How To Solve Big Problems with A Small Budget

[0:00]  one of our largest programs one day at a time led by the dynamic mws was founded by his father uh in the late 80s to address the burgeoning problem of uh drug use and HIV AIDS is and how do you deal with drug addiction homelessness and illness right and so he started a program that became the beginning of what we call now the recovery house and so now today 40 years later odet serves 57,000 people every year they have a whole slate of drug and alcohol treatment programs mental health programs re-entry programs employment programs um you know illness Management Programs they've got all kinds of things and that's just one of our 60 programs so I think that when we get behind solving Community problems we can find

[0:47]  leaders who are really ready to step up to the plate all right guys welcome back to a brand new episode of the heart and hustle podcast now I'm incredibly excited because we have an amazing leader here today who specializes in supporting the nonprofit sector now today is going to be an amazing story because we're going to talk about not only his personal Journey what's impacting nonprofits today how they're looking at technology some of the challenges that they're facing but also just the landscape of how this space is evolving once again thank you so much for coming to the show today man um Arun welcome man thank you

[1:35]  so much for coming on the podcast I really appreciate it Keenan it's such a pleasure thank you and and I'm excited to be here uh really appreciate the time one of the questions that I think is really important for us to kind of dive in and it'll kind of set the table for our entire episode is are we really doing everything the right way in the nonprofit sector what do you think man I think it's tough to say yes to that I think that nonprofits do a lot of good work um the caring business is amazing and people pour their hearts and souls out every day I think there's a lot of things that are inefficient in the nonprofit sector and whether it comes all the rules from you know the government or um how underinvestment has impacted the viability of the sector or technology um there's so many things

[2:24]  that we could we could do better and I think it's really important people think wow we're solving society's biggest problems with one of the most underresourced and underinvested sectors in this in the country so what what do we need to do if we really want to solve these problems to get it right how do you think we got here solving some of society's biggest problems with the most underfunded sectors and underutilized resource areas of our business sectors in the United States what do you think how do you think we got here I think the short answer is this has been a long history of getting here that um charitable efforts weren't um viewed as a center of innovation they were really viewed as managing the downside of a changing Society especially during the in second uh wave of industrialism and when people started to generate a lot of

[3:12]  wealth they saw people suffering in poverty um but they didn't uh put the pieces together that how we how we do what we do in society either creates or reduces poverty I think they just saw there's poor people and they wanted to help and so this idea that poor people need charity rather than human beings in a society that develops Humanity uh would organize itself a little differently you know so then the charity model really takes place and and people start to form a society around making lots of money and then giving out some of it to help with some of the challenges that the society faces so I think that you know not not blaming anyone here casting no dispersions but I think if we're looking at what does it take for Humanity to do in The Next

[4:00]  Century we're going to have to solve that problem as a problem on its own um not just a byproduct of how it takes for some people to do well as the president of the urban Affairs Coalition what are you kind of thinking about what we need to do differently moving into 2025 and Beyond have the impact that we're kind of talking about here sure and so I so first the urban Affairs Coalition is the largest and oldest uh fiscal sponsor in the country led by black and brown on folks a fiscal sponsor is a larger organization that takes on the Legal Financial and administrative responsibilities for a smaller organization and helps them deliver programming in a cost-effective way typically for a smaller program that might cut their overhead and their

[4:47]  expenses on administrative work by half because there's somebody doing the accounting the HR the financial statements filing the insurance certifications and whatnot so fiscal sponsorship as a way to agregate nonprofit effort is a way to do what many of the corporations did in the '90s and 2000s which is use shared services to get cost savings and improve quality and so many of the biggest fiscal sponsors in the country operate you know anywhere between 60 to 100 to thousands of programs and they help those folks keep the cost down and expand their impact by pushing more money to the bottom line is it easy to say that without these shared services like we're talking about the nonprofit sector would

[5:33]  be even more trouble than they're actually kind of in now because they don't have the resources nor the talent to be able to I would say execute on these areas of concern like you guys are talking about efficiently I think that the reality is the nonprofit sector 99% of people in the nonprofit sector aren't using a very um uh like isn't aren't using a fiscal sponsor they're kind of running it as we've always run things which is a chip off the old block mark model right the corporate model chip off that becomes the nonprofit model rather than thinking is this the best model for nonprofits to operate under which um you know it's it's charitable money so shouldn't we save money on things that uh why should everybody have the same you know clerk doing the same thing and not all of them working to maximum

