Change is the only constant in life. How do you decide which change to embrace and which to dismiss as a fad? Which changes—whether systems or processes—will create space for the essential, impactful work supporting your mission? Tune in to this episode to learn how to identify, prioritize, and embrace it.

Brad Ward, Regional Director, Community Foundations | Foundant Technologies

Brad joined the Foundant team after years at the Council on Foundations as the Lead Strategist for Community Philanthropy, with a keen focus on Community Foundations. Brad is also a former community foundation CEO who led the merger of two community foundations in Indiana and has firsthand experienced with the complexity of big change at a community foundation. With over 2,500 volunteer service hours across Europe, United States, and South America, Brad cares deeply about place, the connections and commitment of the people within their communities, and how important place and belonging matters. Brad resides in Charleston, South Carolina with his wife, two children and rescue dog, and is eager to support community foundations with innovative technological solutions to advance the field.

Links:

• Recorded Webinar: Getting Back to Philanthropy: Identifying, Prioritizing, and Embracing Change to Move Forward
• Compass: Connect with other members of the philanthropic community at Community.foundant.com
• Social: Follow Foundant Technologies on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, and Instagram
• Website: Foundant.com

Embracing change. It may feel scary, but it's actually one of the great lessons we can really lean into for ourselves and for organizations in the communities we serve.

Welcome to Connected Philanthropy. In today's episode, we are talking with Brad Ward, who is the regional director for Community Foundations here at Found Out. Brad has also been a CEO that ran and merged two community foundations in Indiana. So not only has he felt some of the same stressors that those of you listening might be dealing with right now, but it's also safe to say that he is no stranger to embracing big change.

So without further ado, let's dive right in. Here's Brad.

I think it's fair to say that there might be a buzz word or even a trend around this idea of change management and and how it works and how it's strategic. And it's absolutely critical to implementing a new software solution. But it's critical in just about everything we do as people in organizations, regardless of the tools that we're working with.

And in my mind, the idea of just embracing change is is really understanding what are the personal attributes, the personal behaviors, the personal self that you need to show up with to be able to embrace change that is naturally happening or needs to happen both internally with the organization and the people you work with and externally in terms of what's happening to your community, what's happening to the nonprofits that you serve and the grantees that you serve.

And just acknowledging that change is going to consistently ebb and flow and some is going to be more severely impactful on your organization. Some things are a little bit less so, but just as critical. And so having an eye on that is what I think is important. When I think of change management, there is absolutely big picture change management of like we're talking about like a whole software change that is just detrimental to everything we do on a day to day basis because like you're taking one system and exchanging it for another.

And while it is going to open up all these opportunities, it's all these things you have to now learn, right? And you have to understand how they work. And so that is is frankly just sometimes fearful. I think people come at change with this idea of fear. And I will acknowledge that there is an element of consistency that we all strive for and like routines are nice.

You know, like my dog does the same thing every day. He sleeps in the same spot. And if we don't take a walk at the same time, like he gets anxious and he gets very unruly with me. And so if I can see that in my own dog, I probably could reflect on my own behaviors and acknowledge how when I get out of routine, how I behave, but that's what this is all about, is just acknowledging that this is happening.

I find that if we embrace change as the you know, I think it's obviously a philosopher said that change is the only constant. Right. But but I think it goes way beyond that in terms of wrestling with the idea of how much change is necessary, how quickly does it happen and what methods does it do. And one way to think about about this is, is that it just means we're constantly assessing the landscape around us.

Right. And it means we're open to what might be beneficial to adapt to.

I love how you emphasize the personal aspect of change and acknowledge the emotional toll that it can take. Change is scary. I love the example of when your dog goes outside the routine. You know, emotions are running high. I think so many people focus on the technical aspects and they fail to recognize the toll it's going to take on the team or how it can affect morale, how people are feeling about it.

So I think this is the appropriate approach of acknowledging the the personal emotional side. So this conversation is happening after a webinar that we did. It was an hour long webinar where we had panelists from the Hartford Foundation and one other foundation remind.

