Grow Your Confidence So That You Can Grow Your Mission w/ Katie Appold

​In this 1 hour workshop with Katie Appold, of Do More Good, you will learn how to leverage confidence in your approach to your work and your grant strategy.

​​By the end of this workshop, you’ll learn how to: ​

• ​​Empower your mission using knowledge
• ​​Build and strengthen your approach to your work
• ​​Build out, rather than up to successfully accomplish your organization’s mission
  

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Katie’s nonprofit career includes a variety of leadership roles for human service, foundation, and publishing-related nonprofits as well as many volunteer roles. Under Katie’s leadership, nonprofit organizations have developed new programs related to free healthcare, affordable and accessible housing, and literacy programs for K-12 students. In her first Executive Director role, Katie increased the annual revenue of the organization she led by 300% and received the top grant prize in the nation for affordable housing through the Federal Home Loan Bank of Indianapolis. Today, she leads Do More Good, the parent organization of Nonprofit Hub and Cause Camp which collectively serve more than 50,000 nonprofits throughout North America.

Instrumentl Partner Webinars are collaborations between Instrumentl and its community partners to provide free educational workshops for grant professionals. Our goal is to tackle a problem grant professionals often have to solve, while also sharing different ways Instrumentl’s platform can help grant writers win more grants. Click here to save a seat in our next workshop.

Click the video link below to start watching the replay of this free grant workshop, or check out the transcriptions below the video.

Chandler: Awesome. So, yeah, so these are our Instumentl partner webinars series. They're collaborations between Instumentl and our community partners to provide free educational workshops for grant professionals. Our goal is to tackle a problem grant professionals often have to solve while sharing different ways that Instumentl's platform can help grant writers win more grants.

Instumentl is the institutional fundraising platform. If you want to bring grant prospecting, tracking, and management to one place, we can help you do that. You can set up your own personalized grant recommendations using the link that I'm going to share in the chat. I'll share that in just a second. But lastly, I want to make sure that everybody sticks around today for the entire presentation, because at the end, we will be sharing with you a freebie that everybody can use and help with your grant mission.

So if you have any questions today, go ahead and pop three hashtags followed by your question into the Zoom chat, and that's going to help us differentiate and help those questions stand out. Okay. So without any further ado, a little bit about Katie. Katie's non-profit career includes a variety of leadership roles for human services, human service foundation, and publishing related nonprofits as well as many volunteer roles. Under Katie's leadership non-profit organizations have developed new programs related to free healthcare, affordable and accessible housing. And literacy programs for K through 12 students.

 In her first executive director role, Katie increased the annual revenue of the organization she led by 300% and received the top grant prize in the nation for affordable housing through the Federal Home Loan Bank of Indianapolis. Today, she leads Do More Good, which is the parent organization of nonprofits hub and Cause Camp, which collectively served more than 50,000 nonprofits throughout North America. So without any further ado, I'm going to pass it on over to Katie and she's going to help you grow your confidence. 

Katie: Thanks, Chandler. And thank you all for the grace in getting started a couple of minutes late. It was an internet issue.

I'm in Michigan and we are in a wind storm today. I'm in west Michigan. And so if you hear banging in the background, I was just telling Chandler, my neighbor built a treehouse for their children, and there's a metal roof on it and it is just barely hanging on. So between that and the internet issues, I appreciate you hanging with us.

Okay. Chandler, thank you for the warm introduction. I am Katie. My background is largely in nonprofit leadership. Today I work with Nonprofit Hub and Do More Good. We are largely known as the nonprofit toolbox. 90% of everything we do is free for nonprofits and it's all education-based. We also run Cause Camp, which is one of the top nonprofit conferences in the nation. It's coming up in May so get your tickets. 

So before I dig into things, I want to kind of prepare you. I want to have a discussion via the chat, of course, in 10 minutes, about what is the top issue facing new nonprofit leaders? So just get that rolling around in the back of your head. Maybe jot down some notes, but we'll come back to that in just a little bit.

Okay, so to get started, I want to give you a little bit of perspective on why I'm speaking on confidence and not like grant writing explicitly or nonprofit management. I'm speaking on confidence because it's something that is kind of near and dear to my story, but I also think it is a crucial ingredient to a successful nonprofit career.

It feeds into everything that you do. So as mentioned, my background is as an ED for a regional charity. I worked with a foundation and I was a marketing executive for a nonprofit publishing house. I did all those things and was working in the ED realm until via LinkedIn. So if anybody ever tells you no one gets recruited off of LinkedIn, they're lying. I did. 

