Johna Rodgers shares the importance of community and communication she has observed in her 25+ years working with nonprofits.

Johna Rodgers, GPC | Johna Rodgers Consulting, LLC

Johna Rodgers, GPC, has been there and done that. And almost every step of her divergent path included grants. For nearly 30 years, Johna has helped organizations of all types and sizes address their most critical needs—at the federal, state, corporate, and grassroots levels. In 2015, she opened Johna Rodgers Consulting, LLC, a full-service consulting agency. With more than $162 million in grant awards, she has the competitive experience needed to ensure proposals are fundable; as importantly, she has learned to work efficiently with dozens of partners and their conflicting ideas, missions, and concerns. Johna is a Board Member of the Grant Professional Association (GPA), a member of the National Grant Management Association, a national trainer for Grant Writing USA/Grant Management USA, and a GPA Approved Trainer. She is also a former board member and exam administrator for the Grant Professionals Certification Institute (GPCI).

Grant Professionals Association (GPA): https://grantprofessionals.org/

GPC (Grant Professional Certified) https://www.grantcredential.org/

Johna’s webinars and blogs with Foundant:

• Burnout: https://resources.foundant.com/education-webinars-for-nonprofits/you-are-not-alone-burnout-is-real-relevant-and-recoverable-3
• Working with Your Program Team: https://resources.foundant.com/education-webinars-for-nonprofits/program-development-insights-learning-to-juggle-machetes-and-other-necessary-evils-3
• What does a grant writing do: https://resources.foundant.com/blog/what-do-grant-writers-do-12-steps-to-help-you-explain

Contact Info:

• email: Johna Rodgers <johnarodgersgpc@gmail.com>
• Social: https://twitter.com/JohnaRodgersGPC

Want to see additional resources? Visit resources.foundant.com

Connect with other members of the philanthropic community at Community.foundant.com

Hello and welcome to our Connected Philanthropy podcast. Today, we are so very privileged to have Johna Rogers, Gypsy principal consultant and owner of Johna Rogers Consulting, as our guest with more than 200 million in grant awards. Johna has helped organizations of all types and sizes address their most critical needs at the federal, state, corporate and grassroots levels. In 2015, she opened Johna Rogers Consulting LLC, which is a full service consulting agency.

And she, Johna is board president for the Grant Professionals Association, a member of the National Grant Management Association and a GPA approved trainer. Wow. I had to take a little breath there. She is also a former board member and exam administrator for the Grant Professional Certification Institute, ECI, and she is especially proud to hold her G.P.S. since 2008.

Oh, it's easy to say that Johna Rogers has been there and done that. Thank you so much for joining us today, Johna.

Thank you. I'm glad to be here.

I was thinking about this conversation for a while, and I'm there's so many places we could start and so many places we could go to. But I was thinking let's start today with a question on surprises during this vast career and various experience that you have working in nonprofits as a grant professional. What has surprised you the most?

You know, and, you know, you and I have chatted over the years, and I am so proud to call you a friend and a colleague and somebody I look up to and just have a great time with and learn from. And I think that's where my biggest surprise comes, is is is the amount of learning I'm still doing after all this time that at some point you think you know, when you were a kid and you thought, you know, I just want to be really, really good at something one day, I just you know, I'd watch the Olympics and you'd say, I want to be the best the best one of those out there.

I just want to be that well. Okay. So now I do paperwork for a living. So there's that. And and then I don't even I don't even know every time that I sit down how to do that paperwork, because if I'm doing it for a federal grant, that's one thing. And I'm doing it for faith based grant. It's a whole nother thing if I'm doing it for the United Way.

Well, there's that whole other thing. And then the earmarks came back this last year, and it was like, say what? So the more I do this, the more I know that I don't know. And so I just put myself in the role every day. Of learner. I, I trust that I probably know more than beginners know, but that I'm never going to know it all.

And the word expert is not even in my vocabulary, at least pertaining to myself. And I guess the other thing that really surprises me is that after having spent so many years avoiding becoming a consultant and and telling myself, you know, you need that steady paycheck, you have to, you know, you don't have it in you to to be the go getter and to go out there and find the work and to be successful in that entrepreneurial area.

