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Called to serve and learn: How the Nonprofit Management Institute helped faith leader Erin Tamayo make an impact
Erin Tamayo (center) says her ASU Lodestar Center training gave her the "self-confidence needed to begin to try new and innovative strategies and ideas." She is pictured here at the Spring 2019 Nonprofit Management Institute graduation ceremony with Program Manager Julie Huffman (left) and Director of Professional Development Education Cindi Thiede (right).
by Troy Hill, ASU Lodestar Center
July 31, 2019
An Indiana native, Erin Tamayo first came to Arizona State University to study Spanish, hoping to work as a missionary in Latin America after college. Years later, she’d be back at ASU for another graduation, earning her fourth certificate from the Nonprofit Management Institute (NMI) at the ASU Lodestar Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Innovation.
Along the way, she’s been a teacher, pastor, community organizer and a nonprofit executive director.
Let’s learn more about Tamayo’s journey – and how the ASU Lodestar Center has equipped her to make even bigger impacts in Arizona communities.
As an undergraduate at ASU interested in missionary work, Tamayo got involved in service learning, “which opened up a whole new way of thinking about serving people and helping people,” she said. She then started studying bilingual education as well as Spanish.
“I wanted to help promote Spanish-speaking families be able to preserve their culture and their language in a way that was empowering for them,” Tamayo said. “So I did that, I graduated, and I taught here [in Phoenix] in the Isaac school district for five years.”
But Tamayo felt a calling to return to a career that more focused on her faith, so she attended San Francisco Theological Seminary to get her master of divinity degree, which she received in 2011. Tamayo said that her desire to help people intersected with her religious beliefs.
“Through seminary, I kept talking about this desire to help people, to empower people through their own culture, through their own experiences, and I was connected with a nonprofit,” Tamayo said.
That nonprofit was Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice in Los Angeles, California (CLUE-LA). She first interned with the organization before being hired on after she was ordained.
“That work was a really great way to put my faith and my nonprofit work together,” Tamayo said.
But after several years on the West Coast, Tamayo said she felt another calling: To return to Arizona and work in the area of immigration.
In January 2013, Tamayo and her husband moved back to the Valley. She took a job with ASU as an English instructor for international students; 15 months later she was hired as a faith and community organizer for the Organization United for Respect at Walmart (now called United for Respect at Walmart).
Then the Arizona Faith Network (AFN) called. In January 2015 she became executive director of the local faith-based organization.
“[AFN] was also looking to do some social justice work in the community,” Tamayo said. “So I was really thrown into this high-profile position with lots of ability to help create change in the community.”
Tamayo took the job, but she had never had formal training in running a larger organization or nonprofit. She took classes and read books to help with the transition into the new role, but she was left wanting.
"None of these resources seemed to provide an overall comprehensive nonprofit educational program," she said. “I felt like I would really benefit from something like a certificate or something that was set up in a way that I could improve in specific areas of knowledge. And that's when I came upon the ASU Lodestar Center.”
The first Lodestar program that she found, thanks to a tip from an Episcopalian church, was Best Skills, Best Churches, training specifically designed for faith leaders. It's one of many professional-development offerings from the Lodestar Center's Nonprofit Management Institute, which since 1993 has offered courses and certificate programs for those who lead, manage and support nonprofit organizations.
Best Skills, Best Churches was exactly what she’d been looking for.
“I signed up for that class and was hooked after that,” she said. “I really enjoyed being part of a cohort of individuals who were faith-based, but also wanted to improve their own knowledge of how to run churches and religious institutions, and nonprofits in general.”
After a couple years with AFN, Tamayo decided to step back and spend more time with her young children. But, as an inveterate learner, Tamayo went back to the Lodestar Center to complete four more Nonprofit Management Institute programs over the next two years, including certificates in nonprofit management, operations and program impact, marketing and strategic communications, and fundraising and sustainable financial management.
“I wanted to continue my own knowledge about how to run a nonprofit because I really wanted to stay connected to that work and prepare myself for future employment and serving the community in that way,” she said.
Since leaving AFN, Tamayo has joined the board for the nonprofit United Religions Initiative North America.
“My education with Lodestar really helped equip me to be a better board member as well,” she said. “These certifications also helped to ... see how to continually improve an organization, strategically plan for the future, and support their executive director in the work that they're doing as well.”
Today, in addition to her board duties and local volunteer work with people seeking refugee status, Tamayo is back at ASU teaching a class on international business through ASU Global Launch. She says the NMI training continues to help her in all of her work.
"Through the ASU Lodestar certificate programs, I not only gained the knowledge and expertise I was looking for, but I also gained the self-confidence needed to begin to try new and innovative strategies and ideas," she said.