Hey friends, you know, we love just really cultivating this idea of a global mindset in your corner of the world. And doing that by lifting voices that represent different movements and different impact happening around the globe. Well, we sat down a couple seasons ago with Raj Kumar, he was the founding president and editor in chief at dev x, which is just a powerhouse of information and development happening around the world. But he sat down and shared, what does this season of innovation and change look like in the nonprofit sector? How can we shift our focus to zero goals? I mean, this conversation had so many takeaways that we're really excited to relist it on the podcast today. And I can't wait to hear what your thoughts are. 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.
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So let's get started. Hey, Becky,
welcome everybody.
Okay, y'all, we're trying to contain the excitement. And I'm just gonna be really blunt. It is very hard to contain the excitement in the room. today.
We are in the presence of greatness, which is really ironic, because we're set up strangely today that we look like anchors like news anchors, anchors sitting next to each other. We have like the king of new humanitarian news efforts with us today.
What a good parallel. That is exactly right. We're just talking to Raj Kumar. today. He's the founding president and editor in chief at dev x. And you know, for us, it was a first time learning about dev x in the last few months. And our heart has grown to understand that this exists. But if you think about the global development efforts, the humanitarian efforts happening around the world, 20 ish years ago, Raj looked around and said, there's no independent voice, really speaking to the sector, to the people that are living and breathing and fighting on the front lines and raising money and all those aspects. And he built the table that he wanted to see in the world. And that is dev x today. And it is a powerhouse. He is an author that has registered a real thought leadership book in the space called the business of changing the world. And his pedigree is everything you would expect somebody leading at this effort. I think he
doesn't talk about it either. I like so humble, Raj, you're so great. And that's
more the tone of this podcast, too, because we want to hear about your story that led you here. And we know you spent time in India at a young age that really was formative. But Raj has just had an incredible experiences in life. He's been on the ground at some of the most formative world changing moments. He's been part of the Clinton administration in the strategy, strategic capacity and journalist. So he has had so many experiences threaded together, this is going to be an incredible conversation. And Raj, it is our honor to sit with you today. Thanks for being here.
Guys. The feeling is totally Mutual. You are the best I have had such a great time getting to know you and your organization. Listening to your podcasts. I'm just I'm just delighted to be here and have this discussion with you stick up for
Johner. Shop. Well, Raj, okay, could you start us kind of walk us through your story, I love the bravery that you showed and just standing up and saying, I'm gonna do something that hasn't been done yet before. Because you saw the need, would you kind of take us through your journey, personally of how you love this sector and how you built this table?
I'd say bravery maybe is a good word. But also ignorance, like sometimes not knowing is really helpful. Knowing how hard something is gonna be I think, had I known how tough it would be to start and lead dev x, I'm not sure I would have done it in the beginning. You know, things are things are often it's helpful, being young, and not not knowing how the whole world actually works. That benefited us in some ways. But you mentioned I spent some time in India as a kid. My dad was from there. As a kid, I got to go to India a lot when I was young, I had a lot of family there. And it just kind of opened my eyes to the realities of the world that we live in, right? Like I used to play soccer, in this little village where I would go and my aunt and uncle lived and who I'd stay with, and I was the only kid who had sneakers, right? So we play in this kind of gravel field. And those things really stick with you even when you're five years old, or seven years old, or whatever. And so I always got this sense, and my sister did to my older sister that why does the world work this way? You know, why is it set up this way? And we had this really, really fortunate experience that I had an aunt and an uncle from India who had dedicated their careers as academics to studying poverty and global development. And so they they would take us on visits to villages and they would tell us about this this world of global development which, you know, forget about most kids most adults haven't really heard this term global development is kind of an insider's you know, industry term. But I got to know that it existed through my aunt and uncle when I was really young and had a sense of, I think this is the thing I want to work on one day, you know, and I have been fortunate enough to get a chance to do that.
I think one of the most extraordinary things to me about interviewing people who steeped their businesses and empathy and equities is they have these stories of being a child. And they notice inequities. I mean that the story of understanding that you had privilege with your sneakers, and understand not just noticing it, but having it trigger you and say, Hmm, this doesn't feel good, this doesn't feel right. I want everybody to have sneakers, we should all be able to go out and play soccer together. And I love that that thread followed you into dev x, which, I mean, people, Raj is connecting and informing more than a million closeable development professionals around the world with this content. So I am so excited about what you're doing. It is very Becky Endicott style of talking it punches you it kind of hits you square between the eyes, with what you're saying. And sometimes you need to do that to get someone's attention. It's that scroll stopping content, we want somebody to click on it, we want them to click and then we want them to activate and care. And so I would love for you to just give us kind of an overview of dev x of your mission and your programs.
