Welcome back to the summer of evolution, we're in innovation week. And we could not go throughout this week without re lifting an incredible conversation we had with the infamous Dan PELADA. If you don't know Dan, he had an incredible TED talk that I can still remember watching for the first time that went viral about a decade ago called the way we think about charity is dead wrong. Tune into this episode friends, because we are talking about nonprofit disruption, marketing. And I love this quote that I remember Dan left us with and it was if you're not being laughed at, you're not dreaming big enough. We are right on the heels of Dan dropping this incredible documentary film he's been working on that's a follow up to his TED talk called uncharitable in September 2023. We hope you check that out. But listen in here, this is gonna give you some incredible nuggets for how to infuse innovation into your organization.
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.
Welcome, welcome.
Do you what a big day,
the day is here,
we've been counting down the days
when we start I mean, this would almost be the impetus of why you would start a podcast is to just simply have a platform to talk to our guests today. And I had been thinking about how I would even begin to intro our friends and Pilates. I plan nothing, because I wanted it to come from the heart. But I kind of want to take everybody back about seven, eight years ago, I am on a we've talked about this several times, I'm on a TED Talk binge, and where I would just watch everything that was on. And I was just so intrigued by the concept of Ted and just the way that it could curate these innovators in the world in such a short span of time. And I watched this TED talk. And I'm sure Dan hears this every time he goes to talk to anybody, but it was so revolutionary in my life. And Dan gives this TED talk that went viral. And I mean, viral still continues to get millions and millions of hits around the world. And he is basically talking about the way we think about charity is dead wrong. And I felt my the X the world tilt on its axis a little bit after I watched it, I have sent it to probably 50 People in my lifetime, including every boss that I've ever had. And today we are talking to the disrupter of all disruptors, the man who I felt like for the first time in my nonprofit career, I saw somebody that represented my thoughts, and my ideas. And I'm just geeked out. So Dan, welcome to the We Are For Good podcast, we're a little bit excited that you're here.
Thank you for having me, Becky and John, and thanks for that big, big build up. I hope I can live up to it. But I'm happy to be here with you. I'm looking forward to the conversation. And, you know, thanks for creating a place for ideas like this. These are
the conversations that we need to be lifting up. And I really just want to kick it to Dan and just say, tell us your story and how you even got into the nonprofit sector and why you started speaking up for things that truly matter.
Well, I guess it probably started for me. You know, I'm probably started when I was a kid I was born. I was born the first day of John Kennedy's presidency. And so I, you know, my formative years where I was surrounded by images of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King and John Kennedy. And you know, these were young people talking about love and justice in the same sentence was also the era of the Vietnam War. So you know, when I was six or seven or eight years old, my parents were watching Walter Cronkite every night talk about the you know, the body counts, and it was it was unending, and it gave me a sense of that the human condition was futility that we were unable to transcend our circumstances. It was also the era of Apollo, right? So I was eight years old when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon like so many other eight years old, my eyes were just glued to the television set during that whole mission, watching the docking sequences, the undocking sequences, the landing everything else, and so that was a that was a powerful stew of things that made me want to make a difference in the world rebel against futility, but I also wanted to do something as As big as going to the moon, and then I guess it was in college when I was studying world hunger for the first time and learning about the massive mortality, I chaired our Hunger Action Committee, we were doing these little fundraisers that seems very not big to me. And so I wanted to do something big and organize the bike ride across America got 38 of my classmates to bicycle 4200 miles across the continental United States with me during that very hot summer of 1983. And that's where the metaphor of the journey became powerful for me, you know, the very difficult journey, the arduous journey that took us nine and a half weeks, pedaling our bikes, 4200 miles, 69 days, the intersection of that and coming to the aid of the of the disenfranchised, and then and the abandoned in the world.
Plot is such a good dude. And I love the humble brag of just we just biked 4200 miles just got all of these people to do it. And it really it underscores our belief that community is everything. And if you can get people to believe very much in the mission of something, they will work and they will hustle to see it through to the end. And then you have a rabid fan there who you can pour into your mission even further. I love that you saw this so early.
