02: Starting a non-profit as a career change

Self-declared Type A personality Christina Martin Pendleton shares how she overcame her fear of failure to start her non-profit, LiKen, in spring 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic.

LiKen is an organization in the Boston metro area that helps adolescents, who are displaced due to their parents' struggles with substance use disorders. It provides comfort items to these at-risk kids in real time to encourage self-care and healthy coping strategies.

Learn more about LiKen at www.likenkids.org.

Ways to donate to LiKen:

Amazon Smile: https://smile.amazon.com/ch/85-1321939. 

Give Box: https://givebox.com/helpbreakthecycle. 

PayPal: paypal.me/likenkids. 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LiKenKids/. 

Music credit: TimMoor from Pixabay

Podcast info:
What's your career switch? What do you think about this episode and the show? Tell us at careerswitchpod.com. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Transcript

Lixandra: Hi everyone, I'm Lixandra Urresta, and this is Career Switch Podcast. This show is here to encourage you to take action with whatever career change you've been considering or are working on. In some episodes, I talk to people who've made their own career switch, whether by choice or circumstance. They share the good, the bad, and the truth about their journey, including what worked for them and what didn't. In other episodes, I speak with experts who offer their best career advice on issues that can come up during the process of making a career change. After all, it takes guts to switch things up, and it's not easy. However, it is possible. I hope you hear something in this episode, an idea, a suggestion, a piece of wisdom that'll spur you into action with your own career switch, whether it's taking that first bold step or trying something new. Welcome. I'm glad you're here. 

In our last episode, we covered how to make a career switch during the pandemic. Education consultant Christina Martin Pendleton did just that when she founded a nonprofit in spring 2020, right at the start of the pandemic when everything pretty much shut down. She joins us today to share her initial fears and how she overcame them to start Like Ken, an organization in the Boston metro area that helps adolescents who are displaced due to their parents' struggles with substance use disorders. Christina tells us how the pandemic was mostly a positive force for her, but how she had to think outside the box and what she learned about herself along the way. Thanks for joining us, Christina. You've spent your career working with kids. You have a master's in education focusing on children at risk. You've worked as a preschool director, managed a children's center in the UK, and in 2019, you were working as an educational consultant. What led to your career change to start a nonprofit in 2020 during the pandemic?

Christina: Substance use disorders and mental illness are very prevalent in my very big family. And at the end of 2018, we experienced the sudden death by heroin overdose of a very close family member. His wife was also struggling with substance use and in the process of planning for the care of their four children, my eyes were really open to the many and conflicting intricacies of kinship care, foster care, We took guardianship of one of the children, my husband and I, a teenager, and learned really quickly how complicated it can be in real life and how little help there is for families like ours. Our hope was to help guide other families through this process.

Lixandra: What else happened in your family during this time?

Christina: My stepdad, Ken Levine, who'd been a loving, supportive, and nonjudgmental big force in our lives, happened to pass away just before the pandemic really took hold in very early March. So that's where the name came from. The motto is sort of be like Ken. So be supportive and nonjudgmental and help people through difficult times.

Lixandra: So starting a nonprofit is a big undertaking, I would assume, especially during a pandemic. So what things did you consider when making your decision to start like Ken? What were you excited about?

Christina: So I tend to overthink things. And the thing I had to consider the most was block that tendency. I think it stopped me many times from doing things that were really in my heart. So I had to stop overthinking things. And I made a very simple business plan, which you can find many examples of online. And I started researching. And I was excited to provide a service that isn't offered anywhere else to kids and families who are going through this incredibly difficult process.

Lixandra: And what things made you hesitate?

Christina: I know I'm not alone when I say that money was the biggest hesitation for me. How will I complete the lengthy tax exempt status application and pay for that? How will I get a good website developed? How do I know that there will be enough money to help if too many people start requesting help? So, you know, scaling was a very big thing. What if I start and 20 people need help and I only have enough to help five of them and I can't have that happen? And, you know, you can always create these scenarios that make you think you shouldn't do it.

