Podcasts about Rise Against Hunger

We get the honor to sit down with the founder of Rise Against Hunger, Ray Buchanan, to talk about how it got started, how Menlo has been a tremendous help for so many, and how to continue in our partnership. Text us: (650)600-0402

This week we recap Baptism Sunday and our recent Rise Against Hunger meal kit event with Phil EuBank and Tim Wong, Director of Missions and Outreach. If you ever had questions about committing to Jesus, or the importance or serving others who desperately need it, this is for you!  Connect with us | Need prayer? Text us (650)600-0402

Brian Nell, CEO of Rise Against Hunger joins Bongani Bingwa to speak about how Rise Against Hunger provides an opportunity for volunteers to play their role in showcasing acts of kindness and the work they will be doing for Mandela Day.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to Generous Impact! In this episode, hosts Bret and Amanda Brummitt are joined by Marshay Love, Partnership Manager with Rise Against Hunger. Marshay shares her inspiring journey from a probation officer to a key player in the fight against global hunger. Discover how Rise Against Hunger aims to eradicate hunger by providing immediate food assistance and building sustainable food systems for the future. Marshay delves into the organization's impactful programs, including meal packaging events and sustainable agriculture projects, and highlights their ambitious goal to end world hunger by 2030. Learn about the incredible stories of volunteers and beneficiaries, and how you can get involved in making a difference. Whether through hosting a meal packaging event or simply spreading the word, there are numerous ways to contribute to this noble cause. Tune in for a heartwarming and enlightening conversation about the power of community, resilience, and the drive to create a hunger-free world.

 Fred Bodimer brings you the latest in weekend religion, starting with Pope Francis' health challenges, his recent hospitalization, and ongoing struggles with flu symptoms and lung infections. Despite concerns, the Vatican indicates that the pontiff's schedule, including Easter events, remains unaffected. Shifting gears, St. Louis Archbishop Mitchell T. Rozanski and fellow bishops voice opposition to a Missouri abortion initiative, citing concerns about women's health and safety

This week Megan and Keith join us to continue the conversation of finding joy in worship with hints of redwoods, and spiritual formation. Tim Wong, Director of Missional Outreach, also joins us as we are preparing for our Rise Against Hunger event this weekend! Text Us: (650)600-0402

The Gift is our year-end giving campaign that we use to make a big difference in the lives of our kids here at Believers, our community and all over world.  Nothing is more important than investing in the faith of the next generation, and in our community. We're excited to talk with you about what this year's initiatives will be and why.In this episode, we discuss the origin of The Gift, reminiscing about our favorite projects over the years. Pastor Jamey provides an insightful background on how The Gift started, and our unforgettable initiatives over the years.We will be diving deep into this year's goals and introducing our distinguished partners – Mosaico, Word of Life Camp, Suffolk Public Schools, and Rise Against Hunger.

Grace and peace to you. I'm Rev. Joe Cailles, the pastor of Peakland United Methodist Church in Lynchburg Virginia. Today is Wednesday, September 13, 2023. + This past Sunday, September 3, Peakland gathered for worship in our sanctuary and in our fellowship hall and online for Sunday worship. We sang, we prayed, we listened to the scriptures and how Jesus tells us to fight like a Christian. In worship on Sunday, we had babies and children and youth and young adults, not so young adults and all people are welcome. It was a good Sunday morning here at Peakland. Later that same Sunday afternoon, over 70 folks from Peakland came together to Rise Against Hunger and create these – sealed bags of rice, sorghum, dehydrated vegetables, and a vitamin packet. Each of these bags contains 6 servings. It took us about an hour to set up our fellowship hall into a meal making factory, with stations for filling the bag, weighing the bag, sealing it, and packing them up. In an hour and 10 minutes our Peakland volunteers created 10,126 meals. We finished the job 20 minutes sooner than expected. Cleanup happened in about 40 minutes, but you may still see one or two errant grains of rice in the fellowship hall and on the sidewalk outside. Rober is one the job though! My great thanks to the people of Rise Against Hunger for coming to Peakland and helping us reach out, serve all, and extend God's Table and God's Love. From Peakland, these meals will be stored for a short time with Rise Against Hunger and then sent to a needed to community, could be a community in Haiti, could be a community in southern Africa. Rise Against Hunger will let us know when and where the meals end up, and I'll keep you posted. I'm grateful to all the people who donated funds so this ministry could happen at Peakland. I'm grateful to God for the many, many volunteers of all ages who gave their time and energy. We had folks younger than age 8 and older than 80 giving of themselves so others might eat. There aren't too many places in the world where folks of all ages and stages of life can come together to worship and to work together to make a difference in the world. I'm grateful to God that Peakland is such a place where all are welcome, and everyone has a place here. My hope is to bring Rise Against Hunger back to us again next year at this time. Perhaps we can raise enough funds to prepare 15,000 meals. Next Sunday, we'll gather again for worship and Jesus will teach us how to forgive like a Christian. And in the weeks to come we'll gather for food and fellowship and service and worship. If you are looking for a church home, or if it's been a while since you were here at Peakland, now is the time to be present here. Reach out to me at PeaklandPastor@gmail.com, I want to hear from you and help you find your place in this great church community. Thanks be to God!

In this episode, we speak with Andy Byrne, CEO and Co-founder of Clari. Clari is a platform that uses AI and machine learning to support sales teams by integrating with their existing CRM systems. Thousands of sales, marketing, and customer success teams at leading companies, including Okta, Adobe, Workday, Zoom, and Finastra, use Clari's execution insights to make their revenue process more connected, efficient, and predictable. The company is backed by Blackstone, Silver Lake, Sapphire Ventures, Tenaya, Bain Capital, Sequoia and other notable investors. Prior to Clari, Byrne was a founding executive at Clearwell, which he helped grow from pre-product and pre-revenue in 2005 to an $80 million annual revenue run rate until its acquisition by Symantec in 2011. Andy supports Rise Against Hunger. To learn more about this organization click here. I am your host RJ Lumba. We hope you enjoy the show. If you like the episode, click to subscribe.  

Grace and peace to you. I'm Rev. Joe Cailles, the pastor of Peakland United Methodist Church in Lynchburg Virginia. Today is Wednesday, September 6, 2023. + Labor Day was this past Monday, marking the unofficial end to summer. I heard yesterday that one of our youth was sad that this weekend was the last time in the outdoor swimming pools, and then another church member said, end of summer was fine with her. She didn't like the hot weather anyway. I do like September weather, and I am excited about all the great ministries Peakland will be getting to in the weeks to come. Yesterday, I sat in with the ladies of the Ruth Circle, Peakland's women fellowship group. They are planning their great Card Party here at the church on Tuesday, October 17, and the money they raise supports local helping agencies. The United Methodist Men begin their weekly morning breakfasts here at the church this Saturday, September 9 at 8:00 a.m. All men are welcome for a great breakfast and great fellowship. This Sunday, September 10, Peakland unites in service with Rise Against Hunger, an organization which helps feed hungry communities around the world. This Sunday, 80 or so of us will gather at the church fellowship hall beginning at 4:30 and within 2 and half hours, we will have bagged 10,000 meals of rice and grain and dehydrated vegetables. For those of you who are volunteering, bring a baseball cap or you'll have to wear one of the hairnets they provide. Andrew will be sending out more information to the church volunteers later this week about Sunday's event. Peakland After Dark, our ministry with children, youth, and their families. begins its regular Sunday night gathering on Sunday, September 17. Looking ahead to October we at Peakland will unite for a church wide book study, reading Being United Methodist Christians, in which we'll explore the questions of What do we United Methodists believe? What makes us distinct and how do we grow as disciples of Jesus. Whether you are a lifelong methodist are relatively new to the faith, I trust we'll all learn a great deal together. We've also got plans for an October baked potato fellowship supper. We'll have our annual blood drive in November. Andrew will create some special worship services around All Hallow's eve and all Saints Day. And Advent and Christmas are coming. We already have great plans for Peakland in December. If you worship in the sanctuary this Sunday, you'll see that I have replaced the green banners with red banners. These red banners were a gift to Peakland from the family of Steve Cox, and I'm glad they will be on display. Red banners are usually reserved only for Pentecost and a couple of special Sundays, but your radical pastor likes to put on the red in the fall to signal not just the change in the seasonal weather, but the mark the change in church life as well. The green leaves of summer will be changing to the fiery reds and oranges of fall outside and at the church we have fire and excitement and a great spirit. If you find that you have been away from Peakland for a season or two, now is the time to find your way back home. Christ is doing great things here at Peakland, and it's so easy for you to be part of it. Reach out to me at PeaklandPastor@gmail.com if you'd like to be part of our great church family.

Grace and peace to you. I'm Rev. Joe Cailles, the pastor of Peakland United Methodist Church in Lynchburg Virginia. Today is Wednesday, August 30, 2023. I am not in the parking lot today, as I'm recording this it's wet and soggy outside and no place for middle aged pastors or expensive video cameras. Last Wednesday I spoke to you about our parking lot, our 40-year-old parking lot in need of a lot of repairs. This past Sunday, Don Weschler, Peakland's chair of the Common Table, spoke at each of the worship services about our church's Pave the Way to Grace capital campaign to fund the repairs, and after the 11:00 worship service, Mike Ohl, a Peakland trustees and the point man on the project, gave an excellent overview of the parking lot problems and the parking lot solutions. This week, each Peakland household will receive a letter from the Pave The Way leadership team, along with an informative brochure, which Kim Ness, Peakland's church administrator and I put together, along with a pledge card, which Cindy Harding, Peakland's business manager put together. We'll also have these in the worship bulletins through the end of September. Some folks had already filled in their pledge cards and turned them in. I will be doing mine later this week. We hope to hear from everyone by the end of September. Two questions have come up since we announced this that I can address with you now. The first is, “What kind of trees are we going to plant in the islands once the parking lot is done?” Good question! I love dogwoods and redbuds. I know having those in the parking lot would make me very happy when I come to church. But it's not up to me. Our trustees will make that decision when the time comes. The next question is really two questions when is this happening and how long will it take? Ideally if everything goes the way we want it to go, we will raise the money we need and accept a bid by the end of September, and work can begin toward the end of October and be done in 7-10 days with minimal disruption to church life. that's the ideal scenario which could happen. However, sometimes things don't work out exactly as planned. I promise we will keep everyone informed about the progress we are making and let folks know what's happening when. The Peakland pre-school folks know what we are planning and parking lot work certainly impacts them! And we need to know if we have a place to park when we come to Sunday worship! We'll make announcements online, in worship and through email. I'm grateful to the people of Peakland for their hard work and their generosity. As Don told us on Sunday, what we do now will benefit future generations of Peakland people. I'm also excited that we at Peakland will be kicking off our Fall ministries on Sunday, September 10th with our Rise Against Hunger event here at the church. 80 of us will prepare 10,000 rice-based meals in just over 2 hours in our fellowship hall. We have so much more planned for our church in the weeks and months to come, as we keep reaching out, serving all, and extending God's Table.

The podcast by project managers for project managers. If we can identify the reasons why people say no, we can be more effective in getting them to follow our requests. Patrick Veroneau introduces an acronym called GREAT to understand the resistance we may be facing from our team. An offshoot of effective leadership is being able to inspire other people to say yes to our requests. Table of Contents 00:32 … Rise Against Hunger01:57 … Meet Patrick03:39 … Six Principles of Influence05:49 … Signs of Resistance07:02 … Goodwill09:21 … SCARF13:07 … Reactance14:56 … Self-Awareness16:41 … Expertise18:46 … Build Credibility20:55 … Kevin and Kyle22:02 … Apathy24:51 … Trust and CABLES26:16 … Congruence27:22 … Appreciation27:35 … Belongingness27:48 … Listening28:22 … Empathy28:37 … Specifics30:45 … Contact Patrick32:15 … Closing Rise Against Hunger WENDY GROUNDS:  We visited Rise Against Hunger as a company, Velociteach, and we did some meal packing there.  We packed over 1,080 meals that were sent to – I think these ones were going to Zimbabwe. BILL YATES:  Nice. WENDY GROUNDS:  But it was going to people who are not in the position to just be able to get food as easily as it is for us.  Rise Against Hunger is an amazing organization.  They target remote communities with hunger pockets, and they send their packages of food there. BILL YATES:  We had such a great time as a team preparing these, you know, helping put these meals together, packaging them.  And we ended up with all these boxes of packaged meals ready to go.  It was so fun for the team to be together.  It was a team-building event with a purpose.  Those are our favorites. WENDY GROUNDS:  I highly recommend it as a team-building event.  I think that was really fun.  Everybody really pulled together.  We packaged a bit too quickly, almost.  We were so excited about doing this that we got finished too quickly, and then we had to wash dishes; didn't we. BILL YATES:  Yeah.  But there's nothing better in terms of bonding than seeing your coworkers wearing hair nets.  It was just... WENDY GROUNDS:  Oh yeah.  Oh yeah. ____________________________________________________________ WENDY GROUNDS:  You're listening to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  I'm Wendy Grounds, and with me in the studio is Bill Yates and Danny Brewer. We're talking to Patrick Veroneau today.  And he's the founder of the Emery Leadership and Sales Group, and they focus on helping employees and organizations bridge the gap between engagement and excellence.  He had his first management position with a division of Van Heusen Corporation, and he spent over 15 years in the biopharma industry in sales training and leadership development.  He continues to develop and refine leadership and sales models that blend evidence-based research and theory with what happens in the real world.  And what happens in the real world is often we're trying to lead or to manage people on our projects, and we get resistance.  And so we're going to be talking about that resistance today. Meet Patrick Hi, Patrick.  Welcome to Manage This.  We're so glad you're here today. PATRICK VERONEAU:  Oh, thank you so much for the opportunity to be on the podcast.  Always great to talk about resistance. WENDY GROUNDS:  Yeah.  First of all, tell us about your company, Emery Leadership Group, and what inspired you to start it. PATRICK VERONEAU:  So Emery Leadership Group is primarily an organization that helps other organizations to develop better leaders and really to become more productive.  If you don't have good leaders, right, if you don't have people that can inspire other people to say yes to requests, then it's very difficult to, I think, be as effective as you could be.  And there's a lot of research in terms of what are the things that inspire individuals to want to say yes to our requests.  And that's all that leadership is.

Sunday, April 23, 2023 | Jesus is the Question: Lent & Easter 2023 | Pastor Michelle delivers a short homily on John 6:1-21, Jesus' question "How are we to feed these people?", before the church gathers to pack 20,000 nutrient-rich meals with Rise Against Hunger at our 2023 Hope for the Hungry event.

