The Next Chapter of We Are For Good _ Celebrating 4 Years _ (1)

4:27PM Aug 27, 2024

Speakers:

Becky Endicott

Jonathan McCoy

Brooke Richie-Babbage

Keywords:

community

good

conversations

work

talk

podcast

change

membership

share

content

love

impact

space

lift

john

becky

mission

evolution

feel

intention

Oh, my Goodness,

I love it. What is happening? Oh, my gosh,

our birthday party, um, we're out of our trying threes. We're four now. Happy birthday. We are for good.

Oh, my God, so many of Og we're for good friends in this chat means the world. Hey, Natalie, good to see you,

literally, some of our favorite humans today. You know, we couldn't just have like a birthday party. We had to come and talk about some stuff. We had to bring in community voices. And of course, we wanted to gather with our favorite human so Hi friends, so good to see. We're so glad that you're here.

Okay, you know, community is everything around here. We've got to just give a little shout out. Tell us who you are. Tell us where you're phoning in from today, I'm in the family Airstream. We are in Washington State, officially. Now it is good to be here. Y'all. I've got my Starlink pointed at a giant tree, so if you lose me, you know I'm here in spirit. Where you calling in from?

I'm calling from Oklahoma City. I would say I'm in my yoga pants, but it's 110 here today, so I'm in my shorts. I'm in my weird for good shirt. Y'all tell us where you are coming from. Drop it in the chat. We want to see who you are and Dana, yes, our first day of pre K was fantastic. We learned about sharing is caring. We're sharing our graham crackers. We're making new friends. And y'all community is everything we're going to double click on a four year retrospect of what we have seen, and we're for good to hear. Stay tuned to the end, because we have an epic announcement. And of course, we want to bring you into it, so it's going to be really, really exciting. You're

here. Oh my gosh, Becky. We can just say all day we have John. Okay, if you're new to weird for good, here's how all the different ways that we're showing up. So please get involved at whatever level makes sense for you. Today, we've got our weekly newsletter. Y'all. We counted them up because it's a birthday. You start counting things. I actually found you can go into Google and figure out how many Google Docs you've created. So if you want to have a little bit out of added life to your days, like go see how much content creation you've done. Think we're 1000s, which is kind of scary, but listen, we've had more than 200 weekly email issues. This is where we give away freebies. We share content 200 Becky, that's a lot of writing and a lot of

editing. And we say nobody wants to sign up for your newsletter, but some of you have really cool newsletters, and we are trying to make this a value add newsletter for you. And guess what? You may even see your face in there, because we're introducing community all the time. Absolutely

okay. And then you may know us from the podcast. We've passed 550 episodes. We just announced 600,000 downloads. Like y'all, we're kind of overcome with the way that community has circled this movement, and this summer was really the pinnacle. We'll talk about it a little bit later. But impact up is our gathering in this community that now happens quarterly. So the next one is coming up on October 10, but more than 2000 folks came to impact up virtually, and more than 1000 came to activate in person at these meetups. I mean, y'all, the community is literally rising, which is fueled one of the big announcements we're going to talk about today is this membership. It's already out there, but today we're going to unpack a lot of the juicy details and tell you a little bit about what's more in store. So oh my gosh, so much celebration. So many ways to plug in and

Andy, thank you. Andy, our content leader is in the chat telling you how to sign up for all of the things. So, okay, four years, John, happy birthday. Remember when we launched this at a coffee shop with you, Julie and I, and we were like, What are we doing and here? But at the end of the day, there was always one central theme for us, and it was this concept of impact uprising, we wanted to get as many people involved in generosity and philanthropy as possible, because we saw the effects of that in our work and how it literally changed someone from the inside out. And the last four years, we like quit our jobs in the middle of the pandemic. We told our parents we were. Launching a podcast, and they asked us what was wrong with us. Since day one, our website has said impacting the world is hard, and we need to dig in together, and it has literally been the greatest joy to just dig into this work in community over the last four years. And I mean, you talked about some of these milestones, John, but it's like 565 podcast conversations. We're at 610,000 podcast downloads. Our community is over 2500 members. We have met heroes and expanded our hearts and minds. We've met so many of you, all we've learned from you, and really it was about just starting at the table, getting together, having conversations, getting curious, and then taking that collective wisdom and curiosity and activating on it and growing this collective of amazing friends like you. But something happened in July, and we took we are for good, like to a little bit of the next level. Thanks, Paul, so thanks. We appreciate you so much. So in July, we invited this community to activate together, and more than John said this, more than 2000 of you showed up, and we just started activating the conversation more localized, because we talked about power in that first thing. And it's like, how do we see power where we are, where each of us are? We're all in different places in the world. We're and I mean that metaphorically, and I mean that physically. And we tease that there was this new beginning, and today we're going to unveil it fully. And we are so excited to talk about membership. We're excited to tell you what we have seen in four years, these through lines, and there's a lot for the taking here. So am I? Am I? Is my ADHD nervous energy, just hyping everybody up.

