SHOW ME YOUR BUDGET AND I'LL TELL YOU WHAT YOU VALUE

Sixth in a series at the intersection of values-based leadership, identity-centered growth, and the Seattle nonprofits doing the hardest work in our region.

What if your values statement isn't the thing hanging in your lobby? What if it isn't the deck your marketing team built, or the six words your leadership team argued about for two days at the offsite?

What if your real values statement is a spreadsheet?

I'll go further. What if the most honest document your organization produces all year is the one almost nobody outside of finance ever reads?

I spent twenty-five years in risk management and internal audit at Amazon, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Walmart, and Target. Here is the shortest version of what that taught me. People tell you what they believe. Budgets tell you what they believe. When the two disagree, believe the budget.

What I Signed in August

Let me get specific, because this isn't theory for me.

In August I sat in a board meeting at 6020 Rainier Avenue and signed two budget resolutions in one sitting. An amended budget for the year that was ending, and a new budget for the year that was starting. Rainier Valley Leadership Academy, the public charter school where I serve as Executive Chair.

Two documents. One afternoon. I want to tell you what was happening in that room, because I think most business leaders would recognize it, and very few have seen it at this level of consequence.

A budget amendment is an organization admitting something out loud. It says: what we thought would happen did not happen. Something cost more. Something came in lower. The world moved.

In a corporate setting we have a lot of ways to make that admission comfortable. We call it a reforecast. We put it on slide fourteen. In a school serving the students the rest of the system too often asks to shrink, there is nowhere to put it. Every line is a person. That line is a counselor. That line is whether a young person who is three grade levels behind gets an adult in the room who knows their name.

So I asked the room the question I always ask: "If a stranger read only this document, what would they say we believe?

"Nobody answers that fast. You shouldn't. That's the point.

The Gap Nobody Names

Longtime readers know I write about the Identity Gap, the place where who you say you are and who you actually are stop lining up. I usually write about it in people. It happens to organizations too, and the budget is where it becomes visible.

You say people are your greatest asset, and the learning and development line got cut first. You say you're committed to this community, and your community investment is a check written in December by someone who has never been to the neighborhood. You say you want honest feedback, and you have funded exactly zero hours for anyone to go gather it.

None of that is villainy, and I want to be clear about that. Almost none of the barriers I found in twenty-five years of audit work were put there on purpose. They accumulated. Somebody made a reasonable call in a hard quarter, and nobody ever went back.

But your people can read a budget too. Not the document. The behavior. They know what survives the cut, and what survives the cut is what you actually value. You are broadcasting on that frequency whether you mean to or not.

What RVLA Does With Its Constraint

Here's what I've watched at Rainier Valley Leadership Academy that I would put in front of any executive team in this city.

They do not have the option of pretending. A school like this runs on public dollars, thin margins, and a mission that does not scale down gracefully. You cannot serve a student sixty percent of the way. So the governance conversation is never "can we afford our values." It is "our values are the constraint, now build inside it.

"That flips the usual order. Most organizations set the number first and then ask what mission fits inside it. RVLA sets the mission first and then does the harder arithmetic. Every dollar has to argue for itself against a kid. I have sat in rooms at companies a thousand times RVLA's size where the financial discipline was not half that clear.

I'll be honest about the cost, because I'm not interested in selling you a heartwarming version of this. That discipline is exhausting. The educators and leaders carrying it are holding weight most of us never touch, on salaries most of us would not accept. That is exactly why the business community's involvement matters, and why it has to be more than a photo.

Try This From Your Seat

Here's the practice. This week. No budget required, no title required.

Pull up whatever you actually control. A team budget. A single department line. If you don't control money yet, pull up your calendar, because your calendar is a budget too. It is just denominated in the one currency you cannot go get more of.

Now read it like a stranger. Not "did I hit my number." Ask the harder one: what would someone conclude I believe, if this document were all they had?

Then change exactly one line. One. Move one hour, one thousand dollars, or one recurring meeting toward the thing you say matters most. Small and real beats large and someday.

That's the whole exercise. Fifteen minutes. It will tell you something uncomfortable and useful, and you can do it before Friday.

The Ask

If you run a company in this region, you have three things RVLA and organizations like it can use immediately. Money, expertise, and access.

Money is the obvious one and the easiest to give badly. Give it multi-year and unrestricted if you can. Restricted one-year money forces an organization to spend its scarcest resource, which is leadership attention, on compliance instead of on students.

Expertise is the underrated one. If you have finance people, audit people, HR people, or real estate people, those skills are worth more on a nonprofit board than another table at the gala. That is how I got here.

Access is the one nobody asks for out loud. Internships. Site visits. A hiring manager who will actually take the call. After-School All-Stars Puget Sound, UNCF Seattle, Community Roots Housing, and Founders Live are all in this same business of building a floor underneath people, and every one of them can use a door taken off the hinges rather than politely held open.

Your budget is already a statement of belief, y'all. The only question is whether you wrote it on purpose.

Create Possibilities, Not Excuses.

Jesse Rhodes Jr.



Jesse Rhodes Jr. is a speaker, author of Leadership Unlocked: Harness the Power of Your Ambition, and strategic advisor specializing in values-based leadership. He teaches at the University of Washington Foster School of Business, serves on the UNCF Seattle Leadership Council, and chairs the board of After-School All-Stars Puget Sound. He is available for keynotes, leadership offsites, and Employee Resource Group (ERG) events. Reach him at info@jesserhodesjr.com.