Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:07 Welcome everyone to another edition of why it matters. I'm Tracy, Crohn's Zac director of innovation here at now at Mallory's always joined by my stalwart companion, Tim Lockton. Lockie
Speaker 2 00:00:21 The stalwart companion.
Speaker 1 00:00:23 I like that because it now conjures up in addition to the mule, uh, and now conjures up like a sidecar on a motorcycle. Like if you attached like a big sort of purple powder coat sidecar to Harley
Speaker 2 00:00:35 For a way to call me your sidekick,
Speaker 1 00:00:38 Every Batman has their Robin,
Speaker 1 00:00:45 Every green arrow has their speedy. I don't know. Um, I am super excited for our guests today. Uh, Marnie Webb, who's joining us from tech soup. Uh, true story. I feel like I've known everybody around Marnie except for Marnie over the past 15 years of my career. And that includes some folks who have been highly influential on my own career and like life development. So, uh, I'm really awesomely, happy to have finally connected with you this year, Marnie, around some of the work we're doing at now. It matters and continuing that relationship and yeah, it's been so rewarding. So I want to turn it over to Marnie to introduced herself. Uh, Marnie, please tell us about you.
Speaker 3 00:01:34 Sure. And the same back at you, Tracy. I feel like how we didn't meet before is astonishing to me. Um, so my name is Marnie Webb and I'm the chief community impact officer for tech soup, which is a nonprofit that focuses on, um, on supporting organizations and civil society. As you can see, um, behind me over my shoulders, I also, uh, play a lot of musical instruments has does my 16 year old daughter. And we spent the pandemic, uh, playing with those instruments and, uh, buying speakers and stereo equipment for our house, uh, which was, uh, which was an, an awful lot of fun. I'm, uh, located, uh, by our tech soup's biggest office is in San Francisco. And I'm located right near there in Berkeley, California.
Speaker 1 00:02:26 Is it really right near there? Cause I've written the Bart from Berkeley to San Francisco and that's like an hour. Yeah,
Speaker 3 00:02:33 The night in the middle of the night, it takes me 12 minutes to get to the office. Any other time of day, it takes me two and a half hours by car. So Barton's Bard is like easy peasy, man. Right?
Speaker 1 00:02:46 Bart's like an abstraction nowaday. Anyhow.
Speaker 3 00:02:48 It is. It is. I remember that it exists.
Speaker 1 00:02:52 Yeah. I remember that it exists too.
Speaker 2 00:02:56 Marnie. Uh, I would love for our listeners who don't know about tech soup to hear more about, uh, what tech soup is, what its mission is. And you've been with texted for a long time, so you've helped develop and shape some of that vision. So you're the perfect one to ask about tech soup.
Speaker 3 00:03:16 Yeah, sure. I'm happy to describe it. And by long time, I mean, 21 years I have, um, and, uh, it was already 10 plus years old whenever I joined. Um, so, so texts you possess at TechSoup is a non-profit organization. And our mission is to build a bridge that connects civil society organizations and social change agents to the resources that they need. So they can design and implement a wide variety of technology solutions, um, in, in ways that make a more equitable planet. So the, the thing that most people know us for and the thing that occupies many of, uh, our, our teams, uh, working hours is supporting corporations from, you know, fortune 10 companies to brand new startups and getting their products out into the hands of civil society organizations as either donations or discounts for those corporations. Let me make sure, yeah, that really is the kind of organization that you need to be giving to whether they're located in Bozeman, Montana or weather or, or, or whether they are located in Porto Alegre Brazil, you know what, wherever they might be in the world for the organizations on the other side, we help them make sense of the vast array of technology that's available to them.
