470. Uncharitable: Unthink Everything You Know About Change - Dan Pallotta

1:49AM Oct 2, 2023

Speakers:

Jonathan McCoy

Becky Endicott

Dan Pallotta

Keywords:

people

nonprofit sector

uncharitable

world

nonprofit

charity

change

movie

big

ideas

puritans

good

media

overhead

dan

sector

talk

film

thinking

impact

Today's episode is sponsored by our friends over at que give the folks that cue give work with 1000s of nonprofit fundraisers to help them with their online fundraising campaigns and events.

So friends if a fundraising event is on your horizon queue game has built a playbook just for you. To give us offering our We Are For Good listeners a free on demand webinar full of tried and true tips to help you improve your on site event experience.

You'll learn how to create a mission focused environment to achieve fundraising success head to we are for good.com backslash Q give for access to this free webinar. That's we are for good.com backslash q g i v.

Hey, I'm John.

And I'm Becky.

And this is the We Are For Good podcast.

Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.

We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an Impact Uprising.

So welcome to the good community, where 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. Becky, the day is here,

the day is here and the conversation is here. I will say this may be one of the most important conversations we have this season and the man is in the house today.

He is in the house. And let me be clear, we talk about Impact Uprising everyday around we're for good. But this is a conversation that the Impact Uprising is not just in the nonprofit sector. This is a conversation to fuel the national the worldwide conversation about charity and we have none other than Dan Palazzo with us today. He is a second time guest on the podcast. And you probably know him. And I remember him I fee I remember the way I feel the first time I watched his TED Talk that really define the conversation of so many of the things that keep us up at night from the overhead myth to just how we think and it's such a scarce way in the nonprofit sector. And we're here because Dan has finally released uncharitable, which is this film that is really going to help shape the conversation hopefully give us all the language the tools to point to a better way to talk about our work. But if you don't know, Dan, I want to encourage you to go back and listen to episode 115. He shared a little bit of his backstory. So we're going to jump in today with where we're at today. But Dan is this entrepreneur, he's author. He's a humanitarian activist, and probably best known originally for these charitable events that have raised more than billions of dollars into the sector and the frameworks that he used to do that. But this this impactful TED Talk that really changed the way Becky and I thought about our work is now being translated into a movie and it's this documentary is out now and we want to encourage you to go see it and to get people into the theater. It's directed by Steven Gyllenhaal. And it really exposes the dark side of philanthropy and introduces a radical new way of giving. And so with sincere honor, it is so good to have you back in the house. Dan, welcome to the We Are For Good podcast.

Thanks, John. And Becky, it's wonderful to be back with you. Your enthusiasm and passion is infectious. You know,

we've heard a little bit about your story. But what's happened to bring this movie to market right now like talk to us about from the TED talk to this moment? What was that journey like? And tell us about why now more than ever? It's so important.

