How Donors Can Bring More Than Money To The Table with English and Jeff

So how do we, as next-gen, kind of start to come into an interaction in a more holistic healed way to really listen, to really store capital and a continuum, to really show up and think about capital as a tool versus capital as an identity? Well, to me, it's also capital as a partner, and you're learning as well as a post who is just the dollars in funding. So there's a whole set of opening opportunities, I think a lot of these individuals just really don't get. We can't fix the world alone, but collaborating isn't easy, and systems are allergic to change. So how do we do it without losing our damn minds? That is what we're here to find out. I'm Jeff Walker. I'm English Saul. Welcome to System Catalyst, the podcast that cracks the code for making the world a better place. Hey everyone, guess what? We're wrapping up season 3 today. English and I are chatting about all the amazing lessons we've learned from our guests this season. And of course, what we've come to realize about our role as donors in the whole social impact space. Yep, that's right. Today, we're revisiting some of our favorite episodes and diving into collaboration. How can we as donors show up with more than just our checkbooks and actually bring some real value to the table? So whether you're a donor looking to get more hands on with what you're funding or just someone who's passionate about creating change through collaboration, you're in the right place. And if you've missed any of our past episodes or want to get notified when season 4 drops, don't forget to hit that subscribe button. Not only will you stay in the loop, but you will also be helping us spread the system's change gospel. But before we dive into the deep stuff, we're kicking things off with a pretty important topic. I'll pack us. Yep, you heard that right. Stick around. Hey, English. Hey, Jeff. How are you? I'm good. We've had a fun season. So it's fun to reconnect with you and talk about it and talk about what's going on with our lives and what we've learned over the last season. And you know, it could be because we're both hobby farmers. We kind of think about this downtime season as we're preparing for the spring as it's coming. And so I have to ask you, how are your alipacas? They're great. They are a constant source of enjoyment and comic relief. And I will say it's kind of a fun time because we're actually in the process of moving. We're moving from one farm to a different farm in North Carolina and in Linux like three weeks, basically. And so, you know, I've got four kids now. And the you adopted two more. Right? I did. I did. A lot's happened this year. We've, you know, we've got our farm. We've got we we did my husband and I we adopted two little girls from Liberia and we got back with them in October of 2024. So as you can imagine, now I've got I've got four children. I've got four alipacas. I've got two dogs. I alone have many personalities. So my husband is just, you know, fighting for his life. Basically. And now we're all picking up and moving. And so it's been quite an interesting adventure to sort of say, okay, we're moving the alipacas and, you know, our dogs to this new farm. How are we going to do this? What is it going to be like for them? How do we get the new place kind of prepped for them? But all in good time. So it's a process, but they're great. And I think they're going to love this new place so much. It's much more space for them. Well, you're continuing to grow. You continue to evolve. And I think that makes life fun and interesting and fun partnering with you as well. But I heard you tried to cheer the alipacas. So we, it's so funny, Jeff, this whole new world of alipacas, right? Things I didn't know that I needed to know. There's this guy that comes and he starts, he lives up in the north and he comes down the coast because we're in West Carolina. And so he comes down the coast and he comes in April and he spends the entire month of like April, May, just doing his road show of shearing alipacas. And so we are one of the stops on the way. And every every year we've done this now for four years. And every year he shows up with like two helpers, two or three helpers. And it's usually like they just spend the day out there with my alipacas. And of course, Will, my husband comes in and helps. And for us, it takes a certain amount of their fiber to actually be able to turn into yarn. So we've had these alipacas now for almost five years. And even before that, right, they were getting shared at the farm that they used to live at because every time they get shared, they only produce, you know, X pounds of fiber. And so it was just now this year, I think after like nine years of shearing them, that we actually had enough fiber to send to someone to make yarn out of it. And so Jerry's out on how much is actually going to be usable. But we can hopefully check back in and you know, the next season about whether or not, you know, we've we've been able to turn the fiber into something fashionable. So we may have the same share because, you know, we have alipacas in our farm in Connecticut. And he comes through as well. In fact, we have to get a new one because he didn't cut them the right way. So the shearing was all these short hairs as opposed to the long way where you can make rugs and sweaters and things out of them as well. It's it's funny you get alipacas and you think you're going to have a whole alipacas sweaters. And also now, you know, after the first year, you know, we have a little rug, you know, and and then maybe the guy will cut it a different way next time and and now we'll get, you know, half a sweater. And so yeah, it's a you can actually get together and collaborate with other alipacab farmers and buy and pay a little bit more and get a full sweater. So that's also possible. English is a shortcut. Yeah, exactly. All right. So we've we've talked a lot about alipacas and farm. How about some of the lessons and ideas that we've that we've learned from our podcast this season? English, you know, I'm going to come back to you as a next Jen donor. You're still young. Less so than before. Debatable. I don't know. I've aged a lot this year. You're certainly younger than I am, but you know, how do you think about that as a donor and you know, young giving place donor and you know, others, you know, what perspectives do you have? I think that there's a lot of transition happening right now in this in a space of philanthropy. I think that I would also, you know, take a zoomed out picture. And I would sort of say that the space of capital