Michael Mantel · President and CEO, Living Water International | As the author of Thirsting for Living Water and a veteran of the nonprofit space, Michael has been guiding change for over 30 years.

With over 30 years working in nonprofits, Michael Mantel knows a thing or two about sustaining change over a long period of time. And as the President and CEO of Living Water International, an organization making waves in the WASH space, as well as the author of Thirsting for Living Water, Michael also knows when to shift the way change is made.

By using the concept of Appreciative Inquiry, Michael shifted from a problem-solving perspective to an opportunity-seeking outlook, articulating a shared vision between Living Water and the communities that most benefit from their impact.

Listen in to hear Justin and Michael discuss supporting changes in goals and strategy, esprit de corps, and December 23 miracles.

And then he said, Well, that's great. Is there anything else we can do? I said, Well, maybe you could do two more. You're more water projects and it. Well, thank you, Mike, and I appreciate that. But Pinky wants to know, can we make an impact in this pandemic? And I said, you have made an impact and thank you for these additional water projects that you're considering. And he just stops me, says, you don't understand. I think he wants to know how many of those cut water projects you told me about. Can we get back for $2 million? And I just was blown away. I didn't see it coming.

Hello and welcome to this episode of Nonstop Nonprofit!

With over 30 years working in nonprofits, Michael Mantel knows a thing or two about sustaining change over a long period of time. And as the President and CEO of Living Water International, an organization making waves in the WASH space, as well as the author of Thirsting for Living Water, Michael also knows when to shift the way change is made.

By using the concept of Appreciative Inquiry, Michael shifted from a problem-solving perspective to an opportunity-seeking outlook, articulating a shared vision between Living Water and the communities that most benefit from their impact.

Listen in to hear Justin and Michael discuss supporting changes in goals and strategy, esprit de corps, and December 23 miracles.

Justin Wheeler All right, Welcome to the podcast, Mike. How are you doing today?

Micahel Mantel Justin It's a beautiful day. I am doing just fine.

Justin Wheeler Great to hear. Great to hear. Excited for our conversation today. And again, thank you for taking the time to stop by the podcast for the audience. Tell us a bit about yourself, the organization that you've been running for, I believe the last 15 years or so, would love to learn a little bit more about yourself and your background in the nonprofit space.

Micahel Mantel Thank you, Justin. So I've been in the nonprofit space for 32 years, first with World Vision U.S. I was in Chicago for 16 years, and then the last 16 I've been serving as president and CEO of Living Water International. Prior to that, I was in business. I had the privilege of working for Tom Monahan over at Domino's Pizza at a holding company. And I was involved in business development, real estate development. And along the way I got a business degree. I got a doctorate in organization development. I love strategy. I love fundraising. I married to Nathalie. She's a lawyer. We just celebrated our 40th anniversary.

Justin Wheeler Congrats.

Micahel Mantel Got four daughters, five grandkids, I guess. Now I'm in Houston again. I was in Aspic Island nominee Estonia and I grew up in California, and that's who I am living. Water International. The organization I serve with, is a wonderful 34 year old organization that is focused on helping communities access safe water. We work in 16 countries around the world Latin America, Caribbean, Africa and in Asia. 7 million people now have water, sanitation and hygiene because of the generosity of our donors. Wow. We've completed about 24,000 water projects and it's fun. Yeah, Great organization to work with.

Justin Wheeler That's awesome. Well, sounds like you've got your hands full with lots of great things going on. What part of California you mentioned growing up in California? What part of California was that?

Micahel Mantel I grew up in Modesto.

Justin Wheeler Modesto.

Micahel Mantel Do you know Modesto?

Justin Wheeler I do because I had family that lived in Stockton for a while. So I am familiar with Modesto.

Micahel Mantel Yeah, my my dad and my family put in sprinkler system. So I guess that's how I got introduced to water initially. I'm awfully dry in Modesto.

Justin Wheeler Yeah, they.

