We recently connected with Katherine DiClaudio and have shared our conversation below.

Katherine, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.

The foundational concept of Impact100 is collective giving. Instead of raising money for a specific cause or charity, we recruit members who pool our donations and provide transformative grants to a number of charities throughout Oakland County. Our value proposition is simple: if you donate 1,000 to a single charity, you can make a positive contribution. However, if we pool hundreds of people together and provide grants of up to $100,000, we truly transform the ability of nonprofits to serve our communities.

A great example of this is the funding we were able to provide Common Ground. The are a non profit that provides, amongst other things, suicide prevention services. In 2018 they received a $100,000 grant to build a text messaging service to support individuals contemplating self harm. This service became foundational to not only Common Ground, but it was picked up by the State of Michigan and eventually even became a national service. Through collective giving, our membership was able to literally help save lives all around the country.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Impact100 was founded by Wendy Steele in 2001 in response to feeling as though women’s roles in philanthropy needed a new way to be expanded and encouraged. Wendy launched the organization with the goal of empowering women to see themselves as activists through utilizing large grants to make an impact within their communities.

By 2002, Impact100 received nonprofit status and donated its first grant of $123,000. In 2003, People Magazine published a story about Impact100, and Wendy’s idea quickly began to spread.

In 2015, Impact100 Oakland County started and provided their first $100,000 grant in October of 2016. Since then, Impact100 Oakland County has provided over $2 Million dollars in funding grants to 22 local non-profits, helping them transform how they serve our communities.

My non-profit story started in 2010, when my husband and I moved to London UK. I found myself moving from a career orientation to having time and energy that need focus. I was able to work closely with charities that I was passionate about, supporting the homeless population and the HIV-positive community. My passion for making large impacts on my community, combined with my professional background gave me a great opportunity to help others. When our family moved to the Detroit area in 2016, I heard about the good work Impact100 was doing, and joined in 2017.

I’ve been so incredibly fortunate to work with women from across metro Detroit as part of Impact, and I’m so proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish and what we are poised to do in the future.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

I focus on three things: gratitude, vision and energy.

In our organization, we are all volunteers. That makes it even more important to recognize contributions and say “thank you” frequently! I’m constantly looking for different ways to recognize the amazing work our members do, and recognize the effort of our board and exec team.

In addition to showing gratitude, we think it’s really important to have a vision for what we want to be. We started “fund all five” as a mantra last year, with our efforts going towards increasing our membership so we could provide grants to all five of our focus areas each year. That takes a lot of effort to recruit, retain and promote our membership, and constantly reminding ourselves why we are doing this is critical.

Lastly, it’s important to keep the energy up. Non-profit work can be grueling, and we’ve found the best way to keep our energy up is to keep an open mind to new ideas and ways of doing things. There is no monopoly on good ideas amongst our members, and I’m proud of the work we’ve done to try out new things in the past few years. Our goal is serving Oakland County, so we’re always looking for new and creative ways to do it!

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

In our world, growing our membership is key to making a larger impact in our community. We’ve found that the best recruitment efforts are actually led by our grant recipients. In sales, a common refrain is “our clients are our best salespeople”; for collective giving, our grant recipients tell the best stories and our existing members make the most compelling cases to new potential members. We hold events throughout the year that showcase our grant recipients and provide great opportunities to network and find new ways to grow our membership ranks.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.impact100oaklandcounty.org/
• Instagram: @impact100oaklandcounty
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/impact100oc/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/impact-100-oakland-county/
• Youtube: @impact100oaklandcounty6
• Other: https://linktr.ee/impact100oc

Image Credits
Olivia Seyfarth https://www.oliviaseyfarthphoto.com/