How to Harness Innovation to Scale Meaningful Impact - Evan Feinberg

3:21PM Jul 25, 2023

Speakers:

Becky Endicott

Jonathan McCoy

Evan Feinberg

Keywords:

people

community

phoenix

nonprofit

transform

frameworks

share

shawn

story

problem

evan

organization

talk

love

solving

nashville

work

podcast

incredible

social entrepreneur

Okay, this conversation really stopped me in my tracks. And I'm really excited to relaunch it to you today. We talked to Evan Feinberg, He is the executive director of Stan together Foundation. And the way that they think about impact is just so right. You know, I think a lot of times we can get hung up on the metrics, I mean, get into counting. And it gets us off of asking the right bigger questions about how are we actually solving some of the biggest systemic issues that our world is facing. And so I am so excited for you to listen to this conversation and hear what you think as we dive into how to harness innovation, and scale your meaningful impact. Hey, I'm John. And I'm Becky. And this is the We Are For Good podcast,

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So let's get started. Hey, Becky, welcome. Welcome. You know, we always play like seven degrees to Kevin Bacon, but it's all roads, always Becky always has a personal connection to everybody. And this happened again, today,

I'm getting like super good human vibes. And I'm very excited to talk about the things we're going to talk about. And guys buckle up, because this nonprofit mission is going to just explode your heart and make you want to get activated. And this

is for all type of listeners, if you're a business brain, I think you're gonna geek out if you just want to see the grassroots organization thrive. This is a conversation for you, too. So we're so delighted to have Evan Feinberg. Today on the podcast. He's the Executive Director of the stand together Foundation. And whatever you're doing right now, go to their website. Because it is absolutely amazing. And as you kind of peel back the layers of what this organization does, they're committed to breaking the cycle of poverty and communities. And they're doing that in a really entrepreneurial way, by finding the grassroots leaders that organizations that are doing that well, and they're working to replicate to put them on a platform to learn from them to grow from them. It's all the values that we talked about on the podcast, they're living them out all the time. And so this conversation, Evans, gonna kind of talk us through a little bit of their strategies with that, share some stories of how it came to be, but he is just a really accomplished guy that is doing incredible work. And I can't wait for you to fill in some of the gaps. So welcome, Evan to the podcast.

Well, thanks so much for being here. I'm a huge fan of the podcast a an avid listener. And I think what you guys are doing is so important for our sector. So it's a true joy and privilege for me to get to be a part of this and get to talk with both of you and pick your brains and learn from you and hopefully share some insights your listeners as well.

Well, I'm geeking out. Thank you so much. Evan, would you kind of walk us through your journey, what brought you to really serving with this organization now and kind of tell us a little about your personal life, too? Yeah,

I mean, from a very young age, I decided I wanted to try to change the world somehow. And I feel like I was I was sort of ambitious as a high school kid. And when you're a high school kid, you want to change the world, you're sort of drawn to public policy and politics and the laws of the land. And so that drove me to sort of study political science and really begin thinking about sort of the principles and conditions that drive human progress. And so that led me to work at a think tank and then work on Capitol Hill. You mentioned I worked for a couple different senators, the real highlight was working for Senator Tom Coburn, a physician from Oklahoma, who was just this incredible guy. You know, a lot of folks in Washington are there for the wrong reasons. Tom Coburn was there for all the right reasons he befriended people from across diverse backgrounds, experiences across the political aisle. He was a good friend of Brock Obama's despite being a conservative Republican from Oklahoma. And he just inspired me sort of what a what a what you should be like if you're a statesman and a leader. But frankly, I spent that time and I, I left Capitol Hill thinking that most politicians weren't like Tom Coburn. And so I ran for Congress, myself back in my hometown and in western Pennsylvania, just first,

first millennial to run for US Congress ever. Wow.

Yeah, the wow factor kind of wanes when I lost 6337 in the primaries. But it was a great crowd of you. Thank you. Thank you very kindly. It was a great experience. But ultimately, I learned through that whole experience that while politics and sort of that debate is important, it's not what makes the world go round. I really don't believe that the rules of our country of our states it's not what makes the world go round. What makes the world go around are the principles beliefs paradigms, that we have the norms, beliefs, expectations, that we have of ourselves of one another and that culture is what really matters. And, frankly, there's a lot more opportunity for collaboration and agreement and shared progress when we focus on culture. And so through a whole series of events after that, I found myself helping to launch Stan together foundation, this effort to really transform the way we think about the most significant problems in our communities and how we transform what I would call the institution of communities in a way that will help more people to to live up to their full potential. So that's, that's what I'm all about now. Wow.