Yeah, well, let's talk first about why now more than ever, it's more important. You know, Buckminster Fuller had this great vision that he articulated in which he said we can we it's now possible to create a world that works for everyone, with no one and nothing left out. News very specific, right. It's one thing to say a world that works for everyone. There's a lot of wiggle room there, but added with no one and nothing left out. If we want a world that works for almost everyone, we don't really need the nonprofit sector. Business will get us there, you know, it'll get us 85% of the way there. And yeah, you'll have 15% Poverty in every developed country like we do in the US and you'll have 15% illiteracy rates and, you know, you'll have an unacceptable you know, marginal infant mortality rate, but you know, 85% of the people will be doing all right. I don't think that's the world any of us wants, right? I think the the whole idea of philanthropy, love of humanity is every man, every woman, every one, and if you want that, then you need the nonprofit sector. Because after you get to that sort of point of you know, the market, a market economy lifts up 85% of all boats, the market economy gets stuck. At that point, it doesn't have any more answers because there's nothing left to monetize. How do you monetize the prevention of a suicide in a person who may suffer from mental illness and may never be a productive member of society in the way that we traditionally think of that. Yet none of us wants that person to commit suicide, right? Or now we should say die of suicide. How do you monetize the love that a kid gets in Special Olympics? But we all want that kid to get that love and Special Olympics? How do you monetize the feeling of friendship and companionship that a shut in elder gets from a nonprofit that provides someone to visit her or him you can't monetize that yet none of us wants that person to be alone. And so this is why I said in the TED Talk, philanthropy is the market for love. And I meant that seriously not as like a Hallmark card. It's the market for all those people for whom there is no other market coming. Because you can monetize love. People want to feel love. People want to give love, they're willing to pay for that. In the same way they want to taste chocolate. In the same way they want to listen to music and other ephemeral experiences. We just need to excite demand for love at that level by unleashing the nonprofit sector, unleashing its voice, giving it voice the same way Coca Cola has voice, giving it capital so that it can amplify that voice the same way Apple is able to amplify that voice and create a country a community a world of compassion, as much as consumption. How we got to this point. You know, I wrote uncharitable for Tufts University Press. It was done in 2008. And the end of 2008. Right around Christmas time we released it. And I had been going to Ted I went to Ted in 2006 and 2007. I was there when Ken Robinson gave the most popular TED talk of all time, I was there when Al Gore gave his TED Talk that had the bones of An Inconvenient Truth. And then not long after that. He and Lawrence Bender made an inconvenient truth. And I thought from the get go, uncharitable as the same kind of message, it would lend itself to a TED talk, it would lend itself to a documentary movie. Martin Luther King said the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. And I think he should have reversed that and said the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice, but it is long. It so it took a long time. And you know, the first thing was well, just getting the book uncharitable out in the world. And then it took me four years to get up the nerve to ask Chris Anderson if I could do a TED talk. And then that expanded things more. And that was 2013. And it wouldn't be another three or four years till Steven Gyllenhaal and I started talking about the movie and it took us six years to make it probably would have taken us for if not for COVID. And part of that is you keep running out of money, right? And you got to pause everything for two months while you go and hunt more money we've raised so far 1,000,008 to make and market uncharitable, and we need to raise more Yeah, so all from not from big, iconic institutional funders. It was all from entrepreneurial family offices, and smart, savvy, entrepreneurial, ambitious, small foundations.

Which is like the ethos of what we think grassroots fund fundraising can be when it's at its best is small gifts banded together having a massive impact. And I have to tell you, I'm glad this movie is dropping, when it is dropping, this film is so important it is so of the now. And this concept that love is a commodity, because they have love, like the economies of scale of love. We all have that we can all pour into that. And so I'm so proud that you have made this film. And it is so important that nonprofits that you go and see it and you take someone who doesn't work in the sector with you, because this is such a colossal issue. And I want to dive a little bit into this film because the Stanford Social Innovation Review said that your book really deserves to become the new the nonprofit sector, like sort of new manifesto. Talk to us about this manifesto. This adaption of stepping in to what we know stepping into our power, stepping into changing and reforming this world that we want to live in working given.

Yeah, well first, just to be more specific, if people want to see the movie again is called uncharitable, go to uncharitable movie.com And you can see right now we're in 35 theaters in the United States and Canada and That box office success is really important to us. So we need people to go out and see the movie and, and fill those theaters. If it's not playing in a city near you, contact us on the website, and you can work with us on our with our team on a buyout of a movie theater. It's not as expensive as you think. And then it will be streaming January 1, if if not sooner, and we're negotiating those those streaming deals now. But it's really great to see it in a movie theater and see it with other people who work in the sector, right? You're used to seeing a bombastic superhero movies in the movie theater, how wonderful it is to see you and your issues in your cars up on that big screen. Victor Hugo talked about and nothing is as powerful not all the armies in the world as an idea whose time has come. And I think this is an idea whose time has come. And, you know, there are a few of us who have spent the last 20 years building the foundation of this conversation so that people at least know whether they agree with it or not, that there's a conversation out there. Now it's time to push the ball past the 50 yard line to the to the 40, to the 30, to the 20 to the 10 and over the goal and change the way people think about this stuff forever, the same way we change the way they think about seatbelts and smoking and everything else. It's time it's time the the it's killing people to live with these old ideas about charity literally. So it's time that we modernize the way we think about about change and how to achieve it quickly. Well, I

mean, you're talking to an audience that is all about social impact. And we know a lot of these issues are systemic, and it feels under being part of the sector. This is one of those systemic issues for us. Like it's so baked into the core of the conversation.

