The Charity Charge Show Charity Charge

In Episode 102 of the Charity Charge Show, Stephen talks to Lisa Van Dusen, Executive Director of Palo Alto Community Fund, whose mission is to focus on the unique needs of our community and channel charitable giving of local donors to effective organizations that improve the quality of life for everyone in Palo Alto, East Palo Alto and Menlo Park.
Stephen and Lisa Van Dusen talk about innovating quickly during the COVID-19 pandemic and trust based philanthropy.
Van Dusen has dedicated her career to helping build thriving communities through philanthropy, advocacy, entrepreneurship and media, bringing more than 30 years of cross sector experience to the Palo Alto Community Fund.
Previous to joining the Palo Alto Community Fund, Van Dusen was Chief Relationship Officer at Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund (SV2) where she led innovation and learning initiatives that deepened awareness, engagement and giving to address social and environmental challenges in Silicon Valley and globally.
Her accomplishments include expanding and diversifying SV2’s donor community, introducing field-leading impact investing and spearheading advocacy program offerings.
Van Dusen, who has lived in Palo Alto for 35 years, has held a variety of professional and civic leadership positions, including launching two groundbreaking local media ventures—Cable Communications Cooperative of Palo Alto (Cable Co-op) and Palo Alto Online.
She revived and co-led Leadership Palo Alto and created and hosted First Person, a video interview series featuring Silicon Valley trailblazers. In addition to her experience as a social entrepreneur, Van Dusen brings expertise in sales, marketing and communications with the Palo Alto Weekly and other organizations.
She has served on a variety of nonprofit boards including, Palo Alto Art Center, Planned Parenthood (Golden Gate), WINGS Guatemala and in numerous civic leadership roles. She has been recognized extensively, including as a Silicon Valley Women of Influence, TEDx speaker, Leadership Midpeninsula Senior Fellow and California College of the Arts Leading by Design Fellow.
Lisa Van Dusen on trust based philanthropy:
In June 2019, our board signed off on a strategic plan that was committing to trust based philanthropy meaning that instead of the dollars that were raised each year going into our endowment that the default would be for the funds to go out the door and pass through grants to nonprofit organizations in our community.
Our donors could still specify if they wanted their contribution to go to our endowment but the default would be to get the money out to the organizations making a difference in our community.
We believe this would lead to a deeper connection and knowledge exchange with our community, organizations, and other leaders, to connect us with what is going on. I also see it as investing in ourselves as an organization, which I think is really significant.
We had great support for this initiative and met our three year plan goal in the first year. Trust base philanthropy is at it's core saying, "here is money, we trust you as an organization to know how to deploy it best." If that is to pay your staff, then that is what you should do, or it's to keep your lights on, use the money for whatever you need.
With our strategic plan we are fundamentally choosing, who we who we are betting on as an organization, and trusting them to do what they need.

In Episode 101 of the Charity Charge Show, Stephen talks to Georges Benjamin, Executive Director of American Public Health Association (APHA), whose mission is to improve the health of the public and achieve equity in health status.
Stephen and Georges Benjamin talk about what APHA learned from the COVID pandemic, APHA's role in shaping American healthcare policy over the past 150 years, and the importance of having financial reserves in place.
Georges C. Benjamin is known as one of the nation’s most influential physician leaders because he speaks passionately and eloquently about the health issues having the most impact on our nation today.
From his firsthand experience as a physician, he knows what happens when preventive care is not available and when the healthy choice is not the easy choice. As executive director of APHA since 2002, he is leading the Association’s push to make America the healthiest nation.
Georges Benjamin, Executive Director of American Public Health Association, on the importance of having financial reserves:
We try to be fiscally conservative and have multiple revenue streams and live with in our resources each year. Of course COVID is stressor on those financial goals. That's one of the reasons we have reserves is so that you can go into them when times are hard. The last couple of years, we've had to go into reserves a little bit, because times are hard.
But we were able to do that because every year we were able to take any surplus revenues that came in and put them in the bank. Having a good savings account is important. However, I also think it's important that people figure out what's important for you to do and focus your mission - then put your resources behind that focused mission.
For us, if it hurts people or kills people, the public health community has a role in it, but we can't solve all the problems. Instead we try to solve the problems that we think are important for us directly and then we partner with others who have the strength to tackle other problems.
We don't really care who gets the credit, we care that the mission gets done. We hold ourselves accountable to the mission getting done as our main measure of success.

