Nonprofit Expert Episode 30 – One Check Can Change Everything: Fundraising Lessons from Nonprofit CEO Eileen Heisman

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Welcome to Nonprofit Expert, presented by DonorPerfect.

Robbe Heaely

I’m Robbe Healey, and thank you for joining us for Nonprofit Expert presented by DonorPerfect. This year, we’re talking with experienced nonprofit professionals in our career insights Read More

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Welcome to Nonprofit Expert, presented by DonorPerfect.

Robbe Heaely

I’m Robbe Healey, and thank you for joining us for Nonprofit Expert presented by DonorPerfect. This year, we’re talking with experienced nonprofit professionals in our career insights series. And today, I’m so lucky to be speaking with Eillen Heisman. Eillen’s had a very distinguished career, most recently retired as the CEO of the National Philanthropic Trust. And in her journey as a professional, she’s had several interesting positions and many interesting experiences, and she’s gonna spend some time now talking with us about some of those and how that informs the way she thinks about the future of our sector. So, Eileen, I’m absolutely thrilled to have you here this afternoon and to talk about what we think the future of our sector might look like. But we before we dive into that, why don’t you fill in a little bit more about the career you’ve had, the opportunities you’ve had, the places you’ve been?

Eileen Heisman

Sure. Thank you. It’s great to be here. And when I first got into fundraising in the from the AFP side, I you were one of the people I looked up to and knew, and people talk about you all the time. So fast forward, but I don’t know how many years. I don’t wanna even say.

Robbe Heaely

It’s probably several decades.

Eileen Heisman

Yeah. Yeah. Several decades. It’s fun for me to be here as well. So I started out thinking I wanted to make the world a better place. Right? That was my goal. As a pretty young age, like, way beyond before high school, I mean, I thought making the world a better place was a worthy goal. And nobody said to me, go into business, make a lot of money. But my parents said to me, just pick a job you really wanna do. So this is really how I looked at job opportunities. I mean, this is pretty nerdy. We used to get the Sunday New York Times, and and this is way before the Internet. And I in the back of the, of the new the of the, whatever, current events section, there was all this job listings, not business jobs, but nonprofit jobs. I don’t know how they and why they segregated them. And so I used to read those job descriptions. I was probably in early high school with a really fine tooth comb and thinking, okay. I wanna do a job like that, or I wanna do a job like that. And that’s how I formed this idea of of what I could do and what skills I would need. And that was when I didn’t even know anything about the sector. My parents didn’t work. My parents are both in health care. And so then, fast forward being a freshman in college and my freshman roommate is there, and, I never met her before. We’re total strangers. And this is very sexist, but I said to her, what does your dad do? Right? I’m embarrassed that I said that now, but at the time, that’s what I said. And she said, he works for Prudential Life Insurance, and he gives away money for them. And I said, what? And he was the grant making, the CSR person for Prudential Life Insurance in Newark and their big corporate offices. And I said, I think I said something like, well, you can get paid for that. Right? Or either said it or thought it. And then I ended up meeting her dad who was quite a gentleman. And so you can see the seeds of this. Yeah. Right? Because he’s he’s and, and my mother was really active in civic affairs and League of Women Voters. My dad ran for school board, so they were both involved in the community. And my mother used to take me. There was some pretty poor kids in our neighborhood who were part of a Girl Scout troop my mother ran, and my mother used to take food over to them. And she always made me go with her to drop the food off. And then she would say, Doug, to talk about it to people because she didn’t want them to be embarrassed that they were getting free food. So I go to I go to college and get a bachelor’s degree at, Carnegie Mellon in psychology, and then I did a, a year working in a mental health in inpatient in between, and I went to graduate school at Michigan in social work. And and I I didn’t there was the thing called the macro. It was the it was the micro, which was clinical work, and then there was macro, which is like organizational work inside the nonprofit sector. And and I majored in social program evaluation at University of Michigan. And, and that really just put me in this career path, but I still didn’t know about fundraising. And but I was interested in politics, and I did an internship at congressional budget office. And then I ended up getting a job working for Joan Spector in city hall during her first term. And I loved politics. I just loved it. And I eventually I went to I worked for Ireland too for a little while. And but at the end of the four years, she was running for reelection. And, we were the staff members in city hall in Philadelphia who work in city council are the only people allowed in the whole city government allegedly to get involved in political campaigns because it’s really hard to when you’re working in a council person’s office, to delineate this is a campaign thing, this is a work. You know? So so I was allowed to do political things there. And she’s asked me if I would help her do these fundraisers, and I said, yeah. Sure. So, you know, I was putting these events together and charging and, like, being at the door and collecting money and getting remarks ready and all of a sudden. So I did that. And at the end of the and she won reelection. And at the end, she said, you know, you’re really good at this. You should think about doing this professionally. I was like, you know, my answer was good at what? That’s funny. I literally like, what are you talking about? And she said, fundraising. You know, people get paid for it. I said, they do?

Robbe Heaely

The power of a mentor.

Eileen Heisman

And she said, yes. She said, you should really think about it. And, and then I and then I left her office, and she kept in touch with me. And I was having a hard time getting a job. I actually couldn’t find a job. And somebody said that I should, consider professional fundraising charitable fundraising relative to political fundraising. So I did a bunch of informational interviews, and I ended up putting my you know, rearranging my resume, which at the time I typed on an old fashioned typewriter. Wheel. Yeah. And and I started interviewing, and I interviewed it. I got a job offer at Drexel, and I didn’t the person who was running drug show development then nobody really liked her. So I wanted to work for people that I liked. Then I ended up doing seven interviews. I got my first charitable job at the Philadelphia Foundation. Development officer. It was nineteen eighty seven, and they had never had anybody raise money before.

Robbe Heaely

Eighty seven. Interesting. You would think.

Eileen Heisman

And so and community foundations were and still have to raise money to keep their public support test for being public charities. And so, I didn’t know what they’d even met at the time, but now so I but then I started working there, and I had been working in campaigns for about two and a half years, political campaigns. And she and I I couldn’t believe how boring I thought it was. There I was. You know, it’s endowment money. It’s long term. And it was bequest money waiting for people to die. I mean, getting them in the will. I’m like, oh my gosh. And I you know, it’s just to this incredible fast pace. And it was the opposite. And I thought I can’t stand this. And I was calling my political friends up saying, you gotta get me out of here. I can’t stand it. And then a check came in. One check came in for six hundred and fifty thousand dollars that I’d never seen a check because at at that point, the max you’d give to a political candidate senate was ten thousand. So I I I missed something. I’ve been the I became the, finance director of Ireland’s, eighty six reelection campaign to the US senate. So I went for Joan and I went to Ireland. And so that was that was a national job. That was and then and that’s when I couldn’t find work after that. That was pretty scary. And so the Philadelphia Foundation took a took a chance on me, and I went in there and then didn’t like it and then got this check for six fifty. And then I was like, oh my gosh. And then I thought, wow. This is a lot of money. And then literally overnight, I went from I can’t stand it to I’m gonna figure out how this check got here, and I’m gonna figure out the path that it took and everything, every behavior step I could track. And then I’m gonna figure out how to do it and do it really well. And that was like, you know, one thing happens, and I was like, okay. And I went came to work the next day instead of, like, whining and, like, really fetching and, like, just I was, like, I was ready to rock and roll. So I went on this path. I started interviewing. I talked to a lot of people, but I said, what are the ten fastest growing community foundations? And they told me and I this is before Zoom wave. You know, I make phone calls, introduce myself, how to get through their secretaries or some administrative assistants. And I interviewed the people who were raising money from the ten fastest growing community foundations in the country. And I collected all this data, and I put it together, and I created a plan for, the Philadelphia Foundation. And it was all based on data. Right? It was data driven plan. It was nineteen, let’s see. Eighty seven to ninety two is when I was there. And, I just got started. I mean, I got started doing it, and it’s actually that plan that when I went to NPT, I made into a national plan. Like, I I just pulled out my plan.

