Biggest Challenges Faced By A Community Relations Director At Sacramento Municipal Utility District
Rhonda's biggest challenge as Director of Community Relations is balancing the Sacramento Municipal Utility District's resources among over a thousand nonprofits, facing difficult days when funding requests must be denied and struggling to "spread the love" while acknowledging they "can't help everyone." Another challenge stems from the volume of meetings, sometimes six in a day, which leads to an accumulation of emails and necessitates after-hours work to stay on top of communications.
Nonprofit Funding, Community Relations, Time Management, Meeting Fatigue, Work-Life Balance
Advizer Information
Name
Job Title
Company
Undergrad
Grad Programs
Majors
Industries
Job Functions
Traits
Rhonda Staley-Brooks
Director, Community Relations, Outreach & Support
Sacramento Municipal Utility District
California State University Sacramento
Executive Masters Business Administration
Psychology
Energy & Utilities
Communication and Marketing
Took Out Loans, Worked 20+ Hours in School, Greek Life Member, Transfer Student
Video Highlights
1. Difficulty in allocating limited resources to a large portfolio of nonprofits and having to deny funding requests.
2. Maintaining engagement and focus during days with numerous consecutive meetings.
3. Balancing meeting schedules with administrative tasks like answering emails, often leading to after-hours work.
Transcript
What is your biggest challenge in your role?
The biggest challenge in my role is when nonprofits are struggling. We have a portfolio of over a thousand nonprofits that we work with, and sometimes times are just hard, and we can't serve everyone.
The challenge for me is being able to spread the love, but also knowing we can't help everyone. There are some difficult days when we have to tell a nonprofit, "No, we can't fund you at this time." Those are challenging days for me.
Other days are just when you are in meetings, after meetings, after meetings. Being able to stay engaged and awake on those meeting days is a challenge. People say, "Oh, it's great you have office work," and I'm like, "Oh, sometimes I'm in six meetings in one day."
When I'm in those six meetings, I'm not answering my emails, so then I have to do my emails at night. From the community standpoint, it's definitely the funding challenges. From a business standpoint, it's too many meetings where your emails are piling up, and you have to do more work to get that stuff done.
Advizer Personal Links