Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world. We're
here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an Impact Uprising.
So welcome to the good community. We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropist, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
So let's get started. Hey, Becky, what's happenin?
Tori's here. I'm so excited that Dory is here. Friends get ready. Dory is the friend you never knew you wanted and is like the hero of the nonprofit lane right now. And you may recognize her.
Yeah, and Dory. I mean, you're just gonna feel the optimism that shines through when she speaks the brilliance of just how she sees the world and how she's threaded that into massive impact. It is a huge honor to to introduce you to Dorie McWhorter. She is the president and chief executive officer at the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago. Hello, so many Chicago friends that are listening today. And she's got Can I just go ahead and stop the intro and say you've got the best LinkedIn tagline I've ever read in my life. She is an accomplished optimist, a socially conscious business leader dedicated to improving our world. See, we're just optimist, but we're not as accomplished. So I love that you're actually channeled. And you know Dorie has this really cool career before she served as the CEO of YMCA. She was the CEO of YWCA, Metropolitan Chicago for over eight years, where she embarked on a journey to transform that 140 year old social service agency into a 21st century social enterprise. And we got to hear that story, my friend, baby. And so we first met you without knowing it by watching you and uncharitable the movie, so you may recognize her voice. And she's just such a staunch fierce advocate for our sector. And for us to innovate the way that we show up in this film, if you haven't seen it helps really the general public unthink everything we know about change. But I also want to talk about her leadership focus of increasing impact and organizational sustainability. While at the YWCA she her operating budget grew from get this y'all 10 point 5 million in 2013, to 38 million in FY 2022. So that is another story. We have so much to unpack, Dory, I could talk about all of your accolades, but I just also want to get you in this house and get you talking instead of me is a huge honor to have you on the we're good podcast, welcome my friend.
Thank you. First of all, I need you and Becky with me wherever I go. Because you all are just so kind, and you're in your opening remarks. And I just really appreciate it. Actually, when you said the accomplished optimist, someone called me that in an article and I was like, You know what I like that I'm gonna keep getting older. Actively are accomplished.
I love that so much. And I'm gonna grab the domain for you if it's still available.com. But don't worry, I mean, we want to welcome you to the show by just saying take us back to your story. We want to get to know a little story growing up and like what you know, connected. What are these kinds of connected moments of your life that led you to this incredible work we see today?
Well, it's so interesting. So when there's sort of a documented record of what little Dorie thought about, as my parents still saved a letter from Santa that I wrote, or I think they I don't know that they saved, I think he must have given it back to them. Because this letter to Santa that I wrote that asked Santa for three things. And at the time, the one thing the first thing was to make everyone alive today, okay. And the second one was for me to be their accountant, actually. The second one was for me to get a picture to prove that he was real. And the third one was for me to be my parents accountant. So I bring that up. Because, you know, people often ask me because I moved from the for profit space to the nonprofit space. What sort of aha moment I had, I was like, Yeah, I was always like this. It's just that it just was came time to reprioritize what I was focusing on so little Dori was focusing on one the world to be okay. Yeah. And
I want you to know, we feel this like the first time we ever met you. There's something about your warmth and your optimism and your joy and I and the possibilities that I feel like you see in the world and these, I mean, starry eyed optimist are our kind of people because there's too much divisiveness and dissension and hate in the world. It's like we've got to try things differently. We've got to connect differently. We've got to elevate differently. And so we're definitely going to go into the work, the wonderful work that you're doing at the YMCA and you have done some absolutely groundbreaking things that we also want to talk about, but we I mean, you were in uncharitable, can we just do a heart stop by there, we've had Danville out on the podcast a couple times. And we had this conversation we're just so honored to have with you going into it. And if you've not seen uncharitable, I don't want to tell you to just watch it, I want to tell you to take a friend to go watch it to set it up in your board meeting, to have a watch party, because the only ways that we're going to become unstuck in the way that we live and work in this world is by socializing, what the problems are, and talking to the change makers who are making the difference to where you are one of them. So want to give you the floor, talk about your experience of just being in this film. And like give us some background into some of the trickle down effects of these systemic changes that are holding you your team, the organization back from the Thrive and the vibrancy we know are so within your grasp.