stewardship, right? I think that I think that there's a way that I like to view myself in this in this world as a steward of capital and looking at philanthropic capital, looking at impact investing and looking at, you know, more quintessential investing. How do we how do we use this continuum to really try and solve complex problems? And I also think that they're, you know, getting back to what you said before of like, we have to start listening better, but it's also listening differently, right? And I think that sometimes we play in the space of donors or philanthropists or investors, we have a tendency to play kind of fast and loose with that term listening. Because sometimes I think we go in and we listen, but we already kind of have an idea in our head of what we're trying to do or what we want to solve or the solution, right? And I think that the hope is that that is shifting to try to go into a situation with no preconceived notions of what the solution might be and really put the power back into the hands of the people in the community to say, no, this is what the solution is or this is what we've been doing for a really long time. You come in and you, you know, steward resources to that, but don't come in and steward resources to your own solution that you want to sit on top of what we're doing. And I think that we really have to, you know, be intentional about how we steward those resources in a way to not have kind of the negative externalities that have occasionally come up when we're talking about donors and we're talking about philanthropy and we're talking about investment because I think a lot of times not coming in with the idea of working together and coming in with, you know, a lot of the biases that we as humans hold of, well, I'm doing a good job and I valuable, how do I, you know, what is my role in the situation? It's not solving as many problems as it could. And so how do we as next gen kind of start to come into an interaction in a more holistic, healed way to really listen, to really steward capital and a continuum to really show up and, you know, think about capital as a tool versus capital as an identity. Well, to me, it's also capital as a partner and you're learning as well as opposed to just the dollars and funding mechanism. You know, I was mentoring or on a call with a donor that's part of the Ford Global Network, which is one of our partners. And she and her husband have a foundation they had just set up in focusing on early childhood in Ottawa, Canada. And she was looking for advice and how to kind of grow that and kind of think about it. And I said, you know, the have you gotten others together in the community? Well, no, I said, well, you might have Jeffersonia dinner and just get others who have a common interest in this and find partners to work on together. This is dinners that just are whole table conversations that people listen to each other. You don't talk to the person next to you. You talk to the entire table. And so those individuals sharing that knowledge and sharing ideas and finding common people that they say, hey, I want to follow up with you because that's interesting what you just said or that was an interesting book you mentioned. Can I read that too? And so it's an easy way to kind of build tools for people to start finding ways to come together. We've have a post on that on the system catalyst network that I hope people will go to the website and check out and download. And they had funded this hospital center focusing on early childhood, which was awesome. I said, but who else is partners with you on that? Well, we did that. Well, maybe look for other ways to connect to other nonprofits in the area, to other individuals who are interested in the same issue to the mayor in the city who might be concerned about the same problem with early childhood and early in young kids zero to six that they are focusing on as well. So there's a whole set of opening opportunities. I think a lot of these individuals just really don't get. And when you're talking about a Jeffersonian dinner, this is dinners that just are whole table conversations that people listen to each other. But that kind of advice to the young talent saying, hey, don't just go out and set your foundation up and look for things to give to. Look for people to work with as maybe one of the first things. And I said, maybe fund a system catalyst. Maybe go out there and find a couple of people to say, I'm going to put together, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars to focus on an issue and maybe have more leverage and more impact than if I had just started giving my money to particular organizations to try to come up with the change I want to see. I think that that's a really good point. And I think one of the preconceived notions that was challenged for me this season that I really appreciate is that sometimes being a donor in the space limits my ability to actually find people in the community and really listen in an unbiased way to people in the community. And I think that funding a system catalyst in the same way that we have worked with Wendy and Raquel and Claire and Phyllis and people who are not the donors sitting in the donor seat but can act as a bridge and can really act as a neutral convener is extremely important when it comes to that nonbiased that really understanding the solution and really being able to focus resources where they need to go. Sometimes we have to admit as donors that like we are not going to go into a community and get the truth because of just the presence and the disruption that our presence creates in that in that community or in that moment. And I think that that's just that's just a real truth that we aren't always going to get the information in a way that is truly going to be impactful. And so funding and having a system catalyst and a neutral convener is crucial to actually hearing and understanding what's going on in the community because they can provide a presence that is nonbiased, that is neutral, that is really empathetic and understanding of the community that they're in. And it allows the community to build trust in a way that is not attached or kind of coded in the donor grantee relationship. And so I think that that was just a really important lesson for me. The season is that like maybe it's not me. Like it's not me that's going to go sit and listen and hear these stories sometimes. I need to go find people that can act as that bridge or that can act as that translator. And that is a really important role for me as a philanthropist and institute of resources. Well, a catalyst as a convener