Transcript Episode 148 – 2023 Podcast Highlights on The Prosperous Nonprofit

TPN 148 – 2023 Highlights

Stephanie Skryzowski: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Prosperous Nonprofit, the podcast for leaders who are building financially sustainable and impactful nonprofits and changing the world. I’m Stephanie Skrzewski, a chief financial officer and founder and CEO of 100 Degrees Consulting. My personal mission is to empower leaders to better understand their numbers, to grow their impact and their income.

On this show, we talk to people who are leading the nonprofit sector in new, innovative, disruptive, and entrepreneurial ways, creating organizations that fuel their lives, their hearts, and their communities. Let’s dive in.

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Prosperous Nonprofit. I’m excited to be here with you as always, and you are probably listening to this episode at the end of 2023. I [00:01:00] mean, I’m sure everyone thinks this as well, but it is so hard to believe that we are already at the end of the year. I can’t believe it.

And I’m coming to you today with some reflections on 2023 and some major highlights from this podcast. So if you are a new listener, thank you so much for being here. And I’m going to highlight our top downloaded episodes of 2023 during today’s episode. So I hope you go back and listen, because these are good ones.

And I say every episode is a good episode because it is. And also Your fellow listeners and nonprofit leaders believe these are good ones too, because they are the most downloaded time and time again. So I’m going to share those with you today. I hope that you have had a good year. I hope that you have had a chance to reflect on 2023.

What went really, really well for you? Maybe what didn’t go so well and what you want to bring more of [00:02:00] into 2024. Now I will say that at the time of this recording, I’ve not yet done my 2023 reflections. So at this point you are not going to get reflections on how my year went as a business owner, as a human, et cetera.

I have not done my, my 2023 reflections yet. But. I have looked at our podcast episodes for the year, and I want to share with you the ones that are the most popular, the most downloaded, and I’m going to tell you exactly why. The first most popular episode was our announcement and celebrating 100 episodes.

So we took a little bit of a hiatus at the end of 2022 going into 2023 on the podcast, because we were kind of quietly undergoing a Big transition here at 100 Degrees Consulting. We basically closed down half of our business. So if y’all remember, we [00:03:00] used to serve both nonprofits and small businesses with CFO and bookkeeping services, but we made the very difficult, but very, very aligned and much needed decision.

We to stop working with small businesses and only continue with nonprofits going into 2023. And so this is the first year since like the very, very beginning of the existence of 100 Degrees Consulting that we’ve only worked with nonprofits. And I can’t tell you How good it feels, how clear I feel, how clear our team feels because we have one ideal client that we are working with.

We serve nonprofits and we are all things nonprofit finance. And so. Um, in this episode of the podcast is when I announced that this is what’s, this is what’s happening. Um, so that was episode 100. If you want to go back and listen to that and just learn a little bit more about our journey and how we came to that decision to basically shut down [00:04:00] half of our business.

Yes, that is exactly what we did and it was terrifying, but it was 100 percent the right decision. Go back and listen to episode 100. Now another amazing episode is, this is our second most downloaded one, and I don’t think I’ve told her, so I need to, I need to go tell her this, but the second most downloaded episode is how nonprofits can use chat GPT, aka AI, to Increase their impact.

And this is with Krista Kerlinkes, and this is episode 104. Now, this episode went live on April 3rd of 2023. And think about where we are now at the end of 2023 compared to April 3rd and all of the AI tools that have come onto the market. and how much more widespread AI is. And I remember telling Krista in that interview that I was like, yeah, I haven’t really played around with chat GPT.

I can’t really get into the software. I don’t understand it. I’m not there yet. And she was already[00:05:00] 

And so, since I have used ChatGPT a lot, like, it is incredible for generating ideas, you know, ideas that I probably could have come up with myself, but instead of me sitting, you know, for an hour and brainstorming, ChatGPT can help me, you know, brainstorm ideas about a certain topic in three seconds, right?

And now Krista. She has a course on AI. She’s going all in on helping nonprofit professionals ethically use AI to advance their cause in so many ways. And so definitely check out that episode. But more importantly, go check out Krista Kerlinkes at GrantWritingMadeEasy. We’ll put the link in the show notes because she’s killing it in the AI space.

She’s really ahead of the curve here and this is something she’s been working on all year. So if you’re curious about AI, she has a course. Go check her out. So, our third most popular episode is Building a Thriving Organizational Culture with Skylar Badnok, and this is episode [00:06:00] 106. It came out in April of 2023, and Skylar is a Really good friend of mine.

