People in Fundraising: A Nonprofit Podcast by Tim Wilson

People in Fundraising, season 3, ep. 18: Mariame Sano of Make-a-Wish Massachusetts & Rhode Island

I am so excited to share this "People in Fundraising" conversation with a rising star in the fundraising world, Mariame Sano! Mariame and I got connected through my former Harvard Business School co-worker and season 1 podcast guest Jessica McNeill. Like Jessica, Mariame is an alum of Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts, where my father has worked for decades.
In our terrific interview, Mariame discusses:
 
* her experience as a first-generation immigrant, what brought her to the U.S., and what she has learned about herself as a person and professional
* her role as the Senior Manager of Corporate and Community Partnerships for Make-a-Wish Massachusetts & Rhode Island
* her response to teacher and writer Margaret Wheatley’s observation that “There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about.”
* volunteer leadership experience at Bridgewater State University
* the benefits of being a super-early riser. In Fall 2023, Mariame posted this on LinkedIn: “I wake up and do what my heart desires…uninterrupted. At 5 a.m., I am no one’s friend, sister, or employee. I JUST AM!”
* Mariame's goals and aspirations in fundraising, specifically for social impact initiatives in focused on women and girls in her native Guinea and Africa in general. "Somebody has to go do the work there, to make it better. I hope and wish to see more of that!"
Thank you Mariame for a phenomenal and motivating conversation! I look forward to seeing your career continue to advance and see the dreams you set for yourself to uplift and inspire others come to life.

People in Fundraising, season 3, ep. 17: Past NEDRA President Susan Grivno

I am excited to share this reflective conversation with Susan Grivno. She and I served on the board of directors of NEDRA (the New England Development Research Association, one of the largest chapters of Apra International), from 2016 to early 2018. Susan later became President of NEDRA, her tenure coinciding with the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Among the reasons I wanted to chat with Susan was to have her share what it was like to pivot NEDRA's famous, multi-day, in-person conference, with just weeks' notice. 
Susan also discusses:
* How the decision to cancel the 2021 NEDRA Conference was actually more difficult than the 2020 conference, yet it set a precedent for the NEDRA conferences going virtual in 2021 and 2022
* Susan's reflections on former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers' impression that Americans were "working unsustainably hard" during the pandemic
* Her take-aways from being NEDRA's President about managing bandwidth and expectations (including her own), planning ahead, and allocating and delegating responsibilities - Susan began using a quadrant to segment her personal, work, and NEDRA assignments
* What Susan misses about working for a university, as a fully remote staff member (Susan works for the University of New Hampshire, and is based in the San Antonio area)
* The example of her friend Joyce Newton for the latter stages of one's career
 
Thank you Susan for your thoughtful conversation and for doing so much for NEDRA and the broader prospect development community!

People in Fundraising, season 3, ep. 16: PhilanthropyOps founder Jenny Kleintop

To help celebrate her birthday today (!), I am so excited to share Jenny Kleintop's energetic "People in Fundraising" conversation. In addition, Jenny is my podcast's first guest to represent Delaware. We got connected on LinkedIn when I started seeing Jenny's frequent posts and immediately realizing how freely and kindly Jenny shared her expertise and excitement for fundraising, specifically philanthropy operations.
In our conversation, Jenny discusses:
* How she developed and launched her company, PhilanthropyOps, in 2023. Happy one-year anniversary! Link to Jenny's company here: https://www.philanthropyops.com/about
* Burnout - how she has experienced it, how she addresses it earlier now, and how she encourages others to acknowledge this stressor and pivot as needed
* How being a prolific content-generator and content-sharer on LinkedIn has enriched Jenny's career, and her life in general
* Her November 2023 post that encouraged her network to "Go find your remarkable!" I loved Jenny's answers to my questions, "What is your remarkable? And what have you learned about getting to this point when you know what your remarkable is?"
* Her effort to build an awesome partnership between the philanthropy operations and frontline fundraising teams, especially in small- and medium-sized fundraising shops
* Fractional fundraising - what it is, how it works for Jenny, and how many clients she works with at a time
* Being married to a frontline fundraiser, Jenny joked, "The shop talk never stops!"
* Jenny's post about a backpack and visiting Panera after getting laid off - how these elements got her through a difficult phase in her career: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jkleintop_layoffs-community-movingforward-activity-7153139692647890945-9WsP/
Thank you Jenny for a phenomenal interview! What a treat, and I am sure our audience will totally enjoy your insights as well.

