NONPROFITS: ROUNDTABLE.

• Position: Discussion

Every month, Utah Business Magazine partners with Holland & Hart and Big-D Construction to host roundtable events featuring industry insiders. This month we invited the top nonprofit minds to discuss diversity, fundraising, and the new tax deduction laws. Moderated by Kate Rubalcava, the CEO of the Utah Nonprofits Association, here are a few highlights from the event:

What is your organization doing to advance the leadership of your employees?

Mara Haight | Executive Director | Rape Recovery Center

Everyone is part of the budgeting. We are all collectively making decisions about how our resources are going to be divvied up. They bring ideas and wisdom that I never would have thought of. Being able to bring people in to those decisions and really give them space and leadership to grow into how that gets done has been pretty exciting.

Laura Hadley | Executive Director | Cystic Fibrosis Foundation

Keeping my little team together is always a challenge. And they have expressed frustration that, "There's nowhere for me to go." So, finding ways to encourage them to be involved with Rotary, UNA, get on a committee, Junior League, kind of go outside and giving them the space during work hours that they can do that and you can support them in those efforts.

How is your organization addressing race equity, diversity, and inclusion?

Mara Haight | Executive Director | Rape Recovery Center

We, especially in leadership positions, have such a lack of representation. If there's nobody applying at my organization who would qualify as diverse, then I need to look at how am I recruiting--: What's the representation of my organization that people from marginalized communities are not applying here? How do we intentionally recruit the people that we need? Because we know that that skillset is needed and we know that that experience and that world view is absolutely necessary to actually do the work that we do.

Gavin Noyes | Executive Director | Utah Dine Bikeyah

We have a 100 percent Native American board. Our staff go to these conferences and they come back and say, "Well, I was the only nonwhite person there. People don't have a clue what I'm even talking about." They don't know how to relate across these cultural divides.

Mike Washburn | CEO | Thanksgiving Point

It starts with that awareness. How do we invite other groups in? One of the things we do is a Day of the Dead, Dia de Los Muertos, event in November. It gives us a chance to really reach out to the Latin community and get people involved on committees and participate with us, and then hopefully grow those relationships into maybe some coming to work for us or being on a board or board advisors or committees.

Carolyn Wawra | Executive Director | Recycle Utah

If you can't get the race diversity on the board, it's valuable to get somebody who might not be as passionate about your organization. They have outside perspective because they do a check of, "Can this really work?" Because we can come across as hippy environmentalists, to have someone who can hone that back has been valuable.

What unique skills do you, as executives, feel like you bring to your organization that some people might not know exist or need to exist at this level? What do you feel is most important in your sphere?

Alex Eaton | CEO | Community Foundation of Utah

There's such a breadth to what we do. We don't have an HR department or payroll department. We have to be an expert at everything. Finding someone with legal expertise, financial expertise, accounting expertise who will be willing to earn what we earn in the nonprofit sector is really, really tough.

Chris Conrad | Executive Director | Playworks

The strongest trait to leadership is to be a continual learner. I'm not an expert on everything. I'm always learning, all the time. And I tell my staff that if you are not continuously learning, you are not going to be a leader or an expert.

Matt Slonaker | Executive Director | Utah Health Policy Project

To somehow be able to maintain a certain level of...