Kate Barr is the Executive Director of the Nonprofits Assistance Fund.
She makes finance accessible through the magic of her nontraditional staff. To hire exceptional talent, she has done away with the job description. To Kate, your resume means very little. That you love nonprofits means everything.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY EVAN PALMER & EMMA TRITHART
You must bring your whole self to the office. Not just the professional details that fit on one sheet of paper.
Kate's lessons in hiring a talented staff come from her own career path.
This is her story.
She thought she'd work at the bank for two years. Finish her business degree. Go back to working in arts administration. BUT Dave talked her out of it. At 25 years old, she would begin a career in banking.
KATE'S FIRST LESSON
WHEN IT COMES TO HIRING:
Technical skills can be taught and learned.
See people's capacity to learn.
"Every time I see a job description that says must know QuickBooks or must know Raiser's Edge, my response is, 'Huh? Why would you ever need that?' When I hire, I start out with must be smart and resourceful. I want someone with whom others want to work."
KATE'S SECOND LESSON
EMBRACE EMPATHY
"In banking, my male colleagues exuded a false confidence and certainty. Such as, 'That's no good. That's a bad deal. This is what will work.' There's a bravado that's required. There's a certainty with which I don't agree. Empathy gives you access to being open to the fact that it might not work out this way, but that we'll figure it out anyway."
KATE'S THIRD LESSON
Always have another question.
"Ask the same thing in multiple ways. I'm often known to say, "You know, I just have one more question. When I interview people I try and figure out what activities they do. Not necessarily work experience, but all of the surrounding stuff. Skills come from things other than jobs or taking classes."
One thing that isn't required at NAF is lending experience. It's completely unnecessary. If you want to work at NAF, you should probably know what it's like to be a client. And to be a client with financial troubles. To work at NAF, a love for nonprofits is a MUST. Without it, new hires can't stick it out. You have to care about the success of every single client. Whether it's a $3 million social service agency or a $65,000 start-up nonprofit. Empathy, people skills, and financial smarts matter, but those come in all shapes and size. Technical skills can be taught.
Here are just a few…
Lu Hang: Loan Officer/Financial Specialist
First a banker and then the executive director of MN Hmong Chamber of Commerce, he understands what it is like to help a nonprofit.
Stephanie Jacobs: Program Director
Energetic and adaptable, she loves the sector. With a nonfinancial background, she better serves NAF clients, because she can empathize with that audience.
Curt Klotz: Finance Director
Sure he is a qualified accountant, but he also loves nonprofits and brings a unique charisma to finance training that combats fear of finance.
Allison Wagstrom: Loan Officer/Financial Specialist
Not only does she have a past in mortgage banking, she is incredibly hardworking. If she has a free hour she'll read a finance text box.
Related Opportunities
Reflections On Being Mentored
Three nonprofit stars discuss their relationship with Kate Barr
For nearly 15 years, Kate Barr has made it her mission to invest in nonprofits. As the executive director of the Nonprofits Assistance Fund, her organization has become one of the premier resources to provide training, strategic financial consulting, and loans to nonprofits groups in Minnesota. But her commitment to support and mentorship in the community doesn't stop there. Kate knows the importance of having a good mentor guide you as your career develops (read more about how Dave Cleveland impacted her journey in our recent feature), and she has since stepped up to pay it forward and support many other local sector leaders in their journeys.
Dana Nelson, DeAnna Cummings, and Laura Zabel – all executive directors at their respective organizations – describe what's unique about the way Kate mentors, and share a personal story of a time Kate mentored them.
Dana Nelson
Executive director (aka cheerleader in chief) of GiveMN
Just a month after taking the reins at GiveMN in 2009, Dana drove the success of the largest single-day online nonprofit fundraising campaign in history. Five years later and she hasn't looked back.
I asked Kate to be my mentor about two years ago. I was in the middle of a strategic planning process, and was losing my patience and my mind. Kate had many words of wisdom about planning, poked some fun at the process, and made me laugh really hard. Later that year after the GiveMN website had "significant technology issues" on Give to the Max Day, she sent our team green rubber balls for our "remarkable capacity to bounce back." She reminded me (in a matching green card, nonetheless) that resilience is a key attribute of success. I could say so much about Kate and her mentoring style, but most importantly, Kate is always, always, always there for me.
DeAnna Cummings
Executive director at Juxtaposition Arts
For 20 years DeAnna worked to build an arts organization to channel the exuberance and creativity of North Minneapolis youth into positive neighborhood contributions. The President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities recognized her program as one of the 50 best out-of-school arts programs in the country.
Kate has a really wonderful way of meeting people where they are and building their sense of confidence to take the next step. In Kate's field of finance and financial leadership, that's critical, because it's an area that many executive directors feel a great deal of insecurity about. I work with lots of subject matter experts, and some consultants will make you feel insecure about what you know and where you're at, and present themselves as being much more knowledgeable than you are. It creates additional insecurity on behalf of the executive director or team they're working with, and can create a situation where you feel this person knows what's best for me and my organization. Kate always reminds me that I know what's best and I'm the expert about Juxtaposition Arts. I'm consulting with people who can add to my knowledge base, but ultimately I know best. Where you are right now and what you know right now is perfect, and you should feel proud of that.
