We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits

Epizode

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  748. How One Founder’s Lived Experience Created 116,000 Anchors - Ali Borowsky, Find Your Anchor 12.10.2026 39min

  A note before you listen: This episode discusses suicide and suicide prevention. If you or someone you know is struggling, you’re not alone. In the U.S., call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, available 24/7. Outside the U.S., visit findahelpline.com to find support near you. Ali Borowsky used to design for the NHL Winter Classic. Now she designs something far more personal: a small blue box that tells whoever finds it that strangers care. 🩵 Rooted in her own lived...
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  747. How One $14,410 Fundraiser Became a Global Movement - Jeremy Vallerand, Atlas Free 07.10.2026 27min

  Jeremy Vallerand and a few friends turned a Mount Rainier climb into a fundraiser: $1 for every vertical foot, $14,410 total. It was supposed to be a one-off. It wasn't. Today, Atlas Free is a global network of 160+ organizations in 67 countries fighting sex trafficking, still fueled by the community hikes and climbs that started it all. 🩵 In this Possible in Practice episode, you'll hear: How one climb became hundreds of community-led hikes and climbs every year, and the simple idea that mad...
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  746. 1 in 2 American Adults Struggle with Social Connection. Nonprofits Are Part of the Solution. - Aaron Hurst 05.10.2026 27min

  1 in 2 American adults is struggling with social connection, and fewer than 20% are thriving. Aaron Hurst, the social entrepreneur behind the Taproot Foundation and the pro bono movement, says that's why volunteering and giving are collapsing, and why nonprofits hold the key to reversing it. Guest co-host Susan McPherson, author of The Lost Art of Connecting, joins us to dig into the U.S. Chamber of Connection's Six Points of Connection report, the first national index of its kind. In t...
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  745. 3 Case Studies on Using Data + Storytelling to Grow Your Org's Impact - Urina Harrell 30.09.2026 24min

  A pandemic relief territory that grew 39% while every area around it went red. A fund that deployed capital fast and couldn't prove what it did. A 55-year-old nonprofit still running on paper. Urina Harrell, founder of Vox Pop Branding, walks through all three — what was broken, what she built, and what happened next. 🩵 In this episode, you'll hear: Case study 1 — Long Beach: Why workshops and education stopped moving the needle, and how rolling up sleeves alongside founders produced the only...
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  744. Make the Problem Bigger: A Different Way to Build Community - Greg Tehven, Emerging Prairie 28.09.2026 41min

  Greg Tehven runs a $5.5 million nonprofit with 40 teammates in Fargo, North Dakota — and his advice to leaders is to stop working on problems they can solve alone. That instinct built Emerging Prairie into the heartbeat of a region's entrepreneurial ecosystem, launched Grand Farm, and turned TEDx Fargo into an event 1,000+ people build their year around. Guest co-host Stacy Huston, CEO of SixDegrees.org, brings Greg on to talk about what it actually takes. 🩵 In this episode, you'll hear: Why ...
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  743. Unlock the Full Potential of Your Peer-to-Peer Program - Victoria Vighetto, ZERO Prostate Cancer 23.09.2026 18min

  When ZERO Prostate Cancer's peer-to-peer program started slipping, Victoria Vighetto didn't tell her field staff to make more calls. She walked the constituent journey herself — and found the problem sitting in an email. The call-to-action button was too far down. The sends were landing at the wrong time for open rates. Registration was where people were falling out. 🩵 In this Possible in Practice episode, you'll hear: Why a fundraising dip is almost never a motivation problem — and the diagn...
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  742. Money Is Medicine: Decolonizing Wealth and the Future of Philanthropy - Edgar Villanueva 21.09.2026 41min

  An elder told Edgar Villanueva that the medicine that had chosen him was money. One sentence — and it turned an angry, burned-out program officer into the person rewriting how philanthropy thinks about wealth. Edgar is the founder and CEO of the Decolonizing Wealth Project and the author of Decolonizing Wealth, now in its second edition. His work has helped move nearly $1 billion toward the communities that need it most. 🩵 Joining us as guest co-host is Lindsey Fuller, Executive Director of T...
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  741. Fundraising Problem or Distance Problem? The Reframe That Raised $1M - Connie Lewin 16.09.2026 29min

  Connie Lewin found the funders. She wrote the emails. She sent the proposals. The response was silence. With a $1 million goal for a small nonprofit in Rwanda and no established high-net-worth donor network, Connie had to quickly step into a leadership role and take responsibility for the organization’s goal to scale its impact and operations in three years. What finally moved the money wasn't better writing. It was closing the distance between donors and the people at the center of the missi...
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  740. Start Before You're Ready: How Creative Futures Collective Grew from 10 to 3,500 Without a Roadmap - Jai Al-Attas 14.09.2026 29min

  Jai Al-Attas started a record label at 16, sold it to Virgin Records at 24, and never went to college. So when he moved to LA and tried to get people from a reentry program and a homeless youth org into music industry internships, the question that kept coming back — "are these people in college?" — landed personally. He didn't have a plan. He had a chip on his shoulder and $1,800 he needed for rent. He spent it on 10 Chromebooks instead. 🩵 Today Creative Futures Collective has moved 3,500 cr...
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  739. The Simple Gratitude System That Doubled Donor Retention (From 33% to 66%) - April Thompson 09.09.2026 20min

  April Thompson took a grassroots foster care nonprofit from 33% donor retention to 66% — and grew the donor file from about 100 to over 400 along the way. The system behind it was two touches: a personal voicemail within 48 hours, a handwritten note from a board member days later. Both logged in the CRM. That's it. 🩵 In this episode, you'll hear: The "one-two punch" gratitude guide that doubled retention, and how to document it so nobody loses track of the last donor touchWhy a ringless voice...
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  738. The Storytelling Strategy That Turns Donors into Believers (And How to Build It) - Annie Wood and Max Kringen 07.09.2026 34min

