In this delightful podcast episode, Yamilee Toussaint Beach shares her wealth of knowledge and experience in scaling up her nonprofit STEM from Dance. She explains how having a clear mission and vision, strong leadership, and a dedicated team are essential for any nonprofit looking to grow.
One of the key takeaways from the episode is the importance of investment in skills building for leaders.
Yamilee’s personal experience of scaling up STEM from Dance will help you to think about how to invest your resources, how to manage your time and what not to sacrifice as you grow.
To learn more about STEM from Dance, visit: https://stemfromdance.org/
To connect with Yamilee: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yamilee-toussaint-beach/
QUOTE FROM Yamilee “I don’t want to sacrifice the culture for the growth.”
Episode Transcript
RHEA WONG 00:05
Welcome to Nonprofit Lowdown. I’m your host, Rhea Wong. Hey, podcast listeners, it’s Rhea Wong with you once again with Nonprofit Lowdown. Today, I’m excited to welcome my guest, Yamilee Toussaint Beach, who is the CEO and founder of STEM from Dance. And we are going to be talking about exponential growth. Not linear, exponential. Yamilee, welcome to the show.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 00:28
Thank you, Rhea. It is an honor to be here with you.
RHEA WONG 00:33
Well, I know you and I have chatted for a while and we’ve been trying to get this together. So I’m glad we’re finally making that happen. Before we talk about the tremendous job that you’ve done growing your nonprofit, tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey here. Because it’s a little bit nontraditional, I would say.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 00:51
Sure! I think to start with being a little girl and just being obsessed with dance. I love everything about dance. My dance studio was a home away from home. I was out when I was at home.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACHv 01:10
I would just be dancing all over the house, constantly practicing, and also at the same time, I was really into math and science, which you know, probably came heavily from the instruments of my parents.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 01:24
My father especially was a mechanical engineer. And you don’t hindsight. I think it’s really admired, how much he loved what he did, that he loved being a person and to this day, loves me the person that could just fix something, and build something and not need to rely on somebody else to do it.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 01:46
But you know, just like with his hands he can create. And so I think in hindsight. I really admired that and decided to go that route instead of the dance route. So I went to MIT to study mechanical engineering.
RHEA WONG 02:05
Say that again for the people because I find that extraordinary. You went to MIT, people, to study mechanical engineering. Okay, please continue, I just wanted to make sure that we highlighted that.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 02:19
Yes! And it was hard. It was really hard. And I felt very inspired by what I was learning. And even just the way it transformed how I saw the world, I started to see the world as a bunch of problems that I could potentially have an impact on.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 02:45
But at the same time, I was very disappointed by how few people of color there were there. Like in my class of about 1000 students, there were 20 black women. And I felt like there’s got to be a way to change that. And that thought is what led me to then become a teacher.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 03:07
So I joined Teach for America, and I became a high school math teacher in East New York, Brooklyn. And, you know, when I think about my time teaching what was really meaningful was getting to know my students and seeing how much math was scary for them.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 03:31
It was unpleasant. They would say things like, ah, math is not for me, or algebra was this exam, they had to tap so that they can just go on and move on with their lives and graduate from high school.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 03:47
And I just felt like that was part of the problem, just the mindset that exists towards math and that made me think back to my time dancing. Because what I realized now that I didn’t realize then was that through dance, I built confidence.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 04:05
I engaged in an activity that was meaningful to me to my culture. I was encouraged to be creative, and I just gained this community. And I thought those are the ways I want my students to describe learning math and engineering and things like this.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 04:24
And so I started to wonder, like, is there a way that these two can be integrated, or at least side by side so that what you gain from one can translate to the other? That was the initial thesis, and I ended up doing a pilot with, at that school that I was teaching at, I just worked with a handful of girls and really just start to explore that.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 04:49
And I know we’re gonna talk about my journey with the organization, but I’ll say today, kind of fast forward today, 10 years later, most STEM from Dance coexist, and not only this but is thriving, and really what we do is create an experience where girls of color specifically can create dance performances that incorporate technology.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 05:15
So imagine costumes that light up or a backdrop that they code with animations that mirror their movement. So we’re looking for these interesting ways for them to do both dance and STEM in a way that excites them to pursue that in the future.
RHEA WONG 05:31
I love that so much. Because, you know, I wouldn’t necessarily think about STEM and dance being connected. And it’s so fascinating to me how you marry those two passions of yours.
