Amy Acton · CEO, Phoenix Society for Burn Survivors | Phoenix Society for Burn Survivors implemented an aggressive EOS growth system to expand PBS’ community and visibility to more than one million burn survivors, and it’s been a game-changer for them.

Hi, there Nonstop Nonprofit listeners! Today’s interview offers insight into an unlikely pairing of nonprofit passion and for-profit practice.

It’s a method of leading and growing nonprofits that’s largely unused in the nonprofit sector: EOS. Amy Acton, CEO at Phoenix Society for Burn Survivors, implemented this aggressive growth system to expand PBS’ community and visibility to more than one million burn survivors, and it’s been a game-changer for them.

EOS, or Entrepreneurial Operating System, is more often used by for-profit startups because of its dynamic strategy, but when combined with the passion and dedication that nonprofit people possess, it has the potential to propel exponential growth.

Over her decades with PBS, Amy has been a part of an unstoppable team with a mission to unite the voices of the global burn community—and they make it happen through some of the most innovative swing-for-the-fences concepts and experimentation that we’ve ever seen.

If you’re looking for an explosive episode to break your nonprofit from its self-imposed bonds, this is a must-listen. And lucky you, you’ll have the whole summer to work on your exciting plans because Nonstop Nonprofit is on hiatus until September! Thank you, listener, for your continued support—we can’t wait to bring you new and exciting leaders in Season 4 of the Nonstop Nonprofit podcast.

Hello and welcome to this episode of Nonstop Nonprofit!

Hi, there Nonstop Nonprofit listeners! Today’s interview offers insight into an unlikely pairing of nonprofit passion and for-profit practice.

It’s a method of leading and growing nonprofits that’s largely unused in the nonprofit sector: EOS. Amy Acton, CEO at Phoenix Society for Burn Survivors, implemented this aggressive growth system to expand PBS’ community and visibility to more than one million burn survivors, and it’s been a game-changer for them.

EOS, or Entrepreneurial Operating System, is more often used by for-profit startups because of its dynamic strategy, but when combined with the passion and dedication that nonprofit people possess, it has the potential to propel exponential growth.

Over her decades with PBS, Amy has been a part of an unstoppable team with a mission to unite the voices of the global burn community—and they make it happen through some of the most innovative swing-for-the-fences concepts and experimentation that we’ve ever seen.

This is a must-listen if you’re looking for an explosive episode to break your nonprofit from its self-imposed bonds. And lucky you, you’ll have the whole summer to work on your exciting plans because Nonstop Nonprofit is on hiatus until September! Thank you, listener, for your continued support—we can’t wait to bring you new and exciting leaders in Season 4 of the Nonstop Nonprofit podcast.

David Schwab Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Nonstop Nonprofit podcast. I'm David Schwab, director of growth and marketing at Funraise. And today I have Amy Acton, CEO of Phoenix Society for Burn Survivors. Amy, thank you for joining us.

Amy Acton Great being here, David. Thanks for the invite.

David Schwab Well, before we get started, I actually have to admit something. Before I started my role at Funraise, I actually interviewed for a marketing job with the Phoenix Society for Burn Survivors about a year and a half ago. A little over that now. And I will tell you all, I have been so inspired from those conversations I had and what I learned about Phoenix Society for Burn Survivors, Though the role didn't work out. I knew that when I started here with Funraise and we had this podcast and we were all about bringing influential leaders in the nonprofit sector to share their perspective, share their experience. I knew I had to get Amy and bring her perspective from Phoenix on. So Amy, again, thank you for joining us. To get us started today is a question I always like to ask our guests is, you know, you've been in the nonprofit sector for over two decades now. That's a Herculean career by any standards, let alone with the same organization. There has to be something special about the Phoenix Society. But could you tell us what brought you to the nonprofit sector and what's kept you all these years?

