Generational Activism: Engaging Millennials and Gen Z with Derrick Feldmann

[MUSIC] Because in social movements, you have two types of movements. You have movements that are looking for policy change. You have movements that are looking for cultural behavioral change. Now you kind of want the two to intersect. You want the two to be a part of one another, but it doesn't always happen that way. [MUSIC] Welcome to Causing Purpose, the show about the leaders, innovators, and change agents. Working on the front lines to solve some of the world's greatest social challenges. My name is Mike Spear, and our guest today is researcher, author, and advisor, Derek Feldman. Whenever I need information on giving behaviors among millennials, Gen Z's, or in the workplace, I seek out Derek's research. He's the Managing Director at the Ad Council Research Institute, a visiting research fellow at the Skull Center at Oxford University, and Managing Director of ISG Research Advisors. Like most of us, his interest in the social sector came at an early age, through several formative experiences that helped shape the way he viewed the world. We cover a lot of ground in this episode, and there are a bunch of concrete takeaways you can use as you engage your audiences and build movements around your cause. Hope you enjoy. Derek, great to catch up as always. Thanks so much for doing this. Just to kick things off, how did you first become interested in impact-related work and in building social movements for good? A group in a very small town in southern Illinois called Aveston. If you have a listener from Aveston, that would be amazing. It's a town of like, when I left, it was 7,5800 in the middle of southern Illinois, about an hour and a half east of St. Louis. And now it's up to like 1,500, so it's doubled. Nice, yeah. Big time now. There's two stop signs, I think, more than one. But things have changed a little bit. So when I was there, it was interesting because I grew up in a pretty rural community. My mom is actually from California, Northern California, I'm such a sites in California. And then my dad and the army moves to southern Illinois, where my dad has always been the unelected mayor of the little town in a way. He's a very popular guy, all this stuff. And so I have this very rural experience. I go to college, not that far. I couldn't really afford much. I went to Southeast Missouri. It was an eye-opening experience because I left my sort of small town in Southeast Missouri. It was a small college, and I go to Springfield and all of a sudden, there was like two or three of us statewide interns. I was assigned to policy work. And as part of that policy work, we had to kind of find balance between what everybody in Chicago wanted. And then I knew my life in southern Illinois, and I'm like, that isn't how I learned anything about how that is. Like we always had this like, well, that's Chicago. Like we're almost like this other country up there versus us, you know, down in southern part. And what was interesting too is it was my first exposure to when decisions are being made based upon people's actions with social issues or policies or culture. And it was my first exposure, honestly, to a lot of other people being affected by things that I never was overall. So I had this pretty interesting and incredible experience where I'm like, I think I want to help people, I want to help people get more involved in their issues because when you're on the other side of it, meaning that those who are in the place of making decisions related to policy or you're making decisions at organizations, you are the recipient of the constituencies actions, right? Like you see it and they're trying to influence you. And you're like, if only more people got involved, they would realize it actually has an impact. You know, it's not talked about because a lot of the people who are performing the actions are not on the receiver end of it in general. So that moment really kind of sparked this interest in cause work. I then though, you know, realized that it was really, really interested in learning why or why not the behavioral side of it. So why somebody gets involved, why somebody doesn't, all of those things, which naturally led to a lot of the research work that I do now and still to this day. Although obviously much of it was generational focus of the onset from there. So that's kind of where it all started. And you know, if there ever is a piece of advice for people who are working hard on social issues, is that they do matter. The actions people take really, really do matter because it's meant to influence the other end of it. And if you ever are on the other receiving end, you would realize how important those actions are. So maybe there'll be a day that many of that take action can be also on the receiving end of it. So the big my perception is that folks in small town tend to treat quote unquote good works that they do as being more person to person. You help your neighbor out no matter what. There's shared meals, there's hosting, there's different things like that. You know, as you're growing up, I was wondering how you were aware of that distinction. And as you did more work in the field, how have you experienced that bringing sort of, you know, big picture sort of causes back to people who, you know, in their daily life in general, but especially for folks that may treat their quote unquote charity as like more person to person. So I was shocked that entities existed to do the work that we did without those entities because when you're in a rural community, you don't have a lot of the things that maybe the organizations that are established in San Diego have or the infrastructure in general. I'll give you a memory that just always stays with me. I remember going in lunch at that time. I'm going to date myself. It was quite low. It was like 80 cents, 85 cents, 90 cents, whatever it was for when I was growing up in that little community. And I remember that you would have certain colors of lunch tickets for the free and reduced lunch folks. And then you would have, you know, people could pay the 85 cents a day kind of thing. And I remember someone, like I remember friends would have the pink ticket and I had the yellow ticket. And it was crazy. It really didn't matter. It all went to the same count. You know, in the end, it was just like this system, right? And I remember one of my friends was like, yeah, I got the pink ticket, you know, kind of socks. And I'm like, you know, you can have some mind. I'm like, nobody really cared when you're living in it as much. And although the stigma on hunger exists when you're in a rural community, I felt like because I knew so much about them. Like I knew that their dad or their mom, like the farm wasn't going well. So it makes complete sense. It's in an off year. And like there were so many reasons to understand why they were in their situation more. And I knew more about them. And so for us to deliver food on a week or a weekend, like it's just because we knew each other so well, it made sense. And to not do it felt like you were just being unparticipatory. And no one wanted to be unparticipatory because it was socially uncooled within the rural community as well, you know, in a way. And then, you know, I realized the organizations that do that, you know, when I got to them obviously left and springfield, you know, did all those other things as I mentioned earlier. But the stigma around hunger was there, but it was very different because we all knew each other's business and challenges because they were mostly hours as well, right? I mean, I bailed hay during the summer. You're looking at a guy that would never, if you saw a picture of me, you'd probably be like, that guy never bailed hay into the life. No, I had to do it, you know, in order to get my first computer. I had to do a lot of these other kinds of things. And part of that was because they couldn't find other help. And I did it for free because at times they couldn't, I knew they paid me at some point. Like, there were all of these systems that were just an accounted for that were kind of in there. And so the stigma around hunger, the stigma around other issues were there. But I think what was different for us is that we knew everybody's situation and the context around it because we were in it. With them more than it was where I feel today knowing that your neighbors are hungry, that sometimes even harder to understand or know when you are living right next door in general. People tend to think more locally, I think, in small towns and rural areas. So bridging that sort of think local, think global divide, I think is an interesting thing that you've taken on in many ways. What is interesting around this sort of think local and act globally? And you're going to find that throughout my career, much of it has had to do with figuring out what is the reality around the generalizations that we have around cause. Social behaviors. And one of the things that I'll often hear is that somebody, they will think globally and they're doing all these global actions in general. When you're talking to a person that has offices in Europe and in other places so I can see this or not. But the data doesn't necessarily support that ever. In a way that it makes the generalization true, in the sense that what we see is that a lot of people think maybe about an issue, but they're not ever going to understand its complexity until they are witnessing or experiencing it. And when they experience it, most of their actions will be local because even if I'm in a city in San Diego, walking from the parking lot to the office, you are going to see social issues constantly. You might see somebody who is in need of hunger or in need of food. You might see somebody that's in need of health or any other kinds of things. So your actions are going to happen there