Hey, I'm John. And I'm Becky. And this is the We Are For Good podcast.
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So let's get started. Thank you, us having them today.
I'm grinning from ear to ear and I've gotta like, take everybody back before I introduce our guests to say, how did we get to this point, and I was having a conversation with our dear friend Rachel, bear Bauer, and I said, Rachel, she, you know, she's just the queen of small but mighty nonprofits. And I was like, we're really looking for some innovative ways that some of our smaller nonprofits are really revolutionising donor engagement and stewardship. And she said, Hold Up friend, because you got to meet my friend Jehan. It was like, we fell headfirst into the story of sons Jeremiah, it is an incredible organization that our friend that we're visiting with today has founded and I'm just so excited today to talk about what can be learned from radical stewardship that is highly organized, highly personal, and really touches to the core of why a donor is connected to us. So let me start out by just introducing our guests and incredible woman, mom and human Jehan sarahfey. She's the co founder and executive director of Sun sir Maya, and she's this amazing nonprofit professional, y'all. She's got the extensive program and project manager experience. With this focus on international development and human rights and the story she's about to tell you about how she arrived in Nepal. And what she saw there and how it changed. Her worldview is really gonna open up your heart. Because today, she's just creating the holistic programs that are enabling disadvantaged women and children in Nepal, to build their own pathways out of poverty. She's doing this through a variety of programs. And I can tell you, radical stewardship and donor engagement are a part of that equation. But I just want to give another shout out because Jehan has just done so much in the international aid and human rights sectors. Most recently, she served as the program and development manager for the human rights organization united for Iran. And she's also built an international network that provided educational and medical relief to underdeveloped areas in Nepal. So we're excited to have just a global powerhouse on the podcast today. Jehan, welcome. Welcome to the we're good podcast. Get in our house.
Thank you, you guys. I'm so honored to be here. I'm so excited to talk to you both. I have been a fan of yours for so long. And I just have to tell you every time I listen, when I finished up an episode all I think was that just felt like a big warm hug. Oh, yeah. That's what it should
do. Thank you. And and this is not the first time we're meeting. I mean, the first time we met you, I think was a community and coffee. Thank you for coming in all the way from California, you're in San Diego. But we I want you to kind of tell this story and back it up just a little bit. Because I think it's a powerful one. Just talk about kind of where you grew up and how you fell into this work.
I grew up in California. I come from a very large extended family. I'm one of 12 Oh my gosh, yes. Not awful. So at least there was some haves in there. You know, my mom always had a love for children. She was a preschool teacher she had worked in children's ministry and continues to do so. So I think it was always just kind of part of our worldview of this care and love for children and it really bled into my life. I was living and working in San Francisco. I had landed what I thought at the time was my dream job. I was working as a travel guidebook editor. Oh my god, I'm not believe my luck to
be years gone.
Every day I walked in the door is like they're gonna find me out. But I don't know. I'm so happy to be here. And it was just living this wonderful, amazing life. And then the recession hit. This was back in 2010. And our entire team got let go. And I was heartbroken. I was like, there it goes. There was my one shot and it's it's gone. So I spent the next six months doing some contract work filling in the time and it was not filling my soul I think in honestly it was having the opposite effect. So I sat down one night I remember sitting on the couch with my husband, we were newly married and I said what do you think if I go to Nepal and do some traveling, and he was all for it. He was like that sounds like a great idea. You need to go so I packed up my bags, and I took off and I was doing some traveling. I was doing some fun went to work. And a few weeks into my stay, I was offered a job. So I called up my husband again, we've been married for four months at this time. And we had to figure out how we were going to make the first year of our marriage work with me living on the other side of the world. And somehow we did it. And it was this amazing, incredible experience. I was facilitating medical camp, setting up education placements, and just living this incredible experience. When people think of Nepal, the first thing they think of Everest, right? That's what everybody knows. But it's so diverse. It's so multi layered. There's so much to it. But it's also one of the world's poorest countries. If you talk to anybody who's been there, I think their experience is probably the same as mine. And it is that it is magical. It is beautiful. I just fell in love with the people. I fell in love with the place. There's just a generosity and a welcoming spirit. That's just all encompassing, it just fills your heart. So while I was there, myself and three friends, we just sat down, we're like, how do we give back this place has given us all so much like, what do we do? And so we started really small with sons are Maya, we just started by giving children, backpacks, and school supplies and uniforms, just the things that they needed to get to school every day. But over some time, as we started to develop these relationships and working in the community, we sat down again, and we're like, I don't know, is this really going to move the needle? Is this going to have an impact? Yes, these are things that children need, but is really what's going to get them to where they need to go. And so we started with this idea of an after school program and this kind of holistic program. And that was back in October 2014. And I remember the date exactly, because for some reason, we decided to open it up the week that I had my firstborn child,
why not? Let's do it.