People in Fundraising season 3, ep. 15: Meredith LaPierre, Phillips Exeter Academy

Volunteer management gets its topic time in the spotlight thanks to Meredith LaPierre, a terrific fundraiser whom I first met when we worked together at Harvard Business School. Meredith suggested this topic after viewing prior "People in Fundraising" episodes and seeing this as an area that viewers and listeners would be interested to learn more about.
In our conversation, Meredith discusses:
* The foundational fundraising aspects of class giving and class affinity in higher education, which was Meredith's first role in development
* Her exposure to development shops of various sizes (HBS, Southern New Hampshire University, and Phillips Exeter Academy)
* Her focus on recruiting, managing, training, and retaining alumni volunteers to give back and encourage their alumni classmates to support Phillips Exeter Academy - including a focus on how to be successful with meeting dollars raised and participation goals
* The importance of understanding and meeting volunteers where they are, as Meredith's focus is on alumni who are now young professionals embarking on grad school, careers, and starting families - all of which impact one's time, energy, and resources
* Generational differences across her alumni volunteer cohorts and how they generally wish to be engaged and informed about the impact of their giving and their time
* Her involvement with the CASE Leadership Academy, which includes a monthly video call with philanthropic leaders from around the world
 
Thank you Meredith for a terrific conversation! I really enjoyed reconnecting with you.

People in Fundraising, season 3, ep. 14: Children's Miracle Network Hospital's Matt Jennings

To help bring awareness to Children's Miracle Network's annual Children's Hospitals Week - starting today and being celebrated at Walt Disney World - I am delighted to feature Matt Jennings of Children's Miracle Network (CMN). Matt is the Senior Director of Business Development for Salt Lake City, Utah-based CMN, where he works with corporate sponsors and donors for CMN funding initiatives.
In our conversation, Matt discusses:
* His role at CMN, where he has worked for just over one year, and what led him to join CMN. CMN was founded just over forty years ago.
* How he learned about and entered the nonprofit profession while working at his alma mater, Texas A&M University ("Gig 'em Aggies!"), what it meant to work for A&M, and how his fundraising career grew there over a two-decade span.
* Realizing that he, as a Texas A&M student, and I, as a prospective student visiting the College Station campus from Massachusetts, were at the same Texas A&M football game against Rice University in the fall of 1992!
* His thoughts on this Brene Brown quote, "If we're not practicing gratitude and allowing ourselves to know joy, we are missing out on the two things that will actually sustain us during the inevitable hard times." As CMN's mission is to support local children's hospitals in the U.S. and Canada, treating thousands of children facing dire medical conditions each year, Matt's thoughts on how this quote applies to his work is moving and meaningful.
 
Thank you, Matt, for a truly enlightening and enjoyable conversation. Best wishes for a successful Children's Hospitals Week! 

People in Fundraising, season 3, ep. 13: Goodwell Banda of SAFI, Malawi

"Life is about making sure there is support for other people."
Season 1 guest Marci Romney of CoAfrica strongly encouraged me to interview today's featured guest, Goodwell Banda. My conversation with Goodwell was informative and covers his nearly 30 years in nonprofit work in his native country of Malawi, in southern Africa.
Goodwell discusses:
* The nonprofit orgs. he has worked with, and their focus on agricultural development, forestry, and other initiatives seeking to improve the economic circumstances for people in a country where more than 75% of the 21 million-plus population lives in rural areas.
* Collaboration between the Malawian government and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to strengthen nonprofit impact, as well as between Goodwell and CoAfrica.
* The School of Agriculture for Family Independence (SAFI), at which Goodwell and his family work, is 100% funded by donors, especially by the Utah-based Nu Skin Force for Good Foundation.
* Goodwell's personal background and how his life experiences (born in a village, the first of 12 children born to subsistence farmer parents; wore his first pair of shoes at ag 18) influenced his desire to give back to other people.
Thank you Goodwell for sharing your inspirational story with our audience!

