Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Roberta Rakove. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Roberta, thanks for joining us today. What sort of legacy are you hoping to build. What do you think people will say about you after you are gone, what do you hope to be remembered for?

My partner and I have decades of experience in advocating for underserved communities. We worked in health care, immigration, economic justice, human services, and gun violence prevention. We started our firm with the goal of bringing power to people and organizations that may not have been at the tables where decisions are made but should be there. We believe that real systems change will not happen unless people from the nonprofit world, community based organizations, grass roots groups, and youth have greater impact on the policies that are needed for social change. We are especially interested in the racial barriers and challenges faced by many emerging leaders. We hope that our legacy will be that we have been able to use the lessons we have learned to help others have the tools and resources they need to be successful advocates.

Roberta , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Both my partner and I started out to be classic do-gooders. I got a masters degree in public heath and she got a masters degree in social work. But we were both drawn to wanting to move beyond providing services to changing public policies. I learned about government by working on the inside including working for the federal government, the Chicago City Council, and State of Illinois. For 30 years, I oversaw policy and advocacy for one of the biggest safety net health care systems in llinois. I got to work on everything from expanding Medicaid, policies to support immigrants, and helping to create a coalition around gun violence. My partner created the advocacy area for one of the biggest human service agencies in Chicago. Our clients range from foundations to statewide agencies to community based organizations, What we do for all of them is help them to build the infrastructure they need to succesfully advocate for systems change for the causes and communities they care about. That means learning to do everything from figuring out where their assets are, training boards, learning to create a case for the change they want, building successful coalitions, and recruiting champions. We do a lot of training and we are expanding this area of our business now with a focus on emerging leaders. We are very much a niche firm in the world of nonprofit consultants. We have yet to find another firm that does this.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

Without a doubt we have grown our business through networking and personal contacts. We started out with a reputation in Illinois and even though we launched three weeks before everything shut down for the pandemic we didn’t have to market because people who knew us came to us. We are at the point now where we want to grow and we research organizations that we think would fit our model and look for personal contacts for introductions. We not shy about asking former clients and others we know to help us make those connections. Having said that, there are certain things any business needs as a baseline. We work with an amazing website designer who make us look great. A great website won’t bring you clients but it has to be appealing so that when someone checks you out, they get a sense of who you are and what you do. When we had to pivot during the pandemic to doing a lot of our work on Zoom, we engaged with a graphic designer who comes from teh world of education and undertands how to make virtual trainings and meetings lively and engaging. We started a blog that goes up on social media and is individually sent out to a select group. It’s just a way of reminding peole that you are there and jogging their memory about what you do. We got a little lazy about it when we were engaged in a couple of big projects so we are committed to making it a more regular effort. My dream is to do a podcast about grassroots changemakers and grow an audience for that but we probably won’t get to that this year.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Last year we were working with a very exciting potential client. We were deeply committed to their issues, loved the people we met, and would have had the potential for working around the country. There was a lot of enthusiasm between us and we cleared a time to prepare for what would be a big project. But for a variety of reasons it didn’t happen. Instead of being discourged, this experience prompted us look at our focus and make changes. We began to think about how we could make what we do accessible to a wider range of groups and individuals. This led us to to think about how to expand beyond individual clients to reach a broader audience. We have put a lot of work into developing a comprehensive advocacy training program that will be be practical, collaborative, and financially accessible and we are currently engaged in conversations with groups we would never have reached out to before. If you believe in the goal of what you are doing you have to keep moving and experimenting and not be afraid of rejection.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.rakoveandstrassberger.com
• Linkedin: Rakove and Strassberger

Image Credits
Cafe photo and headshot- Katie Devries