I was emailing from the hospital bed, my husband was like, you gotta put down the phone. And I was like, wins. And
he would make a twin joke, John.
It is it's the joke. I had two babies that week, I had twins. And that was kind of that was the birth of sensor, Maya.
Wow. I mean, anybody that knows me knows that I'm eating the story up for multiple angles. But just love how you are just following these nudges. And really trying to do it in a way that centers the community and trying to figure out the best, most impactful way to work with and support the incredible light of the people of Nepal. So I just love just seeing your heart explode as you talk about it. And you know, sensor Maya, I was really struck by the mission that I saw, or that I read that was said it was born out of a desire to help Nepali women and children break the cycle of generational poverty, like what a big beautiful mission to pour into vision, will you kind of walk through a little bit of like, you've talked, you've mentioned the after school program, but I know you really have four pillars of work and be threaded a little bit of the connecting dots from launching to how you landed on these four programs and walk us through that.
It's true, our mission is to provide women and children what they need, right they for them to build their own pathways. And we're just here to support them and provide those things. And we're really community centered and holistic in that work. So our after school program, that it was our primary program, the one that we started with, and that once we really got into it, it was really looking at what what the need was. And in the poll, most children have access to school, legally, every child should be able to go to school. But that looks different for every child, especially based on your circumstances, you can imagine kind of the degrees and the quality of education. So but even if you're able to go to school, if you're hungry, you can't learn if you are experiencing mental health crisis, you can't learn if you're having medical issues you can't learn. And most of the students in our in our communities, they're living in orphanages, they're living in slum tenements. So you can imagine that things that they're not getting the support at home. So the goal of the program really is to provide children everything that they need, but they might not necessarily get at home to provide that those opportunities and that healthy development. And so we have 300 students every day, we have three centers that they come to, and there's the three pillars of our program, which is the academics, the medical and the mental health. So when our students come every day, they get immersed in this like really cool hands on immersive curriculum, where they're learning to, they're learning how to think not what to think. And so they're doing these projects like they are making a working model of lungs out of bottles and straws. They're making battery powered cars out of cardboard. One of our students, they got a group together and at one of the centers, they created this hanging garden out of two liter soda bottles, just this amazing, amazing work. And I give all the credit to our teachers. I mean, they are the ones who do this day in and day out. And then on top of that every student gets a daily nutritious meal. They're getting full medical and dental care twice a year. And then the mental Health Support. And that's a really important part. You know, in Nepal, mental health is not prioritized. And so you can imagine students who are living in these circumstances, unfortunately, when you are experiencing extreme poverty, oftentimes things that can also tap into our substance abuse, domestic abuse, things like that. And so we have a full time mental health therapist on staff who is there to provide any needed therapy to any of our students. So we've been doing this since 2014, like I mentioned, and it's been amazing to kind of see the progress and see some of the students how they've moved through the program. We have this one student, and she had come to us when she was little, and Taylor, she had moved through the program. She graduated a couple of years ago. And in the time between her high school and college, she came back and she interned with us. So she was teaching, she's now going to college, she's enrolled in college, which is amazing, right, just even to have come from those circumstances to get into college is such a huge feat. And that she's also working part time now as a teacher, so she's making a salary to help support her education, support her family. And now she's giving back to her community because she wants to become a teacher when she graduates. So it's just this really beautiful, full circle of the program that we're starting to see.
