Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.
We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an Impact Uprising.
So welcome to the good community, we're nonprofit professionals, philanthropists, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
So let's get started. Becky, what you know?
I'm excited to talk to our guests I said before he got on his name's ubiquitous. We've been talking about him for months. Today is the day and he is finally here.
International Man of Mystery right here. Oh, my gosh, I mean, we're so delighted to talk to you. Because not only does your reputation precedes you, but we get to meet earlier this year. And I just think the way you see the world is really incredible. And the tech that you're bringing to our space, the heart that you're pouring into this, the nonprofit space and the social impact space. It's just so needed. And so I'm really excited for this conversation, we're going to be talking about unlocking more ways to give and reaching this next generation of donors and bands. We followed you a little bit on Instagram too. And I think the things that you share, are so much of the same things that we see in the world about how do we really galvanize believers, and not just donors, but people that really believe in what we're doing. And flip the script of the traditional donor pyramid understanding that an Impact Uprising revolution is can be unlocked whenever we get people kind of together in lockstep. So I'm excited to have you here, a couple of things. Vance is the founder and CEO of Overflow. And if you've not heard of them, they're on the mission to inspire the world to give their unlocking a lot of ways to do that through crypto stock gifts, everything electronic, and they work with nonprofits and foundations, churches and corporations. But his background is in Silicon Valley, where he has worked for companies such as Google, and he understands how the Silicon Valley way of thinking really is changed in a lot of practices that we can adopt and take into the space to really think in a different way. You wrote this beautiful book, the High Growth Fundraising in the Silicon Valley Way. And we're going to talk all about that we want to hear about your amazing family and your four kids. Oh, my gosh, I can feel some kinship there too.
That's you too.
I know, I know.
You know, you're also a podcaster. You've got all the setup. And that's the Give it Up Podcast. There's so much wisdom being shared there. But thanks for making time today to join us on the show. It's just a delight to have you here.
Such an honor Becky and Jon, We Are For Good podcast. So glad to be here. Thank you for having me.
Well, it's an honor. And you know, we'd like to create space. Before we jump into talking about all the tech tools and things in stock giving. We want to hear about you Vance, your story is really interesting. And I want to you know, create space just to hear a little bit about the path that brought you here and got you pouring into work at overflow today. catch us up?
Yeah. So originally from Seattle, Washington went to the University of Washington. That's where I met my now wife actually met her at a church run across from our university. You know, she gave this really lame pickup line, but I loved it so much.
Come on now, she's not here to defend herself.
She actually she actually, you know, this cute, cute little Asian girl makes a beeline for me and she goes, Hey, you don't know me. But I know you. You're the only Filipino on the Kentwood basketball team And Area 5 DECA president. Okay, bye. And she walks away. And I was like who is? And then and then I realized that she was in my marketing class. And so what I did was, you know, I asked her if she wanted to study together for our test, right? So she thought she was working to get an A, but I knew I was just trying to get quality time. And so, you know, just a few months later, we actually started dating a few months after that we got engaged. And then right when we graduated college, we got married. And, and, you know, moved down to the Silicon Valley. What took us from Seattle to the Silicon Valley is I originally got a job at Google. And so really kind of immersed myself in tech at the start of my career. Kim also got a job in the Silicon Valley teaching at a charter school in a tougher neighborhood in San Jose, through a program called Teach for America. And we started our marriage. We started Yeah, it's such an amazing organization, nonprofit organization doing incredible work. And so that's what started our lives in the Silicon Valley. And obviously, being an I didn't know it at the time, really, the epicenter of innovation and technology has really transformed our mindset on how we can make impact at scale. So my latest book, really centers on some principles I've learned within the Silicon Valley simultaneous to all of that happening, I guess, in my tech career. What we found is a partnership with some pastors that moved from Sydney, Australia. Yeah, to the Silicon Valley to plant a church, which is, again, a 501C3, charitable entity legally, right. But it's really all about catalyzing community. And so we met this couple actually through Twitter with that's another story. That's another book. And ultimately, we love their vision for creating a modern expression of church that can reach people and give people community here in the Silicon Valley that are building products that are changing the world, can we create a church community where they can worship and find faith and find spirituality. And so we started that, you know, 12 years ago with them in a living room with seven people in San Jose. And now 12 years later, it's about 4000 members on a Sunday, and over 11 locations around the world. And so that's just a little bit about my background, I think, I've found this beautiful intersection of technology and innovation, and catalytic local community, just coming together in my life. And anything that I've learned, I try to share.