Nonprofits Energize & Give Back To Communities On MLK Day Nonprofits across the country worked to engage and give back to communities this MLK Day. Virginia nonprofit Rise Against Hunger worked to fill 50,000 bags of food to serve communities in need. The article notes that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke often about hunger, and was a catalyst for this organization to focus on emergency food relief. In Charlotte, communities are finding assistance from nonprofits like Promise Youth Development, which serves to educate youth about Dr. King's legacy while advocating for social justice. In addition to providing kids with education and exposure to Dr. King's teaching, the nonprofit also fosters healing and relationship-building between students and police. Read more ➝   Summary   Allegations that the charity George Santos claims to have run was fake highlight how scams divert money from worthy causes | yahoo.com  Anchorage nonprofit's use of $750K in federal funds investigated | alaskasnewssource.com 118th US Congress most racially and ethnically diverse in history | Pew Research Center Greta Thunberg detained by police at German coal protest | Axios  Local nonprofit celebrates helping black entrepreneurs on MLK day - KLAS | 8 News Now       Rough Transcript [00:00:00] audio1555325285: This week on a nonprofit newsfeed. We're talking about some of the events that went on during M l k day as we're recording this the day after. And Nick I hope you had a great weekend and we're able to celebrate in your own way. , yes, it was a brisk but lovely weekend here in New York. We hope you're staying dry and safe out in California. [00:00:27] But to your point, yes, we want to talk about nonprofits giving back to communities on MLK Day. So yesterday it was MLK Day in Peas, United States and nonprofits across the country are. To give back to communities. One nonprofit in Virginia named Rise Against Hunger Work to fill 50,000 bags of food to serve communities in need. [00:00:50] Noting that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Himself spoke frequently about the issue of hunger which catalyzed this organization to focus on emergency food relief and in Charlotte. Communities were finding assistance from organizations like Promise Youth Development, which serves to educate kids and young people about Dr. [00:01:11] King's lead legacy while advocating for social justice. And recently they started providing kids with healing and relationship, building support between students and police during the ongoing conversation. Police and community relations in America. So I think that M l K Day is a point of reflection, a catalyst to service, and an opportunity for nonprofits to show how they are making their communities safer, more inclusive, and more just. [00:01:46] Yeah, it's great to see how the holiday evolves with the times and how it. Be used to spark those types of conversations and social impact activities. And just knowing that people are more primed to, to volunteer and have have those dialogues around this time. And of course moving into, in, in short order Black History Month coming up next month. [00:02:09] It is good to see also the amount of coverage in the news that we saw. [00:02:15] Absolutely. All right. Shall I take us into the summary? Yeah. What do we got? All right, George, I'm so excited for this story, not because the main antagonist of this story shares your name, no relation. , but we are talking about . George Santos, famed Republican congressperson from Long Island. Parts of Queens, but , his, George Santos has been in the news recently for as it turns out, fabricating almost the entirety of his resume, professional and personal background. [00:02:52] But the reason we are talking about him on this podcast is that Santos claimed to have started a animal welfare nonprofit called Friends of Pets United, and apparently, This nonprofit, which was listed as such on an early version of his campaign website in fact, did not exist. Apparently, the only inkling of. [00:03:17] Any evidence that such an organization existed is a now defunct Facebook page. But the nonprofit was never registered under the i r s never made donations to organizations it claimed to, and as Santo said, the group rescued 2,400 dogs and 280 cats between 2013 and 2018. However, there is absolutely zero evidence at all. [00:03:43] That such activities happened. This is a ghost organization and I. Leads into a broader narrative about how fake charities are, in fact a real problem. The article we link out to in the newsfeed@nonprofitnewsfeed.com goes through why this is such a problem because it diverts donations away from legitimate organizations as well as undercuts donors confidence in giving. [00:04:10] So George, what's your take on this? And then I'm gonna follow up and ask you what's your favorite, George Santos? . God, it's so hard to choose. Not really, no, nothing proud here about how there was failings, I think on several different levels. And if your immediate reaction here is to be angry at George Santos just acknowledge that there are many people creating many fake charities. [00:04:34] There are also many folks that look to take advantage by lying. Their accomplishments, resume in order to get ahead. And so where does the onus fall? If you're applying to a job, the hiring manager should check on these things, maybe call a reference. And I suppose if the United States Congress is hiring somebody, voters are hiring somebody, the news outlets, one of the branches of anything that we rely. [00:05:06] should maybe do background checks. And so I'd say there are a cascade of failures that led to this. And they're on both sides, really. D nnc opponents that did literally nothing in terms of researching their opponent. Journalists that put that name down without calling a single thing whatsoever, checking anything in IRS records, something that would've taken the amount of time. [00:05:31] a brewing, a cup of coffee would've revealed. And then the r n c, which is in an unenviable situation now, of letting someone in who is a categorical liar. And then you can see nonprofits here because nonprofits are frequently used to burnish the reputations of those that need that work done and that. [00:05:55] Story is on repeat. I would say one of those things, this is in the back of my mind, is whenever I hear now that the specificity of of work, right? You're out there counting that me number of cats, like there's a certain, like we've helped a lot, we've helped over hundreds to say 280 cats. Also why fewer cats than dogs? [00:06:16] 280 cats versus 2,400 dogs that, I, I don't know if those numbers would. and then released 3000 cats. Yeah, there's a lot of numbers here. They're too specific for me. , this is what I'm, it's. It's such a mess. , I can say that in addition to apparently creating a fake nonprofit and not going working at any of the jobs he claimed to have worked or going to school where he claimed to work Santos is in the unenviable position of being under county. [00:06:54] State and federal investigation in the United States, as well as under a case that was reopened in the lovely country of Brazil. Apparently they've been looking for him for a long time, and there he is in the US Congress. So yeah, hold on. Here's where allegedly, I wanna go back to the cats and dogs though. [00:07:15] Okay. So in the US approximately 4.1 million shelter animals are adopted each. , you wanna guess the breakdown? [00:07:26] I don't know. 50 50 precisely. 2 million dogs. 2.1 million cats. Okay. So going back to those numbers, this is why it's off, right? How are you that far off in terms of the rescue numbers? 2,400 dogs, 280 cats. I don't think this guy likes. I think there's a cat a bias against cats that you should look out for. [00:07:52] That's really, that's a spicy thing. He's not numbers, right? He's making up numbers. I will say his compatriot for the New York City mayoral election Curtis Sliwa is famously a cat person and has nine cats and is very pro catt. Maybe just many layers of division and rife and just bizarreness in this story, but, This does take us to our next story. [00:08:20] Both sad and fun as this one is about a nonprofit organization in Alaska which used $750,000 in federal funds improperly. So the Revive Alaska Community Services Food Pantry is very saying serious questions about how the group. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal funds throughout the pandemic. [00:08:45] Anchorage itself received a hundred million dollars to distribute to various organizations and. For various reasons. But nobody seems to know where this money goes and how that $750,000 helped feed families in Anchorage. There seems to be some just sketchy what happened here in the saga, and there's more details you won't get into, but it's important to be accountable. [00:09:16] Yeah. And sadly, I think we're seeing a lot of the, where did the money go now that the, pain of the pandemic has mainly passed from the peak periods and it's it's a reminder to, to be documenting these types of things and in your accounting. But this was, this seems pretty question. [00:09:36] Because they were given three quarters of a million dollars to rebuild a barn that was a food pantry . Instead, the structure was torn down. So you're like wait a minute. Little different. Not great. But we will go now from not great two. I think is great. George, you threw this article in from the inevitable Pew Research Center that the 118th US Congress, our current Congress is the most racially and ethnically diverse Congress in history. [00:10:09] So according to Pew Research This is actually the seventh Congress to break that record set by the one before it. And overall, 133 Senators and representatives today identify as black, Hispanic, Asian-American, American Indian, or Alaskan native. According to this analysis. And this is increasing in every Congress. [00:10:35] Interestingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly I think 80% of these members caucus with the Democrat Party. But that being Said Congress is becoming more representative of America as a whole. Approximately now Congress is approximately 75% white which is, brings it closer in line with the overall US population which is now at 59% white. [00:11:03] And will soon actually be minority white if demographic trends continue. I'm all for it. Representative Congress, representative democracy, let's go. Yeah. And the Republicans are making a couple ticks toward the right direction. Previously it was, 17%, 83%. A distribution for non-white lawmakers in terms of the breakdown of diversity in Congress. [00:11:27] Slight increases there, but overall, it's just great to see over the past two decades to see this number nearly double. And, clearly tracking US population and you see it in that way. And it's also a good reminder for what representative democracy will hopefully become as the people representing representatives representing communities will will reflect them. [00:11:53] Absolutely. All right we will take us now to our last story in the summary. And this comes from Axios and others, and the headline of this article is Greta Thunberg has been detained by police at a German coal protest, and the article comes with a pretty dramatic photo of Greta being. Whisked away by some scary looking cops and riot gear. [00:12:21] It turns out that climate activist Greta Thunberg was detained today protesting a coalmine expansion in the German coal mining town of. Rath where she was physically removed from the site. Apparently Tomberg was participating in a sit-in near the edge of the mine. A pretty hands-on approach to activism from fellow climate activists. [00:12:48] But George, I can't help but being struck how similar this photo seems to the photos of activists. Protesting for clean water particularly adjacent to Native American reservations and communities in the United States, not just a couple years ago. It seems strikingly similar and real interesting to see such tactics taken by activists and protestors. [00:13:36] I think it's a Huff one. I like the activism angle here in terms of you have a young person able to command such a powerful presence and message, right? And on the other hand, you have, I think Germany and some other countries making. energy decisions that actually cut off the bridge to sustainable energy. [00:14:02] And you feel that, especially when you're dealing with the conflict in Russia, and I'm cutting off various pipeline resources and pieces that, it's one thing to say you're going to go on a carbon neutral path, but if you don't have the plan to get there, all you've done is. Given disproportionate power to Russia and other coal generating areas. [00:14:25] Cause that energy has to come from somewhere. And I think there's there was a lack of planning and a lot of promising shutting down nuclear power plants of reducing the production without the plan. And so I think the next phase that I honestly hope to see from Thunberg and others are the planned part, not the, just the protest and stop this because the truth is when. [00:14:46] Drastically increase energy prices overnight, and you create dependencies on governments such as Russia to give them disproportionate of power in the region. You hurt large swaths of humanity and indirectly directly hurt the environment. And protest, but have a plan. And I, I. The green movement can easily have that critique going back 30, 40 years of evolving. [00:15:11] Hopefully it's approach to the industry and how you get a path rather than a protest to to green energy. It's complicated. When I see these types of things, it's easy to celebrate. Yeah. Close it down. On the other side, like with regard to coal mining you're not gonna solve this winter's problem with gold taken from the ground right now. [00:15:30] has to be processed, has to be pushed through. And so like how, how you're planning this is also confusing to me. I don't know a lot of thoughts I have. Yeah, George. I think that's right. It's interesting. I was actually recently talking from someone to talk to someone from Germany. And she was saying, By far and away the energy crisis. [00:15:52] There is the most talked about issue and has been for well over a year now in central Europe. So it's interesting to get a glimpse into that world. And I think similar in, in other countries, particularly the UK as well. Yeah, an interesting look across the pond into how these issues play out in the public sphere. [00:16:15] All right. How about a feel good story? Yeah, what do we got? All right. This is from eight news now.com, and it is reporting out of Las Vegas where a local nonprofit is celebrating helping black entrepreneurs on MLK Day. The organization is called Global SoCo, which is a nonprofit dedicated to helping black-owned businesses like the one mentioned in the article, get a boost. [00:16:43] I think it's really cool to see community organizations like this working to support black entrepreneurs and black community members. And I think really coincides with the legacy and desire of M L K to see the, that community work together. Real cool stuff. Shout out to them. [00:17:01] Yeah, absolutely. Love the angle of entrepreneurship and actually helping folks. A leg up in the industry and a good excuse again to, to use m l k to evolve to the needs of the community and where we are in the world. So thanks Nick. I appreciate you giving the summary. Always. Thanks George.

Nonprofits Energize & Give Back To Communities On MLK Day Nonprofits across the country worked to engage and give back to communities this MLK Day. Virginia nonprofit Rise Against Hunger worked to fill 50,000 bags of food to serve communities in need. The article notes that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke often about hunger, and was a catalyst for this organization to focus on emergency food relief. In Charlotte, communities are finding assistance from nonprofits like Promise Youth Development, which serves to educate youth about Dr. King's legacy while advocating for social justice. In addition to providing kids with education and exposure to Dr. King's teaching, the nonprofit also fosters healing and relationship-building between students and police. Read more ➝   Summary   Allegations that the charity George Santos claims to have run was fake highlight how scams divert money from worthy causes | yahoo.com  Anchorage nonprofit's use of $750K in federal funds investigated | alaskasnewssource.com 118th US Congress most racially and ethnically diverse in history | Pew Research Center Greta Thunberg detained by police at German coal protest | Axios  Local nonprofit celebrates helping black entrepreneurs on MLK day - KLAS | 8 News Now       Rough Transcript [00:00:00] audio1555325285: This week on a nonprofit newsfeed. We're talking about some of the events that went on during M l k day as we're recording this the day after. And Nick I hope you had a great weekend and we're able to celebrate in your own way. , yes, it was a brisk but lovely weekend here in New York. We hope you're staying dry and safe out in California. [00:00:27] But to your point, yes, we want to talk about nonprofits giving back to communities on MLK Day. So yesterday it was MLK Day in Peas, United States and nonprofits across the country are. To give back to communities. One nonprofit in Virginia named Rise Against Hunger Work to fill 50,000 bags of food to serve communities in need. [00:00:50] Noting that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Himself spoke frequently about the issue of hunger which catalyzed this organization to focus on emergency food relief and in Charlotte. Communities were finding assistance from organizations like Promise Youth Development, which serves to educate kids and young people about Dr. [00:01:11] King's lead legacy while advocating for social justice. And recently they started providing kids with healing and relationship, building support between students and police during the ongoing conversation. Police and community relations in America. So I think that M l K Day is a point of reflection, a catalyst to service, and an opportunity for nonprofits to show how they are making their communities safer, more inclusive, and more just. [00:01:46] Yeah, it's great to see how the holiday evolves with the times and how it. Be used to spark those types of conversations and social impact activities. And just knowing that people are more primed to, to volunteer and have have those dialogues around this time. And of course moving into, in, in short order Black History Month coming up next month. [00:02:09] It is good to see also the amount of coverage in the news that we saw. [00:02:15] Absolutely. All right. Shall I take us into the summary? Yeah. What do we got? All right, George, I'm so excited for this story, not because the main antagonist of this story shares your name, no relation. , but we are talking about . George Santos, famed Republican congressperson from Long Island. Parts of Queens, but , his, George Santos has been in the news recently for as it turns out, fabricating almost the entirety of his resume, professional and personal background. [00:02:52] But the reason we are talking about him on this podcast is that Santos claimed to have started a animal welfare nonprofit called Friends of Pets United, and apparently, This nonprofit, which was listed as such on an early version of his campaign website in fact, did not exist.

