By Liza Valencia and Chelsea Inton
Published on November 25th, 2020
This post was last updated on November 27th, 2020
People Partnership Director, Jam Mutuc.
People Partnership Director Jam Mutuc joined Smarter Good eight years ago as a writer. Through the years, she’s seen a small team of grant writers evolve into a boutique professional services firm providing fundraising, finance, communications, and organizational support to over 80 nonprofits around the world. We sat down with her for the full story on Smarter Good’s journey.
Meeting the Gap
“Our founder Jane Leu has decades of work experience in the social entrepreneurship sector and has been a nonprofit executive director and founder herself for years. She knows exactly what nonprofits need and experience, which has made her passionate about helping them solve their challenges,” Jam shares.
While she was the executive director of Upwardly Global, an organization she founded to help immigrant professionals rebuild their careers in the US, Jane struggled with the organizational demands. She and her friends — equally accomplished social entrepreneurs and nonprofit leaders — spent too much time on administrative tasks and juggling multiple roles. They needed to move out of the office and into the world to create their intended impact.
Throughout her career, Jane saw many professionals leave their countries for better career opportunities abroad, where their talents are maximized. It motivated her to create social sector career opportunities for those who wanted to have a career contributing to global impact. Jane believed it was possible – that they could have a seat at the global table and influence social change without having to leave their countries.
She founded Smarter Good in 2012. With her colleagues’ recommendations, Jane established its home in Manila, Philippines, known for growing ambitious, entrepreneurial, intelligent, and multilingual talent who were also risk-takers.
Smarter Good started by offering fundraising research and writing support to three clients from Jane’s network. Jam recollects those early days: “It was nerve-wracking. Imagine being a newbie in the sector doing this type of work for the first time. We did the research, writing, and client coordination by ourselves, with Jane hands-on training us and checking our work.”
From Growing Pains to a Team of Talent
The Smarter Good Team at their Makati office, Warehouse 8, in 2019.
The team soon experienced the same challenges their high growth clients faced – how to grow the organization and talent to meet growing demand and impact goals. Retention was particularly difficult. “The war for talent is fierce, after training these talents we ended up losing some of them to international NGOs, CSRs, and other social enterprises that have more lucrative offers… Others were simply not a good fit with our culture,” Jam recalls.
To overcome this challenge, Smarter Good developed hiring strategies that involved a series of writing tests, interviews, reference checks, and shadowing. The company also made culture fit a priority, and brought in team members as part of the screening process. Over time, Jam became more intuitive about selecting people who best fit the company. Studying various profiles and learning from mistakes taught her to read behavior patterns, spot red flags, and trust her gut feel: “We learned the hard way to never lower our standards and stick to them no matter what… I’ve come to know and understand what personalities, behaviors, and attitudes will most likely succeed here or who can start, sustain, and scale their impact in Smarter Good and the social sector.” Fact: Only about 5% of applicants become employed at Smarter Good.
“We’ve had to figure out the best structure to deliver the service to clients, from working on all current clients since we were small, to finding the best team size and design to serve the right number of clients across diverse social issues,” Jam explains. “We came to realize that the team should always come first – hiring and training talent now so they will be ready when a new client comes in.”
They needed to move out of the office and into the world to create their intended impact.
In it for the Long Haul
With its rockstar talents, suite of professional services, and growing pool of nonprofit partners, Smarter Good’s future looks bright. “When one starts here, she usually thinks her role is small and limited in ability to drive change. But over time, she will realize how much knowledge and ability she has to create an impact all over the world by doing her role.” Smarter Good is a company about people, and Jane’s leadership anchors this. “She has always been laser-focused on people… She has always prioritized how much impact we’re creating rather than how much profit we’re gaining.”
Given the company’s global outlook, Jam hopes to see Smarter Good expand its talent strategy across the world. “This has been a dream… I look forward to that day when we have a Smarter Good office in Africa, maybe in South Asia, or South America!”
As Smarter Good nears a decade of operations, we continue to open doors for both nonprofits and passionate development professionals around the world. With our dedicated and talented team supporting changemakers, making an impact is inevitable.
Liza Valencia is a Senior Development Associate at Smarter Good. She leads strategy for prospect research and funder pipelines, streamlines processes and workflows to meet client needs, and supports Smarter Good’s social media and communications team in content creation, marketing, and brand identity. She enjoys powerlifting, reading, and writing, and loves cats despite her allergies.
Chelsea Inton is a Development Associate at Smarter Good. She provides fundraising and prospect research support to nonprofits working in youth workforce development, education, and health. She graduated with a degree in BS Development Communication from University of the Philippines Los Banos. She spends her free time watching her favorite anime and TV shows.