There’s Money in the Budget

Nora kept a folder in the bottom drawer of her desk, under files nobody had reviewed in years, a few dust bunnies, and a stale Snickers bar.  Inside was a flyer for a two-day workshop on supervising teams, a brochure for a nonprofit management certificate, and a printout for a webinar series called “Hard Conversations, But We Gotta Have Them.” She kept it hidden like a secret she wasn’t supposed to have.

Nora was the program manager at a local food bank. The programs served after-school snacks and hot lunches to 120 kids, and every Thursday there was a community dinner in the basement of the event center.  She’d started as a volunteer. She came early to wipe down tables and straighten chairs, so the room looked nice before the kids ran in. Eventually, she ran the Thursday dinners. Then Gloria, the old program manager, moved to Arizona to be near her grandkids, and the board wanted to know who knew things.

Nora knew things. She knew which kids had allergies and who couldn’t eat food that had touched other food. She knew which volunteers could calm a crying child and which parents would be late for pickup. When Will, the Executive Director, asked if she wanted to run the programs, she said yes.

She’d never led people or managed a team. Will hadn’t thought of asking her if she could manage people and the board approved the promotion without a second thought.

Now she supervised seven staff and about thirty volunteers. She could back a 15-passenger van into a space the size of a paper towel. She could feed 100 people on a budget that the average family spends on groceries each week. What she could not do was tell Tomas, her best driver, that he had been late three Thursdays in a row and he needed to show up to work on time.

She practiced the conversation in the car on her way to work.  She rehearsed on her daily walks around the neighborhood.  She thought about what she would say while she stood in line at the post office. In practice, she was firm and fair.  In her head, Tomas nodded seriously at everything she said. In real life, Tomas walked in at 3:25 for a 3:00 shift wearing an orange jacket, and what came out of Nora’s mouth was, “Hey, Tomas, that’s a great jacket.”

“Thanks,” he said.  “It’s perfect for this weather.”

That night, after she got home and put her feet up, she took out the folder from her bag and spread the papers across the kitchen table while her husband watched TV in the other room. The supervising workshop was $1,400 with the hotel stay.

She opened her calculator. Lunches cost about $3.50 each, so $1,400 was roughly 400 lunches. Thursday dinners ran about $7 a plate, so that was 200 plates of the chef’s famous chicken and rice he made in a roaster the size of a bathtub and brought in half the neighborhood. If she went to the workshop, those were lunches kids wouldn’t get and neighbors who wouldn’t eat together to talk about city council. All of it gone so she could sit in a hotel conference room and learn to say, “I’ve noticed a pattern in your attendance.”

How was that supposed to help her feed the community?

She gathered the papers into a neat stack, put them back in the folder, and put the folder back in her purse, out of sight and out of mind. She decided she wouldn’t ask Will for the money to attend the conference and she could continue feeding the community.

She had seen what happened when someone asked for training at work. In the spring, Lena, the volunteer coordinator, mentioned a regional conference to Will.  He rubbed his forehead and said, “Let’s see where we stand after the audit.” The audit came and went, they reviewed the results, but nobody talked about Lena’s training again. Now Lena said “the audit” the way other people talk about paying taxes.

Will took a lot on for the food bank. He wrote the grants, signed payroll, took calls from the board chair at all hours of the night, met with donors, and fixed the walk-in cooler when it broke down. He wore a light grey cardigan to work every day.  The one with the hole in the elbow that seemed to grow with every budget meeting.  His office light was on when she left every day and still on when she drove past at 8:00pm on her way to the grocery store. When he remembered to eat, he ate granola bars standing over the kitchen sink before rushing off to his next meeting.

Someone doesn’t just walk into that office and say, “Hi, Will. Can I have $1,400 and take Thursday off so I can feel better about myself?”. 

Besides, the money wasn’t hers to think about. The largest grant covered food and delivery.  Another donor had given enough money to cover an after-school program for the kids.  The food bank had also received a sizable donation to fund the roof repair.  And at the last donor event a program officer said, “We just love to see lean overhead.” Training was overhead. Everybody knew that. It seemed like there was never enough budget for overhead. 