The Resale Edit: WeeklyEdition #3-This past week we saw the launch of three new brand resale platforms: Michael Kors, Marimekko, and PrettyLittleThing (PLT). Dicks Sporting Good expanded a local trade-in program, Amazon invested in Cashify, an Indian electronics trade-in marketplace, Trove reached 700 U.S. stores with trade-in technology and The Cut gave us a not-so-nice peak inside The Real Real.Michael Kors and Marimekko launched resale programs with beautiful splash pages, gorgeous photography, and activated with paid media budgets. The sites are powered by Recurate and Archive respectively. They follow the pattern that will likely define resale in 2022– low resource lift and high media exposure. As more brands offer resale, it will further accelerate the shift of branded resale from innovation to expectation.As Sourcing Journal writes these programs provide brands a low-lift way to launch resale by putting the work of listing, pricing and sell thru on the customer. Over the longer term these programs will require additional investment to go from marketing to business relevant. For example, as of August 30, Michael Kors had 74 items for sale, Marimekko 1,203: when shopping across 13 categories and half a dozen sizes on Marimekko it quickly becomes hard to shop.Trove shared a milestone of their Recommerce Operating System powering trade-in technology for 700 stores nationwide. Physical retail trade-in provides a tremendous advantage for brands making it easier for customers to bring back items, driving foot traffic, and cementing loyalty. This approach is a good example of the technology necessary to scale profitable resale for brands.Dicks Sporting Goods expanded local trade-in events with partner SidelineSwap. It's a no-brainer as stores fight to become community hubs. And, Amazon's 2% stake in Cashify, an Indian electronics trade-in marketplace is another early signal of the importance of electronics supply globally. I anticipate more shakers and change-makers to come over the next decade.Finally, The Cut exposed a “very real” look into The Real Real. The piece did its best to add a small dose of sugar with ‘but I can't stop shopping' however that is where the sugar high ends. The viewpoint is fairly accurate but in the broader context, early marketplaces such as The Real Real have been the innovators that have made resale of today mainstream. These marketplaces will face additional pressure as brands launch resale programs with lower customer acquisition costs, existing supply chains and store base.The So What?Resale is quickly becoming a customer expectation rather than innovation as more brands launch resale programs.Many brands are finding low lift ways to launch programs in the media. While these programs are a good start, they will require additional investment and technology to become meaningful to the business and customers.—----------------------------Week of August 30: Michael Kors Pre-Loved, a New Resale Marketplace, Launched FridayWomen's Wear Daily Looking to support the circular economy, Michael Kors launches a resale marketplace on PreLoved.MichaelKors.com. With this new marketplace, Michael Kors wants to re-invent the meaning of timeless luxury. Only Kors VIP members are able to sell previous products.How Michael Kors is Offering ‘Low-Lift' ResaleSourcing JournalMichael Kors PreLoved recommerce marketplace is an example of a brand managed peer to peer resale. It's relatively low resource as the VIP Micahel Kors members do most of the heavy lifting. VIP PreLoved members upload photos, set the asking price, write the descriptions and current conditions. MK just has to verify and approve submissions for accuracy.Heinz and thredUP Drop Vintage Drip Collection Celebrating the Iconic Ketchup Stain PR NewswireYou want a designer ketchup stain with that? Heinz Vintage Drip released it's first-of-its-kind fashion collection featuring 157 secondhand streetwear and designer piece. Each item with a unique HEINZ ketchup stain taking the stigma out of ketchup stains. In partnership with thredUp, Heinz will donate 100% of profits to Rise Against Hunger while also promoting fashion sustainability.DICK'S Sporting Goods Expands Resale Partnership with SidelineSwapPR NewswireUsed sports gear accounts for approximately $20 billion of unused items in a typical U.S. household. DICK'S Sporting Goods and SidelineSwap, the world's largest online recommerce for new and used sporting goods, are continuing their partnership to offer a variety of new trade-in events in seven states.PrettyLittleThing launches resale Partnership with Sideline SwapJust StyleIn response to customers wanting to sell their PrettyLittleThing garments that they no longer wear, PrettyLittleThing rolled out a community resale marketplace. Consumers can access resale items from their existing PrettyLittleThing orders making it efficient and easy to sale and upload products. PrettyLittleThing hopes to inspire customers to recycle garments using the three R's, re-selling, re-wearing, and re-using.The key fashion pieces right now? Clothes you'll want to still wear (or sell on) in five years' timeThe GuardianWith the rise of sustainable fashion, comes the emergence of a different fashion style, Timelessness. The most fashionable statement you can make is not giving into the fashion trends of the moment. Although pre-loved items aren't as transparent on an environemntal impact it's obvious that the most coveted look is one that will still be desired in five years.The RealReal Is a Total Mess, and I Can't Quit ItThe CutThe RealReal is a Real hot mess and what customers believed to be growing pains of a startup seems to only have gotten more chaotic since the company went public. It's more about quantity than value of products and employees have said they have felt overworked and underpaid. However, clients say they will still shop there because it's the only place with reasonable pricing.How And Why To Promote Resale in Your OrganizationForbesFounder and CEO of Rebag Charles Gorra shares how and why retailers and brands should adopt a circular business model. Vintage Gucci soars as hottest resale brand, demand increases 500%New York PostThe Real Real released it's annual report which declared Gucci the most sought after resale brand. Gucci is most likely to cash in higher when flipped along with Chanel, Prada, and Hermes. The Real Real saw a 44% increase in purchases and 5.3 million new site users this year.Marimekko Partners With Archive to Make Resale and Vintage PossibleForbesResale is going global, this week sought-after Finnish design-house joined the recommerce market powered by Archive. This new platform is inspired by the thought that timeless designs bring joy to consumers. For now Pre-loved Marimekko will only be available in Finland with plans to service other markets in the future.Amazon Exclusively Invests in Cashify, A Re-Commerce MarketplaceCashifyTechByteRe-Commerce is all the rage and Amazon has joined the race, by investing in the re-sale marketplace Cashify. Through the solution, smartphones, laptops, and all other electrical needs can be bought second hand directly from customers. Cashify works through a variety of retail and online channels that will only increase with Amazon's investment into the future of re-commerce.Resale Going Mainstream in Canada with Consumers Particularly Valuing Brand-Owned Resale: ReportRetail InsiderRecurate reports major takeaways concluded that 85% of shoppers would try a new brand if resale was offered, 75% of all participants said recommerce would increase their brand loyalty but third party marketplaces are their only option, and 72% of recommerce shoppers shop at least every two to three months participating in frequent fashion without fast fashion. Most shocking, 74% of people across all major markets, ages, genders and socioeconomic status shop recommerce.Beni Scours Internet for Best Price, Alternatives for Resale ShoppersWomen's Wear DailyMeet Beni, a woman-founded resale start-up. No, it's not another marketplace, but a free google chrome extension making secondhand shopping easier. With this extension you can see real time marketplace listings with 18 of Beni partners including: Nearly Newlywed, Rent the Runway, TheRealReal, and eBay to name a few. Beni hopes to get people in the habit of shopping more sustainably by the ease of the scrollable pop-up that appears on the desktop during online window shopping.

Guest: Brian Nell | CEO at Rise Against Hunger See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Two local Rotary Clubs are working together to Rise Against Hunger. We'll hear the details of their concerted efforts. Next, we'll celebrate the almost half-century career with UVM's Royall Tyler Theater of Pat Orr, who has served as shop foreman, instructor and technical director. After that, we head to Northfield to enjoy a Pitter Patter Porter, a Pigman Lives IPA and an Early Riser Cream Ale at Good Measure Brewing. And we finish the morning sitting down with one of the biggest stars in the galaxy of WDEV All-Stars – Farmer Dave! 

Meet Ray Buchanan founder of Rise Against Hunger, and his team of everyday Rotarians that have put together more than 31milloin meals to help the hungry folks all over the world

"Logistics with a Purpose: Mickey Horner with Rise Against Hunger"Supply Chain Now Episode 338Sponsored by Vector Global LogisticsThis episode of Supply Chain Now features Mickey Horner with Rise Against Hunger. Mickey has held several positions with Rise Against Hunger over the past 12 years. Currently, he is responsible for developing the strategic vision for expansion of the volunteer meal packaging program within the United States, and overseeing the supply chain of the organization on a global level. He has extensive experience in developing and implementing various supply chain models throughout the US. Mickey has over 25 years of management experience, including more than 15 years with non-profits.Mickey earned his B.S. in Business Administration from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and his Masters of Business Administration from Wake Forest University. He also holds a Certificate in Non-Profit Management from Duke University.This episode was hosted by Scott Luton, Greg White, Enrique Alvarez, and Monica Aurora Roesch Davila. For additional information, please visit our dedicated show page at: www.supplychainnow.com/episode-338

Welcome to First Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Georgia! We hope you will be blessed by the ministry of the Word through our services! Click here to view the Concise service video on Youtube

Welcome to First Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Georgia! We hope you will be blessed by the ministry of the Word through our services! Click here to view the Concise service video on Youtube

After pivoting 180 degrees from a career in politics to working as a community engagement manager for the nonprofit organization, Rise Against Hunger, Robert speaks about how feeding the underserved is a crucial piece of the puzzle when creating self-sufficient communities worldwide. ___________________________________________________________________Get involved!https://www.riseagainsthunger.org/take-action/Connect with Robert on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertjwhitaker/Email him at rwhitaker@riseagainsthunger.orgConnect with me!Email: hello@globalhealthpursuit.comInstagram: @globalhealthpursuitWebsite: www.globalhealthpursuit.comAvid listener? Support us by becoming a Patron!Sign up here: Patreon.com/globalhealthpursuit___________________________________________________________________Music Credit~Wholesome by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5050-wholesomeLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Are you burned out by today's work realities? Are you looking for strategies and tactics to reduce burnout and enhance wellbeing? Are you ready to lead and live differently in order to have a more productive work life and a more fulfilled personal life? Our special guest Becky Jacobs answers these and other questions about leadership, wellbeing and empowering high performing teams. Becky Jacobs is the founder and Chief Engagement Officer of Simple Change, an organization dedicated to improving engagement and productivity by building healthy, high-performing teams. She has dedicated her career to the study and practice of personal and workplace productivity, successfully leading teams to greater efficiency, wellbeing and overall impact. Becky spent more than twenty years in senior leadership roles at various multinational companies, including Bank of America, Red Hat and Rise Against Hunger. She graduated from Old Dominion University with a degree in Business Management and completed her MBA at UNC Chapel Hill. Show Notes Episode highlights… What is well being in the workplace and why it matters so much today The concept of the juggling balls of life The reality that we bring our whole selves to work and organizations must support the whole self Wellness and cultures are not marketing bumper stickers in organizations What do your organizational and leadership behaviors saying about your culture and values? Are your behaviors expecting your people to choose between work and their family / relationships? It's essential to provide clarity for your people on distinguishing urgency Don't assess your culture unless you're committed to making changes The exhausting and burnout impact of remote working (and the truth that work more hours doesn't make you more innovative or impactful) Redefining and focusing on productivity versus hours worked Beware leading people today (and having work expectations) based upon the way you were lead (and the work expectations on you) decades in the past Are you paying your people for their time or for what they produce / create? Leaders don't have to solve everything (you only have to listen and empower your team in solving it) The more you engage your employees in coming up with solutions and ideas, the more you're going to empower them, retain them and enhance their performance Ask your people what's working, what's not working and what they'd like to see different Psychological safety at work is essential to get high quality feedback from your team Strategies for measuring well being Beware the cultural messages that work sucks (e.g. Thank God it's Friday) Millennials are generally more willing to speak up, provide feedback and ask for what they want (but will you listen and change?) The impact of COVID on our teams and the different leadership it requires Leadership requires balancing productivity and compassion What messages are you giving your children about work and life? Why pivoting emotionally and vulnerability are essential in leadership Leaders must model wellbeing for their team You can't pour from an empty cup Pick one simple change, make that normal and then pick another simple change Resources: Becky Jacobs Simple Change Website Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters MostBook

Today's episode is a Simply Tech LIVE interview featuring my co-host, Ali Mazaheri, and our special guest, Gina Loften. Gina is the Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft US, where she connects business leaders to unique perspectives that inspire them to drive the future of their business and accelerate and deliver digital transformational journeys built on deep customer knowledge and industry expertise.Prior to Gina's career at Microsoft, she led global initiatives for IBM's Watson, served as IBM's CTO for North America Consulting Services and Hybrid Cloud, and was a leader in IBM's Global Cloud Consulting Services business unit. Outside of Microsoft, she has served on the boards of George Mason Research Foundation, Museum of Life and Science, and Rise Against Hunger. Gina has addressed social topics that include how AI can help mental health among veterans, the true value of data for government and how open source can bring agencies to the cloud.Gina graduated from the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University with a degree in Electrical Engineering - a Historically Black Research University. Gina is incredibly passionate about Diversity & Inclusion, diverse thinking in the future of the workplace both internally and externally as it impacts people and organizations globally, and inclusion, inspiring today's youth to achieve their goals and inclusive work cultures that bring accessibility into a more modern workplace. Gina's thought leadership consistently finds a place across Women in Tech and Girls in Stem dialogues in the industry and across various communities.Key Takeaways:[07:47] Common trends Gina has seen within the industry following the cross section of technology and culture[10:43] Gina's career at IBM, and the main differences between tech giants IBM and Microsoft[12:49] The definition of the connected customer experience[15:59] How Gina's personal journey of adversity has helped her develop a perspective of empathy, compassion, and contribution[20:20] Specific areas of interest that energize Gina across technology and business[27:06] How those seeking career success can leverage experience and opportunities in the journey to leadership[26:51] Gina's guidance to those looking for highly technical leadership roles in large organizationsMemorable Quotes:[17:10] “People don't get a vote on your dreams, so they don't get to take it away.”[17:40] “You gotta define what's important to you and have the courage to speak out when things aren't as they should be.”[22:26] “No matter what industry you are in, you're gonna have to have some digital skills to succeed.”[27:08] “Make sure that you practice courage and risk-taking.”Resources:Contact Gina Loften - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ginaloften/https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/diversity/programs/digigirlz/default.aspx https://workforce.org/Thank you for listening! --------------------------------Join the **New Monthly Newsletter** - Data Binge REFRESH: https://www.derekwesleyrussell.com/newsletter Interested in starting your own podcast? Some candid advice here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-start-podcast-3-step-gono-go-beginners-guide-derek-russell Learn more about the Data Binge Podcast at www.thedatabinge.comConnect with Derek: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/derekwesleyrussell/Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN1c5mzapLZ55ciPgngqRMg/featuredInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/drussnetwork/Twitter: https://twitter.com/drussnetworkMedium: https://medium.com/@derekwesleyrussellEmail: derek@thedatabinge.com

I had a great chat with former professional rugby player and now general manager of Zambrero, Darragh Fanning. Zambrero is a Mexican food franchise which started in Australia, with a focus on healthy and affordable food, which also helps to save world hunger. Every burrito or bowl purchased means a meal donated to someone in need with Plate 4 Plate, a charity partnering with Rise Against Hunger. To date they've donated over 40 million meals! Darragh talks about how he discovered Zambrero whilst in Australia in his mid-twenties, how his life changed afterwards and his professional rugby journey. Find out more about Darragh Fanning and Zambrero here:https://www.zambrero.com/Irish Business Builders is brought to you by Jetbooks. Jetbooks provides online bookkeeping services for Irish Businesses. For a free 15 minute online consultation, visit www.jetbooks.ieThanks for listening!

Join Matt, Phil, Chris Mixer (Director of Missions), and Sean Taylor (DUMC Foodstock Co-chair) as they discuss the upcoming Rise Against Hunger meal packaging event on November 14 & 15! Visit dunwoodyumc.org/foodstock to register and find out more info. Start the conversation here, then tune back in on Sunday for the sermon!

Give us a question you'd like us to answer on the podcast! https://forms.gle/9zaPtSSQM8PRMtq4A To sign up for Alpha Course: https://community-christian.net/alpha Give to Rise Against Hunger: https://community-christian.net/giverise

Give us a question you'd like us to answer on the podcast! https://forms.gle/9zaPtSSQM8PRMtq4A To sign up for Alpha Course: https://community-christian.net/alpha Give to Rise Against Hunger: https://community-christian.net/giverise

As organizations return to in person workspaces, leaders are tasked with the responsibility of encouraging productivity without increasing already high employee stress and anxiety. Today’s guest, Becky Jacobs, Founder and Chief Engagement Officer of Simple Change, believes balancing compassion with the push for productivity is the key to facilitating this transition with minimal negative impact on the workforce. With more than 20 years in senior leadership roles at industry giants such as Bank of America, Red Hat, and Rise Against Hunger, Becky is uniquely poised to help organizations improve engagement and productivity by building healthy, high performing teams. Becky’s company, Simple Change, offers support, inspiration, and encouragement on the path to transformational change in organizations through leadership coaching, workshops, keynotes, and consulting. In this episode, Becky discusses the considerations organizations should keep in mind while transitioning employees back to the office and how important flexibility and creative solutions are during this unprecedented time. She mentions a few missteps she’s seen and offers some advice for leaders during the transition to both take care of themselves and their teams. Becky explains what she means by balancing compassion with productivity and how leaders can communicate effectively and minimize employee anxiety. Lasty, she implores leaders to look ahead to what is necessary in the new normal, rather than looking backward at how we can return to pre-COVID operations. For links mentioned in today's episode visit: http://bit.ly/Redesignpod To join the Redesigning Wellness Community visit: https://www.facebook.com/groups/rdwellnesscommunity/