We have been colleagues. Um, his organization is a client and we’ve just supported each other in so many ways over the years. And one thing that really sticks out to me about Skylar is how he has built a really solid organizational culture at his organization, Hope for Haiti. And they have a remote team with a small office in Florida and then mostly all of their staff is in Haiti.

And he’s really built this incredible culture where people stay at this organization for years, five years, 10 years, they have been with the organization. It’s just not like very typical these days, right? Like it’s not normal for people to stay at an organization for five or ten years when people are just jumping around so much.

And so we talk in this episode about building a thriving organizational culture. And I really believe that Um, having a really strong culture is the key [00:07:00] to impact, right? You’re not going to have the impact and really live out your mission the way you want to if inside it’s, inside the organization, it’s like turmoil and chaos, right?

So Skyler and I talk about that. And then the next episode of the podcast I want to share with you is again about creating a strong organizational culture. And this time I’m talking to Alyssa Novoselic. She’s a VP of finance over at the Empowerment Plan based in Detroit. And this was a super popular episode as well.

It came right after Skylar’s episode. So this went live in September of 2023 and it is episode 134 of the show. And again, we’re talking about the way that she is building. internal organizational culture at the Empowerment Plan. So if you feel like, you know, we’re doing great work, but it doesn’t feel like our staff is all aligned and like, we’re just not all on the same page and like, how do I create a culture where people want to work and people want to be at, [00:08:00] listen to these two episodes.

They are both really, really good. Okay, so the next one I want to talk about is episode 110, and it’s The Missing Element in Every Grant Writing Office with Meredith Noble. So another grant writer, but she owns a grant. Basically, like a, a grant writing collective for grant writers. So she trains other grant writers in how to not only write grants, but really run their businesses.

And so she’s been on the inside of nonprofit organizations and she really understands like the key to writing successful grants. And so we talk about that quite a bit in this episode and it was another super popular one. So if you want to learn more about the missing element in your grant writing office, check out episode 110.

That was a super popular one with Alyssa.

Hey there, amazing listeners. I hope you’re enjoying another fantastic episode of The Prosperous Nonprofit. [00:09:00] Before we dive back in, I have a quick favor to ask. That’s right. If you are getting value, knowledge, encouragement, or even just good vibes from our show, please share The Prosperous Nonprofit with a friend or colleague who you think would love it as much as you do.

It’s like passing along a good book or recommending your favorite local coffee spot. Please take a quick second to hit that share button, send a link, or even give a shout out on social media. Your support means the world to me. Thank you for being awesome. Thank you for being here. And now back to the show.

Now I have three. The next three most popular ones are just me. Listen, y’all, I know you love these episodes with our guests. Clearly, those were like the most popular ones, but these three next ones were also super popular and they were just me, myself, and I. So I’m really glad you enjoyed those because I like to come on and just Talk to you about what I have going on, what [00:10:00] I’m seeing in the sector right now, and, um, just provide a little bit more insight.

So the next most popular one was how to build confidence in doing scary things. Okay. And this one was episode 103. It went live in March of 2023. And this was all about me being totally terrified to do basically like a TED talk style talk on a stage in front of about a thousand people with no notes. No slides, nothing except me and my brain and a microphone.

And that part was terrifying. It was the slides, like the lack of slides and the lack of notes, right? I was not, like, standing behind a podium teaching on a particular topic. I was doing, like, a motivational 10 minute TED Talk, and it was really scary. And so I shared with you all a little bit about the behind the scenes because on stage, I’ve seen the video, I look really confident.

I look like, oh [00:11:00] yeah, this girl does this all the time. No, I was terrified. And so I share the behind the scenes. And I think, I think it’s in this episode that I actually did the talk. I actually presented to you what I shared on stage. So how to build confidence in doing scary things. Hopefully, this will give you maybe a little bit of confidence in.

doing something that feels uncomfortable for you. Okay, the next two were super popular, and I totally understand why. Now, it’s just me, but in one of them, I’m talking about your nonprofit finance dream team, and the other one, I’m talking about the role of the nonprofit CFO. Okay, so these were sort of back to back episodes.

Your nonprofit finance dream team is episode 109 and the role of the nonprofit CFO is episode 111, both of which came out in May of 2023. Now, the reason that I think these are very popular and very downloaded episodes are because it is so gosh darn confusing [00:12:00] sometimes what roles we need in finance in our organizations, right?

CPA, CFO, accountant, bookkeeper, finance manager, controller, aren’t they all the same thing? No. No, they are not. And I share in that first episode, your nonprofit finance dream team, exactly why they are not the same and which roles you might actually need in your organization. And maybe more importantly, which roles you probably don’t need in your organization, right?

