We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ciji Wagner. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ciji below.

Ciji, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today One of our favorite things to brainstorm about with friends who’ve built something entrepreneurial is what they would do differently if they were to start over today. Surely, there are things you’ve learned that would allow you to do it over faster, more efficiently. We’d love to hear how you would go about setting things up if you were starting over today, knowing everything that you already know.

I love this question—taking the time to reflect always helps me clarify what I want moving forward. This very idea is one crucial piece that I would have introduced earlier in the life of Louder Than Silence (LTS). It’s easy to self-assess during times of big planning moments, like writing a business plan or creating budgets. I’ve learned, however, that it is equally important to incorporate time for reflection regularly into my work from day one instead of buying into the myth that there isn’t enough time to reflect during the day-to-day process of building a business.

Part of this reflection would have included sifting through the aftermath of sexual violence more thoroughly to be more realistic with my capacity, acknowledging where trauma responses interfere with work, and seeing what unhealthy mindsets I had internalized that were limiting me. This was the most evident in the fact that I wasn’t aware enough of how pressing the need was for the expertise of a fundraising coach, since this is where I struggled the most in launching LTS.

If I was starting over today, I would dream bigger and set more ambitious goals from the start. I spent too much time in the weeds of how we were helping survivors of sexual violence via one defined modality of therapy rather than zooming out and communicating about the overall needs and the types of resources we would like to see available to recovering survivors. I would also take the time to find what guidance I needed to grow the organization and leverage the expertise of people who have the experience in growing small nonprofits instead of figuring it out on my own.

Ciji, 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?

My path to the nonprofit world was not a traditional one. My degree is in Baking and Pastry Arts, and I worked in the culinary world for 18 years. I worked in various roles throughout my career, from wedding cake decorator to pastry chef to executive chef to independent consultant. One of those jobs was at a nonprofit that fed people experiencing homelessness.

I left that job thinking I would never work in the nonprofit world again. I expected to continue working in the food world indefinitely when I had the original idea for Louder Than Silence (LTS). At the time, I was in the middle of EMDR, which is a type of trauma therapy, to address the sexual violence in my past. It was completely life-changing for me. I was reveling in this idea one day on the way home from an appointment and I had the thought, “But why am I paying for this? Shouldn’t someone else be paying for this? Haven’t I paid enough?”

On that drive home, I resolved to find a way to get funds to other survivors of sexual violence so that they could also experience this incredible change in their lives. The thought took off like wildfire, and within a few weeks, I had LTS up and running. Once I began doing this work, I realized that there was no way I could do anything else. Helping other survivors of sexual violence awakens and heals my soul like no other work possibly can.

When we became an official nonprofit in the fall of 2019, our sole mission was to pay for survivors’ EMDR therapy, and we have since expanded to provide more healing options. We now offer workshops, in the form of 12-week long cohorts, do mentorships, provide self-care kits, host retreats, and have many more plans in the works to build out a robust structure for helping survivors heal. We seek to fully address the continuum of care for survivors on the long path of healing.

What sets us apart from other nonprofits who work with survivors of sexual violence is that we are not involved in crisis intervention. Rather, we serve as a touch point further down the line in the continuum of care, understanding that healing consists of many touch points and interventions to recover what was lost. As an analogy, if your house is on fire, you need to get out of the house first. That said, there is a long road after that before life returns to normal. What we do is help rebuild what was destroyed with the flames, so to speak.

Everything we do is survivor-founded and survivor-led, meaning that we empower those that have had these life experiences to create the resources for other survivors.
One of the other ways that LTS stands apart is that we provide peer support that pairs with professional intervention. Our staff and volunteers use the expertise of being survivors themselves to support others in their work. There is incredible power in having a resource of people who are further in their journey helping walk alongside those who need it.

I’m proud that up to this point we have funded over 400 EMDR therapy sessions. We’ve facilitated 12 workshop cohorts. We’ve hosted 6 retreats. We’ve provided 63 self-care kits. I love being able to tell the stats of the work we’ve done in just over three years.