Micahel Mantel Have a famous arch there. Water, wealth, contentment, health. And I think that got into my system. So I've always been interested in water and helping people access water. But Modesto was home. I left when I was about 20 to go to Calvin College and get a business degree and then started working with Tom's Holding company.

Justin Wheeler So yeah, I want to talk about that a little bit. It sounds like, as you mentioned, you got a business degree. You did. You spent some time early in your career in business and then at some point transitioned into the nonprofit space, which it looks like World Vision was was maybe the first organization you worked at as part of the nonprofit space. What was what was the reason for that change in in career from from business to nonprofit?

Micahel Mantel Well, it was an adventure. So Tom Monahan was a very creative executive. And one day he asked me to put on the world's longest nativity scene at his global headquarters. It's kind of a strange story, but we put on a two mile long nativity scene corner, two freeways, 217,000 people came to enjoy that display and dropped change into buckets. We ended up with $112,000. We gave that to some local charities, some international charities, some national charities. And one of the groups we gave some resources to was drilling a water well in Senegal. And I just thought that was kind of cool. And the owner of that windmill company just invited me and said, Hey, I'm going to go put this windmill up in the desert in Senegal. You want to come? And I thought, what a crazy thing to do. So I jumped on an airplane. I kind of wanted to make sure that the money was well spent. And what I experienced opened up new opportunities. It really changed my perspective. We're in the middle of the salad desert. There was these Wolof tribes people. They were desperately poor. They are exceptionally generous and they had a water aquifer 300ft under there, the surface of the desert, and they had no means to access that water. Wow. And we started drilling water well. And when we had water all the late. And he started dancing and singing and the children were partying, and they knew that their life would be changed forever. And I thought, this is crazy that the Pizza King could link up with a charity in West Africa, a windmill company in Ohio. And change the lives of 300 tribesmen in Senegal. And I. I just wanted to be a part of that for a little while. So I made a deal. I said, you know, I'm going to tithe 10% of my work life three years, and I'll just go work for a nonprofit, which was World Vision. And then I got stuck because it's been so challenging. So exciting. So what? 32 years later, I'm still engaged in the nonprofit space, you know, trying to utilize the business skills I've developed along the way. But it's a joy to be in the wash water access, sanitation, hygiene space in helping people access water.

Justin Wheeler Interesting. Now you know that you're the story kind of I'm curious if it aligns sort of with something you've talked about in the past where, you know, you said nonprofits need to determine whether they're trying to solve problems or save people. And it seemed like this was a pivotal experience early on for you, seeing the impact of of, you know, solving a problem for these individuals and with with water and love. Could you expand on Bill, and what do you mean by deciding between solving a problem or saving people and how those are different?

Micahel Mantel Well, when I decided to bless the world with my business skills, I had no idea how complex the nonprofit space was. So for World Vision, I moved to Chicago and I was going to help solve some problems. And the problems were on the west side of Chicago, on the south side of Chicago. There were some intractable issues related to housing related to youth development. And what I found was that as we tried to solve problems in Chicago, they were unsolvable. There were generations of broken promises, generations of suspicion. And when we tried to get African-American and Anglo Latino churches to work together in that inner city linking to others in the suburbs, nobody wanted to play because the problems were insoluble. And so I was stuck. You know, I didn't I didn't have a solution. And I heard about this progressive thinker out of Case Western Reserve, and his name is was David Cooper, writer. And he was coming up with this theory that rather than embracing the world as a set of problems to solve, consider embracing the world as a set of opportunities to embrace. And he was beginning to articulate a process which is now called appreciative inquiry, where you discover what really works, what's allowed us as an organization to thrive in the past. You hold on to that and then you dream together with everybody that's got a stake in the solution about what can be done. And then together you create solutions that live into that opportunity. And I thought it was a little bit academic, a little bit, you know, from a business perspective, a little airy. But what I experienced was when you get all the stakeholders together and you talk about what you want, the opportunities you want to live into, you can actually begin to articulate a shared vision. And the power of language is so compelling that together you can begin to live into a shared vision. And so it starts with just seeing that the world is full of opportunities rather than problems bringing people to the table, building a foundation on what's possible in the past and dreaming together for the future. If we can get into that space, which I discovered in Chicago. We can live into incredible possibilities. And that's how I framed really the engagements I've had at World Vision and then subsequently at Living Water. Just bring people together, build on what we've done, dream about possibilities, and then build the architecture to get there, the systems, the processes to live into your vision.

