By Kim Glenn, President.
As January brings us into 2023, many of us are thinking about our New Year’s resolutions. We make lists for ourselves, announce our intentions to others, and think purposefully about how we will live into them. It’s the time of year when we are actively encouraged to grow in different ways.
What if we could approach every day with the same enthusiasm of turning the page and starting anew?
In November 2022, our moss+ross team engaged an outside consultant to help our team think more creatively and see problems as incredible opportunities to try new things. These concepts are part of our core values, and as a team, we focus every day on being open to new ideas, taking risks with identifying solutions, and remaining nimble with the ways we support our clients.
This doesn’t mean we stop planning or seeking consensus for big decisions – those are best practices that are critical to the success of any organization. It does mean looking at problems differently and capitalizing on them as opportunities. During COVID, we saw some of our nonprofit partners shut their doors, and we saw others embrace the opportunity to deliver their services in new and different ways. Those that took a risk saw the reward of living into their missions with novel approaches that endure today.
moss+ross is continually reimagining and rethinking how we can live into our mission, and we want to keep thinking creatively about how we can best support our clients:
- In 2018, we set in motion a plan to recruit, screen, and train a pool of specialized fundraising professionals and launch our Interim Solutions division in response to recurring client needs. We took a risk in extending our business model, and the reward has been that in five years, we have placed more than 100 interim leaders who provide more than 800 hours of interim support each month to organizations throughout the Triangle and beyond. In the process, we have expanded the moss+ross talent pool to include 200+ interim Chief Executive Officers and Executive Directors, Chief Fundraising Officers, Development Directors, Database Specialists, Human Resource Specialists, and Campaign Coordinators.
- In 2022, in response to the Great Resignation, we had an outpouring of requests for our Executive Search services and we invested in our search business, adopting a new database and streamlining our process to help us identify the best candidates with the skills our clients are seeking. We took a risk, and the reward is that we placed 14 new CEOs and Chief Development Officers in key organizations in our area in 2022: Habitat for Humanity of Wake County, Ronald McDonald House Charities of the Triangle, Camp Corral, NC Aquarium Society, Marbles Kids Museum, InterAct, and United Way of North Carolina, among others.
- In 2023, we are listening to what our clients need most and are ready to take the risks to meet their needs. Not every risk we take will be rewarded – some won’t work, and some will teach us new things, but we feel the rewards are worth it to serve you, our clients.
What risks will you take this year to live into your mission?
