Catalina Parker On Helping Non-Profit Professionals Transition Into Flexible Careers As Impact Consultants

Catalina Parker quit her six-figure nonprofit job to pursue consulting at 29. After building a successful agency to serve nonprofits, she decided to teach others how to do it.

Relatable Nonprofit empowers growth-driven women with nonprofit hearts to succeed in consulting. Motherly, Thrive, Canvas Rebel, Bloomerang, Bonterra, Keela, Nonprofit Hub, Virtuous, and others have featured Relatable Nonprofit.

Catalina discusses creating network of empowered female non-profit leaders who provide purpose-led consulting services, unlock the full potential of organisations, and share their unique professional experiences.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Indio Myles] - To start off, can you please share a bit about your background and what led to your work in non-profits, consulting, and social impact?

[Catalina Parker] - I got into non-profit work straight out of college, and that was in 2014. I started at the bottom of the totem pole as a staff assistant, getting people snacks, ordering supplies, and scheduling meetings. Then I worked my way up the ladder to the director's level. I was probably 22-23 years old at this point, so I was still young.

I was managing digital marketing for a non-profit in DC, and that's where I met Julia, my business partner. She was my intern at that job, so our history goes back 10 years. I ended up getting another job offer; I was recruited for a job at very large private foundation with $500 million in assets.

I ended up moving to take that job, and I thought that was going to be my dream job. I was giving out money, literally millions of dollars to all these amazing non-profits in need. Then the pandemic hit, and I started questioning my life. I ended up having one of my children, and I thought maybe it was time I stopped working so hard and instead started focusing on myself and my family.

I realigned at that moment, and I didn't know it at the time, but Julia was going through the same realisations. She burned out of her non-profit job (as a lot of non-profit professionals do), so we decided to do something, let's do a business together. I texted her in Christmas of 2021, and the rest is history.

We've been consulting for non-profits for three years now. About six months ago, we decided we had such a blast building this business, and we knew there were other high achieving non-profit workers who might be interested in taking a similar path. We're now teaching people what we learnt so they can learn from our mistakes.

We've been teaching people how to build their own businesses for a little over six months now, and it's been great.

As a co-founder of the Relatable Nonprofit, can you describe how your work is empowering purpose driven women to become heart led consultants?

Our name Relatable Nonprofit comes from our Instagram account which we made a little over a year ago now. It was just for fun; we would go on there and post relatable memes about working in the non-profit sector. We created memes, and then we were trying to post some more inspirational stuff, and we're now trying to do that with captions that help solve some of the problems people might be struggling with.

We want to talk about the problems so we can make some changes in the sector. That's where the name came from, and in the non-profit sector in the U.S. there are 12.5 million people employed. There are 1.8 million non-profits in the U.S., and when we look at the people working inside these non-profits, about 70 percent of those people are women.

It’s a primarily a female lead sector, and that's just because the origin of non-profits in the U.S. Back in the 60’s, 70’s and even earlier, women were the ones who came up with the idea of non-profits. They wanted to do something while the husbands were at war, so it's interesting to see what is happening today.

There was a recent staff report which came out late last year stating three in four non-profit workers are thinking about or wanting to leave their non-profit jobs in the U.S. That's due to a variety of factors, including burnout, a lack of staff support, and low pay benefits.

It was jarring to see that report and how many people want to leave the non-profit sector. We started thinking about what if we could offer a different path for these people. At least from our personal experience, what changed our lives was when we achieved flexibility.

We were still able to serve non-profits in our consulting roles, but we had flexibility, which was everything. Especially for me as a mother, I'm able to be with my kids and Julia travels a lot, so we thought that maybe this was just a different career path people were not aware of. That’s why we created our core offer now, which is the Relatable Nonprofit mentorship.

It’s a 12-month group coaching program where we teach people how to build businesses serving nonprofits. We help them through the transition, and a lot of people in our program are still in their non-profit jobs but they're trying to figure out when to make the leap. This leap however is not for everybody, it must be the right fit.

We're not trying to diss non-profits, we don't want everybody to leave the sector of course, but we thought this was a good alternative for the three in four people who were already considering leaving the sector. Maybe we can keep them by offering this alternative career path.

What obstacles do you believe are stopping people from entering an impact or purpose led career, and how can people effectively navigate these barriers?

There's a common misconception that non-profit jobs provide low pay and bad benefits. That’s not true. In Julia and I’s non-profit jobs, we were making six figures, and you can make that normally. We have a couple of people in our program who are transitioning from the corporate sector, and they've maybe volunteered for non-profits and now realised they want a more meaningful career.

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Honestly when we were non-profit employees, we just didn't know consulting was a career option. I think when people hear the word consulting, they think of an old, serious man in a buttoned-up suit with 40 years of experience. What we're seeing is the average nonprofit consultant are more like social entrepreneurs.

Most of them have small teams, maybe just themselves and an E.A. You don't have to have 30 years of experience, I had around eight years of experience when I started consulting and Julia had something like six years. We do see a lot of people get tripped up thinking they need to have all this experience, but you don’t. You know a lot more than you think you do.

How can organisations, businesses, and non-profits collaborate with people who are in consulting or freelancing positions to unlock their full potential?

We've seen so many different collaborations occurring. We are seeing more for-profit businesses now whining because of Gen Z and millennials, it's almost like a requirement for your business now to have a social good or impact component to it.

Younger people really seem to feel strongly about supporting brands or businesses that align with their values. It's going to become more and more prevalent, so before you hire a consultant, you want to do your research. There are a lot of people out there who claim to be experts, but they're not.

I always recommend asking for case studies and testimonials from past engagements to find someone who fits with you. There are just so many different personality types, and consultants can plug in as almost another staff person because most consultants have worked in non-profits themselves.

They're employees who know everything about the sector and its inner workings, which is very valuable. Yes, they’re a third party coming in from the outside, but they've been in your shoes.

What would be your advice to an aspiring changemaker in the non-profit sector if they don't know where to start?

I would start with gathering as much information as you can. When we first started our business, we did informational interviews with everyone. I went onto LinkedIn and asked myself, “who can I talk to who has a background in what work I want to go into?”

We set up tons of these informational interviews, and usually people are very willing and excited to talk to anyone who's thinking about entering the non-profit sector. Honestly, after having an informational interview, something else would be catalysed. I would make one connection, and then they would say, “you should meet with this person, they can help you with this.”

Each meeting would always lead to another connection, so that's just a great way of learning. Talk to who you know, you don't even have to have a huge network.

What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across creating a positive change?

There was this cool organisation I came across recently called the Mockingbird Incubator. It's an incubator for nonprofits, which I thought was cool because those small organisations under the $50,000 revenue mark make up most of the non-profits in the U.S.

I believe about 90% of non-profits are at that financial level, so Mockingbird provides funding to different people who want to create start-up non-profits. That's the most recent project that's been on my radar.

To finish off, what books or resources would you recommend to our audience?

I'm reading this book again right now called Bending Reality by Victoria Song. It's more of a mindset book, but I just keep coming back to it.

I recently arrived back from a silent retreat where I was by myself for five days thinking about my life. You're not allowed to have anything with you, you can't even journal. You're just lost in thought, but I kept coming back to that book repeatedly in my mind.

I'm rereading it now, and she primarily talks about the two states of your mindset, this contraction or expansive state. I’ve found that to be a game changer for the way I think and how I have rewired my brain to think positively.