Jennifer Baker, executive director of the nonprofit Good Dads, walked into the United Way of the Ozark’s United for Greatness event with a problem:
How can the Springfield-based nonprofit form a national model people across the nation can adopt to form chapters and lay the ground work for an organization that spans across the country?
After an exhausting, eight-hour day meeting face-to-face with some of the best marketing and communication experts Springfield has to offer, Baker walked out with an actionable plan, a timeline and an added bonus.
Good Dads got a new board member out of the day.
“We didn’t have a banker on our board and now we have a banker on our board,” Baker said. The event, “was probably one of the most helpful things an organization has done” for Good Dads.
The event was a two-day workshop pairing uniquely-skilled experts and Great Game of Business coaches with Springfield nonprofits who all had problems they were trying to tackle, such as creating brand awareness, building a volunteer network or reaching outside Springfield into rural communities.
Nine Springfield nonprofits participated, including Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) of Southwest Missouri, Harmony House, Ozarks Counseling Center, Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Ozarks and more. Even the City of Springfield presented a problem to the experts.
Nonprofits “need these high-skilled volunteers who come in and act as coaches and topic experts to help move the ball on what is potentially their gnarliest problem,” said Greg Burris, United Way of the Ozarks Chief Executive Officer.
“So our job was just to kind of provide the opportunity and the fertile ground for those kind of relationships to bloom.”
Turnover and burnout followed 2020
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, Springfield nonprofits have experienced high turnover and burnout rates. At the same time, the needs for their services to southwest Missouri have skyrocketed, said Jaimie Trussell, executive director of the Council of Churches, which participated in the United Way event.
More than ever, there is a need to get businesses to donate time and expertise the nonprofits could not otherwise afford, she said.
For the event, which took place at the Jay Wasson Idea Loft at the eFactory downtown in early October, the Council of Churches had a “doozy” of a problem, which was to build a unified brand and bring awareness behind it, Trussell said.
The advice the Council received from the three marketing experts United Way paired it with would have cost $40,000 to $50,000, she said.
“Candidly, we couldn’t afford to get those people in the room,” Trussell said. “There’s not enough money in our budget to have done what we did in one day” with the volunteers.
Springfield caught in a nationwide problem
There are more than 2,700 nonprofit organizations in the Springfield metro area, according to Cause IQ, a database that tracks nonprofit activity across the United States. Those nonprofits employ more than 35,000 people and report more than $6 billion in revenue each year. The most prevalent types of nonprofits in the Queen City are religious organizations, followed by educational institutions.
Nonprofits across the nation are experiencing high job vacancy rates, which is resulting in growing waiting lists for services or the denial of services altogether, according to a 2023 report from the National Council of Nonprofits.
The companies that participated in the report said salary competition affects their ability to recruit and retain employees as well as budget constraints. A high number of nonprofits reported stress and burnout as a cause of workforce shortage.
The Council of Churches has seen demand for services spike since the pandemic, while support withdrew, Trussell said.
“Both human resources in terms of volunteers as well as financial resources, kind of drew back,” Trussell said.
LeAnn Garoutte, a former marketing and communications executive who was paired with the Council of Churches for its brand identity campaign, said she doesn’t believe people in the community are aware of the growing issues in the nonprofit sector, namely high turnover and soaring demand for services.
Since the pandemic began, needs for services have climbed by 20 percent in counties that the council serves, Garoutte said. And with that, the need for experts in the business community to help nonprofits has grown substantially as well, she said. That community might not be aware of the growing issues, but Garoutte implores them to get involved.
“I’ve found myself at a point in my career where I’m able to give back at this point, not only in my time but just my years of experience,” Garoutte said. “I have decided this is my passion. This is what I want to do.”
The right experts for the problem
Garoutte and two other marketing and communication experts worked with the council to form a cohesive brand identity, a problem that has been in the works for 20 years, Trussel said.
“Through my lens, I think there is a lack of understanding and lack of awareness in the community of exactly how much the Council of Churches does for the community,” Garoutte said.
People know of a few of the services they provide, like Crosslines Resource Center or the Diaper Bank of the Ozarks. But people don’t recognize there is one organization at the helm of all these programs, Garoutte said.
The three volunteers were responsible for reading hundreds of pages of material covering the extent of services and programs offered by the Council ahead of the event. They took a tour of the Council’s new facility, which opened earlier this year, to get a clear idea of the organization’s mission.