So cool. Yeah,

I mean, one, thank goodness, Paul, you found your people in nonprofit and social good, come over to our space, I just I love this, the way that you have poured into your passion, and it's, it's always a winding road, when you're on that journey. And it's like, when you're looking for purpose, you're likely you're never just gonna run toward it. So I'm sure that you've had so many learning experiences in this, but I want to talk about the stand together Foundation, and and the catalyst program. I mean, what you have built here is so aspirational. And I love that you're using social entrepreneurs to activate on this mission, which is so huge, which is breaking the cycle of poverty. And I know we have a ton of listeners who have deep passion for this exact same issue. And so would you talk a little bit about how Stan togethers like was set up what the goals were and how you are activating today?

So sustained the other foundation is it's part of a broader philanthropic community that's known as the stand together community of business leaders and philanthropists who want to stand together to help every person rise? And what are those conditions of human flourishing and number of years ago, and I was a part of the this, to launch this effort, basically said, look, what are the problems in communities? Why do we have persistent poverty where, unfortunately, social mobility in many ways is on the decline in America, which is sort of a new thing for our country. And we got so many efforts, we got a million and a half nonprofits in the in the human services industry, why is so much so many efforts, going into helping people to transform their lives and break the cycle of poverty, and yet the problem is somehow getting worse. And really what we came back to is the principles and the paradigms in our communities. They were off, frankly, the majority of efforts in our space. And I say this, with a great deal of sort of humility that, you know, I think it's probably not your listeners that are part of this problem. But I think it's worth all of us considering the prevailing approaches to solving problems in communities knowingly or unknowingly, or to treat people that are experiencing problems, people that are in poverty, has broken and deficient and in need of top down outside expert help to solve their problems to fix them. And so as a result, even the very well intentioned efforts out there are making sort of human suffering less, they are making poverty easier to endure. But these efforts are actually making poverty harder to escape. And so frankly, we're treating poverty as a resource problem to be to mitigate it, when it's not that right and said, people are not problems to be managed, people are assets to be unleashed. And so poverty is actually an innovation problem. It's a problem that requires people to discover new and better and different ways to unleash the latent assets, the incredible potential that are out there and individuals that for one reason or another injustice as they face problems they face in their lives. For one reason or another, people are disconnected from their highest contributions. And so poverty, if it's an innovation problem, you have to look in completely different places for how to solve it. You don't look to experts in Washington, DC, or philanthropists that have studied the problem quite a bit. You've got to look to social entrepreneurs that are discovering new and better ways of unleashing human potential. And frankly, those social entrepreneurs are not where people tend to look, they are folks that have experienced the problems themselves, or have taken some firsthand risk in their life to get close to the problems they're seeking to solve. They're trying new things. And they're they're finding success. And then that success needs to be replicated, learn from it needs to be iterated upon by others, right? This is the social sector we need. But it's not unfortunately, the social sector that we have today. And so we've tried to lead the way by finding these innovators, giving them a platform, helping them to have stronger management approaches, stronger measurement frameworks, and really more robust vision for what they can accomplish. And then we want to tell these stories too. Every one that can listen, so that we can drive some real transformation in how people think about people and how to solve their problems.

I mean, this is a thread of conversations we're having in season four, which I just I love, it's like it's not solving problems with the way we thought about them maybe 50 years ago, just throwing money at something's not gonna solve it. But it's this human aspect. And it's really going deep and looking at the creative ideas and the entrepreneurial ideas that people that are experiencing it. So I just really appreciate how y'all are approaching this. Could you kind of use a story or organization to kind of show us this in action, I just I look at shells website that organizations to work with, are just all so mind blowing, like you can talk about one of our so is one that's kind of a pet favorite of yours, or something that you can kind of just express this of how you do this tangibly? Well,

