Leadership Levers
This podcast spotlights leaders' actions so they may enhance their organization’s performance and culture.
We feature CEOs and industry-recognized Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) who share their experiences and insights on three key challenges: people, performance, and profit.
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Leadership Levers
Leading Through Crisis - Transparency, Trust & Culture with Rich Schaus
What would you do if your organization faced a media firestorm, financial setbacks, and internal culture challenges—all at the same time?
In this episode of Leadership Levers, Rich Schaus, Executive Director at Gospel Rescue Mission, shares his firsthand experience leading through crisis and rebuilding trust - both within his team and the broader community.
Following a wave of public scrutiny from an embezzlement scandal and declining donations, Rich took a bold approach: radical transparency, direct engagement, and a commitment to culture-driven leadership.
By addressing the crisis head-on - involving staff, donors, and board members in the solution process - his organization emerged stronger and more resilient. His unique approach not only resolved immediate concerns but also laid the foundation for a thriving, mission-driven culture.
Rich’s story underscores the challenge of aligning an organization’s mission to the moment, expanding beyond basic staff needs to provide essential services like job training, mental health support, and addiction recovery, all aimed at empowering individuals toward stable living.
With over two decades of leadership in the nonprofit sector, Rich offers invaluable insights for leaders navigating organizational change.
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Welcome to the Leadership Levers Podcast. I'm your host, Will Gladhart, CMO at the Culture Think Tank. At the Culture Think Tank, we empower leaders with metrics that strengthen culture, drive performance and return. We're here today to learn about the actions leaders have taken to address organizational change. Today, our guest is Rich Schaus, executive Director at the Gospel Rescue Mission. Thanks again for taking the time to join us.
Rich Schaus:Thanks for having me here today.
William Gladhart:Perfect. Well, let's begin by having you share a little bit with our audience about yourself, your background and your organization All right.
Rich Schaus:So I was born just east of St Louis. If you've seen the vacation, the original vacation movie with Chevy Chase, where his car gets kind of hijacked, that's where I was born and raised... so I was...
Rich Schaus:an Eagle Scout. I got a BA in Missions and Bible from Central Bible College in Springfield, Missouri. I have a BA in Rescue Missions work so working with those who are homeless with City Vision College in Kansas City and a Master of Leadership degree from Northeastern Oklahoma University. I've been married to my wife, kara, for 27 years. I have three children and three grandchildren or, excuse me, four grandchildren. I have a new one that just popped out. I'm a former United States Field Artillery Officer. I'm a distinguished Toastmaster. I'm the author of States Field Artillery Officer. I am a distinguished Toastmaster. I'm the author of a book called Hero Quest. I've been doing this work with the homeless for about 23 years It'll be 23 years as of mid-March and I just love working with these people.
Rich Schaus:I have a key Bible verse that kind of shapes my life. It's Micah 6.8, "where he says he has showed your man what is good and what does the Lord require of you. But he has showed your man what is good and what does the Lord require of you? But to do justly, love, mercy and walk humbly with your God. And that verse has kind of shaped a lot of my life and got me to the Gospel Rescue Mission. I came here in 2015. The original Gospel Rescue Mission was formed in 1931 in the heart of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, everything else. The founder, hobart Cox, decided that this was a huge need and he sacrificed everything in order to serve those who are homeless, and I kind of came in with that. They had some tough seasons. At one point, the 1990s, the executive director had embezzled a countless amount of money. It was the front page of the paper for about two weeks and so when I got here in 2015, they were still bringing this up, even though it had been over 20 years.
William Gladhart:Right.
Rich Schaus:We got there and, as an organization that makes their living, we don't take any government funding, so our donors' perception of who we are is a key part of what we do, and so working to overcome that, to build that trust back, has been a real challenge. So, anyway, I was brought here in 2015 to fundraise.
Rich Schaus:They had a building that was literally built before Oklahoma was a state and they've been retrofitting it and doing all sorts of things. They said, okay, we need to move to a new place and kind of modern electricity and plumbing basics being there, and so they brought me here to do that. The budget at that point was about $300,000. And I needed to raise $1.6 million for the campaign and then bump up our annual to about $800,000 a year. And the challenge is that because we had the lack of trust that had built up in our community over those years, I had to first spend the first three years of saying you can trust us, we are valuable, we can help out. So, step-by-step, in order to build that trust, we became more than a shelter.
Rich Schaus:We do give them a place to sleep, we do give food, but our real purpose is to help these men and women to flourish, to get out of being homeless. They're not homeless anymore. A lot of programs are happy to let them stay homeless. We'll give them food, we'll give them clothes, whatever, but they stay homeless. We give them the food, the clothing, but we're teaching them and coaching them on how to live a better life. So it does have job training, get them some mental health help, addiction recovery, help them overcome felonies, whatever it takes, but we do push them on there. So last night we had 39 men, 35 women, 11 children and then we had 12 in our overflow that were there. Don't play well with others, so we put them in a little room on their own and let them sleep there so they don't die in the freeze and the cold and snow we've been having.
William Gladhart:Right, wow, it's really interesting the mission that you and the people and individuals that you serve. I mean, it's definitely a broad swath of the population and when we talked as we begin our discussion today, we have three questions as a warm-up to our conversation. Would you share why you believe a healthy culture is critical?