I love it so much. Okay, so we're going back through the archives, and you know, Becky just kind of emoted and shared about impact uprising. But I remember the early days of we are for good. It started, literally, we didn't start in the garage at my house. We started in this, like, kind of back room where Julie would drive over, Becky would drive over, we'd sit around these tables and turn on the mics for the first time, which was just such a surreal thing, because we had no idea what we were doing, but there was something on our wall, and I had this, like, TV, you know, situation where you can pull up the screen, and from the very beginning, impact uprising has been there, and it's interesting that that was a very grounding part of every conversation that we would have. And I missed the early days when, you know, we're just figuring this out, kind of dreaming of what can be, and what felt like this ethereal impact uprising get more people involved in philanthropy has become like this tangible manifestation. And I look at the people that are here gathered like I have chills seeing your names, because you are the impact collectively, we can do this together. So I'd love to hear from you if you're in the chat. This is another script. What does impact uprising mean to you, and what has it been to be part of this community? I want to celebrate right there with you, because while you're kind of scheming on that, this podcast was episode eight, I want to say it was probably our third or fourth recording. I was still nervous, like y'all are having to talk me down at like Zoe's at lunch, because I was nervous

when I ran into Sarah Cunningham in our elevator at our old job, and I had seen her on Reddit in this video, and was like, Are you her? I mean, the world is just so small, and now she's on our podcast and a dear friend,

yeah, and just an incredible human but I mean, this quote that she shared bubbles up to us if we think back to like, how this all plays together. But she said, What is your burden? What are you accountable to that's the cause that you're called to serve. There's a lot of different words that it's been called over the 500 plus episodes and 1000s of conversations I've seen in this community, but it's connects to our purpose, our light, our our calling, different words for it. But that's what this place is all about. Each of us pulling together in our own way, of what really moves us, and man, that's what's captivated us to think about all of us coming together to do that. Okay, we gotta lift some of these. Oh, my word y'all. Y'all blessed in my heart. Allison, I know invalidation. It means continued inspiration for a better future. Thank you. Tasha Krista,

repairing and healing the world. Ah, caffeinating the nonprofit here for you the levity,

but I've got, oh, my goodness, oh, this is so,

I mean, this is what's so beautiful about this community. John and I can wax philosophical up here. We can talk to you about the direction that we see things are going, but it is so organic, and it is so community led, and your voice, your lived experience, your expertise, is helping to shape this movement. And so we want to get into some of the takeaways here, because there is a lot here for the taking in this moment. And we kind of saw these four through lines of conversation that have been lifted. And of course, because we love alliteration and the four and the four bless John's heart for our birthday, we're going to lift four of those through lines today. And I love that we just pulled up Evan, because we actually talked about Evan, and this whole intention of retention is an inside game as a trend. Because, why? Because our sector needs whole leaders. This is truly what we think is a through line for the last four years, and all too often, we just neglect our personal needs because we're serving the greater good, and we're not lack realizing that that lack of well being makes us and it makes our team less effective. So to be a good leader, you've got to be this whole leader. And we're not just talking about founders and executive directors in C suite. Each person has the capacity for leadership. We lead ourselves first and when we don't. You know we aren't worth following. So if we truly want to transform the world we live in, we have to start from within, and we have this great quote from our friends over at plenty. If you are not following the plenty people, drop it, go immediately and follow Jen Mulholland, there's they are the plenty people. They give you plenty of everything when you hang in their way. Jeff Sheck and Jennifer Mulholland, they've been on our podcast several times, and Jen just has this beautiful episode or beautiful quote where she says, the way to heal ourselves, to heal others, to thrive in an organization, to help our teams and companies be the best they can be, is to take care of ourselves first. We cannot give what we don't have. And we love that quote so much, because we feel like there is this sense in this impact work where we put the mission first, we put ourselves last, and it's like, what have we always heard? Apply your oxygen mask first, before you put it on your child. Your child is your mission. You permission today to put yourself first and really dive into that whole leader. We can't talk about whole leader without quoting Sonia Perez Lauterbach, who is just one of the coaches of our hearts. We found her in this community, and she says, take a step back to look at what do I have control over? And oftentimes, so much of our energy is spent on the things we don't actually have control over and so if you are someone who feels seen in that, I know I feel very exposed when I look at that, because I tend to be a warrior. I'm an Enneagram too. I want to take care of everybody around me, take care of myself last. And so it really requires us to do these left handed moves where we're going to have to start prioritizing our health, our well being, our rest. Alana said this before our healing, our repair work, because that is going to fuel the next iteration, and not just the thing that we're working on, but ourselves. So Oh, Evan, incredible quote. I got to read this. This for everybody. If you are seeing it up at the top, we can fence people in by force, or we can give them a well, a well around which to gather. Oh, can you just gather at the well that has some metaphor that's going to be yes, yeah, yeah, it's coming up, which is really metaphorical. And then the last what we want to pull up. And if this is something that's really resonating with you all about, how do I dive into myself? How do I really take ownership of who I am in this moment in time and the space that I take up in this world? Think about these individuals. Go back watch their episodes. Because we had diaris out on the podcast. We pulled her into panel. She's so wise, and she says, your budget tells you what your values are in terms of how you invest and also how you choose to spend your time and invest in talent. So my question is, how is your budget telling the story of your care, of your leaders, of your culture? We need to start putting some emphasis on that. We need to let go of the guilt we feel for it, because it's actually going to have the opposite effect. When we take rest, we're going to be able to pour more into those missions. That's the first through line.