I guess the biggest surprise to me there is that it was as simple as it was. I did not have to beat the bushes. I had a you know, after so many years in the field as an employee and working with communities and nonprofits, and governments and schools that I did have a bit of a reputation that was more positive than not.

I'm always going to be wacky genre, but, you know, at least I knew I could do the work, right. And so I think that I still remain amazed. Six and a half years into consulting that it wasn't more difficult than it was, and that I didn't have to have all the things. And, you know, I talk about this often is that I still don't have a website.

I've you know, that was be one of the things that everybody would say you need a business card and a contract for them and you need clients and you need a website. And you need, you need, you need. And I didn't I just started working for people. And that has I'm still just working for people. I, I have enough sense now to kind of plan ahead six or nine months.

So I kind of know where the work is coming from in my pipeline. But really, I have this base of clients that, that continue to need good work done and that I love doing good work for So that has been a real that's a that's a surprise for me is that that it has not been the Ts pulling experience I thought it would be and that that you can make a good living working with good people to get good things done.

I I know many people struggle with that that thought and that choice and is it going to be better because there's pros and cons of both and that insight is probably helps a lot of people considering that. Oh, and now you're currently the board president for grant professionals. Association, and I know you've been working with them for a long time, as well as their sister affiliate, the Grant Professional Certification Institute that that I have been involved with for a while here.

And you were also a mentor and entertaining speaker? Very much so. I thought leader as well. I avoided using the word expert here. But but you are so many things in the grant and fundraising community what are some popular misconceptions you'd like to dispel?

And wow. And there are so many so many out there that that people look at us in nonprofit work and they they have these different conceptions. You know, I get phone calls from time to time, especially from a local community where where someone will say, hey, my board of directors just asked me to start writing grants and I'm the only employee here.

And and they want me to write grants. And and I just I don't what am I supposed to do? And and I give them some tips about. Well, first off, they don't know what they're asking. They just don't know what they're asking. They they simply want more money. And everybody says, well, there should be a grant for that.

So they want this. There's this poor individual who's already working 50 hours a week just running the organization to step up and add another 50 hours to write grants. And it's just a challenge. And so, you know, counseling folks through that and counseling in an informal sense, not the mental health sense, just talking with folks. That's all I do. You know, it's it's like it's like these myths that are around grants just persist.

And so I think it's it's one of my goals in life to help people understand that we are not just sitting at our desk writing. We are not just just making this stuff up or not. We are working with people to plan good work because that's that's what grants do. They're they're good program designs that we put out there to a funder to say, hey, have we got a great idea for you?

And wouldn't you love to be a partner with us? On this is no different than anybody else who's who's trying to operate a business, who goes to the bank and makes a proposal to someone to say, hey, have we got a deal for you? Well, we do that on a daily basis. We just do it through nonprofits and city governments, and we do it to make sure that kids eat and that flowers get planted in parks and that the whale gets saved.

You know, we do it for these these unusual reasons. And so sometimes people don't think of us in the realm of of being professionals first, but also of of leading that whole process. They rather they think, oh, you just sit at your desk and you write had a colleague once who said said, oh, but but Johna, you're in the pre writing phase.

You're you're doing all the thinking and planning. Right? And I was like, that's it. That's it. That just nobody seems to understand that if it takes you 150 hours to write a large proposal and there's my first piece of news that takes 150 hours to write a large proposal that the majority of that is not actually writing, it's the budgeting and the planning and the letters of support and then the editing and then the re editing and then the how, the hand-holding.

There's just so many things out there. And for example, I had a had a a colleague in a nearby city call me or she emailed me the other day and she was in there. She's a grant professional and she was upset because she had won a very large grant for her school district. And it was a collaboration between the school district and the city and county.

So everybody was all excited and they were having their own little party about it. You know, there's going to be a lot of great stuff that happens in the community because of that. And she was feeling left out. She was really feeling that no one was was celebrating her personally. And, you know, I had to I had to kind of take a step back and say, okay, so here's the deal.