Yeah, it's got to be you know, you got to give them a dream. That's the thing. And I think too many nonprofit organizations, and even you know, political leaders want to make it as easy as possible for people. And that's not what their spirits want, you know, they want to live into a dream. And so when when you tell someone that who's lost their friends to AIDS, you can stick a red ribbon on your jacket, or you can work your ass off for a year and ride your bike 600 miles from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and raise $2,000 and scare the hell out of yourself in the process of asking people for that money. They'll pick the ladder.
Yeah, I mean, I love that you bring up dreaming. It's real serendipitous. We were, you know, interviewing another guest this morning. And she talked about just the limitations that nonprofits feel with so much restricted funding coming in to the, to the play, and she was the recipient of this huge gift from MacKenzie Scott that was unrestricted. And she said it allowed us to run it allowed us to dream. It allowed us to activate and I feel like that's what you have been really championing for a long time saying nonprofits can have these answers and have these big dreams. But they can't get held back by these by looking at the wrong metrics of if we're successful or not. And it's keeping things so small. You know, I love that you've been kind of preaching that are similar to that if I haven't watched it for a decade, you know?
Yeah, in the TED talk, I use the the metaphor of a rule book that, you know, there are two rule books, the for profit sector gets to play by one that has a lot of freedoms in the nonprofit sector has to play by one that has a lot of restrictions. And since then, I've been using the metaphor of prison that the nonprofit sector is in prison and the for profit sector, rooms free and even and even when we dream we dream in miniature. You know, we don't dream on the scale that Elon Musk is dreaming and Mark Zuckerberg is dreaming that Jeff Bezos is dreaming. I mean, these are people who are lack any ounce of self consciousness about the scale of their dreams, right? come right out and say it colonize Mars, you know, bring humanity to another planet. But you try and get a person in nonprofit to say it's their dream to end hunger in the city of Boston in the next 10 years. You try I've tried that, you know, they just can't bring themselves to do it. They just can't bring themselves to think that big it's it's hubris to think that big you know, it's ego to think that big I, you know, well my dream my dream is if we could hire another major gifts fundraiser, like really, really, like, you don't have to do it, just say it, just say it. What's in your heart just say like if you couldn't fail, what is it? Can't do it?
Do you think it's because people are just so precondition? Because the next answer is going to be I mean, here's all the limitations. I mean, you don't have the budget to do that. It's gonna cost too much to do that. It's too
high. Oh, we work in the in the know sector, right? It's the it's the no profit sector, profit sector. sector. So the word profit actually comes from the Latin for progress. So it's literally like the no progress sector and there's I think there's you know, I think there's a I'm gay, I'm very familiar with what oppression sicknesses and I think There's a serious oppression sickness in the non profit sector that we're so used to. You know, what McKenzie is doing is great, but still recognize that we're grateful for what a dreamer is doing for us, right? We subjugate ourselves to the dreamer, even in that, even in that scenario what Joan Kroc did for the Salvation Army. Oh, isn't she's a saint. Well, you know, what about us? Why can't Why can't we create entities as big as Apple for solving the world's problems? They're only individuals that Apple, that's all they are. But they managed to put a smartphone in the hands of pretty much every human being on the earth and a Mac on, you know, 10% of everybody's desk. They're just human beings with capital. Government is just human beings with capital, we're human beings to why aren't we capable of achieving things on that, on that kind of scale? You know, people are aghast when you say that, Oh, no government has to do it. Well, the government can do it great, but they haven't demonstrated the ability so far. I'd like to see people have ingenuity stimulating public concern on a mass level, selling the idea of a better world on a mass level, the way we sell caffeine, and, and, you know, watches and everything else. And get ourselves out of this prison because we didn't do anything wrong. You know, we don't deserve to be in prison. No human being, it's a horrible thing. And it's ironic, like, well, like the poor person that you're trying to help. You know, the entrepreneur that you're trying to help the poor entrepreneurs starting a business, you want to see that business grow, right? You want to see them maybe get wealthy, but no, not yourself, not your organization. There's this, there's this internal inconsistency to it.
