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Hey, I'm John. And I'm Becky.
And this is the We Are For Good podcast.
Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.
We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.
So welcome to the good community. We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropist, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
So let's get started. Hey, Becky, us having and
I hope everybody's buckled up and ready for what our guests is about to bring down today because we are gonna get activated.
We are I mean, we talked about the impact uprising is our vision. And I feel like we are sitting with the human that may could sit across the table and tell us how to actually create an impact uprising. And so it is a huge honor to be talking to Jacob Harold today. You may know him because he has this incredible career that has spanned a lot of different facets of our industry. But he is really honing that and put it into I want to call it like a manifesto of really how do you solve? And how do you harness a lot of these energies to solve the biggest problems facing humanity. And so we're gonna talk about his book. Today we're going to talk about a little bit of his story. Let me tell you a little bit about him. He studied ethics at Duke, and he earned his MBA at Stanford. This is a former Greenpeace activist, he is a Hewlett Foundation, Bridgespan alum. And he spent some time even at little known entity known as GuideStar. Now as called as candidate, he was the president and CEO there. But he has kind of taken all those and many more experiences and put together this book called The toolbox. And it's teaching the methods and mindsets for maximizing social impact. And so this is close to our heart. It's about really activating people at the base. It's about organizing community. It's about centering what really matters to make some systemic changes in our world. And so Jacob, it is a delight and an honor to have you in our house today. Welcome to the podcast.
Well, thank you guys. I'm thrilled to be here. But man, no pressure. I mean, what now? Well, I will not only have a few answers, but maybe together we can we can figure out a little bit more.
Oh, that sounds fun. Yep. And thank you for that posture. Because I think you know, what a way to start this conversation. I mean, we all have our own perspectives. And we need to tap into those and add to our own lived experiences, which is why we always want to start just inviting you to bring us into your world, like take us back to growing up and what informed your story along the way that made you want to pour into this work in such a meaningful way.
Sure. Well, you know, so I grew up in Winston Salem, North Carolina, and I was the son of a couple of do gooders of the best kind social workers who were devoted to their community. And it it started out very young when I would, was two or three years old, I like most kids would stumble and fall sometimes I skinned my knee or fall on the grass, on the gravel, and my mom would scoop me up and she would kiss me and make sure I was okay. And then she take me back to the spot where I fell and ask that we show compassion for that spot of ground she would say let's check to see if the ground is okay. And on the one hand, that was just a parenting trick to distract a crying child from from passing pain, but it was really more than that it was an attempt on her part to expand my sphere of compassion to think about kindness in as big a way as possible, even the scrap of ground that, you know, had skinned my knee or whatever. And, you know, so that that was very emblematic, I think of my childhood that I feel very, very blessed by, as I, then, you know, watch my parents working at an AIDS hospice, my dad ran Catholic social services for central North Carolina, my mom helped to run outreach at our church. And there was, you know, these were the discussions we had over the dinner table, the struggles around fundraising, or working with the board or whatever it may be. But I, you know, had to figure out something to rebel against. On national and global issues, instead of instead of local ones, I was about the best I could come up with. But I do feel very, very blessed to have had that as, as my, my, my route, and then you know, we all find your own pathway after that, gosh, you're
so humble. I mean, we literally start with humility, and then we moved to compassion. And I want to give your parents just such a lovely shout out for grounding you in that way. And it also makes me feel that they made it not just about you, they made it about, hey, stop and look around and see what else is impacted. And it just is very symptomatic of where you are now, it seems like just a natural flow into like, okay, how can I go find the greatest impact and everything that I do? And we're so intrigued by this book, that you've just written the toolbox. And I have to tell you that I loved it, because I thought the play on words of it was so brilliant, because when we think of a toolbox, we think about what we're going to go into, and where do we get all the ingredients? Where do we get all the tools to make things work, the frameworks, but you have built in something here that says, whoa, whoa, it's not just about the methods, it's also about the mindsets. And thank you so much for that, because we believe that abundant mindset is the way to stay curious is the way to stay compassionate and humble in this lifetime. And if you're constantly curious and iterative, that is going to grow and grow as you continue to listen and learn, so please unpack this wonderful book for us why you wrote it. And then you also walk through the nine lessons for social change. And we'd like to hear you unpack those as well.
