Podcasts about nonprofits

In this episode, I sit down with Bob Campana, serial entrepreneur, author, helicopter pilot, and founder of the Redwood Cafe.With over 40 years of experience across hospitality, travel, real estate, and aviation, Bob breaks down what it takes to rebuild after failure and shares hard-earned lessons from his book, Don't Look Down: The Improbable Adventures and Battle-tested Lessons of a Serial Entrepreneur. In this episode, we discuss:Transforming early global travel experiences into an entrepreneurial mindsetBuilding a hot tub business from recycled World War II pipeline woodManaging memory moments and moments of truth to build customer loyaltyUsing thoughtful communication to elevate travel experiences and build anticipationApplying the "rocking chair test" to guide life decisions without regretsFostering real human connections within the hospitality industryMoving an entire restaurant building to launch a new, massive project at age 72Overcoming self-doubt by amplifying positive inner dialogue About Bob:Robert “Bob” Campana is a California builder, landscape designer, real estate developer, restaurateur, and all-round serial entrepreneur. Born in San Francisco, he grew up in the Sierra Nevada foothills. At age twenty, he quit his job on a backwoods survey crew to travel the world, a journey that changed his life. Returning to California, he started a small business manufacturing and installing redwood hot tubs and eventually grew the company into one of the state's premier swimming pool builders. He later launched and acquired several other successful ventures, including Modesto's popular Redwood Café, which Yelp calls “one of America's most romantic restaurants.” In 2022, he created Redwood Café Tours to develop luxury small-group adventures in Europe, Asia, and Oceania. An experienced helicopter and airplane pilot, he travels the world and celebrates life with his wife, Lynna. BookDon't Look Down!: The Improbable Adventures and Battle-Tested Lessons of a Serial Entrepreneurhttps://a.co/d/012zNJwjhttps://www.bobcampana.comhttps://www.youtube.com/@GetBack2Workk https://www.linkedin.com/in/bob-campana-entrepreneur/ ----- Connect with Candice Snyder!Website: https://www.podpage.com/passion-purpose-and-possibilities-1/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/candicebsnyder?_rdrPassion, Purpose, and Possibilities Community Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/passionpurposeandpossibilitiescommunity/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passionpurposepossibilities/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/candicesnyder/ Shop For A Cause With Gifts That Give Back to Nonprofits: https://thekindnesscause.com/Go to FusionaryFormulas.com and use code PASSION at checkout for 15% off your first order. Fall In Love With Artists And Experience Joy And Calm: https://www.youtube.com/@movenartrelaxation

In this episode of The First Day from The Fund Raising School, Bill Stanczykiewicz, Ed.D., is joined by Jeff Grandy, Vice President of Client Development at Catapult Fundraising, to discuss why every nonprofit should be thinking seriously about legacy giving, and why the best planned gift prospects may already be hiding in plain sight. Grandy explains that while surprise million-dollar bequests make headlines, they are not the typical story. More often, legacy donors are ordinary, deeply committed supporters whose long-term loyalty to an organization matters far more than the size of their annual gifts. Grandy shares that loyalty is one of the strongest indicators of a potential legacy donor. At Catapult Fundraising, his team has found that donors with roughly 11 years of consecutive giving or 14 years of non-consecutive giving can be especially strong prospects, though organizations should adapt those benchmarks to their own donor base. A supporter giving $25 a year for more than a decade may be every bit as worthy of a legacy conversation as a major donor. The key is to look beyond wealth indicators and pay attention to sustained engagement, including donors, volunteers, alumni, grateful patients, and others who have maintained a meaningful connection to the mission. Bill and Jeff also explore how fundraisers can begin those conversations without making planned giving feel uncomfortable or overly complicated. The starting point is curiosity, not a discussion about wills, death, or tax law. Fundraisers can simply ask longtime supporters why they continue to give, what they value about the organization, and what impact they hope to see continue in the future. Grandy emphasizes the importance of listening for those values, sharing appropriate donor stories, and allowing the relationship to develop over time. In his experience, legacy conversations may unfold across several interactions over six to 18 months, although some donors are already waiting to be asked; Catapult has found that about 25 percent of donors contacted during outreach say they have already included the organization in their plans. The central takeaway is that legacy giving should be treated as part of a nonprofit's overall fundraising strategy, not as a separate activity reserved for wealthy donors or large development teams. Strong annual giving systems, thoughtful donor stewardship, and long-term relationship building can all support a healthy legacy pipeline. By recognizing loyalty, approaching donors with authentic curiosity, and advocating for long-term sustainability alongside immediate fundraising needs, organizations can help supporters extend their values far into the future, and create transformational impact in the process. Stay Connected with The Fund Raising School

Since January 2025, the Trump administration has drastically slashed the size of the federal workforce through layoffs, cuts and buyout offers led initially by the Department of Government Efficiency. The scope of staff losses recently came into focus at one agency – the  U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.    The Center for Biological Diversity found that the agency lost 36% of its staff between 2024 and 2026. CBD obtained USFWS staff rosters in response to a Freedom of Information Act records request the advocacy organization had filed. As first reported by the Oregon Capital Chronicle, the data shows a loss of 40% USFWS staff in Oregon alone, including wildlife biologists, wildland firefighters and equipment operators.    Noah Greenwald is the endangered species co-director at the CBD. He says that the loss of experienced USFWS employees with specialized expertise of vulnerable plants and animals jeopardizes the agency’s ability to carry out its obligations under the Endangered Species Act. That includes listing species as endangered or threatened, like the monarch butterfly and Chinook salmon. Earlier this month, CBD and two other organizations sued the USFWS to spur ESA protections for northwestern and southwestern pond turtles.     Greenwald joins us to share more details about the agency’s reduced workforce and its impact in Oregon.   

This Week:  Be Present To Save The Universe If you want your presentations and messages to persuade people, you need to be present; clear; confident; unscripted; and have fun. Whether you're meeting one-on-one, one-on-one-hundred, or you're on stage facing 2500. … Continue reading →

There are millions available for anyone who can launch a successful nonprofit AI safety startup. The hard part, it turns out, is finding people to take the money. Coefficient Giving has drawn up a list of dozens of ideas for organisations it would like someone to start — and it's looking for founders. Today's guest, Max Nadeau, works on Coefficient Giving's Technical AI Safety team, where he's trying to find talented people who can turn neglected AI safety problems into effective organisations.Project Tailwind is Coefficient Giving's attempt to get those organisations started.Preseed grants run $200,000–$2 million, with no preliminary results required.Teams with early results can seek $2–$20 million.For exceptional organisations, much larger grants are possible, even for brand-new startups— Coefficient recently gave $160 million to Geoffrey Irving's new research centre, Resolution.The gaps Max most wants filled include independent assessment of AI companies' safety claims, research aimed at aligning far more powerful systems, and shared infrastructure that speeds up the whole field.But money can't supply the hardest part: a founder with a convincing account of how their work will actually reduce catastrophic risks. Producing good research is only one step. Someone has to use it, change their decisions, or adopt the safeguards it makes possible.Max and host Zershaaneh Qureshi discuss what makes a proposal worth backing, why nonprofits can have a bigger impact on safety than frontier companies, and which gaps most urgently need someone to fill them.Learn more, video, and full transcript: https://80k.info/mnDisclosure: Coefficient Giving is 80,000 Hours's largest donor, though we haven't received funding directly from Max's team.This episode was recorded on August 18, 2026.Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Who's Max Nadeau? (00:00:37)Max's journey from AI research to grantmaking (00:01:55)Project Tailwind: Funding ambitious AI safety nonprofits (00:03:24)“The only bottleneck is talent” (00:13:23)Mistakes startups make (00:19:52)The importance of dramatic pivots (00:22:34)Why AI safety needs outsiders (00:28:16)Is impact possible within AI companies? (00:37:06)Working at AI companies to escape the permanent underclass (00:41:44)For-profit vs nonprofit for ambitious founders (00:44:34)What makes a bad founder? (00:50:50)Top 6 AI safety ideas Max wants to fund (00:55:40)Improving your odds of getting a grant (01:01:57)Our production team includes:Video editors: Josh Alward, Dominic Armstrong, Ollie Bignell, Jasper Luithlen, Milo McGuire, Luke Monsour, and Simon MonsourProducers: Elizabeth Cox and Nick StocktonCoordination and support: Katy Moore and Lou MoranMusic: CORBIT

Episode 386: How to Build on Your Community Capital as a Nonprofit Leader (Dan Bevels)Episode SummaryPlenty of nonprofit professionals talk themselves out of executive roles because their resume does not show years of philanthropic experience. Dan Bevels, President of the Atrium Health Floyd-Polk Foundation in Rome, Georgia, nearly did exactly that, and applied only after his wife and a mentor pushed him. He walks through the case he made in place of the credentials he lacked: that what he did not know could be taught, and that fifteen years of relationships across northwest Georgia would take anyone else years to build. He describes meeting one-on-one with all seventeen of his board members in his first year, mostly to listen; why the foundation asks grant applicants who they are collaborating with, and makes introductions when the answer is no one; and how a young foundation is shifting from funding programs to attacking the causes underneath them. Listeners will walk away with a way to make the case for a role their resume does not obviously fit, and a clearer sense of what a funder is actually listening for.About DanDan Bevels is President of the Atrium Health Floyd-Polk Foundation, an independent supporting foundation of Atrium Health Floyd in Rome, Georgia, that works on the social drivers of health across northwest Georgia, from food insecurity and housing to access to care. He studied broadcast journalism and expected a life in radio and television, then moved into corporate communications once the hours and relocation ruled out the family life he wanted. He joined what was then Floyd Medical Center in 2009, having suggested half as a joke that they hire him rather than keep calling with freelance projects, and later served as Director of Community Health. The foundation was created when Floyd joined Atrium Health in 2021, and Bevels stepped into the top job on January 11, walking straight into grant application season. He grew up in a blue-collar family in the county he now serves, started working at fourteen, and still opens conversations in nearby towns with memories of swimming at Peaks Park.ResourcesThanks to our podcast partner, InperiumDan's LinkedIn | Atrium Health Floyd-Polk FoundationDogwood Health TrustBook recommendations: Upstream by Dan Heath, and The AI-Driven Leader by Geoff WoodsConference for NC Nonprofits, October 20-21, 2026 in Concord. Use code PATH26 for discount, or PATHMEM for $100 off through October 19 if you're already a member!Follow Your Path to Nonprofit Leadership, and please leave a review!Learn more about the leadership resources at Armstrong McGuire

In this episode, I sit down with Dane Johnson, a board-certified nutritionist, founder of Crohn's Colitis Lifestyle, and one of the most successful Crohn's and colitis coaches in the world.After overcoming a life-threatening battle with inflammatory bowel disease using natural practices, Dane transformed his personal triumph into a mission to help thousands across the globe find their unique answers to IBD while building a supportive community of healers and doctors. In this episode, we discuss:Overcoming severe IBD through natural recovery practicesRebuilding physical health, mental fortitude, and spiritual resilienceUsing patient-zero self-study to test naturopathic principlesEstablishing core daily habits by removing inflammatory stressorsCommitting to a 28-day trial for intuitive body feedbackAddressing five key gut health imbalancesSupporting daily gut healing with simple, low-cost herbal teasReframing diet mindsets around "celebration meals" instead of "cheat days" About Dane:Dane Johnson is the founder of Crohn's Colitis Lifestyle, inspired by his life-threatening battle with Crohn's/Colitis, which he reversed using natural practices. As a Board-Certified Nutritionist and one of the most successful Crohn's/Colitis coaches in the world, he has helped thousands around the world find their unique answer to IBD while building a community of supporters, doctors, and healers! https://crohnscolitislifestyle.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/danejohnson1/https://www.instagram.com/crohnscolitis_lifestylehttps://www.facebook.com/CrohnsColitisLifestyle -----Connect with Candice Snyder!Website: https://www.podpage.com/passion-purpose-and-possibilities-1/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/candicebsnyder?_rdrPassion, Purpose, and Possibilities Community Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/passionpurposeandpossibilitiescommunity/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passionpurposepossibilities/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/candicesnyder/ Shop For A Cause With Gifts That Give Back to Nonprofits: https://thekindnesscause.com/Go to FusionaryFormulas.com and use code PASSION at checkout for 15% off your first order. Fall In Love With Artists And Experience Joy And Calm: https://www.youtube.com/@movenartrelaxation

Send us Fan MailMost nonprofit events open exactly one path to giving: the ticket. Jena Lynch and Britt Stockert map the fundraising moments most events miss, before doors open, during the event, after everyone goes home, and unpack how nonprofits can open more paths to giving - without extra work for their team.What You'll LearnWhy the ticket purchase is one of the best, and most frequently ignored, fundraising opportunities of the event life-cycleWhat good ticket data actually looks like (knowing who to expect before your guests even walk in)Where the most donation opportunities quietly slip away once the event is underwayWhy one unified donor record beats three spreadsheets and a manual mail mergeThe one friction point Britt says to fix first, before your very next eventIf you're deep into your year-end event planning, this one is for you!Engage attendees. Simplify giving. Grow your impact.Find out more about maximizing your events with the double-down power of Donorbox Dynamic Duo  - from ticketing to post-event stewardship.You can:Streamline ticket sales and collect donations from ticket buyersManage your event in one easy-to-track placeCheck guests in with easeCollect in-person, cashless donations with just a tap, dip, or swipeChapters00:00 The Mindset Shift in Event Fundraising00:56 Welcome to The Nonprofit Podcast02:28 Capturing Generosity at Ticket Checkout04:08 Streamlining Table Registration & Payments06:00 Common In-Event Pitfalls to Avoid07:16 Eliminating Friction for Event Attendees08:52 Using Donorbox Live Kiosk & Offline Auto-Sync11:00 Post-Event Data Integration & Donor Segmentation12:55 Timely Stewardship and Follow-Up Emails13:44 Practical Action Step for Your Next Event14:51 Closing Remarks & ResourcesHost BiosJena Lynch, Head of Community Engagement at Donorbox, anchors The Nonprofit Podcast.Brittan Stockert, Fundraiser Coach at Donorbox, co-hosts The Nonprofit Podcast.Donorbox is a trusted fundraising platform used by more than 100,000 organizations worldwide, raising over $4 billion for nonprofit causes. Learn more at donorbox.org.Enjoying the show? Subscribe for more practical fundraising strategies, leadership insights, and tools to help your nonprofit grow sustainably.Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only and shouldn't be considered legal or financial advice. Please consult a professional advisor for guidance specific to your organization.Support the show

When a nonprofit closes its doors, it opens up a bunch of questions. What happens to the mission? Are there other organizations or groups doing this work? And a big one – what do we do with everything that's left over?   No individual gets to keep the money or assets leftover when a nonprofit dissolves. So what happens now, and how do you honor everything your organization stood for? Meghan and I tackle a bittersweet listener question from an executive director who chose to close a nonprofit with dignity rather than run it into the ground. Now they're sitting on a substantial amount of leftover funds, ready to play Fairy Godmother. Real Listener Question: "Our nonprofit is dissolving, and I want to be a good steward of the leftover funds. I worked with an attorney to dissolve properly and now I'm ready to give away a substantial amount. How do I choose who to give the money to? Do I give a big gift to a few orgs or smaller amounts to many? What would you do?" Meghan and I dig into what the law actually requires when a nonprofit dissolves, why this ED already knows the answer, and why the paralysis they're feeling has a lot more to do with grief than with grant strategy. What You'll Learn: The legal requirements you need to follow in a nonprofit dissolution Why a bigger gift to fewer orgs makes a far greater impact What you actually need to check before giving Why over-vetting the successor organization is a common hurdle to dissolving nonprofits What makes that final gift ACTUALLY difficult (and it's not the reason you think) Bottom line: There is no perfect formula that will make the end of a nonprofit hurt less. Do your due diligence, give the best gift you can, and let yourself grieve. Resources from this Episode Previous Episode: https://birkenlaw.com/charity-therapy-podcast/ct172-board-basics-by-a-teenager Episode Transcript: https://birkenlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/CT_Ep173_Transcript.pdf Connect with Us Jess Birken: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessbirken/ Meghan Heitkamp: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meghan-heitkamp-829254115/ Listen & Engage Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon Music Rate & Review on Apple Podcasts: Click "Ratings and Reviews" then "Write a Review" Send us your nonprofit questions: https://birkenlaw.com/podcast/#podcast-story   Stay Connected Sign up for the Birken Law Email list: https://birkenlaw.com/signup/   Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter

Plus, Dallas approves a $6 billion budget for the next fiscal year, and the Ross Fire is 100% contained.