[6:20]  capacity right like there's just some efficiency questions we have to answer why are you doing this work man out of all the places that you could have applied yourself right in all of your knowledge and all of your expertise why did you think that you know being the president of the urban Affairs Coalition was the best spend of your time what was like the motivation in doing this work uh first and foremost you know I come from a family that was deeply impacted by poverty and uh my father was uh grew up in postcolonial India uh watched half of his brothers and sisters he was one of 15 only seven survived pass away and so there's always somebody out there even if I'm doing well right now my father came to American was successful there's always somebody who's exactly like my dad a kid who was innocent of everything else that was going on in the

[7:07]  world born into a family that would have been you know say it's a good family but they're poor you know and so we have an obligation like somebody took the time to make sure that my father got educated and he made a a successful life for himself and he instituted the values that you know you you just where you're born doesn't mean that you don't have a responsibility collectively to other people and so you know that's been a value I held my whole life I went through Jesuit school and they taught you to be a man for others and live a life of service I grew up um I've done service work my entire life for the most part whether it was in government or nonprofits or even at corporate you know I always focused on trying to be a person who is serving others through leadership and is perfect place for that yeah I mean I think it's really

[7:55]  interesting how like our early experiences especially with kind of the ROM models in our family teach us to serve others and I feel like we've gotten away from that a lot in our society today but hearing kind of the origin story of the tragedy of your father only being one of the seven surviving of 15 and then diving into this work is just so important I just think that we need to be more servitude today in society and I'm glad that we have leaders like you who are kind of really pioneering and thinking about how we can support these organizations and our community because they need more support than ever from the lens looking on kind of the work that these organizations do that's right I think it's hard for I think it's hard for people to understand um how many challenges that their neighbors and other fellow residents wherever they live are facing I think we're really

[8:42]  good at um I I heard a vet say cats are good at masking the pain and I'd like them to think about human beings human beings are really good at masking the pain and putting on a good face and keeping it moving when reality a lot of people are really struggling so I know I know that you know you guys at the UAC have been supporting organizations for 55 years now across mental health re-entry entrepreneurship homelessness and Community Services why are these specific Services service areas that you guys are focusing on is that the highest need right now across the demographic of organizations you guys support or how did you guys come to that it's a little bit more organic than that I we're always looking to address um the issues that are emerging in communities the ones that there aren't really good solutions for and so or you know a lot of times we

[9:29]  many of the programs we have have long histories of evolving into these things so for example one of our largest programs one day at a time led by the dynamic Mal Wells was founded by his father uh in the late 80s to address the burgeoning problem of drug use and HIV AIDS and how do you deal with drug addiction homelessness and illness right and so he started a program that became the beginning of what we call now the recovery house movement in the in the world it was the first person to call it a recovery house and kind of propagate that model so I think that when you're looking at that um that growing need I mean crack was not a problem in the 70s

[10:17]  right but in the 80s and 90s and and continuing on to today uh you know widescale uh you know substance use disorder is out there and and so we try to stay in those spaces and make those uh time and energy Investments to get outcomes and so now today 40 years later odet serves 57,000 people every year they have a whole slate of drug and alcohol treatment programs mental health programs re-entry programs employment programs um you know illness Management Programs they've got all kinds of things and that's just one of our 60 programs so I think that when we get behind solving Community problems we can find leaders who are really to step up to the plate and what do you think from the macrosocial challenges of mental health

[11:06]  and substance use and everything else that we're facing why do you think we continue maybe this is kind of you know a little bit of a left field question why do you think the needs in our communities continue to grow but reimbursement rates and things like that continue to get cut from like a an insurance payer perspective that's puts an incredible amount of stress on these type of organizations to meet the demand sure and then things don't stay the costs don't stay fixed either so you know there's a combination of challenges when costs rise and there's cuts and you still have to provide the same Services if not more to people who are now becoming more acutely aware of how mental health has impacted them I think that that's a big area for example shortly after the pandemic um it was really clear that the nonprofit sector and clinicians generally didn't have enough therapists

