The Important Podcast - Ep 3 One Degree from Help - Rey Faustino

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It’s not easy for impoverished Americans to access resources and services . Even more difficult than accessing services is the initial discovery of the ‘right ‘services and resources at the ‘right’ time. Many people are not aware of helpful privately provided resources and government provided resources that are just a few blocks away. This is a big problem in need of solving.

That's where Rey Faustino comes in. At age eight, Rey left the Philippines with his parents and arrived in Los Angeles. As newly arrived immigrants, the Faustino family struggled to make ends meet as they became naturalized American citizens. Rey often acted as a translator for his parents to help them navigate government systems and American life. A major difficulty for Rey while growing up, was finding and accessing government provided services and nonprofit provided resources that would help his family.

25 years later, Rey created an organization called One Degree that streamlines the discovery and accessing of services and resources for low income families and individuals in California. In this episode, you will meet Rey and hear his story.

In This Episode, You Will Learn

• How Rey was inspired to help low income communities in California from his experience as a child immigrating from the Philippines to Los Angeles with his parents. 
• The most common pain-points of low income families and individuals in California 
• How fundraising is different in the nonprofit sector from the private sector: the importance of building relationships with investors before you’re fully “ready.”
• Rey’s experience and lessons learned from Ycombinator and FastForward.
• How Rey approaches the ratio of doing (i.e. being on the dance floor) vs. the ratio of thinking / reflection (i.e. being on the balcony). 
• Why the traditional startup growth playbooks for companies like Yelp, Uber, etc. (i.e. a colonial approach of value extraction from the community) doesn’t work for a community driven nonprofit like One Degree. 
• Rey’s recommended marketing channels for reaching underserved communities in California. 
• How the entire question of “measuring impact” and lives changed is very complicated for nonprofits and how Rey approaches measuring impact at One Degree.
• How Rey approaches running a nonprofit organization as a technology organization with a focus on hypothesis driven product innovation, customer development (i.e. “getting out of the building”) problem solving and design thinking. 
• Rey's advice to startup founders and nonprofit founders to invest in relationships instead of burning bridges. 

Links and Resources

• One Degree
  • Donate: https://www.1degree.org/donate 
  • Add information: https://www.1degree.org/organizations
• Books by Ronald Heifetz: 
  • The Practice of Adaptive Leadership
  • Leadership Without Easy Answers
  • Leadership on the Line
• Ycombinator
• Fastforward
• 2 Dope Queens

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