Sure, and I love to use the word abundant because that is at the heart of, of what I've tried to do with this book is to move us beyond a scarcity mindset towards one that recognizes all that's been done over the last few centuries to figure out how to do good, and that we can actually draw from those lessons. But our society in some ways, is not really set up for that. And I think I really, I had the idea for this book when I was at the Hewlett Foundation. This was about a dozen years ago. And you know, we would just sit there in our beautiful office, and the smartest social change agents in the world would come to us because they needed money. So we could almost passively absorb all this thinking from all around the world from all these different perspectives. And it wasn't just people who were pure social change agents, it was also a philosopher would come by or world famous psychologists just to have lunch and talk to us or, you know, we go across the street to Stanford and spend time with the design school. And I remember being there feeling so blessed by this abundance, but also realizing not everyone had access to this range of perspectives. And that, in fact, when you looked at the social sector, what you actually saw was so many people who picked one framework, and viewed the entire world through that lens. And they usually had good reason, the framework was usually really thoughtful, but it was never complete. And I started to get frustrated by that. by those who said, it is only about the story we tell, or it's only about the mathematical analysis that we do, or it's only about figuring out the nuances of human behavior, or it's only about using a market to scale a particular approach. And, you know, I felt each of them were right in a way that there was real power and insight from that perspective. But the sense of limitation, I found frustrating. And I wanted to think about, you know, how might we as a field, do a better job of tapping into this variety of different different perspectives that you know, we've got to figure how to make that easy. So put nine of these tools in a book and we can go through those, and
you should and you even have icons for each one. So as the graphic designer is geeking out, it's beautifully set up but I do want you to unpack the nine lessons because I do think the visuals help you to see the book is beautiful, too. You're holding that up.
Yeah. So and we should talk about the actually let's pause and talk about the design part first because if you if I want to This would be a gift that would be usable to many different types of people, I knew I was going to have to use different forms of communication, in order to learn from types of people where they're at. And you know, some people learn through stories. Some people learn through equations, some people learn through a diagram, some people learned through a poem, some through a photograph. And so I included all of those different ways of communicating in the book and in in one way or another, to try and make sure that everyone who read it, you know, saw themselves it least, and was able to connect to at least one of those methods of communication, hopefully, more than one. But you know, I'm a big believer in all of those as ways of helping people learn. So that I hope that, you know, we succeeded the designers, I worked with it at open with the name of the design firm, and I am colleagues and in presenting this information about multiple perspectives through multiple perspectives. But so the nine tools are ways of, of organizing your understanding of the world and organizing how you act in the world. The first one is storytelling, we can talk about all these in more detail. The second one is is mathematical modeling. The third one is behavioral economics or behavioral science. The fourth one is design thinking. The fifth one is community organizing. The sixth one is game theory. The seventh is markets. The eighth is complex systems, and the ninth is institutions. And each of those offers so many different lessons and so many ways to think about how to organize our work to make a better world. So let's start with Game Theory, which you know, might be the, the least familiar to to many people who are listening. And game theory developed in the middle part of the 20th century, as a as a mathematical discipline. And it's ended up playing out in political science and economics, etc. But the first place where it really got traction was in dealing with the crazy logic of nuclear war. And you have these mathematicians who are advising the US military, about how do we make a decision, when we don't know what the other person is going to do. And that decision could lead to the end of the world. And that it was actually possible to begin to put that in formal mathematical language. And you know, the most, the most most famous example is the idea of a prisoner's dilemma, where you have two prisoners who've been arrested, and they're each kind of offered a deal, where their their short term incentive is to betray each other, you know, to rat on the other one. But if both of them resist, that, they will end up in a better Better Place holistically. But the short term incentive, no doubt is, is to defect away from your colleague. And so to me, one of the most important lessons of of game theory is to be honest about the fact that people do often have an incentive to betray each other in the short term. But there are ways to get around that. And they're all relevant, I think, for social change. One is the flow of information. If you can actually have a flow of information between two organizations that maybe we could be competitors, or maybe we could work together, then it's so much more likely that you'll be able to, to find that pathway to collaboration. The second is to realize that, almost always, we're actually interacting with people multiple times. And that when you have a repeated game, it totally changes the logic, because later you have to deal with this person again. So as you stretch your time horizon, it becomes much easier to realize, oh, it's actually logical to work together.