Yeah, and to me, these are the most important issues in the world, these are the issues that we shouldn't even have to jazz them up or dress them up. We're talking about, you know, how the entire planet lives, how people get through their lives. Get ahead, you know, when you think of things like climate change, whether as a species, we're gonna do well, in the future. These are the biggest issues in the world, in my opinion. And yet, as a news organization, we often find like, Yeah, our reporter will be in the room at some un hearing or some Capitol Hill event. And we're the only journalists there to talk about child poverty, you know, like the somebody, somebody on stage saying that a journalist here when asked a question, and there's one maybe, and that's not a good thing, you know, we think these are the most important issues, we think people should be covering them. And that's why we get started. That's why we do what we do every day, which is to shed light, through journalism, on the most important issues in the world. Climate, poverty, disease, shed light on those issues, let people know what's happening, what's working, and what's not working to, you know, the whole people and institutions accountable. The biggest institutions, the World Bank, USA ID, the UN agencies, were writing about what they're doing well, but also what they're doing is failing. And I think the power of journalism brought on a subject like this is is really is really significant. And that's, that's what gets us up every morning, is this idea that, you know, we've got these Sustainable Development Goals, before that there were the Millennium Development Goals, that kind of the goals for the whole world, make sure no kid goes to bed hungry, you know, make sure that there isn't this level of inequality and poverty in the world, and who's actually working on making sure we achieve those goals. And really, there's a whole industry built up around it, you know, a lot of the big nonprofits have plenty of people listening to this work and places like that, you know, care and Oxfam and Save the Children and places like that. There's, of course, big philanthropies, Gates Foundation, Ford Foundation in so many others, big and small. Then there's the government agencies. And if you add it all up, it's a huge industry, we think it's like bigger than $200 billion a year that goes into these kinds of global development efforts. And what we're trying to do is, document all that, write about it, talk about it, make it clear to people, and really hold us all accountable to actually achieving the goals.
I think the thing that I love the most about it, because I want to compliment you. Because we had we were talking to Cn Haldane with March in London a couple of weeks ago about the SDGs. And what the UN is trying to do to move the needle in it just has to be a grassroots effort. That's what I took from that conversation is, it's not on dev x. It's not on launch. It's not on the UN, it's about all of us, pulling together. And you are reporting right now in a history of the world unlike anything we've ever seen before. And I want to compliment your style of reporting, because it is so honest, which I think there is such a mistrust of media right now. And it's a massive problem. And I just see such transparency. These are the themes of development, what we want to do when we talk to donors, when we're trying to, you know, connect missions with philanthropy, it's like you're doing it through your reporting, you're showing up authentically, you are transparently saying what it is you're not watering down. And I just commend you, your reporters, the bravery. I mean, I don't know about you, John, but I have been watching the Afghanistan coverage, like on a loop just very stressed about it. And these reporters that are so brave to women reporters who are walking out and getting this hard hitting news. I mean, talk to us about this social enterprise and communicating and lifting up the stories in the middle of a time such as this.
Yeah, it's a pretty extreme time, right? And you look around the world. There's some crisis happening, you know, everywhere. Obviously, we're living through a global pandemic, you've got Afghanistan, you got Haiti, which is living with your multiple crises, there's a lot, there's a lot happening. And for us part of the job is to make sure people are paying attention to those stories. And the other part is making sure they have context around them. Because it's not always just enough to say, and you know that so well, through all the various podcasts you've done and the issues you've highlighted, it's not enough to say, well, let's write a check. And we're going to solve global poverty. It's not just about the donation, that's important. Funding is important. But then it's about what do you do with that money? And who has a voice in it? And is the local community empowered to actually solve this problem on their own? Are we using the best evidence in the approaches to solve these issues? Or do we have, you know, data to tell us whether what we're doing is working or not working. And all of those things are so critical. And if you look at the history of foreign aid, and global development, there's a lot of mistakes. I mean, there's just so many mistakes that have happened over the years. And a lot of good too. But we feel like the key in a moment like this, when there's so much crisis, and there's so many challenges is to shed more light on it, you know, to make sure we first do no harm, we first like don't make things worse in some way. And at the same time, we get funding and money and voice to the people who really are closest to the problems and can can help actually address them.
Well, I think, you know, the people that listen to this show, we're wired to, like, want to help and when these crisis keep on popping up, you want to just plug in, you want to be involved, how, you know, what kind of lens would you prescribe to for people as a funder to really identify around the world? What is the type of organizations that are doing that work? What are the kinds of checks and, you know, boxes that you'd want to look for? Because the marketing can tell you anything, right. And as journalist, I know that y'all cut through that, what do you think is most key for funders to be looking for, for these, you know, solving these global issues?
