Using the Whole Whale - A Nonprofit Podcast

Buying Voter Files is so 2015 Advocay - Join 2023 with Quorum

Alex Wirth, Co-founder & CEO of Quorum.us - a leading public affairs software that helps map, track, change, and report on policy landscape, shares insights into advocacy approaches that will work in 2023.

Alex ranks: Twitter, IRL meetings, calling, letters, videos, Meta, and billboards as just some of the methods advocacy organizations can be using to get the attention of representatives.  

 

He shares why buying Donor Voter files may be obsolete in the new advocacy landscape. 

 

About Alex

Alex Wirth is the Cofounder and CEO of Quorum, a public affairs software platform that enables organizations to launch grassroots advocacy campaigns, manage stakeholder engagement, and monitor dialogue in Washington, Brussels, all 50 states, and thousands of cities around the U.S.

 

 

Rough Transcript

[00:00:00] audio1717820249: Today on the podcast, we have a returning guest, a returning guest that we had on a few years ago. His name is Alex Worth, the co-founder and c e o at Quorum. Uh, quorum is a public affairs software helps you work smarter, move faster. Thousands of public affairs officials use quorum and their work to Congress.

[00:00:44] My short hot take on it is it helps you connect with Congress and has an amazing database and functionality prior. To that, uh, he did happen to graduate from Harvard, as I understand it, and he was an intern at , the White House. Uh, and the office of the Chief of staff, uh, has also spent time as a global shaper.

[00:01:04] And a board member on the Economic Club of Washington, among other things. Uh, but Alex is also one of the folks that I've known since back in the day, and I respect his work and his persistence in, in staying with, uh, staying with the organization and building it over time. So, Alex, welcome and, and thanks for coming back.

[00:01:25] Awesome. Thanks for having me. Well, I hopefully didn't confuse people too much about Quorum, but what is your elevator pitch and explaining what Quorum does in the world of political advocacy? Yeah, so we're a public affairs software platform, uh, that is used by public affairs professionals at major companies, trade associations, nonprofits, uh, little bit of federal government work to track everything that's happening on Capitol Hill.

[00:01:56] All 50 state legislatures help communicate up to members of congress. Um, we collect both the official and staff contact information and have the tools to be able to get email messages to those staff. And then also we have a whole series of grassroots advocacy technology to help individuals write their member congress, tweet their member, call their member, run massive mobilization campaigns.

[00:02:18] And we are currently working to bring a brand new pack product to market to help, uh, third party packs, both collect and raise. Manage their individual bank accounts and records and then issue disbursements to lawmakers to participate in the political process. So the quick way to think of us and our goal is to be the one stop shop for all the efforts that an advocacy team needs to engage on Capitol Hill in Brussels or in any of the state capitals across the country.

[00:02:45] Yeah. It's pretty impressive. And before we, we pressed record, you were telling us, um, about Capital Canary. Right? You were, you were able to, to pull them into your. Feature suite and what has that capability? Yeah, so this has been the really exciting update for us, uh, from the last year is that we did acquire Capital Canary, which is the new name for the phone to action business, which sends more messages to Capital Hill than any other technology platform out there.

[00:03:15] Uh, phone to Action on average sends about 25 million messages a year to Capitol Hill, and so we combine forces with them, uh, at the end of September of this past fall. And overnight both doubled in size for the number of clients we serve and that we're working now with 2000 organizations, including hopefully some listeners, uh, on this call, but also as a result of that, have been able to double the size of our research and development team.

[00:03:41] So we're incredibly excited to be working combined as we think about innovations with advocacy and advocacy technology rather than against each other, taking the same teams to build the same features on multiple different platforms. And we're pretty excited about what the future's gonna be able to bring from.

[00:03:58] Well, last time we talked, I feel like you were really opening my eyes, our audience's eyes, to the impact that Twitter was really starting to have. And mind you, we were pre pandemic, we were PreOn Musk coming into Twitter town, and I felt like you really were helping us understand that there are, you know, I guess a hierarchy.

[00:04:21] A hierarchy of ways that elected officials and you know, really their staff. Are are listening to constituents and I'm, I'm wondering, maybe we could just revisit that. What is your current hierarchy of high to low attention? No attention for messaging, elected officials, representatives. Yeah, so to start with the Twitter piece one, you were spot on.

[00:04:49] Twitter has taken off since we last talked, and a lot of that was as a result of the pandemic of you had members of Congress, state legislators, mayors who are used to being out with people in their constituents, stuck at home, not able to meet everyone, anyone. And wanting to show that they are being relevant and share as much information as they can with constituents.

[00:05:10] And so we saw the number of social media messages from elected officials skyrocket in 2020. I mean, just a full jump, um, as the pandemic and lockdown hit. Um, and so there's been more definitely usage of the platforms. I think the other component to it is, I do agree with Elon Musk's comments that Twitter really is a digital town square, and I think you see that very significantly in the policy influence participation journalism and advocacy worlds that exist on Twitter and that many of us, including me, follow along, but that we see members of congress, journalists, policy, influencers, actively participate in.

[00:05:51] And the example that I think is helpful to share is that almost every state legislature in the country, Has a given hashtag for the individual legislative session. I was born and raised, uh, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. My dad happens to be a state legislator so I know it well. Uh, and in New Mexico the hashtag is hashtag nm ledge.

[00:06:09] And the best way to get information about what's going on in the State House during session is following on the hashtag nm ledge. Cause you have people that are in the gallery. You have reporters sharing what the information they have. You've got leadership sharing, Hey, we're gonna be on the floor of the House of Senate.

[00:06:24] This bill is moving, party's sharing what's up next. And you can't get information that quickly, that accurately and from that many people anywhere else. And so that same level of conversation that's happening, New Mexico is happening in all 50 states. But also then it's happening on key issues here in Washington DC and it presents a really significant opportunity for advocacy organizations to participate in.

[00:06:48] Stuff. Yeah. Because frankly, it's, you know, love it or hate it. We're not here to litigate the, you know, week by week changes that Musk is putting out there. The, the truth is that it's, uh, an open, trusted platform to the extent that identities and we understand the identities of representatives and people that have been able to burnish their reputations with consistency on the platform are able to report on things like bills progress, uh, and political means, and.

[00:07:18] And one of the questions I actually had for you is around the fact that, you know, recently, you know, we were recording this in January of 2023, uh, change of allowing political ads in political organizations to, to run ads. Now on, on Twitter has, you know, the, the ban has been lifted. What are your thoughts on the, the implications of that or opportu.

[00:07:41] Yeah, so I think there's huge opportunities you think about reaching policy makers and their staff in that it is possible to geofence state capital, the US Capitol, a given agency, and run publical or public policy related Twitter ads to those organizations. I think that is some of the biggest opportunity and impact.

[00:08:03] and the Great Washington story that I, I've heard over the years is there was an official at the Department of Transportation that was needed to approve an airline route from one country in Europe to the us and it was held up with a singular individual official, and the public policy firm in DC figured out where the official lived.

[00:08:23] Figured out the exact direction that their apartment window faced out of, found the billboard that they look at every day, and went and bought just that one billboard and talked about the benefits of opening up this airline . And literally the official had to stare at it for a month or a month and a half, and then suddenly the approval came through.

[00:08:42] And so that's obviously like the really old school way of doing things. And that story is probably from 10 plus years ago. But that is now possible again on Twitter with public policy and political advertising. And it makes a difference because these elected officials are looking at it. They're watching and seeing what's happening and going on, and so you wanna be at the platform that they're on.

[00:09:02] And it's a lot more cost effective to do than that, than try and advertise to everyone that's gonna be watching Super Bowl Sunday and like hope you get the elected officials that are also gonna be watching as well. So I want to come back to my question about hierarchy. So at the top of the hierarchy, Billboards in front of the windows of representatives, number one.

[00:09:23] What is number? In person meetings. Um, and I think that that is something that very much got lost in Covid. Um, members of Congress did love to do zoom meetings cuz they could be many more places at once, much more efficiently. But there is something about sitting next to someone in person explaining your story, saying, I traveled to Washington or the state capitol from whatever county or state it may.

[00:09:51] And giving that pitch and, and giving that conversation. I think the third one that I would put out there is video. Uh, and this is something that we're seeing much more cutting edge within the last year and a half, is video story banking. So pulling in and having individual advocates or members or donors record, what does the organization mean to you?

[00:10:11] Why is this policy issue important? How are you being impacted? Buy this change or buy a covid lockdown. And then organizations stringing that together to be able to play to an individual legislator or lawmaker or appointed official and say, let me show you how your constituents are having an impact.

[00:10:28] And it feels really raw when someone's sitting in their car with a cell phone video and sharing that. And that's been pretty impactful. I've probably put Twitter, um, close to number four. And the reason for that is that we have seen an increase in members of Congress who are personally tweeting themselves on the platform.

[00:10:47] Um, and that's one of the big things that we've expected to happen just as we've had both, you know, more younger members of Congress become elected, but also more members adopted. And one of the interesting things from our annual social media report, Is that some of our most prolific tweeters in Congress are actually the older members themselves.

[00:11:04] Um, and so we're seeing, you know, individuals look towards that example and realize this is the way that you communicate with constituents. And let me tell you, we've all used the Twitter app. You know, when you're mentioned and you know, when you're talked about. And it's a little bit along the lines of, you know, what people are saying about you, not behind your back, but on a public town square.

[00:11:22] Like, you're gonna click on that and see how you're mentioned and see how you're being discussed. And so I think that has a huge impact that oftentimes can go overlooked as a way to be able to reach and, and get to a member of Congress. That's a sort of self-aware sentiment that I'm sure they're all using tracking applications.

[00:11:41] And last time I dug into this, there are very, you know, smart apps that are, that can be used to track these things and manage messages. And so that's up there. So it's interesting because it feels like it, it's moved up the rank, you know, looking back, we were talking about calls and letters, you know, where, where does that communication medium fall for?

[00:12:01] Yeah, so calls are still key, um, and certainly have an impact. I mean, if you can have a hundred people call a legislative office in a given day, that's really big. Now the challenge is that staff picks that up, not the member. There are some great stories, a members that'll occasionally do a little time phone banking and someone calls and suddenly, if they're a member of Congress on the phone.

[00:12:22] But you know, that's one in a million um, calls that it happens. And so members do, and I was a congressional intern, you know, get a sheet every day of here are the top issues that we're called about. And the key piece there is doing it all in one day so that you're at the top of the list. Because having a hundred people call over a month, you're gonna have five, six calls a day.

[00:12:40] It's not gonna be as effective as everyone in one given day. Um, I still think that personalized letters really do have a pretty big impact. Um, and the key piece of it is making sure that they are differentiated and on, you know, slightly different subjects than all form letters on the same thing.

[00:13:00] Because what happens behind the scenes is that members of Congress have constituent management software platforms and they can both pull and collect similar messages together and highlight that. If a message is 50% the same text, batch it all together, write, write one response, and send it. . And yes, the numbers matter, but it's different than if somebody takes the time and writes a completely customized note.

[00:13:21] You can't send a form letter to a customized note, and so then you actually have a staffer customizing a message in response, getting that approved and having that happen. Uh, and I really do believe that that starts to change some of the conversation in a congressional office because it can take an issue that no one was previously aware about and suddenly raise it to be top of mind for the office because they're spending time writing and customized and thoughtful.

[00:13:45] Mm-hmm. . So you would still put Twitter above calls and differentiated, we'll call them custom letters. So I, the handwritten letter is what might give that a little bit of a run for the money. If you can deliver a handwritten letter to a member, um, that's pretty valuable. But again, the opportunity with Twitter that exists is you've got a chance to reach that elected official or policy influencer directly themselves and differentiate and also catch them in a little bit of downtime.

[00:14:13] Um, and I think that's the key thing that I would encourage and you know, it helps with both my parents being local elected officials, is they're people just like, And so members of Congress the same way they're sitting, waiting for that flight to take off to go home, do they really wanna be sitting there, you know, powering through email?

[00:14:26] No, they're probably scrolling on Twitter. And are they gonna click on the notifications tab? Of course they are like, we're all human. Um, but you know, that's a different experience than if you're a state legislator and you're trying to go through email as fast as possible. Like it may not have that same component or piece to it.

[00:14:43] Um, that getting the direct in front of and, and on the Twitter platform. . All right. Any other honorable mentions out there? You know, the, the case for Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, fill in the blank. You know, I won't talk about Mastodon because I feel like that is a moment in time. Yeah, we're cer We certainly see some members that are active on Facebook at the congressional level that use it even more than Twitter.

[00:15:10] Um, I think, you know, anecdotally we'll see more form posts or posts that it feels like come from staffers and are a little less personalized. Um, than Twitter. We, interestingly enough, see more state legislators have Facebook accounts, uh, than Twitter accounts. It's about 75% have a Facebook account and little over 50% have a Twitter account.

[00:15:33] Uh, and that's where they do end up using it a little bit differently. But the medium of the platform is just harder of saying, oh, you're gonna comment on an. Uh, in, you know, sending someone a Facebook message to page, it just doesn't work the same way that Twitter does. And, and that's part of, I think, you know, the relevance of Twitter and also where I have to say long term, you know, I am bullish on Twitter continuing to be around because you have all the users and people on it, and it's designed in a way.

[00:16:03] that is very user friendly and also very personal. That is a, you know, way for an individual to communicate. Whereas I think when you look at some of the other platforms, there are many more uses for them. And so as a result things become harder where, you know, TikTok is not gonna be the best way to, to reach your legislator.

[00:16:19] I mean, are they allowing government officials on TikTok anymore? I know there's certain bands talked about for, uh, government employees on the platform. Um, namely because China is literally probably used to spy, manipulate popul. Yeah. So I know certainly that's been talked about for federal, uh, executive branch employees.

[00:16:39] Um, I am not as familiar, um, with the rules that are currently happening in Congress, but realizing is a different branch of government. Oftentimes we will see different rules, um, that are applied to congressional staff. Um, but I don't have the answer top of mind. Gotcha. Alrighty. I wanna talk about what you're seeing.

[00:16:59] 2023. In terms of tactical trends, there's an organization listening right now saying we are, you know, going to be gearing up. There's the, you know, the new elected officials in office. We're trying to get our, you know, lobbying and advocacy straight for 2023. What are the types of activities that you see being planned for, that you think are going to be.

[00:17:22] Yeah. So first off, it's state level, state level, state level, state level. And the reason for that is we now have a divided government here in Washington with Republicans in control of the House and Democrats in control of the Senate and the White House. And so the general mood in town is that not a whole lot is going to happen here over the course of the next two years.

[00:17:41] Uh, and where are things gonna happen? Things are gonna happen at the state level because you've got state houses. Both on the democratic side and the Republican side, where you have either Republicans or Democrats in complete control of both chambers as well as the governorship that wanna enact policy and want to go, and Bills can move fast and they're able to do things.

[00:18:01] And so it is incredibly important to have a state level advocacy strategy because there's both an opportunity for a lot of wins, but also there's an opportunity to, that you need to be aware and be playing defense because any of your opponents are gonna be really active. on that state level as well. Um, so I think that's part one.

[00:18:20] Um, part two of that is thinking a little bit about how do you build a thoughtful and engaged advocacy program to succeed in Washington in the long term. Uh, and it's a pretty exciting time because we're about to. Start thinking about the 2024 presidential election cycle and also what does Congress look like in 2025 during the next cycle.

[00:18:42] And there's a world that, you know, we could be back with one party control. There's a world, we could have a new president and a new administration, and there's a world that we could still be in divided government, but that as we are ramping up for that, now is the time to be planning those strategies in.

[00:18:56] For 2024. And when talking about strategy, I'm talking about things like voter education. What are the campaigns that you're gonna be running when everyone's talking about the presidential election cycle, and how are you helping your advocates and your donors and your employees and your members register to vote, find their polling places?

[00:19:11] There are some super innovative programs that I've seen nonprofits do targeting campaign staff. Targeting individuals who are running for president and making sure that they are very known. So one of the most simple ones is just simply to go wear your nonprofit's t-shirt and go volunteer for a presidential or congressional candidate and make sure they know that on that given day the phone bank is 50 people from this organization.

[00:19:35] They're gonna notice, and these elected officials and presidential candidates are gonna be way closer to the voters than they are during most times of the year. And then figuring out bigger picture, like how are you gonna position your issues both in the election cycle, but as well as in the presidential cycle?

[00:19:51] So that they're top of mind when either, you know, the administration is reelected or new congress comes in so that you're off and running in 2025. And I think it's really about playing the long game at the federal level. Um, that becomes so important. And then the last thing that I'll share, Just on thinking about 2023 and the advocacy side is it's all about integration.

[00:20:11] I think in the past we've seen a lot of very siloed efforts and siloed technology platforms. So you use one thing to send things out and you use another thing to do advocacy, and you use another thing for tracking. Um, and it ends up with data being lost, really clunky, lot of time doing downloads and uploads and what we're seeing both with Quorum as well.

[00:20:34] Other platforms out there is that integration so that you have more one-stop shops and that your data lives together connects together, um, and that you're able to leverage the full benefits from it.

[00:20:56] I have a random question. Can you explain data, data voter files to me as though I were a seven year?

[00:21:06] Yes. So when you are 18 and you get to register to. You go and give information to your county clerk about where you live, who you are, your age, and that information is compiled in a publicly available record that you are registered to vote, and then that record is accessed by campaigns candidates.

[00:21:37] Policy organizations and advocacy groups, and they can use that very simple information, most notably your home address, to attach a whole series of additional information to you based sometimes on algorithms and sometimes on other anonymized data. So for example, if you give your home address to go. For a hunting magazine, they can tag you as likely interested in hunting.

[00:22:07] And so when you get a mailer from your candidate or uh, elected official that's talking about the work that they're doing on access to guns and hunting. You can bet that the person that cares about environmental issues or cares about gun control is not also getting that same mailer, and so it lets a series of both hyper targeting from mail, but also from digital ads occur in an anonymized fashion that protects an individual from being exposed by, or being known for the fact that they subscribe to a hunting magazine and may care about.

[00:22:47] I was wondering, I've seen some organizations, you know, when it's time to jump into the advocacy fray, think that like, step one is I buy this absurdly expensive donor file and then I do the advocacy. I, I, um, I'm curious of what your thoughts are on where that fits in the strategy versus, you know, looking at it from a different lens.

[00:23:14] Yeah, I, I love this question. So I've spent this morning with, um, two Quorum customers as we've started off the year and done just strategic planning around their advocacy campaigns. And one of the comments from breakfast this morning was that 2015 was the era of buying big lists. And this organization bought a massive list of.

[00:23:37] Suddenly had all these people on their contact program, and now five years later, what they're seeing is these people aren't active. Their sending domain and reputation is going down. People aren't engaging because they never signed up and never wanted to be a part of it. And so that era of big list buying and just adding people in is over.

[00:23:57] It is all about having a trusted brand or trusted network of communication of someone that you know. And getting individuals to take action through that. And one of my favorite examples of this, uh, is American Airlines, uh, a company that I am, uh, quite a big fan of as being a frequent flyer. Uh, but they're also phone to action customer.