Can I Can I jump in on here? Because I think I'm making a parallel, or maybe I'm not because I'm not good at math. But I do live theory. And I think what you're saying here, and I want to relate it to what people can understand at home, it's like, I think using game theory is going to find your believers, we think there's a distinct difference between a donor and a believer in just this application of this sort of thinking. And philosophy is like how do we find somebody that does good instinctively, that we're they're already going to do good, versus somebody who's just like going after that warm, fuzzy feeling, you know, that they feel in the moment or because Oh, my gosh, this, this natural disaster happened, I do think that there are believers baked into this. So I do think that this could be like the 2.0 of figuring out who your believers are with your donors. So that's fascinating, at least to me.
And this was a theme throughout the book is the connection between strategy and ethics. That you know, it turns out that under certain circumstances, the right thing to do is in fact the strategic thing to do. And people who study game theory have actually been able to show this that In a repeated game, if you're interacting with people over and over, the best strategy, and this has been shown quantitatively is to start out with generosity. So just assume that the other person is going to do the right thing. If they end up betraying you hold them accountable. And then as soon as they do the right thing, again, forgive them. And this has actually been shown quantitatively to be the best strategy for dealing with this sort of, sort of a situation. And so it's to me a profound lesson, because we can get pretty cynical about really, you know, it's only the jerks who, you know, make it anywhere in this world. And that even that can be true in the nonprofit sector. But, you know, I've really come to believe that, you know, being kind actually can be really good strategy. And we should take advantage of those opportunities. And, you know, I played this on myself in when we formed candid with the merger of GuideStar, where I was CEO, and Foundation Center. And, you know, we we're in this kind of Prisoner's dilemma of, are we going to betray each other? Are we actually going to pull this off for the greater good? And can we figure out how to let go of some of our ego, in my case, let go of being CEO, in order to make this thing that was important for the field happened. And so I think it's really worth us in the social sector, thinking through the mechanisms of collaboration, and how we get around some of these traps. Because like, that's the point, right? Is that why we're doing this work to figure out how to work together in order to do more good. But the power often do people in the social sector stumble, when they are trying to do that,
I mean, Jacob, that's worth the purchase price of your book, just this piece, right here, I just think of what that would unlock. And I think we create this space to be a kindness, first community, you know, and I think we've seen the tangible effects of just building in that way. But I think you're gonna steps two and steps three are equally as important of like, still having accountability, and still fighting for what's right, not just ending it, like we're just being kind to everybody. But there is truth to that. But there's a way that you ultimately can move forward and not cancel people, but help people to get in alignment together. And so really some big life lessons in what you're saying, Yeah, but I want to give you when to lift up one more of your lessons for social change before we move forward. So I think I was really curious about hearing the design thinking, so if you'll take us there. Yeah, you know,
design thinking, you know, has sort of been all the rage on and off for the last decade. And it means so many different things to different people. But when I talked about it, I focused on a couple of key elements. One is looking at a problem in a truly user centered way. And that has pretty profound ethical implications around really listening to what other people need and not just imposing your own your own hypothesis. And then the second really important piece is having a structured process that you're going through that in a way, hold yourself accountable to iterating a few times, to having steps where you listen to having steps where you step back. And so this sort of combination of of listening and iteration can be formalized in kind of an almost any process. And one place where I think Design Thinking briefly went wrong, but it has course corrected was that a lot of this was initially developed around product development, and in particular, the development of physical products, and a process where you're really listening to the user going deep into their experience iterating over time, you know, holding yourself accountable to a process that that allows you to learn in a structured way that works really well when designing a physical product. But I think we've also seen, especially in the social sector, that a lot of the problems we're tackling cannot be solved with a physical product. They're solved with a new kind of service, a new way of thinking, a new process, a new social structure, a new policy. And so one thing that I think design thinking has done well over the last several years is generalized some of these lessons beyond product development, to solving any kind of a problem. And, you know, none of that's really new people have been doing versions of this for centuries. But I think design thinking has done a nice job of beginning to really distill that into a discipline.