I'm just like, envisioning in my mind ripple. Ripple, ripple Ripple. I mean, here you are coming up on the first decade. And, and I think it just has to be so powerful for you to see that full circle moment come by, and you also have this amazing women's literacy program. Talk to us a little bit about that.
Yeah. So that our women's literacy program, it came out of this question of, what else can we do for our students in our communities? And in thinking about the impact? I know you guys know this, and I'm sure your listeners know, this is how do you best support children and communities, and you educate and empower women, that's how you lift up entire communities. So that was where it came from. But we chose to do it a little bit different, you know, the goal, the program's not just to have someone be able to read a book, which in and of itself is a magical and beautiful experience in something that everybody deserves. But we wanted to make sure that these women were able to take these skills and go out immediately into their everyday lives and be able to use these. And so we're teaching things like how do you go to a local government building and find the office that you need to get to? Or how do you read the label, one of our women has come to us and said, you know, before I came to the program, I couldn't read my own prescription bottle, like I did not know how to take my medication, right? And you don't think about at all? Exactly. How do you go to a market and be able to calculate discounts or taxes, one of our other students had said, for years, she had gone to the same local vendor in her community and for the fruits and vegetables at her for her family. And for years, she just had to take what he was telling her as truth. And this only happened last year. And it was so powerful. She said that she had gone, got her stuff. And he gave her the total. And she pulled out a pencil on a piece of paper and tallied it up and showed him that he had been cheating her and taking advantage and demanded the payment back. Right. So like you said, it's things that we would never think about, we take for granted every day, but they're able to take these skills out into their everyday life and really just make an impact for them and their families.
I mean, thank you for doing this. I feel like when we talk to founders that are going after big vision that can't just be easily accomplished, that you're trying to change a cycle and systems. Like I appreciate the audacity, you know, to go and say, we're going to pour into this because that's what I see in your programs. And clearly it's changing the trajectory for families already. And there's more programs and you could lead us into we want to lift your teacher training in the emergency relief the child do also, but just what a beautiful mosaic of impact that you're creating in Nepal. And so I want to transition because the way we you came in the door, Becky alluded to this at the beginning is that you're also disrupting the heck out of how to steward the donors that are surrounding your movement. And so we love this case study of a year of stewardship. So you came up with this idea to really put more personalized attention and great care on your donors. So tell us the story. How did you come up with this plan? And how did you get your team rallied around it? How'd you pull it off? Because we'd love to hear kind of the results of this experiment? You did.
