Anticipating Turnover: An Interview with UWW’s Tom Lowery

The words "we rise by lifting others" hang on the wall of Kelly O'Lague's office at the United Way of Columbia-Willamette in Portland Oregon. That's not just for people helped by the organization. It's also for staff member's professional development. 

"One of my favorite authors is Priya Parker (author of The Art of Gathering)," said O'Lague, the organization's president and chief executive. "One of the things she (Parker) says is that gatherings are the culture carrier so, for me, one of the most important things we do to retain staff is gather them regularly."

Intentional attention to culture is a theme for many nonprofits in an era when staffing is hard to find, thus making it vital to keep those people in the fold and updating skills for the next career step. O’Lague believes in people development instead of problem management.

“We build leaders at the Y, whether they stay at the Y or they move on the community. That is one thing near and dear to us, building leaders,” said Tina MacVeigh, executive vice president, chief learning and leadership development officer at the YMCA of the USA.

All staff in the American Heart Association are in the talent pipeline, starting with an Interns of Impact program and having access to a “Heart U” program learning center with 100,000 resources, said Sally Pabin, national senior vice president of talent at the American Heart
Association.

Staff at the American Heart Association have access to a dedicated internal career coach. “All she does is work with internal employees talking about career development,” said Pabin. They receive help with their resumes and LinkedIn profiles with an eye toward internal mobility. Roughly 33% of staff movement at the American Heart Association is internal, as compared to people leaving or hires from outside the organization, according to Pabin. Staff can sign up for notifications of system openings based on their career goals. “We want them to stay with us,” she said.

There is a holistic process at United Way Worldwide. “It’s a competitive marketplace out there. People are always looking for opportunities in their communities and so we know that professional development is key to that,” said Tom Lowery, senior vice president, network resilience, network engagement, learning & development, knowledge management at United Way Worldwide. Nonprofit leaders, particularly those in federated systems, have stepped up the pace in education and training, if the titles of those in charge of them are any indication. The training is a hybrid concoction of online, inperson and selfdriven learning where a course can take weeks online, a few days at a meeting or a matter of minutes on TikTok. All of it is designed for a culture of learning.

It is a tired phrase, but people need to be reached where they are and that is logistically and by platform preference. Organizations where leaders were interviewed all use a variety of information mediums. In many cases an individual will set up their personal development plan.

“What is on my plan might look very different from what is on your plan,” said Pabin. “That also allows me to choose things my leader has told me I need to work on and things that are of interest to me and to find the right medium where I learn best.” The interns are often the teachers. “That’s a workforce and population you don’t have yet. A lot of sessions with the interns, there’s a lot of reverse mentoring to help us learn,” she said.

The staff at United Way of West Tennessee in Jackson, Tennessee is full of Millennials and Gen Zs with a generational reputation for job hopping. “That means that we’re always operating under the assumption that someone could choose to go elsewhere at any time,” according to Matt Marshall, president and CEO. “That’s why it’s so important that we try to make that decision as difficult as we can for them by providing a supportive work environment with clear pathways to promotion. It is something these groups have consistently expressed concerns about. I must admit as a small nonprofit with only about 24 staff members, this is not always easy to do,” according to Marshall.

Lowery estimates that 70% of local United Ways have five or fewer staff so they are drawing from a relatively limited pool of potential staff, although many are anchored to their communities. “What’s going to keep them in the role in many cases is the mission of United Way and addressing the needs of their community through the work that they do,” he said.

People have career goals and Lowery has a plan. United Way is expected to launch a staff credentialing program during 2025. It will be common and relevant learning experiences for all United Way staff. Staff members “obtain a certification or credential then that’s one thing that is part of their employment brand and used within their United Way career,” said Lowery.

“We are in the early days of beginning to assemble an understanding of who is on our staff across the network and being able to extract and maximize those lived experiences along with other attributes,” he said. “We believe that will make a big difference in helping people further appreciate that there are indeed career opportunities within United Way. They can move around, and they can move up.”

United Way also has a Next Generation Leaders Initiative (Next-Gen). It is a two-year program for what Lowery described as high-potential leaders who are early in their careers or approaching mid-career. It is an interactive online experience. “The goal is to put 1,000 local United Way leaders through this,” said Lowery.