is an important aspect of system change. And we saw that with Don Gibbs, a school who has basically the school world forum is one of the key areas, like a key events of the year for system change agents and social entrepreneurs. We do the school world forum because we believe that bringing these folks together from around the world we're working on these toughest problems around the world will generate new ideas. This work is really hard. So it reduces the loneliness that helps with the well-being of all those who are participating. And so it's a major investment of both time and resources that we make every year because we think it's by bringing everyone together that you can generate the new ideas for how we're going to drive this change. You saw that with John MacArthur. He has the 17 rooms and under Brookings and Rockefeller who jointly sponsor it. They gather people who are working on these strategic development goals, the STGs. Each of these goals, whether it's for health, for education, for, you know, ocean protection, environmental management, they each have their own ways of getting people together, their own conferences, their own communities, their own academic departments. But they don't have a common question of, well, what should we do next to drive bigger rates of change or to bend the curve towards our goals? And they don't have a way to get commonly all the different voices together that might make a difference on each issue in the spirit of what we've been talking about here. And they certainly don't have a chance to get all those people together across the common set of questions across all those issues in this aim place. And so we had this idea several years ago, over to look like to have, you know, all those people who care about each of these goals, asking a common set of questions about what can we do next? He just brings people together and we find each other. And so that's a great method for a philanthropist to start bringing together people who have common interests and making sure it's not just, oh, I'll get together all the NGOs. Oh, I'll get together, you know, all the corporations and we're all going to have impact. No, it's actually a blend of all of those. It's starting thinking about, you know, bringing those conversations together and then coming up with a roadmap together. As to here's a couple of things we're going to work on together. Very effective and we've seen that happen time and time again and one of the conversations we had. And I think that's a little bit of what I am continuing to learn about system catalyst is they have this also real strong interest in how to be whole people, how to not be the smartest person at the table. That's never works. How not to just look at the roadmap and have an orderly process, but to really start stepping back in understanding what bringing compassion to the table means together and each one of the people that we interviewed this season and all the other seasons, they just love what they do and they love working with people on these common issues. Just as, you know, English, I love working with you, you know, working with work Austin, working with, you know, our friends on these bigger problems. To me, that's growth and that's growing together. I agree. And I think that in that growth and in these conversations and this, this is a great example when I interviewed Marcy, you know, from PSI with via health and it's disability to change course if you need to. And it's disability to bring people along while you're changing course because I think that that's one of the most important things when you're talking about people, you know, the ability to work well with people is also the ability to sort of say, hey, let's take a minute and make sure that we're still doing what we say we're doing and if we're not, how do we, how do we evolve? We started by going out and talking to individuals in the communities. A couple of countries and then we tested that across other countries and what they told us was that in the family planning and reproductive health space, the market was incredibly fragmented. They didn't know who to trust. The development space had created this culture of speaking to them like public health professionals as opposed to we talked about bringing the sexy back. And then they told us that the solutions weren't holistic. We weren't thinking about them as whole people. We weren't really thinking that they might have multiple needs at once. And so that's sort of the evolution of via health. Constant consumer feedback and engagement is a core component of our business model and and allows us to then adopt our product or service offering or partner which is critical to the success of via health. In my conversation with Marcy and how they sort of came up with with via was was just that it was this moment of evolution of sort of saying, well, we've listened to the community and there's certain things that we're doing that are working and then there's certain things that we need to be doing a lot better. And so that's kind of how this, you know, how this new initiative came about. And I think that, you know, that is another nugget that has been proven time and time and again with every interview that we've had of at some point in the arc, at some point in the narrative, there was enough trust and enough progress within the groups that were working on these issues that there was an evolution moment. And that evolution moment actually ended up going very well and landed them in a spot where there's more impact, there's more trust, there's more community involvement because those foundations were built at the beginning. And there was enough, you know, egos being checked at the door that everybody could have a very real conversation about what evolution needed to take place. It happened with me and you and Austin when we'd said, Hey, we're going to move from global to domestic with community health acceleration partnership. And I think that having those difficult conversations with people that you really trust and enjoy working with is, it's just part of the story of system change. And it's not necessarily difficult. Right. But it is if you stay stuck on the same issue continually and trying to take the same approach. So what we experienced over our 12 years working on community health with you and Austin and I is a lot of really high success, setting up NGOs and really creating this movement for community health in Africa. What we found was it's time to let go that a lot of these things were happening on their own and that we kind of did our work. And now it's time to take a lot of these skills