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, where Nonprofit Professionals, philanthropist world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
So let's get started. Becky, another ungettable get.
It's an ungettable get list day. And we're so excited, y'all. Sasha Dichter is in our house today, we are so honored. And from the inception of the ungettable. Get list. Sasha has been on there because he has been talking about how to amplify transformative change way before it was cool. So we are so excited and honored to have him in our house today. If this is your first time getting to know Sasha, let me introduce you to him. He is the co founder and CEO of 60 Decibels. And it's not just a co founder and a CEO, he has done so much blogging, speaking, talking about philanthropy, generosity and social change for almost two decades. And it really started with this manifesto for nonprofit CEOs, which we're going to talk about just a little bit, and we're gonna talk about how that's shifted. And that'll definitely be linked up in our show notes. And it's this realization that if the nonprofit sector is ever going to realize its full potential, we got to stop apologizing for the value of the work that we do. So we're gonna get to know Sasha, we're gonna talk about how he created this generosity day. I remember Jon listening and watching to his TED Talk, like probably 10 years ago, talking about the generosity experiment. And friends, we just got another good human in the house, who's going to talk about impact measurement. And we're gonna go deep into why we do the work that we do, and how do we take it to the next level. Sasha, thank you for joining us. Welcome to the We Are For Good podcast.
Thank you. I'm blushing. But it's a great pleasure to be here. And I'm excited to jump in with you guys.
It's really surreal to see you across from me, because I have watched that TED talk no less than probably five times. Because the things that you talk about in it are just really revolutionary. But we want to before we get into your ideas, we just like to get to know the human and we want you to like take us back to where you grew up, like tell us about little Sasha, and how he fell into justice work and thinking differently.
Well, we won't go too far back. But um, I think, you know, I grew up in New York City, and the son of two immigrant parents. My dad was born in Shanghai, his parents fled the Second World War, Polish Jews, who went from Poland to Lithuania on the Trans Siberian railroad to Japan and ended up in the ghetto in Shanghai. And my mother grew up in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, her parents both emigrated there, one during the First World War and one in between the wars. And and I tell that story only to say I think that we all know intellectually, that a lot of things have to happen over a long period of time for us to be here. But there's something very specific about my parents being born literally 11,000 miles away from one another. And hearing the stories from my grandfather, in particular, of their escape from early days of Nazi Germany, that just felt one just the unlikelihood of all of those things happening, and to the very specific stories of risk and generosity on the parts of people who put themselves in harm's way so that my parents, my grandparents would survive. So I think that that just felt probably more present to me. I mean, other than that I grew up. I mean, I grew up in a tremendous amount of privilege. So it's not that I was personally facing hardship, but it was present for me that lots of things had predated me and lots of hardship had predated me and lots of good fortune had had to happen to people came before me. And so that being in my mind, I think, informed how I thought about what my life hopefully could become.
I mean, thank you for taking us back. Goodness, the legacy and just probably the weight to that you feel just carrying this forward, what an honor of the life that you've lived now, I mean, looking back, and just how you are paying it forward and how you're pouring into other people and to us today in our community. And I want to go back to 2008. Okay, this is kind of, I felt like the world was so different back then. But you were seeing something that today would probably not be as disruptive but at the moment, I think it was super disruptive. And I want to talk about this manifesto for nonprofit CEOs, where you're like, hey, let's stop apologizing for raising money and really reversing some of the power dynamics and it's something we've explored a lot on the podcast and something that I would love for you to say, you know, looking back now, what has changed? And what is still something that nonprofits need to lean into and shift the lens on how we're valuing our work?
Well, it's interesting, because even as the way you describe it, I think the the answer to that question is on two levels, on nonprofits themselves, but also the people. And this all comes down to people and our individual experience and our sense of our own worth. And so I think that that has changed. Not that much. I think that there is if you know, if anything we have, you know, we all exist in the context of culture. And we live in a culture in which the value of wealth and extreme wealth and sort of the making everything an economic transaction has just accelerated. And so that equates to status and it is equates to power, and it creates all sorts of things. And so, you know, there's a lot of luggage and baggage that comes with the act of mobilizing resources behind a problem, which is even different language than the act of fundraising. Right. And I think that baggage still exists, I think it's the least glamorous thing. It's the thing that leaders of nonprofit organizations sometimes ask not to do. And I think we've just, we sell the entire thing short, if that's our starting point. And I do think that the real, the real question is our own worth, right. And unless we are able to show up with a sense of worth in all contexts, because I do think nonprofit professionals are more likely to feel confident in the worth of their organization and their personal worth with respect to the work what they would what you would narrowly call the work, the programmatic work and be intentional about the language we use. But then the moment you move into these other spaces, where the currency quite literally is different. And where there's economic differences, financial differences, status differences, wealth differences, it is easy to come in to that space with apology and self doubt. And I think, when we enter in that way, we are hard to stay motivated. It's hard to be persuasive. Right. So whether it's it has to do with how you feel or how effective you are. All of that mindset, I think can be quite limiting.