Me, yeah, the foundations for enhancing communities and in Pennsylvania, Kirk was coming from Pennsylvania and obviously Hartford and Connecticut. That webinar was a great fund because it had incredible players, right involved both both those foundations. And they brought, you know, Kirk came from from the Pennsylvania Foundation that we mentioned. He brought this idea of enterprise level thinking to go along with it.

So he was at the super macro level and Amy and Kelly and Jonah at Hartford were really talking about a very technical and practical change that was occurring in their grantmaking around trust based philanthropy. And I think we have to respect the fact that we're all coming at this with a different perspective of how is it going to impact me.

And that's a fair question to be asking, right? Because you want to know what is expected of you. And as soon as you start to suggest a change in where we're going and how we're going to get there and what we're going to use to get there, it's a little bit of uneasiness. And so that's where organizations really, you know, I think instead of getting too caught up on the big picture, I like to think about it as like face the daily decisions from a standpoint of like, how can we break this down into its simplest components?

And you can only do that if you know what the big picture actually is. So where are we going? And I use this example with you, Logan, and I think this is great for people to say, I'm in Charleston, South Carolina. I'm all the way on the East Coast. If you called me and said, Brad, I needed Bozeman, Montana, I'm going to say, great.

Of course, I would love to come to Bozeman. But the question is when, when do you need me? And that is going to change everything, right? In terms of the speed in which I need to get there. Like, if it's tomorrow, I got to hop on a plane. If I got a whole couple of weeks, I'm going to drive.

I'm going to enjoy the scenery, take my time, and then I'll have a sense of like, if I made it to Denver by this point, that means I'm almost there. Like, I'm on schedule. Am I behind schedule? And so you have to start breaking it down into its lesser components. You got to know where you're going. But then we need to know how fast we need to get there.

And I think when we don't assess how fast we have to get there, that's where some of this change management starts to fall flat. Right? Because if we if we under assess the reality of time that it takes to make these critical changes in processes and workflows in whatever we're talking about, implementing solutions in software or changing our grant program or even just talking about how we're going to interact with our donors, right?

Like communication strategy, it doesn't matter. We just have to assess the time it might take to get there.

I love that analogy. Yeah, you have to know where you're going and how fast you need to get there. And I think all too often people have no idea what the end goal or the end destination looks like. Aside from maybe a few key decision makers, it should really be emphasized and re-emphasized. This is the why behind what we're doing and making sure you have buy in and also communicating the speed.

Where my mind went with that was I listen to a podcast of like people trying to estimate how long a project would take and I think economist found out that all things on average usually projects get overestimated by like 50%. So like just whatever your estimate is, add 50% to that and you'll probably be spot on. So I don't know if that's.

A well, you know, Logan, one thing I learned about found that right away is that we take the conservative approach when we talk about making a change right in our solutions. We're always super conservative. We give you extra time. We would much rather deliver early than feel like we're behind schedule or not be able to adapt to the unforeseen circumstances that might adjust where we're trying to go and how we're going to get there.

So I think you're absolutely right. 50% of estimating time is very valuable. Also like understanding the cost of time, right? That's really critical too, in this embracing change. Just like, you know what what is out of bounds in this particular iterative work, Right. Like what is out of bounds of what is in bounds with what we can accomplish, What are going to be the thresholds of people's ability to retain whatever it is we're trying to change.

Those are all critical factors to that. We have to take into place. I mean, I always called it like, don't get too far out in front of the headlights, right? Like I talked about that with my board of directors, like making sure that my vision and mission for how fast we were going to go was not too far out in front of their headlights because then they can't protect me, they can't be with me.

They can't do their job in governing. The same was true with the staff that I was leading. I had to be confident and comfortable that I was communicating enough information so that we could take the steps we needed to to go forward without overwhelming them or leaving them in the dark with why we were trying to get this change occurred.

Could you speak a little bit more about Fountain's approach to change management? I love what you said about taking the conservative route and also defining what's in scope versus out of scope. But how does founded think about things like the training, the migration?