It is it's it's a systemic issue. And what's interesting is the nonprofit sector has a profound inability to get pissed off.

Sorry, my life

yeah, no. Now look, if you take them at the micro issues, it'll get pissed off about AIDS, it'll get pissed off about, you know, racism, it'll get pissed off about income inequality, but it will not get pissed off about the economic prison in which it lives that prevents it from making real impact on AIDS and, and racism and economic inequality, it will conform until the sun goes down. The most radical activist cowers at the sign of, you know, charity watch and getting and getting two stars instead of three stars instead of rebelling against that oppression. That prevents me from having the resources I need. You know, I had a guy ask a question the other night and he said, Well, what about the you know, your betrayal of people on the AIDS rides and, and the lavish lifestyle that you lived with what like what lavish, I don't recall living a lavish lifestyle what I bought a home, I bought a $300,000 home and my dad flew out from Boston, a construction worker and helped me remodel it for two months. Am I not entitled to a home is a home lavish for people who work in the nonprofit sector? And if that's the case, then what kind of people do you think we're going to? Are we going to be able to attract the best people who are capable of buying mansions and getting a great feeling of social impact by working for Apple or working for Elon Musk. So these ideas are broken. They're killing people, we need to change them. They're just there. As I said, in uncharitable in a TED, they come from Old, old Puritan religious ideas. And we just haven't revisited them. We haven't changed them like so many other things I am talking to you from Topsfield, Massachusetts. Today we are as the crow flies may be seven miles away from Salem, Massachusetts, where the original Puritans landed on the arrow in 1633, and you know, this, I was speaking to an audience in the Netherlands yesterday, before yesterday, and then it's your fault because the Puritans were Dutch and originally right they, they came from there. And look, they grew up in a in a society where there was no electricity, no lights, you know, at night, it was dark, dark, dark, and you heard the howling of wolves in the stars moving around and you had all of these fantasies of you know, evil gods that were doing all of this and you better be good and charity became the place where people had to be good. So you couldn't make any money there because that was how you prevented yourself from getting into hell. Well, we're more grown up now. We have electricity. We have lights right? It's time to let go of these terrified Puritan ideas. is about salvation. Charity is not about salvation. It's not about getting into heaven. It's about preventing women from dying of breast cancer. And people in kids from being malnourished and people from being illiterate. Those are logistical challenges, we can solve them. Let's get to it.

Thank you. I mean, I feel just the battle cry that's just beating inside my chest right now just feeling like this is the moment and I know you listener out there are feeling it too. And we don't want to live in scarcity anymore. This sector is built on scarcity. We don't want to live in poverty, we don't want to be trapped. We don't want to have those sorts of limitations, not just financially, but on our mental health on our time, on the way that we run passionately things. And I, and I think innovation and creativity, you talk a lot about it, we talk a lot about it. But I think the most quoted at attribute that we give to your last episode was when you were talking about Walt Disney walking around with a picture of a mouse, you know, in his pocket in his binder, and the quote we use so often and we repeat is, if you aren't, you know, if you're not crazy, and how you're dreaming. If people are not laughing at you, then you are not dreaming big enough. And in the movie, you share kind of a similar tangental idea. And you're saying we have made it a liability to dream in the nonprofit sector. So my question to you, Dan, is how did we get here? And how has this been completely mischaracterized in our sector,

