legal momentum

This week on the Nonprofit Build Up, we’re talking with Carol Baldwin Moody, President and CEO of Legal Momentum, The Women’s Legal Defense and Education Fund. Carol has developed a reputation for her outstanding efforts to fight for equality. Her work specifically focuses on educational, economic, and gender equality. She’s widely recognized for her broad regulatory experience, domestically and internationally. With a strong focus on organizational culture, her specialties include global risk management, regulatory compliance, and corporate governance.

Carol’s passion and expertise are so clearly illustrated in this episode as she speaks about the work of Legal Momentum and its focus on providing support during the inequities of the pandemic. She also shares practical advice for nonprofits and funders about the power of prevention in social justice and the importance of shifting from an ecosystem of competition to collaboration within the sector. This conversation is going to encourage you to embrace new ways of working and collaborating within the nonprofit sector.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Resources:

• The Nickel Boys
• Just Mercy

 

 

About Carol Baldwin Moody

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Read the podcast transcription below:

-Upbeat Intro Music-

Nic Campbell: 

You’re listening to the Nonprofit Build Up Podcast and I’m your host, Nic Campbell. I want to support movements that can interrupt cycles of injustice and inequity, and shift power towards vulnerable and marginalized communities. I’ve spent years working in and with nonprofits and philanthropies, and I know how important infrastructure is to outcomes. On this show, we’ll talk about how to build capacity to transform the way you and your organization work.

Nic Campbell:

Hi, everyone. This week on the Nonprofit Build Up, we’re talking with Carol Baldwin Moody, President and CEO of Legal Momentum, The Women’s Legal Defense and Education Fund. Carol assumed this role in April 2018 after serving on the Legal Momentum Board.

Nic Campbell:

Carol has developed a reputation for her outstanding efforts to fight for equality. Her work specifically focuses on educational, economic, and gender equality. She’s widely recognized for her broad regulatory experience, domestically and internationally. With a strong focus on organizational culture, her specialties include global risk management, regulatory compliance, and corporate governance. Black Enterprise named Carol as one of the 75 most powerful women in business. In honor of her work and influence on diversity, Nationwide Insurance African American Women’s ARG established the Carol Baldwin Moody Impact Award.

Nic Campbell:

Carol and I recorded this conversation in May 2020 as we navigated our way through the first few months of the global pandemic and were wrestling with issues of equity. Carol’s passion and expertise are so clearly illustrated as she speaks about the work of Legal Momentum and its focus on providing support during the inequities of the pandemic. She also shares practical advice for nonprofits and funders about the power of prevention in social justice and the importance of shifting from an ecosystem of competition to collaboration within the sector.

Nic Campbell:

Carol also shares how Legal Momentum is thinking about its infrastructure to protect the rights of the most vulnerable women and girls, and highlights the importance of revenue diversification, being thoughtful about the role of volunteers, and being deliberate about including diversity in decision making. This conversation is going to encourage you to embrace new ways of working and collaborating within the nonprofit sector. And with that, here is Carol Baldwin Moody.

Nic Campbell:

Hi, Carol, it is so great to have you join us for our Fast Build Leader Series.

Carol Baldwin:

Hello, Nicole. It’s so great to be here. Hello to you.

Nic Campbell:

I think it’s going to be a wonderful conversation. I’m really looking forward to it. To get us started, can you tell us about Legal Momentum, your role there and Legal Momentum’s immediate priority?

Carol Baldwin:

Certainly, certainly, Legal Momentum, we are the first and the oldest – sometimes that’s not a good thing, but in this case, it is – legal defense and education fund for women. And we were originally the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, NOW started. And that means we were their legal department 50 years ago, 50 years ago. We’ve always been at the forefront of what has been a controversial battle for gender equality. I mean, that’s NOW. And so we then changed our name in 2004, just because we wanted to have a 501(C)(3). So I’m the CEO. I think the important thing is I started off actually being on the board of Legal Momentum, which often not a path for CEOs and even more different is that I stepped off the board to be the Chief Operating Investment Officer, because that’s my background.

Carol Baldwin:

I run huge operations. That’s my background. And I decided that I would better serve Legal Momentum if I stepped off the board and just took a look at how well the organization was organized and managed. I love doing that. I’m good at it. And that’s what I did. And then one day I was in a board meeting and it was time for succession. And I said, okay, cause our CEO went on to do something very specific that we were part of, which is the ERA, the Equal Rights Amendment, we’re part of that, she wanted to do that solely. And so she went to do that. And then I came in at a board meeting and then they all were clapping like, yay, we have a new CEO. So there, it was. That’s how it happened.