I think nowadays, what funders are really trying to do is get as local as they can, you know, they want to, they want to go to the organization that really lives, the issues. And people have that lived experience they bring to them. And not just people like ourselves living maybe 1000s of miles away who care about it, but really getting as close as they can to the ones who are doing the work. So I see a couple of different trends happening. One is funders who are trying to seek out those local groups, and directly fund them. And sometimes the amounts are small, because these can be really local community groups for for whom you know, $5,000 can be a life changing amount of money can really affect the way they operate. The other thing I see is that these big international organizations are themselves trying to become more local. So their staff is generally becoming much more composed of people from the communities they're serving. Even their leadership in the organization at the country level or local level are more reflective, you know, there used to be this idea of expat jobs, and global development. You know, you fly around the world, you get put up in a really nice house, you have maybe a car and a driver, and you have all kinds of services and kids go to a private school. And it's a great setup, right? I'm not saying it's gone completely, but it's diminished a lot. Because the idea now is much, much as the corporate world has done is to say the talent, the professionals who are out there to do this kind of work, they exist in the country, and we're trying to serve. And so I think what you see funders trying to do more and more is address this issue, where they say the sector, we're working in the development sector, the nonprofit sector is itself an outgrowth of an unequal history and is itself, you know, top down and a lot of ways. And we've got to address that right in our own backyard. If we want to address these bigger issues in the communities we're trying to serve.
Oh, my gosh, I just learned so much. Right. And I think the thing that is so encouraging to me is, you know, as as disheartening as it feels right now, in the world, I mean, the unbelievable suffering, we've been very stressed out about what's going on in Haiti, thank you for mentioning Haiti, we've interviewed a couple people on the podcast to have organizations there. And the level of destruction is just devastating. But I also think your point about localizing and making things community based, is very exciting. And here's the thing it tells me is that it's not it's no longer we can no longer live in a society where we just had people who write checks, it is incumbent upon all of us to figure out what is the issue around me? How do I pour into it from my corner of the world? And it's going to take the I mean, it's almost like the script has flipped, and grassroots is starting to become the thing that is creating movements, creating community and moving issues forward. And I love that because the accessibility of that means that anyone can jump in, and the way that the world is so digital now means that we are instantly connected to each other. And that community can have this very fast ripple that just expands and in having the information, correct information, I want to emphasize when you have factual science based information, or people on the ground talking to the issues talking at the heart of people who are experiencing these issues, it changes the lens, it simplifies and humanize the story, which we talk about all the time on this podcast. So I'm loving this conversation. Yeah, please go ahead.
And I think it also helps to avoid making the mistakes I alluded to before, like you talked about Haiti, in my book, I talked about the American rice program in Haiti, where the American government said, you know, people are hungry in that country, they eat a lot of rice, let's get rice from American farmers. And let's ship it overseas, and give it to people for free, who are hungry, and you know, help them out. And, you know, it sounds great. At one level, it sounds very generous of the American government, American people to do this. But what they ended up doing was decimating the Haitian farmers, because the farmers no longer had a market to sell their own rice, because Rice was free. And today's Haitian rice market is way smaller than it was before we started all this generosity. And you know, Haiti has to import rice now, even though they used to, you know, have a much larger amount of much more abundant amount. So there's all these examples where when you don't go local, when you don't actually talk to the people you're trying to serve and say what would be useful to you, you can make really big mistakes. I also highlight in my book, the whole theme around orphanages, right where people want to help. And orphanages are a way that it seems like a great way to help. And they can be in some cases, and there may be examples. But they've also turned out to an industry. And so in some countries, kids who still have parents are pushed into orphanage life, and their uses kind of props for fundraising. And I mean, there's horrible stories about it. But this is not like a small number of kids. This isn't in the 10s of 1000s around the world. And some governments have had to just ban orphanages, because of the problem of money coming from well, meaning Americans, Australians, Europeans and others who see these pictures and they see these videos, or they go traveling to these countries, and think I want to help and they don't realize in helping they're actually taking a kid away from their parents. So there's real reason to be local and to listen to people locally. It's not just that it's like the right thing to do it is. But it also works better, and it avoids mistakes. And I think it's kind of an essential ingredient. If we really want to achieve those those big goals, like we have to actually center the work with the people in the communities where they live, just like we would want in our own communities to have a place what's happening.