Yeah, So that's you know, I've been here now for a couple of years and just getting to see it on the inside is really exciting. It's really interesting. And you you heard it from the outside when I was working at the council, even when I was at the Community Foundation meeting at that time, we were just in the grants and scholarships space here at found it, and I remember everybody talking about how great the customer service was, how responsive it was, and just how they were just, you wonderful people that were always there to help.

Right. And so that in and of itself, setting that attitude and that comfort was step one. That is still true to this day, is that we just have this really good approach about letting people know that we're showing up as humans to, you know, that we've got stuff going on in our day. We're throwing a lot at you and we respect that.

We've done this a couple of times. So for us, this is old news, but this is new news for you. So interestingly enough, going back to what we were talking about in the webinar with Amy and just showing up and acknowledging the human aspect of this and celebrating where we can, that ironically, that's not even the nuts and bolts of it, but that's just the that's what wraps around the change management that found that leads.

Then you start getting into the technical work that found that does and the methodical approach they take to really transitioning someone from one solution to another. And it's a step by step process with a lot of different team players and it's all organized with somebody overseeing it, right? Whether it's that functional consultant or that project manager who's really just making sure the right people are showing up at the right time to support the folks that are trying to make that change.

And I think making sure then that we have the right people in the room who have the deep expertise that's going to be successful. I found it is one of these places that I don't see a lot of vendors who have this much institutional knowledge about our sector. You know, I mean, obviously we probably don't want our engineers coming directly out of philanthropy.

We probably want them to come out of the tech world and know engineering. So they make up a big chunk of our staff. But when you look at our client services, you look at our folks who are helping people make decisions about whether this is the right solution for them. It's our marketing folks, it's our support lines. These are people who have actually been on the front lines of working at these organizations that these grantee grant organizations.

And so they get they understand the language, they understand the goals, the objectives. So they bring all that to the table. And one day you might need a functional, you know, a fund accounting specialist, somebody who really understands accounting that's really unique. And then the next day you're going to need somebody who could talk moves management and donor development or, you know, scholarship, you know, specifics around branching, which I still don't even know if I understand.

So, I mean, I lean on those people that do understand all that stuff and make sure they're in the room at the right time. And I think found it does a fantastic job of leaning into the personal aspect, but then also acknowledging that people learn in different ways. So some of it is direct one on one coaching and training, some of it is just here are some of these resources that you can use at your own speed, your own time.

You know, the online videos, the the libraries and resources that they can really dig into at their own pace or when things are quiet, you know, or so that they can, you know, put their headphones on and listen to Metallica. That's what keeps them focused, motivate whatever it is like, right? Like we all have our own ways of learning and growing.

And so how that does a good job of making sure there's a lot of versatility in how we get the work done.

And I love what you said about how much experience we have internally of people who have worked for nonprofits or funding organizations. We recently did an internal poll and 60% of found that employees have come from that space, which is pretty amazing.

Now, it does not surprise me at all. I mean, this is certainly a place where I'm constantly challenged with knowing that there are people that are smarter than me and that have had deeper experiences than me. I've had a lot of broad strokes, you know, engagements, and I've seen a lot of different things. But the the depth that our folks can go is just really encouraging because it tells me that this is a solution that's going to be and a vendor that's going to be around for a while and that doesn't even think and feel like a vendor.

And I think that's what is most critical to me is and I think it's what's important for me for the sector to realize. And that's something that I really try to articulate with all the partnerships and the networks that I'm in, is that we have to take this seriously, that this is a partner that wants to be a partner with us.

They're here to watch us grow and they're here to constantly evolve. The solution found is embracing change with constantly improving the solution in a way that allows us to be competitive, allows us to be forth, be forward in our thinking, and create new opportunities to connect with more constituents, more donors, more grantees, and just build an ecosystem around the right set of tools to enable people to embrace change and do it.

Do it super effective. I think what's really important is the fact that found that also creates pathways for the folks who are using the solution to connect with one another too. And so we really enable this opportunity to learn from each other and to influence the work that we're doing. And I think any time somebody is trying to make a change, they're trying to improve their process or their workflow nine out of ten times, they can just hop on the campus, on the online community and find thousands of peers who would travel, maybe be willing to just share whatever template they were using.