RHEA WONG 05:47
And it’s really working. I mean, I’ve had the honor of seeing your girls in action. And I think I saw them and they helped me code some sticks that they use for her dancing. And let me just tell you, that’s really hard. I was like, kudos to you, friend. So, talk to us a little bit. So your STEM from Dance is 10 years old.
RHEA WONG 06:04
Walk us through the last 10 years. And before we started recording, you and I were talking about some numbers. So give us a sense of where you were back in. Let’s call it 2019. And where you are today in terms of organizational budget?
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 06:17
Sure! Yes, in 2019, the head weighs $350,000. And the following year, it raised 900,000. So we saw this 3x growth. And let’s see, last year, we were at a $1.5 million budget, and this year, we’re projected to raise 2.25 million. And because it’s our 10th anniversary, we have a goal in the next 10 years to be a $10 million organization.
RHEA WONG 06:48
I love that. And just to be clear, this is all private money. You’re not taking any big federal grants or anything like that. Is it right?
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 06:56
No, no big federal grants.
RHEA WONG 06:59
That is astonishing. So for folks listening out there, you know, it’s so interesting because normally, when I was running my nonprofit, I always had this idea that once I got to the million, life would be perfect.
RHEA WONG 07:11
Like, it’s all good on the other side of a million dollars. Talk to me about what you’ve learned. As far as different thresholds, like, did you have that idea of after a million dollars, everything is golden, and we’re all good, and we don’t have to worry anymore?
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 07:27
Absolutely, absolutely! The million-dollar mark definitely was a big goal. And I say now that I’m on the other side of it, I think they need just continues to grow. And it becomes a different type of organization. And also the work leading it also changes. I could see ways I’m thinking about challenges differently.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 07:55
I’m planning differently. I’m having different kinds of conversations. And so I think I didn’t necessarily anticipate was how I thought it would just be like a big organization with more money. But it also comes with a shift in mindset and responsibilities and work that in many ways I welcome.
RHEA WONG 08:17
Okay, I love to dig into this because I think, you know, not to be stereotypical about it. But a lot of times we see founders who have a hard time with scale because if they start an organization, it’s because they really love the program. Right?
RHEA WONG 08:32
And it seems to me that once the organization grows, your responsibility grows. Your area of focus grows. You have to shift what you’re really doing day to day. So can you walk us through some of those shifts from 2019 to today? Like what does that mean, in terms of leadership, in terms of staff, and in terms of how you spend your time?
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 08:53
You know, I think one of the biggest things I noticed as a difference is an investment in sharpening my axe. I think the link at Abraham Lincoln quotes that, you know, if you give me six hours to chop down a tree, I’m gonna spend the first four sharpening my axe.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 09:14
And I think about ways that I speak, I started to spend more time thinking about how I’m communicating the mission because it is, you know, a bit nontraditional, nothing different than what exists. It has taken a lot to learn how to get people to understand it.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 09:34
And I found that when I spent more time working on how I’m talking about it, we had a greater success rate when it came to like foundation grants and such like getting multi-year funding instead of like small one-time gifts.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 09:50
I think also with strategic planning. I love a strategic plan. It is more than a document. I talk about it constantly throughout the week, throughout the whole three-year period on the constantly, it is my anchor in a way that in the past, it was kind of a nuisance to have to spend the time to build something like that.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 10:12
We’re not I think differently about planning. And then also coaching is really surrounding myself with people who can show me the way and who’ve been down the path already. And just having access to people and spending time with them in ways that I wasn’t before.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 10:28
And I’d say one more thing I think about the choices that I’ve been making as far as where to invest the funding we’ve been getting, it’s been really amazing to be able to grow our team back in 2019. We’re a team of three, three full-time staff along with our part-time instructors. Now we’re 11 full-time staff.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 10:49
And it’s amazing to see what we can do with more people. And I think it’s just been really great to be able to invest in a team, invest in consultants who can help us with very specific levels of expertise.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 11:02
And then also marketing, I guess I’d say because our work is so visual. As girls work in their performances really showcase our mission the best. And so start investing in very high-quality video production.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 11:21
Because when people see that, and they see that before they have a conversation with me about funding or partnership or whatever it is, it just does such a great job of really advocating for the mission and explaining and helping. It makes sense. So I think those are the things that help to shift into more of a growth trajectory.
