Using the Whole Whale - A Nonprofit Podcast

The Power Law of Large Donors | Causevox

Rob Wu, Founder of Causevox.com shares lessons learned from talking to over 100 large gift officers and donors. Learn about the BAIT approach to donor qualification. BAIT - Budget, Affinity, Intension, Timeliness 

 

About Causevox

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We launched in 2010 and help nonprofits rally communities and raise millions every year.

 

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From small community-service charities and national organizations to global development nonprofits.

 

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From DIY fundraising and peer to peer to events and donation pages, CauseVox has you covered.

 

Transcript

 

[00:00:00] Today

[00:00:26] on the Whole Whale podcast, we have a returning guest who may, if I'm right, may be setting the record for the, the most, uh, appearances on the whole Whale podcast, episode 50, The Data Behind Donor Retention, Episode 1 53, Analytics Answer, Who are My donors? And Episode 1 59 Survive the nonprofit software business.

[00:00:47] Rob, we always appreci. Your candor, your willingness to come on the show to talk about it. And this is Rob Ru, of course, the CEO, founder of Cause Box. He has been diligently working in the sector, I believe, at least on cause box since

[00:01:03] 20 11, 27 officially.

[00:01:08] Officially 2010. Uh, actually also the same year that whole Whale was founded.

[00:01:12] So, uh, we were joking before we turned on record of our, our various, uh, check-ins with each other over the years. And, uh, we're still, we're still doing it. Rob,

[00:01:21] I'm so happy you're still alive, George . Thanks,

[00:01:24] man. You know, we'll, we'll continue to, to check in over the years. I brought you in today though, because you are always looking for the upside for the nonprofits using ox.

[00:01:37] You're trying to stay on, you know, the, the practical, I'll say the practical cutting edge of how to raise more money for great causes. And so I was hoping you could share a bit on what you have been focused on this year with regard. Major gifts.

[00:01:55] Yes. How I see it in terms of my mission is that I'd rather be useful than to be sexy.

[00:02:03] I'd rather be valuable rather than to be a unicorn. So if you look at the field of all the animals, there are all these analogies. I'd rather be a zebra than a lion or a unicorn or whatever fancy animals there are. So, Starting cos walks Over a decade ago, you, we came into this, uh, this business to become a digital fundraising platform because there's a big gap between technology and fundraising where a lot of nonprofits couldn't go online.

[00:02:33] They didn't know how to do it. They didn't know how to utilize all the ways of social media fundraising. Digital fundraising, peer to peer. This and that. So it's been a great journey to us help accelerate that piece of digital fundraising and by bringing more and more organizations online and where we had some of our best years of growth and over covid, unfortunately, where a lot of organizations were transitioning into digital fundraising.

[00:03:01] As we see the next steps of what's coming up, I think one of my biggest frustrations is that a lot of organizations see. Online fundraising as a siloed approach where they think, Hey, I need to run an event. I need to run a gala. I need to do peer to peer fundraising. I need to be on Facebook. And they kind of just treat, uh, the, that style of fundraising as a one and done thing.

[00:03:26] They don't look at it as a process of how you can grow donors, of how you can grow gifts, how you can upgrade folks up the pipeline to become major donors. So I went on this quest to figure. When you're looking at major donors, how do folks actually get major donors? How do they qualify them? How do they really work through this process to grow a small $100 gift all the way to a hundred thousand dollars gift?

[00:03:54] And the results of this were actually really surprising, where it gave us a lot of inspiration behind what we should build next when it comes to major gift fundraising.

[00:04:03] That makes, uh, it makes a lot of. And as you're, as you're building this in this approach, the way I guess I look at it is that if you are ignoring, if you're ignoring the major gift strategy of your digital fundraising, You are missing out on easily half of the potential revenue you could and should be making.

[00:04:25] What does that actually mean? If you have a hundred donors, I can very confidently tell you that there is probably a power law distribution of their wealth and capacity to give fancy way of saying that 10% of them have 90% of the wealth, because frankly, that's just how the things in America are carved out.

[00:04:44] Thanks to capitalism, the question. That you should ask next is who are those people and what should we message them? So maybe you could pick up the thread there. Is it just, you know, smile and dial and be like, Hey, you have money. Give now please

[00:05:00] more. Right, right. It is kind of funny, like, so I did this huge research quest to, to speak to over a hundred people on major gifts.

[00:05:09] So I talked to, uh, over a hundred people who are either major gift officers, where the day to day is just about talking to rich people and China secure donations all the way to major donors who have carved out half a million dollars or more to give annual. Give to organizations. So across the board I've talked to like a lot of folks, and what's really interesting is that it's less about the message itself.

[00:05:31] Yes, having a compelling story and follow up and the exercise and activity of reaching out to prospective major donors is important, but what's actually more important? Is understanding what the process looks like. Having a complete process of taking a mass donor, which is someone who gives what, 50 bucks, a hundred dollars at your Facebook fundraising or your, your gala, that kind of thing, and having them have a strong cycle and process and methodology of identifying who are the folks that I should be reaching out to as my short list of major gift prospects so I can grow them conversations.

[00:06:09] On one end you have a lot of folks who do events and mass fundraising and crowdfunding and peer to peer. On the other end, you have just a short portfolio of a hundred, 150 people, uh, where. Uh, those are just like your prime targets and essentially you're just kind of reaching out to them and trying to secure meetings and tell 'em their story.

[00:06:30] It becomes a very one-on-one sales process, like for better work. And there's a huge gap in a middle where I've also identified that for mid-level donors, nobody knows what to deal with em. So that part gets severely ignored. And when you look at parallel, which is kind of the distribution of, of uh, I, a handful of donations can have astronomical impact on your fundraising.

[00:06:53] Uh, the, the top matters a lot, like major donors matter so much where you get a 50,000, a hundred thousand dollars gift that's transformational in terms of a small organization or if you get a number of mid-level gifts, which is around five 10 k each. Getting a handful of those, that's also transformational.

[00:07:13] But then when you look at mass level gifts, if you get additional five more donations of a hundred dollars each, that's not transformational anymore. So it's kinda interesting where a lot of folks focus too much time on the mass, not enough time on the major, and no time at all on the mid-level donors.

[00:07:30] So they're missing huge opportunities.

[00:07:33] Mm-hmm. , and that's the graduating donors, I think is maybe one of the terms I. Used in the past, how do we upgrade our donors from this level to the next level? But also acknowledge that like, guess what, You know, somebody who's given 50 bucks, maybe, maybe not. Is there, you know, wealth engine type stuff.

[00:07:51] I know Wealth Engine is a company, I know there's other, uh, data pools out there. Does that bring any extra information to you, or do you prefer just to look. The spread of donation amounts. Say like, All right, here's my bucket of people that donated an a hundred. As you mentioned, like, Oh, this person donated a thousand.

[00:08:11] That's interesting. Maybe I have a talk with them. Which way do you like to.

[00:08:15] Yeah, if you have the resources and the time, the ability is to do both approaches. That's where some of the organizations they, they really flourish because they have just a lot of different data pools to tap into. Of course, one of them would be like using folks like Donor Search and Wealth Engine and iWave, and to provide a great Kind of just well screening data where you can pipe out data into their services and come back with a rating in terms of the properties that a donor owns and if they have more of a propensity to give, you know, that kind of stuff.

[00:08:45] But really, when I talk to a lot of major gift folks, that data is rational at best. So it's not very bad. Mm-hmm. , So the most accurate information actually is previous giving. So if you have giving history of a donor, uh, the two things that typically, uh, are really great indicators of a great and major donor prospect, one would be is their, their loyalty.

[00:09:09] Meaning that are they being retained year after year If a donor is donating year after year, Whatever it amount, they already meet a qualification of, they support your organization, they know something about it. They have shown this intent to give, and they're just tied to you. So there there'll be a great prospect.

[00:09:27] The additional layer you can layer on top is actually giving amount. So donors that give it over a thousand dollars typically be the threshold. .

[00:09:35] All right, I'm back.

[00:09:38] I really like. How you were talking about the behavior, It's something that I consistently try to pull our clients toward, our teams toward in terms of finding insights, which are less about what public data we've scraped and more about, show me the behavior. Is this person acting like someone who cares?

[00:09:57] Are they showing the capacity to give through their actions? Because truth be told, a lot of this wealth data is essentially address zip code based. They pull it up and look at like, Oh, they live in this zone and live in this reason. They don't even talk about the, the reason they may have given, which is maybe it was a, a one and done check because, you know, someone's nephew wrote them one time and they don't really have a emotional connection to the organization.

[00:10:22] So I like starting with your, your own data in your backyard as you. To these fundraising experts. I'm wondering what is the most common way of starting that conversation of like, Hey, you've got a lot of money and seem to care about us. How about more like what is the shape of that? What is the cold, warm intro?

[00:10:51] Yeah, so ideally you're starting with a set of folks that have already donated to your organization. So you're looking at your own, uh, donor pool, whether you have 200 donors or 2000 donors or 20,000 donors, which is whatever. Uh, whatever you're looking at, you're starting with these. Warm donor prospects who've given something to your organization so they know something about you.

[00:11:13] So it's not a cold type of outreach. It's something that is more about, uh, having a conversation with somebody that, uh, knows what you do. So you start with that kind of formulate a list of folks typically. If you're looking at doing major gifts full-time, you can reasonably work only around 150 folks as part of your portfolio.

[00:11:32] So it has this account management focus where you short list list of folks who've, uh, given to your organization, uh, several years in a row that given over let's say a thousand dollars or whatever that threshold is. They can be higher if you're a larger organization, lower if you're a smaller organization and you come up with a list of.

[00:11:50] If you do have the ability to bring in some of the wealth data, uh, that we just mentioned, then you can use that to segment even more until you get to a point where you have 150 people that you can work on for a year. So after you have that list, then what you wanna do is, uh, basically qualify. So your goal is to get to a qualification meeting with a donor.

[00:12:11] Qualification meeting just means that you have a conversation with a donor, uh, to better understand. Uh, the capacity to give as well as their affinity to give. So those two points, capacity to give would be, uh, this basic understanding of how much wealth they have. Is, is this somebody who has. The ability to give more than a thousand dollars.

[00:12:36] Like can they give $10,000? Can they give 50? Can they give a million? Basically having a conversation, asking some questions to better understand what, essentially what is their wealth, and not in those direct terms would be the first part. The second part would be understanding the affinity to give. Why did they give to your cause in the first place?

[00:12:55] Is it because they're personally tied to your organization's work? Or was it because a friend asked a friend or something else in some other circumstance? So to better understand, essentially the affinity to give, I also like to add in, add a few additional qualifications to it based on my conversations with actual major donors who are donating hundreds of thousands of dollars every year.

[00:13:17] Uh, one. The third one would be intent to give. So someone who has an intent to give, uh, that is typically a lot stronger than someone who does not have the intent to give. Intent is essentially what I, is an indicator of generosity. So someone who says, Hey, uh, I have a donor advice fund. I'm trying to spend it down every.

[00:13:40] And, uh, I already give as part of my culture, of my process, as part of my family values, then that person has a stronger intent to give and are, and will be more likely to give. All else being equal . And the second, uh, qualification that I wanna add in is around budget. A lot of major donors that I talk to, they actually have carved out budgets for giving.

[00:14:05] So when they look at their plans, look at their cash flow, uh, they look at their donor advice fund or kind of whatever they have, they think about, Okay, I have a budget. I, and I want to donate $300,000. So, and they try to figure out, how do I do that? I give to the folks that I already give to, Yes. But then I still have a chunk of it that I'm trying to figure out who to give to.

[00:14:27] So, uh, in another instance, my framework for qualification is called Bait. Bait. Yeah. The budget, the affinity, the intent. And you also need to have the timeliness to give as well, like talking to somebody at the right time. That would be the last point I didn't really touch on, which is around this idea of like, did something happen where they, they come into an liquidity event where someone sold their business or they had a windfall of some sort.

[00:14:55] So a lot of major donors I talked to, uh, come to that point where they're like, Hey, I just sold my business. I have a lot of millions to, uh, to give away. Uh, now is the right time for me to get an ask from a non. So,

[00:15:10] and being top of mind in that moment is probably pretty valuable.

[00:15:14] Yep. Yep. So after you have this qualification framework and kind of the screening then really becomes an exercise of saying, outta these 150 people that have on my list do they check the boxes in terms of, uh, being qualified for B ait?

[00:15:29] And if they do, then I will make a. So it's as simple as that. The hard part though, is actually reaching out to each one of the hundred 50 donor prospects and trying to get that conversation so you can qualify them to get to a point where you can make a ask.

[00:15:46] Yeah. I imagine people are not itching to have a, a conversation like this, and I imagine it is packaged in a different way, such as talking about, you know, the, how the organization plans to grow.

[00:15:58] Maybe it's a capital campaign, maybe it's an upcoming event. It seems like there is more effective if you've got some sort of branded thing that you can talk about as opposed to give because it's Tuesday,

[00:16:10] right? Right. It's give, because it's Tuesday is definitely not a good reason for major donors to give.

[00:16:15] It, it, a lot of the outreach that happens with major donors happens way beyond the giving season that follows every year. It's really about, uh, thanking a. For making that initial, uh, donation or series of donations and having a conversation with them to better understand why they give to the organization and how the nonprofit can better match, uh, opportunities and present opportunities of giving to the donor.

[00:16:46] So, so that's really the key, getting that conversation, doing the qualification and understanding if this major don. Prospect would be a good person to make up bigger asks too. So a lot of it just revolves around just getting to know a donor.

[00:17:04] Yeah, and I mentioned, I mean, I just kind of threw out there the like events, the capital campaign, or maybe you're asking them, Hey, it's the end of year, we're looking for someone to put up a matching gift that will help other people.

[00:17:18] Are there other programmatic activities or types of packaging? I, I guess, that these conversations revealed as more successful than others? Things that are trending more given the, you know, shift in wealth or shift in, uh, philanthropic interest? Yeah,

[00:17:37] I think was it really interesting, especially when I talk to major donors they, they, they.

[00:17:42] they profile the same as any other person that you talk to where they're really interested in causes, they wanna connect their dollars with making an impact. They want to hear a compelling story. So it's, it's less specific about the time of the year and more about, uh, what kind of programs are available.

[00:18:01] There is an information gap when it comes to major donors and major gift officers, where major donors have the capacity. And they need to know what giving opportunities are out there because nonprofits never do a good, a great job of presenting all the opportunities that someone can give because they're just limited to their, their tools that they have, like their website or social media.

[00:18:25] And then major gift officers need to figure out what makes it a donor click and then presenting those opportunities. So I do think that there. Campaigns that organizations do, if you're doing a capital campaign, like building a building, that kind of thing, uh, that, that is a great opportunity. But by and large, when it comes to major donors, uh, they're supporting the programs, uh, the annual funds or just kind of whatever gap fundraising an organization needs to do.

[00:18:51] Yeah, the opportunity. To match that donor along their interests could be, you know, around a program, something they are particularly passionate about inside the organization and like, Hey, here's an opportunity for a, a multi-year support of this program happening in this region that I know you're interested in.

[00:19:11] Mm-hmm. , but it's about, it's about matching that. But it does sound like a lot of work, right? This like tracking, tracking down 150 people, having those convers. But it does seem like you, I mean, you only need a hit rate of what? 5% if they're the right gifts.

[00:19:27] You only need a small hit rate. So that's why a lot of organizations that invest so much staff time and effort into major gifts, where if you just secure a handful of them, then it's transformational as well as when, when I look at, uh, fundraising folks, development folks at an organization, they're better equipped to have conversations and tell stories on a one-on-one basis than on a one to many basis.

[00:19:51] Uh, I think for a long time, uh, we're. We as kind of just an industry we're trying to transform, uh, kind of fundraising people who are really good at one-on-one communications and turn them into digital marketers where you're saying, Hey, like, learn how to do direct mail or learn how to do social media, or learn how to put on large virtual events.

[00:20:12] So kind of forcing people out of like their skill sets. Or what they know the best and trying to push 'em into kind of this mass fundraising. And I, I believe that if you're able to do mass fundraising well, or just do it okay, as long as you have a, a, a steady inflow of new donors. You just kind of need to set some parameters and throw them at fundraising people so they can have these one-on-one conversations, get the major gifts, and use the parallel effect to transform the fundraising results of the organization.

[00:20:46] I have this,

[00:20:47] this assumption that if you gave me the fundraising data of, you know, a donor pool, I could calculate a projected potential. Upside for a large gift. Am I like, you know, am I on some sort of, you know, data island with this? Is this like an assumption too far because you know, if you've seen one, you've seen one?

[00:21:08] Or is it pretty immutable? Once you see like major gifts implemented over a period of time that you would get a distribution saying like, All right, if you have got, you know, 30% of your audience donating a hundred dollars, here's your upside. Here's what's potentially sleeping in

[00:21:24] in your backyard. Oh, for sure.

[00:21:26] I, I think you can completely forecast it given enough data set. Now, of course, if you're a small organization, let's say you only have a hundred donors, then your distribution in your data forecasting is gonna be grossly inaccurate. But once you get to, uh, several thousand, tens of thousands of donors, then you can easily make assumptions to start forecasting.

[00:21:46] And then that's where things get interesting, where then you can know, Oh, we need to talk to X amount of people every year because then we'll close a dozen major donors. And this is implication of that forecast.

[00:21:59] I think that's helpful, especially if there's somebody listening that has a. A standard, we'll say, sort of let people donate as they're going to donate.

[00:22:10] We'll go after grants and things like that. But individual donors are just, you know, fine at this, whatever level they wanna access at. We have an annual event. But I think looking at it as saying like, you're leaving money on the table if you aren't seeing this type of. Power law in giving, cuz it certainly exists in wealth.

[00:22:25] Is that a fair phrasing?

[00:22:27] Yeah, a hundred percent fair. I, I think for a long time, uh, and this is one of my frustrations, uh, at cos box is that, uh, we're empowering folks to do kind of these mass giving opportunities, but then there's not an easy way for folks to say, Okay, now what I. These couple hundred donors that I got from my peer, peer or craft funding campaign, let me have an easy way to move them on, upgrade them into a major donor.

[00:22:53] Uh, so that's something that we're building towards, to helping organizations have, have the right tooling so that they can reach out to folks, have those conversations, qualify them, track the stages, and eventually close on these major gifts.

[00:23:08] Does it make sense to be really trying to have those. Obviously qualifying conversations earlier in the year, and then as you move to the end of the year when you know, uh, you know, tax advantages, especially for the rich, they're thinking about donations and making those final donations.

[00:23:23] Is it more extreme in that, like you gotta have those closing conversations in q4 or are large net worth individuals just dealing with DAFs and it really doesn't matter when, when that gift is.