I agree with you. I mean, we're all recovering gift officers here and this conversation right now. And I think just this sort of pallor of scarcity that surrounds us has even the approach that we take becomes minimized in that that way, and it's like the world is so different now. And when we start thinking about abundance, and we start living in abundance, and we start understanding that not only are nonprofits solving the biggest issues, but they are powerful vehicles of business, powerful vehicles of change powerful vehicles of humanity, it just up in the way that you walk into a room, and the way that you honestly advocate for your mission and give it the advocacy that it deserves. And so I want to talk just about the impact, you know, of that of, of what we do. And we've gotten a lot of questions from our community, who said, Hey, can you curate some more content around how do we measure this impact? Because social good isn't just for nonprofits. You talk about this all the time. So talk to us a little bit about what's the bigger question when it comes to impact measurement? What where, where are we thinking about it incorrectly? And how do we shift that value set into this abundance that we're talking about?
So I mean, there's, it's a great question and feel like there are two big parts to it. And so, you know, if we, if we'd like we can talk about both. One is the actually the impact on that donor. And then the other is the impact of our nonprofits on other constituents, beneficiaries, or the way you want to describe it. That was good. I love this. And I think I think they're both real and we don't talk about the first one at all. I really, you know, I've been fortunate enough to see and work with philanthropists for whom their philanthropy is highly expressive act of, you know, totally self expressive, it's about self actualization, it's about realizing who they could be in the world. And, again, to walk into a room as a against saying a gift officer sort of just sounds like that, but in any case, you know, you you're saying, look, here's this person, and I can help them realize their full potential as people I can help them be transformed through connection through community through efficacy that I've given them that otherwise they wouldn't have it So this notion that there's something really on offer, like I wouldn't try to quantify that necessarily. And then, interestingly, in the world of nonprofits where our job and that we feel that we're signing up for us to create transformation in lives, we are also I think, fundamentally, we find ourselves disconnected from understanding that transformation and having that proximity as well. So somehow, I think when we get ourselves tripped up, we are closing ourselves off from possibility in both directions. And you're talking about this idea of abundance. I think that lots of nonprofit settings exist with this experience day in and day out of scarcity. And I think that is, in many ways, the most suffocating thing of all, because if that's the way that it feels, it just, it feels like your energy is internal there, the resources aren't there, as opposed to like, I am a giver of abundance. I am a receiver of abundance. I am a connector between different worlds. You know, when I originally I mean, I spent my first five years at Acumen, being in charge of fundraising, having never raised $1. And I went through my whole process talking to them saying, I want to be really clear, I haven't raised $1, I don't know if I'm the right person for the job. But the one thing that I felt like I could potentially do was bridge between different folks. And I felt like I could speak to the donors or the potential donors, the partners, as we called them, in a way that they can understand about what we were doing. I felt like that I could do I could connect, and I could move between those worlds effectively. And I thought maybe that is a thing that I can bring to this conversation. So I just think that there's a there's a shift. That has to do with like the experience day to day if the experience day to day feels like I sort of have these blinders on. I'm on the inside. And there's not enough oxygen in the room. Like, the the first question, I think, is how do you change that experience? Because that's going to affect how everybody shows up every day, whether inside or outside the organization?
Dang, I mean, lots that I want to unpack here, but I have to just like double click on what you talked about the two sides of impact, because I'll say it's our North Star of why we even jumped to start We Are For Food. And you may be the first guest that's talked about.
I think he is.
Which makes my heart just like so happy.
Is there like a bell that goes off?
Yeah, there's gonna be some prize, let's send you a shirt. I mean, it's this idea that we really believe we could change the world, because of philanthropy's power of what it does to the giver, we always talk about the impact, but we don't talk about like what could happen if people get more in touch with their values and unlock that through their giving. And I just think that that is the power of an Impact Uprising. And you've said it a lot more succinctly than I have said thank you for that. In your work now, I want to kind of tee you up to talk about what does this look like in real time? Like how is impact measurement been misunderstood? Because I know y'all put a lot of work in just how do you activate this in businesses, in organizations? But what's misunderstood there?