RHEA WONG 11:46
Okay, you said so much here, and I want to unpack some of those. The first thing I want to bring up is you talking about investing in yourself and your skills because I know so often in nonprofits, we want to save money, and we think of professional development as a luxury.
RHEA WONG 12:05
But I know that you in full disclosure, Brooke and I talk about you as a success case, but you’ve really invested in coaching for yourself to upskill around fundraising, around strategy, and around leadership.
RHEA WONG 12:20
So talk to me about whether was it a hard decision to make these pretty significant investments in your professional development. And how did you talk to your board about it? Because I think sometimes, too, it’s also convincing the board that this is a good investment to make.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 12:37
Yeah! It’s such a good question. Initially, I think it’s hard, especially kind of going from that place of scarcity, just feeling like we’re just trying to get by. I remember when I would have to come off of payroll to make sure that our instructors are getting paid.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 12:58
You know, that’s a very different place to be to then be in a position to pay for a coach or a strategic planning consultant. And, so initially that was difficult. But also being in that place where getting resources was so difficult, I also need the importance of investing in things that would allow us to continue to grow like I didn’t want that was sort of a stretch.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 13:28
So I knew that if we invested in having a really great plan that does bring about more funding, I just knew that like that idea of sharpening the axe, I knew that if I had a separate axe, I wouldn’t be able to get further.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 13:44
And so over time, I’ve just come to love thinking about that, and just really appreciate having like being in that space. I love being able to speak to potential consultants and not have to choose the lowest bid because that’s all we could afford.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 14:01
But I really can choose exactly what we need and the person who is the right partner. And as far as the board, I think because they have been so much in the journey with me, I think they also had a similar perspective and understanding of the need to invest in these areas too. I would go to my board chair with questions that he had no background in.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 14:26
And so when, when it came to a place where we could invest in somebody who had that expertise, he was all for it because he knew that he understood the need and the gaps that we had. And so I’m like very grateful to say that a lot of the choices we’ve made and how we grow and like the board has just been in lockstep with me.
RHEA WONG 14:47
That’s so great. So I just want to highlight this for folks who are listening. I often say when you’re thinking about expenses, there are three things that an expense should do.
RHEA WONG 14:57
It should either A: bring in more money; B: give you back your time; or C: increase operational efficiency. And so it sounds like you’ve been very strategic about making investments that are really ROI-positive, right?
RHEA WONG 15:13
That has brought in more money. Let’s talk about the marketing piece because I think that’s the other piece that I think is really interesting. You know, as nonprofits, I think we’re coming from this mindset of like, we’ll do it cheaply, right?
RHEA WONG 15:23
So we’ll use, you know, the iPhone pictures, as opposed to really investing in the beautiful photography, or will, you know, get someone of our students to videos something, as opposed to really investing in high-quality marketing?
RHEA WONG 15:38
How have you thought about that expense and the ROI for that? Because I can see a world in which people would think well, that’s overhead costs. And that’s not a responsible use of the funds. Talk to me about how you thought about that.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 15:54
Yeah! Quality matters a lot to me, just personally, I think the quality of something can validate the idea. It can attract people towards it. Even though I’m thinking about the data aspect of our work, I want our students to be presented as artists, not just these little kids who are dancing on stage like they are their artists, and their work deserves to be treated in a way just like nonmatching, like the pictures of Alvin Ailey dancers.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 16:34
I envision our students being portrayed in this really beautiful way because what they’re doing is making art. They’re making really amazing things. And so I love what it feels like when our students walk into like a beautiful theater.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 16:50
And like this theater is for them, like they’re getting an audience for them. There’s something that feels so special about that. And so I think part of it is creating something really special for the students for them to have this keepsake of this really beautiful video that they can remember and be proud of being part of.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 17:11
I mean, I’ve seen the response to people when they go to our YouTube channel and see these videos, and really, sometimes it can take your breath away. Just seeing how beautiful the work that they create is.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 17:25
And so the dollar amount can also take my breath away when I see how much it can cost to produce these videos. But I think it’s so worth it. Because like you said, it’s not just an ROI in it that yields more opportunities.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 17:45
But it’s also something that returns something for the students and their families as well. So it’s like a win-win. And still to this day, when I go back and see videos, I’m touched by it. So I think it’s such a valuable cater of the mission.
RHEA WONG 18:02
I love that. I think about this because I found myself in a similar position as I was growing up. Because of my time, by necessity, I had to be taken up with less of the program stuff and more of the meeting with donors, managing board members, HR, finance, etc. How do you continue to stay connected to the program?