Amy Acton Yeah, well, I worked for a nonprofit hospital before this job. I was a nurse and nurse manager on a burn center. So I think the idea of service was important to me. And so the nonprofit sector kind of fit with my values, number one. But as a burn survivor myself, I just was so like you taken with the vision and the work of Phoenix Society and the need, because 25 years ago when I started here after care and thinking about people's transition home with a burn injury was really not a very widely adapted part of health care. So I really love the mission. I love the people that I met through this work. We're very authentic and real, and some of the most courageous but also real people I'd met. So I love I just love working in the community. And I think the other thing that has kept me in the nonprofit sector is the tremendous learning and flexibility you need to have. And I like change and I like building things. So taking the organization from its founder and having a good vision and then building kind of the structure and the greater impact over time has been a great journey. It was a great team of people that I've had the great fortune to work with.

David Schwab Well, Amy, I want to share something with our audience and then let you talk about it a little bit. So when I was first in conversations with the Phoenix Society, you guys were getting started on your Million Strong Movement, where you wanted to grow the Phoenix Society for Burn Survivors into a nationally reaching organization and move from the model of being the deliverer of service to being the connector of service so you can scale and grow your impact. Can you tell us a little bit about that process? How did you adopt the Million Strong Movement? What led you to that and how is that movement been going?

Amy Acton Yeah, we have been a national organization since our founders started, but like you said, we were working very deeply with a few people and having really amazing life-changing impact. But I think the realization that there were so many still going in alone and that a lot of people didn't know who we were, what we did and how we did that work. So the board and our staff really were we said we could stay the same or we can try something new and how do we take what we do that's so valued by the thousand or 2000 people for World Burn and our kind of peer support programs and scale that, because each year about 40,000 people are burned and injured in the U.S. alone, worldwide it's millions. So there is a great need. And the Phoenix Society is really the only national survivor type of organization long term about living with a burn injury. So we decided that we needed a rallying cry. And part of it was let's get to a million strong. And that does several things for the Phoenix Society and for our community. It gives people the services that they need sooner by connecting with them as they leave the hospital, by building people engaging with us, we're going to bring more people and more resources to the work so we can then provide more services. So it's kind of a flywheel effect, right? So the million strong, this kind of spoke to everybody because most people are very passionate about getting people connected to the work that we had been doing just in a different way. So we had already started to think about digital delivery, increasing peer support from the hospital out into the community, which we had. Started there, and we're in about 80 burn centers in the country. But how do we build that into the community, into the digital space, to get good quality peer support so you don't have to go it alone? So that's kind of where that all came from. And part of our work was with iOS, and I think we're going to talk about that maybe a little bit later. But it was a business operating model that really helped us really get focused. And I think part of the challenges in nonprofits is the need is so great. We try to go too wide and too broad and then we start to over-stretch and we're not doing some core things really well. And so that's where we really focus on what's our best thing that we do. And it is connecting people, is connecting people with just other people who have been there, but also resources that they can't find and making it easier to find.

David Schwab So being that connector of people seems to be a critical piece to leading an organization like yours. And before you were with the Phoenix Society for Burn Survivors, you were a nurse and my wife is a nurse and I have noticed over many because of that. We've got many friends who are nurses or have been nurses. And there is a special character trait about nurses who just care deeply to see people, not just taken care of, but healed. How this may be a stretch and you can tell me if it is, but how was your experience as a nurse? How is that carried over to leading an organization like the Phoenix Society?

