Leaders of Modern Finance Ep. 24 – Mission Driven Finance ft. Barbie Jefferson
On this episode of the Leaders of Modern Finance podcast, host Ken Boyd welcomes Barbie Jefferson, CFO at the YMCA of Greenville.
Life Is Not a Job
Almost from the beginning of her professional career, Barbie has managed to keep a healthy perspective when it comes to her work. For her, the passions and dreams she carries personally are of utmost importance. Her job is a means to fulfill those passions, not an end in itself.
This emphasis on a work-life balance can be seen in Barbie’s career progression up to her current work at the YMCA. Almost immediately, Barbie realized that the for-profit world wasn’t for her. The fast-paced environment and the generous compensation package that had initially appealed to her quickly lost their luster. After only a few years of working for a publicly-traded restaurant company, Barbie transitioned to work in higher education.
This transition not only provided an enjoyable challenge but personal fulfillment as well. When Barbie joined the financial team at a small upstate South Carolina college, it was in the middle of a phase of enormous growth. Being in charge of managing the college’s assets at a time when so many growth projects were being undertaken was an exercise in budgeting and operations management that Barbie relished. At the same time, the mission that she was working towards—education—was extraordinarily rewarding for her. Building up an organization that was providing an important service to its students, and society at large, was exciting work to be a part of.
Despite her contentment with her role, it was becoming increasingly difficult to balance her job with her home life as Barbie’s two sons got older. In an attempt to preserve a healthy dynamic between her roles as financial leader and mother, Barbie eventually made the switch to the YMCA of Greenville. This new position allowed her to continue to serve her community through her work, such as in higher education, while the closer proximity to home made space for her to more easily and meaningfully parent her children.
The values that Barbie carried with her through these career transitions, including her focus on family life, made her an ideal candidate to manage the YMCA of Greenville’s financial assets. As an organization with strong community values, it takes a leader with similar values to effectively fulfill the company mission.
Money As a Missional Asset
The YMCA of Greenville is a nonprofit organization, which immediately sets it apart from the for-profit world where Barbie got her start. As Barbie puts it, when she was working for a publicly-traded company, it was all about revenue generation, profit margins, and shareholder returns. In her current role, revenue is not the primary focus; the mission is.
All assets and resources must serve the overarching missional focus. Rather than finding innovative ways to market and sell a product, Barbie must be innovative in rationing and allocating assets to ensure that the YMCA of Greenville is always able to fulfill its organizational mission.
Money streams coming in are subordinate to the work that money is accomplishing. So, rather than spending funds in a way that generates a meaningful ROI, Barbie instead focuses on how her financial approach generates a meaningful impact on the community.
In a rapidly-growing area like Greenville, this presents a minor challenge. Barbie has to ensure that her organization is generating the necessary resources to grow with that community. A larger population has greater needs to be met, and a nonprofit like the YMCA of Greenville isn’t necessarily positioned to easily adapt to greater resource demands.
Keeping pace often means bringing the expanding community in as organizational partners. Garnering more YMCA memberships and providing volunteer opportunities provide more financial and human capital for Barbie to work with. In this way, a greater number of people needing to be served also translates into a greater number of people to generate the resources required for that service.
Leveraging these various assets for the benefit of those beyond her workplace is immensely fulfilling work for Barbie. Being able to use her financial training in a way that translates into meaningful human interaction is what motivated her initial nonprofit transition. This work at the YMCA of Greenville allows her to merge the most human elements of her professional and personal life.
Bringing Personal Values to Work
The YMCA embodies the values that Barbie herself lives by: creating a meaningful and fulfilling life is more important than a profit margin. Those values can be seen in the Y Food Program that Barbie spearheaded through the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic.
After the initial school shutdowns in March of 2020, the YMCA was also forced to temporarily close its many locations in Greenville. While leadership pondered the next steps to take, they received a call from a local school district. This call informed them of the many children who depended on school lunches every day for a meal, and with schools closed they were now in danger of going hungry.
Barbie, together with other community partners, worked to create a food security program that delivered meals to children’s homes during the week and sent them home with food backpacks for the weekend. Despite the financially challenging times posed by Covid-19, Barbie and her team used what few resources they had to serve their community, at the cost of financial stability.
This “people over profit” posture comes naturally to Barbie in her professional life because it’s an essential element of her personal life as well. Her particular career path sacrificed greater compensation for the sake of furthering her relationships with her children. She prioritized meaningful personal fulfillment over wealth.
Because her personal commitments aligned with the stated goals of her organization, Barbie was a much more effective financial manager, willing to take financial risks that furthered the YMCA’s work with the community. These risks are never reckless but, as the Y Food Program demonstrates, decisions are based on a priority hierarchy that puts the community and the mission above the bottom line.
This mission-driven financial approach reveals a different value set than the for-profit world. For a financial leader like Barbie, that value set aligns with a personal mission and positions her well for success. At a nonprofit like the YMCA of Greenville, when Barbie is successful, the whole community is successful.
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