Send us Fan MailHow to record in-kind donations for nonprofits is more than an accounting question . . .it reveals what programs truly cost and how much support the community contributes! Justine Townsend, Manager at Your Part-Time Controller (YPTC), explains how to value, document, report, and steward noncash gifts without distorting the books.Donated office space, food, equipment, vehicles, program supplies, graphic design, and certain professional services can represent significant organizational support. If a nonprofit would otherwise need to purchase the item or service, failing to record it may understate both revenue and expenses, and conceal the real cost of delivering the mission.Fair market value is where things become complicated. Food banks may use published food valuations, while donated office space may require comparisons with similar local properties. Donor estimates also deserve scrutiny. Justine recalls an advertising contribution valued at approximately $1 million (enough to nearly double one organization's reported annual revenue) before the valuation methodology was challenged.“The finances are just our story told in a different way,” Justine explains. Accurate records support more than audits and Form 990 reporting. They strengthen budgeting, donor stewardship, vendor relationships, fundraising communications, and financial planning.The conversation also exposes a frequent operational failure: development teams negotiate in-kind support, but finance learns about it late—or not at all. A clear gift acceptance policy can establish what the nonprofit will accept, who approves unusual contributions, when appraisals or additional forms are needed, and whether the organization can actually use or sell the donated property.Volunteer support deserves attention too. Verified volunteer hours may support audit-note disclosures and show funders the depth of community participation. As Justine says, in-kind support helps tell “the story of how much the community loves, supports, needs and wants what you're doing.”Key Takeaways:Record qualifying in-kind revenue and its corresponding expense.Use supportable market evidence—not an unquestioned donor estimate.Describe donated property on acknowledgments without assigning its tax value.Create a separate receipt process for noncash contributions.Connect development, finance, and donor stewardship before accepting gifts.Budget for donated resources so leaders understand replacement costs.00:00:00 Why In-Kind Donations Really Count00:02:13 What Qualifies as an In-Kind Donation?00:04:00 When Donated Services Can Be Recorded00:04:37 Valuing Free or Discounted Office Space00:06:16 Who Determines Fair Market Value?00:08:32 Event Discounts, Goods and Professional Services00:10:21 Reporting, Stewardship and Form 99000:13:34 Fixing the Finance–Development Disconnect00:14:43 Tracking Volunteer Hours and Their Value00:17:19 Valuation Mistakes and Gift Acceptance Policies00:22:53 The Cost of Not Recording In-Kind Gifts00:25:14 What Belongs on the Donor Receipt#NonprofitFinance #InKindDonations #TheNonprofitShowFind us Live daily on YouTube!Find us  Live daily on LinkedIn!Find us Live daily on X: @Nonprofit_ShowOur national co-hosts and amazing guests discuss management, money and missions of nonprofits!  12:30pm ET   11:30am CT  10:30am MT  9:30am PTSend us your ideas for Show Guests or Topics: HelpDesk@AmericanNonprofitAcademy.comVisit us on the web:The Nonprofit Show

What if serving a mission didn't require sacrificing yourself in the process? In this episode of Circle Up and Get REAL, I sit down with Kayla Deitch, the first full-time Executive Director of the North Dakota Association of Nonprofit Organizations — NDANO. Kayla stepped into a 30-year-old organization at a moment of change, with an opportunity to listen, build relationships, connect nonprofit leaders across North Dakota, and help imagine what the sector could become. And there is plenty to imagine. We talk about the realities many nonprofit leaders are facing: burnout, underpayment, isolation, uncertain funding, and the pressure to keep doing more with less. But we also talk about possibility. What happens when nonprofit leaders stop accepting scarcity as part of the job? What if fair compensation isn't selfish, but part of creating sustainable organizations? What if nonprofit leaders don't have to figure everything out alone? And what changes when organizations begin to see one another not as competitors for limited resources, but as potential collaborators? Kayla shares what she is learning during her first months in the role, why she is spending so much time listening to leaders across the state, how she is thinking about advocacy, and why she believes breaking down silos may be one of the most important things NDANO can do. We also explore the tension between running a nonprofit like a business and remembering that mission and impact can't always be captured on a spreadsheet. Along the way, we talk about authentic leadership, abundance, resilience, board development, AI, and the courage to be the person who sees possibilities other people might call naive. Maybe nonprofit leadership doesn't need more people willing to sacrifice themselves for the mission. Maybe it needs more people willing to create the conditions where both the mission — and the humans carrying it — can thrive.

It's fall festival season for Farm in The Dell! One of our favorites Anna Sather joined us in studio to tell us about it! Check it out!

Some of the biggest names in tech have started to increasingly sound the alarm about the rapid development of advanced AI warning about the possibility of humans losing control of increasingly powerful “frontier” AI systems. President Trump disagrees saying these alarmists are trying to conduct a 'hoax' on Americans and winning the AI race is essential to the future. This all happening amid growing safety and national-security concerns with ongoing debates over the construction of data centers. FOX's John Saucier speaks with Amy Kremer, Chairwoman of 'Humans First', a conservative A.I. safety group, who says she wants the United States to win the A.I. race but it needs to be done safely with input from everyday Americans. Click Here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ To Follow 'The FOX News Rundown: Evening Edition' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

https://www.plannedgivingaccelerated.com/my-book  The episode features planned-giving consultant Tony Martignetti discussing his book, Planned Giving Accelerated. His central message is that legacy fundraising isn't reserved for universities, hospitals, or large nonprofits—small and midsized organizations can launch a practical program in one week. The three-step approach: Identify your strongest prospects. Prioritize loyal, long-term donors with whom someone at the nonprofit has a genuine relationship. Consistency matters more than wealth: someone who has donated $5 annually for 20 years may be a better prospect than an occasional major donor. Start exclusively with gifts in wills. Bequests are familiar, simple, and cost donors nothing during their lifetimes. More complicated vehicles can wait until the program matures. Cultivate and ask. Begin personal conversations with the best prospects. Martignetti recommends asking directly but naturally: “Would you consider including us in your will?” Key insights: Planned giving is a conversation about life, not death. The focus should be the longevity of the organization's work and its future impact in the community. Loyalty predicts potential better than gift size. Nonprofits shouldn't restrict planned-giving outreach to wealthy or major donors. Start with donors around age 55–60 or older. Younger donors can participate later, but older, established supporters are more likely to retain the organization in their estate plans. Don't lead with tax benefits. Most modest donors will receive little or no estate-tax advantage; they give because they care about the mission. Technical questions should be referred to the donor's attorney or financial adviser. Bequests are usually unrestricted. Martignetti encourages nonprofits to place as much as practical into an endowment while balancing immediate operating needs. Specific restrictions and naming opportunities are exceptions. Discuss programs, buildings, or required gift amounts only when donors want a more tangible legacy. Monthly donors can become strong prospects, although the initial launch should remain tightly focused on the most established relationships. Donor-advised funds require succession planning. Donors should designate successor advisers or charitable beneficiaries so the remaining money doesn't simply default to the sponsoring organization. Meetings can be informal. Martignetti likes meals because their natural pacing creates room for conversation, but fundraisers should meet wherever both parties feel comfortable. The episode also discusses Martignetti's deliberately humorous, anti-academic style and a seemingly unrelated chapter documenting the 2025 “GoFundMe chaos week.” In that episode, GoFundMe created roughly 1.2 million unapproved nonprofit donation pages. Nonprofit professionals organized on LinkedIn, pressured the company to respond, and helped bring wider regulatory attention to “shadow donation pages.” Overall, the takeaway is simple: planned giving does not require a complex campaign, special website, tax expertise, or wealthy donor base. It begins when a nonprofit identifies a loyal supporter and opens an honest conversation about sustaining its mission beyond the donor's lifetime.

If you've ever wondered whether a membership model could work for grassroots organizing and not just traditional fundraising, today's guest is going to show you exactly how.The African American Roundtable (AART) won this year's Monthlies award for Strongest Sense of Community, and Executive Director Markasa Tucker-Harris is joining me to share how AART created a five-tier membership structure, inviting donors to “be the work.”That shift has influenced EVERYTHING, from fundraising and staffing to storytelling and retention, including how they think about dedicated membership roles, relationship-building with donors, and creating pathways for members to organize more people into the movement.Markasa also shares why AART's churn stays low and what nonprofits considering a membership or recurring giving model should do first.Resources & LinksLearn more about the African American Roundtable and their upcoming events.My book, The Monthly Giving Mastermind, is here! Grab a copy here and learn my framework to build, grow, and sustain subscriptions for good.Want to make Missions to Movements even better? Take a screenshot of this episode and share it on Instagram. Be sure to tag @positivequation so I can connect with you. This episode is presented by The Monthly Giving Builder.  With the Monthly Giving Builder, you can generate your comprehensive monthly giving plan and build your program step by step - with a guided companion working alongside you from start to finish. Save the date for our next Monthly Giving Summit on February 25, 2027. Apply to speak here!Applications are now open for the 2027 Mini Monthly Giving Mastermind and Retreat. If you have built a monthly giving program, join our high-touch peer coaching community for nonprofit leaders who are ready to break through.Supercharge your monthly giving program and apply for my Monthly Giving VIP Intensive session. Only 2 spots are available this fall!Let's Connect!Send a DM on Instagram or LinkedIn and let us know what you think of the show!My book, The Monthly Giving Mastermind, is here! Grab a copy here and learn my framework to build, grow, and sustain subscriptions for good.Want to book Dana as a speaker for your even...

Planned giving can feel intimidating, especially if your team is small and your days are already full. But you don't need dedicated staff, or expensive resources. Farra Trompeter, co-director, talks with Tony Martignetti, evangelist for planned giving and author of Planned Giving Accelerated, about why planned giving is easy, accessible, and affordable for organizations of any size. They explore Tony's three-step launch framework, and discuss why donors who include you in their will actually increase their annual giving. You'll also learn how to reframe planned giving from a "death conversation" to a joyful legacy conversation and practical low-lift marketing tactics. Get actionable advice for launching a planned giving program this month—with no additional staff.

What if your nonprofit doesn't need to post more, it just needs to post better?Nonprofits are constantly told they need to be more active on social media. Post consistently. Create more Reels. Follow the trends. Keep feeding the algorithm.But what if doing more isn't actually the answer?In this episode of Nonprofit Nation, Julia sits down with Reuben Harney, founder of Motus Reach, to challenge the idea that nonprofits need to constantly create content to succeed on social media.Reuben shares his philosophy of “posting less, but better” and explains why focusing on real people, real stories, and meaningful outcomes can create stronger engagement without adding more work to already-busy nonprofit teams.Drawing from his work with Family First, a Jersey-based charity, Reuben shares how a more focused and sustainable social media strategy helped increase engagement while reducing the organization's content workload.We talk about how nonprofits can uncover compelling stories within the work they're already doing, collect testimonials without overwhelming staff, and turn those stories into content that inspires supporters to actually take action.We also dig into the difference between engagement that simply looks good and engagement that genuinely advances the mission—and why nonprofits should stop posting simply because they feel like they have to.In this episode, you'll learn:Why posting more doesn't necessarily lead to better social media resultsThe difference between being active on social media and having an actual social media strategyWhy real names and real stories can be more powerful than generic impact statisticsHow to find compelling nonprofit stories without creating more work for staffHow to gather testimonials while respecting the people your organization servesWhy a sustainable content strategy can outperform an aggressive posting scheduleHow to connect storytelling with fundraising and supporter actionWhich social media metrics nonprofits should actually pay attention toHow to distinguish engagement that looks impressive from engagement that actually moves your mission forwardWhat small nonprofits can realistically accomplish with limited time and resourcesWhat nonprofits should stop doing on social mediaHow to build a content strategy around impact instead of algorithmsA Few Key TakeawaysYou don't have to be everywhere. Being constantly active on social media isn't the same thing as having a strategy. For nonprofits with limited time and resources, a smaller number of thoughtful, strategic posts can be more effective than trying to keep up with an endless content schedule.People connect with people. Numbers can communicate scale, but individual stories can help supporters understand the human impact behind those numbers. Reuben's approach centers on real people and real stories to help organizations communicate their impact more meaningfully.The best content doesn't have to create more work. Nonprofits already have stories happening every day. The challenge is creating simple systems that allow program staff to capture those moments naturally instead of making communications teams constantly chase down content.Engagement isn't the end goal. Likes and comments can feel good, but nonprofits ultimately need supporters to take meaningful action. The goal is to connect storytelling to what you want people to do—whether that's donate, volunteer, share, subscribe, or simply pay attention.About Reuben HarneyReuben Harney runs Motus Reach, a social media management agency that works exclusively with charities.His approach focuses on real names, real stories, and posting less but better. Through his work with Family First, a Jersey-based charity, Reuben grew their engagement by 272% in under five months while developing a streamlined content strategy designed to increase engagement and support without creating an unsustainable workload for the nonprofit team.He works with a small number of charities at a time, helping organizations communicate their impact, build trust, and make it easier for supporters to understand and act on their mission.Learn more: MotusReach.com

Eric went to the Communications Network annual conference for 21 years in a row, so he knows a little bit about what makes this gathering special. In this bonus episode, Eric is joined by Communications Network CEO Sean Gibbons, VP of Events and Community Carrie Clyne, and Director of Strategic Projects and Partnerships Erica Pelletreau two weeks before ComNet26 in San Diego. And this conference comes at a critical time. It's been a very hard year to do communications for good. Nonprofits are losing funding at the same time more people need their help. New research from the Center for Effective Philanthropy reveals that grantees think that their funders are out of touch with their needs. In San Diego, communicators from foundations and nonprofits from around the world will come together to learn from each other, teach each other, and make some lifetime friendships. Can't make it to San Diego? Stick around to find out how you can still be part of it. Follow Let's Hear It, leave a rating, and help more people find the show.

Eric went to the Communications Network annual conference for 21 years in a row, so he knows a little bit about what makes this gathering special. In this bonus episode, Eric is joined by Communications Network CEO Sean Gibbons, VP of Events and Community Carrie Clyne, and Director of Strategic Projects and Partnerships Erica Pelletreau two weeks before ComNet26 in San Diego. And this conference comes at a critical time. It's been a very hard year to do communications for good. Nonprofits are losing funding at the same time more people need their help. New research from the Center for Effective Philanthropy reveals that grantees think that their funders are out of touch with their needs. In San Diego, communicators from foundations and nonprofits from around the world will come together to learn from each other, teach each other, and make some lifetime friendships. Can't make it to San Diego? Stick around to find out how you can still be part of it. Follow Let's Hear It, leave a rating, and help more people find the show.