Carol Baldwin:

And so we’re a women’s organization, and really what we do is our focus is to ensure economic and personal security for women and girls. And that’s a broad, broad statement. That’s a broad statement, but we do it because as we say, we lead, we litigate, we educate, we advocate, and we defend. And the great part about that is that means every aspect of any kind of inequality for women we can effect. We can effect. So when it comes to…I like to deal with education first, because that is education fund. I’m a strong believer and we have always been a strong believer that the best way to serve inequality, any kind of harm, is to try to prevent it, try to prevent it from happening. You know, you can litigate, you can do all kinds of things, well wouldn’t it be great if it didn’t happen in the first place?

Carol Baldwin:

Wouldn’t it be great if sexual assault didn’t happen, sexual harassment, pay inequality, discrimination, wouldn’t it be best if it didn’t happen in the first place and that’s our education piece and advocacy. Because you can’t deal with any kind of issue, as you well know, until you know what the issue is. And once you…and we’re so good at that, and we’re deep at that. And once you know what the issue is, you have to educate the people who are affected and that’s everybody. And that’s why our program is really broad. We educate, you know, warriors, we educate judges. One of our great programs is our National Judicial Education Program, because believe it or not, eventually, if something does happen, a lot of things are going to be right in front of a judge. They’re deciding your fate. And we created this phenomenal program where we teach judges how to deal with bias in the court when it comes to issues of gender.

Carol Baldwin:

Very, very important, because no matter if you have a law, that’s good, which we probably helped write. But if you get before a judge and they can apply the law without bias, you haven’t done what you’re supposed to do. So we focus on doing all those things across a spectrum. We spend time and it takes time to advocate for new laws. If you know anything about how legislation is, it could take five years, but you know, here it is 25 years later, and the Violence Against Women Act, which we were the pioneers and part of writing that, it’s 25 years later and what’s happening right now? It needs to be reauthorized. And it hasn’t. And the amount of time and hours and months that we as an organization spend, trying to advocate to Congress, you know, the House and the Senate, about why…I think the number is more like a hundred billion dollars has been given out to organizations because of the Violence Against Women Act, it’s huge, it’s 25 years old.

Carol Baldwin:

But what happens is as time goes on, we see where there are weaknesses in the law. We see that they didn’t anticipate transgender protection. And so we need to go back and say, okay, this was a great law at the time, but you have to be out there. And the reason why we can be out there is because we have our ear to the ground. We have a helpline that people call in and we don’t necessarily represent them, cause we have a small legal team, but we’re hearing what their questions are. And we tell them where they need to go, no matter what state they’re in. You’re being discriminated at work, this is where you need to go. But out of that help line, that’s where we find out what’s really, really affecting people. We find out for instance, that right now at the most vulnerable women, as you well know, if you’re looking at the crisis right now, women are more than 50% of the people who are at the front line.

Carol Baldwin:

You know that, you know that. And sadly, or it’s just a fact, like you said, what’s being highlighted is the most vulnerable women who are being effected. These are women of color, low income women, immigrants, and transgender. They are being affected the most. And so what we’ve done all along and we did something incredible two years ago, we put out the most comprehensive…we call it the Legal Toolkit, that outlines every right a woman has in the workplace in the state of New York. It’s 75 pages long, took two years to write it. And that goes back to my education. First, you had to educate. And so we’re happy because a lot of those laws we have, right? Well, if you don’t know about it, it’s not helpful. And when we put it out there, we got a note from RWA, which is the Restaurant Workers Association. The 4 million members, they said 4 million people, now know how to deal with wage theft, tip theft.

Carol Baldwin:

These are all the things we talk about in that toolkit. And the great part about it is once it came out, we just got together a bunch of those organizations that are affected domestic workers. And we said, what’s missing? And what we’re focusing on now, we took that and in this environment, as you said, it’s highlighted, we now have a policy statement saying, Hey, we did some good stuff with some good laws, but this is what you didn’t get to. And you need to do it because we talk about, you know, women’s rights during the pandemic and after. This is not going away, it is not going away. And like you said, we just highlighted the things that we’ve been talking about. It’s nothing new. It’s nothing new. I mean, we put a series of…when this happened, you know, we’re lawyers and we tend not to, you know, we got to think and think and think and think, but we immediately created our new series called LM Action, every single week shown where the information is for everybody.