United Way is also partnering with the Institute for the Future (IFTF) to design and deliver content on future-focused leadership and strategic foresight within Next-Gen. IFTF is doing two things:

IFTF researched and authored a report for United Way that describes four future forces that might shape civil society leadership through 2034. Next-Gen participants explore the report in-depth to consider implications for their own leadership. The report also describes seven “talent profiles” for leaders to activate situationally as they confront new opportunities and challenges.

United Way licensed a customized version of IFTF’s Foresight Essentials course to build strategic-foresight skills among the Next-Gen participants. A course-within-a-course, Strategic Foresight for FutureReady Leadership includes six lab sessions and access to tools to help participants develop insights and perspectives on future leadership challenges.
 

The YMCA has 11 regional learning centers, one of which is online, that were established this year. The other 10 are for live training and are in local YMCAs or affiliated organizations. Leaders keep an eye to learning journeys, building leaders in one track and technical proficiency in another.

Leaders at the American Heart Association are strategic in certain markets “where we either have a challenge hiring or need to build up the talent so we really start there trying to look to our intern program,” said Pabin. The American Heart Association has five regions and what is considered the national center.

The training regiment is about talent development, not just leadership. “Who is in that seat today and what do we need to do to develop the talent behind or where do we need to recruit,” she explained. It’s a buy versus build mentality. If a skill is unique, they adjust and source it from outside.

The intern program is not just for those coming out of college or university. “It might also be someone returning to the workforce who had never been in a nonprofit capacity or people from the military, transitioning from military life to the workforce,” she explained.

Everybody’s path is different, including lived experience. “You might have a particular aspiration and we see the potential in you but the way you get there, based on your skills and experience, might be different” from others in the system, said Pabin. “We really try to look across the whole of the organization. That information then gets fed to the “Heart U” database with the organization also working with external experts such as McKinsey and the Center for Creative Leadership.

“Everyone can be a leader and influence others,” she said.

The pandemic spawned a great deal of today’s strategy for staff development and retention. “The COVID crisis represented the finest hour for many locally based nonprofit organizations because they had to respond immediately to very different circumstances and they often had to throw out their playbook about how they do things and quickly invent new solutions on the fly that would respond to immediate community needs,” said Lowery.

“As people pivoted, they reinvented, thought up new skills, thought up new solutions, realized they could be agile and responsive in ways they didn’t think they could,” said Lowery. “They had to do it. They did it and now they have a new skill in terms of being responsive and agile.”

It was not only individual skills people developed but a collective skill which means they can replicate whenever challenges come up, according to Lowery. “They were heroes. They did great work and now they can extract that and use that for the future,” he said.

Managers can be territorial about staff and that can be a challenge when an employee looks to move up or try a different position. “We share very openly who has moved within the organization, where they have gone and if there is still an issue there is always our human resources team who will get involved and engage,” said Pabin.

Leaders at United Way Worldwide, the American Heart Association and YMCA of the USA believe learning networks will knit their federations tighter. “People clamor for having information and having access to what other United Ways are doing in their communities that they can adopt and adapt for their work,” said Lowery. That togetherness is a strength for when the next crisis hits, he said.

That gets back to the concept of gathering and lifting up staff. “We gather once a month for a staff meeting, and it becomes an all-day affair. We have breakfast together. We meet. We have learning opportunities. We have team building opportunities and then we have lunch together,” said O’Lague. There is work within departments during the afternoon.

There is also a collaborative success model, for example, with November being a gratitude celebration where staff and the community get together. “There’s no ask, just a party,” she said.

There is a succession plan and a growth plan for every position at the United Way of the Columbia-Willamette. “I work with my direct reports. They work with their direct reports. We look at opportunities. We look at budget,” said O’Lague. There are quarterly checkins around performance and professional development.

Those plans include people who might not on the surface be looking for another position or are keeping quiet about a retirement plan for fear of being moved out. “I ask everyone ‘where do you see yourself in three years, in five years,’” said O’Lague, of defusing fears of conversations.

“My job is to be lifting people up to their next step on the ladder. It’s not a competitive career ladder but where do you want to go next and having this conversation with every staff member,” she explained. Having that mindset as an organization is part of a caring culture, she explained, with the key being passion for the work. O’Lague believes it’s part of that culture to help people to see it’s okay to leave a job they don’t love and okay to look for the one that brings them joy, whether it is within the United Way or elsewhere.

If you’re dreading going to work on Monday or happy it’s Friday you are probably in the wrong job, O’Lague opined. She recalled the advice she once received: “Never stay away from what you love for too long because that’s where you find your heart.”

Read the full special education edition of The NonProfit Times.