Today we’d like to introduce you to Jaime Lehman.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Jaime. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
About 9-ish years ago, I learned that a friend’s birthday was never celebrated. This was an interesting moment in my early 20’s where I began to think about the world around me rather than myself. My birthdays were always highly celebrated with lots of little traditions and fun things, so I was stunned to learn this didn’t happen for others – quite a privileged situation. My next immediate thought was, “does this happen to other children?”
In 2015, I had moved down to Los Angeles from the Bay Area and felt stagnant in my career. I had just taken a major pay cut after not finding work for a year and, being 29 back at the bottom of the totem pole was difficult for me. I wanted something super challenging to do in my spare time but wasn’t interested in starting my food truck back up, and the idea for the nonprofit came back. This was a great opportunity to give back to the world and feel, in a sense, useful. My dad came up with the name For Goodness Cakes and I started to do research on how to start a charity. By January 2016 we were a company and received our 501(c)(3) (nonprofit status) by February.
For Goodness Cakes has always been built with growth in mind. I know people love to bake and how it’s a gathering piece, so the first year was a mixture of learning to run a charity and figuring out the best platforms and procedures for growing as fast as I felt it would become popular, and sustainably so we wouldn’t reach a tipping point. The first year was hard, and there was a huge learning curve. Our first couple of months were 4-6 cakes a month, and our first volunteer orientation had six people (one was my dad!). The next month, though, about 50 people came and that’s when the impact of what this organization had on people started to feel real. By the end of the year, we had made 166 cakes, with 145 volunteers. We’re about to deliver our 1000th cake in just 2019 alone, which is huge for a young nonprofit!
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Learning how to run a charity without any background is always going to prove difficult and can wear out the best of us. Nonprofits suffer a lot of burn out, especially in founders and their staff, so I created this organization with self-care in mind. Running yourself and your staff ragged just means high turnover and, essentially, hurts those who benefit from your mission because you’ve burnt yourself out trying to do everything (and your staff, too).
We experienced that in our first year and although I wasn’t at risk of burning out, the rest of my initial staff were and did. I went from having a lot of help to none, and I’m grateful for those who helped me in the beginning and decided to leave. I know that seems weird to say, but there is an incredible lesson to be learned in understanding – and valuing – that people are human. They have their own lives and personal development, tragedies and happy times, and that it would be unfair of me to ask anyone else to make this nonprofit the center of their lives. For Goodness Cakes started because I wanted people to be able to make an impact, but without this huge investment. I don’t have time to be a Big Sister, or a CASA, or anything. But I do have time to make a cake, and that’s what is important.
With that goal in mind, I turned my focus on how to make joining as a volunteer, partnering as an agency, or even becoming a staff member, easy. So many nonprofits don’t utilize technology to help, and maybe that’s because there isn’t enough education about what automation is and how it can be used to further a cause, but also that there are very few opportunities for donations/grants for tech. My biggest challenge became convincing people to donate toward a cause that uses so much technology and continues to build and improve it. It took a long time to articulate that without our infrastructure, we couldn’t be a 100% volunteer-led organization helping over 1000 children and young adults a year in four different states – or be able to grow it!
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the For Goodness Cakes story. Tell us more about the business.
For Goodness Cakes is a nonprofit which matches volunteers to bake birthday and academic graduation celebration cakes for disadvantaged youth and young adults around Los Angeles/Orange Counties, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and Albuquerque – and soon Buffalo, NY! We partner with other nonprofits who work directly with the cake recipients, who order on their behalf. It’s a very simple mission, but there are very few like us in the US.
It’s hard to put what I’m most proud of – as a company. I’m proud of my Sprinkle Squad (our volunteer bakers), of my staff and chapter leaders for doing such an amazing job furthering this mission beyond just Santa Monica, for my board for being incredibly supportive, and for our donors for giving such a young organization – and me, without much experience in running one – a chance. It’s quite a risk, and I’m really grateful to them.
As far as what sets us apart from others, I’ve always struggled with this question! But if I did have to choose something, I’d say we’re more Millennial-focused than most. It sounds odd but our focus on investing in the right infrastructure to do more with less is truly a Millennial trait. I want everyone to be doing the most important work most often, not data entry all the time. All that does is take away time from meaningful interactions they could be having, which is what makes this all worth it. Automating the tedious stuff means we are grateful for the time our agency partners, our volunteers, and my staff give to the organization because I know how busy they are.
I’ve also worked really hard to keep our expenses down as much as possible, to make it easy for our chapter leaders to raise money each year to sustain themselves. I don’t want them spending their time fundraising – they should be out there baking cakes and encouraging our Sprinkle Squad! So to a smaller extent, I do think that sets us apart from others and what I’m quite proud of, is making it obtainable for anyone to start and maintain a chapter.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
I’d have to credit Facebook for the one time them listening in on my conversations got me the right ad to find our Enterprise Resource System, Argenta Software. It’s not as well known as Salesforce or Blackbaud, but it’s an incredible system built and run by one of the most passionate individuals I’ve ever met, the Chief Technology Officer Christine Swartzendruber. Like me, she built her company to help others with a focus on automation and I have been really lucky to work with her. Trying to find a system as flexible as we needed without starting from scratch would have been impossible, but she helped us customize it.
Contact Info:
- Address: 2118 Wilshire Blvd #826
Santa Monica, CA 90403 - Website: www.forgoodnesscakes.org
- Phone: 424-256-6405
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: instagram.com/4_goodness_cakes
- Facebook: facebook.com/forgoodnesscakesinc
- Twitter: twitter.com/FGC_org
Image Credit:
All pictures taken by For Goodness Cakes.
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