As for mentorship, there have been hundreds of times over the years. But in terms of a specific story, I would point to our early interactions when Juxtaposition was seeking a loan from NAF to help us do some rehab work and purchase some buildings. I never had any interactions with commercial lenders, and didn't really know a whole lot about lending and lending relationships from a commercial or business perspective. I called Kate. She said we really needed to have a handle on cash flow. She gave me a template to create a yearlong cash flow projection and then walked me through the process of how to use it. We created our first 12-month cash flow projection with her help and support. That quickly became the most important financial management and financial leadership tool in our toolkit. Kate introduced me to the idea of cash flow management, and then provided tools I could use to understand it and utilize it at JXTA.
Laura Zabel
Executive director of Springboard for the Arts
After nearly a decade at Springboard, Laura has catapulted the organization into the national spotlight while increasing the balance sheet from $200K to $2.5 million, and impacting about 12,000 artists annually.
Kate is warm and wonderful, and really committed to helping people learn; but she's also tough and she doesn't suffer fools – or foolish behavior. Her directness is one of the best things about her. It means that if she invests her time in you, it really means something. If you earn her respect, that's something to be really proud of.
I must have called Kate a thousand times my first year at Springboard with questions such as, 'What about the money left over at the end of the year? Where does it go?! Does it disappear?!' She never made me feel dumb for asking basic questions. She always took the time to explain the 'why,' as well as the 'how' and the 'what.' I've learned so much from Kate – about leadership, about how the financials are the mission, and about how to diplomatically push people past the talking to the doing. I also learned that at the end of the year the 'leftover' money lives in a magical and beautiful land called 'Reserve Funds.'
Illustration By Evan Palmer
Nominations open for Minnesota Business magazine 100 Best Companies
VIA Tamara Prato
Want to lure top talent? It helps to have an excellent workplace that wins recognition. That's why each year companies from across the state submit nominations for the 100 Best Companies to Work For Awards by Minnesota Business magazine. Time after time, they help the winners attract those key employees who make all the difference.
So don't wait: Nominate your company today. Make the list and you'll make game-changers take notice.
To nominate a deserving company, click here and complete the webform. Employee surveys will be sent out in early January and the top 100 companies will be notified in February.
Those on the list will be honored during an awards ceremony in June. If you have questions about the process, contact Mimi Falkman.
When:June 4, 2015 – 6:00pm
Where:The Depot Renaissance Minneapolis Hotel
Address:225 South Third Avenue Minneapolis, MN 55401
Hashtag:#mnbiz100best
Posted by Tamara Prato on December 2, 2014
The Responsibility To Mentor
Three nonprofit stars discuss their thoughts on mentorship
Kate Barr knows a thing or two about giving advice. As the executive director of the Nonprofits Assistance Fund, she's been helping organizations get their finances in line for nearly 15 years. But along the way she's also made it a point to connect with the people behind the companies and nonprofits in the Twin Cities.Dana Nelson, DeAnna Cummings, and Laura Zabel are three of those leaders.
We asked each executive director to share their perspective on the responsibility they have to mentor others, and how they actively put that into practice.
Just a month after taking the reins at GiveMN in 2009, Dana drove the success of the largest single-day online nonprofit fundraising campaign in history. Five years later, she hasn't looked back.
The thing that bothers me about mentoring is the assumption that one person has more to offer than the other. I have never found that to be true. If I am "mentoring" someone, I always learn something from them and benefit from the relationship. I have a lot of coffee meetings (I heart espresso!), and I love meeting people who reach out because they are curious about nonprofits, or want to learn more about my work and the seemingly strange decisions I have made. Yes, it is a responsibility, but it is also an honor to have those conversations. I leave a bit buzzed from the caffeine and the inspiration of meeting someone you don't know and becoming friends. It is the magic of humanity.
I've been doing the work I do as the executive director for nearly 20 years. Starting last year, it dawned on me — I have a body of work, experiences, and a knowledge base. I'm not necessarily the person with the same energy I had in my early 20s to be doing, starting, and creating things from the ground up. I realized I'm at a point in my professional development where my role is really to share what I know with the next generation of professionals who are growing, developing, and following in the path that we've laid in the ecosystem of arts, community development, youth development, and social justice work. I made a conscious decision that it's important for me to mentor others one-on-one, in a personal relationship, but also in terms of growing the field. I've been on panels and engaged in more external conversations with other people about the work I do at JXTA and what I've learned over time.
I'm at a point where it's important for me to be externally focused as much as it's important for me to be internally focused.
It's important to be very targeted in how I'm engaging and sharing the base of knowledge I've accumulated. Accepting the initiation to join the board at the Bush Foundation is part of that work. I also have individuals I meet with on a regular basis, in a more formal mentor-mentee relationship. There's also a half dozen to a dozen people I meet with periodically — not in a formal kind of way, but people I get together with on occasion who are interested in picking my brain and sharing best practices. It's like with Kate Barr, I never said, 'Hey Kate, would you be my mentor?' Nor did Kate ever say, 'Hey DeAnna, I want to mentor you.' It's a relationship that developed over time through sustained interaction, conversation, and getting together on a regular basis. I consider her to be one of my mentors and she considers me to be someone she mentors, but it was never a formal agreement or conversation.
