Today we’d like to introduce you to Laura Moody.
Hi Laura, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
Susannah and I met nearly 20 years ago through mutual friends because we all had pugs as pets. Fast forward to 2017 and I was running a fundraising and events consultancy. Susannah was then the Executive Director of ArtsATL and hired me to manage fundraising for their annual awards dinner. That successful experience led us to collaborate on behalf of many clients when Susannah started her own fundraising practice. At the end of 2019, we decided to merge our companies in 2020. COVID-19 had other plans, but we officially announced our merger in September of 2022, and Purpose Possible was born! 2021 was a year of growth and 2022 has been just as amazing. We brought in a third partner, Starsha Valentine, who is now the Managing Director of our second regional hub in Washington, D.C.
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?
Our biggest challenge has been the pace of our growth. It’s both incredibly exciting to have a business grow as fast as we have, but it also means we are learning on the job every day. We regularly joke we are building the plane while flying it. We’ve been fortunate to bring on trusted consultants to support our efforts – especially in Human Resources and Finance/Taxes. Similarly to the advice, we give our clients – we focus on our subject matter expertise, which is the actual client work, and bring on teams to concentrate on the business matters that can be inefficient for us to manage.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Purpose Possible empowers mission-driven organizations to overcome the roadblocks that prevent them from making their purpose possible. Suannah and I both came out of start-up nonprofits so we have built the company to be a one-stop shop for all of the needs small nonprofits regularly encounter and don’t always have the capacity to manage on their own. It’s incredibly important to us that we are always giving our clients back the time they need to focus on their mission-based work.
Our firm is passionate about communities and the people that create them and we always center that in how we work. As we have grown, we have prioritized recruiting a team that reflects a variety of backgrounds and life experiences because we know that allows us to do our best work for clients and the communities they serve.
The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
Every business had to re-think its culture and expectations of its workforce during COVID-19, and that is continuing. As a company that started during the pandemic, we had a unique opportunity to design what our company culture would look like without having to rebuild our model. Our team all comes out of the nonprofit sector, which is notorious for having chronically high levels of burnout at all levels of staff. For us, it’s important to heed the lessons of the pandemic, which means we recognize that for our team, flexibility and the ability to take care of themselves and their families is a top priority.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.purposepossible.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/purposepossible
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/purposepossibleatl
Image Credits
Erin Brauer Photography