[00:23:36] Yeah, it, it is more of a letter. It, it is not as, uh, important when it comes to time of the year. Uh, but you before, for most major gift plans, their work plans is based on an annual cycle though, where at the beginning of the year, uh, they come up with a portfolio of folks to work and then they figure out what is my work plan for each specific person?

[00:23:57] When am I gonna reach out to them and when I'm gonna make an ask, But ask, coming on a rolling basis. Uh, some donors are qualify a lot faster so they can make a proposal center proposal, make an ask for a major gift while folks, uh, sometimes just kind of drag it out depending on time of the year. There is more urgency at the end of the year, typically speaking.

[00:24:17] But, uh, for major donors, they really break this process. They're not molded into, uh, this seasonal annual in of year giving.

[00:24:27] I think it's just super helpful and it's something that continually is on my mind because we work at various levels for digital fundraising, but also just for awareness building.

[00:24:37] But inevitably it is looking at a marketing funnel where you're turning attention into interest as measured by emails, converting those folks into people that care enough to open their wallets, and then sometimes it can sort of be left. At that point of the funnel as opposed to saying, and the next phase is this.

[00:24:59] You gotta have conversations. Your CEO needs to be set up with people that have been qualified to say, Hey, here's our larger vision and here's why I need a quarter million dollars to get there. .

[00:25:09] That's right. I, I think it's, the challenge right now is to make sure organizations are set up to have opportunities for major donors to donate.

[00:25:17] Uh, or kind of presenting in that format is one of the big challenges. I think the second big issue is that, uh, organizations don't have the right tooling. You know, I, I've been on this research quest and essentially folks have been telling me that when it comes to major gift fundraising, they just take data outta their data.

[00:25:36] Their CRMs and they just manage it in their head or in their spreadsheet when it comes to major gifts. So, the, the work of someone who's touching major donors, it really isn't served by by tools. So I think that's another gap too, where infrastructure, having the right tooling, having the right process built into the tools just aren't there for folks, and that's one of the reasons why folks don't do it.

[00:26:00] Well, it sounds like a, a great opportunity and a natural evolution. Maybe you can tell us a bit more about how people find you and maybe some of these new tools that they can check out at cause box dot.

[00:26:11] Yeah, so at Cosmos we're launching a new product. The, the product name's called Morningside. For now, probably need a better name, but the idea is that we want to build, uh, a product geared towards major donors.

[00:26:24] So we call it a major donor workflow Product essentially has three different tiers, uh, three different pillars. The first pillar being that, uh, you have a suite outreach tools, so you can send. Like one on one emails to donor prospects. You can text them, you can make calls, you can do all your outreach in one tool instead of depending on your phones or depending on your email system, uh, so that you can track everything in one place.

[00:26:48] Uh, the second piece of it would be this idea around donor tracking, where you can track. What stage a donor is in from prospect all the way to committed and fulfill. So you can easily see outta my portfolio. Major donors here are folks I've had meetings with. Here are people who are qualified. Here are people who've committed but haven't paid, and here to people who paid.

[00:27:07] So you can easily see that as well as you can apply different work plans to each donor where you can chart up. Uh, for this donor prospect. I'm gonna touch 'em four times a year, hear the dates that I'll touch them. It's basically like a. Giant reminder list or to-do list that lets you easily just see what needs to happen on one day.

[00:27:26] Uh, and then the D pillar will be attaching payments. So just the easy ability for, for donors to, to, to make a payment. But, uh, And have a customized, uh, donation page, equipment page for that. As well as if you're doing an offline, then they can send in checks or, uh, forward that information to their donor advised fund, uh, for our stock transfer, things like that.

[00:27:48] Uh, essentially the idea is that we wanna be end to end when it comes to major donors. So gonna help folks not only automate but accelerate their major gift fundraising.

[00:27:57] Awesome. Really appreciate you walking through it and excited that you're gonna be helping more organizations get a, get a bit more in their, uh, in their bank accounts.

[00:28:07] So thanks,

[00:28:07] Rob. Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks George.

 

Crypto DAFs are 3X MORE Generous that Traditional DAFs | Endaoment.org

Alexis Miller, Donor Engagement and Strategic Partnerships Lead at Endaoment.org shares how crypto DAFs work and why nonprofits should start paying attention. When compared with traditional DAF payouts, Endaoment is showing 3x payout rate of funds- 22% to 58%.  We also discuss other ways crypto donors differ from traditional fiat donors.

 

About Alexis Miller

Alexis Miller is the Donor Engagement and Strategic Partnerships Lead at Endaoment, the first 501(c)3 community foundation built on the Ethereum blockchain. Alexis works to facilitate collaboration between nonprofit organizations and crypto donors. Before joining Endaoment, Alexis worked as a philanthropic advisor and a development professional. She earned a Masters in Social Work from the University of Pennsylvania and now lives in Washington DC.

Resource Links

• Endaoment Community Hub *includes a crypto 101 glossary - https://endaoment.notion.site/
• Endaoment website - endaoment.org
• Twitter - @endaomentdotorg
• Discord - discord.gg/endaoment

 

 

 

Rough Transcription

 

[00:00:00] Well, we found a reoccurring guest, well I'll say organization joining us today from endowment, and they are helping turn crypto holdings into crypto givings, which is a topic that I love. I just love it. I'm long crypto philanthropy. Alexis Miller donor Engage. Strategic partnerships Lead at Endowment is joining us today.

[00:00:32] Kind of as a follow up to our conversation a year ago. We'll put that in the show notes. And Alexis, after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, Master's degree in Social work, Went on to donor services officer and Baltimore Community Foundation. So definitely kind of one of us, as well as working at, uh, Associated Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore.

[00:00:56] So now you have landed at endowment, and maybe for our newer listeners, can you explain what endowment spelled? Endowment? Mm-hmm. . I'm not pronouncing it right. I feel like you really have to put M faces on the Dow. Can you explain what. Yes. Thank you for having me, George. And for that introduction. So endowment, spelled E n d a o m e n T.

[00:01:22] I always try to, sometimes people Google us and can't find us because we're spelled d a o, not d o w, like the traditional way. We are a 5 0 1 C three. Non-profit community foundation that essentially exists for the crypto community. So we are built on the Ethereum blockchain, so our actual non-profit entity structure is built using.

[00:01:46] Blockchain technology, and we essentially serve as that community foundation resource. So we were created really to solve two problems. The first is to allow a tax compliant and easy way for donors to be able to give Crypto or NFTs. And on the flip side, allowing non-profits to be able to receive donations that originated in crypto.

[00:02:10] No cost to the nonprofit. So that is a little bit of what we do. I will get into the details, but our kind of bread and butter is our crypto donor advised fund. So similar to other community foundations that offer a donor advised fund, charitable checking account. Essentially we do the same just using crypto.

[00:02:30] Maybe we can make sure that this makes sense, because I feel like there was a lot of words with lots of words, a lot of acronyms, because that's what technical people seem to enjoy doing by making a ton of acronyms. Maybe we start with the, as you were explaining, Dow and what that actually means. The d a o as I understand it.

[00:02:52] What, what, what does that actually mean as it's part of your name? It is part of our name, so, DOW stands for a decentralized autonomous organization and basically what that means. An organization or an entity where the decisions are being made by the community as opposed to like a top down approach. So having your CEO or your executive director make all of the decisions, you're actually putting voices into the hands of your community or stakeholders to have a say in how the organization is run.

[00:03:28] So that. A term that's used widely in the crypto space is a dow, but the concept is something that other folks are using just maybe in a little bit of a different way. So in short, we're talking about a daf, but. For crypto. Is that a fair quick summary? Yes, yes. Another acronym. You know, like it's, it's funny, my, my a donor advised fund.

[00:03:53] You're right. Yes. We're gonna have a lot of gloss. It's all good. It, it's funny cuz you know, my background's in non-profit and I feel like non-profits use a ton of acronyms and like insider language. And now I'm in this fine, I'm kind of balancing the non-profit world with the crypto world. And they also use a ton of acronyms, very different acronyms, but you know, gotta get used to both of the lingos for sure.

[00:04:16] So let's just make this tangible. Somebody has a crypto windfall. They're then interested in deploying that capital for social impact, making the world less terrible. They come to endowment.org. What happens? Good question. So, you know, as I mentioned before, we're built on the Ethereum blockchain, which I'm, I'm gonna get technical for a, a second and then I will make this more easily digestible.

[00:04:50] But basically the blockchain is just the technology that underpins. This whole crazy world of cryptocurrency. So think of it as like, a public ledger where basically all of the transactions and data is taking place. So what that means in practice is our nonprofit is actually set up so that you can see all of the transactions taking place.

[00:05:14] So, All money flowing into endowment and all money flowing out of endowment is technically publicly available without any personal information. But all of that information lies using what's called blockchain technology. So that's kind of like the basis, So we're built on. Blockchain technology, and when someone comes to, you know, endowment.org or app.endowment.org, they would connect their wallet that holds their cryptocurrency and they could take an action on our platform so they could open up a donor advised fund by clicking a button, they could make a direct donation to a nonprofit of their choice.

[00:05:53] Basically skipping the fund process and just giving a one off donation to any nonprofit in the us and. We handle all of the tax receipting so that individual donor is giving us their name, their email, their address so that they can get a tax deduction if they choose. And you know, within 24 to 48 hours, we are turning around that donation and getting it into the nonprofits bank account as US dollars in cash and turning it from the cryptocurrency that it originated in into us.

[00:06:29] Gotcha. And to date you have deployed, it looks like over 50 million according to the website, to a total of 924 organizations. I'm curious, uh, how has growth been? Because right now, I don't know if you've noticed things like Ethereum and others are down 60, 70% just this year. Has that slowed growth? What is it looking like for endowment right now?

[00:07:02] Yeah, so we are right at the $50 million mark and. In terms of growth, you know the market is down for sure, but our average donor is someone who has been in the crypto space since, you know, 20 16, 20 17, 20 18. And most of our donors, while they still might be, you know, down some money or down large amounts of money, They're pretty much up for when they originally invested in the crypto ecosystem.

[00:07:34] So for us, we're still seeing a lot of activity. It's definitely slowed a bit. But we're still seeing that. So to kind of like take a step back, I'll give you some, some statistics based on this year versus last year in terms of how we're doing in terms of getting money out into the hands of nonprofits.

[00:07:52] So our, and, and again, as I mentioned like blockchain, everything's transparent. We also are, so on our website you can actually see, uh, a lot of these statistics that I'm going to share. And, you know, we really try to keep our community informed. The ecosystem and the impact that people are having through using endowment.

[00:08:14] So we have granted, to date 58% of funds that are sitting in donor advised funds. So 58% of the capital that has gone into endowment has been distributed out to various nonprofits across the country. Just to give you a comparison, the average I believe this is through Fidelity, is 22% a national average for donor advised.

[00:08:39] Deploying capital. So as you can see, you know, And that's annually, I guess for the, the DAF distribution and Yeah. Yeah. Annually for the DAF distribution. So you can see that our community is really, really focused on getting money out into the community to support their favorite nonprofit or to support an area of interest.

[00:08:58] And they just need a little assistance identifying who to actually support. So 58%. Capital that has been basically ingested by endowment has been distributed out to various non-profits. And that's lifetime. That's a lifetime distribution number. Lifetime distribution. Yep. And, and we started at the end of 2020.

[00:09:15] So year to date, we've had $21.15 million donated to endowment. So 21.15 out of the 50 million has been donated. This year, you know, in 2022, and we've granted this year 17.9 million which is both of those numbers are up from last year. So if you think of, you know, 2021, the crypto market was a lot higher.

[00:09:39] Yet we've actually done more volume in terms of both donations and grants in 2022. Then, sorry, one more time. Was 17 distributed over 20? 17 distributed this year in 2022, and you have collected 21 million and we've collected 21 million. I mean, you're tracking at 80% at that point, so that, you know, I think it's even more impressive if I'm just speaking, honestly, looking at the annual cause I feel like there's many sins hidden in average numbers.

[00:10:06] Yeah. This is not a sin. This is actually. Contrary to what I would've believed in a down market where I imagine a donor coming in who has transferred over their, you know, do coin. Millions may have chosen not to liquidate, but to hold and maybe hold until it goes back up. This doesn't seem to be the case, and I am right in that assumption that when a donor comes.

[00:10:31] Connects, their wallet moves over an asset that that asset isn't immediately liquidated like it is with say, the giving block when a donation is triggered on site directly to a non-profit. So we do actually liquidate it to US dollar coin. Okay. So yeah, so we are taking in whatever cryptocurrency is donated to us.

[00:10:53] We always say that anything that there's a liquid market for, we will take. So we don't have, you know, a hundred cryptocurrencies listed on our website. Okay. We really will take anything and work with any donor who has any crypto. We immediately convert it into US dollar coin. And then it's SDC, I believe.

[00:11:09] Yes. Yeah. Yep. So U sdc and then it's granted out as US dollars to the nonprofits bank account. Mm-hmm. one, one thing we launched last month in our version two of our platform is actual portfolio allocations, which has been super exciting and was the top feedback we received from our donor community last year.

[00:11:30] So, It's always exciting when you can take feedback and actually build something or do something about it and not just say, Thank you so much for your feedback. We'll take it into consideration. So endowment just launched our version two of our platform and one of those features includes portfolio allocations where people can actually take that us d c, that US dollar coin that's in their donor advised fund and actually invest it in.

[00:11:55] Right now we have three different. Crypto native portfolio allocations that they can invest it in. So when they're not granting out, they, instead of kind of having their funds set idly, they can actually deploy their capital and hopefully earn a little bit of interest making their fund grow, which means more money to charity.

[00:12:16] I don't fully understand that. Can you explain more? How, how is my fund growing? So you're putting together portfolios I understand of nonprofits. Let's say I wanna go help the environment because maybe the coin of my choice is proof of work and it's torching a bunch of electricity and I wanna like make amends on that.

[00:12:38] Is that what we're talking about? There is a essentially an index fund for. That you had packaged for the environment, for social justice, for women's rights, Actually, The kind of the opposite. So it's actually like taking, it's taking your cryptocurrency and actually investing it in like an, the version of like an etf, right?

[00:13:01] So most donor advised funds, you're actually investing those assets in like a money market or in some sort of actual like financial investment vehicle. So, Community foundation's, Fidelity Schwab allow their donors mm-hmm. to take, you know, if you have a hundred thousand dollars in your donor advised fund, you can actually invest that in a money market or in an ETF that the board obviously approves, and you can earn a little bit of yield on that.

[00:13:29] So. Mm-hmm. , you know, when I was in the community foundation space, we would have donors in a, in a good year who were making. Eight to 10% on their money, so that capital is being invested and then you're able to actually give more money out to charity. So we're doing the same thing, but with crypto.

[00:13:48] Portfolios essentially. So instead of investing in, you know, a Fidelity ETF or something, you're investing in Ethereum or you're investing in Ave or Compound, which are the three portfolios that our board has approved right now. So you're taking your idle capital in your donor advised fund that you're not granting out imminently and you're actually investing it to hopefully yield a little bit of a return so that you have more money to grant out to charity in the long term.

[00:14:19] That's, you know, that's interesting. I won't touch on it too much though. I, I feel like one of the reasons that this year you're tracking at what sounds like four x the rate of distribution, then standard DAFs. So by the way, I'm coming up with a title of this podcast right now. I feel like a good one.

[00:14:36] Crypto philanthropists, four x, more generous than greedy. Little fiat DAFs, right, Who are tracking at 20%. In general, your overall numbers are three x, right? If we're talking 20% into 60% distribution, I'm all about the distribution. I'm all about putting the money to work. Nothing frustrates me more than money sitting on the sidelines while non-profits are out there doing the work right now.

[00:15:05] And so I get, I'll just be honest, hesitant about, Hey, here's a way for you to like stash it and make 0.78% on compound. By the way, no subtle risk to what may actually happen to that capital. Looking at what happened to DAFs this year alone, with the market dropping 20% that were in safe, I'm using air quotes, safe investments just means less freaking money for non-profits headed into a recession.

[00:15:35] You can tell I'm frustrated by that , so I think this is interesting. , but it doesn't, it it's not, It's not exciting in the sense that like getting dollars out the door, which is, which is really great. I wanna come back to, unless you have a finer point and you wanna push back on that, I'm fine to. Listen, I, I, you know, I, I agree with you for sure.

[00:15:57] Like money needs to go out into the hands of non-profits. You know, I will say that we are working at a way faster pace than traditional DAFs in terms of getting that money out. We have a four x this year, four x this year. Yes. We have, you know, a two year inactive fund policy is an example. Most community foundations have five years where you don't have to do anything with your.

[00:16:17] For five years. Hmm. Ours is two. And I will say just anecdotally, based on our community, people are super generous and wanna get money out into the community. So even if we're letting them invest a small portion of their donor advised fund, they are not necessarily investing their entire donor advised fund.

[00:16:37] They are still getting money out into the hands of nonprofits. Yeah. And we've seen this time and time again with Ukraine, with reproductive rights. All of the horrible things that are going on in this world, You know, we have been able to raise money imminently, and the fact that we send grants via a bank wire and not a check, like most traditional DAF providers, we are able to actually deploy capital in one to two days to these non-profits that really need it.

[00:17:06] So, you know, everything we do at end. Very, very mission driven and mission-aligned, and we are taking some of the traditional narratives of donor advised funds and, and of philanthropy and really flipping it on its head. My last point about this, and then we can totally move on, is our fee structure, because that is something compared to the traditional donor advised fund that really, really sets us apart.

[00:17:30] You know, we take a transaction fee, it's one and a half percent. It's super upfront and transparent on our website, and it's actually weighted at the throughput. So we take 0.5% when someone is making that initial investment into their donor advised fund, and we take 1% when it's going out to the receiving nonprofit.

[00:17:53] So we're actually financially incentivizing ourselves by taking a larger fee to get money out of the DAF and into the hands of nonprofits. Most traditional donor advisement providers are taking a fee based on assets under management. So if someone has $500,000 in their DA and they grant out $200,000, they're left with $300,000 and that.

[00:18:16] Donor advised fund provider is getting less money. So there's no financial incentive for these larger daph providers to actually get money out into the hands of nonprofits that need it imminently. So, you know, we're trying to really change the narrative and one of the reasons, and one of the ways we're doing that is with our fee structure in terms of waiting more on the output and on the throughput.

[00:18:40] Sorry. Not taking a fee based on how much money is actually in the donor advised fund. The adage, show me the incentive. I'll show you. The behavior is ringing in my ears. I wonder, coming back to the fact that you're built on Ethereum, which is a publicly auditable database living on the blockchain, that it's publicly available that I can check.