[11:55]  to meet that demand so I think that there there are those growing challenges as times change and needs change we got to stay on top of it and then also we have to create humanistic Frameworks so that we can keep people in care you know it's hard enough to find somebody who needs help it's just as hard to keep them getting that help and then have the good outcome so we want to really support programming organizations so they can support individuals in their personal success what does that humanistic framework mean I want to double click on that because that's really important we think about the longtail I would say continuation of services needed especially when it comes to mental health and substance use and addiction treatment everything else like that these are longtime Horizons and so is that why you're saying it's difficult to keep somebody engaged for that long to get the outcomes that we're talking

[12:42]  about yeah when I go back to my own career and I see what my arc was I I started the city's first Drop in Center for kids who are doing youth really who were doing uh sex for money for drugs 247 and you know occasionally I might run into one of those young people people and either they've gotten clean or they're still on the street when I met them they were 18 and that was close to 20 years ago now they're 38 that's a very different story and so the first step is just helping them stay alive but then the second step is staying with them long enough to get them the help when they need it because you can't really make somebody stop using drugs or you can't make somebody's leg get better unless they want it to get better any of these things really

[13:29]  require partnership cooperation respect caring concern and I think that there's a lot of work we have to do to see that um you know people who aren't succeeding in our society the way it's structured right now um probably could succeed at something else they're not people to be when we talk about humanistic framework we don't want to just think about people as either producing or not producing therefore having value or not having value we want to op from a humanistic Viewpoint where everybody has value and that we have to provide the structure to be able to kind of cultivate it you know and at least in human services work that that there's a lot of potential for recovery and Redemption and that's the basis of which we want to do that work doesn't your intuition tell you that we

[14:17]  need to swing back towards that humanistic framework rather than either you're a valuable person in society by producing you're a non-valuable person in society by not producing it seems like we need to swing back in the opposite direction more so now than ever I think so I think that um that part of the challenge for people in the culture that we have right now is um you know things are changing quickly um what uh whole groups of people used to do just in last year became all AI right um there's going to be a lot more changes so valuing people um makes a lot of sense and creating structures for people to be able to to bring higher level engagement creativity and curiosity to the table um you know because we don't live in an

[15:06]  industrial world anymore most people aren't producing widgets uh at the same time we are still in the period where we don't know what the next economy is going to really look like so we do have an opportunity to get people at least ready for the things we know are going to be important instead of letting them stay stuck at the things that may not be relevant in five years how do you think we're going to be able to do that because when you're talking here my gears are running in my head where I'm thinking about with AI everybody thinks about productivity we think about the things that we can produce quicker faster but yet we have so many people in our society who aren't ready for that large Chasm jump into that productivity based society and it seems like like you said we're waiting for the new element of the Horizon to kind of show itself and it seems like

[15:53]  we're kind of like in a limbo period which is really interesting to me yeah I think that in part it's there's a lot of things that aren't being done in society like you know there is room for jobs programs there's room for people to get trained on how to do some of these things and I think the challenges for you know like I look in Philadelphia and I see how Philadelphia operates one of the things is the people who want the help and the people who can help are never in the same place so there's a lot of bridge building that we need to do um people looking for work if they're not connected it's hard to find people who are connected looking for work find jobs within three to six months you know so I think that there's some breaking down our old silos our old groups reconnecting people in ways that are

[16:42]  more Equitable and kind humanistic and then starting to think about what it's going to take on a much smaller unit you know your neighborhood your church your community your block um what can we do on our own Pedal Power to get people connected to things that I have right why do you think everything is so siloed that's really interesting to me because we all participate in this nonprofit sector right we're all getting dollars from the government normally or we're fundraising to be able to serve the community but there's so much siloing that happens when it comes to Workforce and the people who actually need it why do you think we see so much of that compartmentalization at those lower levels well I have a theory I'm and I I don't profer this as a scientific theory I just would say it seems to me that the way that things

[17:29]  work is that uh people who have access um have a lot of access and the people who don't have access don't even know where to start so um you know in a lot of these um like how networks operate you see that the network is really around the people who are already working already going to places already doing certain things and the people who he who need help are not connected to those things right and so what we talk about is like credible Messengers that uh are trusted individuals who can help share those messages to try to connect people but that's kind of a a level of community uh work and Community organizing Community uh you know building that I think that could help