I was approached by a gentleman who is kind of a big deal in the nonprofit marketing space, his name's Bill McKendree. And he ran an agency in Michigan that became one of the top agencies in the nation for working with large nonprofits, a marketing agency. And he invited me to coffee. And to be totally honest, I ignored the invitation because I was so sure that he thought I was somebody I wasn't.

I had seen him speak 10 years prior and we had done the quick handshake at the end of the presentation. And I thought, no way this guy thinks I'm the right person that he wants to meet with. So I didn't take the coffee meeting. I didn't respond to the LinkedIn message, but I did talk about it to like every person I knew and my poor husband got so tired of hearing about it.

He's finally like, go get the coffee. It's a free cup of coffee. The guy's not going to be a jerk. He's not going to walk out when you're not the right person. Well, I never found out if I was the right person, but I did go have coffee with Bill and he had a suggestion that we form this nonprofit together called Do More Good.

It would be an educational platform for nonprofits, but in order to do that, he wanted me to help him grow his agency. So he was starting a new boutique marketing agency for nonprofits. So my job was largely going to be sales, a little bit of account management and helping with the marketing every day, and I took this gentleman's agreement.

I did the handshake agreement and said, this is too big to not pursue. Every day, though, I would walk into his office and this would be my vision. And I wish I had a larger shot of it. So you could see, but this was what you saw when you walked in the door. This is also what I saw when I went to the ladies' room.

So like four or five, six times a day, I'm staring at the trophy case. Bill was a big deal. He won just about every award there was to be won. And I have to tell you working in that agency and walking into the trophy case every day, it just about killed me. My confidence was in the gutter. I didn't feel like I could even show up in a way that mattered when I was showing up next to somebody who was kind of a big deal and obviously had earned some recognition.

So that's a little bit of my backstory. But I'm not alone. So this is a UK study that was done a couple of years ago and they found that eight and 10 millennials believe that they aren't good enough. So 80%. And this was 2000 millennials. This is not a small study. It goes beyond that young age group, though.

80% of adults experience imposter syndrome. If you've never heard of imposter syndrome before, it's that feeling of kind of whoever you're dealing with, whether it is a foundation or a donor or your board, or maybe even just your coworkers, but you have that feeling of if they really knew you, if they knew, you know, your story, your background, your qualifications, they wouldn't believe that you were qualified to be in a room.

They would think you were an imposter. So give me a thumbs up or thumbs down in the chat. And I will forewarn you, I can't actually see this the way I'm doing my presentation, but you can see each other. Thumbs up if you've ever felt like you've had imposter syndrome. If you're throwing a thumbs down, you are amazing.

I hope this hour is not a waste of your time. I guarantee you'll probably learn something. But I hope what we're seeing is that everybody feels this. You're not alone. And I don't have a stat specifically to back this up, but I think in the nonprofit sector, we have it a little bit harder. So everything we do is public facing. Whether it's a celebration, a gala, we're negotiating a contract, we're meeting with a foundation, we're meeting with auditors. I mean, the joke around here is that if it's not getting analyzed, it's getting audited because that kind of is the nonprofit space. We don't just have unique challenges, though.

We have a unique conglomeration of challenges because all these things come into play at the same time. It's a very public facing position no matter what role you have in an organization. And then of course, the problem that is common to all nonprofit professionals is that everybody knows how to do your job better than you do.

Can I get an amen? So what I'm hoping to give you is five ways that you can strengthen your confidence. And there's two things that I want you to do as we kind of get into this. I want you to stop thinking of confidence as a have or have not thing. So confidence is a learned trait and it's an intellectual muscle that you can build up just like you can build up your bicep.

It is something that you can work on. I also want you to take a minute and jot down and no one else can see this. If you're feeling incredibly bold, you can throw it into the chat, but I'm not going to ask everyone to do that. But think about the situation where you feel like your confidence holds you back the most. Maybe it's walking into the board room, maybe it's the staff meetings.

I can't believe how many people I talk to that the staff meeting is actually harder than the boardroom. Maybe it's meeting with funders, maybe it's large events like the golf outings and the galas. As we go through these tips, I want you to think about your own situation. And I also want you to recognize that anything I'm going to ask you to consider or to do is within your control.

Hopefully by the end of the segment, you realize your confidence is something that you can master and you can grow. Number one way to grow and strengthen your confidence is your own knowledge. So the ability to come prepared to almost any situation is yours. Now I want to go back to my intro story about working with Bill, the trophy guy, the agency guy that could drop names, drop hardware, obviously, and drop examples of incredible career achievements in every single meeting.

I could not do that. By nature of my age, when I first started working with him and just by nature of my experience, I was never going to compare. But whatever meeting we were having, I could do my homework. So if we were meeting with a client that maybe worked in the area of literacy, I could put in a few hours the night before, and really research that topic.