[00:19:04] You said words, they sounded. . Here's the thing. I can check that. I can check the holdings, I can look on the chain, I can see where the assets are and I can see where they aren't. I think that's a sort of like amazing trust but verify. Mm-hmm. that traditional DAFs just don't have for sure. And I think that maybe part of this ethos, it's, it's easier to stay honest when you're kept honest.

[00:19:31] For sure. We, we, That's something great about crypto Phil. Yeah, it's not just our board. You know, since we are structured as a nonprofit, you know, we do have a board of directors and it's not just our board us, us being accountable to our board and to our staff, right? But we're actually being accountable to our entire community and ecosystem.

[00:19:49] And even beyond that, because somebody who is not a donor to endowment, has no relation to endowment, can actually see that public trail on the blockchain. So anyone. Check our work can see the activity that's happening. And that for me personally, just coming out of the non-profit, traditional non-profit landscape is something that was really, really exciting about what endowment is doing.

[00:20:14] Because there is that public trail, you are able to check activity and it's just adding layers of transparency that people are really looking for. Both donors, non-profits, and just people in general. This world needs to be more transparent and upfront and, you know, inviting people into the conversation.

[00:20:33] And, you know, we definitely are doing that at endowment and, and we're kind of practicing what we're preaching as well.

[00:20:42] Okay. I was doing some back of the envelope math, so already asterisk. Be careful with that. 924 organizations have been the generous recipients of that amount of, you know, percent of 50 million that has been distributed. 924 is not a lot. That's actually a, a rather small distribution on average looks like $54,000, uh, headed toward, on average.

[00:21:06] These organizations, again, average is a dangerous number, probably throws against a power law for the distribution of this capital. So a sort of consolidation of cause. What is top of mind? What is noisiest? What is emotionally resonant of the moment? And as I explore some of the, the top organizations getting funds and community funds, it does seem like there is a pretty high consolidation around those topics of reproductive rights, of gun violence, of, as you mentioned, Ukraine.

[00:21:41] Can you tell me a bit about. How a nonprofit listening right now that is not the, in the limelight in the moment right now on that cause, how might they engage with this platform or at large crypto donors that seem to be following the shiny social issue of the moment? Sure. So I think it's important to note that, you know, we have nonprofits that are signed up with endowment that haven't.

[00:22:12] funds. Right? And that's okay because you are adding awareness to your donor community that you offer this type of giving vehicle. So you know, once a non-profit is onboarded with endowment, again, we're completely free for non-profits. So there's no contract. You know, nonprofits aren't paying. To potentially get a crypto donation.

[00:22:34] We're completely free. We're really offering this public goods infrastructure where we want every nonprofit to be able to benefit from, we call them crypto originated donations. Since we transfer it into US dollars, we want every nonprofit to be able to participate in this ecosystem and benefit from this new asset class and donor group without ever having to pay.

[00:22:55] Because if. Wait, it then all of the large nonprofits who have the budget will be able to benefit and the small grassroots nonprofits get left out. So when, you know, our CEO built endowment, that was really important to him to keep it free for all nonprofits. So that's like my first note is like, get set up with endowment.

[00:23:15] Like gonna give us a little shout out here. We're completely free. You don't have to pay and get set up and like start communicating to your donor base that you're now set up to receive crypto donations. So, You know, I always tell nonprofits like start spreading the word within your own donor community, right?

[00:23:32] If you are a nonprofit and you have a newsletter, if you use Twitter, if you use Facebook, if you use Instagram, spread the word because you don't know who's a crypto holder, and just because somebody hasn't come knocking on your door and saying, Hey, we have Bitcoin, do you accept? It? Doesn't mean that they're not holding crypto.

[00:23:49] The other aspect is on the donor education side, because. Right now, again, I'm not a cpa. This is not tax advice, like I'm not a financial professional. But crypto is tax the same way as stock is where if you have appreciated crypto assets or appreciated stock assets and you donate them to a 5 0 1 C three, you can mitigate your capital gains taxes while also taking a tax deduction.

[00:24:14] So there's actually a benefit financially why someone would donate crypto. There is an education gap because there are so many people out there who are holding crypto who would never think of it as an asset that you can donate. And I just think about non-profits and the education that they've had to do about stock donations.

[00:24:35] I mean, it has taken years and years to educate the masses that you can donate stock, and it's a change in behavior for people, you know, instead of donors putting. Their $5,000 donation on a credit card are sending you a check. If they have appreciated stock assets, they can actually donate it and it's beneficial for them and for the nonprofit.

[00:24:56] So once a nonprofit starts educating A that they are set up with a platform like endowment to receive the crypto donations, and B, start educating their donor community on the actual benefits of giving crypto, you'll probably see people coming out of the woodworks. So, That's kind of my plug for how nonprofits can kind of benefit from this and start spreading the word.

[00:25:21] And then you see nonprofits who are like totally embracing this crazy crypto community. You know, like there are nonprofits who, a lot of them are larger nonprofits, but they have a, you know, gaming in community manager, or they have like a dedicated staff person, whether on their development team or their marketing team who.

[00:25:42] On Twitter trying to find NFT projects to collaborate or learning more about the space. And I would just say like, you know, if you work at a non-profit and you're crypto curious, like do some research, like find out what's out there because there's a lot of people in the crypto space and in the nft, the non fungible token, like the little digital JPEGs as people call them.

[00:26:06] There are a lot of people who are looking to give back and to do good and just start like seeing what's out there. Because I'm not saying you should hire someone on your non-profit team to spearhead this, but if you're curious at all about the space, start doing research and talk to your team about it.

[00:26:22] Because there's people who wanna do good in this world and support non-profits. And you know, we, we now have created a platform where you're able to do. Yeah, it's, I mean, you're, you're spot on with regard to the opportunity. You know, there's, I'll, I'll pause on it cause I'm gonna put a pin in. There's no downside.

[00:26:44] I'm gonna put a pin in that for a second. Just to add to this, the idea that, because no one has come to you saying like, Hey, I'm a crypto donor, itching to give you money. Doesn't mean they're not out there. A recent study from Investipedia showed that 38% of millennials hold cryptocurrency, 38%. So there is a high probability that existing donors to your organization, uh, meaningful percent of them are, are already holding cryptocurrency.

[00:27:18] What's more, if we're talking about millennials, we're entering into in this. Five to 10 years, the largest wealth shift in human history of boomers, shifting wealth, transferring wealth to millennials. I'll let that sink in for a hot second, as you may write off. Now, that said, Alexis, it has been an adage that has kept me alive for quite some time of not being the first penguin in the.

[00:27:48] Are you familiar with that? Penguins actually, when they're trying to suss out whether or not there's a shark in the water before they go fishing, they'll all cuddle up right next to the edge, and whoever's the first penguin in the water, they see and they look over and they're like, Did Jim get eaten?

[00:28:03] Did he not get eaten ? And if it's safe, they all start jumping in and getting fish. Now where I'm going with this is that we're still pretty early. There's still a lot of confusion, I would say around. Whether or not accepting crypto hurts the environment supports terrorism. You know, blind, small puppies kills rainbows.

[00:28:25] In a more practical sense, earlier this year, Wikipedia chose to stop accepting crypto after having accepted it since very early on. Can you talk me through some of the pain points or potential honest downside? That are talked about with regard to non-profits choosing to move forward or not on accepting crypto.

[00:28:54] Sure. Before I get into that, I want, since you just gave that great stat on millennials with crypto, I wanna give another stat and stat. Stat sta an article. Sta sta sta . Yeah. So, and then I will get to your question, but so to add to that We just did an article in, In Giving Compass and in Candid, and I quoted a Fidelity research that said that, you know, One third, 33% of crypto holders have actually donated digital assets to nonprofits, and half, nearly half, 46% of those donors felt it was difficult to find charities, which directly accepted cryptocurrency donations.

[00:29:40] So that to me is saying that. People want to donate crypto, they just can't find non-profits to accept it, which is just going back to my point of like, get signed up. Because if it's not on your website and you're not promoting it, then people are gonna go elsewhere. So I just wanted to share that stat.

[00:29:59] It's something that I, you know, I have been sharing a lot recently because it just adds to the point about. Why it's so important for nonprofits to get set up to not have to pay for this, because people are looking to donate crypto and they just are gonna turn to the next nonprofit who is set up to receive it.

[00:30:17] So that is my stat add-on. To go to your point about, you know, kind of like the hesitations or maybe like the weaknesses in crypto, you know, It's a really interesting space because of a lot of the privacy and security and you know, when I first started with endowment, I was completely new to the crypto space and I had a lot of preconceived notions about like, Everyone in crypto is like a crypto tech bro, and they're sitting behind their computer and they, you know, like are all engineers.

[00:30:54] And I had all of these preconceived notions about like who is in crypto. And now that I do this for a living, I have met so many amazing people who are in the space who do not at all look like. What I imagined, and there is a huge women in crypto community that I'm, you know, I've connected with a lot of people who have similar backgrounds to me.

[00:31:17] I just found someone the other day who also has their master's in social work, and I'm like, I never thought sitting in my, you know, social justice class that I would be sitting here working at a crypto nonprofit, but here I am. So I think a lot of it is like the preconceived notions and the judgements that people make.

[00:31:34] Like there are a. Diverse people who are in the space. You know, crypto's also. International, Right? Really anyone who has access to internet can access crypto. And we've seen a lot of use cases of people who aren't able to access bank accounts, be able to open up a crypto wallet cuz all you need is an internet connection.

[00:31:57] So it's actually, there's a lot of use. Cases, especially in other countries of how people have been able to use crypto. Not just to give back like we're doing an endowment, but actually instead of traditional banking because for one reason or another they don't have access to traditional finance and banking means.

[00:32:14] So it's been a really interesting use case. On the flip side, there's a lot of securities and risks. Like I wouldn't encourage anyone to just open a crypto wallet if you don't know what you're doing. You need to be able to educate yourself on the landscape. And you see all the same headlines as I do with different protocols who are going belly up and CEOs leaving, and there's a lot of noise in the space for sure.

[00:32:39] And part of it is like having a trusted source of where to turn to. And I think for. I'm grateful that when I started with endowment, my team was super helpful in educating me and telling me like, Don't interact with this company or protocol and this is where you should focus your efforts. And you know, like different podcasts to listen to and blogs to read because there is a lot of noise and that is really important because you don't know what.

[00:33:09] Fake and what's not, and you don't know what's legitimate and what's not. So that's definitely a hurdle because if you don't have a team like endowment or a friend who's in the space, it is really hard to know what's valid and what's not. You know, speaking to like some of the environmental impacts, you know, like we're built on the Ethereum blockchain and we just moved to proof of stake, which just lowered the environmental impacts by 99 point, like nine, 7% or something.

[00:33:36] You know, a lot of other things in our world today take up a lot of energy and. Ethereum just merge, which I don't need to go into the details, but basically like the energy consumption that Ethereum is using has been increasingly lowered which has been huge for the industry. And, you know, we do work with environmental nonprofits that are signed up with us and like see the, that the benefits are kind of outweighing the, the negatives.

[00:34:03] Is there anything else specifically you wanted me to touch on in terms of like, The negatives, I guess, of the crypto space or, or the perceived negatives of the space? I suppose if there was a I'm, I guess I'm in the mind of a non-profit that is worried that they start talking about the word crypto and those headlines of fraud, of criminal activity of, you already mentioned the environmental component, which is awesome.

[00:34:35] Just. Make sure that that is clear as a bell because you are on Ethereum, literally because you exist when somebody moves their money onto there, connects their wallet and moves their Bitcoin, there it is liquidated and is actually on an energy efficient network. You are actually a net positive for moving cryptocurrencies onto a green network quite literally.

[00:34:56] So that is hopefully becoming a moot point. The criminal activity one could be one that, let's just say older donors assume that it's all Silk Road type of nefarious activities. Russian billionaires being able to avoid sanctions, fill in the blank. Cnbc, uninformed post about how crypto's being used, how is that responded to, or can it be responded to because the same arguments can, should be made about cash.

[00:35:29] Cash is the number one full stop used for criminal activity worldwide. Yeah, so, you know, I will say with endowment there, you know, there's a, an ofac like bad actor, bad wallet list that exists and. We are crosschecking wallets that interact with endowment. I don't know the, you know, I'm not, I'm not on the engineering team, so I don't know the logistics of how it happens, but you know, because people interact with our platform using their wallet, we are able to crosscheck it on the ofac.

[00:36:07] Bad actor wallet list. So that is, you know, for us as an organization, that's kind of how we are checking ourselves to your point. Exactly. There is bad stuff going on in every industry, whether that's with crypto, whether that's with cash. There are bad actors everywhere in this world. And you know, we've seen it a lot in philanthropy, like people are.

[00:36:31] Making a lot of money with their company that's maybe not doing so good in the world, and they're parking their money to be charitable and they're getting buildings named after them, and that money is dirty money essentially. So I would say like, this is my personal opinion, that. It's happening everywhere.

[00:36:50] And that just because the headlines are talking about crypto now doesn't mean that that doesn't exist in the world today. And you know, if anything, using a platform like us, people are charitably inclined and they're doing good in the world. And you know, our donors also like, Most of our donors are under the age of 45.

[00:37:09] Most of our donors have made their wealth in a very short amount of time and feel so grateful to give back to the communities that have helped them or that they live in, or that they've benefited from. You know, time and time again, we talk to donors and they say, I've never been able to give more than $500 to charity, and now I'm giving $50,000 or $500,000.

[00:37:29] And just the. Heartwarming sentiments of these people who have made a lot of money in a short amount of time is really, really inspiring. So there are bad actors everywhere. There are also people who are incredibly generous and philanthropic and wanna give back, and in my opinion, the headlines need to focus more on the use cases for crypto and how it's being used for good and how it's helping people who don't have access to bank accounts as opposed to the opposite area.

[00:37:59] Gotcha. Yeah. And thanks for, for making that point. I know it's, uh, it, it's one that probably comes up, uh, a bit. I wanna talk about one more feature on the site before we run out of time here, which are your community funds, because I think it lends itself potentially to a strategy. Can you explain what these funds are?

[00:38:18] I'm on the site and I'm seeing something like the Art Blocks Fund or the end guidance ending. And gun violence fund advised by hug and some are advised by endowment. I'm interested actually, if you can talk about the ones that are advised by other projects and other groups here. What is this? So community funds are.

[00:38:43] Really think of them as area of interest funds. So somebody could come to our site and open up a fund that is supporting gun violence, that is supporting reproductive rights or Ukraine. And these community funds are most often utilized by groups of people, whether that's an NFT project, whether that. We talked about Dows in the beginning of this conversation, whether that's advised by a Dow, whether that's advised by a group of friends, and it's really a great way to be able to raise money for the cause or area of interest that you care about.

[00:39:23] So we saw this. With reproductive rights, right? So endowment as an entity set up a protect reproductive rights fund where we vetted seven non-profits, both national and local. We wanted a combination of, you know, like the more well known organizations paired with the small grassroots non-profits. We identified seven non-profits that we were gonna split donations to those organizations.

[00:39:51] So anyone. Come to our site, make a donation to our Protect reproductive rights fund, and we would evenly distribute to those seven non-profits. That was a great opportunity for anyone who wanted to support the cause, but didn't know where to turn to or didn't wanna do the research on their own. In addition to that, we had other groups of people and FT.

[00:40:11] Artists dows different protocols, some companies that opened up their own funds that they could actually fundraise from. So an example. There's a Dow, an NFT project called Cowgirl Dow and Molly Dixon, who's their founder and artist, she set up a. Fund where a hundred percent of the NFTs were supporting various reproductive rights nonprofits.

[00:40:38] So anyone who purchased one of her NFTs, a hundred percent of the proceeds were going to this fund. And then she was using her community to actually vote on what nonprofits to support. So it was giving people a voice, giving them a say in how the funds are being distributed. And then because it was.

[00:40:57] Public fund on endowment. Anyone could just donate into that fund. You didn't have to purchase an nft. You could just go to her fund, make a donation, and know that your money was supporting reproductive rights nonprofits. So they're a really great tool in vehicle for kind of that collective giving model.

[00:41:16] You know, like in. A lot of nonprofits offer giving circles or have a way where people can kind of pool their funds together and distribute among various nonprofits, and that's essentially what our community funds are doing, is giving a say to various communities across the country that want to give back to a specific area of interest and mobilize their community to get involved in some capacity.

[00:41:40] Gotcha. This is the index fund of non-profits that I think I was thinking of earlier, but what great functionality and also transparent, again because it is built on the blockchain. Alexis, thank you so much. Are there any final thoughts, bits of advice, stats, , that that's, that you were hoping to share before we sign?

[00:42:05] No, this is, This has been great. I mean, I would just add, you know, End of year and it's giving season. And I would encourage, you know, from the donor side of things, if anyone has it, if anyone's listening and has cryptocurrency, please consider donating to your favorite nonprofit. And from the nonprofit side, get signed up with us before the end of the year.

[00:42:27] Or just do some research and like figure out what works for you. Or just survey your community and see if anyone has crypto. Like take an action, do something out of your comfort zone, this giving season. And. , you don't know where it'll lead. And I, I will end with that, but this has been great and you know, I'll give a little plug.

[00:42:46] Like for anyone who wants to learn more we have a whole like resource. Center, we have a crypto 1 0 1 dictionary for nonprofits who have heard terms like blockchain and dow and don't know what they mean and wanna learn more. It's on our website. You know, we are really here as an educational resource and if anyone has questions they're curious about the space, like please reach out to us.

[00:43:06] Our website is endowment.org or on twitter@endowment.org on Discord. You can email us. All of the links will be shared in the show notes and. Thank you George, this, this has been a great conversation. Well, thanks for your time and we appreciate the work. Thanks.

Greenpeace: ”Recycling is Futile” (news)

Reality of Recycling Comes To Forefront As Environmental Concerns Peak 

Nonprofit Greenpeace has released a new report acknowledging the gross inefficiencies and near futility of recycling, as reported by Grist. The report highlights that even while the use of plastics across the world surges, the amount of plastic that gets recycled has decreased, a symptom of a solution no match for the scale of a problem it hopes to address. Greenpeace states that “U.S. households generated an estimated 51 million tons of plastic waste in 2021, only 2.4 million tons of which was recycled.” Because of the complexities of sorting, the chemical hazards of the process, and the use of low-grade plastics, the U.S.’s recycling infrastructure is abysmally short of where it needs to be to reduce plastic waste. This report comes as the United Nations-sponsored COP27 climate summit commences in Egypt, where U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has warned the world is on a “highway to climate hell,” set against a backdrop of war and economic crises.