Amy Acton Yeah, I think flexibility number one, especially in today's healthcare, you have to be flexible. You have to think on your feet. You have to be okay to adjust your plan for the day. And I think that's, if I've learned anything in nonprofit management and leadership, it's that you are going to do your best work to prepare you for what the plan is, and then you're going to have to flex a little bit one way or the other and not being rigid. So I think nursing career helped me do that. I think authenticity and compassion goes a long way as you're trying to build something and listening to others and identifying those common needs. And so I think the ability to listen to those, what someone really looking for has helped me. And then I think what I saw in nursing was when people were connected and they had community around them that they were more likely to heal. And so that all those things I think, have helped me in my current role. And as I look to challenge maybe the health care community to think about how they're doing that a little differently and that can be difficult. Our founder wasn't in the healthcare field. He was a chemist, Allen was a chemist, and he was very much, you can't just treat us and st streets and we can't just survive. We have to thrive. And he had to be a very aggressive advocate in the healthcare field. At that time. I've been able to say, okay, I've been there, I know what you're trying to do and I know what we do. And there's a great bridge here that if we connect these two things, people will have better outcomes and live successfully, I think with a brain injury, and that's possible. So it's been a great opportunity to also let the health care providers know that they're doing great work and we appreciate them as survivors. And it's okay to let other people help you help that survivor. So those are just I guess I'm maybe babbling a little bit here, but those are some of the things I think I've learned along the way.

David Schwab No, that's great. That's great. I will bring it back to now, where you talked about when we were talking about the Million Strong movement, you talked about your, the EOS. For those in our audience who aren't familiar with that term, it stands for entrepreneurial operating system. It was introduced in a book called Traction by Gino Whitman and Kevin Pearce many years ago Now. I was a little shocked first when I heard that you guys had adopted that, because it really is a, you know, it's a for-profit start-up entrepreneurial. I mean, like I said, an entrepreneurial operating system. And when I was transferring from my last consulting agency before moving into this role, I was part of a startup consultancy and we had used the EOS to grow our organization from two people to like 20 people by the time I was leaving. And so when you're your peers, when I was interviewing like, Hey, do you know about the EOS? And I was like, I know a lot about it. How do you know about it? But I was just very interested in the fact that you had adopted that kind of culture and operating system. It's funny even to use the word operating system for an organization of business, but what was it like when you first were adopting the EOS? What were those conversations like? How did you as a leader, champion that and rally your peers around you to bring the organization into probably what felt like a very big change at the time?

Amy Acton Yeah, well, I would say I learned a lot. Some of it I wasn't very successful with. But I think for me as a kind of lifelong learner, always trying to figure out, okay, I'm hitting a wall, what are what do I have to go learn to get past this? And so part of it was as. We started to hire more people. It gets more complex, right? And trying to get the team to all be on the same page moving forward together was a struggle and bringing in some of those consistent processes so we didn't have to recreate the wheel all the time. So I had a great board member who shared with me as we continued to grow and more was asked of me as a leader, he helped me see that my skills are visionary, my skills are thinking ahead, but operational is probably not my strong suit, and I always brought people next to me that had different skills and I'm not threatened by that and it really helps the organization. So he just said, Why don't you think about an integrator to work with you to integrate your ideas into the business? So I started out with the rocket fuel concept of kind of the CEO and an integrator, someone that can really operationalize the vision. And in advancing our plan, our business plan, because nonprofits need plans and business practices, too. And so I started that way, and I quickly realized that that was just one piece of a bigger puzzle that I needed. So we decided to adopt the EOS system. And I will tell you that some of my leadership team said, Oh, no, not now, no, no, no. And really pushed back. And because I do kind of put new concepts, new books out there for my team quite a bit, and they were kind of tired of that, I think. But I will tell you to a t, most of them after we got practicing, some of the structure around daily operations, myself included, it took away some of the frustration that took away some of the unknowns. It helped us be consistent of our approach and solve the problem for good, versus keep recycling the same problem. So I think there is some challenges with a nonprofit in the U.S. system because there's a lot of very focused financial things within it that sometimes aren't as clear in a nonprofit. You know, when your philanthropic is kind of like selling a widget. So so there's there's some challenges to translating it to the nonprofit. But I have spoken with other nonprofits that have found it very helpful. And to scale, I don't think we would be where we are without it, quite frankly.

