Calling all New York based nonprofits!
In this episode, we speak with Suzi Epstein, Senior Program Officer at the Robin Hood Foundation, and Kim DiPalo, Director of Development and Communications at Drive Change, about the GRIT program. Applications due March 15!
Listen and learn about:
What is the GRIT program?
How does the GRIT program work?
What impact has the GRIT program had?
How can you, the listeners apply to the GRIT program!
GRIT Program: https://www.robinhood.org/program/grit/
Robin Hood Foundation: https://www.robinhood.org/
Drive Change: https://www.drivechangenyc.org/
Quote: “Everything old is new again”
Episode Transcript
Rhea Wong 00:05
Welcome to Nonprofit Lowdown. I’m your host, Rhea Wong. Hey, podcast listeners! Rhea Wong with you, once again with Nonprofit Lowdown. Today I am joined by two very special guests. We are talking today with Suzi Epstein, who is the Managing Director of Field Building at Robin Hood, and Kim DiPalo, who is the Chief Development Officer at Drive Change.
Rhea Wong 00:27
And we’re talking about Robin Hood’s GRIT program today. So this is specifically for all of the New York nonprofits and learning about how the GRIT program can be a support to you. So Suzi and Kim, welcome to the show.
Suzi Epstein 00:41
Thank you.
Rhea Wong 00:43
So Suzi, I know we’ve had you on before. But for those of us who have yet to get to know you, can you give us a little bit of a background about yourself and the program that you’re running? Then Kim will be asked the same.
Suzi Epstein 00:56
First of all, thank you for having me a second time. Second, I’m a longtime staffer at Robin Hood. I’ve actually been there for 30 years. I’m an attorney by training. My background has been in areas like criminal justice, housing, mental health, and domestic violence. I became very interested in nonprofit management early in my career as a lawyer.
Suzi Epstein 01:18
And as the CEO of Sanctuary for Families encountered Robin Hood in its infancy, sent them a grant proposal, and got some funding. And then several years later, was the tenth person to join the senior staff. I’ve assumed a number of roles there. My favorite actually is what I’ve been doing in the last couple of years, which is basically coaching, and merging nonprofits, to get philanthropic support.
Rhea Wong 01:53
And you will receive the GRIT program, can you give us a brief overview of what that is, and then I’d love to talk to you about your experience.
Suzi Epstein 02:00
GRIT stands for Grant Readiness and Insights Training. It’s a series of work stops that cover everything from program design, learning, measurement, presenting fiscals and budgets and costs, presenting results, presenting good governance and how your board functions to doing grant writing and cultivating individual donors.
Suzi Epstein 02:25
So we’ve organized a syllabus for emerging and early middle-stage not-for-profits to go through this training to help them actually secure corporate foundations and individuals. We are in our eighth year of running the program. We have had about 80k different not-for-profits. And we’ve seen really good results from it to date.
Rhea Wong 02:51
I love that. Kim, let’s jump over to you. So I love your story. It’s a little bit of a non-traditional journey into nonprofits. If you could just give us a sense of your journey here, and then a little bit about your experience in GRIT because I know you are an alum of the program.
Kim DiPalo 03:08
Yeah, absolutely! Thanks, Rhea. And I’m excited to be here with you and Suzi. So my background, I’ve been at Drive Change for four years. I’m the Chief Development Officer. Newly, I was previously for four years the Chief Operating Officer. Prior to being at Drive Change, I actually spent 22 years in hospitality. I’d spent my whole career in restaurants.
Kim DiPalo 03:28
I was a kid who dropped out of college and started waiting tables in order to support myself and feel very fortunate through my career to have had many incredible leaders who not only promoted me but really invested in my learning. The longest part of my career was at Gramercy Tavern where I started as a server.
Kim DiPalo 03:45
And my last role there was as General Manager running a very large budget all because I had people who were willing to teach me how to run a P&L on a large budget. Then eventually I made it to recruiting at Union Square Hospitality Group. So I was managing the recruiting for all 20 businesses and was working with our leaders just about the way we think about hiring and investing in talent.
