Plugging into Nonprofit Success | Dr. Sharon Elefant | 603

And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on the podcast, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is Dr. Sharon Elevante. She is the founder and CEO of the nonprofit PLUG, which is a consultancy that works with various individuals to form and incorporate 501 tax-exempt nonprofit organizations. They specialize in supporting nonprofits to develop their organizational and administrative infrastructure, strategic vision implementation plans, and funding growth development and relationship cultivation. And she's got some really cool backstories and lots of other things. So welcome aboard, Sharon.

Thank you. That sounded so cool.

You're impressed to meet yourself, right?

I am impressed to meet myself. Yeah.

There we go. So how did this happen? Tell us. And you and I spoke, I think it was last week, but how did you get here? Because one of the things that I love about the thought leadership space is when I ask that question of people, I never get the same answer twice versus in most professions, ask an accountant or a lawyer or whatever, how they went there. Yeah. And yawn, yawn, nap, nap, went to dental school, became a dentist. Right.

For sure. Yeah.

How did you get here?

I love it. So great question. Um, how did I get to the nonprofit plug? So, In a prior life, my academic training was to become a hospital administrator. I went that route, I did it. I ran the Southern California and Southern Nevada outreach programs for the VA Health System with homelessness, and through that was really involved in outreach programs and partnering with nonprofits and strategic partnerships. So I knew I loved that part, didn't love the VA and did not love government, right? Right. Uh, my mouth is too, uh, uh, free-thinking and open for that kind of life. So I ended up getting recruited by a veteran service organization, went and worked for them for several years, met bazillions of nonprofits, constantly volunteering, constantly doing community work, constantly connecting people and partnering people and finding resources. And I was working on my doctorate at the same time and, and ended up getting laid off from that. Veteran service organization. So kind of a side hustle to keep my income up while I was finishing my doctorate. I was just, you know, grant writing, finding funding, finding partnerships for other nonprofits and colleagues and, and things like that that people in Los Angeles were calling me the plug. And I was like, cool, like, I like being the plug. Like, number one, that sounds really cool. Number two, like, I just love being that person for everybody. That's probably a strength and a weakness of mine. I just I love, love, love finding resources and problem solving for everyone. It's also my downfall. So while doing that, my family thought I was dealing drugs. I think I had told you about that because I was the plug and I even had a phone number that was like the plug, which is very hard to get, by the way. Like you can't even get that. Not one state in the entire United States. So I had to do like 444-PLUG, not the plug.

Right.

Right. So then I had to clarify with the whole elephant herd that like, no, I'm not a drug dealer. I mean, if you, if you need me to find somebody, I can, but I am the nonprofit plug. And so it kind of just became my nickname for a while. And I was like, damn, this is really fun. Like, I wanna make this my full-time thing. So I, I legally filed.

Stay, stay there for a second though. So this is one way you found it was people just, they kind of got a sense of you're the get it done chick, right?

I can go time to plug.

Right. So then they just started asking you, and I'm assuming when they were asking you there was no invoice involved. So you're like, wow, this is pretty cool.

Yep.

But at what point did they ask you and you figured out you can get paid for this? 'Cause that's an epiphany moment.

Really through the grant writing.

It was okay.

Once, once I started doing things that literally took my time in administrative paperwork and things like that, that's when I was able to start invoicing. It wasn't so much in the, like, oh, let me make you an introduction to someone, or hey, go check out this. It wasn't so much in that quite yet. It was really in the, when it became administrative, more like work for someone. I see.

So stay there for a minute because in many professional services, what we do is what we do, right? Accounting, law, consulting, whatever, whatever. And there's lots of other people that can do it a little bit better, a little bit worse for a little bit more money or a little bit less. So a way to differentiate is to be that, that hub and spoke, that connector, that— yeah, fixer— what that you're not getting paid for, but it's a way to stand out amongst all the others that's doing— and I don't mean to say, you know, grant writing to some degree is a commodity, right? So you go to Google grant writers, the people that are popping up on that SEO, the— it's probably going to be lowest cost provider that's going to win for people that go in through that door.