“My passion is to help them create a brand awareness that is inclusive of all of their programs,” Garoutte said. “And basically publicize that brand awareness to the community.”
The experts and the Council came up with what Garoutte calls a “tactical plan,” she said, which includes executional elements, deciding responsibility for the work, the timeline and what kind of funding would be needed.
The plan has already had actionable steps, Trussell said. The council is in the process of hiring a third party to do focus groups and studies, she said. The budget for that third party was set out at its annual meeting Oct. 25.
The Council will “be in a position to announce a change next October,” Trussell said.
Without the volunteer experts, there is no way a plan would have taken shape, Trussell said. Those three volunteers have all agreed to continue to work with the council throughout its identity campaign, no matter how long it takes.
“We would not have been able to do it at all and it was so affirming and encouraging to know” the help it needed was right in its backyard, Trussell said. “If you know anything about nonprofits, we don’t have extra bags of money laying around.”
Good Dads had similar results from the United for Greatness event, Baker said. The organization was able to come up with an actionable plan to create a model for chapters across the nation to adapt.
“What we wanted to do with Good Dads was to create a model that any community can embrace or use so they can have those services in their area,” Baker said.
“There is no larger group for fatherhood work [across the nation.] So we are creating the umbrella, if you will,” Baker said. “How do we expand across the state and even outside of the state, and what’s the best strategy to make that happen?”
Experts led them to develop a focus, set parameters for a chapter model and developed a timeline to put the plan in place. It wouldn’t have been possible if it wasn’t for the volunteers, Baker said.
“I have a pretty good appreciation for the fact that there are a lot of good minds in Springfield, but getting access to those minds,” Baker said. “They’re busy people.”
The City of Springfield’s goal was to create a single, unified volunteer program, said Cora Scott, director of public information and civic engagement.
“We have various ways that volunteers can plug in, but there’s no one centralized policy and procedure,” Scott said.
“Basically, there isn’t one program.”
The United Way event paired the City of Springfield with Alex Cobb. He’s the chief resource officer at SeniorAge, a nonprofit aimed a providing in-home services to aging seniors. Cobb oversees more than 1,000 volunteers across 17 counties, he said.
“For every hour we have an employee working for SeniorAge, we have a volunteer that is donating an equivalent hour,” Cobb said.
Cobb’s expertise proved crucial to developing a volunteer program, Scott said.
“He has real-world, everyday experience of putting together a program almost to the scale of what we’re looking at,” Scott said. “So that was really helpful.”
Springfield has nearly 30 government departments, and a handful of those have volunteer programs.
“However, there isn’t a consistent way to sign up, there isn’t a consistent screening process,” Cobb said.
Each department formed its program by itself. The city needed a unified program “that allows the community as a whole to get involved to a greater depth,” Cobb said.
By the end of the day, the city had an actionable plan for a volunteer program, laying out budget constraints that will have to be overcome and establishing a timeline for the program to roll out, Scott said.
“Our goal is to have a full program fully operational in 2025,” Scott said.
World-class facilitators
The United Way didn’t base the United for Greatness event on any other event, said Burris, chief executive officer.
“We sort of dreamed this up on our own,” he said.
The partnership with the Great Game of Business made the event possible, as it provided experts to facilitate each group, Burris said.
“We literally had world-class facilitators for those two days,” Burris said. “So we’re pretty fortunate to have Great Game located in our community.”
Steve Baker, vice president of the Great Game of Business, acted as facilitator for the event. The groups would have failed to accomplish as much if he hadn’t been facilitating, Trussell said.
“He came in and he guided conversation and he redirected, and he insisted firmly, but kindly, that we come out with actionables instead of ideals,” Trussell said. “And that’s where every strategic plan that we had before had failed. Because we had ideals, but not actionables.”
Being such a good facilitator has come with years of experience, Baker said. Next week will mark his 18th anniversary at the Great Game of Business, he said.
“Really to me, facilitation is trying to understand,” Baker said. “It’s really tapping into the folks in the room and their intellectual capacity. And just asking a lot of questions. To me it’s less about the agenda and more about what is the ideal outcome.”
Baker believes forming mutually beneficial relations between the business community and nonprofits are crucial, not just for the companies, but for the Springfield community as a whole, he said.
“What I want out of this whole thing is a better community,” Baker said. “I’m just being honest. I want a better place for my kids, for my family, for my friends.”