When you win a grant, you all win the grant. It's everybody. And everybody celebrates. When you don't win the grant, you all mourn the grant. It has to be all it can't be Jonas Grant. It can never be Giannis It has to be the community the nonprofit organizations. And therefore, when the celebration comes, if you if you've done your job correctly, they all feel bought in and they can celebrate that that's a good thing.

And so you know bringing her down a little bit and saying, okay, you should celebrate and this is what I do I've been doing this for for a long time and and I learned a long time ago that I celebrate when I submit I celebrate when I take all those random ideas that are out there. And I put them all together in this beautiful puzzle that I know is going to do good in the community.

That I've had great conversations, sometimes painful conversations. We've cut budgets, we've expanded, but we've done all the things we've had to do, and we submit it that is when I celebrate because that celebrate the good work that we all did. If it gets funded, that's just gravy. That's just the cherry on top because I can't control that. There are so many things, so many factors that go into whether you get an award and most of us who've been around long, long enough have received awards where we went, really, that grant won.

What? And it's like you get the one that you're like, that really shouldn't. I'm just amazed. And then and then the one that we were sure was a was a winner. No, it doesn't. So it helps me to know that my goal and 20 years ago I had a had a, a colleague who said this and it really stuck with me is that as long as I'm submitting a fundable project that will do good in the community.

And it was the best work I could do in the limited amount of time that's my job. That's all I have to do now. I'm a I'm also a woman of faith. So I do say a prayer and then I celebrate I go get a bar, pair of shoes or a milkshake. It depends on on the mood of the day, but I continually focus on the fact that it's not Johna is Grant, it's it's our grant.

And the only way I can get those smart people around me to play, to talk to me, to bring me data, to do all those things we talk about that sometimes are hard to get, is that I have to have that that group mentality going all the time. And that's kind of tough for me because I'm not a people person and people tell me I am no, I'm not.

I'm really not but I understand that it's an important part of my job to bring everybody to the table and ensure that their voices are heard we may not use every thought they have, but but you're at the table and you're able to voice that. And then it's my job to to kind of make it make it all come together into a package.

But if I don't have those other voices, it's not going to be very good. I can I can do it without them. But I'll get up. You know, if we're talking about grades, I would get A, B or C, but if I if I have all the right voices at the table, we're going to have an amazing product.

And again, that's all we can control. At the end of the day. And another thing, another misconception that that I think is really hit us during COVID is that it has been so darn crazy that could it possibly be as crazy as we think it's banned? And the answer is yes. If it was just darn crazy, some of us got slammed.

Some of us, you know, the spring of 20, 20 I did not win a single grant award. And I had funders who emailed and called and said, hey, we're sorry. We just wanted to let you know we've redirected our funding. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you know, part of me is like, okay, you know, I'm going to be, I'm going to stand up here, be a big girl and say, okay, I totally understand you're going to feed people.

And we had to feed people in the spring of 20, 20 But what was surprising there is that on a lot of those, they came back around later, six months later and said, Okay, we've gotten through that. The first part of the crisis and we're sending your clients some funding. So if we hadn't applied in the middle of the craziness, we wouldn't have gotten that just to just to do my best to ride the wave of whatever's coming.

That has been you know, that's been really crazy. You know, I've got a good friend who says, who works, who works in a food industry feeding people and with a nonprofit. And he says, You know, I can't even call it grant writing. We called it grant catching. There was so much funding headed to food and and that was a bump in the road for the rest of us for a while.

And we just kind of had to swallow a little bit and go, Okay, that's appropriate. And we need to take that step back. So so some of those misconceptions that we have out there are that, you know, on a Tuesday, you can write a grant for anything and you know, that hasn't been true in the last two years.

It it really hit there has been a wave we've been writing and it's coming back around to what used to be normal. We'll see what the new normal is, but we're not there yet. And, you know, especially our friends in the arts that they have probably struggled the most. And we just have to have to see where we all come out on the other side.