 

Summary

• With Twitter in chaos, Mastodon is on fire | CNN Business | CNN
• Ashton Kutcher finishes NYC Marathon, raises $1M for his nonprofit | TODAY.com
• Election officials facing armed militia presence at some polls | CNBC
• 200-foot sub to benefit food-rescue nonprofit | YourArlington.com 

 

Voter Engagement Can’t Be One-and-Done | Voter Empowerment Project

Interview with Dave Chandrasekaran, Co-founder and Executive Director of the Voter Empowerment Project. VEP leverages skilled volunteers to help front-line community-based organizations that work on voter engagement. Dave shares how they engage volunteers to support communities over time rather than just every 2 years. 

 

Learn how trust was built with CBO's over time and how skill-based volunteering is creating amazing impact. 

 

The Voter Empowerment Project (VEP) is a grassroots initiative that launched in November 2019 and mobilizes individuals to support voter turnout in high-need areas. VEP’s network of volunteer professionals provides remote technical assistance to small, high-impact, front-line organizations that mobilize voters in historically disadvantaged communities.

 

Find VEP on:

• https://twitter.com/EmpowerVoters 
• https://www.instagram.com/empowervoters/ 
• https://www.facebook.com/empowervoters 
• Volunteer here

 

 

Rough Transcript

 

[00:00:00] We have a very timely guest on with the midterms coming up. We reached out to the voter empowerment project, voter empowerment.org, voter empowerment.org, and we found none other then the co-founder and executive director Dave Chandresakaran to join us on the podcast.

[00:00:46] Dave, how is it? It's going great, George.

[00:00:48] Thanks so much for having me on.

[00:00:51] Well, I could imagine, I don't know, a million other things that you are racing to do as we approach such a important time in American Politic, but I maybe we could start with your story. How did, how did this begin? I, I know 2019 was the year, but maybe you

[00:01:08] can bring us back.

[00:01:09] Sure. Our founding was back in 2019, but it really was inspired by some experiences several of us had in 2016. And I, along with many of my colleagues who are here based in the DC area, we like to every election cycle go knock on doors and go phone bank, and we try to recruit as many of our friends and colleagues to come and do the.

[00:01:30] And so in 2016, many of us were in Pennsylvania. And on, on one day I was in South Philadelphia knocking on some doors, predominantly African-American neighborhood. And there was an older black gentleman who answered the door in one case and had no interest in voting. And he explained that was because quote, you people come here every four years, you yell at us to go vote and you leave because you don't give a damn.

[00:01:52] That's something that when I tell that story, often everyone in the room nods their head. They've all experienced that when they're doing election related work. But I think the problem was as I spoke to some of my colleagues in the campaign sector, they said, You know, that's what happens. You talk to 10 million voters and you upset 2 million of 'em.

[00:02:07] It's just collateral damage. And I think as we experience what happened to people, especially communities of color after the 2016 election and for the years afterwards, a lot of people were absolutely suffering, especially people of color. And when we approached 2020, I really didn't wanna perpetuate that situation of having out of towners, parachute into black and brown neighborhoods and just tell them what to do and then leave.

[00:02:31] And so we really, were brainstorming in 2019, how can we still activate volunteers from around the country, but do so in a way that's more respectful, that's gonna have, you know, meaningful impact and really values the communities we're talking to. And so we recognize that. Hundreds or thousands of really small, amazing non-profits out there that are doing this work.

[00:02:52] And they do it year round and they're based in the community. They reflect the community. They work not just on elections or voter empower, empowerment or civics. They also work on housing and healthcare and education and criminal justice reform. So they just have far more trust in their communities, but a lot of them are under.

[00:03:10] And so we thought, why don't we find volunteers from around the country, all of whom are just really smart and have a lot of skills, and let's go to these fall nonprofits and let's say, Hey, if you have access to our network of just really smart people, what could we do for you? And so that morphed into this model where we kind of became a pro bono consulting firm for small organizations that were at the front lines of helping get out.

[00:03:32] That's

[00:03:32] so interesting cuz you hear this, You know, you people come here every four years and tell us to go vote. It's like there's this giant voter apparatus, this amazing engine that gets revved up with the order of billions of dollars and then disappears, vanishes overnight. and it in one way makes complete sense.

[00:03:55] It, it seems like there's just like a lack of feedback loops because I imagine the other side of the narrative, the people that are working for progressive change in these neighborhoods say, Well, well, well, yeah, well, we're going to do the work. Didn't you see that, this or that, or the things that happen, How do you view the, the underlying problem here?

[00:04:12] I've labeled it as a feedback loop, but clearly that's over.

[00:04:15] Sure. So if you think of the sort of electoral industrial complex, it's a multi-billion dollar industry that pops up every two years, every four. I recognize that for better, for worse, that's how our electoral system works. It's donors going to campaigns to political action committees, and then hundreds of millions of dollars spent mostly on advertising, on networks and digital space.

[00:04:37] And the whole goal is either to persuade people to vote for your candidate or to eventually get them to come out to vote. And that's not gonna change any time soon. But for those of us who want to participate in a way that's maybe. We have built our model recognizing that there's amazing groups who do this work, who can help build trust among folks who are disenfranchised, who've really been left behind and can earn their trust.

[00:05:00] When we then go and say, Hey, we'd love for you to register to vote. If you aren't, or we know you're registered, we'd love for you to go and exercise your right to vote. And what can we do to help you if there's barriers because of voter suppression laws, because of the difficulty in finding your polling place because you move.

[00:05:14] and I wish there was more emphasis on that to the larger, broader industry that's working on elections to realize that investing in these groups and doing so not just every two years or four years, but year round, that really helps a lot of these groups report that's funding comes, you know, the summer before an election.

[00:05:30] There's all this beltway influence on them of what they need to do with strings attached to the funding and then it disappear. So they hire people and then have to fire people and then find new ones again. And then, you know, and one thing I'm very thankful of is that a lot of the philanthropic community who cares about civic engagement and democracy have really moved more to this longer term investment in these kinds of organizations, multi-year grants that are big enough that they can hire and train quality staff, that they can use some of that money to invest in the community through outreach and events.

[00:06:01] And I think that is having an. But I'll be honest, as you know, the rise in voter suppression in many states around the country is making the task of helping people vote all the more difficult, You know, dozens of laws have been passed in, in many, many states that are specifically targeted at help, making it harder to vote, especially for people of color and other disfranchised communities.

[00:06:21] So I do hope that the larger industry that cares about voting rights will really look at how we invest that. and the support, not just episodically, but year round over the long term, and helping these groups really expand their impact over time.

[00:06:37] I do wanna get more into how you are working with volunteers, training them, placing them, connecting them.

[00:06:44] But I'm also curious because there's a sizeable voter engagement and, you know, midterm circus going on right now. I know you're focused on the overall, like how do we build over time, But I have you in this moment. What is top of mind for you right now? What are you looking for as we roll into what's gonna be a very noisy week

[00:07:05] politically?

[00:07:06]

[00:07:06] Our model has two. One is helping amazing small, high-impact organizations working at the state and local level who are mobilizing communities of color and rural Americans and returning citizens and first time voters and young people, and we want to really help them expand their impact.

[00:07:24] The second objective though, is activating more people in civic engagement, and so we really prioritize creating volunteer opportunities that are more accessible and meaningful and engaging. For people who otherwise wouldn't get involved. And in fact, in our first year of operations, over 80% had only participated in less than three campaign cycles.

[00:07:46] 40% had never been involved. So we see that as our mission in addition to helping frontline work. And where that really comes in this year though, is what many people are noticing traditionally in midterm election. The enthusiasm among voters and the enthusiasm among volunteers and the enthusiasm among donors is just significantly lower than presidential years.

[00:08:07] And I can honestly say that 2020 probably had the most attention compared to, you know, decades of elections. And I think we all understand why it was a very intense election. There was very vitriolic. But that really has had an impact on us when we're trying to find more people to participate as volunteers.

[00:08:21] It was much more difficult this year compared to 20. So that was huge lessons in what we need to do in a year on fact function of engaging volunteers, building opportunities that will keep them involved, keep them enthusiastic and make sure that they're available to support these groups in a year round fashion.

[00:08:38] Since that's the one, one of the most important things, I think we're seeing that the vitriol and, and devices and politics is not going, not going away anytime soon. And that certainly motivates some people. But there was a lot of people who were volunteers with us and a lot of the groups we. They just really care about helping people get out to vote.

[00:08:54] It doesn't matter whether you're liberal or conservative, it doesn't matter, you know, where the voter is in the country. Everyone should be able to exercise their right to vote, especially those who've been disenfranchised. And I think that's been a huge selling point to a lot of the volunteers that we talk to, rather than door knocking or phone banking and talking to strangers on the phone.

[00:09:11] And, you know, that's a very difficult circumstance difficult activity, and frankly, not everyone's good at. . But instead of that they can use their existing skills helping really amazing frontline groups and the staff they get to interact with. It's, it's just a much more pleasant experience. And so we certainly hope despite lower enthusiasm in these quote unquote off years, we wanna figure out how we can grow our impact in recruiting volunteers so that we're delivering for the groups that we're helping.

[00:09:33] That makes sense. And so, Maybe you could say a bit more about, I think on a macro level, I will also say that we've seen a, a decrease in, in volunteers. There are, you know, big picture things like employment levels after effects of covid involved in this, as well as inflation costs of gas for transport.

[00:09:54] That volunteering in general seems to be on a bit of a decline. What is your hope though, when you recruit volunteers at this time of year? There's a sudden surge, albeit much lower than our every four year. This is an off cycle. What is your hope though, in, in raising the, the visibility of the voter empowerment project, in front of volunteers?

[00:10:18] I guess at this

[00:10:19] moment

[00:10:19] we are very much interested next year and focusing on understanding what motivates people to volunteer, what excites them about it, and what can we do. To earn their participation. So for example, we're really broadening our investment in professional development. So we recruit volunteers. The youngest was 14 in 2020.

[00:10:40] The oldest was much, much older. They are anywhere from students in high school and college to early career professionals, to executives, to retirees. But especially for the younger volunteers, we know that there's a way we can help them develop. Help them find mentors, help them as they advance in their careers or in their education.

[00:10:58] And so we really wanna highlight that. We wanna develop that more formally so that when we approach, you know, the masses we wanna recruit to volunteer, we can say this is something that you benefit from as well. So that it doesn't rely on people's political motivation or the intensity of an election cycle.

[00:11:11] It's just an opportunity that they see that's meaningful to them. We also want to convey that volunteering to help other people vote. Perhaps it's just something everyone should. For those of us who have an easier time to vote, maybe that's a way of giving back the way. Volunteering at a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving, or helping to mentor young people in your nearby schools.

[00:11:31] Those are things that many of us have done over the years. This is something we all should just do and everyone can do it whenever you have time using your existing skills. We really believe that it doesn't matter what skills you have. Maybe you have graphic design, social media skills, data analysis.

[00:11:44] We need a lot of. But also just people who are really good at Googling information or really good at just writing and building information putting up to da the documents calling volunteers of a small nonprofit and getting them to come out to volunteer. There's a lot of ways people can help and, and it, so we're gonna spend a lot of time next year figuring out both what to offer and then how to take that message out to the public when we recruit volunteers.

[00:12:07] Yeah, it's a couple steps removed, I imagine, on off cycle years and timing. It is. Potentially tough to connect that, that impact, right? A volunteer who hands out and creates, you know, impact in a soup kitchen is very different than someone who builds capacity in a frontline voter empowerment organization on the ground somewhere doing, you know, as you mentioned, data analysis or marketing, pr, communications, research.

[00:12:38] You know, you're helping the people who are helping the people who are then going to vote. How, you know, are these times of year, maybe I'm getting into more specifically here, are these times of year easier because voting and the importance of voting is top of mind for recruiting volunteers? Or is it just so noisy that it is other sort of more, we'll say soup kitchen focused direct service on the ground, smile and dial types of volunteering that that overtake these.

[00:13:07] The first thing I'll say is we really wanna say there's no such thing as an off year. That voting is a thing we should think about always, regardless of whether it's midterm or presidential election. And in fact, in many places, your state or your local municipal government will have elections in odd numbered years.

[00:13:25] And there's many elections that happen. Some happen early in the year even. And so we want. Both voters understand the importance of coming out to vote, but also volunteers understanding the importance to volunteer throughout the year, throughout different cycles. And we recognize though that, that the larger narrative around what's happening, presidential election, you know, Democrats are Republicans, that's probably gonna motivate most people, but we really think that there were a lot of volunteers in 2020 who wanted to get involved, didn't know how, and once they did, they were really eager to come.

[00:13:56] Our post activity survey in 2021 showed that 97% were interested in volunteering again, and 86% said that they just had a deeper understanding of issues around voter disenfranchisement. And over 60% said that really helped them understand issues around racial injustice. And so we hope that once folks get in the door and they participate once that, they'll really come back.

[00:14:18] And we have seen that. But you're right, there's, there's, nothing's gonna make it easy to build enthusiasm at a time. People have been overwhelmed and traumatized by the pandemic and by other issues and political vitriol and criminal justice reform issues. So we wanna also be empathetic to that.

[00:14:33] Our big motto is that those who want to help, here's an opportunity for one way you can. And there's many, many ways you can help, whether it's in voting or other ways. We just wanna create a very attractive one for the people that it'll benefit and who who would like to, to get involved. And so that's really on us to make that volunteer opportunity attractive.

[00:14:51] And one of the things the volunteers really said, they appreciated volunteering in a nonpartisan way. They appreciated working with these frontline groups, most of whom are led by staff of color, who were just genuinely amazing people. And some of our volunteers built really great relationships with the staff of those groups on the ground, even if they lived a thousand miles away.

[00:15:10] Some of them joined the boards of these organizations. Some of them became direct volunteers for these organizations. Some of them became donors. So I really think that experience is one that makes it worthwhile and we hope to really amplify that message by saying, Here's this great opportunity not just to help the public, but really to help you as well.

[00:15:26] I really

[00:15:27] am interested in how you're crafting this volunteer experience. Clearly based on the, you know, exit polling, , the surveying that you're doing of volunteers that are, are part of. It is working. How many volunteers have gone through this process? Can you gimme an idea of some of the numbers and then as much as you can, Like what kind of impact can you tell these volunteers are having given the wide range of services that these volunteers are then providing to frontline

[00:15:56] organizations?

[00:15:58] Since the start of 2019 when we launched, we've had, you know, close to 500 people sign up, interested in volunteering. About a half of them eventually ended up participating, getting onboarded, getting involved in a project. But I'd say about 180 or so have been like really active in doing, in delivering services.

[00:16:15] And we certainly hope in the future to double or triple that number once we expand our capacity. We know. For most volunteers, it's really hard to balance their work commitments and other things going on in their lives during a pandemic childcare, a lot of you know a lot, and that's why we allow volunteers to volunteer when you have time.

[00:16:36] Do you have a couple hours this week? Great. If that's, if there's a project that needs someone to help edit a newsletter and you have time to do it, great. Do it. And then if you're busy for a month, that's okay. And when you're free again, come back and we'll offer what other projects are. We also want to make sure that the groups we're helping are able to receive our help without adding burden to them.

[00:16:54] And that's why one of the most important things we do is we manage the delivery of services. A lot of groups match people, They match volunteers to organizations, and I think that model absolutely works as well. But we wanted to be careful because. We didn't want the organizations to have to have an additional thing or additional person to have to oversee.

[00:17:12] So we just get the info from an organization. Let's say they wanna update their website, They want new information on their civic engagement page. They just don't have time to research it. They don't have time to upload it. We'll find a volunteer who can do the research. We'll find a volunteer who can then take that information and write copy to go on the website.

[00:17:26] And then we'll find a website expert who can then take it and put it up online, maybe a graphic design volunteer. We'll create some great graphics with it and add it to that webpage. And so, you know, multiple people are working on a. And we can get this done in maybe a week. And if folks want to go out and hire people, if they had the funds that could take, you know, three weeks just to sign the contract and then months of meetings, and then maybe it's update.

[00:17:47] So we really value our rapid response process to help these groups who are in need, who just don't have the time or capacity to do it in house. This is such an

[00:17:57] important point, and I'm really happy that we're turning towards it because I think there's this myth. All you have to do is point a volunteer at a nonprofit and boom, good things happen.

[00:18:08] Ignoring the amount, the amazing amount of project management, organizing, messaging, and generally corralling of volunteers to have an actual workable product created. Maybe you can dig a little bit deeper into how this actually works, because it sounds like you are effectively running an agency. That is leveraging volunteers to have finite

[00:18:36] deliverables

[00:18:37] that can be relied on by these organizations.

[00:18:42] Like, What, This sounds like a PM circus. What is going on? How are you doing

[00:18:46] this? So we often describe ourselves as a pro bono consulting forum for small, under-resourced voting rights organizations at the front lines of voter engage. But I think that sounds a little corporate. So we really consider ourselves an organization that gives free technical assistance in a way that is tailored to what an organization drives is their needs.

[00:19:08] But you're right, managing all of the different projects is an enormous hercule effort, and it's not insignificant. And that's one of the reasons we're really, you know, aggressively trying to raise more money from foundations, from donors, so that we can hire more staff. It really just comes down to. Good people who are organized, who can help recruit volunteers, who can help identify the great frontline groups that are doing voter engagement, and then who can help assign the volunteers of the work.

[00:19:34] But the most important is following up and making sure the services get delivered, especially since volunteers are donating their time. It's not like their staff, It's not like you have that ability to sort of really just directly have that authority to sort of order them to get certain things done.

[00:19:47] You're really asking for. , which is why we are very supportive in helping. Any time a volunteer needs help or needs information from the organization, we can help facilitate that if needed. Anytime the organization feels like a volunteer maybe isn't responding we'll step in and figure out what's going on and just wanna make sure that soup to nuts, everything gets done.

[00:20:06] And that's our really we pride ourselves in delivering things on time and in a satisfactory fashion. In a way that's equal to or better than what a private sector consulting firm would do because these groups deserve that. They don't deserve second tier service.

[00:20:21] We were talking with the podcast r i p, medical debt and how they turn $1 into a hundred dollars of leverage to alleviate medical debt.

[00:20:30] I see for voter empowerment dot. That you actually can, can claim that you are getting a three to one, right? You're getting matched on your generous founders, which is awesome. Can you explain maybe, is there a leverage where I donate $1 to essentially your amazing project managers there who are organizing all of these volunteers and these hours, Like what type of leverage do you see happening with dollars put into the organiz?

[00:21:02] Yep. I appreciate you bringing up our current fall fundraising campaign. Our, one of our board members has generously agreed to put up $10,000 in matching funds. She's gonna donate $200 for every donor who contributes this fall, and so we're very excited to be able to expand our impact by securing more funds that can both help us, you know, invest in hiring more staff, but also in different projects like our professional development program.