Okay, can I interrupt with something that doesn't have a slide? Because I think I'm trying to think where I share this. Maybe it was in our season recap episode, but I know from seeing the names and knowing you all personally, we're all in the same posture of this, like, we're not just trying to, like, have conversations. We're trying to, like, integrate it and apply it. It's often messy, but so much of that through line has informed how we want to show up the next impact up. And we gotta talk. We gotta, like, tease, like, what is coming with impact up. Truth be told, we're updating the website for that. So it's not full. The full details are there yet, but we've started conversations about the October 10 gathering. Do you want to share a little bit, but peek behind the curtain. Becky about what's coming about October

10. All right, you have a review right here. Our theme for October 10, we talked to you. It's going to have something in the vein of wellness. Some. Thing in the vein of mental health. It's World Mental Health Day and y'all our theme is pause. And it is the ability that we want you to know you have to pause in this work, to take stock on relaxing, getting rejuvenated, getting rest, getting that wellness, getting whatever you need to find your center and your core again, without that buzzing noise of life of work that's constantly sort of enumerating around you. And so the the program that we have set up, I cannot begin to tell you how amazing Julie has has built this program. You are going to come in. We are going to have workshops for you. We are going to have panels. We are going to have coaches in your midst, walking you through. How do we stay well? How do we get back to center so that we can go do this work?

Yes, oh my gosh, what a hype. Swad. I mean, 1010, you can go to impact.present.com, and register and go ahead and hold your seat. We're going to talk more about that in the coming weeks. Okay, sorry for the pause. This is not going to surprise you one bit, but through line number two is community is everything, and I say that with so much grounded intention, because if you've heard us share this story before, you know, Becky and I had crafted like the queer for good core values over a period of probably 10 years of watching them play out and work in our nonprofit careers. And we thought, and these are revolutionary, it's everything from play the long game and believers over donors and steward relentlessly and cultivate rabbit fans, the things that the phrases you hear us come back to probably often on the podcast. But we realized just a few weeks into launching leader for good, that community was this, like, missing piece that we had never, like put a clear words around. And so that changed when we said, hey, we're actually not done a building our values, because the people around this movement, even in the very first few weeks, made us realize, like, that is the component to everything. And so community is everything was added as a value. It's

like our most beloved 130 in the morning. I want to be clear. We were up working. I

know. I wish you think we have the text still like, define

that text and share with the community at some time, because I remember freaking out with the all caps of, that's it. That is totally it. It's so

true. Because, like, our hearts have grown a ton with what community means to us as we've seen it play out actually in this place. And so I think of it in two different lenses, and one is like, how do we center it in our work? And so what does that mean for I love that seeing Dana is here. I mean, Dana's coaching this like you don't just build a monthly giving campaign, you build a movement like you build a place where people feel belonging. That's what we're doing. This membership. It's not just a list of things that you get. You get the things, but it's really about the connections and the people that are part of it. So community is very core with how we approach our work. How do we integrate it? So people have these collisions and have these deep relationships that drive a lot of things forward, but also like, what does it look like in our personal life? This looks like our friends and our circle of influence around us, the people that you're listening to, maybe in your ear pods, or the people you can physically spend time with. But community is just so important in how we stay in the game, how we can show up, how we can, you know, move through really hard parts of our stories too. So as you think about those two lenses, I also want to show this way that I've really seen community and really has inspired me in this movement with we are for good is that step one of community is really setting up the table and creating the space. And I think there's a lot of brave people that I see in this chat that are brave of setting up and holding space for people in whatever community that they're in, or for your mission. But point you know part two of that is when you do that, people feel safe enough to really carve out and create their own spaces within that, and that's what I see in this chat today, is that the sub communities that have spun off, or the businesses that even spun off from this community, board relationships, friendships, partnerships. There's all of that in the mix here, and that, to me, is when a community is thriving, that you're not just going to all assimilate in one place, you're going to go find and grow and nurture and replicate, and that's a beautiful thing. So how can we play that into every bit of our work? That's magnet, that's magic, and that's magnetic for our missions. So those are some of my reflections. Be but I can't let you, you know, not riff on community. What are you staring at right now?