Philanthropy Misunderstood by Bob Hopkins The word PHILANTHROPY isn't new, but many think being a philanthropist is about money. In Bob Hopkins' new book, he assures us it IS NOT. He and 100 of his friends define, by way of their good deeds, that philanthropy is about LOVE OF MANKIND. Philanthropy Misunderstood is a 256-page coffee- table book that will surely entertain and inform you. You won't want to put it down. It is colorful and exciting. “Bob Hopkins Introduces us to 100 plus new best friends…people like you and me who give of themselves who actually LOVE others. What a joyful time Bob shares with us. Optimism and hope emerge from every page. Each person's story sparkles. Each one makes us prouder to be fellow ‘homo-sapiens'.” Dr. Claire Gaudiani, philanthropist, author and international lecturer. Bob recalls his first experience with his mother when he was five years old in Garden City, Kansas as they delivered groceries to a poor family during the holidays. He remembers the pat on the back he received from someone for doing good. “Maybe it was God,” he recalled. For more information, go to Philanthropy Misunderstood.   Read the Interview Hugh Ballou: Greetings. Welcome to this episode of The Nonprofit Exchange. Wow. This is going to open your mind to a whole new world. I just met Bob Hopkins recently on a recent trip to Dallas. Some of our previous guests that started Barefoot Winery said, “You have to meet Bob.” When I was in Dallas, I rang him up, and we met. They had shared his book with me called Philanthropy Misunderstood. I thought it was a nice book. When I started digging into the stories and what Bob knew about philanthropy, I said, “We have to share this with other people.” Bob, welcome to The Nonprofit Exchange. Tell people a little bit about you and your passion. Bob Hopkins: Thank you, Hugh. I am so honored to be invited to be here with you as your guest today. I am glad to know that there are some other people in the book in your audience today. I am an older person. I have been around for a long time. Every 20 years, I ask myself, “What am I doing, and where am I going?” I have divided myself into four different segments of my life. I am on the last 18 years. I give myself another 18 years to live. I am trying to figure out what to do, so I am probably going to go to a seminar called PSI in June to find out what I'm going to do next. But, Hugh, I have been involved with this word “philanthropy” for the last 45-50 years. I learn more about what it means all the time. Then I became confused and realized that what I thought philanthropy was is not. Or maybe it is part of, but that's why I had to dig into it and tell stories of 108 people who actually do philanthropic things for other people. That's what this book is about. Hugh: How long have you been engaged in the nonprofit arena with leaders and different kinds of organizations? Bob: I came to Dallas in 1984. I had just been involved as the director of development on the National Council of Alcoholism and learned all about this word called “fundraising” and philanthropy. Found out that the two of them are together as one word and one meaning, and they are also separate things. Some people get them mixed up. They think that fundraising is about money, but so is philanthropy. I have learned that philanthropy can be about money, but largely not. Instead, it's doing good things for others. That's how I got involved with this. I have been in Dallas for 38 years, and I have been working in raising money and now writing a book. I did a magazine called Philanthropy in Texas for a while. Every decade, I learned a little bit more about what that word means. Hugh: Bob, you and I are in our mid-70s, we'll say. We could be sitting back, chilling, and not doing anything. But you and I have a passion for being engaged. Why aren't you sitting around? You're teaching classes, and the stuff that you're asking your students is really profound. You're active with some local charities still. Why is this important to you? Bob: I don't know. I do it because I don't know what else to do. I do play tennis, and I do ride horses. Those are two of my hobbies. I do spend time doing those two things every week, so it's not like I'm constantly thinking about philanthropy, even though I have a horse named Philanthropy. I watch the USTA, and did you know the USTA is a nonprofit organization? They wouldn't survive if they didn't get contributions from people. They do good for others. I guess I'm involved with philanthropy pretty much all the time, even though it's my joy. I love doing it. I like talking about it. I like telling people about it. I like finding people who are doing different new things. I have found so many people over my 40 years that I decided to put them in a book. That's where Philanthropy Misunderstood came from. Hugh: I've had the joy of visiting a couple. The whole family does this water project. I won't get into it, but I want you to tell people. You called them up and said, “You have to meet Hugh.” I went over there, and it was an amazing visit with the whole family. I met the couple. I didn't meet the kids, but I have heard about them and their involvement. How about highlighting some of the stories? Let's talk about this one first; they will be guests on the show in June. It's folding paper. How does that help people? Bob: This is a crazy story, and it's a fabulous story. It's been so fabulous that it's been on Good Morning America. Neiman Marcus actually helped these girls sell these ornaments that are called origami that they make. Their church and schools make them with them. They have volunteers of hundreds of people who do nothing but help make origami, and they sell the origami for $50-$75 a piece. To date, they have raised over $2 million building water wells to actually give water around the world. 170 different water wells in 17 or 18 different countries. These girls are 15, 13, and 10 years old. They started it when they were 4, 5, and 6 because Daddy is part Japanese. He said, “We need to do some origami.” One thing led to the other. I'm not sure what the other is and how detailed you have to get in to find out what the thinking was of the parents, about involving their children in making these origami. That's their life. It is now their life. These girls are so smart because they are in a business. The 15-year-old is the president of the foundation. It's a cool thing. Hugh: I went to visit the whole house and the project. These volunteers come in to do the folding. It's engaged people in a focus. I don't know if the people come in and do that right now, but maybe the family can do more while the kids are out of school. There is another story in here that has a big picture, and it's Bonnie and Michael with Barefoot Winery. They were guests a couple months ago, and they were the ones who connected us. Tell the story about how you got connected and their story in the book. Bob: It's so interesting because Eric is actually the one who introduced me to Bonnie and Michael. He was the marketing director of Barefoot Wine. What Bonnie and Michael did, when they couldn't sell the wine, because nobody wanted to buy it because there was no place to buy it, and liquor stores didn't want to buy it because nobody was asking for it. They started giving it away to charities on the beach in beach towns, mainly starting in Florida. He would give it to them for free, and he said, “If you like it, go to your grocery stores and tell them to buy it.” Long story short, over 15 years, it became the #1 wine in America. Bonnie and Michael did it through giving wine away to charitable causes. I know that they had a marketing plan here. They said, “This is cause-related marketing,” which are words we used to use. They didn't really know it was philanthropy because they really wanted to sell wine. But it also made them feel good, too. I have taken Bonnie and Michael on a philanthropy trip to Mexico. So I got to watch them in action. It didn't have to do with wine; it had to do with building schools and painting houses for people in Mexico. It's a great story. They are in the book, and they should be. Hugh: The book is what you would call a coffee table book. It is hardbound. It's a $45 book. The quality of printing and the quality of the stories and an amazing layout and design. It should be $100. It's one of these treasures. My fourth book, which you have a copy of, Transforming Power, I teach people how to do things. I got to a point where I said, “Hmm, people want to be inspired by stories.” That's one of the premises behind this show is for people to tell their stories. There are people out there in the trenches who are struggling to make ends meet, to pull people together, to rally volunteers, to rally their boards, to rally their funders. Let's talk a bit about this title and what's behind it. What is the biggest misunderstanding on both sides, the funder and people seeking funding? Bob: It started with me. I was always told that philanthropy was about money. I started a magazine in Texas all about people who had money and gave it away. I would come into my staff and say, “I think we need to do Boone Pickens on the cover of the magazine. And the first question was, “How much money does he give away?” That was the common question. That was whether or not we were going to put him in the book on how much money they gave away. Finally, after a while, I realized, You know what? I know a lot of people who do so much more than writing a check. They're never recognized. I have this incredible woman from Houston named Carolyn Farb who spends 26 hours a day helping people learn how to raise money, but also build a hospital, and do all kinds of things. She is not known to be a huge giver, even though she is a giver; therefore, her picture would not be on the front cover of anything because of money. But it would be because of the word “philanthropy.” I realized, because of Carolyn, that I was talking to the wrong people. I needed to be talking to people who were in the book. The people in the book probably give money as well, but that wasn't what I wanted the focus on. I wanted them to tell me why they do what they do. Why do they build origami and build water wells around the world? They don't get any money for it, and they don't give any money. They give things. Well, they do give money because they raise money in their case. Bonnie and Michael, they give money, too. Instead, they gave wine. Chip Richey gives his time and effort and expertise in filmmaking. He's made lots of films about the Indians and Oklahoma. He did things for me for my philanthropy courses. There is Jordie Turk who was a student of mine, who volunteered on his own dime to come to Dallas and video my launch party. His name is not even on the piece. But he did it. He loved it. He is happy about it. I think that's what philanthropy does, moreso than what money does, is gives you joy. That's what everybody says. I get so much more out of what I did than what I gave. Hugh: Philanthropy is both. We have to run the organization. It's like having a car. You have to put gas in it. But there is a bigger piece to this. It's not money alone. Sometimes, people want to give money to save their conscience. They want to be doing something, and they're not really involved with it. So they want to buy a place. but buying a place and stepping up and working. Talk about the synergy of the two of those together. Bob: I'm a giver. But nobody would ever recognize me as a financial giver because I give $100 or $200 or $25 or $50 or whatever. I'm involved with a lot of organizations. I give not necessarily because I love the organization, but I love the person who is asking me. So I write a check in order to continue this relationship I have with this person as a friend or as a person who works with me. But when I actually take on a project and get my feet dirty and hands wet, and I go out and build something, or I paint, I come back tired, but for some reason, I give myself this secret pat on my shoulder and say, “You did good today, Bobby.” That's what happened to me when I was five years old. My mother and I went to give groceries in a trailer park in Garden City, Kansas. We walked away, and I felt this hand on my shoulder. It was patting my shoulder, and it said, “You did good today, Bobby.” I looked around, and there was nobody there. That is the feeling I have gotten because of giving my time and efforts, as opposed to writing a check to get you off my back to say, “Go. I put my name someplace.” They go, “Oh wow, $100. Thank you so much.” Then they come back the next year and do the same thing. There is just a real difference between the people who are in the trenches and the people who aren't. Hugh: I think it's important to give at any level. You say that you won't get recognized for $25 or $50. But if we get a lot of people who support us with their time, talent, and money—you give your time, talent, and money. There is a triage there that are all magnified by each other. If you have the synergy, if you have one person who gives $25, great. If you have 1,000 people who give $25, then you are paying salary and rent and some operating costs. Then you can rev up the engines and focus on your mission. I do find a lot of charities are compromised in many ways, but as you know, the story of SynerVision is we want to empower leaders to step up to the level that they can take the organization. I noticed some of your students are here from the class, and I want to talk about them as well. There is a synergy in those three. We spend time teaching leaders how to raise the bar on their performance so we know how to engage people who are philanthropic-minded. There is a whole lot of stuff there. Jeff, “Bob has given many of us the gift of learning to give, and it is life-changing.” What a quote that is. Talk about your students. I got to sit in on three classes last week. You're doing this Zoom group session education, which is quite remarkable. Your gracious spirit with them, and you see what's inside them, and you see potential that maybe some of them don't see in themselves. You said to me you challenged them to think about writing a eulogy, but you also mentioned doing some research on a nonprofit organization. There was a need for you to have to explain what that meant. What is a nonprofit organization? Talk a little bit about the class. Bob: I taught at a university here. I was teaching business and professional speaking. I decided I wanted to bring in my love and passion to the course. How am I going to bring my love and passion into the course when philanthropy is not in the syllabus? I included philanthropy in the syllabus. When you talk about business, you are going to talk about nonprofit businesses. They had never heard of a nonprofit business, even though they had. They knew what the Salvation Army and the Red Cross was. They knew what the Boys and Girls Club and Boy Scouts are. But they didn't know they were nonprofit organizations. They didn't know there were two million of them in the United States. They didn't know that half of the things that are positive about our country is philanthropy. I said, “Okay, let's have you all look at a nonprofit you are connected with.” They had no idea they were even connected with one. Landon is a new student this semester in my class right now. You asked him a question and asked him to talk when you were in my class. He did. He has a passion. You can feel it when he talks, about the things he does or can do and wants to do to serve people in our community. What I'm doing is there is maybe a small fire underneath them already, and I'm turning up the heat. They get passionate about it, and I empower them to do something about it once they learn about the fact that they can do it. They can do something on their own. Landon is one of those. He has several physical problems, and one of them is with his eyes. He picked a nonprofit organization that had to do with sight. He loves being involved with something he can connect with and understand. We all do. We all can. I am attention-deficit. There is a nonprofit organization and a school that has to do with children teaching children about dyslexia and Attention Deficit Disorders. There is something I can do. There is something everybody can do because we all have something that we are connected with, and we just didn't know it. Hugh: I was going to come in and say hello, and I stayed the whole class for two of them. We are recording this in the middle of being sequestered home. It's a time of refreshing, renewal, revising, and thinking about how when we go back to work, how we are going to define the new normal. We are leaders. We will reset the bar. I don't think we're going to go back to what we did before. Most of the people in the book didn't do things in ordinary ways; that's why they are in the book. These stories will inspire others not just to do the same old thing that they always had observed, but to think about what they bring to the table that's really special. What is the new opportunity? Bob, let's dig into some more of these stories. The book is divided into sections. Talk a little bit about why that is and why that's important. Bob: I had some great people working with me. Tom Dolphins from Kansas City designed the book. The book is so attractive that people want to find out what it is. It's not just the words, but it's the design. And Ann Vigola from Lawrence, Kansas started out as my editor. She happened to be a student of mine prior to that. Ann spent a lot of time figuring out how to organize this book because as being an attention-deficit person, I have all this information up here. I didn't know how to organize it. It was organized starting out with topics. We did One Day at a Time because I am a recovering alcoholic, and I wanted to talk a little bit about that topic. One Day at a Time also had to do with the AIDS epidemic. I had a brother who died of AIDS, and I wanted to focus on that. Every person in here has had something to do in my life. People would say, “You didn't do so-and-so. They are such a great person.” I said, “I know, but I didn't work with them.” All of these people, I worked with. All the stories in here, many of them, I had something to do with. Chip got me involved in the Phoenix Project, or maybe I got him involved, which was helping warriors coming home from war, connecting them with their spouses on retreats with horses and massages. Chip actually put together a video about this whole thing. I was involved with that. I went to the sweat lodges with these warriors and watched them connect and relate to each other. They are all stories I have been involved with in one way or another, and that's one story I like a lot. Jordie worked with me with the poorest of the poor kids in Mexico in Guanajuato, Mexico, Leon. We would go to the poorest school, and I would tell the teachers, “I want to take your kids for just an hour once a week and bring in 20 of my students. We will teach them philanthropy.” We watched children change because of a handshake. Jordie was able to volunteer his time, even though he was a student of mine, to put this fabulous piece together that is on YouTube. These are all stories we were able to capture. I wish I'd had these two men together with me for all of the stories because somebody's contacted me and said, “We need to make a movie here with these short stories.” Some of them still have long-lasting things. One of the people in Mexico said, “Just teaching a child to do a handshake and watch her change as a person week after week after week has changed me as a person,” she said. It does. When you do philanthropy, it changes you. Hugh: That's a great sound bite. Serving churches in music ministry for 40 years, I took many mission trips. We went to give them, but we came back having received a lot more than we tried to give away. There is a reciprocity to giving. You're a giver, but you're blessed by your giving. You're enriched by your giving. You give stuff away, but it really impacts you. When I am with you, you're just full of energy. You're this most passionate energized person purposeful person. What more about the book? Was there a story here delving into their story for the book, that really moved you more than any other story?   Bob: Yeah. We took a vote in our little group who put this book together, Ann, Tom, and I. There is one called “Bridging the Gap.” It is written by Morgan Herm. He is a schoolteacher. He talks about a bridge that is in Pennsylvania, where he lives. He would go and meditate there. On this bridge, he noticed that somebody had put in a letter between the planks. He opened the letter, and it was a letter that a person had written about them being able to become at peace with themselves because of meditating on this bridge. He put the letter back. Then there was a collection of letters that people would put in about how this bridge had brought them peace. It helped them through their divorce, or it helped them through their domestic violence. Morgan finally built a mailbox so people could put their letters in the mailbox. They could read each other's letters. That's philanthropy. That bridge serves as a philanthropic metaphor or example of peace and love. That's one of my favorites, and it's written so well because Morgan is an English teacher and writer. Hugh: Each contributor wrote their own story. Bob: They wrote their own stories. There was a couple of them that I wrote. There was a woman named Ruth Altschuter in Dallas who died last year. I wanted her in the book. So I went to her husband and said, “Would you write this for me?” He said, “No, I can't write anymore. I don't write.” I said, “Let me write Ruth's story, and you approve it.” He said okay. But most people wrote their own stories. One lady wrote a story that I told her should be 1,000 words. It was 5,000 words. I read it and realized I couldn't cut anything out. It's the history of Swiss Avenue, which is one of the oldest historic districts in the United States. She called it, “Philanthropy Built Her Neighborhood.” It's about how the mansions and big houses on Swiss Avenue became run-down in the ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s. You could buy a piece of property here for $10 or 25,000, which are now going for $2 million, back in the old days. She wanted to tell the story about how it became a fabulous neighborhood that is looked upon as one of the premier places in the United States. It ended up being 10 pages, and I left the 5,000 words. It is the longest story. It wasn't meant to be that way, but it's really well done, so I didn't cut it out. Hugh: You said here. Is it in Dallas? Bob: Yes. I live in that district. I live in the Swiss Avenue historic district. Hugh: Wow, that's fascinating. Landon has a question. Landon, you're live, so if you have your mic on, do you want to talk to us? Landon Shepherd: My question is, let's say I have an idea for a nonprofit I would like to start. But I don't really know exactly how or where to start it, or who to talk to about getting started with what I want to do. What would be your advice to some of the students who may have these ideas, but don't know how to work out these ideas? Hugh: That question is for your professor? Landon: Either one of you guys. Hugh: We'll tag-team on it. Go ahead, Bob. Bob: He's a student of mine, and I will definitely have a talk about that. But we have in Dallas and in Fort Worth and every major city in the United States a center for nonprofit management. The centers for nonprofit management in each of the major cities are where people can go learn about giving and learn how to start an organization, a 501(c)3, the who, what, when, where, why. They have seminars all the time. You can go to the Community Foundation of Texas. You can go to the Dallas Foundation. These are other avenues of where people are experts in this. Yes, there is a way to do that. Landon, I will tell you who to contact here in Dallas. Hugh: There are centers like that in every city. There is also a universal presence called SynerVision Leadership Foundation. We have a blue button at the top of our page labeled, “Join.” We have this community with all kinds of resources. Sometimes, we find how to do strategy or how to do leadership or how to do fundraising or how to do a brand or marketing. We put it in one contiguous process so you don't have to look around. You can look at our site and see if that suits you. Combine working in person with one of these centers Bob is talking about. That would give you a leg up. Bob, I know half of the nonprofits started each year will close ultimately. My take on it is they haven't done a good job of looking at the market to make sure it's not being duplicated, and they haven't really activated their board and set themselves up for success. What is your idea of why some of those close? Bob: You're right. They usually are started by people who don't have any information. They have a passion, which you have to have for the topic. People who have cancer, they want to start a nonprofit organization that has to do with cancer and raise money in the name of somebody. The Susan G. Komen Foundation was started by Nancy Brinker here in Dallas because her sister Susan G. Komen had breast cancer. She told her before she died, “I am going to find you a cure for this.” What Nancy did was she surrounded herself with experts who knew how to put together a nonprofit. Now, it is the best one in the world. I can tell you five or six right off the top of my head that didn't last for more than a year because they didn't have a board of directors, they didn't know how to do their paperwork, they started raising money without knowing how to be a fundraiser. Let me tell Landon and everybody this. There is an association called the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) in the United States. 35,000 professional fundraising people. I was a member of this group for most of my years as the president here in Dallas, and went to all the major conferences. There are conferences every year with AFP. There is a luncheon in most major cities every month that bring together all the people who raise money for the nonprofits in any city. There is a program with a speaker. It is a time to network, the people who have been there and done it before. That's how you do it. Hugh: Building a network around you. There is a peer-to-peer network, which is great, but you want to have a network of people who are even better than you. In my case, it's not hard to do. But hang around people who have been there, done that, and are experts. We have Jeffrey Fulgham watching who has a question. I want to allow you to talk. Jeffrey has been a member of that and is a certified fundraiser. Why is it important for you? You went through the certification process and studied development for so many years. Do you want to comment on the organization and why it's so important for people to understand now? Jeffrey Fulgham: I have always looked at it as a cliché of the good housekeeping seal of approval. I think this gets more important every day. This needs to be a profession, and it needs to be professional, not just in fundraisers but in nonprofits. There has to be some standard. We hope it's a standard of excellence, but there has to be some standard by which people can look and say, “Okay, this is an organization, or an individual, who is committed to certain principles, certain basic values, that transcend whatever it is that that organization is involved in.” Obviously, there are certain organizations whose values are going to be different than another one. But those values are related to the mission, not the operating strategy or the integrity of the entity or the integrity of the individuals working within it. What it allows us to do is create that standard. When someone looks at an organization, they have Guidestar to go to and the other metric organizations. But they also have a way to look and say, “Hey, this is what these organizations support. These are the values they support. This organization belongs to them and subscribes to these values. They subscribe to certain values. They set the standard.” Of course, the CFRE sets the standard as well. I think it's important for people who are giving, but also for people who want to get involved as volunteers, who want to go work somewhere. Do you want to work for an organization who subscribes to certain values and has that level of integrity? That's the main reason why I think it's all important. Hugh: Great. Before I let you go back into your listening mode, do you have a question for our guest today about philanthropy or about his book? Jeffrey: You know, that's the first time I've heard of this book. I'm definitely going to have to get a copy of it. I think it's really interesting that you mentioned that philanthropy is not necessarily about money. I always tell people that fundraising is not about money; it usually ends in money, but it's about relationships and about creating relationships that are long-lasting. Those relationships should transcend the money in that just because in a bad year, and we're having one by the way, where people are not going to make gifts to organizations they care about because they have to take care of their families and their friends. They will give more money to their church. They will make hard decisions about who they are giving to. If that person doesn't make a gift to my organization but they have been supporting me for 20 years, do I abandon them and ignore them because they are not giving money through our fundraising? No. Because I have a relationship with them that transcends their financial giving, or possibly their volunteerism. It becomes a different thing. Philanthropy is definitely a mindset beyond money, and I love that you are bringing that to the surface so people can understand what it's about. Hugh: I'm glad you asked me where to get the book. There is a website called PhilanthropyMisunderstood.org. You can find out how to get the book there. Bob: Thank you, Jeffrey. I want to know more about you as well. I am a member of AFP and of CFRE as well. There are a couple of people in the book who are CFRE, Scott Staub and Alfonse Brown. They have great stories in there not about fundraising. As you say, it was about relationship-building and the volunteerism they participated in as well. Hugh: Not everybody wrote a story in there. There is a story about a horse. Who wrote that? Bob: I wrote that one. It's my best story. I wanted Philanthropy to be on my front cover, and Philanthropy happens to be my horse. This woman by the name of Tracy Carruth, who is a big philanthropist in Dallas, breeds horses. I happen to have an Arabian horse. She breeds Arabian horses. Napatoff, who is her most beautiful world champion horse, was retiring. Before he died, or left the breeding ring, she wanted to make sure that I got an offspring from Napatoff. She gave me the semen from Napatoff to go into Sherry Rochesta, who was my Arabian. Through that, we got a beautiful horse that I named Philanthropy. I wanted to start that as my first story. My editor didn't like it, so we put it into the back. I am there with Tracy Carruth and our horses. That's the story. Hugh: The standards for everything, the quality of the writing and the photographs, the design of the book, all of these sections in the book. You start out with Circle of Influence. Jeffrey headed us that way. It's not about money; it's about relationship. When you and I had lunch recently, we talked about relationship. You now have a relationship with all these people, and they wanted to be in your book. Why is relationship important to our work? Relationship in our teaching at SynerVision, it's the underpinning of leadership and ministry, and it's the support for communications. Funding and philanthropy happens as a result of relationship. Say a little more about relationship and how it's important. Bob: Debbie Mrazek, who is one of the writers, wrote a part in the book called “Your Circle of Influence.” Who are all those people who will take care of you, who will take you to the airport and lend you sugar and tell you where to get the plumber? I had my students write down 100 people they know, wheedle it down to 25, and then 15 who will be in their circle of influence. I teach networking. It's not what you know; it's who you know. That's the first thing and last thing I say in my classes. My students, I say, “How many people do you know?” They didn't know 100 people. One of them knew seven. My family members. No, I don't want to meet anybody. No, I don't need people. I said to the class, “I'm going to take students to Nepal. It will cost $1,500. How many of you can raise the money to make it happen?” I went to this girl who said she knew seven people, and she didn't want to know any more people. She said, “I don't know anybody. I don't want to know anybody. I guess I'm not going to Nepal.” I said, “I guess you're not.” We took people to Nepal because my students most of the time realize that they have a great number of people around them who care about them, but there is a methodology of how to influence people and how to cultivate people and how to get them to be your friends, and more than friends, how to be a good friend, how to help people, and actually go around hunting for things to do for people. That's what I want my students to become. I don't think that we get anywhere in life without others. That's one of the key principles that I teach in my communication classes. Hugh: Your class that I sat in on is really about communications. You're really promoting good thinking skills. Communication to me is based on relationship. We can send a whole bunch of emails that nobody reads. It's not about data. Bob: No. I send emails, and I pick up the phone. We used to send faxes. We used to go knock on their door. We used to drive by. I think that this time right now, we're trying to figure out how to continue life in solitude since we are told to stay home, and stay home alone. I think we're finding this television and this computer even more important than ever since this is how we're able to stay in touch, through this cell phone we love so much and this computer. However, I can go next door and knock on the door and take them a cake and say, “I was thinking of you and realize you may not have any desserts at your house today.” Sometimes, I'll have my lawnmower man come out and next door, they don't mow their lawn very much. “Go mow their lawn. I'll pay you.” The people come home and say, “I can't believe you had somebody mow my lawn.” It was a philanthropic idea I had, was to love mankind and do something for the person next door. Hugh: Bob is an inspiration. My ideas are popping. You have 100 creative ideas every six seconds. You're prolific. In these stories, 100+ stories from people who helped change the world. We are all doing our part. It's not one person. But one person can start a movement. My friend in Lynchburg, he was the person who founded Stop Hunger Now, which is now Rise Against Hunger. Before we had a setback with coronavirus, they were on target to package 750 million meals. Their vision is to end hunger in our lifetime. It's not just about packaging the meals; it's about a lot more than that. One person thought of that and founded it, and it's now a major movement that will exist long past his lifetime, which is what he wanted. It's a legacy. What are the legacy possibilities for any of us who say, “I want to do something for humankind and have it keep going?” Are there possibilities for all of us? Bob: I always say, “What are you doing for the person who just passed away in your life? What will you do for your mother? What will you do for your father?” I got involved with building schools in Nepal with Don Wilkes. Let me tell you about Don Lueke since he is here. Don Lueke is from Kansas City; he and I met probably 30 years ago because he taught children at his school about giving. It's the Junior Leadership. It's similar to my PAVE program (Philanthropy and Volunteers Education). For the last 15-20 years, he and a man by the name of Steve O'Neill, who are businesspeople in Kansas City, take time out of their week every week to teach children at the Catholic school where their children go about giving back. This has become so sophisticated that this last year, I was a part of a seminar they had at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, where all of his students, maybe 30 or 40 of them, came and gave presentations on nonprofit organizations they had helped in the community. He does similar things to me: empower young people to get involved in the community. There is a double page about him and this group he is doing it with. Don Wilkes in Nepal for example. What can you do to honor somebody? He said, “If you can make a contribution of a couple thousand dollars, we will put someone's name on a classroom in a school we are building in Nepal.” I called my brother and sister and said, “For $2,000, we can put our mother's name on a classroom in Nepal.” My brother says, “I want to see a video of what it looks like.” I sent him the video, and he called me back immediately and said, “Let's do it.” My sister said, “Sight unseen, let's do it. We want to honor our mother.” For $2,000, our mother's name is on a school's room in Nepal. I know because I went to Nepal to see it. I had to go see my mother's name. When I got out of the car, and the children were clapping for me because I was amongst them, because I gave a simple $2,000 and put my mother's name on the deal, gave me such joy that we decided to do it again. I put my cousin's name and my aunt's name in another classroom on another school they are building in Nepal. That is a way you can provide not necessarily for yourself, but for somebody else that meant a lot in this society. Everybody we run around with meant a lot in this society. They did something in their lives that changed the world. Hugh: Absolutely. That's an inspiration. Are you willing to entertain questions if I open everybody's mic? Bob: Absolutely. Eric Groover: Bob, this is Eric Groover from the University of North Texas. How are you doing, Bob? Bob: Hi, Eric. It's good to see you again. Eric: Hugh, I just want to say thank you for hosting Bob. Bob and I are new acquaintances through some of our students at the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science here at the University of North Texas in Denton. Just north of the DFW metroplex. Bob was actually scheduled to come speak to some students on our campus last week, and unfortunately we had to cancel that. Bob was gracious enough to bring up some of the books that we purchased for our students and faculty and staff. We spent a few minutes violating the university's shelter-in-place order, visiting in my office for 20-30 minutes. I just wanted to say, Bob, that it's been lovely watching you today and hearing your stories again. Just a huge thank-you to Hugh for hosting this event. He does you credit, and I'm glad for that. Thank you very much. Hugh: Thank you, Eric. Blessings. Nancy Hopkins: This is Nancy Carol Hopkins. Yes, I am Bob's sister. I am watching from Tucson, Arizona. Obviously, Bob has been an influence in a lot of people's lives, including mine and our younger brother. I wanted to make a comment on the volunteerism point. First of all, Bob gets asked frequently how come he stays so young and is so active at his age and has so much energy. If you look up and do some research on volunteerism, there is a lot of research that shows that volunteerism actually helps you medically, emotionally, physically, keeps you young literally. It does. There is medical research to prove that. If anybody wants to know how Bob stays so young and energetic, it has nothing to do with vitamins and pills he is taking. It has everything to do with the work that he does. Hugh: Very helpful, Nancy. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for sharing that. Nancy: You're welcome. Hugh: You don't have to take tonic if you hang around Bob Hopkins. Nancy: That's right. You don't. Hugh: That's so rich. By the way, our governor slapped a stay-at-home order on us until June 10. The exception is volunteerism. If you volunteer for a charity, you can get out and do it. That was a good thing, I thought. Penny Rambacker: Hi, this is Penny Rambacker. How are you doing, Bob? Bob: They said Penny. I was hoping it was you. Penny: I'd like to make another comment about the idea of having purpose. I think Bob has a purpose, as many of us philanthropists have. I have been reading a book recently that said two of the things you can do to be the happiest in life are 1) to have a purpose and to feel needed, and that keeps you young and alive, and 2) is to be grateful. Those of us that practice gratitude and appreciate what we have are oftentimes people who are giving because they have seen other people with greater needs than their own. They become grateful for all of the things they have in their life. I had a huge gratitude lesson back when I first got into this. That was when I visited the garbage dump in Guatemala City. I saw children living there. It really touched my heart, and I had to do something about it. I found my purpose, and I felt grateful for the life I have. Two good things to think about when you are doing philanthropy. Yep, that's me and my kids. Hugh: What page is that on, Bob? Bob: Pages 48-49. Hugh: Love it. Great stories. Penny, where are you? Penny: I am in Naples, Florida. We work in Guatemala. My charity has built 57 schools in the mountains of Guatemala. We also sell handicrafts. We just sent an e-newsletter telling people to visit our store online. It's virus-free. You can go shopping for a greater good. If you want to go shopping, we have great things at Store.MiraclesInAction.org. Hugh: Good for you. I have been to Guatemala, and people are very poor. They have lots of wonderful natural resources. They do wonderful clothes with all these designs that are brilliant. What are you showing, Bob? Bob: This is Don Lueke's page. He is on pages 82-83. Hugh: Don, do you want to comment? Don Lueke: This is a great opportunity to showcase your work, Bob, and the work of everybody in that book. I appreciate the efforts on your part. Just want to add. We talk about having a purpose. I think that is what makes us get up every day, or at least get up quicker. I don't know if I have a lot more to add. I'm humbled by everybody's story in the book, so I think I am just one of many. Hugh: Thank you for sharing. I am humbled being part of Bob's network. *Sponsor message from Wordsprint* Bob, what is a parting thought you'd like to leave people with today? Bob: I am going to do another book called Philanthropy Understood. It's going to be new people. Some of the old people we want to expand upon, too. I'd like to do something with TAMS. I think TAMS is a great program that Eric Groover has been a part of before. There are so many people that I have been thinking about. That's what I'm doing right now, and that's why so many people are here who are in the book because I sent them a memo telling them all that we are needing to stay together on a monthly basis. We did have a man pass away yesterday in the book, Charles Lowe. He has spent 45 years working with the disease called neurofibromatosis, and I worked for them for eight years. I was able to tell all of the people in the book about his passing. So many people responded who didn't even know Charles, but did know his article in the book. I think the more we create this circle of influence around ourselves, the richer our lives are going to be. Also, the kinds of people we depend upon, I always try to find people who are smarter than you who have more things going on for them because they will lift me up instead of running around with people who will pull me down. My challenge to everyone is to continue these kinds of groups, and continue doing good together. That is the real fun about philanthropy and being volunteers. It's a togetherness thing. I did go with Penny to Guatemala, and I loved the experience. She is in the book. I went with her 20 years ago. I included her in the book because that experience changed my life 20 years ago. It's one of those many things that make up a person. It's so much fun going back in my history, in my family. My sister is the greatest philanthropist of our family. She is doing more than me even. I think that's the joy. I don't even say it's happy anymore; it's a joy to walk out on my front porch and say, “God, take me. What is my next step? What do I have to do next?” You know what. Somebody picks me up and takes me. I think that's the lesson I have learned more than anything: you have to be willing and tell people. Hugh: Bob Hopkins, you are a gift to humankind. Thank you so much for being our guest today. Bob: Thank you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Barry Mattson of Rise Against Hunger shares a vision for ending world hunger–and how he came to be part of the movement. At the Compass Podcast, we identify the Divine in the everyday. For more episodes, visit: www.umc.org/podcasts