there's so many favorites. And hopefully, I get to share a handful of these stories, I've learned far more about this work directly from these incredible leaders than than I could ever share with your listeners. But maybe one of the groups that I think is a pretty great place to start is a group called the Phoenix, it's a peer to peer addiction recovery effort. And so you start with the problem of addiction. And the majority of people out there knowingly or unknowingly think about individuals experiencing addiction as broken, right? They they're even thinking of it as a deficiency. They're they're focused on the problem, even if they understand it as a disease, they're still seeing it as a deficiency, that people have something that has to be cured. And so as a result, we take all these top down approaches, right one we incarcerate people for their addiction to we treat drugs with other drugs, which is often a life saving treatment, but it's not solving the underlying problem. We try to solve it with clinical treatment beds, which there's not enough treatment beds in the country to really address the 20 million Americans that we know of their experience in addiction are the 20 million more that are in recovery that are frankly, very likely to relapse at some point. And so the Phoenix comes along with an entirely different approach, the idea that the resilience and strength to overcome addiction is within each of us. And that the way that we can tap into that resilience and strength is through safe and supportive community and, and then need to be part of that community to belong to that community. And so their peer to peer physical fitness approach has a third of the relapse rate. So some of the best clinical programs in the country. But more importantly, people that are part of the Phoenix become better than well. They're they just they're there's their story of having overcome their addiction. And being in recovery is part of their identity and something they can share with others. And so it's, it's really this incredibly powerful organization. When we met them, they were, they were trying to open up a few gyms across the country, they were serving about 4000 people per year, we taught them to transform their strategy around volunteer led Chapters and, and partnering with other gyms. So now they've gone from 4000 to 40,000, from three communities to now close to 60. But the real goal is to get to a million members of the Phoenix within the next four or five years. And the goal for getting to a million members is not just because a million people's a lot of people and we want to transform a million lives, though we absolutely do. The real benefit of getting to a million is it becomes a tipping point where everybody in the country will know someone that's participated in the Phoenix and tapped into this resilience and the power of community. Wow. For us, that's so exciting. Because look, I'll share it just personally for a second, I think you'd be okay with me sharing this story. My brother in law has struggled with addiction. And, and he and for a long time, you know, we as a family didn't know the best way to come alongside him, right? You hear interventions and tough love and, and all of that stuff. And, you know, in many ways, we just were at our wits end for what to do to be there for him as he was caught in the cycle of addiction. And he's now 16 months sober, which we're really, really just proud of him and excited for him. But there's no way that I would have known how to engage productively but for I knew my friends at the Phoenix who taught me so much about what my brother in law needed, right what we could offer as a family as as his friend. And so it's not just the Phoenix is programming the matters. It's changing the prevailing mental models and mindset of, of what people are capable to begin believing in people again. So I'm deeply proud of our work with the Phoenix and it's it's one of 213 groups that we work with around the country. Certainly a very special one, but I can tell lots of stories just like it

and the mental image of a Phoenix and like I know the the word of that, you know, thank you for sharing that story. And I

just think the way that the foundation is set up the stand together foundation is so smart. I am seeing and I'm John and I you just said I'm hearing you talk to people you're seeing that for profit is over here, nonprofit is on the other side, there's social entrepreneurship, maybe in the middle, it's crossing over. Yet on this, you know, paradigm we all need each other. And for profit needs to understand how we connect with people, how we make them feel really great about giving and about building community, we need to learn how for profit gets their messages out, we need to understand how to get something in front of someone to scale. And you have taken the social entrepreneur who is right in the middle. And you've taken the best of for profit and nonprofit and put them together. And I want to repeat something you said that I think was so beautiful, poverty in itself, any problem that we're facing, it's not a resource problem. People are not problems to be managed, their assets to be unleashed. So if you have a growth mindset and abundance mindset, where you're not looking at throwing money, throwing money at a problem, you're thinking about how do I take this problem, get into the thick of it, meaning sitting down, I love the peer to peer on the Phoenix, understanding what the heart of the issue is, what someone is feeling, what they're going through, it is going to allow you to iterate that thing so much more succinctly. And the last Bravo, I'll give to you, Evan, is that the last thing you said is, we give them frameworks and then we tell those stories. That is right there, the secret sauce, wherever you are in the world listening, if you're a nonprofit, get your frameworks, get your people mobilized, get into the guts of it, listen, and then tell those stories. That is where community is unleashed. It's where activism is unleashed, it is where passion is activated. I am just loving this conversation. And I will stop talking and let you get a breath in here as well.