I mean, I'm gonna call this the palapa pulpit because I just am sitting here listening to you preach. And I just am cheering in my head. I'm like, yes, you're saying this is exactly what we need. We need a revolution, we call it an Impact Uprising, and in our organization, and it's about shifting the lens and everything in the way that we talk in the way that we engage in the way that we infuse and the way that we empower. And I love just this unapologetic approach to this is how we can really solve human suffering, because you're right. Anybody that's sitting an apple is a human being just like we are. But I would even submit to you that people that are in the nonprofit sector have the level of compassion and the level of sacrifice that could even elevate creativity, ingenuity to another level, because we don't want to see failure. We know what failure looks like. We've seen it in the eyes of the people that we're trying to serve and the people that we're trying to help solve these crises around them. And I love that you brought up Elon Musk, because we have a very dear friend who says that if Elon Musk says that he can colonize Mars in a decade, why can we not in the water crisis in the world in the exact same time? Why do we have to move outside our own planet, when we still have major issues of basic human rights and basic human? Like response? Yeah, to end suffering. So I love all of this. I also want to give a shout out to just what you do with marketing, and advertising. Because I think that the way that you leverage the power of words and platform is a beautiful thing. Dance Group has a great ad campaign that's going on called I Am overhead, which I am just geeking out on. And the thing that you say is, we've got to humanize overhead because overhead is people. When we talk about overhead, and we talk about not investing in overhead, we're saying that we're not going to invest in people. And it's the people who are passionate about these issues. And it's the people who are going to solve the problem. So I would love to get your just take on the overhead crisis and how our listeners and all of us can lean into combating it. Yeah, I
want to just go back to something you said earlier that like maybe in the nonprofit sector, we can even do more than Apple. Because of sacrificing because we're unwilling to see failure. I actually think we have a high tolerance for seeing failure. I think we've seen failure for a long time, and we've gotten quite accustomed to it. And I think we actually need to break out of that willingness to live with the failure to end poverty and the failure to end hunger and failure to cure cancer. And I think also that we have to rewire. What kind of sacrifice we value, right? We value financial sacrifice, like the person who's willing to sacrifice themselves financially. I remember a mentor of mine When saying I don't, I don't, I don't have respect for someone who's old I have, I have respect for people. And I don't have respect for people who sacrifice money necessarily doesn't necessarily make a difference. I have respect for people who are willing to sacrifice their reputation. People who are willing to sacrifice their reputation, put their ass on the line for some audacious dream that they don't know whether or not they can achieve and they're not sure how they're going to achieve it. But they're fully committed to it. And they're willing to have the world laugh at them while they're there. They attempt it to me, the willingness to sacrifice your reputation eats the willingness to sacrifice money for lunch, and the domain of of making a difference. And I think we also have to recognize in the nonprofit sector, that there's a certain arrogance to thinking that oh, we're the we're the people who really make a difference in the world. Oh, really. So you don't think the people at Apple who developed the ability to do an electrocardiogram and 30 seconds on your wrist, you don't think that makes any difference? You don't think the iPhone makes a difference in the lives of the blind, you don't think the iPad is making a difference in education, you don't think zoom makes a difference, which is allowing us to spread this message about making a difference around the world wherever we want to spread it right. So get over this notion that you're the only one that that makes a difference. Get over your sackcloth and ashes. Get over your sacrificial mentality and get in the business of producing results. And ask yourself, what is the result? You actually want to produce? Like, say it? And not? Well, if we could, if we can meet our budget this year? That's not your dream? That's not your dream go deeper? Well, I'd like to have you know, I'd like to have money to do the new marketing campaign. Really, that's what you want on your grave? Did the new marketing campaign. You want to solve problems? Name them? I want to cure cancer in the next 10 years? Say it, say it, you know, what is it that you want to achieve, because if you don't say what you want to achieve, like at the deepest level of your heart, you are lost, you're lost. And you will be at the mercy of some kind of fog of confusion and a sense of lack of purpose about your work, no matter what kind of 501 C three status, it has attached to it,
just some self reflection of just me, and we're just selling ourselves short. We're selling our missions. Short, we're selling these problems that could be eradicated. And, you know, Becky, I do have a dear friend that his mission is to eradicate to go out of business because we solve the crisis. But that's a very rare organization to see, you know, we have to look far to find that. What do you think is holding people back then? And I also want to hear what are some of the naysayers saying to you because it's not lost on me that you were one to stand up and put your reputation on the line to stand up and be the counter argument to you know, all this tradition and expectation of cost to raise $1 and all these things. Sorry, to throw two questions at you.