It is. Yeah. And really doing that process, that's what really established me as a thought leader, which then allowed me to get to the point of now people pay me to speak a word. People will pay for a word that comes out of my mouth now, and people know that I'm the go-to in the industry. I don't have to fill out a grant application or do an administrative piece of work for people to pay me now. Now I am that subject matter expert. I am that go-to. I produce the content that gives people the tips, tricks, and techniques, the process flows. Now I, I—

no, stay there for a minute because I think certain people in certain industries struggle with when you're that go-to, when you're that, you know, there's a, there's a line between subject matter expert and thought leader, et cetera, that when you give it all away, well geez, what would they pay you for? They don't really understand that the more you give away, in essence, the more you get because there's 100% Yeah, folks that will follow what you do, never hire you or anybody else for lots of reasons and get to a good outcome. But then there's the other group that have the potential to be a client that see it and it's documented and they know you probably know what you're talking about it because you're talking about it a lot. And when I need those services, I'd gladly pay you versus anybody else.

Yeah. And I'll give you a perfect example. Here's, here's where that comes into play, right? Because I will give I know giving— I give people information. I'll give it all day long for, for free, right?

Yeah.

Because I always get clients out of it and I always find that I can tell you what to do all day long and I can give you guidance, but are you really going to do it? And so a perfect example of that is I have downloadable PDFs and workbooks and things like that.

Yeah.

You get for free, for example, a grant readiness literal checklist, like Boom, boom, boom. The pro— and people, I give that to people all the time because they're like, well, you know, I just, I just need like somebody to give me like a to-do list. And I'm like, okay, yeah, here, here's my grant readiness checklist. But they— but then what happens is, one, it's very time-consuming to write a grant application. It's very specific in the wording. Uh, and this really goes for like any of the services that we provide, really. People are like, Sharon, teach me how to do QuickBooks and accounting, like, well, go to YouTube University and look at that. But when it comes down to the actuality of it, they can't actually implement the process. And also that kind of goes towards like, I share like my packages, I share like you can come on and see what services we provide and people, you know, will want to reenact those services. But do you have the skill set and the capacity to actually implement it.

And I think, I think it also validates because it shows, oh, I'm hiring you to write a grant, you just write a grant, right? But then when you, when you look at a checklist, you're like, wow, if you were on the fence, I, there's so much more to this than I ever thought. Just this checklist, which is the high level, you know, the 58 things you need to do, shows them there's, geez, there's a lot more to do here than you ever thought. Do you really want to do this? Do you really, really want to do this? You know?

Perfect example is starting a nonprofit or even start people who want to start an LLC or a nonprofit. You can, you can go, you can go do it yourself. It's plenty of resources online to learn how to do formations and incorporations yourself. But what happens is you checkbox the wrong thing on the form, you write the wrong one word. Like when you do a nonprofit filing, if you put one word wrong, they reject you all day long. And I have 100% success rate. Because I know exactly what the IRS needs. I know exactly how to phrase things. I know exactly what the definitions of a charitable organization are. I know what an appropriate and legal formation is for an LLC. And that's where my subject matter expert comes in, is through my, my experience. And so that's what people are paying for, is they're paying for 100% accuracy. Get it done. Give me the resource. Give me the funding. Give me the guidance based on my experience. You know, I have over 15 years. I know I don't look like it because I look like I'm, you know, in my 20s. But I have— I have those years of experience. Not only that, I've been an executive director of a nonprofit. I've been, you know, every position in every kind of company, bottom up to the top. I planted plants. I've watered plants as a job. I've been a shit picker-upper for dogs. Like, I have been all of these positions, so it comes with experience of trial and error. So I can tell you, here's how I raised $25,000 in a day. Here's how I got this grant funding. Here's how I got this donor or this person to be on my board.

If you're enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help spread the word about our podcast, please leave a 5-star review at ratethispodcast.com/LTL and share it with your friends. We're available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps, as well as at thoughtleadershipleverage.com/podcast. So let me ask you this then. So there's indirect ways of monetizing the thought leadership in direct ways. So indirect would be you're building your brand, you're building your platform. When people are ready to pull the trigger, they're like, that's the person. Are there ways that you're directly monetizing it by, in terms of putting it into packages or, or yeah, e-learning or assessments or what does that path look like?

Yeah, so for sure. So I think our direct ways of monetizing our firm now are We have— you can purchase packages with us for— that comes with a grant writer, it comes with a consultant, it comes with, um, subject matter experts on all levels of, um, what your nonprofit might need and coaching. You can purchase a monthly accounting package just like you would another bookkeeper. Like, we have bookkeepers on, on staff and accountants and CPAs. You can purchase hourly support. I'm actually—

are you able to capture a premium? So one is you're able to attract clients through all this activity. So that's good. That reduces your marketing spend. Are you able to capture a premium in the market? Because if I was just strictly looking for bookkeeping services and I'm sure if I went online, it's going to be some outsourced group in, you know, pick a place, right?