You know, as you were talking, I was just thinking about Shawn from the Phoenix. So Shawn is is an incredible guy. So I was going up to their gym in Boston and they were giving me the site visit as if I were someone walking in their price of admission to their gyms is for eight hours clean and sober. And so I was able to step into the to the gym that day, they treated me as if it were my first day at the Phoenix. And so within five minutes of coming into the building, they've got me strapped into to come to go up a climbing wall, right and a guy named Shawn starts coaching me through it right. So have you ever climbed for us at once in college, and it's okay, so he starts giving me some tips. And you know, he coaches me I get a scurry up the wall, he takes me to a harder spot and helps walk me through some tough things. And I get down to the bottom. And at first he says to me, you know, it's actually a special day for me, it's it's the 10th anniversary of my sobriety. And, you know, people all over the gym, immediately drop what they're doing and start coming over. There's tears, they're all hugging him. And, and he tells me his whole story. And a story comes in, he had never done anything physical at all before. But he finds out right away on the first day comes into the Phoenix, that he's actually pretty good at climbing, right? He's a pretty easy, natural. So then he finds out that he's actually beginning to then coach his peers, like he's figuring things out. He's like, Oh, well, maybe you put your foot there and do this and starts coaching others. And he finds out that not only is it pretty good climber, but he's got a gift as a teacher, but he's really a great coach and teacher. And so, you know, then he became a staff member of the Phoenix and started coaching on on climbing and other physical activities. Eventually, he started training the trainer's of their facilities all over the country. And he now leads a lot of their program in Phoenix nationally. And it struck me this, Shawn is the is not just great at what he does. He's the best in the world at what he does. He's if you're coming in and you want to learn climbing and find community and overcome addiction, there's literally nobody in the world better than Sean at helping you through that process. He's been there, he's walked in, he has insight and he has gifts and talents to help you. It's it's absolutely inspirational to me that Shawn is in the role that he's in now. Most philanthropy is not set up to help Shawn do what Shawn does. Most philanthropy is set up to advance compliance to some evidence based best practice that somebody learned in a college class or through some random controlled study, which I'm not against random control studies, but their r&d metrics they they help us to think about what maybe we should try and what's worked in the past, but they aren't funding social entrepreneurship. Instead, we have to find those Shawn's and understand their secret sauce and invest in them. Understand the value they're creating for customers, the customer not being the funder, but the person whose life is being transformed and ask ourselves how do we get more investment in more Are people like Shawn, to drive personal transformation, rather than did we get lower recidivism rates or higher graduation rates at a population or aggregate level? Because we were complying with some, you know, random control study that we did 15 years ago, that showed we get a left if we did some two generation approach or whatever else it might be.

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I mean, okay, Evan, we're kindred spirits on this what you're talking about, I just think what you're talking about, specifically with lived experience, and people going through probably the hardest thing, the thing they didn't want dealt to them in life. Whatever that thorn in the flesh is. Y'all see those people with the potential and activate and allow them to channel their passion, their purpose, and do something super meaningful. And this is a thread we're seeing in conversations right now. People are moving into this sector or this space, because they want to do something meaningful with their life. And I feel like y'all just kind of exist to activate that. I mean, how does somebody get involved in this, if you've got this great idea? What is the steps for a nonprofit or this idea to get funded or to get supported with you guys?

Yeah, well, we love for nonprofit leaders, I hope that there are lots of social entrepreneur, nonprofit leaders. When we say social entrepreneur, I don't mean you know, someone that's doing something for profit or revenue a social entrepreneur does is anyone who's taking any risk or trying to discovering new things, to transform the lives of others that to me as a social entrepreneur. So if you've got any leaders in who are listening, who are thinking, That's me, that's my nonprofit, or that's the nonprofit I want to start, we want to talk to him. Now they've got when we're looking for nonprofits that participate in our programming, we're looking for folks that are already into it a little bit, they, they've got a clear vision for how to how they believe they can transform lives. They've got a sort of a leadership and culture that they're building that fits this rubric already, we're looking for demonstrated outcomes. And we're looking for that wow factor, the cultural leverage that the Phoenix has that if they're successful, they have this incredible impact on society more broadly. And I'd love to share some more examples of that soon. But if they've got, if they fit that rubric, we want them to apply for our catalyst program, they can go to stand together foundation.org and apply for it and be connected to us. But if it's just generally a citizen, or a person who's listening, our real goal is to build a movement out of this. And so we're looking for new and better ways to offer the things that we've learned the frameworks that we help nonprofits apply to philanthropists or volunteers, or just ordinary people who want to want to engage in this way. And so we'd love to get connected. They can reach out to us through our website or on social media, they can certainly reach out to me directly. But our goal is to work with hundreds of nonprofits. We have some new programming where we coach and train philanthropists to think through this mindset. We are building some proprietary or not really proprietary some some original measurement systems that we'd like to share with the marketplace that we believe measure customer value rather than sort of these macro aggregate measures that we think might pull us off course. Love to talk more about that as well. And so we're, we're we'd love to work with anyone and everyone that just wants to make a bigger difference why I'm on your podcast because this is the ethos of everything that I've heard from from you all and so I'm really excited that you're cultivating a community that's that's thinking this way.