Send us Fan MailAI governance for nonprofits is quickly becoming a management, finance, data security and leadership responsibility . . .not simply an IT conversation! Dr. Stephanie Rose-Belcher of JMT Consulting explains how nonprofit organizations can gain enormous efficiencies of AI without surrendering human judgment, accountability or control of sensitive organizational data.  AI can accelerate everything from contracts and presentations to financial analysis and routine administrative work. Stephanie describes tasks that once required hours of formatting becoming dramatically faster with AI. But speed introduces a new business question: . . .who is responsible for the result?Stephanie's answer is direct: “You are still accountable.”That matters when nonprofit employees begin experimenting independently with free AI tools. A grant manager, fundraiser or finance professional may see an easy way to analyze information without realizing they could also be moving organizational data into an environment leadership has never approved.As Stephanie puts it, AI governance rests on three connected elements: “ . . . people, technology and policy and process.” Organizations need to decide what AI tools are approved, what information may be entered, which uses are acceptable, how outputs will be validated, and where important workflows need to become standardized.The finance implications are especially important. If multiple employees independently create AI processes for the same accounting function, the organization may gain speed while losing consistency, traceability and auditability. AI-powered work still needs controls that allow someone to determine where an answer came from and how it was produced.And smaller nonprofits are not excused because enterprise software costs money. Stephanie recommends establishing an acceptable-use policy defining what information is public, private and confidential—even when the organization cannot yet purchase a secure enterprise AI environment!Key Takeaways:Human accountability remains with the employee and organization using AI.Build AI governance around people, technology and policy—not software alone.Audit how employees are already using AI before assuming you know.Protect donor, financial and organizational data from unauthorized AI use.Standardize important AI-assisted finance processes so results remain repeatable and auditable.Create an acceptable-use policy even when enterprise AI tools are outside the current budget.00:00:00 — AI Is Already Inside Your Organization 00:02:27 — Who Is Responsible for AI Output? 00:05:36 — Accountability Still Belongs to You 00:08:17 — When Staff Use AI Without a Policy 00:11:26 — People, Technology and Policy 00:16:58 — Protecting Organizational and Donor Data 00:21:23 — Keeping Finance Work Auditable 00:25:39 — What Smaller Nonprofits Can Do NowFind us Live daily on YouTube!Find us  Live daily on LinkedIn!Find us Live daily on X: @Nonprofit_ShowOur national co-hosts and amazing guests discuss management, money and missions of nonprofits!  12:30pm ET   11:30am CT  10:30am MT  9:30am PTSend us your ideas for Show Guests or Topics: HelpDesk@AmericanNonprofitAcademy.comVisit us on the web:The Nonprofit Show

Michael Medoro says nonprofit coalition building works when partners stay grounded in a shared mission, bring their own strengths to the work, and remain clear about what they can and cannot do. The Chief Operating Officer and Chief of Staff at Childhelp explains that bold advocacy is not about being the loudest voice in the room. It is about being clear, disciplined, and focused on outcomes for the people you serve.Some of the biggest challenges nonprofits address, including child abuse, trauma, and exploitation, cannot be solved by one organization working alone. Michael explains how coalitions can bring nonprofits, government agencies, corporations, and community partners together to reduce duplication, pool scarce resources, and advance systemic change.In this episode:Why coalition building is becoming a more necessary strategy for nonprofits facing systemic challengesHow mission-centered coalition work differs from partisan political advocacyWhy coalitions can help nonprofits create systemic change that would take one organization much longer to achieve aloneHow Childhelp's Children's Advocacy Center model brings law enforcement, medical professionals, child welfare agencies, prosecutors, and forensic interviewers together to reduce retraumatization and better support childrenThe common concerns nonprofits and corporate partners have about advocacy, including brand risk, loss of control, and slow decision-makingHow to keep advocacy focused on your mission instead of reacting to trends or the news cycleWhy shared values and clear roles matter more than funding and operational plans aloneHow Childhelp stays focused on its core strengths while connecting people to trusted partners and local resourcesWhy boards, legal teams, communications teams, and corporate partners should be involved early in coalition conversationsThe questions nonprofits should ask about mission alignment, governance, resources, ethics, and brand values before joining a coalitionA practical coalition-building framework: trust first, structure second, results measurement third, and ongoing communication throughoutHow to explain coalition decisions to donors, staff, corporate partners, and communities by starting with the mission-based whyYou will leave with a clearer way to evaluate coalition opportunities, establish boundaries and shared goals, build trust across sectors, and advocate for meaningful change without losing sight of your mission or your partners.Episode highlights: (0:00) Intro (1:18) Why coalition building matters for nonprofits today (3:52) How nonprofit coalition building differs from political advocacy (5:33) Why nonprofits choose coalition advocacy to strengthen mission impact (10:38) Common fears about coalition advocacy and corporate partnerships (11:55) How to keep advocacy focused on your mission (12:52) How shared values and clear roles build stronger coalitions (16:57) How boards and executive teams should approach coalition advocacy (18:26) Questions to ask before joining or launching a coalition (20:17) What effective coalition building looks like in practice (21:41) How to communicate coalition decisions with stakeholders (23:36) The future of coalition building for nonprofit impact (24:43) Closing thoughtsGuest: Michael Medoro, Chief Operating Officer and Chief of Staff, Childhelp ⁠⁠https://childhelp.org/⁠⁠](https://childhelp.org/⁠⁠Full transcript and show notes: https://www.anedot.com/blog/nonprofit-pulse-nonprofit-coalition-buildingMore episodes and the monthly newsletter: https://www.nonprofitpulse.com/⁠If this was useful, follow Nonprofit Pulse wherever you listen.Nonprofit Pulse is a podcast by Anedot that explores trends, insights, and resources that help nonprofits accomplish their mission. Hosted by Josh Breland.

Is your nonprofit bogged down by administrative tasks? Learn how to streamline your operations by outsourcing your back office. Join Phil Cooke https://philcooke.com in this conversation with Shae Hinson, founder of Accordus, as they discuss the benefits of moving beyond traditional staffing models to outsourcing essential roles, allowing your team to focus on the mission rather than the paperwork. Whether you are struggling with the complexities of nonprofit accounting or need a more reliable approach to database systems, marketing, fundraising and administrative duties, this conversation offers practical solutions for outsourcing that enables your organization to grow and reach more people. "If you've got a great idea for launching a ministry but you're held back because you can't find the right team to help with the back office, you should talk to Shae." —Phil Cooke 

Most nonprofits are taught to think of every other organization in their space as competition for the same limited pool of donors. Heather Ray, founder and CEO of Project Sanctuary, and her colleague Catherine Ganley say that mindset is exactly backwards, and it may be one reason so many organizations struggle to grow past their first few years. On a recent episode of the Charity Charge Show, they explained how a collaboration-first approach, paired with a genuinely specific niche, has kept Project Sanctuary operating for close to 20 years.Project Sanctuary provides therapeutic retreats and up to two years of follow-on support for military, veteran, and first responder families, treating the whole family unit rather than just the service member. Ray started the organization after recognizing that veterans returning home were getting help while their families were not, leaving a gap that no other organization at the time was filling. ---------------------------About Charity ChargeCharity Charge is a financial technology company serving the nonprofit sector. From the Charity Charge Nonprofit Credit Card to bookkeeping, gift card disbursements, and state compliance, we help mission-driven organizations streamline operations and stay financially strong. Learn more at charitycharge.com.

In this episode, I dive into the essentials of creating a high-impact strategic plan for your nonprofit. Last week, we explored the importance of a well-structured planning process and clarity about your end goal. This week, we focus on the content of your strategic plan, ensuring it's both inspiring and actionable. Whether you're leading the process or working with a facilitator, understanding these elements is crucial. What You'll Learn:How to articulate a 10-year guiding vision that serves as your organization's North Star.The importance of defining 3-year strategic priorities and goals.Effective strategies for engaging stakeholders and maintaining flexibility in your plans.Key Takeaways:10-Year Vision: Define a long-term vision that inspires and guides your team.Strategic Priorities: Choose focus areas that maximize your impact over the next 3-5 years.Goals vs. Activities: Set strategic goals as end results, not just a list of tasks.Core Strategies: Outline broad approaches instead of detailed activities to stay flexible.Stakeholder Engagement: Involve key stakeholders in the planning process for better buy-in and support.Want to work together? Apply for the Next Level Nonprofit Mastermind, a high-touch coaching and training accelerator for established organizations with $1M+ budgets that are ready to design for impact sustained at scale.  Budget under $1M? Join Elevate and get proven step-by-step playbooks + coaching support to build each of the core elements of your nonprofit's operating system - strategic clarity, a fundraising engine, a high-performance team, and an active and engaged board!   Connect with me!LinkedInInstagramYouTube

