GlobalGiving's Victoria Vrana on leading a virtual workplace

Growing pains are an expected part of any job transition. Regardless of how much experience you have, there will always be challenges when it comes to taking on new responsibilities, learning about new systems, and working with new teams. Victoria Vrana knew all of that when she took over as CEO at GlobalGiving in January after more than a decade of working for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. But she may have underestimated just how hard it is to step in as a new leader when the majority of your staff works remotely from posts across the United States and around the world. “It’s really challenging, I’ve found,” she said. “I’m trying to build relationships, and that’s paramount. That’s the first thing I have to do as a leader. Doing that virtually is not impossible, but it definitely takes more work than virtually working with people you already know.” GlobalGiving is among those multihyphenated philanthropic organizations that cater to donors with a variety of interests and needs. At its core, the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit is an intermediary that connects potential donors and corporate partners to other nonprofits seeking funding. It also is an online fundraising platform, and it provides philanthropic advisory services with a particular focus on disaster relief and trust-based grantmaking. Vrana, who also is based in D.C., collaborated with GlobalGiving often when she was in charge of two Gates initiatives to help nonprofits fundraise. Vrana had long-standing relationships at the organization where she is now CEO. “Victoria is already part of GlobalGiving’s DNA, having strategically invested in initiatives essential to propelling us toward our mission to accelerate community-led change,” Brian Walsh, chair of the GlobalGiving board of directors, said when she was first announced as the new CEO in November. But GlobalGiving also has grown rapidly in recent years. And there are lots of new people for Vrana to get to know as she settles in at the helm of the organization, which has helped raise more than $826 million for nonprofits around the world since its founding in 2002. GlobalGiving had 56 employees at the end of 2020, most of whom were based in Washington, D.C. Now, there are 94 staffers from “coast to coast across the United States, as well as in Puerto Rico, Ecuador, Ukraine, Canada, Mexico, the Philippines, Tanzania, China and the UK,” according to GlobalGiving spokesperson Kristin Wright. That has made it more complicated for Vrana to make the rounds meeting staff, which she sees as a critical part of her efforts to establish goals for GlobalGiving’s next era. In that next phase, she wants to expand the group’s roster of donor and nonprofit partners and increase collaborations with other giving platforms. But it isn’t an insurmountable situation, according to Vrana, who said she’s found workarounds. In her first couple of weeks, Vrana hosted “open lunches” to introduce herself to staff, with one held in person and the other virtually. She’s also instituted a monthly “Connection Week” — an optional in-office week for staff that includes activities and opportunities to socialize. It’s an idea that “I shamelessly stole from Candid,” she said. And as she travels, Vrana said she checks to see if there are any “Global Givers” in those cities that she can meet for happy hours or lunches. “It’s really just to meet them, and really open time to talk about whatever they want, just to have that moment, connection, and facetime,” she said. In the end, having far-flung staff has been an advantage for GlobalGiving, which aims to “make it so that you can give local anywhere,” Vrana said. Connecting donors to local nonprofits around the world is core to GlobalGiving’s mission. That work includes doing grantmaking and vetting for donors who want to give to local groups and managing disaster funds to help donors respond to crises quickly and effectively, Vrana said. It’s familiar work for Vrana, who earlier in her career directed NEWW Online for the Network of East-West Women, the first program connecting women’s rights activists in over 35 countries through the Internet. GlobalGiving also provides philanthropic advisory services in areas such as disaster response and equitable grantmaking practices. “We’re trying to change the way philanthropy and aid work, in order to center community leaders and proximate leaders,” she said. “That’s why I’m here. That’s my mission. That’s been my professional mission for 30 years since I got into the nonprofit sector.” In addition to helping to provide funds to nonprofits, GlobalGiving also offers them services such as learning tools and information on how to build capacity. GlobalGiving is considering taking that work a step further by hosting regional convenings for local organizations to help them build community, Vrana said. “They’re looking to us for a lot of support beyond resources, and so we’re thinking through what things should we be providing, and what things should we partner with others to provide,” she said. GlobalGiving also wants to seize opportunities to partner with other giving platforms, especially those “curating causes and geographies where we’re not,” Vrana said. When GlobalGiving launched over 20 years ago, there weren’t many philanthropic organizations talking about moving money to community leaders and democratizing the sector, but now there are “lots of voices at the table,” she said. GlobalGiving wants to share its learnings from the past two decades and “I’m excited in my role about really lending our loud voice to that conversation,” Vrana said.