Transcript:
This podcast was transcribed through a third-party application. Please disregard any misrepresentations.
Intro:
Welcome to Civic Warriors, brought to you by Withum. On this podcast, we bring the conversation to you, sharing, engaging stories that motivate and build consensus in the nonprofit community. This podcast is about the innovators, the leaders on the frontline of adversity, guiding lights in the nonprofit industry affecting change. And through their stories, we can all join forces to become civic warriors.
Brad Caruso:
Hey, warriors. Welcome to today’s episode of Civic Warriors. Brought to you by Withum, I’m your host, Brad Caruso, leader of Withum’s not-for-profit practice. On today’s episode, we welcome Elizabeth Yntema, president and founder of Dance Data Project. DDP promotes gender equity in the dance industry, including but not limited to ballet companies by providing a metrics based analysis through their research and programming resources and advocacy, DDP showcases and uplifts women throughout the dance industry and does so much more. And we’re so excited to have Elizabeth on today, as well as to talk a little bit more about how data integrates in with their advocacy work and other work that they do. So, uh, really excited to have you and welcome to the show, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Yntema:
Thank you so much, Brad. Liza’s fine, by the way. Um, and I’m a huge fan of Withum. Um, the more I learn about y’all, the more impressed I am.
Brad Caruso:
Love it. Love it. Well, thank you Liza. And, and, and I guess to start, why don’t we talk a little bit about your background for pioneering this organization and being the founder and bringing it to what it is today. You know, can you talk about the mission and the why behind it?
Elizabeth Yntema:
Sure, absolutely. Probably most of the entrepreneurs that you have on are like, yes, I’ve wanted to do this since I was five years old. Yes, I absolutely had a plan. Um, and yes, I’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur and I would, uh, in our case, in my case, I am the ultimate reluctant entrepreneur. As we all know, there are too many not-for-profits in the United States. A decent estimate by Crane Chicago business in 2015 said one third of the not-for-profit should go away. And that’s because they’re cannibalizing each other. And it means that as they staff up, they’re providing less direct service. So I spent probably four or five years trying as hard as I possibly could not to do dance Data project. I looked and looked for organizations that were doing something similar within and without the dance industry. Um, I spent a year drafting a plan and kept asking myself, do I actually really wanna do this?
Elizabeth Yntema:
I even sat in church one day, Brad, and I was looking up, uh, sort of waiting for God to open up the heavens and say, I have somebody better. I have somebody smarter. I have somebody who is an auditor or an expert in financial, uh, transactions and who has spent, you know, 20 years looking at the IRS websites. Um, and instead what came back was a beam of sunshine. It was sort of like, Nope, kid, you’re it. So, um, yeah. Uh, starting in about 2013, 2014, I was sitting in the Auditorium theater in Chicago. And if anybody has ever been to something similar, it is one of these great temples of culture that they built in the 1880s to the 1920s, particularly in the Midwest, uh, Midwest trying to say, yeah, we’re as good as New York, et cetera. It seats about, well, almost 4,000 people.
Elizabeth Yntema:
Um, so when they do aida, it’s not one elephant going across the stage. It’s 3. And I had one of those literally coupe de froude lightning bolt moments where I sort of sat up and looked around. I literally stood up and all the way up to like the gods, the like third balcony filled with women. And about my estimate was 70% of the audience was women. Then I looked at the book pre Covid. It was this gorgeous, big, thick, sort of glossy thing that theaters used to produce, and almost all the donors were women, even if it was a couple. Uh, for the most part, it was clearly the wife who was leading the charge on this. And I thought to myself, hang on a minute. Um, I’ve been coming to this theater now for 15, 20 years. Admittedly, I didn’t go to every performance. I have never seen a female choreographer.
Elizabeth Yntema:
I’ve never seen, um, a classical company run by a woman. As a matter of fact, I don’t think I’ve even seen a set costume or lighting designer credited that is female. What’s up with that? And so I started asking questions and the responses got more and more hysterical, except it’s not funny. And so I sat at my kitchen table and I started doing research and kept looking for facts. And I found one woman who’d done one year’s worth. But what I did notice is that there would be outrage and a lot of press coverage, um, mostly in the arts page, and then it would fall off because nobody had any data. So my next, my next thought was, okay, I will shop this idea to somebody. We are going to look at the data and we’re gonna correct this. And I looked at all the national organizations, both, um, sort of for the arts generally, and I looked within the dance world and I couldn’t find anything.
Elizabeth Yntema:
What I did find is, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, dance is between 73% and 80% female. There, there’s still a massive gender gap in salary. And the, the way it’s characterized as dancer choreographer, there’s also huge problems with counting who’s in the field. And, uh, dancer choreographers of the quote, creative professions, which is how the Bureau of Labor Statistics looks at it, are the least educated, the youngest, the most female, and here’s the kicker, two and a half times more likely to live at or near the poverty line. And that is when I finally woke up and I realized, this is not just a cultural issue, this is a major economic issue. And as we started to look, uh, more broadly and sort of get a handle of it, what we realized is that the performing arts sector is actually highly unexamined and there’s a lot of really bad practices going on.
Elizabeth Yntema:
The only other thing I wanted to mention, Brad, um, as I’ve been talking too long, and I’ll turn it back to you, is that if you actually read the statute, which I’m sure you have, and you look at the IRS, um, guidelines on not-for-profits, it doesn’t mention the performing arts, it’s specifically mentions scientific, um, and educational endeavors. And that is Alan Harrison, who is a brilliant sort of iconoclastic analyst to the not-for-profit field, says that means that every day performing arts organization should be waking up saying, how are we serving our community? Because that is really, truly the only way that they should be qualifying for not-for-profit status. Cuz you and I, as taxpayers obviously are supporting these organizations and particularly at a time when people can’t feed their kids, it’s fair to ask, what are y’all doing?