  The film ended and the room went silent. Then it roared. Over the next three years, hundreds of donors gave more than $300,000 to build one young woman a home of her own. That's what belief looks like when it shows up. Max Kringen and Annie Wood of Tellwell Story Co. have spent years studying how it gets built — and it isn't luck, and it isn't a bigger ask. 🩵 In this episode, you'll hear: Why a muddy story keeps donors stuck in transaction mode — and how confusion becomes a tax on every dolla...
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  737. How to Find and Activate the Right Influencers for Your Mission - Trevor Boffone 02.09.2026 20min

  The right influencer for your mission probably isn't the biggest account in your city. It's more likely someone already following you, already talking about your cause, and already waiting to be asked well. Trevor Boffone had three months and zero dollars to activate creators for Mental Health America of Greater Houston's new provider-matching platform. His first list of 20 got him one yes. His second approach — an open call and a radically honest ask — got him 26 pieces of content. 🩵 In this...
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  736. Meet the Nonprofit Building a Brand + Movement Around Unity - Adam Mizel, Us United 31.08.2026 22min

  "There's so many brands for division in this country. Where's the brand for unity?" That question is why Us United exists. Adam Mizel spent more than 30 years in finance and entrepreneurship before his wife Tanya asked him the question that ended that chapter: What are you going to do? 🩵 What he did was build a brand — hats, T-shirts, media, storytelling, leadership — and wrap a movement around it. Us United now runs a unity pledge, monthly cross-bubble conversations, Unity Seats at live spor...
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  735. Case Study: How a Grant Rejection Turned Into a $223,000 Yes - Katie Hannah, Momentum Leaders 26.08.2026 23min

  Katie Hannah printed out the rejection email and brought it to the interview. "After careful consideration, our board of reviewers has determined that your application does not make the case for membership at this time." Most fundraisers file that away and move on. The Director of Development at Momentum Leaders sent one open-ended question instead — and it turned into a $223,000 yes for a leadership nonprofit in Birmingham, Alabama. 🩵 This is Possible in Practice, a limited series of case st...
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  734. The Planned Giving Multiplier: Why Your Most Loyal Donors Are Your Biggest Opportunity - Tony Martignetti 24.08.2026 23min

  $1,500 in lifetime giving. A million-dollar gift in the will. Tony Martignetti calls it the planned giving multiplier — the gap between what a donor gives you while they're living and what they leave you when they're gone. It's often measured in the thousands. And the donors most likely to trigger it aren't your wealthiest. They're your most loyal. 🩵 Tony has spent 29 years in planned giving — as a frontline fundraiser, a director of planned giving at two nonprofits, and now founder of Planne...
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  733. The Creator Partnership Playbook Every Nonprofit Leader Needs - Patricia McLoughlin, The Anthem Awards 19.08.2026 34min

  One in five adults now get their news from TikTok. Over 40% of adults under 30 do. That same feed is where younger donors are finding the causes they'll give to. Trust has shifted from institutions to individuals, and most nonprofits are still running the old playbook. 🩵 Patricia McLoughlin is General Manager of The Anthem Awards, where she reviews more than 2,000 entries a year from 42 countries. Her team turned that vantage point into the Shared Influence report, then into something more us...
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  732. Measuring What Matters: The 3-Step System for Measuring Your Impact - Ginneh Baugh, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America 17.08.2026 31min

  Big Brothers Big Sisters has been collecting data for 120 years. When an economist finally studied it, the case for support changed completely: young people who were mentored are 20% more likely to attend college and earn 15% more. Ginneh Baugh, Chief Impact Officer at Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, has spent two decades helping nonprofit leaders measure what actually matters. Her system is three steps — know your data, show it as a story, grow the movement around it. 🩵 In this episode,...
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  731. What the World's Most Effective Nonprofits Have in Common (And You Already Have It Too) - Scott Curran 10.08.2026 33min

  Scott Curran has helped former presidents, Fortune 500 companies, and street-corner nonprofits turn good intentions into real impact. After a decade as general counsel of the Clinton Foundation and ten years building Beyond Advisors, he kept noticing the same thing: the world's most effective changemakers and the hometown hero nobody's heard of have the exact same nine things in common. So do you. That pattern became his new book, Better Good — a framework any organization can start using tod...
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  730. Capacity Is the Strategy: How to Make Your Org More Sustainable - Brooke Richie-Babbage, Chidi Asoluka, and Casey Lardner 05.08.2026 25min

  Most nonprofit leaders treat capacity like a fuel tank — something you deplete and refill. Brooke Richie-Babbage makes the case that capacity is something you design, and that the strain you're feeling is information about that design, not about your dedication. She's joined by two leaders who've rebuilt theirs in public: Casey Lardner, Executive Director of Genspace, the world's first community biology lab, and Chidi Asoluka, Founder and CEO of NewComm, which went from a classroom experiment...
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  729. The 4-Step Formula to Get Your Mission Seen by Media, Partners, and Donors - Jenn DeBarge Goonan 03.08.2026 24min

  Jenn DeBarge Goonan has sent thousands of pitch emails to editors, producers, and partners. She's distilled what works into four steps — and they work whether you're chasing press coverage, a corporate partner, or a major donor meeting. Jenn launched Lululemon into the U.S. market, built campaigns for Ben & Jerry's, and now runs JAG Communications, where she's spent 20 years making mission-driven work visible. 🩵 In this episode, you'll hear: Step 1: Why every note has to be a one-of-one, ...