I could come prepared with examples. I could come knowing the backstory of the client we were meeting with. People love when you show up prepared and you've done your research. We are in the age of Google. So you may not have degrees or awards, but you have a smartphone. You have a laptop, you have the control, the ability to show up prepared.

So one other dimension of knowledge I want to talk about is authority. And I want to give you a really icky, gross example. And I don't want you to actually replicate this obviously, but it paints the picture. So back in the day, my first ED role, I took over for a gentleman who had been running the organization for, I think since its inception, I think he wasn't really the founder, but he took over shortly after.

And this gentleman, he was a prideful gentleman. Let's just put it that way. So we're talking like part of my training was, he had a closet full of newspapers. This is back when newspapers were a thing, and he would show me all the clippings of every time the organization or he had been named in the news.

It was nauseating. But one of the things as we were going through these news clippings I noticed was that the staff was constantly throwing out this number of people served by the organization. And I had just graduated from grad school. And one of my last classes was researching stats. So I was kind of clued into the fact that there's no possible way in our community that this stat is true, that it's viable.

And so I asked him about it and I said, you know, knowing this community, I've lived here my entire life, and knowing what I know about what we do, the numbers don't tie for me. And his response was it's true by nature of me saying it's true. I'm like, holy crap. That's some guts. Now again, totally gross story.

I don't want you to just go say things to try and make them true. But what I want to point out is this gentleman knew the authority of his position. He knew the authority of his experience and the community. Now all of you by nature of what you do have some authority tied to your organization, tied to your focus area of work, and tied to your expertise. So if you are serving the hungry in your community, you have some authority tied to that. Now always be truthful, always be forthright, but understand that you can speak confidently because you are doing the work. Your boots are on the ground. You are the person serving that need in whatever community, region, state in the nation.

Whatever you are doing, you will be trusted by the nature of the fact that you are working within it and you are doing so to help. So again, sorry, really gross story, but paints the picture. Okay. Spend about 10 minutes. So go ahead, throw it into the chat. What is the top issue facing new nonprofit leaders?

And while those who thought about it are putting that in the chat, I want you to take a moment and think about the fact that you feel prepared to answer this question simply because I warned you 10 minutes ago that we were going to talk about it. Now I know in the nonprofit sector that crisis and the unexpected are daily, multiple times a day, probably occurrences, but in most and in fact almost all situations, you have some ability to show up prepared, and that speaks into that knowledge piece. Whether it's a board meeting, an event, a one-on-one donor meeting, a meeting with a grantor, you have the ability to do your research ahead of time, or to at least get your mind working ahead of time about that meeting.

When you're prepared, you show up that much more confident. So I will have to look at the chat transcript afterwards because I can't look at it right now, but I hope you guys put some good things in there. So the second muscle, the second thing to work on is consistency. Before I began in nonprofit work, I actually worked for a business consulting firm and I was the receptionist.

And I hated it. And if you called that place, you could probably tell that I hated it. I did not aspire to work in that role. It was the job I could get out of undergrad. It wasn't beneath me. I was actually very fortunate to have it, but it was not something I desired to do. So I was desperate to get out of it.

Well, the organization ended up opening a new office. It was a lead certified building and they asked for volunteers to run the event, to plan the event, to make it happen. So in that meeting, my first or second week on the job, I raised my hand. One of my friends who worked for the same firm was like, what are you doing?

You haven't ever planned a wedding, a birthday party, nothing like, how are you going to do this? But I was desperate. I wanted to prove myself. Well, it worked, I mean, I pulled it off. And so I became addicted to raising my hand. Like if you give me an opportunity, I'll walk all over it. And later the chairman of a board of an organization I worked for later, dubbed me the chronic hand raiser.

Now, what I want to point out with that story is that life begins with would not could. Very few of us show up fully-equipped to take on what we're going to take on. You have to be willing first and your would becomes your could. Now that's a story where it worked out. It doesn't always work out. I have raised my hands for things that I have totally bombed at, total failures and that happens, but the thing is more often than failing, you do succeed because you're trying. And usually you've got people around you who are helping you and every time you succeed, it doesn't only build your confidence, it builds the confidence of others. They have more confidence in you. So don't be afraid to raise your hand. Maybe don't become a chronic handraiser, but don't be afraid to put yourself out there.

