The Nonprofit Leader's Guide
We want to bring you the thoughts of some of the most impactful leaders in health and human services. Their real-world experience in driving growth and impact and leading in hard times might be just the extra dose of motivation and common sense you need to bring to your organization whether you are an Executive Team member or the Board President. We think that leading the conversation about the nonprofit business sector and what nonprofits should think about now is part of our mission, “Building A World that realizes the boundless potential of all people.”
Our purpose in this podcast is to make your mission, our mission.
The Nonprofit Leader's Guide
The Strategic Power of Nonprofit Mergers & Acquisitions
Nonprofit mergers and partnerships aren't just survival tactics—they're strategic opportunities to multiply impact and secure long-term sustainability. This compelling conversation with Jennifer Riha, Chief Strategy Officer, and Trent Stechschulte, Chief Legal Officer at Boundless, unveils how strategic growth has transformed their organization's ability to fulfill its mission of realizing the boundless potential of all people.
Today's health and human services organizations face a perfect storm: skyrocketing demand for services while resources and qualified staff become increasingly scarce. Against this backdrop, Boundless has pioneered a proactive approach to partnerships that challenges traditional nonprofit thinking. As Trent memorably states, "not-for-profit is a tax status with the IRS—not a business plan."
Jennifer shares how strategic mergers have expanded Boundless from serving specific populations in limited areas to reaching over 6,000 individuals annually across Ohio. Their sophisticated partnership toolkit—including scoring systems for potential partners and comprehensive integration planning—ensures these unions truly amplify impact rather than simply combining assets. The results speak volumes: when Koinonia joined Boundless in 2023, staff immediately received higher wages and better benefits, while clients gained access to specialized services previously unavailable in their region.
Perhaps most compelling is how these partnerships create the financial leverage needed for innovation. With nonprofit margins typically under 5%, organic growth alone can't generate sufficient resources for technological advancement or program expansion. Strategic partnerships create the scale necessary to invest in the future. Curious how your organization might benefit from strategic partnerships? Listen now to discover practical insights on building a more sustainable, impactful future for your nonprofit mission.
Well, hello everyone. You've heard me and others say many times on our podcast series our mission is to build a world that realizes the boundless potential of all people. That's in our core DNA here and in recognition of that mission, plus the fact that boundless can't do it alone, we are closing this year's podcast season with a three part series. It's on mergers, acquisitions and partnerships and how they improve our services to build that world for all people. Welcome everyone to the Nonprofit Leader's Guide podcast. I'm your host, scott Light. So today we want to discuss our experience building our growth strategy toolkits, lessons learned and what comes next. We're really excited to share how our growth and partnerships have multiplied Boundless's potential by boosting innovation, increasing access to services and securing our future sustainability. Let me introduce you to two great guests.
Speaker 1:Jennifer Reha is the Chief Strategy Officer and oversees Boundless Advantage that's the growth and strategy department here. Jen also leads Boundless Advantage that's the growth and strategy department here. Jen also leads Boundless's government relations, marketing and communications, plus research and innovation partnerships. She does a lot. Jennifer has worked in nonprofit health and human services for nearly 20 years and has helped lead many organizations across our state. She's also served as a national technical assistance provider for grassroots and nonprofit organizations across the country, and she's a frequent national public speaker too. Jennifer, it's good to see you Welcome.
Speaker 2:Thank you, so happy to be here, scott.
Speaker 1:Trent Steck-Schulte is the chief legal officer in general counsel. He oversees the legal and compliance department here at Boundless and in his role he serves as the organization's corporate secretary, while also overseeing risk management, quality improvement and training. Trent is a corporate healthcare attorney with over a decade of experience in legal and compliance roles for various provider types. He is also currently an adjunct professor at Ohio State's Moritz College of Law, where he teaches healthcare compliance and assists the administration in building a health law curriculum. Trent, welcome to you. Thank you so much, scott. It's good to be here. So let's begin on the personal side, if I could, with both of you. Jen, why don't you start us off? As I mentioned, you have worked in nonprofit health and human services for more than two decades. You're a frequent public speaker on so many subjects out there. What drew you to this?
Speaker 2:work and what continues to inspire you with this work? Wow, what a question. I think from a very early age it was very clear to me that I wanted to do something that was going to make the world a better place. Maybe it's a little bit stretching it to say that I think that maybe there's a chance I can change the world, or I can be a part of helping change the world, and so, for me, boundless has really become that place and become that opportunity. I have a personal connection. I do have a son with developmental disabilities on with developmental disabilities. So, layered on top of that real drive and desire to make a difference in the world, combined with, like you mentioned, my clinical education and then that personal connection, this really has become an opportunity to fulfill and work to achieve my life's goals and dreams and leave a lasting impact.