Speaker 3 00:04:40 We help them think about how they, how they have to support that. We help them think about what it means to onboard and off-board their staff to do technology, how they maintain and set it up. What does cybersecurity mean in this evolving world and how do they make the choices that they need to make so that they can operate in their communities in the ways that they mean to operate that, that set of relationships with both corporations and the NGOs on the ground has over the 30 plus years at tech soup's been around, you know, um, spawn a lot of other activities. So for example, we use a lot of that same expertise and sort of operational strength to support foundations in the us and, uh, being able to meet the legal requirements that allow them to give outside of the us. Um, we work with communities on the ground and, and go in and say, okay, what is it that you need as a community from a sled, uh, digital solutions and what can we put together to help power you to do that? We do that work in those other countries, not by hiring staff that sits in those other countries or having a bunch of language skills, you know, broadcasting from the U S by, but by partnering with independent organizations in those countries on the ground. So they can say, this is well, it's going to be meaningful here. And then this is how we bring that here. You know, localizing isn't just about translating localizing is about understanding the context in which an organization operates and how digital solution can, can support them in that operation. Um,
Speaker 2 00:06:15 That's a little navigate, sorry. Um, yeah, no, I'm curious how that, um, how you navigate that, uh, strong Texas identity in really different contexts. Um, is that a franchise model? Is that a, an affiliation model? How do you determine what's core as you're making it? Yeah,
Speaker 3 00:06:36 Yeah. Yeah. It's a network of partners. There are each independent organizations, most of which existed before they became part of the TechSoup network and operate under a variety of names. So, you know, or, or our German partner operates under their own name does not include the word TechSoup our partner in Chile is called TechSoup chili, you know, and they actually changed their name a little bit ago. Some our Brazilian partner have their independent organization name. There are things that they do under that name, but they also have have tech SuperZoo.
Speaker 2 00:07:10 There is a question I'm sure until he, if chili is in fact already soup, so it would just be Chile instead of a tech soup Chile. So, um, oh my God, my <inaudible>.
Speaker 3 00:07:25 Yeah. I'm not even sure if that makes it to our dad joke panel.
Speaker 1 00:07:33 Yeah. What really interests me about this is what tech soup did 30 years ago, by my observation, at least. And I've been on all sides of tech soup, like I've been a recipient of tech soup. I've been involved with some of your projects. I have presented at some of your conferences. I love the sort of continuation of this founding premise, but something I think was unique in the era that it was founded was we are a nonprofit in the United States that is focused on serving nonprofits with software and to some degree, because we're a nonprofit, it makes us more relatable and understandable to the context of the constituents that we're serving. Now, that seems to me like the nugget that started this, and obviously what you've just described as how that plays itself out in 2021. You know, I have always personally maintained it in one of my profound disappointments with entities like Salesforce foundation, for example, was when it stopped being a nonprofit and became sort of a mealy mouth social impact business. And that ultimately is now just a vertical inside of Salesforce. How much has core premise of being a nonprofit serving nonprofits enabled tech soup to grow and expand and pursue that vector along its charitable intense?
Speaker 3 00:09:08 Yeah, that's a great question. I think there are, you know, sort of three big things we think about in that area. One, it does, it's not just an, it makes us relatable. We have the same issues. We have to convince our board of things too, in the same way, we have to go find funding in some of the same ways. You know, we w we, we have to do those things, but most importantly, I think that the status gives you the, the, the, the mandate that both the privilege and the mandate, um, to serve individuals or organizations that aren't going to support a for-profit business. So the small grassroots organizations that were working on behalf, those weren't going to be anybody's clients, any big businesses, clients. Those aren't the people that are getting sales calls from certified gold partners of the companies that we work with.
Speaker 3 00:10:03 But being a nonprofit says that we actually, that is our mandate. This is the mandate of nonprofit organizations. And NGOs generally is serving people that don't fit into the standard business model. So that's it, that's a huge part of it for us. The second part is I think, you know, and this is very much more of a where we are now and, you know, sort of, but as we look at w what I think we've developed, and this is going to sound as geeky as I am, is a supply chain for civil society. We have a way to operationalize and get philanthropic goods into the hands of civil society organizations we have not yet built, but I think we've collectively have an opportunity to build the side of the supply chain. That's giving data back, or decision-making in a for-profit model. When that data comes back, it goes to the owner of the profit and the supply chain, so they can make better, better business decisions, and they might farm some of it out to people acting on their platform, because it helps them, you know, Amazon's a great example of that individual producers are going to get their slice of that supply chain because it makes them better.
