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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Episode Transcript

William Gladhart (00:00):
Welcome to the Leadership Levers Podcast.
I'm your host, Will Gladhart,CMO at the Culture Think Tank.
At the Culture Think Tank, weempower leaders with metrics
that strengthen culture, driveperformance and return.
We're here today to learn aboutthe actions leaders have taken
to address organizational change.

(00:21):
Today, our guest is Rich Schaus, executive Director at the
Gospel Rescue Mission.
Thanks again for taking thetime to join us.

Rich Schaus (00:32):
Thanks for having me here today.

William Gladhart (00:34):
Perfect.
Well, let's begin by having youshare a little bit with our
audience about yourself, yourbackground and your organization
All right.

Rich Schaus (00:41):
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 getskind of hijacked, that's where
I was born and raised.
.
.
so I was..
.
an Eagle Scout.
I got a BA in Missions andBible from Central Bible College
in Springfield, Missouri.
I have a BA in Rescue Missionswork so working with those who

(01:03):
are homeless with City VisionCollege in Kansas City and a
Master of Leadership degree fromNortheastern Oklahoma
University.
I've been married to my wife,kara, for 27 years.
I have three children and threegrandchildren or, excuse me,
four grandchildren.
I have a new one that justpopped out.
I'm a former United StatesField Artillery Officer.
I'm a distinguished Toastmaster.

(01:24):
I'm the author of States FieldArtillery Officer.
I am a distinguishedToastmaster.
I'm the author of a book calledHero Quest.
I've been doing this work withthe homeless for about 23 years
It'll be 23 years as ofmid-March and I just love
working with these people.
I have a key Bible verse thatkind of shapes my life.
It's Micah 6.8, "where he sayshe has showed your man what is
good and what does the Lordrequire of you.
But he has showed your man whatis good and what does the Lord

(01:49):
require of you?
But to do justly, love, mercyand walk humbly with your God.
And that verse has kind ofshaped a lot of my life and got
me to the Gospel Rescue Mission.
I came here in 2015.
The original Gospel RescueMission was formed in 1931 in
the heart of the GreatDepression, the Dust Bowl,
everything else.
The founder, hobart Cox,decided that this was a huge
need and he sacrificedeverything in order to serve
those who are homeless, and Ikind of came in with that.
They had some tough seasons.

(02:10):
At one point, the 1990s, theexecutive director had embezzled
a countless amount of money.
It was the front page of thepaper for about two weeks and so
when I got here in 2015, theywere still bringing this up,
even though it had been over 20years.

William Gladhart (02:23):
Right.

Rich Schaus (02:23):
We got there and, as an organization that makes
their living, we don't take anygovernment funding, so our
donors' perception of who we areis 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 herein 2015 to fundraise.

(02:45):
They had a building that wasliterally built before Oklahoma
was a state and they've beenretrofitting it and doing all
sorts of things.
They said, okay, we need tomove to a new place and kind of
modern electricity and plumbingbasics being there, and so they
brought me here to do that.
The budget at that point wasabout $300,000.
And I needed to raise $1.6million for the campaign and
then bump up our annual to about$800,000 a year.
And the challenge is thatbecause we had the lack of trust

(03:09):
that had built up in ourcommunity over those years, I
had to first spend the firstthree years of saying you can
trust us, we are valuable, wecan help out.
So, step-by-step, in order tobuild that trust, we became more
than a shelter.
We do give them a place to sleep, we do give food, but our real
purpose is to help these men andwomen to flourish, to get out
of being homeless.
They're not homeless anymore.
A lot of programs are happy tolet them stay homeless.

(03:30):
We'll give them food, we'llgive them clothes, whatever, but
they stay homeless.
We give them the food, theclothing, but we're teaching
them and coaching them on how tolive a better life.
So it does have job training,get them some mental health help
, addiction recovery, help themovercome felonies, whatever it
takes, but we do push them onthere.
So last night we had 39 men, 35women, 11 children and then we
had 12 in our overflow that werethere.

(03:52):
Don't play well with others, sowe put them in a little room on
their own and let them sleepthere so they don't die in the
freeze and the cold and snowwe've been having.

William Gladhart (04:00):
Right, wow, it's really interesting the
mission that you and the peopleand individuals that you serve.
I mean, it's definitely a broadswath of the population and
when we talked as we begin ourdiscussion today, we have three
questions as a warm-up to ourconversation.
Would you share why you believea healthy culture is critical?

Rich Schaus (04:20):
We spend a great deal of our time at our
employment.
Whatever job we have, we spenda lot of hours there every week
and if that culture is sick,then we're infecting ourselves,
and if we have infectedourselves then we shorten our
lifespan and then we also takeback that infection back to our
families.
I don't want that, and a gospelrescue I would say it's even
more critical, because sickpeople cannot flourish.
And if we're the staff andwe're sick emotionally,

(04:43):
physically, spiritually,whatever that is we can't really
serve these people very well.

William Gladhart (04:48):
I think that's a really great point of you
know, looking at the wholeperson, but the holistic part of
the organization, so that youcan move individuals forward and
help serve.
Let's begin with question one.
You know it's been ourexperience that leaders tend to
struggle in several key areaspeople, process or profits.
You know, in your role as a CEO, could you identify which one
of these areas presented acultural challenge within your

(05:10):
organization?

