As I See It: A Conversation 15 Years in the Making With Missy Gale
With 2024 upon us, M. Gale is celebrating its 15 year anniversary!
This is a celebration not only of our successes as an organization, but of our successes with you, our partners. We are incredibly proud to have worked with nonprofits for so long, accomplishing big goals together.
To help us look back and commemorate the years appropriately, our team conducted an interview with our fearless leader and namesake. We’re excited to share the conversation with you below:
Q: Can you reflect on the journey of founding M. Gale? What inspired you to start the business? How has that changed (or stayed the same) throughout our history?
A: The first 13 years of my career were in health care. I started in public relations/community relations and then transitioned to fundraising. After that, I went to work for a cultural organization that had a much smaller infrastructure in place for fundraising, where I had my "ah ha" moment.
I recognized that I had learned so much about staffing, job responsibilities, and the type of coordination necessary to successfully complete larger scale projects while in healthcare. With this knowledge, I knew I could help smaller nonprofits or those less developed to build the team necessary to do bigger things together and ultimately raise more money.
While our knowledge has grown over time, our approach remains the same. Along the way, I learned that truly every nonprofit organization could benefit from an outsider's perspective. We all get stuck from time to time in "rinse and repeat" approaches and find that this can slow our ability to scale. Yet, we still look at organizations both objectively and subjectively. Offering an assessment first, and taking the time to listen, then providing recommendations, is critically important. It allows us the opportunity to better understand our partners, as well as their unique needs and circumstances.
Q: What is your favorite memory over the last 15 years?
A: Honestly, there are so many. It’s really hard to pick a favorite.
I truly love what I do and what we've built here. When I look around Fort Worth, Texas and beyond, I see our work in so many places. When I see clients who had little to no fundraising success now raising significant money annually and even more when they campaign, I’m in awe.
Q: What have been some of the most memorable milestones or achievements for M. Gale over the past 15 years?
A: From a business perspective, opening our first office on Race Street is a favorite milestone. It represented not only a physical presence, but hiring a full-time employed team and being able to provide benefits.
Many consulting firms never really hire staff, they subcontract based on the job. For many years I did that, and to an extent on some projects, continue to. Yet a full-time team, with space to collaborate and work closely together, is the difference between having a practice and a firm.
Of course, despite recognizing our physical address as a major milestone, our employees work at the office and remotely. While work from home is a more recent trend, we’ve been committed to the approach since our beginning. Staying committed to the same goal (providing the most successful outcomes for our clients) and having the freedom to work from where best suits the work, our team can reach new heights and fresh insights.
Working across our services and verticals has produced deeper and richer tailored services, thanks to the brain trust we have and practices we've pulled together over the years.
Q: Could you share a particularly impactful success story or project that the consultancy has been involved in?
A: Those where the relationship is strong and we've had time to dive deep into multiple engagements. I think back to long-term relationships we've had with north Texas organizations such as: ACH Child & Family Services, James L West Center for Dementia Care, Big Brothers Big Sisters Lone Star, Presbyterian Night Shelter, The Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Children’s Advocacy Center for North Texas, Texas Health Resources Foundation, Key School and Ronald McDonald Houses, among other.
Q: Could you tell us about the three most important lessons you’ve learned over the last 15 years?
Organizational change doesn't happen overnight.
Listening is the key to offering the strongest solutions.
Setting up success goes well beyond providing recommendations. The pathway to a solving an issue is the key to success.
Q: How has the nonprofit industry changed since first opening M. Gale’s doors?
A: It’s become much more sophisticated largely due to professional staffing and technology. Most Human Service agencies now have staff in every major department, from program to fund development.
On top of the influx of perspective, most organizations are using new systems within each of these disciplines, These systems allow for an easier measurement of success. With greater systems in place and more transparency around what’s working, nonprofit organizations are able to be even better stewards of donor dollars while gaining insight as to what makes sustainable business.
There’s also research out there now on program and fundraising effectiveness to provide benchmarks and best practices for success, which, thanks to the evolution of the internet and greater world wide connectivity, is easier to find than ever.
Q: How has M. Gale evolved and adapted to changes in the nonprofit sector since its inception?
A: Each of us have to be lifelong learners in our field.
We have to stay on top of research, outcomes and understand what's working and what's not. We've had to create ways to review the most and least sophisticated nonprofit organizations based on best practices. In doing this, we have the time and latitude to meet people where they are and bring them up to speed quickly or roll up our sleeves and work with them as partners.
We've also had to stay on top of industry related tech that offers affordable solutions to our clients. This knowledge gives us the ability to help our clients adopt the solutions and become more efficient. We meet people doing interesting and new things everyday. It’s imperative for both us and our partners to understand them quickly and hold the solutions up to the foundational understanding of what it takes for long-term success.
Q: What has been your biggest surprise from the last 15 years?
A: Behavior.
I am the eternal optimist and when I hear of a need, I immediately want to help solve it by working closely together with clients. Our entire team shares this optimism. At the end of the day though, we can only be successful if the client truly wants to do the work in partnership with us.
When people seek outside support, then they generally behave as though they want help and guidance. Sometimes, however, they don't. Sometimes, they are seeking outside support to take care of a problem they are unwilling to address.
The biggest surprise for me is when a client recognizes that their behavior, the behavior of a board member or members, or that of their team, needs to change, but they do little to nothing to help evoke change.
Q: Can you speak to the values or principles that have guided our work over the past 15 years?
A: I believe the nonprofit sector is a critically important part of American culture and is woven into every community.
Because of this, I believe the work we do matters. At the forefront of this work are relationships - as I've mentioned already, when we work together in a strong relationship, everyone does better.
Collaboration starts within our firm. Collaborating together and coalescing our expertise and knowledge is essential to partnering well with our clients.
Another big value for me that works right in line with collaboration is abundance. A mindset of scarcity kills creativity, true collaboration and does not solve problems. We believe there are solutions to almost all complex issues that can work well when people are open to working together.
With 15 years behind us, we are extremely thankful for your partnerships. We look forward to the next 15 and more, with countless future successes together!