Rob Hays & What Great Board Members Get Right

This week on Givers, Doers, & Thinkers, Jeremy Beer sits down with Rob Hays—business leader, philanthropist, and nonprofit board member. Rob reflects on the experiences that shaped his resilience in business and his approach to philanthropy.

They also dive into his work with institutions like the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the Aquinas Institute, and unpack what boards get right and where they often go wrong.

Let’s go!

Sponsored by AmPhil, helping nonprofits advance their missions and raise more money: https://amphil.com/

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Center for Civil Society's YouTube Channel

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey, join us on the next Givers, Doers, and Thinkers as we speak with Rob Hayes about the importance of leadership and formation when it comes to making great strategic choices in philanthropy. Let's go. Welcome to Givers, Doers, and Thinkers, a podcast on philanthropy and civil society. I'm Jeremy Beer, and it's great to have you with us. We are recording on February 23rd, 2026. And this season, we are highlighting some of the most interesting, innovative, and strategic things currently being done by American givers, especially in light of the ongoing celebration of America 250, the semi-quincentennial. And to that end, uh, we are excited to have with us today Rob Hayes, former president and CEO of Ashford Hospitality Trust. Rob has uh two decades of business experience operating and growing companies, has lots of executive experience in the healthcare industry, in particular, I should say hospitality industry, excuse me, in particular, with forays into healthcare and energy as well. Rob earned his AB in politics from Princeton University and later studied, which he's reminding us with the quarter zip he has on here today, and later studied philosophy at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome. And of course, we are speaking with him because he is an active philanthropist and board member. Indeed, he's the chairman of the board at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. And also at the Aquinas Institute at Princeton. But he lives in the great state of Texas. Rob, thanks for joining us. Happy to be here, Jeremy. Thanks. That's the uh that's the Texas sky, it looks like behind you there.

SPEAKER_02 1:54

It is a Texas sky here in beautiful Irving, Texas. So it is a it's a beautiful day. And uh yes, I am wearing my slightly obnoxious Princeton orange for you.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

Well, we'll get to uh uh I don't know if it's obnoxious or not, but we will we'll get to that and talk about Princeton and as part of your giving and and your what you're doing as a philanthropist. But I'd like to start sort of establishing sort of where you come from, who you are, by kind of getting your story in terms of your um educational background. I know it's interesting. Your educational background's a little bit different. Maybe we can start there and then flow into your business background, which includes at least two interesting things. One, uh, I think a scrape with Enron. That is the case. That is the case. And second, uh running being the CEO of a uh a hotel company during COVID, which must have been a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_02 2:44

That was quite a hoot. Yes. So I guess a little background. So I grew up, I was born here in Texas, but I grew up mostly in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and went to a big public high school in Tulsa. And I have no one in my family at that time had any Ivy League type aspirations, but it was something that I was also a competitive golfer. So until I was maybe my early 20s, I was thinking about potentially turning pro as a golfer. But I also knew myself hopefully well enough to know that I was actually a bigger nerd than I was an athlete. And so I ended up using my golf to try to get in the best school that I could and still play division one golf. So that's how I ended up at Princeton. So I had a great four years there. And yes, I uh my first foray into the business world after I graduated was in investment banking. And my father at that time had been in the energy, oil and gas business in Oklahoma. And so I naturally thought that was where I wanted to be. And so I went to one of the big investment banks, was in oil and gas. And yes, Enron was one of our clients. And so uh I had several of my colleagues uh in my group that ended up going to jail over uh Enron. I worked on a lot of those offering memorandum docs myself. I was a little 22-year-old analyst on that deal. And it was a very uh, it was a very early lesson to me that the line in between innovation and kind of pushing the line a little bit in jail is not a bright red line. And so it was a very good lesson. But that also then put me into a bit of a of a vocational crisis of is this what I really wanted to do with my life? Uh, while I loved a lot of part of it, it obviously I had other parts that were I was kind of questioning myself. So I ended up spending some time back at at Princeton doing campus ministry, and then decided to go to Rome to study philosophy in case I made the decision to enter seminary, which I obviously didn't. But it was an amazing time to live in Rome in in the early 2000s, and it was one of the best times of my life. And from that, figured out that my vocation in this life was to marriage and came back, proposed to an awesome Princeton girl that I knew. She said yes, and voila, 20-something years and seven kids later, here we are.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Now, when you were I I want to go back to the Enron thing, Doctor, just quickly. Was there a time when you thought you might be going to jail?