Robbe Heaely

Fundamentals were the fundamentals.

Eileen Heisman

Exactly. And but in the interim, I realized that I became a mother, and I also realized that I needed to, hone some more fundraising skills because being a political fundraiser was good for sort of annual giving. But, and so I ended up, and I liked planned giving a lot. So, I worked at, the Philadelphia Foundation for almost five years and then became director of planned giving in Einstein and then moved to Abington shortly after where I was, the director of planned giving then director of development under Nick Costa. We were just talking about Nick And worked with Beverly Goldberg as a rock star. And I ended up sort of learning the tools of the trade at a really hands on development office at a this at a hospital that was had a huge donor base and very loyal donor base. And I learned about recognition there. I learned about stewardship there. Beverly was a great teacher. And Nick was very by the book. He was actually writing a book at the time. And so I got to be a student of these incredible craftsmen who were right around me. And, it was really fun. I mean and I’m a like a spongy learner, but all of a sudden, the world seems small. Like, there I was in this ten mile radius. You know, I was like I was like, this is not all there is to life. And I had just been working Arlan’s campaign was national, really, even though it’s Pennsylvania campaign, the fundraising was national. And so I heard through the grapevine that, Pitcairn Trust Company was starting this entity called the National Philanthropic Trust. And I thought, wow. It’d be cool to do this nationally. Like, that would really be cool, and it’s near my house. And I really and I had this whole thing. And so I I I made a cold call kind of, and I, not it was not completely cold, but it was lukewarm.

Robbe Heaely

Yeah. A lukewarm call.

Eileen Heisman

It wasn’t a hot it was like I had one intro to them. Right? It wasn’t like I called out of nowhere. But and they said come in. And then they talked to me and I talked about, you know, all the things I just said to you. And then and they offered me a job, and then I said they didn’t have a job description. So they gave me this job description. It was for, like, a private banker type, like a relationship manager for private bank. And I came back and I said, I don’t think this is really what you want me to do. Like, this isn’t really the job. It’s like a banking job. And, they said, okay. You write it. I said, okay. So that was in ninety six. And then, for two years, I and then they gave me a promotion within those two years. And then this person who was president, stepped down. It was a family member who I loved and ended up going on the board, and that he went on the board. And then they promoted me to be CEO, and that was in ninety eight. And I raised the first, you know, million dollar gift within a couple months. And then I took my plan from Philadelphia Foundation with all these fundamentals, and I said, okay. It’s not gonna be the region anymore. It’s gonna be national. And I scoped out what that meant, And I just, I just started on my way. And when I left after being CEO for twenty six years, we had about forty two billion in the bank. We had raised sixty three billion in aggregate. We had given away about thirty billion in aggregate. And at one point, really, not the year I left, but the year before that, we’ve become the third largest grant maker in the world. And you can’t I always would say, you can’t give it away unless you raise it. And so I was always in there with my fundraising lens on always. I mean, I I never was a great grant maker. I never liked the grant making side. And most donor advised funds donors don’t need grant or want grant making support. So I was really looking through that lens. And, and I and so I never looked back after that. And that six hundred and fifty thousand dollar check at the Philadelphia Foundation was like this pivotal moment. And I remember, like, you know, when you remember those moments in your life, you remember I was standing near the front desk that had a high counter and I’m pretty short, so the counter was pretty high. And I remember opening the check, and and because it was so big but I had only been there for a few months. Because I was a development person, I could get credit for it. Though it was a bequest that had been left years before by a woman, but in Fidelity Bank, I actually got the whole story. Called the trust department, said, you know, we just got this check. Could you tell me how it got here?

Robbe Heaely

But you’re talking about relationships over decades. Yes. From the little girl reading The New York Times job postings to a college roommate whose dad winds up being an instrumental mentor even if organic.

Eileen Heisman

I just kind of a Exactly.

Robbe Heaely

Yeah. Exactly.

Eileen Heisman

When she would hurt his daughter, my roommate used to talk about what her dad did. He wished she would talk about it. I said, that’s really interesting.

Robbe Heaely

Yeah. It’s interesting. And I think I I don’t know about you, but when I was in high school, I I had my career path planned. You did? Oh, absolutely. What what was it? I was gonna work for the Girl Scouts. So I wrote to the Girl Scouts of the USA, and I said, if, if I’m gonna get hired by a Girl Scout council after I graduate from college, what should I major in? Well, that’s working backwards. I I

Eileen Heisman

did that a lot.

Robbe Heaely

They said be a teacher. And I’m like, I don’t wanna be a teacher.

Eileen Heisman

That’s one of those careers that women were always getting pigeonholed.

Robbe Heaely

Well, that was before title nine. Right. And it was before women who had children kept their jobs, which I realized was very controversial at the time. But, anyway,

Eileen Heisman

and had summers off and were off, you know All the things. Yeah. Two of

Robbe Heaely

their three So I tripped across I was a a counselor at a Girl Scout camp in the summer, and one of and and the CIT, the counselor training program, and one of the staff was doing an undergraduate degree in recreation and outdoor education at Indiana University. I’m like, that sounds like me. So I actually did an undergraduate degree at Northeastern in recreation therapy and outdoor education and fully intended to work for the Girl Scouts forever. And after six years of working in one Girl Scout council, I decided the woman in the council next to me needed to be my mentor. And before she realized she’d been tapped for this high honor, I said, I’m gonna apply for every job she posts until she hires me. And the first one she did was a director of fund development.

Eileen Heisman

And she hired you.

Robbe Heaely

And she hired me. She said at the end of her search, she had a girl scout who’d never raised a dollar and a hospital fundraiser who knew everybody in town but had never been a girl scout. And she thought it was easier to teach fundraising skills than the culture of girl scouting. And the late Hank Rasa was still alive. Yes. And I went to his fundraising school, and that was the So she put mission

Eileen Heisman

over experience.

Robbe Heaely

Mission over skills. That’s really interesting. Well and I think that’s probably pretty smart.

Eileen Heisman

Well, because you probably stay longer. Right? Because you’re already demonstrated that you’re in love with the mission. Right? You lived it. You wanted to work there, and and she didn’t know. Did when did you tell her that you were gonna apply for every job? Did you ever tell her that? I don’t know.

Robbe Heaely

I don’t know if I did.

Eileen Heisman

That’s something I would wait, like, three years to tell somebody.

Robbe Heaely

I don’t know that. And it’s a long and boring story, but I didn’t work for I only worked for her for about two years till I wound up moving here. And when this chapter, the Philadelphia AP chapter named me fundraising executive of the year, I happened to be in Rochester, New York. This was up in Syracuse, Geneva, actually. I told her I was coming, and I brought the National Philanthropy Day program with my picture in it and took it to her and said, look what you started. And she said, I knew you would be good at that. That’s so great.

Eileen Heisman

I don’t know what you’re gonna you

Robbe Heaely

But that’s like that’s like Joan Spector.

Eileen Heisman

Yeah. She and you know what? She kept she kept in touch with me until she died recently. Like, we would have dinner. Her she had dementia at the end, so it’s harder to have a con you know, dinner with her because she wasn’t quite all there anymore. But she kept she said, you know, I know you’re doing really well. I mean, she would always and I thought, you know, this whole thing, you’re good at it. I’m like, good at what? Like, I’ll never forget that conversation because I didn’t know what the what was because I said there’s not much to it, which is such a bizarre thing. But, I mean, the political fundraising piece for city council, there’s a pretty limited little box of things that and I you know, toolbox that I just used over and over again. But I was disciplined, and I like to get things over the finish line, and I’m competitive with myself. So if I raise certain amount, I share it more and follow-up and good at follow-up. Like, all the stuff that makes fundraisers good. And I it’s not like I had to teach myself. I’m just that way naturally.