Brad Caruso:
Yeah, without question. And just your comments on the pay gap, on the percentages that you displayed and that you talked about. Um, it, it’s really interesting. And the dance field is an interesting one. My, it’s so funny, I went to my, uh, daughter is four and a half, almost five, and she, uh, she’s at our first dance recital on Saturday. And you’re right, like even if you just look demographically, it’s 95% women performing in, in the, in the dance and you know, one, one boy in the, one boy in the picture. But yeah, it was, it was exciting to go to. But but yeah, the, the not-for-profit community itself and the not-for-profit code is interesting. It’s religious scientific education and the, the stuff that qualifies under religious is usually in, is usually the most, the most interesting.
Elizabeth Yntema:
Performing arts generally, I think has gotten away with a lot. I mean, it is in theory 4% of the economy. And when not-for-profit organizations or the NEA or Americans for the Arts is lobbying for more money, the first thing they say is, look, it’s this huge economic generator. Look, it’s a multiplier. You know, it affects restaurants, et cetera. But what they don’t ask Brad goes right back to Cicero and the Roman Republic, qui Bono who is benefiting from the system. And right now you talked about the pay gap. Even if a woman can get a job running a company on the artistic director side, she makes 63 cents on the dollar for what her male counterpart makes. And that figure is actually skewed because it’s, that’s the largest 50 companies. If you look at the largest 10 companies, when I started, there was only one woman running, um, a major ballet company.
Elizabeth Yntema:
And that is because, and this is, I’m sure you’ve talked about this before, it was a glass cliff situation. They just about bankrupted the place and that’s why they gave her a shot. And that, um, that’s been true for a number of women who are finally given a chance to run things. I will take a little bit of credit as of next year there will be four women running the largest 10 companies. That’s a big deal. And they’re not all rescue situations. So that’s also a big deal is that successful companies, the boards have gone ahead and chosen a woman to run them. And this is a huge sea change because everybody looks at these big companies. Just to give you some background, the largest 10 companies by our count are about, and this is kind of pre pandemic, so it’s gone down, but we’re not talking peanuts here. Um, it’s 600 and, um, 60 million, the largest 50 companies. And within that, the largest 10 companies like the a Abts, the San Francisco ballets are 60% of that. So, I don’t know, you know, it’s been a long time since my freshman year economics class, but that sounds like an oligopoly to me.
Brad Caruso:
Yeah, and that’s a, that’s a sizable chunk of the economy and, and, and I’m sure is it concentrated geographically too, like in New York, California, in a couple of markets?
Elizabeth Yntema:
That is a really smart question. Um, and the answer to that is, yeah, of course. Um, the other thing I’d like to bring in, cuz cuz you’re thinking in bigger meta terms, which is fun, is in the last 20 years, 50% of American newspaper daily newspapers have disappeared. The first thing that’s cut is the performing arts coverage. And within that, the first thing that’s, that is dance. So if you can have the best performance in the world, but if it doesn’t get covered, who knows. And also the dance critics, a lot of them based in Manhattan Couple in San Francisco, a lot of them don’t drive. And they are also now not fully salaried employees. So they are not gonna be going to Kansas City or Tulsa or Cincinnati where there’s great stuff going on. They’re gonna sit in New New York and wait for things to come to them.
Elizabeth Yntema:
Or if they do get, um, any funding, where are they gonna go? They’re gonna go to, um, London to see the Royal Ballet so they can tell all the other dance critics. When I was at the Royal Ballet Gala, I saw Lei Block again, I would ask, are we being served by the arts press? I think it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. And then of course we know that large foundations tend to give the most money to the biggest whatevers, you know, venues, festivals, or ballet companies. Um, and I would argue that the philanthropy around performing arts has gotten very flabby, very lazy. And, um, the people who run the foundations like staying on the Upper East side, what they should be doing is getting dirty, dusty butts sitting on floors of dance studios in Tulsa, in Columbus, or God help us all, maybe actually go south to Atlantic, et cetera, have some bad diner coffee, eat some food at a Cracker Barrel and actually see what’s going on out there.
Brad Caruso:
Yeah, and you bring up a lot of very interesting points and I, I love how, uh, in invested in the data on this because you know, number one, you’re, you know, calling this up like this, you know how close you’re to it. But also too, I think you point out like such a, a great reason why I think our world is shifting in the right direction. Like to your point of now four outta the top 10 dance companies are now run by women. I mean, I think some of that, it’s all related. I think, and, and my my outsider looking in perspective is some of the work you’re doing on, on pointing it out, right? You and, and others, I’m sure bringing all this to the surface, like, hey, look at this. It, it’s kind of, it kind of got, it kind of got brushed under the carpet, but I think it’s relevant that everybody knows this.
Brad Caruso:
And then you get, you know, pressure on corporations like, oh yeah, they’re right. You know, we need now we need to change our tunes. People don’t point the finger at us. So then the corporations start changing. And then, and then the relationships between, you know, the reason why some maybe bigger foundations may give is that they have the relationships with the people they’re giving to. So you then you have to change that relationship and then people hang out in certain circles. So then you introduce different people. So you know, it, it definitely sounds like a wildfire scenario where it, it catches on the wind blows and then it works out, right? But, but in order for that to happen, it’s like, how, how do you start, how do you, how do you get to the edge of the cliff and jump off? It’s, you know, how do you start that? And once you started it probably keeps going.
Elizabeth Yntema:
I would use a different analogy what I’m trying and hand journalists who are interested in, um, this treating the performing arts, like as one of my advisory council members says, any other reporting beat, um, dance critics have not been handed the tools to do this, which is why we found ourselves much more successful with Wall Street Journal, with the Guardian, with um, NPR PBS because they have really well trained journalists who understand economy, understand, et cetera. Uh, yeah, how to read a balance sheet. Um, if I could do one thing, it would be to require anybody, um, getting a journalism degree learn how to read a balance sheet. I’m an English major, I was terrible at math. If I can figure this out, everybody else can. Um, I also think that we’ve been successful, Brad, because a, I spent a huge amount of time researching this.