SPEAKER_02 5:09

No, and I I was no, and not at all. And I never was even subpoenaed. Were they only going for the top people? Yeah, I was I was a nobody. I was a little 22-year-old financial analyst that was just filling in spaces and building models. So no, I was never even interviewed. Had to be truly, like you said though, an eye-opening experience.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

I mean, is that um that that put you back sort of on a certain path, making toward a stronger faith commitments, or is that already happening independently?

SPEAKER_02 5:38

Well, I think that was happening independently. I mean, particularly in college, but it did make me question what's the point? Like what why am I here and what's the point of this work? And it wasn't really until I went through my process of going in through ministry and then going through Rome that I, in a sense, came back to a very similar world, which is the world of business and finance and transactions, but with a materially different vision of what's the point of work and what is its value in my life and why am I made for it? So as opposed to seeing my work as a drudgery and just you know mercenary work or just as yeah, it's just as a means to making my way and making money, it became a much more vocational part of who I am and and what I wanted to be. Did you feel called back to this world? I did. I did. And I did, I don't think I really understood coming out of college that you can have a vocational calling to business in professional life. And I always thought about that in terms of religious life and even to marriage or ministry. But it wasn't until I went through that process that I then came back to business with that sort of missional vision of what work is for professional life.

SPEAKER_01 6:54

And so you found yourself doing uh I mean, you tell me how this went. I know it's some the hospitality industry becomes the the major part, I believe, right, of your business life for the next 20 years. Talk about that.

SPEAKER_02 7:06

Yes. So I came back to the States, got married, we moved here to the Dallas area since I was born here, and we I was working for a small uh oil, oil and gas company here in town for a little bit. And shortly thereafter, uh, this is at the end of 2004, I got a call from a friend who was uh back at Princeton saying, Hey, my family uh is in the hotel business, and my father and my brother just took our company's hotel company public. And he needs a right-hand finance guy in Dallas, and you're a finance guy. Why don't you call him up? And I said, All right. So I called him up and uh joined him in early 2005. And my first title was senior financial analyst, and I was attached to the hip of the founder and CEO of the company, and began my process of working my way up over a few next couple decades. Which included uh getting to run hotels uh during COVID, which was which then included in 2020 when COVID hit, this the CEO at the time, not the founder, but the CEO at the time ended up stepping aside. And yes, so I was handed a giant dumpster fire trying to learn how to navigate the world of both being a public company CEO and having the kind of the world burn down around you and how to navigate that tension. How many people were working for the company at that time? Across all of our properties, it was, I think, almost 13,000. And I think about 10,000 were direct reports to one of our entities. That was a lot. And we ended up making a very hard decision in March of 2020, where we furloughed effectively 95% of everybody, basically in a weekend in the middle of March, which was probably the worst day of my professional career. Uh, that was a really, really rough day. Yes, we we well, we had something where we uh lessons that our that our founder and his father had all learned was if you're gonna panic early. And and and it was worthy of panicking. I mean, our our revenues dropped 95%. So it can't really drop in 2020. In 2020. Within March and April, March and April. What was the clo what was the climb back like from that? Well, it was slow. I mean, I think it people forget that you know, now we look back and we think of COVID maybe just as a just another virus, or depending on how you want to look at the vaccines or whatever, but we forget that in those moments we didn't know how long this was gonna last. We had the two weeks to flatten the curve, and we also had six weeks to flatten the curve.

SPEAKER_01 9:53

Was it two to begin with?

