Elizabeth Fields of the Warrior Connection is here to discuss mental health issues among our veterans. For more information: www.warriorconnection.orgOr listen on your favorite podcast platform!AUTO-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT:Hey greetings everyone. Lieutenant Colonel Allen West here and welcome to the Steadfast and Loyal Podcast.[MUSIC][ALLEN WEST] Hey greetings everyone. Welcome back to the Steadfast and Loyal Podcast. Elizabeth Fields is the Chief Executive Officer at The Warrior Connection. Elizabeth served as President and Co-Founder of Jackson Fields Consulting, a firm that leveraged 20 plus years of nonprofit leadership experience to help organizations reorganize and scale effectively to ensure sustainable impact. Prior to that, Ms. Fields served as Chief Operating Officer at the Gary Seneese Foundation as well as held various executive roles at leading nonprofits and academic institutions to include National Public Radio, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, and the University of Arizona where she is a graduate, Eller College of Management. So we are now joined by Elizabeth Fields who is top dog at The Warrior Connection.[ELIZABETH FIELDS] Well thank you so much for having me on the show today. It's an honor to be here.[ABW] It's my pleasure. And you just recently moved down here to Texas so welcome to our Texas Heat.[EF] Well thank you very much. It's a little bit different from that Arizona heat because that's pretty much so dry heat. We have a little humidity we throw in there. Just a little bit. Just a little bit.[ABW] Well tell us about your background starting out in the not-for-profit world because that can be a world that really has a lot of intricacies and can get bogged down and a lot of not-for-profits do fail. So what are the keys to success for being a nonprofit organization?[EF] Run it like a business. Run the nonprofit like a business. I don't think what happens a lot of times are a lot of nonprofits, I don't think, a lot of nonprofits are a start-up for because people have a passion. They want to make the passion happen. They want to go run the program. They want to help people. And they just do all that. And they forget that you need to raise awareness. You need to raise money. You need to actually have proper operations because that's what's going to help you grow and become sustainable. So you need to run it like a business and you can't forget about the admin needs that are associated to actually make it grow. Now how often do you see these nonprofits that, you know, they go through maybe some type of ramp-up, some type of train-up as opposed to those that just, you know, "I got a great idea. Like I said, I got a passion. I'm going to apply for a 501(c)(3) status." And then it's like, "Okay, what do I do now?" I'd say that most of them sit there and just go and they forget about everything else. And then it's, "What do I do now?"The really effective ones will actually sit there and raise capital for a year or two before they even do programming. And then they're set up to actually raise money for, you know, the next year. They don't have to worry about raising money when they're actually trying to run programs at the same time. So now they're establishing a seed money, a base, a foundation. Yes. That is definitely the most effective way to ensure success. Now the branding and of course, you know, the donor contacts. I mean, is there a means by which people can get, you know, good education on doing these things so that it's not, you know, starting from ground zero in many cases?[ABW] Well, nowadays you can actually go and get a degree in how to run a nonprofit. Wow. That's fairly new. I'm old school. I didn't go and get a degree in that. I learned hands-on and I have to say I still think that's the best way. But being able to, so a lot of times you'll see fundraisers in particular jumping around a lot of nonprofits and people are like, hey, why are they doi