Well, I appreciate that, you know, I was so happy to be a part of the, the the film uncharitable. Mostly, because when I went and came into the sector, back in 2013, when I when I left public accounting and became at that time the CEO, the YWCA, I actually was using Dan Platos TED Talk to orient my board. So we will use it in our new board member orientation. And for me, it was finally something that described what I believe to be true about the sector and the approach that I knew we needed to take, given that I was a CPA and coming from an accounting background and management consulting background. For me, it was all about how we continue to understand the business of impact. And so when the film uncharitable when the when the folks had reached out to me, I was like, Yeah, da Yeah, I get it. And of course, they had a couple of proof points, like starting the exchange traded fund, and just other pieces that they saw from the work that we had done at the YWCA that was really aligned with what Dan was discussing as the principles of the movie as well. So it was really nice alignment there. And I was really happy to be able to continue to beat that drum of we need to really understand what are the drivers, like in the other business that make these things successful? Right? It's just that our work is absolutely focused on creating greater impact, and those drivers and levers wouldn't be any different. And so for me, it was just, you know, such a good opportunity to continue to say, yes, these are the things we need to do, and really happy to have been a part of it.
I mean, okay, you mentioned this, and I have to go back to your bio and lift your exchange traded fund piece because Dorie, y'all led the effort to develop this exchange traded fund for women's empowerment. It's on the New York Stock Exchange ticker. So you know, I am in, in partnership with impact shares, which is the first nonprofit investment advisor to develop an ETF product. So don't you we're in the Hall of Fame over this give us a second soundbite of like, what this means or what it looks like today? Sure. Well,
first of all, the fund is doing incredible. And I'm not giving investment advice. I'm just saying.
Because she's an accountant.
Right. That's our facts. And the fact that the star or excuse me, the fund is a five star rated fund for Morningstar is significant, because Morningstar rates 1000s of funds. And so the performance speaks for itself. But we also knew the reason were why we wanted to get involved with this. For me, it really stems back to one of the companies in the Chicago area at the time, went public and had a very successful IPO. And I was sitting on the sidelines, like why they get to raise all the money, they're in great companies true. But why do they get to raise money or have access to capital that we don't have. And so literally that year, I did a little mock up of we could go raise capital on the exchange and what it would mean and what it would do. And then lo and behold, a few years later, we had the opportunity to partner with impact shares that was really looking to leverage the knowledge that we had about change and what corporations could do to advance women so that we could partner with them and create an exchange traded fund that looked at those criteria, as well as then allowed us to have different conversations with corporations to talk about their role. And to me, that's what that's what this is all about is that every single opportunity we have to to make impact and advanced society. Everything is a lever for that it's a matter of how we put those things together. And so the ETF was such a strong representation that you can even do it with an exchange traded funds. So what excuses do we have to make a change we can do with anything and so that, for me, was just another example of demonstrating that we can have so many levers for change, if only we choose to do so.