Kim DiPalo 04:07
And I was working with Drive Change, Emma’s Torch, and Hot Bread Kitchen. So really thinking about workforce development and some non-traditional pathways into the restaurant industry. So when the CEO role came up at Drive Change, I just thought it was a great opportunity. I really wanted to get into mission-driven work and just love the work that was being done at Drive Change.
Kim DiPalo 04:29
So it’s what really inspired me to make the move, even though I was like, oh, my God! Do I know what I’m doing? And then the most interesting part of the last couple of years for me was we had a founder-CEO transition and our founder used to do all of the fundraisings. And so there was this kind of accidental move into development, but for me, I really love it. I think it’s just like hospitality in many ways.
Kim DiPalo 04:51
I think it’s about relationships and understanding people and so I really enjoy it. Our new Executive Director and I just went through the GRIT program, which was a great opportunity just for us to do workshops that are really deep dives into a lot of the parts that I’ve heard you say the area, it’s like you need someone to help you learn these pieces.
Kim DiPalo 05:13
I’ve heard other people say they don’t teach development in college. That’s not a course you get to take, having the opportunity to go through the program and really spend time and like we’ve done a lot of the one on one work to just dive a little deeper into our specific needs, which has been really cool.
Rhea Wong 05:28
I love that so much. And actually, it’s funny you mentioned it because Danny Meyer is someone that I really look up to as far as the philosophy behind how I think about fundraising, which is exactly right. How do you connect with people? How do you make people feel special? How do you make them feel a part of something?
Rhea Wong 05:43
We’ll talk about that a bit more. Suzi, back to you. Right now you are recruiting for the GRIT program. So can you give us a sense of who would be the ideal person to apply for GRIT and what stage might they be in that would most benefit from the GRIT program?
Suzi Epstein 06:00
I’m going to answer it by substituting organization for a person because the cohort is filled with very diverse leaders with different levels of experience and different backgrounds in terms of missions they’ve been involved with or expertise that they have. What we’re looking for are organizations whose budgets are between $1 and $20 million, and who have limited private support.
Suzi Epstein 06:30
So a $10-million agency that gets half of its funding from foundations, 5 million from different philanthropies, wouldn’t be the optimal candidate. We’re looking for organizations whose budgets are maybe only 20% from philanthropic for an individual donor. And the reason for that is because that is such an inflection point and such a place where there’s a clear need to diversify revenue streams.
Suzi Epstein 07:04
No matter what your total resources are, that kind of proportion is a place where if you want to be resilient, and you want to start new programs and services that may not be underwritten by the public sector, you want to be able to bring in private money to do that.
Rhea Wong 07:22
And can you just give us a sense, tactically, what is the application process? What’s the application due date and so forth?
Suzi Epstein 07:31
Absolutely! So our next cycle of GRIT starts on May 2nd. The GRIT application is on Robin Hood’s website. Now, the due date is March 15th. The application is fairly simple. It takes maybe two hours to complete. We asked for a couple of attachments that include a Board list and your audit and budget.
Suzi Epstein 07:54
But it’s a number of questions on an organization’s strengths and weaknesses and what they would like to address. We interview every group that applies because we do what is a very bespoke hands-on relationship that we do talk to the groups and will make decisions in mid-April so that organizations can configure their calendars so that they can attend the GRIT program.
Suzi Epstein 08:18
It will meet twice a week, throughout May, from May 2nd to June 1st. The sessions are mornings on Tuesdays and Thursdays. With their hybrid, we’re going to have half of them in person and half of them remote. We also offer individual office hours with the presenters at each work stop. And I and another Robin Hood senior staffer are available to meet with groups and to coach them actually, in perpetuity so that it’s a serious long-term relationship if you’d like that.
Kim DiPalo 08:52
I like long-term relationships. Kim, having successfully completed the GRIT program, can you speak to how you feel like it’s helped Drive Change?
Kim DiPalo 09:03
Yeah, absolutely! I definitely think the workshops are incredible, especially since they’re focused on a lot of the areas that we just knew we needed and wanted support. So everything from individual fundraising to board governance, to understanding how to get your metrics and actually present them in a way that is meaningful.