"Logistics with a Purpose: Mickey Horner with Rise Against Hunger" Supply Chain Now Episode 338 Sponsored by Vector Global Logistics This episode of Supply Chain Now features Mickey Horner with Rise Against Hunger. Mickey has held several positions with Rise Against Hunger over the past 12 years. Currently, he is responsible for developing the strategic vision for expansion of the volunteer meal packaging program within the United States, and overseeing the supply chain of the organization on a global level. He has extensive experience in developing and implementing various supply chain models throughout the US. Mickey has over 25 years of management experience, including more than 15 years with non-profits. Mickey earned his B.S. in Business Administration from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and his Masters of Business Administration from Wake Forest University. He also holds a Certificate in Non-Profit Management from Duke University. Upcoming Events & Resources Mentioned in this Episode: Subscribe to Supply Chain Now: supplychainnowradio.com/subscribe/ Connect with Scott on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/scottwindonluton/ Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/gswhite/ Connect with Enrique on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/enrique-alvarez-64332a2/ Connect with Monica on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monica-roesch-d/ SCN Ranked #1 Supply Chain Podcast via FeedSpot: tinyurl.com/rud8y9m SCNR to Broadcast Live at AME Atlanta 2020 Lean Summit: www.ame.org/ame-atlanta-2020-lean-summit SCNR on YouTube: tinyurl.com/scnr-youtube The Latest Issue of the Supply Chain Pulse: conta.cc/39CqaRx 2020 AIAG Corporate Responsibility Summit: tinyurl.com/sd8pb8h 2020 AIAG Supply Chain Summit: tinyurl.com/yx5asq35 Supply Chain USA 2020: tinyurl.com/yx4c2v2q Supply Chain Now Listener Survey: forms.gle/76Q2ynmidNdRCgzM7 Check Out News From Our Sponsors: The Effective Syndicate: www.theeffectivesyndicate.com/blog U.S. Bank: www.usbpayment.com/transportation-solutions Capgemini: www.capgemini.com/us-en/ Vector Global Logistics: vectorgl.com/ APICS Atlanta: apicsatlanta.org Verusen: www.verusen.com/ ProPurchaser.com: tinyurl.com/y6l2kh7g Supply Chain Real Estate: supplychainrealestate.com/ This episode was hosted by Scott Luton, Greg White, Enrique Alvarez, and Monica Aurora Roesch Davila. For additional information, please visit our dedicated show page at: www.supplychainnowradio.com/episode-338

In this podcast, I interviewed Courtney Hudson, Distribution Warehouse manager with Rise Against Hunger. They...