I mean, I think the biggest shift that I've seen after, you know, spending 20 years in traditional nonprofit shops, is we're not building to donors like I always thought we were. Again, you said this in reference Dana Snyder, we're building to movements, and so we're we have this mindset shift where community building is a business, and you think about community, community building as a business. And you think about who are those people. John, you talked about this beautifully. You set up that table, you invite them to that. Table, and you ask them to be themselves, and you find their story, and you tell them yours, and you talk about the mission in relation to that story. And that's what draws people in. They start to see themselves in that story. They start to see themselves in the joy, in the hurt. But the reality is that we're all walking through it together, and so we're not experiencing joy alone, we're not experiences hurt alone. We're experiencing it together. We're walking through it and we're creating solutions that make it better. So that's what I feel like I've learned in community, is everything is that you are not alone in this. There's an army of rabid fans behind you, and whatever your mission or your passion is, and if you are not in a mission, you're on the app, on sort of the fringes, and you're assisting them. You have an army of rabid fans in this community who are lifting you up and teaching you how to connect better, how to story tell better, how to use better tech, how to save your time. And so what I want you to know is community is everything, and it's here right now, and it's here for the taking. And so that's the invitation that I extend to everybody, and we extend today, lean into community, because it's going to be the Solve for so many big things that feel like a block today in your life. And we want to be that trusted space for you here and wherever I'm looking at Tasha von Flack, who's on, I mean, the nonprofit hive is an incredible space. Find your space, wherever that is, and get in community with like minded friends. I

feel like you're offering a rose of community. So everybody on this call may be I'm feeling it's yes yes, except the rose. Okay, we have a little program called Phone a friend that when we feel stuck on a topic, we have a phone a friend moment on the podcast, and we got to lift a conversation. Julie's got a video clip of Brooke Ritchie Babbage. We had her on as a repeat guest during the habits of an impactful fundraiser series. And specifically, she was talking about executive director, and I'm sorry I have to tone said slightly. You think about what is a great habit of an executive director. My brain was like, I'm going to know all of what she's going to say. It's going to be like, who are your top donors, who's your board members, etc. But this is what she said instead. Sorry, J, that was a really didn't give you any time to hit play and

weight and pressure. if, you know, if you do a word cloud of, weight and pressure? Are, you know, if you do a word cloud of

all right. Well, we have a little bit of technical difficulty there. And that's what makes us human, is the fact that we have technical difficulty. So John, do you want to lift the

head? I will totally lift BRB, and we can drop episode 329, if you're in the podcast, we just get your finger work out there. Scroll way back to 329, but I mean, she talks about the most important relationships for an executive director are like their circle around them that's supporting them and walking through the journey with them. It wasn't their top donors, it wasn't their board member. It was what she called what it was the words that her Society of, what was her sisterhood, sustainable sisterhood. Yes. So I think that's just a beautiful acknowledgement, like, man, we all need this work, so let's pour into that. Okay,

okay, third through line, we're talking about the power of the collective, which maybe I sort of gave a little bit of this away in my reflections, but it's this idea that at the end of the day, we're not meant to go it alone. A support system is a wonderful thing, and it's absolutely vital to all of our growth. So believe it or not, we need each other to grow, and we want you to take this idea to heart, because when you create conditions for other people to thrive, we create the conditions for ourselves to thrive, to and so think of this notion of the rising tide truly does lift all boats. And I think somebody who's doing this really beautifully is Liza Miller. She's with Echoing Green. She had this great quote where she talks about one of the most powerful voices in the conversation is the nonprofit leaders in mass. And what she's talking about is, hey, if you're a leader in the sector and you're seeing something, how do we lift that? How do we lift it, even if it's hard, even if it's going to cause maybe some tongue wagging or some pearl clutching, is it okay? And the answer is yes, and we need other brave humans to come into that space alongside us and stand in the gap, because our missions are worth it. And so the next one that I want to lead to is like, how do we define conversations that drive us to create impact at the way that we did this was the power of community, and we wanted to bend the arc. Of the sector in our world towards more good, and it takes bringing in more voices, more people with lived experience, bringing in friends and colleagues. So our challenge for you here is, how can you lean into the power of the collective in your mission, in your work and in you as a as an individual? So we want you to get curious and start talking. And whether that's here in our in our community, we absolutely know you, you know we're going to foster that in our side. But wherever you gather with individuals, start talking about the change that you want to see. Start talking about what is the collective voice that is needed to actually change the things in our world and our boy, Floyd. Flo Jo. Floyd Jones, if you don't know him, please go back and and listen to some of his episodes, because it will bring so much energy and good vibes into your world. But Floyd had this really powerful quote. He says, there's such a dichotomy. We're in the most connected time in history. We've all got our phones. We've got many computers in our hands, yet we're in the most disconnected time in history. So what we're saying is, let's connect, and let's not just connect with our donors and with our people who are funding our missions, but let's get together with the people who are on the fringes who can actually push our mission forward in new and different ways, with the things that they can bring to the table. Yes, they may be bringing money to the table, but they're going to bring a lot more to the table than just a cash donation. They're going to bring their stories and their advocacy and their share and their networking. And when you start to think about the power and what's beyond that dollar goal, that's when things really, really good, interesting, and you start to see the power of the collective