However, what can never be measured are the real changes in the lives of survivors in the LTS community. We’ll never know how many flashbacks a survivor doesn’t have anymore. There are no metrics for reaching out for help instead of being isolated. We don’t know about all the promotions earned, businesses started, degrees received, or many of the other achievements that couldn’t have been accomplished without the support of the work Louder Than Silence does.

This was summed up best by one of our clients recently who said, “I realized that for the first time in my life, I can say that things are actually going well for me thanks to being part of LTS.”

That is precisely why we do this work.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

Starting a for-profit business is tough, I know. I’ve done that too. But, starting a non-profit? That’s a whole different level of challenge.

Understandably, people want evidence that the money they donate is actually going to improve someone’s life. This is a very reasonable expectation. But, when starting a nonprofit that provides long-term support, there’s no immediate evidence of programs’ success. I could point to studies about the types of intervention and how they are helpful, but early donors primarily had to trust that I knew how to bring these programs into existence in a way that benefits survivors.

So, donors needed to see program results in order to give. Program results depended on people funding the programs in order to provide the results. This is obviously a catch-22.

Some of the ways LTS worked through this was by partnering initially with another organization to be able to take tax-deductible donations immediately. This allowed us to go from the idea phase to having a functioning nonprofit within just a few weeks. The other organization led to our credibility, provided organizational structure for our fledgling idea, and allowed donors to get the same tax-deductible donations they would have if giving money to another nonprofit. This also allowed for LTS to get our own 501(c)3 approval much faster. By the time we had separated from the parent organization, we had over a year of program experience under our belts.

We also started with a launch party to get an influx of initial money and had a grand plan for events each month to get the word out. Well, Covid had other plans. We got our 501(c)3 approval in December 2019, and we all remember March 2020…

Obviously, we had to make huge shifts in our approach. We hosted virtual events, like an art creation party and a virtual convert. We partnered with local businesses to hold profit-sharing days. We even started a combination awareness and fundraising campaign called March in Boots.

Essentially, all of our initial funding came from friends (or friends of friends) and family believing that I was onto something and choosing to fund the cause. It took many conversations, answering questions, and reassurances to convince people that they could really make a difference in other people’s lives. Eventually, the trust was built enough for people to take the risk, and we’ve seen exponential growth ever since.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Scarcity mindset is extremely common in our society, and being a survivor of sexual violence magnifies it even more. Unfortunately, my experiences taught me that I couldn’t count on people to be there for me and that I wouldn’t receive the support I needed. It also taught me to believe that each day will feel like a battle and like it’s too much of an ask to have enough to maintain my life, let alone having enough to succeed. I believed that I was on my own and that asking for help would lead to people I cared about abandoning me.

It wasn’t just the belief that I didn’t have enough money, it was also the belief that I didn’t have enough time, knowledge, insight, confidence, people, or whatever else I would need to bring LTS to life.

Slowly but surely, through EMDR, workshops, and my ongoing therapy, I learned to address this scarcity mindset and see how it impacted both my professional and personal lives. I began seeing where I was limiting growth because I didn’t believe that I would have what was needed to bring LTS to the next stage.

As I was doing this personal work, I began to see a phenomenon that has happened over and over again. When the time is right, the resources arrive.

Shifting the mindset away from the belief that there will never be enough to knowing that there is way more than I can possibly imagine has been a huge turning point. Understanding that it’s simply a matter of telling LTS’ story, continuing to do the work, and focusing on my health and the health of the organization are all manageable and tangible.
Being able to stay with the here and now of the LTS’ life allows for so many more possibilities. I don’t have to live in the anxiety of the future. This doesn’t mean that we don’t make budgets or set goals. Of course, I am doing everything I can to continue to grow LTS and to get more donations. But knowing that we have enough for today has proven to be magic and a lesson that I am so grateful to have learned.

Contact Info:

• Website: louderthansilence.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/louderthansilenceorg/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/louderthansilence
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/show/0SmB4fj9h1WgmPnks7RibW