In Episode 100 of the Charity Charge Show, Stephen talks to Grant Trahant, Founder of Causeartist and RefiJobs. His mission is to show that everyone — from shoppers and professionals to entrepreneurs and investors — can change the world by making decisions that benefit the people and places around them.
Interested in listening to the full episode and hearing more from other nonprofits? Check out more episodes here.
Stephen and Grant Trahant talk about what it takes to build a business or nonprofit from the ground up, reflect on what Stephen's learned from 100 conversations, and the unifying power of listening to and spending time with others.
Since 2013, Causeartist has been read in 150+ countries. Over this time Grant has interviewed 700+ social entrepreneurs, impact investors, and impact ventures from around the world.
The mission has always been to highlight innovations within ethical fashion, regenerative farming, climate tech, fair trade products, impact investing, and sustainable travel.
He also hosts the Disruptors for GOOD podcast and the Investing in Impact podcast.
Connect with Grant on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Grant on listening to others and seeing what truly unites us:
One advantage I get from talking to people around the world is that I experience that no matter where you are, no matter where you live, people still want the same thing for themselves, for their communities, and for their kids.
Whatever it may be their level of passion is the same. Whether they're from India, Southeast Asia, Delaware, Toronto, or Mexico City, wherever it may be, everybody's problems are pretty similar.
It could be dealing with mental health or dealing with economic issues, although different places approach problems and issues differently there are always people trying to solve them.
We're unified in trying to solve problems together on all continents and cities around the world.
About Causeartist
causeartist – [cause-artist] noun. a person who uses their talents and skills to impact the world.
Since 2013, Causeartist has been read in 150+ countries. Over this time I have interviewed 700+ impact entrepreneurs, impact investors, and impact ventures from around the world.
Causeartist is a global community of social entrepreneurs, builders, creators, and conscious consumers, who believe business can positively impact the world.

In Episode 99 of the Charity Charge Show, Stephen talks to Vicki Burkhart, CEO of The More Than Giving Co., whose mission is to give nonprofits with visionary leaders and compelling missions an affordable, on-demand staffing solution to supplement the bandwidth and skillsets of their volunteer force.
Stephen and Vicki Burkhart talk about More Than Giving's work with nonprofits to provide the staffing they need, the importance of a living strategic plan, and the four critical things for nonprofit success.
Vicki Burkhart is founder and CEO of the More Than Giving Company. She has 30+ years of experience in the nonprofit arena as an Executive Director, nonprofit executive and consultant.
After earning a B.A. and M.Ed. from Penn State, Vicki advanced to hold leadership positions in development and donor relations, including serving as the VP of Advancement at the MCP Hahnemann School of Medicine. At the same time, she was serving several nonprofits as their Executive Director.
Collectively, these roles gave her extensive, hands-on experience with major gift cultivation (including personally closing multimillion-dollar gifts), board development and strategic planning, membership development, organizational development, and volunteer management.
In 1999, Vicki founded More Than Giving with the goal of delivering innovative solutions to help more volunteer-driven nonprofits achieve sustainability and growth.
Vicki on the four critical things for nonprofit success
There are four things that I think are critical to a successful nonprofit:

