For nearly 15 years, Kate Barr has made it her mission to invest in nonprofits. As the executive director of the Nonprofits Assistance Fund, her organization has become one of the premier resources to provide training, strategic financial consulting, and loans to nonprofits groups in Minnesota. But her commitment to support and mentorship in the community doesn’t stop there. Kate knows the importance of having a good mentor guide you as your career develops (read more about how Dave Cleveland impacted her journey in our recent feature), and she has since stepped up to pay it forward and support many other local sector leaders in their journeys. 

Dana Nelson, DeAnna Cummings, and Laura Zabel – all executive directors at their respective organizations – describe what’s unique about the way Kate mentors, and share a personal story of a time Kate mentored them.

Dana Nelson
Executive director (aka cheerleader in chief) of GiveMN

Just a month after taking the reins at GiveMN in 2009, Dana drove the success of the largest single-day online nonprofit fundraising campaign in history. Five years later and she hasn’t looked back. 

I asked Kate to be my mentor about two years ago. I was in the middle of a strategic planning process, and was losing my patience and my mind.  Kate had many words of wisdom about planning, poked some fun at the process, and made me laugh really hard.  Later that year after the GiveMN website had “significant technology issues” on Give to the Max Day, she sent our team green rubber balls for our “remarkable capacity to bounce back.” She reminded me (in a matching green card, nonetheless) that resilience is a key attribute of success. I could say so much about Kate and her mentoring style, but most importantly, Kate is always, always, always there for me.

DeAnna Cummings
Executive director at Juxtaposition Arts

For 20 years DeAnna worked to build an arts organization to channel the exuberance and creativity of North Minneapolis youth into positive neighborhood contributions.  The President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities recognized her program as one of the 50 best out-of-school arts programs in the country.

Kate has a really wonderful way of meeting people where they are and building their sense of confidence to take the next step. In Kate’s field of finance and financial leadership, that’s critical, because it’s an area that many executive directors feel a great deal of insecurity about. I work with lots of subject matter experts, and some consultants will make you feel insecure about what you know and where you’re at, and present themselves as being much more knowledgeable than you are. It creates additional insecurity on behalf of the executive director or team they’re working with, and can create a situation where you feel this person knows what’s best for me and my organization. Kate always reminds me that I know what’s best and I’m the expert about Juxtaposition Arts. I’m consulting with people who can add to my knowledge base, but ultimately I know best. Where you are right now and what you know right now is perfect, and you should feel proud of that.

As for mentorship, there have been hundreds of times over the years. But in terms of a specific story, I would point to our early interactions when Juxtaposition was seeking a loan from NAF to help us do some rehab work and purchase some buildings. I never had any interactions with commercial lenders, and didn’t really know a whole lot about lending and lending relationships from a commercial or business perspective. I called Kate. She said we really needed to have a handle on cash flow. She gave me a template to create a yearlong cash flow projection and then walked me through the process of how to use it. We created our first 12-month cash flow projection with her help and support. That quickly became the most important financial management and financial leadership tool in our toolkit. Kate introduced me to the idea of cash flow management, and then provided tools I could use to understand it and utilize it at JXTA.

Laura Zabel
Executive director of Springboard for the Arts

After nearly a decade at Springboard, Laura has catapulted the organization into the national spotlight while increasing the balance sheet from $200K to $2.5 million, and impacting about 12,000 artists annually. 

Kate is warm and wonderful, and really committed to helping people learn; but she’s also tough and she doesn’t suffer fools – or foolish behavior. Her directness is one of the best things about her. It means that if she invests her time in you, it really means something. If you earn her respect, that’s something to be really proud of. 

I must have called Kate a thousand times my first year at Springboard with questions such as, ‘What about the money left over at the end of the year? Where does it go?! Does it disappear?!’ She never made me feel dumb for asking basic questions. She always took the time to explain the ‘why,’ as well as the ‘how’ and the ‘what.’ I’ve learned so much from Kate – about leadership, about how the financials are the mission, and about how to diplomatically push people past the talking to the doing. I also learned that at the end of the year the ‘leftover’ money lives in a magical and beautiful land called ‘Reserve Funds.’

