What it is
H.E.E.A.L. Santa Barbara was a new nonprofit that helped people through grief and loss with exercise and the arts, as an alternative to clinical talk therapy.
Jesse Fowler held the president's seat as a volunteer while running Tellus Design and Build. The job was fundraising, governance and partnerships with schools and care providers.
What Common Ground did
- Saw that grieving families rarely find programs on their own. A school counselor or a hospice coordinator hands them one, in a short conversation at a full desk, and that person was the real customer.
- Built the outreach around what a referral costs the person giving it: lead with the three facts a counselor can repeat without checking anything, that the program was free, local and had no waitlist, and put the board, the model and the funders behind the yes.
- Treated grants, donor relationships and referral outreach as one record, so the same governance and funding story served a grant committee and a school, and fundraising stopped being a separate track from outreach.
- Took the president off the Accountable line where a partner would look. The board took accountability for financial reporting and public communications, a treasurer or finance lead took responsibility for the reporting, and larger grants went to board sign-off, so the person raising the money was not the only check on it.
- Spent volunteer hours on individual counselors and coordinators rather than districts or hospital systems, and measured the second referral from the same person, not the first.
Results
- Four years and four months in the seat, through organizational growth, fundraising expansion and stronger board governance.
- A public recommendation of the board's leadership in December 2010, from someone who sat in on board meetings that first year.
- The easy-yes test any service that depends on a gatekeeper can reuse: name who actually says yes, write down what a yes costs them, put the facts that need no checking first, put the credibility behind it, and measure the second referral.
External links
- Public data room: H.E.E.A.L. Santa Barbara data room
Stories from this work
Design the outreach for the adult who refersWhen I was volunteer president of H.E.E.A.L., the board assumed a good program finds its own families.Insider truth
Origin: H.E.E.A.L. Santa BarbaraFor five years I was president of a small Santa Barbara nonprofit called H.E.E.A.L.Teaching moment
At a glance
| Project type | Governance and referral development |
|---|---|
| Industry | Nonprofit |
| Seat | President (volunteer board seat) |
| Ran through | H.E.E.A.L. Santa Barbara, a volunteer board seat |
| Dates | September 2010 to January 2015 |
| Duration | Four years and four months |
| Location | Santa Barbara, California |
| Public data room | H.E.E.A.L. Santa Barbara data room |
| Related pages | Jesse Fowler |
| Credit | Created by Common Ground |