because you're exposed to it. You're going to have it. But you might say, well, this, I hope this doesn't happen anywhere else in the globe. But in a rural community, the thing is, is that my exposure isn't just an interaction once. My exposure is a consistency over time in understanding those individuals. That builds systems around it. Whereas in episodic exposure and intervention, sometimes don't have that kind of infrastructure as well. bridging that divide in a very literal sense. You write about it in your first book, The Hands Across America event. Can you talk about it a little bit and kind of share how you experience that? - Honestly, I had forgotten about it in general. Until I went home one year for Thanksgiving and my mom's like, "We're moving. "You need to take all your crap out of that room "and look what I found." And in there with some old participation trophies, I found that picture of my mom and I, it says like, "And that Feldman, "signing up her son Derek Feldman "for Hands Across America." And I'm like, "Oh my gosh, "like I had in that moment found the reason why I do what I do, "right because I'm always trying to figure this out "from a behavioral research side." I go to, in the short amount of time that I found that piece to the time that I sat down with her. I was like, "So, I just found this." She's like, "Oh, I remember that." I said, "You were really into hunger relief globally "because that's what it was." And I was going through all of this and I had this whole thing in my head. I'm like, "Mom, how can we never talk about it?" Because, you know, for my parents to drive from Southern Illinois to Springfield, it was just north of Springfield where the line was going through, it was like my parents weren't overly charitable and actionable, right? So there was a lot of like, you know, to do that. And she was like, "No, Derek, we just, you know, "us and the millers went up there." We're like, "Hey, there's hands things going on. "We should do it. Everybody else is doing it." And I'm like, "No, that wasn't the reason. "Was it?" It was like my whole idea of why I got into it in general. But it really solidifies something that is a part of our cause world that for me, I wanted to act like never really exists, but leaders know it exists, which is that we have people that participate just because of in the moment environments, right? Like friends are doing things and all this other stuff. And even my own exposures that way have been fairly in the moment because my parents are not big charitable givers. My parents are not the protesters out there doing any of those things. In fact, they're always asking me questions about what is going on in general. And it just really solidified my thinking that if this is a showcase of how participation is, we really got to help leaders understand it more. Because not only do they need to influence the right people, but we need to sustain it, right? So my experience earlier with the governorship was, in the governor's office was, let's figure out, I want to help people understand that their actions really do matter, influence. And then my experience even growing up. And then to now in looking back is like, there's so much episodic environments that I just never really took advantage of in general. But I think that's for many people. I'm not the only one out there. But it's funny how that stuff sticks with you. It does. And I mean, many of the experiences overall, when I think about it through the years, I think built towards that one momentous experience, when you're sitting in a body or a governmental body, caring people, being very honest and candid about how a policy is going to affect their livelihood, that you start to realize, wow, I can't imagine my parents writing and not participating in that way. It must be really bad. Like to think, that was how naive I was, because it's like, it got to the point that this was the outlet that they thought. And because I grew up in, it's like politicians are politicians. And all of this kind of stuff, that that was their route to try to create change. And I remember taking that and I forwarded on to the legislative aid. And I'm like, we should really listen to these people. And that kind of started the whole start for me for research in general. Do you remember what this sort of compelling moment was for you, where you first started really doing this stuff on your own? Yeah, I mean, much of that happened when I was in college and then right after college in general. I had the internship piece of the governor. And then after that, I took a role in a position with an organization called Learning to Give, which was focused on educating K12 on philanthropic education and kind of like what we're talking about civic engagement. I started to realize that when you start seeing the perspective of a lot of other people, you start to get more involved, like myself, in general. The people I lived with in my apartment complex in the city that I lived in. We're experiencing things that I could witness and see. And this might just be the social science part of the job and role that I have. But in addition to that, is the consistent exposures to these issues and things really change the way that you approach future stuff. And I remember we had a situation where we had lost power and all this stuff was happening in the community where I was living in at the time. And I remember someone knocking on the door of one's asking for some help. And I'm like, well, absolutely. It brought me back to the rural days, right? Like why wouldn't we, in general? And there were a couple of moments like that when you are living in the experiences with others that you start to realize that, wow, one, perspective, the things affecting me are nowhere near the issues affecting the people that are next to me, the neighbors that are hungry and the neighbors that are dealing with electricity and bills and stuff that I know nothing about. And then two, it doesn't take a lot to kind of help out a little bit. It doesn't take money. It just takes a lot of other kinds of things. And so I had a little bit of those moments incrementally. But I will also say, too, is that there was this point when I was at learning to give doing some other work. And I started to see a lot of young people, because we were folks on K12. And when I would see them get involved in stuff and then myself not getting involved, it felt a little tough. It was a little tough. But there was no pivotal moment, like sort of that one kind of thing. But I would just say is that the more you do the more perspective you gain for the issues around you that are often hidden, you know, like I mentioned earlier around hunger was hidden in a way. And all these other issues, you know, like mental health and all these other kinds of things that I now address, you would never know it on face value. And I think that that was my naivete coming from-- because in rural communities, you don't often talk about these issues. You just participate or engage or you don't. You've done a ton of research, especially around millennials and employees sort of giving back and mobilizing. And a lot of your work is, you know, in sort of root causes and emotion and kind of what people respond to. So I'm curious for you personally, like, you know, are you aware of like what part of your personality you tap into when you start like contributing in these ways? It was interesting. I wrote about this in the second book. There's some really good, obviously, neuroscience around the feeling when gets when performing acts, right, of social issue and support. I often talk about this too when I speak with others around the purpose of sometimes marches, protests, and rallies, and how good, you know, when you're out there, it's like, it's just the healing you get. Because there's two parts of that that's really important. The first part of that feeling is comfort. Knowing that people around you believe like you do. That's amazing. Like, because to this point, right, we live in a digital world, a digital society, I can literally perform a lot of these actions from my home and never really truly interact and have relationship. But the moment I go to a protest march or rally or one of these other kinds of things, if you get that feeling, that's what it feels around the camaraderie. The second part of that is, is that even if there is no outcome, in that moment, the second part is, is that you feel that somehow progress might be made. And much of my experiences have been involved with family or friends or other kinds of things that have happened in my life, in general, like most of us have had. From somebody coming from a very small community, a rural community, and I go to other communities now, much bigger, and I see and witness those things, it's like, well, I don't think you understand what's happening. We just did this study recently with Aliens. It's called the RISTaker Assessment of Social Movement Leaders. You know, you hear a lot of social movement research, leadership research, and much of that research is all around what people succeed at. And this was not only on what they failed at, but what were the risks coming at them? And you start to realize that, you know, some of the leaders put themselves out there in very vulnerable positions to fight for something, right? And when you talk with people about that vulnerability, become very vulnerable with you, right? From a quality active. And we're listening to some of these when we were sitting down and this study was only on the EU social movement leaders, not in the US. And much of those leaders talked about, you know, when you are vulnerable in that moment, and you have people around you that love you and support you and lift you up regardless of the people who are negative against you, it means the world. And you need those moments. And I would say that at the