The mentor relationship developed through a real relationship.
Part of what I've learned from Kate is that we all have a responsibility to help each other, to show up and share what we know, to ask hard questions, and to push the work forward together. I guess I don't really think about this as mentorship, but more about building real, authentic relationships with colleagues and friends.
I actively serve as a mentor by helping, prodding, and pushing others in a way that feels reciprocal and grounded in the work we want to accomplish and the change we want to make in the world. Kate never says, 'Hello, I am your MENTOR now!' She just says, 'Hello, let's get to work. Let me help.' That's the kind of colleague I aspire to be.
HR Senior Generalist
Playworks
VIA Mel
About the Organization:
At Playworks we believe in the power of play to bring out the best in every kid.
Playworks is a national nonprofit organization that improves school climate, reduces bullying and increases student engagement in school through play and physical activity. Through both our training programs and our on-site direct service, Playworks teaches children to resolve their own conflicts that arise at recess and carry over to the classroom, restoring valuable teaching and learning time. We help transform recess into a safe, fun and inclusive time that gets students active and engaged so they can return to the classroom focused and ready to learn. For more information, please visit www.playworks.org.
About the Position:
Playworks is looking for an experienced Senior HR Generalist to manage the day-to-day operation of Human Resources department. In this position you will participate in a wide range of tasks and projects in all disciplines of HR especially onboarding and offboarding, risk management and compliance, performance management, training and development, benefits and compensation and HRIS system. You will collaborate closely with the HR Director providing strategic management and expertise in several specific HR discipline areas.
From the national headquarters office in Oakland, our team supports hundreds of committed and playful staff providing direct service and training to students and communities in 23 regions across the country. This is a great opportunity for a dynamic and self-motivated individual interested in playing a key role in a growing HR team for a fast-paced, respectful, fun and playful organization.
Responsibilities include but are not limited to:
Recommend, design and lead implementation of HR systems, processes and strategies.
Identifying, interpreting and facilitating policies and procedures with special attention to continuity of company values and to compliance and risk management issues
Design and implement training and development needs
Manage all aspects of benefits programs including design, administration and communication of benefits
Prepare compensation analyses and manage compensation procedures
Oversee maintenance of records and HR analytic reports development and preparation
Serve as a primary employee relations contact for all staff and as a HR business partner to managers, providing consultation, identifying solutions and implementing action on wide range of talent issues including coaching and counseling, investigations, document preparation, etc. for hiring, termination, discipline and performance improvement
Support performance management process including ensuring effective processes and providing guidance and coaching to managers and staff
Participate in full-cycle recruiting efforts
Supervise HR team members
Minimum of 10 years in dedicated HR roles
BA/BS required with PHR or SPHR highly desirable.
Solid broad knowledge of employment law and HR practice with particular expertise and deep experience in training, benefits and compensation, compliance, performance management and/or employee relations
Excellent computer skills with extensive experience with HR management and information systems and advanced knowledge of Microsoft Office suite
Demonstrated experience in implementing systems, managing projects through successful implementation and recommending and designing talent-related policies/procedures
Superb verbal, written and interpersonal communication skills
Strategic mindset and analytic approach with willingness to be hands-on and assume tactical job duties.
Strong customer service orientation and professional, collaborative approach.
Reputation for integrity, good judgment and dedicated work ethic with desire for ownership of process and product success
Knowledge and experience working in non-profit organizations and organizations serving vulnerable and youth populations preferred
Willingness to PLAY and sensitivity to community we serve
Competitive nonprofit salary
Employer-paid health coverage
Access to employee-funded pre-tax health and child care spending accounts
Paid vacation, sick and holiday leave
Please no phone calls
Position will remain open until filled
Playworks employees please visit the HR Google site to submit your resume and cover letter
As an equal opportunity program, Playworks encourages applications from all individuals regardless of age, gender, race, ethnicity, or physical ability, and evaluates all candidates on a merit basis.
Posted by Mel on December 11, 2014
Evan is an illustrator and cartoonist living in Minneapolis, MN. By day Evan is a web and animation producer at PUNY while by night he is a freelance illustrator, storyboard and concept artist, and self publishes his own comics about robots, wizards, and cooking. He has worked on such titles as Yo Gabba Gabba!, Scott Pilgrim, Vertigo's Fables and for clients such as Cartoon Network and BOOM! Studios.
Emma Trithart
Emma grew up in Michigan, only moving to pursue a degree in Illustration from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. After many wonderful years in Minnesota, in 2014 she waved goodbye to the snow and drove across the country to Los Angeles, where she lives today. Her favorite things in life are blankets, drawing flowers, drinking coffee and eating good cheese on a cracker with some pepper jelly. Previous clients include Anthology, BUST magazine, and Caribou Coffee.
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