Well, the first thing you know, it's it's part of the human condition, to to lower your horizons, I think because you people are afraid that there'll be laughed at and I've always said if you're if you're not being laughed at, you are not dreaming big enough. Like seriously, if people aren't ridiculing you in a way that's painful for you. You're not thinking big enough. Mario Andretti that famous racecar driver used to say, if you don't feel out of control, you're not going fast enough. And I think that's true. And if you look at the ridicule that's been laid on Elon Musk, I mean by the legacy auto manufacturers and by the space experts, by his heroes, by heroes of his in the space program, laughing at him, you know, it's just like, painful, painful stuff. You imagine. Imagine Walt Disney at the age of 15. Walking around with this drawing of a mouse and telling people I think it's got a lot of potential, right? I mean, seriously, like, try to erase hindsight from your brain. And you're looking at a 15 year old kid with a drawing of a mouse. I'm laughing, right. I mean, I remember this Bruce Springsteen needs to tell the story of his concerts about how he and his dad never got along. And he had long hair and they always fight and his father didn't know why he's playing the guitar and his father was waiting up for him one night, when he came home sitting in the kitchen and his father said to Springsteen, what do you think you're doing with yourself? And Springsteen said the worst part about it was I could never explain it to him. Um, it's in that moment where who you are is really tested. How do you tell your father, I'm going to be Bruce Springsteen. Right when that means nothing, prior to Bruce Springsteen being invented. And so, so I think it's, I think it's part of the human condition. I also think we have, some of our values are mixed up in it, like, we don't want to make a promise, and then not deliver on the promise. Because we feel that we're dishonouring our word, but I don't think it's dishonouring your word, if you make a promise, and you don't keep it, I think it's dishonouring your word if you make a promise, and don't keep it, and then act as if you never made the promise in the first place, that's dishonouring your word, but to actually make the effort and fail, and explain to people why you failed, and then perhaps make a new promise, I thought we were going to end hunger by 2025. We didn't do it here. But here's what we learned. And here's the progress we made as a result of that adversity, we're making a new promise, we're going to end it by 2030. I applaud you.
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You are so right. And it is it is about a global mind shift. You know as a mindset shift, and I and I we have a lot of people that are that are new young professionals in the in the nonprofit space. And I just believe Gen Xers and Gen Z years and millennials, you are the ones that we think can turn the tide on the way nonprofit is viewed in the way that we operate in the way that we engage. And I am here to tell you that your disrupter is right here. Your your creative rebel is sitting here on this podcast right now. And I want to give you an example of why it's important to stand up and be the one that everybody thinks is crazy, the one who's being laughed at Dan stood up and had this 18 minute TED Talk. And then three minutes or three minutes from home it may could have been three minutes after at lunch three months after the TED Talk went live GuideStar Charity Navigator and the Better Business Bureau wise giving Alliance did a complete about face. It was like the coup of the season, in my opinion, you know, as the three leading resources for nonprofit data, and announcing that they were denouncing the overhead ratio as a valid indicator of nonprofit performance. When you speak up when you are brave enough to save the thing that is on the hearts of so many when you have capacity to dream. Incredible movements begin to ripple Ripple ripple. And I have to tell you I love this notion of picturing Little Dan, like watching the shuttle launch and you've literally if you get on the YouTube you can see the in the background and it literally has a shuttle in the background of this office, which is amazing five rights that okay, there you go. No one. So I just think that if you have someone like Dan, who has this heart for justice, you have a penchant for creativity, and you can speak up and and be okay with being the one that's being laughed at. They will not be laughing in 10 years because a movement can come behind you. You have little people in Oklahoma who say Dan, you saw us you are the creative rebel who was brave enough to step out there and say this, and now we're looking at a different arc that's kind of hitting our sector. And so my question to you, Dan, is there are people listening in here who are going to say yes, I 100% believe in this ideology. I believe that I want to be a Part of change and about shifting this narrative. How could someone lean into what you're doing? We're going to talk about the charity defense counsel in just a second. But how could they lean into that? How could they lean into this notion of we've got to start disrupting, because I do think it starts within community and wherever they are in the world. Well, first of