RHEA WONG 18:25
Because I think that is a challenge for founders as well. They started the organization because they love this very particular part of it. But the job is different now. Your time should be set differently now. And yet, how do you stay connected to the thing that you loved to begin with?
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 18:45
Yes! You know, I had a friend who texted me recently about taking a dance class, I used to dance first when I was a kid. And it’s been so long since I danced and I miss it so much. So you know even just that distance is tough.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 19:02
And now that the times that I’m in the room and planning the lessons and really part of that work has been less than less. And for me, what I find a lot of motivation is our vision to grow the program.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 19:22
We have an ambitious strategic plan for the next three years to bring this from something that has been rooted in New York City to become national, eventually global. And what excites me about that is the, you know, what we found is that there are students who otherwise would not consider STEM if it had not been for this integration with dance.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 19:44
And I think there are no communities and girls all over the country in the world who just need that experience to unlock that within them. So it’s motivating to me to think that by me spending time to get the resources and to create plans to skill then allows more and more girls to have this experience. That’s enough of the fuel that I need.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 20:08
And I still get into the room. I still have the conversations. I love the one-on-one relationships where I’ve been able to coach and mentor like one of my mentees started at Georgia Tech this fall. And I’m keeping up with her. She studied computer engineering. So I just loved also just like that one-on-one relationship as well.
RHEA WONG 20:30
I love that. So talk to me a little bit about how you preserve the culture of the organization as you grow. Because one of the challenges that I faced when I was growing up was, we were a team of three, and I think at the biggest, we had a full-time team of 15.
RHEA WONG 20:50
And I really had to think very strategically and intentionally about culture and communication and the processes underneath. Because when you’re a three-person team, and you can just turn around and be like, hey, we’re doing this. We’re doing this. Cool!
RHEA WONG 21:06
Compared to an 11-person team, it doesn’t seem that much bigger, and yet, things break along the way. So talk to me about how you’ve been able to think about how to keep things from breaking or fixing things that break but also preserve what you feel is the heart of the culture of STEM from Dance.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 21:26
Yes! I think that’s so important. What something I observed, especially around the time when I went on maternity leave for four months. And it was really the first time that the team had to exist without my presence. Like I completely checked out.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 21:47
And what I learned was that a lot of the culture lived with me. I was a culture. And what I had to learn how to do is make what was implicit to be explicit. And, you know, I actually worked with Brooke and Susie and, you know, like, veteran EDs, who have been down that road to really show me how to do that, how to articulate what was instinctive to me.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 22:15
And we were able to create a set of values, clarity around how the values show up, and also tools to use to make sure that we’re living into them. I think I love tools. I love systems. And so, you know, things like, how do we kick off a project?
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 22:33
How do we make sure that we’re aligned at the beginning of it? How do we bring challenges to one another? What does that team meeting look like?
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 22:40
So thinking a lot about this and codifying a lot of the practices and tools also helped to sort of have these things live on outside of me, especially as I went from managing everybody on the team to only managing some people on the team.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 22:57
And then one more thing that I really enjoyed was that I’ve been able to maintain a one-on-one relationship with everybody on the team. And sometimes that’s just like having a touch base every other month or every three months.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 23:10
But I feel like it’s important to me to be able to still listen to what’s happening. So that when there are needs to tweak and change it’s not happening without me, without me being aware of it. And I feel like it’s something I’m still thinking about as we continue to grow is how do you maintain that?
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 23:30
Because when I think about our staff experience, what has been a highlight is the culture. And it’s a reason why a lot of people have stayed with the organization for a number of years. And I want to keep that. I don’t want to sacrifice the culture for growth.
RHEA WONG 23:46
I love it. I don’t want to sacrifice the culture for growth. That is tweet, tweet! Let’s put that up there. Let me change tack a little bit because you know, it says Nonprofit Lowdown. I love talking about money.
RHEA WONG 23:57
So I imagine, as you’re an MIT graduate in engineering, you are not trained in how to fundraise. I’m wondering, can you talk to me about the mindset shifts that you had to make to go from this, you know, tiny little nonexistent budget to a $2.25 million budget where you’re making big asks. You’re talking to donors for six-figure gifts, I imagine. What did you have to do internally to be comfortable being in those rooms?