So the third one and this is kind of a big one, is your network. Have you ever had someone say, do you get out of your head about that? Or like my mom always says, stop ruminating about that. Like, who uses the word ruminate other than my mom? But as a sector, we do this. We think on things. Maybe thumbs up in the chat if you wake up at 2 or 3:00 AM thinking about work 'cause I'm guessing a lot of you do that. We tend to get in our heads about things. And that makes it very important that we have some outside perspective and some outside counsel. So there's nothing more valuable than somebody who can bring a reality check to our situation sometimes, or just some perspective.

I'll give you a grant writing example. I've gone into foundation meetings where I don't want to say I have a chip on my shoulder, but either because of the tone of the communication, or maybe just the way it's gone up until that meeting, you're kind of braced for the worst. And I have an amazing mentor. She's just valuable. She has been so valuable in my career, in my life. And I remember talking to her about – it was actually the grant example that was read in my bio was an FHLBI housing grant. And I told her, the organization I led had been rejected for that grant three times. They'd been turned down and I said, I feel like I'm driving two hours to go to this meeting.

I'm just going to get shot down and then I'm gonna be down for the rest of the week. I don't know if it's worth it. And her response was, you don't know the people you're meeting with, you don't know what has changed in their organization over the past year, and they don't know you. And her fresh perspective kind of helped me to get out of my head about it.

I needed to go in with a blank slate as far as expectations. If you don't have a mentor, find a friend who doesn't work in the sector or doesn't work in this sector in your organization or in your area. Because again, you want somebody who is unbiased. You want somebody who doesn't have a stake in the game.

You don't want to talk to somebody who is a competitor. I don't really believe in that, but you want to make sure that you're getting truly outside perspective. The other thing is develop areas of your life outside of work. This is one of the biggest dangers I see in the nonprofit sector is that we tend to lack boundaries.

We work the 70-hour work weeks. Not always because we have to. Sometimes because we have to, but almost always because we are so dang passionate about what we're doing. To us, everything is a life or death situation. It matters so much. But that is where burnout comes from. That is why the cycles on our jobs.

I think in ED, the typical turnover right now is like 18 months. I mean, that's why it is what it is 'cause we're not great at developing those other pieces of our identity or our network of our life. So when I have a really bad day at work or a bad week, I play monopoly with my kids. It is like my go-to activity for those times.

And I do it, and this is going to sound bad, but I'm just going to be honest, I do it because I can kick their butts. I can dominate at Monopoly. I may suck as an ED that week. I may be failing left and right. But man, I come home and I'm super mom because I'm undefeated at Monopoly. It's small, but it's meaningful and it's another area of my life. And it reminds me that I'm valued, that I am seen through a different lens other than a coworker, a leader, a nonprofit executive. So whatever that looks like for you, man, I can't emphasize that enough. Develop an area outside your work and develop a network outside your work. 

Okay, humility. It's going to seem counterintuitive or it probably seems counterintuitive that humility is actually the backbone of confidence. So the woman in this image, her name is Amy Bockerstette. She's better known in the golf world as Amazing Amy. And I met Amy about, it's been a little over a year ago. Previously served as the president of a board for an organization called Gracious Grounds. And they are a housing provider for people with cognitive disabilities and their big annual event was a golf outing. And Amy was our celebrity golfer and she rocked my world. She's just kind of a big personality in a tiny body, but she taught me something so important. It's critical that we build out more than we build up. So too often we think about confidence as the person who walks into the room and is here I am.

Amy's whole perspective is here you are. And I'm going to show you a little video about her and about a tagline that she uses quite often. But I just want to show you, this woman has built a following that is unbelievable. I mean, we're talking about thousands and thousands of people around the nation who follow her, who follow her story, and now support her mission work. And a lot of it comes down to her perspective that she is all about the other. She is all about the other person in the room and she will always build you up. She will always build out before she builds up. So a quick video.

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Woman: She is just the biggest light. 

Narrator: Two years after her famous putt. 

Amy: Yeah. 

Narrator: The legend of Amy Bockerstette is only getting bigger. What's it like being a celebrity? 

Amy: Oh, I loved it. I love being a celebrity. Awesome Amy, Amazing Amy and playing golf.

Narrator: History making.

Man: Very nice.

Amy: Thank you.

Narrator: Amy, already the first person with down syndrome to earn a college athletic scholarship, Monday in Florida will become the first person with down syndrome to compete for a college national title, playing for Paradise Valley Community College. At the end, NJCAA Championships.

Woman 2: That girl can do anything. She gives me goosebumps. 

Woman 3: We're really proud of her. Really inspired by her.

Narrator: Hugging. While Amy's scores will count in the four-day tournament and she pumps it right down the middle, over and over, the 22-year-old, even more consistent at pumping up her Puma teammates.

Woman 2: Right next to each other?

Amy: Best friends.