[18:19]  accelerate and that doesn't take a lot of money it just takes um consistent effort so I think that's one like lowcost solution that people could have is integrate more information sharing about the resources you're available with uh that have you have available to you to the people that you're connected with in your regular Communications here's an interesting concept and I kind of want to Riff on this in the world that we live in today everything is based on convenience it seems like all information flows towards us but often when we're looking for housing we're looking for Workforce we're looking for all these type of things right if you don't know where to look those information pieces aren't coming towards you you have to go out and search for them do you think that the layer of convenience in society today is often stopping people from reaching out and going to explore and find resources because there's like a

[19:07]  fallacy of you build it they will come which I'm kind of hearing here which doesn't seem to be true right well and I also think that people who are um inclined to try to find things easily are probably as the internet gets easier to use and things are easier to find are probably feeling much more frustrated uh than the old kind of grinded out model because it it becomes um when you have a certain expectation that everything should show up to you within a couple clicks it may be a few more clicks further and you may not know right so really having people excuse me navigating helping people navigate those resources having people um you know connect intentionally those networks and kind of weave them together a little bit

[19:55]  becomes really crucial that becomes a whole job is Network management and making sure that your network is getting the resources that it wants and it means a lot of listening to communities too I mean that in itself is a form of innovation right being able to have the resources necessary to gather the sentiment analysis of the community that you're serving and being able to respond to it but it seems like with all the pressure from a financial perspective from a staffing perspective from a community service Services perspective it doesn't seem like these nonprofits often have the time or the bandwidth to innovate because there's so much under pressure and getting to the next funding raise or the next Grant dollar to be able to keep the doors open so do they even have time to innovate and think curios think creatively about how to solve these problems I I think that many really struggle with that I think that

[20:42]  um there's always time to innovate but you have to be in a mind space to do that and then you have to have and innovation has to be something relevant to your area um and so in some of the sectors we're really CL down uh like you have this you know if you're going to provide this service you have to follow this model you have to do this thing you have to do that thing and if you don't do these things then you don't get paid the full rate for it so there's a lot of um barriers to Innovation Inhibitors of innovation in the field and I do think that the health and wellness of the field in general is a big one a lot of people are pretty burnt out pretty stressed out um and they're seeing a lot of primary secondary and tertiary Trum from other people and I don't think

[21:30]  there's a lot of um um vents for it I agree I mean I think about I think about the role of you having to show up every single day serving your community investing your emotional time your energy into serving others but then it seems like the problem continues to compound because there's more and more people who are looking for your services every day you guys are kind of in a place where you're trapped or you have golden handcuffs because you have to serve and we can't take a step back because the demand is consistently there it just seems like a rock and a hard place to be stuck between yeah and it's even I think that you've captured that well but it's harder than even you describe or people probably might imagine you know for organizations that work with uh Government funding oftentimes you know we don't see the money for a long time so even when we you know it's a simple premise that I

[22:18]  would do work for the government and I would get paid back what really happens is we do work for the government and then we wait forever to get paid back right so that adds another layer of complexity to it and interest costs and um strain and stress and making pay all those things it doesn't matter what size and more organization you are in this country as a nonprofit those are not unfamiliar struggles so how are our leaders supposed to navigate these times if you were to sit down with a board of CEOs and leaders from nonprofits how would you be telling them to strategically think about 2025 and tackling some of these challenges do you have any two cents on that well I think the landscape is going to change dramatically with the change in administration so you should expect um however people believe funding is going

[23:09]  to flow to change right in light of a new presidential administration's priorities I think in particular that'll have some pretty significant impact on programs that have started to look forward to um you know different uh diversity equity inclusion programming I think that seems to be under attack at least by some I think that there's probably going to be some concern around programming for folks who are um considered immigrants um and uh there might be some tensions around those things and I think that those areas of funding that where people may have received funding from the Biden Administration May sh shrink or dry up in favor of funding to other things so there will be some federal