Yeah. So the the company that I co-founded is called 60 Decibels. 60 decibels is the volume of the human conversation. And that's, you know, very intentional on our part, right? Because what we have found is, whether you're not for profit, whether you're a social business, whether you're an investor who has social aims, it seems crazy to me, that there would be human beings involved in the change you're trying to make in the world. And your day to day practice would be never to listen to them, and never to speak to them. But I think you could describe most work that involves social change that way. And if you put it that way, you just sort of go wait a minute. So let me get this straight, we are going to be involved in trying to transform people's lives for the better. And as part of that practice, we will not listen to them regularly. Like just someone come down from Mars and go, Well, that seems like a terrible idea. Right. And so, and I think that, again, we were you know, as we started this conversation, we've noted the power of language, right? Whether it's being a gift officer, or there's scarcity, all these sorts of things. I even sometimes worry about, you know, we're going to do all of this work, and then we're going to do a study and then we're going to see if we had the impact we wanted to have and again, it's just like, no, no, we want to be in dialogue with people. We want to build systems that allows us in a day to day way to understand what's happening for people. So that's kind of the why behind it. What we do specifically is we believe that comparable, scalable, social metrics are the lifeblood of any organization that's trying to create social change. So what we do is we make it really, really easy to listen to your customers, your beneficiary, your suppliers you name it anywhere in the world. And by making it really easy to do that, we ask people the question, if it's this easy to do it, if it is not, let's take a deep breath and do a massive three year study at the end of 10 years of work. But rather, we can make this part of the lifeblood of every single day. This is how we do this. It's part of what we do. It's the we've been talking increasingly about having it be an operating system, for how a nonprofit works, how social change organization works, we believe that by making that easy, we can make that part of the everyday. And we can make that part of how you run an organization. So we can talk a little bit more about how we do that. But that's why.
Okay, yes, because I'm about to say, give me this application in some way. Because I do think that extending a challenge, like out here, and in this space, specifically, but every space that we go to in this, like building a culture of listening, and what does that mean? And because I think and again, this is just my theory, if you asked most nonprofits, are you listening? Are you listening well to your base? I think that they would say yes. However, I want to double click on that, how we're listening, how we're engaging in community dialogue, you know, our final core value of our company is the community is everything. And having that heartbeat of dialogue of listening of humility, and listening of that feels really bad. And that's a bad reflection on us. But how do we take that? I want to know, like, how that shows up and what your work is, because I know somebody out there is thinking, Yeah, I think that's me.
Right? Right. Well, so I mean, Bryan Stevenson talks about proximity as a prerequisite to doing any meaningful work. And you know, what, how I think about this is, how do you make proximity part of what you're doing always? Right? When I hear Brian talk about it, it's sort of first that's the prerequisite. So if you're not proximate, you need to get proximate. But then if you get proximate, and then you start doing the work, how do you stay proximate? And of course, the answer that question is going to differ, right? If someone is listening to this, and they are part they are from a community, that organizations in the community they're living in the community, like Far be it for me to say that that person isn't proximate, because they are. But more and more as things start to grow, and things start to scale, we lose that proximity. And specifically, we lose the way to make that part of what we do each and every day. So what we're trying to do is to say, the act of listening should be ongoing, should be regular, but also, there is a risk, right? If I show up, I mean, you can imagine if I show up at a homeless shelter at a soup kitchen or something, and I mean, this is gonna, this is gonna be an extreme example. But in the act of providing direct service, say to someone, what do you think of our service, it's going to be a little bit difficult for that person to say these things are good, but these things are less good, right? So I do think it's also about having kind of an objective third party, make it easy to have someone speak their truth and say, This was working for me, this is what's not working for me in a regular easy way. And again, if helpful, we can talk about the how that we do it. I mean, our how is specific. And there's lots of different ways to do it. But so that's not so I'll talk...
I'm like pointing at him keep going.
