sarahlearningequality-org
Forum Replies Created
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Oh, that’s great to hear, Marvin – congrats, and thank you for sharing and affirming! Chitra sure is amazing – she helped me confirm we are eligible and helped me sort through the double dipping questions I had. I still need to finalize, but I’m hoping to submit in the next week.
Question for you – did you submit your 941x yourself, or did your payroll provider submit for you? We use Gusto and I see that they may be able to file for us: https://support.gusto.com/article/191223257100000/Employee-retention-credits-ercs. Curious if you or others have done this through a payroll provider and if so, how you felt about the process.
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Salaries are the biggest for our org for sure! We went fully remote during the pandemic and will stay that way, so rent isn’t an issue for us. But the other big one for us moving forward is going to be travel, food, accommodations, etc. for when we do get together in person. We haven’t done any full team in-person gatherings yet, and likely won’t until at least spring 2023, but I know this will be a significant budget item for us. We’ll have to think through what frequency of full-team vs smaller group in-person events (maybe based on location or working group) makes sense. The in-person connections are going to be all the more important to be thoughtful about now that we’re fully remote!
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These are great, Kristine! Funder intros, and I think even more broadly, generous and thoughtful intros can go such a long way in building strong networks.
One thing we’ve done, and could continue to deepen, is investing in our racial equity work (learning sessions for staff and board, facilitation to put learning into action).
I’d love to put another question out there: does anyone have a system or process for financially supporting staff who are leading racial equity work in the org? I know many orgs pay stipends or bonuses for staff who serve on racial equity committees or working groups, to compensate for the emotional burden of leading that work. My questions: how do you set the amount? How do you take into account different identities leading the work (e.g., do BIPOC folks get compensated differently? could white allies who are leading pieces of the work opt out of additional compensation?)
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Thanks so much, Jeff – I’d love to see your playbook and the research you did! (I may have missed if we have access to each other’s emails here on the forum… I don’t see them on profiles but I’m going to message you on LinkedIn.)
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Thanks for sharing these, Madge! So many great nuggets I’d love to dig deeper on 😀
1) You mentioned considering whether the time is ripe to consider a Co-Exec Director model. I’d love to hear more/discuss! My org does have a non-traditional management structure with the goal of distributed leadership, but we don’t explicitly have a co-director model. It’s exciting to think about what that could look like… and a bit intimidating to think about what the process to get there would be.
2-3) I love hearing that your org and board are supportive of investing in staff through COLA, even if it means a short-term budget deficit. We can’t work toward our mission if we don’t have staff! Have your staff or board talked about changes in business model/revenue model? In the past year, my org has jointly applied for grants that we’ve been awarded in conjunction with other orgs we work closely with, which is fairly new for us, which has got me thinking about if and how we might do more of that.
4) I also love being explicit with funders that’s what’s needed. Curious how those conversations have gone with funders?