[00:24:21] And about four or five years ago when they were facing some of the challenges with air traffic control staffing and the f AA funding and where we gonna have enough air traffic controllers, they sent out an advocacy alert to all their frequent flyers, myself included saying, You don't wanna have longer waits on the tarmac.

[00:24:38] We need to fully fund the f a and expand the number of controllers. And so suddenly you have all these frequent flyers saying, of course I'm in. Take action, write my member of Congress. And it elevates that issue. And so for organizations out there, My encouragement for you is you have to start by looking at who's on your existing list, who are your most engaged donors, advocates, event participants, individuals who are involved, and use that list to start your advocacy program and then slowly recruit people beyond that because it's about the quality that matters and not the quantity.

[00:25:10] And it goes back to behind the scenes of what the Congress. To see if you have a ton of people that don't really care, just sending and clicking a form letter, it has nowhere near the same impact as someone who really does care, taking even just two minutes to write what they personally care about. And so that's where, you know, unlike 2015, you shouldn't feel this pressure that, oh my God, I need to send 10,000 messages because 10,000 messages that say the same thing.

[00:25:34] ops is just shrug. And I'm like, yep, I've seen this before. But sending a hundred messages that are all different and super customized, like that's really impactful at the end of the day. And then ideally, you're having your in-person advocacy team go up and talk to the members and re-share those messages and say, let me tell you about your constituent who's facing this issue.

[00:25:54] Yeah. I think that's, that's helpful. I love you saying it was such a 2015 moment. It's clearly burned into your mind as you led up to the presidential elections. I. , you know, the, the expenditure on that. And the interesting thing is, you know, you're, I, I dunno what the going rate is, but it's tens of thousands of dollars depending on what you're getting, but you're not getting the permission to communicate.

[00:26:14] And, and I think that's what you're hinting at. And when you burn through that list, you are also hurting your digital reputation. You know, ending up on, on many, uh, do not send lists and ultimately the goal was missed. Um, and so what, what are some int. Planning in terms of spending, like, you know, clearly everyone will get quorum, , uh, right.

[00:26:38] But, you know, in terms of the, the outreach, what, you know, is it buying Twitter ads? That seems like, uh, an opportunity, is it spending to build up my list? Am I trying to do petitions, promote petitions? What is the, the tactic then if, if you're not buying. but earning it. Yeah, so the most easy one that we go to is Facebook Lead Ads, because Facebook still has a series of targeting that you can get pretty specific in terms of individuals with interest that you're looking for, as well as individuals that are in a given region or area that you can then connect.

[00:27:14] Through to an advocacy webpage. Uh, and so that by far is the default for organizations that are really actively looking to grow their lists and looking to invest. But I will also just go back to my big challenge is before you look externally, look internally and what are the options with your internal events and internal lists to be able to grow your pool of advocates.

[00:27:38] And what I often see happen with nonprofits is the advocacy team. Siloed in a given area that says, oh, well that's your database, that's your list. You figure out how to grow it. And the organization is sitting on a list that is way bigger and way larger for their major trade association or major individual impact summit or movement.

[00:27:57] But it says, oh no, you can't use that list to do advocacy. And I think one of the key message. To share and highlight is that advocacy can be helpful in building a more robust relationship with your members, donors, individual participants, because they're looking for ways to be involved. And I think so often what you get is fundraising teams who go, oh, well, don't even ask our donors for anything.

[00:28:19] We're already asking them to give money every year. But if you're just asking, give money, you're sitting there saying, well, what's my connection? Why am I here giving resources and dollars to it? I don't feel like I'm helping. I want to be more. And so as you can have a donor who gives money and say, oh, thank you for it.

[00:28:35] Would you be willing also help us out and take action? There's more of an attachment, more connections, and so you can build on the ladders of engagement and actually end up with, you know, larger donations, more frequent donations, and people who see the work and connection that they're funding. Rather than just get hit up for a check every single year.

[00:28:53] I think the inverse of that too is also your grassroots advocates are the best people to identify future donors from. Because asking someone to go and write a hundred dollars check, like that's a big ask. Asking someone for two minutes of their time to click a couple buttons and write their member of Congress, that's easier.

[00:29:09] And so the challenge that I would give to any of the organizations listening, Is what percent of your grassroots advocates are donating and how do you help increase that percentage? And what I think you're gonna find is, is that very few organizations turn around and actually solicit the grassroots advocates because the advocacy teams are sitting in their silos saying, oh, well we don't wanna ask them to donate money.

[00:29:28] Like we're trying to get them to do advocacy. And really what we're seeing is the best organizations are connecting the two and making it part of a cohesive engagement.

[00:29:40] final. Uh, thank you for sharing that. It's, you know, helpful to see your framing on it. I'm now curious, you know, we're talking about grassroots advocacy communication, and it's not one size fits all. I feel like when we last talked, we were in peak moments of what I will call rage politic, right? Ra ra rage messaging was all the rage.

[00:30:04] I, I, I'll go out on one and say, what? , what do you look for in terms of tactics, guidance, advice, approaches for getting people to care when clearly, uh, we are, we're even postig of political messaging at this point, so I think one, you have to make it relevant to them. Uh, people are not as interested to be stirred up or responded in, uh, Aggravated per se based on whatever the issue is on left or right, because certainly there are people there that feel that way and feel really passionately.

[00:30:44] But you also have a whole series of people that just wanna go about their lives that aren't thinking about what's happening. The state capitol aren't thinking about what's happening in Washington, and honestly probably don't even know the names of the individuals that represent them. And so the challenge for most organizations, Is, how do you phrase the messaging in a way that gets at those people who are in the middle, who and are, who are often on the sidelines.

[00:31:08] And I go back to that American Airlines example, and there's many others. If you have to make it directly relevant to them of, Hey, your life is going to be impacted because of this. And that's how you get some of the most passionate and engaged stories. Because what you end up hearing is saying, Hey, if I'm sitting on the tarmac for another three hours, I'm not home playing with my kids and I already have to travel.

[00:31:28] X number of days a week. This is the personal impact that it has on me. That's the story that you want to tell the member of Congress, not the story around government funding and whether we should spend more money or less money on the f aa and how that impacts the federal debt. Um, because it comes down of that.

[00:31:43] They wanna hear the personal stories and that's what moves. And so making clear that individuals know, you know, what is the impact for them, and making that as hyper-relevant as possible, I think leads to both the best advocacy outcomes and also the most effective. . Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Making it practical, bringing it to your backyard, you know, the sort of act local and is what you started off by saying, which is , the state.

[00:32:08] The state, state, you know, is acting in your backyard. Um, super helpful. Anything else that you wanna share regarding Quorum Cool Tactics, uses of the platform that are. I, the big one I just go back to is this is the year of integration, the year of one stop shop, and it's time to get your data working for you.

[00:32:31] Um, and both, some of that runs through the work that we're doing is we work to string together, pack information, advocacy, legislative tracking, and have that sync. But it also comes to just simply donor databases and is your donor database talking to your email platform, talking to your fundraising tools, talking to your grassroots advocacy tools, and getting all the information from those back in a, you know, circular motion so that you can learn from it and apply more analytics and information.

[00:32:55] This is something that was really probably cutting edge as we think 5, 6, 7 years ago. But now is the time to make it happen. And we're seeing a lot more organizations make changes to their technology stacks to reflect that we're in 2023 and the technology is out there. It is possible to do, but it's really comes down to a matter of having both the willpower.

[00:33:20] As well as the encouragement to know that now is the time and that you don't have to be a trailblazer to go and, and make that happen. Um, and so I would just encourage folks to really think about that because as you think about 2024 and the advocacy opportunities coming presidential election cycle, like that's the time when you need your tools to be the most effective they possibly can be.

[00:33:40] And so take the time this year to go make those investments and make those changes, uh, to be your, put yourself in a position, uh, for. . Well, thanks for that. All right, we're gonna move into some rapid fire here. Please keep your responses brief and interesting. , what is one tech tool or website that you or your organization has started using in last year?

[00:34:04] So we finally started using a chat bot on our website to engage with people who were coming to the website. Uh, we were late on this, um, from a B2B perspective, and many of you have probably been to websites looking to buy and see the little chat bot pop up. But we've seen a whole new series of engagements, conversions, and people that wouldn't normally just fill out a form on the website that we've captured through the chatbot.

[00:34:29] And so my kind of out there challenge to the listeners on this podcast is what would it look like to put a chatbot on your website? Who would you wanna try and engage with? What information would you wanna capture and can you get more people added to your organization's list or engaged than you could from just a standard email sign up?

[00:34:47] I think we've seen a lot of B2B uses for it, but I don't think we've seen as many advocacy nonprofit and even B2C uses for it, and that there's a lot of low hanging fruit there, especially with the new AI coming out. As you know, as much as you wanna trust a pre-trained AI to answer on behalf of your organization, uh, is a good point though.

[00:35:07] tech issues. You are battl. Yeah, so we just bought Capital Canary, doubled in size overnight and literally had two of every system. Now, sometimes they were the same system in that we had two instances of Salesforce. Sometimes they were totally different. We had an instance of churn zero and an interest of Gainsight.

[00:35:25] For our customer software, uh, we have HubSpot and we have Marketo. And so we are currently in the middle of a major, major push to both select go forward systems and integrate so that we're operating as a combined business. And the advice and kind of mandate that I gave our team is that we don't wanna be Southwest Airlines.

[00:35:45] When you look at the challenges Southwest ran into at the end of December of 2022, they have not upgraded their technology yet the way that they need to. And so you saw a massive meltdown as a result of it. And I think that all organizations need to take a moment and just look within and say, do we have the technology infrastructure that we need to scale as we look to grow and expand our operations, or even keep the operations going right now?

[00:36:09] Because the, you know, if Southwest Airlines is culpable of not having the technology, I know that there's a lot of organizations out there that may be looking and saying, yeah, my tech really isn't working for me, so we're up to our next, just because of combining two businesses together and doing it. But I'm really excited because I know we're gonna come out stronger with more advanced tech than if we hadn't done the combination.

[00:36:32] What is coming in the next year that has you the most? Yeah, so we're launching a brand new pack product to help pack professionals run, manage, and distribute contributions from their pack. It's gonna be the first new software in the market in 20 years, and so we both have an incredible amount of excitement to come into a market that just has not seen a whole lot of innovation.

[00:36:56] And also we have customers that are really. Excited about for what that's going, uh, to bring. And then for us, it's the last leg of the stool on the integrated product strategy of finally putting together federal and state legislative tracking, grassroots advocacy, impact management at one place. So that's certainly gonna be, uh, a highlight for us.

[00:37:16] Can you talk about a mistake that you made earlier in your career that shapes the way you do things? So the biggest business mistake that I've made is signing a new office lease in downtown DC where I sit now. Uh, and I share this because I think organizations really need to think differently about both their office space and their work strategy.

[00:37:39] We signed this lease three months into Covid, so probably. Uh, probably a year or so after we last talked and, um, you know, we were focused in betting on a rebound of coming together and coming back to the office. We now have a fully remote development team, and about 35% of our team is fully remote and lives outside of dc And even for the folks that live in DC people are not coming into the office the same extent that they normally do.

[00:38:05] Now, luckily as a company we doubled in size, and so the amount that we're paying is a small percentage of our overall budget each year. But still, when you sit in 28,000 square feet of office space and have 30, 40 people coming in, you realize that is this really the best use of money? And is this also no longer is the way that you engage, retrain, uh, at attract and, you know, help, uh, skill and motivate team members, uh, because it's a whole new world.

[00:38:35] Uh, and so I really think that both has changed the way that I look at the world, both of how we operate as an employer in an organization. But also, you know, I was even in a board meeting, um, earlier this week of folks that are planning to renew their office and, you know, thinking really is that the best sentence?

[00:38:52] And looking at what are the other options? What can you do with less space? Can you do more flexible working? And that the way of working as much as I loved it or others may have that we've done for the last 50 years has completely changed with the pandemic and that we've gotta adapt our strategies to that.

[00:39:10] do you believe that nonprofits can successfully go out of. . Absolutely. So one of the things that we initially met through do something.org, uh, which is just an incredible organization, uh, working on efforts and getting more young people engaged in making a difference. And one of the things that I think do something really framed for me is this ideal of social impact and doing it in a way that.

[00:39:38] Funded by organizations that are looking to make a difference or by donors, um, that are looking to achieve a particular outcome that's clearly measured. And I think the same way that businesses can go out of business, if they're not consumers that are willing to pay for it or customers that are interested in the service.

[00:39:56] Uh, nonprofits should be able to successfully go out of business either because, one, they've solved the problem and so there's no more need to pay for that individual code or service. Or two. I think it's also okay to. And look at the number of startups out there that have tried to do successful things and the number that fail as a result of that.

[00:40:15] Um, and even with that, it's clear that hey, there's not a market or need to it. And I think the trap sometimes that, uh, smaller organizations, even larger organizations, can fall in of what, we're a big institution. We're here, the donors keep funding it, and so let's keep finding things that we can keep getting more donations.

[00:40:32] The push that I would say is, are you really making an impact at the end of the. And one of the clearest ways to do that is if someone is willing to pay dollars or services or time for what you're doing, even if it's a small amount, because that gives an indication that you know what you're doing is, is successful.

[00:40:48] And then the best ones, uh, you're eventually gonna run it out of that because hopefully you've solved your individual problem. How did you get started in the social impact sector? So I was involved, uh, in local youth advisory boards. Uh, I served on the Santa Fe Mayor's Youth Advisory Council, uh, and eventually chaired it for two years and gave me really a chance to start thinking bigger and broader around the community.

[00:41:13] And then realized that there was a whole series of opportunities to work with organizations that informed youth advisory boards do something. Dot org was one of those, uh, and had the chance to be on the do something youth advisory board. Uh, and then I sat there thinking about it and saying, look, we've got a whole series of governors, a whole series of members of Congress that have youth advisory councils.

[00:41:29] Why doesn't the president, uh, have one? And so I ran a campaign for probably four or five years to try and get a presidential youth council. Uh, we got this close, but ultimately, uh, we're not successful. With it. But what it really taught me was how to start and run an organization. How do you get people signed on?

[00:41:48] How do you delegate tasks? How do you put a website up? How do you send out email updates? Uh, basically everything but a whole ton on the financial side. Uh, and what I realized is that social entrepreneurship was one of the best lessons that I could have ever wished for, for doing actual entrepreneurship because as we were founding and launching the company, it felt really familiar and it was something that I'd.

[00:42:09] You know, a couple of years before, just in the social side for the Presidential Youth Council. Yeah. It's funny, I rare aside that, yeah, it is how we met. I'm getting flashbacks. I don't know if I was directly running it at that point, but I do recall at one point it might do something career, uh, needing to arrange a bunch of kids coming to New York, going to and from hotels to our office.

[00:42:31] I don't know if you were part of that adventure when I was running it, but that was pretty funny. Yeah, I remember it. , I'm glad I didn't lose you in the , the subway. Uh, alright. If I could put you in a hot tub time machine back to the beginning of your work, what advice would you give?

[00:42:54] So I think one of the hardest pieces is you have to be prepared to give things up. And there's a great article called Giving Away Your Legos. Um, but you have to train yourself and learn that you have to constantly be pushing and giving things to other people as you grow and scale. . And that's really hard because when you're a small organization, you have all the Legos and you know, the Legos are super, super fun to play with.

[00:43:20] But as you scale more and more Legos start falling on your plate and you have to start giving away your favorite Legos and that you can no longer send the emails or collect the invoices or spend all the time with customers or do these items and you need a team around that has their own Legos that they're playing with.

[00:43:35] But all those have to start with you. And so I think one of the most challenging lessons is we've scaled. Is learning, okay, how do you give away your favorite Lego set and say, I'm no longer involved in doing that, or I'm not gonna go do X. And that's a really core part of scaling that I think founders definitely struggle with because you care, you're passionate, you're engaged, uh, and I think also applies for individuals, even if you didn't found organizations.

[00:44:00] What are you doing that you can give your new team member that just joined or be able to delegate or give back to someone else to let you really spend time focusing on the things that matter the most? Uh, and that's been one of the most helpful framing things that we've learned over our eight and a half years of doing this.

[00:44:16] That's so funny. There's part of my brain that's saying Absolutely right. , you have to eve away tho those types of things. And the other part of me is saying, I don't want to give away my Legos. I think there is, you know, speaking to somebody who's approaching a decade of work in the organization, I think there are some Legos that I will say you have to hold onto because it fuels you in some part, because otherwise you're just left with all the little gray pieces that don't really match or anything.

[00:44:37] And you're like, these Legos stink. I don't like this Jack. So I'll put an asterisk on that. Alrighty, . Very fair. . What is, what is something you think you or your organization should stop? Uh, the number of meetings that we have. I am a big believer in the book time, talent, energy, and I think the shocking thing that the book starts out of is you have all these organizations, many listeners too, who have large finance departments that are really concerned when you go spend a hundred or a thousand dollars on something and all the approvals that are involved.

[00:45:13] Well, most organizations', largest expense is the salary. For their headcount, and each individual each hour of the day has a cost associated with it. But yet, so often you see, oh, let's put 10 people in a meeting, and suddenly you're looking around and you're running a $500 or a thousand dollars meeting.

[00:45:31] And most organizations, including ours, Don't have a whole series of protocols in place that limit the number of meetings or put standards around meetings the same way that you have to get your expense report approved or a budget approved. And so I certainly would love to see us reduce the number of meetings, reduce the number of people in meetings, and be more intentional about when we get together.

[00:45:52] But it is a fight that I've fought for many years and it is a challenge because we as humans wanna socialize. Wanna see each other and default to that, and also wanna be inclusive, and so add more and more people and suddenly you've got 15 boxes on a Zoom screen and it ends up being a pretty significant cost to the organization.

[00:46:13] What advice did your parents give you that you either followed or didn't follow? I love, I love this question. So, when I first told my mom, uh, that I was going to start a startup at Quorum to track what was happening on Capitol Hill, uh, her immediate response is she goes, oh, well that sounds like a nice thing to do between college and graduate school.

[00:46:34] Rest assured, both my parents are lawyers that would've loved for me to have gone to law school. Um, I did not have the opportunity to go to graduate school. I'm very happy to be here in growing the business. Uh, and so that, uh, immediately comes to mind because look, founding a company, Or a social, uh, impact effort or a nonprofit can be scary and you've gotta jump off and have confidence.

[00:46:56] And if you spend enough time working towards it and iterating, you will eventually get there, even if it's not the idea that you started on. If I were to hand you a magical wand wave across the social impact sector, what would it do? So for us, we're always interested in more government data, more information published online, more information in machine readable form, and more transparency, uh, that happens every day, uh, on both state governments and, and the political process.

[00:47:27] I think there's a ton of opportunities at the state government level of just being able to pull in much more information around the individual proceedings on the floor amendments, agendas, and committee hearings. Some state governments have individual transcripts of what's happening on the floor and committee sessions, and so there is huge opportunity, but oftentimes we'll see government organizations trying to hold it back where they don't want to give too much information to the public.

[00:47:51] They don't want to invite too much participation, and so that's the big area that I would love to take a magic wand and just fix that and make the government more accessible. What advice would you give college grads looking to enter the social impact? So my big advice would be go follow your passions.