Elizabeth Yntema:
Everybody says it’s a passion project, which of course makes me just bristle because it’s a really condescending way of thinking about it. No, the answer is, our theory of change is if you hand people the data, they will start to use it, uh, deploy the data almost to make change. And all we’re doing is handing people the stats that they can then take, um, and start to trump this, to your point about the foundation though, oof, that’s gonna take a little longer because people have been able to get huge sums of money with impunity to companies that are not treating their workforce well. And let’s go right back to the mission. How are you actually helping your community? Um, that’s gonna take us a little bit longer. And I’ve been really startled, especially as a donor, um, that a lot of the major foundations just don’t ask the questions they should be asking or, you know, you have to fill out 85 page grant application, give all the stats, and then what turns out is actually happening is that the lead program officer is best buddies with the executive director. So they take all this information, they don’t share it publicly, which also is a big upset to me. And then they just throw it out the window and say, oh, it’s gonna be great.
Brad Caruso:
Yeah. And that’s that cuz it’s a relationship, uh, relationship game on, on, uh, you know, in in the business world and even in that, in that foundation world. So, yeah.
Elizabeth Yntema:
Right. And I would argue, and maybe maybe you on your side from with him see this to some extent, I think, I think we’ve taken the wrong lessons from business and applied them to the not-for-profit world. So instead of turning everything into a profit center, instead of monetizing everything as a way to continue to exist, we should be doing the opposite. So I’ll give you an example. We started a leadership training program. I’m trying to recreate a Harvard MBA with no money. Um, and we deliberately do not put up a paywall. There is no subscription service. We are small deed democratizing the skills you need to advance in the profession. Um, is it aimed at women and particularly women of color. Sure. But if you’re smart and you’re motivated and you’re up at 2:00 AM rearranging your sock drawer, you can put on one of our, um, podcast interviews and learn about budgeting and programming.
Elizabeth Yntema:
And here’s another one, people don’t think about crisis communications, media relations when you need an hr. So we’re really trying to create a curriculum that whether you’re in Sydney, Australia or in the middle of nowhere, Utah, you can start to get smart quickly. And what I’m seeing, which is super exciting for us, is that a lot of people are applying for jobs now using the resources we’ve created. And on the other side, the recruiters are calling me and saying, hi, do you have some names of people I should know about? So we’re inserting ourselves hopefully in a positive way. And this is not obviously rocket signs, I’m saying, yeah, there’s these 15 women out here that you should know about. And what has happened, and I’m sure this happens in the business world all the time, is the recruiters are mostly white men, almost completely men. And they’re calling the same 30 people who then give them the same 200 names. What we’re trying to do is broaden the applicant pool and then also educate that applicant pool so when they show up, they shine.
Brad Caruso:
Yeah. And I think you point out the trends that’s gonna catch on significantly and be, and be the trend, which is exactly what you’re doing. It’s that, you know, not-for-profit education environment. It is creating a curriculum tailored towards what you know are the issues based on all the work and advocacy and research you’ve done. And it’s not necessarily gonna be a, it may or may not be a college degree program, but what I’m seeing is just this ex giving an uptick because colleges aren’t giving people the technical training per se, for the job of the work, what the workforce demands. I know in the accounting field it’s, it’s night and day. I mean, we hire people and we have to spend years training people to get them up to speed. Whereas, you know, you go to school for five years in accounting now to get so many credits and you don’t even have the basic skills to, um, to know, oh, this is, this is what this profession is even about.
Brad Caruso:
Like, you take one audit class and I’m an auditor for life and I’d take one audit class in college. Like what does that tell you? It tells you that it wasn’t a focus, but being, but 50% of the jobs out there are to be an auditor. And so, and so when you put that in perspective, I I think it’s, it’s uh, you know, you certainly hit the nail on the head with, with being innovative as well as being ahead of the trend. But the other thing you said, which I want to talk a little bit about is impact and, and how much impact does a not-for-profit have and how do you measure it? And I think you, you know, we all look at balance sheets, we all look at financial statements and we all look at what people put out there. But interestingly enough, a lot of like government funding, a lot of funding out there, a lot of agreements, a lot of things they don’t really necessarily require you to report on impact.
Brad Caruso:
They require you to report on it, but they don’t necessarily require you to be held to that standard. And even in like the audit world, like I wish our audit world started auditing, you know, had a, had a subset of nonprofit where we, we could audit impact where, hey, these are the criteria that we as a not-for-profit set and here’s how we met those criteria here, here, here’s what was the result of those criteria that we established and then report on it. And I guarantee you’d have much more effectiveness with program dollar spend and with other things out there because you would be held to a standard like, well if we don’t meet this, we’re not gonna get funded for it. Um, as opposed to, as opposed to fueling the organization without having to be held accountable to that. So, you know, I don’t think as a, as a regulators aren’t there yet, right? I think a lot of regulators are starting to think about this with ESG reporting and other things going on. They’re starting to say, well, we’re gonna force people to report upon this. Um, but we’re still not there yet. We still always concentrate. External data is always financial. It, it’s rarely, uh, measurable in another way. But I, I mean, I shouldn’t say that.
Elizabeth Yntema:
I have a number of thoughts about that. Um, in part because my husband and I do have done some giving and, and some I hope very innovative giving and mean. We’ve been told some of the stuff we’ve created a sort of first in the nation and then we turned it over to somebody else, which by the way, I also think more philanthropic people should do, get less attached to having their name on something, start it, move on, et cetera. But a couple of things on that. Number one, yes, a hundred percent, um, you should, you should require data. Um, but if you’re a very small organization and people are asking for reams of data, you may never actually get to the point where you are doing your mission. Uh, number two, if you are going to require data, um, as a funder, so I’ll SMU data arts where they aggregate the data, please make it public.