I'm so happy if you are in the world, like you You stand together Foundation, because I feel like we've just spent a year going through understanding where is the sector right now where people's intentions in their hearts. And here you are building frameworks funding and empower, you're empowering the person who's about to empower the community. And so I'm just telling anyone who's listening right now, if this sounds like something that your nonprofit is ready to do, if you have that spirit of being brave, and not perfect, and you can jump into community, I just think this is the way that we see massive linear growth in some of our nonprofits, because we're learning things that are going to take us to the next level, we've already learned a nice base about what major gifts are, what campaigns are how to steward, somebody had to tell a great story. Now it's time to take it to the people get at a grassroots level. I'm just so excited. I just hope there are many of you out there right now who are thinking, I think this may be the thing for me. So we want you to go check out the catalyst because it is extraordinary. And I want to tie it back to Shawn. Thank you for telling the story about Shawn because I visually feel like I can see him right now. And I feel like Shawn is such a great metaphor for everyone of how are we reaching to the point where we're making our missions vibrant for the one, we again, we want these people to be better than well, whether they're in the poverty cycle, whether they're in human another human services issue, you could be someone who is in the top 1% of people, you know, in this country who have wealth, but could be struggling mightily with a thing. Our nonprofits need to be set up to focus on the Sean's and figure out how to pour into them to make a vibrant community around us.

Well, I 100% agree. And so on this storytelling track, we have a show page on Facebook called catalysts that I'd encourage everyone to watch. We do many documentary type videos, you know, four to seven minutes on a lot of our catalyst organizations. And there if you just want your soul warmed right watch these incredible stories of people's lives being transformed. It's it's, it's what gets me out of bed every day is these these stories of transformation and what's possible in people's lives. So I'd encourage folks to check those out. But it's the it's the inspiration alongside the the frameworks and tools and paradigms to do this at scale. So I want to give an example that we think really matters to get to that individual. As you mentioned, Becky, we think that measurement in the space, I've mentioned this a couple of times, we just think it's off, right? It's not that we don't care about how many people you served or, or services, Render, right meals, deliver beds that people were able to utilize, et cetera. But those are counting metrics. And if you treat them as value metrics, you'll measure how much of the problem you're managing versus how much of it you're solving. So as a leader, you should care about those numbers, you should track them. But if you treat them as value metrics, versus the counting metrics they are, it's going to have you incentivized to do the wrong thing. And frankly, a lot of government programs will pay based on how many services you render. And I think a lot of our programs, and a lot of philanthropists are paying for volume rather than value creation. It's one of the reasons why our sectors floating. But then there's this sort of movement in Effective Altruism and effective philanthropy. I think there's a lot of positives here. But it's toward these sort of aggregate macro measures that lose the individual in them. So they understand they're sort of r&d metrics, or long term outcome metrics. They're often the lagging indicator of the value you're creating. And I think they're valuable, and they give valuable information to funders and nonprofit leaders. But they don't help you run your organization every day. You can't ask, did I create value for Shawn today, or not this case manager do better than that case manager. There's something going better at this site than that site, you can use those random control studies and five year you know, high school graduation rates as the measure for that. And so we've been pioneering some subjective wellbeing and other survey instruments, transformation metrics, to actually be able to compare apples to apples across the sector and give organizations real time information, much like customer service businesses use with our customers. And so we're using net promoter score and we're using life satisfaction scales and the Harvard flourishing the human flourishing scale of Bob Vander wheel at Harvard has been working on and now there's one question that is rising to the top and this might sound overly simplistic, but the simple question on a scale of one to 10 How much is this organization trend? formed your life for the better. And we, we use a kind of like net promoter score, we subtract six and below as not transformed from nines and 10s is being transformed. And then we hold seven and eight neutral, we don't count. And we're finding that some of our best nonprofits are scoring nine, 90%. and above, which means almost everyone is saying nine or 10, right? My life was fundamentally transformed. That's what they say, at the Phoenix, or cafe momentum or urban specialists. Versus if you go to, you know, a food bank, you might be really glad that they offered you a meal, but no one's saying my life was transformed for the better than nothing is food banks. But it's helped us to really identify these social entrepreneurs that are having breakthrough success in at solving intractable problems. And so I think more experimentation is needed here. We're just scratching the surface of it. But it's an example time not only do we tell inspiring stories, and draw people to personal transformation, but we're also trying to set up business strategies to deliver personal transformation on a regular basis.