and look at something else and let it go. And so sometimes it's hard to let things go or hard to kind of like say, I need to move in a different direction like Gerald Chabie and did and said, I need to work on system change. I can't keep pushing my own idea by itself. It's part of something else bigger. So learning to let go and see something new is a key skill of a system catalyst looking out over the horizon saying, where are the tools and levers that I need to pull and push and still support what I'm doing, but also look for the new levers, the new opportunities, those new partners that we have out there as well. And I keep finding that something needs to have to continue to teach and to experience because it's a little scary sometimes to step out and to go in a different direction. It is. And I think that's why we got to continue to surround ourselves with people who can take that leap with us always grow together, finding people that will help you grow and you help them grow as well. So whether it's a dinner or whether it's working on a puzzle, you know, I have to tell you a farm story. So we have some cows on our farm. Yeah. And Connecticut. And two of them became mothers and one gave birth and it was easy and there was a calf the next morning when we were running around on the field and my grandkids were running out. That's pretty cool. The second mother, a couple days later, had a problem giving birth and she had a breached birth and trying to get a cow stable so that you can help it. And so my son-in-law and one of our farm manager were there trying to figure out how to help the cow give birth. And they were having some problems and a guy pulled over on the side of the road in a pickup truck, started walking over and said, "Looks like you're having some problems. Can I help?" Turns out he was a farmer and he had a dairy farm. My daughter had called, you know, up to tops and trying to get, you know, people to come down the vets to help, you know, and and all this. And the farmer kind of said, "Alright." And then we got, he said he called another friend of his that we knew and they came over and these four men helped bring this baby calf out of the mother and pulled and kind of stabilized the cow. And it was this community that came together for this change, right? And then the farmer said, "Okay, I'm going to take the calf. I'm going to take it with me because it needs support." And we're going to bottle feed it and get it going. And so all of a sudden the community just came together. And my son-in-law said, "I didn't buy into this. This is now what I was looking to do." But, you know, you saved, you know, you saved a life and you jump in and the experience is going to be something that they're going to remember the rest of their lives, but also help build the community because people jumped in and came together for this common issue, for this common cause. And now they're all talking with each other and there's a whole, you know, larger community around, you know, what we're doing around cows in our farm and what they're doing, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, it was a horrible thing to have to have happen, but it was an amazing experience to see how it all came together and it was great development experience for my family. Wow. What a wonderful, just like what a wonderful story and metaphor for how important it is, you know, the foundation of these systems and the exchange of information and the exchange of experiences. And I hope for our next season that's something that we can really focus on in saying how have you brought communities together and what does that mean? How has that now made your community stronger and better and built a foundation for generations, right? I think it's a generational change. You can have one of these unifying moments. And then you can see that carry across to the strength of communities over time. And to me, you also learned the power of local knowledge. I think this farmer came in and said, here's what you do. And literally about a half hour later, these vets came in, these women and white, they put a white gowns on and we're already to give birth, now help the cow give birth. And they start coming up and putting their gloves on and everything else. And they look at it and going, oh, I guess you already handled it. They guess you didn't need us. I guess the science way and the official way. And they're like, no, this is how you do this stuff. This cow knows how to get this done, right? So sometimes that local knowledge is, it trumps the science. Exactly. Exactly. No. And that, I mean, what a great take away also from just all of our interviews this season is like, sometimes again, it's just about listening to the people that have been doing this for so long and not coming in with our white coats and our gloves trying to fix it. Exactly. There may be a better way out there. Yeah. Well, English has been great. It's a great, great third season with you and it's so fun to hang with you and learn and continue to grow with you as well. And I hope people, if you go to our our website and sign up for our newsletter and find out, you know, what we have going on. English, any other last words and thoughts? Just that this has been a great season and I can't wait for what's next. And I also encourage people who are listening, you know, reach out to us, you know, listen to our episodes. Please reach out. Please, you know, leave comments. And if there's questions, if there's ideas, if there's things that we can talk about and share that we haven't, you know, I really hope that we can get, again, more community feedback for what we're doing. That's it for today's show. Please don't forget to subscribe to System Catalyst so you don't miss out on the new episodes. Also, do us a huge favor by rating our podcast and leaving us a review. Thank you so much for joining us and we'll catch you all in the next episode. Before we go, we'd like to thank our producers at Human Group Media. We'd also like to thank our incredible network of partners who are supporting our mission, the Skull Foundation, the Aspen Institute's Global Leadership Network, Echoing Green, DRK Foundation, Maverick Collective, Virgin Unite, Charlize Theron, Africa Outreach Project, Boldly Go Philanthropy, Scenarios, Forward Global, Nexus, and New Profit. If you are interested in becoming a System Catalyst and would like to learn more about our partners, please visit SystemCatalysts.com. Views and opinions expressed during the podcast are those of the individuals expressing them and do not necessarily reflect those of System Catalyst or Human Group Media.