[00:21:31] That's gonna help create opportunities for skills training and mentorship for our volunteers as well as for staff at the partners, because a lot of our frontline partners said we really would love more professional development opportunities, but we also wanna see how we can leverage getting more financial and other types of resources to our frontline partners.

[00:21:48] And so, for example, in 2020, We recognized that a lot of our organization partners had never had voter file data before to help them target their messaging, target, their outreach, door knocking, et cetera. So we said, How can we help you access voter file data? And so we found some opportunities where they existed that were actually pretty affordable, but they didn't have it in their budget.

[00:22:07] So we were able to raise a bit of money from some donors to pay for that voter. But then we realized we have this voter file data. Well now you need to use text banking tools and phone banking tools, et cetera. And some of them didn't have that. And so we said, Okay, why don't for, you know, for the next three months, we'll pay for those services for you so you can get it off the ground.

[00:22:24] And then a lot of them had never done paid advertising on social media before, which is another key way to reach certain demographics. And so again, we were able to raise a bit of money to help them fund their digital marketing campaigns that we ran through volunteers, but we needed that tiny bit of money to help it get out the door.

[00:22:40] So that's another area where we're willing wanna expand our project to help support these organizations. And donor and foundation support is gonna be critical to.

[00:22:48] Yeah, there's a lot of leverage happening here. I, I don't know if it's even possible to say like, Oh, we do this many projects. This is the average size, this is the average output, or however it would come across.

[00:22:59] But this is a leverage play very clearly, where you are able to create the, the tool, get access to the data, and then. Offer it to organizations that need it the most, on the front line and also, you know, it seems like provide funding to them on occasion as well.

[00:23:16] Yeah, we've executed several hundred projects for the organizations and from a wide range.

[00:23:21] It could be revamping or redoing many of their websites and no critique to non-profits. But our websites are not known for being cutting edge . And we were fortunate enough to have several computer science students who then became graduates from Stanford, who were just amazing at this stuff. And we also created, you know, 50 to a hundred pieces of individual social media content, graphics, cap.

[00:23:43] That were plug and play for several organizations based on topics they described, or we analyzed voter file data for them to help them create targets of who they should go doorknob to, who they should phone bank based on the demographics and the zip codes that they wanted to focus on. Or we actually helped some groups figure out how to do volunteer recruitment better, so it could be anywhere from as simple as updating their volunteer signup form on their website to collect the information they need to better use their volunteers.

[00:24:10] To researching what are some great student groups in your area? Or if you need, say, volunteers who speak Korean or Vietnamese, let's find some networks of people who speak that. And then we would actually engage those organizations to recruit those volunteers to the frontline partners. So the projects were, were really diverse.

[00:24:25] And some would take an hour or three hours. Some would take, you know, once a week for, for three months to help execute. And it just, A broad range of ways. We help organizations and the, and create them in a way that volunteers who have different time, different skill sets and different interests can really plug in wherever they want.

[00:24:42] Yeah. This

[00:24:43] is, this is great. I'm, I feel like I'm being sold to become a volunteer. I'm like, Oh, I know how to do that. I could do that. I could, I know how this would work. Talk me through. I'd go, I would sign up on the form and then I'm contacted. I imagine I'm vetted to some extent. What would my experience be?

[00:25:00] And I guess maybe it also depends on the time of year, because right now, let's just be honest, , you're volunteering to like work for the next week. This is not the, you know, maybe the right flow, but big picture, if you care about voter engagement, it seems like a great use of, of energy and skill. So walk me through what that, you know, onboarding, What does it feel

[00:25:20] like?

[00:25:20] What does it look. Well first off, George, I absolutely would like to recruit you to come volunteer, and I know several groups have been interested in launching podcasts. Your expertise would be very, very well received. Oh, yikes. . So, in terms of the process you know, if you find our website, voter empowerment.org, you know, you can click there to sign up to volunteer, and.

[00:25:40] You know, you'll, we'll reach out to you pretty quickly and just say Thank you for volunteering. The signup form includes an opportunity for you to list what are the different skills you might have. It might be creative, like graphic design or social media or writing. It might be technical, like web design or data analysis.

[00:25:56] Or computer programming, or it might be sort of logistics, an administration, like helping to recruit volunteers or helping with backend HR operations. and we'll, we'll onboard volunteers just to give an overview of what the experience is like and we really get a sense of, well, what kind of time, you know, do you have now over time, over the year?

[00:26:16] And then we can add you to our list of volunteers based on the skill set you said you have. And as we approach organizations throughout the year and they share with us, Hey, right now I really need someone to help me draft some new social media content, we'll reach out to anyone who said they had social media expertise and say, Is anyone available to help this amazing.

[00:26:33] Asian Pacific Islander Outreach Group in Arizona or in North Carolina create some new social media content targeting youth from API backgrounds. . And so we see which volunteer might have both the skill set, but also the sort of experience in those communities that can help volunteer. And then we'll, we'll, you know, ma link the organization and the volunteer and we'll oversee the process, provide them with any information and support and check in as they, you know, create the social media content.

[00:26:59] We'll make sure it meets the needs of the partner, ultimately leading to creating, you know, a Google Drive full of content that the organization can, can use. And once that volunteer's completed, you know, we like to check in and see how things. and then the volunteers sort of able to come back whenever they, they are interested or if they get busy, they're, you know, we understand that and we, we, you know, give them their space cuz everyone has a lot going on.

[00:27:20] But it really is flexible, built around your, your availability, your skills, and your interests. The other thing we do is that we know some people might come in with a little bit of knowledge of something, but not a lot. And maybe they wanna enhance those. So let's say you're, you know, preliminarily good at some website design, or maybe you're someone who likes the, you know, you wanna learn more about fundraising.

[00:27:41] Well, maybe we'll pair you with a volunteer who's an expert in that on a project so you can get some sort of apprenticeship exposure. And we hope that you can develop those skills as a volunteer. Not just to be able to help other partners through v e P over time, but also that can add to your skill set as you develop your own career and can apply for jobs that look for those kind of skills.

[00:28:01] So like I said, we really want to invest in the people participating in the program as much as we're investing in the organizations we're serving.

[00:28:06] Yeah. That, you know, that makes, that makes sense in terms of just like the amount of time, like how much time is like, I'm gonna fill out this form. I'm like going through right now, I'm entering in my skills and the extra pieces that I can.

[00:28:18] You know, what is the amount of time before I would be potentially placed on a project? Or is it, it's like I get called in if the project arises that matches

[00:28:26] it. The volunteer can get invited whenever we have any project that seems to meet their skill set. So it might be that someone signs up and maybe they're someone who has video editing and video prediction skills.

[00:28:37] And at the moment there isn't an organization who needs that. Well, it might be, you know, we're not gonna reach out to that volunteer right away until we have that. But for many of the groups, they have such a broad range of needs for, for so many different skill sets that most volunteers have something that fits some project that's open.

[00:28:53] It can be as complex as doing some really sophisticated regression analysis of something, something through data, data tools, or it can be as simple as data. Just need to find out what is the demographic breakdown among 18 a plus year old in Milwaukee. Folks can just quickly research that and pull together and make it into a little, you know, worksheet that they provide to the partner.

[00:29:17] So for most volunteers, we really will have an opportunity right away. Now you did mention, you know, how about right now we're less than a week away from the election, and it's true that most things towards the election is already in motion. But one of the things the organization said very clearly is that when they need help is not only September through.

[00:29:37] Perhaps even more important, starting next year, January through next summer, the summer of 2024, that's when they have time to work on things, to take on new projects. That's when they really want to test out new tools or new ways of doing outreach. That's when they'd like to learn and take trainings on how to, they can improve their social media skills.

[00:29:58] So we really are aggressively inviting people to sign up, to volunteer right now while elections are on their. So they can help us out, you know, in November, in December, and into next year, which I think is gonna make or break voter turnout in 2024, if that's something people care about.

[00:30:13] The human

[00:30:14] response to emotion and disaster thinking and of the moment is gotta be so frustrating for you. We donate and we're triggered to donate to disasters, hurricanes, when they happen, and then the interest die. As well as the attention and then the commitment to it falls off. So it really does seem like when people are motivated in this window is, is when you would recruit the most volunteers.

[00:30:40] Is that accurate

[00:30:42] or do I have this wrong? It's a hundred percent accurate that people are certainly more motivated to donate or volunteer. In the moment in a crisis in response to a, a severe event, whether that's, as you mentioned, hurricanes like Katrina or the tsunami in Southeast Asia or it's in the aftermath of earthquakes or, you know, horrible, horrific mass shootings in the US And then certainly elections and 2020 was probably a hallmark sign of how so many people were interested in getting involved.

[00:31:11] And some found a way, but many didn't. And so we were one opportunity that many people got. And like I mentioned, a lot of folks said they appreciated our opportunity cause it was unique. It allowed them to use their existing skills and didn't put them outta their comfort zone and let them work with amazing small, frontline person of color led organizations.

[00:31:29] But I think that's the reality and I don't blame anyone for being reactive when it comes to their tism in their philanthropy or their volunteer time. I think that's just part of human nature. And that certainly was the case for me when I was younger and, you know, I evolved to become someone who really got.

[00:31:44] Year round. Volunteerism is a good thing, not just for the community, but for myself. And it can help me advance and grow as a person and in my career. So I take it upon ourselves to help educate the public that, you know, next year, next January, February, is as far away from an election cycle as you can be.

[00:32:01] That's gonna, you know, really be on people's minds, but that might be the best time to come. Volunt. And we want to earn folks interest in that by creating opportunities that are easy, that are meaningful, that are rewarding by investing their professional development. But really, we're gonna sit down with all of the frontline organizations we work with, and we work with over 30, and we hope to grow that we're gonna find out what do you need now in 2023 to help you grow?

[00:32:25] I wanna take that directly to the volunteers and say, I just heard from the most amazing frontline groups in Georgia and in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and Arizona, and in Texas and Florida, and this is what they say they need to succeed. And you have those skills to help it. So we're partnering, We're looking to do an impressive outreach with universities.

[00:32:44] For example, we've contacted about 300 universities in several of the states that we're working in, over the past couple weeks, thanks to our amazing interns who are working with us this fall. and we're talking to multiple student groups in those universities saying, We'd love for you guys to volunteer.

[00:32:58] We'd love for your students to apply to intern with us, and we'd love to invest in those students so that they're getting something out of this. And we think that'll be a huge opportunity to, to both support young people, but also create a pipeline among them to become future leaders. In civic engagement, we wanna reach out to mid-career professionals, so folks who might be lawyers or data analysts or web designers and say, This could be a very easy way for you to compli.

[00:33:23] what you're doing in your day job with a little bit of just rewarding altruism out there. And maybe that'll even help you build some connections and build relationships. And then there's a lot of executives and a lot of retirees who have enormous amount of skill, and especially the retirees have a lot of time on their hands.

[00:33:37] Mm-hmm. and saying, You know, here's a great way you can help positively impact our country at a time when democracy is. So I'm consciously optimistic that we'll be able to recruit more volunteers despite, you know, this year's lower enthusiasm as we really invest in what we think is gonna matter to the volunteers.

[00:33:54] One more important

[00:33:56] part of the puzzle, I mean, you're dealing with a two-sided marketplace, which is notoriously the hardest where you're finding volunteers, but also the projects, the types of projects structured in a way that are. Package so that a volunteer can actually plug in play. But more importantly, you mentioned the, the 30 community based organizations as I understand it, that, that you have and you have built trust with because you know that is really where the actual impact occurs.

[00:34:26] Maybe you can talk a little bit about how you recruit them, how you work with them to find those types of projects, and even like what is the most common project you see coming

[00:34:35] in 2020? Yep. In late 2019 and early 2020, I just researched, you know, civic engagement organizations in the many states we were focusing on.

[00:34:47] And I could tell you it was an enormous amount of research. I built a, a very impressive list of 300 plus organizations and I just called email . And then I had emailed them a second time and then a third time, and I got a response rate of maybe about 10%, but even that was 20 plus organiz. But I heard from one of our, you know, the first organization we work with, an amazing group in Michigan called API Vote Michigan.

[00:35:05] The director has since joined our board and, and she's lovely. Rebecca, she's just been an amazing partner. She told me, you know, I got this email from you for free help and communications and social media and web design. I just didn't think it was real. It seemed too good. Definitely fake. Definitely

[00:35:20] fake.

[00:35:20] Here's three. Yeah, sure. Where's the catch? Where's the, you? .

[00:35:25] And so you're right. We really had to earn the trust as a new organization that at the time was grassroots. We weren't incorporated at the time. We were just a, I always say we were just a bunch of nerds with the Google spreadsheet and we were eventually able to earn through, you know, having her on board, having a couple others during our pilot phase, having them be able to give us quotes that we used in our email outreach to other groups to show that we were real.

[00:35:45] And so over time we built up, you know, we built connections with several groups, but the most important thing that we learned from them was that they. Didn't wanna be told what to do. And I think that's a very common relationship between Washington, DC and community based groups. Out in the field is a very didactic relationship, and that's not what we were, We were very wanted to hear from them what their needs were.

[00:36:05] But the other thing they told us is that we would give 'em a list of ways we could help and they said, I didn't even know I could access voter file data, or I didn't even think about creating video ads to post on social media. So we didn't know what we didn't know until v p came and showed us the opportunities and that I really take pride in that we were able to help expand their scope of what they wanted to do to impact other entities out there.

[00:36:26] We were fortunate enough to then get incorporated. Last year we joined a fiscal sponsor that handles all our back ends and now, Formal non-profit c3. We have our web domain, we have our formal emails, so that really helps in our outreach now. And I can assure you I haven't had as much difficulty getting organizations reaching out to me lately.

[00:36:42] Many, many want help. And so we're actually in the opposite circumstance where we have so many projects that need to be done and not as many volunteers. Oh, interesting. Come all on. But again, I think that's the heat of the election cycle. Could we really ramped up in the summer and. And I hope next year as we are past the election cycle, we have a bit more time to both grow our volunteer network to invest in them, but also work with the organizations.

[00:37:03] You know, they don't need a three day turnaround on something after the election the way they do now. So after the election, we can take a writing project on, and it's okay if it lasts three weeks, or we can do a web design and it's okay if it lasts a month, and that'll just help increase the number of volunteers who can participate since it'll fit their schedule.

[00:37:19] That makes a lot of sense, but it also sounds like a lot of work. But that's where the leverage comes in, right? That right there is, you know, building that trust packaging, productizing the types of ways that, v e P can support via volunteers and, you know, then, then move those, those projects forward. I mean, it's, it's really impressive.

[00:37:41] And I will say I'm, I'm sold. I officially, I hope I don't offend you. I literally did. The whole submission of my, my form as a, as a potential volunteer. So, maybe I'll be doing a follow up on my actual experience, because this makes a lot of sense to me.

[00:37:55] I'm always satisfied and happy when I hear a new volunteer signs up close.

[00:37:59] Very exciting. And I, I am shameless in recruiting anyone and everyone in all of my personal, professional and social engagement. So, so I'm very thankful, for you to. I should have

[00:38:08] known when I entered into this, this podcast that this would be the net result. Before we move into the Rapid Fire, any final, final thoughts, notes on the upcoming midterms, the chaos confusion or what you see with the

[00:38:22] organization?

[00:38:24] Yeah, I'd say two things. One is, uh, someone who's worked both in the voter engagement volunteer side, but also on the policy side, trying to pass the Freedom to Vote Act this past year that. . I would argue that democracy is under attack now more than it's been in well over half a century, and I haven't been around for half a century.

[00:38:40] So I've consulted a lot of folks who ha were around when the Voting Rights Act and others Civil Rights Act were passed. And they absolutely agree that the vitreal and divisiveness we have now is, is very scary. And most importantly, the laws that were passed to disenfranchise the vote have made it so that it's becoming legal.

[00:38:58] To basically impede someone's constitutional right to vote. And so we really just hope people recognize that and are able to step up again with whatever they can. So my second point is when it comes to the voter empowerment project, we believe strongly that everyone can help in at least one of three ways.

[00:39:14] You can volunteer, you can donate, or you can share. Now we'd love for you to volunteer, but not everyone's schedule allows, or maybe that's not meet their interest. But then would you be considering making a tax deductible donation at $25 during our fall fundraising campaign where you know it's gonna get matched by 200 bucks?

[00:39:31] Uh, but if for, for some reason that's not possible either, can you just take our website and post it on social media? Say you heard it on this podcast, Sounded like a neat opportunity. Maybe you know, a few friends who have skills in graphic design or data analysis or web design or writing or fund. Can you email them real quickly and say, Hey, check out this website.

[00:39:48] And we really feel like everyone can do at least one of those three things to help us try to preserve democracy. And I'm not being hyperbolic. I, you know, it's scary to think about where this country could be in 10 years or more if things continue in this way. So I'm, I'm just hoping we all can do our part and step up in whatever ways we can.

[00:40:04] Yeah.

[00:40:05] Catalyze on this, this moment of compassion and concern for the actual work that needs to be done with the organizations on the front. Makes a lot of sense to me. Alrighty. Moving into rapid fire. Here we go. What is one tech tool or website that you or your organization has started using in the

[00:40:23] last year?

[00:40:23] We recognize that doing everything off of spreadsheets was not possible. And so especially for managing all of the individuals who've donated to us and others we went to a very simple but very accessible CRM called action. And a lot of non-profits start there. There's, you know, bigger ones and more sophisticated ones that are more expensive, but it's really proven to be a very great entry level one for us to really get our, the, the hu the humans we work with into a, a, a more manageable circumstance, uh, so we can engage with them better, but also keep track of who's involved with voter empowerment project.

[00:40:57] What tech issues are you currently battl?

[00:41:00] The single biggest tech challenge we've had is being effective at project management tracking. So we've been using spreadsheets primarily, and I think we were lucky enough to have some pretty smart data people who created really sophisticated.

[00:41:12] Formula is in our project management spreadsheet, so it is very functional, but we recognize the need to move over to more sophisticated project management tools. And we're actually in the process of doing so. Uh, we have a contractor who's bringing us on to monday.com in the next week or so, one of many that's out there.

[00:41:27] And we definitely recommend to small non-profits that these tools, the one that fits your budget, the one that fits your needs. I really do think that they have a return on investment. Uh, and so we're excited to transition over. What

[00:41:40] is coming in the next year that has you the most excited?

[00:41:43] I do believe that one way or the other, the elections will motivate people to get more involved in democracy, or at least I'm consciously optimistic.

[00:41:52] And I think everything that's happening in our public discourse, is, is being felt by more and more people. I hope then we can tap into that by and recruit them to volunteer and that we'll. The broad volunteer base next year like we had in 2020 to really meet the needs of the frontline partners that we know is gonna be great next year.