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You just talk about it in a way that is just so understandable. And I thank you for that. Because this is this is new, big thinking for the non profit worker out there. And for those that are, have been in the sector for a long time, this is how it's almost like we're stretching you, we're trying to get you we're trying to pace you up for your marathon, because this journey is a marathon. And it's like how do we stretch beyond what we know. And what we've taught? This is 2.0 thinking, I thank you for bringing it up. Because even the way that you're laying it at our feet is so gentle and open handed. And I also think it gives it creates space for having a new idea and embracing that or giving somebody a second chance or believing that reinvention can be a part of the solution. And I think that is such a clear mindset shift. And it's one that I think we're here for with this community, because we do believe that community is everything. And it's built under our first core value, which is that everybody matters in our company. So thank you for all of that. And I wanted to talk a little bit about this tri sector mindset that you have in the book. And we've talked a little bit about the tri sector model. We had Jen's Moll back on the podcast a couple of months ago to talk about this. It's really about this idea about how can we collaborate across sectors to achieve a better world? Can you kind of just talk us through this collaboration and what opportunity exists right now, for our listeners and for the shops that they're working in,
you know, I would even go deeper than collaboration to identity. And you know, this sense that we're on the same team. You know, in in the US alone, there are 13 million people who work for nonprofits. We know that number of pretty precisely, we also know there are millions of people who work in business with an eye to the social good. We all know a precise number, but we know it's millions. And we know there are millions of people in government, who are who see themselves as social change agents. Yet, we don't really have a language for this commonality, this sort of new profession that's emerged across sectors, where somehow as a society, we figured out how to help people build their lives around the social good, how to actually pay the bills, how to, you know, build a professional identity, it's a miracle of the social contract. And it is at scale to, you know, almost a half a trillion dollars donated every year in the US, you know, $30 trillion invested in ESG funds around the world. You know, there's real scale. But you know, it's also hard work. You know, that's why you need tools, but that's also why you need each other and that there are distinct roles that different sectors of society, different organizations can play towards the greater good. But there also are ways where there's, there's deep commonality, I'll just give an example from my time at at at GuideStar and Candide, where, you know, how did this sort of Trifecta model play out for us that, you know, the bread and butter of GuideStar and candids database was information from the forms 990, that nonprofits file with the IRS. So that is to say that there's a government entity that's creating a framework that defines how information is structured. And then we a nonprofit organization, then found ourselves with the responsibility of interpreting and presenting that to people and to the world in a way that was usable, which sometimes ended up being an almost regulatory role, which was pretty awkward, because we were just a nonprofit. How do we end up having so much power over how information is presented? But then we also realized, oh, you know, we've got, well, I'll tell another story. We started to get kind of cocky about how many people were visiting our website. And when I started, it was about 6 million a year. And, you know, I was having a friend and having lunch with a friend who worked at Google. Oh, we have 6 million people who visit our website every year. And my friend at Google smiled and said, we have that many every minute. Sherry And, you know, sort of, you know, lightbulb went off. Oh, you know if we really want this information to be where people are making decisions that are relevant, we have to figure out how to partner with the private sector, we have to figure out how to use their channels to reach more people. And that's exactly what we did. And Google and Facebook and Amazon and others would buy data in bulk and then distributed in a number of different ways, reached a lot more people. So you know, just in that there's three sectors, relying on each other, to get good information about nonprofits, out to donors, and volunteers and others. So that the tri sector dream is more than a dream. I mean, it's actually happening all the time. But it does require some intentionality to really capture its potential.