Robbe Heaely

But But I think there I think that’s what’s different now about decades ago. There wasn’t a glide path. And now when you look at people coming into the sector intentionally, If you look back on the pivotal moments, not necessarily in your career personally, but in this sector

Eileen Heisman

Right.

Robbe Heaely

When you think about what the next ten years, the next twenty years, the next thirty years because I think you’re a generative thinker. I mean, you wanna be excellent today, but what’s tomorrow going to bring? And how does tomorrow stay excellent while you keep today going? What do you think might be shaping?

Eileen Heisman

I call that sitting on top of the mountain, standing and looking over. Like, I because I think if you’re a CEO and you’re good, you have you have to be worried about the day to day, but you have to get on top

Robbe Heaely

of the mountain.

Eileen Heisman

Yeah. So what what would you so, you know, I have the great privilege of teaching a philanthropy and fundraising course at Penn, a graduate course. I I cold called the dean twenty years ago, and I and he didn’t call me back, and I called him two more times. I called him three times. And he finally called me back. And I was CEO of NPT at the time, but we were so small. You know, that wasn’t a great title of, like, a very tiny thing, but he finally talked. And I went down and ate lunch with him and the dean of at Penn of the School of Social Policy and Practice. And he, said, what why? You know, you’re chasing me around. I’m like, well, because I have this idea. And I said to him, you know, it took me about twelve years to put all the facts and figures and kinda constructs together about how money goes from individuals, you know, and foundations, corporations into the nonprofit sector and as a fundraiser. And that framework is like, it took me a long time, but I said, what I’d like to do is take what I learned and distill it into a course and teach it to people that are going into the sector so they can do it smarter, faster, better, and easier than it took me twelve years to kind of what’s this world I’m working on. And, and he looked at me, and I said, you know, I was talking to Temple. I have somebody at Temple, but I’d rather do it here. He goes, don’t go to Temple. Like, okay. And and, and he said, you’re hired. And I said, really? And he goes, yeah. But it’s gonna take you a while to get into the classroom. And he said, because you have to have a full fourteen week syllabus. You have to have every reading. You have to have every class, all the fourteen weeks mapped out, and you have to have a grading rubric, you know, everything. And he said, you don’t just walk in. And I said, okay. And you know what I did? I took my AFP outline for the orientation course that they used to teach at Villanova. I took that, and I kind of mushed it around and made it my own. It had all the fundamentals. I literally took that. I took it out, and I and that was my framework for and my course. That was the framework that I used. And, you know, that was, over twenty years ago. But and I never take teach the same thing twice, but the benefit of that class and I have about six hundred former students all over the country, even the world, many of whom, I’d say eighty percent work in development. And a lot of them come in saying, I really I don’t really like this stuff, but I feel like I should know what I wanna work. I mean, they come in sort of whiny. Yeah. And I and it’s like and I just ignored that. Like, I I said, okay. Well, you know, first class, I make everybody around tell me what they wanna learn, you know, because I kinda wanna know everybody’s baseline. And by the end, almost inevitably, at from whatever they said at the end of first class, they come, you know what? I know I was sounding negative at the beginning, but this is really interesting. You make it really interesting. So the but the other benefit of that course is that I get to see the next generation of young people who are gonna be taking all of our jobs and gonna be doing this radio show, podcast instead of us. Right? They’re gonna say, oh, I remember those two women. Right? But and you know what? We’re gonna be in really good hands.

Robbe Heaely

So what do you see from the top of the mountain?

Eileen Heisman

I think that the sector will right now, at this moment in time, because of all the federal cutbacks and decisions that are getting made, I think we’re in an unusual crisis spot. So I’m gonna put that in the parking lot for a second because that’s relatively recent. But I think the sector is gonna grow and thrive. I think they’re you know, they’ve the mission driven pieces are the same, but the tools that they have are really, really different, I think, to fundraising and to also, you know, execute. Right? Just just artificial intelligence alone, right, is an amazing tool that, like, unimaginable, even ten years ago. And they’re committed to mission driven organizations. They they know they’re not gonna make as much money. They wanna exercise their ability to make the world a better place. They often come with years of experience. There are very few kids of the people who and they get this graduate degree. It’s nonprofit leadership are right out of college, and they’re really committed to being excellent. And so I’m very confident that we’re gonna be in good shape. I think from a policy point of view right now, you know, we’re gonna we’re watching some deconstruction going on, and we’re gonna have to work really hard to reconstruct when this place where we are ends or comes to a kind of a saner moment in time. So it’s a scary time right now. I mean, I’m you know, I was CEO for twenty six years. I have to say, I’m I I’m still teaching. I’m doing some consulting, and I’m, writing a book. And when I’m watching what’s going on and I watch it pretty closely. I still have my subscription to the Chronicle of Philanthropy. I read I mean, I, you know, I talk to people like you, and I have an inside the Beltway lobbyist who I talk to a lot. And I’m teaching. Right? So you have to stay current when you’re teaching. But I think that we’re in a, you know, we’re in a we’re gonna be in a maintenance shrinking mode for a little while. And it’s sad. It’s heartbreaking actually to me personally professionally. But I think I for when it comes to personnel and talent, hugely talented people are coming through my class. And, you know, LaSalle has a nonprofit leadership, program. I teach

Robbe Heaely

the course at Villanova.

Eileen Heisman

You teach the course at Villanova. You know, Gratz College has a fundraising, track for their, like, nonprofit. And, you know, of course, Indiana is there. I mean, there’s there’s, you know, so there’s a lot more academic interest in the nonprofit sector. You and I, I learned through the seat of my pants. Right? Yep. There was nothing. There was hardly any formula. AFP. Right? Or and the plan giving.

Robbe Heaely

Yep. Right.

Eileen Heisman

I used to learn. And I used to go to every AFP lunch and breakfast. I never missed a Franklin forum because Yeah. You could and I went to the New York fundraising day often because if I didn’t learn that way, I wasn’t learning. And the Chronicle Philanthropy barely existed or nonprofit times when I was first starting. So there was no body of knowledge. I think there’s a body of knowledge now. You know? And so I worry about people that just lean into the sector without learning anything.

Robbe Heaely

Yeah. I think I’ve thought about at least thirty different lines of conversation we could have. But it’s interesting to me, I think, about two thousand nine when the mortgage banking crisis and the economic downturn. And, of course, that was not a political crisis as much well, tangentially, it certainly was, but but it was an economic crisis, and people would be crying out. The nonprofit sector needs to step in. Well and, of course, we’d been there the whole time, but when the need was less obvious to folks, there was no hue and cry. And I I’m expecting that now that with people struggling and health care being diminished or food resources being diminished or services for people experiencing homelessness, the hue and cry will come back. The nonprofit sector needs to do something. And, of course, it’s it’s such a double edged sword because the reason for the crisis is reduced money and the impact on jobs, and it’s just this vicious cycle. And I I hope you’re right. I believe you’re right that it’ll be somewhat temporary, and we will get through it. But the recovery

Eileen Heisman

It’s

Robbe Heaely

gonna be be painful will be painful.