[00:42:11] Can

[00:42:11] you talk about a mistake that you made earlier in your career that shapes the way you do

[00:42:15] things? Now?

[00:42:16] Throughout my career, one thing I know I've done is try to do everything for everyone, all the. And that means, especially when working with Frontline Partners, which has been a core aspect of my career, whether it's health policy or gender based violence or here in voting rights, and in this project, we really recognized the need to focus in on where help was needed most.

[00:42:37] And so we, you know, had to pick certain states where we knew voter suppression was at high risk. We also had to decide which services do we do, and which services do we know not focus on. We purposely limited our focus to voter engagement and not policy and. And then we really had to decide which groups to work with.

[00:42:54] And so we prioritized small groups that are under resourced, that are at the state and local level. Even though there's other groups that are very deservative of help, we just wanted to tailor and focus in so we can, you know, do it well for the people we're serving.

[00:43:07] Do you believe that

[00:43:08] nonprofits can successfully go out of

[00:43:10] business?

[00:43:10] I think I have a broad response to that question. I think there are circumstances where there's a very intense specific need, a need to pass this bill, a need to address this urgent climate crisis that's in a particular community where a coalition can form or a non-profit can set up and they can say, Look, we're here through the end of this problem.

[00:43:28] It might be a year, it might be five years. We're fundraising for it, we're staffing up for it, we're gonna. For the better. And then we disband, and I think that's healthy. So I think sometimes a lot of non-profits start up and then they're just in perpetuity forever, and then they're just fundraising forever and then they just become part of the Emilio.

[00:43:43] But I do think a lot of the other non-profits that are built to solve some of the most intense issues of inequity, both domestically and internationally, I, I just don't have optimism that we're gonna solve most of those issues anytime soon. And so sadly, we do need those non-profits to exist and to fundraise and to have.

[00:43:59] Over the long haul as we try to solve really big problems with really great solutions. Do you think the voter

[00:44:05] empowerment project could successfully

[00:44:07] go out of business? I will happily, you know, close up shop of the voter empowerment project. If and when every person is very able to exercise their right to vote in a, in a easily accessible way.

[00:44:22] I think the trend is heading in very much the opposite direction. And so, you know, the main reason for us incorporating is. We check, is there a need for this model long term? Is there a support for it? Is, you know, does our frontline partners think that they need this help, uh, going forward? And the answer was absolutely yes.

[00:44:38] So for as long as we can be helpful, we'll be around, uh, as long as we have the funding to do so. But if and when voting becomes as easy as it should be in the country, I will be the first person to close up our shop, free up our web domain for anyone else, and to, for us to go focus on the next big problem.

[00:44:54] We won't be holding

[00:44:55] our breath. Uh, aspirationally. I like it. If I were to put you in a hot tub time machine back to the beginning of your work with the voter Empowerment project in 2019, what advice would you give yourself?

[00:45:07] Uh, a few, a few things. One would be start earlier. Uh, we certainly were aggressive in our thinking in 2019, but you know, we should have started it earlier.

[00:45:13] The second would be to build relationships with formal entities sooner. Whether that's national organizations or especially universities. Uh, it wasn't until later that I really realized how much students were an, an amazing source of volunteers and had unbelievable skills, social media, web design, writing, uh, so start there earlier.

[00:45:32] And then thirdly, I would've invested our project management tool much earlier on because I think that would've made us much more efficient. And so I do encourage organizations to think about that instead of just relying on spreadsheets and.

[00:45:44] What

[00:45:44] is something that you think your org should

[00:45:47] stop doing?

[00:45:49] We're really exploring next year comprehensively. What should our focus area be? You know, do we continue exactly how our model is? Should we expand the organizations we work with? Should we expand how we help? Should we look into charging money for our services? I. One of the things I think we've been good at is making sure we don't have mission creep.

[00:46:07] And so I want us to resist that urge as much as possible. Cuz we've all, we've all heard the great need from the frontline organizations and so far we've been able to resist. I think there's a temptation to want to do more and to expand outward in a way that might stretch us too thin. And so that's one thing that I'm really hoping we, we avoid doing.

[00:46:25] If you had a magic

[00:46:26] wand to wave across the industry, what

[00:46:28] would it. I would absolutely love more organizations to make good on their commitments to dei. I think there's a lot of talk and a lot of great language on websites about wanting to diversify their staff and wanting to ensure that more funding is going to under-resourced organizations from historically, you know, underprivileged communities.

[00:46:46] I think it's starting, It's nowhere near where it should be, and so I'm the kind of person that wants to have this job. But if there's a great person with lived experie, That really has a better way to fit. I wanna be someone who will step out of the way and let them take the reins. And I just hope more people in the in the movement will recognize that one of the problems is who's in charge, and if they're willing to step away, that might actually help, uh, advance the cause.

[00:47:08] How did you get started in the social impact sector?

[00:47:11] It's interesting because my college focus very, was actually biology. I was really into the hard sciences and life sciences and wanted to pursue, you know, medicine over time. But before I applied to med school, I actually did an AmeriCorps program in Boston for two years working with young people in Boston, as well as focusing on healthcare advocacy in Massachusetts, and I got hooked.

[00:47:30] I loved the advocacy area. I love the organizing side. I love the policy side. You know, the thinking part of my brain. Loved problem. But the human side really loved working with people, especially people who were facing challenges. Uh, and so that really, really stuck to me and I ended up going to med school and then halfway through I ended up quitting.

[00:47:48] Cause I really missed the advocacy side when coming back to it. So I thank AmeriCorps so much for that experience. What

[00:47:55] advice would you give college grads currently looking to enter the social impact sector?

[00:48:00] I think broadly is. Really identify what is it you care about in terms of issue. Is it healthcare?

[00:48:07] Is it climate? Is it, uh, criminal justice reform? Think about the ways you, what you like to do. Is it social media? Is it writing? Is it fundraising? Is it policy? Is it organizing? And then reach out to as many people as you know that are in the field. Not everyone likes to take on college grads as mentors, but many people out there are happy to talk to you.

[00:48:25] I'm happy to talk to folks to just give them that advice. I will say this, right now, when you look at the job, If you are in development or you're in digital strategy, those are the two things. Well, you'll be employed for the next 10 to 20 years for sure. So if that's something you understand, I definitely recommend going into fundraising, Going into social media, digital strategy, what advice

[00:48:45] did your parents give you that you either followed or didn't quite

[00:48:49] follow?

[00:48:50] Uh, my, I think at a young age, certainly there was a lot of pressure to do well in school and to make. And I think, uh, I think over time I've been able to help my parents understand how great it is to be in sort of progressive non-profit advocacy. But I think probably most importantly is they're just very into family and community and just sort of, you know, loving respect and honoring people in your life and, you know, contributing that way.

[00:49:13] And I absolutely think I channeled that to the broader community at large. Uh, I will say the advice they're not, I'm not taking, that they would be mad at is going to visit them more. And so I think I know I need to do. Thanksgiving coming up, so I'll, I'll be sure to go and see them. Gotta go visit. Have you called

[00:49:28] your mom

[00:49:30] Yes. We talk, we talk periodically. Not as much as they'd like, but uh, but they've actually over the years, have become a lot more active in social justice issues and fundraising and donating and whatever. They sort of do something progressive or they donate money to a candidate or they, you know, knock on doors.

[00:49:43] My mom will always text me excitedly and so it, it is heartwarming to see sort of how we've both, you know, we kind of share those interests in sort of supporting the. That's awesome.

[00:49:52] Also, shout out to my mom, who's probably listening to this podcast. Hi mom. Alrighty, , final hardball question. How do people find you?

[00:50:00] How do

[00:50:00] people help you?

[00:50:01] Please check us out@voterempowerment.org. As I mentioned earlier, there's three ways you can help that anyone can help. You can volunteer, you can donate, or you can share. Please sign up to volunteer. I promise you the opportunities will be fun. They'll be interesting, they'll be meaningful and rewarding, and we invest in you so you can grow your skills.

[00:50:21] If you can't do that, or in addition to, can you please donate $20, $25, a hundred dollars, whatever you can spare, our, our generous board member is matching every donation with a $200, uh, match. And so we hope to get as many donors between now and the holiday. And then lastly, can you share our website? Can you share our social media?

[00:50:40] Adam Empower Voters on Twitter and on Instagram. And voter empowerment.org is our website. We just need more people to know about us to know that we exist, cuz we know once folks find out about us and get involved, they really do appreciate our model and what, what it sort of allows for them to do as a volunteer.

[00:50:54] And we just need to get that word out more. And we really appreciate everyone helping us do so. You have

[00:50:59] it. Share either your time, your treasure, or your tweets. Do. I love the skill-based approach to a massive problem facing democracy in our country. I wish you all the best, and I thank you. Thank you for

[00:51:12] the work you do.

[00:51:14] Thank you George, so much for having me. And thank you for doing this innovative podcast. I, I always appreciate it and folks in the media really prioritize bringing folks on board who can talk about, you know, movement building. And so thank you so much for what you

[00:51:24] do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Terrifying Twitter Trends - Nonprofits React (news)

Reactions, And Worries, As Musk Twitter’s Takeover Is Finalized

Elon Musk’s $44 Billion takeover of Twitter was completed last week, with Musk officially becoming the owner and de-facto CEO of the influential social media platform. The drawn-out saga of the acquisition, which at times seemed like it would fall through, marks the beginning of a new chapter for a platform now run by one of its most prominent users. Musk's ownership has raised new questions about content moderation, rules around speech, and other fundamental questions about what Twitter (and by proxy, social media) should even be. The takeover, with Musk being a self-proclaimed advocate for “free speech,” has spurred a sharp increase in derogatory posts from trolls, according to the nonprofit Network Contagion Research Institute. While Musk sought to assuage the fears of advertisers by saying the platform would not become a “free-for-all hellscape,” some prominent corporate advertisers already appear to be wary of the change in discourse on the platform.

Read more ➝

 

Summary

 

• How a ‘mental health workforce crisis’ has these nonprofits retooling office culture | The Salt Lake Tribune 
• Swarm learning for decentralized artificial intelligence in cancer histopathology | Nature
• Michelle Obama, Melinda French Gates, and Amal Clooney Announce Collaboration to Support Adolescent Girls’ Education and Help End Child Marriage
• Resource: Scary good AI email writer - Nonprofit Email Fundraising AI Writer (free-for-now) | Whole Whale

 

 

DALLE2 Image - blue birds

Girl Scouts Get $85 Million Historical Donation (news)

 

Girl Scouts Get $85 Million Donation From MacKenzie Scott

MacKenzie Scott, known for historic billion-dollar donations continues to change nonprofits’ fortunes, this time with an $85 million donation to the Girl Scouts of USA. The donation is the single largest donation in the organization’s history since its founding in 1912, and will help the organization recoup a loss of programming and membership as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to reporting from KUSA.com. According to the report, only 2% of philanthropic giving in the United States goes directly to programs expressly interested in serving women and girls. Youth membership in the Girl Scouts dropped nearly 30% in the first year of the pandemic.

Read more ➝

 

Summary

 

• Gates Foundation boosts GivingTuesday with $10M donation | AP NEWS
• Bill and Melinda Gates are chopping funding for reading, writing and the arts to plow $1 billion into math education instead | Fortune 
• Police Complaints in This Indian District Are Going on the Polygon Blockchain | @coindesk
• Countering an Authoritarian Overhaul of the Internet | Freedom House
• Avoggedon strikes Philadelphia: One nonprofit gives away thousands of avocados
  NPR.org 
•  

“Big Lie” Affiliated Nonprofits Scrutinized By FBI (news)

“Big Lie” -Affiliated Nonprofits Scrutinized By Authorities On Eve of Midterm General Election

Two organizations associated with the “Big Lie,” the disproved conspiracy that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election, face scrutiny for financial impropriety. The Arizona Attorney General (a Republican who as recently as 2020 courted Trump’s endorsement) has asked the FBI and IRS to probe the nonprofit organization True The Vote, an organization that purported to document unfounded claims of election fraud, according to reporting from Politico. Similarly, the nonprofit organization Defending The Republic led by Sidney Powell, a prominent character in the plot to deny the 2020 election results, has made highly questionable expenditures after raising $16 million, including to private companies that Sidney Powell is listed as a manager, as well as reportedly expenditures to Powell’s personal legal fees. The Justice Department has subpoenaed Defending The Republic’s documents as Powell herself faces multiple lawsuits, legal sanctions, and other legal inquiries as reported by The Washington Post.

Read more ➝

 

Summary

• Century-old nonprofit Goodwill on taking thrifting online | TribDem.com 
• Major bank cancels account of religious nonprofit, demands donor list | FISM TV
• Richmond nonprofit says marijuana possession pardons could help over half of their clients | CBS 6 News Richmond
• Gates Foundation pledges $1.2B to eradicate polio globally  | AP NEWS

10th Annual Giving Tuesday: Predictions & Strategies | Big Duck

Discussion with Farra Trompeter, Co-director of Big Duck, and George Weiner about the 10th anniversary of Giving Tuesday. How should your organization approach this year's event on November 29th? 

 

Will Giving Tuesday raise a new record on the day? Whole Whale predicts it will.

 

Should your organization adopt a new 'Collective' giving approach to the day? 

Farra talks through a recent post about collective giving how to bring a spirit of abundance and consider how you can use this day to educate and inspire your supporters beyond your mission.

https://bigduck.com/insights/approaching-givingtuesday-with-a-collective-lens/ 

 

 

 

Image: Dalle2 Megaphone on pasta

Marijuana Win For Social Justice (news)

Weekly Nonprofit News summaries.

 

In Win For Criminal Justice Advocates, Biden Pardons Marijuana Charges & Orders Evaluation of Cannabis Scheduling

The Biden Administration announced last week a series of pardons for those charged on federal, simple marijuana possession charges, in a win for criminal justice reform advocates. The legacy of the Nixon Administration’s “War On Drugs” is still felt throughout the United States, where black and brown Americans are more likely to be charged for marijuana use than white Americans, despite similar rates of usage. NPR quotes Patrice Willoughby, vice president of policy and legislative affairs at the NAACP, who says that “The failed policies on drug criminalization have ensnared many on nonviolent, marijuana offenses.” Biden has also “instructed the attorney general and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra to start the process of reviewing marijuana’s status under federal law, according to Politico. Advocacy groups continue to highlight the need for reforms at the state level.

Read more ➝

 

Summary

 

• U.N. refugee boss warns of 'severe cuts' without immediate new funding
  U.S. Reuters
• What Happens When a Company (Like Patagonia) Transfers Ownership to a Nonprofit? | HBR.org Daily 
• Black Lives Matter tops list of groups that Black Americans see as helping them most in recent years | Pew Research Center
• Nonprofit Helps Salem Family With Wheelchair Makeover Fit for Halloween | NECN

 

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What is the CURE for medical debt? | RIPMedicalDebt.org

On this episode Allison Sesso, the CEO & President of RIP Medical Debt talks about their unique approach to alleviating medical debt of Americans. By leveraging medical debt markets and partnering with hospitals, RIP Medical Debt is able to achieve 100X leverage on every dollar donated to wipe out debt at scale.

 

How big is the problem?

The SIPP survey suggests people in the United States owe at least $195 billion in medical debt. Approximately 16 million people (6% of adults) in the U.S. owe over $1,000 in medical debt and 3 million people (1% of adults) owe medical debt of more than $10,000.

 

 

RIP Medical Debt by the numbers:

• $7,091,262,274 in medical debt relieved so far
• 3,987,191 individuals and families helped
• 2021 Annual Report

 

The debt relief we provide reduces mental and financial distress for millions of people. Here’s how we got started.

 

RIP Medical Debt was founded in 2014 by two former debt collections executives. Over the course of decades in the debt-buying industry they met with thousands of Americans saddled with unpaid and un-payable medical debt and realized they were uniquely qualified to help those in need.

They imagined a new way to relieve medical debt: by using donations to buy large bundles of debt that is erased with no tax consequences to donors or recipients.

From this idea RIP Medical Debt was born, a New York based 501(C)(3). The results have been spectacular—billions in medical debt eradicated so far, providing financial relief for millions of individuals and families.

 

About Allison Sesso

President / CEO

---

Allison Sesso became the President / CEO of RIP Medical Debt in January of 2020. RIP Medical Debt was established for the sole purpose of reducing the medical debt burdens of low-income individuals with limited capacity to pay their medical bills by leveraging donations from people across the country. They have abolished $7,091,262,274 to date for over 3,987,191 people.

Under Allison’s leadership and in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, RIP Medical Debt launched the “Helping COVID Heroes Fund” focused on relieving the medical debts of healthcare workers and emergency responders like nurses, home health aids, pharmacists, social workers, hospital technicians, the National Guard and others working on the front lines of the pandemic. It also benefits service workers and others facing financial hardship resulting from the COVID induced economic downturn. Through this effort RIP has abolished over $100 million in medical debt.

Prior to joining RIP Medical Debt, Allison served as the Executive Director of the Human Services Council of New York (HSC), an association of 170 nonprofits delivering 90% of human services in New York City.

Under her leadership HSC pioneered the development of nationally recognized tools designed to illuminate risks associated with government contracts, including an RFP rater and government agency grading system. She led negotiations with New York City and State government on behalf of the sector and successfully pushed for over $500 million in investments to address the nonprofit fiscal crisis.

During her tenure at HSC, Allison also led a commission of experts focused on socialdeterminants of health and value-based-payment structures and published the report,Integrating Health and Human Services: a Blueprint for Partnership and Action, that examines the challenges of operationalizing relationships between health and human services providers, offering several recommendations. She also served on the New York State Department of Health’s Social Determinants and Community Based Organizations (CBO) Subcommittee helping to formulate recommendations around the integration of CBOs into Medicaid managed care.

Allison’s work on behalf of the human services sector led City & State to recognize her as a top nonprofit leader in 2018 and 2019, one of the 25 most influential leaders in Manhattan in 2017, and one of New York City’s 100 “Most Responsible” in 2016. She recently received the 100 “Most Responsible” award for the second time for her efforts at RIP Medical Debt.

Allison also serves as the Vice Chair of the nonprofit “Right to Be,” formerly Hollaback!, a global movement working to end harassment through bystander intervention training and storytelling. 

 

Rough Transcript

 

[00:00:00] George Weiner: This week we have an awesome guest who I, I think I promised I would track down somebody from R IP medical Debt because they kept showing up in the news and innovative approach to dealing with, uh, a tremendous. Problem in America around, uh, I'd say healthcare and debt, and none other than Allison Seso, the CEO and President is joining us.

[00:00:52] This means a lot. Thank you, Allison, for, for taking the time today.