So there's this ability to have best practices that are floating among the day to day users. And so found it isn't just the provider of the solution, it isn't just the knowledge center, it's the the community basis by which we can work together as a field and as a sector. And I think that's important too, because we want these tools to not only enable the people in the individual organizations to be successful, but we want the entire sector to float, right?

We want community philanthropy to be at its very best because that's what locally place based work really thrives off of. And that's how we all have brighter and more successful communities that can give us a place to live, play and work and be successful and lift communities out of poverty and create opportunities that are equitable and acknowledge the differences as well as the paths that we've had that we need to rectify going forward.

So I think these tools do a whole lot more than just day to day clicks. They have a fundamental basis to how we get our work done.

Thank you for emphasizing the Compass community. That's something that found and does differently. We have over 4000 members, close to 2000 discussions that are going on right now where you can learn from other people, get those ideas and in addition to the connections that found and offers things like this, this podcast, which are purely just our effort to provide value, educational resources, because professional development and learning is also an important part of the equation.

I will say for those of you who want to join Compass, just go to Community dot found Incom and that link will also be in the show notes. Encourage everybody listening to hop in there and binge some of the discussions and maybe put something in there yourself. But hopefully this doesn't just sound like a big fountain to add.

We'll get back on track and talk more about maybe we could just talk about what are some other key takeaways from the webinar that we could share with our listeners.

You know, Kirk, he's a CFO at the Foundation for Enhancing Communities, and he had referenced that he'd been there in 20 some years. So it would be pretty easy to have pigeonholed to Kirk to say he's just doing the same old thing day in and day out, and he's in his routine and, and Kirk acknowledged that he was actually one of the linchpins for what was either going to hold them back or move them forward in terms of making the change with the system.

And one of the reasons was, was that the system they were using was so limiting. It didn't have the cross functionality across the teams, it didn't have individuals capacity to do the type of things, mimic, you know, activities that you can do with the tools that Feldman has. And so Kirk realized, like, you know, when people needed a report, they came to him and then he had to take the time to you.

Producer And assuming that he wasn't out that day for a holiday or sick or vacation, could depend on how fast he could generate it. And so, you know, he actually helped a lot of power, like he held a lot of information that was critical. And so by that nature, he also made himself not dispensable. Right. So, like he had a little job security, yet he threw all that out the window and said, we need to be moving away from the silos and we need to figure out how we be truly an enterprise that is cross functional and self-sufficient.

And so he took himself out of that what otherwise could have been considered the wrong type of job security. And now he made himself even more valuable because he led that change. And I loved how he reflected on that personal journey of like accepting that, like maybe I am holding on to power and like I have and like, is that good?

Is that bad? Like you wrestled with it and then he got out of the way. And I think that's that is he talked about the personal struggles now that he's giving people all this power. Well, they're like, well, why can't you just do it for me like you used to? You know, it's like I could I could just do it for you.

But then you're not finding the self sufficiency and you're not discovering what else you could do as you start to intuitively learn the capacity of the system and before you know it, now you're generating all kinds of things that will benefit your day to day work, right? And you don't need Kirk to do it. And so I think Kirk was was that was a favorite one of mine that he he talked about and with Amy and Joanna and Kelly at Hartford that one just showed me the complexity of change that they were managing and how they did it with such grace.

And they brought each individual skill set to the table. You know, Jonah was going deep with the code and the technology enabling reporting dynamics that would reinforce the change they were trying to make. And Kelly was all about the feedback loops with the grantees who were actually the end user, but yet has so many other users involved. And she was really assessing that and being open to what that each, each feedback loop, you know, allowed them to assess.

And then you had Amy masterminding all this and making sure they had the support they needed the right people in the room at the time and also the coverage to to to take their time in doing the change correctly and not just deliver some result that was half baked. I thought that was really, really critical and really awesome and it was a lot of fun, just kind of diving into some of that and listening to them.

Just explore some of that with us.