Eileen Heisman

And we’re we’re probably gonna lose some talented people in the sector who are not gonna wanna do it. But, you know, the burnout I think some the burnout in the sector and especially fundraisers. But when you’re in a crisis, you know, when you don’t have to do your job every day or you think you can do something else, you know, you at some point might say, I don’t wanna do this anymore. I never got to that point. And I went through I went through the downturn in, you know, ninety nine to, like, right around two thousand, that first Internet kind of explosion where these companies that didn’t have a real product or service had these high valuations, and then they tanked and a lot of things blew up. And then that o eight zero nine with the mortgage crisis Yeah. You know, and then there was around COVID. The you know? Absolutely. Yep. And then here we are now. Now is less I mean, the market’s so volatile right now. I mean, it’s just watching. You know, I’m a I have to say I’ve always been a fan of the business world. I never was thinking, oh, these are the bad guys. And so I watched the business world because I knew they were our donors. And I you know, and when I end my class, I always say, is are you are you watching the business? Like, are you reading the business section of the, you know, people reaching digitally now? I see the paper. Right? And and a lot of them say no, almost like I’m interested in nonprofit sector. Like, that’s not. I said That’s not my time out. Yes. Yes. Time out. It is a part of your world. Right? It is. The economy dictates a lot of things that cascade into the nonprofit sector. And, and I think it takes a certain kind of thinker to think that. But when you talked about being on the mountain, I think we have to hunker down. We’re probably gonna be expected to do more with less less, which is kinda ridiculous. I mean and But it’s the constant you encourage us to I mean, that you know what? I’ve been in this business since my first charitable giving job since eighty seven. I mean, I’ve heard that since eighty seven. I And it’s like and it’s twenty twenty five. Right?

Robbe Heaely

Well, and it’s the never any overhead, only program focus, never any r and d, only guaranteed success, all the things that on the business side of the table would never be be a thing ever.

Eileen Heisman

Demonization of overhead by the original chair navigator leadership was one of the worst things that’s happened in this sector in thirty years because strategic planning, having good equipment

Robbe Heaely

Branding.

Eileen Heisman

Yeah. Well, yeah, and research and development, like and program evaluation and all these things that you need to figure out how to run, you you know, management training, having bench strength, all those things that the for profit sector take for granted, especially the big they either demonized and all that. And when people say overhead, you know, I said, don’t wouldn’t it be great to have a strategic plan? I try to I try to kind of, break it down what overhead means. And when you break it down, people don’t push back as much. But this overhead has just become this like, a terrible word. Oh my gosh. What a and you know what? Even though Charity Navigator has changed its tune, when I would talk to donors at NPT and they were when I when I was so close to them, as we got bigger, I got farther away, but they would say, well, I don’t wanna give it overhead. That was a hue and cry.

Robbe Heaely

Yeah. There was a, hundred women who care group in Chester County a few years ago that I was active in before COVID. And in their model, the way they did it, any member of hundred women who care could bring a nonprofit to present themselves to be one of the ones you’d consider that night in one person. You could count you could set your watch to her raising her hand first and asking each person, what’s your overhead percentage? And I wanted to take her aside and say, do you have any idea what you’re actually asking?

Eileen Heisman

Don’t plan. Don’t train yourself.

Robbe Heaely

Plan. Don’t supervise well. Don’t provide them good infrastructure. Don’t provide them good tools. Don’t provide them good equipment. Don’t allow them to get training.

Eileen Heisman

Don’t do program evaluation, but do a really good job and have the data that you need. Right?

Robbe Heaely

All the things. So I I had a chance to talk to Art Taylor when we were developing this series, and he had an interesting comment about future professionals for the sector. What did he say? Well, he talked about the people in government who are either being terminated or opting out and that he believes they could be a pool of very interested committed individuals who might find a home in the nonprofit sector. Because in his experience, many of them went into government with through the same motivation to do public service, but on the government side, not the nonprofit side. Is he right?

Eileen Heisman

I mean, probably partially right. I mean, whenever there’s a, you know, outflow of a bunch of people, and and that’s really been a tragic one. Right? Fired without cause. If there is, you know, if there are people who wanna do that, do I think it’s an easy transition? I probably easier than other places, but I think there’s still a body of knowledge and a culture of the sector that’s quite different than the government. But, I mean, they are working to make the world a better place. It I guess it depends on what department and what they’re like and, you know, what their skill set is like. I mean, it the thing that’s amazing to me, and you probably remember this, is that when we were younger, fundraising jobs like, getting your first fundraising job was pretty easy.

Robbe Heaely

Right? Well, that’s because people thought anybody could raise money.

Eileen Heisman

Right. And so now, though, it’s actually really hard. And I’m saying that relative to these government folks because, you know, getting your foot in the door at you have to demonstrate competence. You have to demonstrate that you’re aligned with a mission, that you have the skill set to do the job. Do I think it’s a pool of people? Yeah. I mean, do I think they could jump right in? Some probably could, but I think a lot of them, you’d have to you’d be it’d be a culture shock, I think.

Robbe Heaely

Yeah. It’s interesting when you think about the I don’t know about you, but people I know who are looking for development officers can’t find them because they’re jobs and people who apply, but not qualified people who apply. So I think that that’s that’s another big piece. Earlier, you mentioned artificial intelligence. I’d love to circle back

Eileen Heisman

to that

Robbe Heaely

as I think I just finished, co chairing the task force that rewrote the AFP code of ethics. And as we’ve been doing the rollout

Eileen Heisman

It’s so great that you do that work. Oh, it was Are you still on the board, the national board?

Robbe Heaely

Oh, no. I finished I finished that in twenty ten.

Eileen Heisman

Wow. Okay. So it’s

Robbe Heaely

been a while.

Eileen Heisman

But I feel like you’re still there.

Robbe Heaely

Right? Well, I when they ask me to do something I feel I can help with, I say yes. That’s great. But I honestly think this code of ethics project’s probably my last big one because I think there’s so many other talented people who need a chance. I just wanna get out of the way. Yeah. But the last piece of the launch of the new code was in Seattle at the international conference. And every time I’ve done a national presentation or regional presentation, the number one question I get asked is, what’s the standard on AI? And I say, there is none because there are no standards on tactics. There are two standards that apply. One is don’t overinflate your skills, and the other one is don’t steal intellectual property. So those fit together. But if we think of AI as a tool, and I know some people are worried that it’s gonna replace human beings doing work.

Eileen Heisman

I don’t.

Robbe Heaely

And other people think it’s some kind of mystical evil thing, and some people think it is the biggest solution to every problem we’ve ever had. How do you see it fitting into our work?