Elizabeth Yntema:
There’s this velvet rope thing where our folks can see the data, but they won’t, they won’t give you the data on individual companies. Which leads to number three, the problem we were talking about earlier, which is it’s actually really based on personal relationships. So you’ve got, um, program officers who require the readings of data and then don’t actually use it. So I thought A, it should be public, B, you should use it. Uh, the other thing I I would also say is as a very small organization, I mean people see our budget, they are shocked, um, within six months of us. And it took us a year because we had an accountant who completely screwed it up within a year of us getting our 501c3 people were already saying, what’s your impact? What’s your impact? So I agree with Mackenzie Scott, although she does a huge amount of due diligence way in advance.
Elizabeth Yntema:
I think we need to talk Brad a little bit about how you define impact. Very often in the social services area, it’s bodies in bodies out. So how many black and brown kids have run through your doors? But what they’re not doing is looking at persistence looking longitudinally. And that takes decades. And you know, I mean headstart probably the most significant social intervention I can think of other than maybe Title IX and the Voting Rights Act. We now have 50 years of data on it. But somebody had to trust that this would work for a while. And as you’re looking at it, I also think you need to refine the data, right? Like how would somebody assess our impact? Well, we are told that, um, we are credited, DDP is credited with boards becoming more aware with more women being hired. On the other hand, you could say, well, dance data project is not having an impact because a third, you know, still almost no full length works are given to women.
Elizabeth Yntema:
Although that is changing with female leaders. And also, you know, the pay gap has widened. Now, if you could say, well, you haven’t had an impact because there’s still this huge pay gap, I would say, well, at least we know what it is. Um, and we have heard from, for example, dancers who, um, second company by the way, you can be considered a professional dancer and not get paid, or the women get a stipend and the guys are getting benefits. We’ve heard that people have gotten 40% salary increases simply by using our data and going into the board and saying, this is ridiculous. But for us really working on an all remote, all independent contractor basis, if somebody was gonna say, we’ll give you a hundred thousand dollars, but you have to, you have to document all these metrics, I may, I might turn it down cuz I don’t have the time to look into that. Does that make any sense?
Brad Caruso:
Makes a ton of sense. Yeah. Yeah. I think a couple of things you said there resonate with me and definitely kind of like, you know, you can’t, you can’t look at impact necessarily at a point in time. It’s an overtime and it’s gonna evolve over time, right? Like, I think you’re gonna have a constant shift. You’re gonna have to constantly reevaluate what your criteria are or what we’re measuring ourselves against. And, and two things pivot over time. You know, you may solve one issue, it creates another, you may solve one issue and it solves three issues. And I think, you know, there, there has to be that constant evaluation. But I, but I think, you know, having that focus, I I, I think, you know, to to your point, I think, um, you know, a lot more funders of not-for-profits are, are focused on that to, to a degree.
Brad Caruso:
And then, um, yeah, th those are the ones that are gonna probably be winning in the future, especially with just the volume of information that’s out there. I mean, 30 years ago, I don’t think you could access any of this information, you know, now we, we have access to, I mean, think of the nonprofit world and, and I’d like to elaborate on it, is how much data is out there. Like, and, and you do have to digest it and you, and you can’t <laugh> you have to like, to your point, like you have to ignore certain things too. You can’t, you can’t ingest everything and, and just think you’re, you know, you need the super computer that you mentioned before to, to, uh, to process it all. But, but yeah, may maybe, um, I, I think a good, a good conversation or a good point to, to talk about is, you know, you’ve obviously had a significant amount of success in your field related to gathering data. You know, what, what, where, what type, when you, when we say data, like what, what type of data do you obtain? Where and where do you obtain it from? Just, just, you know, kind of generalized.
Elizabeth Yntema:
That is a really good question. Um, and it leads to exactly your point, how our organization is evolv. So there’s me with an Excel spreadsheet in 2015, 2016, sitting at my kitchen table and starting with the largest 50 ballet companies. Even that is like, where do I go for this information? How are we gonna decide what the largest is? Um, to the point now where I am hiring. And it’s extraordinary how many there are out there. Dance physics majors, dance math majors, dance computer engineering majors. If you look at our maths head, and these are, I’ve got a kid in high school, I mean, she is 16 years old, she’s taking advanced calculus at the University of Michigan, and she’s an intern. She’s still <laugh>, she’s, and she’s gonna run the world someday. Um, yeah, <laugh>, but she really is. Um, but her dad is, um, is in the auto industry and uses massive data sets and he’s been super helpful.
Elizabeth Yntema:
He’s now on our advisory council. We are now hiring specifically for data engineers. Um, do we use the coding, um, to scrape data from the IRS website? Yes, we do. And it’s a single source, so you can go to one place. Um, the IRS has also just changed its compression algorithm. I had no idea what I just said, but I just said it. Um, which means we have to change it. The problem is, as we expand and DDP gets global, we’re following 400 companies and festivals and venues in different countries. We’re trying to figure out how to scrape data from all these multiple sources and sort through it. Um, if I had the backing of a big university, we might be able to do that. But to, to respond to your question, um, the easiest to get is the IRS, um, sourced information.
Elizabeth Yntema:
We use ProPublic guidestar as a backup, but we’re going right to the IRS now, as you well know. However, there’s a massive, massive lag. Um, the i r s was was gutted. Underfunded, yeah. And that means that if there is some bad behavior going on, like people are getting massive payouts, or if they cut all their dancers, um, and took a short pay cut, they may actually have restored their own pay. Um, and we won’t know about it for two or three years. So as I always say, there’s the outrage lag and it’s, it serves, um, people in leadership who are not necessarily, you know, using the best practices very well because we can’t assess until two or three years down the road. Um, I wish there were, I wish the i r s would catch up. I mean, I guess they just, ProPublic just set a million records dumps.