Yeah, so many gold nuggets in there. The importance of feedback loops really resonated with me. Something we call that internally is assigning change agents. So these are actual people that you assign as an advocate when there's a big project happening, somebody that in a different department can understand the big push and be excited and get their team excited about it and collect individual questions and feedback and then come back.

So if you have a giant company with, you know, 50, 100 people, you don't actually have to sit down with every single one to get their feedback. Maybe just assigning a few change agents that can represent their departments. That's a tactic for kind of getting that feedback.

I think there's like that old saying that, you know, culture eats strategy for breakfast, right? Like if you don't have the right culture that no strategies you deploy will actually be effective or valuable. I'm probably getting that quote wrong. But but the premise is there, right? Like if you don't have the trust, you don't have the mechanisms to support this change, any strategy you dream up is just going to be a strategy on paper or in your head.

And so there is an element of understanding who the actors are, who are the change agents, who can get this done, who can have the right caliber to be mindful of all the pieces and to be able to also take the feedback when it's not positive, like when is it going to be a negative feedback? Because you change something that doesn't feel right with people and how do you adjust and adapt to that?

And then I think making sure that you're taking into consideration all of the stakeholders, they will not always present themselves right up front like you may have thought you thought of everybody, but then you might see something crop up later. And I think adjusting and really applying some strategy to that, to think about the influence that others would have on this and, you know, both positive and negative.

So really having a sense of defining your internal and your external stakeholders, you know, who's going to be supporters of this change, who's going to be detractors from this change, but then also just acknowledging when you have to adjust along the way. And I think, Kurt, during the webinar that we were talking about, this change agency staff and was talking about how and I think I think Amy's team at Hartford did the same, they had like biweekly meetings and, and, you know, they're acknowledging a lot of different pieces.

They're looking at, you know, what what founder is producing. They're looking at what the community has produced and they're trying to assess a lot of information to determine if it changes anything that they're doing or if it needs to take a further action or if it's good as is. Right. Like we keep going with the direction. So I think there's that constant improvement that's part of this and this critical, the trust factor.

It needs to be there and the culture surrounding these systems and processes is going to help you get to an enterprise level thinking that's going to support your ability to embrace change or more quickly, efficiently and be more effective at doing so. And the other one, Logan, that we've kind of touched on, but we haven't talked a whole lot about, It's just like the constant change in philanthropy, the constant change of our environment and our, our communities and societal pressures and things that are sometimes way outside of our control but have a direct impact on how we respond and how we proactively engage.

And I think that's something that I learned in running a community foundation was that I had a plan. I was going to do this today, and then somebody walks in with an entirely different plan and how to adjust on the fly was really critical because you don't want to miss that opportunity that's right in front of you, but you also want to assess it and identify where it needs to go in terms of what you said you were going to achieve and how does that affect your plan on a on a day to day basis, on a weekly basis, and then ultimately long term?

And that can be frustrating if you have a plan, even at the beginning of the day, you think you know what your task list is going to be and having to, if something comes up, potentially adjust. And I love what you said to me about is this a change that we should embrace or is this just chasing a trend or putting out a fire?

Because it seems like it demands our attention. Can you speak a little bit about the difference between embracing change versus just making a change because it's a trend or changing for.

Yeah, I think that's a that's a tougher one for folks to to really acknowledges that we get excited by the trends. We get excited by what we are seeing our peers and colleagues do and what seems to be working effectively. We get caught up in the movements of the day, you know, the various movements that are taking shape in our community.

And so a little bit about it does depend on your your set strategy, your set organizational speakers. And you do have to have clear guidance of like, what is our mission, what is our vision, Where are we trying to go? And so again, going back to the analogy of if I need to be in Bozeman, but I see this really pretty opportunity up in Chicago, like I could go there on my way to Bozeman if I'm driving, how much is it going to take me?

Of course. And how much is it worth it right, to to take in whatever is appealing in Chicago. And so we have to really assess it against the goals and objectives we did set out for ourselves in terms of what are those trade offs and what are those going to be in the time that it will take to adjust to whatever that trend is and what value is it bringing to our ultimate stakeholders that we're trying to serve?