Eileen Heisman

You know, I, I so in my class, it’s been an issue for a couple of years. In my first year that it started to come, you know, when somebody speaks English as a second language and they submit a paper three times longer than it has to be in perfect English that sort of sounds robotic almost. I’m like, this person didn’t write this. And I’ve had foreign students for almost the whole nineteen years. So I’m used to slightly, awkwardly written English, and and it’s like and all of a sudden I mean, it was like, what? I was kinda I didn’t know what to do. Right? And so I called, and Penn was really, at that point, still kind of formulating their thoughts about it. They’re much more sophisticated now. But, I think it’s a tool, but it’s not the end result. And, you know, somebody I was just I I joined this group of people called Life fifty of of former chiefs who are now in retirement age but still really active and healthy. And I just went to a meeting in in Miami with them, and it’s been one of the most fun things I’ve done since I’ve stepped away from my job. And, and they were talking about AI a lot. In fact, it was a huge topic, and they were talking about having it be a first draft. I think this is a great metaphor. You know, if you have a really complicated email on a topic, you can have it do a first draft of something, but you should never send that draft out. You should be like, you use it as an outline. And so I think when you come to think of it that way, because it might be pulling from inaccurate data or it might not be your point of view or it might certainly may not be in your voice, but it may give you a framework that would that would help you from your own sense of what a first draft might look like. And so in that sense, it could save you a lot of time. I I use it when I’m not sure about something and I or I think I know a fact that I heard somewhere, but I’m not positive. I’ll use it and and say, could you tell me the fact about this or that? And and it’ll come back. And then based on that, it might ask it a second or third question. And then I would go out and do my original research and, like, just use that as, like, a tool. I think if that’s the only tool that you’re using and you’re not putting any of your personal intelligence or thoughtfulness or other research, you’re it’s it’s terrible. I think you should use it like you wouldn’t use the encyclopedia or I remember Wikipedia when it came out. People thought it was terrible. And I actually have in my own syllabuses. You cannot use Wikipedia as a source because it’s all secondhand information. Right? And so that seems like a little bit drop in the bucket now relative because Wikipedia couldn’t write it for you. But, you know, this idea about writing a paper, one of my assignments is writing a direct mail piece, and they have to pick something that they, either a a place that they’ve identified or a place where they’ve worked or have been a donor to. And and they said, well, that’s a pretty AI proof, you know, assignment. Then I thought to myself, well, you could ask the AI to write a direct mail piece. Right? Why not? Yeah. And so I you know, it’s gonna be our generation and and everybody’s struggling with this. I mean, I I’m also involved at Carnegie Carnegie Mellon where I went to undergrad. And when I had this pen problem, I went to this committee this national committee that I’m on. And I the dean’s there of the school where I graduated from at CMU. And I said, can I talk to you about your policy on artificial intelligence? I mean and I told them my struggles, and they’re they were struggling about the exact same thing. And so the whole world’s struggling about it. And I think, like, the Internet, when we thought it was gonna we didn’t know what the Internet was gonna be twenty years ago. It was and you didn’t know how it was gonna be used. I think we’re right at the beginning scary that scary point, but I think we’re gonna need to incorporate it in and figure it out. And, I I actually enjoy I at first, I thought it was horrible to use it. I actually enjoy using it, but I’m careful about what I use it for. I’m careful about what I use it for. I was just at the session where they were doing a teaching thing about it, and the guy who was teaching it said you can teach it how to talk in your voice. And if and and you can so they can give you something. You say, I don’t think that’s accurate. I want it to be more similar to other things I’ve done. And so the guy said, you have to be bossy. You have to, like, push it around. And he had this whole strategy about, like, being the boss of of the AI tool that you’re using. And don’t let you know? And and don’t ever take the first response, like, to be the final thing. Like, you gotta form you know? And so we I mean, the way it works now, it by five years from now, it’ll probably be way more sophisticated.

Robbe Heaely

Two years from now, it may be. Yeah. Right.

Eileen Heisman

My brother, who is a chess master and lives in a different intellectual world than I’ve lived in, He thinks that it’s gonna become smarter than people and faster thinking than people and that it’s there’s a whole group of kind of people that are terrified of it, and he sort of lives in that world. So I know when I see him, not not to talk to him too much because he makes me really nervous even though I love him and he’s my brother because and he tells you why he tells me why. He’s he’s not just he’s not just being a sensationalist kind of Chicken Little. The sky is falling. And I said, yeah, Danny. I know. That sounds like it really could happen. I mean, what I was supposed to say is that he’s actually making sense, but I kinda refuse

Robbe Heaely

you remember when Google searches were for something? And you could search for anything, and you could get all this stuff. And

Eileen Heisman

You started to organize it. Right? Of course

Robbe Heaely

you did. And you had to filter out what what was true, what was false, and you’d go to the library into the reference section to research whether what you got from Google was right. I mean, we remember card catalogs and Yes. Doing your own research. In my opinion, AI is no different than, you know, with a ten cent photocopy machine in library where you copy a page and take it back to your office and use that. It’s just faster Right. And it aggregates a lot more stuff.

Eileen Heisman

So you need to make sure that it’s you need to check. Right? You need to do something. Absolutely need

Robbe Heaely

to check. And I think you also need to decide how you are going to allow it to be used in your own work Yes. As an agency, not just as an individual.

Eileen Heisman

You know, at Penn, it’s it’s teacher by it’s professor by professor.

Robbe Heaely

Interesting.

Eileen Heisman

They have some general policies, but it’s up to you to figure out because it’s the what gets taught is so broad at Penn. They they felt like they couldn’t make rules that would fit every class class and what the tasks are related. Think of a physics class or my fundraising or Yeah. Or what Wharton’s teaching, I mean, or English literature. Right? You to make a policy that fits all those classes doesn’t they they just decided not to do it, but they’re they have they have workshops at the Wazoo. In fact, tomorrow, I’m taking probably my sixth pen workshop on use of AI in the classroom.

Robbe Heaely

You’ve talked a lot about the body of knowledge and the impact that the present body of knowledge has on people starting their careers or early in their careers. When you think about skills and leadership qualities for people who are going

Eileen Heisman

to be in these chairs forty years from now? What skills do they need, and what leadership qualities do you see as the most useful? It’s a one of my former board chairs said to me, and then she said it publicly. She said, Eileen, you’re an EQ CEO. And I said, what does that mean? And she said, you don’t live by the numbers, so you know the numbers. You live, in the the emotional intelligence of managing. She says, because you know you have somebody who knows the numbers right next to you, which was true. I before I became a CEO, I thought if I ever become one, I’m gonna need a really good finance director or VP for finance or CFO because that’s just I just don’t go there right away. But I but I like it. I like looking at the budget, but I don’t put the budget together. And so I think that CEOs need the emotional intelligence of understanding what motivates people to go to the office every day, you know, how tasks get assigned relative to a strategic plan, how to articulate a street strategic work, you know, how to motivate people, how to res well, and how to respond to a board. Like, you know, working with the board is a huge part of my job, but all and if you’re gonna be in a chief role, you know, you have to deal with the board. The board are business people that have different stakes in the ground that come from all different disciplines and maybe never ever worked at a nonprofit. And then all of a sudden, they’re basically supervising you. Right? So you have to really be cognizant of that. I was always trying to see the world to their eyes, each of their eyes, right, not their collective eyes. And then you have to be a jack of all trades. I mean, I had to know about technology. I so I think you have to need to know at least a little bit about everything that’s going on in your organization. And so you have to have a wide breadth of knowledge. You have to be really attuned to people. You have to understand what motivates people. You have to be able to read and understand a budget and or work with it when it’s not working. And then you have all these external things. So we mean you have to have eyes in the back of your head. And you have to like that pace. And, like, if you’re somebody that’s really rigid that likes black and white and I’m not done my task yet, so therefore I can’t get to that, don’t be a CEO. Because you have like, I would come with my list, and some of this was written as soon as it was in my head of what I was gonna do in a day. And there were days that as soon as I got in, there were little fires to put out, a big thing had happened, somebody had decided to resign, or somebody else became pregnant, or somebody else was having a hard time with their families or their mental health issues or you know? And so I would come in with what I thought was gonna happen that day and many days.

Robbe Heaely

At the end of the day, the list was still there.

Eileen Heisman

The list was still there, and I had to make sure that the trades were running on time even though my list wasn’t getting done. So learning how to delegate. I learned a lot of it on the job, and I learned some of it by watching, watching managers that I really, really liked. So when I worked at Abington Hospital, I thought the CEO was brilliant, a guy named Felix Pilla. I think he’s recently died, but he had been a frontline nurse, and his mother was a immigrant from Italy. And he was this little Italian guy, and he sort of looked like a frog, brilliant guy. And because I was a fundraiser, I had access to him even though I was many, many steps below him. And so I would see him, and and he liked me, and I liked him. And I said to him once I was there for about almost five years. I said I said, what what is your management philosophy? Because the hospital was brilliantly run. Really. I mean, it was clean. There were no clinical like, people weren’t suing. It was pretty amazing to work there. And and he said, he goes, I I believe by management by walking around. And I said, what does that mean? And he said, I talk to the people that clean the floors. I talk to the people that are in the operating room. I talk to the people in the cafeteria. I talk to the doctors. I talk to the nurses. I go to the emergency room. And so I go and I talk to people and I watch and I listen. He goes, I learned a ton that way. And then he said the other thing, and I’ll never forget this because this was really antithetical to how I thought about the world at that moment in time. He said, I let people who are good at their jobs and smart, I let them make mistakes and learn on their own even if I so they tell me what they’re gonna do, and I might not agree with it. And I but I let them he goes, if somebody’s gonna die or be threatened by it, I don’t. But he said day to day management things, if I don’t agree with them, instead of me dictating that, I I need to be grooming them and growing them as managers. And he said, sometimes I’m wrong, and sometimes they just find another way to get there. But he said, and I let them learn from that, and it’s really important to let that happen. I and I never thought I I you know, I was at the age where I never thought about that. And so, and he said, and I paid my dues. Paid my dues. So I he went up, you know, into different jobs. And and one of the things and so I paid my due I did you know, I paid my I went I had all the incremental steps before I got to be a CEO. And it’s been really interesting to watch the younger younger generation. Like, when I use the phrase paying your dues, some of them get it. A lot of them don’t get it. Or they think if they did one or two good things, they paid their dues. But sometimes the dues take a long time, you know. And so, you know, to be a student and a sponge of people around you and to really be a good listener and to ask questions. And the other thing I learned really early on is never jump to make a conclusion based on one comment one person says because there’s often another side of the story.