I think this framework that you're teaching is incredibly disruptive, but it's so the best way. Yeah, and I think a lot of times throughout this conversation, I just keep on thinking, the words that you're using, just capture the moment really well. And I think even using the term customer really like transforming the way that we're thinking about the end of the day, who are you serving, and we talk a lot of times about our customers almost like our donors, but truly it's like, let's let's put that on the shelf and look at like, what is the real impact? Like, what does it really matter? And I think this just drives to everything that has led up to this and so many conversations on the podcast is, is your vision big enough? Is it really connected to doing the actual thing? Are we so caught up in these other beautiful metrics that don't really matter? You know, how many people download the podcast doesn't really matter. But how many people change their way that they lead as a result of it? I would love and care about that stat. So I'm just drinking it? Can you give us some advice for transforming to a culture like that? And this is not on our flow? But I'm just curious of like, I would want that in our organization? Is it the Net Promoter Score? Is that a good way to do it? Or is there something that's really easy to implement? If like, how do you look at 2.0 stats, you know, that you can really dive into?

Yeah, well, for a podcast, I'd have to think about it some more, I think, net promoter scores and net transformations, those anything that's getting feedback from your customers, whether they derive significant value from the experience, right. And so if you're using downloads, I actually think in the podcast world downloads are actually pretty, a pretty useful accounting metric. Because it's a conversion metric, it's a little bit different than, you know, some of the services rendered metrics in the space. But if you stop there, if you stop just a downloads, you might get really high downloads, because you invited the right guests on or, you know, you, you brought celebrities on people who have got more followers than someone like me. But if your goal is to transform the mindset of the nonprofit's you might be okay, with fewer downloads, and inviting people like me on it, we're gonna share ideas and frameworks, right? It would help you make the trade off between why you would ask the guests like beyond versus a guest that has, you know, 100,000 Instagram followers. And, and I think you you all, because you're so focused on the value creation, because your vision is big enough for what you're doing. You're making that trade off, sort of implicitly. And I'd encourage organizations to make those trade offs explicitly through a clear vision. And I like I use that as a big enough. But for us, a vision is not just you know, your Northstar. It's what capabilities do we have? And who can we create value for? And what are the ways that we're that we're thinking about to create the most value for those customers and those opportunities? Then if you have you laid out your principles and values well enough, I love that for your podcast? Is it eight that everyone matters down?

Oh, my gosh, you know, our values? Thank you. Yes,

yes. It's incredible, right? Because as soon as you lay out those explicit values, we encourage every organization to do this, you can then hold every word that comes out of your mouth, every person you bring on to be a producer and editor or a guest. You can hold them accountable back to does this further have these principles and values or not? So we think that's really critical. We talked a lot about measurement. Do you have knowledge processes that ask whether you're advancing your vision or not? And if and are you challenging yourself even within your organization? right even if you don't have measures are you subjectively you know, this is like free speech signals in in in our culture? Are you challenging each other? Is this the best way to advance our vision? Are we making decisions against that and do we have the right incentives right to do John and Becky Get, get sort of famous and paid more and everything Because of the number of downloads, or do you get or do you? Or do you seek the value? Do you align your incentives? In your podcast back to did you get the social change that you were going for? So we have a management framework. We call it market based management or a mutual benefit framework. And we we basically train organizations to apply those mental models. And the whole goal of it is, how do I unleash the ingenuity of every staff member, every volunteer, every donor, every board member, unleash their ingenuity on the problem we're solving by having those frameworks in place, rather than turn my organization into an efficient bureaucracy that pushes out a program or an idea, or whatever it might be.

This is the revolutionary thinking that we're hoping people will start to move toward. It's not just about hitting the KPI, getting the, you know, the minimum of what we need for our programs. It's about unleashing the ingenuity within all of us and pouring it into the mission. And I think if we can just get into that mindset of, it's not about us, it's about Shawn. And when we get up this morning, we've got to pour that ingenuity into somehow duplicating the Sean's of the world and replicating that experience for them. So thank you, Evan, this is an extraordinary conversation. And I cannot wait for the next one, which is, tell us a meaningful story of impact, which is a hilarious question, because you've shared so many wonderful stories, but you're clearly just an amazing threader of story and what you do, and I would wonder if there's a moment that just kind of rises to the top for you?