I think that's another critical factor when you're sorting, assessing, am I chasing a trend or is this a trend that is here to stay or it's a trend that is critical to what we have said is our mission. And so then we need to start reflecting on the changes that we might need to make to envelope that. And that was what we heard in the webinar with Hartford, was that they were really looking to change their grantmaking processes that were reactive and, you know, responding in one way to a more trust based and really getting the input and feedback early of their grantees about how they be the right kind of partner.

And it enabled the kind of results that they wanted. I think they said it was like 300 or 3000. I can't remember the number, but it was a ridiculous number of new grantees that had never received funding before or hadn't received it for several years, that now we're accessing dollars just by creating this new approach. And it was based off of some critical trends that they were understanding and learning about in different circles of influence around this trust based philanthropy, this trust based grantmaking.

So they in that regard were leaning in to what the trends were telling them the outcomes could be. And then they were trying to create a viable road map to get there. So they were aligning sort of what they were doing and their current environment with where they hopefully wanted to go. And it it required a shift in focus, It required a shift in outcomes.

But it was doing so in a way that was improving their process. And I am not going to deny that. I certainly found myself chasing a few trends that I thought were perfect, perfectly aligned, and, you know, they fell outside the scope of what we said we could achieve. And ultimately it showed at the end. Right. And that's that's okay to to a degree, Right.

There's a degree of just trial and error in some of this. It depends on, again, identifying the scale of change we're talking about what are some calculated, low level risks and what are big level risks that we have to be mindful of. And so you do have to do a lot of identifying and assessing when you're embracing change in what could be sort of the outcomes And how critical are those outcomes going to be to our bottom line, to our ability to serve, to staff morale, Like there's just some critical factors that have to be taken into consideration.

And I think as long as you aren't, as I said earlier, getting too far out in front of the headlights, you're going to be just fine. You just have to understand how far those headlights can stretch before you realize you're just running too fast and you're technically running alone and no one's able to follow you.

Out here in Montana, we call that getting out over your skis. I don't know if that's a sign. Yep.

That's a fair one. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's. That's my my Charleston, you know, not able to throw those that good ski analogies in there. But you're absolutely right. It's the same thing.

Anything you'd like to leave our listeners with as we wrap up this episode?

You know, I think that the the biggest takeaways I have is that embracing change really teaches you a lot about yourself. It teaches you a lot about your organization, and it can inform your own identity and purpose within the ecosystem. It will help you identify that if you're embracing change, you're also embracing opportunities and you also are identifying what is out of bounds for you.

And then you start to say, Well, who is that good for? Like, Who is the better fit to be doing that work so that we don't have mission drift to try to become everything to everybody. But how could we influence somebody else to take on that important work and what role could we play in part of that? And that I'm starting to get into the weeds of like the locally play space philanthropy and the changes that we want to see in our own communities, right?

And knowing that we just can't do it all. So we've talked a lot about like just more fundamental change in our organizations and the workflows and the technology and things like that. But if we go outside of ourselves and we say like, what are we? What is all this for? And we're just saying we want to create change in our community, we want to make a difference.

This is also really important to know what we ourselves can accomplish and who are our allies in getting that work done. And sometimes we don't have to be the leader. We can be a key follower, and we might even be able to enable someone else to take on that important change and support their work that would need their internal work, that would need to change to support it.

So it all gets down to the core basis of the difference we're all trying to make, which is to make this place a little bit better than how we found it and trying to create a little bit more inhabitable, friendly and communal space that we all can thrive in. So I think that's what is really critical to me is that embracing change.

It may feel scary, but it's actually one of the great things that we the great lessons we can really lean into for ourselves and for our organizations and the communities we serve.

Well said. Well, Brad found it is very lucky to have you once again. I just want to commend you on you acknowledging the human aspect of this big embracing change topic. I can't think of anybody better to talk to about this. Our clients are lucky to work with you. It's been a pleasure talking to you and thank you to our listeners.

Definitely check out that webinar recording once again. A link can be found in the show notes and thank you for all you do.