Robbe Heaely

Or ten.

Eileen Heisman

Yeah. So collect a lot more information. And I and I I had this temperature. I have I I trust my intuition a lot, which I think intuition is a combination of experience, knowledge, previous things that have happened to you. I’m not sure it’s, like, spiritual of in nature. But if I was uncomfortable making a decision, especially a big one, and I could feel it, I would say, I guess I don’t have enough information, and I would sleep on it. And something that would make me really angry the day before a good night’s sleep, I would get up in the morning and feel totally different with the same set of facts. And so I came to watch myself and knowing that I shouldn’t be making this decision now. I need to calm down or I need to be or I need more information or I I need the other side of the story or there’s something here that doesn’t feel right. And so I think all those things. Do you need to go to business school? Maybe. Can you learn it on your own? You can. But, the EQ part, I think if you’re not good at EQ, you can learn how to read people and read things. You have to work harder at it. You know, if you’re a strict numbers person, you have to learn it. If you’re like me, you have to you know, and and my accounting people, the people who’s my, like, CFO, especially as we got really big, would laugh at me. And they’d say, I mean, you know way more than you think you know about accounting. But it took me, you know, it took me a long time. I had to figure it out. And I used to say at the beginning of the budget season, you know, treat me like a really smart twelfth grader or, you know, senior in college because I I I have a high ability to learn, but I just, like, you know, go slower. Like, you you don’t talk like you’re talking to another person who has a kind of background. And eventually, you know, I knew what to read, but I still would make sure, like, am I really reading this right? You know, is this what it says to me? And I would I would like I I asked a million questions.

Robbe Heaely

You’re talking about admitting out loud what you don’t know. Yes. I always did. Well and I think that’s something that we’re trained never to do. So if you’re gonna be successful, you have to go against your training.

Eileen Heisman

Because I think that’s one

Robbe Heaely

of the things that hold the sector back, I think, especially with board members. But, you know, we we don’t wanna be on a board with each other and come in a room and

Eileen Heisman

I know. I I agree with you. Board members have this thing where if you if you’re just smarter, you would be working in the for profit sector. So you’re I I always suffered the most when I felt this criticism was coming at me. Like, kind of like, not don’t worry your pretty little head about it. So if you wanna make me crazy, say that to me. But more

Robbe Heaely

I’d like to see the person who said that

Eileen Heisman

to me. But more like, well, if you really add your act together and you’re really smart, you would be working in the for profit sector and you’re not, so you’re working here instead. And, I just I thought, you know what? Mission driven work is to me is sacred. I feel it’s sacred, and and I feel like charitable fundraising is sacred. And I feel like when somebody’s making us responsible for the money that they’ve earned to put it to good use for a mission, like, what what a huge responsibility that is and how morally difficult that is and how seriously I took that every day I thought about that. And this idea that it’s I’m not smart because of it, like, what does that mean, number one? And number two, how did you come to that conclusion? Well, exactly.

Robbe Heaely

Did you figure that out?

Eileen Heisman

No. No. I made it out of that arrogance. You know, I heard a guy from, who had worked at Bain that started, what’s the spin off from Bain that was the, nonprofit consulting firm? Anyway, so he said this is really interesting. I went to a Stanford, executives in philanthropy program. He said the difference between your prof your for profit salary and your nonprofit salary for the exact same job is the exact measure. That delta is a measure of the emotional satisfaction you get from doing that work. So you could be making that much more, but you’re choosing not to because there’s something inside of you that makes you wanna do this work about the world. And and he and I heard that. That was probably eighteen or nineteen years ago I went to that program. And that has stuck with me because I could’ve gone into the I’ve actually had one job in the for profit sector, and I felt like I had my wrong size clothes on every day. But I thought, you know what I did? I I gave up I gave up income, but the what I was able to do every day and especially in my work with NPT where the numbers got so big was was get that emotional satisfaction of satisfying this wish I had when I was eight, right, that I wanted to make the world a better place. And it manifested itself in all these ways in all these different ways. And there’s something about the people that tell me that if I was smart, I’d be in aren’t don’t understand that. Either it’s like, it’s just a foreign concept. You wonder what their primary driver is. To be on the board even or just in life. Exactly. Yeah. Both.

Robbe Heaely

Yeah. Both. We could do a whole conversation about why people serve on board, so maybe we’ll save that for another time.

Eileen Heisman

Yeah.

Robbe Heaely

But you also said something about the hospital CEO giving people room to fail.

Eileen Heisman

Yeah. I thought that was brilliant.

Robbe Heaely

I think it’s brilliant, but I also think it’s so unusual because in the sector would tell me that that too. Are not allowed to fail because then the vigilantes say we’ve wasted money. We’ve wasted pressure precious resources. I hope as the next generation of leaders comes into the sector, they will have less handcuffs and more ability to experiment and get it right.

Eileen Heisman

I mean and that goes back to the overhead issue. How do you know if there’s a better way to do something unless you tried and failed Tried and failed. Right? I mean Right. Right. That’s I mean, how, you know, how do you know that electric lawnmowers are better than old fashioned mowers or better than gas stove mowers? Because you, like, tried them and it didn’t work. You did. Boy, but and you do that in in the sector. You you have to really be careful. And, you know, everybody wants data. Right? This whole thing data driven, data driven, evidence based, evidence based. Like, I totally get it. And I but, you know, if you don’t have the money to get it to do that or and or it’s hard data to get. And because some of the stuff

Robbe Heaely

is going on. I was

Eileen Heisman

just gonna say that. You know? I mean, then what what data do you use? There’s this whole thing about outputs versus outcomes. You can measure outputs, but you can’t measure outcomes easily. And so, you know, that all spills back into this. Well, you you you don’t really have data. You don’t know what you’re doing because we don’t have quarterly, you know, financials, right, that prove x or y. Right? And we don’t live quarter to quarter. Right? We our in our sector living quarter to quarter would be nutty. What are you gonna prove in a quarter of trying to solve a social problem in, like, a really, three months? Even a year. Yeah. A year. Exactly. Exactly. So because I studied program evaluation and I almost got my first job and I walked in this is true. I walked into this place and they had, like, this really dusty computer. Remember when computer paper was folded like this the little green stripes

Robbe Heaely

on it? Paper and it had the holes on the side.

Eileen Heisman

Yeah. Exactly.

Robbe Heaely

The green bar paper with the holes

Eileen Heisman

on the side. Stack like this. And so this was a job I was interviewing for. She goes she goes, well, you’re gonna be the program evaluation person. I said, yeah. That’s what I studied. And and she said, well, you have to go through this stack and figure out what all the data means. Oh. And it was, like, literally dust, the whole thing. And the whole room was dust, and I and and that was gonna be

Robbe Heaely

there since the dawn of time.

Eileen Heisman

Well, you know what? I I I I said, I don’t not at that moment, but I thought there’s no way I’m taking that job. And it wasn’t that I wasn’t interested in the data. It was it was the daunting sense that it was in this backroom that that was all dirty, and this was what they meant.