So I just think with your work studying all this community organizing, have probably value align people trying to do something recognition that we're all on the same team, we're trying to fight for something. What have you learned, what are some do's and don'ts of creating these kind of movements that you've witnessed? Yeah, I
mean, you know, I will say, I think there are lessons but there's no single recipe, you can look at social movements historically. And you know, they all play out slightly differently, recommend a great book by gal Beckerman called the quiet before, that looks at the period before social movements really get going. And what happens in those movements, like, you know, in the US Civil Rights Movement, you know, as someone who, you know, when did that start, people say, Oh, the late 50s, you know, early 60s. But I mean, really, the US Civil Rights movement started in the 30s, with the structured creative education that helped to build up the power of movement. And it took a long time to create the institutions and the patterns and structures that allowed it to achieve what it did. So, you know, we can look at the sort of essentials of community organizing, and I'll mention two, but then I'll put a big caveat. So you know, one essential community organizing is it is about relationships. And it is fundamentally about systematically building relationships in order to do the second part, which is build power. And in this way, community organizing is different than just hanging out in a community, or all the other ways that people come together, which can be great, like for a sports team, or a church or whatever, but community organizing is about power. And that clarity of here's who we're trying to influence, they have more power than we do. But when we come together, we have enough power to influence them. And so those are kind of the two essential elements of community organizing, and that plays out in lots of ways through recruitment, and organizing demonstrations, and art and civil disobedience, etc. But one thing that I will note is that, because of the way the world is changing, community organizing, is changing, too, and has not in my mind, really caught up with the shifts that we've seen in how people communicate with each other, how they connect, how they build relationships, we've seen fits and starts, we saw it with the Arab Spring, for example, we saw it in interesting ways with Black Lives Matter in me to tapping into the power of the internet, and really interesting and relevant waves. But I think we still face a puzzle as a society of what does it mean to build power and build relationships in this modern world, where, you know, we can sometimes feel so, so fragmented. So that is to say, you know, I don't know how it's gonna play out. But I do know that these two elements of relationships and power are going to be important in the next iterations of, of community organizing.
I could not agree more. And I just think it is fascinating to watch social movements gained steam fizzle out, specifically, like in the digital space. I mean, you mentioned Black Lives Matter, and me too, and to just watch those movements go down, and the level of storytelling and how it rippled and how injustice, you know, grows when it gets sometimes more noisy. And I think something that I want to bring us back to is that I still think you can be effective. Without being the loudest person in the room, you can be effective in the way that you choose your words and the way that you amplify causes and the way that you link arms with other people. And I just, I feel like you know, it's we're going through a mental health reckoning in our country, we're going through a health reckoning we're going through, it feels like every kind of a reckoning. And I've just been thinking so much about the responsibility of community to create a softer landing place for all of us to land. And the way that we show up and the way that we gather around these causes does matter. And so I'm curious, because I know you've watched some of these movements that I kind of hinted at Fizzle a little bit. And so I I'm just curious if you could talk to us about how you've seen some social movements consume themselves, and what causes that to happen?
Yeah, well, let me start by just giving one example and then let's talk about moving considering themselves, which is Occupy Wall Street, and how it evolved, in a sense into the fight for 15 campaign. So you know, with Occupy Wall Street, you had this movement that was incredibly effective from a discourse standpoint, and totally ineffective from a policy standpoint. And that was almost purpose, if you talk to some of the the leaders that they quite intentionally did not have a very specific set of policy demands, they wanted to change the conversation. And then there was a group of working class folks who were inspired by Occupy Wall Street, who launched the fight for 15 campaign for a $15 minimum wage, which actually led to a whole series of very concrete wins that affected many, many, many, many people. And, you know, billions of dollars in in wages. And I just think it's really interesting to compare and contrast the names of those two, because Occupy Wall Street is named after a tactic. What did we do we occupied Zuccotti Park in Wall Street, fight for 15 is named after a goal, we need to we want to actually get a $15 minimum wage. And that, you know, in that you sort of see that you need both of these sides, you need the narrative that was sort of told by the tactic, by the image of of tents in this park, and you need the more concrete and focused attempts to change very specific policies. And I don't, it wasn't really entirely on purpose. But those two things ended up working, working really well together, at least in this one part of the the economy, there's obviously a lot more to be done around inequality. But we also see that movements consume themselves, I think about the the Monty Python movie, The Life of Brian,
The Life of Brian, there's another scene where
there are some of the rebels against against the Roman Empire, the People's Front of Judea, and they're talking about how the only people that hate more than the Romans are the Judea, and peoples who are supposedly on their side. And like the amount of energy that we waste in the social sector, complaining about our allies, and battling with those that are, you know, slightly to the left or right, or whatever, from our perspective is such a tragedy and such a case, I think, of how movements can consume themselves. And you know, that's not to say that, there, there isn't reason to argue with your friends about what the right policy is. But from a game theory perspective, there's actually great power in having a range of different perspectives. And you know, we need a better phrase for it, especially these days, but good cop, bad cop dynamics are a real thing and strategy, and they can work. And I've experienced it myself, that being explicit about, hey, the fact that we have different perspectives is a strength, not a weakness. We have to articulate it out loud and think about how we're going to use this. But instead, you know, so often social movements end up falling apart from internal conflict. And you know, what a tragedy that is? Yeah.
