Today we’d like to introduce you to Tawnia Wise.
Hi Tawnia, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I grew up in Section 8 housing in the Denver area. I was raised by a single mom, and we relied on food stamps and welfare. These experiences greatly influenced my desire to dedicate my life and career to helping families and kids who came from challenging circumstances.
I wanted to be an attorney but found myself working in event planning while I was in college and those jobs led to a role in nonprofit fundraising as a special events fundraiser. I found that I really enjoyed fundraising as it is basically getting to know people and connecting them with a way to meet their desire to impact their community or influence change.
When I was about 30, I adopted my niece and nephew by birth. At the time, they were 2 and 4, and suddenly, I was an instant single mom of two small children. I have never been afraid of challenge, but that was definitely a major life change. My life at the time wasn’t really designed for motherhood, so within 6 months, I bought a new house, got a bigger car, and changed jobs twice, trying to find one that was family-friendly. It was overwhelming to say the least.
About 4 years later, and after about 15 years of working in the nonprofit sector, I decided that it was time for me to take more control over how I spent my days and the impact that I could make with the skills and experience I had developed. So, as a single mom and with my income tax return, I launched a consultancy with enough cash in the bank to give myself four months to make it work. I know everyone thought I was nuts. Lots of people sent me job opportunities, and I had to repeatedly reassure people that I was serious about being a consultant. It was a major risk, but as I told anyone with doubts – if it didn’t work, I would just get another job. But if it did work out, it would likely be my most stable job yet.
We are celebrating 10 years in 2024, and I can say with absolute certainty I will retire from Wise Resource Development. I love the work that we do with all of my heart. Over the past 10 years, we went from a sole proprietor to a growing company with seven consultants. We work with more than 30 ongoing clients, many of whom have been with the consultancy since its beginning. One of my very first clients is still working with us today.
Right now, my priority is to develop the leaders who will take the company to the next level so that it will outlive me. And after a lot of hard work, we have an amazing team. I truly believe that we are the best at what we do in the Dallas Metro Area.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The path I chose has definitely had its challenges. In growing a company, I learned a lot about myself along the way and learned a lot of lessons the hard way. For instance, over COVID, we grew really fast, but rapid growth can come with serious costs, including quality control. When we started to have rapid turnover a few years later, we had to get really clear on our identity as a company and the clients that we really want to work with. We became more clear on our social impact commitment and that we want to work with clients who treat us as partners. One of the biggest lessons that we had to learn is that our clients make up part of our corporate culture, so we had better align well with them.
Growing a consultancy means that you have several key growth fulcrums, including moving from selling yourself to selling a collective of talent and then scaling for impact while maintaining quality requires significant intentionality. I also had to transition from spending my time working directly with clients to developing consultants and leaders. So, how I realize my motivation to help transform lives and communities had to be realized in a different way.
Being a single mom and building a company was also very challenging. I think some people who don’t know me well and watched the evolution of the company from a social media perspective thought it looked easy and like I have been living a charmed life of leisure and travel. But what they don’t see is that I worked through most vacations – and that wasn’t easy on me or my kids (and trust me, it is very difficult to find a quiet place to take a conference call at Disney World).
In the beginning, when I couldn’t afford childcare for my kids in the summers, they went to every single vacation bible school in the Metro, and that was the only time that I could meet with clients in person. Often, I worked well into the night after they were in bed. I’ve never worked harder or given more of myself for a job, and anyone who has worked with me knows that is saying a lot. You don’t build a successful company without sacrifice. I have taught my kids that we all make sacrifices for the career and company that blesses our family with what we have. We have all sacrificed for the company that fuels our family’s goals.
As you know, we’re big fans of Wise Resource Development. For our readers who might not be as familiar, what can you tell them about the brand?
Wise Resource Development connects nonprofit leaders with the resources they need to impact our community. We specialize in fundraising consulting, however all of our consultants worked in-house in nonprofits, so we understand nonprofit management. Because of this, we work a lot with founder-led organizations and nonprofits that are in the start-up phase, which is not time-bound. The start-up phase is a state of being and can persist years or decades into the lifecycle of an organization.
We advise on all aspects of nonprofit management to help an organization become more competitive for funding and to have the sustainability to effectively implement their mission work. We do everything from grant writing to fundraising assessments, development plans, campaign management, and executive recruitment. I think one of the most important things that sets us apart is that we marry strategy with tactical support. Our commitment to excellence also sets us apart. We don’t do anything cookie-cutter. All of our clients get customized coaching and fundraising strategy that leverages and supplements their capacity and unique assets.
Another thing that sets us apart is our focus on southern and South Dallas. We are passionate about doing our part to dismantle and rebuild the systems that were designed to hold the southern sector of Dallas back from positive life and health outcomes. We are proud to have a 1/3 of our clients doing work in the southern sector.
In October, my book, Become a Nonprofit Pro: 9 Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them, was published to provide the most common advice that we give our clients. This book is our way of broadening our impact and supporting nonprofits who may not be in a position to hire us. It is written with nonprofit leaders of organizations in the start-up phase in mind, but I think there is some helpful information in it for more veteran nonprofit leaders. It is available from Amazon in paperback, kindle, and Audible.
What was your favorite childhood memory?
My grandma volunteered at the local office of the American Cancer Society, and I would go with her to the office and watch her answer phones. I remember looking at their pamphlets, one of which I remember to this day used the three pigs’ story to demonstrate the impacts of smoking – when the wolf tried to huff and puff and blow the houses down, he couldn’t because he was a smoker. My grandma was an incredible storyteller with fun voices and lots of animation, so her telling of this story was legendary.
This volunteer opportunity gave her a chance to support a mission that she cared about greatly as her mother had died from cancer. This was really impactful to me as it was the first time that I someone close to me modeled the importance of volunteering. It is an example of one of the things that I talk about in my book – how asking someone to care about a nonprofit as much as you do is giving them an opportunity to meet their own goals for impacting change. It should never be seen as an imposition.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.wiseresourcedevelopment.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wiseresourcedevelopment/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wiseresourcedevelopment/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tawniawise/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuqWuAdZ-FIMHOrwi67sjxQ