Speaker 1:Hey, we need folks every day who think they can come in and believe that they can change the world, so we love that. Trent, similarly to you, you've been here since 2022. Before that, at Equitas, you're an adjunct professor, as I mentioned, so you give back to your profession in teaching our next generation of lawyers and legal scholars. Tell our listeners more about your background and again I want to get to that inspirational part what inspires you to do this work?
Speaker 3:Yeah, many times corporate lawyers. You know they're not trained in law school to go into social services and nonprofits. So being able to demonstrate, not even in your organization but also in your community, that what you do at improving and helping these organizations helps them move forward. Even today, we're talking about affiliations, acquisitions, mergers. These organizations need legal minds and legal services to really develop and carry through with that mission.
Speaker 3:And at the end of the day, yes, what I am doing is I'm a corporate healthcare lawyer, but I am working for an organization, to Jen's point, that may change the world or that serves a community that doesn't have a voice, serves a community that doesn't have the resources that we think they need to have a fulfilling life. So every day I go home and I know that I'm working for a good organization. I get to work with people like Jen and her team as well, which is incredibly personally fulfilling, and also the job is challenging. The problems are challenging. It doesn't matter if you're a hospital system or social services. The same rules apply. So I also have a lot of intellectual challenges that I really wanted when I went into law school.
Speaker 1:I have a feeling with both of you and again, disparate career accomplishments and all the positives that you each bring to the table. But to your point, trent, when you both go home, it's got to be a really satisfactory feeling when you know you're making a difference.
Speaker 3:Yes, and I also think it's important that young lawyers, people going into law school, understand that there also are opportunities to work at mission-driven organizations and that many of these organizations need those resources and need those personnel to really drive their mission forward.
Speaker 1:Jen, let me come to you with a 30,000-foot question here out of the gate. What's the state of play for nonprofits, not only here in Ohio but nationally?
Speaker 2:Well, the reality is the world is changing so much more rapidly than it ever has before, and the health and human services sector nonprofits are not in any way immune to that. So we're facing huge changes, first and primarily, that the desire and need for the services that we provide and this is true really, I think, for many nonprofits today are exponentially increasing, while the resources and the tools, including the workforce, to meet those needs are becoming more scarce and are really becoming harder to attain and retain. So, as we really see those significant changes happening in the new challenges and maybe even historic challenges that are now compounding, I feel like Boundless and other nonprofits, both in the health and human services sector and outside of it, really are up against a new environment and a new scenario where we're having to be more creative, we're having to be more flexible and we're having to be more willing to consider ideas that may seem out of the box, in order to make sure that we keep achieving and moving toward our missions.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about missions plural, because there are many of them here, so let's dive into it. The general public if we think about it here, they largely know nonprofits by the services that are provided, but what is not talked about enough in our industry are the things that both of you are getting to business practices, legal prowess to enable those services to not only exist but to thrive. We looked at a recent article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review and it said this quote the social sector must move beyond viewing M&A as a last resort for struggling organizations and instead we should recognize it as a proactive strategy for achieving greater impact more efficiently. This shift requires changes in both mindset and practice.
Speaker 2:I love the idea of the fact that we are non-profits. The fact that we are health and human services sector does not mean that we don't run with great efficiency and use great best practices and great business practices. I'll sometimes sort of joke that not-for-profit is a tax status with the IRS. It is not a business plan, and so we really really aim to make sure that we're running this organization like a great business.
Speaker 3:Boundless has a unique leadership team in that regard, where we are making very highly strategic decisions and we have business plans that many social services nonprofits don't invest in, and they don't invest because they don't have the resources or they can't find the talent to do it, and Boundless is doing that. So, to Jen's point, we view this as a business and a nonprofit as a tax status and not a plan.
Speaker 1:Let me follow up Again coming off that quote, using that still as a springboard here. Why has the nonprofit sector viewed M&A Trent to you first on this one. Why has the nonprofit sector viewed M&A growth as a last resort?