[23:58]  structural change and then we have changes in the state legislatures and so that'll vary on a case-by casee basis there were a lot of uh state legislatures that either flipped parties um or have a new governor new Senators um or their G General Assembly it may have changed so I think that those are really on a Case by casee basis depending on where you are in the country and the mood of the country generally so I I would suspect nonprofits um you know may find themselves in in a changing time and hard to get settled again man it sounds like a great reset is what we're kind of hearing from you know your outlook on how we're going to navigate the next

[24:45]  four years I I think a a big reset I may not be great because I think a lot of um a lot of the social pressures that people are facing really do require um some bipartisan approaches and and we're not we're having a lot of partisan conversations in America so there is no reason why we couldn't solve some of the problems If people could work more collaboratively and closely together and focus on the facts of what's happening on the ground rather than the politics of what's happening in these exalted Chambers I was talking to another CEO from United Way organization in Tennesseee and we were talking about a seat at the table now one of the things

[25:34]  that this CEO was talking about was you know often when we think about collaboration we think we should all come to the table and everybody should have a seat but often when it comes to funding in the table if you will each person has their chunk of the pie so if somebody else comes to the table that means I'm gonna have to give up part of my pie for this person to slide in and it seems like even the funding mechanisms and the stability that comes from government dollars and grants and things like that almost stifles collaboration because we're trying to protect ours rather than trying to bring the entire Community into a conversation there's just not enough funding to go around what do you think about that well I think that's true in some sense and I I would totally see why somebody who maybe worked on the ground and did not receive that funding would think that um at the same time I think the government also makes um you know by virtue of its

[26:22]  rules and terms and conditions it makes uh very specific requirements of organizations to get that funding and that's something that people learn not um it's not like a back of a serial box instructions it's very complicated and it can prove to be very challenging to keep up with all of those things if you're not familiar with them so you know in many ways you you always have this um people who are on the inside get more and people are on the outside get less Dynamic um and and it does seem as though people try to keep others out so that they can keep the money money for themselves the reality is nonprofits aren't the generators of resources they're the recipients of resources and and so I do think that there's a combination of things that government

[27:09]  could do better to get more money down to the ground I think personally um using what we call Financial intermediaries or agencies that are able to move money more quickly to the ground and have better Connections in certain communities is a strong practice for example you know if I'm in organization that has a network of three or 400 groups and I have good sense of them then you might say which five would do a good job at gun violence or you know mural painting and we could send out the applications to all of them but just know that you know there are five or six that really specialize that so everybody's got a fair shot if they want to take a crack at it but you know if if you see these five people show up and say hey this is

[27:56]  what I do every day don't be surprised right that's really interesting to me because you know one of the things we talked about in our previous conversation was the data that we're all sharing within institutions right if you think about impact often we look at a specific data set but that might be not might be telling the entire story right and so how do you think about the shared data across the sector of nonprofits and being able to kind of truly measure the impact that each of us is having and then the collective overall yeah I think that we're not there yet right I think um there's some there's some types of work where people collect really good data and it tells us a lot there's other kind of work that it really it doesn't tell us much right and when funders start to

[28:44]  emphasize data and outcome and results that's a good thing however when it's not really clear how do you document those things then people come out with whatever information they have you know best effort they're trying to tell the truth about try and tell the story but you know the the challenge is is we haven't gotten to the point where we know what really really works um and I think sadly we're going to learn that it's not a series of interventions that work it's really a much more stable structure for people that allows their holistically their problems to be addressed simultaneously instead of saying hey look I know you're homeless and you're hungry and and you haven't paid uh you know back all these credit cards but let me tell you about this dental program you know I think

[29:32]  that that kind of a a mentality just is one that says hey this is the only thing I can help you with so we're gonna talk about that rather than like what do you need and how can I help you with that and I I think that that again is we're just far away from getting the kind of data that tells us something that we know to be true in individuals what we have is data that tells us some Trends in the Aggregate and I think we got to keep using using that uh extremely well and I think some organizations really use data extremely well but I think in general the kind of question of like what's the most impactful program or you know like those kinds of things I think that that's still a science in the making not a science that's been made are you excited about the role of artificial intelligence and being able to understand all these macro trends of

[30:20]  data and then solidify them down into best practices or do you think that's still on the horizon I you know I think that you know that might take some time in the sense that I think AI can be really good at helping us kind of dump a big data set and kind of pull out some trends that a normal human can't identify um I still think that you know when we're missing some of the F like so for example when we look at youth wherever you go in the world the research shows that and it's going to sound super obvious caring adults safe place those are the two most important things to a youth program it's not curriculum it's not Staffing it's that do you have one person you trust and do you feel safe when you go