I mean, y'all, okay, everyone listening? Don't you just feel like this is the kind of work we need to pour into, we're at the start of the new year, we're fighting for the bigger things of the world. But we've got to get subscribed to some of these strategies that are going to lead to what we're actually trying to do and not getting distracted by all the arguments along the way. So I wonder, want to talk for a second on just sustainability creating true and lasting impact at our organizations? What, what do you have, you know, to kind of offer us as we kind of think about that aspect of it?
Yeah, well, you know, this, this comes to the the last tool, which is institutions, and, you know, how do we build, build institutions, and you know, institutions are just patterns of behavior. They don't have to be an organization, the concept of marriage, or a high school reunion, or the neighborhood barbecue can all be institutions. So part of sustainability is thinking about, you know, what are those patterns that you want to continue? And how are we going to make that happen? And it truly doesn't have to be, you know, an organization. And I think, actually, too often, we in the social sector think that the answer is an organization. And, you know, there are all sorts of new models that may or may not work, distributed autonomous organizations or, you know, quadratic voting or, you know, whatever. But there's definitely an opportunity to experiment with, you know, with patterns of behavior that that can last over time. I mean, the the right email list, becomes its own community becomes its own ecosystem. It's just an email list. And that can go horribly wrong or horribly right. But I do think that we need to be intentional about well, what are the patterns of behavior that we want to see continue? And, you know, does it take an organization or not? And then this relates to a whole other conversation we could have, which is, you know, do we have the right number of organizations the right size, the right distribution in the social sector, and how do we mix and match them? In a way that's best aligned with what we're trying to accomplish. And you know, that, again, is something we tried to do with a merger to form candidate. But I think we need a lot more of that in the sector. It is not just about mergers and acquisitions, that can mean lots of other things. But it is, I think, an important question of how do we arrange ourselves so that we reflect what's needed. And, you know, especially now that we are this giant, you know, trillion dollar industry, it's our responsibility to think about the structural questions, I think, in a new way.
And if I can just like bring it back to the beginning, if you're going to do that, if you're gonna start and begin these movements, take the two Jacob Harrell qualities and embed them at the forefront. Bake in humility, baking compassion, and checking that ego at the door, threading, love and empathy and listening and curiosity and that abundance mindset through it is going to change the game because you don't look at it the same way you don't look at it as my movement. It looks very much like an arm movement. And I think that is one of the big differences about how we need to walk through this life. So I want to ask you about storytelling. And I know you said that you wouldn't fundamentally go there for the first time. But I contend that I think you've been a beautiful storyteller today. But we believe very much in the ability for storytelling to connect people on a human level like nothing else. And so we're curious if there is a moment of philanthropy or possibly a moment where you saw impact work intersect with your life and the story in the moment of that stayed with you? Would you be willing to share one with us?