SPEAKER_02 9:54

Maybe a two, and then with six, and then and so for us it was so my my problem was trying to solve for how much runway do I need, and no one knows. And so it was just made it very, very complicated and it put a lot of stress and anxiety in my life trying to juggle everything.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

I'm sure a number of business owners who may be listening to this can identify with that, or nonprofit CEOs for that matter, as well. Not just the COVID experience, but the general experience of going through something completely unexpected and for which there is no playbook.

SPEAKER_02 10:26

Well, I will tell you a quick story though, because it applies to this is that when I got the call from my chairman saying our CEO just resigned and we would like you to consider taking the role, I said, Well, let me sleep on it tonight and let me pray and I'll get back to you in the morning. And I called my father. My parents live here in the Dallas area, and my dad has been CEO of a lot of different companies. And when he was in oil and gas in the 80s in Oklahoma, he lost just about everything when oil crashed one of the years. And so I called him up and told him about the situation, and it was obviously very rough. And the first thing my dad said to me when I finished was, you don't know how envious I am of you. And I'm thinking, Dad, you're not listening to me very much. It's really rough. This, I'm not sure we're gonna make it. This may just be slowly moving this company to bankruptcy. And he said two things to me. He said, the first thing he said was, You can't learn this in a book. And that was absolutely the case. And the second thing he said is every business person needs to stare into the abyss at least once in their career to see what they're made out of. So welcome to your abyss. And so, I mean, it and he was right, it was not fun at all times, but I'm very grateful for it. We had a great group of people, and we were in the trenches for quite a few years slogging it out. But I look back on it, and now that I've stepped away from that role, I'm very, very grateful because I now know that some there's a there's purpose in going through that suffering, and that I'm looking forward to figuring out how I'm supposed to be using that going forward.

SPEAKER_01 12:02

Yeah, that's great. That is uh not many people's fathers could give them that counsel, but you told me before that your father was a serial entrepreneur, if I recall correctly, right?

SPEAKER_02 12:11

He is. He's he's retires every few years and then gets back into it. So he's eighty years old and the CEO of a medical device company right now, so he can't help himself.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

Well, where did um obviously we're gonna talk about giving today to philanthropy? Where did that start with you? How did that get started?

SPEAKER_02 12:32

I think it started with my family, with my parents. I mean, seeing I got to see my father and my mother, but particularly my father, was very generous in how he dealt with people. And he did it in ways that very few people knew about. And I can even remember one example where we were in our our church in our in our parish, and the pastor mentioned uh thanking a donor because they supplied all new uh books for you know, all the songs and kind of worship panels and whatnot. And I remember kind of looking over at my dad, and he just has this little smirk and winks at me. And but he did lots of things, and he does lots of things for people that no one sees. And so that very generous spirit, and even remember when I graduated high school and was going off to college, I had multiple people pull me aside and tell me some stories of things that maybe my dad had done to help them in difficult situations. And so that that spirit of really looking at how to be a good steward of the things that you've been blessed with, your time and your talents, your financial resources, and being willing to put it at the service of others, I got to I absorb that at a young age without really explicitly thinking about it. It was only then later in my career when getting married, starting to have babies, and then moving in my career and be able to build starting to build a little bit of wealth and a little bit of of uh of income, it then made me realize that I now am in a similar place where how do I, what do I do? How do I use this in a way that's consistent with that spirit that I saw in my parents?

SPEAKER_01 14:20

Yeah, when was it when you decided it was time to um, I mean, this is a question I think a lot of again, business leaders have, or maybe some sometimes I'm surprised that some of them don't have this question very soon in their careers, uh, not till maybe at the very end, if at all. But when I was like, I need to start carving out a certain amount of my time, a certain percentage of my time for uh philanthropic leadership roles, like the two board board chairmanships you have now. Was there a time in the in the growth on the uh as you were going up sort of the corporate ladder when you decided, okay, now's the time I need to start doing this?