The lessons I carried away from September 11 did not begin that day, and they certainly did not end there. In this solo episode, I reflect on how my parents taught me not to accept the limits others placed on blindness, how my guide dogs taught me about trust and teamwork, and how September 11 confirmed so much of what I already believed about fear, leadership, change, and possibility. I share why I work hard not to worry about things I cannot control, why I believe we can never truly go back to “normal,” and why strong teams are built through trust rather than control. I also challenge some of the ways we think about blindness and disability, because different does not mean less capable. I hope these lessons help you think differently about fear, change, leadership, and what it really means to live with an unstoppable mindset. Highlights: 00:46 – Why the lessons of September 11 began long before that day. 08:56 – How Michael learned that blindness is not the real barrier. 17:13 – Why focusing on what you can control can reduce fear. 24:28 – Why getting back to “normal” is not always the answer. 32:30 – What guide dogs taught Michael about trust and teamwork. 1:01:37 – Why disability does not mean a lack of ability. About the Host: Michael Hingson, blind since birth, was born in Chicago to sighted parents who believed in raising their son with a can-do attitude. Treated like all other children in his family, Michael rode a bike did advanced math in his head and learn to read and write – Braille that is! Michael's family relocated to the warm Palmdale area of California when he was five years old. It is here that Hingson had his first adventure with Guide Dogs for the Blind and received his first guide dog. He later went to college receiving a bachelor's and master's degree in Physics along with a secondary teaching credential from the University of California at Irvine. Michael then enjoyed a nearly-30-year career working for high tech companies spending most of his time in management roles. Michael Hingson's life changed dramatically on September 11, 2001 when he and his guide dog, Roselle, escaped from the 78th floor of Tower One in the World Trade Center moments before it collapsed. Soon after, Michael and Roselle were thrust into the international limelight where Michael began to share his unique survival story and 9-11 lessons of trust, courage, heroism, and teamwork. Mike has served as The National Public Affairs Director for one of the largest Nonprofit organizations in the nation: Guide Dogs for the Blind; He has served as the vice president of the National Association of Guide Dog Users; Michael has held a seat on the Fort Worth Lighthouse for the Blind. He is the chair of the board of directors of the Earle Baum Center for the Blind  and is the vice chair of the Colorado Center for the Blind; Michael is The National Ambassador for the Braille Literacy Campaign of the National Federation of the Blind. Until October 2019 he worked as the CEO of the Do More Foundation, the non-profit arm of Aira Tech Corp, a manufacturer of assistive technology which makes a revolutionary visual interpreter for blind people. In January 2021 Mike joined accessiBe as its Chief Vision Officer to help advance the company goal of making the entire internet fully inclusive. He held this position through June of 2026. He is the author of the #1 New York Times Best Seller: “Thunder dog –The True Story of a Blind Man, a Guide Dog & the Triumph of Trust” – selling over 2.5 million copies Worldwide. In 2013 Mr. Hingson published his 2 book “Running with Roselle”- which Is the first of its kind- A story for our youth shedding light on one of Americas Darkest Days. Mr. Hingson's third book, “Live Like A Guide Dog”, was released on August 20, 2024. This book shows readers how they can learn to control fear and not, as Mike would say, “become blinded by fear in the face of crisis”. Aside from his talents and advocacies, Mr. Hingson has traveled the Globe from Japan to New Zealand, the Netherlands to his hometown, Chicago. Speaking to some of the world's most elite: from former President, George W. Bush to Larry King, to Fortune 500 companies and colleges and Universities Nationwide. After sharing his story of survival on hundreds of TV and Radio programs, Michael is now an Expert hired by many of today's major corporations and organizations. Speaking and consulting on the importance of Teamwork and Trust, Moving from Diversity to Inclusion, as well as offering Adaptive Technology Training – spearheading innovation for ALL! - Thus, bringing organizations to the forefront of the ever-changing competitive modern world. In June, 2024 Mike was inducted as an alumni member into the honors Fraternity Phi Beta Kappa. Currently Michael lives in Victorville, California with Alamo, Michael's eighth guide dog and his rescue feline, Stitch. More information on Mr. Hingson is available on his website. Here also is a link to Mr. Hingson's press kit: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/q8uxu9u7pap4puj5de7rg/h?rlkey=22bziy0wmghf8111kad73685y&dl=0 http://www.michaelhingson.com/live-like-a-guide-dog www.michaelhingson.com www.michaelhingson.com/podcast Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/mhingson https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://www.facebook.com/Roselle911GuideDog/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/1568642850718948 https://www.facebook.com/?paipv=0&eav=AfZNi2VDR2R4nC6SveyCvZIyKtyi9VOLOzOKcG-v0Hk1glaVssEHwdR920w1_u-8B-k&_rdr https://www.facebook.com/?paipv=0&eav=AfZNi2VDR2R4nC6SveyCvZIyKtyi9VOLOzOKcG-v0Hk1glaVssEHwdR920w1_u-8B-k&_rdr Twitter, https://twitter.com/mhingson LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson Youtube channel, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfCx2L9OVN38Dv4mX6udP8g Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson  00:04 What if the biggest thing holding you back isn't what's in front of you, but rather what you believe? Welcome to Unstoppable Mindset, where inclusion, diversity, and the unexpected meet. I'm your host, Michael Hingson, speaker, author, and advocate for inclusion and possibilities. This podcast explores how the beliefs we carry shape the way we live, lead, and connect with others. Each week, I talk with people who challenge assumptions, face adversity head-on, and show what's possible when we choose curiosity over fear. Together, we focus on mindset, resilience, and the small shifts that lead to meaningful change. Let's get started. Well, hello, everyone. I am Michael Hingson. I am your host on Unstoppable Mindset, and this happens to be episode 475. Yeah, we've done a lot of these, and most all of them have been conversations with people who said that they wanted to come on the podcast and talk about one thing or another. And I was really pleased to have them. This episode is going to be a little bit different, as the last few have been. Episode 472, which we published on September 4, was a talk I gave in April of 2024, which told my story of being in the World Trade Center on september 11, on episode 473 on the eighth of September, Michelle Abraham interviewed me, and we talked about a number of things around september 11 and so on. Episode 474, which was published on the 11th of September, 2026. was a conversation with Bob Ellis, who was in the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, an escape, and we hear his story, and we got to chat and kind of talked about notes from both of us. Now it's episode 475, and it was suggested that I ought to talk about things that I learned from September 11th and how my life has changed, and I'm going to do the best I can to talk about all that. So you're just going to be hearing me today. I hope you won't go away. I hope that you'll enjoy it. I just returned from speaking all week from September 9th through September 11th in Kilgore, Texas, at Kilgore College, they did an incredible job of doing some things to help people become aware of September 11th. They actually had in the library and around the library at Kilgore College a monument to September 11th. They had some columns or portions of columns from the World Trade Center. They had a list of all of the names. They had flags in a in a in several rows with the names of all of the people who were lost on September 11th. They had a timeline from my book Thunderdog: The Story of a Blind man, his guide dog, and the triumph of trust at Ground Zero-a timeline of what I experienced, and they also had, I think, a timeline of just the World Trade Center events in in general. Well, okay, so all of that happened. I got back last night, and now here it is, Sunday. It is the 13th of September, and I'm recording this so that we can publish it on Tuesday, september 15. So that's a little bit of a long way to get to where we are. But as I said, people asked me to talk about what I learned that day, and how I proceeded and progressed from that day, but I have to go back to long before September 11th to really do everything justice and to put it all in context. So let me start this way. I believe that I have said a few times on this podcast, and certainly in some of the speeches that I've given, that I was born two months premature, and I was given a pure oxygen environment when I was born, because I was born early. Medical science had started to hear that even too much oxygen might not necessarily be a good thing, but the doctors in Chicago where I was born didn't buy into that concept yet, and so the result was I was given a pre-oxygen environment, and my retinas didn't develop as they should, and I became blind. So was I born blind? If you're very technical, no. But for all intents and purposes, yes. The doctors told my parents to send me to a home, to send me away, because no blind child could ever. Michael Hingson  04:59 Grow up to amount to anything, and all I would be would would end up being a drain on my family, sucking up all the love that my parents might have had for their older son, two years older than I, my brother Ellery. But the reality is, my parents said you're wrong. He can grow up to do whatever he chooses, and we're going to give him that opportunity. And I grew up with that idea. I grew up with that concept. My parents told me at some point when I was still fairly young about what the doctors had said, and they said, "You know, we think that you can do whatever you want. We want you to have that opportunity. Well, they did a number of things to help the process along. For example, we lived in Chicago until I was five, but at the age of four, typically children in in Illinois start or in Chicago start kindergarten, and I did as well. My parents worked with other parents and the school district to start a kindergarten class for children who were blind, and there were a number of preemies in the Chicago area. In that class, Miss Lapree, my teacher, taught me Braille. See, I remember her name. Taught me Braille. Taught me other skills. Taught the other blind kids because it was a kindergarten class for blind children. Taught us all a variety of different things that we could use, and then unfortunately, in a sense, I guess after kindergarten at the age of four, and it was over, my father had gotten an offer and took a job out in California, and we moved to California. Well, in California, kindergarten starts at five, and even though I had had a course in kindergarten already, I had to go through a second year of it, but we didn't have any kind of facilities to teach us or teach me about Braille going forward, getting me Braille books and so on. So kindergarten, first, second, and third grade, I didn't have access directly to textbook material. My parents helped me though. My father taught me math. He was an electronics and electrical engineer. I was doing algebra in my head by the time I was six. My mother read other assignments to me, taught me the spelling words because in first, second, and third grade you learned to spell, and in theory beyond third grade as well, of course. But what happened for me was that I learned about spelling by my mother teaching me how to spell the words, and then she would say the words, and then I would spell them. Well, that ended up going even further because typically in classrooms, what happened was that when it came time to take the actual spelling test, which happened on Fridays, the teacher would say the words. All of us or all the children in the class would write down the answers. Then we would exchange papers, and the teacher would then write the correct spellings on the board. Not in my class. I had to. Well, I got to get up. I. I don't want to say I had to. That's a lesson that I want to get to. wasn't that I had to get up. I got to get up, and actually spell the words out loud. I remember once missing a word, at least starting to miss a word, and somebody made a noise, and I realized, oh, that must be wrong, and I corrected it. But I learned how to spell words, and I learned to spell them out loud for the whole class, and not be afraid of them, and that way students could grade each other's papers. And so, in a sense, I could say that's where I started to learn how to be involved in doing public speaking, and I learned not to be afraid of standing up and and saying things as long as they were the right kinds of things. Well, between third and fourth grade, I got access to Braille books. Cora Hershberger was hired by the school district to come in. She was a resource teacher with training in dealing with blindness and blind kids and so on. Michael Hingson  08:56 And there were a number of us, and she she was able to get us books, she was able to work with each of us and prove our Braille skills and my Braille skills especially, and so on. So I tell you all of that because I want to put things in perspective, and I think that the most important thing is the doctors told my parents that I couldn't do anything. My parents said, "Of course he can, and they brought me up believing that I could. So I rode a bicycle to school. Everybody still thinks that's amazing. One of the important things that I have learned over the years, and I've learned to articulate it even more effectively. I hope, certainly, I believe better since the World Trade Center, and I became a full-time keynote public speaker, which I've been doing for 25 years, I have learned to discuss this whole concept of blindness and accept the fact that there are going to be a lot of people who have eyesight who get it wrong. They think that, like the doctor said, blind people really can't do anything. You can't absorb the same material, or at least you don't get the same. As sighted people do, so you really aren't going to be able to do the things that we can do. And I have learned that I can't be angry at that. I've learned that in reality, I need to articulate the fact that blindness isn't the problem. The problem happens to be the misconceptions and poor attitudes that people have about blindness. It would be so easy just to be upset every time I hear some comment that talks about what I can do and what I can't do. You can't really ride a bicycle. That's amazing that you could do that. I can't imagine anybody else doing it. I know lots of blind kids who rode bikes, and I'm sure that they still do. Blindness isn't the problem. The reality is the problem consists of the misconceptions and poor attitudes that sighted people have about blindness. Whether you like it or not, that's the way it is. Blindness isn't the problem. We can learn to do the same things pretty much that you can do, and we can learn to do things that you can't do, and we learn all of that and use that knowledge to help us move forward and be more effective. What can I do that you can't do? Try walking around in the dark. You can't do it. You don't know how to do it. You don't have the techniques to do it. One of the things that has cropped up over the past significant number of years is restaurants do something called dining in the dark. Dining in the dark, and there are organizations that promote that, and they say, "Oh, you get to learn how blind people eat and how much of a challenge it is. That is so disgusting that people do that because dying in the dark isn't going to teach you anything about blindness. You don't get the training that you need in order to function as a blind person. Just like I don't get the training to learn how to function as a sighted person. Although I've spent a lot of time observing sighted people, and I understand a lot about eyesight, and I understand what you can do, and I accept that. But I expect, and I think it is reasonable for you to understand and accept that I can do lots of things. That it's not about eyesight. I wrote a book in 20, and it was published by Thomas Nelson Publishing in 2011. I and Susie Florey wrote the book. It's called Thunderdog: The True Story of a Blind Man, His Guide Dogs, and the Triumph of Trust at Ground Zero. And there is a section near the end of the book called Guide Dog Wisdom. And number two in Guide Dog Wisdom includes a sentence that says, "Don't let your sight get in the way of your vision. You all strictly deal with eyesight, and if it's not something that you can see with your eyes, or you don't really separate eyesight from vision, you tend to really misunderstand so many things. But the reality is, don't let your sight get in the way of your vision. Recognize there's a whole lot more to life than eyesight. Michael Hingson  13:01 SEAL Team Six, other military teams, so many other people learn how to use those other senses, and that's the same thing that we as blind people do. We learn to use our other senses. They're not magically enhanced simply because we go blind, but rather we learn how to use those senses? I hope, or we try to, and by doing so, we improve them and we develop them. And those of us who truly do that are a lot more better off, and we're able to do so many things that people think are amazing, but they're not. They're not really amazing. They're certainly not amazing to me. Anyway, I grew up believing all of that, and of course, I was also very fortunate to have a number of jobs throughout my career. And the final result of all of that was I ended up getting the opportunity to open an office in the World Trade Center for Quantum ATL, the company that hired me to open an office in New York, and there we were on September 11th when everything happened. The night, as September 11th ended, was spent by me and my wife Karen. By the way, Karen was in a wheelchair her whole life. We got married in November of 1982, and we were married through into November of 2022. We were married 40 years. Karen was in a wheelchair her whole life. It was a great marriage, as I love to tell people. She read, I pushed, worked out well. How do I push a person in a wheelchair? Well, she used a manual chair, and when we got to curbs and so on, she would stop, and she would hold the wheels, and and I knew that she had stopped. And I would tip the chair back. She might say, "There's a curb. I would tip the chair back onto its back wheels. We'd roll down off the curb, put the chair down. We'd cross the street, tip the chair up. Front wheels go up on the curb on the other side, unless there was a ramp to go up. And we continued on our way. It's not that magical. It is just what I learned to do, and I enjoyed it. and And I enjoyed Karen's company and so on for 40 years. We were locked down during the pandemic and so on. We'll get to some of that in a bit. But I learned overall that in reality, what my parents taught me was true. Blindness wasn't going to be the problem; eyesight was going to be the problem. And that night after September 11th, we kind of tried to make sense of it. It was me and Karen and a friend of Karen's who I also got to know, and who became a friend of mine. Tom Painter had come down. Tom and Karen went to the same high school, but we all ended up in New Jersey. And Tom came to visit us, actually visit Karen after September 11th started. When he heard about the terrorist attacks, he just came down, not knowing whether I was in the office or not. But I was, and Karen and Tom, well, Tom stayed with Karen and and drove her to pick me up at the Westfield, New Jersey train station at about 7p.m. on september 11. We went home with my guide dog Roselle. When we got home, I took Roselle's harness off because I was going to take her outside. She would have none of it. She ran off. She grabbed her favorite tug bone and started playing tug of war with my retired guide dog Linnie. Well, that was kind of fun, and I didn't think a lot about it. But I went. That was interesting. The next day, I contacted Guide Dogs for the Blind because several people from there had visited us in the World Trade Center, and among others, I spoke to the head of the veterinary department, and I said, "So, tell me, how is all this going to affect Roselle? Because everybody's talking about how it's going to affect everyone and all that, and and he asked me, "Did anything threaten directly Roselle? Did anything really threaten her? And I said, No, not really. Nothing directly affected her. And he said, Well, there you go. Dogs don't do what if. They live in the moment. Michael Hingson  17:13 And when you took the harness off, it was over for her, and she was ready to go play. She wanted to relax. She wanted to play, and she did. Oh, and yes, we did eventually get her outside. But the bottom line is, I think that's one of the most important things that I learned coming out of September 11th, and I, I kind of knew it beforehand, but I really got to understand it afterward. We what if everything to death? We what if anything that comes into our lives, well, we're we're in a war with Iran. Well, what if Iran bombs us? What if Iran does this? What if the Hooties do that? What are we going to do? What if our government takes us to war in the first place? Well, they have. The bottom line is, though, we don't have control over all of that. We do have control over some things in our lives, and those are the things that we should worry about. We should stop worrying about everything else. And people say, "Well, it's natural to worry. No, it's not. Not any more natural to worry than it is not to worry. We learn to worry because we're taught that. But the bottom line is, if we learn only to focus on the things over which we truly have control, and be aware of the other things, but don't let them worry us. Don't let them cause fear in our lives. We will live much less fearful and much more stress-free lives than in any other way. If you want another example of why I believe this, on September 11th, David Frank, my colleague who had come in to be involved with the seminars, David had come in the night before, and he came to our office about 8o'clock in the morning on the 11th of September. When we were escaping from the towers, we ended up downstairs and outside. David saw fire in Tower Two, and the way we happened to walk took us very close to Tower Two. We were at Broadway and Vessi Street, maybe 100 yards away from Tower Two. And when David stopped, he said, "You know, there's fire in Tower Two. I want to take pictures of it. And and I also wanted to try to call my wife Karen to let her know that we had gotten out of the towers, I couldn't get through. The circuits were busy because, as we later learned, people were calling and talking to loved ones. But anyway, David had just started putting his camera away. I had put my phone away, and a police officer yelled, "Get out of here! It's coming down right now! And we heard this sound I describe as kind of a combination of a freight train and a waterfall. I could hear glass breaking, metal clattering, and then just the building collapsing straight down. We didn't necessarily know that it was going to do that, but it did. It did exactly what it was designed to do. Anyway, everyone turned and ran. David ran. I turned 180 degrees. With Roselle, and started running back the other way. And as soon as I started to run, I thought to myself, "God, I can't believe that you got us out of a building just to have it fall on us. And I heard in my head a voice as clearly as you hear me right now-a voice that said, "Don't worry about what you can't control, focus on running with Roselle, and the rest will take care of itself. And I had this absolute sense of conviction that if we worked together, we would be fine. Well, we were. Where'd that voice come from? It was God talking to me. I grew up with my father very seriously believing in the concept of God. If you don't, that's fine. That is your choice. I've had people on my podcast who don't necessarily have strong beliefs and convictions about God. I do, but it's not my job to force people or compel people to believe in God. I will tell my story, and people can accept it or reject it as they choose. But that's what happened to me, and I've realized from that time on: don't worry about what you can't control. And I really, truly work very hard to focus on not worrying about the things that I don't have any influence over. Michael Hingson  21:16 I like to be aware of them. I hear from people all the time today about don't watch the news. I don't like to watch the news because it just makes me so angry and so fearful. And my response is, I'm going to watch the news because I want to know what's going on. And sometimes I'll yell at politicians through the TV, but I won't really overall get angry at them. I will hear it. I will either accept it or decide I don't have any influence over it, so I'm not going to worry about it, and I don't because it isn't going to help me to worry about it. It isn't going to help anyone else to worry about any of those kinds of things. Don't worry about what you can't control. Focus on what you can and leave the rest alone, and that's one of the basic premises of the third book that I wrote, which was published in 2024, entitled "Live Like a Guide Dog: True Stories from a Blind Man and His Dogs About Being Brave, Overcoming Adversity, and Moving Forward in Faith. And that book was written by me and Carrie Wyatt Kent. The book was published by Tyndale House, and is out there for people to to read. The first book was published by Thomas Nelson Publishing, which is now part of Harper Collins, and a lady, Jeanette Hanscom, and I wrote the second book, which is called Running with Roselle, which is really a book more for children, teaching them about me growing up, Roselle growing up, and how we met. A little bit about the World Trade Center. That one was self-published, but all three books are available wherever you can find books, so you can get them always from Amazon, of course. And so I hope that that you'll get them and read them. They will help. Live Like a Guide Dog probably is the best book for me to talk about in terms of things that I learned over the years, but if I really summarize mostly what happened for me after September 11th, it is that what happened on that day validated everything that I've believed about me. Certainly, what I believe about God, but it validates everything that I've ever thought about blindness, blind people, what we can do, the challenges we face, some of the issues that other people have, and the validation is certainly something that helped what I learned. But I learned other things along the way, and you know I want to talk about some of those things. The first, as I said, is don't worry about what you can't control. Focus on what you can, and let the rest take care of itself. Speaker 1  23:56 If you enjoy Unstoppable Mindset and would like to help us continue bringing these conversations to you each week, we've created a way for you to support the show. Your contribution helps us cover production costs and continue sharing stories, insights, and ideas that inspire people to live with purpose and possibility. If supporting the podcast feels right for you, you'll find the link in the show notes, thank you for being part of the Unstoppable Mindset Community. One Michael Hingson  24:28 of the things that happened to me almost immediately after September 11th is I started hearing people say, "We got to get back to normal. If we don't get back to normal, that's a problem. We got to get back to normal. And I always reacted internally, at least pretty negatively to that. And I finally realized why I reacted to that statement about we got to get back to normal. The reason I reacted to that statement, and I still react to to myself to that statement, is normal will never be the same again. We can't get back to normal. If we get back to normal the way it was prior to September 11th, the same thing will happen again. We can't do that. We have to get back to a different normal, and and in fact, normal is probably going to be an ongoing, constant process of change. We ought to learn not to fear that either. Change is all around us. We always say that, but then we don't like change. It's kind of a paradox. But the reality is, change is all around us. And what we really need to do is to learn how to focus in change. And we need to learn that in reality, we can deal with change. And if we have any influence over it, then we should do something about that too. But the bottom line is, getting back to normal prior to September 11th isn't going to help any of us, and and it isn't going to happen. So that is an one thing that I will say definitely. I learned from September 11th: normal will never be the same again. As I said a lot earlier, I think I probably learned about public speaking at least the beginning of it by doing the spelling tests and so on. But after September 11th, the media got my story, and that happened because Joanne Ritter, the public and information services person at the time at Guide Dogs wanted to write a story, and I kind of agreed. And I said, "That's fine. And then she said, "I'll bet you'll be on TV. What television show do you want to be on first? So I kind of just sort of flippantly said, "Larry King Live. That was on the 12th of September when I talked with her. On the 13th, she called back and she said, "Larry King wants you on his show on september 14, which was a Friday, and they sent a car to pick me up, and and I recall Karen and and Tom one as well, and anyway, we went into the World Trade Center, not to the World Trade Center, but we went into New York, and I appeared on CNN, which was the first of five interviews with Larry. Larry also, by the way, at my request, wrote the foreword for Thunderdog. So when you read Thunderdog, you'll get to read Larry's words as well. But after being on Larry King, the media really got my story, and a lot of things happened after that. I started getting literally calls every day for interviews. People wanted to talk to me about September 11th and ask questions and so on. And one of the things that I learned was that talking to reporters could be a great therapy because they would ask virtually any kind of question you can imagine. And of course, a lot of people said things like, "Well, did you know what happened on September 11th when it was happening? And I said no. And they said, well, of course you didn't. You're blind, you know. And my response is, anybody who says that really needs to not let their sight get in their way or their vision to be polite about it. The fact of the matter is, as we were going down the stairs, no one knew anything about what was going on. When I got into the stairwell, I began smelling an odor, and it took me four floors to realize I was smelling the fumes from burning jet fuel. I did a lot of travel for my company, and so I was in airports a lot. So I recognized that smell. People were speculating about what they were smelling. People were speculating about what was going on. Nobody had a clue. Michael Hingson  28:20 When I realized I was smelling jet fuel, I observed it to everyone around me, and they said, "You're right. That's what we're smelling. It's burning