This was so fun. You know, for us, our donors, and I think probably I know a lot of organizations feel this way. But for us, our donors truly are a part of samsara Maya, right. Like we cannot do this work without them. And they are just as important as any team member and I wanted them to know that and feel that authentically. But at the same time, like Nepal is really far from here. We're here in the States, a lot of our donors are here. And so how do you find that connection? I think we've done a pretty good job up to then of like communicating and sharing with our donors, updates, things like that, but not really truly finding that connection. And we had come off a year that we've done pretty well financially. So this was not kind of motivated by needing to raise more funds. But it was really about sustaining the organization as a true community and fostering those relationships. So that's where we came up with this year of stewardship. And we still did a lot of the usual things. Like I tried to always write a handwritten thank you note to people when they when they donate, or board members make phone calls, holiday cards, things like that. But what else could we do right, not with an ass, but truly with building that relationship. And so we came up with a couple of ideas. And some of them were super fun and quick, like, in February, we sent out a Valentine's Day card. And it just had a picture of our kids and some of their artwork, and just was worth thinking of you kind of thing, super simple. We did a summer fun list for our donors, they got a Nepalese recipe that they can make it super easy one, some book recommendations by Nepalese authors, we put in a Spotify playlist and some movie recommendation, Ray, just like, here's some ways to connect. So you know that this is the place that you that you are giving to. And then in the fall, we did something that I thought was super special. I think when people think of Nepal, often may probably also can think about meditation, right? It's the birthplace of the Buddha. So there is definitely that connection there. And so we were long gone from the days of pandemic zoom parties, this is 2022. But somehow, we got people all over the globe to come together. And we did this meditation event one evening, and it was hosted in led by meditation teacher from his place in Nepal. And it was just this really beautiful, small, intimate group. But it was also a way to like authentically connect as an organization. You know, meditation is a daily part of our programs, and something that our students practice. And so it was a way to connect to our programs into the place for our donors. And then the last piece was this thing that we dubbed Chai with me, and this kind of happened throughout the year. And I have to tell you, this is the brainchild of Alicia, she's our director of development, and she is my partner in everything that we do and go Alicia. Yes, she's amazing. And what we did is we printed out these cards and these got sent to anybody whether they give $5 $500. Again, it was all about just the relationship building. And they said something super simple. Like, I just want to hear from the people who make sense or my happen will you have a cup of chai with me. And there is a little packet of Nepali chai tea inside and a QR code and that code would link to my calendar online. And people could set up a time to chat. So I had these monthly calls with people. And you know, some of these people had been given for years. Maybe I'd emailed with them or sent them cards, but I never got a chance to talk with them. And I got to know, I got to know them on a personal level I I got to know not only like why they chose to get to sponsor Maya, but who they were as people, I got to hear about their families, their hobbies. I remember one of them was in her art studio. So I got to see all of the art that she'd done. And we had talked about that. And I just got to know them as humans. And just a way to say thank you for what they were doing.
Okay, so much to double click on here. Let's start with the car. That's right. I mean, because we can call the stewardship. And that's a very jargony buzzword here in the nonprofit sector. But what you did was you connected and you connected on a deep human level. And it wasn't just about, hey, here's a tchotchke. Or here's your name on a wall or something. It was like, Oh, here's our story. Here's our people. Here's what we're working on. Let me educate you about Nepal, you also met them in the spaces where they're at. And I just have to ask you like, what was the outcome of the year of stewardship? What did that look like to you and to your team?
Yeah, it's a good question. You know, I have to say, going through it, we just didn't know right? Especially with the chai with me, there was plenty of people that we got never we never heard from I had no idea that they even got the card. Did it get lost in the mail? Were they like, what is this thing? And why are you sending it to me and spending money that I've donated. So there was never a clue. But again, we just felt like this was authentic. And it was true to who we were, and just trying to foster that connection. And at the end of the year, we always pull our retention rates, we want to see how we are doing with our donors. And overall overall last year, we had a really good retention rate, like I was proud of it, we beat the national average and it was something that we had been working towards. But then when I segmented out the people that had received these cards and people that I had never talked to people that never even told me that they got it across the board. That retention rate was 20% higher than our own retention rate. And that's huge.
It's also speaks to like attribution, because this is what's talked about a lot like in conversions for like online marketing metrics. It's like it's not always one to one they don't always click on the exact email that you send that had the link, it's like you're lifting across the board. So I love that you looked at it kind of holistically. And of course, that led to more of that it just makes common sense to and just knowing it's about people and building that relationship. So knowing the the kind of complexity, y'all are still a very small team overall, you had to use some tech to stay organized. And I've heard from a little bird that you are like a tech wizard at using this to like power, these kinds of projects. Would you kind of talk about how do you use tech to help personalize at scale in the way that you did?