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 24:27
I think one thing is acknowledging what you just said the fact that I didn’t know what I was doing. And I had to learn and I think what I’ve appreciated the most over the years and the people that I’ve been able to surround myself with so I can see it.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 24:57
I felt like I had to see it and hear about it. Talk about it over. It wasn’t a one-workshop kind of thing. I needed people to kind of come alongside me and say, this is how I would hand this out, push this, or I was crazy about this email.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 25:12
Because of what I would naturally do, I realized that next somehow unconsciously, I got the message that the way that you communicate with funders is you’re very buttoned up. And you present this very confidently.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 25:27
And what I learned is that, you know, it’s a complex conversation to so many relationships is getting people to know who I am. I could show up and just be me and not feel like I have to be this other person.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 25:41
And I feel like the more comfortable I got in building that relationship, and keeping in touch with people. All these things that I heard about, but once I did it, I started to get it. Like, oh, it really is about building a relationship.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 25:55
And those are my favorite, like, funding stories are the people who have just gotten to get to know who they are. And I can text you. I can let you know, what I think about it during the pandemic. Because it was during the pandemic that we saw a lot of this growth. I’m letting them know what challenges we’re facing.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 26:21
And I didn’t know that at first, but that’s how you engage with people. And even just, you know, sometimes it’s uncertain like, okay, how much am am I asking for and all this? And I can act without that information.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 26:32
I think there was this dance that I was playing. Other people weren’t dancing with me. You know, there wasn’t harmony there. I think once I learned how to just be a human and relate to funders that I started to see a shift and how even how it felt to do the work.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 26:53
It didn’t feel as intimidating. It just felt like, again, like I’m just getting to know somebody we’re talking about. And we’re also being clear about the need. Like not being hesitant to showcase what we’re doing well, but then also like this is like we actually do need money.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 27:12
And this is how much of it that we need, just like not being hesitant to say it so clearly. So those are a few things that I felt were a huge, huge shift for me.
RHEA WONG 27:23
Yeah! As you’re talking, I’m just vividly remembering my own shift. Because folks who have listened to this podcast when I was a 26-year-old ED. And I think it was a lot of insecurity on my part that I felt like I had to be very buttoned up, you know, and I think I had a lot of perceptions about what people thought about me. I was a young lady.
RHEA WONG 27:44
I also looked very young, right? So I felt like I had to overcompensate for that. And so it took me a while to really just loosen up and let people in and be myself and I found it. I got into the flow so much easier than when I was pretending to be somebody I wasn’t. Alright, last question.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 28:06
I was just going to add that. You know, I feel like some of the insecurity for me came from the place that the organization was at, I always dream big about where we could be. And so knowing that we didn’t have large numbers, or we didn’t have these accolades that I wanted at the time.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 28:25
You know, that also caused me to be nervous, like, oh, what if they uncover that you know, we’re only in X number of schools? And I think also just be starting to get more comfortable with just talking about the challenges because it points to the need for funding. So he’s also acknowledging that was hard for me to be able to share some of those challenges.
RHEA WONG 28:53
But let me ask one last question about fundraising and money. It’s because you may know, folks on the call, folks listening to this podcast may know one of the big things that I teach about is the money mindset and our relationship to money.
RHEA WONG 29:04
And I think in the nonprofit world, we really operate in this scarcity mindset of, oh, there’s not enough. I’m not gonna afford that. There’s not enough time, not enough money, and not enough resources. I’m wondering, have you thought about that? And have you made any specific shifts to move into an abundance mindset?
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 29:27
Yes, totally. Having a bigger budget, and seeing the ways I’m able to dream about what’s possible and implement it, has encouraged my shift to an abundance mindset. When I think about the things that we’re able to invest in now that we weren’t able to do before, it encourages me to….
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 29:55
I’m thinking about it I remember one time I showed Brooke a budget of mine and what my expenses lined up with exactly how much I thought I can raise. And she was like, where’s the opportunity for? What’s for like growth for what you don’t know that you can get?
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 30:15
And I feel like this thinking of this seeing it and being bold enough to say I don’t know exactly where every single one of these dollars is going to come from. But I know this is what we need. And here’s a plan to demonstrate why we need it. I’d like having that competence to put that there has really transformed the kind of conversations that I’m good at. I’m happy.
RHEA WONG 30:38
I love that so much because that’s exactly right. So often I think we create these budgets. I know you work with share. We call them squeak-by budgets of just enough like I think I’m gonna be able to make raise 3% more than I did last year.