Justin Wheeler Yeah. Thank you for explaining that. And you know, it reminds me, I think oftentimes we I spent about 15 years as a as a practitioner in the nonprofit space, started a couple of nonprofits before starting fundraise. And some of the best opportunities are the one. Guns when you're able to engage with the individuals most impacted by, you know, the thing or the challenge that you're actually trying to to overcome. And so often I feel like so many charities actually negate and don't look at the beneficiaries as stakeholders in the actual outcome of what we're trying to accomplish. And so the way you walked through that, you know, and you talked about getting all the stakeholders involved, what I'm hearing is it's, you know, the individuals who need clean water, what are solutions that are going to ensure that this this well or whatever the the device is, is going to provide long term sustainable impact for the communities. It got me thinking through and I've read a little bit about your strategic plan pre-pandemic. There's I feel like a lot of organizations had strategic plans pre-pandemic and post-pandemic. And for some, the pandemic kind of changed sort of the direction. But pre-pandemic, you had a strategic plan called Watershed 2040. What was that and what were some of the goals of the strategic plan?

Micahel Mantel That's a great question. I love strategic plans in that they're a repository for vision, for passion, for socially constructed processes that will move us from where we are to where we're going. I don't see strategic plans. Is that a binder you put on the shelf? But rather it holds the passion and the vision of people. So actually, we've had four strategic plans since I came to Living Water International in 2008. The first one we simply called Watershed, and that was an effort to again capture what we've done well and dream into who we ought to be. And that first plan radically transformed who we were. So prior to 2008, we drilled water wells. We were an American organization that sent experts into the field to do that work. We were about a $12 million organization. And when we got together with all of our staff, our donors, the communities with which we worked, the partners that we had, we declared some crazy things for us at the time. We said we we wanted to become a global organization because we wanted to represent the voices within each of the 18 countries in which we worked. We said we we wanted to not just drill water wells, but pursue the flourishing of people, healthy people, kids in school communities developing because of the intersection of of water in their lives. We said we wanted to double our revenue in the middle of this, and none of it was possible, but it was a shared dream. And we began to build that organization a $25 million organization. We hired 250 national leaders. We moved from water to water, sanitation and hygiene so that people would get healthy. That was watershed. So that took us four, five years. We were on a track. We were building it as we were going. And then the plan that you're referencing, Watershed 2040, really was a vision of the chairman of our board at the time, David Welch, who was an oil executive. He said, Hey, Mike, in the oil business, we have 25 year plans. And I said, Well, David, in the nonprofit business, we can hardly do a five year plan. And he said, well, just imagine, you know, look at scenarios. What would the world look like 25 years from now? Health, population, technology. Just do some scenario planning and then see if that longer range plan influences your current trajectory and if your current trajectory will influence your long range plan. So as an accommodation. Okay, Dave, let's let's go ahead and do this. We ended up making it a 25 year vision and a five year plan, 2040. And what we found was we were moving in the right direction, but we really needed to build a strategy management system. We needed to build a global financial system. We needed to build a customer relations management system. We needed to build quality standards across the 18 countries in which we worked that now had national leaders. So 2040 took us deeper and gave us a longer view. So then we're cranking, we're doing, you know, good work. We're continuing to build on the best of our past. We continue to involve voices of the whole system to build into our future. But then Covid hit. And this was unprecedented for us. We we didn't know what to do. Nobody knew what to do. You know, is this a virus that's going to be gone in two weeks, two months, two years? You know, one of our friends sent us a podcast. You know, is this a storm? Is it a season? Is it an ice age? You know, we're thinking, wow, what is it? And we had a realization that how do you fight Covid? Water, sanitation, hygiene. So we were part of the solution for Covid. But at the same time, we were running out of money. Churches that at the time were providing 25% of our resources were looking to survive. Donors were a little nervous about what the future would hold. So we knew that we were going to hit the rocks. We would run out of money. And of course, there's revenue that you can manage. There's expenses you can manage, and there's cash. And you've got three levels. So we could pull one of those levers, 2 or 3. And so we just said our strategy is good. It's carried us now for nine years. But how do we respond in the middle of an unprecedented global pandemic that is impacting everybody at the same time in media and politics, economics, transportation, health? And we went back to our strategic roots. We said, well, what do we do that's really good? Who do we need to have at the table? How do we want to live through this pandemic?