Lixandra: Did you turn to any friends and family or colleagues for advice?

Christina: I did. An amazing friend told me that as long as my heart's in it and I'm willing to do the work and ask for help, that everything else would fall into place. I made lists of people I knew who were good at things I'm not good at and asked for help about fundraising since it's something I'm not entirely comfortable with. I also didn't know if I could raise any money during a pandemic, especially at the beginning. None of us knew when or if we'd ever go back to work. Many people were being So it was a great time to actually get the physical work done that I hadn't had time to devote to developing the business plans and the website and all that. But I thought, well, I could do all this and there could be no money. So I just decided if all that was done and there was no money for a year. or however long it took, the groundwork would still be done and that would still be beneficial and it would still be a step in the right direction. So I went down the list and I solicited advice for the things that I am not good at and lots of people offered help and I was really grateful.

Lixandra: And when you say you went down the list, who did you turn to?

Christina: For example, I have a friend who worked for QuickBooks for many years. She's an accountant. In my past work, those systems were developed by the organizations or schools that I worked for. And I merely plugged into them and did my work. I had never created stuff like that from the start. And I'm not an accountant. So I can keep track of a budget. But if I were to run an organization, I would need much more than that. So I consulted with a friend who has been an accountant her whole career and she gave me advice about certain apps and certain ways to record things that are helpful and make things easier and that was really helpful. And for the web development? This was one thing I had to say to myself, I can't do this. And that's really hard for me. So I tried, I tried on several platforms on MailChimp, Squarespace, I just don't have the technical skills. And I thought, well, all of this stuff is, you know, it's already designed, it's online, all I have to do is plug stuff into it, it can't be that hard. And it turned out it was hard for me. I just felt like it was something that I could not do. And if I did it, it would involve so much time that it would be inefficient. So I decided to start working with a graphic designer.

Lixandra: You also said that fundraising is hard for you to do. Why is that?

Christina: I grew up with not a lot of money, so it's hard for me to ask people for money. I've always been someone who makes things happen on her own. And I had to kind of shift that paradigm and think that I am making this happen on my own. And I'm asking people who share my values to help me do it. I actually learned that fundraising is a lot about storytelling and whether you're trying to run a for-profit or a non-profit business, that fundraising can be done in lots of small increments. It doesn't have to be big events, which of course couldn't happen during the pandemic. I shared a lot of stories on the Facebook page that I developed and made sure that the content on the website told a story of what families go through in these situations. thankfully spoke to people. We've had many small donations. I mean, I had as small as $20 and up to about $500. We've had a few $500 donations, and those really have been the largest. And we've managed to raise upwards of $8,000 since June, which helped me reimburse myself for the website development. I sought the help of our local junior women's club in my town who provide small grants and they granted me the $600 it cost to apply for non-profit status.

Lixandra: Who did you turn to for help with the fundraising since that was hard for you to do?

Christina: I turned to actually a friend, Anil Tai, who is now a board member, who was always a great cheerleader. And he's sort of the opposite of me when it comes to diving into things. He doesn't overthink it. And he thinks if it doesn't work, he'll just do something else. He knows he has drive and skill and a positive outlook. It took him years to convince me that really, as long as you have those things, and you're careful, you know, you don't just throw your money around, obviously, you really have nothing to lose. Because if it doesn't work, and you really spent minimal money, and you put a lot of time in, well, you gave it your best effort. And as long as you're not putting your livelihood or your family's livelihood at risk, that every risk is worth taking. So he was telling me all about, you know, Charity Water and all these organizations that have just raised money online and that that's possible.

Lixandra: What role would you say the pandemic played in your decision making? Did it help in any way? Did it hinder you?

Christina: I wasn't working, so I had loads of extra time in March and April and part of May. It was now or never because my excuses didn't fly anymore. I'd always thought, you know, I'm so busy. I work full time, I have kids, I do volunteer work, and I have my niece as well living with us. I didn't have those excuses anymore because I had all the time in the world. So I thought it was kind of now or never.