Well, I love that you dedicated part of your life to just documenting this and going through the process of writing a book and from speaking to other authors. I know, you had to just immerse yourself so deeply to do this, would you kind of take us through set the scene? why did why did you decide to write this book and kind of what is the key takeaways of what's affecting global development in our world today,
and give us the title because I love it. Yeah,
it's the business of changing the world. And, you know, I got into this situation where I felt like I was just repeating myself all the time, you know, I would go to, you can talk to my wife, or you're just talking to my friends going to events. And I'm like, I'm just saying a lot of the same stuff. I'm really interested in this stuff. And maybe I need to go through the process of actually putting it down on paper. And that, you know, that process is pretty rigorous. It forces you to fact check everything. And I found some of the things I was saying, you know, what weren't exactly right. And once I actually looked into the facts and the details, and it forced me to really think through kind of where I thought this whole sector is going, you know, where does Global Philanthropy head from here. And so it was a lot of work, as I'm sure you've heard from other authors. But I think it turned out to be really useful to me personally, just to kind of ground my own thinking on what I consider a pretty important set of topics. And so to me, the book was a way to take stock of what I've learned in the last couple of decades since we started that back since I was a grad student. And we thought thought of this idea. And what it led me to realize is this kind of revolution that I thought was happening 20 years ago, in global aid and philanthropy and development actually didn't happen back then. You know, we were kind of wrong about it. Our timing was sort of off and away when I was when we're starting to have X myself and some friends. And that is happening now. Like it's right in front of us right now. And the interesting thing, you know, we're very used to talking about industries going through disruption. Think about Tesla and Uber, how they're disrupting, you know, the automobile industry, or think about, you know, Facebook and Craigslist and websites like that. Totally disrupting newspapers. But when it comes to nonprofits, we often don't think about ourselves as an industry in a way. And so we this idea of like commercial disruption doesn't touch us in the same sense. And I think it really does. You know, and I think that we're basically going through the same kind of radical disruption that these other industries have gone through that we're so used to talking about right now. And we better pay attention to it because we can use this opportunity if we, if we pay attention to it. Well.
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that's Foster avenue.com/good. Rock Raj, okay, you're speaking I
know, I'm so excited, we can't leave this topic, keep going. Because
that may be what people think it's just not the reality. And I love that you're speaking that into being it's like you can't live outside of this world is not changing at this pace, which is why the nonprofit industry is so behind in a lot of ways. So thank you for speaking that with clarity.
And it just speaks to the need to stay current to stay relevant to embrace innovation, to make space within your budget within your timeline for creativity. Because, you know, this is such a trigger word for John and I but doing the same thing, the way that it's always been done, will not be effective in this day and age. And it also has a deafening I think a you know counter effect where you're not listening, if you're doing things the exact same way. And if we're going to continue to evolve, if we're going to continue to rise to what our port for profit peers, our entrepreneurial peers are embracing, then we have to come over and say, okay, the way that it's been done has gotten us this far, you know, and we have very nicely grown, but I want to see some linear growth, I want to see a skyrocket, and this time and so what would be your suggestion to nonprofits right now? What are the opportunities that they could seize to kind of embrace this brave new world?
I think there's so much to talk about on this, Becky, I would just first of all, bring up this concept of zero goals. So, you know, there's different levels of ambition, you can have you say, I want my nonprofit to double in revenue, or I want to hire more staff. But you know, think about zero goals as a way to examine how ambitious you're being. Zero goals are things like, I want to end all child marriage, you know, the whole world, I think there should be no more forced marriage of kids. And that's a really big goal. It's a zero goal. Because you know, if you get to that state, there will be none, no more of that happening, you see a lot of zero goals around health issues, because there may be a little easier to measure like polio, you know, we're close to the global eradication of polio. And zeros are really compelling. You know, people really sit up in their chairs, when you when you talk about the stuff, it's like, this is something that you know, we can do, and then it will be over for the rest of the world, like forever. And you know, there's only one disease in human history, smallpox that was ever fully eradicated. But now there's like seven or eight more that were close to that, like maybe in the next decade or so could get eradicated. So I think, first of all, we got to ask ourselves, are we being ambitious enough? Are we looking at these really big goals, it could be a zero goal, it could be something like you see in the sustainable development goals. But if you're in this space, there's no point in being in it. If you're not being really ambitious, that doesn't have to mean, you know, I want to scale something globally, it could just be in your own neighborhood. You know, but But am I being ambitious enough about what I'm trying to do? Or is it a check the box activity? Is it like, you know, we're gonna keep going and do what we've done last