[00:48:12] Go do the thing that you are most excited about doing, and that gets you up every day, even if it is not the given chosen path or the one that might be most exciting. And it's really interesting. Well, that most exciting, but most financially rewarding. When I look at my college classmates now, about eight years out, the ones that really went out and followed their passions, did the most risky things that at the time we graduated.

[00:48:38] You said, well, why aren't you going to take the really high paying. Consultant or financial job or going to law school and doing the traditional thing. Um, those are the folks that I think are both most successful and most fulfilled currently in their careers. And that is something that when you are leaving college at a given and current moment, you have this pressure of where everyone else is making high salaries and going to, you know, go work in business or go work in Wall Street or going to go do X or Y and a big encouragement that you will.

[00:49:09] Financial success, you will find fulfillment. You will find what's right. It might take you a little while to get there, but your twenties are the time to do that. And so use that time to explore because you'll end up with just a much more fulfilling career and you'll have more opportunities to pivot within it than say you will, you know, going into one of the more traditional paths.

[00:49:29] Well, Alex, thank you so much. Final question. How do people find you? How do people. Yeah, so we're super easy. Um, quorum.us. My email's just Alex quorum us. Uh, more than happy to be helpful. So if you're looking at your nonprofit technology and just want someone to talk to, certainly happy to bounce ideas off.

[00:49:48] Uh, if you're figuring out your advocacy strategy for next year or looking for advocacy software, we're certainly here. Uh, and happy to talk and in general, you know, looking to be able to give back to the community because I think it's so important that we help each other and realize that there's a lot of advice, uh, and favors and help that we've been given over the years.

[00:50:04] That's let us build the company, uh, and looking to see more people do that with NGOs, social impact movements, uh, and startups. Uh, thanks for the work you're doing in the sector. We appreciate it and good luck this year. Awesome. Thanks so much for having me on, George.

 

Blood Donation Eligibility National Update (news)

FDA To Further Ease Restrictions On Gay Men & Blood Donation Eligibility

On Friday the FDA proposed new policy revisions that demonstrate a shift toward more inclusive regulations surrounding blood donation for members of the LGBTQ community and those of various sexual orientations, according to reporting from CNBC and others. In 2015, the lifetime ban on gay men from donating blood was eased to allow those who abstained from sex for one year to donate blood, but Friday’s announcement proposed easing those restrictions further. The restrictive blood donation rules have long been criticized as discriminatory. As CNBC reports, “the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest organization that advocates for LGBTQ rights, said the FDA proposal is a step in the right direction, but more needs to be done to remove restrictions.” The new rules would allow monogamous gay and bisexual men to donate blood, while folks engaging in sex with new or multiple partners must wait three months.
Read more ➝

 

Summary

• PEPFAR Celebrates 20 Years of Unprecedented Global Impact in the Fight to End HIV/AIDS
  United States Department of State
• How Nonprofit Hospitals Put Profits Over Patients | nytimes.com
• SNAP 'food stamp' payments are about to get smaller. NJ lawmakers want to fund the difference. | Gothamist
• 10th Annual High Country K9 Keg Pull raises money for local nonprofit | Watauga Democrat

 

 

Proud partner of the Nonprofit Podcast Network from Nonprofit.ist.

 

 

Cookie-pocalypse & Fundraising in 2023 | Agility Lab Consulting

Elyse Wallnutt, Founder & Principal at Agility Lab Consulting shares how nonprofit fundraising professionals need to adapt to the removal of 3rd party cookies, dealing with evolving donor privacy laws

 

Resources on GDPR, SHEILD, and CCPA for nonprofits.

 

 

Rough Transcript

[00:00:00] audio1299811408: Today on the Whole Whale podcast, we have somebody who was referred to Whole Whale by none other than a, a frequent guest and teacher on whole whale, uh, Josh from Round Table. And we, uh, we tend to pay attention when he says this person knows what they are doing, knows what they're doing with regard to data privacy and fundraising.

[00:00:48] So I was, I. To Elise, the founder and principal at Agility Lab Consulting, uh, agility Lab Consulting. And that's, uh, I believe Agility Lab Consulting. Uh, agility lab.io. Agility lab.io is their website. And we're excited because Agility Lab has just founded and starting their work. And I will say Elise comes with an incredible background, previously senior director marketing advertising at World Food Program.

[00:01:17] Yeah, you might have heard. In the us I also spent time director and strategy at the Center for American Progress. Uh, spent time at Media cause for a year and of course, uh, a little organization called The Nature Conservancy as a senior Associate director, uh, digital acquisition. So safe to say, you know, your stuff.

[00:01:37] I'm excited. I'm excited to learn from you. Thank you for coming on. Anything I, I missed, Elise? No, thanks George. It's, it's great to be here. Thank you for having me. Yeah, well, you caught my eye immediately because you started speaking my language before we turned on record by talking about the sort of like cookie apocalypse.

[00:01:58] The cookie apocalypse. So I don't know if that's the right place to start, but things are gonna get weird in 2023 for fundraisers. Why? Yeah, so you're probably all aware as consumers about how much more aware we've become about how our data is being used. I think that that's been a much more popular topic of conversation in the last couple of years, and audience demand for privacy has really picked up.

[00:02:28] We saw the EU adopt privacy laws with GDPR in 2016, which really set the standard and us. Uh, legislators have taken note as well. So there are five states in the US implementing privacy laws this year. And with that, uh, big tech is really paying attention to how they need to protect their reputations, um, and stay in compliance.

[00:02:53] So they are eliminating what's called third party cookies, and that's a, it's a little piece of code. , that is what allows marketers to stand up ads that, uh, essentially follow you around the internet. So those, you know, that pair of pants or shoes that you can't stop seeing, it's, it's that pixel or that, that third party cookie that allows for that.

[00:03:15] So, um, the reason it's. It's troublesome is most people consider it not consented data use. So what we're moving toward with the elimination of third party cookies is marketers are only gonna be able to use. Consented information. So the information that you provide to them. So we're looking at things like what you provide in a form, when you donate, what you provide, when you fill out that petition, um, and, and things of that nature.

[00:03:46] So that's really gonna require us to be a lot more thoughtful about our targeting strategies. You caught my attention here with saying that there are five states. I was only aware of the New York Shield and C C P A in California, but it's feels like, can I just summarize saying like where one goes all must follow it.

[00:04:06] It's essentially like I love how am American states are like so futile when it comes to internet laws and even like registration. So I. nonprofits have to register in each state for fundraising, even though you have one donation form on your site, is this is where data privacy, third party cookies are going?

[00:04:29] Like how do you advise, because obviously you're offering like consulting advice on how to approach this. How do you advise folks of being like, oh no, no, you gotta do this here, here, here, here. What is the approach? So the good thing about the, uh, five states that are implementing this right now is that the laws are, are pretty similar.

[00:04:46] Um, what it allows for is audience members to request that their information, um, can be deleted from your file essentially, so they can. Call you up and say, Hey, I wanna know everything you have on record about me. I want to view that information, and if I want you to get rid of it, you have to. So most of the states are, are pretty aligned on where they're falling with that.

[00:05:10] And to your point, George, I think most of the states are probably gonna have to. Fall online eventually based on, uh, demand from constituents, that's not going to stop. And there's actually, um, a bipartisan supported federal bill that's pending. Um, it's gotten a little bit stalled up, but may make progress in 2023.

[00:05:33] And if that comes to fruition, that will create that federally supported framework. So my advice for nonprofits is to start treating this like it. Already a reality and to start getting prepared for something you can put in place operationally across the board. There's not really a point in standing up, you know, a set of operations for Colorado versus California, um, because they're, they're pretty similar.

[00:06:00] So GDPR is the most aggressive and luckily we already know what that looks like, uh, from the eu. And if you use that as a framework, you're pretty much guaranteed to be in compliance with what the states stand up. and just to play it out more practically, let's say you get, cuz it's a, a rite of, rite of removal, I think for your data.

[00:06:23] Mm-hmm. . What if that's not followed in, what is it, 30 days or 90 days? What are the kind of penalties you're seeing for this? Uh, so what we just saw actually, um, Facebook got hit with a really large fine by the EU for not following privacy compliance. Um, so when you're out of compliance, you can get hit with fines.

[00:06:44] Um, you, you will have more of that, uh, legal eye on you and it really could impact you in. In terms of audience trust more broadly. Um, so that's where I've been encouraging people to think of this as more of an opportunity rather than a slap on the hand. Um, when we're showing audiences that we care about respecting their rights and how their data is used, you can really build your brand and make sure that you are front and center of building that trust conversation.

[00:07:16] And just to be clear, let's say there's a, a privacy@myorganization.org. Mm-hmm. , I George email them saying, you know, I'm sort of invoking my right for removal. Right. To be forgotten. Yep. Uh, please present and remove any and all data. This is an official notice, let's say that goes to that email and the organization's like, this is the first time we've ever seen it.

[00:07:40] Like, what does that actually. So it means that you're gonna have to go through your C R m present everything that you know about, but you also need to have a handle on how you've been releasing data to third parties. So you know when you're uploading a person's. Email address into Facebook so that you can serve ads to them.

[00:07:59] You're also releasing some of that data to Facebook. So there are things that you can implement, like Facebook's conversion API that allow you to self-select some of those fields and get your third party options in, uh, better compliance being more risk averse there. But really it involves you being able to tell people what you have on them.

[00:08:23] Um, You know, your own spare, but also how you've been using their, their data externally. So the idea is that you don't want it to take you three weeks to execute one of these requests. You wanna be able to make sure that your staff knows how to, uh, turn this over and make sure that it is, you know, scalable and your approach is able to be right sized.

[00:08:48] Um, and also that your privacy policy reflect. What people can expect. So if you have 45 days to, to do this, is it gonna take you all 45 or can people expect to see something in 10? So you really need to be able to set the tone for, um, what audiences should get from you. And when

[00:09:08] I see a lot of headaches in the future here, I mean clearly, unfortunately, my mind goes toward. More of a predatory attack potentially, um, where you could sort of deluge an organization with, um, hundreds of these requests, um, and really bog down a technical team. So certainly I think having a plan in place for how do you do this in, in batch and do it efficiently, uh, especially if you are on the front lines of organizations that dance on contentious issues, we'll say.

[00:09:39] Is that a, is that a fair. Yeah, we're actually seeing whole companies, uh, being stood up just to provide for that. Um, you know, it's flooding businesses with requests from consumers, you know, as the consumer you can hire them to go and do this for you and they'll hit everything you know, you've ever email subscribed to.

[00:10:01] So that is where you need to be able to make sure you have your operational process in line and, you know, um, what. fair game to be released and, and what's not, um, and, and how you're gonna treat that. Yeah. Sounds like, um, a lot of work. I I, I don't wanna spend too much more time here unless there's something I'm maybe missing on the, the right to be forgotten and those policies coming up.

[00:10:26] I think really the most important thing, well, not the most important thing, but another important thing for, uh, marketing teams to also consider here is that, Data minimization is going to be your legal team's recommended approach. So it's really important for you to get a good handle on what the states consider, uh, personal information, what those fields look like, and also for you to know the business reason that you're ingesting certain data fields and what you want your retention period to be, and what fields you're willing to.

[00:11:02] You know, forego. So if you know that you're going to lose some of that third party tracking, what do you need to know on a first party level in terms of, you know, person's age and their interest categories and, and all the other things that make us understand what makes a person tick? You need to have a good handle on that so that you can sit at the table with the legal team and, uh, engage with them productively on what can stay and what can.

[00:11:28] I mean, I don't even know how you would go about finding that individual's third party cookie that you're using to track them around the internet and delete it. I mean, I think you acknowledge it, but is there a way to like signal out that one, you know, unique identifier inside of the walls of Google and, and others?

[00:11:47] Uh, no, I, well, you, so what most people are approaching this as, and, and again, this needs to come through in the privacy policy, is there are services that will let a person like you or me, George. Gotcha. Yeah. Go wipe my, yeah. Yeah. Um, so. An organization can say, Hey, we're gonna recognize signals from those types of services or not.

[00:12:10] Uh, and that's what you need to make clear in your privacy policy cause you're not technically, legally obligated to do that yet. But in the future, when third party cookies are wiped, that's gonna go away for all of us. It's not gonna exist as a capability. And when is the, is the deadline for removing third party?

[00:12:28] So they, you won't have to do anything to remove them. Uh, Google's gonna do it for you supposedly. Uh, Firefox already doesn't support third-party cookies. There's several other browsers that don't, um, but Chrome is, owns 64% of the market share when it comes to browsers and they. Google is saying that 2024 is the year they're gonna make good on this promise.

[00:12:54] And it's notable, this timeline has shifted a lot because Google hasn't quite figured out how they're gonna make up the revenue loss on their end, is my guess. Uh, so they are, they keep extending it, but 2024 is, is what they say. Uh, the deadline. And we've already seen, you know, thank you for explaining a bit about cookies and kind of how they're used and the, the apple fallout, I feel like is still coming.

[00:13:19] So maybe you can talk a bit about how fundraisers are needing to adapt to the reduction in tracking ability in email and maybe marketing with regard to Facebook Advertis. . Yeah. So the question I get asked, um, often is, why is Facebook acquisition struggling and what are we gonna do to replace it? And I think what people are missing is that Facebook is just the first, because they were hit so hard with apple's changes when Apple forced web developers to say that, um, they had to ask users for permission to track them.

[00:13:57] N 94% of those users said, no, I don't wanna be tracked. Facebook lot lost a lot of capabilities to target people outright and also to create lookalike models based on what they knew about people's behaviors. So what you're saying from Facebook is just representative of the struggle you're going to also have on Google via paid search ads and the like when third party cookies are wiped out.

[00:14:23] So it's really the time to take stock. Understanding what's working on your file, doing some contextual audits to get a sense of. What you know about your audiences and what you'd want to know so that you can collect those inputs. And also so that you can do more one-to-one media buying. If it came to it.

[00:14:45] Um, you might wanna understand, hey, we, we stood up ads on this site and they worked, but not this site. So we're gonna play more toward that type of content category. And we're also going to take that one step further and build our, our content strategy so that it focuses more on that type of topic. Uh, so you might think about those pieces now while you still have the capability to see into, uh, your Google results.

[00:15:14] So the other thing that is really important to understand about third party cookie elimination is that there will be analytics implications. GA four coming into play. Um, and with third party cookies wiping out, you know, Facebook and other advertising capabilities to see a pixel fire, you're gonna have to feed that information more manually.

[00:15:39] And you're also going to need to adjust your attribution model potentially to, uh, make changes so that you understand the state of play and how things are converting or.

[00:15:52] I think the way I'm kind of trying to position this is less moving forward about who people are with regard to their cookie footprint. Mm-hmm. and more about what they do. This is gonna be a behavior first environment. And you know, you mentioned GA four. I have the feeling. based on numbers, conversations, and what I'm seeing, I have the feeling a lot of folks are not ready for the hard transfer from Universal Analytics.

[00:16:24] The number one used web tracking analytic on the interwebs. Mm-hmm. stopping in July, like done, done like dinner, gone not until November, but until gone. Won't work and then suddenly everyone's gonna have to use GA four, which is very clearly Google's response to cookie apocalypse gdpr rising concerns of the way the fundamentals of universal analytics work don't work in this new environment, which is why this is happening.

[00:16:54] Yeah. Uh, what is your take? How are you positioning this transfer and thinking? So in terms of my advice for people, I would. Operating like it's happening tomorrow and taking stock of what you've learned and the benefits of having all these tracking capabilities in place now, uh, by creating and documenting all of those insights so that you can say, , Hey, you know, right now I'm on this really sophisticated attribution model that lets me see all of the touchpoints that led up to a conversion.

[00:17:32] But if those go away tomorrow, and if I never had them at my discretion, how would I make different decisions? So if I am only able to see that a person gave on this donation form and I know nothing else about their path, how, how would I apply some of the learning? From the past to, to get to that. So, um, I would look at what you've learned about, you know, when I was at the Nature Conservancy, we were finding that it took an average of 16 touchpoints for a per person to decide to give.

[00:18:02] And those were the ones that we could track. So knowing that, how many emails do you need to get in front of them? How many, you know, direct mail placements do you need to, to hit them with? What are the more creative outlets that you. Uh, apply with influencer marketing and, um, more of that thought leadership lens that parn back to, you know, a decade ago before we had all these, uh, capabilities at our hands and had to operate, you know, more like creative marketers, , and getting to that touchpoint model.

[00:18:34] And thank you for, for sharing that, having to be top of mind for your audience. Losing. , the tool of remarketing hurts. Mm-hmm. , I don't know. I like, I think that's the technical word hurts. . What? Help is my question. Yeah. So I, that's where I think that piece of the contextual auditing is gonna be really important.

[00:18:59] So that, you know, I think the word persona is overused and it means so many different things, but really getting that fine-tuned understanding of what makes people tick. Um, and like you said, based on their behaviors, what they're doing. So qualitative, Data is one thing. You can ask people in a survey how they feel, what they think, but we've seen the downfall of qualitative data, uh, with, you know, election polls and, and whatever else.

[00:19:29] So we know that we have to take that with a grain of salt. So understanding quantitative data and, and what's working, I think, will help you make those decisions about the content that you're standing up. Your forward path to creating, uh, what's called a first party data acquisition strategy, um, and making sure that you're creating content that's going to give people a reason to give you their email address so that you can do that more manual retargeting with, with emails and, and other services.

[00:19:58] So you mentioned email. You know, when Apple flipped the, the switch there, we started to see some wonky things in our mm-hmm. open rates, confusing numbers of being like, we're doing great, but are we, can you explain a little bit more? Because so much of I'll, I'll say, , the digital fundraising tactics that whole whale pushes forward, rely on those email data.

[00:20:23] Can you explain what's going on, why we may not be able to trust our open rates and what we can do as, uh, you know, moving forward in this environment? Yeah. So that goes back to the same iOS update, um, that impacted. Mobile app developers on the advertising side, and it'll also hit email. So the metric to watch now is, is click data.

[00:20:47] That is what allows you to understand if a person actually engaged or not. And everything before that is a bit amiss because of the tracking capabilities that are missing now. So the, the metric you wanna watch, Um, engagement, and that is because you know that that information is visible on your side and it's, you know, considered your data.

[00:21:11] So, Paying attention to all of those content insights is what I would focus on right now. And, you know, there's never been a more important time to make sure you have really good, um, reasons for a person to click through and engage so that you can factor in at that email engagement rate. It's so difficult because sometimes the purpose of an email is to deliver that experience.

[00:21:41] in that platform, in that medium and not click through. Mm-hmm. not lose that extra step. When you do that though, you're getting less data. So, you know, we know that that strategy has worked in the past, but it's tough to also say like, oh, we're not saying only send like two words and be like, click to see the rest.

[00:22:00] Right. We're holding your content hostage until you give us data in the form of clicks. Uh, . I mean, I don't know. Are you recommending that? Is that the trade off or are you just like, no, what you're not getting. Yeah, I think there's, so one of the things that I've been playing with in my own email strategy is encouraging people to reply to an email or do something that's other engagement, um, and reply to say, Hey, this is why I signed up for your email list, whatever, whatever type of content that you think, um, might be engaging and might give you some information that you can scale.