Lixandra: What first steps did you take toward making your career switch? Did you know how to proceed?

Christina: I absolutely did not. Thank God for the internet. I did web searches as if I were a family going through this process, what kind of services there were, and what age groups, the different agencies in my region that serve kids. For example, we have Cradles to Crayons, which is a wonderful organization. We have Room to Grow. We have Katie's Closet. We have lots of organizations in the greater Boston area. Many of them serve families and kids up to 12. We mainly serve kids who are 12, 13 to 18, 19, but our full range is 10 to 23. So I really went through the list of things and services they could need and what the barriers were to that. So that was sort of how to define what we would do. Then there was what kind of organization to register as. You'd think it's only LLC, INC. The list was probably 15 choices long of what you could register as, whether you're a nonprofit or a for-profit. And I didn't realize there were that many choices. So once I looked that up, I had a lot of learning to do about what were the benefits of one versus the other. But of course, again, all of that information is available.

Lixandra: It took you three months to start like Ken. What ups and downs did you encounter during this time?

Christina: The pandemic was mostly a positive for us. There were a few organizations I wanted to talk to who were closed in March and April that I would have liked some feedback from in terms of developing our services, and they were closed. But I did find others to help me. The time it took was mostly ensuring that I was not being hasty about any part of it, that I was doing my research. And this helped allay a lot of my fears, which, again, is just part of my personality. I would say the pandemic was mostly positive for us, but it was definitely a learning curve, learning to work at home with both of my kids here doing remote learning and my husband also working in the home. Our house isn't that big.

Lixandra: So that was a challenge. Were you ever discouraged during this time?

Christina: The development of the website and admitting to myself that I couldn't do that was difficult for me. And the time I spent trying to do it was very frustrating for me. So I got some recommendations and I started working with the designers I mentioned. Fortunately, because of the pandemic, she was actually offering monthly payment plans, which isn't something she generally used to do. And I decided to go for it and that I would pay myself out of my initial fundraising campaign when that started.

Lixandra: Did that teach you something about yourself?

Christina: Yes, it's a good thing that I'm where I am age-wise and profession-wise in life because it's just around the time when we, as women, I think, in my own experience, start to try to be a bit gentler with ourselves. We know what we're good at and we know what we're not good at. And we know that beating ourselves up about stuff we haven't been able to do or things that have been difficult for us to learn doesn't get us anywhere. And so I've learned over the past few years, but definitely most in the past year, how to be gentle with myself, how to be okay with things developing slowly, because I'm a hit the ground running, everything needs to be done super fast, no time for anything, you know, just get it done. And it's been really great for me actually to You know, to kind of see this play out and see that taking things slowly, especially because I still have to work a paid job, um, is okay. And that it still is developing beautifully, very slowly, but it's working. And in the meantime, we're helping people, which is something I used to do anyway. But now, you know, with the financial help of others who have similar values, it's been a great learning experience for me. And I've been very gentle on myself in terms of the speed of things.

Lixandra: So you're still consulting. What other work are you doing while you grow like Ken?

Christina: I also nanny part-time. That gives me a lot of flexibility to do interviews, to go and visit kids at STAR programs and group homes. I purposefully work for a family that has flexibility and really supports the work I'm doing. With the amount of money we've raised, all of that money has to be there to help families. So it's not a situation where I can pay myself yet, and I'm okay with that.

Lixandra: So, Like Hen started in June 2020. Tell us about it. What services do you provide for at-risk kids?

