Matt talks to Mark Waterson, the well-dressed CEO of the Convalescent Aid Society, a Pasadena nonprofit that loans free, durable medical equipment. The guys discuss what it takes to be a nonprofit executive, what brings them joy at work in 2020, and whether or not Mark is a Speedo guy.
EPISODE #7
MATT:
I'm in your office, I want to be an executive director, tell me, what are the steps I should take?
MARK:
Being a nonprofit executive requires a very, very broad band of expertise. You have to understand budgeting and finance. You have to have an operational bent. You have to be a storyteller--Unless you're at a much larger organization than mine, okay?--But if you're at a small-to-midsize non-profit, you have to know something about everything, really.
So, HR. Okay, I mentioned earlier, just like a for-profit business, we're under all the same regulations that Amazon is, in a sense. We've got to pay our people the appropriate wage, we got to make sure they take breaks at a certain time. We had to go through sexual harassment prevention training because that's the law in California.
MATT:
Listen, you got to tell your wife about that. Just FYI, you got to tell your wife about that sexual harassment.
MARK:
Yeah. Now, have you all done that?
MATT:
Listen, listen-
MARK:
Is it Ashley's fault or not, is the question.
MATT:
... Listen, I'm not here to talk about how we run our company, because nobody needs to know what we do on a daily basis…
MARK:
Anyway, my advice, I guess, is learn as much as you can about as many things as possible.
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