[00:22:34] That's another mechanism for people to. Really show interest and, and give you data that is consented that you might be able to gain some, some insights from. Um, but yeah, otherwise, I, I would not recommend sending a two word email that just says click. But I would say that you should start, um, optimizing.

[00:22:54] Content in the way that we used to optimize for subject lines to get that open. You know, you still need a good, you still need a reason for people to open, but that's not your primary focus. Your primary focus and your metric basis should be on, um, what you're doing to, to get the engagement in those insights.

[00:23:12] And so you mentioned that in 2024, Google Chrome is gonna be making this change. Does this also extend to Android and Gmail? in terms of that tracking. Will open rates put another way, be completely null and void as we get into 2024 of that change? Or do not? I under do, am I misunderstanding this? Uh, so Chrome.

[00:23:37] So safari has already been hit by this with Apple. Um, so anything that's happening on your iPhone right now is, is not really trackable in terms of third party cookies. Um, in the Android land, I, what is the primary browser for Androids, it's chrome. Yeah. Yeah. So, so Chrome, yeah, everything will stop being supported there.

[00:24:04] So yeah, unless you're using some device that none of us are aware of at this moment, , it's, it's really going to be hurting, I guess if you are opting into some browser that's, that's very small and market share. Um, effectively this is really just gonna need to be the wholesale change, so. I think this all comes back to the same thing, which is that this is just kind of the way of the world now where audiences, they're not gonna get less aware of how their, their data is being used.

[00:24:36] So you should probably adjust for that and, um, take the opportunities that you have to be a leader in the space and. You know, let people know how their data is being used. Be upfront about what you'll do to, to respect their space and their privacy, and make proactive changes so that you're not caught off guard.

[00:24:56] We saw a really good example of this actually. Um, the New York Times in 2020 became the first major publisher who went to a first-party data only model. So they completely stopped using third-party supported, um, information. And the way that they were able to scale that is they came up with a really creative content tagging strategy where, you know, they're tagging their content based on a range of different things, whether.

[00:25:23] You know, emotion evoked author, topic, et cetera. But with those insights, when an advertiser comes to them and says, Hey, I wanna place an ad on content that has this type of feel, the New York Times can offer that with. Completely consented data because it's based on what people are doing on their site in a logged in state.

[00:25:46] So the New York Times is a great example of a content publisher doing that, and obviously it's not completely replicable for the, those of us who are not, uh, you know, news outlets. But I think that there are things that we can learn from them in terms of giving people a reason to log in. , which is easier said than done, but is a case for brainstorming what some creative product development might look like, and also thinking about the context of the content that you're putting out and how you might, uh, do it differently in terms of both tagging and the, the actual content within, so that you are setting yourself up to, to get good data insights from it and, uh, to make sure that you are setting your data or setting your content up in a way that.

[00:26:32] Clear funnel toward monetization. It's a move kind of back toward the old school intent driven ads. Mm-hmm. , what is the, uh, user intent, and it's more clear on Google's search than probably any other platform at this point. If I'm searching for ways to support the environment, it's pretty clear. I care about a couple things.

[00:26:55] I have a desire to take action, and that action is revolving around learning more about the. , guess what? That might be a good moment to introduce yourself as the nature conservancy. Yeah, and what's interesting is that, uh, last year was the first year in recent memory that the total combined ads, as I understand the stat, um, being spent total ad spend of Google, Facebook, who used to dominate pretty much the entire market fell, um, fell below 50%, which means there's like a rise of the rest coming.

[00:27:29] and I wonder if you can talk about how we'll have our own data of emails, but then we'll be like shopping around in a much larger marketplace and needing to make a lot more decisions than ever before. Uh, as it relates to data opportunity, however you want to take this, uh, this fly ball. Yeah. Yeah. You, uh, in terms of things like co-op partnerships, I think those are some of the options that are at.

[00:27:58] Discretion. Um, and I think that's where knowing third party data terms is gonna be really important so that you're making really practical decisions to understand how, um, those partnerships are working. You know, I think that there are some organizations that can offer up. Email addresses at scale, and you wanna make sure that they're also GDPR compliant and following cans, spam rules, and doing things in a way that aren't gonna get you into hot water.

[00:28:30] Uh, so that's, I think, point number one is you're going to need to be newly. Aware of and deeply aware of as a marketer, the decisions you're making on that front. Um, and also you're gonna need to consider efficiency. So I think when it comes to the efficiency question, obviously the third party. Data pieces are what allowed us to scale so quickly.

[00:28:58] Um, but I would test a range of different publishers who are not so much reliant on, um, third party cookies and start getting those insights now so that you get a sense of how things are gonna perform and you can scale that later. So there are publishers who are exploring this in a pretty forward thinking way, you know, Spoke with Basis Technologies last week, just as a, as an example, but, um, they're already exploring how they can garner, uh, marketing techniques that put advertising out there in a way that isn't, um, illegal.

[00:29:34] as it will be later. . Yeah. Well, it's gonna get pretty interesting. Any other points you wanna make before we move into our rapid fire about coming data privacy changes? What organizations need to be prepared for? I think really just making sure that, as you know, a marketer or a fundraiser, wherever it is, you sit on that spectrum that you consider.

[00:29:58] The implications in a forward thinking way. Um, and don't think of privacy as something that's just for the IT and legal teams. I think it's going to impact your job in a way that it just didn't previously, and that's gonna be the state of play from here forward. So it would make sure that you understand, you know, what your privacy policy says.

[00:30:18] Make sure it's covering you. Make sure your legal team knows what you're up to so that, um, you are protecting your organization and ultimately your brand, which is your job. So that's the big piece that I would hammer home there. That's super helpful. Alright, rapid fire time, roughly 32nd responses. And just to kick it off, what is one tech tool or website that you've started using in the last.

[00:30:44] Uh, so I have been using. Kajabi, that's how I built my site and I really enjoy that. If you are looking to build a website, which is probably a, a small number of people, um, I'm also exploring notion, um, I'm late to the game there, but that is a tool that's. . Um, I need a replacement forever Evernote, because my Evernote syncing has gotten very bad, uh, between my devices.

[00:31:11] So I'm looking for a, a replacement note taking app. Maybe that follows into tech issues you're currently battling with ? Yeah. Yeah. I would say data sync issues between devices has been a big one for me, uh, where I'll write myself a to-do on my phone and it's not showing up on. My desktop app version. So that is a big problem.

[00:31:35] What is coming in the next year that has you the most excited? What's coming? Yeah, what's coming up? Uh, personally, professionally, does it matter? Oh, let's do one, one professional and one personal. Now that you ask, uh, I would say professionally, you know, this is my first year in business by myself, so I am excited to, um, be able to know what to predict for 2024.

[00:32:02] Uh, no. What I can scale and um, how things need to pivot. I think entrepreneurship has always been something I've been very intrigued by and I'm excited to be, you know, taking the plunge personally. Um, I am going to Greece for the first time in March, so that should be a great time. Awesome. Talk about a mistake that you made earlier in your career that shapes the way you do things.

[00:32:28] this is a good question. I think one of the most valuable insights I've learned over the years is when it's important to have at least a verbal conversation, if not an in-person conversation, rather than trying to make it work over email, slack, et cetera. Um, I think sometimes people rely on the efficiency of.

[00:32:52] email and, and written coms. Um, and I know I certainly over relied on that in the past, and sometimes it's really important to just take the time to take somebody to coffee and recognize that that's gonna do more service to what you're trying to get done than hammering home a deadline will.

[00:33:08] Do you believe that nonprofits can successfully go out of business successfully? Go out of business? . Yeah, I do. I think that it is, there are a lot of solvable problems. You know, when I was at World Food Program, we called Hunger, the world's most solvable problem. I think it's a matter of building the operational infrastructure to be able to ingest the money that would allow you to go out of business.

[00:33:37] If you got. A huge donor, are you gonna be able to scale your operation that quickly and think about the components that would need to go into that? So I think, um, nonprofits need to be able to operate in a way that allows them to have those overhead pieces taken care of, and the sound operational infrastructure that allows for that.

[00:34:00] if I were to put you in a hot tub time machine back to the beginning of your nonprofit work, what advice would you give yourself? Hmm. Um. I would say to be unafraid, to, to speak. I had a mentor early in my career who made clear that if you were invited to a meeting, it was for a reason and your voice needed to be heard.

[00:34:26] And I think especially as, uh, a female in this industry, you can, can take a step back from that at the beginning of your career. You, there's some, I think, imposter syndrome among all of us, but especially among young women. So I would. Speak.

[00:34:41] If I were to give you a magical wand that you could wave and change something in the industry, what would it do? Hmm. I think we'd be a lot further ahead on diversity initiatives and understanding how they come into play in every facet of what we do. I think nonprofits. Just catching up to this conversation.

[00:35:04] And we still think of it as, you know, we need a diverse hiring pool and we don't necessarily understand all of the things that go into building that, that talent pool. So making sure that we have cultures that diverse communities would want to work within and, uh, that, that respect, um, the difference standpoints that we all come from.

[00:35:22] That's what I would change would be further along. What is something that you think you should stop doing? I should stop doing, I should stop drinking more than one cup of coffee a day. , I, uh, I'm playing with my, my workflow for the day and the optimal time to make sure I'm, I, I used to exercise first thing in the morning, and I'm pivoting that more toward, toward the, the mid-afternoon, which I, I guess, are the luxuries of being an entrepreneur.

[00:35:52] But, um, playing with the caffeine intake, um, has not been great. So produced. How did you get started in the social impact sector? So I grew up in a very conservative area of Colorado. Um, Colorado's a very interesting state in terms of politics, but I grew up in the area of Colorado Springs, um, that's very focused on religion, military, et cetera.

[00:36:17] Um, and I was about nine when my Uncle Keith passed away, uh, from AIDS and. at that time, we weren't allowed to talk about why he passed and what happened and, uh, his sexuality and I, as I have gotten older, always think about what that must have felt like for him to not even be able to talk to his family about, um, you know, this terrifying illness that he had and.

[00:36:48] The, where he was in life. So that's, that's been the event in my life that I've always come back to. That drives me to make sure that no one else feels like that or is in that place. What advice would you give college grads looking to enter the social impact sector? You co oh, I guess your college graduated by that point.

[00:37:07] Um, I was gonna go the internship route. I, I think just start. I think there's a lot of trepidation around diving in and, um, finding, you know, the perfect job description to apply for, or the perfect service to offer. And I think just getting out there and seeing, um, Casting a wide net is, is very useful in those beginning stages.

[00:37:34] And also not being afraid to say yes when you get invited to, you know, that networking session or the happy hour, that might seem useless. Just building your army of, of friends and contacts. What advice did your parents give you that you either followed or did not follow?

[00:37:55] Um, my parents gave me lots of advice, advice that I, I did not follow. Um, . One thing that I did follow, my parents, uh, grew up in, um, a very small area of Ohio, former mining town that, um, was not well to do. We did not grow up, um, super well off money wise, and my dad really wanted me to focus on a business degree, uh, because it was practical and I did do that.

[00:38:24] Um, but I will say that I've, I've tried to pivot it in a way that's become my own. Um, and that is, is focused on. Yes, the business side and the practical sides of that, but also the social impact side that is, is my own mark. Well thanks for sharing all of that. How do people find you? How do people help you?

[00:38:44] So my website is agility lab.io. Um, and I have on. That's a, uh, you can contact me for a quick informational consult or I have a couple of, uh, checklists that will help you think through your risk diversification strategy. And if you're interested in pursuing a project together, you can reach out to me one-on-one through the site, um, or join my email list.

[00:39:10] Yeah, I'd say just add, if you're looking for that digital privacy tuneup that doesn't just stop at privacy, but also looks. How your fundraising and comms team are approaching a different landscape. It sounds like you know what you're doing. I enjoyed the conversation and thank you for all that you've shared with our audience.

[00:39:27] Thank you, George.

 

AmazonSmile Turned Upside Down Cutting $449m CSR Program (news)

 

Amazon Sunsets AmazonSmile Amid Cost-Cutting 

The AmazonSmile will be ending by February 20th, according to a statement from the company, as reported by NPR and others. While the program dispersed nearly $449 million to nonprofits globally, the company says that the donations were spread too thin, minimizing impact. Amazon pointed to other efforts, such as its Housing Equity Fund, which supports affordable housing efforts near its headquarters, as an example of a social impact program receiving investment. However, smaller nonprofits that received AmazonSmile donations say that the donation were helpful and would be missed. The move comes after Amazon announced 18,000 layoffs, amid a winter defined by tech layoffs across the industry.

Read more ➝

 

Summary

• Time's Up to halt operations, shift resources to legal fund | ABC News 
• People are only just realising what happens to the money IKEA makes - and it’s blowing their minds | The US Sun
• Founder of Seattle West African immigrant nonprofit accused of embezzling millions | king5.com 
• What if school was all outside, every day? N.J. ‘nature schools’ take class outdoors, rain or shine.  NJ.com
• The Eagles thought their Christmas album would fund a toy drive. It ended up doing much more. | https://www.inquirer.com

 

 

Rough Transcript

[00:00:00] George: This week on the nonprofit news feed. Well, we are talking about turning that Amazon smile upside down. I was first off, really happy to be able to come up with that subject line. Um, not as happy that this program is ending. Uh, Nick, how's it going?

[00:00:42] Nick: It's going good. George, this is, I think, gonna be one of those weeks where we are just focused on, on one-liners and, and puns. But alas, I'll take us into the top story, which you alluded to, which is that Amazon Smile. The program that donated a PORs, uh, portion of the proceeds from purchases on Amazon to nonprofits will be coming to a close on February 20th.

[00:01:07] This comes via reporting from NPR and other outlets. And in the history of the program, it dispersed nearly 449 million to nonprofits globally. However, the company says that the donations were spread too thin, minimizing impact. That's in quotes. Um, Amazon pointed in their statement to other efforts such as its Housing equity fund to support affordable housing.

[00:01:34] Here its headquarters as an example. Of a social impact program it was investing in. However, in the articles, smaller nonprofits said that Amazon SMILE donations were helpful and would be missed. And this comes amid broader economic headwinds that the industry is facing. Amazon has announced 18,000 layoffs.

[00:01:57] Tech layoffs are now commonplace across the board. Amazon Smile more like a frown these days.

[00:02:06] George: I'm sad to see a CSR corporate social responsibility program of this magnitude get sunset in this way in short order. I've been looking on LinkedIn, um, the reactions, and some folks are saying, you know, good riddens, this was a distraction for nonprofits because it sort of baits an organization into becoming an affiliate marketer.

[00:02:30] Meaning you get a portion of the sales based on a trackable link and you're pushing product as opposed to your purpose. , I hear that. I also see 449 million, uh, across nonprofits being something meaningful now. Yeah. You spread peanut butter too thin and it turns into nothing. Right. If I were to donate that, but like, that's still just, that's a lot of money.

[00:02:55] You know, there's, um, 1.5 ish million nonprofits, so I don't, I don't know that I buy that full narrative of like, it was too small to make a difference. , it was part of, for some organizations, a balanced fiscal diet. It was a diversification of revenue streams. You know, it was something that they, they got and ideally didn't have to push too hard for.

[00:03:19] So bad thing too bad. You know, I, I, I don't think that, I'm curious why, and, and I'll maybe never know the reason of like the actual, like, is this a cost cutting? Is there just a change in csr? Did they not get enough, uh, from it? Because on the same token, it actually served them as well because guess what?

[00:03:42] Somebody was buying something from them. You know, it was the affiliate marketing strategy. It was actually pretty darn clever, and it worked so sad to see it. And hopefully there'll be a, another solution that arises, an opportunity that shows up for, for those organizations.

[00:04:02] Nick: I agree. I. It can't have cost them that much money to run though. Like that's the thing, right.

[00:04:11] George: Well, the the other thing is like you can just sign up for an affiliate link and sell things, but I think the difference also with Amazon Smile is that, You could have your supporters put Amazon Smile on their purchasing. So I had it for, for my nonprofit, and it was just, anytime I buy, I had something on Amazon.

[00:04:27] A point went that way. So I, I, maybe you need to backtrack on like affiliate marketing versus actually it was adding a layer that said, for these customers, a portion of your proceeds go back to this organization. So that is uniquely different.

[00:04:43] Nick: That's fair. That's fair. We'll continue to see if we hear more about this, maybe they'll roll out something different or new. Alas, we move along to our next story, and this one is from a ABC News and others that the Times Up organization, the Me Too, the organization born out of the Me Too movement, particularly the that one in Hollywood, um, has Hal.

[00:05:13] Operations and is shifting remaining financial resources to the Legal Defense fund. So Times Out has had a. Go of it. Fallout from associations with Andrew Cuomo and that scandal, um, and has been something of an EM battered, uh, embattled organization rather, um, over the past couple years and is now closing doors and, and shifting that money to the legal defense fund, which does, uh, provide, uh, resources for women in, in specific industries. This is kind of a weird one because it's such a high profile organization that came up very quickly. I think there's probably some lessons to be learned here. George, what are those lessons and what is your take on this?

[00:06:03] George: I wish I was smart enough to actually understand the, the full implications of of this. The different narratives that I see here, one, are the types of organizations that pop up in these. Cultural moments have a lot of headwinds. Later they start off with a disproportionate amount of attention and funding upfront, which certainly times updated and they did remarkable work, certainly around if we're looking at victims of Harvey Weinstein, and then the way that they were able to, I'd say, update the way that victims were dealt with.

[00:06:44] In these cases from a legal standpoint and a lot of achievements there, but there's a certain type of what feels like immutable. What goes up must come down type of physics here, where the speed at which with which you rise to fame. also seems to all but guarantee the fall from Grace. That is kind of like the inverse Lindy effect.

[00:07:15] The Lindy effect is if you have been here for this long, you'll probably continue to be here. Uh, coming from the. Run of show for Broadway, uh, productions that if a Broadway production had been on, you know, it's a, it's a wonder that cats ever stopped being on Broadway. Cause cats had been forever on Broadway.

[00:07:32] And it was this, this joke of like, once you're in the line cafe, you'll sort of never be removed. Um, I've gone far from the topic, I'm gonna come back to it. So the first thought, the speed with which something rises probably dictates the speed with which it falls the next. Looking at organizations that need to sort of spin up with all of the overhead, with all of the infrastructure and hiring staffing, like to create a new organization takes a lot of, of work and wealth.

[00:08:08] And the fact that now at the end of it, you know, they, they talk about, and even in this quote, very simply, the Legal defense Fund really reflects who we were, not only at our inception, but really at our core. And that's a quote from, uh, Schultzer. And that's why, you know, the, the remaining 1.7 million, which is, is quite small, uh, in the grand scheme of the size of the organization, uh, is going back to that fund.

[00:08:33] And the question I guess in my mind is, you know, the fund administered by the National Women's Law Center in Washington? Which has provided and provides legal administration help to, to workers that identify as low income and 40% of people of color. I, I'm, I'm curious as to what the world would've looked like, had times Up simply been a branch of that organization, how much more could have been applied to it and the, the learnings and the staff and that ability rolled into an existing organization rather than saying, we need a new organization.