y'all, it is just like everything, and how we can all kind of bend the arc. And you know, BRB is in my head of, how do we all collectively bend the arts work more good in the world? So, okay, we're here to number four, the fourth through line. And I want to take you back, because I'll just say the evolution that we've experienced as humans since we started, we are for good since the first time we had Julia Campbell, who is in the house. Julia, hello. Oh my gosh, our first podcast episode is in the house hanging out with us today. Congratulations. It's great. Follows everything that Julia does. Yes, please go check her out. But I think that this is really where we shine. Because when we are for good started, it was the very middle of the pandemic. It was summer of 2020, and that was kind of our, you know, thesis at the moment of like everyone is in the same boat for once in our lifetime, none of nobody knew what the right next move was. Nobody knew. Do we cancel the event? Do we have the event? Do we send the mail, or do we ask for money? All the questions, of being in a worldwide pandemic, we had to just go through together, and I think that's also what bound us together a lot in that moment. But we're realizing that the evolution is ongoing, you know, and so much has changed in the last four years. And so here's just some thoughts that we have around owning your evolution, the people that we see that are staying as leaders in their respective areas and that are coming up with, you know, breakthrough ideas, they're dropping the ego, and they're leaning into prioritizing their own personal development, you know, and that looks like a lot of different things. It's not just attending webinars. It's also like doing the inner work that we've talked about a lot on this podcast. How do we sustain, you know, create sustainable systems within our own life and health, and also finding the joy, you know, in that too. So I gotta lift Dorothy Chang you have to go find this episode. I'm squinting to see what number that is. It's in the 500 so it's not too far back, 546 546 Okay, so we're talking about values all the time. I threaded some of our values at the beginning of this conversation, and for sure, our values are bedrock to what we do. But she came in and said, They're not the why. They're the how, like, how do we actually show up and integrate the values that we want to see in the world, whether that is justice or whether that is community? How do we actually tangibly live that out in the way that we show up, in the way that we make decisions, in the way that we fundraise, and all of the things, because we're actually being the change that we want to see in the world as we allow those values to play out. She breaks this down much more beautifully than I just did, but I love that kind of evolution of moving from a plaque on the wall to like integration of man, this is how we show up, and people are drawn to that value as well. And then I gotta lift Lindsay Fuller, you know, she has come on the podcast a couple times to really talk about their work at the teaching well, they're very much in a restorative space of like, building cultures that you don't have to heal from, is one of their taglines, which I think is so critical, considering all the kind of intersection of the conversation we've had today. But she said, You know, before you jump ship, like so before you leave. Because a lot of people I see, Evan and Michelle may be here too. They did this study that more than 75% of nonprofit professionals are thinking about leaving their jobs in the next two years, right? So here's just a word from Lindsay, before you jump ship, look and see if we can tend. Soil together, because that's like the culture work, the hard work, because it's hard to find some of our great colleagues. We can't always replace great teammates. But could we consider staying and it's just a counterbalance to just say running from something, but really running towards something that's really good, and not to say stay in a toxic situation that's horrible, but it's to say, is there enough here that you could work with it, that you could be the actual change in the culture that you know could create this vibrant place, if you're centered in values and doing that work? So a couple of conversations that feel really defining to being the evolution. I need a drink of water. I'm selling very raspy.

