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Alumni Spotlight: Matt Ellsworth on pushing out of the comfort zone with the Executive Leadership Certificate
March 20, 2024 — Matt Ellsworth has long been a nonprofit professional, but he didn’t start out that way.
After a childhood in Prescott and an undergraduate degree from ASU in Tempe, he moved to the Phoenix metro where he worked as a full-time soup kitchen volunteer for two years. Following that, he worked briefly as a high school English teacher before moving across the country to pursue a master’s degree in creative writing.
However, as his career path zigged and zagged, writing as a career never left Ellsworth’s sight.
“Coming out of grad school, one of the first things I remember saying to my wife as we were moving across the country again … was I really want to do something with my writing,” Ellsworth said.
Now, he leads as the Vice President of Communications for the Flinn Foundation, a philanthropic grant-making organization based in Phoenix. Ellsworth oversees the company’s internal and external communications, including social media marketing, public relations work and communication with the board of directors.
Today, Ellsworth has been at the Flinn Foundation for more than 15 years, his longest tenure at any one organization to date. But despite this wealth of experience, Ellsworth says he wanted to avoid stagnation — both as an organization and an individual.
“Most people are going to shake your hand and smile and say that they really like what you’re doing,” said Ellsworth. “But that’s not quite the same as meeting people as peers out in the nonprofit sector and understanding what their real needs are.”
This desire for growth pushed Ellsworth to join the Nonprofit Executive Leadership Certificate program’s 2023 cohort. The 8-month certificate program from the ASU Lodestar Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Innovation’s Nonprofit Management Institute promotes networking and skill-building among nonprofit leaders.
“There have been a number of resources that we were exposed to that I’ve continued to learn from and kind of dig deeper looking for,” said Ellsworth.
In each module of the program, he was asked “to work on a project (and) bring it home” to the Flinn Foundation, building opportunities for deeper learning and team building. For example, in one project Ellsworth turned to the Flinn Foundation’s Flinn Scholars program, which offers undergraduate scholarships and other learning opportunities to Arizona students.
“It came out of a module focused on fundraising and looking at the different revenue streams that an organization can have,” Ellsworth said. “I spent a lot of time working with my colleagues here at the foundation, thinking about the possibility of a way for alumni to give back to the program.”
While his project may not be officially implemented by the foundation, Ellsworth says he found value in the opportunity to plan something out of his comfort zone.
In his view, the format of the program was tailor-fit to the needs and wants of a nonprofit executive. To his fellow executives, Ellsworth gives the go-ahead.
“It is really well structured for somebody who does have a busy leadership role at their organization. It does not require too much time, but it does require an investment of your energy,” he said. “You’re going to get out of it what you can put into it.”
Story by Lillian Finley, ASU Lodestar Center
Image: Courtesy Matt Ellsworth
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