Elizabeth Yntema:
So what are we trying to do? We’re trying to get that information as much, you know, as quickly as possible. But we’re still, Brad in the middle of looking at FY 2021 returns, which means, right now, snapshot in time, DDP is looking at what happened, mid pandemic. And to really geek out here, all of Almo, a lot of these companies have different fiscal years, and depending on where they are in the country, they either had to shut down or they didn’t miss a performance. So we’re trying to evaluate financial data in 50 states with really different, you know, real life circumstances. Um, we also look, by the way at, uh, rosters, um, we’re trying to identify what are the feeder jobs that are gonna create the next generation of leaders and try and intervene there. And we’re trying to keep data, um, and everybody’s moving in this industry, people are coming, people are going, I mean, it’s, it’s just literally fling everything up in the air and start over.
Elizabeth Yntema:
But what we’re trying to do is, um, is track over time where the jobs are, as you said, it’s longitudinal. We can tell if we’re having an impact, if maybe we’re seeing women move into, or, and people of color into the, although we don’t track that into that second or third tier job and then move up. And the other thing is, we’re we’re also global now. And I don’t know how your Mandarin is, mine isn’t particularly strong. So we’re using, yeah, so we’re using translation apps, but they sometimes are wrong. And so we wanna go into China, we wanna go into India, you know, other countries, a lot of Eastern Europe. And um, also, I mean, their financial setup is different, right? It’s completely different in France, what it is to the UK et cetera.
Brad Caruso:
Completely different. Yeah. And throwing the other wrench on the spokes, which is the word no one wants to hear anymore, which is the two letters. Ai. So how does, how does now, as your, how does, how does that, how does that whole, uh, you know, 2023 problem? That’s, I don’t wanna call it a problem, but I think it’s a problem. I watched the Matrix in 1999,so.
Elizabeth Yntema:
Oh, I, I might agree with you. I still also, I wanna be her. I mean she’s just, what is it, Trinity? She’s just <Trinity, yep.> Um, so the answer is AI so far is a is for us, is a really benign force. But obviously, you know, whatever we do, we have to have humans looking at it and backing it up. So there are a lot of, um, gender neutral names, or I’m sorry, this is getting really geeky, but in Asia, your last name is first, right? So if you took down somebody’s name, assuming that it was written the same way as it is in the US, you might get the gender wrong and you might get the person wrong, right? Um, so if I had the computing capability, we would be able to use, you know, create an algorithm. As I said, multiple sources is also hard, you know, I mean, going to each company website, uh, but we would always still have our interns physically going to websites. Um, what we’re also trying to do is build out a global leadership cohort of people, whether they’re, you know, in even Ukraine where there’s still a lot of active ballet companies, or France or Belgium, et cetera, who, um, can triple check our workforce. Cuz we still need human sources, right?
Brad Caruso:
Oh, without a doubt. And I think, I think that’s one of the biggest mistakes that, uh, in the world today that I see is that there’s a lot of reliance upon external information without verifying the external information, uh, all across the board. I mean, we’re lucky in the not-for-profit world because the data is actually out there. It’s in an IRS database, someone else submitted it and, and we can rely upon it. And, and we’ve, you know, we’ve pulled those database, you know, as, as Izzy I’m sure has helped you. And we can pull the database records, but we also sometimes will, will go pull the original 990 too and, and say, okay, yeah. Like, we even double check the IRS database even though we know it’s so, yes. So we, we go back and double check that too when we, whenever, if ever we do any benchmark work and, and we, you know, test basis, we, we, we validate it.
Brad Caruso:
But, but you know, it’s a great point. You raise and, and, um, there’s so many potentials and, and people love using the word Ai, but I, I always find that you’re right. Like there’s a component to it that can never go away. If you want to be accurate and you want to, you know, analyze it the right way. Cuz like you said, you can’t, you can program a computer, but you can’t program a computer for every variable because then yeah, we wouldn’t be able to, the computer would never be able to function with too many variables. So you, you know, you still have to know your business and the data you’re analyzing. So the point you made is phenomenal.
Elizabeth Yntema:
Yeah. Even if you have, you know, design yourself the perfect program, right? You still need a human brain, you still need somebody, whether it’s an Izzy, whether it’s you with years and years of experience to say, and this is what we spent a lot of time on the back end with Brad tiny organization. But again, my background, labor relations and crisis pr, what does it mean? What should we be thinking about? So for example, we just did, uh, a project with, uh, Smith College, which has the oldest data sciences program of seven sisters. We got four incredible young women. And because I really believe in giving people a good experience, it’s very high touch, it’s very hands-on, which means it’s a big commitment from our end. But I also wanted to give them the freedom to say, okay, now you have the data and this is the English major side of me.
Elizabeth Yntema:
Tell me a story. Or what is the data telling you as a story? One of the things that really shocked me, um, and you very, I mean absolutely right to point out regional differences. I didn’t realize that you’re, that organizations above a certain size, uh, are supposed to let you know how many volunteers they have working for them. Well, in an or in, in an economic sector where women are underpaid or completely unpaid and there’s a huge amount of volunteer time that goes in. It was very interesting for us to look whether it’s accurate or accurate or not by region, to your point, and by organization size, the number of volunteer hours they use. Do we know what that means yet? No, but I’d very much like to watch this over the years and see how they recorded those hours. But also, are there any patterns, are there any trends coming out of that?
Elizabeth Yntema:
The other thing that we looked at, um, and again, it’s tell me a story. So much of fundraising is sort of on the erector set theory of, you know, let’s, let’s build the building. Um, the Elizabeth Yntema, a fourth floor broom closet, right? Supposedly people wanna slap their names on everything. Has, has this actually turned out to be a smart idea? In other words, is the building paying for itself or would it have been better to put in an endowment in the stock market, do something else with it? And again, I think that that kind of decision making really needs to be looked at. Nobody’s really thought this stuff through since the 1990s. Is it actually better to have a building? And then if you do have a building, do you sell it to do something else with it? I would argue that there’s a real failure of imagination in terms of philanthropy in the performing arts arena. We could do, or even the museum world, we could do so much better if really, if what we’re coming back to is the mission in the community, could you take that money and do something different with it? But again, that would involve teaching your donors that prestige might look a little different. Right?