Speaker 3:that are in dire financial distress. Merging with another organization, you also have that character of an organization you think will change. You have leaders and employees saying I'm an employee of this nonprofit. If we merge, we're going to lose that culture. We're going to lose our ability to serve individuals better. However, when you back up, culture is important but you can provide more services by growing and by bringing others in, accepting that talent. One thing Jen mentioned a little bit was just around talent. Through a lot of our acquisitions and mergers, we have found amazing talent that have come in, provided us perspective on their culture and their operations that we've used to improve the services we deliver to our individuals.
Speaker 2:Yeah to Trent's point.
Speaker 2:I really think a lot of times some of that hesitancy or the way that that's viewed is driven from fear.
Speaker 2:Trent mentioned the talent question and I think oftentimes there's a concern of, hey, the great people who have invested in this mission over the decades aren't going to be able to be a part of this organization if we merge or if we're acquired or something like that, when the reality is to what Trent was saying, there is no nonprofit out there that is just swimming in an overwhelming pool of amazing talent.
Speaker 2:In an overwhelming pool of amazing talent, coming together means that we need to bring our talent together, that we're actually going to be able to perhaps specialize and have more time to do the thing or the couple of things that we're really, really good at, versus every nonprofit leader having to wear 15 hats. That that's what that brings together. And so I do think that a lot of times there's a considerable amount of fear and a considerable amount of really being afraid of both change and the uncertainty, whether it's the board members or it's the leaders themselves or other staff. And the truth is, when you look at the vast majority of nonprofit mergers and acquisitions, and certainly the ones that Boundless has been involved in. That's simply not reality. The reality is we need all the talent we can get. That coming together does not mean that we don't need great talent.
Speaker 1:Let's pick up on where you both were leading there, and that is what's happening here at Boundless. So how does Boundless view M&A and why is it such an important part of our strategy here?
Speaker 2:You know, one of the things that is happening right now in this sector is that we're seeing a lot of for-profit, especially with the private equity money. The goal is to invest for three to five years, bundle together a number of providers that they buy or invest in and then resell them. Now this is having a huge impact on our sector. We see it a lot, especially in the autism and the substance use disorders treatment space, and it really is making it extremely difficult for many of the historic nonprofits to sustain and to compete. When we add on top of that the rapid technological advancements all around us, including the increasing use of AI and therapeutic interventions, but then also the very real changes in what families and individuals that we serve expect for their lives and want from providers, that's just a huge amount of change, and nonprofits have to, today and right now, be able to evolve, adapt and invest to make sure that our missions continue long into the future. And most health and human services organizations, including Boundless, operate on very slim profit margins every year. It's almost always less than 5%, and so that leaves very little room for most providers to invest in that evolution and that adapting that we all really need to do.
Speaker 2:Reality is organic growth.
Speaker 2:Growing programs from scratch is really hard, really slow and really expensive, but we have found that if we can come together with like-missioned organizations to create that larger pool of revenue, then the same 5% is a bigger number and can become a big enough number to be actually able to afford the investments that nonprofits need to be making.
Speaker 2:So that's really the bottom line for why we're putting so much time and energy and intentional resources behind looking for partners because we see these challenges around us now, we see the ones in front of us over the next decade and we're really committed to making sure we find a way to ensure that Boundless's mission is here, it's thriving for the future generations, and so we're really looking for those partners that allow us to create the efficiencies, to make sure that that profit margin at the end of the year is large enough to invest in our workforce, to expand new programs into new communities, to launch new services, make sure our programs are based on the best latest research, and then also to invest in the technology tools that can extend the impact of our workforce. So, as we look around, we really see partnership, m&a, these kinds of opportunities as a tool, if not the tool that's going to be most effective in getting us to the investments that we need to make to be able to make sure that our services continue and are here.
Speaker 3:And Jen and her team do a good job of vocalizing and helping other partners understand that investment Technology is not oh, if we buy this system or we buy this support for individuals, their care will be improved. That's not. The conversation is more how do we build a team of professionals that can develop a process that then can put this technology to use, that can develop a process that then can put this technology to use? That's expensive and it's expensive for all health care providers and that includes IDD and social services.
Speaker 2:Well, I think it really comes back to in order to deliver services, and great services you need to have the resources to invest, and so, whether we're talking about additional talent as the resource and so we talked about this a little bit earlier that when you've got multiple fantastic managers, leaders, people delivering services so that's you know, you've interviewed and talked to so many over the years on the podcast but having more fantastic speech therapists or more fantastic intervention specialists, those things help to make everyone involved better.