jet fuel. We must have been hit by an airplane. You see, no one knew. We had no clue. Superman and X-ray vision just aren't real. And the bottom line is, nobody knew what was actually happening on September 11th. Blindness have nothing to do with it. People want to feel more comfortable by saying, "Well, most people probably did know, but you're blind. You didn't know. We've got to get away from these habits of thinking that just because somebody is different than we are, that they're less than we are. That's just not true. In any case, the bottom line is that we we really deal with those kinds of things, and that helped me as as time went by recognize and realize that normal would never be the same again, and it validated more my belief that blindness isn't the problem; it's the misconceptions and poor attitudes that people have about blindness that tends to truly be the problem that we face. So, as I began to talk with reporters, I didn't think about what was actually happening. But later, I realized when people started saying, "Well, did you ever get counseling or therapy, and I said no. And then it just popped into my head to say I probably had the best therapy around. I got interviewed by hundreds of reporters that asked basically any question that you can imagine, and I learned to answer those questions without being upset, especially when they were asking pretty derogatory questions or making derogatory comments. Your dog led you down the stairs. No, my dog did not lead me down the stairs. Guide dogs do not lead; they guide. And I understand the definition of lead, but it's a little bit different than what people were truly saying. What they were saying is you didn't know anything, and the dog took you all the way down the stairs because the dog could see. No, in fact, Roselle didn't lead me. Roselle's job wasn't, and no guide dog's job is to lead a person or to take charge. The dog's job is to make sure that we walk safely. I also have a job on the team. My job is to make sure that I know where we're going and how to get there. A lot easier now than it was 25 years ago, but the bottom line is that I'm the one that has to direct the dog and give the dog commands, and the dog needs to make sure that we carry out those commands safely. We are a team; we work together. I've always kind of known that guide dog schools didn't necessarily early in my guide dog career, express it that way, but it's it's a much stronger statement now. They recognize that truly we're a team. We each have a job to do on the team, and we have to work together to make the team work, which is true of any team. I've mentioned Seal Team Six earlier. They're a team. They work together. The firefighters in the World Trade Center and the other people who who were around there worked as a team, and they had to work as a team in order to develop a level of trust and a relationship where essentially each person knew what the others on their team were going to do, and it gave them more of a confidence to be able to function. Teamwork is so crucial in our world, and I learned, and and again on September 11th, it was totally validated how teamwork is so important. Roselle and I worked together well. The firefighters worked together well. Yes, we lost people, but the team really is so important, and we need to recognize that anyone listening to this ought to work in any of the things that they do to develop teams. Being alone makes no sense; it isn't going to work. You're going to have to and should learn to work with other people to make teams work better. I've seen companies where when they have award ceremonies, the leader of a team or the boss of a team gets an award, but the rest of the team doesn't really get the same recognition. Michael Hingson  32:30 If a leader is truly doing a good job at creating a team and being a part of a team, then that leader is really enhancing everyone else on the team, and that leader is the person who should help to make sure that when awards are given, that everyone on a team is recognized. We need to to learn and realize that a team is a bunch of people. It's not just one people, but they learn to work together, and that is also so important. And as I learned more and more about the events of the World Trade Center, I learned and realized more about the whole understanding of teamwork and trust and the value of it. I knew about it with me and Roselle, and I recognized the concept of teamwork. But certainly, September 11th again validated that a whole lot more effectively than anything else that I could think of, but I worked with eight dogs over the years, and working with eight dogs from my first guide dog Squire, who was a golden retriever, up through my current guide dog Alamo, I've learned probably I think more than I ever learned from experts and teamwork and sales and so on and motivation. I learned more from those dogs than I ever learned from the human experts because of the fact that one, I had to build a team with a creature who didn't think the same way I did, who didn't talk the same language that I did, and that expected things from me, and and as one of the things that I've learned is that dogs who are guide dogs really want the human to be the pack leader because it is the pack leader, it is the human who's supposed to tell the dog what they want the dog to do, and dogs take that so incredibly seriously. I mentioned Linny. Well, I didn't mention her, I think, by name. But Lenny was my fourth guide dog, and we were out in in San Diego at a company meeting one Friday in May of 1999, and we came home. It was a Saturday morning that we got home. I flew a red eye home, fed Lenny, and then rested and and all that. But Saturday night, when it came time to feed Linny, I called her. She wouldn't come. Karen even called her. She wouldn't come. We went. Upstairs and found her lying on her bed, kind of really not very responsive. We got her to a veterinarian, and it took a few days for the veterinarian to diagnose what she had as something called glomerular nephritis, which is a disease where the kidneys, the glomeria of the kidneys, which would normally pass out bad stuff from the kidneys but not the good stuff. They were passing out the good stuff as well, and Lenny was was not doing well. We were able to reverse that, but she had to retire from being a guide dog. In fact, we thought in late June of 1999 that we were going to lose her. We went off to a a meeting, not a meeting, but we went off to a hotel to say goodbye to Linny, if you will, on like the second of July. But Linny didn't pass away then, and she did get better. And then Roselle came into our lives, and Roselle and Linny became really good friends, but I mention all of it because I had no clue what was happening to Linny. Guide dogs love their jobs; they take them very seriously. And the fact of the matter is, as I learned, and especially after September 11th, I learned that these dogs will work till they drop. They will. They will do everything they can to please us, because they love what we do. They love us, and we need to bestow the same kind of love on them, which is all part of what teamwork is all about. Well, the bottom line was with Linny. She was with us for three more years, and she got to play with Roselle a lot, and so on. Michael Hingson  36:41 Of course, as I also mentioned after September 11th, but I again, especially because of what happened to Linny, but then afterward on September 11th, I realized how much it was important for me to do all I could to keep the team relationship a positive, strong one, to recognize that in reality these dogs work so hard on their own part to make the team's relationships work. They they deal with what they have to deal with. They get very stressed if we're upset. They take it very personally if we get upset, even if we're not necessarily upset at them; they still take it very personally. The more stress that a guide dog faces in their lives, the harder it's going to be for them, and frankly, the shorter their lives are going to be. So I learned, even before September 11th, but especially after September 11th, to do all I could to keep the stress away from the dog. As we were going down the stairs on September 11th, I constantly encouraged and praised Roselle. What a good dog! Keep going. What a good job! Good girl, Roselle. Even if I wasn't able to hold the harness because the stairs were so crowded that Roselle couldn't walk next to me and had to walk behind me at heel, and I would just hold the leash. I kept praising her because I wanted her to know for her I was okay, and I had to focus on not being afraid and letting that fear come out. Well, I was fearful like anyone was, and in fact, I love to tell people. Being a great fan of science fiction, I have a great imagination, and I was listening for the building to make creaks and groans, and you never knew what was going to happen. Fortunately, it didn't all the way down. But the bottom line for me was that doing so kept me focused. And I and I learned later that while I might have been afraid on September 11th, partly because I was encouraging Roselle and working to sound very calm and confident, I was able to also help other people, but help Roselle and keep Roselle from being afraid and and being stressed. And I work very hard to do that with my guide dogs that I've had since even more than prior to September 11th. My current guide dog Alamo and I travel the world speaking all over the place, if you will. We've been to Israel. We've been well, actually, Alamo didn't get to go to London, but we've been to Israel with my seventh guide dog, Africa. We went to the Netherlands, Alamo and I have been to Wisconsin. I've been to a variety of places, and of course, all around the the world, all around the United States, to Canada, everywhere. And again, I don't necessarily know a lot about where we're going in advance, but I ask a lot of questions so that I can learn where we're going to go, so that I can give the dogs the appropriate commands. I mentioned Wisconsin's. I've been all over the United States. It's been an honor, and I'm going to continue to do that. If anybody wants a public speaker to come and talk to their organization, please reach out to me. I'd love to hear from you. My email address is really simple. It's speaker@michaelhinkson.com. We'll put that in the show notes, and love to hear from you. So anyway, I learned a lot about teamwork from working with eight guide dogs, and I continue to learn every day. I think it's very important for me to learn and to focus all that I can to make sure that I do what it is that's necessary to make a team work, and I believe it is all about the team. I've mentioned that I've written three books, and each one was a collaboration with someone else: Susie Florey with Thunderdog, Jeanette Hanscom with Running with Roselle and Carrie Wyatt Kent with Live Like a Guide Dog, and and the fact of the matter is those collaborations I think were very important. Michael Hingson  40:49 They made the books come out a lot different than I might have imagined them coming out by themselves and the way I would have written them without having collaboration, and probably Live Like a guide dog more than more than the other two, just because of the way it all went. But with live like a guide dog, we focused on each of my my guide dogs and the lessons that we learned. So I mentioned Squire, who I worked with in high school and then went to college with Squire, and Squire was was all around where wherever I was. One night in a dorm, I was with a roommate. Well, actually, a person who lived in a room next door to mine, and I was in his room. We were dealing with a physics problem. By the way, my master's degree is in physics. I have a secondary teaching credential, but I was in with Richard dealing with a physics problem. When I went back into my room, there was no Squire. I didn't realize that a couple of the students decided to play a trick and kidnap him. I went looking around the dorm. I even went into the bathroom and opened the shower door and called Squire, and nothing was totally quiet, and finally, I was getting a little bit concerned. And one of the people said, "Oh well, look, we took the dog. We'll show you. They went into the bathroom, opened the shower door, and out comes Squire. He was in on it. He didn't do a thing when I opened the door, but when the other people did, then then he came out. I wasn't mad at him. Sneaky dog that he is, he had a great sense of humor. But I got vengeance because that that person didn't tell the other people that they showed him where showed me where Squire was. I went and hit Squire somewhere, and then I went back out into the main part of the dorm and I started going, "Who took my dog? What's going on? Where is he? And all the other people said, "Oh, come on, he's in the bathroom. And they went in and opened the door to the shower. No Squire, and they were starting to worry about what happened to him. And Squire, of course, was again not making noise. But eventually, I brought him out and I said, "Okay, I found him. I knew where he was. We're playing a trick on you just like you played a trick on me. That'll teach you. I learned that dogs have a sense of humor that day, but I also learned how much I valued having Squire around, and so Squire worked with me up until and through my first graduate year in physics at UC Irvine, and then Squire retired and went to live with my parents. And in 1973, I got my second guide dog, Holland. Holland was with me through 1986. He worked for almost 13 years, and in fact, was two weeks from retiring when he collapsed in our backyard one day, and we took him to the vet. And the vet said, "I could probably bring him out of whatever he's got, maybe a stroke or a heart attack or both, but he won't have a good quality of life. And so we said goodbye to to Holland. Holland and Squire were both golden retrievers, but again, Holland so strongly reinforced all the things that that I had felt about teamwork, and I learned so much more from him about what I needed to do in order to to function well, not just with a dog, but in my whole life. Then I got Klondike, who was my third guide dog, who was also a golden retriever. Soon after I got Klondike, well, about a year after I got Klondike, suddenly one day he had a very strong grand mal epileptic seizure, and we took him to the vet, and they put him on some medication that wasn't really helping that. And we then kept trying to to deal with it, and finally, and during that same time, I was looking for a job. I had owned my own company for four years, but decided I wanted to go back into the workforce, and and I finally got a job with a company. Michael Hingson  44:52 And on one of the first days that I worked there, Klondike had four grand mal seizures in the. Period of time, and we thought we were going to have to say goodbye to Klondike. But I talked to our veterinarian, and he said, "You know, before we do that, I want to send him to a neurologist who did an electroencephalograph. And he said, "I didn't see much, but he said one thing he did was to take some blood tests, and he said I noticed that his Klondike's thyroid level is low, and low thyroid levels in dogs like Klondike can make them more susceptible to have seizures, just like it can for children. Well, we put Klondike on synthroid, synthetic thyroid, as well as on phenobarbital to control the seizures. The synthroid had much more of an effect than the phenobarb did, Klondike actually became a much more active and playful and interactive dog, and did not have from that time on for the next seven years that he worked for me as a guide dog never had a single seizure. So the thyroid theory was a good one. Again, with with Klondike, it was about developing a team and recognizing that we had to work together. Well, then I got Linny, and again I mentioned Linny only worked for three years. Linny had glomerular nephritis that was really probably from a tick bite where the tick had Lyme's disease, and we didn't know any of that was happening until that night that Linny didn't wake up at all or didn't get up from her bed, and we finally got it diagnosed. And then I got Roselle. Now Roselle was a a wonderful dog. One of the things that I've always said is that when I get a new guide dog and I tell the trainers I want a dog with an on-off switch. That is, I want a dog that knows when the harness is on, it's time to work, and when the harness is off, then they can play. Clearly, Roselle had that when she was in harness. She was very focused. She did develop a phobia of thunderstorms, but there were a few times that we had thunderstorms, and she was able to continue to guide, even though she would shake and she would shiver a little bit. But she continued to guide. She focused. In fact, there was a thunderstorm the morning of September 11th, about 12:30 in the morning. But there was no thunder when we were going through what we did in the World Trade Center, so none of that caused her to be fearful. But again, Roselle was a dog that that taught me a lot about observation, learning what the dogs do, what what they fear, and how to help keep them focused and calm. And so I did that. My sixth guide dog was Meryl. Meryl only worked for about a year. Roselle retired in 2007. Merrill worked from 2007 to 2008, but Merrill became very fearful of guiding, and so ended up not being a guide dog very long. And I I'd never experienced that, although I had heard other people who had issues where dogs didn't work very long. Lenny only worked for three years, but a dog that didn't work for more than a year-that was unusual for me. However, poor Meryl wasn't able to do well as a guide, and so she retired. And then we got Africa. Now Africa was my seventh guide dog. Africa's mother was Fantasia. In January of 2006, we were working. I was working at Guide Dogs for the Blind, and we applied to be what were called breeder keepers. That is, they were the the people who would keep a breeder dog in their home because the guide dogs for the blind bred their own guide dogs and so on. And breeder keepers would keep dogs in their homes so that the dogs weren't just cooped up in kennels all day, and we volunteered to do that. And the director of breeding, Marina Hall, called us and said, "I've got four dogs for you to look at. I think one's better than the others for you, but I want you to come and meet these dogs. So we went down, and and she made the comment again. I think one dog is going to be better than the others. Michael Hingson  49:02 And and I said, well, if you think so strongly, but which one is it? Well, she finally sort of told us. She said, I didn't want to tell you, but I'll tell you. So she did. But anyway, the first dog who came in was a dog named Fantasia, and it works sort of the same way that when people get guide dogs, you're in a room. The dog is allowed to come in, and you see how the dog reacts to you. When I met Squire for the first time, I was sitting in a chair. They let Squire in. He came over and started sniffing me all over. Didn't leave me. He just started sniffing. And Bruce Benzler, who was the apprentice instructor at the time, later became director of Guide Dogs for the Blind, CEO anyway, anyway. Bruce then said, "Looks like you found a friend already, and we became friends. But anyway, when when Fantasia came into the room, she took one look at Karen and leaped into Karen's lap. She had no fear of the power wheelchair that Karen was using by that time. The other three dogs, we still looked at them, and they all expressed one level of fear or concern about being around this wheelchair. But Marina said Fantasia was the one that we thought you'd like best and would like you best, and she was. So anyway, in 2006, we got Fantasia in January, and later that year, she had a litter of puppies, and then in early or mid 2007, she Fantasia had her second litter. I guess it was late in 2006 she had the second litter, but anyway, by the middle of 2008, when we had to retire Meryl because she wasn't working out very well, we were notified that they found a dog that they thought would be a really good replacement for Meryl, and that's a dog named Africa. And Karen and I realized Africa was a name that we suggested as as breeder keepers that they could name one of their puppies if they had puppies who came from an A litter. And the way it works, by the way, is when a litter is born, they're assigned a letter of the alphabet, and they got a big book, and they go into that book and they get the next names that are available. They don't use names of current guide dogs, so when a dog retires, then they can start using that name again. But anyway, Africa was a name that we suggested, and as soon as we saw the email that said Africa, we knew Fantasia was Africa's mother. Well, Africa came and joined us, and mom and daughter did really well, and Roselle was still with us. So the three of them have a lot of fun together, but again with Africa, I learned about teamwork and doing the things that I needed to do. Every dog is different, and one of the things that I developed over the years was an understanding that to truly develop a relationship with a dog takes probably close to a year by the time we really are totally comfortable with each other, but I worked with Africa. We became good friends. Africa became good friends with Roselle. Of course, Africa liked her mom, and all worked out really well. Developing those teeming relationships is so important, and you can learn a lot more about them if you get live like a guide dog. I think you'll find them all very interesting to to read about. So in 2017, I noticed that Africa was starting to slow down and not do as well. She wasn't able to see as well at night. Sort of typical signs of a dog getting older, even though I work to to keep stress out as much as possible, but I applied and in 2018 on the 9th of February, Africa's puppy raisers, Bill and Peggy Sproul from San Francisco or San Diego rather, came to visit us in Victorville, and we had offered them the opportunity to take Africa because we had Fantasia, and we had Africa. And if we kept Africa and Fantasia, and I got a new guide dog, Karen would have a hard time taking care of two dogs when I traveled, because I was doing a great deal of travel by then as a keynote speaker, and so the Sprouls came and got Africa. Michael Hingson  53:26 Left our house, Africa didn't even look back. She was gone. We had visited her several times since then, and and in in the Sprouls home, Africa died in 2020. But we we got to visit Africa several times and it was a lot of fun and and she she loved us and all that and remembered us anyway on the 11th of February two days later I went to Guide Dogs for the Blind and I met Alamo who was my first black Labrador and I met him we we met in the room and he kind of sniffed me a little bit and walked around the room. But then came back and sniffed me, and then I took him on leash back to our our dorm room at Guide Dogs for the Blind, and I decided I'd sit on the floor to to visit with him. And the next thing I know, this big, huge, 60 pound Labrador is in my lap. Alamo was and is a lapdog, but he doesn't know a stranger, which is great. I mentioned earlier that I always said that when I get a guide dog, I want a guide dog that has an on and off switch. Another thing that I require is that guide dogs that I get be raised by cats. I have known of animals who of guide dogs who don't like cats, and I would not want that because we always have had cats. And by that time, when we got Alamo, we had Stitch, who we rescued in January of 2015. So now here it is, February of 2018. So I knew that we needed to have a dog that wasn't going to be. Be afraid of cats. Well, so Stitch and Alamo kind of walked around each other a little bit when we first went home, but they got to like each other pretty well pretty quickly, and they have been together ever since. Alamo has been on a number of aircraft, as I've mentioned over the years, he went to Israel with me. He didn't go to England when I spoke in 2024, but he's been to other places and will continue to travel with me. I work really hard to keep the stress out of his life. I don't want him to become any more stressed than he ever has to be, and he feeds off of how I behave, as as I've learned guide dogs do. So that's one of the most important things that I've learned is to keep that stress out of his life. I would point out that is just as much true for human teams. Don't stress out your team. If you are a leader, your job is to enhance what those leaders, what the team does. Your job isn't to boss them around. If you're doing that, you're only causing more stress, and you're going to find you're going to have a big job turnover, much more than you really should. I've always felt that my job isn't to boss people around when I hire them, my job is to enhance their abilities by using the skills that I have and learning to work with them to give them the benefit of what I know and to use the benefits of what they know to learn myself as well, so that we become more effective. And the people who really get that do very well. The people who didn't get that tend not to last very long at the company because they don't perform very well. Because I know that in reality, I add value to the team by working to add value, not bossing the team around. I think there's a big difference between leaders and bosses, and I've learned that over the years. That leaders are people who can enhance what other people do, who work to make the whole team effective and not just try to boss people around. In late 2020, I discovered a company called Accessibe, A C C E S S I capital B E. Website is accessibee.com. Was a company that made products to help make internet websites more inclusive, and at first, they had some challenges because they were using a lot of AI stuff to make their products work, and they sort of did. But there were there were challenges. But one day in January of 2021, the founder of the company, Sheer Eckerling. Michael Hingson  57:41 contacted me and said we're interested in you joining the company. I had been looking at possibly selling their products because the pandemic had hit, and I thought I could sell them from home because we were locked down. And and he said, well, you know, we we'd like you to not sell as a partner, just on your own, we'd like you to join the company. Well, he asked what I was doing, and by that time I had started to learn about podcasting because I couldn't travel and speak all over the world. So what I decided to do was to look at using podcast as a revenue source. And Shear said, "Well, you know, we we're really interested in having somebody do a podcast for us. And I said, "What do you want? And he said, "I want to just get somebody who will do a podcast to show that we're part of the world. And you join the company; you could do that in part. I joined the company, and he didn't have any specific agenda for the podcast. So, in August of 2021, I began Unstoppable Mindset, and soon it became unstoppable mindset where inclusion, diversity, and the unexpected meet. And I'll explain all of that in a moment. But the point is that we started the podcast. I created the title. I recreated the description, and I wanted the podcast to be conversations. And as anyone who has been on the podcast knows, we don't do interviews as such. We do conversations, and I ask people to send me materials to help me prepare to be able to do the conversation. And so a number of times we've had diversity experts on people from the DEI world, and when I ask them what they do, they say, you know, we focus a lot on diversity, and I say, what does that mean? And they say, well, we deal with race, gender, sexual orientation, and so on. And we chat for a little while, and then I say, but you haven't talked about disabilities. And they say, oh, disability is not a minority. And I say, what do you mean? He said, well, disability is a social justice thing. It's not like race, gender, or sexual orientation. And my response to that is balderdash. I like to use balderdash. I could go back and use what Colonel Sherman Potter did on Mash and say monkey muffins. But anyway, balderdash because diversity should include disability because it is a minority. Even the Center for Disease Control says that. Adversity, or that that people with disabilities are a minority of about 25% of people in the United States. Well, so the bottom line for me is that I would say to them, "What do you mean you're you're not including it? And they say, "Well, it's a it's a disability, but it's social justice. It's always about being a lack of ability, and as I have learned, especially since September 11th and and beyond, disability does not mean a lack of ability. You might want to think it does. You might want to try to make that fit, but it doesn't. And I learned that most effectively in March of 2023 when I went to something, by that time Karen had passed, and I was working with a person who had been Karen's caregiver, who decided to work for me. Very grateful for Josie doing that. Josie entered my name in the contest to be a guest at the Kelly and Ryan Oscar after party, which was going to be held the Monday after the Oscars at the Dolby Theater, well, I didn't even know she entered me, but I got a call the Tuesday before the Oscar after party and the Oscars, and I was and I picked up the phone and they said congratulations, and I said for what? Oh, you won an invitation to come to the Kelly and Ryan Oscar after party, and I went really well. Anyway, I went down with my niece and nephew, Tracy and Charlie Green. The there wasn't room for taking Josie, her husband, and her mother and her five kids. So it was just me, Tracy, and Charlie. Michael Hingson  1:01:37 We got up to our room about 3o'clock in the afternoon on the Saturday before the Oscars, the day before the Oscars, we put our luggage in our room and we were coming back down the main stairwell staircase actually from the third to the first floor in the Hollywood Roosevelt. It's a very open staircase, and all of a sudden I heard people screaming, and it took me a while to to try to understand what's going on, and finally I couldn't figure it out. I said, Tracy, what's going on? And she said, Oh, we just lost power and lighting on the stairs, and and power and lighting in and around the entire hotel. Now it didn't bother Tracy. Tracy had known me for a long time, but people were panicky because they weren't getting all the light they expected, even though the windows were open, the the shades were up on the first floor in the lobby, and so on. Lots of light, but it wasn't all that people expected. And I thought about that, and what I learned from that was, it proves that disability isn't a lack of ability; it proves that disability is a characteristic that we all have. Thomas Edison and others worked on the light bulb, and Thomas Edison is credited with developing the electric light bulb back in 1878. But in the 148 years since the light bulb was developed, all society has done in that regard is worked very hard on coming up with better ways of providing light on demand, so that you sighted people could have all the light you want when you want it. Nowadays, we have smartphones, we have flashlights, we have other ways of getting light on demand. But as the Americans with Disabilities Act would describe it. The light bulb is simply, or any piece of technology that produces light on demand, is simply a piece of technology that provides light on demand to light-dependent people who otherwise don't function well without it. The bottom line is, disability is not a lack of ability. We got words like discrete, discern, disciple. What is discern? Is it a lack of discern? What is it? What is disciple? A lack of viple? No. Disability is not a lack of ability. Disability is a character