We're still. COVID's not over. And nonprofits are the last to recover. When these things happen, they're always they're the first hit and the last to recover. And we we have historical data about it for the last century. So, yeah, we just got up, just got to hang in there and keep keep moving forward one day at a time.

Yeah. And I in doing that and learning if I was new into the role of a grant professional, learning that perspective from you would be so helpful to prevent me from some dramatics ups and downs and misreading things. So yeah. How have you seen or can you give some examples of how leaders in our nonprofit communities have needed and found support from their peers?

Or also you found support from your peers as well?

And you know, it is interesting that we have this is not the first recession we've ever had. This is the first pandemic in most of our lives that we've ever experienced. So a lot of this was literally building the plane while we flew it, as they say, so one of the things that I was most pleased about over the last two years has been the internal conversations that have been going on with later to later support.

Also, I've been I've had several clients who reached out to me not not for grants support, but for general overall support of where is this going and what are we going to see next and what do we need to do to position ourselves to get ready for whatever's coming? That's been a really interesting thing with my nonprofit clients, is that they realize that they're that that they can't predict the future.

But there are things they can do to be diversified and more prepared for whatever's coming down the pike. And so that's that's been a really interesting thing for for me. What I am I am the queen of phone a friend we we all think in grants that we are the only person in the world who has this problem.

I think that the small nonprofit with the single executive director who has a board, they're trying to keep happy. I know they think, number one, that their board doesn't understand. And by the way, they're correct in that. And number two, that nobody else understands how hard that is. Some of my mentees over the years have been those those leaders in my local community where you just go to lunch or or have a phone call once a month and talk through some of the some of the things that are so stressful in working with boards in particular.

And it all comes back to understanding what we each bring to the table, trying to get as much out of your board as you can. You know, when a board member comes to you and they and they have this idea, well, okay, it might be a good idea, but it also brings work and it always brings work. And so that's where we as nonprofit employees or or as consultants have to take a step back and go, okay, that's awesome.

I've got a great idea. But now let's figure out what that means. Practically. So rather than take it as a bell must do this, we need to take it as a great idea. And we need to figure out how to resource it. And that often is going to be something we can do peer to peer from with from ourselves to others.

In nonprofits, and then also to bring in other people to talk to board members. One of the exercises I like to do with board members as a consultant, and I often I don't want 100 people calling me to do this, but I have often done this for free. Is, is that when somebody says on a board, we should be writing more grants, I'll go, okay, let's sit them down and let them help you find grants.

Because most of them have never looked at an RFP. They have no idea what a solicitation looks like. If you said, here's the grant creative area, they don't understand that. I just think you write down a happy idea and you get a grant. So instead let's put the board members around a table and let's hand them each ten potential RFP and give them 20 minutes to decide which five or six might be okay.

And help them let them do that work that because it's not hard. Anybody can do that to help the executive director make a few decisions, call down a hundred RFP into a possible four or five to do over the next six months and that that alone, that right there saves a week of work for the for the nonprofit executive director.

But it also and this is the more important thing and also educates the board members on what the heck a grant is and all the paperwork that's involved. All they have to do is read through a couple of those and they realize, oh, this is not what I thought it was.

So and it's a lot of work for a little money or education could be priceless that and so beneficial for them.

Yes and you know because they only know what they know I can get angry at them and I have in my past and I'm a little more mature now I just know they don't know. They just don't know. And you know, it's like when I take my car to the mechanic and he says, Well, well, ma'am, we may need to look at your at your serpentine chain.

Okay. Well, all I know about serpentine changes that they're usually made with goal. I don't know anything about a car's timing or certain things I don't know. So it's it's that way with grants as well. And so it's part of our role whether it's by modeling or just conversation, helping nonprofit board members understand that it's not as easy as they may think.

Yeah. And I think both parties leave leave better and as better partners. And and you could you could make that a fun event. You should package that up and put a price tag on it.

And there's usually pizza and you got to have a laptop of pizza. That's what you have.