RHEA WONG 30:53
So I’m just going to raise expenses, by 3% more, but I think we need to give ourselves permission to dream and have bold ideas because bold people are attracted to bold ideas. And you know, a 3% increase in your budget is not inspiring.
RHEA WONG 31:10
All right! Let me ask you to be a little bit more here. What are some of the mistakes that you made along the way or things that you wish you’d done differently?
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 31:16
One thing I realized is, I would always count on the best-case scenario, like the best-case scenario would be the scenario and so when this really promising conversation with a funder took place, I was okay. This is the person that’s gonna get us to that next level. Right? And I was like, you know, be so excited about it.
RHEA WONG 31:49
I say hope is not a strategy.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 31:53
Right! And that’s what I found out because then I would count on these conversations. And when it didn’t pan out, it would be like a deficit. And so I speak about some of the early years, and just the disappointment that I just kept experiencing.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 32:11
And so when I shifted to just being more realistic, I found that like, I started to become a better planner, especially when it came to our forecasts, and enabled us to actually accomplish the plans that we had for the money that we brought in.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 32:33
That’s one mistake. And I’d say another goes back to the years when I was trying to figure things out, and I didn’t have enough coaches, and funnily enough for like, it didn’t have people in place who were there coaching me as much as I needed to.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 32:53
I think there’s a lot that I was like, hoping I could just figure out, especially on the fundraising piece. It’s like, okay, I’ll just raise some money. Surely, I can figure this out. And it took a few years of not getting the results that I hoped for that they maybe, okay, I just need help.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 33:10
And, again, once I have these, you know, people who have been in my position like 10 years prior, showing me the way, it just made my work so much more efficient. There’s like things that I avoided because there were like when I was at this point, I needed to focus on this.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 33:28
I shouldn’t have done this. I made the wrong hire. And I just absorbed that like a sponge. And now to the point where if I have a major decision, I’m going to one of these advisors. So I wish I did that.
RHEA WONG 33:43
You’re singing from my songbook friend because so often when Brooke and I are out here talking to people about being in our programs, we’re like, let’s help you avoid the mistakes that we made.
RHEA WONG 33:54
And it just seems so obvious. But I think the reluctance to invest, maybe because you’d think you don’t have the money or you don’t have the time or you think it’s not going to work for you. That is real.
RHEA WONG 34:06
But I also think you are smart enough to figure out that like, you can learn from other people’s mistakes and save yourself a whole lot of time. All right, last question from me, actually, last two questions. I have a fun question.
RHEA WONG 34:18
But the last question for me is, you know, I’m sure you speak to lots of folks who are social entrepreneurs or want to start a nonprofit. I speak to a lot of them, too. What would your advice be?
RHEA WONG 34:30
Because in some ways, you’ve done the things I counsel people against because I think a lot of people come and they’re like, I want to start this new nonprofit. I’m like, why? Not that I don’t think there’s a need, but I often think too, that people jump into it without realizing that they’re actually running a small business or a big business in your case.
RHEA WONG 34:51
So what would your advice be to anyone listening who’s thinking about starting a nonprofit or has a small nonprofit that they’re trying to get off the ground?
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 35:00
Yeah, you know, I think that there is a tendency when you have an idea to want to plan a lot. And I find that people can get stuck in the planning, like, okay, like figuring out a name, and making like a 20-page business plan and wanting to apply for 501(c)(3) status.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 35:33
And all these things, when I think what’s most important is figuring out what is the idea and giving it a go in some kind of small way. And that’s what I always encourage people to think about is like, okay, you have a big idea, what’s one byte of it that you can implement?
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 35:49
For me, that was going back to the school that I worked at because I knew the principal, and I knew she would just be open to something that I proposed to her. At six girls, it was in a classroom, it probably cost altogether $200. It was just me.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 36:06
I didn’t need a team. I didn’t have a lesson plan for every day. I had planned, but it wasn’t like an official lesson plan. And I just learned so much from doing that over the course of six weeks. And doing it gave me the momentum to do it again.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 36:24
And it also gave me a lot of credibility because I was a person who not just had an idea. But I had an idea, and I implemented it. So I just encourage people to get out of the Google document and get on the ground and start to do some of the work.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 36:40
And then secondly, you know, I’ve been doing a lot of reflection, since I’ve been doing this for a decade. And I think something that has sustained me, especially during seasons when I wasn’t getting paid, and I wasn’t sure exactly how it would turn out.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 37:00
What really helped me was being very clear on my purpose and like why, like, for me, doing this work is not a job. It’s my purpose. I believe that I didn’t just randomly have this experience of being a dancer and an engineer.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 37:24
I think part of my purpose and my destiny is to do the work that I’m doing. And that being my anchor helped me. I’m five years in, and it’s still a struggle to raise $100,000. So I think it’s really important to just have an anchor because it’s going to get difficult. And it just makes sure you know what that “why” is.