There are over 820 million people who are chronically malnourished in the world (that's about 1 in 9 people). Andy Morris from Rise Against Hunger and FastPrayGive helps break down what that means, how you can talk to your students about the issue, and what we can do to help fight it. Youth ministry is not a solo sport, but far too often youth workers feel like they have to do it alone. We are here to help with that. Every week some of the top United Methodist youth workers offer free resources from their real-world ministries. You’ll find everything from games to downloadable lessons to coaching on how to put together a budget. We hope that when you get online to work, you don’t feel like you have to do it all yourself. We want to be the first place you turn for games, lessons, ideas, coaching, and personal devotions.

Paul Ferraro and guest host Amir Fouladgar sit down with Matt Stamper, EVOTEK CISO & Executive Advisor. Matt is a wealth of information and you will get his insights on the security profession, challenges, and opportunities as it touches almost everything “under the sun” but it’s all about a well-informed business decision in the end. And have you ever wondered what a CISO does to disengage? Do they ever really disengage? You decide. “Taking a business perspective to security is one of the things we bring to bear, security is not technology, security is not process, security is not people, security is a combination of all of those things layered over with the important business context of the organization” --- Matt Stamper, EVOTEK CISO and Executive AdvisorMatt discusses his favorite project of 2019, what’s ahead for 2020, “reasonable security”, and if you want to see, hear, and talk with Matt come to our EVOTEK Security Summit Jan 17, 2020 or see him at the WSJ Cyber Security Symposium Jan 10, 2020 in San Diego!“It’s a tremendous and significant resource to be able to bring Matt to our clients… it’s instant credibility, because he’s done it” – Amir Fouladgar, EVOTEK Regional Vice PresidentAnd lastly on Dec 19, 2019 EVOTEK held its 3rd annual Rise Against Hunger event, EVOTEK CEO Cesar Enciso stops by our podcast to discuss why these events are important and how giving back to the community is foundational to EVOTEK’s culture.

This episode is a double whammy! The first 3 quarters are the classic format, seats on couch in studio. Stay tuned after our convo to hear clips from our last live show of 2019!Rise Against Hunger is an international hunger relief organization that distributes food and life-changing aid to the world’s most vulnerable, mobilizing the necessary resources to end hunger by 2030."Get Involved to End World Hunger! Regardless of your location on the map, age, schedule or resources, we believe you can make a positive difference in the fight against hunger. Even seemingly small contributions can add up to a BIG impact. We’d like to invite you to take action, donate and join our growing movement to end hunger worldwide by 2030."Stuff referenced in the ep:The 2020 elections are upon us, make your decisions wisely by reviewing the COMFORT FOODS OF THE DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES Be sure to get tickets to our next show on January 10th at Kramerbooks & Afterwords Cafe with SPARC!Do you want to date someone you've heard on the show?! Stay tuned and travel to DC to bid on a date with one of us, while supporting the nonprofit of your dreams! Info on the Data Comic Auction (date - a - comic) comin atcha real soon..Instagram: dogoodfeelgoodshowtwitter: @dogoodshowgmail: dogoodfeelgoodshow@gmail.comShout-out to our real life sponsor: Sage and Sunshine Designs. Don't forget to use promo code: dogood for 15% off your first purchase and NOT free-shipping!DoGoodFeelGood is a Grassroots Comedy DC podcast See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sunday, December 8, 2019 | 2nd Sunday of Advent (abbreviated service followed by Rise Against Hunger meal-packing) | Michelle preaches from John 1:6-8, 19-28, as we continue our Advent series entitled "And He Shall Be Called." Bret and the band lead us in "O Come O Come Emmanuel" and "Rising Sun".

Once again RadioRotary interviewers haunted the halls of a Rotary International Convention, which in 2019 was in Hamburg, Germany. Our team found many fascinating stories about the projects of Rotarians and representatives of other organizations that are trying to do good in the world. These include fighting hunger in third-world nations; uncovering the roles Rotarians played during the Nazi reign inGermany; providing dictionaries of all kinds around the world; and raising money to end present-day slavery. The program concludes with an in-depth interview with Barry Rassin, Rotary International president for the 2018-19 Rotary Year, focusing especially on his work in providing water to Haiti. Learn more: Rise Against Hunger: https://www.riseagainsthunger.org/ Rotary in National Socialism: https://memorial.d-1800.org/ The Dictionary Project: https://www.dictionaryproject.org/ Cycling from Chai to Hamburg: https://www.thehindu.com/life-and- style/travel/chennai-based-cyclist-naresh-kumar-is-pedalling-against-bonded- labour/article26931535.ece Barry Rassin: https://www.rotary.org/en/2018-19-rotary-president-selected Rotary International: https://www.rotary.org/en CATEGORIES Humanitarian Service International Programs Literacy Nutrition Rotary International Water Projects --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/radiorotary/support

Episode 11: Live from the ASAP Student Leadership Summit   On November 9, 2018, more than 200 ASAP students and their faculty and staff came together at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for a day of motivational speakers, interactive activities, a transfer fair with more than 30 four year partner institutions and a service project in which they packed over 20,000 meals for Rise Against Hunger.     In this, our first episode that brings you live on location recording, you’ll hear directly from the students, faculty and staff who make this program so successful and get a chance to learn first hand about this program.   Call To Action Visit our web site at http://www.ivytech.edu/asap to learn more. Share this episode with a student or parent who might be interested in the ASAP program.  If you work at Ivy Tech and would like to get more involved with your local ASAP program, reach out to the ASAP program coordinator/director on your campus or to your Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs.   Get In Touch! Thanks to all of the students, faculty and staff who spent a few minutes talking with me today and to President Ellspermann for giving her perspective on the ASAP program. You can connect with Kara Monroe on twitter @KNMTweets You can connect with Anne Valentine on twitter @indypenny Reach out with show ideas, comments, or questions via twitter or at our email address - ourcollegeyourvoices@ivytech.edu. Check out show notes, listen to past episodes, and get instructions on how to access the podcast on our website at http://www.ivytech.edu/podcast. Thanks as always to Jen Edds at The Brassy Broadcasting Company. Jen provides our theme music, recording, and post production services.

We kick off live show week with a great story. How about a blogger who owed thousands in student loan debt and turned things around so much that only a few years later she's earning six figures every month and lives on a sailboat? Michelle Shroeder-Gardner joins us live from Orlando, Florida, to help us kick off our Three-Town Tour! But that's not all. Plus, because we're live, we've brought a TON of financial and community stars with us. Helping TIAA support difference makers in the Orlando community, from Rise Against Hunger we welcome Jason Haulbrook. Plus, in a our headlines segment, Josh Elledge from Savings Angel joins us to talk about saving money at hotels; from DIY.FUND, Eric & Wendy Nissan talk about innovating in the Orlando area; helping us answer your questions, Paula Pant from Afford Anything joins us, plus the ladies from the Money Millhouse, Ellie Kay and Bethany Bayless. We're also excited that in every city we had a Stacking Benjamins band! In Orlando we were helped by the woman behind Planting Money Seeds, Miranda Marquit, and the man from the Inspired Money podcast, Andy Wang. ...and of course, we were joined on stage by our guest co-host, the co-founder of Blooom, Chris Costello. It's a really fun episode in front of a live crowd. Thanks to Blooom for supporting Stacking Benjamins and our tour. Get a one month free at stackingbenjamins.com/blooom and enter promo code SB for a month free! Thanks to TIAA for supporting Stacking Benjamins and our tour. Find out what type of difference maker you are at TIAA Difference Maker 100.

Here are four more stories of people putting service before self from the 2018 Toronto Rotary International Convention. Sole 4 Souls not only distributes shoes and other clothing around the world, but also creates sustainable jobs in third-world nations. World Bicycle Relief does not provide relief for bicycles, but provides bicycles for relief of travel problems in places with bad roads or none. The specially designed bicycles are strong enough for bumpy rides and easy to repair if needed. Rise Against Hunger recognizes that there is food enough for every person on the planet, but 815 million people, many of them children, go hungry because food is unequally distributed. The volunteers at Rise Against Hunger work on assembly lines to produce nourishing food packages; often the volunteers are Rotarians. Rotary is most known, however, for its steps to end polio now, which is discussed by Al Bonney of Traverse City Rotary. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/radiorotary/support

Sunday, April 8, 2018 | We gathered for a 30 minute worship service before setting our hands to work in packing 10,000 meals with Rise Against Hunger to combat world hunger. Rev. Michelle Matthews preached a short 5 minute homily introducing the new sermon series entitled "Fake News: Finding Ultimate Truth in What's Simply Unbelievable" that began Sunday, April 15, 2018, and the band led us in "Glorious Day" and "Welcome Table".

Kate sits down with two Elevation members to discuss a recent weekend trip to Camp Egan! Then, Ryan and Kyle talk about the meal packaging event for Rise Against Hunger. Like our Facebook page, First United Methodist Church Stillwater, and also follow us on Twitter @FUMCstw for updates about First Church Cast, along with posts from the life of FUMC Stillwater

Rise Against Hunger is an international hunger relief organization that distributes food and life-changing aid to the world’s most vulnerable.