Okay, now I can see why Jon is saying like that you do not think on the same level as everyone else. And we we say that very complimentary. Because, I mean, when you come in, you could you could look at you on the surface Vance, and maybe say, oh, that's just another tech bro, you know, trying to come into the sector? And it's like, no, no, I have not met many people that start with the observation of community and talk about the potential that can happen when you have catalytic community, community that wants to ripple and link more arms together. And I think, you know, from seven people to 4000, I mean, what, what a powerful sort of evidentiary example of just how getting somebody wrapped around an idea, and getting subscribed and value aligned can really take you so much faster. And so you, you talk about being disruptive, and I want to go straight into this notion of just disrupting everything by flipping the donor pyramid. And we talk so much on the show about what would happen if we just completely rejected this sort of dusty old concept of the way that we value donors. And it's really a financial model, it has nothing to do with how we can unlock the potential of human beings. And so you also believe in the same way that we do that if you can focus on the base, and not just the top of the pyramid, you're going to build early believers. So talk to our audience about building that financial base with early believers, how they can develop this culture of giving by fostering excellence across the org. And I'm not just talking about financial, I'm talking about lots of things that they can bring to the table, because we're not just unlocking the resources, we're unlocking the passion and those things that take seven people to 4000. So give us some insight on what you've been able to see.
Yeah, you know, that that top of the pyramid or what I've come to learn, even in my own journey of fundraising for overflow, as a for profit kind of technology startup is this investors mindset, right? This this idea of how investors think about deploying capital. And here's the reality and I learned this firsthand, being unsuccessful in fundraising for overflow in the very beginning. Desperation, we put it in the context of 501c3 nonprofit, desperation for donors, is not the pathway to catalytic giving. Right? It's kind of I use this analogy, where if I saw somebody on the street, and I started running off to them, what are they going to do? They're going to run away. Right? It's like, oh, yeah, like, you know, and so I think a lot of times because we serve over 450 charitable organizations, including churches, nonprofits, and charitable entities, a lot of what I see is desperate behavior. And desperate behavior does not translate into catalytic giving. Right, what investors are looking for more than a desperate campaign and a desperate appeal, and a guilt driven appeal. They're actually looking for an invitation to a vision that creates a future that does not yet exist, that's going to be better for our kids. That's what they're looking for. And if you take a Silicon Valley principle, that's exactly why hundreds of billions of dollars every single year is being deployed to technology startups, not because the success rate is even high. But because the Silicon Valley breeds em ambitious, disruptive, big thinking. And so the goal for people that want to deploy big capital is not even 100% success rate. It's not even for organizations to play it safe. But it's to give something a go, it's to give something a try, that is so transformative, that is so disruptive, that that is so catalytic, that it could potentially change the way that we do life in the future. And that's how you unlock unprecedented amounts of capital being deployed, or the way we talk about it in the nonprofit space, unprecedented amounts of generosity showing.
Jon, you're eating this up.
I love the way he broke that down. And it is an invitation. And I do think it's it speaks to how we storytell and this transformation is happening in front of us. We talk about storytelling all the time on the podcast, why doing it with dignity and making sure we're not, you know, creating more harm than when we even started in the way that we do. This is so important. But there's a stat and I think this came up the first time we chatted that 90% of wealth is from is non cash assets and orgs are still not accepting them at scale. And I'm going to throw my past organization a little bit under the bus here, because we're talking about stock here, right? Talking about a lot of stock is a big piece of this. What is your current process for stock give someone whoever the average listener is today, because I can tell you the process that was in place, and our organization was so oh my gosh, that we almost would take it off the table of visibility because it felt like too, too much too complicated, too hard. Right? Break this down.
100% I can literally think of my last stock gift that I got and all of the hoops I had to jump through. And I am literally googling words because I have no idea what they are talking about. So yes.
Yes, let's talk about this.
Yeah, I mean, we live in an Apple Pay generation, we live in an amazon.com generation where I literally can buy a bathtub on Amazon Prime, and it's on my doorstep in two hours. This is this is what we live in. But if I want to give one share of Apple stock to the nonprofit that I love, and that I care about, requires physically filling out a form and faxing it into my broker. Okay.