beginning, most of the issues, you know, not that we weren't confronting those when I was growing up, they were just, and probably some would say, we weren't addressing the root causes. We were just helping people get through, but that's all we knew in that moment. And I think now what has changed for me is is trying to get to the understanding of people's behaviors so we can get better at addressing and advocating for the root causes that are necessary in general because I've seen it work on the other end. And I think it's been those experiences not necessarily one that I can point to, because, you know, candidly as a researcher, we take every moment as learning opportunity to figure out, okay. Did that work? How do we reorganize that survey or study and how do we look at qualitative better in general? That's been some things for me that has been eye opening. I honestly wish that one of the pieces more leaders get an opportunity to do is be exposed to other leaders who are risking a lot as well to learn from them, how to build community because that's the community that's really helping them. In the global sense, I think there's a lot tied to human nature. In what you said, I heard sense of belonging, wanting to participate in something bigger than yourself. Just the sort of psychological aspect of giving being more rewarding long term than receiving safety and taking risk. What else should be on that list? In terms of enabling people with a cause or with a movement they want to produce or expand, the human nature things you really have to tap into to be successful there. Leaders that focus on action or engagement with their community or their movement are even a company's trying to get consumers involved, which can be the way we work with a lot of companies now, way more than we ever have. Much of that work centers around the behavior from the other side, not from the side of the person trying to incite it, right, in general. Because the challenge about the people who want to incite action is sometimes I think they lose mindset around that this issue is it really that important or is it kind of like, yeah, you know, all of those things. So I often talk first about where does the issue sit from the list. And I mean capital T, capital H, capital E. And the list is transportation, health, economics and employment. These are basic needs, people need to feel and if those issues affect those kinds of things, now we're in a different ball game. If it tends not to and you're trying to get somebody to care about that, you're asking them to go way above how their brain operates because our brain is a path of least resistance. The brain is going to be like, hold on really important issue that's affecting you. Let me take care of this other thing and bring it back in. That just doesn't work that way. So that is first and foremost, how does the issue stack up against the list in general? The second thing is is that when you're thinking about behavior, you will always have people that feel that the reason for their actions, well, they won't necessarily stay this way, but the reason I think do it is because the sense of belonging. Like my mom did it because the millers went and everybody else was doing it. It was on TV cultural moment, right? I mean, love her to death, but she was just doing it episodically. You know, it is what is she belonged in the moment. There are so many moments that happen every single year of our time, right? In each of those moments, creates opportunities for action. And it's our expectation that not all of those moments will actually produce people that will be interested longer term. So we move from this belonging state to this state in which that we actually have deep interest in it. And it's at the belonging state of our sense of exposure, our sense of exposure to those that need help are the beneficiaries in general. And it's also the sense of being exposed to the realities of the issue and its effects on populations and people overall. This is the storytelling that your line of work in the past, right? Like really great storytelling and all that. Yeah, you know, the storytelling aspect of that though, the thing that's really, really key here that most people do not market towards is the receiver's knowledge attitudes and beliefs already in existence, right? So when we're talking about storytelling for fundraising, you might do it in a certain approach, but storytelling in which that you are taking that person in the receiver's and current knowledge, because you know what they know or don't know, you know how they approach that knowledge, you know, you might have a very rural audience who might be fairly conservative or you might have an, that I came from in general that excites certain beliefs like, well, why wouldn't that be acceptable? You know, not because they're, not because they're just trying to be difficult, but because they just don't know they grew up in this familial cultural environment in general. It is the moment that you help them truly understand based upon those KABs, knowledge attitudes and beliefs and behaviors that moves them into deeper engagement. The work that is not done effectively at that stage, where we take into account the real receivers knowledge, add to the way they think about the issue into the way that we communicate about it, will determine whether or not they engage. And what we mistake at that stage of is clicks and petition signings and all these other kinds of things as participatory interests. And it really isn't because you still don't know enough, you still don't have that base there. And then we kind of get to those that tend to lead. And what I say lead is that they self-organize, they start to do other things because they're, they're, they're into it. You sell refrigerators, they're going to buy one tomorrow, right? But the vast majority of the public sits between the first two phases of belonging because of the moment, cultural familial friends, everybody else has been persuasion to all of that stuff. And those that are somewhat knowledgeable are knowledgeable and it's our gain to help communicate together to sort of address those KABs. In the work I do right now, the ad council at the research institute where I spend half my time, I mean, that's all I focus on a lot of is is, okay, is every Gen Z person interested in climate change? Is it when I hear that generalization? Right? I'm like, wait a minute. So what do they know, what attitude are they coming at? And who is being interviewed? You know, because we start to put stuff out there to try to incite more participation. And you're like, well, wait a minute, we did all the fundamentals of email marketing according to fundraising. I think the leaders need to understand that you're going to get a big belonging set. You're going to get a net Feldman's lever to death, but that's what's going to happen. And then you're going to have a population that moves out of that, that you really, that's the sweet spot. That's the group that you spend time with. And don't fool yourself with participatory interest. Your categories and folks in a way by like sort of the initial interest to having more of a sense of belonging to being a real leader, evangelist, organizer, personality wise, are those different people? Where there are things you can do to bring somebody from really just that initial conversion point to, you know, higher levels of ownership in action. It was interesting because I think you were called us at some point, you know, it's just like, okay, then all of a sudden they're going to volunteer and then they become a, it's like, we have these stages. We look at something related to this in which I like does the real involvement flow actually happen the way we do. And then what we discovered is that it does, for some who are already predisposed to the issue and to the familial to the like the culture around, like, yeah, that does happen. But what you're talking about is someone who is likely, it's like kind of giving the scholarship to the person that was likely to get the scholarship already versus getting the scholarship to those who really need it in general. And you need those people, no leader would ever say no, we're going to discard them because you need everybody and anybody to apply influence when it's necessary whether it's through their own personal assets or anything else. But, but it is your job to try, if you're really trying to get people to move from one stage to the other, I always say to leaders and I say there's a lot to corporate marketers that I work with who are trying to get their consumers engaged to do something in social movement leaders is not everybody's interested in organizing. And that's okay, it is complete. And the vast majority will sit in the state of brand recognition and when you perform an ask that's very achievable for them, we'll do it. They will be a part of the movement. They don't need to lead it. And we have to get that in our head that that is okay because now here's the really, really important thing. You could spend hours and time and money on trying to get that ramp like we're that flow that we were just talking about with a few individuals, which will be fine. You'll get those. But the vast majority just want to remain consistently involved. Great, don't want to it's great supporters. Whatever that support really means, it could be financial or not. And when you need to call upon them, you need them to apply pressure at times because of certain issues. That's when it's most, that's when it all comes back. That's when it's necessary in general. And so I think what's really, really important here is to understand is that not everybody is going to be the social movement leader and not everybody's going to organize in those that do great. Some of the, you know, it's like always saying like when I, when I compare people when board members, I'll