[00:09:08] You know, could this have. A campaign or a program of that legal defense fund. Those are just questions in my mind, and it's, it's tough with an organization under this level of scrutiny. I, I have a hard time getting behind some of those decisions they made with, you know, Andrew, Andrew Cuomo and, and consulting, allegedly consulting with them behind closed doors that was then later revealed by reports.

[00:09:33] Uh, It's tough. I think nonprofits are under, uh, a much, much greater microscope and it doesn't take much to set the, set the tide in the wrong direction because you exist at the public's. Will you rely on funding and funders and if those funders are then effectively being shown. as public donors because nine 90 s are all public.

[00:09:59] We can see donors and donations. Are you then saying, oh, a large donor has to then reconsider like, wait a minute, am I supporting an organization that supported Andrew Cuomo? Not saying that that is a direct line, but all things being equal, it doesn't take much to hurt in that reputation, and it's tough for organizations that are in that frontline type of work.

[00:10:17] Nick: George, I, I think that's, that's a great point. You bring up a lot of different nuances and the threads there, and it makes me think that your nonprofits have to play by different rules than businesses, right.

[00:10:33] George: They do. You can't just go on an apology tour being like, Hey, sorry, we fired him. We're all back to normal. Like, nevermind that our news station. Maybe let this kind of go by the wayside.

[00:10:44] Nick: Yeah. Yeah. Um. Yeah, I guess we'll, we'll continue to keep an eye on this story. It'll be interesting to see how that legal defense portion of it, which is still administered by, um, that, uh, the other organization, the, the woman's um, uh, legal organization, how that all pans out. Um, so we'll keep our listeners updated, but to that end, I will take us to our next story.

[00:11:12] And this one comes. From King five.com and the founder of a Seattle West African immigrant nonprofit is accused of embezzling millions. Um, so. Uh, the, the gentleman in, in question, Issa I apologize cause I know I'm mispronouncing. That was the founder and longtime executive director of the West African Community Council or W A C C, which is based in Seattle.

[00:11:44] Um, and after decade of service, um, he was ousted, uh, on December 16th. Accused of embezzling, which is, which is, you know, terrible, terrible, um, especially, you know, people who really, really need help. And then this long article kind of goes into it, it goes into, uh, in DA's started of the story, um, as well side of the story rather, and it kind of a complicated one.

[00:12:11] But, uh, George, what's your takeaway on.

[00:12:16] George: I look. Board members for this, and this is a reminder for the fiscal responsibilities that your board members take on. And I'm not saying send this article to your board members, but if you are on a board, if you are building a board, fiscal stewardship and hiring and firing the c e o, those the primary jobs and roles of a board.

[00:12:38] And so I see this and I don't look at, you know, in the D and say, oh, what a bad actor. Like there are bad actors. One out of a thousand people, one out of 10,000 people are not the, you know, folks that you should be trusting. The job of the board is to hire and fire and make sure the right people are in there.

[00:12:56] And the fact that this was an extra bank account started in 2014, like a secret bank account, and like hundreds of thousands of dollars going through there, you know, I'm looking at auditors, I'm looking at board members looking at that, and so paying attention to those things like, oh, it can't happen. . Um, it, it is just a function of odds and, uh, again, I wouldn't have put this in here actually if it had not been for the size of the, the embezzlement.

[00:13:25] We have millions of dollars. It's, it's brutal. Uh, so it's a reminder to, to board members out there that, uh, while those finance meetings may be boring, and also the people preparing them, like, here's, here's what you're actually doing. Um, you're making sure money gets to the. The right places and you're avoiding, um, tragedies like.

[00:13:45] Nick: Absolutely. I think that's a fantastic point and we always like to keep our listeners on their toes to protect themselves from this happening at their organization. I have our next story is an interesting one. Um, Georgia. Did you know that IKEA is owned by a nonprofit?

[00:14:11] George: Here's the thing. I didn't know that Ike. Was owned by a nonprofit. Frankly, this is like a non-story story, but it's fascinating because, uh, you know, in the , the rep reputable, the US Sun , and this title says no Ikea, uh, people are only just realizing what happens to the money IKEA makes, and it's blowing their minds.

[00:14:32] I mean, first off, a plus on a hook title. But it's funny because there is a nonprofit involved and owner of the main entity. So IKEA is actually a nonprofit organization. So the money made from those, uh, you know, fund to assemble wardrobes, uh, you know, beyond paying is, is put away into, um, a nonprofit. And the charity's big mission is to further the advancement of interior design.

[00:15:01] Nick: Novo, Novo.

[00:15:03] George: uh, They're putting it out there further, the advancement of interior design. I mean, you've gotta believe in that mission, I suppose. Um, I did. I didn't have anything else here. Just I thought it was funny.

[00:15:17] Nick: it's really funny. So the detail is I e Ikea store stores are franchised by a company called, Inga Holdings, which is fully owned by a nonprofit organization called Stitching Inga Foundation. Um, yeah, I , it's kind of funny. I wanna do a deep dive on this. We need like a little mini documentary on what the hell's happening, but.

[00:15:45] Uh, I am willing to bet there is some criticism in the wonderful Scandinavian world about, uh, whether this is truly because people are passionate about, um, easy to assemble interior design pieces, or whether this is some kind of, uh, super duper clever, uh, tax loophole that is being taken advantage of.

[00:16:09] George: Yeah, I mean, look, there's some definitive, like this is a tax play very clearly. They pay according to online mba, 33 times less taxes than the average business. The Economist, the overall setup of IKEA minimizes taxes and disclosure handsomely, rewards the founding camra Cam Prad family, and makes IKEA immune to takeover.

[00:16:32] So it's interesting. That when you're saying like, this is a strategic reason, like frankly as a business owner, now you have me thinking, should a nonprofit own whole whale and suddenly we don't have to pay taxes. We have, I'm gonna go ahead and say a loftier mission then to improve, I'm sorry, I want to get it accurately to, uh, to further advance, uh, the advancement of interior.

[00:17:00] Further the advancement of interior design. So I would say ours has built a healthier, more just and sustainable world as an agency. I, uh, I don't know. One of the funnier quotes here is, uh, no wonder why you gotta put everything together yourself at Al Okaya, because they rely on a bunch of volunteers to put their stuff together.

[00:17:20] So, you know, they have a lot of volun, big volun. I have volunteered for Ikea on more than one occasion,

[00:17:29] Nick: Volunteering on for IKEA is a, a family pastime. Um, That's funny. Here's another one for you, another light story. We're, this is a good week. There's nothing too traumatic in

[00:17:42] George: I mean, just, you know, massive embezzlement, half a billion dollars of CSR stopping at Amazon. This is a good week,

[00:17:49] Nick: Yeah, this is,

[00:17:50] George: on

[00:17:51] Nick: this is a good week for

[00:17:53] George: this. Okay, you're classifying Good week on this. Okay.

[00:17:55] Nick: I, you know, maybe it's just because it's sunny out. But that is a perfect segue into our next story, where one New Jersey school asked What if school was outside all the time? Every day. So New Jersey Nature schools are taking class outdoors, rain or shine. Um, and this article talks about bundled up kindergarten students at a Star Child Nature School in Medford, New Jersey, outside collecting tree sap to make glue.

[00:18:28] Four handmade ornaments. So this is an immersive, you are outside, you are learning, you are one with nature type situation at this school. And that brings us to, uh, the relevant question of making, uh, the question of nature versus nurture ever. The more salient.

[00:18:46] George: Wow. It's, it's all, it's all nature school here. Uh, and I know some are nonprofits, some are for-profits, but there's a number of them, and I'll call out one quote here From the South Mountain Nature School, our programs promote social and emotional development and instill confidence and foster independence.

[00:19:01] Said Mary Claire Solomon. Who also in other news happens to be my sister. And so I'm incredibly proud of my sister for starting one of these nature schools, pushing through the pandemic and growing to the size that they have, uh, in New Jersey. And, you know, I get to see the, the pictures and the approach that they take in.

[00:19:23] There's, you know, that question that comes up, well, what about when it snows? And it's like, you know, there's no bad weather, just bad apparel. So they, they are out there, rain or shine. I think this is a, a really healthy way for, for young people who are inevitably going to wander into the world of screen first learning and engagement and work to realize that, you know, food comes from the ground.

[00:19:52] SAP is fun and it's, uh, it's great to see. I'm very proud of my sister, though. In other news,

[00:20:00] Nick: That's super. George did you know that's mine, hometown, A South Mountain Reservations with in walking distance from where I grew up.

[00:20:07] George: He can go over and say hi.

[00:20:09] Nick: Go over, say hi. Maybe a little too old for, uh, the Nature School thing,

[00:20:14] George: you could volunteer perhaps.

[00:20:17] Nick: love it. All right. How about a feel good story?

[00:20:21] George: Yeah. What do we.

[00:20:22] Nick: This one comes from the Philadelphia Inquirer, uh, and it's about the eagle. The team, not the group, uh, thought that their Christmas album would fund a toy drive and it ended up doing so much more. So the Philadelphia Eagles of a football and. Sports fame can tell.

[00:20:44] I follow football. Uh, thought that they were just raising a mere $30,000, um, for this charity toy drive, when in fact they raised

[00:20:59] George: Quarter million 250,000 I believe.

[00:21:02] Nick: million. Wow. Wow. Good for.

[00:21:07] George: Yeah. What it's nice is also going to be funding not just one, but two toy drives and a summer camp, uh, which. Objectively I, while I respect toy drives and I like those moments, it's great to also say, what about dealing with, uh, the summer learning gap and supporting communities when, um, when you are needing a potentially even more.

[00:21:29] So, uh, congratulations. Also, full disclosure here. Nick thought that this wasn't the team, the Eagles, but the band, uh, the Eagles. And it took him a couple of reads to realize that it was a fact about the sports ball. So Nick, I think we all learned something today.

[00:21:49] Nick: We've learned a lot.

[00:21:51] George: Have we, well, before I give you a terrible joke, I have a bit of a sponsored post here and it. A note that we are opening up our, as far as I know, we only do it once a year and it's the ad grant cohort and we're teaching. Organizations how to run the ad grant, the Google Ad grant, the thing that you get 10 K a month in in-kind ads for placing ads that drive traffic and value to your organization.

[00:22:20] We're doing a five week live cohort. This isn't pre-recorded. This is hands-on and we're sharing exactly how we run this ad grant to maximize the ROI for your organization. And so we're gonna help, uh, only I think it's limited, 25 organizations. It always sells out. Registration is now open. Uh, and you can find that link in the show notes or wander around whole whale.com/university and you'll find it there.

[00:22:47] Alrighty, question Nick, for you.

[00:22:52] Nick: Uh oh.

[00:22:53] George: Why, why did the clown donate his salary?

[00:22:57] Nick: Hmm. I don't know about the clown thing, but why did the clown donate his salary?

[00:23:02] George: Uh, it was a nice gesture.

[00:23:05] Nick: Ah, ah, ah.

[00:23:09] George: He, he laughs sometimes he doesn't know. And then we like, go off, Nick, did you actually get this one or is this gonna be the one where you like pause and you're like, I didn't get it. Explain it to

[00:23:17] Nick: I, I got this one. I'm a huge Shakespeare Stan. I, I'm very familiar with a court gesture and this was, yes, but offering to explain was as well a nice gesture. Um, cuz

[00:23:30] George: I just wanted to do it cause I feel like I cut off. I'm like, this would've been much funnier if he didn't understand it. He was like, I laugh, I don't get it. Alright. Thanks for humoring me and this is what you get for staying to the end of the podcast. Leave us a review. Thank you. Bye.

[00:23:46] Nick: Bye.

Using Food Entrepreneurship to Feed Careers | Hot Bread Kitchen

We interview Leslie Abbey, Chief Executive Officer, Hot Bread Kitchen.

In this podcast, Leslie shares how HBK is focused on reaching 1,000 "breadwinners' by 2024 and how it has been leading the organization out of the pandemic. Hot Bread Kitchen programs and services include professional skills training and career programs, job placement, food entrepreneurship and social services support. We have a built-in network of high-quality employers ready to hire women from our programs. Our food entrepreneurship offerings help small business owners seed, start and scale their ventures. And our team helps women overcome obstacles to success outside the workplace—from financial planning to childcare.

 

About LESLIE ABBEY, ESQ.
Leslie is an organizational leader and entrepreneur who has committed her career to supporting at-risk youth and families, social justice, and data-driven strategies to improve human service outcomes. In January 2022, Leslie became CEO of Hot Bread Kitchen, an organization that creates economic opportunity for immigrant women and women of color through job skills training, food entrepreneurship programs, and an ecosystem of support in New York City. 

 

Prior to joining Hot Bread Kitchen, Leslie was Deputy Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer of Covenant House New York, the City’s largest organization dedicated to serving youth experiencing homelessness. During her tenure, she implemented significant operational improvements, including the launch of multiple data-driven strategies to improve youth outcomes, growth of the organization’s budget by more than 50%, and the spearheading of an agency-wide diversity, equity, and inclusion strategic plan. From 2014 to 2017, Leslie was Interim Executive Director and Chief Program Officer at Lantern Community Services, a leading nonprofit provider of supportive housing in New York City, and the largest operator of such services for youth leaving foster care. From 2007 to 2014, Leslie held progressively senior positions at the New York City Administration for Children’s Services (ACS). 

 

Leslie started her career as an attorney in the Legal Aid Society’s Juvenile Rights Practice from 1997 to 2007, where she first represented children and youth in Bronx Family Court, and then moved on to the Practice’s Special Litigation and Law Reform Unit. In 1995, Leslie received her J.D. from New York University School of Law, where she was an editor of The Review of Law and Social Change and a member of the Family Defense Clinic. She received her B.A. with Honors from Swarthmore College in 1990. 

 

Leslie has served on various boards and committees in the nonprofit and public sectors and currently sits on the Board of Managers of Swarthmore College and Board of Trustees of New York University School of Law. In the year following her law school graduation, Leslie founded Legal Information for Families Today (LIFT), which provides legal information and support to Family Court litigants, and now serves 30,000 litigants annually; she continues to serve as a member of LIFT’s Board of Directors. A native New Yorker, Leslie lives in Manhattan with her husband, two teenagers, and rescue dog, Sammy.

MLK Day Celebrated by Nonprofits & Santos’ Charity Questions (news)

Nonprofits Energize & Give Back To Communities On MLK Day

Nonprofits across the country worked to engage and give back to communities this MLK Day. Virginia nonprofit Rise Against Hunger worked to fill 50,000 bags of food to serve communities in need. The article notes that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke often about hunger, and was a catalyst for this organization to focus on emergency food relief. In Charlotte, communities are finding assistance from nonprofits like Promise Youth Development, which serves to educate youth about Dr. King’s legacy while advocating for social justice. In addition to providing kids with education and exposure to Dr. King’s teaching, the nonprofit also fosters healing and relationship-building between students and police.

Read more ➝

 

Summary

 

• Allegations that the charity George Santos claims to have run was fake highlight how scams divert money from worthy causes | yahoo.com 
• Anchorage nonprofit’s use of $750K in federal funds investigated | alaskasnewssource.com
• 118th US Congress most racially and ethnically diverse in history | Pew Research Center
• Greta Thunberg detained by police at German coal protest | Axios 
• Local nonprofit celebrates helping black entrepreneurs on MLK day - KLAS | 8 News Now

 

 

 

Rough Transcript

[00:00:00] audio1555325285: This week on a nonprofit newsfeed. We're talking about some of the events that went on during M l k day as we're recording this the day after. And Nick I hope you had a great weekend and we're able to celebrate in your own way. , yes, it was a brisk but lovely weekend here in New York. We hope you're staying dry and safe out in California.

[00:00:27] But to your point, yes, we want to talk about nonprofits giving back to communities on MLK Day. So yesterday it was MLK Day in Peas, United States and nonprofits across the country are. To give back to communities. One nonprofit in Virginia named Rise Against Hunger Work to fill 50,000 bags of food to serve communities in need.

[00:00:50] Noting that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Himself spoke frequently about the issue of hunger which catalyzed this organization to focus on emergency food relief and in Charlotte. Communities were finding assistance from organizations like Promise Youth Development, which serves to educate kids and young people about Dr.

[00:01:11] King's lead legacy while advocating for social justice. And recently they started providing kids with healing and relationship, building support between students and police during the ongoing conversation. Police and community relations in America. So I think that M l K Day is a point of reflection, a catalyst to service, and an opportunity for nonprofits to show how they are making their communities safer, more inclusive, and more just.

[00:01:46] Yeah, it's great to see how the holiday evolves with the times and how it. Be used to spark those types of conversations and social impact activities. And just knowing that people are more primed to, to volunteer and have have those dialogues around this time. And of course moving into, in, in short order Black History Month coming up next month.

[00:02:09] It is good to see also the amount of coverage in the news that we saw.

[00:02:15] Absolutely. All right. Shall I take us into the summary? Yeah. What do we got? All right, George, I'm so excited for this story, not because the main antagonist of this story shares your name, no relation. , but we are talking about . George Santos, famed Republican congressperson from Long Island. Parts of Queens, but , his, George Santos has been in the news recently for as it turns out, fabricating almost the entirety of his resume, professional and personal background.

[00:02:52] But the reason we are talking about him on this podcast is that Santos claimed to have started a animal welfare nonprofit called Friends of Pets United, and apparently, This nonprofit, which was listed as such on an early version of his campaign website in fact, did not exist. Apparently, the only inkling of.

[00:03:17] Any evidence that such an organization existed is a now defunct Facebook page. But the nonprofit was never registered under the i r s never made donations to organizations it claimed to, and as Santo said, the group rescued 2,400 dogs and 280 cats between 2013 and 2018. However, there is absolutely zero evidence at all.

[00:03:43] That such activities happened. This is a ghost organization and I. Leads into a broader narrative about how fake charities are, in fact a real problem. The article we link out to in the newsfeed@nonprofitnewsfeed.com goes through why this is such a problem because it diverts donations away from legitimate organizations as well as undercuts donors confidence in giving.

[00:04:10] So George, what's your take on this? And then I'm gonna follow up and ask you what's your favorite, George Santos? . God, it's so hard to choose. Not really, no, nothing proud here about how there was failings, I think on several different levels. And if your immediate reaction here is to be angry at George Santos just acknowledge that there are many people creating many fake charities.

[00:04:34] There are also many folks that look to take advantage by lying. Their accomplishments, resume in order to get ahead. And so where does the onus fall? If you're applying to a job, the hiring manager should check on these things, maybe call a reference. And I suppose if the United States Congress is hiring somebody, voters are hiring somebody, the news outlets, one of the branches of anything that we rely.

[00:05:06] should maybe do background checks. And so I'd say there are a cascade of failures that led to this. And they're on both sides, really. D nnc opponents that did literally nothing in terms of researching their opponent. Journalists that put that name down without calling a single thing whatsoever, checking anything in IRS records, something that would've taken the amount of time.