That was my world. Thank you.
Yeah, so without Overflow, right? If you want to give anything from your stock portfolio, you would actually have to identify the right form to download from your brokerages website or call your broker to get instruction. And then when you download it, you're gonna have to fill out which stock from which account and how many of them you want to give. And then you actually have to coordinate with the CFO at the intended nonprofit that you can give to on what their account information is. It's kind of like what's their wire information and the brokerage world it's called What's your DTC number. So you're going to figure out what's their DTC number, you're going to take that information, you're going to fill it out on the form and brokerage firms today, fidelity Charles Schwab Vanguard still require you to either snail mail it, or fax in the form. Right.
Okay, so I'm not outdated. I was I was remembering the fax. I mean, as I remember,
The fax is bad.
No, no, I was like, surely this has changed since the pandemic, but no, I guess.
Yeah. So you're gonna fax in the form, then the broker is going to pick it up. And then they're going to press a button on their side to initiate the gift to the nonprofit. The problem is that because none of this has been handled online, when the nonprofit receives it when the church or charitable organization receives it, they don't know who gave it. Yeah. So they don't know to thank Becky, they don't know to think Jon. And then the person that gave like $100,000, in Apple stock is pissed, because nobody thanked them for that gift. The organization's like, I'm so sorry, Becky, I didn't even know what it was you. Thank you. Do you want your tax documentation, and then they have to manually create a letter. It's called a charitable acknowledgement letter that most organizations are still doing by hand, and then providing the 8282 and the 8283 that needs to be filed by both the nonprofit and the giver, just to get that gift, right? And so only if you're like, super motivated to bless your nonprofit or your church. Are you going to go through this hellish process? Right? But the reality is that even if you go through that hellish process, you're not doing it next year. And so that's what we saw, right? If 90% of wealth is in non cash assets, if you know the top 1%, the top 10% of wealthy people in America don't hold their cash in checking and savings because of things like inflation. And they put that money to work into IRAs, into ETFs into other non cash assets so that they can generate a return. How come on most of our webs sites. When we ask for non cash donations, we say email CFO at my nonprofit.org. Nobody's going to do that. Yeah, so so. So when we only appeal to people to give from their debit or credit card, or via ACH for wealthy people, we're actually appealing to their leftovers, not their overflow. Not actually where abundance is, hence, overflow, the name.
Okay, it's all coming together from thank you for explaining it to me, like I'm five years old. I actually think that there, I want to double click on that. Because you have discovered this insight, which is a very brilliant and insight, you know, that I don't want to go after somebody scraps, I don't want their scraps to make a difference in the world, I want the biggest possible difference to happen within my mission. But I'm having some PTSD here of all the stock transfers, I have tried to secure and transact in my time as a recovering major gift officer. And you're right. I mean, I felt the friction, I can't even imagine on the back end, what it must have felt like for the donor. So on behalf of the nonprofit community, thank you for making a platform that one is baked in community and abundance. And to gosh, how did it take this long to actually improve this entire process? Thank you for that. You know, and I think that there are principles here that can be impactful for anyone who's listening, he wrote this really great book about high growth, fundraising, the Silicon Valley Way, and you've spent your career, you know, in this fast paced industry holding it up, and it is a gorgeous book can't believe he's not talking about the kerning, and all of the typefaces. We'll definitely link that up in the show notes, if you want to go check that out. But you've you've just been conditioned to be in these fast paced, high growth sort of markets. And we would love to hear since now you're spending some time on the nonprofit side. Give us your perspective, like, what principles have you learned that should be applied to the nonprofit mission? You know, to the B Corp work that we're doing? And what what's there to be unlocked in it?