Woman 2: Once you have a great shot, great shot, you have a bad shot. Great shot. Like.

Woman 4: Every time any of us have a bad tournament, she's always sitting on the 18th hole ready to give us all a hug. I love Amy.

Amy: Coleen, do you get many?

Woman 4: Not me. Not yet, girl. It's not about the score for Amy. It's about the relationship with the person she's playing.

Woman 5: Are you gonna help her set up? 

Narrator: Helping. 

Woman 5: I like that.

Narrator: After creating the I Got This Foundation in 2019, this spring, Amy and company taking it to another level...

...with the inaugural I Got This Golf Academy, eight weeks of instruction for people with down syndrome and other intellectual disabilities.

Amy: I like to help people to teach how to play golf.

Katie: Okay, I'm going to stop it right there. It goes on a little bit more into the news story. I want you to hear "I Got This" part because that is Amy's tagline. And I know when we had her at our golf outing, what she kept saying, what you would hear all day is we got this, we got this, you got this.

She was a cheerleader for others. Now it's really hard to be down on somebody when they're for you. So, if you feel like you need more support to be more confident, if you want to feel more confident, do it by building up others. When you build up yourself, you will automatically get some resentment. I'm telling you. There will always be those who, you know, maybe follow, but a safe bet is to start with an other centric perspective.

So tied to that and tied to humility, this is probably the biggest section of the presentation. I want to talk a little bit about listening. I know we've all heard this. There's been so much talk about it, but listening to respond and I'm sure you've all experienced this. It's when you're having a conversation, you can tell the other person is kind of tuned out and you know they're thinking of their argument.

They're thinking of the next thing they're going to say rather than listening to what you're telling them. So it's not a good habit. And I heard a speaker recently call this "listening to win" as if it's a competition. So when he gave the example, you're actually listening to somebody to tell a story that taps theirs or to make a point that tops theirs.

That's not good either. I think what's actually happening when those two behaviors are happening is that we're listening to prove. We're trying to prove that we belong in the room, that we have an argument or a point in the conversation that we have value. So it actually comes not from a place of confidence, but a place of insecurity.

What I want us to do is to listen to learn. That is active listening is probably the most common term for it. And that is where you're listening to really, to learn from the person that is talking to you to understand. Now I'm going to give you an example and this is a little bit humorous, but I have an amazing intern. She was willing to record a video with me and we happen to have a really cool example topic to talk about. So take a listen, no pun intended, and figure out what is the listening to learn and what is the listening to prove.

Hey, Haley. 

Haley: Hey, how are you?

Katie: Good, good. I think we're going to get started in just a few minutes. We're waiting for the other team members to come in. While you're here, though, I have to ask you a question. My daughter, her girl scout troop disbanded. 

Haley: Oh, no.

Katie: I know. She's considering becoming a Juliette, which is like an . Independent girl.

Haley: Yeah, that's so exciting. I know all about it. I don't know if you know, but I was a girl scout and I went all the way. I was like all the way up through my gold award and I earned my gold award. I'm a lifetime girl scout. I absolutely love girl scouts. So I could answer any questions that she has. 

Katie: Well, I did know. I knew that about you. I remember talking about that when you interviewed. I guess I'm mostly just curious, like, we're really interested in the scholarship for her. 

Haley: Oh, yeah. My scholarships. I got a ton of scholarships when I was a girl scout and I got my gold award, I became a national golder girl scout. It was named one of the top 10 girls scouts in the nation. And I got tons and tons of scholarships. I got like $25,000 worth of scholarships my freshman year. And it was great. 

Katie: Oh, my goodness. Wow. That's incredible. 

Haley: It was wonderful. 

Katie: That sounds amazing. Grace is not, my daughter is not quite as outgoing as you are, so I wondered how she was going to manage, you know, kind of being in a solo troop.

Haley: Well, maybe she'll just have to figure it out. I think that girl scouts is all about, you know, breaking out of your box and learning how to be more outgoing. And she'll just have to be used to putting herself in situations where she's uncomfortable and she'll have to get used to it. But girl scouts are really good about doing that with people.

Katie: Thanks. Haley, that's been awesome. That's good information. 

Haley: Well, if you have anything else that you want to ask, you know, I know everything about it, so I'd be more than happy to answer any questions that you might have or talk to your daughter about it. I would love to talk to her. 

Katie: Okay, cool. Thanks. 

Haley: Yeah, of course.

Katie: Hey, Haley, I think we have a few minutes until everybody else comes in. Hey, I wanted to ask you a question. My daughter, Grace, her girl scout troop disbanded. 

Haley: Oh, no. 