go into board meeting, which I often, I really don't spend a lot of time with boards candidly. But when I do, they'll be like, well, Derek, you know, I'm involved, you know, when I hear the I am, I'm like, well, wait a minute. You, like you're on the board. The vast majority of the public is not going to be on a board, you know, in general. So we just had to get that in our mindset about the population. Great points. But I think it could also be seasonal in somebody's life. I mean, maybe like, you know, for a period of time, I'm up for it. And for a period of time, I don't have the bandwidth. And that, that should be okay too. So we do have this piece that we have that we have done research on, which kind of looks at the life cycle changes of individuals as they go through in the civic or participatory habits of it, philanthropic as well. And there's a couple key things. There's usually about four factors that kind of go into it. And you're going to notice the thematic when I get done. But I'm going to take age out for a minute because if, anyways, on their research, if you know that, you know, the average age of a person in college is much higher than it used to be. And so so it's been growing. But if you look at it right now, the person is financially independent. That means not on mom and dad's health insurance, not on any other, they're financially independent, making them financial decisions. Second thing is, is when they're actually managing people, they are managing and responsible for the delivery of services, for their company or for organization, and they're overseeing individuals to do that. The third thing is this partnership, marriage spouse. And the last one is dependence. If you look at the thematic in all of that, it is all how many social issues are in everything. You are now being exposed to the people you work around, challenges that they're going through. You're more empathetic. You're dealing with other issues that make you busy. Other challenges to try to help and support your team members. The second thing is, is you're dealing with some very substantive financial familial issues, right? And working through those. And when you do see a dip in participation over time, and it goes back up, once the individual understands and compensates, and I don't use that from a financial perspective, but compensates it for time, for every other kinds of things that they do, they've leveled out, and they now can kind of get back into it and grow. In fact, one of the things that we do often in our screeners now, and screening for people participation, is that I can't have everybody who's figured life out in there. I got to have people who are, have kids in college, and they're paying for it. I've got to have people who are managing and who are not being managed, because the sample and the people who are getting information from has to be a better representation, not the overtievers that potentially are out there. As people sort of move into, you know, higher levels of exposure, different experience with empathy and a sense of responsibility over others, they sort of engage with these different ways of being activists differently. And issues will arise because of it. I have two daughters, 11 and 13. You know, I also have been working a lot of mental health campaigns. And this is the challenge of when work intersects with life and reality in a way, right? If you were to ask me if an issue of mental health was of most important 10 years ago, to me, I would have said no, you could say, well, Derek, now we're opening up, more people are aware of mental health. That is true. However, I have two people in my household that I see their mental health on a daily basis with the usage of their provide. And so many other things, as the follow-up to girls, who are at the teenage, preteen stage, you know. And so that exposure to the issues that now or within my sphere is different than the exposure that I had earlier. And while I heard mental health is important five or seven years ago, it's not until I see it firsthand right literally in front of me that I'm like, yeah, this is big. This is an issue in general. In your last report, I was amazed to see that mental health was actually one of the top issues on seeding like race relations and some of the other stuff. Mental health is so hard, historically, so it's such a stigmatized thing and so hard to fundraise for and all these things. But now it's like right up there with people. It's a lot of the work that my colleagues at the ad counselor are doing, related to some campaign work, succeed the upwards, mental health pillar work, and so forth. And I think what we have to recognize in much of our reports and everything else is, no, we actually have one coming up very soon, which is our 2022 year in review. And there are some consistencies across there. Is I wouldn't necessarily look at it from what was top number one or number two, but rather what's in that top portion overall. Because it intersects with all of those, right? If you look at race is in their mental health, there's so many intersections on a lot of the social issues that affect 18 to 30 year olds, which is what we study right now. And much of those intersections are not done in sort of this vacuum where it's one issue and it's just that way. Much of it is contributors to it to as well. When you think about the needs of individuals across these life spans and the issues that they're intersecting with, is that you start to get to a phase of where am I most comfortable and where am I not most comfortable, right? So it's like it works going good, but my family start diverting your attention and spans at times. We know that from a lot of the research we've done in many others that validate it and the work that they do too when you look at the things that we take on from a personal perspective. And so it's where do you spend your time and energies and so forth and what is the most important to you that brings you the best joy in that moment or the most important pieces? And that is that is the one thing that I often ask cause leaders and social movement leaders is to say, you know, you have to recognize that the population you're trying to recruit to engage at such a high level has the list that they're working on, which is also familiar related and we're probably not going to be able to do it. But we will over time. It doesn't mean you give up. It just means that your expectation for this nice, chart flow of increasing every year of involvement with give, you know, all this stuff that's out there is like, yeah, that's that's a world in which society is that sort of a constant in a way. What's unique about millennials, especially now that those guys control so much disposable income, you know, what's different about Gen Z if anything? And how has COVID changed the way people engage with causes? We led the millennial impact project for a decade, 10 years. I could have done it without the cases, you know, gene and Steve case and foundation and the work that they supported it throughout those 10 years. With millennials, I think the biggest learning that we had, coming out of that, you know, 10 years worth of work, is that a person doesn't view themselves as these labels that we often give people as a volunteer or a donor. They're just a supporter of a cause or an issue. And we attempted probably about halfway through to try to help the field understand that that stuff's not as important as helping them understand that every action they have has value. Some would say, well, wait a minute, you know, money is more value, you know, like they would go through this whole thing and I have to go through this whole exercise together. And I said, yes, but people also view their vote having more value right now, then say giving you 10 more dollars because they're this person might vote on the issue affecting what you're doing. Again, it kind of gets back to my previous work a long time ago. One of the major things coming out of that and that has remained consistent and actually has built what we would call, we did a study for points of light called around the civic circle, which can look at all the civic actions that one takes and where the most influence can happen. And what's interesting is that, you know, we kind of started out thinking that donations was behaviorally one of the most important influences. And we left after 10 years saying participation in so many different ways creates so much influence in general. And that holds true today. And specifically around that millennials and mass and voting have such an opportunity, it just is, it just really, really is. And with the fact it's disposable incomes, you know, I'm not too, you hear all the folks focused on transfer of well stuff. It was big, but it wasn't something that we monitor as much because we know, usually that number is not reported with all of the strings attached to that money. So it's kind of like, you know, millions are just going to give free will you mail money and it's just going to be great. So we spent more time trying to see, okay, or what actions are they taking and most of those actions were voting related, buying decisions, you know, there were all of the things that were secondary effects on social issues and causes in general. That piece is very true. The other thing too, and it's happening, if you look at generational studies, you know, more dollars are made from older generations, and now millennials, you know, they're opening up. If you look at when we were compared to now, that trend is true. So they are your young donors for those that are just financially focused still, because Gen Z is not there. And I mean older millennials in general too. And lastly, I would say is that, a lot of millennials are in management right now. And so much of their social issue interest participation and acceptance of things is happening