Yeah. And put the word party in the title and get all the members excited about it. Exclusive the oh okay. I'm going to fire off down that so next question I have for you takes a little turn in another area that you've been working with. I know you work with a team that researches and educates nonprofit professionals on the topic of burnout as you've done that, what what has surprised you and, and what advice would you give to others who are starting to feel signs of burnout for personally as well as those leaders who.

Yeah, they're feeling it themselves as well. But they, they, you know, how should they think of it for their employees as well in these difficult times?

Yeah. And it's, it is and it's been it's probably been one of the, the, the biggest honors in my life to just be able to work with people and think about these issues deeply to to think about individual people, to think about our profession, to think about nonprofit employees in general. It is really everywhere and so we need to remember that burnout is not just this phrase.

It is an actual diagnosed condition, an illness that the world health organization has recognized. And so it's not a it's not a made up thing. It's not something that that Johna thinks she feels. It is a real true thing. And I guess my my surprise was that, you know, like everything else in this, the solo or I should say siloed profession, is that I thought I was the only person in the world who ever felt this way.

And until I got a label for it, I really felt I didn't even know how to begin to do something about it. So I think that's the biggest thing. It's it's not just me. And it has nothing to do with the fact that I'm a typical type-A, although I like to think I'm now an A-minus. I'm working on my type-A.

I'm coming down just a little bit but but there are real things that I can do about it and that others can do about it. You know, there are certain things we can't do. We can't make the the boss smarter or help them understand directly, least not at this point. We're working on ways to to challenge that. But you know, the first thing is don't blame yourself.

It is not your fault. It's not our fault. It is a result of some unrealistic expectations that are placed on us by our colleagues and bosses and our our partner groups that are out there to get more money and to do more stuff. And again, because they don't understand sometimes how long it takes to to actually do this work, they don't know what they're asking.

You know, I believe and I truly believe this, that our bosses do not expect us to work 50 and 60 hours a week. I think that at the I really don't think they expect that. They just don't understand that to complete the job they've given us takes 50, 60, 70 hours a week. Say that we would never say I need you to stay at your desk for 65 hours.

No. So they keep piling on the work and there's no way to complete it. Again, it's that education piece so that there's this disconnect on how long it will take to get that job done. And that's a conversation that we can proactively have with our colleagues and our bosses. So, so if I were to give people a piece of advice, I would say, number one, you have the power to say no and you need to start doing that.

And I don't mean to be snotty about it. I just mean, you know, you know, that's going to take me the rest of the month to get that particular proposal done. So I'm going to need to take something else off my plate. So, Mr. Boss person, can you help me figure out what it is we need to assign to someone else?

I am so happy to work on that. But that it I can't handle those two, three, four things together and so and so. So those are some of the barriers we can put around ourselves that are easier to do than than walking away from a job, for example, because that that's, you know, the next job you land may be just as bad.

So you need to do what you can do while you're there and do some proactive things. One of the simplest things you can do is, is to start taking your vacation seriously and multiple vacations during a year, put it on the grant calendar, plan around it, book your your airfare in advance so that you're stuck. You can't move it, you cannot do that off that calendar.

And one other simple, simple thing that I do, my husband has has always laughed at me about it, even though I work from home. I'll take my lunch away from my desk. I take a usually 45 minutes to an hour. I'll walk away. I might do a little laundry. I might do the dishes, I might sit down and watch a cooking show.

But I'm going to walk away from the desk for 45 minutes to an hour, even though the desk is in my house. You know, it's a very simple thing. Another thing, just stop answering email on Sunday. Don't even look at it. I've got a friend, Trish, who actually puts up her her email messaging that says, Hey, I am off this weekend.

I'll be happy to answer you next week. And it's like, Okay, all right. Know, so there are tons of things we can do to help people know we have some boundaries and that we are going to work really, really hard to do that good work. But we're also going to be reasonable about it. We're not going to we're not going to work 70 hours a week because there's so much to get done.

Instead, let's have a thoughtful conversation about our priorities and what needs to be done, what must be done, and then go after that instead.

That is that is so insight for all of that and it's you got to kind of like you said, it's, it's an US problem at the beginning and you got to decide do you want to step into being that expert role of explaining or you know, becoming and growing yourself into this takes this amount of time this takes that amount of time.

