We were lucky to catch up with Taimere Wood recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Taimere, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
Resilience is something my mom has instilled in me by my mother since childhood. Coming from a military family, I was always taught to persevere and not let harsh life lessons and reality stop me from conquering my goals and ambitions. My moms passing during COVID was a very difficult to deal with but I was able to overcome my grief and remember that she is always here with me and proud of what I have become to be in life and my career.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
Back Office Support Solutions (B.O.S.S.) was created by Taimere Wood to arm sector leaders with high-performance practices to ensure organization sustainability. Combined with her extensive knowledge of the nonprofit environment, she helps nonprofits and philanthropies change what’s achievable in social impact.
B.O.S.S. offers a comprehensive range of services, from nonprofit startups, operation compliance assessments, donor records database support and expert assistance with a variety of other institutional advancement needs. B.O.S.S.’s solutions don’t come out of a box ready to plug and play. She prides herself on identifying your challenges quickly and designing strategies to address them, always keeping top of mind your nonprofit’s need.
Taimere Wood has 13 years of experience with skills in all facets of a nonprofit organization including operations management, finance, resource development, and programming. Working with budgets as small as $100K up to $12M, she have the knowledge to help create, manage, and sustain a nonprofit organization to thrive in the community.
Even though she is not an Atlanta native, she is based right outside the city and received her bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Clark Atlanta University in 2012 and has been working with various nonprofits nationwide.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Motivation, motivation, motivation. And if you don’t feel motivated, then be disciplined enough to keep going. Finding ways to re-ignite your passion for the work you do will help continue or spark the motivation you need to lead you to success.
There are a lot of misconceptions about a nonprofit being easier to manage than a business when in fact, I believe it’s more difficult. Nonprofits aren’t selling products for profit. Engaging with prospective donors and stakeholders to secure donations is a task that takes multiple touch points, follow-ups, and of course the actual ask for donations. Not to mention, you still have to meet program deliverables for previous funding, manage staff & board members, and be tax-compliant within state and federal guidelines.
Running a nonprofit is hard, but it wouldn’t be as rewarding if it was easy.
How can folks who want to work with you connect?
I’m currently looking for other expert nonprofit professionals and leaders to collaborate on a free to the public webisode series as another way to educate new professionals and provide resources so they can create sustainability for their startup organizations.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.bossnonprofitconsulting.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/bossnonprofitclinic
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/bossnonprofitclinic