Robbe Heaely

Attention to it. And what was the driver for them trying to fill the position then?

Eileen Heisman

Federal there was no federal mandate at the time that said if you’re gonna get money from HHS, you’ll have to you have to have data to prove it. So here’s this little graduate student

Robbe Heaely

from So we’ll jump through the zoo.

Eileen Heisman

University of Michigan who said, oh, she you know, so I was I was a graduate by then, but I’m not doing that. I I thought, you know what? Is you know that you know that principle in medicine rule out where you’re like I love that principle. I explain it to people all the time. They look at me. But, you know, you try things, then you realize you’re ruled out. Like, I don’t wanna do that. I worked in frontline mental health. I didn’t wanna do that. Ruled that out. Ruled out the stack of paper. And then I got into politics, and I thought, I’m not ruling this out. You know? And then I started fundraising. I’m like, oh, I’m not gonna rule this out. So you sort of by the you know, by these experiences, you get to, like, have these things to say, okay. I really like that. I don’t wanna do that. I did always wanna be a CEO, though. I did. Oh, interesting.

Robbe Heaely

That was never on my list. Really? Why not? I didn’t wanna do operations. Oh,

Eileen Heisman

I actually like the operation stuff.

Robbe Heaely

That’s why you did, and I didn’t. So we were talking about boards Yes. And and why pea I don’t wanna talk so much about why people volunteer to be on boards. But if you were advising someone how to think about populating a board for the next five years, ten years. How do you think that’s evolving if it is?

Eileen Heisman

I mean, I think, you know, I think part of the challenge is to get younger board members on, but who I’m using the word but, which always sounds like negative word, and who are experienced and knowledgeable enough and have a broad enough skill set that they can, get on the top of the mountain. Because I think board members have to always also be on the top of the mountain with the CEO. And I’m not even sure they understand that, because if so there’s somebody that are drawing the details, getting on the top of the mountain can feel like, what am I doing here? But, it depends on the size of the organization. But I think you have I think boards are gonna really need to be a mix of talent just like they are now. Talent, age, experience, and a willingness to give time, you know, to a mission. Hopefully, they’re gonna love the mission. I mean, you shouldn’t get on a board or get on a staff, right, unless you absolutely love what the organization is doing. And so you definitely have to filter for that. But to have a mix of people so they’re you know, so whatever you’re doing in your organization have especially if you have a risk profile, which probably most organizations don’t. But if you know that you have repute reputation or operational risks or risk related to finance or anything, they should have somebody on the board relative to the things the organization’s doing. So if you need some talent or help in that area, you have almost like an internal senior person there that can, like, have some wisdom, but be now know enough to know that they are not supposed to be telling you what to do, but giving you a kind of framework to how to think about it. And that’s, like what I just talked about. To me, that’s one of the biggest issues on board is the board sometimes doesn’t know that they’re not the manager.

Robbe Heaely

My opinion about that, and I’d love to hear your thoughts about this. My opinion about that is it’s an unusual board, unusual board member who actually gets to to do strategy in their day job. They typically are implementing tactics. So into the boardroom, they come with skills in implementation, not skills in strategic planning or generative planning or any of that. So the the lane they’re traveling in in their day job is the same lane as the staff. So teaching them how to get in the lane. And I think of lanes, not silos, because in silos, you can’t see each other. In lanes, you can. And, you know, if somebody’s in the breakdown lane, you get off and help them. Sometimes you’re in the same lane. Sometimes you’re in your separate lanes. But I think we don’t spend enough time teaching board members the difference between strategic governance, generative governance, and operations. So

Eileen Heisman

I think especially small organizations. I have to say because I was with NPT when it had zero. And at the end, the kind of people that wanted to be on the board, that we could recruit to be on the board was, like, night and day. You know? I mean and so the early board was really different kind of person and probably more like what you discussed, what you mentioned. As we got bigger, we got people that were definitely more strategic because they had more senior jobs. But I I and but nobody trains them. Nobody trains board members, and I don’t have experiences with them going to training programs where they know that it’s, you know, what they call, nose in, hands out or whatever that metaphor is, that they they don’t know where that line is and they don’t know. And part of my job at CEO sometimes was to be that intermediary when I felt that they were telling staff people exactly how to do their jobs was to get them to back off a little bit because there’s no way that people that are there every day working ten that we had really long hours and people worked really hard at MPT. And often, I mean, I worked every weekend, every like, I I I worked every day of the week and worked on my vacation. And but my my subordinates, my immediate chief people reported into me. If a board member was telling them how to do their job and they’re this talent individual that we recruited, it’s like they don’t sit every day in the organization and do it. And and and people I would get people would get mad at me. I would call the board chair, and I’d say, you know, so and so is doing this. Or I would do it myself. I would call and I’d say, you know, we should talk about what a good way to get and have an information exchange. And right at the end, after my many years, I said to the my board chair, I said, you know what? I couldn’t I didn’t do everything the board told me to do. And she said in a somewhat interesting way, I know. And I said I said, well, first of all, if I’m being told to do things in, like, completely opposing directions from different board members, turn right, turn left, go straight, go center. What I have to make a decision about what I think is best. And and I you know, so so when you’re and I was I had enough kind of there’s a phrase, chutzpah, right, kinda guts to put that time out. And I’m sure board members got mad at me occasionally. But my my underlings didn’t feel that comfortable doing that. And so I would try to kind of find a way to educate the board member at the same time and train the staff to figure out how to set those boundaries. But some people learned, some people didn’t learn, some people didn’t care. Some people didn’t know at the end about fourteen. They were all really smart, talented, really accomplished. And a lot of them were so busy. They didn’t have time to do that, and they came and they, you know, they were on the investment committee. They were on the finance committee. They were on the risk, you know, the audit risk committee. But I I just it’s it’s really a hard part of one’s job. It’s really hard because we did an onboarding. Like, we but the onboarding was like who we were. You know? It was describe the departments and the function they did and looked at the audit for the last year, but it wasn’t about your general, here’s your responsibilities. It was always assumed that they knew that. And they don’t. Some did.

Robbe Heaely

Shame on us. Yeah. Some did. But you’ve referenced small organizations several times. Very different. Yeah. I think it’s,

Eileen Heisman

Very different. And sometimes they do wanna run it. Sometimes you can just feel they wanna jump right in.

Robbe Heaely

I I often think that board members who are severe with staff have experienced that in the workplace. Yes. And so they think that’s this is their chance to be severe with someone else if that’s happened to them. Scary. It is scary. But I think it’s human nature kind of writ large, and we don’t think about that. And as the next generation of nonprofit leaders are coming in at a very different time in the formation of the sector, because I think it was still very much making its way. Fundraising as a profession was certainly making its way. It wasn’t even We barely seen as a profession. The associations only just had its sixtieth anniversary. And, of course, fundraising existed long before that, but that when those trade associations formed is when it was starting to get its formation really going and create a body of knowledge and look at ethics and all of those practices. But I think in year seventy five, it’s going to be very different than it was in year twenty five.

Eileen Heisman

I think the board I think it’s great when board members go to training and go if you can get them to go, but a lot of them don’t have time or don’t want to.

Robbe Heaely

The training has to be really good. Really good. We have

Eileen Heisman

to take the training to them.

Robbe Heaely

We do, and it has to be relevant for that moment. Because I think if they learn something relevant for that moment, then they’ll actually come back for more stuff that may be a little less immediate. But it’s,

Eileen Heisman

You have to be you know, like, I think like any learning, you have to be ready for it. Right? You have to be open to it, ready for it, ready to receive it, ready to lean into it, ask questions. You can’t sit there and say, like, I know all this stuff. You have to be really present. And so you have need good facilitators, and it also needs to be I think there needs to be a lot of interactive parts to it. It shouldn’t just be a talking head. Right?