[00:00:55] Allison Sesso: Thanks for hunting us down and finding us. We love talking about our work and, and the issue of, of medical debt, so I appreciate every opportu. . Well,

[00:01:05] George Weiner: let's drive right into it on the front page of r i p medical debt.org. On the front page of the.org site, I see every $100 donated relieves 10,000 in medical debt.

[00:01:19] First off. That gets my attention. What a perfect way to start a conversation. But how does that work exactly?

[00:01:29] Allison Sesso: Yeah. We are a, uh, a unique model and we take advantage of the for profit, uh, debt market, uh, and use it for a mission driven purpose, which is really exciting and, and I think unique. So we do get an incredible return on investment and it's because there is a market for debt buying, uh, that is, has been established, and That is because, uh, there is a for profit industry that we take advantage of, uh, and they are looking to make money off of the issue of debt. We, on the other hand, are trying to relieve debt, so we take donations from individuals, we take 'em to the debt market, and we buy large portfolios at.

[00:02:10] So, the individuals that are in those portfolios tend to be financially burdened. They are poor, they are, um, in fact, to qualify for our program, you have to be 400% of poverty or below, or the debt birth burden has to be significant compared to your overall income. So it has to be 5% or more of your income.

[00:02:28] We do an analysis of the debt portfolio and we buy all of the accounts that qualify and then we purchase them based on. For profit rates. And so we're competitive with that market, but because the for profit folks are trying to make money, they have to really depress the prices and they have to have a really deep discount in order to make sure that they're making their money back.

[00:02:49] And so we don't have to make our money back. And so we're able to take, you know, $1 and turn it into a hundred dollars of medical debt relief. And as you pointed out, you can ex expand that. So, you know, $500 gets rid of 50. Um, $50,000 of medical debt. And so that's how we're able to, provide massive debt relief to the tune of $7 billion to date and grow.

[00:03:12] George Weiner: Yeah, I think there's a lot to unpack there. Maybe I, um, wanna poke a little bit more into like, making sure I actually get this. So let's say I'm, you know, a family living below the, the poverty line meeting your, your standards. There's an, uh, unexpected accident and injury. I then am in the hospital for a few days and suddenly I'm walking around with 45 grand in debt overnight.

[00:03:34] And because of the way our systems work, this is now. A debt I owe to creditors. Now that debt, as I understand, can first go from the hospital to maybe a secondary buyer, right? There's like all these markets of like, Oh, I'll grab that one, I'll grab that one. And then it seems like they're, there's a discount on it cuz it's not dollar for dollar you're getting.

[00:03:56] A hundred x leverage on it. So there's some discounting of my debt with that 45,000. Can you just walk me through like the individual, like I am sitting here, I've got 45 grand in debt. I can run off to a sort of like Go fund me type site and be like, Please, please, please, please pay this money. I have a story.

[00:04:19] I have a narrative. And unfortunately I have to compete with other stories around me. What is the alternative path that my 45 K debt takes in your world?

[00:04:29] Allison Sesso: Yeah, so your, I could buy your debt probably for $45. That's the diff . That's, that's the difference. It's pretty, you know, I'm sorry, I don't understand.

[00:04:39] I'm sorry For $450. Sorry. Yeah. Okay. Um, Um, Um, so yeah, I could buy your debt for $450 and that is because I'm not just buying your. I am buying the entire provider's portfolio of bad debt, so it's more attractive of an option. So basically I'm, I'm a hospital or another healthcare provider. I am serving people who can't afford to pay.

[00:05:02] They are poor as you just described. And, and by the way, just to be clear, it's 400% of poverty or below, so it's not just under poverty, but four times the amount of poverty. So it's people that are poor but but not necessarily. Oh, so

[00:05:16] George Weiner: four x the whatever, $45,000 Exactly. Anywhere you are. Okay. So

[00:05:21] Allison Sesso: that, that matter.

[00:05:22] So we're really like helping people that. Really trying to make ends meet but aren't actually, uh, technically in poverty based on the federal definition. So you, you know, you, there's, there's, you have to, In order for our model to work, we're buying the entire portfolio of many of those individuals who have the 45,000 or a thousand dollars or $2,000 of debt.

[00:05:43] Uh, that all together. So it's source driven. So basically I'm going to the hospital or other healthcare provider and I'm saying, Give me the debts. Give me your entire portfolio of debt that you have tried to collect and you have been unable to collect and mostly been able, unable to collect because the individuals are, uh, financially stressed out and can't.

[00:06:03] Afford to pay this bill. I will look at that portfolio and I will assess what can I pay for that? And this is if I'm a for-profit, not F R P medical debt, but as a for-profit debt buyer, I will say, Okay, I'm gonna pay this. I'm gonna pay you an X amount of dollars for the entire portfolio for thousands of people's bads.

[00:06:23] On the bet that at least I can squeeze enough out of that. Mm-hmm. , you get to make up for the investment that I've made plus, Right. Cuz I'm looking for a profit and I squeeze those individuals either by calling them, by putting it on their credit, you know, and giving them bad credit by sometimes suing them and taking, putting leans out on their.

[00:06:43] Um, on their cars, on their vehicles. So I take different tactic to try and collect on that. And so that establishes this debt market that establishes a price that is very depressed and discounted. And again, that's what r i p medical debt takes advantage of. So I'm competing with that already depressed price that is driven by the fact that people are trying to make a profit off of these bad debts.

[00:07:05] But in my world, I've sort of flipped it on its head and I'm. I will pay the same as the for profits, but I'm not trying to make a profit. I'm just trying to provide relief. So I'm going to take donated dollars, so I don't need to make any money back. I'm gonna go to that same debt market. I'm gonna say, give me all of the bad debts that you have available.

[00:07:25] I'm gonna pull out the ones that are for, which is most of them, like 80% oftentimes of people who are financially uh, struggling. And I will pay. this amount, and I pay based on, usually the debt is, um, the older it is, the cheaper it is because

[00:07:42] George Weiner: the idea is it pays outstanding, puts a higher discount on the probability

[00:07:46] Allison Sesso: that gets behind.

[00:07:46] I'm, I'm paying like, you know, a million dollars for, you know, $300 million worth of debt in one fail swoop. And so it's thousands of people that are getting helped.

[00:07:58] George Weiner: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . So staying with the story here, I have incurred this 45,000. I have not been able to pay it back in thirty, ninety, a hundred eighty days.

[00:08:09] I am within that window of one to four x the poverty level. And do you like show up at my door? Like an oversized check. Is it like, uh, so like how am I notified that? Like, hey, you're suddenly like, you don't owe this anymore. Like, how does this final, like I release you of your burden before, Like what, Like is there a confetti?

[00:08:34] I'm like, that would be a lot of, uh, groundwork for us because we've helped over 4 million people. So that'd be a lot. Lot

[00:08:40] George Weiner: of confetti. And then we got the environmental problem on that. A lot of conf the

[00:08:43] Allison Sesso: confetti ideas. Yeah, exactly. It would be a lot, lot of champagne, you know, it would be a lot. no, we, what we do, first of all, The debts tend to be at least a year old because the hospital does it is required like by regulation, they have to try to collect that could be sending one letter, it could be sending two letters.

[00:08:59] It depends. And so every hospital is different. And the thing is, when you've seen one hospital and their approach to collections, you've seen one hospital and their approach to collections. So there is no like, well what's the standard? There's some norms, but there's really differences. Like for example, not while hospitals sell their debt roughly and.

[00:09:17] Like, I'm not even a hundred percent sure, like, but it's roughly like 30% of hospitals that sell their debt. So not even all hospitals sell their, their debt to begin with. but we do get hospitals to sell to us that don't normally sell to other for profit debt buyers, which is, I think, important. But So you are that individual.

[00:09:34] We would not have access to your file and your debt and when, until a hospital engages with us and agrees to work with us. So that's an important element of our model, is that hospitals have to be interested in working with us and say yes to dis debt relief. Once we get a hospital involved, we will get their entire bad debt portfolio.

[00:09:53] So you, if your debt of that 40, uh, what did you say? $45,000? Mm-hmm. , then we. , uh, send letters in mass like we do to every other individual that's in that thousands at one time that basically say, We are our IP medical debt. We have relieved your debt. You are free and clear. Check us out. We're for real.

[00:10:14] Like, believe us. and

[00:10:16] George Weiner: oh yeah, but there's a lot of, Sure right Where, where's the timeshare agreement?

[00:10:21] Allison Sesso: Right. And you don't have to do anything. And the other thing that's really important is there's no tax burden associated with it. When, when certain debts are relieved, there can be a tax burden because it's considered a gift equal to the amount of the debt that's been released.

[00:10:33] Right, exactly. So could you imagine you get a debt relieved and then you get a tax bill. It's like when you win a lotto and you have to pay taxes. You're like, what? ? The good news is soured. but with r p medical debt, that is not the case because we are disinterested third party. So you get this debt relief free and clear.

[00:10:48] And honestly, the, the debt relief happens whether or not you actually pay attention to the letter. They really can

[00:10:53] George Weiner: just continue to do what you were doing, which was ignore the problem and hope it goes away. Which I have to say, never were, I can't use the word never, because apparently sometimes that works.

[00:11:04] Allison Sesso: Well, I mean, look, the people who were, we are helping though, at the end of the. everyone. I mean, we get the stories back from individuals. Mm. They want so desperately to pay. They really do. And they feel like failures because they haven't been able to pay. Mm-hmm. . So these aren't people who are just like, Whoa, let's hope for the best.

[00:11:25] I'll just keep ignoring this. And you know, these are individuals. Something happened to them. Either they got sick, they were in an accident, whatever happened to them. Maybe they just are poor, like, and, and have other obligations they have to pay for and they can't pay this bill. And so we are relieving those debts of individuals who were forced to pay a bill that they should have never been forced to pay because it's unaffordable.

[00:11:51] George Weiner: Yeah. Cuz clearly they had that desire to pay it back, but not the means by which to do it. What's more, medical prices are not exactly accurate in the United States.

[00:12:03] Allison Sesso: I don't know if the word is accurate. They are all over the place because we have this weird system where the insurance company is paying and the prices are ar.

[00:12:16] Yeah.

[00:12:18] George Weiner: Yeah. Uh, when you operate as an individual in a system designed for these large players that are charging what they will, it just breaks, it seems like, and you're just left with outrageous numbers, and debt burns.

[00:12:32] Allison Sesso: I think that we've created a, a. Typical consumer approach to healthcare and it doesn't work like the economics don't align when you're buying healthcare, first of all, you would pay a lot more than you would for any other good or service, right?

[00:12:49] Because it's your health and your wellbeing. So like your artificially willing to to pay more. And I think we take a little bit of advantage of that in some ways. And, and I think that the fact that we have insurance companies that are negotiating what to pay is. Makes it complicated and it's really hard to navigate this as an individual, nor I think should we have that expectation that people, while they're sick, should be navigating what they're gonna pay for a service that they have Really no real way of doing comparison shopping on.

[00:13:24] George Weiner: this is very different than a lot of other models that I see. And you must, and I see it on the site saying, if you were an individual looking for medical debt relief, that is not us. And that must be hard because you were. You know, behind the curtain that's behind the curtain running in debt markets, which frankly, you know, this may be the first time many people are hearing about this.

[00:13:51] I'm curious how, how did this organization come about? It's been around for, for a while.

[00:13:59] Allison Sesso: Well, I mean, actually we've only been around since 2014, so it's not that old considering, I mean, a lot of nonprofits. Just years old. You know, we, we were . We've only been around since 2014 and we, we came we came into being, because we have two, uh, former debt buyers who understood the market.

[00:14:17] I think that was a key element of it. Craig and Jerry understood, uh, how the debt market works and what it costs to buy. , they were inspired by Occupy Wall Street, actually. Uh, and they saw that there was this group doing this thing called the Jubilee, where they were trying to do just what r i p does in, in large scale, which is to buy medical debt, and relieve it, but to make a point.

[00:14:42] And they recruited actually Jerry's help in this. And then Jerry referred Craig. Then they sort of made their point as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement, and they were gonna pack up and go home kind of on, on this whole debt relief front. And I think Jerry sort of said to Craig like, We gotta make this a real thing.

[00:15:01] And so they did. They, they really, they, and I think that they have a book that, that they put out talking about this. You can find it on our. , it's called End Medical Debt, and it tells sort of the origin story of of R I P and and and how they thought about this and one of the key moments that really helped the organization propel forward.

[00:15:20] Was being highlighted on John Oliver, which, you know, I'm a big fan of, I was before I got this role and knew about r i p medical debt, but he really, did some debt relief through the institution and, uh, and that propelled a lot of donors to come to the table. Cuz without donors, this really doesn't work.

[00:15:38] I mean, I can go to the debt market all I want, but if I don't have a lot of people supporting my ability to buy the debt, it, it doesn't, it doesn't work. So, That's our story. It was two Defiers who were brave. They took some. They almost went into poverty on, on, on their own because of the fact that they, they took this, uh, this on and they just thought this was too good of an idea to let go.

[00:16:00] And again, John Oliver helped propel us and then the board of directors, you know, said, Let's take it to the next level. And, and then I came in as a, as a seasoned executive director type and, and we were able to really, uh, propel this work forward and we're gonna keep doing. .

[00:16:16] George Weiner: Yeah. I mean, 24, I mean, you've made it through some, some filter bubbles for sure.

[00:16:22] In terms of like the filtering of can you make it five years, can you make it over a, a certain amount of revenue, but you're starting to, uh, really pull. Pull through. It also strikes me because medical debt is the number one reason someone declares bankruptcy and it seems like this is, uh, something that may slow that down.

[00:16:45] Uh, but I don't know how big you need to be, like billions of dollars that you have done. 4 million people. I think you said like those are big numbers. How big do you actually need to be in your mind to, I'm not gonna use the word solve, because you, you are not solving, you are resolving a broken system that will continue to break things.

[00:17:08] But how big do you need to. To take this actually on at the level that you'd imagine?

[00:17:13] Allison Sesso: Yeah, I, it's a good question and it's one I often think about as an executive director, or sorry, as a, as a CEO of the institution, it's one I often think about. What I would say is that, , we need to both be a certain size and relieving a certain amount of debt every year.

[00:17:32] And I don't know what exactly what that number is. It really depends on the donation size. Maybe it's 10 million, maybe it's 20 million. I like the number 25, in terms of our budget size every year, uh, I'd love to grow to that size and, and you know, we're, we're more than halfway there already today, in consistent revenue, but, you know, we'll,

[00:17:51] But the other thing is, I, I loved how you framed it and said, We're not solving but, but resolving this, the issue. And that's a hundred percent true. And that is our mantra. What I wanna make sure is that we're not just trying to grow to a size that picks up and just keeps resolving the issue, but at, in the process of resolving the issue for individual.

[00:18:12] We are very intentional about telling the larger story about the issue of medical debt and how systemic in nature it is, and that we are very intentional about pushing for larger changes that are above our pay grade as an institution. And so to me that is really the key. So our size almost doesn't matter as much as our.

[00:18:36] And so by growing our voice within this work and growing our expertise and taking the data that we are getting in mass, so we are having a deeper understanding. How many people, uh, we, how many people we're helping, what their situation is, what is their race? What is their economic situation? Where do they live?

[00:18:56] Is this, is this problem more prevalent at certain types of hospitals, nonprofit versus for profit? I think over time we'll be able to take a deeper look at our data collectively as we do more and more direct hospital work and contribute to this issue in a larger scale. And be able to hopefully push for, uh, larger solutions that are above again, our pay grade and who we.

[00:19:22] George Weiner: So the debt, we were talking about this before, the debt that a individual incurs, going back to like, here's a, my $45,000 and surprise debt that I now owe. I have a family, uh, we live, you know, in a house we're doing right. But this is something that frankly does not fit into the budget, not even by a long shot.

[00:19:42] Uh, I may. Go into bankruptcy, but it seems like there is a like actual adverse medical effect to having debt. There's like a relationship to having this like held over my head that has negative consequences. We think we were talking about the drama report or other reports out there that suggest that like, I mean, it's just.

[00:20:09] It hurts my brain to put it in the order of logic that like I went to the hospital to get better and now I'm probably gonna get worse because of the overpriced and debt that now chases me indefinitely. And can you tell me a bit about that relationship of debt distress?

[00:20:23] Allison Sesso: Yeah, absolutely. Uh, it is the number one theme that we see in the letters that come back from individual.

[00:20:29] We help, uh, it's overwhelming for individuals and, you know, stress is. Undermining of health and financial stress. Stress is one of the biggest things, and we look at poor communities and we see. You know, diabetes, we see all these stress related diseases, heart issues that are all stress related, that are more extreme.

[00:20:54] Uh, and so in, in terms of medical debt, it is in itself a social determinant of health. And the social determinant of health is something that hospitals have increasingly been looking at and are spending. Millions, billion dollars, billions of dollars across the country trying to invest in community programs that address social determinants of health.

[00:21:16] And yet, as this Gemma report that came out just recently shows the medical debt created from going to the hospital itself is a social determinate of health. So if, if we can really look at medical debt, , we can actually get rid of one of the stressors that's causing people to have to go to the hospital or get care to in the first place.

[00:21:38] So I think it's a really key issue that you're raising and one that we wanna make sure that we keep elevating. Cuz again, these providers, these hospitals are investing lots and lots of money into social determinants of health. Those are things like environmental situations family dynamic. You know, lot things that are in the environment, not your own personal health.

[00:21:57] You know, living in a food desert. All those kinds of things contribute to the undermining of health. And it's a, it determines how well you're going to be healthy, hence, hence the social determinate of health language. And so the fact that medical debt itself is among those is something we need to really look at.

[00:22:14] And I'm so grateful that there is this new report that points to this because I think it will create, To reexamine billing and practices at.

[00:22:26] George Weiner: and I think this is the Jam and Network, uh, that that put this out. But we'll put a link in the, the show notes on it cuz there's a certainly a lot in there and it's one of those things I'm glad somebody did the research on and I am now forced to think about it, but also, I'm sadly not surprised.

[00:22:44] I'm not surprised that having, uh, you know, the, the threat of somebody putting a lean on the house that, you know, my kid lives in, like wouldn't cause me stress. Like I go, I went in cuz I broke my ankle, right? I went in cuz I broke my, and I walk out like two years later with diabetes and other stress related disorders that put me back on that bill.

[00:23:05] Like,

[00:23:06] Allison Sesso: well not only that but the other on top of that, the. Stressor is that people don't go to that hospital because they're scared. They're either gonna incur more debt cuz they have had some, or they know of a friend or family member that's had debt and that it's put them in a, you know, difficult situation and so they don't go and get the care that they need.

[00:23:24] People are sitting outside of hospitals waiting to see if the pain dissipates before they walk in. or they're just ignoring it and, you know, putting, you know, Ben Gay on their knee over and over and over again, and taking Advil and trying to ignore the problem until it gets to a point where it's actually even more expensive to solve and to adjust.