[31:08]  there right whether you're in Israel you're in Windsor Canada you're in you know Lima Peru that's what kids need and want right so as long as we don't do those things well I think we'll we'll have a lot of bells and whistles and metrics and and things but we got to really focus on fundamentals and then AI can really help us once we kind of get a grounding and like it's not I don't know how helpful something is if we're not willing to do the basics once we're willing to do the basics I think that then all of a sudden that's a form of discipline that will help us do Advanced things um if we're looking for a quick fix then you know AI will tell somebody something they can get funded for it and they'll have a quick fix and three years later we'll still be here you know I mean yeah it seems like we've got a lot of like Band-Aid approaches to these

[31:56]  macro societal problems that take a longer time Horizon to be able to solve and I do worry about some of the conversations when I hear the Evangelist on the early adoption wave of AI saying that this is going to be the solution for everything it's not so much a silver bullet but a 100 golden BBS that we need to shoot at these problems to be able to have a bigger sustainable impact because I just don't think that the switch of a new technolog is gonna kind of transform the macr societal issues that we're kind of facing right now well and also you know let's be honest I mean technology is useful it's a tool it's great um it still has to be something where we're investing in communities not extracting from them so like if I'm selling somebody uh some data model or some app on the hope that they'll use it and their utilization will help them improve their lives I might have helped

[32:43]  some people but still my motive is not to help them it's to help them while I make money and therefore it doesn't really matter if I help every single person I touch it just matters that I have enough subscribers and some of them get help that we can keep it all moving and so I just think that the models of um investment versus extraction have to be examined I think the models of um quick fixes or like Band-Aid approaches versus holistic Community Building approaches have to be examined and I think that our intentions uh for how do we how how like you know are we applying the rule that you know I want somebody to solve this problem so I don't have to live in this world anymore and are we flipping it now I'm going to solve this problem so that

[33:30]  nobody in the world has to live with it or am I just solving it to make money which is you know that's the way we live in America and I get that you know people sell Burgers to make money they help people to make money but I think that we have to examine those things and in examining them we might get better at doing things even if we're still doing them for reasons that may not be you know every saint in the Bible's reason right if if you had to call your shot for what the next let's say five years of this nonprofit sector looks like from the advancement of services from funding from the implementation of Technology how would you call your shot and how you hope the next 5e kind of unre unveils itself how would I hope it unveils itself yeah let's let's get super hope let's get super hopeful with this I would I would hope that um people would start to um see investments in the

[34:20]  sector as being significant Investments to make right so that you know one is at least the organizations get enough money money to do what they need to do even if it isn't like you know a lot but not way below I think the second thing is a lot of the technology pieces will should be coming together and some of the data you know a lot of organizations struggle with data collection and that automating some of the data collection and getting better systems to process that data that produce some Trend some perspective some insight could really help Drive Innovation and I think I'm excited about the younger generation of people who are now moving like Millennials and genz moving into the market for nonprofit Services I think that you know there's a

[35:08]  generation of people who are leaving now and there will be a generation of people replacing them um in many ways that are tuned way in to their daily lives because um you know Gen X is a really small generation and the boomers are left so very quick you'll see the majority of people who are either getting served or providing services in nonprofits or Millennials and genes so I think that that time that younger generation is really going to come into its form and it seems like that's kind of what we also need as a turning of leadership in no disrespectful way whatsoever but when you grow up in a world world where you're indoctrinated by technology and how it can make services and delivery of I would say products easier you have a different mindset on how we can attack some of these different problems and it seems

[35:54]  like we just need a little bit more time until we can get there to to be as efficient in the adoption of Technology but also the Curiosity and how this Tech can actually help us serve our communities as well yeah and having people be interested in making technology for communities right um because I think that that is a specific need that we haven't figured out is how do you you know how are people thinking about like what would make it less expensive to live in this home rather than what can I sell somebody you know that they're going to buy right um and so you know there are things that do that you know by accident there's things that do like you know who knew that new windows would make it so uh much more cost-efficient great example but you know it really does and