year. And I think the world and the scale of the problems is just demanding more from all of us. And I think the market shift in our space, is that it used to be enough to bring good intentions to the table and say, you know, I just really want to help, and I have these great intentions. I think that's still really important. But that's not enough on its own, we now have to bring a much stronger focus on results. Like is the thing we're out there to do? Is it working? How do we know it's working? Are we honest with ourselves when it's not, and therefore pivoting to the things that might work? And I think we're being you know, really called to be much tougher on our own selves, to make sure as nonprofit leaders or as you know, international development professionals, that the work we do is the right kind of work. It's having to kind of effect we want it to happen. I'll just give one one quick example, which is around this organization called give directly talking about in my book as well, we cover a dev x all the time. You know, it's a group of economists, who said, why don't we just literally give money to poor people? Like, why are all these nonprofits set up to do education programs and health programs and agriculture programs? If, if we know these people are poor, why don't we just give them money, and they won't be poor anymore? Right. And it's a very simplistic concept in many ways. And so people laughed at it. At first, they sort of said, Yeah, this doesn't work. If you give poor people money, they'll probably go out and spend on alcohol and, and other vices, you know, and, and you're not going to actually address these issues. And they said, but do we know that? Or are we just assuming that, and so this group got together, and they started very rigorously measuring this approach, they use satellite photography, and they went to East Africa, and they said, Okay, if we find a village, and a lot of people have tin roofs, they must be doing okay. But the huts that only have, you know, thatched roofs made out of grass, they probably have less resources, will target those homes, and through mobile money right to their cell phone, we'll give them $1,000, you know, unheard of amount of money in those communities. And then we'll really track what they do with it. And they did this, they did it really rigorously. And they found you know, what, actually some pretty positive effects, people weren't wasting the money. People were spending it on things that you would you and I would spend it on, they were making their homes a little bit better they were spending on on school clothes for their kids on food to improve their nutrition. And so this concept started to grow. They got money from a couple of big foundations in Silicon Valley, including google.org. And I think they've now given away more than $150 million directly to poor people. Now, it's not a panacea. And I think the folks over give directly would say to themselves, this is not going to just solve everything. But it is kind of a call to action to all the nonprofits out there that don't do cash programming, and instead do health or education or agriculture, to say, can you measure the results of your program, and show that they are at least as strong or ideally a lot stronger than just giving away money? Because if you can't, then why don't you just give away money? Right, it's a it's it basically entered brings a strong competitive element into the nonprofit space, where we might have before just sort of had a glossy brochure with pictures and said, look at the great work I do. There are a lot of smiling kids, they're happy. And now you have to say, well give directly gets this impact when they give away $1,000. What impact did we get when we spend $1,000? On our program? Wow.
Yeah, I mean, everything you're saying is threading together. And I think last season, we talked a lot about dreaming big, but kept coming up in these conversations. And I feel like this zero goals is go into that next step. It's like, okay, we need to get out of the ethereal, we need to get down to what are we really trying to do? And actually do that and make sure it's not to the detriment of a host of other things. I loved your rice example, too. I don't think I got the chance to comment on that. But at what expense our programs or whatever you think that we're doing positively? Is it happening downstream? is it costing people their jobs? Or is it costing, the economic stability of a country even I mean, that is such a powerful example and just connects it all together for me. So thank you so much for that. And it's making
me think of like, water for who everybody knows, we just love so much, who is saying, No, we're here to eradicate the water crisis. That's our mission. It's as simple as that. We want you to put us out of business. And it's and it wasn't just about give us donation, so we can do it. It's like, we're going to teach the people in Africa, we're going to create an entrepreneurial program. So they are driving their own business. They're creating businesses out of, you know, getting water to people. And it's not about putting a well in the middle of the village. It's about getting water in their houses. And I think about Harry Rosen, have you heard the story of Harry Rosen? This is like a self made millionaire from Orlando. He did exactly what you just described, these economists do. And by the way, I believe an economist economists have the answers. I'm not surprised at all by this. But he literally went into an incredibly impoverished neighborhood in Orlando, and he said, Tangela Park, I'm gonna I am going to take you on with my money. And all he did was provide free daycare for everybody. And he gave every kid a college scholarship. And the college graduation rate went from 25% to 100%. And house prices ended up quadrupling. And it's like he didn't take you know, a nonprofit with his fancy brochure, he just again, took his money straight to the source and said, I'm gonna put it in these two problems. And bam, the community ended up thriving at a local level. So I guess what we're saying is everything you're saying is true. And we're drinking all of this Kool Aid.