Yeah, it's a good question. We are a very small team. I'm the only full time member over here, we have tons of full time staff in the poll. But when we set this out, we had to figure out how to make it work for our team of our size, and how to make sure that it again, was personalized, right, I did not want to take that out. So we relied really heavily on air table. And you call that Rachel bear Bauer, she helped me a lot with it. I do love tech. And so we had to just set up these processes, especially with the chair with me because it was going out to so many people each month. And so we use air table to kind of track everything. Each time somebody, obviously the cards went out by hand, every time a card went out, we hit something in air table, and it triggered a record to be created in our CRM, CRM. So we know who got the card, what it said when they got it. And then we also used air table. So a week later, right, you want to follow up, maybe they didn't get the card, maybe it got lost. And so a week later, also through air table, it triggered an email that came personally from Me, personally through air table that said, Hey, I hope you got our card, I'd love to still talk with you. Here's a link to the calendar. And so that really allowed us to track this automated and to ensure that people were getting it. And obviously you don't want to like resend a card to somebody those kinds of things. And so we really relied heavily on technology to make this happen.
I'm just so proud of you. I mean, our small but mighty nonprofits are so freakin mighty. I mean, this is the way that I think you can work smarter, not harder. And I think, you know, you had this initial goal of this increase in retention. But I just think the practice of this, the organization of it gave you all these added benefits that you probably maybe couldn't have perceived would come as a result of it. So I'm like, What can nonprofits learn about this? That's what I'm thinking right now. Jehan is like, as they're planning their own donor engagement strategies, what were really the takeaways that you and the team felt like lifted out of this little experiment. I
think the driving idea was just to show up and be authentic. Relationships are not transactions. And so you have to find what's meaningful to you and your programs and your donors. You know, us being an international organization, a smaller one, again, we had to find what really worked for us. What works for other organizations would just wouldn't happen for us, right? Like, we don't have people come and visit, we don't have some of these other a golf tournament doesn't make sense things like that, right? So find what works for you carve out the time, it's so well worth it. I know, there's people probably thinking like, there's no way especially smaller organizations like ours, like how are you find? How can you find time, 30 minutes to talk to people throughout your week, and it's so worth it. I mean, to be honest with you, I probably would have wasted that time, like scrolling through Instagram. So it was such a better use of my time. And it was powerful, like it really filled me up. And I'm so grateful for each and every one of those conversations.
I have to relate to it just for a second because I have these 230 minute slots held on my calendar on Monday afternoon and Friday morning to just meet people and our community. And that has been one of the greatest joys of my life, we have found so many people that have come on to the podcast, we get to have extended conversations with people that have been a community in coffee or DM me. And I just think there is something to that if you have 30 minutes a week or maybe an hour a week to break that up. I think it could radically change the culture and the dynamic of the relationships and I think it just starts one at a time and I love that you guys did that brilliant.
Your story of just the people that have surrounded this work, but also your own personal journey of you've kind of poured deeper into this mission. I know. The story of philanthropy pie sticks out to you. As you look back on your journey of your life, whence a moment of philanthropy that you would take us back to Jehan.
Yeah, I love this question so much. I love all the stories that I hear from all of your guests. And if I were to pick one, I think back in 2015 We were a baby nonprofit. We had just opened the doors to the after school program that previous November. We had our first cohort of students and One of those students was a little boy, he was a five year old little boy named Shekhar. And he had needed open heart surgery from the day he was born. And Nepal doesn't have a social safety net for children like him, there was no options for his parents. And so he had just live day to day like this. And so we reached out to our small community of donors. Again, we were so small, and I said, you know, there's this little boy on the other side of the world, you don't know him, but he needs you. And the outpouring of love and support was just overwhelming. They not only covered his surgery, they covered all of his follow up treatments, they covered all the medication that he needed over the course of that entire time. His surgery was successful, he went on, and is living like a full and vibrant life as every child deserves to do. And I think it was like the first inkling of what this community can really do. I know I keep on saying community as we're talking, but internally and even externally, we talk about our Suma family, because that's really what it is like, these people surround us and uplift us and support us in times of need. There was actually a couple of years ago, we had a funding gap. And we did not know if we were gonna keep the doors open. We do really well in December, I think, as a lot of organizations do. But this was the end of spring. And I was like, I don't know how we're going to make it. And I can remember sitting down one night and having to write this email and just being really vulnerable and transparent, transparent, excuse me, and just saying, like, we're not going to make it, we need your help. And again, they showed up, they got us through, they got us to a place of stability, and we were able to go on to plan to open up our next center. And it was just again, it's something so special. And I'm so ungrateful, incredibly grateful for this group of people who just encircle us and uplift us all the time.