Christina: Our services are for adolescents 10 to 23 years old and they're tailored to the specific needs of each young person and family. What we experienced as a family was a lot of red tape. This person couldn't talk to that person and I couldn't access this information. You know, there was just so much red tape and so many processes. So we have extremely little paperwork. People send us a request through the website. It's about two or three questions. and I call them immediately and we figure out how we can help right away. So we try to help in real time, get them the immediate things they need within a few days. Some caregivers take children in with no notice, an aunt, a grandmother when something tragic happens, they have no furniture for the child, the child is taken from or leaves the home with few to no belongings. We help coordinate getting those needs met within a few days. Some just need support navigating probate benefits and IEP services, medical care, etc. The common thread is that we aim to make sure the kids have not just their basic needs met, but also some materials to help them strengthen the coping skills they've already developed as a result of growing up in a traumatic household. These are extremely strong kids, you know, so strong that it's difficult for them to let someone take care of them. So Sometimes what we give our art supplies or a bike or an instrument that a young man might might have played the guitar and that guitar got sold or left behind in an apartment they got evicted from and they couldn't take anything. Things like that. So trying to replace comfort items that were really important to them that helped them hang on to those healthy coping skills that they have. anything really that can provide comfort and help them continue to choose healthy coping mechanisms, because that helps us accomplish our overall mission, which is to help them break the cycle of substance use disorders.

Lixandra: So now that you've made your career switch, how are things going? And how is the pandemic still a factor?

Christina: It's going slow, but well. I'm still running it solo with some help from my amazing, very small board of directors. I'm not paying myself, as I mentioned, because I can still work. It's a constant balance, trying to find time to write grants, raising money slowly. The only factor that's hard with the pandemic is getting to be with kids in person in group homes and offer them support or comfort items. There's a lot of quarantining in the group homes. Every other week it would be we couldn't deliver something or we couldn't go and hang out with the kids because the whole program was quarantining again. That's been difficult. And I think it's really difficult for the kids, too, because it means they can't have their visits. They can't go out on passes. And really, those are the last vestiges of their previous life. Not being able to do that is really difficult for the kids.

Lixandra: How are you doing your fundraising now when we're still in the pandemic?

Christina: We have to think outside the box.

Lixandra: So what are some out of the box ways that our listeners can donate to Like Ken?

Christina: You can put us as your charity of benefit on Amazon Smile. So look for us, it's Like Ken, L-I capital K-E-N. And we can benefit from a very small portion of all of your Amazon purchases. just started a partnership with Liberty Mutual. We're in the process of doing one with New York Life, just basically getting into their system so that we can receive matching donations and things like that. You can send an inquiry through the website if you have questions about that. Personal donations can be made through our website, which is www.likenkids.org.

Lixandra: For our listeners who are working on their own career switch and who may be afraid or are doubting themselves, what advice do you have for them that you yourself follow?

Christina: I'd say if you're afraid, write out what the exact fears are, and then look for ways to combat each one. There are a million things involved with running your own business, and if you think about all of them as one sum of overwhelming things, speaking from my own experience, it got me nowhere. So I had to really think, what am I afraid of? I had to write down exactly what I was afraid of and then say, okay, what can I do about that one thing, each one at a time? I have to tell myself all the time that Rome wasn't built in a day. I'm very type A. I fear failure. I just have to tell myself that I have what it takes to do something every day to push this mission forward. And I'm learning to be gentle with myself.

Lixandra: Thanks, Christina, for telling us about your journey and everything you went through to start your nonprofit. Good luck and continued success. Thanks to Christina Martin Pendleton for being our guest today. You can learn more about her nonprofit, Like Ken, at likekenkids.org. All the ways you can donate, including Amazon Smile, GiveBox, PayPal, and the Like Ken Facebook page are available in the show notes and on our website, careerswitchpod.com. 

You can find links to the resources mentioned in this episode and more helpful information in the show notes and on our website, careerswitchpod.com. While you're there, join our mailing list and follow us on Instagram and Twitter at careerswitchpod. So what's your career switch? Are you excited to take action after listening to this episode? Tell us at careerswitchpod.com. We'd love to know, along with any feedback you have about the show. We're a new podcast, so please rate, review, and share with your friends and colleagues. It'll help get the show out there. Thanks for listening today. Till next time. The music heard on this podcast is by Tim Moore from Pixabay.