I'm, I'm so stinking proud of you like what you have done. You're just so bold. You're bold in what you do and how you approach it. And I just wonder like, when you bring this idea to your board, and they're like okay, let's totally try it because As you have, you have the trust, you have the background, you have the numbers. And I love that you guys just went for John, it reminds me so much. We just talked to Alice Lynn Pomponio. Over at America, AC SS, who's talking about how they built this incredible like venture capital arm for directing philanthropic donations and Alice's like from big pharma. And I love it when I hear people that have skill sets in other areas of the world, bringing it into the impact space, and turning these lever or levers on and really unique ways. So I got to ask about your mindset in this because we're big into mindsets on this podcast. And we love talking, especially with like really innovative leaders like yourself, talk to us about your mindset, like in this work when you think about, you know, this EFT which I'm just so proud that I can just tell you what the acronym is, I can basically not tell you anything else about it as a recovering gift officer. But I just want to talk about how do you approach your work? What kind of mindsets would you employ at YMCA of Metro Chicago of whatever you're going to be? Maybe it was at YWCA? Sure,
well, for me, I think that underlying philosophy that I do believe that, that everything can be a force for good, right? So that underlying mindset is that we have every tool available to us to create greater impact and greater societal impact. And so from a mindset perspective, it really is understanding that to me, everyone in everything has value. And so how do we make sure that that gets expressed and is connected in ways to just continue to better society, because I always say impact and value are two sides of the same coin. And so we often try to separate those things and say, Oh, we can create impact or value, which are money. And I'm like, yeah, actually not, that's not true, you, you are always creating impact. And if you're doing that, then there's some value that's been being derived from that. But we sometimes don't acknowledge it, or claim it or even think about it. And so in my space in my world, in my mind, I'm always thinking about how do we do both at the same time? How do we do both at the same time. And so it just for me, and this is one of the when we first got connected when we were doing some of the discussion we had around on charitable and this question around, if it only is impactful and important if it creates value? And I say, well, they're the same thing. For me, separate the two, right? Yes, I want to live in a world that's, you know, yes. Good things happen, because they should happen. But the fact is, is that while that is true, and we want the best things to happen at the same time, we do live in a capitalist society and at least in America, right? And so to the degree that we demonstrate the better we do, the better the world is, or the better, the more value we can create, the more economic stability we can create for folks, all of those things absolutely matter.
Gosh. Right.
I just think like there's something to it, like we cannot lose that fire. And that hope that I think you bring to the table because to us, you're preaching our values back to us. We start with everyone matters, like I'm with you, everybody has somebody something that they can contribute, which is why we can just talk about money. We're talking about a lot things bigger than money. And that opposite really. So okay, I have to kind of throw you you know, this may be a softball, because this is in your past, and then you've already done it's really epic. I want to get the playbook on this. I mean, we're talking about the role that you're in before you came to your current position at the YWCA, which is 140 year old service age social service agency, and you transformed it into this 21st century social enterprise. Tell us the story. What are the highlights? Were just some of the challenges that came along the way and what can we glean from this? Sure.
So at the highest level, the work at the YWCA with the mission was to eliminate or still is, actually is to eliminate racism, empower women. But what I observed when I came into the organization is that, you know, we of course, based on the nature of the work, we have a lot of government grants. And Becky, you were saying your recovery and development officers. So what I observed is that every time a government grant went away, they would shut down the program, furlough, the people just sort of this sort of rinse and repeat cycle that just kept happening. And so as I was coming out, which is why I was coming in the the organization continued to decline. And so once I got there, and I was just like, How is this possible? The work that we do here is amazing. The people are amazing. The the connections in the community are amazing. There's so many assets here, we're just not recognizing that those assets actually bring value to the world. Therefore, we could look at how we can connect to other resources. So for example, you know, I always talk about, you know, this one case, I should say, I use it as a case study to some degree that part of the work that we were doing with we educate childcare providers There's, and we were in a room full of childcare providers. And there was a raffle. And there was a collective sigh when the people when one person won, and the rest, of course, didn't win that it was for gardening curriculum. And I was like, really people really want gardening. So so in my mind, which is Yes, I'm a capitalist, I was like, okay, that means there's an unmet need. Like the side that people lost the raffle for the gardening curriculum. And so, so fast forward, the next year, they ran the same training, and they brought in a speaker, and typically, the training had been free for the providers, which is fine. But then, of course, when something's free, you get a bit of a attrition, that's, you know, a drop off ration. And so they charged something de minimis, like 35 bucks, but they charged so that, you know, because they had to pay for the speaker to come in. But the speaker was great, because he was teaching them. Again, they wanted something that they could do with their kiddos. And so he was teaching them how to do STEM projects at home. So they would, you know, he would do all these little fancy little things to show like how air compressors and a bottle all these things with with household items, right? And it was really cool, long story short, to say that we charge for them