through workplaces too as well, where they've kind of helped that kind of piece happen. Now I will say though, and this is often a myth, it's like millennials created that that's not true. Gen X started that. Millennials just in a amount of people that are really helped reinforce some of those kinds of policies. And now they're making those policies in general too, along with their Gen Xers and leaders. When we think about Gen Z, I will say for us, the financial aspect is incredibly low, rightfully so, low resources and everything else. But what we are seeing way more up than what we had seen in, if you compare the 10 years of studies that we did to the studies that we're doing now underneath our cause and social influence banner, which is 18 to 30 year olds. We're not focused on generation which focus on age courts. What we see is just political issues are cause issues constantly. While we were in the millennial, if you were looking at comparatives, we would things like we'd see other kind of non-political issues in there, consistently. And really, like, women's rights and all of those were a part of it, but it wasn't as strong as where it is now in general. And so our political cultural moments have definitely overtaken as the main issues of Gen Z as compared to when we were doing some of our millennial studies. With millennials, a lot of our work was looking at technologies too, right, that we're being used. Social media platforms primarily. It's interesting to note that in a lot of the work I do, right now, with Gen Z and we look at influences to that behavior, there is this sort of growing skepticism a little bit of something online stuff. It's like, yeah, and I'm not surprised they're promoting it and they're an influencer. Like, that was kinds of things. So there's still awareness building. But trust is definitely being built within small friendship groups still, where I think we're just still learning about a lot of the social media platform use and causes and so forth on the other side. Hopefully your listeners don't take that as a don't do it. That's not the case. There's more cognizant recognition and appreciation of the limitations and usage of social media. And Gen Z is fairly smart and authentic and can kind of sniff it out fairly quick. [MUSIC PLAYING] Hi, Mike here. I'd like to take a quick time out from the episode to let you know a little bit more about a project we're working on called Altruis. There's a deeply held secret in an nonprofit space, which for some of you may be just a little bit controversial. And that is, philanthropy does not equal impact. The challenges faced by our global community are more complex and urgent than ever before. And for philanthropic funders who care about impact, for those passionate about really moving the needle on important social issues, there's very little information available to help guide the decision making around their investments. That's where Altruis comes in. By seeking out the best, most innovative and promising high impact solutions, by combining top quality impact measurement, evaluation, and analysis with insights into social good organizations that focuses on strength and sustainability rather than overhead. Altruis helps funders of all kinds. philanthropists, family offices, foundations, and businesses direct their resources to the programs and organizations best equipped to solve the challenges they care most about in the regions of the world they're most interested in supported with personalized recommendations, engaging multimedia storytelling, seamless funding execution, Altruis levels the playing field, creates unprecedented efficiencies, and most importantly, drives funding to the most impactful social good organizations around. For more information, check us out at www.altruis.org. Thanks for listening and now back to the show. How much of it do you think is just them trying to avoid the transactional nature that comes with giving quite a bit? I feel like millennials as well really want to have that personal significance, that personal sense of belonging, and the feeling that they're being asked to give something unique about themselves rather than some cash. How true is that in general? And does that resonate at all with your work with the Gen Zs and other groups? Giving and philanthropic behavior is very low in Gen Z from a financial perspective. And so when we look at it, we're like, oh, OK, we take the same common piece that many others might do at that point or the assumption. Let's test the assumption. Is it because they don't have financial resources or what's the reason? So we do tons of interviews, we do some qualitative and some quant, and we find that it just don't feel like giving is as effective as a mode of change. And that tends to be the highest driving reason of the behavior that we've been able to track and see. Not the transactional nature of it, but rather it's like, well, I can get more attention this way. I can get more change to happen this way. And so it's almost like a cost-based analysis of where can my actions be the most fruitful? What's interesting, by the way, in our year and review, we also asked young people to help us. Social movement leaders, our researchers, are like, let me help you analyze and evaluate if your social movement is successful. I always like to ask the people who participate if what their viewpoints are and whether it's successful. So what do you think a young person believes? They measure social movement success upon. Policy change? No. You would think that would be number one. It was more about behaviors in culture and people around them. And that was done through attention. It was an attention style environment. It's like, I want to know that other people know about this to try to correct their own behaviors. It's a cultural change. Because in social movements, you have two types of movements. Now, you kind of want the two to intersect. You want the two to be a part of one another. But it doesn't always happen that way. So for instance, you can have a policy change and still people behaving the way they want to. So in healthcare or anything else. And then when you think about the cultural side of it, you can have marriage as a law or legal or gay marriage, but it may not be culturally acceptable. So when you think about the social movement side of it, when you ask young people, wait a minute. What do you think is success? Is that then it basically comes down to knowledge and attitudes about behaviors and beliefs or changed? In addition to policy, but let's put one before the other in general around them. But I think that that's an important piece is to look at the perspective. And when we usually think about transactions or giving, it's just as always been fairly low. And I mean, low, to give you an idea, it's like 5%, they believe it's, you know, well, get less than 10% effectiveness. 5, 6, 7, one time we had it at 12 and that was during COVID. Because people were trying to give resources and money, which I'm going to come to, which is a part of your COVID question in a second. So I think that what we are seeing right now is a change in belief in what is effective from the individual participant level. Now, I know some cause leaders are going to be like, I hear you, I recognize it. But you have to understand how it's perceived, right? From the other end of it in general. Now, let's talk about COVID. Where we saw changes was direct service product donate, like all of that stuff, donations fund, all of that had dramatically increased in all of our studies, double quadruple. And then it has since that time gotten flattened back to where it was before. So that was the dramatic difference where actions of, you know, all the typical other social movement actions were sort of lessons in what they believed was needed in that moment and direct support and access was such as it was almost like natural disaster behavioral in general, what we've seen. When somebody starts on like a campaign sign, stuff for something they'd volunteer, they give, or whatever their entry point is, how do you keep them involved over time? And how much of that is, you know, are you able to shift from like an emotional sort of person to person, view of things towards like, you know, impact data or policy change things or a bit more abstract? Over the course of last 10 to 15 years, there've been great new technologies to make giving as a transaction easier, new technologies that helped to incite actions that we didn't have before. That was just truly amazing. I mean, the first year of our millennial, in fact, we didn't even incorporate some of the social media platforms in it 'cause it weren't really there. Yeah, I mean, they were there like, "Okay, we gotta kind of do it the next year, right?" So I think the reason that while it was always there and I agree with you, the reason our attention moves towards the other places, because we have tools to make those pieces easier, but it's harder to make the motivational side easier, right? So I can make transactions and other stuff happen. Now to get to your point, and this is the piece that is so crucial. I will talk with a leader constantly about what are you doing to keep people involved? And they immediately go to the digital side. Oh, I'm like, always. I'm like, okay, but here's the thing. So I'm gonna backtrack to how individuals look at progress in general. I always love the studies that it's like, "These people wanna see the impact of their gifts." That is the worst survey question ever. There isn't a person in America that would say, "Well, you know, I don't wanna see the impact of my gifts." I mean, that's going to happen, right? So let's get past that point, which is, is it impact reporting? Is it any of those stuff? Or when you sit down with all kinds of people who are in those different life cycle stages, everybody kind of sums it up like this. I