So what we've done, and I don't want to get too technical, because I know it's a general audience. But what we basically said is, what if you brought the sensibility of market research to social research and social measurement? Right? And so it is the act, I mean, so what we do, quite simply is anywhere in the world. So we have an infrastructure of more than 1000 people in 77 countries who are actually placing phone calls directly to customers and beneficiaries of our clients, to ask them directly, what is your lived experience with this product and service? And because we do that app that kind of scale, in a regular fashion every day, and relatively quickly, right, so for the beginning to end of a piece of work with us, it'd be kind of eight to 12 weeks, not three years. So since it has that pace, we start to do a really, really high volume. And since we do a really, really high volume, we get to the it's such a holy grail that people don't even talk about it as if it could be real, which is I will have standardize relevant, comparable metrics around my social performance. And so what that means very concretely is I have project A or company A that does this thing. Not only am I going to know how I'm doing from my customers, or beneficiaries perspective, but I know that there's B, C, D, and E out there that are doing the same thing, more or less, I need to know how I'm doing relative to them. Right? Because if you say I got a 84 on this particular metric, well, what's good? What if everybody's getting an 84? What if everyone's getting a 26 Right? And in every other aspect of our lives, whether it has to do with our finances, or whether it has to do with, you know, a Yelp rating You know, I mean, everybody in my company who's in their 20s can tell me their exact threshold for a Google star rating for a restaurant that you're allowed to go to, right? There's a lot of debate like, no, I need to be north of 4.5, can I go to the low fours?
What's the TikTok ratio look like?
You're like, if you're at like a 3.8 rated Google restaurant, you've gone awry. And no one had to teach anybody that, it's the way our brains work, right? And so the idea that you could say, okay, here's a given intervention that's trying to serve low income customers, on average, what's the income and wealth profile of those customers? And how does that compare to others, this is supposed to change how much people are spending on education. This is supposed to give people an increased sense of confidence, right? If 20% of people in this given intervention, say my sense of confidence, as a woman is very much improved, versus when I started this program, I can tell you that and you, you and I both don't know what that means. But if there 10, or 15, or 20, other programs that are trying to do the exact same thing and say, Wow, getting 20% of people to say that they've had that kind of transformation is in the top 20% of performance, then all of a sudden, we start to get the natural human tendency to say, what is good, better and best look like, where am I performing relative to my peers? And importantly, how do I improve? Right? And I just think this notion that we would have that kind of objective data as part of the operating system of the nonprofit ecosystem, so we could build in a mechanism for improvement, because if you want to go back to the conversation about funders, funders are also desperate to say, is this a great organization? And one of the things that is so hard about our work, there's two, I think fundamental things. One is, when you do great things, it doesn't generate more resource, unlike other parts of the economy. So that's hard inherently. And then the second is, it is very hard to differentiate yourself and show objectively that you are in fact doing above average work. And so you have those two fundamental constraints that are pulling you away from excellence breeds more resource, which breeds more impact. And so fundamentally, what we're trying to do is provide an intervention and a set of resources that allows any organization to kind of break that cycle and say, We need to know if we're doing great work, we need to have an improvement cycle, and we need to be able to show it.
Yeah, I mean, it just adds another layer that it's like, why are we why are we not talking about this? Why is it taken right now to like, lift this? And so I'm thinking Sasha, like you're painting examples. You know, it seems like a bigger organization that's going through 1000s of people, we have listeners that are even at small nonprofits, and I just think like, the power of listening is always crucial. And the power of being open to hearing that feedback is crucial. How does someone get started with this? Before they can scale infinitely big? How do you start implementing a program?
I'd love that question. Because it does start with a mindset. And it doesn't it's not rocket science, you don't need to wait for some big software solution to do this. Right. I mean, a there's like tons of tools out there, right. And so if you wanted to use Survey Monkey or something like that, there's the Listen for Good initiative that has a core set of questions that they've developed, that people can sign up for free and that they can deploy. So I think there's, there's practical elements, I think the question to ask is, are we regularly in conversation with folks? Are we asking them quantitative and qualitative questions, to understand what's working for them and what's not? And then we get that information? What do we do with it? And while that all sounds simple, I would venture that more often than not one of the three steps along those chains, someone will say, not so much. Right? And so you don't need, you know, you don't need to hire 60 Decibels, or you don't need to use a piece of software to say, wait a minute, could we have some volunteers, go and sit in community and with the folks that we're trying to work with, and we are working with and ask them a few questions about what's working or not? Could we do that and get 50 people to respond? And could we just make sure to, like, collate all of that and see what it means? And maybe could we then go back to folks and say, hey, you know, we talked to 50 people, and we heard that these things are going great. And we heard these other things are really challenging. Does that resonate with you? And could you do that every quarter with a handful of volunteers? And would it even if you changed nothing, which of course you would change something? Would that not create a more sense of dialogue and trust? Right. So I think it starts with the mindset that this is just part of the lifeblood of how work is done. And again, people who are who more I think the advantage, the tremendous advantage that more grassroots types of smaller organizations have is that there's not a natural distance between them and the folks that they're serving. So I think it's just a matter of. So for those folks, that dialog is going to be very natural. I think maybe the quantification of that and the formalization of that might feel a little less natural. So I think it really depends on where you start. Whereas if you're less from a place, and you're more from the outside, maybe you have more sophistication with quantification, but you're not naturally in dialogue, right. So either way, I think there's there's opportunities on both sides.