all, you've got to analyze your own assumptions. And be careful of thinking that because you're 22 years old, and you're having a new thought, excuse me, you're 22 years old, you're having a thought, for the first time that it's a new thought. It could be that it's a very old thought, I speak to a lot of college students who are very traditional, they have very, very traditional thinking about charity, because they grew up on it, and they've been infected by the same media as the rest of us. So their idea of being young and innovative and progressive is charity shouldn't pay people very much money. Well, that's a very old idea. That's a very counterproductive idea. That's not a very young new idea. They have the idea that charity should be very frugal and not spend very much money on anything other than giving it to the people who need it. That's a very old idea. That's a very counterproductive idea. So you got to check your own ideas. And I would encourage you to know, watch my TED talk or read one of my books or somebody else's book. And then you've got to come out about your dreams. You know, if you're working for a nonprofit organization, you got to come out to donors, you got to say, I'm not here to have them carve, I kept the overhead low on my grave. I'm here to solve this specific problem. And in order to solve this specific problem, I need these resources. And one of the things I learned over the course of the last 15 years and speaking about this is that people want to educate their donors, but they don't know how they don't know what to say. And they haven't said it as often as I've said it so they're, you know, understandably not as articulate about it. So, in the last couple of years, I've created tools specifically for changing donors Minds, Like a new little book I have called the everyday philanthropist that literally takes an hour to read, it reads in an hour, like you could spend an hour scrolling around on Facebook, or you could like change your whole perspective and charity and and our fishing. It's good big type and big graphs, and it's really easy to understand. And I created these online trainings called the bowl training for nonprofits, staff, and boards and donors. So So I've created lots of tools that people can find on my website for actually evangelize and and you know, you don't have to do it yourself. You can let these tools do it. So by coming out about your real dreams, that's the bravest thing you can you can do, you know, probably like coming out coming out about my sexual orientation is probably the, probably the bravest thing that I did. Or do. You know, people think that you come out once when you're gay? Like when you're 19? You come out? No, I mean, you know, I'm much older now. And I can be in a cab, and the cab driver can start up a conversation about family and I say, have triplets. And he says, Oh, my God, as your wife feel about that. Okay, well, now I get to decide whether I want to have a transformative conversation with a cab driver in a city that I don't know. And what's gonna happen to me, and I don't know what his prejudices or beliefs, so you know, you gotta like come out every day. We've been way too timid in the nonprofit sector. You know, let's tell donors what they need to hear donor trust, donor trust, I'm offered donor trust, yes, we want donors to trust us, but on the basis of what, on the basis that we just told them, we have low overhead, and we know that low overhead means we ain't gonna be able to make much of a difference. Well, that's not a very nice thing to have your Donors Trust in, or trust in your dreams, trust in the resources that you need for those dreams. That's the thing you want your donors to have trust
in. And I have a strong sense that that is why our boards aren't leaned in, why our teams are not engaged, or your staff is not performing because they're not hooked into that big dream that they feel connected to this big idea that they can perpetuate or be a part of. It just changes the way you act and take action. And just the urgency of it. If you're plugged into something that's much more impactful meaningful, will say
to me, how do I get my daughter's more engaged? How do I get my board more engaged? Stop boring them to death. You know, I mean, Jesus come up with a dream that's so exciting that they cannot say no to it. You know, you watch I have that set model of the Saturday Five rocket behind the you know, the the ship that got us to the moon that brought Apollo 11 and 12 and 14 and 15 and 16 and 17 to the moon. And you watch documentaries on the Apollo program and you look at those people who, you know, the flight directors and the people who did the math and the people who built fabricated the spacesuits, they look back on that time. And in the interviews, they're just tears in their eyes. They're just like grown people weeping, because of the beauty of exploring the full potential of your humanity. And you don't do that. You're trying to figure out how to scheme, a donor to give you more money for overhead, and it's without purpose, you know, you're not up to something big in the world. Good luck.
