Antoinette and Speaker A explain why nonprofit leaders live in constant stress and how to fix it. They compare running a nonprofit to parenting without a handbook, then recommend establishing clear policies, contingency plans, and risk-management procedures before crises hit. Their organization meets over 1,500 CARF accreditation standards, which they say actually lowers stress by removing guesswork.
Oh, hello, hello, hello. I got caught off guard because I meant to do something before we got started because I learned something with this new Restream and I forgot to do it. So I'll have to go back and fix it on each platform. So anyway, okay, how you doing?
I'm excellent, I'm excellent. So I think it's kind of interesting that our topic for today, this is, uh, this is what we're calling— what is it that we're calling it? We're calling it, um, Um, oh my gosh, I'm so real.
The real, the real girls. Let's just tell the real truth about what's going on, right?
That's right, the real keeping it real girls talk about what's happening in business. So as we talk about everything nonprofit, um, related, because this is, um, this whole, uh, podcast is all about nonprofits and every aspect of it. One of the things that we have to talk about is keeping the worry out of business.
So, and, and, and I always ask, do you really ever keep the worry out of business? I was— I'd read my nonprofit and I always worry. It's like, do you ever take the worry out of being a parent? Right, right.
And running the business is a lot like parenting.
It really is. It really is.
And I think that is such a great analogy because running a business is a lot like parenting in that you don't get a, um, handbook that tells you how to raise a great child. A lot of that is just simply luck. But one of the things about running a business where luck isn't involved is preparation. Like, we can do some planning And we can do some, you know, like put ourselves in situations where we're prepared. But just like we know in life, you can't be prepared for everything.
And you're gonna do a lot of trial and error. So give yourself room for that trial and error. And what I learned over the years and what I see a lot of nonprofits do, we worry, we stress, we can't sleep, we can't eat, we have sleepless nights because we're always worrying about something. I know I was always worried about waiting for that other shoe to drop. As they usually do. And that's how it is too when we have our kids or our pets or whatever. It's like, god dang, the dog tore up my shoe, you know. But how do you keep the worry out of your business? And as Antoinette said, to be as prepared as possible, to have contingency plans. So if you— something is always going to be happening, but if you have that policy that says if there is a bomb threat, this is what you do, right? And you know what that policy is. If a client scrapes their arm coming in your building, this is what the policy is. So you have to have policies on everything. So when you're not in the office— because remember, you're building a business— so when you're not in the office and something happens, there's a— you know what to do, right? If you're having a fundraiser and XYZ happens at this fundraiser, there's risk management. So there's some way you can reduce the risk what with all the worrying that you have and that what's going on. So you want to make sure you have a lot of risk management policies in place. And I recommend you, as you're building your nonprofit, start right now. Don't wait until something happens. Don't wait until you start having all these clients and all this stuff going on to start saying, I'm gonna start working on every single policy, right? If you're driving a car, you need to have a policy about employees and yourself driving this car.
You know, so yeah, so one of the things that I think is a practical way to handle this is, is, you know, we call it in my industry setting standards. And every business has standards. Standards are usually what hours you're going to open, what days you're going to work, what holidays you're going to take off, um, you You know, what's your preferred mode of communication? Is it email? Is it cell phone? Is it text message? Is it Facebook messaging? You know, like, whatever. So start with those things that you know that you can answer kind of easily. Like, we're going to be open these hours, we're going to do, you know, we're going to work these days. And then always remember, remember, remember to write your mission statement down. When you are doing your standards, just to keep that mission statement running through your head. Like, this is who I'm serving, this is the community. And then see if the community that you're serving match some of these standards that you're creating. Because if you're working with children and they're all in school during your, your hours, then you may have to tweak that.
And it's funny you mentioned the standards because right now as you and I are talking, our organization is going through a CARF accreditation, and they're going through over 1,500 standards that we have in our organization to make sure that— and CARF has over 1,500 standards, so we have to make sure that our organization is in line with what they're saying. So it is amazing how the standards are 1,500, you know, and they're like, okay, you got this, you got this, you got that. Okay, you're missing this, you're missing that. We have to get up to these standards. So you want to set your standards high because why everybody's bar is here, we want our bar to be up here, right? So, and that's what's going to set you apart is getting your standards and your policies and procedures in place, and that's going to help reduce your stress. So I know now with CARP coming in and they're creating and they're showing us these standards that we're missing that we should have that if something goes wrong, that staff will be able to say, oh, this is what we do when this happens. Oh, this is how we document this. Okay. And that kind of takes some of that worry out of building your business. You're always— you're always going to have worry, like you always have with your kids. Your kids could be 30, 40, 50 years old, you're going to constantly worry about it. And that's what's going to be about your business. But how do you reduce the worry in your business?
Yeah, absolutely.
So that's it. That's, that's it. I think we just want to touch on— we don't want to keep a lot of time, but we want to touch on— if you guys have any questions, you have any ideas on how to reduce the, the stress that you find in your life and in your business, please go ahead and tag us and comment. So we're out, got to get back to these standards, and we will talk to you later.