Brad Caruso:
Very true. Yeah. And it goes back to the kind of the impact discussion. You know, what are you really trying to accomplish? And yeah, I mean, to your point, if you looked empirically at, uh, how people spend their money on what they wanna accomplish, it’d be very different than what people say they wanna accomplish. Cuz you’re right, like to your exact point, you know, the investment in capital, especially in that higher education world, I mean, a lot of the money went into capital and capital investments and stuff, but is it, is it, is it really going to the right place?
Elizabeth Yntema:
Exactly. Particularly, particularly because, you know, 25 years ago, maybe less than that, 80% of faculty were tenured, 20% were sort of adjunct. And that’s completely flipped now. So we’re building these massive, massive stadiums. But you know, particularly like in dance departments, the adjunct professors, the least well paid some of them making $30 an hour or whatever, who are putting their bodies on the line. By the way, it’s not like being, you know, I don’t know, a physics professor, you’re wearing your body out. Um, they don’t even have healthcare.
Brad Caruso:
Oh yeah, yeah. You’re a contractor at that point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got, I, I, I, uh, my, my, uh, I do too many ancillary activities, but I know at some point in my life I do wanna bring all of my knowledge I’ve learned in, in the not-for-profit field and teach a, you know, higher education level course or do something with it because I just know it’s just an area that’s, that’s often not talked about. But I went to a school and talked to them about it and, and adjunct position offered $2,000 a semester for a class. And I’m like, the time investment, the time investment for me to teach that class at that point, I’m gonna do it for free <laugh>.
Elizabeth Yntema:
Well, we were, and, and take the tax right off, we were just
Brad Caruso:
Take the tax right up. Exactly. <laugh>
Elizabeth Yntema:
Invite me as a lecturer, and then I would also like to take this class if it’s actually real world. Right?
Brad Caruso:
Right. Yeah. Yeah. And, and at the end of the day, I think that that, you know, that’s the biggest component that we see missing is, is bringing the real world education and, and not, not always get necessarily down to the science, but get down to the practical, you know, this is the information that you see. What do we do with it? This is what you encounter. How do you hand, how do you address it? What are some of the skills that, that we’re not really talking about, we’re just, you know, learning from a textbook, you know, billion dollar textbook industry, but you know, what, what are some of those things? And yeah, at some point in my life, I definitely wanna bring that to a classroom.
Elizabeth Yntema:
I think you absolutely should. I mean, what you just said is sort of why I realized that, um, you know, I might not have a master’s in not-for-profit management, but I have 30 years of volunteering. Oh, yeah. You know, for 40 years. Um, I’ve got 30 years of, of sitting on boards and being on the donor side. And, you know, a lot of my experiences actually are relevant. Uh, and not all of them come from the performing arts arena. I mean, I, I remember Brad, for example, sitting in a boardroom, and this is, this is not for profit that has been extraordinarily successful. I won’t, I won’t say who it was, but I mean, I think they’ve grown like, you know, literally 10 20 x in the last five years. And somebody said something very, very quietly and I was like, excuse me, what was that again?
Elizabeth Yntema:
And what they said was that 50 50% wash out of their program. Now that’s hardly surprising because they’re targeting a very much at risk population in under-resourced area in Chicago, which means, um, that, you know, there’s so many intervening factors, but we’re talking about expanding the program. We’re talking about growing it geographically, we’re talking about templating, et cetera. Everybody always wants to make it vast and scale. And I’m thinking to myself, why aren’t we spending more time, energy, and resources on capturing those 50% that washed out for one reason or another? Why aren’t we studying that more? Why aren’t we seeing if we can lower that number? That is where I think we should be putting our resources. Versus, oh, we’re in these 25 schools. We’re over here, we’re over here. I wanna hear more about that. But because that doesn’t sound so good, and the soundbite and the gala and, and you know, the video you sit through, everybody wants to brush it under the rug. Whereas to me, as a funder and as somebody that’s interested in metrics, that’s where I wanna go right away, because that’s your low hanging fruit. Right?
Brad Caruso:
Well, and, and psychologically, I mean, I, I think there’s a, uh, you know, I’ve learned this a lot lately. I was always so afraid of being wrong, and so, so like afraid over time that, uh, of, of showing weakness, you know, like it’s just a big thing in the world that you’re so afraid to like admit your flaws. And I, I followed a few, uh, you know, whatever you wanna call them in the world, people, and, and like, you know, it kind of like they educated me a lot on no, no, no. Like, you show your weakness, but then you fix it. You know, you, you identify that. Yes. And people, and then, and then, and then the people out there in the world, everyone relates to it because they’re like, oh my God, no one else is saying that this guy is sitting over here saying how terrible he is.
Brad Caruso:
But here’s all the things we’re doing to make it better. I wanna follow that person, not the person that says how great they are all the time. And it, it’s so funny psychologically, but a lot of my messaging, being the leader of the not-for-profit group here, I completely change it. And all I do, like every week or every other week, I send a war story that I went through of how I completely, you know, how I completely caused a major issue cuz of something I screwed up and then what we did with it, what we did about it, how it, how it got better or how it just continued to get worse because of a d you know, cuz of a bonehead action I took. But then, then bringing it home to say, well here’s, here’s some lessons learned from it. And, and so many people will message me and be like, I’m so happy that somebody like actually shares their flaws with us and, and isn’t afraid to.