I agree. And I am just like, dang it, where was Sasha, 10 years ago, when I needed to, like, try this out in an experiment when we were in actually nonprofit work, because I want to throw a little like pro tip or suggestion out there to all of you if you are really inclined to try this out. And I think quarterly is a great like starting point for everyone. I think there's two things that you could possibly do with it that I would recommend. I mean, beyond what Sasha is saying, one, tell your staff, talk about findings. And I would say the good and the bad and the ugly. And we're not trying to throw shade down on anybody within our nonprofit. This is about how do we elevate? How do we continually listen, refine, get better? And guess what? Every time we refine, it shows our community that we're listening to them, that their voices matter, that their input is integral to building the bigger picture of what our vision is pointing toward. But the other thing that might be really interesting, and I don't know how you feel about this, Sasha and Jon, you can raise an eyebrow? What if you story told the data of what you're finding, and actually pushing that out into your community and saying, Hey, here's, here's two things, three things that we just found that were really interesting this quarter in our listening discussion. We're really excited about this one. This one we can tell we're going to work on. And third, here's what do you guys think about this one, this one's kind of all over the place, all of a sudden, your dialogue is not just in a silo or in a vacuum of those quarterly discussions, then community becomes a part of that discussion, I can just see that being culturally impacting, but I also think it could be a magnet to draw other people to you, because you're talking about these topics in these things that really aligned with their core values.
Totally, I mean, I couldn't agree more. And I two things that I want to pick up on one is the word you're keep on using his dialogue. And it's such a different word, then we're gonna measure or we're gonna assess, or we're gonna monitor or we're going to evaluate, again, like talking about the power of language, right, who wants to be monitored and evaluated? I certainly don't, I don't think anybody does. Right. So that so but I think that, in addition to the heaviness of those words, it creates a reaction and a lot of people that they don't have the expertise to do it. Versus this is about dialogue. This is about conversation. And a lot more people will lean in and say, yeah, I know how to be in dialogue. Right. So I think that's sort of the first reaction. And the second reaction, which is related is, is this about proving or improving? Right. And so much, I would say almost all of the measurement in the nonprofit space in particular, but more broadly, we're seeing is a box checking exercise to prove something to someone and then move on. And, you know, and it's just
Poking the bear over here.
just think about that. So then it's not only that you might not do it in with the in the right way. But it's like it gets done, and it gets sent and you're done. It is literally the opposite of a growth mindset. And so we've just, I think we have two problems when it comes to measurement, and one is operationalizing in a way that's quick and easy and dynamic, which is a lot of stuff we're trying to make really, really simple for folks is 60 Decibels. But before that, it's just like, it's in the wrong box. It's in a box, right? It's in this, I need at the end of this thing to do my evaluation to see if this and that. And there is, you know, the nonprofit sector has a ton to teach the for profit economy. But in this particular area, like the idea that you would do things that way, in the rest of the economy, it's just it makes no sense. It doesn't even compute of like, well wait, so you don't really talk to people regularly. And then when you do all you do is use like send it off to your board. But you don't really use what they say like any person worth their salt, who's built a customer oriented company would like scratch their head and go gosh, that's really really crazy. So I it's just somehow or other we got really down around, you know, the famous Bugs Bunny, I made a wrong turn in Albuquerque like, I think that's where we are.
I mean, okay, this is beautiful. I wonder if you'd round it out with like, just some examples like what does this transformation look like when all this gets dialed in? Where there's dialogue happening, there's listening happening, they make shifts, what does that unlock for a mission and maybe take us through an example.
What it unlocks is what I'd actually say is what unlocks is a iterative cycle of change. So what I mean by that is like what we have Have seen so we get this question all the time. And we get hired a lot by investors, for example. So once I have this data, like what's going to change? And the indication is like, I'm supposed to say everything tomorrow, right?
That's what they want you to say. That's what we all want Sasha.
