Dr Wendy Mahoney

I attribute my success to the foundation that was laid for me from a young age. Since the age of [AGE], my grandmother taught me to care for others. She would cook and make cakes, and I would deliver them to people in the neighborhood who were in the hospital or needed support. That foundation taught me to genuinely care for people, not just in my professional life but in my personal life as well. I've always been committed to causes and helping people, asking myself how I can help be the solution or ease somebody's weight. I'm the kind of person who will go through my phone and text somebody I haven't talked to just to reach out, because you don't know what people are going through. This caring approach, combined with my hands-on experience of going into organizations and building their capacity and infrastructure, has shaped who I am and the impact I've been able to make over 35 years in mental health and domestic violence work.

I would say follow your heart. Find something that you're passionate about, because I think we've lost a lot of that in society. If you are passionate about something, what are you going to do about it? How are you the solution to a problem? Just like at Rotary today, we were talking about different things and I stood up and said, I want to be a solution. If there's something I would encourage young people now to say, hey, if I'm passionate about this, or if I see a problem, how can I be a solution? How can I truly help? It's easy to watch something on TV and say, oh, that's so sad, but I think social media has desensitized us, and we don't have the care and compassion that we used to have about various issues. It's too many people in the world to not be a solution to somebody's problem. Whether it's poverty, whether it's hunger, whatever the issue is, there's so many causes out here that we could put our funds and resources to help. Don't get so desensitized by social media that we don't act. We're not being the solution for the problems that exist. Be the solution. We have to do it. Just because you don't have that personal experience doesn't mean that somebody else isn't there. Every issue in society affects someone, and there's somebody who is a meal away from poverty, who doesn't have gas to get to work, who doesn't have healthcare. There's some things we take for granted because if it doesn't hit home, we don't see it as an issue. It's time to get back to paying it forward and being my brother's keeper.

The biggest challenge when it comes to the work that I do now as a consultant is people really opening up. They know that they need the help, but the biggest challenge is how do they fund it? You're a nonprofit, your funding can somewhat be restricted in some ways, but needing the help and not being able to fund the help that you need. Organizations ask, how do I fund this? I help them come up with creative ideas or write it into a grant that may be a little different so they can get it funded. I work on writing it in as professional development, as board development, or different things like that, so they can see it in a different way as something they need in order for their organization to have sustainability and to grow. The other piece is organizations identifying that they need help in the first place. My perfect clients are those organizations who are at that point where they realize, as an organization, we're stuck, I need a little help. We've been doing the work the same way for 30, 40 years, we need somebody to come in with a fresh lens and assess our organization so we can serve more people and our infrastructure is stronger. The cause is usually always great, and people know how to execute and serve people, but their internal structure and infrastructure typically is the issue. They don't have good internal controls, policies and procedures. Those aren't as tight as they would be in corporate America. Nonprofits tend to fall short in those specific areas much more than other companies do in terms of how to run it as a business with accountability and integrity.