Jehan. I mean, here's the thing, you are literally telling the story, as it is. And that is what I want people to take away from that beautiful, heartfelt story we talked so often it's like, tell your community what you need. And I think because you have been inbuilt culturally into your organization, what we call it like this, our core value number six, which is steward relentlessly, you have built a culture, of communication, of sharing the humanity of what your what you need, and connecting people from across the world to a cause they would have never known about. And I just I just applaud the way that you are seeing not only the beneficiaries of your mission, but you're seeing your donors, not just the biggest ones, but the smallest ones, and everyone in between. And I think that's one of the biggest takeaways I'm going to take from this conversation, bravo. And, you know, is a student of the podcast, we're going to have to roll up this conversation, which we're sad about, because I'm enjoying it so much, with the one good thing and I wonder what would be your one good thing you would offer up to the community today?
Yeah, I think if it was to be one thing, it would be just stay laser focused. Remember why you started, remember who you started doing this work for? And then make every decision look at every opportunity through that lens. And for us, it was our students, it's our children. And we've had to say no to some really incredible opportunities because of this, like opportunities that would have been really financially beneficial, beneficial for us. But we had to stay true to our mission. But I think now over time, you know, we've started to see the outcomes that like when you pour so much into these children, and what it does for them, what how it makes them feel about themselves, you start to see it, there's this little boy, and in one of our programs, his name's mummy, she's 10 years old. And just like all of our students, he has grown up experiencing extreme poverty. But he wants to be a writer when he grows up. And he recently wrote this poem. Can I read it to you guys, please. It's called the Nepal of my imagination. And it goes of all the children in my school, I may not be the tallest of all the voices in the world. Mine may be the smallest, but I can almost touch the stars if I stand on my toes. And soon my words might change the world. So you better listen close. And I think like when I read it, and I've read it so many times, it's so beautiful. It's just not that it's not that he knows like the potential that his teachers see in him or the potential that I see in him. And I see potential in every single one of our students. You can hear the potential he sees in himself now. Right, that he can go out into the world and he can live wholly and fully and with everything that he deserves. And I think that's that's all you could ask for for every child.
What a beautiful way to round out this conversation. Just thank you for the work that you're pouring into. Thank you for the dignity that you do it in For the students and the women that you serve, so would you kind of tell us how to connect with you and your incredible mission point as to all the ways that you show up online and just for people to get connected? Tell us what you need to because I feel like, this is something that I know listeners are gonna want to get connected. And if this is stoking your passion, your personal passion, what are what are the current needs of the organization?
Yeah, we are, you know, our websites on semi.org. Everybody can find all of our information there. You can connect with me there at sensor my on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. And yes, we would love anybody who feels connected to our mission to join us. We're always looking for people to share the word spread the work that we're doing. If we're always looking for corporate partners, business partners, people who may be interested in kind of supporting us in that way. And of course, always financial donors are, help us keep our mission going.
What a mighty nonprofit and you are assured that you're gonna get some dang good stewardship when you come over there. So, Jehan, thank you so much for this incredible story. We are just truly rooting for what you're doing. We want to see this impact, just compound and compound upon itself.
You guys, thank you so much. Thanks for talking with me for sharing your platform for highlighting not only our work, but so many incredible organizations. I'm inspired by them and inspired by you. So thank you,
you inspire us to thank you, my friend. Keep going.
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