Yeah, and I wish it made it easy. You know, there is no easy answer to it. There was a study. You know, Brookings put out they kind of calculated to take every person in the world living in extreme poverty and get The amount of that and extreme poverty by the way your listeners I'm sure know, but it's $1.90 or less. So if you make $1.90 per day, per day, not per hour per day or less, you are technically living in extreme poverty. It's a totally arbitrary number. You know, why is it not $2 or 250 year, it's arbitrary, but it gives you a sense of the extreme conditions that so many people live in. And right now, it's about a billion people who are living in extreme poverty, it was quite a bit less than that before the pandemic, but a lot of people got thrown into it in during the pandemic. Anyway, they had calculator at one point, it was like $66 billion a year. So if somebody can write a check that big, you can take all the people out of extreme poverty and put them into one level above that $1.91 A year or something? Well, it's just not that easy. Like, who's gonna write that check? How do you get it to? Do you not Jeff Bezos? Are you listening? But even if he did, right, how do you not like you're gonna have to do other kinds of things, to make sure that people get that money, they can use it to get the food or the education or the health care services that they want. It's not that simple. But it is important to think in these terms, because otherwise, it's easy to just have a nonprofit organization, it's kind of going year to year it hasn't has a good mission. It's you know, people care about what they're doing, but never really get to that point of showing the next level of results. And I think that's what we're all given the crises today. And it's how we got on this topic, you know, that I think the crises are so extreme. Now, we need to be thinking more ambitiously about how we get there.
I think some of you I've seen you write about is this global mindset. And I feel like you kind of describe in your story how that was shaped at an early age to for you. Can you give some counsel to somebody that wants to cultivate that in their own life? I mean, we talk a lot on the podcast, it's doesn't mean go fly and like start building the house overseas. Like, that's probably the worst that you could probably do. Right? But what is what are ways that we can cultivate a global mindset? In the middle of America? You know, we're in Oklahoma, how can we encourage our friends, our neighbors, our families us to do that?
Well, I think so many of the issues we're talking about really are global. And the first thing to remember is, whatever challenges you see in your own life, or in a neighborhood or community, they're probably pretty similar, you know, the scale might be really different. But people are pretty similar. And, you know, if you're worried about your kids getting good education, that's probably a very similar feeling that like a refugee family will have if they're fleeing Syria. Turns out, that's actually true. If you talk to refugee families, a lot of their concerns are things like that, you know, will my kids get education right now? Well, while we're kind of on the move, we're in a refugee camp, what are they gonna provide? And so oftentimes, the first thing you can do is just realize that people are people and that these issues are pretty universal. Second thing is a lot of the biggest issues on our minds today are actually global issues, meaning, even if you do everything right on climate change in your neighborhood, it doesn't really matter if the whole world is not going forward. And doesn't mean don't do it. But it just means that it's worth it to be thinking about how can my work actually impact this global issue? Beyond just working in my community? Same thing goes for something like the pandemic, as we're all experiencing, right? You know, we can get vaccines and have a fantastic program in one little area, and really, really address the virus here. But it's a virus It doesn't it doesn't respect borders, and variants can come from different places. And, you know, we need a global health system that has to be strong. We all know that, you know, health care in our own neighborhood State community, it's a big political issue in the US, obviously, it's not just a national issue. Health care is a global issue. If if a country does not have a strong health system in place, that that's when diseases can crop up and cross borders and come and you know, we've just been reporting on a country in West Africa, this this week that had a case of Ebola and a case of Marburg disease. And because of the because of the fact that they've got a better health system than before, in part due to the Ebola crisis, you know, five or six years ago, they were able to find these cases and isolate and case and trace. And so an American is sitting 1000s of miles away might say, well, you know, that's up in West Africa. Who cares? Well, it can it can travel, right, if those countries don't have the right surveillance systems in place, you could get a global pandemic. So we're really in this, we're only as strong as kind of the weakest health system in the world. And that applies to so many other issues. And so it might, my main advice, I guess, is to get that global mindset is just think about the issues you care about. And you'll quickly see that there's a connection that connects to people everywhere.
And I think the bottom line is, pour into what you're caring about, you know, yes, go follow them on social, yes, make your urine gift. But I think if we're going to follow the Raj Kumar, you know, challenge to us of rising to be incredibly ambitious. It's going to require us to do more than hit the like button to hit the give button. We have to figure out how are we going to pour into it and I think you know, even if you have nothing financially to get right now. Your voice is an important space. I think the brand of who You are how you show up in the world is a very important brand, you have something to say you have a heart and a passion for something, tell that story, bring somebody along, have them care with you put a call to action of I'm doing this, I'm writing a letter, I'm calling somebody, you know, I'm calling my state legislator about this crisis and asking him what they're doing about it, you know, to your point about climate change, it's like, we have got to be pouring into this because it's something that's going to affect generations. And because a healthier world, makes our local community healthier. So I'm just loving this conversation. And I just am curious with all of these wonderful stories that you have. And I honestly love every one of them. And I think people need to go get the business of changing the world and go buy that book, because there's some really great stories in there. What is a story that you have heard either with dev x, or maybe personally, where you've seen philanthropy or humanity converge, and it's just a story that sticks with you.