[36:41]  I think that people you know lived in plac with old drafty Windows can't deny it you know so Energy Efficiency solar there there's a lot of things we can do together are you hopeful for this next generation of people who are coming into this space to work in the non profit sector do you think it's kind of a uh a revelation of maybe going into some of these large corporate sectors to just make money money money isn't exactly the wave of how this next generation's looking to kind of find fulfillment in the work that they do I think this next Generation has values that are consistent with helping people and they've experienced a decrease in the lifestyle as compared to the grandparents so they have more empathy um for people who maybe you know don't have some you know lofty goals of getting rich fast and

[37:31]  whatnot but I also think there's an influencer culture and there's less access to um to the thinking of the world you know so we're used to listening to anybody who can have a microphone um and like you're doing good things with your microphone but you know we know what the content world looks like yeah anything and everything you could get and and so I think that there's some challenges there and I also think that people are losing their ability in some way ways to have more complex um exercises because like not because like they're somehow not as smart they well people are always as smart as they've ever been there's something that is hard about having to do school the way we used to do it you know and where they don't gamify all the lessons and like you know I mean like there's some there's some uh you know

[38:20]  there's some Pedal Power that uh benefits you let me say it that way and so I get concerned that we're making everything really easy easy to learn when actually part of learning is really stretching you not make not just like pouring information in and and also like you know we live in a world where you can get everything in your pocket so how are you going to use that information what if what if you just listen to the first thing you see and the first thing you see is really really makes no sense or ridiculous right like and you're just gonna run off and with no discernment I mean I think there's some challenges out here when you have everything in your rocket it's interesting I'm reading a book right now called Deep work by an author named Cal Newport and he talks about the focus element of being able to focus on a task without distraction is becoming the more valuable skill set in the world where information is

[39:06]  constantly being forced into you and you don't have the ability to focus on a real problem I do really worry about that that's in the front of my mind so I'm really glad that you brought that up yeah and people don't even sit down and talk to people without a phone in their hand right so it's like even hard to focus on a person alone you know I think that's right I think we have to learn how to slow it all down a little bit it's going too fast yeah here's a question for you one of the Traditions that we have on the podcast as we kind of put the wheels down to land it here is our previous guest wanted to ask you a blind question now with all your responsibility right of being the president of your organization and helping so many community-based nonprofits how are you holding space for yourself so you can show up as the best version of yourself to do the work that you do while also modeling that for other people on your

[39:54]  team so they can have those boundaries to show up as they can so so we don't deal with the nonprofit burnout that we talked about a little bit earlier I wish I was doing that better um uh some things I've started to do is make sure that when I have a day on the weekend where I don't have anything I don't do any work I actually just relax because you need some time for it all to calm down right um what we started to do is we we have generally stopped um responding to emails after five even if I respond I don't send it back until the next day like I might for my style of work need to just know everything's done before I can chill and that's fine but I set it to send in the morning you know so to give people some space where they're not at work I mean you spend so much time at work right it's the first thing you get up you get ready you go to

[40:41]  work you come home and it's like almost night or if it's not night then you eat and you go sleep and you do it again so at least some time in the evening to you know have some boundaries and enjoy your family and friends and then starting to ask people at work um what would make it happier for you if you were here I mean they say some things that you don't even expect like snack bar all of a sudden now we got like a million snacks and everybody's like thrilled about it but like I would have never thought of that you know it just says Hey somebody thought you're GNA be here and you might be hungry so there's all kinds of things like that no I appreciate that man it's just really important once again you know we talk about the nonprofit sector one of my favorite analogies here as I look at my coffee cup for everybody's watching is you can't pour from an empty cup and we do have to refill our Cup in order for us to show up every day man so

[41:30]  man I just want to say thank you for coming on the show this has been an enlightening conversation I'm so glad that we have leaders out there that are focusing on how we can help the next generation of nonprofits succeed by having impact by serving our community but also having the resources that are necessary to dive in and actually take the time that it's going to take to have the sustainable outcomes that we're looking for man and I just want to say for everybody who's tuning in watching man I really appreciate you coming on the show it's been a blessing my pleasure and Kenan thank you for what you're doing to get the word out absolutely guys well that's another episode of the heart and hustle podcast we'll catch you on the next one