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Micahel Mantel And what we determined was we could only manage the intersection of the length of the pandemic and the speed in which we could apply technology. And so we made a little cross. We said, all right. And then we strategized in each of those four quadrants. You know, if the pandemic went longer or we could adapt faster, the pandemic was slower or we would adapt slower. And what we determined was that the our actions in three of the quadrants would be the same. The fourth quadrant was we'd go out of business and what could we do? But in three of the quadrants, it was like we would do the same things. And so what we did was we said we have to deliver water, sanitation and hygiene. We have to deliver hope. Maybe we could find efficiencies, make personal sacrifices, align some strategy. Maybe we could defer maintenance. Maybe we could suspend hires. And we finally got to the point where we said, well, we haven't saved enough money. We're going to have to choose to not do a 153 water project, which would impact the lives of 45,000 people. Now, that's when leadership became very tough because which 45,000 people would we choose to not provide services to in the middle of a pandemic so that we might continue to move into our strategy. And, you know, thank goodness Zoom came out. So every day we had, you know, 18 countries on our big Zoom screens. And every day our leaders were talking about political, environmental, medical, logistical challenges. And we've got tremendous leadership, African leadership, Latin America, Caribbean leadership, Asian leadership, American leadership. And when we got to the point of choosing which 45,000 people would not have access to water, sanitation and hygiene, these highly trained, passionate, tough women and men were in tears trying to figure out who. And we debated and we fought. And we finally made the call that we're going to have to reduce our outputs. 153 water projects. We agreed we'd go forward. So we reduced our expenses considerably. Our donors still came through at a relatively reasonable level. Our cash went up. And I got to just close this story with a miraculous intervention. So after we made the best business calls, we could possibly make agonizing over the impact that this would have in the lives of people. Christmas Eve, the day before Christmas Eve, I get a call from a dear donors attorney and our name is a beautiful name. Her name is Pinky. She's a. Elderly woman. And the attorney said, Pinky wants to talk to you. And she came in. We served brownies, we had tea. We put, you know, you're a fund raiser and we had the best pictures we could on the wall showing videos of impact. But she'd already been very generous. And so I was just reminding her that she's already helped in this pandemic. We don't have anything more to ask her. We just want to say thank you. And her lawyer kept pressing. Isn't there anything that Pinky can do? And then I thought, well, maybe one more. Well, that's 300 people. So I said, you can you can do one more water project, $20,000, 300 people. And then he said, Well, that's great. Is there anything else we can do? I said, Well, maybe you could do two more. You're more water projects and it. Well, thank you, Mike, and I appreciate that. But Pinky wants to know, can we make an impact in this pandemic? And I said, you have made an impact and thank you for these additional water projects that you're considering. And he just stops me, says, you don't understand. I think he wants to know how many of those cut water projects you told me about. Can we get back for $2 million? And I just was blown away. I didn't see it coming. But Pinky and her attorney, Brian, put every cut water project back on the board. Everyone.

Justin Wheeler Wow.

Micahel Mantel We made the right strategic decisions. We struggled through the impossible choices and still divinely relationally. Our donors came in the middle of the pandemic to give us a chance to continue to live in to the strategy that we so carefully constructed know.