Here's what I'm what I'm hearing is, when we're positioning, and we have we have this conversation so many times about the new way to partner with a donor in the old ways, I hope they go to bed, and I hope they never come back and COVID in the ways that we would traditionally engage with them. But if you asked a donor, would you come alongside me to explore the full potential of your humanity? Versus Would you consider buying a table at my Gala? I know which one's going to inspire somebody?
Exactly. Exactly. Yep. And they want to look, people got money, I'll tell you I, you know, I mean, I know a lot of people who have they have a lot of money, they don't know where to put it. They don't know where to put it that it's actually going to make a difference they're by and large dissatisfied where where they have to put it. So a lot of them end up just sticking it on the name of a big, you know, $50 million law school building, because at least they can see, well, there's a building there. And it's got my name on it, you know, because we're not very good at packaging, dreams in Health and Human Services. And we got to get much better at packaging dreams and Health and Human Services, the way Harvard is good at packaging a new science center, because higher education is eating the lunch of Health and Human Services, because they're dreaming much bigger than we are. Yeah,
and to think that this could all start with just doing exactly with what you did. If we could just step out on that stage just a little bit. Maybe the stage is just across the seat from your donor in their office or on Zoom. And just literally launch the scale of our dreams. In those words, if that could inspire someone to not only give, but to lean in, I have to think and I'm an idealist. So I probably would think this, that so much good can come from that. Because when you're leaned into the dream, you understand that it's going to take everybody pouring into it. We've got to be inclusive in those spaces. Our number one core value of our company is everyone matters. We've got to make a seat at the table. We talk about the boards, we don't want to bore them. No, we don't. But we also want our boards to be representative of the populations we're serving. If somebody's not at that table, and we're sitting there, we need to scooch over and give them a space. I'd also think that other things would come from it greater potential for risk capital, if they see that you have these creative ideas that are actually building traction in a very untraditional way, then they're gonna give you more more legroom more of a runway to keep trying more things. We talk about throwing spaghetti at the wall, we've got to just try stuff in this sector. And I am just geeking out over everything that you're saying. And I know we have a million questions that we're not getting to because we're just talking to Dan, which is amazing. So sorry, John, go ahead.
Well, I mean, Dan has had a lot of dreams. But one of them I would love to dive into is this. You started the charity Defense Council. And I know your endgame was not to create a council your endgame was to change the way the media and the public views things like overhead in a nonprofit space sets a huge, audacious dream. And maybe it's even bigger than that. But could you give us the background of that organization? And how are y'all activating on that now?
Yeah, well, it was basically after I wrote on charitable, which was a book about the problem. I wanted to write a book about, what's the solution? Well, if the problem is the general public, has all the wrong ideas about charity, then you got to change the way the general public thinks about charity. Now, leaders and thought leaders in the sector, they've started to come around to the idea that inside the sector, we think about it all wrong. And so it's very insular. So we issue press releases to one another, hey, we're thinking about this all wrong. But we never go outside the walls of the castle to the general public, because and that's where it's all happening. So I've always felt like I know the hell with the internal stuff. Let's go out to the people, you know, the people that are driving down the street right now. And when you look at that, like the answer is change the way the public thinks. And you look at the sector, you see It is devoid of any of the tools that you use for movement building. It doesn't have an ad agency. It doesn't have a legal defense fund. It doesn't have a legislative agenda. It doesn't have an anti defamation force. It doesn't have a database of all of the people who work in the sector. There's no database of the 10 million people employed in the nonprofit sector. We've never taken out a full page ad in the New York Times or taken out an ad on the Superbowl Superbowl to tell the general public what we do. We have you know, every community has a legal defense fund, we don't have anything like that. So we're so so the charity Defense Council is about, well, let's put some of those. Let's put some of those things in place. And, you know, I, I kind of go where the love is, and, you know, the charity, defense counsel is alive. And you know, it's been really hard to get structural funding for it because people people want to fund poor children. Well, you're always gonna have poor children if you don't solve the structural issues here. So right now, in fact, I was just on the on the Zoom before I hopped on this with Steven Gyllenhaal, who is directing. The a new documentary that I have coming out on my book on charitable will be out in June and it's gonna be a very powerful tool is going to be more powerful than the TED Talk. And Darren Walker is in and who's the head of the Ford pennant Foundation, Billy shore, who created No Kid Hungry, Chris Anderson, who runs Ted Edward Norton, the actor who started crowd rise, Katie hood was the former CEO of the Michael J. Fox Foundation. It's a really powerful documentary film, with real world examples of how this dysfunctional thinking screws things up.