Sure, you know, I'll think about or I'll talk a little bit about my time at at Rainforest Action Network, pretty radical environmental group, but different from other radical environmental groups, I think, in that it succeeded in integrating multiple different tools, including markets, interestingly, in that Rainforest Action Network, would, for example, when trying to get better behavior out of timber companies realized okay to do that, we have to figure out well, who are their customers? Well, their customers are pulp and paper companies are sometimes the same as the timber companies. But nobody knows any pulp and paper companies and you can have a protest outside of their, their headquarters, no one's gonna pay attention. But who are those companies customers, oh, it's Home Depot, and it's Lowe's. They care if their protests outside of their stores. And you know, to watch that actually work was in really changed the behavior of some of these timber companies, and then it sort of to stall for it to stall. And then for them to say, Okay, well, what about their investors? What about their banks? Where are they getting capital from? It actually does turn out that JPMorgan Chase, and Citi Group care if there's someone outside of their, their headquarters? Yeah, they do. And to then, you know, put pressure in a different way, in a way that, you know, and sometimes when people getting arrested, but then you know, people get arrested, and then the company is willing to talk and say, put on a suit, you go talk to them. And when the company does the right thing, what would the old Rainforest Action Network do, they would take out a full page ad in the New York Times and say, this company did the right thing? Hurray for them. I know, you were just, you know, bolting ourselves to their headquarters a week ago, but now they're doing the right thing. And that willingness to say, you know, you're no longer enemy. And that actually, I think it's the storytelling and an important part of storytelling as applied to social change work is really being thoughtful about who is the protagonist? Who is the antagonist? And who are the allies. But it's all too easy to say, Oh, well, I'm the hero, right? But are you the hero, I mean, if you're, if you're a good fundraiser, you know that you're trying to make the donor feel like they're the hero. But really, in all of this, we're, I hope, trying to make community, the community as a whole, or people we're trying to serve are the real protagonists. And often there's not a truly an enemy, you know, a villain and a black cloak. You know, there's just a situation that you're fighting against. And that is the enemy. And so this is a place where storytelling is not just helpful that people like to hear stories, but storytelling gives us a framework to think about, about strategy.
I mean, there you go. I mean, inaction, everything that you're saying, I thank you for bringing it to life with that example. Love seeing the forgiveness piece at the end of that, too. I just think that that is a powerful thing we need to think about. So okay, we round out all of our podcasts asking for a one good thing, you're gonna have to take all these nine lessons and all this knowledge and all this wisdom, and leave us with a either a mantra or a life hack or something that just resonates with you. You want to share with our community that you're one good thing.
Sure. So one thing when you're using all these different tools, you can feel untethered, because you're looking at things from so many different ways. perspective like, what do you hold on to? How do you keep yourself grounded. And I would say there's two things. There's purpose, and there's ethics. And when it comes to ethics, I just think all of us need to say out loud what our ethical framework is. And, you know, when my wife and I got married, we have a marriage contract where we put love, truth, wonder justice, like those as our, you know, core family values that we talk to our kids about. And that, you know, everyone should figure out what those are for them. And it may come from a religious tradition, it may come from community, it may come from something else, but I just think it's really good to say it out loud, whatever it is for you love,
trust, wonder justice. Wow.
At first I thought he was doing the Superman, like, love justice in the American way or something true. That was amazing. Thank you for going back to core values. And I, you know, I think there's something to be said about showing up vulnerably and saying authentically, this is who I am. This is what I stand for. And then somebody kind of quirks their eyebrow and says, Oh, I'm for those things, too. I didn't know we were aligned on that we should talk some time, using your core values as a way to not only build a movement, but to just find your people is where it's at. Thank you, Jacob, Harold, I just really love your soul. I think you're a good man, I appreciate this book being out in the world. Please tell people how they can connect with you where they can find the book, and all the ways that they can just continue this conversation that we've had today, which has blown our minds.
Well, thank you both for for those kind words. And the book is available all over the place on all the major platforms in many bookstores actually recently sold out of my local bookstore which
give you free mom hugs. There you go. What
is your favorite bookstore in DC? You gotta give him a plug here. Yeah, so
politics and prose in bookstores. Oh, that's cool. LinkedIn is a great place. I talk a lot about what I'm seeing in the social sector on LinkedIn, Twitter, Jacob, see Harold is my handle. And then my website, Jake apparel.com. Please check it out. Send me a note, give me advice on, you know, what are the tools that I missed? What should we add for the next addition? You know, how do we as a field evolve our toolbox in a way that that helps us be better? Gosh, thanks
for giving us a bit of a framework for us to dive in. Thanks, Jacob. This
has been awesome.
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