Rich Schaus (05:11):
Well, really I could do probably all three
Right.
They all create some culturalchallenges, but finding the
right people to have patienceand the fortitude and love to
help the homeless is a realchallenge.
A lot of people like the ideaof it, but then when they get
peed on the first time orvomited on, they're out, they're
done, or they get cussed out,they're gone.
Then also, many people don'tlike change.

(05:32):
So we have adjusted many of ourprocesses over the years to
help people learn to grow.
So the processes would be agood conversation, but I really
think for today to really focusin on profits.
We're a nonprofit but we stillneed finances to come in to do
that.
I think that's where we couldfocus on if we're going to best
serve the homeless.

William Gladhart (05:49):
Okay In terms.
Obviously you identified rightup front there was an initial
profit challenge and a trustchallenge and obviously that
negatively impacted theorganization over time.
As you're looking at that andas you're looking to move the
organization forward, what isone thing that you identified
that helped impact the culturepositively?

Rich Schaus (06:09):
Well, it actually, interestingly enough, started
off with a negative.
We were serving some folks andthey were mad.
They got upset.
They didn't like ourconversations.
However that went and they wenton to social media.
Most of it wasn't even true.
And so we had a huge we calledit our media storm of just
negativity.
They felt like we just weren'tfeeding people well, we weren't

(06:29):
providing them the services theyreally cared for.
And the truth is we wereactually speaking the truth and
love to people who don't want tohear about change.
And so the challenge really hascome from this series of events
.
We served a couple of poormeals we really did have.
That was a mistake we had.
Our cook was kind of taking histime off and doing that, and
some guests took pictures ofthose meals and then posted on

(06:50):
social media.
And then the pile on just kindof began from there.
Suddenly, everyone had somesort of complaint or concern.
Then the negative spin caughton the inside and we started
sniffing at each other, and soour internal things started to
happen together.
We saw our social media numbersstart to drop and then our
finances, our donations, startedto drop, and this was only just
on social media.
This wasn't even any newspaperor public media of any other

(07:13):
type.
And at that exact same timejust because it's a storm,
things have to come up it wasthe middle of summer in Oklahoma
and our air conditioner in thewomen's dorm went down and
people made a lot of sound aboutus not having air conditioning
for our folks and airconditionings are cheap to fix,
so our finances going down atthe same time that we're getting
this negative media was justreally damaging to us.

William Gladhart (07:36):
Yeah, so out of that kind of negative piece,
what steps did you take or whatwas one thing that you did or
identified to help impact yourorganization or culture
positively?

Rich Schaus (07:47):
how much we brought in our revenue is there.
And then we did a social mediaFacebook Live, basically like a
TV show where I just answeredall the complaints that we found

(08:08):
.
I had my staff scour Facebookand Twitter and find all the
complaints and I answered all ofthem we could find and invited
them to ask more questions.
And so, instead of avoiding thestorm, we kind of stepped into
it and said I am here to answeryour questions and give you
truth versus what everybody elsehas been doing and saying.
At the same time, we alsoinvited our guests to come be
part of our process and justtalk about what's going on, how

(08:30):
we can make our meals better,how we can make things cleaner.
They couldn't necessarily helpwith the air conditioning, but
they understood all the rest andthey became part of our process
.
Something that didn't reallychange, but was added, brought
out to the surface a little bitmore, is that our guests
actually write our policies andour guidelines, and so they get
to be a voice in what we'redoing.

(08:51):
And so now, four days a week,I'm with our guests, I'm
learning from them and I'mapplying this.
So, instead of avoiding thestorm, I guess the key answer is
I am just being transparent andstepping out in the middle of
the whole thing and being alightning rod for it all, and
that protects the rest of theorganization no-transcript.

William Gladhart (09:21):
You're using your guests, and also staff, as
the voice to help shape theorganization.
Next steps that impact not onlythe culture but how you serve
others.
Is there anything?
Else as we wrap up, that you'dlike to add to share with fellow
leaders.

Rich Schaus (09:37):
Just to remind leaders.
I think we know this, but we'dlike to forget and pretend like
it doesn't happen.
The storms are going to come.
It's a guarantee.
If you're in a leadershipposition, they're going to come.
So that's why we actually havethe job as leaders.
We get paid for those stormsand negative things that come at
us, and if everything alwaysgoes smoothly, you're not really
needed as a leader.
Anybody could function whenthings are smooth.
So the goal is to take thoseobstacles and allow them to make

(09:59):
you stronger and then yourorganization stronger, and you
can do that.
You will become unfragileanti-fragile and really
unstoppable.

William Gladhart (10:11):
Yeah, I really love that advice.
I think that's sage for anyleader, especially as they're
looking to potentially addressand or face a future crisis.
So, Rich, I've enjoyed havingyou as our guest on the
Leadership Lovers podcast.
Thank you again for yourinsights.

Rich Schaus (10:23):
Thanks for having me.

William Gladhart (10:26):
Thank you for joining us on the Leadership
Levers Podcast.
Find all our Leadership Leversepisodes on the Culture Think
Tank website at www.
theculturethinktank.
com or listen on your favoritestreaming platform.
We'd love to hear from youabout the challenges you have
faced as a leader.
Tune in weekly as we inviteleaders to share their

(10:50):
experiences in strengtheningculture and performance, one
action at a time.