really sort of Who cares how we got here, right? But how we got here, we really did get here from these Puritan ideas, that human beings are evil, right human beings. Puritans were taught by John John Calvin, the was a 17th century, 16th century theologian, to hate themselves. They were taught that human beings are evil, they're evil in the eyes of God, even unborn children, though they have not yet sinned, they are evil in the eyes of God. So if you're evil in the eyes of God, you got to do something to prove to God that you're worthy to get into heaven. So, you know, the Puritans would do all kinds of charitable things, even if the person on the receiving end didn't need it, because it was all about the Puritans trying to get themselves over that bar and into heaven proved that they were one of the elected and you know, you say, Well, that was 400 years ago. Yeah. Well, human beings can live with bad ideas for long periods of time. You know, I mean, I think about we went for decades, I mean, centuries in the world, and then decades, walking through the airports dragging the luggage, before it dawned on anyone, we could put wheels on the suitcases, right? Like, not exactly new technologies, like these were kind of the original technologies, the wheel and the case, right? Because hundreds, 1000s of years to figure out wheels on suitcases, and then we put the two wheels on the suitcases are great. Now we live with that for 4050 years. And then someone goes, whoa, whoa, we could put four wheels on the suitcase instead of two. So we just get trapped into paradigms and live with them for a long time. And we've been trapped in this Puritan paradigm. And then along came the overhead measure. And we're also addicted to simplicity. And the overhead measure was a very, very simplistic thumbs up, thumbs down, you got high overhead thumbs down, you got low overhead thumbs up, thinking somehow that low overhead had something to do with the good that you were doing in the world, when in fact, it doesn't measure anything about the good that you're doing in the world. It just measures your accounting practice and how easily you raise money. So I think that's how we got here, religion and simplicity. But here we are. And now we're conscious about it. And you can't be blamed until you're conscious about it. You know, you can't be blamed for dragging the suitcase when it just hasn't dawned on anybody that you could put wheels. But once the woman or the guy says wheels on suitcases, now it's your fault if you're still dragging the suitcases. And so in the nonprofit sector, we didn't know, we didn't realize that overhead was a bad measure. We didn't realize that having a different set of rules that discriminated against us versus the for profit sector was a bad idea. But now we're starting to know so we could be victims of it before but now know, if we continue to be victims of it. It's our fault. Okay. It's our responsibility to teach donors. Nobody else is going to teach them that overhead is a rotten broken measure that you want to measure impact. Nobody's going to teach them that forcing low salaries on People means you can only attract the people who will accept low salaries that would want is impact not affordability right? That preventing the nonprofit sector from advertising means it can't raise as many resources. We didn't know that the average person doesn't know those things. And if we don't teach them they'll never learn and sexy or not heroic sounding or not. It is the service to which we have been called and we dare not refuse to provide it.

Our friends at feather who built a nonprofit marketing platform trusted by over 1500, nonprofits from the International Justice Mission and Shakespeare Theater, to the American epilepsy society, from email marketing and digital advertising to Facebook ads and your Google Ad grant, you can run and report all your marketing in one place.

But it doesn't stop there. Every week they unpack what impactful nonprofit marketing looks like on their podcast, good marketing unplugged. It's the podcast we turn to for the playbooks that meet the moment and help move your mission into a greater community of believers.

So listen, and subscribe to good marketing unplugged now on your favorite podcast player, follow the link in this episode's description.

Goodness, well, I mean, you always lead me to thinking about the power of media, and how it can be unleashed for our sector. And I think you've been beating this drum for such a long time. And I remember just the juxtaposition of it's like, it's almost like not a lever that's been available to us or this block this belief that we couldn't use that as a lever. And I just think not only is media been fueling a lot of our beliefs, and probably you know, the country's understanding or perspectives of nonprofits, but we believe it can be a catalyst for changing I know you must believe that too, with using this film like we talked about that and how can we all lean into media in this moment?