In this episode of The Responsive Lab, Scott sits down with Tony Martignetti, founder, author, and planned giving consultant. Tony has spent nearly three decades making planned giving accessible for small and mid-sized nonprofits, first as a frontline fundraiser and then as a consultant since 2003.You'll hear about:• Why the conventional wisdom that small nonprofits aren't ready for planned giving is flat-out wrong, and what's really holding organizations back• How to identify your best planned giving prospects using the donor database you already have, with a focus on longevity and consistency over gift size• The Martignetti three-step, one-week planned giving launch, and what actually happens on day one• Why planned giving conversations are about the life and sustainability of your mission, not about death• What early metrics fundraisers should track when the financial results may be decades away• What good stewardship looks like after a donor says yes, from the handwritten note to insider communicationsMake sure to get a copy of Tony's new book, Planned Giving Accelerated, that's linked below.Links from the episode:* Connect with Tony on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonymartignetti/* Buy Planned Giving Accelerated on Amazon: tony.ma/Amazon* Buy Planned Giving Accelerated on Barnes and Noble: tony.ma/BNLooking for technology that helps you build deeper donor relationships with less work from your team? Learn more at virtuous.org.

Send us Fan MailWhat should a nonprofit do after receiving a massive unrestricted gift?This is a rare look at what happens after the transformational check arrives. JobsFirstNYC President and CEO Marjorie Parker shares what happened after a surprise $4 million investment connected to MacKenzie Scott.  Learn why receiving transformational money can create as many strategic decisions as opportunities.The story begins with an unexpected message from someone representing an unnamed investor. After significant due diligence and roughly two months of conversations, Parker learned JobsFirstNYC would receive $4 million . . . “unrestricted”.  That word mattered!The gift gave the organization flexibility to strengthen operations, support longtime partners, develop internal capacity, rethink growth, and build a new five-year strategy. But Parker and her board did not simply begin spending.They asked harder questions: What should be invested? What should be preserved? Where could the organization expand responsibly? How should employees, partners, funders, and the community hear about the gift?  “Growth actually requires sustained capital,” Parker explains.  That became especially important because a transformational gift can create an unexpected fundraising problem: other donors may assume the organization no longer needs them. Parker describes one funder who postponed support for a year after seeing the size of the gift,  while other new investors and communities discovered JobsFirstNYC because of it.The investment also helped JobsFirstNYC build a five-year growth strategy that supported expansion beyond New York into northeastern Pennsylvania and southern Nevada.The conversation also puts the organization's mission into perspective. Parker discusses millions of young Americans ages 18–24 who remain disconnected from work or education and why changing labor markets make economic mobility increasingly urgent.Key Takeaways:Treat unrestricted capital as organizational trust, not permission to spend quickly.Give the board time to establish investment, spending, and governance priorities.Communicate internally so staff understand how major new resources will be used.Use flexible capital to strengthen operations and strategic capacity, not simply add programs.Major public gifts may attract new funders while causing existing donors to temporarily step back.Growth still requires sustained capital; one extraordinary gift does not eliminate future fundraising.00:00:00 The $4 Million Nonprofit Story 00:02:23 JobsFirstNYC and America's Future Workforce 00:04:29 How the Surprise Funder Contact Happened 00:07:08 The $4 Million Reveal 00:09:24 Confidentiality and the Board Chair 00:11:21 Why Unrestricted Funding Means Trust 00:13:54 The Board Asks: How Do We Use $4 Million? 00:17:27 Can a Huge Gift Hurt Future Fundraising? 00:20:36 Saying Yes — and No — to Growth 00:23:27 Marjorie's Advice for Nonprofit Leaders 00:26:06 Reporting When the Funder Requires None 00:27:28 Stewarding Transformational Capital Find us Live daily on YouTube!Find us  Live daily on LinkedIn!Find us Live daily on X: @Nonprofit_ShowOur national co-hosts and amazing guests discuss management, money and missions of nonprofits!  12:30pm ET   11:30am CT  10:30am MT  9:30am PTSend us your ideas for Show Guests or Topics: HelpDesk@AmericanNonprofitAcademy.comVisit us on the web:The Nonprofit Show

Most nonprofit leaders think their biggest problem is raising money. Ny Whitaker says the real problem is influence, and money follows influence.Ny is the founder and chief strategist of Project NYNE, a former White House senior advisor and NYU professor of leadership who has spent 30 years building relationships with elected officials and teaching nonprofits to do the same.We cover why you build the relationship before the budget cut, not after. Ny walks through what a productive meeting with an elected actually looks like: lead with a problem in the district, name the three things your organization does that nobody else does, attach a dollar figure, and ask for the legislative director or budget director instead of the constituent services person who can't move money.She also clears up the thing that keeps a lot of organizations frozen. Your 501(c)(3) can do advocacy. What it cannot do is partisan political activity. That confusion is costing the sector power it already has.I pushed her on ROI too, because I was an ED with city council discretionary funding and the paperwork-to-dollars ratio felt brutal. Her answer is about what that money unlocks: matching funds, other agencies, introductions your elected can make, and being first in the queue the next time a pot of money opens.Plus the version of all this that fits a one-person shop. One thing a week. And the story of the organization that lost $100,000 in a city budget cut on a Thursday and had it restored by Monday.Important Links:Connect with NyProject NYNEMy Big Ask Gifts ProgramMy Book, Get That Money Honey My Newsletter Join the Free Webinar

In this episode, I sit down with Kimberly Sutton, a Texas storyteller, journalist, photographer, pastor's wife, mentor, and author of Just Call Me Pearl: From Pressure to Purpose: How Faith, Grace, and Resilience Created Something Precious.With a rich background in journalism, public relations, and government service, Kimberly shares how turning life's hardest seasons into grace transformed her own path to purpose, and how she now guides others to discover hope in the midst of adversity. In this episode, we discuss:Discovering a passion for journalism and telling people's storiesThe powerful metaphor of how pearls are formed under intense pressureOvercoming self-doubt and fear of rejection to write vulnerablyUnderstanding the choice to forgive family and releasing personal angerReframing service and shifting expectations in personal relationshipsLearning to set healthy emotional boundaries and gaining permission to say noBuilding a structured morning writing routine around real-life demandsUsing life's painful seasons to point others toward hopeEncouraging and mentoring aspiring writers to tell their own stories About Kimberly:A Texas storyteller with a journalist's precision, a photographer's eye, a pastor's wife's heart, and a mentor's calling — writing to help people transform their grit into grace. A woman who turns her experiences into wisdom, and hardship into hope — and teach others to do the same.Upcoming book called "Just Call Me Pearl - From Pressure to Purpose: How Faith, Grace, and Resilience Created Something Precious"www.justcallmepearl.comhttps://www.facebook.com/KimberlyMorganSutton/https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimberlymsutton/https://www.facebook.com/KimberlyMorganSuttonhttps://www.instagram.com/just_call_me_pearl_now/ ----- Connect with Candice Snyder!Website: https://www.podpage.com/passion-purpose-and-possibilities-1/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/candicebsnyder?_rdrPassion, Purpose, and Possibilities Community Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/passionpurposeandpossibilitiescommunity/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passionpurposepossibilities/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/candicesnyder/ Shop For A Cause With Gifts That Give Back to Nonprofits: https://thekindnesscause.com/Go to FusionaryFormulas.com and use code PASSION at checkout for 15% off your first order. Fall In Love With Artists And Experience Joy And Calm: https://www.youtube.com/@movenartrelaxation

In episode 126, we sit down with Dr. Courtney Keim and Sarah Burress, co-hosts of the Burnout Room Podcast, to discuss a challenge that affects organizations across every sector, but is especially common in nonprofits: burnout. Drawing on experiences from the Kentucky Psychological Foundation and the newly launched Nonprofit Wellness Initiative, Courtney and Sarah are working to bridge the gap between occupational health research and everyday workplace practice. Their goal is to make evidence-based burnout prevention resources accessible to nonprofit leaders and employees who need them most.Resources mentioned in the episode:* The Burnout Room Podcast (https://www.kentuckypsychologicalfoundation.org/theburnoutroom)* Kentucky Psychological Foundation (https://www.kentuckypsychologicalfoundation.org/)* Workplace Wellness Manual (https://link.journeycare.app/widget/form/AYL0JDZL6rfAfBg3m2z0)You can find Dr. Courtney Keim here: (https://www.bellarmine.edu/directory/courtney_keim.php) You can find Sarah Burress here: https://www.kentuckypsychologicalfoundation.org/staff-directory This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit healthywork.substack.com