And I've seen that with the role that our software helps people understand the time it takes to do one. You know, all of that. And then I also see or do you want to work for someone who really understands what you do day to day and that may work better for someone, then you got to find that environment.

Well, you.

Know, it's, it's, it's terrible for us to expect our colleagues and bosses to know what we do when there are days when I'm not sure what I do. So how can how how should we expect that they understand it completely? When, again, we we figure it out day to day. So I don't know always what the boss does.

And so it's my job to help him or her understand and the challenges that I face as I'm helping that nonprofit or the government. You know, that's part of my role as being a professional is helping to educate.

I love that. And learning yourself and how you work that that metric you through out of it takes 150 hours. It's it's so much experience built into that, so much not just you, but the type of variations that you run in that you can't expect or should allow for and all of that. Sometimes when my boss or someone else asks me, Do you have time to add that to your plate?

I want to make sure that you know, which I'd like. How do people know the answer to that? Very simple.

You know, well, and that's that's a great point, Amy. We have to you know, we have to start gauging our own our value through something that people understand. And time is one of those things I've been tracking since 2010. I've been tracking how much time it takes me to do pieces of work, and that is serve me really well.

I mean, it really has helped me to sit down with folks and say, hey, if you're writing a foundation grant, it's going to take you three or four days. If you know the client, if you don't know the client, it might take you longer. But if you're writing in an NSF grant or Department of Aid grant or Department of Labor grant, you're looking at 100 to 200 hours depending on the grant.

And and that that's not a number that changes much for me, no matter how how much practice I have added it, it just takes time to get all that done. So that's an important piece of information in that each of us needs to be gathering about our own practice.

Yeah. And within organizations at that triangle of time, quality and resources and there's gives and gets. But the it's, it changes on the other sides as you change any one of them. Yeah. Well, as everyone could tell you and I could talk forever, and I've had a hard time scoping it just on what we plan but I can't believe the time has passed so quickly.

We've covered some great elements here for grant professionals and other professionals as well. In the nonprofit space. And I want our listeners to know that we'll put some links in the webinar. We've referred to a few topics that Gina has done full webinars with us before on burnout, as well as working with programs, teams and machetes. And other dangerous things.

So we'll include those in the show notes as well as a link to Johna's contact information, and we'll include your website if that's going to be ready in the next week. No, no, no, no, no. Just jump. But do you have any nuggets to leave? Our listeners, we have a community that is made up of both funders, non-profits and other professionals working together to make this whole philanthropy work better and are both on their sides as well as together.

Do you have any nuggets to leave our listeners with?

Just remember that you're not the only one out there. There are so many of us, and yes, we often work or are the only one in our organization that does this specific type of work but you have to open yourself up. Even if you're an introvert like me, you have to open yourself up to to be mentored, to be a mentor, to ask questions, to be a little vulnerable, to join a local group, to join a zoom group, to to find other people who've already conquered some of these issues.

Get in. Everybody's done them in different ways. But you're not the only person who struggles with their work who has maybe a little touch of burnout and who needs to hear a friendly voice. We are all there and I don't know what I would have done. I certainly would not still be in in this type of work for so long if it hadn't been for all the folks.

And I count Tammy as one of those who who help us along and who are a kind voice. And sometimes, sometimes just they as a strict voice to say, hey, you need to pull yourself up and get something done. We need that. We need to have others in our lives. Who understand the work and can help us along the path.

So if you think you're by yourself, it's only because you've decided to be by yourself. You need that. You need to think about that and find ways to reach out.

Excellent. So very well said. Thank you. And 12 hour listeners, I hope you feel and are as appreciative to Johna as I am for spending this time with us today. Please share our podcast with others. You you may also enjoy the topics and conversations that we have. We look forward to connecting again with Johna in our future webinars, events, podcasts, and, and also encompass our community discussion platform.

We'll put links to that as well as Johna's information in our show notes. And until next time, we wish you all the best success. And again, thank you for all you do.