Carol Baldwin:

And so it’s across the spectrum. You may not pay attention, but Title Nine, Title Nine, you know, deals with, you know, sexual assault on campus. The new rules just came out. We fought, fought, fought, fought, wrote papers, told them what needed to be done. And frankly, the new rules, they greatly weaken protections of students. And why would you weaken the protection of students to go back to school in a pandemic? We’ve wrote about why that’s an issue. We wrote about pay transparency. And we all know, everybody knows, what the pay gap is between women and men, but you add race into that picture? The number, the disparity is huge. And so here you have, you know, good laws out there, which we advocate for like the EOC, which was collecting data based on gender and race. But then they stopped. They stopped because certain people didn’t want them to do it.

Carol Baldwin:

So we of course are opposing their decision to stop collecting pay data, because you can’t solve a problem if you don’t know what the data shows. So we’re fighting for that. COVID-19 reproductive rights, I mean, come on as a first-grade part of reproductive rights, people don’t realize that there are a bunch of States that are using the COVID-19 to stop reproductive rights. We just filed one of the biggest cases. And we joined up with our NOW organization, which is huge. Huge case, where in Alabama, somebody decided to use an executive order that said, hmm, abortions are not essential. What? So you can wait, what do you mean wait? There’s no going back. I mean, what are you talking about here? And it is women of color and poor women who’re being affected by this. So we got together and we actually, I mean, we worked day and night on this case to file a brief in the courts to overturn that executive order.

Carol Baldwin:

It took weeks. The good news is for technical reasons, you know, the executive order went away, but the underlying statute in, you know, Alabama, Texas, still need to be litigated to protect reproductive rights. So here you are, you’ve got Roe v. Wade, and here we are, here we are. And then about education. One of our news programs, which I’m really proud of is our peer educator program. And we put out something just a couple of weeks ago about young girls of color in these times of crisis. A few years ago, the city council decided to put together a leadership program for young girls of color. And one aspect of it was healthy sexual relationships. Again, try to rebid. What can you do to teach young women about how not to get in these dangerous situations? We started a program a few years ago.

Carol Baldwin:

It is now off the charts. It started off with four and we decided to make it a peer educator program. We would take the young girls of color, bring them in and train them for nine weeks. And then they would go out to schools and talk to their peers. Nobody wants to, you know, they don’t want to listen to me. You know, if you’re 15 or 16 and that plus they have terminology they’ve never heard of. They were like, what? And so we started this program a few years ago and it has now tripled in size. They go out there and when school’s closed, this is what I’m saying, we’re always there to pivot. When the public schools closed, we had a bunch of presentations ready to do and schools closed. But then after people got situated, they asked for a lot of afterschool programs and they said, we need this, people are stressed, domestic violence is going on, kids are home. We need to do this. Can you change your program to be 100% virtual? And we did. And we did. We are now giving the whole series virtually. And it was good that, you know, to have the young peer tutors, because they know how to zoom and all that kind of stuff. They’re like, Carol, you can’t miss it because you’re ghosting the meeting. I’m like, what, what are you talking about?

Carol Baldwin:

Anyway, you know, you hear those young girls talk to the other young girls who’re at home, you know, and no outlet. That’s really, really important. And the last thing I want to say in terms of what’s happening with the roller ball, what we did last week, when we talk about this toolkit that’s 75 pages long that tells you what you need to do. We reached out to people who really are in trouble right now. And we had a phone call with domestic workers in New York, Spanish speaking only, with a translator, virtually, and we said, okay, tell us what’s really happening. And it’s eye opening what is happening, but we were able to reach out because that’s what we do. We have those mechanisms. So we continue to really reach out to the most vulnerable women and girls across the board. And then lastly, ultimately we do bring litigation.

Carol Baldwin:

We do bring litigation. We had two of the most important equal pay cases last year, you know, very, very hard to win, very, very prominent tech company. Can’t say the name, you know, and it was clear that it was a woman and a man, same job, different pay, that’s common. And at the end of the day, not only did we get her money, we got them to change their practices. And that’s what we talk about. We only take litigation that is impactful. Cause we, you know, we don’t have 60 lawyers. If we take litigation, it has to be something that will impact lots of people. That means that case will affect lots of people. And that’s how we choose our litigation. When people call in to the helpline, you know, we refer them, but if they call in for something, we go, Oh, Oh, this is big.