Rod Brooks has served as CEO of Rise Against Hunger since July 2006. He provides leadership and direction toward the achievement of the organization's mission to end world hunger, focusing on service programs, fundraising, financial and administrative management. Rod has spent nearly twenty years working in the non-profit sector. Prior to directing Rise Against Hunger, Rod worked for 16 years creating Exploris (now titled Marbles Kid's Museum), an interactive museum about the world, ultimately serving as Vice President for Administration. Rise Against Hunger is driven by the vision of a world without hunger. Our mission is to end hunger in our lifetime by providing food and life-changing aid to the world's most vulnerable and creating a global commitment to mobilize the necessary resources. Driving Rise Against Hunger's work is the recognition that ending hunger is more than just feeding people, which led Rise Against Hunger to focus its feeding programs in areas where we can have a real impact and expand its hunger-fighting programs beyond meal packaging and distribution. Our organization's approach to ending hunger centers on mobilizing a global network of hunger champions. Another core focus of Rise Against Hunger is responding to crises–both natural and man-made.Another core focus of Rise Against Hunger is responding to crises–both natural and man-made. Our third approach to eradicating hunger centers around grassroots community empowerment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ray Buchanan: A vision to end world hunger  In 1998, envisioning a world without hunger, Ray Buchanan — a United Methodist minister — founded Rise Against Hunger (formerly Stop Hunger Now). After enlisting as a U.S. Marine during the Vietnam War, Ray Buchanan quickly recognized that accomplishing a mission required “commitment to something larger than yourself.” Over the past three decades, that principle has driven Ray's mission to eradicate world hunger. As a divinity graduate student at Duke University, Ray began working with the poor and hungry. He continued that work at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he received his master's degree in divinity, and as a pastor at ve rural United Methodist churches in Virginia. As a pastor, Ray joined the effort to save the lives of starving Ethiopians during the 1973-75 famine in Ethiopia. Driving Ray's hunger work is the recognition that “ending hunger is more than just feeding people.” So Rise Against Hunger “focuses its feeding programs in areas where we can see transformational development,” he says. Ray embodies the ideal of a servant leader. And he understands that volunteers and organizations working together can build a global movement that will stimulate the political will to marshal the resources that are essential — and available — to eradicate hunger. Rise Against Hunger has realized positive, annual growth mainly through expansion of the meal packaging program into new communities. Rise Against Hunger continues to further Ray's legacy of commitment both to domestic and international crisis response including relief from famine, natural and manmade disasters and health epidemics. More information at www.riseagainsthunger.org The Interview Transcript Hugh Ballou: Greetings, this is Hugh Ballou. This episode of The Nonprofit Exchange is great, like every one of them, but this one is a new friend who is right here in Lynchburg, Virginia. He has an extensive history of founding charities and taking them not just to the next level, but taking them to the top. In some cases, over the top. Ray Buchanan: Over the top would be a good way to put it. Hugh: Ray Buchanan. We are going to talk principally about a charity you formed that you originally called Stop Hunger Now. Now it's Rise Against Hunger. I want to let you tell a little bit about yourself. You had an idea about something. How did you put it together and start this, get people on board, and get it funded? There is a lot of people with ideas, and they don't really understand the sequence and how to put it together. Tell us about Ray. Thank you for being on The Nonprofit Exchange today. Ray: Good to be here. I appreciate the opportunity. I was in the Marine Corps during Vietnam. Came out of the Marine Corps. Did all my undergraduate work in about two and a half years. I then had a mentor who saw more in me than I thought was there. He said, “Where are you going to go to get your divinity degree?” I said, “I hadn't thought about it.” He said, “You need to go to Duke.” I said, “Riiight.” I literally thought he was kidding, but he knew people who knew people and I found myself at Duke. I immediately felt like I was way out of my league. I looked at all these young people coming in the first day of class, and I said, “I don't belong here.” What happened was very interesting. I stood in the corner of the student center of the divinity school, and I saw somebody come in the door who looked as miserable as I felt. He was about my age, older than the normal incoming divinity school student. We hooked up, and he had military experience, been to Vietnam as well. We started talking, and pretty soon another older student came in. The three of us gravitated together. What happened was that first semester at Duke, we became a support group. We didn't know that's what it was, but we were all married and had at least one child. In the course of that semester, we became best friends, closer than friends, and a support group like I said. We started in January. During the summer, of course we all wanted to pastor churches. According to the Methodist church, they had no churches available in North Carolina around Duke. I had the choice, and I chose doing beach ministry in Atlantic Beach, North Carolina. That sounds like a real cool gig, but we did most of our work with runaways and drug culture between one and two o'clock in the morning. I had a safe house for folks. One of our other friends served a small church in Raleigh. Ken, the first person I saw, came from Virginia. His superintendent needed pastors badly. He already had a church promised to him. He talked to his superintendent, and he said, “You have friends that might serve churches?” The process was so far along that we didn't get to visit, but he called. I learned my first lesson of humility. He asked me who I was and what I wanted, so I told him I'd been a youth minister in a larger church in North Carolina when I was in college. I had experiences as a chaplain's assistant. I really pumped myself up the way you would to a boss. He said, “I haven't been able to get up with your other friend. What kind of experience does he have?” I said, “He's a really nice guy. He doesn't really have as much experience as me, but he is really committed. He has a heart for the Lord, but he just hasn't had the experience.” The superintendent without missing a beat said, “Well, that is his subtlety. You obviously have much more experience. I'll give you the five churches, and I'll give him the four churches.” I learned real quick you don't need to do that. I started there because that is really the start of the journey we are talking about. The three of us were appointed to churches in rural Virginia, the south side of Virginia. We were right outside of South Hill. Between us we had 13 rural churches. Hugh: Oh, wow. Ray: And we were going to school fulltime, commuting an hour and a half one way. We learned really quickly about supporting one another. We learned that each one of us had gifts and graces that matched with the others. Where I was weak, my friend was strong. Where he was weak, our other friend was strong. Rather than compete, we decided we would work as a team. With those 13 churches, they were all small, struggling, had that feeling that many small Methodist churches have, that they weren't ministering. They were surviving. We decided to change that. For the four years that we were there, we made sure we worked as a cooperative parish. We weren't ever legally called that, but we had our churches go together. I remember the first thing we did is we gathered clothes for Appalachia. They had never been able to do anything as one or two churches, but as 13 churches, we filled a huge U-Haul truck. The men took it to Appalachia, and it made them feel so empowered to be able to do something. Hugh: As you're talking about that, that is a group of churches. The same thing could apply to a group of small charities. Ray: Absolutely. One of the key philosophies that I have always worked with is everything is built on partnerships. The more partners you could have involved, the stronger the program is. I'm not saying it's easier, but it really impacts more people, not only from the relief side, but also from the folks doing it. A key principle in what helps grow the organizations I have been a part of is we always seek partnerships. One example is with Rise Against Hunger, when I started, I knew nothing about international relief work. I had been doing domestic relief work for 20 years, and I've done a few things internationally. But how you work internationally is something I had to learn on the job. One thing I committed to was I was not going to start offices internationally because internationally, every place I wanted to work, there were already relief organizations on the ground. I didn't need to reinvent the wheel. I just needed to partner with the folks already there who had a better idea of what was necessary. Hugh: I won't let that one slip by. You're really understanding the synergy of collaboration. Let's do more stuff than we can do by ourselves. What year was that? Ray: I started Rise Against Hunger in January of 1998. What had happened was earlier than that, Society had a program called The Potato Project. That is the story of God's grace. Basically, Society of St. Andrew was an intentional community devoted to covenant living. What that means is in response to world hunger, we said we wanted to come together and demonstrate a lifestyle that the entire world could adopt, a just lifestyle, a fair lifestyle. We had two families that moved together onto a farm. We formed a covenant to live under the poverty level. When we started in 1979, that was about $2,000 a person. Hugh: Oh my goodness. Ray: If you put all the stuff in the world in a pile and everybody took a fair share, in 1979, it would come to about $2,000 a person. We made a covenant that we would live under that. We had nine people in our community: four adults and five kids. We said we would live under $18,000 a year. We never made it up to $18,000 a year. Basically, we lived under the poverty level out of choice, and we wanted to do that not only to identify with the poor, but also to demonstrate to the church especially that if we wanted to, we could live in a way that the entire world would be able to have a fair share. Hugh: The year you founded this organization was 1979. It was founded as Stop Hunger Now. Ray: The first organization was founded as Society of St. Andrew. I was the co-director of that from 1979-1998. In 1998, the reason I left Society of St. Andrew is because after 15 years or so, both my co-director and I were getting burned out. You start out with your hands working with the poor, shoulder to shoulder, but as the organization gets bigger and bigger, you get further away from the poor. We worked with the poor. Then we had staff that worked with the poor. Then we had managers. Then we had directors of the managers. All of a sudden, you look around and you have 70-80 employees in five or six states. You are so far you can't even see the poor. I started using my vacation time to go internationally to work in Africa and what have you so I could still get my hands dirty. Hugh: That's interesting. You get so far away from the work that is your passion. You get sucked in to the organization. There is a lesson in that, too. Ray: Absolutely. Hugh: When did you found this organization that is now Rise Against Hunger? Ray: 1998. Hugh: And it was founded as Stop Hunger Now. Ray: Yes, it was founded as Stop Hunger Now. The reason the name is important, the reason I founded it is because I did my work internationally, it hit me that although hunger in the United States is real and it's horrible and it's immoral, the richest country in the history of the world, that we have hunger doesn't make sense. The Christian church has to understand its responsibility there. As I worked internationally, there were opportunities that started to rise in doing stuff internationally. My passions fairly quickly turned to doing international work because although hunger is real in the United States, it's qualitatively different than hunger around the world. In the United States, no one dies of hunger. I challenge you to find a newspaper article that talks about the last time anyone died of hunger. They might have died of exposure or something, but it is such a rarity that it is not measurable. You go international, and after all these years, we have hunger down to 20,000 people a day. Hugh: A day. Ray: But when I started, it was like 30,000 people a day dying of hunger. There is no way to explain that. I have always wanted to have the biggest impact. So I started focusing internationally, and my partner, after you work together with somebody for 20 years, you know each other. He looked at me and said, “If you need money for that, you raise it. We don't have money for that.” At that time, Society of St. Andrew was doing $15 or 20 million worth of in-can work, and our cash budget was $1 or $1.5 million a year. We never had enough money. That is how Stop Hunger got started because I needed to raise $25,000 for a special project. I didn't have it. After my partner said, “Well, if you want it, you raise it,” which was the way we worked, I remembered that five years earlier, a donor had come to us, he and his wife. We had an office in a sheep shed. They came and sat around the table and said they wanted to help feed the hungry. His vision of hunger was a starving child with a bowl held up. At that point, my partner and I said, “We don't do that.” We didn't. We worked in the United States, using tractor trailers to haul produce to food banks on Native American reservations. We told him we really appreciate the offer, but that is not what we do. It's not a good match. But we have a friend who is chairman of the board of Food for the Hungry. We will give you his name, and you can connect. We broke the cardinal rule of you never give a donor away. We gave this donor away before we ever started working with him. Strange thing though. Every year, he would call us and say, “Do you have any special projects?” We'd say yes. He'd say, “Send me the bill.” For about $8-10,000. He would never give us a grant. He would never write us a check. But he would always give us a gift of about $10,000 by paying a certain bill. I remembered his vision. After five years, I went to our Director of Development and called him and said, “Give me this guy's name and number.” He said, “Let's meet.” I went to Virginia Beach, and we had lunch. I'll never forget. The timing was amazing. I drove from the big island, and he drove a couple of blocks and we got there at the same time. We met in the parking lot and walked into the restaurant. He said, “How are things going?” making small talk. I said, “Great. My daughter is having her first child.” He said, “Oh, you're going to be a grandfather for the first time?” The proper answer would be, “Of course I am. Yes, that's great.” I said, “No. When my son turned 21, he got a girl pregnant, so I have a grandson.” I said, Shut up, shut up, this is not the way you speak, shut up. It was like I had verbal diarrhea. We get in, and the maître d' seats us. He comes back and starts to speak. John waves his hands, saying, “No.” He leans across the table and he says, “Ray, last year was the worst year of my life. I went from being a millionaire to not being a millionaire. I got kicked out of my own organization that I started. My wife divorced me. My son had to get staggering drunk to tell me that he had gotten a young lady pregnant.” Hugh: Oh my goodness. Ray: This is before the menus get there. All that is simply to say we were on a level that you normally don't get to with a donor until you've cultivated them for years. That is how Stop Hunger Now got started to be honest. Hugh: We are recording live on Facebook. If you come by and wonder what this is, this is the Nonprofit Exchange. Every Tuesday at 2 EST, we talk with a thought leader about how they have made things happen. We are talking to Ray Buchanan about multiple charities he has founded. Ray, I have moved from using the word “nonprofit” a lot even though this is the Nonprofit Exchange. When I am in conversation, I use the word charity because we have tax-exempt charities. It's a business and a framework that has got a lot of rules and regulations for the IRS. My co-host, Russell, used to work for the IRS. He is very much up to date with how we need to comply with those. We need to have strong business principles. If you are listening to the podcast sometime in history, you can ask questions on the podcast page. We learn from other people's stories. Ray, when you are looking back and talking about starting these, Russell was just meeting with a gentleman that has got a hunger project. This is quite an amazing story, Russell, about Ray starting what was called Stop Hunger Now. Now it's called Rise Against Hunger. You had an idea. How hard was it to get it off the ground? How hard was it to get people to support it? How hard was it to get some funding? Ray: I want to say one of the first things that was my first organization, Society of St. Andrew, what made that successful is that when we started our first big project after three years, we fell into the Potato Project, which has taken unused produce otherwise thrown away, wasted. We were going to get that to the hungry across Virginia. The farmers agreed to give us the produce, but they had to get their money recouped on the extra labor, the bags, and the transportation. I could tell you a lot of funny stories about that. Long story short, they could get us potatoes that would normally be thrown away for three cents a pound, a phenomenal price. They said they could get us a million pounds of potatoes. A million pounds of potatoes at three cents a pound is $30,000. At that point, our two families were living on between $12-15,000 a year. That was all the money in the world. That first $30,000 came from the United Methodist Church seeing the vision and buying into the vision. I could talk for hours about the faithfulness in that because at that point, we were seen as a couple of hippies living on a farm. We weren't the bare-faced young guys. But they had enough faith to put the money into it. Once that project started, we had never realized that we were just scratching the surface. Farmers wanted to give us more and more produce, which required more money and more distribution areas, which required more transportation. Literally within two months, we were spending $30,000 to last us this summer, and after about a month and a half, we were out of money. It hadn't been misused, but the need was so great. We started having to raise money. The first thing we did was my partner's brother who had a business degree came to us and said, “You all need somebody to fund this.” Both of us understood that numbers are not my friends. I will be honest with you. I like letters. You can make words with letters, and words make sentences. Numbers are just numbers. We asked his brother to help us, and he graciously helped us. From day one, we ran the organization as a business. Hugh: From day one. Ray: From day one. That is one of the biggest benchmarks that I can point to as to why it worked. We didn't operate as a church. That sounds very horrible, but it's true. We operated as a business, not only in that the finances were handled to the penny. I can literally remember Friday evening at 6:00 realizing that David was still in the office. We operated in a sheep shed that previously held sheep in it. I would see the light on and say, “David, what are you doing?” “I can't get the books to balance.” I said, “What is it?” He said, “It's 27 cents. I cannot find it.” I said, “Here is a quarter.” He said, “Noooo, you don't understand.” That is the way we operated financially from day one, but we also realized that when we made a promise, it was a commitment. Unlike a lot of charities, church organizations, nonprofits, it was like, We will not get to it if we can when we can. If we said we were going to do something, we did it. The operating as a business is a key principle that every nonprofit ought to operate by. Hugh: Hey Russell, we teach this stuff. It works. How about that? Russell: The sweet spot is where fun and compliance and compassion come together. That's what I call the sweet spot. 27 cents by the way is not material if you have more than five dollars. Ray: I understand that. But the principle is the same. Russell: The principle is the same. It's like operating a business without losing who you are. If you have a mission and the mission is spiritual, you don't have to lose that. There is a point in there where money and spirituality mix. It's just understanding both the critical components to what you're doing so that you don't leave either out to the exclusion. They are not mutually exclusive in other words. Ray: Absolutely. To jump forward, when I started Stop Hunger Now, basically I met with this donor. I was asking him for $25,000. He had been giving us $10,000 a year for five years. When I got to the point where he said, “What do you really want?” and I told him I needed $25,000 to move three containers of food to North Korea and Africa, he said, “Fine, I'll write you a check Monday.” Any time you can take a donor from $10,000 to $25,0000, you know that is a home run. I was just going internally like Yes! I couldn't wait to go home and work out the logistics. He lookrd across the table and said, “Tell me, you said you were burned out and were thinking about leaving the organization a couple years earlier. What is it that you really want?” Not trying to be flip, but I said, “I want to feed more hungry people.” He is not the kind of man who accepts an answer like that. He said, “I asked you a serious question. Give me a serious answer.” I had to take a deep breath. I answered him, “What I'd really like to do is go to crisis areas around the world, find out what the real need is, come home, and cut through all the red tape and BS and get that need met as fast as possible.” He leaned across the table and said, “That's exactly my dream, with one exception.” I said, “What is that?” He said, “I'd want you to take the checkbook with you.” We finished the meeting. As we are getting in our cars, he looked at me and said, “Let's see if we can't make our dreams come true.” Two days later, he called and said, “How soon can the head of my foundation and I meet with you and your partner in Big Island?” Two days after that, four days after our original meeting, they were in our office. Both my partner and I knew what he wanted: to set up an international relief hunger organization. My partner and our wives and I have nonstop been figuring out how to make it work. At that point, Society of St. Andrew had an 18-year track record. We were known throughout the United Methodist Church, working in all 48 contiguous states, constantly went up to the Hill to give testimony on hunger and gleaning. I was on the House Select committee and a bunch of stuff like that. We said, “Oh, good, we are going to have a domestic arm and an international arm.” We presented that to him as what we were going to do. He looked at us and crossed his arms and said, “Nope, I'm not interested.” We were crushed. We thought we had this perfect plan. He said, “Look, you are a domestic hunger organization. Your board is always going to fight over who gets the money. Here is what I'll do. I'll give you a quarter of a million dollars a year for two years. Three conditions. 1) You set up a new organization. 2) You set up a completely separate board of directors. 