You're turning into a base. It's wonderful. And if you are somebody who is resonating with what Lindsay fuller saying, what Dorothy Chang is saying, I'm going to tell you to stay tuned, because they're going to be working, shopping some of that and giving some of that playbook and impact up. And so if you were thinking, I do want to tend the soil where I'm at, like, we're actually going to give you some playbook October 10 on how to do that. But as we start to get into winding this down, winding our through lines down, and getting into our big announcement, we had to create some pause. There it is again. You know, I'm going to be integrating it. Create some pause. Create some space to really set intention. And this is something I want to hear from you guys in the chat, like, drop in the chat an intention or a goal for yourself. Like, what is this conversation bringing up? Where do you want to grow? And I have to tell you, John, like you talking about doing the internal work is making me feel very vulnerable, because I know I need to do that right now, with some in my life, the way that we find balance, the way that we find balance as human beings, and we are for good, as parents, as individuals, trying to walk through this world, we have so many different hats, and setting your intention is really going to help you find what my word of the year was, was peace. And it's like, how do I have an intention of peace as I walk through each of these things? So we have six quick little steps to help you here, if you're feeling a little stuck on it, and it's like, how do I start to really prioritize my evolution? And we want you to start with celebrating where you are right now, and you might be looking around possibly like I am going I have a dumpster fire all around me. I need to celebrate this. Yes, dear friends, you need to celebrate today and how you have evolved and gotten to this point. And then we want you to set intentions, to align your habits and your actions around where you want to go, and with that intention, putting it there, maybe in front of you every single day. It's going to become almost like a muzzle or a drum beat that's kind of constantly in your head saying, this is something I want to run toward and advocate for yourself. Make time for that. Don't feel like you have to make excuses for it. Create that intentional space. Number four, how are you putting it on your calendar. How are you putting self growth around it? Maybe it was just taking a nap twice a week. And if that is your intention to get to peace, to rest, that's an incredible action. And we want you to find space in your day for that. And we don't want you to give yourself a deadline. We want it to just organically come in and move you. It's space and time that it's gonna move you. And then once you're starting to get some of that breakthrough and traction, like get back in this community and share what the heck worked. And tell us what you learned about yourself. Tell us about the messy middle. You know, I feel like failure is such an impart important part of life, and we're going to freaking celebrate it here, because it means we learn something that we're not going to go back and do. We're going to get better in this space. And so we want you to be the most whole, full Express, fully expressed human being that is driven in purpose as you can be. And we want to bring everything in this community to help you be that person, whether it's friends who can stand around you, whether it's content to help you grow, whether it's resources to help you get unstuck, whether it's some freaking joy to remind you why we are in this work and why we keep chasing it, we want to be the destination for that centering purpose, and we want to do it in community with you.

Oh my gosh, you just said freaking joy, which I think is

just stepping off my soapbox, as I always do. We love your

soapbox. Be okay. I mean, is everybody feeling the energy of this? I mean, we've kind of teased that, you know, it's all about our personal evolutions here, but it's also like how we're evolving this movement. And if you joined us, live at impact up, we did share a lot of these details with you, but now we're you know, about a month and some change since that announcement. So we're really excited to take this public. You see a full takeover change on our website today, because the evolution of we are for good. Is officially here. And I want to take you back to some of our core tenets. When we started this, you know, Becky and I wanted to start a bigger conversation. We wanted to, we would say, democratize access to the best education possible to get it in the hands of people you don't to go to some fancy hotel and, you know, make your way through the bad carpet to get into the room. We wanted to make the room available to everybody and to create that safe place of connection. And what's cool today is that we believe that even more than ever, and there's a lot more ways that you can learn online now than when we first started. But I think that the powerful shift for we are for good is that this is a movement of the people. It's not a top down somebody trying to, you know, give you their playbook that's going to happen this, you know, connect to their tech tool. This is a movement of people that are sharing, with generosity, with generative ideas, sharing what works for them. And that's the bedrock of what we are for good looks like in the future, and that is this membership. And so we're announcing this fully publicly today that, you know, in the background, we have been creating content for now four years, which has expressed itself in hundreds of really raw conversations, hundreds of playbooks shared, hundreds of moments of like takeaways, and we wanted to find a new home for that content, not that it's not going to be all the places that it has today, but I don't know If y'all about y'all can get show hands. I feel a little like a little bit of the content overwhelm these days. I can't even think which episode that was, where to find it. And so we've been on the search for where is this home of where, you know, we can really ground leaders and create a space of connection. And we believe we've created that. We want to invite you into it, but we've created a place with all we are for good content lives in a new platform where everything is now chronic. What's the word Chronicle?

Chronological? Power?