Carol Baldwin:

We have a lot of pro bono lawyers. We give millions of dollars of donations of free legal work. That’s how we do it. We reach out to our law firms and say, this is a big case. On one of our cases on sex trafficking, which was all over the news, we’re the ones that brought the Backpage case. If you know about Backpage and the sex trafficking, we brought that case, caused millions of dollars of pro bono work. And because of that case FOSTA and SESTA, which are the federal trafficking laws were passed. So again, we go from education, we advocate, we’re the ones that gave a testimony in the Paid Leave Family Law for New York City and New York state. They didn’t follow everything, but we gave testimony. And then we got to review their drafts. They ask us, you know, what are missing? You know, how can we do this better? So our priorities haven’t changed, but every single thing we work on is nailed at the top. Everything we do. Does that answer your question?

Nic Campbell:

No, it definitely does. And what it paints for me is just a really thoughtful organization. So you’re able to play the long game, but you’re also very proactive. So you’re able to say what do we need right now. And then stepping up for the rights of the vulnerable and fighting really hard for them and being creative and focused at the same time. So it just shows just the tremendous history and breadth of what you do and the kind of work that LM is doing now. So thank you for that. I know you mentioned within that explanation that you’d received millions in pro bono work, and I’d love for you to talk about the advice that you have for nonprofits that fundraise as a significant part of their budget. So in other words, what do you think should be top of mind for them right now, particularly during this time of uncertainty? You know, you’ve raised, at least even in kind support, millions of dollars, and you’re doing such huge, you know, huge projects and work with a long lasting impact. So what would you say to those nonprofits that are also trying to fundraise and trying to affect change?

Carol Baldwin:

So a couple of things and the pro bono stuff. So definitely, if you can, find…there are a lot of people, listen, even when times are hard, people like to volunteer. If you don’t have any money, that’s a way you can volunteer. And to the extent that you can free your staff to do other things, because you’ve partnered, it’s really, really important. And you got to think out of the box, it means ease for us because we’re lawyers. So we know what we need. We need pro bono lawyers, write briefs, and go to court. We know what that means. We know what that means, but for other organizations, it means different things. And they need to think about what that means, because that frees up their resources. So think a little better about what your volunteering support is. The second thing is diversification. Listen, you know, I was in charge of a $300 billion portfolio.

Carol Baldwin:

I know about diversification, right? And unfortunately, and we’re victim too, we’re victim too, that over time, you rely on your same funding sources, because it’s easy. It’s easy because it’s hard to get new funding sources. I’m sorry to say. It’s very difficult to get new funding sources. And once you get a funding source, you just stay there. You just stay there. But the reality is, certainly for us and other organizations, as you see, we’re struggling, we have got to diversify our funding sources. We really do. And I’ve been talking about that for a couple of years. I mean, for instance, there are a lot of organizations like ours, who depend on events, right? As their fundraising. I told you I was in San Francisco. We had to cancel that event. We had to postpone our biggest event that normally happens every year.

Carol Baldwin:

It’s almost 60% of our revenue, the combined events. What do you do? And that’s why, as you’re thinking about this, and you’re, you know, obviously we’re figuring out how to do virtual, but the point is I advise a lot of not-for-profits who have gotten, you know, so, okay, we’ve got this, this is how we raise money. You’ve got to think differently. You’ve got to think more out of the box. And then for funders, you know, you got to, you know, push a little more. I know it’s easy to give money to the same people all the time. I get it. I know, I get it. You know, you don’t have to do the extra research, but I do feel that I ask funders to, you know, be more thoughtful about where the money should go. We know that there’s a peanut hole, just like I said, when we were giving out money to invest.

Carol Baldwin:

There’s a finite pool of money. We get it, we get it. But we shouldn’t have to compete as much as we do to get the money. I think it can be a more collaborative process than it is because I’m competing. I was like, okay, you know, I’m trying to get money from this. And I’m talking about the big ones, not the little ones. I’m talking, you know who I’m talking about? The big ones, yeah, the biggest, the biggest. It was the 300 pound gorillas. So I know what it is to be the biggie. When everybody’s competing against the biggies, it really isn’t the most effective way. They should allow us to be more collaborative amongst ourselves, instead of us all saying, okay, let me try to get this money from that. We should be able to go to our funders in a more collective way. And I think that’s something that has not happened in this industry.

Carol Baldwin:

It would serve funders well, it would serve organizations, that we can actually go in a more collective way. Because the way grants are done now, everybody’s got to put in their grant proposal. Everybody’s got to answer questions. Everybody’s got to put in the metrics. And I’m a good, listen, I believe in numbers, I believe in measurement. I do. But some things are not measurable. I mean, when we got that grant is somebody going to, you know, say my God, 4 million people got to read that? How do you measure that? That you can measure. But what you can’t measure is the fact that one of those peer educators who’s in the program, single mom, the only way she could do that program at the school was to bring her five-year-old. Immeasurable. And at the end of that process, he actually got to see his mom in a leadership role teaching others, life changing. How do you measure that? Life changing. So my answer is gotta be more the collaborative in this fundraising initiative, because you know, the money’s going to get…you know, you see what’s going on has always been that way, but I’m a big believer in collaborating, and we need to do more of that.