Yeah, I mean, one thing I've learned in Silicon Valley is the ingredients to innovation. Right? In some of the ingredients to innovation, it seems like sometimes some of our churches and charitable organizations are allergic to, right. If you just think about like the entity of a church, one of its values is actually traditionalism, right? It's traditionalism towards the message, hey, the message can't change because it's rooted in ancient truth. Right? Well, that might be a good service to the message, but it's a terrible service to the method, because methodology changes so rapidly. And so if as an organization you are so fixated on okay, if it's not broke, don't fix it. You already stopped innovating. Right. And so one of the ingredients to, I believe why so many companies in the Silicon Valley, change the world. And because we come up with so many breakthrough technologies, right, I mean, Apple, Google Meta, you know, Uber, Airbnb, they're all headquartered here. But there's hundreds of more you never heard of, because they failed. And I think that's actually one of the key ingredients is do you have a culture within your organization, where there's failure without judgment, where you can fail forward, where you can fail fast? Right? I think sometimes we get cagey as nonprofit operators, because it's like, oh, it's, it's donor money. You can't you can't waste $1 of donor money. Okay, well, maybe let's change our perspective. Maybe it's not a wasting, maybe it's investing. Maybe not everything is going to work out the way that we hoped it to. But can we always leverage it for a win because we're learning from it? And we're getting better from it? And so instead of being risk averse, how can we push the boundaries a bit more in the nonprofit space? So that so like to hear what you're saying, Becky, as a former major gifts officer, right? A lot of the fear of maybe adopting a new technology or going after more stock donations is actually just a fear of messing up, right? Like if I really, if I really promote this in a big way, and then I have to facilitate all these gifts and I don't know how to do it, then then you know, our organization is gonna look bad and you know, all that type of stuff and but that's the mentality that's ingrained in us within the nonprofit community. Right. And so if we can lift the lid on that thinking a bit, and if we can embrace risk a little bit more, because we we frame it as investment. We frame it as moving an industry forward, we frame it as, hey, we're just scratching the surface of what's possible. Right? We're gonna we're gonna go for the moon land on the stars type of situation, which is what many Silicon Valley startups that's their mentality. You can imagine why there's companies like Apple that serve billions of people, I would actually say, there should be charitable entities on that level. Because this is great. This is awesome. This has made my life 2x more effective. But just an iPhone. Yeah, an iPhone. Sorry. Yeah. For the the audio listeners. So this iPhone is great. This has made me 2x more effective. And I'm so glad that Apple has been able to impact a couple billion people. But in the same way, I would love for Charity Water to do the same. In the same way I would love for New Story charity that's trying to end global homelessness, I'd love for them to achieve their mission. You don't I mean, I would love some of the churches that are providing hope to people in deploying hope in local communities, and feeding the poor and housing the homeless, I would love for them to be successful in their mission and their vision the same way, Apple is successful as selling more iPhones.
Well, I think to like, this is a guide of like how you talk about this internally, because if you're going to talk about risk and innovation and creating, like even a culture, that that's a safe place in your organization, I think there's just like, how do you cultivate more vulnerability and conversations like, Hey, I don't actually feel prepared to even go talk about stock gifts. I mean, how are we creating and modeling that? Because I don't think that's a conversation that ever came up in our world. You know, Becky, if I think about it, just like even how we train each other, and how we're supporting each other. So, so much to unpack there. I wonder Vance, if you talk about, you know, what are some other strategies to really multiply our fundraising efforts and expand donations that you see?
Yeah, so we have a big conviction that one of the most catalytic ways to really accelerate and expand giving opportunities is to unlock more ways to give, here's our conviction, that you don't have to twist people's arms to be generous. We actually based our whole company on a biblical principle and ancient truth and Proverbs 11:24, it says, The world of the generous gets larger and larger, the world of the stingy gets smaller and smaller. It's a spiritual truth. Okay, let me take this scientific, the science of generosity published by Berkeley, just a few years ago said when you give money, not of your time, when you give finances, it releases a dopamine, oxytocin in your brain, on the same level of when you eat food. And when you get to shelter. I don't have to convince anybody to be generous, they already want to be that is their God given designed, created state is to be generous. That's why spiritually, scientifically, physiologically, it's just a first principle truth. Okay, so what does that mean? Why are people not giving to your organization, we've made it too hard. We've made it too limiting. And we haven't connected the dots for them. Right. And so we're focused on kind of the first part of that. We're building the infrastructure that makes generosity frictionless, across every major asset class, if we're starting with the premise that I don't need to convince them to give, I just need to make it easy for them to give, then I rethink the way that I do my website, I rethink the way that I do my communications program, I rethink the way that I actually refresh myself on the different ways to give and how frictionless and how easy it is, again, if we live in a Venmo generation, and if I go out with Jon and Becky to dinner, and I pay them back with a click of a button, why would it be any more than just a couple clicks of the button to give a catalytic gift to your organization? And so I fundamentally believe that part of the puzzle is we need to look at the load speeds of our website, we need to look at the website design, and the UI UX experience, not just digitally, but physically, the way that if you have a culture of, you know, writing, thank you letters and things like that, is the team that's behind that spelling every name correctly, you know, is a way that you know, people asking about where their gift, when is that being updated on a regular cadence? Like, you know, the same way that literally Apple employs 1000s of people 1000s of people to move a button from this place to this place, because they know that's going to increase engagement by 50%. Like that's the type of tenacity we should have when we treat our donors. Those are those are our users. Those are the people that we are trying to increase engagement with right?
