Alison Meyers of Writers & Books

LitNYS: Describe your current role in the literary arts.

AM: I’m Executive Director of Writers & Books in Rochester, New York. Writers & Books has been around for about 40 years, and I've been with the organization for four. Our budget is small, still under a million dollars.

I come to the work with a background in the literary arts, mostly in the nonprofit field, but also from the for-profit world. For many years, I ran bookstores. Years ago, I owned an indie bookstore in Willimantic, Connecticut, and after that for four years was general manager of the Oberlin, OH, Co-op Bookstore.

Previous to my appointment at Writers & Books, for 10 years, I was Executive Director of Cave Canem Foundation in New York City. Before that I was Poetry Director and Director of Communications & Marketing at Hill- Stead Museum in Connecticut.

I've been on the planet for a while! At Writers & Books, I do everything from the operational side to the visionary and strategic side of things. Basically, I’m the connective tissue between our board of directors and our staff. 

LitNYS: As a mentor with LitNYS, what is one of the questions you get asked most?

AM:  People usually ask me, “How do I get more money? How do I build my resources? How do I build capacity?” My response tends to be, “Let's first look at governance and board responsibilities. What kind of discourse is going on? Who's involved? Who's engaged? Who are the players? Who are your stakeholders?”

Organizations in the mentorship program are usually at an inflection point. Either they want to grow to the next stage or they’re dealing with a critical issue. I'm a believer that without a high functioning, very engaged board, you're not going to be able to move forward. Board members are your most valuable volunteers, your thought partners.

I also try to move the conversation toward bringing more focus to fewer priorities (to accomplish more), and sometimes it's really hard to get people to take things off their plate.

With the smaller organizations, and typically these are the orgs in the LitNYS program, executive directors are putting out daily fires, and the high-touch relationship building and cultivation they need to do with their board falls fairly low on the hierarchy of priorities.

I believe that if you don't move foundational work to the top of the to-do pile, you'll always be stuck putting out fires instead of transitioning to a strategic position.

LitNYS: I have a two-tiered question. The first part is what advice do you give to those that are just starting out versus what advice do you give to those trying to maintain sustainability. I imagine someone just starting out is just as concerned with maintaining sustainability, but there are two distinct life stages in organizations and they may operate differently when they're at different life stages.

AM: I encourage people to start by doing a SWOT — an assessment of strength, weakness, opportunities, and threats — so they can position themselves within the external ecosystem. For an organization starting out, the questions are: What's the rationale for us to exist? What is our competition? What is the niche that we fill? What are the communities we're serving that someone else isn't? Or, where do we have commonalities for building partnerships? It helps to look outside your own silo so you can then look internally with more clarity and ensure that your mission, vision, and values are essential and relevant. 

With an organization that's at the next stage, it's a similar thing. Let's look at where we are right now, in this moment, and where we can capitalize on our strengths. Do we need to pivot? Do we need to adapt? What changes do we need to make? I always begin with institutional self-study. 

LitNYS: What are the biggest challenges of maintaining sustainability as a literary arts organization? How do you hold on to your staff? How do you keep it growing? But also sustainable?

AM: That is a $64,000 question. I try to remind myself, and I'm imperfect at this, that we're all learners in a shared classroom. I have a lot of experience. I've seen the good, the bad, and the ugly, and I really like to share these lessons with my staff so we don't waste time, and, at the same time, stay open to news that might improve upon or challenge these assumptions. An organization is an organism. It's living, it's breathing, it's changing. It responds to crises. What can it do to not just survive, but thrive?

I try to encourage myself and my staff to be part of the whole. However, each of us brings our individual strengths, our individual baggage. Right? It's a balancing act. I've been part of dysfunctional organizations where the ED uses the board to leverage authority with the staff. I ask, how do we come together around shared values, and what can we do as a united front? Granted operations are over here, and governance is over there, but we need shared vision, so I look for those points of connection. We have a relatively new board member who launched voluntary social meet-ups every other month where staff and board can mingle without agendas. I encourage our team f to participate: “You're going to be paid for an hour to socialize.” One of our board committees, the External Relations Committee, comprises senior staff and select board members. Committee members brainstorm together around important endeavors like writing our justice and equity statement. 

I think it's important that while you have a very high bar for performance, you make it clear what that bar is. I also think a really strong, functional organizational chart is important. When I came to Writers & Books, there was none. Creating a useful org chart is an iterative process, listening to your team and guiding people towards the things they're better at. 

The other thing I would say is to engage your staff as much as possible with the larger ecosystem, as much as resources will permit. Provide professional opportunities for them to grow and bring them into conversations with external partners. The more that happens, the better it is for the organization. And when you’re ready for leadership succession, having it be a successful one because you have support and buy-in from the team. 

LitNYS: We all know that literature is poorly funded. Books are being banned. What would you tell someone who wants to get started in literary arts programming, whether they want to start their own organization or just participate? What's your advice?

AM: I would encourage them. First, though, I used to ask people who said, “I always wanted to own a bookstore”: Have you worked in a bookstore? No? Well, I recommend it. That way you have a sense of how the sausage is made. 

One skill set I often find lacking is an understanding of how money works. We nonprofits are the tail that the dog — which is capitalism — wags. I don't think everyone has to be a financial wizard, but you must at least understand how finances work in the real world and bring in those people with expertise who can support you.

I've seen too many organizations get behind the 8-ball by not recognizing that financial management is going to be a big part of the work. It's the engine that allows you to do your mission-driven stuff, the sublime intellectual satisfying stuff.

I always try to encourage and not discourage. I feel that our field needs to rapidly discard the notion that arts workers should accept being underpaid. One of the first things I looked at when I arrived at Writers & Books was compensation. We conducted a human resources equity audit a year or two ago that was really useful. 

We may not ever be able to compete with corporate salaries so long as the capitalistic structure devalues the arts and makes us beg for money, but we should never accept that a labor of love is a recipe for pushing people, young people of talent, intellect, energy and devotion out of our field. Instead, we want to bring them in.

LitNYS: Absolutely. What are some of the lessons you've learned being a mentor to other organizations?

AM: That's a great question. It's made me really appreciate what an amazing field we have, filled with amazing people. I get exposed to the imaginative ways in which different organizations interpret and manifest literary arts. I think it's forced me to sharpen my own work. I'm not sure I would have focused on board development in the same way without exposure to my mentees. 

I like to say to my mentees that this is their program. I've learned how important it is to respond to their needs. I've learned that you have to make goals scalable. It's about sensitivity, awareness, and remembering that everybody interacts with you in a unique way. You have to try to respect that. You are in a position of framing things and trying to give people structure within the context of their particular organizational culture.

I hope mentoring has helped me become a more sensitive, listening person.