Nic Campbell:

And it’s something I wanted to jump back on what you said, Carol. And that was about diversification of funds. You are really just singing music to my ears when you, when you talk about diversification. And I wonder if you could just give some advice to nonprofits that are at that point where they’re saying, I only get my funding from one particular source or a couple of sources. I see it a lot, even in terms of government funding for example, or just working with the same foundations as their funding sources, what advice would you give them to transition out of that and start that diversification process? What should they be looking at or considering?

Carol Baldwin:

They should be looking at partnering with some other organizations, don’t do it alone. Here’s a good example. There’s an organization that’s up in Harlem, we’re big time lawyers and we do stuff like that. But we actually thought of a way to put in a joint proposal. We are bigger, been in business for much longer time, it goes back to what you say. You know, some people don’t want to fund you not-for-profits. I said, you know what, partner with us, we’ve been in business for 50 years. We know how to run million dollar grants. You partner with us, and we put that grant proposal in together. So people need to start thinking that way, because you can diversify by, like I said…I mean, they never did. They would get like $25,000 grants. Now we get million dollar grants, but partnering with us really opened up an avenue that they would not have been able to do.

Carol Baldwin:

So that’s number one, you can partner. And they get different sources that didn’t get because of what they do. And then it just goes full circle. You know, it just…I help them and then we say, Oh my goodness, we can see how…so that’s number one. You really need to look at partnering with other organizations who have different funding sources, because when you can connect things, you can actually diversify your funding sources. The infrastructure, I mean, raising money, when you have a small staff. You know, you get penalized, you know that you’re in the not-for-profit world. You get penalized when the percentage of time spent raising money, right, is a larger percentage. And you get penalized because of that’s the way the not-for-profit, that’s how they count it. So, you know, if you’re the CEO, I mean, I’m fortunate in that I’m a lawyer.

Carol Baldwin:

So most of what I do is programmatic. I’m the CEO, but when I raise money, I’m doing it in a programmatic way. I’m not just out there, you know, you know, just raising money. We do it that way. But if you’re, you know, you’re a CEO of a small, not-for-profit. You get penalized if you say 60% of my time is raising money, because those statistics go out there. So that’s the other thing we got to get the funders to stop using the traditional guidelines for what’s efficient. You know, you can’t spend more than 10% on this. You can’t. I mean, when you think it, you know, that person who wrote that the toolkit for two years, you know, we got a grant, but that was only for 10% of her salary. The rest of the time, she didn’t work for free, you know. And then you have to…she didn’t, they don’t make that much money anyway. You know? They don’t. You know, these are people who are passionate about what they do. So the other thing is, you know, as you’re looking at how you define operational costs, which you know, is the big no no, I think that you got to really try to look at, you know, what you do, programmatically and what you do with what you call operations.

Nic Campbell:

I like that because it really conjures up for me what I talk about a lot, of the ecosystem of actors. So it’s not, when you say don’t go it alone, it’s like, it’s not just you, you’re a part of a whole ecosystem that’s providing resources and benefits to communities in need. So that the more you’re able to collaborate with other organizations that like you said, are receiving different sources of funding. Then the stronger you are. And I’m going to touch on some of the things that funders might want to do differently. And that’s to make sure that they themselves are more collaborative and that they stop using these sort of traditional risk management tools. Even though many times, they want their grantees to show up as innovative organizations but then turning back and relying on the traditional risk management tools that are pretty rigid. So is there other pieces of advice that you would say to funders now in addition to, you know, give more money, but how would you suggest that they show up so that they can support nonprofit sustainability both within the crisis, as well as beyond it?

Carol Baldwin:

So in the crisis, we see all of this emergency funds, right? Emergency funds, emergency funds. And I don’t like that terminology so much because it makes it seem like it’s going to go away and it’s not. So first of all, what I say to them is, I know you want to jump in there and give them money, but don’t be thinking of it just as emergency funds. I like the term transitioning toward the future because emergency has a negative connotation to it. And I think then people go, okay, I did it. And also the not-for-profits sometimes look at it that way. Okay, let me get through this emergency. So that’s number one. I think that, you know…it is an emergency. I get it. But if you’re looking at that from a mindset of risk, it doesn’t put you necessarily on the right trajectory for the future.