Kim DiPalo 09:24
But I think for us, it was especially like that one-on-one, so it’s great when you’re going into a workshop and there’s an opportunity to ask questions. But for us to then do the office hours and take what we learned and actually apply it and ask questions that were very specific to drive change, I think what was really helpful for us to be able to sit when you look at this grant that we’ve written and tell us like what maybe needs some tweaking or what is a way to open a grant that actually can have a greater impact and understanding the individual giving what does it look like to actually cultivate a relationship?
Kim DiPalo 09:56
And what should that look like? Because like you said a lot of people, like myself who’ve never done this before, you’re figuring it out. If you don’t have any guidance, right? Someone’s saying like, how many times should you reach out to an individual donor?
Kim DiPalo 10:10
Or, what is the right way to do it? What does this look like? How do you make an ask and not feel like, ah? I think those have been the really impactful parts for us. Even looking at how our budget is written, it has been really amazing to what’s the appropriate way to present it in a grant.
Rhea Wong 10:27
Yeah! That’s really helpful. Because I say this a lot, which is how I started my business, which is we have so many accidental fundraisers out there, right? People who have been put in these very important positions, work on some of the most important issues in society without any training. It’s mind-blowing.
Rhea Wong 10:43
So it’s great that it’s out here doing that. Suzi, can I switch back to you? I know Robin Hood. I know that you as an organization are incredibly data-driven. Can you give me a sense of what kind of metrics and outcomes you’ve seen from the current program?
Suzi Epstein 10:58
Yes! And I’m going to say that those outcomes have been both. I’m going to call them quantitative and qualitative. Robin Hood has taken a strong stand on evaluation, a program like GRIT is harder to evaluate, especially in the short term, because raising money can be dramatically quick, especially in crises, post-hurricane Sandy, and post-pandemic.
Suzi Epstein 11:28
On the other hand, cultivating donors can be glacially slow. But we did do a five-year survey after the fifth year of GRIT in which we participants to date on new money that they had raised and the number of new foundations and total philanthropic support they had raised. And we’re thrilled to learn that of the 50 or so groups in the first five years, they raised a total of $12 million.
Suzi Epstein 11:57
That averaged about 400,000 per group. There was a huge range, where several groups maybe got five or six new supporters, but in total $50,000, and several got one or two new sources of support, but they were close to seven figures. So no particular patterns, but a nice amount of money. That’s on the quantitative side.
Suzi Epstein 12:20
Qualitatively, we saw a lot of progress across many groups on governance issues, reconfiguring their boards, doing board report cards on activism and fundraising, and meeting attendance and sharing committees. A lot of groups thought about fundraising efficacy and reconfiguring their offices. Maybe they needed another grant writer.
Suzi Epstein 12:45
Maybe they needed fewer grant writers because things were not so productive groups that thought about their fiscal offices. Many of them actually moved from having a bookkeeper to a controller or a CFO. That was a huge thing in terms of budget sizes. There were groups that thought much more carefully, and strategically about evaluation, thought about the cost per outcome, thought about price points of different elements of the program, and thought about the proportion of management in general overhead to the program.
Suzi Epstein 13:21
You could see a lot of the learning, and a lot of the applications of lessons from GRIT being implemented. And that was hugely gratifying. And I would say probably two-thirds of the cohort made enormous strides in several different management arenas.
Rhea Wong 13:39
That’s really helpful. Kim, I’m wondering if could you speak to any specific changes that you made at Drive Change as a result of the GRIT program.
Kim DiPalo 13:48
Yeah, absolutely! I’ll speak especially for myself moving into development. I think the biggest part was looking at what systems didn’t exist, especially on our individual donors, and even thinking about when I’m writing grants, that having a really good solid grant that you can pull from that you’re not rewriting every single time, it’s something that if someone never tells you that it’s, you’re doing it over and over again.