Speaker 2:They bring new opportunities to our partners. In some cases, when we've merged with another organization, services that Boundless had that that other organization had not been able to build, we've been able to take those now to those new parts of the state and offer those services to the people they were serving, enhancing their quality of life, and so we really see these opportunities as a chance to give all of the great things that Boundless has been able to develop to those other organizations and the people they're serving, but also to get from those other organizations the incredible things that they have learned, the incredible talent that they have. They have unique programs that we don't have. We really see these partnerships as an incredible marriage and give and take that ultimately benefits all of the people working for us, but also all of the communities we're serving, all of the individuals and families that we're serving.
Speaker 1:Jen, you mentioned partnerships. Let's explore that. Some here, boy, you guys are really making my job easy. I just have to tee up the questions and follow your conversation here. This is fantastic. When partners are considering becoming part of Boundless Trent to you, how does leadership try to ease those concerns of fellow partner organizations and ensure that that partnership is indeed a great idea?
Speaker 3:The leadership team's first consideration really is always the culture of the organization we're talking to. That means getting to know the leaders of the organization and getting to know their board of the organization and getting to know their board. So when I say leadership team, I know that can sound just a little bit amorphous. There are a lot of leaders involved in any sort of merger, acquisition or affiliation process, but it's those that are really making the decision, including the board of trustees of the partner organization. So understanding the organization's leadership is important because the decisions about coming together involve not just the executives but those board members as well. So that's why when we start this whole process from a legal perspective, the first step is an NDA. It's an NDA so leaders can be candid with the other organization around what their intent is coming together. We've talked a lot extensively already on this podcast just about all of the benefits. We want to know whether those leaders are aligned with our culture.
Speaker 2:You know. I would also add that the cultures of the two organizations do not have to be identical, and the reality is they're probably not going to be but what we have found is that everybody needs to be clear about how they are different, and then that we need to have a very candid and clear conversation about how those differences are going to be taken into account if our two organizations integrate, and so that means having a lot of time at the beginning of the conversation around expectations, but then also talking about what is really important in your perspective to make sure continues or endures from your organization. So is it a particular program? Is it a particular way of viewing the world? But having really open, in-depth conversations about those pieces really help to make sure that the aspects of the cultures of both organizations that we want to endure, that we can make a plan for that to happen, and we can make a plan for places where there's difference.
Speaker 2:So if there's different ways that we view how work is assigned, how decisions are made, views of independent work versus teamwork, all of those things are unique to an organization's culture, and so it's really about understanding the differences and then making a plan for how do we bring the best of both together. And then how do we create a new culture collaboratively? And the truth is, whether it's a big organization and a little one, or two big ones, two little ones coming together, the outcome, on the other end, is that it's always a new culture. The blending of two organizations ultimately always changes things. So, trying to be intentional and trying to be proactive, to plan out what we want this to look like on the other end, and that makes sense, scott, just from the standpoint of when employees of an organization know there's an organized, structured integration process.
Speaker 3:It eases a lot of the anxieties that come with change. Some folks are very energized by change in an organization, some are not. So, having that structured process around, we are discussing the possibility and the intentions with this organization. We are moving to a letter of intent where we further want to understand due diligence. We want to vocalize and figure out whether this makes financial sense but also whether it improves the services we're providing across the care continuum right. And then we include our board. The board is a disinterested party with a fiduciary duty of care to ensure that we're acting in our best interest. And this membership substitution acquisition comes from the board, a formal legal process that must be approved by the board.
Speaker 1:I'd love to ask at this point in this episode. I'd love to ask each of you a perspective of your learning over the years. Now to our audience. I'm the only one here at the table that has any gray hair, so I've got both of our guests by age here and probably at least a decade or so. But as you heard their bios from the beginning, jen and Trent have been around. They've done a lot with their careers so far. What have you learned over these years about how M&A, acquisitions and other things when it comes to being really efficient on the resource planning side and then using those resources wisely once they all come under one umbrella?
Speaker 2:Well, first, Scott, I will pass along your compliment to my hairdresser.
Speaker 1:I'm not showing any gray today, that's fantastic.