That's going to be QuickBooks or just pop up.

Yeah, QuickBooks or something in the Philippines or whatever. And it's going to be, oh, you could do this for $4 and I like whatever. Right. And for some people, that might be a fine solution. You know, asterisk, trust, asterisk. Are you giving away, you know, sensitive information, etc.? Are you able to capture like how many of the conversations are you having with clients early on around price versus value and experience?

So we just implemented a new program, like literally within the past couple of weeks. So before you used to be like for grant services because that's the, that's it's easy and hard to sell, like selling bookkeeping, easy. Selling like, we'll do your full filing for you, easy. But when we're selling like concepts like grant writing, board development engagement, strategic planning, mindset coaching, things like that's a little bit different. So we used to sell it in hourly packages, 10, 20, 30 hours. Now what we do is we've removed out the word hourly. We don't do anything hourly. It's deliverable-based. And we provide donor cultivation, cultivation, acquisition. We provide a grant writer. We just don't do hourly. We provide coaching on every level of how to get funding and resources into your organization so people aren't relying on grants. And I— and what we do when we pitch those is we say, here's our cost for the full year. So you're committing to months with us, you pay 50% down, and then the rest is split out monthly. Yeah. And through that, it's, it's where, where it really gets people is in that first 90 days, we're going to accomplish all of this list.

And it's all heavily front-loaded.

Yeah, heavily front-loaded so we can get them immediate impact so that then they're also trusting us as an organization to really service and support them. And we put out there what this value would be out in the real world if you were to hire, like if one of our packages for a year might be between $45,000 and $55,000. And that comes with a team of us versus if you were to go out into the real world and put someone on salary, you're going to maybe get one person doing maybe like one thing for that. And that's sort of where we're so impactful for folks.

Got it. So advice that you would give to someone— forget nonprofit, but in essence, if we look at you as a service business to a particular industry. So lots of folks could fit into that definition, irregardless of for-profit, nonprofit, whatever. But a service business that's doing things that are to some degree, you know, there's some specialization, but there's some pieces of it that are a commodity and they haven't delved into thought leadership yet at all. They're just doing their thing and getting referrals and gaining clients, losing clients, whatever. What would you do to encourage them to delve, dive in and put out thought leadership? And where would they start and how much time to give it before they saw the results and all that? Give them, give them a sense of what that journey and expectation would be.

So if I was that person, I, I honestly would start with social media and just posting every single day, like a 10 to 15 second clip of tip of the day. I mean, and that's where, that's where I did start and that's what worked really well for my company, and people love the, like, tip of the day. So that's where I would start, and that doesn't take you more than, like, I don't know, maybe an hour a day to do something like that. In an hour, you could even record 60 minutes of tips and break it up into, you know, a week or two worth of tips posted online. Costs you nothing. As people start to kind of engage with your tip and trick of the day, or if they test out your tip and it works for them, You got a client, right?

And then how long do you stick? Because, you know, this is not a get rich quick business, right? How long should they stick with it before they either quit, we hope not, or change tactics or expect to see any, any sort of outcome that's, that's tangible?

Minimum 6 months. Reevaluate at 6 months to give it a couple of years. People really need to give their their business 3 to 5 years to really see if you should stay in or not. So I always tell people, do not quit your 9 to 5 if you have one until your new whatever it is you're doing, if you're creating your own business, is fully funding your life on top of the overhead for the business. So I say you give this whatever new thing you're testing a minimum of 6 months to collect the data, evaluate the impact, maybe tweak some things and then keep going. But really, it's, it's a, it's for a long haul. It's a— I'm 5, almost 5 years in, and I'm still evaluating the impact of what's going on and the impact of having employees and contractors and making sure every single client gets what they need. Because I want to be a Fortune 500 corporate company with a boutique feeling. Because that's what nonprofits need. Nonprofits need handholding. And you know, when you kind of get up into that high-level corporate level, people get dropped through the cracks. And I do not want nonprofits dropped through the crack. There's already too much misappropriation and nonprofits getting fucked over and people fraudulently using nonprofits. I mean, me and some of my staff have been through that with other third-party contracted companies where we got screwed by them because they were just using us.

Taking advantage. Yeah. Well, this has been great. I appreciate your time, Sharon, and thank you for sharing your, your journey and your story with us.

Yeah. Awesome. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. So much fun.

To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our website at thoughtleadershipleverage.com. To reach me directly, feel free to email me at peter@thoughtleadershipleverage.com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.