Kim DiPalo 14:17
But for us, it’s like building fundraising plans, rather than just being very, like, we never really tracked any of it. And it hasn’t. The system hasn’t existed. So we’ve taken those pieces. We also for me, the budget one was incredible. I think my colleague and I both were like, wow, just the way that budgets were laid out and really breaking out our programs so that we could see because we run three really different but all tied together in some way, right?
Kim DiPalo 14:45
They’re all centered around food, but they have our fellowship. It’s very different from our food distribution and different from our hospitality for social justice. And so looking at like, how do we actually break those out? So it’s really clear to a funder and to anyone who would want to look at our budget where and how money is being spent. So I think that was really helpful for us. And I know we’re looking at building our board.
Kim DiPalo 15:07
So board governance and report cards like Suzi’s talking about. Those are all pieces that we’re putting into play right now, which has been exciting and clueless in her first year. She just completed her first year as an executive director and new executive director. So you know, there’s so much learning that’s being done. And again, like I’m in a new role. So it helped us take pieces and be like, okay, we’re going to use this, and we’re going to go with that.
Suzi Epstein 15:34
I’m just going to underscore something that you’re saying, Kim if I could. Since I joined one of the meetings, we talked about fiscals and costs. And it was incredibly gratifying when something clicked about costs per person where we said, okay, this is what you spend on your program, and you have 80 people in the program or 40 people in the program, and we’re going to do the math.
Suzi Epstein 15:57
Now we’re going to say what part of that cost is stipends, and what part of that cost is training like part of that cost is overhead. And I think those are what organizations encounter. It’s something that is very important for them. it’s very meaningful to us when it all comes together, and actually, I think will move a lot of not-for-profits lightyears ahead of where they were in terms of raising money. When you can say that to a funder, they automatically can do less due diligence, and actually feel more confident in the management staff as an applicant.
Rhea Wong 16:36
And I imagined, too, that going through the credit program is a good housekeeping seal of approval, given the fact that Robin Hood is just such a major player in the philanthropic space in New York City. Suzi, I’m wondering if we could zoom out a little bit. I’m curious about your standpoint on Robin Hood. I think when we last spoke, I can’t remember where we were at the beginning of the pandemic.
Suzi Epstein 16:57
Right! I remember it was the pandemic. Yeah!
Rhea Wong 17:01
Yeah! Since we’ve spoken, the world has changed dramatically. In a global pandemic, we’ve had a racial reckoning. In post-George Floyd, we’ve seen inflation. We’ve seen pulling back the crypto markets. So I’m curious, from your standpoint, what do you think has changed since we’ve last spoken from a philanthropic funding perspective? And then what do you see moving forward?
Suzi Epstein 17:28
Wow! Okay, so changes that I’ve seen post-pandemic, in terms of philanthropy, I think are number one: more thoughtful commitments to community building, and probably to combating racism. I certainly see more allocations towards initiatives that on some level combat racism, whether that’s education reform, criminal justice reform, housing banking reform, financial literacy, and stuff like that.
Suzi Epstein 18:05
I also see fewer strings attached to grants, fewer report requirements, and interest in inputs, as well as outputs, which is something we certainly moved away from over the last several decades. But now, because many grants are oriented more towards survival and are relief oriented, you’re looking at inputs and efforts as well as more than a particular deliverable or impact, I see more cash grants to individuals because relief and survival are so critical.
Suzi Epstein 18:39
And I probably see it as part and parcel of evaluation and measurement, it’s about learning. So that adjustments and diagnostics can be made in terms of program design, or cash allocations, but not so much evaluation and uppercase letters. So I’d say those are probably the three or four things that I mostly see.
Rhea Wong 19:03
I just have a follow-up question here. Because I think from my perspective, I’ve seen a lot of conversations around. Yes, double-clicking on everything that you said, and also to the sense of trust-based philanthropy and a more intentional focus on BIPOC leaders and black-led organizations. Is that an area that Robin Hood is also focused on?