Speaker 2:You are so right. These conversations, these types of initiatives, cost a lot, both in terms of time and resources, but it also eventually has financial cost. So making sure that we're being very responsible and efficient in how we're assessing a potential partner is really important to us. So we've actually learned a lot over the years from decisions and things that we probably wouldn't do again, but what we've built now is a scoring system that's actually specific to Boundless. That helps us score specific states, geographies, as well as different provider types in a particular state to make sure that we're really focusing our limited time and resources on partnerships that are going to be most likely to result in the efficiencies and the opportunity to reinvest that I talked about earlier. We've also built a toolkit, and this is based on M&A best practice from other sectors. We've done research from Harvard Business Review and Forbes and, again, really getting back to that whole idea of being a non-profit does not mean that you can't be a great business, and so what we've put together is an entire toolkit for partnership, merger and acquisition activities that involves laying out the deal fundamentals, laying out the actual non-binding letter of intent, our due diligence process and then, maybe most importantly, we've invested in being able to have people who specifically project, manage this whole process and then bring the organizations together before the deal is closed to, as Trent referenced, put together what we call a master integration plan, and so this is not the flashier, exciting part of the process, but it's very detailed and it literally goes through the plans for IT, for people in culture, for quality and compliance and really walks through.
Speaker 2:If these two organizations come together, how are we going to integrate these pieces? What is going to be a priority to work on first? How are we going to make sure we don't overwhelm people? How are we going to make sure that staff feel supported and that everybody understands the timeline and that we are monitoring our progress throughout the whole piece? And that level of rigor and discipline around how to integrate organizations is really what we are finding makes all the difference. On the other end I talked about that a new culture will come out on the other side, and not paying sufficient attention to the integration and the planning is really what can mess that up and get you a culture you did not want or you were not intending to have come out on the other side. But for us, that's really what has been most important for us in making sure that we're efficient and that we're really working with partners that, ultimately, are going to make it to the point where we truly come together.
Speaker 3:Just outside of what Jen just said, with the internal team, there's also a lot of external players we have to think about. So, first and foremost, legal counsel. As all nonprofits and businesses know, legal counsel for organizations can be expensive, and one of the most important things I can say, without providing legal advice, is, in the legal world, you get what you pay for. So it's critical that you invest in quality, experienced lawyers who have the resources and expertise in this area to help an organization across the finish lines. Additionally, there's more than just agreement management when it comes to merger and acquisitions.
Speaker 3:In this space, you have billing, grants, certifications, licensure. You have particular organizations that may have governance expectations when it comes to coming together, like certified behavioral health clinics, federally qualified health centers, qualified health centers, and you need experienced folks internally that understand that, or consultants or lawyers externally to help you, because if you do not make the expense up front, you will pay for it in the long run, and so you know. Other areas of expense can include human resources, consultants, but also doing those due diligence around your risk management, around your insurance right, and then understanding, from a purely financial standpoint, of your two organizations coming together. How does coming together impact your debt obligations, your credit right, and so those are some of the things that, again, that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to external players involved in a merger and acquisition, when it comes to external players involved in a merger and acquisition, but understanding that, with these shared vendors, these shared external companies, you have a lot of savings in the long run. If you're bundling your benefits, if you're bundling your insurance right, you save money in the long run.
Speaker 1:Any time, as host of these episodes, I try to put myself in the place of listeners and I'm wondering if we have some listeners out there going OK, hey, what you're saying is great, but I want some concrete examples of how the Boundless model has positively impacted staff services culture. The list goes on for this one because I think back to the times. I've heard our CEO Patrick out there talking to various groups and he gets really impassioned talking about the earliest days of Boundless, and that's really where we can trace this thing right. We can trace those positive examples back to the partnership that created Boundless just a few years ago.
Speaker 2:That's exactly right, scott. So back in 2017, the organization at that time was Franklin County Residential Services and it was truly a residential services organization that primarily served only adults and only people with intellectual or developmental disabilities in Franklin County, and it was through an M&A partnership with what at that time was Step-by-Step Academy and they primarily served children and youth with autism and providing behavioral health care that the seeds for growth through partnership were planted. So when Step-by-Step Academy came together with Franklin County Residential Services, shortly after that, monco out of Montgomery County joined as well, and that's really the organization that became what we now think of as Boundless, and that first partnership and the impact of that has spread across the entire state and now serves over 6,000 people and their families every year, with the huge range of services that we know Boundless now has. And so when we think back to really less than 10 years ago, the work that Step-by-Step was doing was fantastic, the work that Franklin County Residential Services was doing was fantastic and it absolutely was making a difference in the lives of the people that both organizations were serving. But when we think about what happened when they came together and how many more people now are served across the entire state, not just Franklin County, not just Central Ohio. I really can't overstate how important that initial, really quite small deal was when we look at how it's blossomed and how it's transitioned over the year, over the years.