A strategic plan - It's usually the first thing I ask for when I engage with a new client. All of the organizations that I lead, as an Executive Director have active strategic plans. By active I don't mean strategic plans that you do and put on the shelf and look at you know once a year. I mean, strategic plans that actually navigate the direction and path for the nonprofit, where you make decisions based on your plan, you look at revenue generation and leadership succession based on your plan. The strategic plan is a document that I think no matter how large or small the nonprofit is, is critical to that success.
Finding the right board - I intentionally use the word right because boards that I have worked with evolve, just like the nonprofit evolves. The founding board may be replaced by what I like to call the transition board a few years in, this transition board can then allow you to start separating operations from corporate responsibility. It defines the role of the board and the board's committees a little bit more and that of what staff does. Then the transition board shifts as the organization matures and starts to move into a more corporate board. It's important for nonprofit organizations to spend time finding the right people to sit on each of these boards. For the founders board looks very different than a corporate board.
Maintaining and building capacity - It's important that a nonprofit has the people and resources to support the growth of the organization. This gets back to, our paradigm shift in staffing and being able to have the right technology in the right infrastructure needed to support the growth of the organization.
Internal support - With the right internal support your professionals and your volunteers can focus on the work that they need to do. That's where you want someone who's sitting on your board making visits to prospective donors and you don't want them sitting in the office just doing light bookkeeping or sending out acknowledgement letters. Organizations really have to look at, if you get this much of volunteer time, how can that best be used?

In Episode 98 of the Charity Charge Show, Stephen talks to Nancy Long, Executive Director of 501 Commons, whose mission is to serve nonprofits as experts, innovators, and partners.
Their passion is to amplify the strengths of nonprofits—so ALL people and communities flourish. Stephen and Nancy Long talk about the resilience of nonprofits during the COVID-19 pandemic, 501 Commons recent reports regarding nonprofit employee compensation, and common mistake nonprofits make with grants.
Nancy Long is the Executive Director of 501 Commons. 501 Commons addresses the national problem of nonprofits having limited access to the expertise they need to optimize their organization. The organization provides consulting, contracted services, and other forms of support.
This allows organizations to have the technology, data, management, fundraising, finance, and human resources expertise they need.
Before becoming executive director of 501 Commons, Nancy worked in health care as the Vice President of Strategy and Organizational Development at Group Health Cooperative. Nancy was on the health care reform policy staff for the Washington Health Services Commission.
She served as the Director of Marketing for the Basic Health Plan. She developed groundbreaking research to promote health insurance to diverse communities and implemented community-based outreach that resulted in unprecedented participation and diverse enrollment.
As the Director of Quality for the Washington State Hospital Association, she represented hospitals on regulatory matters and led a quality of care research project with rural hospitals.
As the Director of Marketing & Community Services at Pacific Medical, she led the effort to create the Cross-Cultural Health Care Program, which has done breakthrough work on culturally and linguistically accessible health care.
Nancy has a BA in social psychology (University of Texas), and a master’s from the Evans School (University of Washington), where she was also a lecturer, teaching nonprofit leadership and management.

John LuxIn Episode 97 of the Charity Charge Show, Stephen talks to John Lux, Executive Director of Film Florida, a not-for-profit entertainment production association for Florida's film, TV, production & digital media industry.
Stephen and John Lux talk about John's unique career path, Film Florida's mission to support the film industry in Florida, and the challenges in showing value to individual members in a large membership based organization.
John has been the Executive Director for Film Florida since June 2016 and manages the day-to-day operations of the organization after spending 20 years working in the industry.
John is responsible for Film Florida operations, marketing, membership recruitment and finance. In addition to his other responsibilities for Film Florida, John is a social media enthusiast and has been handling the Film Florida social media strategy and day to day management of the website since 2014.
In previous roles John has been responsible for operations, finance and marketing positions including day-to-day operations (including all project proposals and budgets), finance (POs, APs, ARs, cash flow planning, etc.), and marketing strategies (social media, award submissions, press releases, communication with media, etc.).
John started in operations for the Walt Disney Company and helped Orlando-based IDEAS transition from Disney to an independent corporation and was instrumental in the transformation and growth of the company for 18 years.
After graduating from Purdue University, John worked in the live entertainment industry managing a staff of 300+ for an outdoor music and entertainment venue in the Chicago area before moving to Florida to join Disney where he received Disney’s rare and highly respected Partners In Excellence award.
His strong Chicago roots are reflected in his undying passion for college football, especially his alma mater, the Purdue Boilermakers and his home town teams, Blackhawks, Bears, Bulls, White Sox, Cubs and Northwestern University.