Katie: I know, I know. I know that you have a really strong background with girl scouts, though. And I was curious what you thought about the Juliette program or the Juliette track.

Haley: Yeah, it works really well for some girls. What does she love about girl scout? 

Katie: You know, I think the crafts and the challenge. Obviously, the whole badge system, she really loves the achievement side of it. 

Haley: Yeah, the really great thing is that even being a Juliette, that's something that girl scouts still has to offer is that you still have that structure and the flexibility that Juliette has to offer that you can make it in whatever that you want, is she comfortable being alone or is she able to kind of make friends easily? 

Katie: You know, I'd say both. She's super independent. She loves her troop and she loves her friends that I think she'd be fine. I think she'd be okay on her own. 

Haley: Yeah, absolutely. And I know that like girl scout councils have like Juliette meetups where you can meet up with other Juliette girls who are experiencing the same things and you can learn from each other and make like your own little Juliette troop, get together sort of something that she's interested in, but it really does offer more customization to the girl scouting program. So before she was probably doing whatever the rest of the troop wanted to do with maybe some of her own insights, but now she can really do whatever that she's most interested in. 

Katie: I knew you'd know what to do. I had no idea that the Juliettes like they could do their own meetups and stuff. That's so helpful. Haley, thank you. Would it be okay if my daughter reaches out to you? If she has more questions? 

Haley: Yeah, absolutely. I'd love to talk with her and kind of help ease any anxiety she might have about it. 

Katie: Awesome. Thanks, Haley. 

Haley: Of course, any time.

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Katie: Okay. So I guess you didn't have to guess. I forgot I put titles on those, but declared confidence is so much different than demonstrated confidence and declared is when you're listening to prove. So in the first video, Haley was only listening to me to respond. If you notice she was pushy, she interrupted me a couple times. I mean, even though we're acting a couple of times, like, I couldn't even hide the expression on my face of just kind of being taken aback by how forceful she was being. Oftentimes this kind of communication leaves people feeling less than and people tend to overshare when they do this. Your voice gets loud and more often than not, it comes off sounding arrogant. Now the second video demonstrated confidence.

So Haley was responsive. She asked me questions and I asked her. It was more of a dialogue. She was patient. I wasn't offended at all. I didn't make any crazy eye-rolls or anything. And she came off sounding informed, intelligent. And I want to qualify that video by telling you that Haley actually was the number one girl scout in the nation before she came to work for us.

So she really did. She knew what she was talking about, but it's such an important difference. And we all know people who kind of operate in one or the other of these categories. Where do you want to be? Who do you want to sound like? Hopefully it's demonstrated confidence. 

So the fifth and final muscle is perspective and I'm breaking this down into two sections and the first is situational. I think this is so important for the nonprofit sector, because we deal in crisis or a lot of us deal in crisis. And in the absence of information, I don't know about you, but I will tell some crazy fiction. Like those 3:00 AM, 2:00 AM, wake up and think about work things. I'm usually telling a story to myself and it's usually a dark story like this is going to happen or what if this happens or so-and-so's going to react this way, basically I'm borrowing trouble.

It's not a bad thing to think ahead, but it's only good to think ahead if you're keeping perspective. So in situations where you don't have all the information or you're not sure of what's going to happen, it's good to think ahead, but think about it from a confidence standpoint. And that means like, kind of looking at the worst case scenario.

So if your boss pulls you in the office and you're going to be scolded for something, or if the funding doesn't come through, if the grant isn't awarded, what's going to happen? But more importantly, how are you going to get through it? Because you are. I mean, you just are, so don't go dark, keep perspective when it comes to these situational circumstances. Don't let yourself stay up all night thinking about it. It tires you out and it ruins your confidence for the next day, too. If you think about it from a tactical perspective, if it doesn't work out, what will I do next? Things become so much more clear.

So the other piece of this is the global perspective. Did you know that the world's sexiest man? Um, Ocean's 11, 12. I don't know exactly how many movies they made in that series. And actually now that I say that, I think he was the world's sexiest man, more than once, too, but he's like a worldwide phenomenon and superstar, George Clooney.

Did you know, he's not on Facebook? He's not on Instagram. I didn't go check Twitter, but I'm guessing he's not on Twitter either. So if George can be George and George can be the world's sexiest man and leading movie star and millionaire upon millionaire, super successful, and he can do it without Facebook likes or comments, without Instagram, you can be you without them, too.

Now social media is not all bad. It's not all evil. And actually it can build your confidence, but it can also take it away just as quickly. So again, keep perspective. When you put something out on Facebook and you're watching for the response or on Instagram, and you're watching for the response, you are putting your confidence in the hands of an algorithm.