Carol Baldwin:

That’s number one, sometimes how you call things really makes a difference in the outcome. First of all, whatever you do, because we’re moving, please, I say to funders, this is not the time not to continue to fund those you do fund while we’re figuring out new ways. I mean, because this is not going to happen overnight. We’ve been talking about this for a long time. I mean, infrastructure and what we need to do, particularly those not-for-profits where, you know, they are run by CEOs of color, we’ve been talking about just like we talk about diversity. I mean, we’ve been talking about diversity and what that means in the decision-making process for how long? In corporate America, it’s no different, it’s no different. And I would hope that to the extent that…I mean, getting on the board of a big, big, big non-for-profit, you have to have money because you know, board members on not-for-profits.

Carol Baldwin:

They donate money. So how many of us of color have been around long enough to have that kind of income to put us into the decision-making process on a big, giant board? I mean, I’ve been giving money myself since I was young, because I was fortunate that I went to a school that, you know, that’s what we did. And I went to a Quaker school. So that’s what we did. But most people, I don’t know how many of my friends I talked to who, particularly minorities, who don’t have a history of giving. And so that is, you know, difficult for you to get on to a big board and diversify the board. If people don’t understand, I mean, I’m on, I’m on a couple of boards. I get money being on that board. And I sit in that boardroom and I’m telling you, it makes a difference because, you know, we were building, you know, an addition to the school. I said, hello, did you guys make sure that the people who are bidding for this, that there’s a diversity factor in there? They’re like, Ooh. That’s cause I was in the room.

Carol Baldwin:

I was in the room. I was on the board. They didn’t think about that. So it does make a difference who’s in that room as they’re thinking about collaborating and understanding that it is not…just like, you know, diversity in general, this is not, you know, like a blame game. It’s not a blame. It’s not a blame game. It’s just a reality that having diverse thoughts in the room make a difference. I’m telling you. My last example was I was talking to someone at a big bank and they were talking about diversity and something or another. And then I said, have you guys ever heard of susu? They’re like, no, what’s that? I said, do you know that my West Indian nanny, who, by the way I paid on the books and she got unemployment, but that’s aside. When it’s time for your son to go to college, they put that money in a susu and they have a 100% repayment rate.

Carol Baldwin:

Okay. And I said to that banker, you’re trying to get to that community, but you didn’t invite anybody in the room who’s in that community. And that’s what happened to you. So I say the same thing, you know, to the funders, you know, invite somebody and they don’t have to be on the board. But instead of the only opportunity for you to get to know organization is through their grant proposal. It’s just like the only way to get a job through a resume doesn’t necessarily work. So I’m just saying they give more opportunity for them to learn about these organizations when they’re not applying for a grant that they can do for free. You know, invite them in, not applying for a grant. Let’s just talk. But the way it is now, the only time you get to talk to your funders, you’re asking for money. That’s something they can do very concretely, invite us in.

Nic Campbell:

I really like that because it’s really talking about the power of voice and the power of being heard and making sure that your voice is part of that funding conversation, even when you’re not talking about funding. But I wonder if you are, like you said, we’re talking about access, right? And if you are a leader of color that is heading up one of these organizations, you know, there was just an article that came out about how much funding is going to organizations that are led by people of color. And one of the issues is access, being able to say, I know this particular person at this philanthropy or this foundation or this grant maker. And so the question is, how do you say, let’s talk, let’s have a conversation outside of funding? How do you even raise your hand and gain that sort of access so that you can be in a room to have a conversation to say, learn more about my organization when normally you’re being invisibilized.

Carol Baldwin:

And I thought about that because, you know, I talk a lot about…you talk about diversity and then getting on boards. Okay. So you know that whole conversation about the…and I’m on I’m on some boards and, and how does it work? It’s the same thing, access, sadly, it really is the networking. It really, really is. I don’t care how many times people tell you that, you know, okay…well no, it’s you’ve gotta get close. You’ve gotta be in the settings. You gotta get out there. You gotta get out there and network. We talk about in the board world, you need to make sure that you know where the person on the nominating and governance committee, you know, where are they going? That’s where you need to be and be invited to. So the same thing here is that I know it’s difficult when you’re running something day to day, but you got to build into your time.