I mean, there's so many, and I get into a bunch of these in my book, one that I think a lot of people relate to, when I tell this one is the Uber for tractors. So we're, you know, we all know, Uber, you know, they're huge now and most of the world. But somebody young man, he was working in banking, you know, he did his degree in Georgia, it was down in Florida, he was he was working in banking, like a lot of young MBAs would. And he sort of thought, I don't feel like I'm having enough impact in the world, like, I'm not connecting to a mission. And he understood and had some experience in West Africa, Nigeria, that there was a big issue there, where poor farmers couldn't get access to a tractor. And in fact, if you traveled in many of these countries, in the world, you'll see, farmers are still using the same kind of tools that they use hundreds and hundreds of years ago, you know, just to hoe or basic materials to prepare their field for planning, it takes on average 40 hours to prepare a field for planning. And if you're using hand tools, and it takes eight hours with a tractor, so 3040 days, if you're doing it by hand and seat hours are the trackers, there's a huge difference, right. And this is why sometimes kids don't go to school because they need their help in the fields, because it takes too much effort to do this sort of work. So this young guy's name is to heal Oliver. He said, Well, why can't we use the same concept of ride sharing that we're using for cars? Here in America? Why can't we do that in a place like Nigeria for tractors, and, you know, probably 20 years ago, he wouldn't have been able to do this. For many reasons, obviously, technology wasn't there. But also the whole nonprofit sector would have said, I don't know who's going to grant money to this young guy with this idea, no track record, really. And we don't do grants that way. Plus, this is kind of a business, you have to do a technology investments, probably a for profit model, social enterprise, it would just never gotten past the idea stage. But he did this in 2015. And, you know, back at that point, there were some people ready to do kind of venture philanthropy, and rest risk a little bit of money. And they even the US government was ready to do tiered funding, where they said, you know, we'll give you a small amount of money $50,000, maybe if you meet certain criteria, if you do really well with it, then we'll give you a few 100,000. If you do really well with that, then we can talk about even more. Long story short, hello tractor is what they're called, has now grown to be a major player in the provision of kind of an Uber for tractors platform, they've got 75% of all the new tractors in Nigeria, use their technology, and they're in five countries in Africa. And the basic concept is, if you had enough money to own a tractor, now you get a lot more use out of it, people can borrow it from you. And you could even have a business doing like a fleet of tractors and getting them rented out. And if you don't have the money to have a tractor of your own, you can pay a small amount and actually get one for use. And it's a, it's a kind of thing that, to me is really powerful, because the center of it is seeing that farmer as a customer, you know, not saying hey, this is a really poor person, and what can we do for them? How do we you know, give them food aid or something, instead of saying, Okay, what do you need? You need a tractor? Well, let's just find a way of financial engineering way to get you on. You are a customer to you, if the amount of money you have is really small. Maybe it's enough to meet your basic needs. And building a business around that person as the agent of change in their own life, I think is really powerful, a powerful concept and one that I think shows me at least where we're kind of headed as a as a global development as a nonprofit as a philanthropy world. It's the it's this nexus of seeing the people we're trying to serve as customers as partners, not as just somebody in need.
Okay, we look like Cheshire cat right now. I
know we're like googling Hello, tractors. It's
casual. Barack Obama is like quoted at the very front and it's like, Mr. Oliver, good on you. Because you are so right Raj. We are moving for in this philanthropic sector. In this moment in time, we are moving away from hey, look, we want you to give to we want you to empower your gift can be a vessel to empowerment, your gift is not something that just, you know, provides funding. It's like getting somebody to figure out how to fish. You know, we don't want to just give the man a fish, we want to teach him how to fish. And I have to tell you, I am here for it. And I am excited. I hope that this is the future of philanthropy, because I think there's got to be some space for venture philanthropy converges with very traditional philanthropy which converges with major foundation giving, what a phenomenal story, I just love it.
And it's just it's removing all the labels, like, who cares how it's organized, like it's focused on solving the problem, you know, we're not all going to, we're all gonna die someday, in preserving our nonprofit for the sake of being a nonprofit is not the worthy mission, it's trying to solve the actual big problem?