Well, I've got I have one from pretty much every single day of my life these days. So I'll share. I'll share one from last night. I was. I was in Nashville for the soft launch of the cafe momentum restaurant in Nashville, Tennessee. So Cafe momentum is a restaurant in Dallas, Texas. It's staffed almost entirely by kids coming out of the juvenile justice system in Dallas. And the magic of it is is that these kids who've been treated the literal term in the Texas juvenile justice system is these kids are called throwaway kids, right? Not because the system's throwing them away. But because people have treated these kids as throwaway kids. And the magic of it is they come in, and they run the third ranked restaurant in all of Dallas and they're trusted to do it. And there's high expectations set on them. And then supportive community and love to be able to deliver, and they run this incredible restaurant. So they've got recidivism rates that are a third of the of the one year is that only 15% of kids from Kevin minim ever go back to prison, whereas 50% of all kids go back within the year in Dallas. And so it's this incredible group and we've been working help them open up restaurants in new cities for last couple of years. The first replication will be in Nashville, the other in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, later this year as well. couldn't be more excited. The NFL is involved in National Football League. It's really exciting. Well, we did a pop up dinner in Nashville, the first time we ever explored going into new cities was a pop up dinner at the NFL draft in Nashville, Tennessee a couple years ago. And there was a kid named Cameron, who was there that night, and he was on a bad path. And Cameron had never cooked anything in his life. And they did a three day training to be able to run a dinner for the mayor of Nashville was there and some NFL legends were there Hall of Famers. And you know, the head magistrate the justice in Nashville, who does the juvenile courts was there. And this kid Cameron discover that he had a love of cooking, and he was great at it. And so he was there that night, and he cooked and there was a restaurant tour in the audience who was there and he met Cameron. And he offered Cameron an entry level job at his restaurant, a high end restaurant in Nashville, two weeks after the dinner. So I that's when I lost the story. I hadn't talked to Cameron and or talked to anyone about this for a couple of years. And last night Cameron was at this event, helping to train some kids that were running pop up dinner to launch their restaurant in Nashville. Cameron has worked his way up at that restaurant to be an A manager and a sous chef. He's 18 years old, and he's making more money than he ever would have expected and his life. He's by all accounts wildly successful, and he found his calling in his life. He's training others and his transformation. Even last night, I watched him transform eight to 10 other kids who were right where he was just a couple of years ago. And that's just the beginning of what this kid can do. I'm inspired by Cameron and I just know there are so many more like him, whose personal transformation can drive societal transformation. And here's the thing about Cafe momentum. Once you walk into that rush, it's not just about the recidivism rates, once you walk into that restaurant and you eat there, you can no longer believe those kids are throwaway kids, you can no longer believe Cameron is a throwaway kid, you begin to understand what these kids are capable of you begin to believe in them will no longer lock them up and throw away the key will start finding ways to to unleash the potential of these kids. And we'll all be better off for it. Certainly they will be so yeah, that's, that's my one inspiring story, I guess for today.

Oh, my word. Wow, this is your life? And then how are you holding it together? You know, it's just like day after dying

right now, these stories. I'm just sitting here with such a full heart of gratitude to Doesn't it make you feel good guys to know that a cafe momentum is out there? Doesn't it make you feel good to know that the Phoenix is out there. And to think that they could take these tools, these mindsets, this passion, and have these kinds of effects where you can go from a throwaway kid to a sous chef, this is the potential of what could be activated. When we can pour into things that matter and embrace trying stuff, embracing innovation, embracing that everything can be iterated and made better. And when you come into a situation where you feel like, I'm going to have humility, and I'm just going to listen. And then I'm going to figure out what the thing is to make my thing grow. Wow. I mean, I just like want to help more cameras in my life. Thank you, Evan,

you know where this is going? Since you listened to the podcast? I don't know how you're going to separate it into one good thing, but what's something you could offer our community that we can all implement today?