3) You are the director,” pointing at me. Hugh: Oh. Ray: Now, what do you do when you're 50 years old and somebody looks at you and says, “I will make your dreams come true?” Hugh: Oh my. Ray: That is so exciting. But if you look at the flip side of it, we had an organization that we had started as two families living under the poverty level and was now at the pinnacle of our ministry. Like I said, we are at Capitol Hill every month. Our senator's wife was on our board. It was a horse you could ride until you wanted to get off. It was only going to get bigger and better. You leave that to start over basically. You leave that. The four adults that founded this society prayed together and cried together and discussed for two to three days. We came to the conclusion that if we didn't take his offer, that money was not going to be there. To get to a place where we could do the international ministry that we wanted would take us a couple of years to raise another quarter of a million dollars because we had maxed out our fundraising capacity at that point. We knew that it would take us a year or two to ramp up if we could. We thought we would take his offer because we could do more good faster by doing that than any other way we could. I left Society of St. Andrew at that point to take over and start a new organization. That is how Stop Hunger Now got started. I started January 1, 1998 with a guaranteed $2,500. Show you how simple I am. I had two goals for 1998 for Stop Hunger Now. I wanted to do at least a half a million dollars' worth of ministry. I wanted to double his gift of $250,000. Secondly, I wanted to be in five or six countries. I didn't want to be a single country nonprofit. At the end of the first year, we were audited, and the audit showed that we had done $2.9 million worth of aid in 18 countries. That was the start of Stop Hunger Now. The name is very significant because Society of St. Andrew, my first organization, was named for the disciple Andrew. He was always introducing others to Jesus one at a time, “Here is my friend.” We like that kind of evangelism. More importantly, he was the disciple that knew about the boy with the loaves and fishes when Jesus fed the 5,000. Very significant spiritually. As we grew, we had focus groups and consultants come in. The first thing every group said, “That is the most horrible name you could have picked. There is no worse name.” Society of St. Andrew: Is that a Presbyterian program? Is it a Catholic program? Is it an Episcopal program? Is it a golfing group? It says nothing about what you do. I learned that. When I started my own organization, Stop Hunger Now, our mission and our ministry were identical. Nobody ever asked what do you do. Hugh: Why the change from Stop Hunger Now to Rise Against Hunger? Ray: We rebranded this year because as we grew, we realized that Sodexo has their foundation called Stop Hunger. Dozens of times, we tried to work with them to get the trademark Stop Hunger Now, and their lawyer said it's too close. For 12 years or 15 years, we worked side by side, no problems, but as our program expanded internationally and we started doing more programs outside the U.S., we bumped up against Sodexo in England, where they didn't want our brand in England for some reason. Our board looked at it and realized we had to get a trademark name. As we started looking at marks, we couldn't even get the mark that we had. We had to start from scratch to rebrand. Hugh: It's really good to have that clarity. Your brand tells people what you do. If there is confusion, people don't want to help you. Russell, I know your brain is going with this funding thing. Russell teaches charities how to attract funding. He is one of our WayFinders in SynerVision. We are talking about Ray joining the WayFinder team. I didn't tell him about the initiation process. Ray: I don't have a lot of hair to shave. Russell: There is full heads of hair, and there is perfect ones like this. Ray: That's right. Russell: You don't need to dress this up. Ray: I hear ya. I hear ya. Hugh: Russell, did you come from- You got this striped shirt on. Did you come from a ball game where you are refereeing, or were you on the work cam for the prison? Russell: Rocks from Little Rocks all morning long. Hugh: Russell, you are listening to this story like I am. I am thinking like this is a fairytale story. How do these people come along? This is one of our colleagues in Denver. You are real popular. Russell: I am just a party waiting to happen here. Hugh: I know. As you are listening to his story, how many charities have we worked with over the years that really struggled to get somebody to believe in them to help them get some funding? There must be something that worked with your tenacity, your language, or something. Russell, what are you hearing? What question do you have for Ray about this early stage and the funding piece together and then getting the right team? Russell: That is a perfect illustration of what we talk about when we talk about why you are doing what it is that you're doing. Or do you want to get out of it? That is a perfect illustration of how important that is because that is exactly what happened to Ray. When somebody brings that horse to you and says, “Here is the gift horse. You don't quibble over what you call it. You just say thank you and move on.” There is a lot of fear involved with that. But you took the bull by the horns and went on and did what it was that you thought you needed to do. Focus on the fact that the mission is important. This is big. This is something that is bigger than me. I have to go here and do this. Here it is. Face that fear and go ahead and do it anyway. Talk with people and find out what is important to them. You were able to speak their language, and that is why they partnered with you. When you talk to people, it's important to use language that is important to them and that they value and move from that standpoint. Let's talk about that a little bit, Ray. I'm sure there were some doubts or some voices come up. We have our critics. We have our itty bitty committee, and I throw something a little extra in. This is PG-13. I will not throw the extra word in there. Itty bitty committee that comes calling when you go to brass that dream and you go to take it a step further. Talk about how you handle some of those conversations that were going on in your head and push through them to reach for the bigger goal. Ray: It's interesting that you say that because I tell friends that Stop Hunger Now started in January 1998. We knew about it from the end of August. That was when the donor made the decision to move forward. September through March, that six-month period, was probably the period where I was most frightened in my whole life because I had always worked with a partner, worked as a team ministry. We had gotten very successful with what we were doing. We fulfilled all our commitments and were just growing. I was getting ready to leap out into an area I basically knew nothing about with no support network behind me. I was so frightened, but I realized after I did it, I was thinking it was like leaping across the Grand Canyon. Actually, it was just like stepping off a curb. It was just a change. It was nothing great. What helped me was what I'd learned with my first organization: People honor results. The people allowed us to do the Potato Project because they had seen us living for three years according to a basic lifestyle of justice. Being just and living that out gave us a platform to do the domestic hunger. Doing the domestic hunger piece for 18 years said that yes, we can fulfill what we promised. When I started Stop Hunger Now, that first year, we were able to make some huge accomplishments again through the grace of God. But for example, my first trip in January of 1998, I went to Nicaragua, Honduras, and Haiti because those are the three poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere. During those trips, I made partnerships and started putting the protocols in place to help some organizations. All of a sudden, in August of that year, we had Hurricane Mitch, one of the biggest hurricanes that hit Central America. Because I had worked with these folks and I had the protocols in place, I was able to get them funds that allowed them to be the first organizations in Honduras for example to actually make a difference for the hungry. When people see that you're actually making a difference, they want to be a part of that. People are hungry to help. The biggest difficulty that I've seen is they don't know how. If you can demonstrate that your organization really makes a difference, you will not have difficulty finding funding most of the time. Hugh: If you go out there and knock on doors. Ray: If you go out there and knock on doors to start with. It's always the case that when you need money the most, it's the hardest to get. When you get to a place where you have grown the organization where money is not that difficult to come by, it flows in. That has always been my understanding. I will say that in the early days, my first organization, Society of St. Andrew, when we started the Potato Project and started spending money, it was $1,000 a month, then it was $1,000 a week. We literally had the capacity to spend ourselves out of existence in any two-day period that we decided to move enough produce. Went to D.C. and talked with a lady at a project where we were helping. We were getting potatoes for her. She said, “I know a man that might want to help you. Let me give you his phone number. He likes organizations like yours, so he will probably give you $1,000.” And $1,000 was wonderful for us. I called the number. It was a business number. He never had come in by 11:00, and he always left by 1:00. Literally for over a week, I couldn't get up with him. I finally asked the administrative person, “I'm sorry, but I really need to talk to this gentleman. Is there any way I can get ahold of him?” She said, “Let me give you his home phone.” I called his home phone for a week and never got up with him. We were panicked, and the need for money was so great we were at a loss. I called the secretary back and she said, “Oh, I gave you his bedroom number. Let me give you his den number.” The first time I called this young man, and he was a young man, he answered. I told him who I was and what we were doing. He said, “Oh man, that is so cool. I like that. Could you use $10,000?” I was hoping for $1,000. I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Let me talk to my dad, and we will put it through the foundation. We will give you $10,000.” With just a letter, I sent him a letter request. He gave us $10,000. Then they gave us another $10,000, and another $10,000. That was $30,000 over the course of two months with never meeting him, just a letter. I kept trying to meet him to take him to lunch and get to know him and cultivate him. He said, “Man, I don't do the lunch thing.” I said, “Fine.” One time I knew I was going to be in D.C, and I told him, “I would love to come see you.” He said, “Come up to the house, and we'll talk.” I came up to the house, and this was a young guy who had been involved in the drug culture. It had affected him quite a bit. He had a huge mudbog truck taller than I was. We spent about four hours together just getting to know each other. He fixed us ham sandwiches in the kitchen. Just a really nice young man who is really trying to find himself. I mean, he had a good heart and never talked about money the whole time. As I was getting ready to leave, he reached into his back pocket and gave me an envelope. “We have been giving you money from the foundation. This is from my personal account. I am sorry it isn't more than it is, but I've been burning through the money a lot faster than I thought. My accountant said he was surprised I had any left in the account at all. This is all I can do. I believe in what you're doing.” Well, I thanked him profusely of course and put the money in the car. I got in the car and drove out to the edge of the driveway. It is a long driveway outside of D.C. I couldn't stand it. I wasn't going to go on the road home until I looked in the envelope and saw a check for $43,500 from his personal account. The reason that is significant is that $43,000 got us through the next three weeks at which time the United Methodist Committee on Relief gave us a grant for $100,000. You just never know how you cultivate donors. I want to say if you're faithful in doing what your passion calls you to do and you communicate that openly to your donors, they will respond. Hugh: That is a big “and.” A lot of people don't connect those dotted lines, do they, Russ? Russell: That's that fourth piece of the four steps to building a high-performance nonprofit is communicating that value that you bring. The language is a little different for different people, but it's about relationships. You communicate that. That is very important. It's critical. It's actually being able to go out there, understanding what your core is, and communicating those values. They may not be for everybody, but you go out there and you do it and you make those critical connections. That's what it's all about. It's about relationships. I was just thinking because that is an example of one donor, but you have different people who volunteer, different people come to work. What are some of the things when people say, “Why do you work with Rise Against Hunger?” What are some of the reasons that people will give? When you understand that, you can communicate that. I am going to put that question to you, Ray, because you have all these relationships you have built, whether it's a staff member or a volunteer. What are some of the things people are saying when the question, “Why do you work with Rise Against Hunger?” comes up? Ray: We get the same answer all the time. We engage about a quarter of a million to 350,000 volunteers a year now. We engage them to a meal packaging program that allows- It's an inter-generational program that lasts two hours where volunteers package high-protein dehydrated meals for school feeding programs internationally. It is a beautiful entrance into making a difference on hunger. We get the same responses every time we ask people. We don't usually have to ask them. First of all, they say it's so much fun. We can make a difference. We are having an impact. They can see the connection between their hands and their heart. It's one thing to write a check and for some people that's exactly what they need. More and more people in the millennial generation want to be physically involved in what they are committing themselves to. Giving volunteers a chance to be involved makes all the difference in the world. The same thing is true for boards. I am passionate about growing boards because a high-powered, high-impact board really empowers an organization to reach the next level. It's the same for every level of volunteering. Giving people a chance to make a difference where they can see it and feel it makes all the difference in the world. People come back time and time again to our events because not only are they interacting with other people and having a good time, but they also know when they put those meals in the box, the next time that box is opened, it will be at a school somewhere where the kids would not be able to come to school without those meals. They know they are transforming lives. That is so important. Hugh: You sort of understanding the fun part of that. My church in Blacksburg did this. In two hours, how many pounds of food do we package? Ray: You probably package 10,000 meals. Hugh: 10,000 meals we packaged in two hours. They have an area director that comes in and tells people all the resources there, the boxes, the gloves. It is a very sanitary process. It's like an energy field where we are doing stuff, and it's like a church social event. It's like games. Like games for families at church. This is far better. We are doing something worthwhile. It is really an energized process where people package. They tell us exactly what is going to happen to it. We put it in those boxes. We take it out, it goes into a truck. Whoosh. It's gone. I was very impressed with the organization. It's like turnkey, boom. Ray: That is part of the secret. The turnkey part of it. The thing is, the more people you have involved in this process, the more fun it becomes. We have done events. One of my favorite events was done in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. We had one university with four campuses. They packaged a million meals in seven hours using 4,000 students in four locations. It was just awesome. It was electric. We do million meal events all the time. One of the most exciting events I have done recently was February a year ago when Kraft Heinz merged. They brought all their senior leaders from around the world together for their first gathering. They asked Rise Against Hunger to come and do a team building event by packaging meals. They wanted to package a tractor trailer load of meals, 285,000 meals. They wanted to do it in two hours. They had roughly 900-1,000 employees from around the world. Not employees, leaders. These are senior leaders. They came, and this was to merge the Kraft people and the Heinz people together. They had such a blast. The CEO of Kraft-Heinz was in there among them going from table to table, talking about what they were accomplishing. They are one of our biggest corporate partners now. They were then as well. The energy in the room, when you can have that many people working on the same thing, interacting with people you normally wouldn't interact with, it's magic. Hugh: What is the website where people can go find out about this? Ray: Riseagainsthunger.org. Hugh: Riseagainsthunger. It will be listed in the podcast notes and TheNonProfitExchangeorg. It is listed there along with your pretty picture. We will work the logo as well. The story about getting started is pretty dramatic. I will fund if you start a nrw organization. Talk about it today. How many countries, how many pounds of food, how much reach? Ray: We started in 1998. For the first seven years, we were a crisis relief organization. I was in the Marines, so I am being comfortable being in sketchy situations. We focused on getting into areas where the larger organizations either couldn't go, wouldn't go. We were a fast operation. I mean we would go in faster than most organizations and make stuff happen. I always wanted to move away from crisis relief into a more sustainable attack on hunger. Our original board donor who gave me all the money was not interested in that. His idea of feeding the hungry was crisis relief only. After about seven years, we had some board transition and a lot of other stuff. It was about that time where the Christmas tsunami hit. I found an organization that was doing meal packaging. I came back from visiting with them and said we are going to do this. That time, I had three staff people. We are going to start this in two months. They all laughed at me. We were able to get it started in two months. The first year, we started meal packaging, we meal packaged 1.1 million meals. The second year was 3.1. This year, we will package 75 million meals for the hungry. Hugh: 75 million from the start of 1.1 million. Ray: Yes. Hugh: My goodness. Ray: Now we have offices in 20 cities in the United States. We now have offices in five countries. I always said I didn't want to raise a flag in other countries. We didn't do that until we absolutely had to. What I mean by that is we don't set up offices in countries to distribute meals. But implementing partners that do that well, they know what they're doing. So many countries came to us and said, “We want to package meals and engage volunteers in our country.” South Africa was the first. We looked around, and South Africa had all the resources necessary to package meals. We started working in South Africa. Then Malaysia, the Philippines, Italy. We have a list of six or seven countries that want us to come in and start offices. But we are very careful about going and starting offices. They have to have all the resources available, and it has to be a wonderful thing. South Africa for example, they will package 8 or 9 million meals this year themselves. But what they have done is they have talked to the United States so much. This is the fun part about when you have work as partners. The situation in South Africa is completely different than the United States. They have lots of volunteers, but no funding. The churches in South Africa don't have a financial base. They had to start going to corporate donors where we weren't using corporate donors in the United States so much. The corporations got behind what they were doing and gave significant amounts of funds. We went to school and said, “If they are doing it, why don't we work on that?” Our corporate income has grown by over 70% because we went to school with what South Africa was doing. We learn from each other that way. In the Philippines, our office there said we use dehydrated vegetables in our meals. Rather than buy those on the market, why don't we get farmers to grow them so they can have a sustainable livelihood? They have cooperative farms where the farmers know that when they grow these vegetables, they will be bought at a fair price. Now they are getting the production ready to where these can be dehydrated, which will employ more people. They have the value chain from growing the vegetables to putting them in the meals. Employing lots of people. In India, they are doing other things. Every country operates as its own entity. In fact, I just came back from the Philippines a couple month ago where we had our first strategic global gathering where we are trying to figure out how to operate as a more global organization rather than the U.S. and affiliates. I can't say enough about the board in the United States willing to look at that and say, “We can be one among equals rather than being paternalistic about it.” It's a huge sea change, but it's fun to see that happening. Never envisioned when I stepped out and started Rise Against Hunger, we had probably 148 employees in the United States in five countries. It keeps growing because it's doing what it says it needs to do. Hugh: We are hitting our last five minutes in a wrap here. Russ, do you have some comments or questions for our guest today? Russell: Innovate and collaborate. That is the name of the game. That's what you are doing. You can spread the impact. The sum is more powerful than the parts. It's an ideal model. That's what high performance nonprofits do. I commend you on that. You are doing a remarkable job. What is the big goal for 2018? What is the takeaway? What is the impact that you want to bring in 2018? Ray: Probably, we are in our strategic planning process now. We have just gone from one year budgeting to three year budgeting. In '18, we are going to probably 100 million meals. That is just a part of all that is going on. Our global model will be to be implemented in ‘18 and hopefully by 2020, that will be fully operational. It's more collaboration in '18 than we have ever had, even in '16 or '17. Hugh: I want you to be thinking about a parting word or sponsor that you have for people who want to do something but are afraid to do it and think it's an uphill battle or impossible. You have given them a great story, but what advice do you have? Ray Buchanan, this has been an inspirational hour. You said how long is it going to be? I said, as long as it takes. Well, we could talk all day. As we are wrapping this interview up, what word of encouragement or what thought do you have for people who have a great idea like that but they are afraid to get started or don't know where to start? Ray: Let the preacher come out of me for a minute. Three points. First, I think it's faithfulness. You have to be faithful to what you know is right and what you know you're called to do. That means doing it. The second is vision. When you are faithful to that vision, people will see that and respond to it. The third is get off your buts, and act on that vision. Faithfulness, vision, and action: those three things are what allow you to do far more than you ever imagined you could do. It's what encourages people to get in and work with you. Those three things, you do that, and you can make a difference in the world. I think that's what we are all trying to do is change the world forever. I tell people Rise Against Hunger, the vision is to create a world without hunger. Very simple. What we are really trying to do is change the world forever. I want to be a part of that. Hugh: Little bit at a time. One person at a time. You have compounded that over the years. Ray Buchanan, thank you for spending time with us and sharing your story. Thank you, Russ. Ray: Thanks, Russ. Russell: Thank you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In today’s scripture, Jesus wants to feed approximately 15,000 people (5,000 men plus women and children). So he asks Philip, “Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” He’s asking him, John says, in order to “test him.” What was the test? To see whether his disciples believed that in Christ, they had enough. Do we present-day disciples believe that? I preached this sermon on the Sunday in which our church, Hampton United Methodist, packaged over 10,000 meals for hungry people around the world.

Toni Marraccini is a long time promoter of nutrition and advocate for equal access to food. She completed her Masters in Public Health at the University of Cape Town and published research evaluating a Healthy Tuck Shop Guide in Childhood Obesity. Afterward, she spent three years at Revolution Foods, a company seeking to increase access to healthy food in schools. Now at Rise Against Hunger, she is working to build global partnerships with a goal of ending world hunger by 2030. In our first episode of the Positive Podcast we talk with Toni about how being sustainable really does have a Positive Impact on the Earth and communities at large.

In 1998 Ray Buchanan founded Stop Hunger Now, envisioning a world without hunger. In 2017 Stop Hunger Now has been rebranded to Rise Against Hunger. Ray shares about turning his passion into action, the value of partnership and valuable advice for anyone seeking to make an impact in this world. To find out more about the work of Rise Against Hunger check out their website - riseagainsthunger.org, their facebook page, twitter and instagram.