Vance, I like you so much. Thank you for coming over to our sector, because I got to share this story because I just heard this this week I was in a, I was at a conference with Pursuant And somebody was sharing a story about how they were in a room. And they were talking about how do we innovate our entire digital experience for our consumers to be as frictionless as possible. And I want to make sure nobody misses that what Vance is saying is the more hoops that people have to jump through, the less money, the less success, the less community, the less engagement, the less, less, less less. So we're talking about how do we remove all these barriers to do the one thing that we want everyone to do, which is make a gift to our organizations. And this beautiful human stands up and tattles on herself, and she says, we were all instructed in the room to go to our website, and make a gift to our nonprofit as if we were a donor. And I was very proud of my website, because we just did a rebrand and it was beautiful. And then I went on mobile. And I had to zoom in on my website, because it was not mobile friendly. And then I had to go in and make the gift. And we only had credit card available. And then I had to leave and go find my purse that I keep in my car in my garage, because they're not like me and memorize their credit card number. And she said it was like, every time I tried to do something, I found hurdle after hurdle. And I had thought we were so progressive, we spent all this money on a rebrand. We talked through navigation, and then we didn't spend the time at the very end to make sure that it was functionally workable. So I have to use that as the great transition into, like, how do we reach the next generation of donors, because we're looking at survey data that says 60% of Gen Z, they want to make a difference. They want to change the world and 30% are already donating to charities, we know that's only going to go up. And so Julie Confer ain't gonna be given a gift in stock. She's just not going to be doing. She's 27 years old. She's going to use Apple Pay and something that's going to be super, super simple on her phone. But you know what? I'm the same way. Jon, do you remember this? Jon, like seven years ago, you told me like, I never want to see another check the rest of my life. Like I want everything to be automated, because then I'm going to have to go deposit it. So Vance, talk to us about how can we reach the next generation of donors, and how critical is the simplicity of this tech going to be to making that connection?
That's why we've done integrations with Apple Pay, Venmo, Cash App, PayPal, right? Because when this Gen Z goes to Blue Bottle for their $7 single origin latte, right, they're paying
I love Blue Bottle.
I love blue bottle. They pay with Apple Pay, you know, they pay with Apple Pay, enabled by face idea takes seconds, right? So if you don't have these type of things, or if you're not at least thinking and planning for these things for your organization, you're literally missing out let me challenge them thinking actually, because people might say I'm a heretic and crypto is dead and things like that. Okay, here 300 million people hold Bitcoin right now. I bet 90% of those Bitcoin holders 300 million this is bigger than Twitter or now x right? Like this is the Bitcoin has more users
Almost the size of the United States
Size of the United States, Bitcoin has more users than Snapchat, okay. And so and so 90% of those Bitcoin holders is Gen Z. Okay. And so you're like, oh, is in Bitcoin? Isn't Bitcoin down? Okay, yeah, sure. It's down from its peak at 67,000. But if it's 20,000, right now, it's up from where it used to be at under $1 in 2012. It's one of the fastest growing asset classes, this is a faster growing asset class than Apple stock. Right? And so again, I'm not saying that you have 1000s of people in your organization or in your supporter base that wants to give you Bitcoin, but why would you not at least make it an option? Right, right. Right. So that's what I'm talking about is like, we need to unlock more ways to get we have to unlock people's imagination. Do they want to give you a used car that they figured out? They don't need to? They don't they don't need it anymore? Do they have a MacBook that's worth $2,500 That they're not using anymore? They're just lying around in their house? Are they a boomer? And do they have a wine collection? That like you know what? I don't really need that. Like, how are we expanding? You know, Gen Z, they are trading Jordan shoes. Like it's Tesla stock or something like literally there's a helmet called stock X. And Jordan shoes are going in the secondaries market for like double, triple what They had bought it for we live in a world where Gen Z understands that collectibles, that assets, they are all getting securitized, they are all appreciating, if an asset can be appreciating, you should be able to give a portion of that. Right. And so we just need to continue to unlock more ways to give unlock imagination. And just watch, like you said, 60% of Gen Z want to make a difference, allow them to, but don't be so strict on how they're going to do it.