to come. So that mean, now instead of having our free event, it was you know, 100 participants show so that was $3,500, just from people coming to that. And then what we also saw is that, that they were intrigued about how can they do all these sorts of exercises at home with their kids. And so our team, because we had been talking about how much value we create with the work we do with the the impact we have, that they created these little stem toolkits, and then they sold them to all the folks so we only had 10 on site that day. So that 100 bucks each that was $1,000. Then underwriters Laboratory, which most folks know, UL Listed they are, you know, they test any things that they do. So they made these incredible videos with with Disney, effectively teaching, you know, electricity safety. And so they're like, Oh, my goodness, you all have these chocolate bars, we'd love to have the videos, or we will sponsor the event for $5,000. So this event turned into a $10,000 event that used to be a free event. And so it was about us thinking through every time we said that there was a value creation opportunity there and taking advantage of it, that what we were doing this on steroids across the organization. And so that's how we really grew. Because and that's why I say we became a social enterprise. Because if we really understood the value that we were creating, the the impact that we were having, and how that can drive the resources to do the work. So we were no longer just beholden to one type of funding source that yes, funding sources evolve. That's what funding funders do. I mean, it happens. But what we were better attuned to is how do we then understand where we're creating value, and who cares about the impact and the value we're creating, that they'll be willing to tap into it differently. And so, so $38 million later, we found a lot of value in the association, and we just empowered. What was so great for me is that we empowered so many of the workforce, so many people within the workforce there, like we did this program that we were providing free childcare services to veterans, it was paid through for Illinois, scratch off tickets, that was our syllabi, lottery scratch off, that were specifically dedicated, designated for veteran services. But again, we had to bring the services to say this is what we can do. And that was so so huge. And yet we were able to provide a good a different resource for people and create that impact and at the same time understand what additional revenue sources we could use to pay for that. So we were so fortunate that we have a whole team thinking like that. And so that's how we grew. It wasn't just me sitting on high saying, huh, what is it that we need in the world? And how can I go get it? It was really the team saying, you know, we have people that call here, they can't get childcare subsidies. If they have health appointments, they can only get childcare subsidies when they have employment opportunities. And so we partnered with the Veterans Association, Veterans Hospital Veterans Administration Hospital, and they were the ones that helped us access their veterans so that we can then provide child care services to them so that they can attend their health care appointments. So it's about like, again, how do we create Win win wins, and then in every opportunity, we have to do that there's value there, we just have to connect the dots. Okay,
Dory, like there's so much to unpack here one week we call this not asking a better question. But asking a bigger question, you asked a bigger question and I keep seeing this coin as this visual sort of beacon for you all that impact and value are interchangeable. They are the same thing. And when you look at it from a much different lens than the one dimensional lens we've all been thinking about which is the dollar amount. We can think about value and donation and an impact in different ways and PS bravo to you for giving so much agency to your team on the front lines. Of course they're going to know this they're in this every single day. They're talking to the people on the frontlines of this and so, I mean, it's just a really cool case study. It reminds me John of we had Maya edge Mira on from a society of science talking about how they reiterated their over 100 year old organization to be a social enterprise. I think, Amy, Amy Frey tag over at the Community Trust of New York City is reimagining their 100 plus year old organization. I just think that these examples are wonderful testimonies and case studies to point back to of people who are asking bigger questions, expanding the way that we look at community interaction and in value. And I just have to like ask you Dory, like, what are the hallmarks? What did you notice what lifted to the top about what a modern social enterprise can be? And how that can be a focus for some of the nonprofit missions that are listening right now?
Yeah, part of it for me, is that one because I do have Yes, I have an MBA and yes, I have an accounting degree and background. And what for me, I recognize that people really just don't understand that what they do also brings value. So we say, so when I joined the YMCA, for example, we would say that our memberships, which were focused on our fitness services, were our cash cow. And then we do our mission work. And as I Okay, first of all of its impactful like all of it is, second of all, all of it also has value. So, yes, you have a structure here that feels because it's consumer base that it feels like it's our cash cow, but I don't, I would argue that because our mission work is also our, I can't even say the word mission work and mission work also has value. And they're in what our goal is to make sure that we're identifying the right sources to, you know, of course, provide be able to provide those services to the community, even if they are for free, right. And so, so for me, it really is recognizing that we need we are offering in a marketplace where value is exchanged every single day. But we get the great fortune and organizations that have a nonprofit tax status, that we're able to effectively do our work, which is provide greater impact in advanced society in a very tax efficient way. So that's how I think about it, that we're part of the same marketplace. You know, we have courts have to hire great people, which of course, the movie uncharitable touches around, you know, making sure we're compensating people making sure we're marketing, looking at the same sort of tools that we have in business, so that I think about those things all the time. And I'm always thinking about how it applies to the work we're trying to accomplish.