Can't wait, oh,
my gosh, we all want to figure out how to lean in to this topic more. And we've got to be a part of big change. If we're going to solve these big dreams. We've got to be able to be mobilized and to lean into it. So I want to ask you about a moment of philanthropy, you've had so many incredible opportunities to work with nonprofits in your lifetime. What is a moment in philanthropy a story that deeply moved you that you might share with our community today?
Well, you know, we had 182,000 people ride or walk in one of the AIDS rides or breast cancer three days or out of the darkness, suicide prevention walks, and so I mean, more stories than I could ever tell you of heroic people who were terrified of, you know, riding their bikes across Alaska or across Texas or across Montana. You know, my dad rode across the continental divide with me when he was 65 years old and the Montana AIDS vaccine, right, my mom's a breast cancer survivor, walk three days and 60 miles with me and my sisters in the breast cancer three day. It's just it's those kinds of stories of average people in ragtag outfits of all kinds of breathing dimensions and rear ends of all widths, who, you know, didn't look like Lance Armstrong and, and committed themselves to these brave endeavors. Each of those is an act of philanthropy. Philanthropy comes from the Latin, Philo's anther posts for the love of humanity. And so you don't need to be a billionaire. To be a philanthropist. You do something sacrificial in the name of others. You know, you sacrifice your body or reputation. That's philanthropy. I wrote a blog once for Harvard Business Review. I used to write regularly for them and Steve Jobs was being attacked while he was alive. He didn't give enough money away to charity. And I wrote a piece called Steve Jobs World's Greatest World's Greatest philanthropist, because of what he contributed to humanity, you know, because of his love of humanity's desire to democratize desktop publishing, and movies and photographs and music. So yeah, my stories. I've seen people give away 10s of millions of dollars in a moment. I've seen I've seen billionaires do it but but my my stories are the ones of the average people. You know, carpenters and nurses and a average people who took it upon themselves on top of everything else that was going on in their lives to do something philanthropically heroic for breast cancer, suicide prevention.
I mean, I just sit here and think about this conversation of dreams and what you've been able to ignite through that walk. I love that you that your mom is a breast cancer survivor, that must just have been so rewarding for you to be able to pour more than $300 million into research for that. It feels like a very nice love letter to your mother. But I'm really curious about your kids. And I would just think having a dad At that everybody deserves to have a dad who loves them. But having a dad who literally says, I want to give you incredible space to dream, your biggest dream, what is that like? And I'm wondering how you're infusing these ideals into the way that you are parenting and raising these three extraordinary humans?
Well, you'd have to ask them. But you know, they're human beings, they have human DNA. So So for one thing, like, you know, yeah, I'm this champion of charity and making a difference in the world. And my son Ryder is really into Minecraft. My daughter is in Minecraft, and he's really into fortnight, and he's really into Call of Duty. And my daughter sage is a wonderful, wonderful drummer, and is learning to play the guitar and is learning to play the piano. And Annalisa is a wonderful writer and goes goes to CrossFit every day. And it's doing CrossFit challenge with all of these adults. And I encourage them to dream their biggest dreams and they're, they're haunted by the human condition, by the by the narrative that says, I'm not good enough. I'm not strong enough, I couldn't do that. So we all battle that no matter who your father is, maybe even you know, if your father is someone who's achieved a big dream, maybe maybe those demons are even louder. I, I tried to make them aware of the voice in their heads. And that's not them. That that's something other than them, that who they are is the listener right, who they are is the context for their lives. Whether it's getting through. Well, we'll just have to see I have enough trouble trying to get it through to my own head.