You know, if you posted the wrong time of day or something, I don't know how they figured it all out. But it's not real. It's not true. And there's better things to frame your identity around. So just keep a global perspective. Some of the most fantastic people in the world are not on social media. So again, I'm not saying abandon it altogether, just keep some perspective.

So now I want you to go back to whatever you doubted that note in the beginning of the presentation and run it through these filters. Apply these muscles to it. So how can you show up prepared next time? Does your network need to change? Do you need some new voices in your life? Is there a way you can step out that you can raise your hand even if it's just to prove to yourself that you can do it, that's legit, too. How in this situation where you're not feeling confident, how can you build up others? Because even if it takes awhile to get yourself going, maybe you can focus on others. And then what is influencing your perspective? Is it accurate? If it's social media it's not accurate.

So maybe take that back. Think about it. I think Chandler said you're going to get the slide deck, so apply these things to it and see if it makes any difference. I want to also come back to the trophy case. So where my kind of confidence crisis started. I decided to not make it about trophies in my situation.

So I am never going to win trophies like Bill McKendree, in part because I don't enter to win them. Instead, I focus on what went really well when I worked with Bill. So when I walked into the office, I had to stop thinking about what he did or what he was going to do and focus on what I did well, what my strengths were.

So for that season, when we were growing the agency, I knew I was great with clients. I listened to them and they trusted me. That was something that I did differently, but I did it well. I knew the non-profit landscape. I'd been there, I'd lived in it. So I knew the struggles, the opportunities. I haven't just consulted in those areas, I've lived them. That was an asset. I'm a great writer and communicator. I'd been told this and I felt amazing when I was writing, whether it was our blogs or proposals. So that was a place where I could work within my gifts. So if I walked into that office every day and just shot past that trophy case and thought about those things, and I actually went so far as to like, hang them up on my board by my desk, it changed my perspective.

So don't let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do. It's one of my favorite John Wooden quotes. And lastly, what you focus on grows. So not only did I have that list hanging right by my desk and I could read through it at any time, my father-in-law, sweetest man, bought me a print of the fearless girl.

Now, if you've never heard of this, I'll show you a full screen. The fearless girl is a statue. It was originally, I believe on Wall Street, but in the financial district. And it has meaning in the financial space. By the way, if you're looking for a Financial Literacy Scholarship, check out SuperMoney's here. I always just kind of liked it because on my best day and my best self in my most confident, I feel like that girl. I feel like hands on hips, ponytail swinging.

I can take on anything. So having that artwork and my office, it was a visual reminder and I tell you what, it helped, what you focus on grows. So focus on what you do well, and maybe even give yourself a little visual cue to remind you of it. And last but not least, I want to leave you with some recommendations, some resources.

John Acuff has written an amazing book. It's called "Soundtracks." And I would actually recommend listening to the audiobook version because John has an amazing sense of humor. And he has a very, like, dialogue of him reading the book. This is all about those things that we say in our heads to ourselves over and over again, and how we can change them.

So instead of saying, you're not good at this, or I might fail at this, or this is a struggle for me, we can actually give ourselves new soundtracks. Networking groups. And I would encourage you to go and this again, ties back to that third tip about your network, try to find a group outside those in maybe your town or your community, even your discipline, whatever area of nonprofit work that you're in, try to go beyond that. Because talking about what you do, talking about yourself with a new audience, with a fresh perspective, does amazing things for you. I did this, I used a leads networking group, which is a chamber of commerce program in Michigan.

And I tell you what, it made me so much more comfortable and so much more confident. Keep distance from those with limited perspective. We all have people in our lives who remember us only in terms of our weakest moment or our last failure, whether it is a family member. So maybe you don't go to reunions cause you know grandma's going to bring up that one time or something like that.

Or it's a friend who keeps going back to a time when you struggled, steer clear of that. I know we can't cut people out of our lives, but we can cut those conversations short and make sure that we're keeping people around us who draw out our best. Move your body. So this doesn't seem like it fits, but I tell you what, it does.

And it's been proven scientifically over and over again. If you exercise, you feel better about yourself and you feel better physically. So even if it's just 15 minutes a day, do something. And then find regular opportunities to work within your gifts. So if your gift is grant writing, find more opportunities to do that.

If it is meeting with people and talking, try to find opportunities in your work and outside your work to do that. When we work within our gifts, we not only get our cup filled, but we get affirmation and that builds our confidence. So that is all I have, but if you have ideas or questions or stories, I'd love to hear those as well.

Chandler: Thank you so much, Katie. I'll keep monitoring the chat for any questions that come in. But since we have about 10 minutes left, I also want to share one quick way that we can help with confidence when it comes to doing your research and getting to know your funders for grant writing specifically. So I'll real quickly share that with you.