just wanna know if I gave of anything, my time, my money, my assets, my resource, whatever it is, that something happened with it, something good. I don't think we need to solve something tomorrow. I just wanna know that something was helped. Some progress was made, and that's about all. I think what we are looking for at times is kind of report like these whole big kind of things when the vast majority are just looking to say that, you know, you did something with something I gave you that I thought was valuable, and it's another reason to maintain involvement. Now the second part of this that's even bigger to that piece is that we all need to look forward to something. We all need to look forward to a piece that we can work on or work towards. When I see a very uninvolved population of constituents, it tends to be from those individuals who haven't been placed with a milestone of achievement as a collective together, overall. They haven't been presented with something, not a 20/30 goal, not a 2050 goal, but what is it that we, supporters of this issue, no matter what that support comes in, what are we all fighting for? That we can achieve together in six months or a year that makes me want to stay involved because it's such within reach. That's the difference between keeping involvement. Now there are tools, like email, all that helps that, but you as a leader have to create milestones of issue achievement for your constituents to rally around, to get excited about, to get their fellow friends involved, to communicate and participate with in general. If you don't do that, it is no surprise that you sent me the direct mail letter in December and I don't hear the hear anything, I don't have anything to work towards or work for. I'm going to lose interest naturally, regardless of how beautiful that email is and you did everything technologically correct. And so that milestone is based upon progress and the person feeling that they had a contribution to that progress. That's the secret to a lot of the engagement that is often missing. Our engagement is, okay, opportunities to get a more involved, that don't ever communicate, don't ever really really communicate about what we're fighting for together and what's in reach and what I need to be involved with. So that's where we need to head. How does that feeling of just doing something that helps somebody, someplace, connect if at all with things like the effective altruism movement, the desire to really tackle only the high impact programs or focus on solving root causes, that sort of thing? Well, I think you're talking about the difference between a slice of the population who is their job or high interest to determine impact, right? Versus those that want to know they're having of impact in general. It's like saying the board members' behaviors reflect the populations' behaviors and that doesn't work out that way. Because my studies only focus on a general population. I always tell somebody, they'll be like, "Derek, can you talk to a major donor, or major gift officers?" I'm like, you guys are going to hate the stuff I say, so probably not. Not your guy, there's probably better folks. Because my focus is on those, the swath of the large American population or any international population that we work with to try to get them to be activated and involved. Will they be your biggest donors? No, but a force as a collective, they're pretty powerful, right? And they got a lot of resources in general. And so, there are some in there. And in here is the thing though, at the end of the day, I will have people signal in studies. I do a lot of due diligence on, "Can you share with me the transactions that you gave to in the last year?" And I look in there and there's tons of episodic giving. Because it's natural. There's tons of all other kinds of giving in there that goes, they didn't put their standard against it. Because when we see challenge pain we're human, we're empathetic people, we're going to react. That is going to happen. So to say, and from the effective altruism movement, that you only make those decisions that you're trying to say in a moment of challenge pain and society, you're going to dismiss the empathetic feeling that you're going to get in that moment to step in to try to do all of the other things necessary. Now, somebody said, "Yes, that needs to happen." Okay. But I can also say that the vast majority of the population is not going down, that decision-making process. In those vast majority of those are going to be the people that you need to show that the issue has strength. It has a community. And it has some influence in some way, shape or form. Even if we're not being as narrow, say as effective altruism, you know, handful of organizations they put forward. If you think people are interested in understanding the nitty-gritty behind the causes they're donated to or understanding that this program is better than that program, empirically, for these reasons. Or they just, you know, it does not enter the conversation as much. We did a field test once. In an email in a direct mail, we put the CEO's phone number, cell phone number, and it said, "Any of you want to call us? Call me personally to talk about how we'll use your gifts. My cell phone is below. You can do it. How many phone calls did they get? Zero. And we even bought a list, by the way. But when we post-surveied individuals who donated and we said what was one of the first time they said what was it? It was really great to see how transparent they were. Knowing that if they wanted to, they would. So now we're getting into desires versus behaviors, right? So I agree with you that in every organization that is listening to this should absolutely 100% do as much transparently as they can to show impact. And even if you want to put the cell phone number out there, but realizing that the signal sometimes that we get, because sometimes when you are operating those things in vacuums and asking questions, you know, it's acceptance bias. I don't want to look bad. But we have to recognize the realities of that that intersects with the realities of the world that we're living in. So I don't think, you know, what I would say is every leader should do everything impossible to show transparency and talk about impact as much as you can. We should be also recognizing that not every person doing the evaluative environments, that some that maybe get more attention in the philanthropy media might be doing makes sense, right? And since the general population is the vast majority of funding, 70% of the dollars, right, or individual donors and so forth, then I think we kind of have to look at it and say, what is involvement really mean for us? How do we ensure that we create opportunities over the year to address milestones and keep them involved that way? Because just because they're a member, just because they gave one, and you don't have them working towards something, even if it's attention or anything else towards the next milestone you're trying to achieve, there's no reason really to follow other than just pure passion and desire and interest and that can be easily taken up. I'm curious, you know, for all these groups that we've talked about and even the human nature side, you know, do people engage with causes differently in a corporate employee environment? You know, what do you see there? And, you know, how can organizations do more than just the greenwashing stuff? Like how do they really incorporate social impact work into their corporate cultures? Some background for the listeners. So we run a research initiative. We have several. One is on cause and social influence, which is sort of the post-millennial impact studies, that looks at 18 to 30 year-old social movement, social issue behaviors and actions and influences. Because we're pretty good on what they're going to do. It's sort of like who's influencing that behavior is really important. Another study that we do tangentially is called the corporate social mind. And that piece is looking at consumer and employee perceptions of corporate social behaviors overall. So we do general population and we do a comparative actually between two countries, the US and Germany, to try to see some differences along with my colleagues in Europe. A lot of that study is looking at, especially at a time right now, corporate social issue involvement with big issues, topics. So we usually take like four or five in the US or five in Germany. We look at, you know, issues as released to migration, immigration across countries and then social behavior. What's interesting on the corporate social mind is that there is still a high expectation that companies are involved in social issues. But now here's the interesting part of that. It doesn't necessarily mean that they want to be involved from a consumer standpoint with that company. So it's kind of like you should be doing that. Don't expect me to be involved in doing it with you. For you are on your behalf in general. So we got to keep that in our perspective because when I work with, and I mostly work with marketing teams, like CMOs and others that are doing brand integrations, social issue, integrations, and so forth. And in much of that work I often talk about it is, okay, what is your outcome of this in general? Why do you want to take on this issue? And while some come to us and want to do that issue of a moment, and we're always like, sorry, you can't help you. Because I mean, I can kind of sniff that out fairly quick. The folks that do want to do something more long-term, and we work with folks like BioStorke, who wants the parent company in IVA, you've turned an off before globally to, we've done work with American Eagle or Levi's and others. And you know, the companies that are interested in working on social issues see them as how do we use our platform to generate awareness and engagement, not