Carol Baldwin:

And I do. Build into your time where you can be to get access. And it has to be part of your job. It has to be part of your job. And it has to be intentional that you get yourself access and we can have help. And the ones who do it well, the same thing about diversity, you know, the ones who do it well, then they can lift up the ones who do do this. Then they can say, this is how we did it. And it will move faster. And you can laud the ones, like in the diverse world, we always rank, you know, corporations that are, you know, diverse. And you go, okay, these are the ones that are doing well. And then the ones who have found a way to do it, share, share, this is how we did it. I’m not the name the big ones, but this is how we did it. This is how we invited them into the room, because that is the biggest problem, number one, that the only time they see us is when we’re asking for money.

Nic Campbell:

And I just think that your response, like to lean back again into what you were saying, just about being collaborative, right? So helping each other and working together. So when we’re looking at the advice that we’ve given to nonprofits and to funders, with all of that in mind, what do you wish we did less of as a sector? And what should we do more of? I know we’ve talked about collaboration, but what do you think we should be stepping away from that we’re doing now? And what should we be leaning more into?

Carol Baldwin:

I think we should be stepping away from feeling that being a non-profit or not for profit, however you want to call yourself, requires you not to have innovative thoughts. You know, sometimes people feel that because you put that title on yourself, that unlike corporations who have shareholders and, you know, we’ve got to look at your profits and all that, get away from feeling like, well, because we’re nonprofit, it doesn’t mean that we have to think in an old fashioned way. That’s just a tax thing. Stop using that as the way you frame yourself. And it really does make a difference because sometimes I’m on calls with other organizations and I go, Hey, Hey, Hey, it’s 45 minutes into the call. You know, you have 10 more minutes, be efficient. You know, because if you were in a board meeting, they wouldn’t let me talk for two hours endlessly, you know, get to the point.

Carol Baldwin:

So stop saying that as a way of thinking, because you’re a nonprofit. And that’s my first thing, stop doing that. Okay. Stop doing that. And the other one, keep doing more collaboration, but that first one’s hard. And I see it. And I see it in action. You know, you put that title. I think it’s like a negative. Think about it. It’s a negative, I’m not for profit. What? We’re really trying to show that you’re philanthropic, but in a way using that terminology can be negative because you get like, Oh, well, yeah, they’re not for profit. They could just do anything, kind of thing, you know? And that’s not it. So I really don’t like that. You know, I don’t call myself, I don’t call us that. We have to for tax reasons, but that’s not what I focus on. I focus on our mission, who we serve, how we get it done, how we account for it, how we action for it. And yeah, by the way, we’re not-for-profit so that you can take advantage, but that’s, by the way. So I know that’s different. I go, and by the way.

Nic Campbell:

Right, right. Well, you talked about you’re fully focused on how you get it done. And I know that the focus of many nonprofits right now is on their programmatic strategy and fundraising, for example. But if we’re talking about being focused on how we get it done, I’d love to hear how Legal Momentum is thinking about building its infrastructure during these times to get it done. And how you’re thinking about building your infrastructure after the pandemic.

Carol Baldwin:

So we’re at a point now where we spent the last couple of years, really, really, really putting depth to all of our programs. We have five program areas and we did that. We’re done with and it’s reflected in our website that’s coming out on Thursday after two years of work. But we did that. And now what we look for, we said, okay, now we need to leverage. You can tell I’m a financial person here. I’m talking about leverage. But anyway, we need to leverage. So what we said was, okay, now let’s get out front. That’s really focused on getting to the legislators as they were making their agenda for the coming year. Okay. This is cool. This is really important. So how we’re doing it is, we said, okay, let’s get in front of the various legislators. And before you set your priorities, think about this, get ahead of it.

Carol Baldwin:

Because what normally happens is something comes out and we get to comment on it, but we’re ahead. So that’s one of our big change is and big push is, getting on the agendas of the various legislative bodies and we’ve gotten invited. So it was great. Say, okay, while you’re figuring out what your priorities are, this is what we think will be helpful in this arena. So that’s number one, and we’ve got invited. And like I said, normally it’s reactive, but we said, okay, we’ve got our programs together that we can leverage if we can get in front of what’s happening. And particularly after the pandemic, where money is going to be an issue, it’s going to be even harder. And so we are at the table as they’re setting in their priorities, this is going to be really, really important when you’re in difficult economic times. And unfortunately, as I said, the other thing in terms of building infrastructure, got to find a way to spend more time fundraising.

Carol Baldwin:

I have to, I do, but I’m going to do it in the way I talked about, I’m going to focus on not just getting 50 grant applications out. Nah, not going to do that. I know that’s what people…if you look at the literature, they go, you have to have ten to one ratio of how many applications you have out. You know, that whole literature. That’s not really…you know, that literature, right. And I know, okay, but I’m not going to be doing that. I’m going to be doing what I just said. I’ve been talking to some other organizations. I said, I think we can collaborate and we can share. And we can get…because some of them know this person, I know that person, and we can share. And I want to spend my time getting ourselves in front of funders in a non-grant way, and I’m going to do that.