Chronological? Maybe a little bit of that too. But think about the power of transcripts and video recordings and audio recordings have now been put into one place, has been also interpreted by a chat GPT kind of function. So an AI tool has listened to every minute of we are for good content, workshop, webinar, audio recording, live recording, and now is back and all that content to where you can search it, you can look it, you can slice it and dice it and ask it questions. Hey, what is the best practices around monthly giving? And it's going to actually bubble up that content. That content for you. So we have this incredible backbone of content that's been original, that's been in the style of we are for good, and now it's available to you as part of this membership. So on july 11, we open this up to say, hey, we've got this backbone of content, but like I've said, that's not the magic of we are for good. The magic is to be part of a community and to say, hey, we're coming together, actually, to be this change, and each of us are making that personal investment. And so we've already had more than 50 founding members join us, and y'all the energy in the space to say, hey, we're in this together, and we want to change the dynamic of how we shift the sector toward good is, like, completely palpable. And so here's a little demo. It's kind of tiny on my screen, so this shows you what it looks like whenever you're a member, you can get access to all of the content. You can actually have a really generous search bar. You've got a wisdom AI tool that's in the corner that helps you get to the content, which is, you can kind of see it play out in real life. Like, what does it look like if you say, hey, walk me through some best advice about building a monthly giving program, it's going to pull the best podcast content. It's going to pull in resources that are in there and give you a very weird for good answer through the lens of the community, the collective, that has shared their wisdom on the podcast. So B, what do you want to share about this membership? Because I feel like we've been having one on ones with people in this movement, and we're like, man, taken aback by the beautiful people that are powering this thing.

Yeah. I mean, this is our first time to publicly really talk about launching membership. We teased it just a little bit of impact up, and this is just an incredible invitation for you to come in and meet the people who are truly the insurgents. They are the ones who are changing the world. We have not really flexed this incredible network that we have built for any purpose other than connection, and now we're giving all of those connections, all of those individuals. We're giving them a space to come together, learn from each other, and heck, they get the best of the benefits. I mean, this will get the best time and attention from John and I, from our team, because we want to resource our members to truly go out and change the world. Here's just a quick look at some of the people who've already joined, and these change makers are already meeting with us. They're meeting with each other. They're starting to have common conversations. They're starting to build I see in the chat people are asking, Is anyone looking for this? Is anyone looking to build this? These friends right here are already in the mix and starting to do the work and. They're sharing resources, they're sharing tips. And when they get stuck, they can come back into our channel and feel free to look for whatever they need to look for, because we don't want anyone to be stuck. We want to have incredible recommendations from trusted community. We want to know what technology is working, what resources are working. Where are the playbooks? Like, what's not working? We want to be able to have full conversations, and we don't have all the answers, but we sure as heck know how to bring the people together and gather them to get those answers and building community. So we are building this. We're not opening it up free for all. We're hoping to build to 100 and then open it up and really make it fantastic for those hundreds, then we're going to open it up for another 100. So you're going to see that we're still stepping into this because we want to meet with every single person who joins our membership. We want to hear your why. We want to hear what you need. We want to hear how we can make connections, which we're already doing. Christina, Hi Christina, she's from Hawaii, already in membership. Love you. So thank you, Margaret, so excited that you're here. Positive tomorrow is another great episode on podcast. But this is the point, it's like. We want you to come in. Use this content. Use these individuals. Use these experts go, change the world, but even better, change yourself, fill yourself up, and we want you to be a part of this impact uprising that is not only going to change the nonprofit sector, but we believe it's going to change social enterprise, the way that people show up to volunteer, the way that we pour into our passions, we literally believe it can change everything, and all it takes is each of us putting our hand out, grabbing another person and grabbing the person next to us and doing it together in community, because we have seen when like minded friends get together, community can make anything possible. Remember that one time we were, like, literally connected to Hollywood and community? It's like, what the heck? You know, literally, I feel like there's a seven degree to Kevin Bacon and all of this. And actually, we saw exactly in the chat, are you still here? Six Degrees? Six Degrees is literally here. So we want to be your six degrees. Come in here. Let's change the world together.

Oh my gosh. Okay. Heart is full. Thank you. Seeing so many people in the chat that are joining with us right now and that have already joined with us. Here's just a little glance at some of the perks. But again, this is a membership, so the community aspect of this is really key. I don't think we've shared this publicly yet, but we've met a lot of really incredible folks along the way that have become dear friends, from Seth Godin to Scott Curran, who we were talking to yesterday, who was the first general counsel for the Clinton Global Initiative. And he has already said, Hey, I'm all in on this membership. And he is actually offering up, like, basically a live Q and A session with everybody around ops and kind of business practices and legal pieces and things that you want a brain that would probably charge a crazy billable hour for. These are the kind of experiences that we're connecting to the membership. So you know what those conversations you hear on the podcast are now going to get to have a follow up in a more private setting, so we can ask those questions, and it's not in a public space where we can be vulnerable and talk through some of the messy pieces together and just really support each other in community. So more details coming on that our events page will be more active in the coming weeks to show you what some of those insider pieces are. But yeah, we're here with questions. You know, we're behind this. This is, you're looking at the whole team here, plus Andy is, is then the chat. So we're here to support you and answer any questions you think about this. But we gotta have someone good things. Becky, am I right? We gotta run this. We