with us on our behalf, but within the issue because they might be affected by it. And one of the best ways is that, and I often talk to CEOs about this when they're about ready to handle a social issue or work on one is, you know, you really don't need to be the loudest voice in the room. I know that sometimes people expect you to be because of your company is that, you know, convene for five nonprofits and say, we're here to learn from you. And how do we build you all up together with us and use our platform to work on things, especially when it comes like mental health or some other kind of campaign efforts. And so the companies that I have worked with are not looking at it from a pure like philanthropic perspective. Most of them are developing initiatives or supporting initiatives that are in existence in saying, okay, so this is our platform. And if we were to drive say 100,000 consumers your way, what would that do? How can we help them? You know, we're going to be funds to support them. And we're going to bolster your work that way. Much more straightforward. strategic and smart decisions when it comes to it. You should also know that you do a lot of risk assessments for companies to determine how the public is going to perceive their involvement with a social issue, which this is the moment that I love because when we produce that report and we sit down with them, I'll be like, you know what? 80% of your consumers are with you at 20% or not. And you're like, wow, okay, so now is the moment to see a determined what they're going to do. You know, it's like right side of history or not. And then, but I have a client that's like, it's got to be 90. I mean, it's 90 and I'm like, now I've got other clients that are like, we're going for it at 60, 40, you know? It's really, it is such the, like you just don't know in the moment. Sometimes what I would say is that those companies have usually taken, this kind of gets the employee side of it. I've usually taken a queue from their employees first because those are the people that are most closest to them because, you know, everybody wants to preserve talent as much as they can, you know, financial reasons are challenging, but you know, good talent, you keep them, you want to engage them and social issues are important to people because they're being personally effective at all the things we talked about. In the biggest thing employees can do is to talk to their employers about using the employee platform in some way. It's not just donations, it's much more than that and communications and awareness building, that knowledge and attitude and all of that other kind of stuff in general. So what's really key here, when I think about companies that the best ones have never had the loudest voice in the room, they usually have worked with some collectives in certain ways. Their goal has been to educate, build that knowledge, shift some attitudes of the consumer audiences that might be affected by the social issues that they're working on. And from there, that kind of looks at, OK, how do we support organizations in a meaningful way that not only supports their operations and so forth, but also supports the people that might be driving there in general, because we don't want to create inefficient systems for them in our partnerships in general. On the employee side, what we need to do is obviously create the mechanisms for people to be heard. And when they're being heard and they're being understood is how do we create a platform for any employee to use their voice through us, to use many different ways in which they can be effective in general. And most of the time that's done through some ERG work, but what I find really, really important is that we let our employees help us understand the realities of the consumer public too as well. I work with companies that ask employees to go ask their friends and family, how are they being affected by issues? They become our eyes and ears out in the community to help us truly understand the communities that we live in what they're dealing with, because it's very easy to be wrapped up in your own little bubble, especially in certain things. And so employees are great connectors into community and not just to organizations they're involved with, but from a social research perspective, helping us understand what families are dealing with in communities that need help. How would you recommend or what have you seen as effective in terms of taking these values, social impact ideals that maybe talked about in the C-suite or codified in the company ethos, but driving alignment and making it tangible for folks on the front line. - With Levi's, it's all like how do we encourage and engage every aspect of our business into it? In the book too, I talk about Aerie, the president and general, it's just amazing. She truly, she will take store-foot prints, she'll do whatever she can to communicate with about young girls and food and environments and mental health, and it's just great. I think one of the aspects that companies today is to look at the sort of intangible assets that they have that are really, really so effective. A lot of the partnerships that I work with, for the brands I work with, money is always a secondary thing. It's a conversation that happens at the end. It's not one that is a conversation at the beginning. A conversation at the beginning is, where are you going? What are you doing? We feel like our consumers and our employees are affected. What do we need to learn and know? And how can we achieve what you are interested in achieving as a collective, too, as well? And it has been so much better that way, overall, and you can measure effectiveness much better in general. And with employee and corporate platforms that are out there right now, one of the interesting things on a piece of research that works at the I-Council Research Institute is called trusted messengers. And in rural communities, including where I kind of grew up, and in suburban communities as well as in some urban, the local business leaders are really great trusted messenger of information for many, right? It's like, well, in a rural perspective, we always looked at it as well. They've made that successful business. They got to be, you know, this is what it is, you know. And so business leaders are trusted messengers for many things. And there are platforms in ways that they can be involved with, as well. And I think that the best leaders out there are ones that lift up the organizations and the issues before themselves in the company and have figured out collective impact before they've decided that they're going to make investment impact in some way. And lastly, the corporations, the least the ones that I've looked at, too, is that have done a lot of really great research to try to understand what aspects of the issue they can actually help sort of move the needle on together with somebody versus just coming in. And specifically what that means is where they add value. In fact, we have this slide deck. We'll talk to a company and say, you have the end, like from our research, this is specifically where an initiative can add value. And here, and I am very clear, here are the places where you will not. And we have to accept that that we as companies and leaders can't do everything, but we can add value. And we've got to find where that value is. So that requires some time and research, for sure. What do you think is on the horizon for nonprofit fundraising, for cause-related work, and for some of these companies that want to do more than just, essentially, maximize your whole of the value? I think part of it is understanding from the corporations perspective that our company is in an isolation and an island by itself. It has employees that come from the community. It has vendors that represent families. It's got so suppliers that do the-- once you start to recognize the intricacies of the networks of things that make business happen, start to realize there's real people, there's real things, there's real society around it, overall. That's the mindset we discuss. And when you think about it from that perspective, you start seeing that from a corporate mindset that risk and challenge from political, cultural, and social movements and issues are going to cause disruptions. And whether we take a stance or not, there will be other issues in the future that will come at us because the people that are in our society are going to be affected. And they're going to have all these other intricacies to as well. And as I always talk, it's like, well, how do we take a line here? And don't take a line there. There is no easy answer. You have to look at it from the perspective of these kinds of moments and what the values are and where they represent within the company. Now, that is a line you'll often hear from consultants. But usually what you would say to that is, do we as a company want to stand behind inaction? Or this kind of-- when you start presenting actual action and assess where you would be with those steps? That's different. They're just saying, we're coming out with this kind of thing. I think we now live in a society that we need to assess where our involvement and how we'll look across many different social issues and spectrums. And it's not one size fits all because there's complexity. There's gray stuff everywhere that exists. And you can also-- you want to be inclusive. You want to try to be inclusive to ideas that are not ones that are of your own, either, in general. And so as I look at it is to say, if you're pretty solid, and you stand for, the rest of the decisions usually can come in line. The person who says the '64 to make their decision solely based on what they felt was what the company needed to do based on their value set. Personnel was 90. It was like, well, I'm unsure a little bit. Now it just always waffles to me because