David Schwab That's awesome. Yeah, I think it's so important. What you talked about there is you said it is even though you're a nonprofit, you're still a business. And it's a conversation I've been seeing happen broader in the sector is as leaders, new leaders are coming into leadership or organizations are facing this, you know, this digital pivot or digital adoption or, you know, we are facing a very uncertain economic, political, socio climate. The nonprofit is tax status, not a business model. Right. But it takes a lot to break the mindset that nonprofit is a business model.

Amy Acton Yeah. You're dealing with people's lives.

David Schwab Yeah. And one of the best ways I've seen it put is in the for-profit sector. You're trading goods for finances in the nonprofit sector. You're trading change for finances, but you're still a business. And one of the things that I thought was so interesting about the Phoenix Society, when I was I was learning about it is, one of your business models is how you connect survivors, burn survivors with products and companies that provide services for them. And please fill in any gaps because I just barely had a chance to get familiarized with it. But burn survivors are leaving the ICU, their recovery is just getting started and the hospitals and health care centers are equipped to provide the type of care and the type of products that they need, but often burn survivors when they go home. They need to change out everything from the sheets they sleep in, to the clothes they wear, to the lotion they use. And so you've found a place to be this middle, you know like you talked about, being a connector where products and brands are able to come in and be part of, for lack of a better term, a subscription kit that introduces these survivors to the products that they need to make their new normal more livable and enjoyable. And then donors can come in and fund that subscription service so that those survivors are able to get their products that they need on repeat. I think that model is so, so interesting. And I want to dig in there for a little bit here is how did you come across this model? How did this start?

Amy Acton Well, I think it goes back to what the need is. And we did a customer journey mapping process during the beginning of COVID. Again, remind you, we were already kind of thinking we needed to go to digital, get people access, so we were able to pick up and go home. But we did a deep survey of our survivors and they don't know what to expect. They don't know how to find things that they need after they leave the hospital dressings and things that are kind of specialty items. It is a niche community, if you want to put it that way. It's a small market, maybe some people think. But when we started looking at the numbers, maybe we're bringing a thousand or 2000 people new into the organization every year, but there's 40,000 people treated in urban centers across the country and there's very regionalized care. So if we can grab half of that group and serve them better by providing them with the companies that have these specialty things that they need, that's a match made in heaven, in my opinion. So you're addressing a need and you're bringing the businesses closer to their population. They're trying to serve as well. So being kind of that national organization that has kind of a relationship with most of the burn centers in the country, we felt if we really built on that kind of intake of survivors so they don't feel lost when they go out into the community, we can give them peer support and we can also connect them with products. We can connect them with mental health that they may not have when they go back to their community. Specialty, like legal. There's a lot of that we identify that there was a lot of questions around legal resources for folks. So we started we're starting, I would say, building out. And then Resource Marketplace is what we're calling it internally to start to populate it directly related to the feedback and the needs we have from the people we're serving. So financially, I think as we grow to that million strong and we have that many people in our community, the financial kind of when will be there so we can put money back into the organization to support survivors. So again, I go back to the flywheel. For us, it's all interconnected and we've got to get all those things moving together and that's where the US has been helpful to get the whole organization moving in the same way for those same goals.

David Schwab Yeah. 

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David Schwab Now that you’ve heard how Funraise can radically change your nonprofit’s fundraising game, let’s get back to the conversation.

David Schwab So let's talk maybe a little bit about that revenue model because it's really interesting and it's a trend. I'm seeing some forward-thinking nonprofits. It's funny, actually. Another nonprofit in Grand Rapids, Mel Trotter Ministries, they're starting to look at this. Okay, how do we take our nonprofit, the service that we provide and monetize it in a for-profit manner or just simply monetize the things that we do? So Mel Trotter is a homeless shelter.

Amy Acton Yeah, I'm familiar with them.

