Work record / Operating / H.E.E.A.L. Santa Barbara
H.E.E.A.L. Santa Barbara: a nonprofit built around the easy yes
From September 2010 to January 2015 I was the volunteer president of H.E.E.A.L. Santa Barbara. I built the outreach around one fact: a grieving family is almost always sent to the program by someone else.
The seat
I held the president's seat on a volunteer basis, in Santa Barbara, for four years and four months, while I was running Tellus Design and Build. The job covered fundraising, governance and partnerships with schools and care providers.
| Sector | Nonprofit |
|---|---|
| Type of work | Governance and referral development |
| Where | Santa Barbara, California |
| Years | September 2010 to January 2015 |
| How long | Four years and four months |
| Through | H.E.E.A.L. Santa Barbara, as a volunteer board seat. |
| Credits | Common Ground Jesse Fowler, President (volunteer board seat) |
What I was brought in to decide
H.E.E.A.L. Santa Barbara was a new nonprofit. Its approach to grief and loss used exercise and the arts, offered as an alternative to clinical talk therapy.
The question I had to answer was how families actually reached it. Families seldom go looking for a program themselves. Someone like a school counselor or a hospice coordinator passes one along, in a quick exchange at a busy desk. That person was the true customer.
What we did
- I saw that the referrer, not the family, was the one deciding. So I looked at what a referral costs the person who makes it.
- I built the outreach around that cost. The pitch led with three facts a counselor can repeat without checking anything: the program was free, it was local, and there was no waitlist. Behind that yes we put the board, the model and the funders.
- Grants, donor relationships and referral outreach became one record. The same funding and governance story then worked for a grant committee and for a school, and fundraising stopped being a track apart from outreach.
- I took the president off the accountable line, which is where a partner would look. The board took responsibility for how we reported money and what we said in public. A treasurer or finance lead handled the reporting itself, and larger grants went to the board for sign-off. The person raising money was never the only check on it.
- I put volunteer hours into individual counselors and coordinators, not school districts or hospital systems. And I counted the second referral from the same person, not the first.
Results
- I held the seat for four years and four months, through organizational growth, wider fundraising and stronger board governance.
- In December 2010 the board's leadership got a public recommendation from someone who had sat in on board meetings that first year.
- Out of it came an easy-yes test that any service relying on a gatekeeper can reuse. Name who really says yes. Write down what a yes costs them. Lead with facts that need no checking. Put the credibility behind them. Then count the second referral.
The lesson
A grieving family will not find the program by itself. A counselor hands it over, so make the referral cheap to give and safe to give again.
Stories from this work
Firm record
Common Ground keeps its own account of this engagement: H.E.E.A.L. Santa Barbara on the Common Ground wiki.