SPEAKER_02 14:56

Um not not explicitly in the sense that I'm writing down my you know 2020 resolutions and my resolution this year is to do that, but it did become something where I did notice that I started getting asked to consider these sorts of things. And so it did sneak up on me a little bit, I think. And then it began to once I started seeing that, then it became, I think, more purposeful, where my wife and I talked about and still talk about, honestly, that time allocation. You know, we still have we like I said, we have seven kids, of which five are still at home. And so it is it's plenty fun and busy. Um, but it does mean that, yeah, and it, and there's a reason why, in some sense, I'm quote, only on two nonprofit boards right now. It's because those two I'm particularly passionate about, and they've been both played very insignificant roles in my life. But honestly, I get asked once a month to be on a board of some sort, and I have to bat them away, not because they're not wonderful groups and wonderful people, but I have to be realistic about my time and and resources. I uh the answer is I've changed my view on this over time. I think, and honestly, I think at different times of career it it can vary. Early in my life, or earlier, I mean, this is not that long ago, but over the past 20 years, my wife and I, we used to write lots of checks to lots, lots of organizations. Um, not big checks, but checks enough to, you know, get a table at a gala or whatever it may be. And that was great in the sense that it allowed us a lot of exposure to a lot of groups during a lot of things, and it and it allowed us a foothold into seeing how things work, who does think what well. Um, some are local, some are church-related, some were national, some are political, some are this, some are that. And then you get a sense and feel of what you want to be a part of. And I think as we get older, we have begun to trim pretty significantly the number of organizations that we financially support and tend now to go deeper on those things that we are particularly passionate about. And I can imagine as I get later in my career and as maybe wealth is built up and you know, God willing, that I can still see maybe the role of spreading things around and being involved and helping lots of organizations. But I think in terms of where I spend my time and primary resources in terms of philanthropy, it is few and focused.

SPEAKER_01 17:40

I think it's very um I'm glad you shared that because actually I think it's really wise and it's a very it is a very practical piece of advice is to actually, maybe at the beginning, write a lot of checks. Like you said, sponsor a lot of tables, go to a lot of things and see it just exposes you to so much. I'm sure you see a lot of both the good and the bad, what great leadership looks like, what not so great leadership looks like, what um, what great gratitude looks like perhaps for those checks versus maybe not so great gratitude.

SPEAKER_02 18:12

I mean, I no, I've had uh as you said, I mean, I've had every experience up and down of great what I consider great leadership and less than great leadership. And people that were very responsive and and grateful, and people were it just went into the ether, and I don't even know you know what what did I did I give? I almost had to check my tax records. Did I give anybody because it just I've it's like no, it does tend to inhibit a second gift, doesn't it? Uh it does tend to. Um no matter what. And so and and and again, I've got a a a friend of mine, a very successful, decently well-known philanthropist here in Dallas, and he and I were having this debate because my wife and I have been shifting our strategy, and he still sticks more to the former. And I think for him, now it's not entirely true because he does give significantly to his alma mater, but generally speaking, he is still of the uh broader strategy, and it's because he enjoys the amount of relationships and the sort of the spreading of gratitude and people that he gets to touch. So just a different strategy.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

Well, speaking of strategy, we're gonna get to your own uh kind of strategy now or your sort of insights into strategy, uh giving strategy, or really cultural change strategy, I guess I could say, should say. Before we do that, so it had to do with why you're supporting, why you're the chairman of the board of these two institutes, these two organizations in particular. I probably should say a little bit to people who don't know you know, what is the ethics and public policy center and what is the Aquinas Institute at Princeton?

