FLiP Meets: Young Founder Rusty Stahl - interview by Bodi Luse

A huge percentage of our readers dream of founding their own nonprofit one day. So, in the next few months we'll be posting occasional interviews with "young founders" so that our community can learn from their experience. If you are a young founder of a "socially good" organization, or know one, shoot me an e-mail - wschneider@changingourworld.com - to share your experiences with the FLiP world.

When we started FLiP, every person we spoke to - every single one - said to us, "You really should talk to Rusty Stahl". We set about getting to Rusty, founder of Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy (E-PIP), right away. His entrepreneurial spirit, his networking ability, and his commitment to the sector make him an invaluable resource to anyone looking to work in the world of grant-making. Right from those first few months Rusty has been a big FLiP supporter, so we thought it was only fitting to kick off this series with a short interview of Rusty.

Future Leaders in Philanthropy (FLiP): What’s your background?

Rusty Stahl (RS): I grew up in Philadelphia and went to college at George Washington in Washington, DC. After college I went right to Indiana University and got my MA in Philanthropic Studies from the Center on Philanthropy there.  I knew coming into my senior year that I wanted to know more about how nonprofits work so that I could find my place in them, and was looking for someplace that could teach me that in a practical and thoughtful way. I got into a one-year, non-degree fellowship at the Center on Philanthropy, which gave me enough credits that it was an easy decision to go on for my MA.

FLiP: How did you know so early that you wanted a career in nonprofits? In college, I don’t think that I knew what a nonprofit was.

RS: My exposure to nonprofits started early – my high school was a public school that was co-sponsored by the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia. Then sophomore year in college I did the Americorp program part-time through George Washington’s Office of Community Service and was exposed to lots of social service nonprofits in DC. That same year, a big conference on service learning came to campus and so I was exposed to many nonprofits from across the country by working on and attending that.

Also in college, I interned at a public relations/strategic communications firm that only worked with labor unions and progressive nonprofits, so I got to see them in action through a communications lens.

After college, I applied and was chosen as a program associate at the Ford Foundation. The program associate program at that time was structured as a two-year apprenticeship program. I worked on Peace and Social Justice, in the Governance and Civil Society Unit.

FLiP: How did EPIP get started?

RS: The idea was actually germinating for a long time. At Indiana, my group of fellows talked a long time about how opaque the nonprofit world is and how opaque careers in nonprofits are. We were getting a lot of exposure through our fellowship program, and were mentored by an amazing professor who was thinking a lot about these issues and believed strongly in exposing young people to nonprofits, even if they weren’t going to work in the field.

Our discussions at Indiana got me thinking a lot about the whole structural challenge of the nonprofit world, how it was wasting opportunities to bring young people in. Through my fellowship, I had the opportunity to go to conferences of big sector-wide organizations like Independent Sector and Council on Foundations. The other fellows and I were without a doubt the youngest people there.

In April 2001, when I was at Ford, I went back to the Council on Foundations conference as a foundation insider. I got in touch with other Indiana fellows who were attending and planned a side event for young trustees and foundation people at the conference. We got a huge response, with people coming who we didn’t know. We formed a committee coming out of the event to explore moving forward. We already had idea of a national network with local chapters.

FLiP: What were important factors in getting EPIP started?

RS: One of the most important issues in being a young founder is about timing. EPIP had a soft launch for a year and a half – we had no staff, no website, just bunch of committed people able to think and organize. During that time period, we were able to organize first two chapters, gather names, and raise resources to really get going.

I really appreciated the time my employers at the Ford Foundation gave me to work on it to get it going. I had time to think about whether EPIP should be a time-limited project or something more permanent.

Another important factor is that I am actually not a founder of a 501(c)3 organization – I’m founder of a project at a 50-year old 501(c)3, the New World Foundation. I had anecdotal evidence that there was a demand for an organization like EPIP, but no research – so I decided to house it at New World. New World’s incubation of EPIP has been really important – I haven’t had to deal with issues like setting up a payroll or getting a yearly audit.

FLiP: What would you tell a young person who is looking to found an organization?

RS: Think carefully about whether your desire to found an organization is really about your ego, you wanting to run things – or is it about there being a real need in the world. It’s the ethical responsibility of everyone thinking about starting a nonprofit to ask the questions about motivation – who am I to do this? Who do I need along with me to do this?

Study carefully what’s already out there in the space that you want to get involved in. Think about whether there needs to be another organization, or whether you can work with an established organization to incubate and test out your ideas.

Go talk to as many people as you can in and around that space that you want to work.  Figure out who the players are. Find out whose feet you may be stepping on, and bring those people onto your advisory committee.

I hear people say a lot that “I want to run my own nonprofit.” Remember that no one owns a nonprofit, that it needs to have broad ownership and public support to be a success.

FLiP: What is the future of EPIP? What is in your future?

RS: Part of the fun and challenge of being there with an organization from birth and adolescence is watching it grow so that it can have a life of its own and you can have a life of your own. I’m thinking a lot about how to build EPIP into a sustainable organization that goes on beyond me, and was lucky to recently get funding for coaching to help me in thinking about this.