Carol Baldwin:

And I started doing it before this happened, but now…we had a board meeting like two hours ago and we were talking about that. And then I said to my board…and that’s the other thing is you got to look at who’s on your own board. I had to look at who was on my board. Right. I didn’t look at who’s on my board. And you know, because it’s historically been around for 50 years, like I said, some of the people, I mean, they’ve been around for a long time. They know people. And they said today, and they did, they said today, everybody think about how you get Carol access to who you know. That’s your job. And that was today. That’s what you need to do. You need to get, because they are, I mean, they’re on the board, which means they contribute money. Your job is to get Carol access.

Nic Campbell:

So even like, thinking about when we’re talking about building infrastructure, looking at your governance, looking at the composition of your board, and looking at the way that your organization is set up so that you can start to think innovatively. And say, we’re going to get, and proactively, we’re going to get in front of legislators, for example, or whoever that target audience is before they even start to do their thinking around issues so that we are top of mind. And to be able to have that kind of those systems in place to say, this is how we’re going to move forward and impact decision-making is extremely important when we’re building out infrastructure. You know, Carol, your insights have been so amazing. I want to ask you a question to help us continue to build knowledge through books and people we should learn from or about to close us out. So what book do you think we should read next? Or what artists do you think we should be paying attention to?

Carol Baldwin:

Does it have to be in this space or just in general?

Nic Campbell:

Just in general.

Carol Baldwin:

Well, when you asked me that question, I was very sad. I was very sad because I’m old school. I read hard books. I don’t read online. I’m sorry to say. I read books. I go to my local bookstore. I buy used books, and then when I’m finished, I give them away. And I’m a speed reader. I’m a speed reader. I really am. I am really, really, really. And I haven’t been traveling so I haven’t gotten a chance to read the book I wanted to read next by Colson Whitehead. You know, ‘The Nickel Boys’. I mean the underground railroad. I don’t know if you’ve got a chance to read it, but I know I should just go on Amazon and order the book, but my I’m so tired of being online. But you have inspired me because I now have it, here it is. I cut it out of the New York Times this weekend and I’m going to paste it into my little office, and I’m going to order this book before the week is out.

Nic Campbell:

Why do you think we should read ‘Nickel Boys’?

Carol Baldwin:

You know, I’m just fascinated about young black boys and particularly what’s going on with Black Lives Matters and look at what just happened last week. I mean, I of course, I have a young son. I mean, he’s not young anymore, you know, but I have a black son. And to see how things start and where it all starts is really, really important if we’re going to get ahead of what continues to be a crisis in the United States, that it is a crisis. You know, that’s why, I mean, and I see it in my own work. Unfortunately, what’s going on now is just shining that, you know, a lot of this racism is still there. It’s still there. It’s still there. It’s just that, you know, it’s coming out in a different way. And so, you know, when I look at the headlines and he is a master storyteller, I just want to get into that. Of course. My other book that I tell everybody to read is ‘Just Mercy’ by Bryan Stevenson. Everybody should read that book. Everybody should read that book. I know they made it into a movie, but everybody should read that book.

Nic Campbell:

Okay. So you’ve got two really outstanding recommendations, ‘Nickel Boys’ by Colson Whitehead, and ‘Just Mercy’ by Bryan Stevenson.

Carol Baldwin:

I mean, in some ways they make you sad because ‘Just Mercy’ is just one of the most…but it’s true. But it just…as sad as it is. But I mean, obviously there’s a positive part, you know, about the work they’re doing, but I still recommend them.

Nic Campbell:

Yeah. We definitely need that knowledge and particularly now. So thank you. And, you know, you shared such knowledge and so many insights that I know leaders can practically use in their own organizations to help them build bravery. So thank you so much for joining us today, Carol.

Carol Baldwin:

Thank you for inviting me. I really, really, I just thank you for getting this out and getting the word out and us helping each other. So thank you so much.

Nic Campbell:

Yeah, of course.

Carol Baldwin:

Bye bye.

-Upbeat Outro Music-

Nic Campbell:

Thank you for listening to this episode of Nonprofit Build Up. To access the show notes, additional resources, and information on how you can work with us, please visit our website at buildupadvisory.com. We invite you to listen again next week as we share another episode about scaling impact by building infrastructure and capacity in the nonprofit sector. Keep building bravely.