I mean, I'm so glad our CPA friend Dory came over to this world, I mean, it's just so good to have this pouring into this conversation. But I want to talk about activation, because you know, we get questions in our community all the time about capacity building, and creating this organizational stability. And I'd say that's one side of the coin. But we also are like, we want to lean into innovation. You know, we just had a conversation, a couple episodes back with Seth Godin about our role is to innovate, like, we don't know, the answers to the society's biggest problems, we have to be changing the norms. And so how do you marry those two ideas? How do you create capacity and stability? Also leaning on innovation to go to the next level? And that's like, that's a perfect question for you, Dory. Yeah.
So you know, Becky, where you had said something earlier? I was, it is always the quality of the question. I always say the quality of the question gets you the right solution, right. And so then you do need to ask bigger and better questions, because there I think there is a thing is a such thing as a better question, right? Because to me, that's how we begin to unpack the innovation is that if we're asking questions, sometimes the questions are as simple as why, why and I used to tell my team this all the time, like, it is our job, if we are trying to create the greatest impact possible and address some of the most some of the most challenging situations people have, we have to ask the questions, why are we in this situation? And what can we do to get out of it, and the what can we do? Gives us to me gives us permission to to truly lean into that. And this is where to me it also becomes to your point down with acity. The difference between lots of businesses and nonprofits is that many nonprofits say this is the budget and then they'll do the work within this budget. Businesses say this is what I want to accomplish. And then so how can I go get the resources to accomplish that? And I think that that's what we need to do more of. And so capacity to me is should always be a short term issue. Because we are often we have to software capacity while we solve the issues at hand. To me, they go hand in hand. So you, you can't be limited by the resources you have. And this is why we never solve the problems because we actually say, Oh, we have you know, just for example, we have a million bucks or 1000 bucks, whatever that is, what can we do with the 9 million bucks I'm like, but the problem takes 2 million so I'm going to ask you to go find the 2 million and let's figure that out. Because you can't downsize the solution. Don't We can't do that it doesn't work clearly doesn't
work. And what donor wants to be part of a watered down solution like I don't as a
solution for nine out of five there's a problem, it's a million dollar.
This is not a BK broiler, this unhoused crisis, this is the food scarcity
and my resources to to be on a level of challenges. And so you can't, I just, I can't even think like that, like, I don't know how you scale down the solution to be within a certain dollar amount. Like I don't even know how that works, that actually hurts my brain to try to think about that. So people
in business are not thinking that way. I mean, they're thinking the opposite. Absolutely.
They're thinking about this is what we need to go do. And this is how we this is how we should go. Try to find the resources to do it. And then you may have to sell your solution, but you at least go look for the resources. But we tend not to do that. We say, Well, we have this and so we need to live within our budget and like, yeah, perhaps but perhaps we just need to go find more money. And I'm open to all of those ways, right? We just need to look at things differently. Right. So I
think that's the benefit and the hallmark of what you're bringing to your organization. And what you're bringing into this space right now is that you don't look at the world and your work, the way that the playbook implies that we should because the playbook is dusty. Let's talk about this. And the playbook needs to be modernized. And I think one of the reasons I would guess that you have found such success, and I don't mean that just in what you've funded, though, 10 million to 38 million should be celebrated Hello. But also success in your team and the way you're diversifying your revenue. And the way that you talk Dory has no scarcity in it at all. It is such a abundant big vision thinking I want to be a part of it.