Send us Fan MailNonprofit success planning may be a better fit for today's volatile operating environment than the traditional three-year strategic plan. Jeffrey Wilcox, President and Chief Learning Curator at Third Sector Company, challenges nonprofit leaders and boards to stop treating planning as an event and start treating it as an ongoing organizational process.“Strategic planning is an antiquated term. What we really are talking about now is success planning,” Jeffrey says. That distinction changes a lot!  Instead of organizing a plan around departments, fundraising, programs, governance, and other organizational functions, Jeffrey encourages nonprofits to identify the forces that will either lead them toward (or away from) success.That means defining the achievements the organization actually wants to create, understanding its role within the community ecosystem, listening to stakeholders, examining financing rather than simply fundraising, and being willing to confront uncomfortable organizational truths.Leadership transition becomes part of that strategy.Jeffrey explains why transitional leaders should not be viewed as nonprofit “substitute teachers” keeping operations moving until the next CEO arrives. Their job can be much larger: build organizational capacity, reduce future executive attrition, establish shared truth, challenge assumptions, build stakeholder buy-in, and prepare the runway for the organization's next leader.  “You are the runway. You are not the jet”, he adds. Third Sector Company typically views this intentional transition as roughly a 9-to-14-month process and not a quick executive search. Jeffrey also shares that its Interim Executives Academy has trained 850 nonprofit professionals across 47 states.The larger business lesson is provocative: planning should not end when the strategic plan is finished. Nonprofits operating amid changing funding, public policy, workforce expectations, community needs, and leadership turnover need a management process capable of learning and adjusting as conditions change.Key Takeaways:Shift organizational planning from functions and activities toward the forces that drive success.Define success before hiring the leader expected to deliver it.Treat planning as an ongoing management process—not a completed project.Establish “shared truth” using data, organizational reality, and stakeholder perspectives before choosing direction.Use transitional leadership to build capacity and create a stronger runway for the permanent successor.Expect meaningful leadership transition to require sustained work; Jeffrey describes a roughly 9-to-14-month process.00:00:00 Rethinking Nonprofit Strategic Planning 00:02:26 The Leadership Succession Problem 00:04:26 Why Traditional Strategic Planning Falls Short 00:07:18 Strategic Planning vs. Success Planning 00:10:35 Better Questions Create Better Strategy 00:13:37 Rethinking Interim Leadership 00:19:08 Building the Transition Team 00:23:55 Leadership Transition as Capacity Building Find us Live daily on YouTube!Find us  Live daily on LinkedIn!Find us Live daily on X: @Nonprofit_ShowOur national co-hosts and amazing guests discuss management, money and missions of nonprofits!  12:30pm ET   11:30am CT  10:30am MT  9:30am PTSend us your ideas for Show Guests or Topics: HelpDesk@AmericanNonprofitAcademy.comVisit us on the web:The Nonprofit Show

In this episode, we discuss how Claude is collaborating with non-profits to enhance their digital presence through local SEO. We highlight the potential impact of AI-driven marketing on charitable organizations. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

As we wrap up Season 4 of this podcast, we're re-airing one episode from each of our nine series—a chance to revisit the foundational wisdom on capital campaigns, from navigating uncertainty to leading with integrity. Next season, we're turning our attention to the specific context of rural giving, exploring what makes small-town fundraising different, how deep relationships shape generosity, and how to build capital campaigns that honor the unique dynamics and constraints of rural communities.Episodes in the Patience in Planning series:147: Patience in Planning - Envision the Future148: Patience in Planning - Persuading Partners149: Patience in Planning - Hold Loosely to WishesWhat do you think? Send me a text. To explore small town capital campaign coaching deeper and to schedule an free explore coaching call, visit ServingNonprofits.com.Music credit: Woeisuhmebop

We often talk about what a new executive director should accomplish in their first 100 days. But what should the organization be doing? In this episode, Nancy and Sarah turn the usual first-100-days conversation around and explore how boards and staff can help a new leader learn the organization, build relationships, understand the money and mission, and listen before jumping into action. Question to consider before listening:What does a new ED need to learn before they can lead well? Enjoyed this episode? Share it with a friend. Want to request a topic? Email us at nonprofitradioshow@gmail.com.You can also follow us on these social media channels:Facebook: www.facebook.com/nonprofitradioshowInstagram: www.instagram.com/nonprofitradioshowTwitter: @smallnonprofitsLinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/nonprofit-radio-show/You got this. 

This Week:  Planned Giving Accelerated & The Martignetti 3-Step, 1-Week Planned Giving Launch It's a first for Nonprofit Radio! Role reversal. Guest Stephen Christopher Nill leads the conversation and interviews Tony about his book “Planned Giving Accelerated: The Cut Through … Continue reading →

What do kids really need from a mentor?In this episode, Zach sits down with Dr. Anthony Bradley to talk about fatherlessness, mentoring, and the kind of relationships that help kids grow into healthy adults.Dr. Anthony Bradley has spent nearly three decades studying boys, fathers, families, and human flourishing. He's written more than a dozen books, taught at the university level for decades, holds a PhD from Westminster Theological Seminary, and has been featured on CNN, Fox News, NPR, and C-SPAN. He is one of the leading Christian voices helping us understand what boys need from fathers, mentors, churches, and communities.Dr. Bradley challenges the idea that mentoring is primarily about giving advice, teaching lessons, or correcting behavior. Kids need adults who show up, spend time with them, listen, and genuinely enjoy being around them. Great mentors become the people kids know they can turn to when life gets hard.In this conversation:What fatherlessness can do to a childWhy boys need healthy men in their livesWhy presence often matters more than another lessonWhat it means to be a “warm” mentorWhy kids need to know that you actually like themHow listening builds trustWhy mentors should resist becoming drill sergeantsHow everyday experiences teach perseverance, failure, character, and lifeWhy the best mentors become trusted people kids can turn toHow healthy adults can help surround kids with the relationships they need to thriveDr. Anthony Bradley also unpacks the devastating data on father absence—suicide, homelessness, dropout rates, violence—and why ordinary men showing up with presence can rewrite a child's future. Through Bradley's own story of mentoring a drug-selling teen named JJ over two decades (from Denny's dinners to a transformed life as a husband, father, and leader), they reveal that mentoring isn't about being Superman; it's about consistent relationship, unconditional acceptance, and surrounding kids with a tribe of caring adults in the name of Jesus–Dr. Anthony Bradley has a brand-new book coming out called The Fatherhood Effect. It takes a hard look at what happens to kids, families, churches, and communities when fathers are absent, disengaged, or disconnected from their children, and what we can actually do about it. Anthony brings together research on fatherlessness, attachment, warmth, and the incredible influence fathers have on their kids, along with practical ways we can help fathers become more present and connected. If you care about mentoring, fatherhood, or helping the next generation thrive, I think you're going to want this one. The Fatherhood Effect releases November 17 and is available for preorder now on Amazon.You can learn more about him below:https://anthonybbradley.substack.com/--If this podcast has encouraged or equipped you, would you take 30 seconds to leave a 5-star rating? On Apple Podcasts, scroll to the bottom of the You Can Mentor page and click “Write a Review.” On Spotify, go to our page, click the three dots next to the settings wheel, and hit “Rate Show.” It helps us reach more mentors like you.--Want to go deeper?• Join our National Christian Mentoring Network• Sign up for our newsletter to stay in the loop• Check out our annual Mentoring Leadership Summit + other mentoring eventsYou can find everything at www.youcanmentor.com or follow us on instagram @youcanmentor--If you want to become a better mentor or build a stronger mentoring organization, check out the You Can Mentor book library. We've written resources on building trust, showing up consistently, understanding kids from hard places, partnering with families, sharing your faith, handling difficult situations, and leading with humility. Books like:You Can MentorThe Youth Mentoring Playbook Volumes 1,2,and 3Tell Me About Your FatherThese books were written to give mentors and mentoring leaders practical tools they can actually use. You can find all of our books and resources at You Can Mentor or find them on Amazon. 

385: No Margin, No Mission: Building Nonprofits That Last (Cecilia Haag)Episode SummaryNonprofit leaders are told that the urgency of the mission will carry the organization, and that financial and operational discipline is something the corporate world worries about. Cecilia Haag, President of Thompson Impact Consulting, came out of that corporate world, joining the 140-year-old human services organization Thompson as Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer after watching it decide to take its model across six to seven southern states. She walks through what that growth actually required: a Tennessee expansion that added roughly a hundred staff at once, a Network Integration Mapping process so nothing is missed when a new program opens, a ninety-day minimum before anyone expects footing, and a weekly, monthly and quarterly operating rhythm that starts with how the team won the week. She also names the red flag that ends a partnership conversation, an unwillingness to talk about what the work actually costs. Listeners will walk away with a working definition of discipline, a short list of the numbers worth watching, and a case for building leaders before the opening exists.About CeciliaCecilia Haag is President of Thompson Impact Consulting, the practice that grew out of Thompson, a 140-year-old human services organization founded in Charlotte and now operating across the South. She spent most of her career in the for-profit sector helping growing organizations build the infrastructure to scale, and was at Insperity when Thompson became one of her clients during the COVID and social justice period, watching the organization work through the strategic planning that set its growth path. She joined as Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer, spent her first years examining where Thompson could absorb more growth, and helped carry the mission into new markets including Tennessee and Seminole County, Florida. When peer organizations started asking how Thompson had done it, Thompson Impact Consulting was the answer. A mother of a high schooler and a middle schooler, she runs her own year on a Full Focus Planner and sits down with her husband every couple of years to decide where the family is headed.ResourcesThanks to our podcast partner, Inperium: inperium.orgConference for NC Nonprofits, October 20-21, 2026 in Concord. Use code PATH26 for discount: ncnonprofits.org. Already a member? Use code PATHMEM for $100 off through October 19!Cecilia's LinkedIn; Thompson Impact Consulting: thompsonimpact.comChop Wood, Carry Water by Joshua MedcalfThe Advantage by Patrick LencioniFollow Your Path to Nonprofit Leadership, and please leave a review!Leadership resources at Armstrong McGuire: ArmstrongMcGuire.com

In this episode, I sit down with Rob Schwartz, a writer, music and film producer, tech company partner, former Asia Bureau Chief for Billboard Magazine, and the editor of The Wisdom of Morrie, a book written by his father, Morrie Schwartz.With a rich career bridging media across the US and Asia, Rob shares the profound personal and intellectual influence of his father (the subject of the famed bestseller Tuesdays with Morrie) and how Morrie's legacy continues to offer guidance on human connection, aging, and living a fulfilling life. In this episode, we discuss:How growing up with Morrie shaped Rob's view of human dynamicsBridging academic sociology with practical empathy in the classroomUncovering Morrie's hidden manuscript years after his passingChallenging societal ageism by keeping older adults engaged and valuedWhy finding joy and humor is vital in later lifeCultivating a personal spiritual connection outside rigid boundariesStructuring meaningful routines through meditation and new pursuitsBuilding deep relationships to combat modern isolation and lonelinessInsights from decades spent living and working in JapanAdvancing global mental health advocacy through the One Humanity FoundationAbout Rob:Rob Schwartz is a writer, music & film producer, and executive who has been active in the US and Asia for more than 25 years. He edited, wrote essays for, and published The Wisdom of Morrie, a book by his father, Morrie Schwartz. Rob is a partner and Chief Strategy Officer for the 3D, immersive environment, tech company Moshpit XR. Rob was Asia Bureau Chief of Billboard magazine from 2008-2021 while he resided in Tokyo. He produces film and is now working on an American anime series. He works with the mental health collective One Humanity Foundation. Book:The Wisdom of Morrie: Living and Aging Creatively & Gracefully https://wisdomofmorrie.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-schwartz-544703/ ----- Connect with Candice Snyder!Website: https://www.podpage.com/passion-purpose-and-possibilities-1/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/candicebsnyder?_rdrPassion, Purpose, and Possibilities Community Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/passionpurposeandpossibilitiescommunity/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passionpurposepossibilities/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/candicesnyder/ Shop For A Cause With Gifts That Give Back to Nonprofits: https://thekindnesscause.com/Go to FusionaryFormulas.com and use code PASSION at checkout for 15% off your first order. Fall In Love With Artists And Experience Joy And Calm: https://www.youtube.com/@movenartrelaxation

Send us Fan MailHeart does that panicked double-thump. Stomach drops. Ohh - there goes gravity! Sound familiar? That's what happens right before most fundraisers call a donor to ask for money…and Britt Stockert, Fundraiser Coach at Donorbox, says that feeling is telling you the opposite of what you think.In this quick, coffee-break episode, Britt shares the four words she scribbled on a sticky note for a burned-out nonprofit leader who needed something simpler than a script. It changed how that leader's whole team makes the ask.This is perfect for fundraisers who want a low-pressure way to build donor trust, especially heading into year-end. Discover:Why the discomfort of asking for a gift is a sign of a healthy donor relationship, not a warning signA four-word framework simple enough to fit on a sticky noteHow to open a donor call without mentioning money at allWhat to say when a donor pushes back on overhead or transparencyWhy silence after an ask is doing more work than most fundraisers realizeHow to measure success in donor outreach beyond whether a gift landed that dayIf you're ready to refine your ‘Ask' approach and get on track for Giving Season, schedule time with Britt here.That nervous feeling before asking for a gift isn't proof something's wrong. It's proof the moment matters. Britt's fix isn't more confidence - it's structure: four words on a sticky note that turn a high-pressure ask into a real conversation between two people who both care about the same thing.Chapters:00:00 - Why Asking for Support Feels Uncomfortable02:10 - The Trust Gap & the Power of Personal Connection03:40 - A 4-Beat Framework for Donor Conversations06:55 - Timing the Ask & Permission-Based Giving08:15 - Redefining Success Through Small Wins09:15 - Overcoming Rejection & Closing ThoughtsDonorbox is a trusted fundraising platform used by 100,000-plus organizations worldwide, helping them raise over $4 billion collectively. Learn more at donorbox.org.Enjoying the show? Subscribe for more practical fundraising strategies, leadership insights, and tools to help your nonprofit grow sustainably.Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not intended as legal or financial advice. Please consult a professional advisor for guidance specific to your organization.Support the show

Recurring giving now makes up 27% of ALL online revenue, and for many nonprofits, 30-40% of total online revenue can arrive in the final three weeks of the year. Is your monthly giving program actually positioned to take advantage of all that attention and generosity?Today's episode is your front row seat into my Q3 State of Recurring Giving webinar, where I brought together the team from STella! alongside fundraising leaders from Habitat for Humanity Omaha and the Canadian Cancer Society to share what they're doing heading into year end.We also get tactical about the channels and tools driving that growth, including Google Performance Max, paid search, SMS, Fundraise Up, UTMs, and AI. Canadian Cancer Society generated an additional $171,000 from pre-donation upsells, while one recurring donor upgrade test produced an average increase of $14 per donor!And if you're wondering what to do before Q4, we end with four VERY practical actions.Resources & LinksLearn more about STella!, Habitat for Humanity Omaha and Canadian Cancer Society.Read the Neon One 2026 Recurring Donor Report and the M+R Benchmarks 2026. This episode is presented by The Monthly Giving Builder.  With the Monthly Giving Builder, you can generate your comprehensive monthly giving plan and build your program step by step - with a guided companion working alongside you from start to finish. Save the date for our next Monthly Giving Summit on February 25, 2027. Apply to speak here!Applications are now open for the 2027 Mini Monthly Giving Mastermind and Retreat. If you have built a monthly giving program, join our high-touch peer coaching community for nonprofit leaders who are ready to break through.Supercharge your monthly giving program and apply for my Monthly Giving VIP Intensive session. Only 2 spots are available this fall!Let's Connect!Send a DM on Instagram or LinkedIn and let us know what you think of the show!My book, The Monthly Giving Mastermind, is here! Grab a copy here and learn my framework to build, grow, and sustain subscriptions for good.Want to book Dana as a speaker for your even...

What if your nonprofit doesn't actually have a communications problem?When a nonprofit's messaging isn't landing, the instinct is often to rewrite the website, create a new communications plan, post more content, or bring in a communications expert. But sometimes, the real issue goes much deeper.In this episode of Nonprofit Nation, Julia Campbell talks with Christine Koh, a strategic communications advisor who works with mission-driven leadership teams to repair narrative breakdowns, strengthen leadership communication, and build the infrastructure organizations need to communicate effectively.Christine shares why communications problems are often symptoms of deeper leadership or organizational challenges, and what happens when everyone inside an organization has a different understanding of its story.They dig into what “narrative breakdown” actually looks like, how internal misalignment eventually shows up in external communications, and why communications teams can end up being asked to solve problems they don't actually have the authority to fix.Julia and Christine also explore how nonprofit leaders can create clearer ownership around messaging, avoid “communications by committee,” and build systems that don't depend on one person carrying the entire organizational story in their head.And, as always, they get practical, talking about what nonprofit leaders should diagnose before investing in another website, brand refresh, communications strategy, or endless stream of content.If you've ever felt like your nonprofit is communicating a lot but somehow the message still isn't quite landing, this conversation is for you.