[00:05:31] a brewing, a cup of coffee would've revealed. And then the r n c, which is in an unenviable situation now, of letting someone in who is a categorical liar. And then you can see nonprofits here because nonprofits are frequently used to burnish the reputations of those that need that work done and that.

[00:05:55] Story is on repeat. I would say one of those things, this is in the back of my mind, is whenever I hear now that the specificity of of work, right? You're out there counting that me number of cats, like there's a certain, like we've helped a lot, we've helped over hundreds to say 280 cats. Also why fewer cats than dogs?

[00:06:16] 280 cats versus 2,400 dogs that, I, I don't know if those numbers would. and then released 3000 cats. Yeah, there's a lot of numbers here. They're too specific for me. , this is what I'm, it's. It's such a mess. , I can say that in addition to apparently creating a fake nonprofit and not going working at any of the jobs he claimed to have worked or going to school where he claimed to work Santos is in the unenviable position of being under county.

[00:06:54] State and federal investigation in the United States, as well as under a case that was reopened in the lovely country of Brazil. Apparently they've been looking for him for a long time, and there he is in the US Congress. So yeah, hold on. Here's where allegedly, I wanna go back to the cats and dogs though.

[00:07:15] Okay. So in the US approximately 4.1 million shelter animals are adopted each. , you wanna guess the breakdown?

[00:07:26] I don't know. 50 50 precisely. 2 million dogs. 2.1 million cats. Okay. So going back to those numbers, this is why it's off, right? How are you that far off in terms of the rescue numbers? 2,400 dogs, 280 cats. I don't think this guy likes. I think there's a cat a bias against cats that you should look out for.

[00:07:52] That's really, that's a spicy thing. He's not numbers, right? He's making up numbers. I will say his compatriot for the New York City mayoral election Curtis Sliwa is famously a cat person and has nine cats and is very pro catt. Maybe just many layers of division and rife and just bizarreness in this story, but, This does take us to our next story.

[00:08:20] Both sad and fun as this one is about a nonprofit organization in Alaska which used $750,000 in federal funds improperly. So the Revive Alaska Community Services Food Pantry is very saying serious questions about how the group. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal funds throughout the pandemic.

[00:08:45] Anchorage itself received a hundred million dollars to distribute to various organizations and. For various reasons. But nobody seems to know where this money goes and how that $750,000 helped feed families in Anchorage. There seems to be some just sketchy what happened here in the saga, and there's more details you won't get into, but it's important to be accountable.

[00:09:16] Yeah. And sadly, I think we're seeing a lot of the, where did the money go now that the, pain of the pandemic has mainly passed from the peak periods and it's it's a reminder to, to be documenting these types of things and in your accounting. But this was, this seems pretty question.

[00:09:36] Because they were given three quarters of a million dollars to rebuild a barn that was a food pantry . Instead, the structure was torn down. So you're like wait a minute. Little different. Not great. But we will go now from not great two. I think is great. George, you threw this article in from the inevitable Pew Research Center that the 118th US Congress, our current Congress is the most racially and ethnically diverse Congress in history.

[00:10:09] So according to Pew Research This is actually the seventh Congress to break that record set by the one before it. And overall, 133 Senators and representatives today identify as black, Hispanic, Asian-American, American Indian, or Alaskan native. According to this analysis. And this is increasing in every Congress.

[00:10:35] Interestingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly I think 80% of these members caucus with the Democrat Party. But that being Said Congress is becoming more representative of America as a whole. Approximately now Congress is approximately 75% white which is, brings it closer in line with the overall US population which is now at 59% white.

[00:11:03] And will soon actually be minority white if demographic trends continue. I'm all for it. Representative Congress, representative democracy, let's go. Yeah. And the Republicans are making a couple ticks toward the right direction. Previously it was, 17%, 83%. A distribution for non-white lawmakers in terms of the breakdown of diversity in Congress.

[00:11:27] Slight increases there, but overall, it's just great to see over the past two decades to see this number nearly double. And, clearly tracking US population and you see it in that way. And it's also a good reminder for what representative democracy will hopefully become as the people representing representatives representing communities will will reflect them.

[00:11:53] Absolutely. All right we will take us now to our last story in the summary. And this comes from Axios and others, and the headline of this article is Greta Thunberg has been detained by police at a German coal protest, and the article comes with a pretty dramatic photo of Greta being. Whisked away by some scary looking cops and riot gear.

[00:12:21] It turns out that climate activist Greta Thunberg was detained today protesting a coalmine expansion in the German coal mining town of. Rath where she was physically removed from the site. Apparently Tomberg was participating in a sit-in near the edge of the mine. A pretty hands-on approach to activism from fellow climate activists.

[00:12:48] But George, I can't help but being struck how similar this photo seems to the photos of activists. Protesting for clean water particularly adjacent to Native American reservations and communities in the United States, not just a couple years ago. It seems strikingly similar and real interesting to see such tactics taken by activists and protestors.

[00:13:36] I think it's a Huff one. I like the activism angle here in terms of you have a young person able to command such a powerful presence and message, right? And on the other hand, you have, I think Germany and some other countries making. energy decisions that actually cut off the bridge to sustainable energy.

[00:14:02] And you feel that, especially when you're dealing with the conflict in Russia, and I'm cutting off various pipeline resources and pieces that, it's one thing to say you're going to go on a carbon neutral path, but if you don't have the plan to get there, all you've done is. Given disproportionate power to Russia and other coal generating areas.

[00:14:25] Cause that energy has to come from somewhere. And I think there's there was a lack of planning and a lot of promising shutting down nuclear power plants of reducing the production without the plan. And so I think the next phase that I honestly hope to see from Thunberg and others are the planned part, not the, just the protest and stop this because the truth is when.

[00:14:46] Drastically increase energy prices overnight, and you create dependencies on governments such as Russia to give them disproportionate of power in the region. You hurt large swaths of humanity and indirectly directly hurt the environment. And protest, but have a plan. And I, I. The green movement can easily have that critique going back 30, 40 years of evolving.

[00:15:11] Hopefully it's approach to the industry and how you get a path rather than a protest to to green energy. It's complicated. When I see these types of things, it's easy to celebrate. Yeah. Close it down. On the other side, like with regard to coal mining you're not gonna solve this winter's problem with gold taken from the ground right now.

[00:15:30] has to be processed, has to be pushed through. And so like how, how you're planning this is also confusing to me. I don't know a lot of thoughts I have. Yeah, George. I think that's right. It's interesting. I was actually recently talking from someone to talk to someone from Germany. And she was saying, By far and away the energy crisis.

[00:15:52] There is the most talked about issue and has been for well over a year now in central Europe. So it's interesting to get a glimpse into that world. And I think similar in, in other countries, particularly the UK as well. Yeah, an interesting look across the pond into how these issues play out in the public sphere.

[00:16:15] All right. How about a feel good story? Yeah, what do we got? All right. This is from eight news now.com, and it is reporting out of Las Vegas where a local nonprofit is celebrating helping black entrepreneurs on MLK Day. The organization is called Global SoCo, which is a nonprofit dedicated to helping black-owned businesses like the one mentioned in the article, get a boost.

[00:16:43] I think it's really cool to see community organizations like this working to support black entrepreneurs and black community members. And I think really coincides with the legacy and desire of M L K to see the, that community work together. Real cool stuff. Shout out to them.

[00:17:01] Yeah, absolutely. Love the angle of entrepreneurship and actually helping folks. A leg up in the industry and a good excuse again to, to use m l k to evolve to the needs of the community and where we are in the world. So thanks Nick. I appreciate you giving the summary. Always. Thanks George.

Thousands of NYC Nurses Go On Strike As Hospital & Union Talks Fall Apart (news)

Thousands of NYC Nurses Go On Strike As Hospital & Union Talks Fall Apart

A dramatic, last-ditch effort to avert a strike failed this weekend, leading nurses at two major NYC hospitals to go on strike, according to reporting from Politico and others. Approximately 7,000 nurses at Montefiore Medical Center and Mount Sinai Hospital went on strike at 6 a.m. Eastern on Monday, demanding increased staffing levels for nurses who say the staff shortage creates unsafe conditions for patients. While other hospitals successfully negotiated with the New York State Nurses Association to continue operations as normal, the strike at these two hospitals is the culmination of longstanding grievances of nursing staff who feel unfairly treated, burnt out, and chronically understaffed. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s push for binding arbitration in the last hours of negotiations was not accepted by the nursing union. Medical professionals working in nonprofit hospital systems across the country will be paying close attention to how this is resolved—the result of which may have wide-reaching implications.

Read more ➝

 

Summary

 

• Woman sentenced to three years in state prison for collecting $400,000 in viral GoFundMe scam | CNN
• Aid operations hit as Taliban bars Afghan women from working for NGOs | 
  The New Humanitarian
• From Nonprofit to $29 Billion Valuation - The Promise and Danger of ... |
  IPWatchdog.com
• A 72-year-old congressman goes back to school, pursuing a degree in AI | Washington Post 
• 
   

Mastodon Embraces Nonprofit Status (news)

Mastodon Embraces Nonprofit Status As Potential Industry Model

Mastodon, an open-source microblogging site, has rejected offers from more than five US-based investors in recent months, according to reporting from Ars Technica. The platform’s non-profit status is “untouchable,” according to its founder Eugen Rochko. Mastodon has similar features to Twitter but is made up of many decentralized, independently moderated servers. Users join one server but can connect with people on other servers throughout the so-called “federated” system. Mastodon has seen a surge in users since Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October amid concerns over the billionaire’s running of the social media platform. Amid increasing concerns about social media platforms’ stability, privacy, and ethics issues, the nonprofit model may increasingly find salience in an industry plagued by a decrease in public trust in for-profit social media companies.

Read more ➝

 

 

Summary

 

• America's Top 100 Charities 2022| Forbes 
• Bank freezes Portland nonprofit Brown Hope's account, delaying donations | OregonLive
• Revisiting Pope Benedict’s thought on reason and faith | Philanthropy Daily
• Fans raise more than $3 million for Damar Hamlin's toy drive | NPR.org
• Coney Island Polar Bear plunge raises money for nonprofits | WABC-TV
• 
   

Where Did MacKenzie’s Billions Get Donated? (news)

Nonprofitnewsfeed.com

 

Scott Releases Comprehensive List Grant Recipients

MacKenzie Scott has released a comprehensive database of all the nonprofit organizations that have received grants from her over the past several years. Scott has in many ways upended the philanthropy sector with the sheer volume and size of the grants, as well as their “no strings attached” nature. The database denotes the name of the organization, the size of the gift, and the organization’s focus area, geographic location, and stated mission statement. The new website’s “Process” page hints at the potential for future open calls for prospective grant recipients. According to reporting from The Guardian, the donations totalled over $14 billion and were disbursed to over 1,600 nonprofit organizations.

Read more ➝

 

Summary

 

• 22 Most Charitable Companies in 2022 | Yahoo
• When Nonprofit Health Care Behaves Badly: The Case For Mission ... | healthaffairs.org
• Big Tech Laid Off Thousands. Here’s Who Wants Them Next | WIRED
• Common Man For Ukraine delivers presents to 1,300 orphans | WMUR Manchester 

 

Transcript

 

[00:00:00] This week on the nonprofit news feed. Well, we're talking about a big release by Mackenzie Scott. She's been giving away money now she's giving away data, a comprehensive database actually, of all of the nonprofits. So we'll jump into that. And also we had, uh, our, our end of year celebrations at Whole Whale.

[00:00:45] And there's an internal video that Nick put together where he is a washed up British rock. Talking about a success. They, they definitely took the whole well adage of taking it too far and making it way too hilarious. Um, we can't release any of it, but if you worked here, you'd see. Uh, impetus to, to keep us on your, your, your job postings, uh, going into the new year.

[00:01:07] Should we be hiring? Yes. Uh,

[00:01:10] video is released. Super fun. I got to live out my alter ego being a washed up British rocker for our annual holiday music video. Here's what I'll say. If you leave us a review and then you message me, I will share that video with you cuz it is unlisted on. I feel like that's, I think that's a fair trick.

[00:01:30] Cool. It is chaotic, good , chaotic, festive, let's say , chaotic, festive. Um, I, I agree. Amazing. Well, we, in the spirit of giving and festivities and holidays and all that, our top story is of course Mackenzie Scott releasing a comprehensive list of grant recipients. So, Mackenzie Scott has started a new website, yield giving.com, and the website essentially serves.

[00:02:06] Just kind of like a, a holding a place to hold all the information about the recipients of Scott's Enormous generosity over the past couple years. So a downloadable database of all the organizations that have received money from Mackenzie Scott. So it's estimated that Don. On this list totaled over 14 billion and were dispersed to over 1600 nonprofits.

[00:02:36] The donations and grants were no strings attached in nature, and the database denotes the name of the organization, the size of the gift, and the organization's focus area, geographic location, and mission statement. So we are getting. Full and total transparency from Mackenzie Scott on where those donations are going.

[00:02:59] and important to note on the website's process page where they talk about how they found these donations. There is a hint at an open call for grant recipients, um, at some kind of process that organizations going forward might be able to apply for grants. Um, that seems to be an in the works type thing.

[00:03:20] But it is the first time that Mackenzie Scott has hinted at an open. Tight scenario. So George, this is, this is big news and we, we started going through that spread list and you see this like never ending list and these donations, it's not $500, it's not $10,000. It's all of them are getting millions of dollars, or at least most of them.

[00:03:43] It's crazy. Yeah. It's refreshing to see. Transparency there. I mean, technically speaking you can, um, sort of back into information like this using, you know, tools like cause iq.com where you can track who's given what. Uh, cuz these things have to be disclosed on nine 90 s. It's just a different. Ability though to sort of pop it out into a C S V and be able to look at it and, and get an idea of it, you know, top things in here.

[00:04:13] I was looking down the list. Um, one of the top recipients in 2020 was actually our IP medical debt who is on our, you know, on our list of, uh, podcast participants. You know, planned Parenthood is is up there with 50 million. Uh, they were a past client of ours, so I was like, oh, kind of, you know, happy to, to look through and see that many of the folks that we.

[00:04:35] actually worked with, um, our are on this list volunteer match, um, is a past client. And you can see just, you know, what's impressive, I encourage you to go there and just like you get an idea of, to your point, it's not like, oh, here's like, you know, 10,000, 20,000 gifts. Like they're just row after row of millions of dollars being given.

[00:04:57] Right? Like that is, uh, something quite significant. , uh, for, for what you're, you know, able to achieve. And you know, it's not until you get to the very end where they're like, very few grants are like under a million dollars. Um, actually if I was on this list and I got less than a million, I'd be like, what the heck?

[00:05:15] why did I get less than a million? Um, but it's a reminder of that, the power of this level of wealth and. , you know, on the other side of that coin is like, you know, this could easily be spent the other direction, but, you know, I have a, a hard time finding a bad, bad, bad apple in the bunch and looking through the hundreds of organizations here.

[00:05:37] Yeah, George, I think that's a great takeaway. It's impactful to see all this disparate data that we might have been able to see just in one place really cleanly. you can download as a CSV and see all these amazing organizations there. Um, that presumably have been a vetted. Um, and yeah, it's just cool, cool to see that impact in one place spelled out so cleanly.

[00:06:06] But I can take us into our next story. And this is from Yahoo Finance, and it talks about the 22 most charitable companies. In 2022. It goes through some heavy hitters. You've probably heard of just about all the companies on this list, uh, Google, Starbucks, Walmart, alphabet. George. How seriously should we take this?

[00:06:30] Is this, is this a good thing? Is this a. E s g whitewashing situation. Are these real donations? What's, what's, what do we think of this list? Well, I mean, it's tis the season for lists. I also bring it up because I think your organization, obviously, if you haven't already, it may be a little too late, but there's still periods of time, I'd say that's stretched through January where you can create your top list of corporations, of people, of influencers, of whatever it may be that have done you.

[00:07:03] The most social impact in your, in your ecosystem. And so this is like at one level, it's like, look, it's Yahoo Fines writing an end of your article. Fine. But I'd also say that, you know, looking at companies being celebrated for doing the right thing in the right way, on the heels of, you know, what we just saw with C v cvs, which, you know, uh, we talked about in the other episode, um, is, is great to see.

[00:07:28] I, I do think. Social impact isn't just relegated to the domain of 5 0 1 It's, it's clear that, um, for-profit organizations need to stand out. I mean, am I, am I really celebrating that hard when I see, like Chevron make the top 10 here? Like maybe not or, you know, JP Morgan Chase? Not exactly. Being like the pinnacle.

[00:07:57] Offense, but like, you know, social, social impact, justice and investment. Uh, okay. Um, ExxonMobil making the list. So there's a little bit of e s g gaming, so take a look at the list. How would you write it? That's my question. I think that's, I think that's good framing. Uh, something of course to keep in mind this time of year.

[00:08:19] Um, but some good things for nonprofit leaders to think.

[00:08:23] All right. I'll take us into our next story. And honestly, this one ruffles my feathers, George. So you're ruffled last. I'm, I'm, I'm ruffled. Uh, The New York Times last week published a story titled How a Sprawling Hospital Chain ignited its own staffing Crisis. And it talks about a hospital chain, um, under the Ascension umbrella.

[00:08:51] Um, that is a hospital that serves approximately 6 million patients in the South and Midwest. It has revenue, yearly revenue of $15 billion. That rivals companies like General Mills and Gap. It is a non-for-profit hospital system, and in addition to its billions in cash, it runs an investment company that manages more than 41 billion in assets, and the chief executive of its wholly owned.

[00:09:23] Investment company made a salary of 13 million last year, and it's estimated from that article that because of its nonprofit status, ascension has avoided more than 1 billion a year in federal, state, and local taxes. That's the, the, the tax exempt work. Um, and in response to that, we have an article from health affairs.org that offers some framing and solutions of thinking about this problem.

[00:09:51] Um, Because our irrational health system, as it notes, allows mega hospital chains that operate under a nonprofit status, um, to, to really not put their, their patients first. It, it stems from, um, staffing crises, trying to squeeze out pennies, uh, during the, the Covid problem, uh, during the covid surge and a whole host of other problems.

[00:10:20] But you. Mega wealthy kind of bad actors in the nonprofit healthcare system. Um, this article offers some different approaches, um, that I'm quite frankly not knowledgeable enough to, to speak or even summarize, quite frankly. But George, why'd you throw this in here? And, and why do we keep talking on this podcast about nonprofit hospitals?

[00:10:45] What, what's the importance of, of that thread?

[00:10:47] This is under. Ongoing theme of brought to you by, just because it's a C3 doesn't mean it's doing good. 5 0 1 is a tax classification and clearly in this case, one that is saving a, um, an operating organization, billions of dollars. Uh, you know, when you're talking about, and it came up in this article, uh, staffing shortages, leaders of these organizations, of these hospitals and their boards bragging about how much they were able to.

[00:11:19] In, in overhead, not for mind you, the service of the patient or what's best in the health outcome, but mind you, in a reduction of staff and especially, and you know, as we're moving through a pandemic, it, it's, it's a real head scratcher in terms of saying like, how, how isn't there more scrutiny brought to bear?