Yeah. media, advertising, billboards, social media, digital advertising Times Square, Apple retail stores, big signs on the sides of tractor trailer trucks. All of the different places that you are indoctrinated in consumption that you are indoctrinated into by Coke Zero, the new titanium iPhone, someday maybe you can afford a loro Piana jacket on Newbury Street in Boston, you know, or an Armani belt, if not a suit, you know, we're just indoctrinated in these things. And we are made to feel bad if we don't have as nice a suit or dress at the as the other people at the cocktail party. As we don't have as nice a car when we pull up to the valet at the hotel for the charity gala dinner. We are made to feel bad about ourselves. So imagine a world where causes and generosity and compassion are able to compete in this rich media, where you see beautiful ads on the Super Bowl for Save the Children. And then another beautiful ad for you know, the Susan Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and then another gorgeous ad for Last Mile Health and you walk down Newbury Street, or you walk down Fifth Avenue, and yeah, there's the Polo Ralph Lauren store. And there's the Armani store. But there's the Oxfam America store. And there's the one love foundation store and there's the One Acre Fund store and begins to become a more balanced world of compassion and generosity. But we cannot do that if we can't invest money in it. Those things don't happen for free and free media. You know, when you get free media at three o'clock in the morning, or on the last page of the newspaper, the bottom line, you know, so no free media. No, no, no, no more free donated media, Coca Cola gets to pay for the best media and the best spot at the best time of day. We deserve that too. And look here, I'm gonna like call out America's biggest foundations. There's a trillion dollars sitting at least more now in the corpuses of America's foundations. Now, I'm not one of those people who necessarily says spend it all down. I mean, that's sort of reckless, you know, like, start with a goal and then figure out what you need what you need. And if the goal requires you to spend it down, then spend it down. But can we please have some imagination at America's foundations? Like could Ford and MacArthur and PAC are the ones that have been leading the charge? And kreski and, you know, then the other the other the Annie Casey, all the big ones Could you could you all get together? 20 of you and each of you agree, you're going to put $5 million into a pot, it's a rounding error on your giving, let alone your corpus $100 million, and you're going to buy out 75% of the ads on the Super Bowl next year. That would change the consciousness that will change and it would change everything. And it practically doesn't cost you anything to do it except some courage and some imagination. And nobody is bringing any imagination to bear on this, then everybody talks about, well, what if we don't ask about overhead? What should we ask about? Alright, it's an important question. But guess what answering that question, that's the easy part, I can give you three great answers, we can debate them. But there's an answer to that. The difficult thing is once you get the answer, how are you going to distribute it at scale to all of at least America on an annually updated basis, you're gonna need some kind of an apparatus 1000 times larger, and I'm not kidding. 1000 times larger than Charity Navigator, or the Better Business Bureau wise giving Alliance or candidate, these are 235 10 $15 million organizations to do an in depth analysis of the impact every big operating charity in America is having an updated on an annual basis is a labor intensive initiative, that would cost them an order of a billion to $2 billion. And we can't fathom that we can't fathom a billion or $2 billion a year for an evaluating entity. Apple's making a billion dollars every day and a half. And we can't dream of that. And that's another place America's foundations could come in, and say we're gonna put up, you know, we're gonna get 100 foundations, we're gonna put up whatever it is that you know, $50 million a year, so that there's this incredible iTunes for charity, robust apparatus that gives everybody confidence in giving. Instead, everybody's in their little silos with their little initiatives that don't amount to much of anything, there's no vision happening. And America's foundations could lead that charge.

I want that to happen. And I don't just want it to happen. If we want to see that in the world, we have to be an active part of moving the needle forward and seeing ourselves as a change agent for that I want to share something personal. Julie, our incredible producer and head of media, she went and saw the film in New York City yesterday. And one of the moments that struck her and hurt her so deeply, was when Jason Russell was talking about how the media even twisted a narrative. And when you're not a part of a conversation at all, those things can cripple an organization, they can cripple a movement, they can cripple human beings. And so the ability to have a voice in this space, and not just a 3am voice, a prominent voice. It allows us to shift the needle on everything. And I'm not just talking about funding. I'm talking about systemic issues. I'm talking about mindsets. I'm talking about the way that we activate, and you said something a little bit ago, and I want to make sure that nobody missed it because you're dropping so many wisdom bombs here. But you said you can't be blamed until you're conscious of it. And so if you're listening right now, you are conscious. And you are the one Dan, that struck me the first time we talked and you said I'm overhead. And I felt that as somebody 20 years in the sector, you know, annual giving officer major gift officer, I am overhead. I am a human being with value. And so why is now the time for Nonprofit Professionals and the organizations to step into their bravery to talk about opportunities to talk about harm to talk about their needs. Tell us