Rich Schaus:We spend a great deal of our time at our employment. Whatever job we have, we spend a lot of hours there every week and if that culture is sick, then we're infecting ourselves, and if we have infected ourselves then we shorten our lifespan and then we also take back that infection back to our families. I don't want that, and a gospel rescue I would say it's even more critical, because sick people cannot flourish. And if we're the staff and we're sick emotionally, physically, spiritually, whatever that is we can't really serve these people very well.
William Gladhart:I think that's a really great point of you know, looking at the whole person, but the holistic part of the organization, so that you can move individuals forward and help serve. Let's begin with question one. You know it's been our experience that leaders tend to struggle in several key areas people, process or profits. You know, in your role as a CEO, could you identify which one of these areas presented a cultural challenge within your organization?
Rich Schaus:Well, really I could do probably all three Right. They all create some cultural challenges, but finding the right people to have patience and the fortitude and love to help the homeless is a real challenge. A lot of people like the idea of it, but then when they get peed on the first time or vomited on, they're out, they're done, or they get cussed out, they're gone. Then also, many people don't like change. So we have adjusted many of our processes over the years to help people learn to grow. So the processes would be a good conversation, but I really think for today to really focus in on profits. We're a nonprofit but we still need finances to come in to do that. I think that's where we could focus on if we're going to best serve the homeless.
William Gladhart:Okay In terms. Obviously you identified right up front there was an initial profit challenge and a trust challenge and obviously that negatively impacted the organization over time. As you're looking at that and as you're looking to move the organization forward, what is one thing that you identified that helped impact the culture positively?
Rich Schaus:Well, it actually, interestingly enough, started off with a negative. We were serving some folks and they were mad. They got upset. They didn't like our conversations. However that went and they went on to social media. Most of it wasn't even true.
Rich Schaus:And so we had a huge we called it our media storm of just negativity. They felt like we just weren't feeding people well, we weren't providing them the services they really cared for. And the truth is we were actually speaking the truth and love to people who don't want to hear about change. And so the challenge really has come from this series of events. We served a couple of poor meals we really did have. That was a mistake we had. Our cook was kind of taking his time off and doing that, and some guests took pictures of those meals and then posted on social media.
Rich Schaus:And then the pile on just kind of began from there. Suddenly, everyone had some sort of complaint or concern. Then the negative spin caught on the inside and we started sniffing at each other, and so our internal things started to happen together. We saw our social media numbers start to drop and then our finances, our donations, started to drop, and this was only just on social media. This wasn't even any newspaper or public media of any other type. And at that exact same time just because it's a storm, things have to come up it was the middle of summer in Oklahoma and our air conditioner in the women's dorm went down and people made a lot of sound about us not having air conditioning for our folks and air conditionings are cheap to fix, so our finances going down at the same time that we're getting this negative media was just really damaging to us.
William Gladhart:Yeah, so out of that kind of negative piece, what steps did you take or what was one thing that you did or identified to help impact your organization or culture positively?
Rich Schaus:how much we brought in our revenue is there.
Rich Schaus:And then we did a social media Facebook Live, basically like a TV show where I just answered all the complaints that we found. I had my staff scour Facebook and Twitter and find all the complaints and I answered all of them we could find and invited them to ask more questions. And so, instead of avoiding the storm, we kind of stepped into it and said I am here to answer your questions and give you truth versus what everybody else has been doing and saying. At the same time, we also invited our guests to come be part of our process and just talk about what's going on, how we can make our meals better, how we can make things cleaner. They couldn't necessarily help with the air conditioning, but they understood all the rest and they became part of our process.
Rich Schaus:Something that didn't really change, but was added, brought out to the surface a little bit more, is that our guests actually write our policies and our guidelines, and so they get to be a voice in what we're doing. And so now, four days a week, I'm with our guests, I'm learning from them and I'm applying this. So, instead of avoiding the storm, I guess the key answer is I am just being transparent and stepping out in the middle of the whole thing and being a lightning rod for it all, and that protects the rest of the organization no-transcript.
William Gladhart:You're using your guests, and also staff, as the voice to help shape the organization. Next steps that impact not only the culture but how you serve others. Is there anything? Else as we wrap up, that you'd like to add to share with fellow leaders.
Rich Schaus:Just to remind leaders. I think we know this, but we'd like to forget and pretend like it doesn't happen. The storms are going to come. It's a guarantee. If you're in a leadership position, they're going to come. So that's why we actually have the job as leaders. We get paid for those storms and negative things that come at us, and if everything always goes smoothly, you're not really needed as a leader. Anybody could function when things are smooth. So the goal is to take those obstacles and allow them to make you stronger and then your organization stronger, and you can do that. You will become unfragile anti-fragile and really unstoppable.
William Gladhart:Yeah, I really love that advice. I think that's sage for any leader, especially as they're looking to potentially address and or face a future crisis. So, Rich, I've enjoyed having you as our guest on the Leadership Lovers podcast. Thank you again for your insights.
Rich Schaus:Thanks for having me.
William Gladhart:Thank you for joining us on the Leadership Levers Podcast. Find all our Leadership Levers episodes on the Culture Think Tank website at www. theculturethinktank. com or listen on your favorite streaming platform. We'd love to hear from you about the challenges you have faced as a leader. Tune in weekly as we invite leaders to share their experiences in strengthening culture and performance, one action at a time.
