Fanny Laguna
VFR: Fanny, tell us about yourself and your journey to becoming Sage’s Sustainability and Foundation Director for North America.
Fanny Laguna: Joining Sage, a global technology company, almost 19 years ago was a dream come true, especially as an immigrant from Cuba with a computer science degree.
I was learning every day and started taking on new roles, advancing my career within the company. When Sage created the Sage Foundation about nine years ago to manage its philanthropic initiatives, I volunteered to become a Sage Foundation Ambassador. In addition to my 'day' job, I began working with local nonprofits, organizing volunteer days, and fundraising events for my colleagues at Sage. That was when I fell in love with the work nonprofits do in our communities and the myriad stories I was fortunate to hear—from nonprofit leaders, their clients, or colleagues at my company.
Then, an opportunity arose to join the Sage Foundation Team full-time. I couldn't pass it up! Despite the two-month mark into the COVID-19 pandemic, I questioned if changing careers was the right choice. However, my passion for helping others guided me. Now, having worked with the Foundation for over three years, joining the team remains one of the best professional decisions I've made. I've gained substantial knowledge, embraced new challenges, and assumed diverse roles along the way.
VFR: Why do you find your work at Sage meaningful?
FL: I'm glad to be part of a company that wants to remove barriers so that everyone can thrive. Sage actively promotes this through various initiatives, including a generous paid volunteer time off benefit—granting employees five paid volunteer days per year—and a donation matching program.
This empowers my colleagues to use their paid volunteer time for activities such as fundraising or direct volunteering, contributing to causes they deeply care about. My role involves connecting Sage volunteers across USA and Canada with nonprofit organizations they can actively support.
Working within the global Sage Foundation Team allows me to contribute to and shape some of our worldwide philanthropic programs. This includes designing or influencing our volunteer and fundraising models, as well as our partnership strategies. I play a role in answering the pivotal question: 'How can we maximize the impact of Sage's available philanthropic funds?'
VFR: VFR recently had the privilege of participating in the Sage Foundation Grow Program. Please tell us about this unique and important program that supports nonprofits.
Sage Foundation Grow is a program that helps small and medium-sized nonprofits grow into sustainable organizations that make lasting change. This initiative fosters collaboration between nonprofit leaders and Sage to amplify their mission's scope and effect long-term, measurable transformations through collaboration and action learning.
Throughout the Sage Foundation Grow program, Sage leaders are paired with leaders of high-potential, growth-oriented nonprofits, forming a program cohort. This cohort meets for in-person working sessions, focused on fostering learning opportunities and promoting collaboration.
Each pairing—comprising a Sage leader and a nonprofit leader—carefully selects a strategic project aimed at enhancing the nonprofit's influence within the community. Leveraging their expertise, professional skills, and networks, Sage leaders engage with these nonprofits, guiding and supporting them in executing these strategic projects to amplify their impact.
VFR: What are some of the key challenges you have seen nonprofits wrestle with and how have Sage leaders been able to bring their insights, knowledge, and expertise to the table to support nonprofits in their program work?
Many of the nonprofit organizations we partner with excel in running their programs but often lack the internal expertise or resources necessary for developing long-term strategic, marketing, or fundraising plans. This makes the work of sustaining, and growing, the organizations difficult. Here is where our skilled volunteers step in! Sage leaders leverage their expertise in sales, marketing, human resources, project management, talent acquisition, and more to assist these nonprofits.
Our Sage volunteer leaders collaborate with these organizations to help improve their websites, create fundraising and marketing plans, update their processes and documents, and, in general, shift from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset. This collaboration empowers nonprofits to not only improve their immediate strategies but also foster a more sustainable and growth-oriented approach.
VFR: VFR’s Sage Grow Program project was particularly focused on volunteer recruitment, retention, and stewardship. Please share about how the Sage Grow Program was able to support VFR’s work in this area.
The different areas of expertise and knowledge Sage leaders brought to the Sage Grow Program allowed us to support VFR with a number of goals related to volunteer recruitment, retention, and stewardship.
Through the program, VFR was matched with Sage leaders, Julià Masmitjà Abad and Avril Zanato, as well as the support whole Sage Grow Program cohort.
Data and strategic planning expert, Julià, was able to support VFR with volunteer data analytics that can be used for targeted volunteer recruitment and outreach, along with supporting with VFR's Volunteer Feedback Survey project. Learning and development expert, Avril, was able to support VFR with creating a new app tutorial video and provided new ideas on how to support volunteers through their onboarding journey.
Other Sage leaders from the cohort were able to support with marketing projects, such as VFR's new volunteer email journey and in-person event marketing. The connections and collaboration the Sage Grow Program provides are what make the program so valuable; and VFR was able to show measurable impact as a result of participating in the Sage Foundation Grow Program, which was exciting to see!
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