well I don't know if you've read the Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. It's one of my favorite books. Why now because now is all you got ever got? Yeah, there's no such thing as tomorrow or yesterday. It's always now. It's now right now. Yeah, let's give it five seconds. But now again. Now right now. It's always now you know. But here one one thing you know, I would like to speak directly to to you who are listening right now. Yes. You not the other person. Not all the people you do you want them to put on your gravestone. I kept charity overhead low. Is that what you want? I mean, think about that. Really? I mean, because this is your life. This is your life. This is your potential. This is everything you're going to do and everything you're not going to do forever. What do you want it to be? Do you want it to be that you ended hunger? Do you want it to be that you can tribute it to a dramatic reduction in suicide? Or do you Want it to be that you conformed, you don't want it to be that you conform. So get your courage up and start actively actively changing things in your ecosystem, and the world around you and get others to do that with you. And all of us, you know, all of us have to start to speak truth to power gives where the power is, it's those foundations, all of us need to speak up to those foundations, get your act together, use some imagination, pull some of your money together, coordinate on some big visions. Look at I don't care what you think about his politics. Look at what Elon Musk is doing. Look at what that one human being is doing with imagination, intelligence and courage. Look at what Steve Jobs did and what Apple is doing in his aftermath. These people are dreaming big, big, big, big, big, big dreams. What makes you think you don't have the right to do the same thing? What caused you to think that you don't deserve to dream as big as those people stop it? Stop it. This is the only chance you get this is it? This is life? This is not a dress rehearsal. This is it.

I mean, Dan, we're here, like just so amped, because what you're saying is not only true, but we believe it. Like I mean, that's the Impact Uprising to us like we, we know that it's imperative that we pour into this. How do we change people's minds? Like how do we take this conversation outside of the sector, outside of these hotel conference rooms when we talk about stuff, and get it into the narratives with our donors with these big foundations with the general public.

With the growing pressure to raise more funds for our missions each year, the role of technology to provide precision and personalization has quickly become a fundraising imperative. The rise of AI brings new promise to helping nonprofits achieve their short term fundraising goal. And beyond that the question is at what cost? The time is now to define how to harness this moment of opportunity for good. We're so excited to invite you to the first fundraising.ai Global Summit on October 23 and 24th. This summit is the largest gathering of nonprofit and social impact organizations to explore the role of responsible AI in fundraising. We're honored to be partnering with our friends over@fundraising.ai and are excited to lean in and learn right alongside you. You can find out more about the summit and register for free at fundraising.ai/summit. That's fundraising.ai/summit Can't wait to see you there