The nonprofit Dream Big City aims to create safe, drug- and alcohol-free community events across Portland. Over the last six years, the organization has put on more than 170 events featuring live music, art, free meals and mentorship opportunities for youth. Its latest project is to turn a blighted street in Portland’s Central Eastside into a community plaza with skateboard ramps, basketball hoops and more.   Alex Murrell is the founder and executive director of Dream Big City. He joins us to talk more about the nonprofit’s work.  

Quinn Childress, owner of Willow Street Lawns and founder of the digital lawn care marketplace Lawnly, joins the Startup Junkies Podcast to talk about the first-ever Lawn Care Olympics coming to Fayetteville, Arkansas on September 20th. Quinn shares how he went from experiencing homelessness as a teenager to building a lawn care business, and now a platform designed to funnel local dollars toward nonprofits and people experiencing homelessness in Northwest Arkansas.In This EpisodeWhy Quinn started Willow Street Lawns after experiencing homelessness at 15What the Lawn Care Olympics is and why it's coming to FayettevilleHow Lawnly connects homeowners, lawn care pros, and nonprofitsWhy local dollars, not charity, are the key to breaking poverty cyclesHow Startup Junkie's ecosystem helped Quinn scale two venturesWhat advice Quinn would give his younger self today⏱️ Chapters1:01 – Welcome to the Startup Junkies Podcast1:42 – Meet Quinn Childress: Willow Street Lawns & Lawnly2:09 – Announcing the First-Ever Lawn Care Olympics2:29 – The Vision: Turning Lawn Care into a Community Sport3:23 – Partnering with Nonprofits to Fight Homelessness4:45 – Quinn's Story: From Homelessness to Business Owner6:30 – Lawn Care Olympics Event Details (Sept 20 at New Beginnings)7:26 – Judges, Challenges, and Who Can Compete11:41 – Inside Lawnly: A Two-Sided Marketplace for Lawn Care14:06 – RISE Arkansas Sponsor Message14:34 – Quinn's Roots in the NWA Ecosystem & Building Lawnly19:18 – The Real Motivation: Helping the Local Economy Thrive22:22 – Time Machine Question: Advice to His Younger Self29:20 – How to Connect with Quinn & Support the Olympics—Connect with Quinn

Most nonprofits that fold don't fail because the mission stopped mattering. They fail because 80% of the budget sat on top of one grant, one donor, or one contract, and that one thing disappeared. HawkWatch International has avoided that trap for 40 years, and CEO Nikki Wayment says the fix is not complicated: stop putting all your eggs in one basket, and start treating every donor relationship like it's worth building for a decade, not a campaign.HawkWatch is a Utah-based raptor conservation nonprofit built on migration research. It has weathered four decades of funding cycles, a pandemic, and the kind of donor fatigue that hits every cause-based organization eventually. On a recent episode of the Charity Charge Show, Wayment walked through exactly how the organization has stayed financially sound long enough to reach its 40th anniversary, and the lessons apply well beyond conservation work.Quick SummaryHawkWatch International has operated for 40 years by continually adding new, uncorrelated revenue sources instead of depending on one.Personal donor stewardship (handwritten notes, thank you calls with no ask attached) converted a $50 a year donor into a $250,000 estate gift.Only about 5% of most people's net worth sits in cash, which means nonprofits that only ask for checks are missing the other 95% of what donors could give.A 16 acre property gift and a corporate card built for nonprofit cash flow both show up in the episode as the kind of unplanned, unconventional support that keeps a mission-driven organization solvent. ---------------------------About Charity ChargeCharity Charge is a financial technology company serving the nonprofit sector. From the Charity Charge Nonprofit Credit Card to bookkeeping, gift card disbursements, and state compliance, we help mission-driven organizations streamline operations and stay financially strong. Learn more at charitycharge.com.

Every leader in the social impact space has failures. But we rarely talk about them. We brush over them, reframe them, paper over them. Michelle Moog-Koussa thinks that's a mistake. She built the Bob Moog Foundation from $15,000 and a stack of Bob's crossed-out notebooks into a 20-year institution, and she runs it like a scientist: write down the idea, test it, and record an honest "didn't work" before turning the page.Episode Highlights: [00:00:00] Why the social impact sector refuses to talk about failure [00:04:00] How 60,000 CaringBridge messages gave birth to a foundation [00:17:00] "You're swinging a miniature bat" and the reframe that changed everything [00:23:00] Running a nonprofit like a scientist: hypothesis, test, iterate [00:25:30] The sector embraces the scientific method, except the failure step [00:31:30] Why fear of failure keeps organizations frozen in planningNotable Quotes: Michelle Moog-Koussa [00:27:15]: "Mistakes are the portals to discovery." Eric Ressler [00:25:30]: "The sector at large does not accept failure with grace." Michelle Moog-Koussa [00:18:05]: "I don't have a miniature bat. My bat is so big, I just needed more people to help me swing it."Resources & Links:The Bob Moog Foundation — moogfoundation.orgThe Moogseum — moogseum.orgSpectrasonics Bob Moog Tribute Library — spectrasonics.net/products/tribute/Native Instruments Modular Icons — native-instruments.com/en/pricing/modular-icons/Hosted by Eric Ressler, Founder & Creative Director of Cosmic, with co-host Jonathan Hicken, Executive Director of the Seymour Marine Discovery Center. New episodes every Tuesday.→ Subscribe: designingtomorrow.show → Work with Cosmic: designbycosmic.comListeners, now you can text us your comments or questions by clicking this link.*** If you liked this episode, please help spread the word. Share with your friends or co-workers, post it to social media, “follow” or “subscribe” in your podcast app, or write a review on Apple Podcasts. We could not do this without you!We love hearing feedback from our community, so please email us with your questions or comments — including topics you'd like us to cover in future episodes — at podcast@designbycosmic.comThank you for all that you do for your cause and for being part of the movement to move humanity and the planet forward.

BIO: Tony Martignetti is the author of the upcoming book, Planned Giving Accelerated. He's been helping small- and mid-size US nonprofits launch Planned Giving fundraising programs since 1997. Tony is a lawyer, but he doesn't write or talk like one. He weaves in his background in stand-up comedy and improv to make Planned Giving easy, accessible, and affordable.STORY: Tony returns with a different kind of investment story: how he spent eight months writing Planned Giving Accelerated, a book designed to help small and mid-sized nonprofits launch a legacy giving program in as little as one week.LEARNING: The best fundraising asset most small nonprofits already have is their most loyal, longest-tenured donors, and putting it to work costs nothing but a conversation. "Planned giving is not a conversation about death. It's about life, the longevity and sustainability of your nonprofit's work."Tony Martignetti Tony Martignetti is the author of the upcoming book, Planned Giving Accelerated. He's been helping small- and mid-size US nonprofits launch Planned Giving fundraising programs since 1997. Tony is a lawyer, but he doesn't write or talk like one. He weaves in his background in stand-up comedy and improv to make Planned Giving easy, accessible, and affordable.Tony joins the podcast for the second time. In his first appearance, Ep820: A Flattering Binder and $13,500 Down the Drain, he shared how a $13,500 bet on a flashy Manhattan PR agency taught him to check his ego. This time he returns with the opposite kind of story: a low-cost, three-step system that has helped nonprofits raise nine figures without spending a dollar on PR.What is planned giving, and why does it matter?Planned giving fundraising is the practice of securing long-term gifts made through a donor's estate or retirement plan, rather than a check written today. Tony's new book focuses specifically on the simplest and most common form: a bequest, meaning a gift left through a nonprofit inside a supporter's will.For a nonprofit, these gifts function like seeds planted years or even decades before they mature. Since most bequest donors are in their 60s or 70s when they name a charity in their will, the gift itself may not arrive for another 20 to 30 years. That time horizon is exactly why Tony sees planned giving as the foundation of real organizational sustainability—feeding an endowment a nonprofit can grow indefinitely, rather than a one-time cash infusion that gets spent immediately.The missed opportunity hiding in your donor listTony points out that most nonprofits miss donor opportunities because they don't ask. They already have everything they need to start a legacy giving program and simply never ask. Tony's three-step framework, which he calls the Martignetti Three-Step, One-Week Planned Giving Launch, laid out in the first three chapters of his book, is designed to get an organization from zero to a live planned giving program within a week:Step one: Identify your top prospects by analyzing donors who have shown consistent giving over at least 10 years, regardless of gift size, to ensure targeted outreach.Step two: Start with the simplest planned gift there is, a bequest written into a will, rather than a more complex vehicle.Step three: Cultivate and solicit those prospects directly by initiating a personalized, values-based conversation about legacy, making the donor comfortable and engaged.Tony's point is that a nonprofit does not need a press release, a webpage, or a campaign to say it has launched planned giving. It needs one honest, genuine conversation with the right donor. Have that conversation, and the program is live.Furthermore, he explains, the size of the gift matters less than its consistency. When a donor has given $5 each year for 20 years, it shows a strong emotional connection to the cause and makes them a better prospect for planned giving than a single large donation made one year ago.Why the conversation isn't about deathA common excuse Tony often receives is that conversations about planned giving make people feel uncomfortable or even morbid, because bequests are paid out only after a donor dies. However, according to Tony, this is not a conversation about death but about leaving a long-term impact that a donor has already been experiencing.Planned giving, Tony believes, is different from immediate, urgent appeals based on scarce funds and the need to pay employees' salaries soon. When the conversation starts by mentioning how important it is to keep the nonprofit from running out of money, that is an unsustainable way to fundraise. A nonprofit with enough stability to plan decades in advance is better placed to have a successful planned giving conversation.The data behind love and moneyTony cites research from Russell James, a professor at Texas Tech University who has spent decades studying the psychology and economics of bequest giving using quantitative methods rather than anecdotes. One striking finding Tony references is that, on average, about 75% of people who add a nonprofit to their will increase their annual giving to that same organization afterward.This seems to be an emotional factor, not a financial one at all. Once a donor decides to include a cause in their will alongside family members such as spouses, kids, or grandchildren, they feel an even stronger bond with that cause, and that bond shows up in daily donations as well. This finding clearly counters the fears many fundraisers have about planned giving and the idea that donors might consider their bequest their final donation and give nothing else annually.Actionable adviceFirst, create your own donor database and filter for longevity rather than monetary contribution, because donors who have been contributing for 15 to 20 years can qualify for planned giving.When you approach that donor, frame the conversation around the future and sustainability of the work they already support, rather than your organization's current financial needs.If you're a nonprofit under five years old or without individual donors yet, focus first on building that base.No. 1 goal for the next 12 monthsTony's number one goal for the next 12 months is to get Planned Giving Accelerated into the hands of 2,000 small and mid-sized nonprofits within a year of launch, with the hope that even half of them implement the three-step framework and successfully launch a planned giving program. Connect with Tony MartignettiLinkedInYouTubePodcastAndrew's booksHow to Start Building Your Wealth Investing in the Stock MarketMy Worst Investment Ever9 Valuation Mistakes and How to Avoid ThemTransform Your Business with Dr.Deming's 14 PointsAndrew's online programsValuation Master ClassHow to Start Building Your Wealth Investing in the Stock MarketFinance Made Ridiculously SimpleFVMR Investing: Quantamental Investing Across the WorldBecome a Great Presenter and Increase Your InfluenceTransform Your Business with Dr. Deming's 14 Points

In this episode, I sit down with Farla Efros, a retail turnaround specialist, former president of HRC Retail Advisory, interim CEO of True Religion, go-to expert on BNN Bloomberg, and author of Fuck Cancer: Commanding a Comeback When Your Body Has Turned on You.With a career built on walking into corporate chaos and driving transformations, Farla faced her biggest turnaround yet in 2023 with an aggressive breast cancer diagnosis. Together, we explore how she applied her executive strategy, data-driven mindset, and dark humor to become the CEO of her own health, navigating loss, treatment, and personal resilience.In this episode, we discuss:How a background in retail turnarounds prepared Farla for her diagnosisTreating her health journey like her most critical consulting projectBuilding childhood resilience by skipping grades and facing early adversitySetting an aggressive "North Star" goal with her medical teamApproaching medical appointments with agendas and objective-driven meetingsNavigating grief from family losses while undergoing active cancer treatmentsWhy hope is not a strategy when advocating for healthcare needsAssembling a personalized executive board of medical and wellness specialistsPractical steps for medical advocacy, specific tests, and health preparationGrieving a former career while finding new purpose through The Healing Rebel Protocol About Farla:Farla Efros is President of HRC Retail Advisory, part of Accenture retail strategy, former Interim CEO of True Religion, and author of F*ck Cancer. After receiving an aggressive cancer diagnosis on a client call, she applied 30 years of Fortune 500 turnaround strategy to her own treatment. Now she teaches patients to bring "CEO Energy" to the exam room through her Healing Rebel Protocol. Book:F*ck Cancer: Commanding A Comeback When Your Body Has Turned On Youhttps://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GYTFD9JN Website: https://farlaefros.com/ LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/farla-efros-93b641bInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/thehealingrebelcaFacebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/people/The-Healing-Rebel-CA/61575491335248/ -----Connect with Candice Snyder!Website: https://www.podpage.com/passion-purpose-and-possibilities-1/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/candicebsnyder?_rdrPassion, Purpose, and Possibilities Community Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/passionpurposeandpossibilitiescommunity/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passionpurposepossibilities/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/candicesnyder/Shop For A Cause With Gifts That Give Back to Nonprofits: https://thekindnesscause.com/Go to FusionaryFormulas.com and use code PASSION at checkout for 15% off your first order. Fall In Love With Artists And Experience Joy And Calm: https://www.youtube.com/@movenartrelaxation

In this episode of John Solomon Reports, we shine a light on the alarming misuse of American generosity on a global scale. Host John Solomon reveals how funds intended for humanitarian aid have been diverted by the United Nations to support terrorist activities and fraudulent nonprofits. Solomon questions the extent of this abuse and outlines potential reforms to rectify the situation.Joining the discussion is US Ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, who presents a bold reform plan for the UN, drawing parallels to President Trump's successful NATO overhaul. The conversation delves into the need for accountability and transformation within the UN, especially in light of its current leadership and the challenges it faces.Listeners will hear from key figures including Congressman James Comer, USAID investigator John Schofield, and Middle East Forum's Greg Roman, who has tracked substantial funding misallocated to groups aligned with terrorism. Additionally, investigative journalist Liz Collins shares insights into the troubling fraud cases in Minnesota, tying together the threads of this critical issue.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode of John Solomon Reports, we dive into the significant political developments shaping the landscape as we approach the 2026 election. Host John Solomon discusses the recent passage of a crucial spending bill by Republicans, which averts a government shutdown ahead of election day. He also highlights a pivotal vote where two Democrats crossed party lines to denounce socialism, a decision that could have far-reaching implications in upcoming campaign ads.The episode covers international relations as Mark Carney's comments on the U.S.-Canada dynamic raise eyebrows, suggesting a game of chicken that Canada may not win. Additionally, Solomon addresses the troubling case of American journalist Thomas Pawkins, sentenced for acting as an unregistered agent for China, underscoring the complexities of foreign influence in journalism.Joining the show is House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, who sheds light on the abuses within nonprofits that masquerade as charitable organizations while engaging in political activities. Smith's insights are critical as accountability in Washington becomes increasingly necessary.Next, Todd Ricketts, co-owner of the Chicago Cubs, joins to discuss his new venture in creating a search engine and the concerns he has about the current digital landscape. This fascinating conversation promises to reveal the intersection of business and technology.Finally, Dr. Chad Walding returns for a weekly health update, focusing on hydration—an essential aspect of health, especially for those dealing with kidney issues. Solomon shares his personal journey with hydration and the benefits of NativePath's hydration products, emphasizing the importance of cellular hydration for overall well-being.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.