Brad Caruso:
And you know, I still am afraid, I mean, you know, I don’t share everything, I’ll be quite honest, but, but I share enough that people can relate and say, oh, I didn’t, you know, that person seems like they don’t do anything wrong. It’s like, no, no, no, no, I do everything wrong. However, every time I do something wrong, I figure out how to fix it or I do something to fix it. And so, to your point, a donor I think would actually love to hear that. Like, oh yeah, this organization’s saying how this this area they wanna focus on more. Maybe I wanna fund that. And, and I think that’s a, that’s a great point. And, and I mean, quite contrary, I think a lot of people would wanna fund that. I think a lot of people would, I think support that
Elizabeth Yntema:
You trying to, I mean, you know, you and I can talk all day about Oh yeah, <laugh>, it’s not the original crime, it’s the coverup. Yep. Right? And what’s true, whether or not it’s criminal conduct or not, instead of trying to CYA on things that didn’t work, um, instead, um, just say, Hey, we’ve got this thing here and for example, let’s collect data on why people wash out and figure out even if we can take 10% of those people. Um, it also has implications like how are we training our counselors? Or how are we delivering this service if 50% of people are washing out? Um, that to me is the focus because we’ve already identified those folks. Um, and you know, let’s, let’s learn from that. But you’re right. And again, the sort of happy, happy stuff that you get at galas, I, I just, I don’t even go anymore. Um, but I also think that, that, that’s that myth, particularly in the United States of this sort of hero’s journey and everything’s gotta be successful. One of the things that I would really love to do, do, maybe I’ll bring you in as one of the people to talk about it for our leadership curriculum, is failure and how to deal with it. And sometimes, and I love what you said, sometimes there’s failure and then it isn’t. And I resolved it and it was perfect. Sometimes it just sucks. Sometimes something goes wrong, right?
Brad Caruso:
Oh yeah.
Elizabeth Yntema:
Sometimes there’s no great victory afterwards. Um, and it it’s just bad or it’s disappointing. It certainly happened to me. I actually think that’s a critical part of leadership training because let’s look at what’s behind that. It’s shame, right? And particularly women, and there’s tons of studies about this in terms of leadership, women assume it’s them. So if you could have a blunt discussion about failure that isn’t all happy talk. Um, and I can, you know, I don’t tell you everything, but I could certainly give you examples. Um, sometimes it’s not like I failed and then it was perfect. I mean, it’s not a, an airport paperback, sometimes it just, you figure out a way around it, but it’s hard and it’s lonely. And I think it’s really true in the not-for-profit world performing arts. Yes. Um, and otherwise, and it also to your point, when people won’t admit a mistake, they dig in and they double down on bad strategies because they can’t say this wasn’t working right. Because then they have to admit they don’t have the answer. And nobody wants to step in front of a board of directors and say, I don’t know what we’re gonna do. This is a problem.
Brad Caruso:
Yep. That’s a scary thing. And uh, everything you said there 100% resonate and agree with and you know. Yeah, definitely. Uh, as you’re teaching leaders, future leaders, that’s a very important fact. And, you know, sometimes the failure’s gonna happen and it’s not gonna get better and you have to carry yourself on like it is gonna get better <laugh> and you have to get over it.
Elizabeth Yntema:
Are we off topic or is this actually the topic? <laugh>?
Brad Caruso:
I think it is the topic. I I think it’s all related. I think, um, you know, as we kind of summarize and, and kind of dissect some of the things we talked about, I think it’s, it’s, it’s all related. You know, we, we go down a journey to analyze things. We try to understand it, we try to get better. We realize some of the things we do may not make things better over time. They do make things better. You gotta take the good with the bad, gotta know when to say no. Like I think all these things are, are completely relevant in the, uh, bigger picture.
Elizabeth Yntema:
Oh, good. Okay. Not off topic. Excellent.
Brad Caruso:
That is a great, this is a great discussion, I think, and and anybody listening to this too, I I, what I love about it is just the, um, you know, kind of the real nature of, of, you know, you running an organization of these are the things that, that are relevant and you talk about ’em because they’re relevant, that, you know, sometimes you do have to put yourself out there on a limb. And I think all of all of those things i, I think are relevant. Especially, you know, we didn’t really talk about it a lot. We’re running, running out on time. But like even, you know, now you do all these things, you analyze all this data, you share all this data. Now how do you face the backlash from all the data, from all of that? How do you face, how do you face the criticism? How do you face the negativity? Oh God. And, and so, and how do, and how do you say, I’m not a failure, I’m doing, I’m doing this and it’s right. But a lot people don’t agree with it, right? So I it is all related just Yeah, that, that’s kind of the question.
Elizabeth Yntema:
I’ll ask you for bringing that up because one of the things that I think not-for-profit leaders need to understand is they are, if you have a point of view, if you are trying to change things, you will be criticized and it can feel like the most benign anodyne cause right? Hearing X disease or whatever. In today’s environment where people are frustrated and unhappy, I think, you know, loss of faith-based comfort that somebody up there is looking after you, where you have our community, you get on social media and you know, it’s very easy to say Liza Yntema is white, middle class privileged. Who does she think she is? You should be looking at this problem. You should, you know, ballet is colonialist, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it is really hard. Um, it really affected me psychologically. Um, and you really have to dig deep and on the one hand examine your motivations on the other hand and take in criticism, but on the other hand say, I’m actually gonna stick to my guns.
Elizabeth Yntema:
And again, that’s the loneliness of being a leader. Um, it’s, it’s way harder than people realize. And as we were talking about failure, I will also say running a not-for-profit is not pure joy. People are like, oh, it’s so cute. You found your passion or whatever. It’s really hard. And yes, we do get screamed at and we get ignored. Um, being data driven, um, I stay up at night, I wake up at two in the morning, uh, because I’m like, what did I forget? Um, what is in the numbers? And there are ethical decisions about putting stuff out there. When do we call people out? We generally don’t. But every once in a while things are bad enough. And yes, we’ve gotten a hailstorm of criticism. Um, it’s, it’s, a lot of it has gone away because we’ve just stuck to our guns and we do this one thing and we do it really, really well and people want us to do everything. Um, and that’s, I think we’re having a really good, strong board is really makes sense. And by the way, my board members, if you look, um, I have three brilliant, um, young board members who don’t yet, although I hope they will contribute, uh, financially. One’s an attorney, one’s a doctor, one’s an MD PhD candidate. But it’s important to me to bring up the next generation of leaders, but they also give me a completely different perspective. That’s been invaluable.