first of all, I want to say that you know what, what you guys are doing with this podcast and others like you is so important. Because we need a new media, a new trade media for the nonprofit sector. The existing trade media is so stuck in these old ideas. And every time I think they have changed they don't they're just in even they hire young people, they somehow find young people who are you know, like wedded to old ideas. So we need we need new media, new trade media for the for the nonprofit sector. And I think that how use the movie is like people will come out of the movies like oh, how do we how do we change things I just told you, I just go show this movie to everybody. We spend all this time and effort and money making it it was not easy to make. We made it for you. Show it to everyone, your mother, your father, your uncle, your sister, your executive director, your development director, your entire board your entire staff, and then show it to them again, if they didn't get it. This is the tool. This is the thing, how you're going to change people's minds with a curriculum, right? There's not some one thing you're going to say there's no silver bullet sentence is going to change the way your board thinks is going to be pummeling them over and over and over again, with a curriculum the same way your algebra teacher pummeled you with algebra, algebra, algebra, algebra, algebra, two algebra, two algebra, two trigonometry, trigonometry, we somehow think that people's minds are going to change with a sentence. No, no, you've got to indoctrinate them. And there are lots of tools out there but you got from from me, you've got uncharitable the book, you've got the skinny little book, the everyday philanthropist, you've got the TED Talk, you've got the bold training for nonprofit boards and staff. You've got the movie now. So you got all the tools you need to go change mind start using them. Now, when people come out of the movie theater, they're going What do I do? What can I do? We don't need you to change the way the whole world thinks about charity. Okay, so stop thinking at that level. Get you're gonna get all this adrenaline right. Here's what we need you to do. Change the way your world thinks about charity, use the movie, okay. Now, Your World, Your ecosystem, your family, it starts with you. And then there's yours, your C suite, your senior team at your organization, I guarantee you 75% of that C suite thinks in very old ways about these things. We think it's the board members, right? Or the donors? No, it's right. It's an inside job. It's right inside the house. Okay, so get your senior team on board, then the rest of your staff, right, because they all think like your program staff. Yeah. They don't like the fundraising staff. Because when a new fundraiser gets hired, they think that's 150 grand that could have gone into my program. And now it's going into this wasteful fundraising? Well, no, it isn't, the fundraising is going to multiply the amount of money available for programs. So get your program staff to go. Now at the same time, get your entire board to go, then look at your major donors, get them to go your retail donors, get them to go new staff come on, use the movie as an Onboarding Tool, new board member comes on to use the movie as an onboarding tool. Now you've got an ecosystem, a family that is thinking in lockstep, they're all excited, they all have adrenaline, they're all thinking in the same way. Now you've got permission to begin to do things in a brand new way. And the whole system is inoculated against ridiculous media criticism or inaccurate media criticism. Your whole system is inoculated against the tendency to think small, it's thinking big. So that's what you can do. You go see the movie, don't try to change the world, the world Big Try to change your world using the movie as a tool. So because people will see the movie and go, that's great. Geez, I should give my board members a book. Oh, get them to watch the same movie that just changed your mind.

This is so timely, I want to share this because this happened to me in the last 12 hours. Everyone knows about my love of Reddit. And I follow a lot of philanthropic charity sort of things on Reddit. And, you know, we I think we can all agree that debating people on the internet is probably never a good idea. But I did it last night, because somebody posted Kivas 2019 990. And there was a lot of debate around what the execs were making. And I just want to tell you that, yes, I got in there. Yes, I put a contrary opinion. But this time, I was able to say there's a film that talks about this scarcity mentality, and the way that you're perpetuating and harming your favorite charity, with these words, and Keven may not be your favorite charity, it was a little personal to me they've had we've had Kieve on the show. They're such good people, I'm a donor to the organization. And there is a no world where charity should be shamed for paying executives $200,000, when they are multi multiplying these microfinance loans for people who would never otherwise have it. So what I'm saying is, you have a tool. Now, when you see that in the wild, you don't have to spar, you can just point and say, Hey, friend, I work in this sector, I'm a part of this harm. And maybe here's a film where you can go wake up, and not just wake up, but like, come and lock arms with me and everyone else in this and come be a part of a bigger movement. So thank you, Dan, for saving me from debating people on the internet with the simplest of phrases of now we have a film. And now we have a way that we can talk about this.

That's so important. Because I've watched people after they hear me give a talk. And they're so excited. And they're so well intended. And the next day they try and go and tell their board members what I said and they can't write because I do I do it 9 million times a year. Right. So I it's what I do for a living they do something else for a living. So they they can't they can't remember what I said they trip over their words and it ends up being worse and they feel down because the board member ended up winning the argument right? So that's the reason for the movie, it will do the talking for you. So you took exactly the right lesson away from it, Becky, it will do the talking for you. You don't have to debate you don't have to remember all the points you don't have to have an intellectual Arsenal over time you want to develop one right and you will but let the movie do the talking for you. It's experts in the field, its music, its power, its emotion, its stories, its decades of experience that have gone into that movie and that are articulated there. Let the movie do it for you. I love

it and our responsibility to is to dream freakin big, which is what you come into our house and tell us because pairing those two together, like gives people some thing to attach Genoa in the film you said, we're dreaming creatures. And I just love that so much. And it makes me think of how we round out this podcast every time as we sent her story, the power of philanthropy, the small moments, the big moments, but just moments that like shaped us as humans, as we see kind of flying through, play out, I wonder if you'd take us back to one in your lifetime. It's a moment of philanthropy.

