Shannon Muti

Passion. I love leading teams. I've led really large teams, and now my current team is smaller, but what doesn't change, no matter what the size of your team is, is that you can't teach people to care. So I always start there when I hire people. You have to start from a place of caring about the humans that you're helping. Everything else can be taught. The type of work that I do requires a deep commitment to showing up everyday and giving it your all - pushing through those tough moments - so that you can get to the finish line of truly taking care of someone who is going through the worst time in their life. I think my ability to do that and teach other people how to do that has been what has allowed us to really change the lives of thousands of people over the course of my career.

I think probably advice from my dad. He said jobs will come and go, your financial situation will change, but what makes you happy won't. And this type of work has always made me happy. I've always felt like, at the end of the day, I could touch and feel the work that I did that day. I knew that a person's life was better because I woke up that morning and I went to work. So each time I've contemplated what the next step in my journey will be, I've started with what will make me the happiest.

I would say be nimble and ask questions. I didn't get this far just by wanting to change the world. I kind of resent that when I hear people say, "I just want to help people." Nonprofit work is rooted in compassion but it is fueled by business mindsets. You can't help people effectively without securing and leveraging the right resources to do that. So my advice to anyone entering the nonprofit space for the first time- diversify your skills and take it to the next level: dive into the finances, dive into the data, think about the bigger picture - that will help you be well-rounded and run effective programs that truly do help people and transform communities.

Definitely funding is the biggest challenge. Many nonprofit organizations are heavily reliant on government funding, and there have been so many changes and reductions to those funding sources, but yet the need for these services continues to rise. Every time there's an administration change, we experience funding challenges to some degree. And that's hitting particularly hard right now. There have been a lot of recent regulatory changes to programs that impact the population that we serve and so we have to be really creative and do our best to diversify our funding sources in order to keep delivering on our mission effectively.

Something I love about our community here in New Jersey is the nonprofits really partner together, and we have a very strong community of nonprofit providers who are all together in this space. We're all going through the same funding challenges and regulation challenges, and the best thing we can do is leverage the strengths of one another to make sure that the needs of our community are still met. Sometimes challenges can open the door to new partnerships, innovative ideas, and even new programs that could end up ultimately serving people better in the end if we do it together and we do it right.

Integrity, honesty, and being transparent are the values that are important to me. I think being transparent is what helps me build trust with my teams and with the people our organization serves. I don't know everything, and I never hesitate to admit when I don't know something, or when we've messed up - because everyone does. I think it's always best to just lay it all out - whatever it is- you have to think about- who will this impact? And then work through it together. I constantly operate on the basis of transparency and honesty.