Mission Elevation Success Stories: Allison Bogdanovic, Virginia Supportive Housing
“It’s allowed us to serve more people, there’s no question about it. It’s allowed us to serve more in what I think is a smarter way – and it’s allowed us as an organization to be more stable.”
Allison reflects on her experience during the second cohort of the Mission Elevation program.
Allison Bogdanovic is the Executive Director of Virginia Supportive Housing, Virginia’s first and largest nonprofit organization that develops and manages permanent supportive housing for homeless adults. Allison has been with VSH since the start of her career – she began as an intern and worked her way up to Executive Director in 2014. She’s seen a lot of change and growth during her time at the organization, and joining the first cohort of Mission Elevation in 2016 did more than just boost and amplify that growth – it helped her learn how to face uneasy challenges and reframe VSH’s mindset to make a bigger impact in the communities they serve. We spoke with Allison to learn how Mission Elevation transformed VSH and herself as an emerging leader.
This year, Allison is celebrating 20 years with Virginia Supportive Housing. VSH has been around since 1988 and their mission is to end homelessness by providing a combination of permanent rental subsidized housing and individualized support services including counseling and case management. Allison recalls being introduced to the organization while getting her master's degree in urban planning, and the rest is history. She found herself growing up with VSH and the housing industry, and learned much of what she knows today from strong women leaders in the organization who guided her all the way to her current position.
VSH has grown exponentially since then – they’ve gone from around 12 staffers to 155 and now manage over 600 housing units. After experiencing such a high rate of change and growth, Allison decided to participate in the new Mission Elevation Program hoping that she could work through VSH’s resource and fundraising challenges as a new Executive Director. She remembers feeling significant pressure over the need to generate more revenue over a short period of time, and knew she needed to address the organization’s shortcomings in some way. She figured that being able to work through this challenge with like-minded peers and coaches through Mission Elevation was a no-brainer and would push her to think more strategically.
One of Mission Elevation’s primary focuses is employing tools and resources that participating leaders can use beyond their term to solve challenges and create sustainable change. Allison reflected on some tools that made the most memorable impact on VSH, including a charting activity that helped her work through VSH’s resource and funding challenges. She explained how using this tool to evaluate all her organization’s programs from a mission-based perspective and a cost-based perspective gave her clarity on which programs were essential to maintain and which weren’t. She noted how employing this framework, though tough at times, has totally impacted VSH’s resource management.
“It makes you really think about things,” Allison said. “I think it helped me to have some really hard conversations that allowed us to grow smarter. I think that the program helped us have hard conversations about growth that positioned us for smarter growth.”
Along with the charting tool, Allison noticed significant changes at VSH after developing a business statement during Mission Elevation. With an overarching mission to end homelessness, Allison didn’t realize how important it was to recognize the business element of what VSH does at the forefront of their operations. She remembers how the status quo used to revolve around wanting to stray away from government grants and trying to rely less on them, but after thinking through her organization’s business lines and what makes them able to serve their communities, she decided to embrace them.
“The business statement is: We end homelessness when there are government grants,” Allison said. “That was a really important jump for the organization’s growth and maturity. We understood that the role that government grants are going to play in the future of the organization is a lot bigger than we had realized, and we had to prepare for that growth.”
This business statement didn’t just lead to an important shift in mindset – it led to the creation of an entire department devoted to government grants that has allowed VSH to better serve low-income communities and develop an expertise that has fueled their ability to receive more grants. Allison believes that the tools from Mission Elevation helped her reach this milestone.
“The program led to those a-ha moments,” Allison said. “It’s been critical to us to where we are today. So, we embrace something that we didn’t know we needed to embrace.”
When Allison participated in Mission Elevation, her and other nonprofit leaders in the cohort spent time presenting their progress and ideas to each other and coaches. She described the experience as a “nice” version of shark tank, since she was able to present while getting valuable feedback from executives with shared values who’ve gone through similar experiences. “I also felt like I could be vulnerable and go out there with my ideas and come back with really good advice,” Allison said. “We had the trust to do that.”
Beyond the appreciation for that genuine feedback she experienced in the program, Allison attributes aspects of her personal development to the group of peers in Mission Elevation that she developed a close bond with so early into being Executive Director. She values her relationships with nonprofit leaders and emphasized looking to them for advice and assistance during challenging times instead of seeing them as competition.
VSH has also gotten better at telling their community stories because of Mission Elevation. Allison remembered how a Mission Elevation coach, Roger, gave her a new perspective about storytelling which the organization still uses today.
“You better be leading with who you’re serving and keep it simple,” Allison said. “There’s no question that’s been absolutely how we tell our story. [Roger] was great help for that; always helpful with that.”
Allison always encourages her fellow community development leaders to apply for Mission Elevation and change how they carry out their mission for the better. “It’s a safe space to really dig deep into some hard issues in your organization,” Allison said. “The connections and how they elevate your thoughts and how you solve your problems and think about things is really worth it.”
You can learn more about Virginia Supportive Housing and support their mission here.