Yeah, you know, I thought a lot about what is that one good thing. And you know, frankly, the one thing that I that I think we've talked so much about but haven't named is hope. You know, I have a I have so much hope for people for our communities for our country because of the hope dealers that I'm around every single day, the cafe momentums Chad Houser is the founder of Cafe momentum, or the Phoenix, Scott strode, who, by the way, I didn't even mention Scott story is that he was in recovery himself and started the Phoenix. It's just a guy in a bike, riding his bike with others in recovery and realize that it was making this huge difference. And that's what gave rise to the Phoenix. Chad was an up and coming chef who went into to the juvenile detention facility to teach some kids how to make ice cream, and just had his mind blown and said, This is what I want to give up my restaurants. And I just want to do this with my life. I have so much hope because of these hope dealers. And, you know, I'm from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Fred Rogers is sort of, you know, this iconic figure in Pittsburgh. I'm a huge Mr. Rogers fan. And you know, there's the famous Mr. Rogers quote, that when he would be watching the news, and despairing his mom would say, look for the helpers first. And and the reason why I have hope is because I see those helpers helping every single day. And our country is so divided right now, there's so much despair. Everyone is pointing fingers at one another. And the answer that everyone has if is, is if one side or the other at some political debate gets power and control and they can fix it. And I know that that's false. I know it's not true. The people that can fix it are the Scott Stroz and the Chad housers. And the Sean's and the Cameron's, we have to find ways to empower them and lift them up in the beauty of that is, where were the sort of the political debates divide. These incredible healers in our communities just naturally unite. There's no longer politics and debate and despair. There's unity and hope and focus. You know, Alexis de Tocqueville, when he came to America, to study it in the 1800s. He said, The great thing about America is that Americans are always seeking sort of seen problems. And when they encounter a problem of any kind, they seek each other out. And together, they unite to solve that problem. And when they do they become a power that that speaks from afar, a power that speaks into which one listens. And you know, there were lots of problems in our country when Tocqueville was, was observing those things. But this is still the great threat of America that if you go in our communities, always in everywhere, there are people solving problems seeking each other out and uniting to drive transformation and progress. And that's what gives me hope. And I hope it gives you a lesson or so

and it supports value number eight, very last one, that community is everything and when you can pour into community and have that be your base. I just think that all good things can flow from that if You can activate them for good. So, Evan, you're a really good dude and I want you to be our friend forever. I know that people are listening right now have been nodding like bobbleheads and they are going to want to connect with you. So Evan, tell us where people can connect with you. Where are they? Where can they go connect with Stan together foundation sign up for Catalyst. What are all the channels?

Well, they can email me directly ie Feinberg at Stan together.org. They can find me on Twitter or social media. Twitter, I'm at Evan Feinberg. They can find Stan together Foundation, they can they can add stand together foundation on Twitter. They got our website stand together foundation.org for all of it. I would love to connect with anyone and everyone, anyone who anyone who truly wants to empower people from the bottom up. There are people and we want to work together in whatever ways we can. And I

want to give a little shout out to stand together foundation because the holidays are coming up in a couple months that they have this incredibly beautiful gift guide on their website in addition to the amazing resources, PS your MBA your impact page on your website, people if you're looking for an impact page and how to quantify it on your website with your mission. Please go and check it out. But the Gift Guide is a curation of all of the social enterprises who are working in community to uplift exactly the Sean's the Camerons everybody. And so and I have to give a little shout out because Cafe momentum is on there. And one of my favorites, thistle Farms is also on there.

I just visited my friend how Kato and Becca and the team at thistle farms yesterday while I was in Nashville, I bought I bought some lavender candles for my from my wife and some, some some hands. So you know the amount of dignity that comes from producing a product that people value is just an incredibly transformative thing. And thistle farms does this incredible job with women who are survivors of empowering them to be their very best by producing this product. I can tell stories like that all day. There are a bunch of social enterprises like that, that we work with women's being project care firm, so many. I would love for folks to go to that store and buy some products and transform some lodges just by doing what they do in their everyday life.

This has been amazing, Evan, you're a rock star. Thank you for sharing your heart, your wisdom, your time with us today.

Keep rockin it.

Thank you so much for having me. You guys are great humans.

Thanks so much for being here. We hope you're loving the summer of Evolution Series. And to learn more you can head over to we are for good.com/evolution All the playlists resources and other ways to help you get inspired and activated this summer. We'd also love for you to join the conversation. Share what you're learning on social media, or join us at our free community at We Are For Good community.com Bonus points for snapping a picture and showing us where you're listening from. Can't wait for the next conversation. See you soon friends