[00:11:38] Also, you know, tactics. Intentionally obfuscate the 5 0 1 obligation of hospitals to actually cover in the case, um, medical bills that aren't able to be afforded by, um, low income clients that come through. And it is, you know, a part of the, you know, terrible jigsaw puzzle that makes up our, our healthcare system.

[00:12:02] But sad to. The nonprofit, uh, you know, name being pulled in, uh, to this overall brand. And so when you look at overall trust dropping in nonprofits, it is narratives like these that are, are really doing it, are really bringing it, uh, bringing it around. So I, I hope this type of article leads to oversight, scrutiny.

[00:12:23] And like, you know what is fine with me? Pay your taxes. That's okay. Right? Just lose your C3 status. Pay your taxes. You're gonna operate like a for-profit. You're gonna operate in the competi. Ecosystem where you're trying to get the most out of it. Like that's, that's America, that's fine. But I don't like the thought that our tax dollars are going to underwrite so that they can have a higher amount of money to then go turn their nonprofit into an investment vehicle.

[00:12:50] Yeah, I agree with that. Uh,

[00:12:53] Certainly a big problem. Healthcare in America, nonprofit hospital chain healthcare system. But, uh, hopefully that this amount of high profile articles, um, shines light on the problem. Alright, I can take us into our next story. And this one comes from wire.com and the title of this article is Big Tech Laid Off Thousands.

[00:13:19] Tier who wants them next? And the subtitle is government's, nonprofits and small startups hope to scoop up. People let go by the likes of Meta and Amazon. It's their big chance to learn top tier talent. Um, so the Article C sites, the sta, that nearly 1000 tech companies around the world have laid off more than 150,000 tech workers.

[00:13:39] This year. We've seen high profile layoffs from meta Amazon. Whatever it was that happened at Twitter. Um, and quite frankly, you now have high skill job seekers in the tech marketplace that now may be looking for stability, potentially lower pay , you know, it comes with the territory, but that governments, nonprofits, and other private sector industries that are looking for highly skilled tech workers, uh, this could be a good.

[00:14:12] To recruit these workers, um, during this kind of realignment of the tech sector. Uh, Yeah, not only that, um, increasingly you're seeing public opinion of major tech companies, uh, taking some heat, Twitter, taking heat, Facebook especially over the past couple years, Cambridge Analytica forward taking heat, and these workers might be primed to be looking for.

[00:14:42] Environmentally socially conscious type jobs, whether that be in the government, social impact sector, nonprofit sector. Um, so this article just kind of makes the case, um, that this is a golden opportunity for social impact folks to recruit.

[00:15:00] I think that's exactly right here and a great opportunity. because many of these folks that have been laid off actually do have fairly generous severance packages, you know, coming out of, uh, meta and others. You can actually go to a site layoffs, FYI, for a full breakdown of number of people laid off when it happened.

[00:15:25] And on top of that, there may be the opportunity of saying like, okay, if we know that there are people in our region or area that have these technical skills, like how are you? Selling and even amplifying the the potential need for not just frankly employees, but volunteers. Again, I note. Severance packages may cover these folks for, you know, 3, 6, 9 months depending on what that agreement looks like.

[00:15:50] There may be, uh, a new swath of volunteers, um, coming out as a net result of this. So, you know, what does your technical volunteering strategy plan promotion look like as you move into 2023? Not just, you know, clearly for, for hiring, in which case, you know, we, we always recommend Idealist dot. As a, you know, a solid place to be listing, uh, for at least nonprofit minded, uh, employees.

[00:16:19] And what's layoffs, layoffs.fyi. I know. Weird ending. But, um, it'll give you some charts and stats on, on what's going on. Yeah. Great. Great resource there. Go check them. All right, George. The time has come. How about a feel good story? Yeah. What have we. Okay, this one comes from W M U R nine A B C, local affiliate, and it talks about how an organization called the Common Man Family of Restaurants, um, has co-founded a nonprofit called Common Man for Ukraine.

[00:16:55] Um, and the nonprofit has delivered 1300 present. Two children in Ukraine this holiday season, along with 700 tons of food and 10,000 sleeping bags. Um, they, they have been visiting orphanages in Ukraine, of course, as the, the human tragedy of the conflict has now left kids, uh, orphaned. Um, and it says, the organization says they've raised 2.3 million in less than six months to support Ukrainian refugees and.

[00:17:30] this is amazing, right? Like those, the, the gift itself is almost not what matters. What matters is kids feel seen, they're allowed to feel joy amid, you know, insane circumstances and, uh, get a little, a little bump, a little support, a little, pick me up during an otherwise uh, trying year. , it's the season of giving.

[00:17:55] And, uh, cool to see a nonprofit stepping up and giving to kids who God knows need it the most.

[00:18:01] , it's an important reminder that we've got, uh, children in a war zone. And, , that's diametrically opposed to a season of giving an abundance and care. So the, , the fact that that's, that's occurring and giving, uh, an semblance of, uh, what the season's actually about, um, is good to see.

[00:18:22] And that's like, that's the work of nonprofits. Uh, you know, and, and sometimes you just, you know, like, oh, well, you know, shouldn't they be sending body armor? Sure. Right. Like, if that were the only focus. Um, but this is called, you know, working with empathy and realizing that, um, there are, uh, many people suffering and there's, uh, there's work to be done.

[00:18:45] So, uh, I like. Uh, all right, Nick, you know it's coming. , I, I know it's coming. Qu question, question for you. Um, how, how was the nonprofit camping fundraiser you went to?

[00:19:00] I'm not sure. How was the nonprofit camping fundraiser I went to? It was intense.

[00:19:07] Oh, brother . Oh my. That was good. That was good. Yeah. Yeah. Moderate. Uh, I, uh, I will say we're probably, we're, we're signing off. I don't know if we'll fit in another one of these before the end of the year. So I appreciate the, the time, uh, and working with you, Nick. Uh, happy holidays to you and yours. See you in the new.

[00:19:28] Happy holidays to you and your family in the new year. Thanks for a great year. Here comes 2023.

 

Helping 40,000 Young Entrepreneurs | Sky’s The Limit

Interview with co-founder and CEO of Sky's The Limit ,Bo Ghirardelli. Bo discusses how they built a youth entrepreneurship network that has supported over 40k young people. Learn how Sky's The Limit leverages corporate partners to help achieve its mission. 

 

Links:

Success stories

Twitter

Corporate partnerships

 

Rough Transcript

[00:00:00] Today on the podcast, we have a great guest who has bravely come on, despite, frankly, Responding out of the blue to a message that we sent him cuz I found the organization very interesting. Bo Garelli, co-founder and CEO of Sky's The Limit, and that's sky's the limit.org if you wanna find them on the interwebs.

[00:00:23] Really quickly on Bo, since I did find him on LinkedIn, which is amazing, but this is quite a track record. After graduating with an

[00:00:31] mpa,

[00:00:32] In nonprofit management from the University of Washington was in the Peace Corps. Love it. And he was a small business development consultant in Morocco. Wow. And then goes on to co-found two other organizations

[00:00:45] in Morocco before, I guess in 2010

[00:00:50] for 12 years now.

[00:00:51] Co-founding Sky's limit. So Bo thanks for joining us and maybe you can start with that. Why is there a limit at the sky? What is going on there? Can you tell us what the organization does? ?

[00:01:01] Sure, yeah, a little. We work with underrepresented young adult entrepreneurs to help 'em chase their business dreams.

[00:01:09] And we combine business mentoring, advising and support and community with learning and training and access to a startup grant fund that we build. And so those three things that the mentoring, training and funding are really Produces some greater than their parts.

[00:01:25] And we've been as you mentioned, doing this for 12 years, but only six as a technology organization. And we can get more into that that journey later on maybe. Interesting. So maybe just to pull back why this cause, why this. Okay. I'd probably start at the beginning in that sense then so I was born and raised in Oakland, California to a family full of small business owners.

[00:01:49] And the conversations at the table were were about how to build businesses, how to solve problems for your customers, how to think about and develop. A business that's truly valuable to the community and and then, concurrently out, out in society and school, raised on this this myth of the American dream where America was touted as this land of equal opportunity.

[00:02:17] And I, I did not see that playing out in my friend group and my community. As I saw vastly different outcomes for people based on arbitrary things like their skin color and their gender and other other opportunities that were there weren't Really gave lie, I think, to in, in many ways this this idea of the American dream and equal opportunity for all.

[00:02:40] And that really sparked a desire in me to figure out how I could kinda combine my. Love of entrepreneurship and love of entrepreneurs themselves with with a way of creating a more just and equitable world. So the journey led to being a, a middle school teacher.

[00:02:57] I'm in south central la and when I got the opportunity to teach a, an elective chorus to, in, in middle school, I asked my students what they wanted to learn and they said they wanted to learn about business and money. And that was the first entrepreneurship course I taught and built was was helping sixth graders understand.

[00:03:16] What it's like to build a business. And students loved it. I loved it. And and I went on in into the the Peace Corps and during the Arab Spring I joined the Peace Corps in order to kinda respond to this this crisis that was brewing in North Africa in particular. It was really rooted in a lack of economic opportunity for young adults of working age.

[00:03:40] So roughly 50% of working age young adults at the time were unemployed. So it's a massive unemployment rate, completely destabilizing the the countries and societies and. While I was there, I asked the young people in the community, like about what what they needed. And they said, Look, we have business ideas.

[00:04:01] I've got a business idea, but I don't know what to do with it. So we built a business training program really rooted in business planning. And they said, Okay, now I got this plan. What do I do? And so we said, Okay, let's go to the microfinance organizations and see if they'll lend any money. So we went to all the, these ostensibly non-profit microfinance organizations.

[00:04:20] None of them would lend money to, to the young entrepreneurs. I was working with and and so we said, Screw it. We'll build our own fund. So I flew back to the Bay Area, raised some money from some generous folks in the community. And we created our own loan fund and underwrote interest free loans to entrepreneurs.

[00:04:38] They got their businesses up and going, and they said, Okay. Now what, how do I keep this thing alive? How do I grow it? And that's where we tap the community of business leaders for mentors and advisors, supporters to wrap a community of support around the entrepreneurs. And so that's the birth kind of our model of combining those three things that mentoring, training and funding.

[00:04:59] And and my Moroccan co-founder took that, that over. And I went back home to Oakland because the same thing the same gap in the ecosystem exists in the United States and existed in my own hometown. And so I, I felt a need to respond to my own community at home. And sure enough we can approved that out, right?

[00:05:18] We launched and quickly got served hundreds of entrepreneurs. We had thousands applying from around the country, and this is for everywhere from, rural Georgia to Detroit to, to the Bronx, like people were applying from across the country. And it just showed that there was this massive gap for earliest stage young entrepreneurs, people of color, women.

[00:05:39] Low income entrepreneurs who had all kinds of business ideas, everything from starting a clothing line to building a gourmet popcorn company to launching a beauty line. So the so I think that was the catalyst for kinda why we. Why we needed to transform what we were doing as a brick and mortar in Oakland to, to figure out how to serve a national and eventually global community to meet this need.

[00:06:06] So that's a long answer to your question, but but that's the why and what of our story that's.

[00:06:13] That's what I love about podcasts too, because guess what, , We have the time. We have the time to talk about it. And the truth is it matters quite a bit. The motivation and the process of how organizations are formed, how they have listened to the community and how they've responded over time, and very impressive that you have.

[00:06:34] Served over 40,000, if I have that right. 40,000 underrepresented young entrepreneurs from 50 states, and also a number of countries. And it seems like when you move from brick and mortar to digital, I'm seeing a sort of app look on your site. It looks like there is in fact an online. Portal that you created.

[00:06:56] I wonder if that isn't that moment where you went from serving into the hundreds to the thousands. Maybe you can talk me through that shift and what

[00:07:03] led to it. Yeah. So in, in 2015 when we had over 5,000 applicants to our Oakland based program that at best could serve people in the Bay Area we, I went to one of my best friends and who was a tech founder.

[00:07:18] He was at the time working on a small startup called blockchain.com, which is now a very big startup. And he and I, it's, he and I had spent many late nights in college talking about. What what our purpose was in life and what the what was the meaning of all this and what should we do about it?

[00:07:38] And he was a child entrepreneur in the same way I was different kinds of businesses, all technology based. For him, he to building a web company as a, 14, 15 year old building websites for other businesses. And and I said, Hey, look, I know you're really busy with this other startup, but what about helping us transform?

[00:07:56] There's a clear demand here. And I think the only way we can meet that demand is through technology and. The reality is that our customer our, the entrepreneurs we serve are the first generation of digitally native entrepreneurs. So when we think about meeting customer needs, our entrepreneurs want are going online.

[00:08:15] They're looking online for services and support. We took this this evidence to a few pe We shopped, shopped this around for a while. We were very fortunate to have a tremendous partner in, in Accenture and Accenture's corporate citizenship group understood this. They understood that that just like how the For profit sector was going had been undergoing decades of digital transformation that the nonprofit sector was also going to do this.

[00:08:42] And and certainly George you understand this well coming from a tech nonprofit that and so they said, Look, yes, we get it. We'll fund it. And they have for, eight years now. So they've really co-created this platform with us. And they did it in a really innovative partnership.

[00:08:58] They staffed a team of engineers, designers. Product manager to the, to sky's the limit to, to help us, build the platform that would power the services and support and impact. We were looking to achieve with our entrepreneurs. Now there's a second component to this and this is why, corporate funders are over 90% of our funding.

[00:09:23] Is that the Fortune 500 has some of the best and brightest people working for them and they've, the Fortune 500 can afford to pay the high salaries, the good benefits. It's the fortune in 500 in the Fortune, right to. To really support these incredible people and help them have great jobs and et cetera.

[00:09:43] And and so we recognize that the community element of what we're building at Sky's the limit was actually the harder side, right? We had a lot of entrepreneurs signing up. So we need to figure out this other side of the community who was going to support the entrepreneurs. And Not only did we get funding talent from Accenture, we also got to we also got a channel to recruit.

[00:10:06] From there, at the time I think there were 500,000 employees at Accenture, and now it's. Closer to a million than not. And and just an incredible global workforce that that was, that has come to bear and engaged thousands of their employees as volunteers on the platform in support supporting entrepreneurs.

[00:10:25] Everything from a digital marketer in New York, helping an entrepreneur launch their first Instagram ad campaign so they don't waste a ton of money. On the ads that aren't working everything from their internal legal department coming in and providing pro bono legal services to, to product developers, helping entrepreneurs, hone and enhance the value proposition of their products.

[00:10:45] So there's a, there's so much we can do with folks inside the Fortune 500. And then we've continued to replicate that model now with PNC Bank, our second largest funder, Goldman Sachs Wells Fargo, hp and some others who've come alongside and said, Hey, we give we will fund and we will provide.

[00:11:04] Access to our employee base as volunteers to bring this, the, this community together online so we can go into a little bit more about the platform. But that's the genesis of that and of the transition to becoming a technology organization now half the team or on our product and engineering.

[00:11:21] It's so interesting cuz there are a lot of different paths that a nonprofit can take to funding and clearly, If the money isn't there, it's very

[00:11:29] hard to support

[00:11:30] Your stakeholders. I'm curious, can you take me into the room of you pitching Accenture? Like how, Cause this has gotta be on a lot of organization's mind.

[00:11:39] You're like, Oh yeah, all you do is talk to Accenture, talk to pnc, get Goldman Sachs, throw a sales force in the midst. So you just walk on the door, knock on and say, Hey, money please. Now. Okay. time, talent, treasure. So can you talk to me about how it looks like you landed that anchor partnership

[00:11:58] with Accenture?

[00:12:00] Yeah. I certainly did not get into this work to fundraise, but the reality

[00:12:05] yeah. No one told you that nonprofits actually are obsessed with money because you have to get

[00:12:10] that right. Yeah no. I, It was, sorry. It was like it's one of those things like, look the mission and the people we serve are the end for me.

[00:12:19] And money is certainly a means to achieving that end. So fundraising has increasingly been more and more part of my day to day. And look, the, some of my favorite days we're working one on one with our entrepreneurs in the earliest days, understanding, their pain points and what their, the problems they're trying to solve.

[00:12:37] But to, I think, unlock the kinds of resources we need to make a dent in the size of this issue. It's gonna take hundreds of millions and billions of dollars and. . And that is what it is, right? I've had to learn how to do this. How do you do it? So what the journey looked like for us is we tried a lot of things that didn't work first and foremost, so failed a lot.

[00:12:58] Okay, so then, so once we figured out all the ways that this didn't work, like cold messaging,

[00:13:02] sending to HR at Accenture,

[00:13:05] the Sure. Everything, but what we realized was like that we had to find companies that had, So step one, find the, find companies that have a public statement around their corporate citizen.

[00:13:17] That, or corporate social responsibility programs that aligns with your mission. If it doesn't, then it's gonna be, it's gonna be a hard road. There's so much internal negotiating and so much internal planning that went into stating these public goals for these companies. You gotta align with the, I think you all of this is just my perception or my belief.

[00:13:36] So I think you gotta align with those. Once you do that you can the next step is much harder. It's figuring out and navigating the decision making process for how a funder can how a, how corporate funder makes decisions around who they. There are 2 million, I think over 2 million non-profits in the United States.

[00:13:57] There are often many non-profits doing similar work. And every nonprofit is, is looking for and hopefully trying to talk about their, comp their advantage, right? Their edge, their why me? , why this organization? And I think. That does matter. But what we realized was that in many corporations, you need to find somebody who cares.

[00:14:19] You need to find a champion. . And that champion needs to be able to influence the decision making process for funding inside of a corporate. And so that's eventually we found what worked. And so we started to recruit, managing directors who. Who could care about, not only not only cared, cuz it's easy to care about our work, right?

[00:14:38] It's a widely appealing mission. And but, Caring going from caring to acting was a journey. And I think ultimately we just find people that we have meaningful relationships with we genuinely care about them and they genuinely care about us. And then we, we also need to then after we have that kind.

[00:14:57] Based relationship, we need to deliver results. And that set and that's, a third piece here is like, how can you deliver results to the to, to a corporate who has a stated goal of what they're trying to achieve? And how can you do that? Technology, at least for us, our, our part, big part of our story was like, look, this is a big need.

[00:15:16] There's big numbers involved. And and even, we just hit our 50000th sign up. Last month. And so it's just, Hey, congrats. Gotta update all those numbers now. . Yeah. . And and we and we have to figure out, to me that's just the tip of the iceberg.

[00:15:29] It is just the tip of the iceberg. And we have to, continuously create value for entrepreneurs, for the volunteers we serve. And then a third customer group, which is the. And so we treat, we treat those partners as a customer group and we. We feel accountable to delivering results against their funding.

[00:15:45] Why they funded us. And it's for the impact. It's for the mission. And often it involves a, an element of scale to, to what they're looking for. And and all of those are important. And understanding each funder is, different, Each corporate is different. All of those corporate, social, respons.

[00:16:02] Goals are off, are all tailored exactly. To to the corporate. And how they measure success is different. It's one of the vast complexities of the nonprofit sector, right? Is what success looks like and what impact, how do you measure it? On the financial side, all of these companies use Gap, right?