SPEAKER_02 19:47

Sure. So the the Ethics and Public Policy Center is a think tank based in DC. It's actually having its 50th anniversary. We were talking about the U.S. having its 250th, is the two the 50th anniversary of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. So it was started out of Georgetown as a think tank at that time really focused on foreign policy, the Cold War, and but through this lens of Judeo-Christian morals and truths, Western civilization viewpoint, that sometimes was missing in public policy debates. And since then, it's been it's gone through multiple presidents and people like Ed Whalen and George Weigel and others have been presidents of that of that organization. And now it's run by uh a very good friend of mine named Ryan Anderson. And Ryan is a graduate of Princeton. I led his Bible study when he was a freshman uh in college. So I've known him a long time. This is one way one gets moped into being the chairman of a board somewhere. It is. Uh, and so he's a very dear friend, and I care about him very much. And uh he's built for that job where he has got serious academic chops um and has a heart for formation and culture, and he's a great leader. So he he runs an organization. It's filled with, you know, let's call it 30-something scholars that touch on a variety of public policy topics, but they all revolve fundamentally about the human person, right? The human person in technology, the human person in biotech, the human person, you know, obviously in pro-life issues, these other, these other topics. And those scholars, they tend to be more focused on the intellectual life. And so that it's not a big grassroots organization, it's not a massive lobbying organization. There's other groups in DC that do that. It's the ideas that, and I want, and you know, my my desire as a chairman is for them to be writing and thinking about the things five years and 10 years from now that we need that will be then the problems that we are addressing. And how can we do the intellectual work now to prepare for that?

SPEAKER_00 21:51

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SPEAKER_01 22:21

Is there enough investment in that kind of thing? I mean, I think I probably would know what your answer is, but um it's it's a it's only certain kinds of givers, it seems to me, have the patience to invest in ideas.

SPEAKER_02 22:32

Yeah, and it but it's it's not the struggle, and this is actually discussions that we have a lot now, is it's not just about ideas. While ideas are very important, I love ideas, there is a risk of funding things as a philanthropist of someone to go write a book that then goes sits on a shelf and doesn't bend culture and doesn't impact people and it just gets dust, even if it's great. And I think that what we are trying to do at EPPC is do that intellectual work, but then also make sure we're creating the pipeline in order to distribute it to leaders, you know, whether it's in politics, in the bureaucracy of the government, in, you know, in church leaders, in families, how do we form people that are impacting our culture and the decisions that they're making?

SPEAKER_01 23:25

Formation is the other thing here then. It's the ideas arrow to leadership, right? Formation are the top of that, right? That's essentially what you're investing in them.

SPEAKER_02 23:37

Yes. Yes, because my my, and again, this is probably goes back to this, you know, you'll talk about the other other organization I'm involved in, but go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 23:45

You can if this is now the time, go ahead. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:47

Well, yeah, no. Well, I said so the other organization that I sit on the board of, so I have two. I'm the chairman of EPBC, and then I'm a chairman of the Aquinas Institute at Princeton, my Allah Mater. And it's the Catholic chaplaincy that's there, but it also is this little mini Catholic think tank that we've created, because in our opinion, the formation of our students is not just about having them go to church and having them in Bible studies or in going on retreats. Well, that's obviously a crucial part of it, but it's also about engaging with ideas on the human person and philosophy and theology and great literature. And so that means hosting seminars and lectures on campus, as well as we've even had four credit classes in the university. I think our dream would be able to have a whole, a whole, you know, series of classes that people could come to an elite university like Princeton and still have this formation, intellectual formation from great professors or in Western civilization, in the truths of uh the human person. So, anyway, so I both of those organizations focus on people who will be, whether currently or down the road, in places of influence. You know, it's like whether or not Princeton and other Ivy League universities and other elite institutions, whether or not they ought to be the credential makers of our institutions is a good and fair debate. And I have no uh I don't have any issue with people that say that we should start other institutions to try to rival them as credentialing institutions. I think that's great. I think the more competition and the more opportunities that people have is great and the better. However, I think it's incredibly naive to think that at least for the foreseeable future, these aren't the credentialing institutions for people going into the government, going into entertainment, going into business, going into law, wherever you name an industry, that's where these kids are going. And so my view is I want to be investing in things that can change their lives. Obviously, me as a Catholic and as a Christian, I have certain views of how I want them to truly flourish from a spiritual perspective, but even from a human perspective of giving them the intellectual moral foundation so that when they're addressing questions of AI or technology, or how should I raise my kids, or how should I think about my marriage, all of those have significant impacts when you are the CEO of the Fortune 500 company, or you sit on the Supreme Court like several Princeton people do today. I would think I'm I can go on the record saying Princeton is not doing it as well as I think it would be. No, but this is this is a really good debate because this is the struggle that I have with some of my alumni friends and other friends that are at other that graduate from other elite institutions, is there is there can be a frustration with some of these universities of, oh, you've you you they have this political slant, or there's these protests, or there's these things, and it doesn't seem like the place it was when I was there 20 years ago or 50 years ago or whatever it may be. And you can have two responses to that, right? One is like a lot of them, they write it off. They say, I'm not giving to them. I'm not giving that institution. You know, I'm gonna give to other institutions that are that I'm more aligned with. And that's fine. But again, because of the the status of these universities, I just think that is an unwise strategy given the impact that these institutions have on culture. And so my pitch is what if we start institutions or build institutions within these organizations, within these universities that does move the needle, that does have the mission alignment that you want. Because by the way, these kids still need the truth and they still need formation. And if you're not there and we're not there, then they're not gonna get it. It's not gonna be better. They're not gonna get it from anywhere. And so, so anyway, so and by the way, as again, as being involved in these campuses, is that there are amazing things happening on these campuses. It's it's very easy to write, oh, there's this woke thing happening on campus, or oh, this administration is so bad, look at this. And but that's 2% of what actually is happening on campus. And so you, if you're not on campus on a regular basis and you're not talking to kids, I mean, I'm very fortunate. I've got a son who's a freshman at Princeton. I've got another son who's a junior at Notre Dame. Both of them are obviously universities that get into the news from time to time. And what I always hear is having children on campus is that I get the different perspective of all the great things that are also happening that don't get any press. So anyway, I just think there are better things going on than people assume, and they need help and support, not to not be uh criticized.