Yeah, no, I appreciate that the world isn't scarce. And so the world continue in the economy to continue to expand. Right? Yeah, we slow down sometimes. And sometimes there may be a recession. But you know, and that was part of my issue, too. When I joined the white back when I joined the YWCA, you know, the best the rest of the business community have been coming out of the recession, since you know, from 2008 ish or coming out. And we it was 2013. And we were still in, I was like, How is this possible? And I was like, oh, because we haven't really claimed the value that we've been creating by ensuring that everybody else is okay. And so we really had to take a hard look of where we were participating in the market. And truly, we're not capturing the value that we were absolutely creating, I had a an opportunity to go out United Way was funding us. And so we went out to one of their corporate partners, and I was telling the how the work that the work that the United Way did in terms of their corporate campaign supporting our work, and part of our work was sexual violence support services, and we provided counseling and therapy services for for survivors of assault. And one of that corporations, employees met me in the parking lot and said, because of the why WCA at the time, you helped me get my life together. And I was like, Oh, that's a wonderful, I'm so happy to hear that. And then I sent everything in myself. And you were able to go back to work and become a productive part of this particular employers. Environment in and let's say they they made money from that, right. But did the Y appear in any of that? No. And so we actually use that as a way to start talking to corporations around how we can be a part of their employee assistance programs, as well as connecting the work that we did. And I brought this up on the call or the meeting we had with, or the conversation we had with Steven Gyllenhaal as well that we were able to demonstrate that when you address the trauma from violence and abuse, it actually reduces the the workers comp third party administration cost. Yes. And so again, it's not about that that person's suffering was valuable. It wasn't that it was that we were participating in the productivity of that company. And we were nowhere to be found and sort of that value exchange or the or even taking credit for our role in making helping that play, become, you know, more of a productive employee for that employer. But then we started having those conversations, right, because there is a true cost to that. And it shows up in our healthcare costs, because a third of our health care costs are actually tied to violence and abuse. But those are the type of conversations we need to have a corporation to help people understand that you should care that your employer goes employee comes to see us you should care about that. And by the way, you should also provide resources so we can do more of that. And so that's why I say how I think about is how do we continue to make sure that we're plugging ourselves in where we really are participating in creating greater value for the whole and
like the boldness of which you speak and and how I want to say like you talk about it as if we have to do it. And then there's no apology in the way that you talk, which I feel like is a little bit of something that's held our sector back. And I thank you for it because Dorie, you're literally doing what you're saying a letter said, that woman just proved, like you are literally making sure that everyone around you is okay. And whether you see him or not, it's happening because of the systems you've put in place. And because of the outputs of your I mean, what you've put out there with your dreams is coming back to you. And I just have to ask you just this final question, before we get into our anchor questions about this innovative lens that you just put on to your work over at the YMCA of Metro Chicago, like, what are you guys working on right now? What do you what do you guys see, and I would love to peek behind the curtain.
There's so much opportunity here. It's like I literally have to sort of put on my shades. I could stop seeing the opportunity here and put it on. Yeah, and you know, for us, it really starts with again, the the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago has been here for 166 years has done amazing work. When you look at the legacy. There's so much of original creation that or just amazing things that came out of the the YMCA, whether it's colleges University, Roosevelt University came from the why, oh, my black history month was founded at the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago. Yes, right on Wabash Street here in Chicago, on the Southside of Chicago, the Bank of America Chicago marathon was founded at a YMCA. So when I came here, it was really bring it building off that legacy of innovation that I felt was, you know, extremely, just such a great opportunity to be surrounded by that energy. And so some of the things that we're working on is we're really looking at how do we modernize the work that we do, many of you folks know us for our health and wellbeing services or fitness services. So or should I say the swim in gym models that people are familiar with the YMCA, but we're taking that to what I would consider a whole nother level where we did a great pilot with peloton because of course, they have the world our partnership, virtual content. And so they will become a partner of ours as well as we roll out this on on a larger scale basis across all of our footprints. So that's really exciting. We also are looking at how we go back into communities that over time the Y has, has left for a number of different reasons. But we think that there's a great opportunity to serve more and really understand how we can go back into those communities. But if we're going to go back into those communities, we're going to do it in a more green way. So we're looking at not only how do we how do we offer what we want to provide in these communities or what the communities want from us. But for example, we're looking at a downtown community hub, that's going to be a mixed income, net zero carbon emission apart emissions apartment complex. So just really have thinking about how we use the wise platform to do more. And so there's a lot happening a lot happening. But there's a couple of highlights because we really tried to, you know, do more my my colleagues, they often one of my colleagues in particular, she talks about, she loves the quote that you know, if you want to go fast, go alone if you want to go far go together. And I was like, Yeah, we need to go further faster, though. So let's do
he's gonna sprint the Chicago Marathon
to do people like let's run in daylight here. So let's go. Let's go. So yeah,
I mean, what an amazing time to be with you in that mission. But I think any day of the week would be a good day indoors world, I just feel like you, when you look through the opportunity through creating value, that everyone has something to offer, like, it's bullying, like we are needed in this moment, more than ever, whatever mission today, you know. So I mean, we got to ask you, I can't wait to ask story about a story. But we ask all of our guests to take us back to a moment of philanthropy that's really stuck with them, and can be a really small moment of kindness or generosity. But what would you share with us today?