So I think it is, the way that I think about this is you're introducing both a new set of attitudes, but you're also introducing data into a system, right? All organizations are just human systems at the end of the day. So when you introduce something new into a human system, it takes a while for the system to kind of know what to do with it. So I think there's an ongoing process and an ongoing dialogue. I mean, what we've seen, what we see in individual cases is I mean, we've had, you know, unfortunately, can't share all the names of our clients. But we've had a microfinance network that is wonderful client has been for many, many years, works in lots of countries all over the world. And they have a core thesis around the kinds of people that they reach. And we have gotten data back from them. And again, the comparative data, so helpful, so they're in a bunch of different geographies, and a couple of those geographies. The data came back and simply said, you're not reaching the people you thought you were reaching, despite the fact that you've been at this for 10, 15, 20 years. But to your point, Becky, this isn't shade, this isn't punitive, this isn't pull the plug this is and that's really, that is how I would also encourage us to think about this, which is, you've done the work of they have done the work of, they're in this country, they have a methodology that works, they have trust there, they all the things you'd want them to have, you've built everything, and then you get the data back and says, Hmm, this isn't quite getting where we need it to get to. Great because you've done 90% of the work, it's the last 10% shift that the data allows you to do, right as opposed to we've gotten the whole thing wrong. So in that particular case, they adjusted their outreach, the product characteristics, again, they had data to show because they're philanthropically funded to their donors saying, and again, to their credit, and to their courage to say, this is how, you know, the good news is they had good news stories, too, here's how we're doing and all these other places, but in this particular place, and again, if your readers are more domestic, this is multiple countries, but it can be multiple counties can be multiple states, it doesn't matter. These five, we're killing it, these two, we're not quite reaching the people we need to hear the steps we're going to take that have to do with product design, and outreach and support and all these sorts of things. And then we'll be back in 12 months to see if that works. And if it didn't, we'll do it again. And we'll do it again. So it's unbelievably practical, right? And having the data that is that aligned with mission. And that is meant to be used, as opposed to meant to be because again, if you do it at the end, and then you send it to the donor, and it says we didn't do that great job, and what are we saying? The donor supposed to say? Sorry, I'm gonna go to the next organization. donors don't want to do that. They have trust, they believe in the organization and the people, all these sorts of things. So that's what it means. Concretely, you know, we saw it, you know, similarly, in the US, we did a lot of work during COVID, around the PPP loans. And it was, it was, you know, again, findings that are now pretty well publicized. But we did this quite quickly and right at the beginning, and you know, lo and behold, the PPP loans predominantly went to people who had access to major banks, which were not the Black and Brown business owners in particular, who were particularly hard hit by COVID. And, and its impacts. And so what they did is they went to community development finance institutions who open their doors and did in became the capillaries of the US financial system in the way they're supposed to be. And what our data showed was, but for the PPP, and but for these CDFIs, these businesses mostly would not have survived, right, and to get that level of clarity in real time, about a program that size on that scale. Again, it really helps you see, you know, see, see what's working. And I think that's also what we need to be celebrating as much as possible.
100%. And I think this really harkens back to this trend that we lifted this year that we've been talking about so much, which is how do you humanize the digital experience? Y'all, when you get data like this, I think that we almost have a duty of care to talk about that, you know, with our community. And again, that goes beyond algorithms that goes beyond chat. GPT This is human feedback. That's real. That's honest, that's raw. And I think the fact that it can come in and help us architect and shape this impact is a really heady cool thing that we should embrace, as a sector. But Sasha we got to talk about this generosity experiment, because this is how I found you, like 100 years ago, but you did this really incredible TED Talk. We're gonna drop it in the show notes because I want people to go watch it and it was 13 years ago. P.S. You have not aged.
I just had a birthday sooo.
Happy birthday, but we want to talk about this generosity experiment. And I want you to talk to our audience about the genesis of that and what you learned from that process because I found it fascinating.
Sure, happy to. And it was an awfully long time ago, because in the talk, you can see my kids, I know, I think like three and five, and one of them's in college. And like, I feel very, very small next to him. So I, as I mentioned, had been put in charge of fundraising for Acumen. When I got hired, we launched what became a $100,000,000 two year capital campaign. And I was brand new as a fundraiser. And so the good news of being brand new was I didn't really know what I was doing. And so it was helpful to not have the orthodoxy of how you're supposed to do it. Again, between Acumen and their brand, their founder and CEO, Jacqueline Novogratz, who is unique individual and also had radical views about how we're gonna go about doing this. So I was inheriting a lot of that good stuff. But I had spent all of this time day in and day out talking to people, primarily very wealthy people about the things we've been talking about philanthropy as a means of self expression, and not feeling scarcity, and all these sorts of things. And, you know, I'm a reasonably self reflective person and try to work on my own self knowledge. And I don't think that if I had been asking myself the questions, I was asking those folks that I would do particularly well, you know, I think my if anything, the more I came into the not for profit space, you know, a lot of acumen was built, because of observations about the limits of traditional nonprofits. And the question of like, how do you get things to scale and you know, what's efficient and these sorts of things, and I found that ironically, the impact of that on me, was giving me really great ammunition to be less generous, because no organization was good enough, right. And, and, again, I'm very analytical. And I think my analytical mind just took over in my own behavior. And I just felt an incongruence between what I was doing every day in my job, and what I was asking you about other people and what I was doing myself. And so this generosity experiment was a forcing function for me to say, and when I when I did and was I spent a month just saying, I don't get to do that anymore. And any person, organization, whatever else that asks me for something, whether money or otherwise, I will default, say yes. And I'll just see what that feels like, as an experience. And I will see as like a form of self inflicted cognitive behavioral therapy. If I start doing that, it changes how I how I operate and how I show
And you did that I gotta say this for this audience, during giving season, like it was it was like November, December, right? I'm thinking that was a bold, bold risk.