[00:16:19] There's a very clear set of ways for accounting for the financial performance of a Fortune 500 company. And they all

[00:16:26] use, I'm sorry. GAP is general accounting principles. Is

[00:16:28] that right? Yes. Yes. There you go. Yes. Thanks for spelling that out. So it's, it is a, it's a formal process for counting for financials, so you can compare the financials of one Fortune 500 company to another.

[00:16:41] But how do you compare the, impact of one nonprofit to another? Is often very difficult because there is no standardized process. And we're talking about people's lives and we're talking about multifaceted issues on impact. So ultimately to bring this full circle, you have to be able to position your.

[00:17:02] Properly for in the ways in which these corporate funders measure. Impact. And and that's so that's a final piece of it. But really finding that, that champion and showing how you're better better different and and then delivering results and maintaining and valuing the needs of that partner over, over many years is how we've, I think retained some of our corporate funders for a long time.

[00:17:29] So to roughly summarize,

[00:17:31] it sounds like you start with this alignment list, this list of potential organizations that you have vetted and checked with regard to their vision, their csr.

[00:17:44] Corporate social responsibility

[00:17:46] programs then take a step back and potentially identify champions and you have an advantage just to reverse engineer this, it seems where you have a backyard full of potential volunteers that may already work at these organizations or can be recruited to become volunteers to see it firsthand, which can be pretty powerful.

[00:18:04] There's no substitute for putting in the time. Once you have that, you develop them into a champion and then you expand within with this sort of bigger vision. Clearly the name is, Sky's the limit, but you are bringing numbers, you're bringing opportunity for impact that is at a scale that frankly companies that deal in the billions understand and it just lets you, it seems level up and align with

[00:18:30] these organizations.

[00:18:33] Yeah, I think an so to speak about specific value propositions for corporate funders. So one is employee engagement, right? One of the top concerns, particularly now in this in this really tight labor market is retention and attracting new hires to, to companies.

[00:18:52] And then with the murder of George Floyd, you had a a social wining that demanded the companies, the employees who worked at these, at big companies are demanding a response. And more than, Lip service to the issues. And I think that the, one of the ways in which we've we've seen some corporate partners for example, PNC Bank made a massive racial and economic opportunity investment to in, in low income and black communities across the country.

[00:19:24] And they were, and they've and as part of that commitment, their people are able to volunteer on sky's the limit with the entrepreneurs we serve. 61% of the entrepreneurs we serve are black entrepreneurs. Again, most of our entrepreneurs are between the ages of 18 and 30, right?

[00:19:39] The working with young adult first time, earliest stage entrepreneurs, 80% are pre revenue. And this is a part of, part of our pitch to corporates, and part of the reason why we've had so many people sign up is because that is a true gap in the entrepreneurship ecosystem, even for nonprofits.

[00:19:57] Many nonprofits in the entrepreneurship ecosystem serve entrepreneurs who are more established. So they, especially if you're a lender or a C D F I a microfinance organization in the entrepreneurship space, and you're a nonprofit, you're still looking for an entrepreneur who's had one or two years of business operations.

[00:20:17] . But there's a massive gap for earliest stage entrepreneurs who don't have friends and family with money and who don't have savings, right? We know over half of America only has $700 in savings. The we call our fund, our grant fund, the Friends and Family Fund, to recognize this gap that exists for founders who don't have friends and family with money, because that's how privileged entrepreneurs get their first money.

[00:20:42] They get it from friends and family. And if the business doesn't work out their friends and family aren't taking them to court and suing them they're just saying, Okay, we're gonna let it go. Yeah. Took a flyer and that's what happened. Yeah. So all of this ties into the, this kind of the why.

[00:20:59] Why does your work matter? Why is, and why are you filling a need that others aren't? And what are you doing about it that's more efficient, better, faster, cheaper? All of those value propositions matter for corporates and particularly we, the employee engagement angle is an aspect, is an important part of why corporates partner with us.

[00:21:17] Gotcha. Now that you

[00:21:20] have passed 50,000, it sounds like signups and entrepreneurs. I have to say that

[00:21:24] the resources are pretty

[00:21:27] broad and impressive. You have on the site accounting, building a team, business planning, legal leadership, funding, operations, Like it just goes on and on for the really, like how we go from zero to one for these entrepreneurs.

[00:21:42] Can you tell me, moving back to the tech you've.

[00:21:45] How the app and maybe even the website gets

[00:21:49] that entrepreneur from zero to one. And I think a

[00:21:53] very tricky part, how you create

[00:21:56] the right connections between mentors and these entrepreneurs.

[00:22:02] Yeah. Absolutely. And we are, we're still, even, five years into building the platform, we're still we're still iterating, right?

[00:22:09] Like we have we can always be better, in my opinion. And we're still trying to solve what is fundamentally a matchmaking problem, right? As you pointed out. The. Entrepreneurs and volunteers create profiles on the platform, right? And we ask a lot of things about you about what you're looking for.

[00:22:28] And then we use that data. To recommend matches for you, but we also recognize that many people, we take a lot of inspiration from dating apps. The major difference from for us is, of course, these are platonic relationships, professional relationships and on a dating app, you don't really need to explain what, what dating.

[00:22:50] To people come in with a clear preconception around around dating and finding a partner, et cetera. And maybe people have different preferences except within that ecosystem. But when you talking about mentoring, it is a, you ask 10 people what mentoring means and you'll get 10 different answers.

[00:23:09] And and really what the kinds of interactions that we're facilitating between entrepreneurs and supporters more broadly. It's, it's between entrepreneurs as peers, Between people who, who may be an accountant really good at accounting, but not interested or able to support in any other area.

[00:23:27] Or you've got, small business owners or general entrepreneurs who've been on the whole journey and understand this. Then you got people who have an hour and you got people who are looking for. A long term relationship. And some people are looking for, shorter term engagements both on the entrepreneur side and the sporter side.

[00:23:44] So there's so there's just really a a ton of nuance and a ton of different types of engagements. Everything from pro bono offering, so that accountant, maybe they'll help you set up your, their, your QuickBooks for your business. That's nice, but maybe they also.

[00:24:01] Want to give you some general pointers around around. Accounting and how to think about managing your money, how to track your money, but you're not formally structuring saying

[00:24:09] Hey, if you talk to this person about accounting, you have to go jump into their, QuickBooks

[00:24:13] and go grind this out, or build their website for them.

[00:24:16] Yeah. One of our principles is that we want to mimic the way humans develop relationships in the real world. Through the platforms. So there isn't a lot of like constraints or rules or if I, I met you George through LinkedIn. Great. Cool. We hashed out what it was.

[00:24:35] Why are we talking, what is it about this, There are no, no rules about what kind of messages you can and can't send. Sure. There's common decency and we certainly have policies around building a healthy community. But beyond that, it's not to say that, if I'm an accountant that I am or if I'm an entrepreneur looking for accounting support do I even want to set up QuickBooks?

[00:24:55] I, Yeah. What do I want? It's so matchmaking between the nuance and what happens if you're as a first time entrepreneur. There's all these things that you're constantly learning about what you need, and your priorities are constantly shift, shifting as you figure out what it is.

[00:25:10] It's a very messy process, building a business, right? And there's a in 98, 9% of our founders are solo. So what are you doing when you're on your own, you have to do it all. You're all your. So again, the community aspect becomes really important, but the matchmaking problem is a really difficult one to solve, and that's what we've been really working on, is helping people meet each other where they're at and supporting them in in building meaningful relationships, whatever that means for an entrepreneur supporter at any given time in there.

[00:25:42] Is it all one to one or is it one to. Yeah it's primarily one to one. Wow. So entre each re each relationship is treated on an individual basis. So if I'm an entrepreneur platform, I can have I can reach out and build an entire advisory board. I can have, 10 different people.

[00:25:59] Doing that. So in that sense, it's one to many. And a volunteer can match with multiple entrepreneurs across many different areas. Now, am I actually

[00:26:07] swiping right and swiping left on people, or have you dialed

[00:26:09] back the dating to that point? Not yet. That's certainly on our minds.

[00:26:14] Oh guys. But yeah, the question is like how do we help you find what you're looking for in the community? At any given moment because it's changing rapidly, particularly for the entrepreneur about what their needs are. And how do we help you do that in a way that's engaging, gamified et cetera.

[00:26:31] What we've done is. We've built a gamification system into the platform so that the entrepreneurs and supporters who are creating the most value in the community as measured by, spending time together, achieving measurable results for co, for the entrepreneurs in their businesses.

[00:26:46] Which we call milestones. So cheating a business milestone. Everything from naming your business to getting your first business bank account up, all the way to getting your first customer, raising money, hiring employees, All of these are common business milestones. So we track those in the platform and the community members who are.

[00:27:04] Who are creating the most value are getting the most points. And those points aren't just for show. They actually govern our grant program. Entrepreneurs can create pitches on the platform and then the community votes on who wins those pitches. So your points are your votes. And so that's a way for us to, Oh,

[00:27:23] Yeah,

[00:27:24] so there that the interaction, but the points aren't just there for smiles and dials, like it's there

[00:27:28] for actual.

[00:27:29] Cache in the community. That's right. Yeah. And you vote for yourself or only for other people? Sure. You can vote for your, your points go to your vote, your votes if you have a funding pitch. But you can also use 'em on other people if you'd like. If you're a volunteer, you don't have a funding pitch, so you're you're voting.

[00:27:44] If you're an entrepreneur, maybe you aren't ready for funding yet or you haven't created the pitch. So sure, you can use yours however you like. The. But the point is that, this governs hundreds of thousands of dollars that we've given away through community voting.

[00:27:56] It's real money on the line and and we're always working to increase the size of that fund. And we've got a couple of, and I assume you don't

[00:28:03] take any, so it's not like a Y Combinator where you're like, All right, we get 10 points of your company going forward.

[00:28:09] It's just no equity. It's a pure grant.

[00:28:11] It is not repayable. It is as free money as it gets. Yep. And we're working on a couple experiments around this. The, blockchain technology is a really interesting potential use case here. Cuz essentially what we're building is a Dow a decentralized, autonomous organization that is governed by a, a token.

[00:28:32] And in, in this case it's on our platform. But we're we. In the process of building a pilot dow that will, potentially transform our community to be able to be governed by a, an actual blockchain based token that is immutable and and will have real control over the disbursement of these funds.

[00:28:51] And it'll all be on chain and and auditable and verifi. And really empower the community to feel a sense of deep ownership over, over sky's limit. And eventually we have plans in the future to turn over the entire sky's the limit organization. To the Dow. Everything from governing, what features get built to who the staff, the everything, and certainly the governance of the fund itself and where those funds go.

[00:29:21] But I think that's a long ways off still, but it's certainly yeah sky coin to the. Yeah, certainly something that we're we've been thinking about and already testing without blockchain technology right now. But but yeah, that's the community is at the hardest.

[00:29:34] Sky's the limit. And we believe that the people closest to the problems that they're trying to solve are. Suited to solve those problems. And we really do want our community to, can take an ever greater voice in in what we do and how we serve two-sided

[00:29:50] marketplaces

[00:29:51] are absolutely the scariest,

[00:29:53] the hardest, the most difficult to get going as a flywheel.

[00:29:56] Right now I'm curious, do you need more entrepreneurs or do

[00:30:00] you need more volunteers? I need you, George, on the, I'm somebody who gets that, that problem. It absolutely is a big one. We have we manage a bit of the kind of the two-sided demand dynamics here. We often, we have many more entrepreneurs signing up than we do volunteers, but we do offer peer matching and.

[00:30:20] That is a one way in which we think about balancing out the Demand from the community for meetings, for support. We're also working on other ways to engage beyond just just meeting. We're buildings, we're thinking about and cons and designing right now, some asynchronous.

[00:30:38] Opportunities for supporting an entrepreneur. Everything. Think about get, getting feedback on your business plan from the community would, could be really helpful and valuable. And get in writings. You don't have to, wait and book a meeting. But using that as a one of, one of the problems we've noticed is that.

[00:30:56] Maybe if you're joining a dating app, you're looking for dates, you're ready to go on the date when you joined. So it's not gonna hold you back from messaging people. But we found that so many people need to understand what the, they need to go on their own journey to, to saying, Okay, I'm ready to talk about something.

[00:31:13] The vetting and the prepping.

[00:31:15] You don't wanna put somebody who's I don't know what a, what is a business? And you're like maybe you're not ready for a mentor.

[00:31:20] Maybe, or maybe you are. And maybe the question, this comes back to the matchmaking problem. How do you get, how do you get the right person at the right time in your journey as an entrepreneur?

[00:31:31] And same thing on the volunteer side, right? Because it's, it, there's a lot of imposter syndrome from volunteers. It's never, I still, I

[00:31:39] wanna be very clear. I don't know what I am. I have no

[00:31:42] idea. It's one problem at time. And that's the thing, right? And that if only more people just were like, okay with that, that we're all kind of making this up as we go along.

[00:31:51] And if that was a more broadly met that was more broadly known message. We'd have, I think a much more open and ready to jump in kind of mentality between with communities. So doing this digital community piece is a tough problem to solve, but the.

[00:32:08] Reward when we crack the crack. The code on this is tremendous. It's imagine unlocking the social capital, the talents of the Fortune 500 and beyond. And really and unlocking the talents of all these entrepreneurs. Who are starting businesses across the country across the world who aren't getting the support they ha they need from their own community or from or online.

[00:32:32] And we can truly I think create a valuable experience for both entrepreneurs and supporters that could change the world. Spinning up a bunch of

[00:32:41] economic engines from the people. Potentially needed the most are in the communities that are, have the greatest opportunity, I'd say to benefit from creating actual companies.

[00:32:52] It's not, the idea of a handout. It's this idea of training as a great opportunity. And the exciting part about this type of model, and I'm wondering if this is actually bearing to be true, is that after, I imagine over a decade of. Do you find that there are people that came in as entrepreneurs coming back as mentors?

[00:33:12] Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. We see that all the time. And part of the peer matching is, Hey, I'm an entrepreneur with the same kind of problems you're trying to solve, and neither of us have a solution, but let's figure it out together. That's a, an absolutely can be an absolutely powerful relationship.

[00:33:30] It, or it could be an entrepreneur who's Hey, I joined Sky's Limit with just an idea, and now I've got, a couple hundred grand in revenue and a team and working on product market fit and found it to some degree. And now I can come back and or not come back.

[00:33:45] I never left. I'm just can I help unshare some ideas along the way? Absolutely. So that's the. The reality is that our our system is broken right now. And so I think it's a tough thing to try to build a new system because what we're doing is too incremental.

[00:34:04] Like we have the same problems and some of the problems are getting worse in our society from a socioeconomic equity lens. And. We need something that is that is going to transform the reality around where opportunity exists because the talent is certainly everywhere.

[00:34:23] And I think the. The way in which we do that is by reducing the friction from people who care to and from reducing the friction for entrepreneurs to get support to get community, to get to have a thought partner. And it doesn't have to be a, a Fortune 500 volunteer. It doesn't have to be a, another small business owner who's, been there, done that.

[00:34:45] It can be. 24 year old who's, in the same place as you and you can work with them in, in building your business together. Yeah. To

[00:34:54] even find co-founders. It sounds like there's a lot of opportunity once you get everybody in the room. Absolutely. But I'm gonna pin you down tomorrow. If 10 new volunteers or entrepreneurs showed up, which would be the

[00:35:06] one you would say you needed more?

[00:35:08] 10 new volunteers. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Maybe this

[00:35:12] is a good transition into our rapid firearm pinning you down. Please keep your responses to about 30 seconds, respond as needed. And if you're ready, here we go. What is one tech tool or website that you or your organization has started using in the

[00:35:28] last year?

[00:35:29] We just started using Century for error log monitoring on the platform. What are some tech issues you're

[00:35:35] currently battling with?

[00:35:38] We are currently battling with wrapping up our web app and deploying it to the iOS and Android store. What is coming

[00:35:47] in the next year that has you the

[00:35:48] most excited?

[00:35:51] I think a big overhaul of our user experience design is is what I'm most excited for. And then the and having that be the impetus for the launch of our iOS and Android app in 2023. Can you talk about a mistake that

[00:36:06] you made earlier in your career that shapes the way you do things?

[00:36:09] Ooh, there's too many to choose from Doing too much, right? Startups often die from indigestion instead of starvation. That's not always true financially, but it can be from like an op standpoint. Like where do you spend your time as an entrepreneur in the earliest days? And how do you how do you balance it all?

[00:36:27] Because it's too much. And brutally prioritizing is is a skill that is That I've learned the hard way of how important it is. You believe that

[00:36:37] non-profits

[00:36:38] can successfully go out of business. Yeah, and I think they should aspire to. I wish that we had more going out of business though.

[00:36:46] Cuz I, we don't see a lot of non-profits, fully achieving these kind of persistent societal. Problems that they're what we're working to solve.

[00:36:57] Fair to put you in the hot tub Time machine. Send you back to the founding of Styles Limit. What advice

[00:37:03] would you give yourself?

[00:37:04] Just focus on people of finding people who, who care about the mission and care about the work and and don't let the people who don't get you down.

[00:37:14] What is something that you think your organization should stop doing?

[00:37:19] Lot of things. This is back to my earlier point around indigestion killing startups. I think we have got to stay focused on the matchmaking problem that we're trying to solve between community members and I think that anything that isn't trying to solve that needs to be deprioritized or to give you a magic wand to wave

[00:37:41] across the social impact

[00:37:42] sector, what would it.

[00:37:44] Oh man. I think that I would I, I would. Just find a way to, to build trust more between between the entire sector. If I could wave a magic wand trust building is difficult and it's hard. And we face it in tr in our community, right? Trying to build trust between members of our community.

[00:38:07] But when there is that trust, it's tremendous things can happen. And and I think that I would certainly wave my wand over the kind of philanthropic funder place and say, examine what you're doing as a funder to encourage or not trust in the nonprofit sector. What advice

[00:38:28] would you give college grads currently looking to enter the social

[00:38:31] impact?

[00:38:32] Focus on creating value for who you're serving. I think Richard Branson has a quote that it's like he, something along the lines of the. The only mission worth pursuing in business is creating value for people in people's lives. I don't think that's any different of the mission for the social sector, right?

[00:38:52] Like it is ultimately rooted in creating value for the people you're serving. And I would make sure that. Staying anchored to that and measuring that. And and listening to the people you're serving,

[00:39:05] what advice did your parents give you that you either followed or

[00:39:08] didn't follow?

[00:39:09] One of the big business lessons at the table is don't spend more than you have. And it's, and it, I know it sounds so simple, but man how many businesses have gone out spending more than they have? And same thing for, non-profits. That's all right. Final hardball here.

[00:39:26] How

[00:39:26] do people find you?

[00:39:27] How do people.

[00:39:29] If you're an entrepreneur we're here for you. You can sign up on skys limit.org. Everything's free. If you are a professional or a business owner and And you care about this work. And then you can either both and sign up as a volunteer on skys.org. And you can fund us and you can, and do both of those from our website at skys limit.org.

[00:39:55] Both. Thank you for your work.

[00:39:57] I love what you're building. I love that you have a bigger vision of what's possible and we appreciate

[00:40:02] it. Thanks so much, George.