Yeah. It's all about like removing the friction, you know, because I think these things that we talked about, there's so many great examples here that are just small shifts, but we don't want to block people from giving. That's the that's the core thing here that I think everybody can get behind. So Vance, I mean, this has been so good. I feel like I'm thinking about our website that needs some optimization now.
Don't go look.
Yeah, don't look yet. But here's the deal. You know, we we found kinship in in each other just because of our love of what philanthropy does to the human being to the soul. So I wonder, we want to create space to talk about a story that's maybe moved you in your journey where you saw philanthropy on display, if you would take us back?
Yeah, just few years ago. I mean, like I said, these past 12 years, a lot of my life outside of tech has been building local community through a church that we started called vive here in the Silicon Valley. For the first 10 years of Vives existence, we didn't have a permanent building, right? We're a startup church. So what that meant is a pop up church. So we would just rent community halls, middle school venues and things like that partner with local places in the community coffee shops, and we just pop up the church on a Sunday. Right, we would just set up some instruments and some screens for the words and some seats, and things like that. And we did that for 10 years just pop up church, trying to save money to eventually buy a building. The problem is that we live in the Silicon Valley, and we're competing against Apple, Facebook and Google for real estate. Right. And so, long story short, fast forward to 2021, there is an opportunity for a piece of real estate iconic piece of real estate right off the 101 right across the street from Google that came on the market. The only problem was, is that it was $32 million. Okay, why is that why is that? Why is that a problem? Because we didn't have $32 million. Okay. So, we had saved up, you know, a few million dollars over the last 10 years, we had coordinated some financing, and we put in a $500,000 deposit to hold the building, or else they would have sold it to a big tech company. Right. And so we put a hold on the building in faith, right. And it was so funny, because, you know, the owners, they were reviewing our financing in our financial reports and things like that. And they they didn't give us any credit for our faith, right? They said, Hey, this is cool. We'll put it on hold, but you're $8 million short. And we're like, well, we what do you want us to do? Or a million dollars short? They're like, well, if you don't come up with $8 million, in 45 days, you will lose your $500,000 security deposit. And we will sell this building to Google for $40 million. So we're like crap. So we're like, Okay, right there. Yeah. So so we're like, Okay, so we're like, you know, surely there's got to be like a billionaire in the Silicon Valley. That's gonna, like love our story. And just underwrite the whole check. Right? So we, we set up a zoom meetings with like, eight billionaires, okay. And we just give our best pitch, right local church, we're doing all this in the community where a million dollars short, would you partner with us? Guess how much we raised from eight? Like, you know, believing billionaires, guess how much we raised? $0 $0 $0. Okay, cool. So we're like crap, what do we have to do? Oh, we have to tell the church, we have to actually raise this money from the church and we don't have like a super affluent church. It's like, you know, young families, singles, you know, people just getting started in their career. So we go to our church and we say, Hey, Church, congratulations. We're in contract for our very first building. And this is the middle of pandemic still. So we're meeting in a parking lot outside. And the crowd goes wild, right? Like they're celebrating. And then we're like, the only problem is where $8 million short. It goes from celebration to silence so fast guys. And then I say, you know, we got to come up with it in 45 days, you could hear a pin drop in that parking lot. 42 days later. 42 days later, I'm talking little girls, creating lemonade stands. The best lemonade stand on their street, raising 1000s of dollars giving it towards the church. Giving more than Christian billionaires. I'm talking, I'm talking families selling their homes and going back to renting in the Bay Area. I'm talking people giving stock crypto, as much as they had 42 days later, we raised $8 million in the bank, transfer to the owners signed the deed, I'm actually literally sitting in the building that we just acquired and moved into just over a year ago.