RHEA WONG 37:57
Yeah, that’s so good. So a couple of things that you said, I just want to make sure we lived up here is having a minimum viable product, so to speak. So before you build the whole thing, test the idea out to see if there’s traction.
RHEA WONG 38:10
So I think that’s really wise. And the second thing you said is to continue to show up. So I don’t know, to me, it’s a little bit of creative tension, right? Because on the one hand, you stuck it out, and people now see where you are 10 years later, like oh, $2.25 million. They didn’t see the first five years where it was like slogging.
RHEA WONG 38:29
So I do think that there is something about, you know, putting in the time getting the flywheel moving. And then they also think that there’s something about strategic quitting, right? Like there’s also for every one nonprofit that makes it their five that don’t.
RHEA WONG 38:45
And so I guess, I would also say not to be a pessimist. But I would also say that there is a point at which you have to consider like, is this nonprofit the right path to go on? Is it the right thing? Is it what the world needs?
RHEA WONG 39:00
So I don’t think that there’s a clear answer. I think everyone has to kind of suss that out for themselves. But I do think there is a tension there between like, being persistent and also maybe persisting on a cause that isn’t going to work.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 39:13
Totally, totally! And I think that’s part of the difficulty of this journey is you don’t know the outcome. I didn’t know I would be sitting here with you today. And I do think it’s important to pay attention to that. For me, I had indications along the way.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 39:33
Like not just like my parents saying, like, good job, keep sticking with it, but like actual indicators that it was worth taking another step. But I will say that I was always open to it not being the right solution that the world needed. So I do think it’s important to be conscious of those indicators if are present or not.
RHEA WONG 39:54
What kind of indicators were you looking for/
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 39:56
Reasons to see that the mission was actually effective as part of It was kind of a thesis like, I think that if you put them with them, it will have an impact. And I would see things like our stakeholders, like schools, parents, and students speaking to the transformation.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 40:15
So wow, like I couldn’t point to like quantitative results. I can hear about the transformation and add enough volume to say, okay, there is something here. And when they were issued, I could see a solution. I could see a change or even hear input from like people who have been in the industry are n the fields.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 40:39
Certain people said that there’s merit was enough. And I think also there would be like one or two funders at a time, who would invest in the work that tick like financially just kept the organization like a float. And I would say if we got to like that seven-year mark, and we were still sort of flatline, I guess the growth financially also was an indicator for me.
RHEA WONG 41:10
Oh, that’s so good, Yamilee. Okay, last fun question. If you had a billboard, a metaphorical billboard that you could communicate anything to the universe, what would be on your billboard?
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 41:26
Dream big…
RHEA WONG 41:28
Dream period… I love that. You know, what I love about you, Yamilee, is that you’re an artist and a scientist at the same time. Like, as you’re talking about organizational building, I can hear your engineer mind working.
RHEA WONG 41:42
Like, okay, if this is the structure we’re going to build this, we’re going to test these and the results for you to see. And at the same time, you’re a beautiful artist and you’re a dancer. So you know, you’re really left-brain, right-brain, which is very rare.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 41:58
Thank you, thank you. And you know that, for me, I never saw it that way. I was just doing the things that I loved. And so like, my dream big moment was when I realized that okay, these aren’t random. There’s a value here. Yeah. And it took, like digging really big to be able to hone in on this idea. So that would be my billboard.
RHEA WONG 42:21
Amazing! I love it. Well, Yamilee, thank you so much for your time. This has been such a fun conversation. We’ll make sure to put your information in the show notes if folks want to learn more about STEM from Dance, which you said is an incredible organization. And is it okay, if I put your LinkedIn if folks want to get in touch with you?
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 42:38
Yeah, that’d be great.
RHEA WONG 42:39
All right, well, make sure it’s all in the show notes. Yamilee, thank you so much. Have a great rest of your week.
YAMILEE TOUSSAINT BEACH 42:45
Thank you, too.
RHEA WONG 42:47
Take care, everyone.
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