David Schwab They serve hundreds of men and women every day. So they've got commercial-grade laundry facilities, they've got a commercial kitchen, they've got a lot of different things that they can do in there, like how do we monetize this to provide a service to the community that brings a financial value to us that we can then invest back in our business, and our business just happens to be serving people. So I'm hearing a lot of the same undertones with what you're saying. So how have you seen some of the early adoption, like our products and brands paying to be part of the service where like, Hey, we're going to pay to have our products included? Or are they saying we're just going to donate our products and have you connect us with the survivors? How is that working?

Amy Acton Yeah, well, we're trying we're testing. I would say we're in testing mode right now. Historically, the corporate world has been very supportive of Phoenix Society and because we have several kind of areas, fire prevention, because we do a lot of survivor advocacy for codes and kind of safety. So we have that kind of market and then we have the healthcare community and the people that are attached to the burn centers. Most of those products, though, are really focused on the acute care. So it's kind of aftermarket for them. So but they really value having the stories of success for the people that have used their products. So connecting people with those stories is important. When we get into people like that have medical supplies that the survivor will need. I think that there's very there's interest there technology-wise. We have to have the right platforms to do that, and we're building those now and testing certain models. I think there is interest more in the percentage per sales type of mode, but when you're a startup, you know you need capital to build that to do that, right? And so that's where we are right now is building some of the capital so we can have the infrastructure, the technology and the way they will connect people to the product and services. But mental health is another one. You know, there's been a plethora of virtual mental health delivery now, and that's one of the biggest challenges of our community, is connecting with someone who is trauma-informed and a therapist that has a trauma background. So that's another area that we can start to explore of how do we connect with a business that is doing that and we can help support people finding their options. I wouldn't do one, but options for online mental health, for example. So the other area we're looking at for kind of fee for service or revenue generation is how do we show what we do keeps people out of the hospital. There's a lot of interaction. We have with survivors through our helpline that gives them kind of confidence to go back to their medical professional to ask questions about something that's going not quite right. And so that's a service we're providing that we believe when we start to collect, the data will show that these folks are doing better. And that's a longer horizon. But those type of things, it's data-driven services, I think is a bigger underlying thing here is you have to figure out a way to show your impact and the benefit of the work you're doing in the health care setting, which is also, as you know, if you know, a lot of nurses is in a state of flux. Yes, they try to do a lot with little and they're stressed and they're burnout. And so they're more open to working with Phoenix Society as part of the solution. And so we need to kind of figure out how we do that best.

David Schwab Nice. Nice. So last piece of this puzzle is inviting donors in to invest. You talked about building that, that funding to build the infrastructure. And you're talking a lot about telling stories and having good stories. How have you used those stories to find and bring in new donors and invite them to invest in what you're doing?

Amy Acton Yeah, well, I think again, of myself as a survivor and others that we work with, we want to be part of the solution. And I think that engagement all along the process has been really important. So we're not just grabbing somebody that we served and telling their story, but they're part of the organization. They believe in the mission and we're actually helping them understand the power in their story, in helping others. And so I think there's fear of exploiting those stories sometimes for prevention, for example. And for me as a survivor, that was really important for me to use my voice so somebody else wouldn't get burned like I got burned. So I think it's shifting our mindset of how do we engage people and let them be part of the solution and their stories flow from that versus, you know, here's a story. But I think there's kind of three pieces. There's the story, there's the data, and then there's the impact. You know, how do we talk about the impact? So it's kind of a three-legged stool, in my opinion. How we go forward with that can't be just the story.

David Schwab Right. Yeah. Well, as we round out our time here, I have to ask, you know, you've been in the nonprofit sector for decades. You've seen over the course of that time a lot of change. And even in the last few years, we've seen probably more change than at any other point. So as we're looking at the landscape now, what are the handful of things you're seeing, the change that's happening right now, that has you really excited for the next year, three, five years ahead?