People in Fundraising, season 3, ep. 12: NonprofitAF author Vu Le

Vu Le is a prominent social impact activist who brings clear-cut insights and humor to our nonprofit world. Welcoming him as a guest on "People in Fundraising" is a total honor, and so much fun!
Vu is the author of the website NonprofitAF.com, from which he published a selection of posts in a 2003 book, "Unicorns on Fire: A Collection of NonprofitAF Posts, Finally Edited for Spelling and Grammar." And if you're not following "Crappy Funding Practices" on LinkedIn, do so TODAY at https://www.linkedin.com/company/crappy-funding-practices/.
Vu covers a great array of topics in our interview, with enthusiasm and hilarity and passion, including:
* As an avowed Trekker ("Star Trek," for the uncool), what lessons can be drawn from this universe of shows and characters and applied to our work in philanthropy.
* Vu' post that made me get over my podcast insecurities for the last 18+ months and invite him to be a guest: "Hey white colleagues, we need to talk about these non-inclusive lists and panels you're always putting together." As a white guy, it re-affirmed my goal as a podcaster to be more intentional and thoughtful with representation among guests now and into the future.
* Vu talks about needing "over-representation of people from marginalized communities," and how white colleagues like myself can avoid tokenization in our efforts to feature a much more inclusive and broader representation of our communities. This includes guests with less-visible indicators of being from "not dominant groups," as he has written.
* Vu's reaction and thoughts to a quote from psychiatrist Carl Jung (I try to weave in quotes from past and current thought leaders in various disciplines): “Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.” Among other societal contributions, Jung championed the anima/animus concept, that there's a feminine side to men and a masculine side to women.
* How he thinks about and chooses social impact/nonprofit topics to write about on his website and LinkedIn, including topical subjects like the Israel- Hamas conflict.
* Vu's thoughts on what he'd like to see as one new fundraising best practice that would be adopted by all nonprofits, and conversely which one currently in use needs to be banned.
Enjoy Vu's awesome conversation, and thank you Vu for being an outstanding guest!

People in Fundraising, season 3, ep. 11: Olga Woltman of LemonSkies

Interviewing another nonprofit podcast host, Olga Woltman, was a terrific and very enjoyable time! Among her many contributions to the social impact sector, Olga is the founder and host of "People of Substance," a nonprofit podcast similar in theme to my "People in Fundraising." I became aware of Olga and her podcast through LinkedIn, and welcoming her as a guest was a treat.
Among our topics of conversation, Olga shares:
* Her career in the nonprofit and nonprofit-adjacent sectors, at agencies or at nonprofit shops - including Olga launching fundraising communications and marketing company LemonSkies about 5 years ago. She also shares the lessons learned in starting this business with purpose, nimbleness, and trying to be fearlessly objective.
* Olga's volunteer leadership role and tenure at The ALS Association, BRAWS (which provides resources for women's shelters) and Special Olympics Virginia.
* "It is hard to exit the nonprofit world because there is such a sense of purpose" in what we do.
* How launching LemonSkies contributed to Olga's suite of skills development to find optimal solutions for her clients, including the need to quickly shift and re-focus as well as how compartmentalization can crop up in this work. "Structure yourself for your work so that you optimize your results."
* The impetus for Olga to launch her LemonSkies-affiliated podcast, "People of Substance." So many great insights here about being deliberate, pacing yourself, and the joy of connecting with other people.
Thank you Olga for a fascinating conversation, and I appreciate the energy and enjoyment that you put into our profession through your volunteering, your client work, and your podcast!

People in Fundraising, season 3, ep. 10: Jessica Balsam, University of Washington

Artist, longtime Apra volunteer, and prospect management leader Jessica Balsam joins "People in Fundraising" to talk about all of these topics and more! One of the topics I was really interested in hearing from Jessica about was the Inclusive Design Framework and centering marginalized people in feedback loops in her development work.* Her background in a variety of art forms (glass blowing, etc.) and working in the food service industry before serendipitously working in the development shop at an arts office. She oversaw data management work, "which is funny, considering I was an arts major who avoided any class that wasn't in the Humanities!"* Why prospect management "calls to" Jessica due to its opportunities for analysis and data-wrangling.* Why Jessica's involvement with Apra has kept her in prospect development, instead of other interesting areas such as institutional research. Among initiatives Jessica has helped to compile and share is Apra's Advocacy Toolkit.* Outside of work, Jessica's interests in art and music, including karaoke (paging season 1 guest James Cheng!), mentioned around the 29-minute mark. She sang karaoke with a bunch of friends at the Apra PD conference in New Orleans!

People inFundraising, season 3 ep. 9: Peter Hayashida,

I am honored to feature Peter Hayashida, with whom I had breakfast this morning at the CASE District VII and District VIII Conference in Anaheim, CA! It was so great to meet Peter in-person.
The first guest to represent Hawaii in "People in Fundraising," Peter's interview is a delightful and really engaging overview of his extensive fundraising career. We cover a variety of topics, including:
* Peter's first year as a Senior Consultant and Principal at renowned development consulting firm Marts & Lundy.
* Peter's passion for and commitment to the intersection of diversity, equity, and inclusion in fundraising/social impact.
* Peter's lengthy involvement as a leading volunteer with CASE, and how additional commitments of time, effort, and attention actually can be recharging.
* Being a storyteller and someone who, throughout Peter's career, has sought to help others realize their potential - and who did the same for him when Peter's career was beginning.
Several "People in Fundraising" guests mentioned to me that they follow and admire Peter for his longstanding commitment to the fundraising world and to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging efforts in this space.
I am grateful that Peter agreed to be a guest so our audience can hear from him on this crucial topics. Thank you, Peter, for a fascinating conversation!