Mark Gaskins · Founder, Nonprofit GPS

About

I built this for the founder I used to be.

I am Mark Gaskins. I have spent more than two decades sitting at two tables most people only sit at one of: the enterprise operating table and the community table. I co-founded and ran a community-based nonprofit serving Black and Brown youth and families across the SF Bay Area and Atlanta Metro for twelve years, and spent a prior decade as an enterprise sales executive at Oracle and SAP.

I was called to build community. I loved the work of connecting directly with parents, youth, and other leaders. As our organization grew from 35 families to more than 1,700, my calendar quietly changed. I went from being in the community to being in HR, payroll, taxes, grant writing, marketing, communications, and fundraising. I was no longer in the actual community. I became a servant to the business.

I love operations. It is my zone of genius. But I could have set up the frameworks and processes earlier and kept myself in better balance between the work I love and the work I am technically good at. That lesson is the practice now.

In all those years I have watched too many nonprofit leaders get frustrated, burned out, and suffer real health consequences from the work that was meant to serve a higher calling. I was one of them. Nonprofit GPS is the practice I wish I had when I was the founder buried in the operation.