Amy Acton Well, I think there's a greater sense of collaboration. I think for nonprofits to truly be successful, that we've got to figure out how to collaborate more and multiply our resources to have change. I am a little jealous of those just starting out right now with entrepreneurial aspect, like, Zip Line is one of one that comes to mind right away that, you know, they saw a problem and they deliver blood in a very unique and out of the box thinking by drones and taught the community how to open up and they decrease deaths by giving births tremendously in that country. So but they did it with a business model. It was good for the government. The government paid for it. So I think as we move forward in the nonprofit sector is helping to educate the general population that just because you have a different model doesn't mean you're not doing great work. So that the old adage of you have this much overhead and you have this much this, you know, we've got to get a little bit away from that because if we're not investing in the growth of an organization and the sustainability of it, it will be no more. And so for me, the change that I've come to know and understand and grow into is we have to be bold enough to do things a little out of the box, even though you're going to get some pushback. Because if not, you know, Phoenix Society and others would struggle and slowly kind of be ineffective. And so that's why I always try to push forward, even though sometimes it's like pushing the ball up the hill.

David Schwab Yeah, I like what you said there. I'm excited for a lot of the same change that's happening. And really the big one I see happening is the change in expectation of hitting this arbitrary 80% rule. And I think if I do one thing in my career and it's to get rid of the word overhead in the nonprofit sector, I will consider my career a success because I have worked on the for-profit side for decades now, or a little over a decade now, not decades, but over a decade. And especially now at a startup. We are all overhead. Yeah, and people look at us and call us a successful company. And I'm like, if we had to. Live and die by the same funding model that are the nonprofits we work with did. We would not be a company. And so I always challenge my team. I'm like, Guys think like a fundraiser, right? Think like a nonprofit here. How would you do this if we had to spend 80% of our cap or 20% of our capital right to do what we're doing right now? How would you continue to grow and accelerate? And that's caused us to grow tremendously over the last year now. But I agree, the understanding that impact doesn't happen by being stuck to an arbitrary rule. And growth happens when you can invest. And sometimes it's more important to spend an extra 10% on fundraising. If you can turn that 10% into 50% more impact than it is to stay within.

Amy Acton Yeah, I'm in. I work with, again, wonderful nonprofits all across the country that are in the green space and some are total volunteer. You know, there's different sizes and scales and shapes and impacts. But if you're an organization like us, you know, you're a national organization that requires multiple relationships at different levels of the organization. You need people. It's a people-driven thing. It's not volunteer-driven, it is it will continue to be more volunteer-driven, but it is you're trying to transform an organization. You're going to need compelling need investment. And I we went forward with a capacity-building campaign. And this very idea, Dan Polaris kind of concept of don't worry about that, I got my dog and you hear him. Sorry.

David Schwab I totally understand.

Amy Acton Yeah, he'll stop in second. So yes, I think it is a, it's more about what is the impact the organization is having and not necessarily the percentages.

David Schwab Well, Amy, this has been such a fun conversation. Thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for joining us and sharing your knowledge and wisdom and experience and sharing about the Phoenix Society for Burn Survivors. Any closing thoughts? If there's, you know, somewhere that our audience would like to follow along with your journey or learn more about the Phoenix Society? Where would the best place to follow or connect or engage with you?

Amy Acton Yeah, we're clearly on Facebook and all those things. Our website is phoenix-society.org. We'd love to have you learn more about what we're doing and join us on this endeavor to build our community. You million strong. And I really appreciate your thinking of us, David, and the great questions.

David Schwab Awesome. Well, Amy, thank you for your time today.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Nonstop Nonprofit! This podcast is brought to you by your friends at Funraise - Nonprofit fundraising software, built for nonprofit people by nonprofit people. If you’d like to continue the conversation, find me on LinkedIn or text me at 714-717-2474. 

And don’t forget to get your next episode the second it hits the internets. Find us on your favorite podcast streaming service, hit that follow button and leave us a review to help us reach more nonprofit people like you! See you next time!

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