{"id":4704,"date":"2021-04-07T17:29:39","date_gmt":"2021-04-08T00:29:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/findfoodbank.org\/?p=4704"},"modified":"2022-11-13T23:32:11","modified_gmt":"2022-11-14T07:32:11","slug":"organizational-survival-and-sustainability-what-it-takes-and-how-to-pivot-during-a-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/findfoodbank.org\/bn\/organizational-survival-and-sustainability-what-it-takes-and-how-to-pivot-during-a-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"\u09b8\u09be\u0982\u0997\u09a0\u09a8\u09bf\u0995 \u09ac\u09c7\u0981\u099a\u09c7 \u09a5\u09be\u0995\u09be \u098f\u09ac\u0982 \u09b8\u09cd\u09a5\u09be\u09af\u09bc\u09bf\u09a4\u09cd\u09ac: \u09ae\u09b9\u09be\u09ae\u09be\u09b0\u09c0 \u099a\u09b2\u09be\u0995\u09be\u09b2\u09c0\u09a8 \u098f\u099f\u09bf \u0995\u09c0 \u09a8\u09c7\u09af\u09bc \u098f\u09ac\u0982 \u0995\u09c0\u09ad\u09be\u09ac\u09c7 \u09aa\u09bf\u09ad\u099f \u0995\u09b0\u09be \u09af\u09be\u09af\u09bc"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ theme_builder_area=”post_content” _builder_version=”4.13.1″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.13.1″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_column _builder_version=”4.13.1″ _module_preset=”default” type=”4_4″ theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.13.1″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]

By Jackie Brennan<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Caravanserai Project<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Jet Fuel Series<\/strong>: A conversation with\u00a0<\/span>Debbie Espinosa<\/strong>, President and CEO of\u00a0<\/span><\/span>FIND Food Bank<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>\u2013\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>The Desert\u2019s Regional Food Bank, Coachella Valley, California<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s old news at this point that the past year was a challenging one for mission-driven enterprises \u2014 forcing them to rethink and adapt their organizational survival and sustainability strategies. From younger enterprises to more established organizations, everyone took a hit in accessing resources, and many direct service organizations were burdened with having to do more with less as the number of people in need of social services rose in the wake of a pandemic.<\/p>\n

Debbie Espinosa and her team at\u00a0FIND Food Bank<\/a>, which serves a 5,000-square-mile region in California\u2019s Colorado Desert, certainly felt the rapid pressure of increased demand. They also felt some initial frustration taking a raincheck on new programs they were on track to roll out. \u201cA couple of the new programs that I wanted to launch were geared toward financial literacy and educational attainment \u2014 so the root causal work of hunger,\u201d says Debbie. \u201cThat kind of stopped.\u201d But it stopped for a good reason: so FIND could double down on its core work of food distribution. And when all was said and done, they doubled their total food distribution within six weeks, a pace they\u2019ve since maintained.<\/p>\n

Debbie\u2019s ability to pivot FIND in response to a crisis was remarkable in its own right. But what\u2019s more striking to us about FIND\u2019s success is that organizational survival and sustainability were not mutually exclusive. In fact, they\u2019ve gone hand-in-hand as FIND is now in a place to revisit some of that root causal work they had to forego in 2020.<\/p>\n

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\u201c\u2026. when it comes to pivoting nonprofit organizations \u2013 knowing the fact that communities are ever changing \u2013 should always be malleable to be able to change with their community to serve them at their best \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Debbie Espinosa<\/strong>,\u00a0<\/span>President & CEO, FIND Food Bank<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Inspired by the agility of Debbie and her team, we were eager to ask her about responding to crises and scaling impact \u2014 all without sacrificing access, inclusion, and cultural needs. Debbie was quick to emphasize that what FIND was able to accomplish in 2020 was years in the making. So, she helped us break down what leaders can be doing right now to deepen their impact, and lay the groundwork that may allow them to expand in the face of unforeseen circumstances.<\/p>\n

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Organizational Survival 101: Evolve with your community<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Debbie makes the case that an organization\u2019s capacity to respond to a crisis comes from their competency to evolve with their community, no matter the circumstances. \u201cRegardless of whatever space or frame a community is in, it\u2019s always evolving and changing,\u201d says Debbie. \u201cSo your nonprofit organization, to serve, has to do that too. My philosophy\u2026is that I\u2019m not doing my best as a leader unless I myself have the capability of understanding how to lead an organization to be able to move through the changes in partnership with the community,\u201d she says. \u201cSo when it comes to a pandemic, I don\u2019t really have to shift my mindset that much.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhen you\u2019re making the quick decisions, you\u2019re doing it from the standpoint of data-driven decision-making, of course, but you also have your gut checks, and intuition and instinct that you should have been developing over the years to read communities that are ever-changing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Debbie Espinosa<\/strong>,\u00a0<\/span>President & CEO, FIND Food Bank<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Based on that, we wondered how a crisis differs from the daily evolution organizations should be undergoing alongside their communities. From Debbie\u2019s standpoint, the difference is the pace of decision-making and execution. But, again, the overarching point is that you should be building a system to support quick decisions long before you have to make them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re making the quick decisions, you\u2019re doing it from the standpoint of data-driven decision-making, of course, but you also have your gut checks, and intuition and instinct that you should have been developing over the years to read communities that are ever-changing,\u201d says Debbie.<\/p>\n

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Establish a professional support system<\/strong><\/h2>\n

In addition to the constant adaptive mentality, Debbie highlighted another resource essential to helping leaders feel supported and confident in making decisions in times of urgent need: people. The people that make up Debbie\u2019s wrap-around support system include the diverse set of technical experts that serve on FIND\u2019s board, executive coaches, and a deep contact list of people within her community \u2013 each one of them lending vital support and encouragement for big decisions. And none of those relationships were cultivated overnight.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy board of directors through 2020 was phenomenal,\u201d says Debbie. \u201cThey were not operational with me. They were not programmatic. They allowed me to do my job. But they were there for me when I hit that point that I needed that extra support of experts with regards to finance, or strategizing how the food bank was going to be able to expand our work by two times the amount we were doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

While a strong board can cover blind spots from an organizational standpoint, executive coaching can offer a much more personalized resource for leaders. Debbie has three coaches, all specifically selected based on a style that she responds to. \u201cFor me to be able to, in a very safe environment, ask questions and counsel with people helps them and me see where I might have weaknesses that I can strengthen, or different ways to look at things,\u201d says Debbie.<\/p>\n

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