Brad Caruso:
Yeah, that’s important to note. Especially when you start an organization for profit, who you surround yourself with is clearly important. Who your advisors are on your board and having diverse board, um, you know, diversity in background, in education, in field of study, you know, and I think most nonprofits out there, you know, they’re lucky when they get a doctor, an accountant, a lawyer, know different, you know, a a pro a programmatic professional in that field. You know, a clinician, you know, different, different verticals cuz you need all those different viewpoints and then different generational viewpoints to carry yourself into the future.
Elizabeth Yntema:
That’s not encouraged. I mean, I sit on a lot of boards.
Brad Caruso:
<laugh>, it’s challenging to attract that talent.
Elizabeth Yntema:
It’s also plug and play. We need this industry, we need, you know, this age group, we need this color. And, um, and, and for me it’s, um, a I have a, you know, it’s important for me to train the next generation of leadership in service. Um, but also, you know, it’s not all about fundraising. I don’t think it should be. I don’t think it can be. I’d also like to send out a plug to our advisory council members, including, um, Izzy Tannenbaum, because that kind of subject matter expertise. I, I literally can’t afford it. And the generosity and the, you know, the, the quick response and also, I mean, we’re getting into real murky waters here with people’s tax returns and they get very defensive. And having somebody like Izzy with his experience and expertise, I couldn’t do what I do without him and, and with some of my other advisory council members. That is extraordinary service and it’s kind of quietly heroic.
Brad Caruso:
I love it. Yeah, no, I, I appreciate you sharing that and, and talking about it because it is, you know, it, it’s so important to fuel the nonprofit and, you know, you operate on a tight budget. You operate with, you know, limited resources or you know, resources that you’re all trying to put towards a certain cause and, you know, paying those couple extra dollars for administrative services isn’t necessarily in the budget or things that you wanna spend money on And so when you receive that, especially at like a high, a high value without being charged for it, you know, certainly it’s, it’s relevant. And, and once again, just having advisory members who are there to support you, uh, help you, help tell you when you’re right, help tell you when you’re wrong, help tell, help, help navigate the murky water, as you said, and, and really just as a gut check to, is this person screaming at me, right? Or are they wrong? <laugh>,
Elizabeth Yntema:
That is exactly exactly how I’ve used his, he’s, he’s been reality checked.
Brad Caruso:
Is this normal or is this not normal? <laugh>,
Elizabeth Yntema:
He’s also actually just really bolstered me. Like, yeah, no, that’s, that’s not legitimate. They just want you to go away. They, liza they just, they’re, you caught ’em with their pants down and they’re not happy about it. And having Izzy say that is like, oh, okay, we’re good. Um, you know, will I still do my due diligence and be super careful? Yeah. But it’s like, okay, now we’re on something. Right,
Brad Caruso:
Without question. Yeah. Yeah. No, it’s, it’s super relevant. I, I get that through our work by, uh, having like mentors, you know, some, some either retired partners or partners that have kind of been through it way longer than me. So, um, we, we all get it in, we all get it in different ways, and I think it, it’s all mutually relevant to, to, you know, both as a mentor share that as well as, as a protege to receive it and to, to experience it and learn from it. So yeah, it’s great that, great to have those resources.
Elizabeth Yntema:
I’m probably running over time, but I do have a little bit of experience with this because I was the legislative affairs director for the Regional Chamber of Commerce, and I did a study of, um, one aspect of, uh, the city of Chicago’s budget, which is O’Hare Airport, which is a separate entity. Again, me in my twenties, thirties, no financial experience. I just kept digging and digging and digging. And I found all these jobs, which somehow were on the payroll, but not really sure if anybody was showing up. And there was all sorts of this weird accounting stuff. And I knew I hit pay dirt when I talked to a very, very well connected lawyer. And I sort of laid out what was going on and I said, and I’m not gonna say who it was, but it was like, do I have this right? And there was literally a 32 second pause, Brad, at the other end of the line, and this is when I knew it was full contact Chicago politics, 30s econd pause. And then he said, be very, very careful. And that’s all he said. I was like,
Brad Caruso:
<laugh>. That’s terrifying.
Elizabeth Yntema:
It. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there are still people, you know, showing up asleep, quote, unquote, in their cars, um, in an abandoned parking lot, and they never wake up. I was like, woo, guess I’m in the big leagues now.
Brad Caruso:
Yeah. Without question. Ugh, <laugh>. Great. Well, I, I think we had a lot of really good discussion today. I appreciate this conversation. I appreciate that you you’re, uh, forthcoming in sharing information with us and, and certainly, uh, you know, certainly appreciate your time in, uh, dedicating to, to share this. I’m sure a lot of nonprofits, founders, people looking to start a nonprofit, people that are in it, looking to better utilize the information available out there, uh, where people just looking to be a better leader. I, I really appreciate your time and effort in, uh, in sharing that information.
Elizabeth Yntema:
Thank you. It’s been really fun. You actually made me think really, really hard. Um, and anybody’s welcome to reach out to me. If you’re crazy enough to think about starting not-for-profit, I’ll do my best to talk you out of it<laugh>.
Brad Caruso:
That’s great. That’s great. Well, you know, thank you so much and Warriors out there. Thank you for listening. Appreciate your time. Appreciate the energy that, uh, Liza brought for us today and everyone listening to this. And, you know, just to close, I think, you know, in today’s day and age, uh, you know, data’s everywhere. Uh, not-for-profits do a lot of great work for the world and any, any budgets, big or small, you can do a lot. So appreciate everyone listening in, and, uh, hope you have a great day, and we’ll see you for our next episode of Withum’s Civic Warriors. Thanks so much.