Robbe Heaely

Yeah. You’d lose me in in a moment. Yeah.

Eileen Heisman

I mean, I think it I in my class, I do lecture, but we break up into small groups, and there’s so much talent in the class. You know, we watch your videos. We do all this stuff because the there’s learning. I mean, there’s information that could come from all these different directions, including each other. And I thought, you know, I mean, I can start the framework for it, but, hopefully, why what they’re reading and listening to. I mean, I assign videos. It’s just interesting about how people learn. I think that somehow there’s this notion that you’re on the board. Somehow, you automatically know it, and it’s not true.

Robbe Heaely

Well, and I think that feeds back to my earlier comment. We’re not allowed to admit what we don’t know. Yes. So you confirm the assumption with silence. And hopefully, the if if we recruit well, I think we find that out and we give people permission Mhmm. Even in orientation.

Eileen Heisman

Well and I think you need to have an open door if you can with the board members to say, you know, you might hear something you don’t understand. If you don’t wanna raise your hand, write me a note. We can you know? Or, like, don’t hesitate and try to just be an open door, nonthreatening. The donor advised fund world is pretty complicated, and so I took our board members a couple years to figure out all the things that were going on. And so what that patience of those that two years or whatever was, like, ramping up of, you know, what do what are they catching on? And people who were on a committee knew what that committee was doing, but they didn’t know what the other five committees were doing. Right? And so then then you got the siloed knowledge. I mean, it’s, you know, I’ve never I’ve been on a university board. I was an Arcadia’s board for a while, and it was not easy to and I I never worked at a university, so it was like, what what’s going on here? And but it was a small place. It was pretty folksy, but I I remember not knowing even though I was a CEO at the time. Not I knew I mean, I I was on the audit committee. I thought, why did they put me on the audit committee? I actually had great I actually understood audits really well because I had sat through our audit lots of times by then. I thought, wow. I actually know this. But it you know, which was so strange because I I didn’t wanna take an accounting class in graduate school because I was afraid of. I might fail. I literally but the, this idea of what they come in knowing and then how they learn the other things and who teaches them and how open they are and that there’s there’s a culture of asking questions. But I think it does look to me that when they’re in a group, if the staff is there especially, you don’t get a lot of questions.

Robbe Heaely

Well, I think the who is the most important piece because who do they relate to? What’s their what’s their structure? And it’s not to go to every single staff person they wanna talk to, which doesn’t mean there’s a firewall, but it does mean their boundaries. And there’s a difference.

Eileen Heisman

Right. And I I mean, the other thing is that French I mean, you’re not their friend, but you need to have a friendly relationship with them.

Robbe Heaely

Absolutely. And respectful.

Eileen Heisman

Yes. Yes. And when they say something you don’t like or agree with, you have to be really careful about how you navigate that.

Robbe Heaely

So we could probably continue this conversation for another six hours. Time up. Well, I have one more question I just want to have your have your thoughts on. If you were if I was a brand new young professional Uh-huh. Aspiring to have a glide path of my own mission passion, but similar to yours, is there a piece of advice you’d give me?

Eileen Heisman

I would probably say get would get your foot in the door in whatever first job you could get. And if you were interested in donor advice, fund work especially, and, be a sponge. Find find a mentor inside. You know, volunteer for things. Pay attention to what other departments are doing. You know, if you see internal jobs that you or would think would be great, you know, apply for them. I had people that would always find their way sitting next to me at, like, lunches when I so, you know, like, you know, all these informal things about who you know make you know, how you have friends. I think those relationships, like, just like with the donors, with your staff colleagues are really important. Like, show initiatives. I I always used to do more than I was asked to do. That was one of my hallmarks, and I would do it quickly. I mean, I, like, I didn’t I and so, you know, do what you’re asked to do. Do more. Do more research. Come up with things. I used to love people that came in with when there was a problem, would come in with solutions when they would tell me what the problem was. So be a problem solver, and show up all the time and work late if you have to and don’t, you know, don’t whine. But be a sponge. And if it means that you can stay, get in inside your organization, you can get promoted. But sometimes you can’t stay in an organization and, you know, see your way to the top. You have to change. So, like, if you see things that would require you to, like, get take your skills and go someplace else, you know, do it. But, you know, you know, don’t do it every eighteen months. You know? And but don’t and don’t feel bad paying your dues. It’s really important because every job that you have gives you knowledge and information and talent and management experience with you have it or even watching a new manager, kind of as a model, you know, and just iteratively do that. I mean, I got really lucky because I joined this entity when it was brand new and, you know, we didn’t know, you know, and then they made me CEO when we were still really small. I I was often wondering if I could get my own job. Not that I want it back, but, so there’s, you know, one way to get is to, you know, just go up the ladder and start applying for CEO jobs. So and there’s a lot of CEO jobs that want you to be have already been a CEO. So if you know that about yourself, be a CEO of a smaller organization, right, and demonstrate that you have mastery over, you know, all the CO things. And go to school and, you know, don’t hesitate to, like, learn, ask questions. I mean, I went I’m a Wharton fellow. I went to the Stanford executive and philanthropy program. AFP had a a one at Vanderbilt that I went to, a leadership training, and then another one in India Indiana. I went to that. And I was at Abington at the time. They were all leadership training, executive skill training. I went to all that stuff, and I and and when work didn’t pay for it, I paid for it myself.

Robbe Heaely

Yeah. I think it makes a statement about the kind of person you are when you invest in yourself. And, obviously, it paid off.

Eileen Heisman

And I just but you know what? I got to make the world a better place. That’s what paid off. That’s really how I look at it. You know? And my husband says to me, now you don’t have to prove anything to anybody else, but I’m writing a book and I’m teaching a second course in philanthropy at Penn now. So I’m teaching, like, a course in another half credit course, and I’m consulting. And I just, like, I feel like I don’t wanna hang my brain up on the on the shelf.

Robbe Heaely

I don’t think you idle well.

Eileen Heisman

No. I don’t. I’m not.

Robbe Heaely

I we share that, I think.

Eileen Heisman

I’m not. And I it’s not that I’m I I you know, I do my yoga and Pilates classes, but I just I feel like I still have I still have some firepower in me. And so I just I’m not ready to give up or, like, throw the towel in. On the other hand, I’m not anywhere near as busy as I used to be, and it’s nice to not is have scheduled mornings where I have to make up at five thirty. So I do appreciate parts of it, but but I I I encourage people who are drawn to the sector. It’s like a calling in a way to do it and and to find their way in it. And you can make a decent living. I made one, and I did my four zero one k, and I maxed out maxed out on your four zero one k’s. The power of compounding is powerful. But I think I think there’s something for people who need and wanna do it. You know? You should do it and not be scared of it. And, you know, I’ve we had ton ton of people come from the for profit sector to work at NPT who said, oh, I’m so much more gratifying. I think that’s true.

Robbe Heaely

Well, thank you, Eileen Heisman, for this conversation with us. And It’s

Eileen Heisman

so good to see you. You were you were slightly elder when I came in the field, and I and often, I just said the world knows this. Robbie would be running Flame Giving Day or Franklin Forum, and then I was right behind you. Often, you were handing yours that’s how I first met you. You were handing things over to me. So I was watching you right behind you. But, I hope to inspire others, actually, as I think the sector is not gonna go away and it’s we do really important work.

Robbe Heaely

I don’t think you have to hope. I think it’s happened and happening. But thank you.

Eileen Heisman

Thank you

Robbe Heaely

so much, Eileen. So we’ve been enjoying a conversation with Eileen Heisman. This is part of Nonprofit Expert presented by DonorPerfect, and thank you for sharing this time with

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us. Thank you for listening to Nonprofit Expert, presented by DonorPerfect. For more information and a special offer, visit donorperfect.com/podcast.

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