Yes, if the focus is on the one, the one tractor, then that is the starting point. And I think if you're a nonprofit listening right now, picture your one, who is your customer avatar? Who is your donor, find that person and run your creative, run your strategic goals through the lens of the one? That's right.
And not all the donors are there yet, but they're getting there, you know, and so if you're, if you're a nonprofit that still thinks, Well, you know, my donors are moved by the photos by the glossy pictures by the by the human stories, okay? You know, maybe some of your donors still are, you can still do some of that, but just know that we're donors are going is they want more than that. They want to see the evidence, they want to see the data and that you've got competitors as a nonprofit. We're out there telling a different story. And they're telling that story of using technology of enabling customers, you know, of really thinking in a different way about impact. And you know, nonprofits I think are going to have a shakeout, just like every other industry has had one, this sector will have one to where some will do really well and grow and some will actually go out, they'll go under, they'll go under, they won't be able to survive, unfortunately, but they won't. If if they don't change with the times.
Yeah. Wow. Okay. I'm just like, so excited. This has got me all amped up, Raj, you know, we end all of our episodes asking for your one good thing, and I honestly can't wait to hear what you're going to say this could be a secret to your success, or a habit that you've instilled. What's what resonates with you today.
I mean, the one thing that came to mind for me is a class I took on journalism class I took in college, and the professor showed us this video clip from the time of the Vietnam War. And it was what you'd expect from an old news reel from back then, right, there's a serious reporter and a kind of a safari suit. And he's standing in front of a trail of Cambodian refugees. And he's speaking in a really deep voice. And he's saying something like, you know, one can only imagine what's going through the minds of these refugees. And the professor showed us this clip, because he's like, this is the wrong kind of journalism, like what you should what should this person do? Turn around and ask them, just ask them what's going through their mind, you don't have to imagine. And I think we do a lot of that in the nonprofit, and especially in the global development sector, you know, just given that so much of the work happens in places like Sub Saharan Africa, but a lot of the money and authority and power comes in places like United States, right? We do a lot of this, imagining what other people think, or imagining what they might want. And the one good thing that I tried to do is to remind myself, like, you've got to listen a little bit more, you've got to, don't assume that you get it that you understand all the context, and you understand how it all works. Gotta go out there and talk to that next source, talk to that next person and just say, how are you seeing this from your standpoint? Or what am I missing? And if you don't get that context, then I think you kind of miss the whole story. And that's what we as journalists index, like, that's our job is to get that story. So that's the thing I think everybody works in the space can do more of is just a little bit more listening.
Okay, I have to correlate that, because we had a major philanthropist on the show, and Season One, given multimillion dollars to many organizations, and his one good thing was that development officers do poorly is listen. And so here we are, again, it's about Stop, listen, and so I am just so grateful that you would come and hang in our space. So how can people connect with you? Where, where can they find you on social? How can they find dev x? Give us all
the links all the thing? But for sure, yeah. Well, I'd love to talk to people. You know, you can find me on Twitter, Roger underscore dev x, you can find me on LinkedIn. You know, tell me what you think read the book and tell me you know what I missed or got wrong or what you're working on? I'd love to and one of the best ways I learned about what's happened in our space, just hearing from people directly about what they're what they're working on. You know, dev x is news platform and go to Dev x.com. You can read our content. You can subscribe to some of our newsletters. We've got a newsletter newsletter called the newswire. It's sort of like the must read newsletter if you're in the development space. Eastern global development space. And you want to know what's happening with the World Bank or the Gates Foundation or USA Id like this is the this is the thing that our reporters are putting together every morning. And it's free and you should check it out. It's called the newswire. So subscribe to that. And, you know, I think you'll find a lot of ways to connect with us. Once you're in the DevOps community we do. We do all kinds of events around the world, we have all kinds of different content. We have a whole platform with 1 million development professionals who have registered their profiles on our site. So come and check it out. And, and tell me what you think when you when you find me on social.
This has been amazing. Thank you so much for being here. And for all that you've done over the last goodness, 20 plus years. You're such a good human.
Thank you, John. Thank you, Becky. It's been great. Really nice to be with you.
Thanks so much for being here. We hope you're loving the summer of Evolution Series. And to learn more you can head over to we are for good.com/evolution All the playlists resources and other ways to help you get inspired and activated this summer. We'd also love for you to join the conversation. Share what you're learning on social media, or join us at our free community at We Are For Good community.com Bonus points for snapping a picture and showing us where you're listening from. Can't wait for the next conversation. See you soon friends.