Suzi Epstein 19:24
Yes! Note a few years ago, launched a power fund for leaders of color. We’ve always been very mindful of community leaders and spent a lot of time in our due diligence, looking at stats and leadership as well as an organization’s model and evaluation. Certainly, it’s one of the things we saw that there was no diversity of leaders across our portfolio and we are looking very hard at penetrating communities throughout the five boroughs and looking at a typical indigenous who may not have several graduate degrees or who may not have decades of experience as CEOs, but nonetheless have founded or have joined organizations that are the lifeblood and heartbeat in their communities.
Suzi Epstein 20:19
And we are spending more time and resources on those leaders. It is also one of the reasons that we did launch GRIT in terms of trying to impart some of the more technical management pieces of information to this group and both an individual and cohort kind of style up so that they could compete, perhaps with more savvy and experienced leaders who had access to where the power and the money are in terms of corporate and long term philanthropies.
Rhea Wong 20:53
Thanks for that. Kim, here’s a question for you. Anecdotally, what I’ve been hearing from a lot of my colleagues in the space is that this last quarter, they saw a little bit of a pullback in terms of private philanthropy and specifically, individuals. I think that there’s this sense of, oh! Those pandemics are over and I think the last quarter, we saw some turbulence in the economy, just wondering, what are you seeing trends in the last year from your own fundraising?
Kim DiPalo 21:22
Yeah! I definitely think we see these like, of course, as things change in the world. People’s decisions change. And we’ve looked at like, even our individual donors in 2020, there was a huge spike, right? And then not as much right after that. And so trying to think about how o we make sure.
Kim DiPalo 21:41
I also speak a little to what Suzi was saying, like, I appreciate one of the things, just the way that I think philanthropy has made some changes, right? Post-pandemic, where it is like you were saying trust base where there is this, I think there are funders who are moving to multi-year grants rather than one time, and then that’s fewer reports.
Kim DiPalo 22:01
The reports have changed. Do I think they’re really interesting some questions that are being asked more around leadership and the board demographics of what that looks like? And also, just like, for me, one of the things that I’m seeing more than I appreciate is just transparency from the get-go of where there’s alignment, or what the relationships gonna look like. Because I do think that’s something that’s really helpful for us.
Kim DiPalo 22:24
When I’m with a funder, and they tell me right away, this is going to be a five-year relationship. It’s nice to know that right away because we know what we’re getting into. And I think that’s probably the truth for anyone, right? It’s like when someone tells you they’re not looking for a long-term relationship. It’s gonna seem like at least you know what you’re getting into, right? If you’re looking to get married, but I’m not. Maybe you don’t belong together.
Rhea Wong 22:48
It’s a dating analogy.
Kim DiPalo 22:54
Yeah! For me, again, like being new, I’m trying to understand. It’s always about understanding relationships, like what people hope, and I think it’s about what people need, right? You have to understand what a person is looking for, even when they’re giving. Because people don’t have to give. So what does it look like to really tap into what moves that are heart? It’s what’s important, I think. So figuring out what that looks like, even in bad times. Because I think, again, 2020 was a terrible time. But I think it motivated people to do more.
Rhea Wong 23:28
Yeah! It’s interesting how crisis brings out the best in people. So Suzi, to follow up on the question that we were starting down the path of, what do you see, as the future of philanthropy, any trends that you could spot for us that our audience might find relevant?
Suzi Epstein 23:44
I think there’s even more cognizance of the power of private resources. Private resources have a huge positive benefit, I think in the world of service provision, and philanthropy. And I think that the more there is awareness of that, the more there’s motivation to give. I think that private philanthropy can help underwrite pilots and new ideas that are small and that government may not yet have an interest in because it’s not scaling and touching the lives of thousands of people.
Suzi Epstein 24:18
I think that can be very sexy to foundations, and individual contributors alike. And I think that the more that is in the zeitgeist, the better that is, and that’s something that seems to be more revealed. So that’s one thing. I think there are changing ways to give and arrange from crowdsourcing to social media. It’s very powerful and very positive. I also think that this is a paradox.