Speaker 2:The other thing that immediately comes to mind for me is our most recent partnership with Koinonia. So in 2023, koinonia, out of Cuyahoga County, which was a large intellectual and developmental disability provider, joined Boundless, and when the two organizations came together, it immediately impacted Koinonia staff. They had raises in their wages. They also immediately had better access to health benefits at a much lower cost, and it created so many new advancement opportunities for many of their leadership staff. And it has, as I mentioned earlier, now resulted in our being able to add new services, such as specialized behavioral health care, open up new, improved facilities and serve many more people all throughout Northeast Ohio because of the two organizations coming together. So I think those are just two really practical examples of how two organizations come together and that it's not one plus one equals two. These have been scenarios where one plus one equals 20.
Speaker 3:Just to Jen's point around leaders and employees from the mergers and acquisitions having a huge impact. So when the organizations do come together, like Jen mentioned, they bring their ideas, their strengths, their talent and since we have been very intentional about integration, we can create new opportunities for staff development and internal promotions. Our director of government affairs is the product of a merger. Our VP of programs is a product of a merger. Our senior director of compliance, quality and training is a product of a merger. That's just naming a couple of examples, but there's many more across our organization and how fortunate we are to have that. And just having those sorts of integration and talent at our organization helps us then say how did you run your business so well, how do you bring that to Boundless and how can we improve because of that? Those are some of the examples I have seen.
Speaker 1:Let's close with a broad question to both of you, and I want to come back to the nonprofit sector as a whole, because one word that we talked about at the very beginning was successful sustainability. We want to be here, not just two years down the road. We want to be here 100 years down the road. Jen, you talked about this earlier. Ai is changing just about every sector of our lives. Whether we realize it or not, change is happening really, really fast right now. So question to you both how can nonprofits be more nimble, be more ready to embrace change for that more sustainable future?
Speaker 2:I think that the piece that comes to mind first for me is willingness, and by willingness what I mean is it is a choice to be willing to be open to the idea that what you have been doing, what we have been doing, may not be what we can do in the future, whether it's because of resources, whether it's because of technology has changed what we use humans to do versus machines, or it's because the market, the people we are serving, are looking for and demanding something different. And I think in nonprofits, in health and human services, it can be really hard to accept that the way we have done things, or even the things we have been doing, may have to change. And let me be clear I'm not saying that our missions change, but the things we do to achieve that mission may need to evolve. And so I feel as though the number one task for all of us in this space is to make a choice, to be willing to consider that we may have to change. We may have to change how we do what we, to consider that we may have to change. We may have to change how we do what we do. We may even have to change what we do in service of our mission.
Speaker 2:And the truth is, even those who, as Trent mentioned, are excited or energized by change which I think people probably think I'm overly energized by change, but even for me change is scary. Change is hard for everybody, and so one making the choice to be willing to consider, but then making the choice to go a step further and say I am actually going to think outside the box, I am going to do strategic planning or do visioning, however you want to think about it in an open mind, in a blue sky sort of approach, and really be willing to focus on the mission, not the how. That is so hard but I think is absolutely what every nonprofit, every health and human services organization needs to be doing today.
Speaker 3:And Jen does a really good job of you know reframing willingness, where not making a choice is a choice. Not deciding is a choice. Not considering how M&A can improve services for individuals is a choice. Not seeing how Medicaid reimbursement is the math is not mathing right I became a lawyer so I didn't have to do math right. But social services, idd providers seeing that, not understanding or realizing that the talent pool is shrinking, but the complexity and the challenges with regulations and caring for individuals continues to march on that's a choice. So when you think about change, when you think about whether it be AI, it's you know AI was no different than electronic medical records. Electronic medical records is no different than telehealth. There are different ways to you know, to what Jen said fulfill the mission and not looking at those and not balancing how those can improve services and fulfill your mission. That's the strategy, that's your mission. That's a choice. So willingness is, I think, a perfect encapsulation of that.
Speaker 1:That's a great, great word to end on great word to end on Just a great conversation that hopefully lifted the curtain a little bit on what we do here and what nonprofits broadly can do to increase the impact on people and communities that they serve. Jennifer and Trent, thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 2:Thank you, scott, it was a pleasure.
Speaker 1:Thank you, scott, great meeting. You Join us next month for our special guest, diane Bistrom, former CEO of Koinonia and current Boundless executive. She's going to be here and discuss how merging with Boundless helps secure their future and also how it affected the things that we talked about today, those things like affecting staff, culture, services and the broader community. This is the Nonprofit Leader's Guide podcast brought to you by Boundless.