I mean, the thing that, you know, philanthropically brought me to tears consistently, would be at the end of the day of any of any aids ride, or the end of the day of any breast cancer three day where everybody who had finished their day would begin to go to the entrance to camp to cheer on the last riders, or the last walkers, they didn't have to, they had written all day, they had walked all day, they were hungry, they could just go eat, they could just go do their thing. But they went to the entrance to camp. And it was always the same seven or eight or 10 people and typically always the same person who was the last person in you know, maybe they, maybe they had a disability, or maybe they were older, or maybe they just weren't in his greatest shape, and the thunderous, uproarious applause of 1000s of people acknowledging this Civic hero who had never been acknowledged for anything in their lives. That's love. That's beauty. That's the kind of world we want to live in.

And I think that is why this moment is so important. And I hope everyone listening, I hope you feel it. And I hope you feel emboldened to be a part of it with your voice with your story. With your lived experience, we want to go to the line and cheer the next guy that's coming through on because it's going to take a lot of us to turn this aircraft carrier, but the more of us that get on the faster we can turn it. And so Dan, we end all of our podcasts as you know, with the one good thing. And if you could distill this moment in time, to a piece of advice, a life hack, something you want to leave with the audience, what would be your one good thing today?

Well, I just it would be I think nonprofits are in an economic prison of no you can't do that in the for profit sector roams free in a world of yes, you can do whatever you want. And I would just say you don't belong in prison. You do not deserve to be in prison. You deserve to be out in the wild, free with your biggest ideas for a better world, making them come true. Celebrating that in all your glory as a human being.

And standing after the race cheering us on to finish out strong. And so Okay, uncharitable movie.com. Dan pointed to other ways to get involved in this movement to get active right now. Just kind of round this out. How can people connect with you

on charitable movie.com Go there. If it's in a theater near you, they're selling out. I'm in Boston, and my mum wants to see it and I that was sold out in my own. I gotta figure out a way to get get tickets to my own movie. So So go see it in your town. If it's not in your town, contact us and take responsibility for being the leader that brings it to your community. Share about it on social media, have discussion groups afterwards, invite others to come to the to the next showings. Be ready when it's streaming, late this year, early in early January to spread the word use your social media, even if you only have 72 followers, get all 72 of those people that go see the movie,

I want to I want to end by I'm going to try not to cry even though I've cried twice already. I want to thank you for making this film. I was hired at a nonprofit at $24,000 at a science museum a beautiful one. And that's all they could afford. And there are so many of us that want to stay in this work, we believe so deeply in it. And to think that we have massive value and that our creativity could be unleashed. I feel like this is a love letter to each of us. Thank you for your boldness, I think you're leading the way with it. And I just want you to know that I for 1am behind you and I believe community is everything. And I believe in this community that we can change it and we can be a part of this vibrant revolution of the way that we're going to impact and re architect social impacts. Thank you, Dan.

Me too. I believe in the nonprofit sector, big time if its potential is unleashed, I really believe in and thanks for what you guys are doing and keep it up and keep spreading the word and thank you for having me.

Thanks so much for being here friends, and you probably hear it in our voices but we love connecting you With the most innovative people to help you achieve more for your mission than ever before,

we'd love for you to come join our good community. It's free and you can think of it as the after party to each podcast episode. Sign up today. We're for good.com backslash Hello.

And one more thing if you love what you heard today, would you mind leaving us a podcast rating and review? It means the world to us and your support helps more people find this community. Thanks so much friends can't wait to our next conversation.

rabid fans have always powered that we're for good podcast. But now rabid fans can get even more goodness and access by joining good friends. It's our listener support community for the rear for good podcast.

Good friends comes with perks exclusive episodes with John and I including the good brief, our new monthly cliff notes of the greatest takeaways and lessons learned from that month, an exclusive ama episodes where we answer your burning questions and tap our community of experts. Join now or learn more at Weir for good.com backslash friends.

We can't wait to see you inside. That's weird for good.com/friends