Justin Wheeler I think that I think that the. Thank you for sharing that story. You know some some of the like nuggets I kind of I gleaned from it is making hard decisions as quickly as possible is is extremely important both in the nonprofit in and for profit space. But your decision to you know the hard decision to be like there's going to be a lot of people that we can't help this year because we have to prioritize keeping our organization running for the, you know, hundreds of thousands of people we're going to impact in the future. Right. So you had to make this hard, hard decision at one point in time, but you were then still able to to deliver on the impact you thought you were having to choose not to make in this, you know, the current fiscal year. And it's I think it's a it's a really good example for other leaders in the nonprofit space on on the importance of thinking strategically and long term because if if you make really bad short term decisions, you could be impacting. Even more people in the long run in terms of the people you're going to serve and so forth. And so I get that your business background and pedigrees played a big part in navigating the organization through what was an extremely challenging time for so many nonprofits. And and it appears that you've come out on the other end stronger with even more loyal donors who want to continue to see your work, you know, propel. And so that's really amazing. And the story and the ending is perfect, a perfect ending to what had to be, you know, very, very hard decisions in the moment. I can only imagine as you I want to one thing I wanted to come back to on that story is, as you know, as you made this sort of shift into to cutting back on expenses, at least in the in the short term. What did that mean internally for the organization? Were there other hard decisions that had to be made? And you mentioned potentially suspending new hires, but how was it how was the organization kind of brought in to these conversations? Right. There's obviously the executive level having having the big picture conversations. How does your your team and teams react sort of to this strategy shift in the moment?

Micahel Mantel We were able to move forward because of good communications on the chassis of socially, collectively created strategy. So when we built Watershed 2040, now Overflow 25, we built these strategies collectively and we believe because all of us can see our language in the documentation, that this is exactly what we need to do. We vetted it with our boards, we buried it with our donors. It's a collective plan. And so if when you believe you're moving in the right direction and as a faith based organization, if you believe that divinely you're also being supported in this process, you can move forward pretty confidently. But but the challenge is the world is volatile. It is unpredictable. Yeah, it's constantly changing. And so from a strategic perspective, we meet quarterly with an annual or a quarterly business review to review where we've been in the last 90 days and where we're going in the next 90 days or monthly. We meet as a senior team and the next level of leadership to reflect on the tactical issues associated with that strategy. We because of the blessing of Zoom, we're able to do this across continents and across countries. And so we're constantly connected from a strategic and a and a practical set of considerations. So then when a challenge hits, we found we really needed a dial up communication even beyond that. So daily we put all of our key leadership on the large screens and had a standup meeting talking about the challenges around the world. Weekly We met with our senior team to look at adjustments and we negotiated those adjustments and there were really in three buckets. The easiest one was where could we align strategies within particular countries or across countries to save money, which was an efficiency move nobody could argue with. And it was, yeah, fantastic, let's do that. So then it was, well, what, what are things that we can defer and make personal sacrifices for the good of the ministry. And those things really are what everyone does. Let's cut training and travel. Let's freeze hires and salaries. Let the senior team take a 10% salary cut. Let's defer maintenance and let's just squeeze as much as we can out of our current resources. Now that begins to create a little pressure, but it's still a free to car. We're all in this together. Yeah, move forward. And what I found was I needed to do a CEO update on a weekly basis so I'd start filming. This is where we are. These are the challenges we have. This is where we're going. Let's stay connected and move forward together. And every week, because it was unknown, these is where we are. These are the challenging challenges we're facing. And let's move forward together and celebrate when we see successes, either planned successes or unanticipated successes. And so I think it is the esprit de corps tied to mission and strategy, clear communications that. While we may not know all the answers, we're communicating what we know and we're highlighting where people are playing at a really high level. Yeah. And and there's faith that we're going to get through this together. And so I think communication at all levels, board staff was critical. Yeah. And moving forward through the challenges.