So that’s a really good one to listen to if you’re like, I know that we need support, right? Yeah. But I don’t know exactly who we need. So I recommend that one for sure. And then the role of the nonprofit CFO. So oftentimes we get asked the question, like, when do we need a CFO? Why would we need a CFO? What does a CFO do exactly?

Right. And this will help answer that question. Like, why do we need a CFO? When should you bring one on? And yeah, [00:13:00] so this is a good one too. Those kind of go hand in hand. So I recommend listening to them together. And finally, I have just two more of our top 10 episodes from 2023. And y’all, I know why these are so good because these people are awesome and they just dropped so much wisdom and knowledge.

And so if you need like a sort of the 100 degrees or the prosperous nonprofit starter pack, it’s these episodes that you want to listen to. Okay. So the next one is demystifying. Federal Grants with Patrice Davis. And so this one is episode 112, and it came out in May of 2023. And Patrice is just incredible.

You probably heard a little bit more about her and about her Federal Grants course later this year, like in the fall, because we were promoting her course on the show, because it is awesome. Awesome. So she gave me access and I was able to dig in. And if you have ever wanted to go out for a federal grant and or And this was, this was the case for a [00:14:00] lot of people I know.

You have one and you have no idea like what any of the terminology means or how to manage it well or how to make sure you don’t like mess up and have somebody scary from the federal government knocking on your door. Patrice’s courses like just go into all of that and she’s so calm. She just makes you feel so relaxed about.

Federal grant management, which is awesome. And so she brings that energy and that vibe to our podcast episode where she demystifies all things federal grants because they’re scary, they’re big, they’re confusing and they, their systems online are like dinosaurs and it’s just like, yeah, it’s, it’s hard and it makes you feel not smart, but she makes everything so much simpler.

Um, so this is a great episode. And again, this was episode. Okay, and last but not least, on our top 10 episodes, now, we released 50 episodes in 2023. 50 [00:15:00] episodes in 2023, at the time of recording, it’s not even over yet, um, so by the time that it is over, yeah, we will have released 50 episodes, which is awesome.

So, these are just the top 10. So, this last one on the top 10 list is how data can improve your bottom line with Caitlin Wendell and this is episode 118. And Caitlin is a nonprofit leader. She is a software entrepreneur building software to help nonprofits, um, really be able to better understand their financials and their impact.

And so. Thank you. She’s awesome. Um, and I know we all know, right, like we all know data is important. We all know that we should be looking at certain things to help our organization grow and to increase our impact. But are we actually doing it and do we actually understand it? And Caitlin really helps us understand it in her podcast episode.

So listen, if you need the Prosperous Nonprofit Starter Pack, I just gave it to [00:16:00] you. Okay. So we are going to link to all of these episodes in our show notes. So if you want to just go through and grab the ones you need, I really encourage you to do that because they’re clearly really good and they’re clearly really impactful and I think they’ll be really, really helpful for you.

So if you have enjoyed. At least one episode of The Prosperous Nonprofit this year, which I really hope you have. I think you have. If you’re listening and you’re still here, I know we have a very loyal group of listeners every single week. I would encourage you to please, I would ask you to please share the podcast with one friend.

Okay. If there’s an episode, especially maybe one of the ones in this nonprofit podcast starter pack that you love. Um, send it to a friend, okay? If you found something that you thought was useful or interesting or even, dare I say, entertaining, please, um, share it with a friend. I would appreciate that so much.

And honestly, one of my big goals for 2023, or [00:17:00] sorry, for 2024, whoo, one of my big goals is to expand the reach of this podcast because I put a lot of energy and effort and time and. thought into this, and I would love to be able to reach and support and help more nonprofit leaders with what we’re sharing on here.

And I know that our future guests, I’ve already started scheduling guests for 2024 are going to be just as incredible as the ones we had this year. So I’m really excited for that. Okay, friends, I’m going to leave you with that. And I’m going to wish you a beautiful, beautiful holiday, a beautiful holiday season.

And if you don’t hear from me, if you are off in holiday land, not listening to any work related podcasts, I feel you, but I’m wishing you a beautiful 2024 as well. Okay, friends, I will catch you next time. And again, if you loved a podcast this year, if you loved one of our episodes, I would love if you would share that can be your little holiday gift to me.

Okay. [00:18:00] All right, friends. I’ll see you next time. Before you go, I just want to thank you for being here. To access our show notes and bonus content, visit 100DegreesPodcast. com. That’s 100DegreesPodcast. com. And I’ll see you next time.