My audience wasn't particularly big. So it wasn't like, all of a sudden,
it's a good thing. You didn't put that in the New York Times, you would have been just completely lambasted. But like, I want to know, what did you learn from that? Like, how did that shift you?
It was so interesting to experience myself doing the opposite of what felt normal to me. And just doing that over and over again, I mean, the one thing that, uh, that I remember specifically, like, I would take the subway to work all the time. And obviously, lots of folks in the subway asked for money. And so I started getting more natural with that. But I remember sometime near the end of that, there was a guy on the subway who had a very specific story of the hardships that he had faced, and also seemed like a person who was not on the other side of that, you know, it was very easy to sort of say, is this guy going to use this money, quote, unquote, well as if I get to judge that. And it was, it wasn't the S train, which is a very short ride it for folks in New York City is just like one stop. So you can really easily ignore people because you're gonna be off the train in a second, the discomfort will go away. And so this guy told his story and everyone was seated. And because I was in the middle of this experience, I stood up and I walked across the train, I handed him a $20 bill. And the end of the act of doing that I my, my pulse must have gone up to 120 the the physical stress and nervousness that I felt, because it was so opposite to what I think was socially normal in that moment, which was either to ignore him or give him $1. When of course, spending 20 bucks on a sandwich, I wouldn't think twice. It just think moments like that just caused a lot of reflection for me. Around how much we allow what is seen as the norm to govern our own behavior. And just for me to just question my own the excuses that I was making that was cutting me off from more personal connection or self expression.
Dang, I mean, what an experience. And I just think to your pairing that with your experience of growing acumen that's such a force for good. It's such a formative time, like you've been parallel to watching change happen at the biggest scale and at the smallest scale, and we create space. On the podcast, I always ask you to take us back to a moment in philanthropy that personally moved you and you just gave us one. So you kind of have a, you're getting a twofer on this one. But I'm wondering if you would take us back to a moment and you're like, Okay, that's an experience that will stay with me the rest of my life.
I don't know if it's so much an experience. But I think what for whatever reason comes to my mind is junctures, moments of kind of self inquiry and kind of what's the next step in my path? And for me, professionally, you know, as someone who is, you know, still to this day, I have trouble explaining to my kids what my job is, right? Like, I've had a series, I've had a series of jobs where it's just like, not, I'm not, you know, a well defined profession. And whenever I'm interviewing someone for jobs, I actually asked them to focus on the career transitions. Because I think those are moments that both we remember and kind of explain where we were at that particular moment. And so what what comes to mind for me, for whatever reason, and that question is specific junctures where I was trying to figure out what came next. And what I tried to go back to was, like, who am I? What do I have to offer, like, in a really honest way? And what could I uniquely do? That I could say, it's possible that I could be the best person for that thing. Because, again, so much of this work, and we started at the beginning, you know, I came from privilege, I grew up in New York City, I went to private schools, like, I think for a lot of work involving the social change that I like to see in the world, I'm absolutely not the best person. So trying to figure out what it is that I uniquely bring. And I mentioned some of that around this ability to bridge and connect across. I keep on trying to go back to that voice, when I'm making my next choices, because I feel like that that's as true as I can be to myself. And then if I can figure that out, then maybe I can make that happen to the world, but maybe I can't. But I feel like that those moments of reflection, like I can still remember at various junctures for various steps in my professional life, like very specific moments of that inquiry, and trying to make sense of it. And then that gave me the fortitude to figure out, Okay, I'll go try to do this or this.
