Lead for Good: A Conversation with Billy Henry - Episode 33

What do you think grassroots organizations uniquely teach leaders that maybe larger organizations sometimes overlook?

I think the one theme that comes out to me is humility and being able to understand what you're good at, understand what you're not good at, and then also knowing that when you're in a grassroots organization, you have to do everything.

So I always tell my team, I will never ask them to do something that I'm not willing to or haven't done myself.

I've done everything from... clean the office because we didn't have janitorial to own vans when I'm legally blind and can't drive and get volunteers to drive those vans to anything, you know, anything in between.

So I think you have to, you have to, you have to have grit, you have to have determination and you have to figure out a way to get things done with a lack of resources.

But what that teaches you as a leader is to say like, is to really think about the work that people are doing and making sure that it aligns And does it really add value? Because when you're in a grassroots organization, you don't have a lot of capacity, you don't have a lot of resources, you don't have a lot of people, whether that be volunteers or paid employees or consultants, whatever that might be.

So you really have to get high return on investment from everything that you do.

Yeah, that's great.

And there's a lot of people who don't know your organization who should just take a minute and tell us about the organization.

What's the name? Where is it located? What's the extent of the impact that you're making currently? That kind of thing.

Absolutely.

So Northwest Association for Blind Athletes, our mission is to provide life-changing opportunities through sports and physical activity to children, youth, adults, and veterans who are blind or visually impaired.

But really what it's about is helping people who are blind and low vision build confidence, gain self-esteem, and really reach their greatest potential in all areas of life.

We provide in-person programming across Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana.

and we provide virtual programming across the entire United States to California, to New York, to Missouri, to all across the US and really meet each individual who's blind or visually impaired where they're at, help them be successful in whatever they wanna do.

We serve individuals as young as six months old that their families recently learned that they're blind and they're learning how to deal with vision loss for the first time to people that are in their 80s that have had full vision their entire life and have recently lost it.

And our mission is very much focused on meeting each person where they are to achieve success in whatever they want to do.

I think that's going to really inspire a lot of people when they hear it and just marvel at the fact that there are just so many wonderful organizations out there filling the gaps that exist in our society.

So thank you again for the work that you have done for 20 years and you continue to do.

But I want you to take us back.

to the beginning.

And tell us a little bit about what the organization and its fundraising efforts looked like in those early days.

Absolutely.

I'm happy to.

So when we were first starting out, I read a lot of about.com articles about how to fundraise, what to do, what it took.