SPEAKER_01 29:05

And certainly we know from studies of how culture is influenced and changed that it's a it is a top-down process. James Davison Hunter has taught us that, among others. As much we may not like that, uh, but culture changes from the top down for the most part, most of the time.

SPEAKER_02 29:25

For the most part. I I always agree, I always think of it still, there's obviously an iterative process that goes, but you need you do need leadership in order to bend it. So let's talk about what you've learned, if anything.

SPEAKER_01 29:40

I I always like to ask this to people who come out of the world of business, especially sort of the corporate world, and then find themselves in a leadership position or a chairmanship position in your case for nonprofit organizations. What are um what do you take? You either answer this one of two ways. What have you taken um from the world of business that's been helpful to you in that those roles? Or what should people take? You can take it in a prescriptive way if you'd like. And what what doesn't transfer? I'm always interested in that question too. Like what what are some false things you think are going to transfer, but they don't?

SPEAKER_02 30:14

You know? Yeah, that's a good question. So on the first question, I mean, what what absolutely takes and what I still in a sense underwrite both in my nonprofit and my for-profit world is leadership. Period the end. Is that if you don't have the right leader who is accountable, who is that people are willing to buy into, that has the right vision, it does not matter how great your mission is, and it doesn't matter what your track record has been. I mean, that's one of the reasons why, again, on the EPPC front, is I'm investing, yes, overall in the mission, but it's because I think Ryan Anderson's also the right person for that role. And we've built out a team at Aquinas at Princeton that's in the same way. And so I and I've seen organizations through the years that I've supported that had a certain leader and I was supportive of it, and then a different leader comes in and the place somewhat falls apart. And and they were in a sense doing the exact same thing. So whenever I am trying to just determine is this a thing that I'm even remote open to considering, the absolute first thing is is who's the person. That's great advice. Who am I making my bet on? That's great advice. Yeah, because when I when I'm trying to summarize to somebody an investment that I'm gonna make, I want to know what my bet is. What's my bet? And my bet in most of the time the nonprofit world is I want to bet on the person that's leading it. Nothing matters as much as that. Nothing matters as much as that. Really true. What doesn't always translate is just people, and this is coming from somebody that was in the ministry world. I was, you know, I went and raised my own financial support, and I've I've been a part of some nonprofits in my life. It's hard sometimes to create the operational, I call it, you know, the kind of the gear or the drive or the push that it seems to be easier to create in the business world, where you all get on the same page and then you go to a level of execution where you're grinding it. You just grind it out, right? We've got a transaction, we've got a deal, we've got something going on. And so people are willing to do that grind. That does it's hard. I've very rarely seen that in the nonprofit world, uh, where people are not typically drawn to that because of their desire to necessarily excel in those terms. Is it just an incentives issue? I think it's somewhat incentives, and it's somewhat, I think there's a personality or temperament type to it. You know, it's you just don't see many nonprofits that have a venture capital, let's invent something and work long hours and grind it out and do something no one's ever done before. I think people typically are drawn to it because of they love the mission, they want to help people, they want to serve, they got great hearts, they they they want to feel like their work matters, and those are all good or no and good and noble things, but it doesn't necessarily create the temperament of uh or the the characteristics of let's go and tear this thing up.

