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Raising Mental Health Awareness

By Kate Hearne, Vice President, Corporate Services. Mental Health Awareness month acknowledges the importance of mental health and reducing the stigma of mental illness. moss+ross is proud to support the following clients whose nonprofit missions are dedicated to mental health support. Camp Corral offers summer camp for children of wounded or fallen military personnel. At camp, children have the opportunity to connect with peers and non-parent role models - social connections that are critical to mental health. Parents of campers report positive impact on their child’s mental health and noticeable improvement in their child’s confidence. moss+ross has provided strategic and fundraising planning, interim staffing, and led executive searches for a new CDO and CEO. Durham Public Schools Foundation is teaming up with Duke Health and Durham Public Schools to launch the WHOLE Schools Movement - a multi-year [...]

Executive Search: Toward a More Inclusive Process

By Emily Bruce, Senior Associate A successful search for your next nonprofit Chief Executive Officer, Executive Director, or development professional is a meticulous process with inevitable twists and turns. moss+ross guides search committees and nonprofit leaders based on our experience conducting more than 90 searches since 2010. As a firm, we have a core value to embrace diversity and inclusion through our hands-on work with community partners and clients. In our search work we strive to use an inclusive lens in every step of our process. For a typical search we: Commit to an inclusive process: Working with clients to ensure their search committees include members with diverse backgrounds and perspectives and are committed to an inclusive process Seek multiple viewpoints: Conducting constituent interviews to understand multiple viewpoints of what the organization needs and what essential skills are needed for [...]

Prioritizing Pay Equity

By Carolyn Rhodes, Senior Associate. Prioritizing pay equity may seem like an additional task for nonprofit leaders and board members to tackle, but it can have significant benefits for both the organization and society. By promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion, nonprofit leaders can create a positive impact on their employees, stakeholders, and the community they serve. Pay equity ensures that all employees are compensated fairly and equally, regardless of their position within the organization, gender, race, age, or ethnicity. Prioritizing pay equity can foster a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace, which can attract and retain talent, improve employee morale, and advance the organization's mission. Additionally, pay equity is a critical component of social justice, promoting equality and fairness in society. To ensure pay equity, nonprofit leaders and board members can take the following steps: Establish clear and [...]

Keep Doing The Work.

By moss+ross Team. moss+ross approaches each client engagement as an opportunity to ask: are we doing the work that recognizes diversity and builds inclusivity and equity? What does this look like in our day-to-day work, in our strategic visioning, and in our reflections on current events as well as history? We only get better as we work together – and keep doing the work. Our clients are doing the work, day in and day out. The moss+ross team works alongside our clients, learning from one another, guiding strategy based on our experiences, and understanding what it means to be accountable. We support our clients as they do the work, including these examples: Many nonprofits are lifting up Black History in ways that are authentic to their missions, including the Durham Sports Commission and UNC Athletics which are [...]

Risk and Reward: Approaching the New Year

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. [...]

Transitions Create Opportunities

By Lizzy Mottern, VP of Talent. Transitions are part of every organization’s life cycle. The good news is they are incredible opportunities to rethink, adjust, and become even stronger. We join clients in times of transition in multiple ways: providing interim contractors through m+r interim solutions, helping boards find their next great leader through our Executive Search services, and providing counsel during succession planning, assessments, and strategic planning work. Specific to staffing needs, moss+ross has provided temporary placements since our founding in 2009, and we formalized this service as our m+r interim solutions division in 2018. Our contractor database has a strong pool of 200+ highly-qualified, local nonprofit professionals who understand the Triangle and take great pride in adding value to the important work of nonprofits. These hand-picked contractors work side-by-side with clients, offering their professional experience [...]

It’s Year-End: Pick up the Phone and Smile!

By Mary Moss, Founding Partner. Are you worried that you have not reached your year-end goals, that you have not talked to the people you thought you should, and that no one is returning your emails? It’s not too late. Pick up the Phone and Smile! In front of you, have the information you need: (1) their names and family names; (2) past giving amounts and patterns of what they usually support; (3) materials that will give you language about the impact of their gift and other details, and (4) how much you are going to ask for. If they have been a past supporter, thank them at least twice during your call. If they have not, make sure they know the impact their gift will have and how they will be recognized, if that’s important to them. Wish [...]

Living Lived Experiences

By Carolyn Rhodes, Senior Associate. As a Black woman gaining momentum in the non-profit sector, I used to begin every new interaction with my lived/living experiences. It was something I felt like I had to do in order to be connected to mission-driven work. I have grown to understand that my lived/living experiences do not have to be my identity and only need to be shared as I choose to disclose them. My lived/living experiences can help organizations see or do things differently in the communities they serve, but it is my skills and experiences that will help make long-lasting change in the organization. I believe you need both. And I recently sat down with some amazing leaders who felt the same way. At the North Carolina Center for Nonprofits Conference earlier this month, my colleague Jeanne [...]

Next Gen Board: Recruiting for a New Day

By Susan Ross, Founding Partner. If your Board nominees look like mirror images of your current board, perhaps it’s time to try a new approach. Most of our nonprofit clients are actively seeking ways to embrace Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging. A stated commitment to DEIB is a good step, but it needs to be followed by actions and outcomes. Nonprofit leaders need board members to be their trusted advisors on strategic questions. If your whole board has the same perspective or the same skillset, you won’t get the best guidance. Board members play important roles as ambassadors and outside eyes, for which you need multiple networks represented. Our clients tell us that they know their boards need new blood, but they don’t know how to find new people. Great candidates are all around us, but it [...]

Gettin’ Lucky: Not a wise strategy for securing major gifts

By Mary Moss, Founding Partner. In my experience, there is not much luck in major gifts work. I believe that you make your own luck. I have been in this business for four decades, as staff and consultant, and I have witnessed comments such as: “Wow, they just got lucky with that big gift. I work with that same donor and didn’t get that kind of gift,” or “That gift just came out of the clear blue” or “That donor had no history with that organization. Wonder why they left their estate there?” In most instances of “gettin’ lucky,” there is a solid connection with the donor and strategy behind the gift. I have had a handful of happy occasions where “true luck” happened, and have always wished for more (don't we all?). Nothing replaces a compelling [...]

2022-11-06T09:45:20-05:00September 20th, 2022|All Posts, From The Partners, Fundraising Counsel|
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