Oh, my goodness, I feel like you know, it's so interesting, because, of course, I thought about this question. But there's, I felt like there's not ever one moment, I just feel like there's many moments that I'm so fortunate to have experienced. So partially the reason I am an accomplished optimist, because I just feel like there's so much goodness and kindness in the world. And I'm so fortunate to be either a witness or a recipient of it every single day. And it's so hard for me like literally, I was racking my brain thinking like, is there one thing and that's just like, you know, everybody
leave that about?
Oh, it really is so hard to just think about, just because, of course, you know, the philanthropy began at its core, the love for humanity, and I just felt like we have such an opportunity to experience that Every single moment of the day, and it really is up to us because there's so many people that aren't experiencing that. And so how we choose to lean into that both both give and receive that like the love you all give is just so amazing like on my Yagami hi for another another at least another 48 hours
around here, where your team for life come back whenever you need us no positive,
but I so for me, it really is. I don't know that there's an I really don't I cannot think of one moment I just felt like I'm so fortunate to have this amazing humans in my aura that continue to feel me every single day, every single day. Don't worry,
she she gave it back. She couldn't pick the her favorite child, she gave it back to humanity. And, and you're right, we I think we get so busy in this work sometimes that we don't stop and look around at the gratitude and at the way that we are changed by the work by the interactions by the things we see and experience. And there's gotta be some pause in our work to do that, because that is what's going to refuel us. And Dory, we end all of our conversations with asking our guests about a one good thing it could be a mantra, quote, a piece of advice. What would you leave with the community ism? adore?
isms my team would be like, no, no.
Like my kids when I tried to do slang, yeah, I get it. Yes, I will
share one of my favorite quotes. This is another point of connection for Dan to pull out. And I because I'm, we're both fans of Bucky Fuller. But my favorite Bucky Fuller quote is that you never change things by fighting the existing reality to change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. And for me, when you mentioned innovation earlier to John, that's what gives us permission to innovate. Because I always presumed that people did the best they could with what they knew at the time. But now we know differently. So I think by asking different questions by leaning into different knowledge points and data points, that we can do better. And so that so that's what I'll say that, you know, I'm all I'm all for just advancing things in advancing society in ways that are extremely relevant for us today.
I'm just here for your ethos, my friend, I mean, the way you radiate the way we feel cared for in the way that clearly you care for your community in such a powering way. It's just beautiful to watch. so, so grateful for this time, people listening are gonna want to connect with you. I know you're on LinkedIn, we're big fans and followers there. Where else can people find you and connect with your work at the YMCA?
I chose Chicago? Well, you can follow us across all the channels at YMCA Chicago. We're that on Instagram, Facebook, and acts. So but definitely continue to connect with us. And just again, it's just such an honor to be with you all today as well. I
just think your heart, your expertise, your vision. We need more of that. And you give us so much hope we're so proud of you. Thank you for walking through life with your generosity and your kindness. We are going to be rooting and watching YMCA and I got a shout out to your 100 Plus your old 140 year old YWCA. I just think
we're it's we're still there.
Yeah, you're making change and ripples happen everywhere. Thank you for coming into this space and just giving us the buoy we needed today, my friend. Oh,
thank you. Thank you both such honor.
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