I mean, that's so interesting to me. So I should, but not at all, that that is like the bookend of this conversation, because the front end of this conversation was you sharing about your family, and about going through revolutionary times and going through a holocaust. And there was nestled in the way you told that story, like profound humility. And, and I just think that your when you talk about your work at 60 Decibels, when you talk about how the generosity experiment shaped you, humility is not nestled at the bottom of that. And so I want to thank you for that. Because I think that's a really profound lesson also, in listening, is when you say it's not about me, it's not about what I'm going to glean from this a data point or a way back to our earlier conversation about proving something, it's about really being open. And being listening, you know, being open and being open handed and open hearted. And I think that when you have that posture in life, generosity flows from that, abundance flows from that. So I think that that is a beautiful starting point. Thank you for centering all of your work. It's really about your humanity and what you do, I'm sure it shows up in your parenting and all kinds of things. And, and I almost think, Jon, he gave us like a one good thing. But we end most of these conversations just asking you to kind of summate for us. What's the one good thing that you could offer to this community, you have a passionate group of people who want to change the world who are actively on the front lines, or maybe in the background powering a mighty movement? What would be a one good thing a piece of advice or something that you would give to them to leave with them today?
Well, thank you. This has been a wonderful conversation that's just flown by. And I feel like we could go a lot deeper and could keep on talking. So I really appreciate the chance to be in dialogue with you. I would reiterate the idea of staying close to the work and staying close to your reasons for doing the work and making making it a practice to be connected to and be in conversation again with your why and if you're wise in service of other people, and you're not living and experiencing that one I in a meaningful way, day in and day out, change that. And I think there's an anterior because I think there's also a like, I've watched, I've experienced that myself. And I've watched team members, then be week in and week out and say, Oh, well now all I'm doing is I'm I don't know, I'm neck deep, neck deep and data, or I'm writing this report, I'm doing this, I'm doing that, like, there is work involved. That is the reason that these problems haven't been solved. And these things haven't gotten done. And so I think it is both of those things at the same time, like if you feel the absence of that closest in that proximity, and that data and that dialogue, in your day to day, like, that's a fundamental problem that at an organizational and personal level, I'd really recommend people change. But also, to solve like, to solve the problems that we're facing in the world haven't been solved for very good reasons is because they're really hard. And so I also think there's a level of endurance, for lack of a better word, there's a level of discipline, rigor, like, I'm going to do this stuff, and it might be hard for a long time. And that's my service. Right, because I'm doing this in service of something that I'm trying to contribute to. So I think having that fortitude, and figuring out a way to structure your life in such a way that you can maintain that fortitude through, none of these things that any of us is working on is getting solved. You know, no one's writing an app that's gonna solve the problem of whatever we're working on in a year or two. These are 5, 10, 20 years long issues there generational issues. And so I think each of us needs to build that fortitude in and remind ourselves that doing this day to day work that may feel, excuse me, slow and hard, is what's required of us to really make that change. Because I sometimes find, and especially for younger folks, there can be this like, Well, wait a minute, I thought it was gonna be I don't know what the end of that sentence is. But not this, right, and deciphering the difference between not this because it really isn't connected and really isn't meaningful, and it really isn't gonna make change versus like, the job today doesn't feel glamorous and transformative. It's like, yeah, because a lot of work that makes real change, you're kind of in there, in the trenches, doing hard work, because it requires hard work. So I would just encourage that reflection, because I think we lose a lot of great people, because you get in, it gets hard. And people haven't figured out the resilience, to keep at it for the amount of time that it takes. And I do think our sector burned through a lot of really great folks. So I think we need to set expectations for people to say, this is going to be a long term journey, and how do you equip yourself? How do you build community? How do you have connection? How do you get to part of the value being in community and being a year olds community is, oh, there are other people experienced this, it's not just me. So that's validating, I'm not doing something wrong, I'm doing something, right. So just building whatever you need around you to help you keep at it for the amount of time we need. Everybody who's listening to keep at it is I think part of the equation.
I'm grateful that we get to be present for your second TED Talk. Right. So, I mean, what a beautiful conversation and thank you for tying it up with community. I mean, you're speaking our values to us. And it's has felt like a dialogue that we're both just like enriched through this conversation. So thank you. How can people connect with you follow you, find you, find 60 Decibels, like connect us to all the ways that you show up online.
That's all super easy. 60 decibels.com the number 60 decibels.com is where the company is, and I blog at Sacha dictor.com. And from there, I'm super easy to find.
Thank you, Sasha, always a delight to meet and ungettable get you totally lived up to the hype and we are enriched by it.
Oh, great. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you.
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