Then there was staff coverage. Who would run things on Thursday if Nora was at a conference? Chef was a retired postal worker who set out salt shakers one at a time as if each one were a precious gem. Lena was already working to get the volunteers to clean the kitchen; she wouldn’t have time to learn Nora’s job.  Anyway, Nora would spend the whole conference worrying about what was happening back at the center.  She shouldn’t go.  And the folder stayed in the drawer.

Until the day Tomas was late again, and a mom called saying she hadn’t seen the driver, yet, and was wondering where her food was.  It was getting late and she needed to start dinner. Nora found Tomas by the loading dock. She had a plan for what to say, she’d practiced it dozens of times.  This time, though, it left her head immediately.

What she said was something like this: “Tomas, you’re a great employee, and the parents really like you. And I know routes can be weird. And I know the van isn’t very reliable. And I appreciate you being here. I mean, it’s fine, but it’s not fine.”  Tomas stared at her. He had no idea what she meant, so he said he’d try to do better.

Nora went back to her office, shut the door, sat with both hands flat on her desk and took a deep breath.

A little later, Will knocked, holding a mug of coffee that had been cold since morning. “Tomas stopped by,” he said. “He wasn’t sure what you were telling him earlier. At one point he thought you might be quitting.”

“I’m not quitting.”

“He wanted to know if he was in trouble. I told him I didn’t know, but I’d find out.”

Nora put her face in her hands. “Will, I’m bad at this.”

Will thought for a moment and finally said, “Nobody ever taught you how to manage people,” he said.

He sat down in the squeaky chair across from her desk. He looked tired under the dim office light and the hole in his elbow was bigger than she’d thought.

“I keep thinking about Lena and that conference,” he said. “And me saying we’d see after the audit. We didn’t look at it after the audit.  The last workshop I attended was six years ago. I think it was about fire extinguishers.” He turned his mug around in his hands. “I tell myself if someone needed something, they’d say so. I don’t think that’s true, is it?”

Nora didn’t answer. In the kitchen, the dishwasher started its drain cycle and an old space heater hummed.

After a long pause, Will said, “So I’m asking. What would help?”

She looked at him for a minute. Then she opened the bottom drawer, took out the folder, and set it on her desk. She handed him the first page, the one about the management workshop, and turned it around so he could see the price. She watched him find it. His eyebrows went up.

“Okay,” he said. He read it again. “I have no idea where that money is. But give me a week.”

“Can Lena corral the kids while you’re away?” he asked.

“She already offered.”

“And Thursday dinner?”

“Chef knows how to do everything,” Nora said. “He just puts out the salt slowly.”

Will laughed, which surprised them both. He pulled out a pen and wrote the workshop dates in the notebook he carried everywhere, looked at his notebook, scribbled out the dates, and wrote them on Nora’s wall calendar instead.

Outside, someone started the van. It coughed twice before it caught.

Nora left the file on her desk, it wasn’t going back in the drawer.  She smiled to herself, turned off the light, and went home.  A weight lifted from her shoulders.

If you’re Will

If you’re an executive director who sees some of yourself in Will and you have a Nora on your team, here are a few things to try:

Ask specific questions. “Do you need anything?” will get you “I’m good.”

Instead, ask:

• How can I support you?

• What is one skill you’d like to build over the next six months?

• What do you need to be successful here?

Tell them what money is available. Most staff assume the answer is no because nobody has said otherwise. Leaders talk about budgets all the time, but they rarely say plainly what’s there for training. If there’s money, say so. If there isn’t, say that too.

Look at your budget again. You may have funds you haven’t thought of using for this.

Make training part of the job. When it feels like a perk, people feel bad asking for it.

Offer lower-cost options. Local workshops, peer groups with program managers from nearby nonprofits, online training, or a mentor can all work.

Solve coverage together. Ask the person what would need to be handled while they’re out and plan it with them.

Go to training yourself. Staff notices what you do. Lead by example.