[00:23:46] George Weiner: Yeah, I mean, the, the size of the problem, it, you know, it's, what I like is that this is a pretty smart and leveraged play at an intractable problem, like the, the scale that you need to play at. And I'll just play, I'll, I'm show my own hand. I don't think it's solved by GoFundMe. No. Truly just it is, and you also even brought up the tax issue that I'm pretty sure if I got my 45 grand from people giving me money, and it showed up as a check to me, I now owe at least a third of that I think in taxes, depending on where I

[00:24:19] Allison Sesso: am.

[00:24:21] Yeah, I'm not exactly sure how the GoFundMe works in terms of the tax system, but it's definitely a popularity contest. How. That's the problem because what I mean for GoFundMe to work you, you need to tell your story effectively enough to have people give to you over others. GoFundMe is, The number one thing people go to, like they go to GoFund me for medical debt.

[00:24:47] It's the number one reason to go to GoFund me. And most of them do not work. They do not reach, reach their goals. And certainly you're not gonna reach your goal if you have an ongoing medical issue. Like what? If you have, uh, a chronic condition, you can't keep going back to the well and begging your friends and family.

[00:25:02] Not to mention the fact that a lot of people are able to. Money if they have friends with money and people with money tend to have other friends with money. People without money tend to have friends without money. So the, the, the GoFundMe is absolutely not a solution and it really is a popularity contest.

[00:25:18] It's how well you're able to tell your sob story. and I just think that's a freely heartbreaking situation that we're putting people in to have to put themselves out there in that way in order to solve their medical death. .

[00:25:33] George Weiner: Yeah. The, you know, frankly, it's, it's not really the, the individual's supposed to do everything they can in their power.

[00:25:39] and so if you're back into the wall, I understand the market force is there pushing there, but there's only one winner in that. It's the person that takes 2% of transaction. if you were looking at a macro system, something like r i p, medical debt, uh, I'm wondering if, you know, just to sort of speculate on it, are there other areas where you feel.

[00:25:58] George Weiner: Financial levers, debt markets even are unexplored avenues for this type of impact.

[00:26:08] Allison Sesso: I mean, I think that there's probably other kinds of unaffordable debt that could be looked at for sure. The thing is, medical debt is unique, and I do think that people are potentially more willing to donate to, uh, medical debt causes because you have such little control over the situation.

[00:26:27] You, you can be insured. Most people actually are insured. 90% of Americans are insured today. yet 41% have medical debt. So it is not a matter of having insurance. So you can do everything right. You can have, I. , you can still and are likely actually to get medical debt. In fact, the, the number one cause of medical debt isn't, is, or, or directional relationship is not whether or not you have insurance, but whether or not you get sick, like, so you're, that's, that's the number one connector, which is that means you couldn't be insured.

[00:27:02] So I. At the end of the day, we can't look at things like GoFundMe for the solutions here. I think you're right that it is, uh, just creating more profit on top of a, a profitable system. Yeah, we, we have to, we have to look at at bigger solutions beyond beyond this, and I think that, that our model could be used for other areas.

[00:27:25] but I think that people are more likely to give to medical debt because of the fact that there's so much little control over how much debt you end up in. People are less forgiving if you end up overusing your credit card or, Yeah, even if you can't pay a utility bill. Honestly. Yeah.

[00:27:40] George Weiner: Yeah, the story obviously, obviously matters, but also, you know, I'd say your ability to, as you came back to it, say like you're able to go through and understand the data behind the actual communities that you're choosing to go for, and just to track back on the conversation.

[00:27:56] You're like in your. Ideal world, you're like, I think we have about 25 million worth of work you wish you could do every year in this.

[00:28:05] Allison Sesso: Yeah, I think 25 million feels right today. Now, I don't know. I mean, ask me, you know, in, in a year from now how, how we feel about that. But I think 25 million gives us a pretty steady pace.

[00:28:16] Of doing debt relief, in mass, right, For individuals while also investing in our own ability to tell the story of medical debt. Cuz that's important, right? Like not every dollar do we only spend on medical debt. We spend a lot, almost every dollar on medical debt relief. But we also are intentional about investing in storytelling so that individuals can be heard and that we're, we are thinking about what is, what it feels.

[00:28:43] To have medical debt. And what are the implications on your mental health? What are your struggles with the hospital finance system? What is it like for your family every single day when you have this thing looming over your head? How have you avoided care? What other trade offs and decisions have you made?

[00:29:00] Have you borrowed from friends and family? All those kinds of things. So we are investing in different systems, but I think 25 million. Feels good as an annual like rate of our budget size because I think that gives us a large scale ability to relieve debt across the country for a lot of people again, and, and lifting up the stories at the same time.

[00:29:26] Yeah.

[00:29:27] George Weiner: Yeah. Well, just, I mean, I won't call out your nine 90, but it, it is all public and so you're, you're hoping to grow there, it seems.

[00:29:36] Allison Sesso: Yes. We're hoping to grow there. That's right. I mean, we've had, we've been, uh, lucky to get a 50 million gift from McKenzie Scott, uh, which is Jeff Bezos's ex-wife, and she's been wonderful in the nonprofit sector and able to.

[00:29:51] push organizations forward. But that's a one time gift, right? Yeah. We're able to do those in multiple years, but we have to be careful about you not expanding our staff to have an expectation that that's gonna be our permanent bottom line. So we pay lot of attention to that reality, and so that's propelled us forward in a lot of good ways and allowed us to invest in even ways in which we can donate and become more, you know, In which we can maximize our ability to fundraise and then also look at our own systems, become more efficient so that we don't need as much staff.

[00:30:26] Uh, so we've done those two things with those funds, but we need to grow to, I think, a, a permanent, like 25 million size where it's year after year we're able to support that.

[00:30:38] George Weiner: And that makes sense. Part of my mind, I keep going back to this $45,000 family that just ran into this just stroke of unlock and, you know, following through the pattern.

[00:30:50] Like it, it is amazing that there is R ip, medical debt that may show up like in some ways, like a lottery ticket that you're like, I didn't know I was playing this one, but I won. And like frankly, I've lost enough. That's amazing. I wonder if there's a world where the probability that I'd have to pay my full debt could be made more publicly known to me.

[00:31:12] And I know there's also nonprofit hospitals that technically if they're serving the public benefit actually are. Uh, due to absolve some of that debt as well. But I feel as though you're not told the full truth when you're handed that bill for your, you know, scan your PT scan and you're like the what?

[00:31:29] And your overnight visit. There's no like, and by the way, you know the probability if you're in this area and you make this much, that if you just wait, frankly one year and don't pay this, like nothing battle happen because the converse is true. We've been taught to pay every bill that shows up to us.

[00:31:44] Cuz that's how you are an honest participant in. , uh, economic society, What does that look like? ?

[00:31:52] Allison Sesso: Yeah. So it's, that's a difficult question to answer because I don't think we're in enough hospitals yet, by any stretch, to, for anyone to feel confident or comfortable to just, you're just gonna

[00:32:02] George Weiner: run around and catch that fly ball.

[00:32:04] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:32:04] Allison Sesso: Right. And also, we're still investing in our fundraising abilities. And I don't know, at some point maybe people are exhausted about paying for this too. And our issue. Not as exciting. You know, we, we are competing, frankly for donate donor dollars with things like Ukraine or abortion rights or gun rights, you know, so there are, there is a limitation to how much I can guarantee that I'm gonna be able to relieve people's debt.

[00:32:28] And also remember that in order for me to relieve your debt, you have to be financially burdened, right? So you have to be 400% of poverty or below, or the debt has to be large compared to your. So I would be leery of people feeling comfortable with the idea that eventually not

[00:32:45] George Weiner: pay. By the way, this is not financial advice.

[00:32:48] I repeat, this is a nonprofit podcast. This is not financial

[00:32:51] Allison Sesso: advice. Right. And, and, and I will say, frankly, you know, there is some concern on the hospital and provider side that, that if they work with us, that that. That that will happen, right? That if that people will bush think, Well, I don't have to pay my bill.

[00:33:04] So I don't think that that's a good way. Wow.

[00:33:05] George Weiner: I didn't even think of that, but

[00:33:07] Allison Sesso: Right. That, that's, that's a good way of

[00:33:10] George Weiner: not you have thought about this as the ceo. Yeah,

[00:33:13] Allison Sesso: exactly. And it's not something I would say we've experienced. What we've experienced is people who can pay their bills do pay their bills.

[00:33:22] There's people in the middle Right. That also pay their bills, but to a, a large. where it's a a difficult situation for them to pay the bills. I would like to address those people as well, like they sign up for a payment plan that they can't afford. What I would advise people, is to not sign up for payment plans that they can't afford.

[00:33:43] If it's $700 a month and that's gonna create a real financial burden on you and your family, then do not sign up for it despite all of the pressure that you might feel from the debt collector, if it's an individual, individual entity or if it's the hospital themselves. So that's what I would advise.

[00:34:00] Unfortunately, as much as I hate having to tell people. be their own advocates. This system is set up that it expects you to be an advocate for yourself, and so you have to advocate for yourself and make sure that you don't sign up for things that you can't afford.

[00:34:19] George Weiner: Uh, what a mess. It just, what a mess. In my mind, I'm just saying like, Well, what if I just waited, like I had my $45,000 debt and I just waited out of like, I'm gonna buy this back on a penny on the dollar in a year. I'm gonna come back to you as an independent broker, and I'm just go buy back.

[00:34:36] Allison Sesso: Yeah, but you aren't, you can't do that.

[00:34:38] Right. You know, you're not gonna have the negotiated power that I can collectively, and you can't come to r i p and. Well look, I got this one debt. It's 45,000. I'm in

[00:34:46] George Weiner: Texas. Hear me out. I mean, you can, I will donate this much over here for the help my angle get better fund, right? Exactly. Doesn't, doesn't work.

[00:35:01] No,

[00:35:01] Allison Sesso: it doesn't. It doesn't work that way, unfortunately. But I do. But I will say this, when we work with hospitals and increasingly so, Our vision is for when we work with hospitals that they take a look at their financial assistance policies and try, because you're right hospitals, especially non-profit hospitals.

[00:35:20] Mm-hmm. are supposed to give out charity care. They're supposed to focus on low income individual. Remember that

[00:35:25] George Weiner: C3 classification in the old taxis?

[00:35:27] Allison Sesso: Yes, exactly. But the thing is that, Hospitals don't really get that classification taken away. Like that's not, that's not a thing that really happens that frequently.

[00:35:38] Yeah, I, and I, and I don't, I don't mean to imply at all that hospitals don't take that seriously. I think they take it very seriously there. They're nonprofit status, and again, not all hospitals are alike. There are some bad actors and there are some that are genuinely struggling right now. Hospitals are not really in a great financial place.

[00:35:56] Compared to some of the patients, they're probably better off. It depends, you know, on the situation. But hospitals are supposed to provide charity care, bottom line, and so they are not necessarily as generous as our program. So there's people in between, like some of them could be 200% of poverty or there's discounts provided at 300% of poverty, not the full, you know, getting it all relieved like r I p.

[00:36:21] So we do hope though, that by doing an analysis of their bad debt file people, that means people that did not get charity care, whose debt we are buying, that we're able to give them information that helps them reflect on their own charity care policies and approaches, like letting people actually know about the charity care, making sure the application process is not to burdensome.

[00:36:45] We encourage hospitals to do what's called presumptive eligibility, meaning that they just take a look on their own by buying data from, from TransUnion like we do, or any other, you know, Equifax, whatever. Buying the data, looking at people's incomes and making assumptions about whether or not they deserve or, you know, can get.

[00:37:02] Charity care based on their income, and then they just give it without, just like we do. We just give it away. We let people know that they've gotten this free kick, this debt relief without them having to fill out any paperwork or anything like that. .

[00:37:17] George Weiner: So that's so interesting. I didn't realize You're not looking at pii, personally identifiable information to the degree where you see maybe a name and an address.

[00:37:24] You're getting like top line stats on somebody Or could you do like, do the search for, you know, George, we in Texas who's got 45 K in debt and you're like, Ah, I found

[00:37:34] Allison Sesso: you, you're there. No. Well, when we get a, when we get a file, so we are HIPAA compliant, right? So we, we have a DAA with the hospital and, and we, you know, we do keep , uh, we're very vigilant about our, our cyber security and all of that other stuff.

[00:37:47] But, and we, we have to be able to have the information of the individual or else we wouldn't be able to let them know about the fact that we've relieved their debt. Right. Right. You do know it. Right. So we do have that information, but, When we analyze a file from a hospital, we're doing it in the aggregate.

[00:38:03] We're not focusing on the individual at all, that we're completely ignoring the individual's name and all of that stuff. All we're focusing on is those elements that qualify them, and so we take the entire part that qualifies, and that's what we hold onto, and then we send out the letters after we've bought that debt, et cetera, etc.

[00:38:24] George Weiner: Gotcha. I love, still, in my mind I'm thinking like, but there's technically a way I could go through and be like, if my name comes up, let's just say I'd be, uh, encouraged to make a donation. You'd never do it, but would it open up a second? Don't get my debt for me.

[00:38:42] Allison Sesso: Let you know. We'd never, ever let you, We would not, we don't give away the names of the individuals that we.

[00:38:49] if people want to tell their stories, they are encouraged to do so, and we let them do that and they can put their stories on their web, on our website, and they can talk to our anthropologist, but we would never tell a donor you helped X, Y, Z. Ever.

[00:39:01] George Weiner: Oh, that's fair. I was saying in reverse like the, the person who's like in distress, like, could I go search a database to be like, Oh, I'm in this distressed category of people, but you can't open up it up because of hipaa.

[00:39:11] Yeah.

[00:39:12] Allison Sesso: Well, you need to find out if we already relieved your debt. If it's already gone, we, we would've notified you.

[00:39:20] George Weiner: Oh, thank you for humoring me. I'm such a, such a rabbit hole runner. That's even a thing. All right, we're gonna move to rapid fire. okay. With your permission, Please keep your responses as short as you feel like they, eh, feel like.

[00:39:34] Okay. What is one tech tool or website that you or your organization has started using in the last year?

[00:39:40] Allison Sesso: Max Q D, which is a qualitative data analysis visualization tool. Cool.

[00:39:49] George Weiner: What are some tech issues you're currently battling with?

[00:39:53] Allison Sesso: Well, we are making sure that our cyber security is so to compliant, so we're really focused on that and we're super excited about that.

[00:40:01] And we also are trying to send people emails in addition to hard copy letters, and so we're working to incorporate that into our model. ,

[00:40:10] George Weiner: what is coming in the next year that has you the most excited?

[00:40:15] Allison Sesso: The ability to enhance how we analyze our data, specifically with a focus on.

[00:40:24] George Weiner: Talk about a mistake that you made in or maybe earlier in your career that shapes the way you do things today.

[00:40:33] Allison Sesso: Creating space for everyone who's a stakeholder, be it on the board, on your team, uh, donor to make their voice heard and to be part of decision making. By not doing that, I think you really undermine everyone's buyin to what you're doing and the direction you're headed.

[00:40:52] And that was a mistake I made in my career that I have overcorrected for, probably .

[00:40:59] George Weiner: Do you believe nonprofits can successfully go out of business?

[00:41:04] Allison Sesso: I sure hope so. I really do. I think that nonprofits are generally not set up to solve problems, but resolve them in your. And I hope that nonprofits can have a greater voice in getting systemic change so that they can help solve problems at a larger scale.

[00:41:24] George Weiner: If I were to put you in the hot tub time machine, back to the beginning of your work at r I p Medical debt, what advice would you give your dryer self yourself

[00:41:34] Allison Sesso: to focus on the progress over the. So that I could feel more excited about the work that I'm doing going forward and less

[00:41:43] George Weiner: stressed. Uh, if I were to give you a magic wand to wave across the industry you work in, what would it do?

[00:41:52] And you can't say, just clean up every single bit of debt

[00:41:57] Allison Sesso: across the industry. Uh, I would, I, I would say, and when I say the industry, I'm talking about the nonprofit industry at large, I would say improve the marketing of the industry. I think that we. A, a skewed view as if we are the secondary industry that's sort of just doing what everyone calls God's work, which I hate.

[00:42:16] I think that we are doing an essential, fundamental, fundamental function for society and that it takes real skill that not everybody has, and not everyone can from a business can just jump in and do, and take over and do well. And I think that I would do a better job of marketing who we are and how important we are as an, as an industry in terms of non.

[00:42:38] George Weiner: What is something you think you should stop doing?

[00:42:43] Allison Sesso: Uh, sometimes I think we put our heads down too much and do the day to day work, you know, going in and outta of meetings, taking, checking off our to-do list and I think we need to stop doing that as much and put our, pick our heads up and look at the big picture and appreciate what we've accomplished.

[00:42:59] George Weiner: How did you get your start in the social impact sector?

[00:43:04] Allison Sesso: I don't have a good answer for that. I feel like it's a calling for me. As lame and cheesy as that sounds, I've always, uh, felt like I needed to work in a mission driven, uh, capacity. And so here I am. ,

[00:43:19] George Weiner: what advice would you give college grads looking to enter the sector?

[00:43:24] make sure that you have a strong ethical and moral compass and that you have people to talk to to ensure you stay with that because money and donors even can really influence you in a way that's not

[00:43:37] George Weiner: always. What advice did your parents give you that you either followed or did not? Heed

[00:43:47] Allison Sesso: Finding balance in my life, both in terms of work happiness and personal happiness.

[00:43:56] To be

[00:43:56] George Weiner: clear, you heated that advice. I

[00:44:00] Allison Sesso: did. Yes. I'm very happy in both my work life and my, My question

[00:44:03] audio1239347413: could

[00:44:03] George Weiner: have gone the other way there. Life, right? could have been a real dark turn. Yeah. Uh, that's wonderful. Uh, how do people find you? How do people help you?

[00:44:14] Allison Sesso: Well, first donate to us please. Uh, r i p medical debt.org.

[00:44:19] I can't do this work without that. You can also follow us on Twitter, on Instagram. Just add our ip medical debt. but I really encourage you to, uh, to take a look at our website, check us out and, and talk about the issue of medical debt, uh, how it impacts you. I think one of the biggest problems with this issue is that people feel like they've personally failed when the reality is the system is broken.

[00:44:41] And you have to remember that. And unless we talk about it in our personal stories, this issue's gonna be with us and it's gonna be killing us slowly, literal.

[00:44:51] George Weiner: I'm grateful for the work that you are doing. Thank you. Thank you for, uh, just, uh, continuing to, to make this a national issue and an Avenue, Avenue to finally put dollars to work, I think, in a high leverage way.

[00:45:03] Thank you. Thank you.