Justin Wheeler It sounds like the, just the transparency with what you knew, what you didn't know, the decisions, the quick decisions you had to make to stay in existence. And then just the the bond of being a faith based organization that your team has is what led you kind of through some of these these hard times. And so it's it's and just great leadership, overall leadership and being able to I think every leader in 2020 was like, how do what does this mean for my business and how do I talk to this? How do I talk about this to my team when there are so many unknowns, Right? It was it was it was it was something that I think a lot of leaders struggled with. And you led the team through and in pretty magnificent way. I know we're running up on time here. And so I want to when I ask this last question, you wrote a book called Thirsting for Living Water. I'd love to hear what was the inspiration behind behind the book and as you were writing it or as you were ideating sort of the thought of writing a book? How did you connect that to the organization and how is that impacted the goals of the organization through through your writings?

Micahel Mantel Thank you for that. I did write that book during the pandemic Thirsting for Living Water. The seeds for that really came from our marketing and communications team some years prior. We were concerned of the bad rap that churches were getting everywhere. You know, like churches are dead, young people are leaving churches. The church is divisive. The church is not engaged in real issues of poverty, injustice, a lot of negative language around the church. And that had not been my experience. You know, where we work in the lowest, most challenging environments. The church is the institution that provides hope and links community leaders with municipal leaders and other nonprofits. It's the it's the church in all of its expressions that are the primary partner with living water to provide water, sanitation and hygiene. So and that's been my experience in Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and in the United States. I was interacting with churches that were passionate. They were visionary. They were engaging their people to change the world. And I'm like, How can my experience with churches be so different than what I'm hearing in in the press and in conversations? And our marketing communications team says, well, why don't you just, you know, write down the stories of how the church is changing rather than the alternative narrative. And then, of course, there's the business side and they say, if you had a book, it's kind of like the new calling card, right? You know, So you got to have a book or nobody to listen to you. And if you had a book, you could, you know, speak in front of conferences and churches. So you need a book. And I'm like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. I'm concerned about the narrative. I don't really have that much time to write a book. And so a few years went by and then and then 2017 hit and it was a very challenging year. So two years before the pandemic, it was a challenging year for me because my father died, my wife got cancer. We had economic challenges across the board at Living Water and Hurricane Harvey wiped out our funding base in Houston. It was a bad year. Yeah, and it led to the creation of a charity on which to tell the story of how the church is changing the world and to tell the story of how water is the fundamental intervention in human development, and to tell the story about how people could cross the lines that divide us educational lines, gender lines, racial lines, geographic lines, economic lines. And so what emerged through the Covid period was me telling a personal story of leadership challenge that then allows people to explore. Their own story, their own story of faith, of love, of action, their own stories of family and community and how they may want to make a difference so that the book ended up being something different than it started and ended up with 12 reflections where small groups of church and business people can gather and explore their own story to to rediscover what drives them and how they're going to make an impact in the world. And then it ended up being a cool calling card, and it gave me a platform to talk about stuff. And it brought a lot of positive attention to Living Water International. It deepened our relationships with donors that really want to dig into the underlying theology and philosophy of why it is that we do the things that we do. It was a heavy lift. It's available on Amazon. If if someone wants it and doesn't have any money, you just send me an email and I'll send you one. It's been it's been a great resource for living water and the people that interact with it.

Justin Wheeler That's awesome. That's great. That's great to hear. And the timing of it also sounds very serendipitous. And in the fact that I think Covid, so many people, we were searching for meaning and purpose and, you know, to hear sort of I haven't read the book yet, but how you explain sort of these reflections at the end to explore these important questions that really, at the end of the day, drive us as humans to do the things that we do. It sounds like the timing of this book at the right time. And so it's it's great to hear that. Mike, thank you. Thank you so much for joining the podcast. And the show notes will include a link to your book on Amazon. Also a link to Living water for the audience to learn more. And I know that you're on LinkedIn and so people can find you on LinkedIn if they want. I want to connect. But Mike, we really appreciate just your your leadership and your thoughts on navigating an organization through through trying times. It means a lot. You could share it with us and our audience. And so thank you for joining us today.

Micahel Mantel Just it's my privilege. Thank you for all the good that you're doing in the world and getting these resources out to people in our space. You and your company are a blessing.

Justin Wheeler Thank you very much.

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