We hear that I mean, Dan has triplets. John has suit two sets of twins. I just feel like I'm feel like I'm not contributing much to this conversation with my singles.
Yes. So. So Dan, we ask all of our guests and man, I'm prepping for this one. What's your one good thing? Summing up all the advice you could impart on our listeners, what's something that you could say you could do this today? What's one good thing?
There's a line in the James Taylor song, which I love. And I sing it in May. It's called jolly springtime. And there's the line where he says everybody say got to live in today. Don't know, buddy know how. And I think it's, um, realize that life is happening right now. It isn't happening when this podcast is over. And you get to apply the ideas. It isn't happening. When you go get your dream impact job. It isn't happening when we convinced the world not to think about over it. It's happening right now. That's all you got. That's all you got is right now it's all you ever had. It's all you're ever gonna have is right now. So if you're not here, right now, if you're not living right now, if you're not happy right now, if it's always off in the distance, that's the that's the greatest mistake you can make. And I think as a culture, we're really bad at being. And it's almost that we're getting worse, that we're getting better and better doing. And you I mean, for all of the importance of it and the value of it. You look at whatever side of the political spectrum you're on. You look at the obsession with political discussion right now. It's all off in the future. It's all doing it's all doing it's all hating on other people. It's all it's all this projection, this cinematic projection in our mind. And who was it Seneca that said all all of all of humankind's problems come from people's inability to sit quietly alone in a room. And I believe that, you know, like, you get you start Jones and out if you just have to be, right, it's just not natural to us to just be just sit here and do nothing. And feel the wood on your hands. And the temperature on your face and the pressure of the chair on your legs. Just sit here and be shut up. You got nothing to contribute. Just be I think that'd be that'd be my one good thing.
I think that was such a beautiful manifesto. We didn't talk about the fact that Dan inspired John and I to write our first organizational manifesto.
10 years ago. Yeah, I
think it was 10 years ago in our in our health care organization. And we wrote one and we've even written one for here. It was the flag. Yeah, if you just think the manifesto concept is so great, but I love what you're saying. Because I think it's an incredible way to just tie up this amazing conversation. We've had a conversation about equalizing and about and not even coming down. I don't mean to come down as equalized. I mean For us to rise up. And I think that this notion of do something, and not even just rewrite this narrative for nonprofit, I would say, look inside yourself, what is the narrative? What is your brand? What do people say about you as a human being? How are you living your truth, and step up and be the person that you want to be. And step out be a champion for the cause that you are so passionate about. Maybe your mother is a breast cancer survivor, you know, maybe you have somebody who's fighting through something right now, be their champion, you can do that in the space that you are, you can do it with your voice, you can do it with your resources, you can do it with your volunteerism. And I'm telling you, we all know and are living proof that charities need us that nonprofits need us that social good needs us that entrepreneurs need us. And so thank you, Dan, for being the great equalizer for seeing every single human and being the scrappy, same little boy that was watching the coverage of NASA with on wonder and the fact that you have followed your wonder loss to innovate. The sector is one of the greatest legacies, I think that anybody could give
a thank you. Thank you both very much for having me. It's been a pleasure to have the conversation and I I salute what it is that you're up to in the world.
Thank you. And in our thanks to our dear friend, Matthew Zachary, my New York brother from another mother for making this connection, and encouraging us to be rebels. We felt like we found fellow disrupter there. So it's good to be around my like minded friends.
Dan, what's the best way people can connect with you online and follow all your good work?
Yeah, go to Dan pilates.com. And you can get in touch with me there. You can buy a kit you can buy a book you can buy both training by human can be both T shirt. You can you know, damp a lot. of.com is the best way to be in touch.
So this has been amazing. Yeah,
thank you for coming down. We're so glad to know you and amplify your great work.
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 to 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.