SPEAKER_01 33:38

Yeah, the risk taking. The risk taking. How do you inject that?

SPEAKER_02 33:41

Is there a way to inject that into a nonprofit organization? I I think the only way is again from the leader side is is modeling it and knowing your people well enough to push as hard as they are able to handle.

SPEAKER_01 33:57

I was just wondering, again, my mind's got back to incentives. Like I'm wondering if there's a way to, if that's what you want, if there's a way to structure incentives, even in the form of just goals, not necessarily financial incentives, you know. The the goals we're trying to hit here would be different than they typically are, which is just to, well, we gotta hit our fundraising goal and we gotta fulfill the grants that we have and say we got to do whatever that we said told the givers we were gonna do. Uh and um we got to stay on mission. We gotta, yeah, we gotta not drift. Oftentimes, you know, that would sort of be top of mind, it would seem to me, for nonprofit leadership or staff. But she said, I want you to try three things and and better off the wall, you know, surprise them.

SPEAKER_02 34:42

Yeah, and it and it's hard because, like you said, so much of it is not quantifiable. I mean, even I had this discussion with with Ryan when we're doing our his you know, his review is yes, there are things that we can track. And the same thing at Aquinas. There's things we can track. Yes. We can track, you know, how many people are attending events, are we public, you know, are the scholars publishing things, how many people did this, how many people did that. That, and that's good. You have you need to have some measurements, but at the end of the day, there is the qualitative, let's sit down, what is the mission? And are we accomplishing that? And sometimes that can really happen in only in dialogue of walking through the achievements and does it in your gut feel like you're moving the needle enough?

SPEAKER_01 35:28

See, what's so interesting to me is that you're getting this from a corporate, former corporate CEO who you would think would be obsessed with the measurables and the metrics, right? And that only the non really the nonprofit types who would want to have the qualitative narrative dialogue conversation. But in fact, it's the opposite. It's sort of like it's so easy to sort of lean on the measurables as a crutch and then to actually let the tail wag the dog.

SPEAKER_02 35:53

Yeah, I think people just sometimes they fail to acknowledge the there's the just the pros and cons of this, this of an algorithmic view. And the more that you create the algorithm of value because of metrics, one, those metrics may not be purely aligned with what you actually are trying to do, but you're attempting to represent them. But then the harder you you attempt to hit them, you can create perverse alignment, perverse incentives. And so I'm somebody that, as a public company CEO, I had lots of either measurements or rankings or things with my company where people, in order to do the same thing for all the other hotel companies or all of the public companies in America, would run my company and our numbers through an algorithm and rank us. And my thought was that doesn't really capture this thing or that thing or this nuance. And so you just always have to remember that to create structure is also to create fragility. And so you have to be very prudent about building structure because it may not really be what you want. And so that's why it may be a prison sometimes too, not just for an approach. No, and yeah, and it may be your own, you know, scaffolding that you just built. And so that ability to have focused metrics so that you are staying on task, but I really want things that matter, not a lot of them. And then the ability to sit down and have a heart-to-heart with leadership to say, look, you know, let's go through this. And it takes time. I mean, that's the that's the other sacrifices that it requires engagement and prudence and discussion in order to make that determination.