then I kind of look at it and say, I wonder how strong the internal culture is. If you're going to get in trouble in general. So I think for corporations going forward, I think we're out of the episodic environments. We're really looking at initiatives adding value because some-- and rightfully so-- have been burned to the past appropriately for their participation. Again, rightfully so. For the future of corporate social issue involvement, I think the company has so many other platforms and assets because they, into themselves, are a trusted messenger. And that's an important piece. On nonprofit fundraising and all those other kinds of things, I think we all recognize that individuals have much more to do than money and volunteering. So that narrative, when we started to shift that from the research, I'm not saying we're responsible for it, but many others too are as well. I think we've realized the capacities of the human population to have to do more. A lot of organizations in the future are going to get better at maintaining interests because they're fighting for something and they know it. And you have really, really great communicators coming up in the leadership that know how to parse out milestones and communicate about those milestones and I think more and more organizations are going to operate like social movement style organizations of the past, so now because the tools be easier and it's not so much just about service delivery, but it's about what we stand for across all communities and how we're going to mobilize people in general. In this line of work, I've seen that it happened more and more, you know, where organizations come and say we want to shift to a more movement style. And I'm like, what does that mean, you know, in general? But it usually comes down to is we want to put something out there and fight for it. Because we can't just deliver and not fight for the issue at the same time at this point. What's the path not taken for you personally? Like if you weren't doing this kind of work, what would you be doing? I actually went to Southeast Missouri on a, I got a criminal justice major in a minor in zoology. I had no idea what I was going to do. Zoo cop or something, right? I originally thought an architect from there. I would really probably be a teacher. Yeah, I mean, I love teaching what I do now as well. It's fantastic. It's fun. It's fun to see up and coming leaders who are really trying to learn as well as ones who have really been in the system for a while. And so I think that would probably been the path in general. Now after looking back at it, but if you were to ask me earlier on, I would have said an architect or something in marine biology, but that didn't really work out. Yeah, of all the cause areas that are out there, there are many important ones. Free personally, what do you think is the most important thing we can tackle right now? Hunger. I mean, we produce enough food in America to feed everybody. But our neighbors are in need in hunger. So that's a challenge that I think is flexible. They support the product. It's not a supply chain. It's like, it is and it isn't. So I think that that's an issue that we addressed and we're closely with feeding America. And it's great that they're working hard. The second issue is just, and this comes down to the economic. Remember the list is kind of the health and economic side of it. I mean wage and employment. It's just challenging, you know, when you see multiple jobs, all of those, the economic side and you talk about life cycle changes because, and the reason why it probably hits me more, but was not in this job, I don't think I would have said those that one because I wouldn't have exposed to it. But when you're like, we start to interview and survey, there's much research that we do because we have to have represented samples. You're like, you start to hear it and see it and witness it firsthand. And especially when we do ethnography pieces. So that, that piece is really challenging because it affects family and affects so many things in general. The other thing on a slight piece and I had a liver transplant six years ago. And so I encourage everybody to be an organ donor, the person that I got delivered from save seven people besides me. So if you really want to have personal impacts, that is a great way to. So that is another thing that I'm personally involved with because I'm the direct recipient of that. So to the point that we were talking about earlier, nowhere near what I've ever said that, you know, until this happened. So when you're ready to move on to a new chapter, what would you like to have accomplished with the work that you're doing now? This is interesting because a lot of the stuff I do now, I've only had a conference or an event, so like we use your research all the time. Like you never know. Like you see people clicks and I get all these reports and stuff and I'm like, what if that's just a bot and nobody's really doing it? It'll be great. I'll go to a conference and they're like, damn, thank you for, you know, that piece is great. And I think so, like when I'm all done, I am hopeful that, and this happens a little bit now already, but that cause leaders use it and like it really help. Like we have a better, we have more people fighting for our issue because we took a cue from what we learned from you. Like that would be amazing. And yeah, and because that's what our intention has always been overall. And it's interesting because, you know, when I think about research, it's like either to prove or disprove something sometimes. It's how people approach it and I don't. It's all like, okay, so here's another piece to the puzzle, right? We're all trying to figure this stuff out. Getting closer and closer every day, but we have a lot more to do. But at least people are learning along the way with us, you know, and it's kind of like happening in that manner. So that is the biggest thing that would be hopeful. I will say it's interesting that my kids now kind of, you know, they're like, that I Google do. Like, you wrote a book, I'm like, well, not just one, but that's fine. It has been interesting because they have kind of me with a lot of questions around current events and it's been fun to inform and educate and to try to, you know, provide all sides of all stories, which is, you know, as a researcher, we have to do. So hopefully they'll take that and learn from that is kind of the other big thing. But it's kind of interesting to see when, yeah, your kids are growing up in a lot of these issues that you're studying. Lastly, you know, what's next for you and for the work and how can people get in touch and access the great information you're putting out there? We produce cause and social influence every quarter and then an annual review. So we produce that every quarter. Corporate social mind we produce at least once or twice a year, narratives and general. So you can all find that on the corporatesocialmind.com cause and social influence.com. You can find those two studies. All the research that we produce at the ad council that I produce with them, since I lead the research institute there can be found at the ad council.org/research institute. There's really great studies. If you're a marketer, it's interested in like trusted messengers on certain social issues. We've got great reports on everything from voting to loneliness and from the pandemic, which is tons of COVID stuff. You name it. So lots of really great there and some really good interesting stuff coming out of mental health in the future as well. So those are great resources and then the books and stuff. You can find them at website there at felbin.com. In addition to those research studies of reproducing the next book, which is going to be on the, we're going to be breaking down the socially conscious consumer. So one of the myths in the field is that, you know, all Gen Z is this. And Tim, I hear the word all. I'm like immediately we're going to be something in general. But marketer's a lot times talk about like socially conscious consumers. And then there's even socially conscious consumers that don't even consume the goods, but they're socially active and activists in general. So we'll be doing something on that. In addition, there will be some work being done or on the movement side of my work through Oxford that I work at the Swole Center as a research fellow over there. So yeah, thanks for the time. Well, thanks so much, man. It's great to catch up. Thanks for the time and the insight. Thanks so much. Really appreciate it. Absolutely. All right. Take care, my friend. Well, that's our show. Big thank you to Derek for taking time out of his schedule to speak with us. For more information about Derek's work, find them on LinkedIn or check out the show notes at cause and purpose.org. If you enjoyed the show, please follow, subscribe, or leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts, or share the link with any friends or colleagues you think might find valuable. One of the biggest pieces of feedback I've gotten about cause and purpose is that I tend to focus too much on the guests and don't give listeners a chance to hear about my story. Well, that's all about the change. Please join us next time when our guest will be me alongside Altruis co-founder Eric Barella. We'll be talking about all things Altruis. We'll include some personal backstories, our inspiration for starting the company, and there will be some healthy debate about what we see as important in the social sector, where it's succeeded, what's holding it back, and the importance of measurement and evaluation and impact work. We very much hope you can join us. Until then, cause and purpose is a production of Altruis.org on behalf of myself, Derek, and our entire team. Thank you so much for listening, and we look forward to speaking with you again soon. [Music]