gotta, we gotta drop a one good thing. It is, it is our most feared thing that people ask us is, what is your one good thing? But I'm gonna pitch it to the community, because we've talked about a lot of through lines. We've celebrated our birthday. We're launching membership. There's a lot going on here, but if we distill it down to one thing, I'm going to tell you, mine today, John, and it has nothing to do with any of this. It has everything to do with being a human. And today, my one good thing is be kinder than necessary. Today, there, there is so much division in the world. There is so much to glom onto, where people make us upset, make us angry. They disabuse us. They don't listen to us. But if we can show up and counteract that with unnecessarily kind gestures and and kindful hearts, I really believe that kindness is such an underrated value that it can change so much. What about you, John,

I mean, do I if I don't go personal, am I going to look really like

it? You go, you, you, do you? I've

been really struck with this. It's just out of reach. Mm. But there's a book called hidden potential by Adam Grant. I've been going through it and I'm like, Oh my gosh. I feel like my world is colliding, that I needed to read this book at this time. Excuse me, but he talks about it's not, yeah, he can use some water. You maybe need to talk. I can't even get a word out. Can I chug this live on camera? And go ahead and get actually myself. Please

do just ice bucket. Challenge yourself, and it would give the community such joy.

What debate was it? I feel like it was one political debate where this guy, just like, chugs the water. That's me, right. Go ahead. Yes,

keep going.

I have been working through this book, hidden potential, and it sticks out to me, because it's so much my story of we are for good. And I think this would have been in an early deck, if you watched a lot of our early webinars, but I would have defined my time in nonprofit spaces feeling like I'm on an iceberg. Even though I was in a team of 10, it's like I was running annual giving. I had way more responsibility and goals than I felt like that I could personally accomplish. I didn't feel like I had, you know, people to, you know, necessarily understood what I was going through, and at the same time I would look at like the success. Let's put Charity Water up there. Because it was always Charity Water, right? That it was like, Man, I wish we had the budget. We should have the resources, the marketing, etc. But there's also just people that you're like, Man, I wish I had the talents of this person, the ability that they have to do whatever it may be. Well, I'm pulling this back to this book. So hidden potential is all about. We have these gifts within us, but how do we actually it's not just this that someone starts with a leg up. It's what kind of infrastructure, and he calls it scaffolding. Can we put around a growth mindset that actually helps us show up, put in the reps, and become whatever we want to achieve. And I think that's a huge, powerful unlock that I'm thinking through this community. Because I think I'm the least qualified person that should have a podcast as evidence. I can barely even, you know, like, get through this without making a gap of myself, right? But it's the idea of, like, not just having the guts to do it. But like, how do you support yourself in community and resources and taking care of yourself and doing all the things of scaffolding that allow you to unlock that next level? And I'm not trying to, like, tie it into this membership, but it is very core. Like, man, that's what we're doing. Like, we want to be that scaffolding for you, because it's what we needed in the world. So we went out to, like, go create it. So I'll try to, like, pare that down to LinkedIn post and share that. But that's not one good thing Becky does. Like, the longest

one ever. I love that so much. Like, could we be each other scaffolding. And I just think it's a really serendipitous time. We're about to move into World Mental Health Day in October, same day as our impact up. We're talking about pause, and I could tell you what I had my nervous breakdown in nonprofit. I did not feel like there was any scaffolding around me. I felt like I was the only one going through it. And I never want anyone to feel that aloneness, whether you're having a breakdown, whether you're just burnt out, whether you have things that are going on personally at home, like find your find your landing space. We would love for it to be at we are for good, but it's more important that you find your community. We would love to be the community that you trust. But my gosh, we love you more, and we want you to be a healthy human being. So get connected. Do something. We said this today. Follow your curiosity. Get curious. Go take some action. Do it on behalf of yourself, and the mission is going to benefit. The more that you are filled, the more that the mission is going to benefit. We are going to build more content, more connections. This community is only getting bigger, but I'm telling you, please join our membership today, because then you get to be a founding member, and you have that forever, because we're going to have some swag around that. So we want you to come in, be a founding member, get in community with people and, gosh, take care of yourself and keep doing this work, because we need you in it. The world needs your heart and your hustle, and we're here to just put it on fire. So happy birthday, John for Oh my

gosh. What does this mean?

Totally, totally,

oh my gosh.

We love you tremendous. Thank you. Thank you for your thank you for your words. Thank you for your love, John, bring us home.

I mean, what else to say? But community is everything. Thank you for hanging with us. Thank you for just believing in this next step with us as we figure it out together. So grateful to be in it together. Y'all, this is so good. Keep

adding your voice. We're rooting for you and believing you in all things. Let's build this impact. Uprising, together Friends, how?