SPEAKER_01 37:44

You talked a lot about leadership. I think we should just dive into that for a second here. Um, what makes a great leader? Or how do great leader, nonprofit on the nonprofit side will say, what are some of the traits? How do they deal with their chairs, their boards? What are some of the things that stand out to you?

SPEAKER_02 38:00

So it always in my mind comes back to at least the the chair and executive director role or president role is always about relationship and communication. And I want, you know, I want Ryan to know, or in this case, or whoever in on you know the management teams of the groups that I oversee, I want them to know that I care about them, I love them, I want them to succeed. I'll be I'm gonna be frank and honest with them. And I want them to call me if they meet me or have an issue and not be afraid of that. And that's everything from when one of them is hiring a new CFO, I'm happy to interview the CFO and see what I think. I don't want them to feel like to reach out to me is to uh is to either get their hand slapped or uh to be afraid that there's negative ramifications. I mean, I make tons of mistakes. I mean, that's the nature of leadership. And I guess in some ways it's when you're in leadership, you realize how lonely that can be. And I want them to know that I'm here to help them. And so I think, at least in the nonprofit world, what makes a good leader, and it's unique, it's very difficult, but they need to be multifaceted. They need to be able to both from a both an external and internal side, they need to be able to communicate mission and motivate people for that mission. They need to be able then with the donor class to be able to communicate that in a way that's compelling and interesting, but then also have the soft skills and the the EQ to be able to read their donors, get feedback, and be willing to be creative, to pivot, to figure out, because sometimes you get people that are too uh frigid or too rigid in what they're proposing, and then others are loosey-goosey and you just feel like, you tell me what you want me to do, and I'll do anything. Like, well, that's how mission creep happens. Like, and then someone that fundamentally into all of the stakeholders has real credibility in what they what they stand for. And again, that's hard to have both the in some ways the IQ and the EQ and the expertise and the relationships, uh good communication skills, it's that's a very, very difficult role to fulfill.

SPEAKER_01 40:15

It is. Also hard to be a great board member. What do you um, especially since you're you're the chair of two boards, what's um we can kind of end with this, but what makes for a really good board member? That's another position that doesn't get talked about a whole lot that many people who are listening to this will be asked to do one day if they haven't already.

SPEAKER_02 40:35

Yeah, I think I I I have this could be a whole other separate episode because I got lots of thoughts on this. But my I I think for me, what a board, what makes for a good board member is knowing what is the thing of which you really are value add. You know, it's like I'm I'm figuring this out in my own career where there's lots of things I can do and there's lots of ways that people ask me to help, but there really are a handful of things I'm particularly helpful and particularly value add, and that there's lots of other things that anybody could do. So don't waste my time and your time by asking me to do that. And so I think as a board member, my ideal boards, particularly as a chairman, is knowing that all right, these couple of people are really good at this, and that's where I want to rely on them for. And these couple of people are really good at this, and that's different than what these guys are good at, and that's what I want them to focus on. I want, I think about leadership and both in boards and in management team is I want people spending as much time as possible on the things that they're good at, the things that they like, that they enjoy, and the least amount of time on the things that they hate and are not good at. I don't want to be asking people to do things that they're terrible at and they hate. And so, how do I create an environment where these board members really like what they do? And, you know, because you may have some people that are super connected and they just love making introductions to people. All right, well, then guess what? That's you. You know, you love working on 990s and and helping audit things and governance. Like, great. Like you're the oversight on that. Like, how do we distribute this so that not everybody feels like they have the weight of the entire board on them?

SPEAKER_01 42:18

Very wise, Rob. And actually, there's been a lot of wisdom uh uh in what you said here. Like I'm very impressed. Thank you. My pleasure. Check out Ethics and Public Policy Center, ePPC.org. Yeah, and uh the Aquinas Institute at Princeton. Check that out as well if you're interested. Rob, thanks so much for your time. We appreciate it. Thanks, Jeremy. This is great. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode and what is going to be the last season of the Givers, Doers, and Thinkers Podcast. Nevertheless, I invite you to like and follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. And as always, if you want to learn more, check out mvil.com. Thanks.