Illustration By Evan Palmer

Kate Barr knows a thing or two about giving advice. As the executive director of the Nonprofits Assistance Fund, she’s been helping organizations get their finances in line for nearly 15 years. But along the way she’s also made it a point to connect with the people behind the companies and nonprofits in the Twin Cities.Dana Nelson, DeAnna Cummings, and Laura Zabel are three of those leaders.

We asked each executive director to share their perspective on the responsibility they have to mentor others, and how they actively put that into practice.

Dana Nelson

Executive director (aka cheerleader in chief) of GiveMN

Just a month after taking the reins at GiveMN in 2009, Dana drove the success of the largest single-day online nonprofit fundraising campaign in history. Five years later, she hasn’t looked back. 

The thing that bothers me about mentoring is the assumption that one person has more to offer than the other. I have never found that to be true. If I am “mentoring” someone, I always learn something from them and benefit from the relationship. I have a lot of coffee meetings (I heart espresso!), and I love meeting people who reach out because they are curious about nonprofits, or want to learn more about my work and the seemingly strange decisions I have made.  Yes, it is a responsibility, but it is also an honor to have those conversations. I leave a bit buzzed from the caffeine and the inspiration of meeting someone you don’t know and becoming friends. It is the magic of humanity.

DeAnna Cummings
Executive director at Juxtaposition Arts

For 20 years DeAnna worked to build an arts organization to channel the exuberance and creativity of North Minneapolis youth into positive neighborhood contributions.  The President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities recognized her program as one of the 50 best out-of-school arts programs in the country.

I’ve been doing the work I do as the executive director for nearly 20 years. Starting last year, it dawned on me — I have a body of work, experiences, and a knowledge base. I’m not necessarily the person with the same energy I had in my early 20s to be doing, starting, and creating things from the ground up.  I realized I’m at a point in my professional development where my role is really to share what I know with the next generation of professionals who are growing, developing, and following in the path that we’ve laid in the ecosystem of arts, community development, youth development, and social justice work. I made a conscious decision that it’s important for me to mentor others one-on-one, in a personal relationship, but also in terms of growing the field. I’ve been on panels and engaged in more external conversations with other people about the work I do at JXTA and what I’ve learned over time.

I’m at a point where it’s important for me to be externally focused as much as it’s important for me to be internally focused.

It’s important to be very targeted in how I’m engaging and sharing the base of knowledge I’ve accumulated. Accepting the initiation to join the board at the Bush Foundation is part of that work. I also have individuals I meet with on a regular basis, in a more formal mentor-mentee relationship. There’s also a half dozen to a dozen people I meet with periodically — not in a formal kind of way, but people I get together with on occasion who are interested in picking my brain and sharing best practices. It’s like with Kate Barr, I never said, ‘Hey Kate, would you be my mentor?’ Nor did Kate ever say, ‘Hey DeAnna, I want to mentor you.’ It’s a relationship that developed over time through sustained interaction, conversation, and getting together on a regular basis. I consider her to be one of my mentors and she considers me to be someone she mentors, but it was never a formal agreement or conversation.

The mentor relationship developed through a real relationship.

Laura Zabel
Executive director of Springboard for the Arts

After nearly a decade at Springboard, Laura has catapulted the organization into the national spotlight while increasing the balance sheet from $200K to $2.5 million, and impacting about 12,000 artists annually. 

Part of what I’ve learned from Kate is that we all have a responsibility to help each other, to show up and share what we know, to ask hard questions, and to push the work forward together. I guess I don’t really think about this as mentorship, but more about building real, authentic relationships with colleagues and friends.

I actively serve as a mentor by helping, prodding, and pushing others in a way that feels reciprocal and grounded in the work we want to accomplish and the change we want to make in the world. Kate never says, ‘Hello, I am your MENTOR now!’ She just says, ‘Hello, let’s get to work. Let me help.’ That’s the kind of colleague I aspire to be.

Illustration By Evan Palmer