Suzi Epstein 24:46
There’s increased trust-based philanthropy and most people are honest and frank and cost-efficient and the ways that they allocate money, but there was also corruption and misuse of funds. And I think that the balance between accountability and scrutiny of both the ways to raise money and the ways to invest money is probably going to emerge on the zeitgeist. I think the targets rotate all the time.
Suzi Epstein 25:18
I’ve been in the not-for-profit world for almost 50 years. Everything old is new again. But I do think that there’s often donor fatigue on different issues and being at Robin Hood for a long time, I actually think there’s some fatigue around poverty-fighting. And so you have to think about ways to present issues as old wine and a new flask with that issues may be of criminal justice, or housing or mental health, or now about systemic barriers, and social and racial injustice.
Suzi Epstein 25:52
So I do think that probably wordsmithing is going to begin. I love words, but I do think that’s going to be a huge issue in the future. I think that donors are very interested in the future of the world and the future of their children. So I think there’s much more giving toward environmental justice and green initiatives than I had seen several decades ago.
Suzi Epstein 26:14
And I do think people are also interested in things that influence their own happiness and well-being and future and we are a lot of donors, who give us feedback about their interests in their own Alma Modise, or the illness that touches their family, or their joy in dance or music. And I think those of us doing social services have to think about ways to pitch those particular themes against things that might be more about beauty and happiness, perhaps.
Rhea Wong 26:48
That’s such an interesting point. But yeah, I think, Kim, to your earlier point, ultimately, everyone has a story, and everyone has something that they want in the world. And we all think of ourselves as the heroes of our own movies. And so the question is, how do we position ourselves as the vessel through which is the guide that we can help facilitate our donor’s stories about who they are and what they want in the world? Ladies, this has been so much fun. Suzi, so folks can go on the website to apply. And this is only for New York-based nonprofits, correct?
Suzi Epstein 27:22
Correct!
Rhea Wong 27:22
And is there a particular issue area that is supposed to be coming from?
Suzi Epstein 27:29
We are not limiting missions in this round of GRIT. Usually, we say groups that only serve families and children, but this cohort is for groups whose budgets are between 1 and 20 million. One way or another, here’s what we learned. Everybody’s serving individuals and families. And so we have not put a limit on who the clients are, or what the particular intervention is. Thank you for asking that.
Rhea Wong 27:57
Very good! And if folks have questions about GRIT, is there a way to get in touch with you or someone at Robin Hood to ask any further questions? Are you hosting information sessions?
Suzi Epstein 28:07
The GRIT application has info on Robin Hood. We are forwarded particular requests. We will call prospective applicants or write them back to answer their queries. There are two of us on this almost full-time for the next four months. We’re actually also running two GRIT sessions this year. In the spring and for that if we have a huge class of applicants. They can’t fit them all in the spring, but we will offer them an opportunity, post-August to be in the next cycle.
Rhea Wong 28:41
Very good! And just so we have an idea how big is the cohort? And how many applications are you getting per stop?
Suzi Epstein 287:47
The work will be 12 to 15 organizations. Of the last several cycles during COVID, we had probably about 50 applicants. So one out of three, I’m going to say this, we don’t necessarily take the strongest applicant. The strongest applicants are organizations that we think will benefit the most. So when people say why didn’t I get in? My budget is so and I’m a fabulous staff. My evaluation is so excellent. My systems are… You’re not going to integrate. You don’t need it.
Rhea Wong 29:21
We will make sure to put the information in the show notes. So New York-based nonprofits are between one and 20 million, which is probably everyone almost. Check it out.
Suzi Epstein 29:31
It’s only 20% private funding.
Rhea Wong 29:33
Oh, yes! It’s only 20% private funding. So those are the parameters. If that is you, check it out. We’ll include the information in the show notes. But until then, Suzi, Kim, thank you so much for joining. This is a lot of fun.
Suzi Epstein 29:45
Thank you. I agree.
Rhea Wong 29:48
And thank you for doing this for the nonprofits in New York City. It’s that place I’ve come to call home and I love it. Take care.
. Thanks for having me here.
RHEA WONG 38:11
Have a good day, everyone.
—
Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/nonprofitlowdown/support
