Interview with Steve Durie
Hugh Ballou: Greetings, it’s Hugh Ballou. Another episode of The Nonprofit Exchange live, it’s Hugh Ballou and Russell Dennis. Russell, how are you doing today out there in beautiful Colorado?
Russell Dennis: After a snowfall last night, the sun has come back out. Everything is beautiful out here in Colorado.
Hugh: Love it. People on the podcast can’t see it, but you’ve got a shiny head. Is that part of the sign, or is that just the light over your head?
Russell: All of this glare helps keep the focus off of the shadow here with all of the gray hair in it, so there is a method to my madness shining the light here.
Hugh: I see that. Russell, the real person. We have a guest who is also a resident of Colorado, but he is a new resident of Florida. We are going to hear from him in just a minute. Today’s topic is protecting your culture by doing effective vetting of the people you’re bringing in, be it volunteers or paid staff. Steve Durie, welcome to The Nonprofit Exchange.
Steve Durie: Thank you, Hugh. It’s good to be here.
Hugh: So good to have you. Tell us a little bit about yourself, some background, and how did you arrive at what you’re doing now? Why is it important to you?
Steve: I have been doing this for 15 years. Where it started was when I was actually volunteering in youth organizations with my kids. My question was: Aren’t you going to run a background check on me? They’re like, No, we don’t do that. We trust everyone. Previous to that, I had a lot of database experience in a consulting company in consulting on justice projects, that is, how to share criminal data. I took that knowledge about sharing criminal data and my passion for keeping my own kids safe and know that I was going to be working as a volunteer and turned it into a business 15 years ago. My kids are a little older now, and my wife Laura and I have a special needs son. He is an adult; he is 31. But he is also extremely vulnerable and needs protection. He doesn’t live at home anymore. And that is a constant worry about Tommy, whether the people who are working alongside him are safe. It does transcend not just our children in their youth, but into any vulnerable population. That is a broad brushstroke is anybody who is vulnerable, and we can look at each group individually as to how to best screen someone and check them out if we are working with children, youth, or vulnerable adults, or elderly, or single people. There are a lot of different. Vulnerable populations who may need our work.
Hugh: Absolutely. It’s really good to know about people. In the work that Russell and I do through SynerVision, we help people build their strategy out. Part of that is competencies. We have created a new paradigm that replaces the position description, and the first of four colors is the competency. When you look at somebody’s competency, you also want to do a background check so that you can validate what is on their resume, that they actually do that. Are there some hidden things in there? Finding out about the people. What is their performance going to be?
Role and responsibility? If it’s financial, there is another level of compliance. I used to live in a town of 30,000, and one year, there were two nonprofits that had treasurers make away with $750,000, trusted friends and community members. They didn’t do an adequate background check or have safeguards in place.
The third color is the culture fit. If somebody has a history of conflict or abuse, you don’t really want them spoiling your culture.
The fourth color is expectations, but the vetting the person, competency, not only are they clean, but they also fit the culture. There are lots of reasons in any kind of enterprise to do the background check. I think it’s especially important when we are dealing with people who are compromised, like your son, like children, like older adults. There are lots of opportunities for people to abuse the system. You have worked with nonprofits so far,