 And if you look in the chat, there's a link to Instrumentl. And if you click that link, it will give you a two-week free trial where you can actually practice what I'm about to show you. So I'm going to go ahead and steal the screen for a second.

Okay. Hopefully you can all see this screen right now, a little bit bigger. So once you get into Instrumentl, this is where you can see all of these different funding opportunities. But what I really want to showcase is the ability to use this to grow your confidence by knowing your funders better and using that to stand out when you're actually writing grants.

So if you look on this, out of these opportunities, these are all of our different opportunity matches for our environmental project right here. But once I come over to the opportunity, I can actually see an overview. So this is what you would normally see when you're seeing kind of an overview on the foundation, on the opportunity, eligibility requirements, et cetera.

So you can use that to real quickly, get a glance at the opportunity, at the funder and see whether it's a good fit. Get some key details to take into your proposal. And then one area where we can help you go that extra mile is in our actual 990 report. So here we can see valuable information such as -- I'll pull up one with a better 990 report.

So this is what it used to be as these PDFs right here, you would have to comb through, but if we actually look at one of our opportunities, when we look at our 990, well, what we see here is we can see different information such as key people. So maybe we can start building connections in this way and growing our confidence by growing our network.

Otherwise we have all these key details such as past giving trends, we can see past giving amounts past, you know, areas, geographically, where they've historically been giving. And we can also see, you know, some various organizations that they've given to. So this is really great for helping us understand who is getting these awards historically and helping align with these individuals and these organizations.

So we can actually, you know, reach out to 1,000 Friends of Iowa and see how they got this opportunity, how they got this funding opportunity and use that to then propel our proposal. So that's just one way that we're going to be able to stand out in the crowd. Another way is just by understanding real quick, the openness to new grantees.

We at Instrumentl usually recommend having over a 30% openness to new grantee means that you have a high likelihood of getting your foot in the door, but there are so many other ways of getting your foot in the door by building those relationships with key people, really understanding and doing your research.

So this is just one way that it can help you find those opportunities that stand out and also using that to make sure that the grants you're going after are the ones that you're the most confident in. So not only being confident in your proposal, but being confident in your strategy as a whole. So those are just a few things I wanted to share with you specifically about, you know, grant-related topics.

But with that, I definitely want to give time if anybody has any questions. Feel free to put those in the chat and I can convey those over to Katie and otherwise, if you do decide that you want to try out Instrumentl and use it to help grow your confidence by growing your understanding and your knowledge of your funders, you can jot down this code, DOMOREGOOD50, and it's going to actually save you $50 off of your first month with Instrumentl.

And then since everybody's stuck around till the end, I'm also going to share this resource with you. So this is our feedback form that you can fill out. And that will, sorry, let me copy that over again. If you fill that out, then it'll qualify you for this freebie, which is the Ultimate Go vs. No-Go RFP tool.

And it's a really great resource for evaluating which opportunities to go after and which to not pursue. Let me copy that link over for you one more time. So that is in the chat right now. And then last but not least, we have a few upcoming workshops. So if you enjoyed this workshop, we have some new opportunities on the 22nd.

We're going to be diving into some more intermediate and advanced techniques for leveling up your grant prospecting. We're going to do that all in 60 minutes. So that is going to cover things like invite only funders, dealing with some time-saving tips and things like that. On the 23rd, we're going to do a tone down kind of beginner class where we actually just help you find good fit prospects. And so by the end of that workshop, everybody will leave with a list of good fit funders. And then finally, on the 3rd, we are doing one of our new workshops, which deals with how to actually go about planning your 12 months grant calendar in under 60 minutes.

So that helps you kind of keep that forward vision with your grant strategy. Do you want to register it? You can do that on our lu.ma page. I'll include the. In the chat as well. And that is what you see right here. So that's all that I have. So with any extra time that we have here, I think we have about five minutes, I definitely want to make sure that we can get any questions answered that anybody has. So feel free to pop those in the chat.

Jefferson, yes, you will receive a copy of the presentation recording as well as the slides, I'll be emailing that out after this workshop.

All right, give it one more minute in case anybody has any more questions.

Awesome. Well, it doesn't look like we have any more questions coming in. So with that, I'm going to go ahead and wrap it up. Thank you so much everybody for attending today. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much, Katie, for presenting. I know I learned so much and I hope that everybody else did, too. I'm seeing a lot of great comments in the chat, so great work

Katie: My pleasure, my pleasure. Thank you, all. 

Everybody 

Chandler: have a wonderful day. We hope to see you at one of our future workshops.