Okay, core value number four of We Are For Good, is it's not about giving. It's about belief, belief. And it's why we value believers so much more than a donor in this space. Because believers will not let you fail. Exactly. And that is an incredible story. And from, like, I'm still getting my head around somebody like selling their house because they believe in in in California, to even own a house seems like such an accomplishment, especially in Silicon Valley. And it's like, the level of belief and love. And now you're you're looking at 4000, you know, members across the world. And I think, yeah, it just starts from within.
And that was my, that was my problem too Becky is like, when people were telling me, Hey, we're gonna sell our house, like, you know, cuz I'm the treasurer on the board of our church. And it's almost like, I felt guilty. Gosh, no, it's like, it's like yet like, we kind of need it. But oh, no, like, don't do that. You don't need me. But then I realized this, they're their break through, because of their belief. To help unlock this building collectively, is going to bless them back. I don't know how, but in so many ways. So it was so crazy, because fast forward to when we're moving in the building, we're doing renovations, we had stripped the whole carpet because it was nasty. We shipped the whole carpet, we invited the 700 family units, and everybody wrote what they were believing for, that this building was going to do for generations, and put their family name on the concrete before we re-carpeted it. So we have 700 names representing 700 households in our community that is in the foundations of the floor. And I just believe that if you can activate people in belief, just like you said Becky, if you can activate people in belief, there is so much possible, we can't just be so focused on the transaction, we have to be focused on the relationship, we have to understand that giving is not a transaction, it's a celebration. And if you treat it as a celebratory moment, look what we can do together, the sky is literally the limit.
And every gift mattered to get there from $1 worth of lemonade took us to get to that point. And I am going to pass along a little bit of Steve Kraus wisdom that is my father, who taught me when I was very young, he said, if somebody wants to give you a gift, there is only one thing that you say and that is Thank you. Because you're not going to take away their ability to be in that moment and give you that kept, you're not going to minimize or marginalize that moment for them. You just stand there and say thank you from the bottom of my heart. So thank you for that incredible story. It is the best transition to say that we gotta wrap this up with a one good thing and you have been dropping the wisdom bombs in here, Vance, and I'm really curious to know, what would be the one good thing you would leave with the We Are For Good community today.
I will leave you all with this. We start every significant meeting at overflow with gratitude. I asked every single one of my staff members, what is one thing you are grateful for today? Because true generosity doesn't flow from guilt. It flows from gratitude. And so if you can constantly reflect and have a daily practice of just writing down or verbalizing to somebody, what can you be grateful for today, and there's something if you think about it, even if you're going through a hard time, you will rewire your brain to continue to live the generous lifestyle that you've been created to live.
I mean, Vance, that's beautiful. And I think I can't get the picture out of my head of the 700 families coming in. And it didn't matter how much they gave. It mattered that they're part of this. And I'm like that is a lesson for how we do donor relations, my friends, because you didn't hear Vance say we segmented the list of everybody that gave him a million dollars and invited them to a private event. So welcome them. It's everybody indebted this happened. And that's literally at the foundation of the building. That's so beautiful. And so Vance, connect the dots for us. How can people find you follow you personally and your work at Overflow? Tell us about your podcast? Just kind of like, show us where you show up online.
Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, few ways is the primary way. If you want to learn more about overflow, overflow, dot co overflow.co not.com. That's about $2 million. We're trying to be good stewards here.
Good for you.
You can reach out to me directly vance@overflow.co. And then find me on social media Instagram, LinkedIn, X, just type in Vance Roush. Also, if you want to search us on Apple podcasts where we're pretty popular now. With the Give it Up Podcast over here. Because you can you can search that give it a podcast, on Apple podcasts or Spotify or YouTube.
Y'all check out this platform if you want to transact quickly to get that money moved to your organization. And I'm not just talking about DAFs and crypto and stocks. I mean, you mentioned this, you're taking cars you're taking I mean, you have ways to transact this quickly. And basically what I hear is it's going to get us moving on to the next possible donor to the next possible program and how we're going to get the change made in our missions. Thank you, Vance. Keep going we are rooting for you. Thank you for this beautiful platform. Thank you for sharing what you know and what you're learning because we can use all of it and abundance in this space. Thank you, my friend, really grateful.
Thank you.
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