Speaker 3 00:11:17 But Amazon's collective view is show much greater than anyone by being a nonprofit and, and having this supply chain, it also makes our obligation sharing the collective view. The collective view, can't be just ours, like in a for-profit model. Part of our mandate has to be opening that up. And so I think we're, we're not there yet. What I just said is are the forward-looking part of our ambition. We spent the last, you know, 30 plus years doing the part of the supply chain that is getting goods into people's hands in the way that I described earlier. Now, I think we have a genuine opportunity to work on the part of the supply chain that is getting data into the hands of community so that we can make better decisions.
Speaker 1 00:12:05 I there's so much in everything you just said, uh, right before we pressed record, we dug into civil society. And I think this is a great pivot to that because one of the things that has made itself readily apparent in the past two years in particular is the assumptions underlying the way that the world needs to get serviced, and what actually needs to happen in this world are quite disparate. And there's a lot of reasons why that gets aligned that way or misaligned that way. But you had a definition of civil society that I think is a much broader one than most people assume that term to mean. And, and I would love to dig in on that because where this is going for both tech soup and how you've articulated, that has profound implications for all of us who serve nonprofits with technology in any capacity.
Speaker 3 00:13:14 Yeah. I mean, whenever I'm using the term civil society, I'm thinking of it as a super set of organizations that includes legally identified non-profits or NGOs or whatever they might be called in their country of origin. Um, but also what we can often refer to as the informal civil society, which is ironic because some of those things are quite formal. Those can include things like mutual aid networks. Those are really prominent in a lot of the world in the us. We saw them popping up, uh, around the pandemic and they took the form of neighbors growing, doing grocery shopping for their neighbors in an organized sense, but there's a lot of methodology around mutual aid networks are often in post-conflict regions before a new government has been able to set up to say, yes, you're not saying somebody who's a nonprofit or not is not the biggest problem in a post-conflict country, right?
Speaker 3 00:14:11 So you have that, we're all familiar probably with fiscally sponsored organizations. Um, and we're familiar with movements, you know, in the last year, or we saw black lives matter, you know, two years we've seen that grow and that that's, that's an, that's a movement. And I think if we're not including those identities, as part of how we think of civil society, we're missing out on some of the, um, those groups have a tremendous amount of flexibility in what they address and what they do and what they can say. And by not helping them by leaving them out and saying, no, you have to have particular stamp on your forehead. I think we're missing out in some of the opportunities for inclusiveness in the sector.
Speaker 2 00:15:00 I know for myself, there's been a shift in my understanding of the work that we do that started very much in the center of nonprofit, with the assumption that all nonprofits are out for public good, which I think all of us in this industry, you know, start questioning very quickly, um, you know, and then social impact, which in cleaners for, or nonprofit entities that are just trying to create impact in the world. Um, I think your view of this as defined by civil society is in sharp contrast to an increasingly uncivil society. That just feels like it is, it is emerging so rapidly. And so I appreciate that language shift away from only formal structures to, Hey, if it works and it's accomplishing something it counts. And I think that there is, there's so much there that's important because it goes unnoticed. And especially I noticed, I think by formal structures of Western funding structures, especially, um, you, you talked some about mutual aid networks. What does that look like outside of the U S in post-conflict countries? You know, um, where do you see that and how do you identify them?
Speaker 3 00:16:20 Yeah, I think that's a great question. And I think that's, I'm going to back up a little bit before to get a running start at, at some of the answer there, but I think one of the reasons that we ended up focusing on these legally identified organizations is one that wasn't always easy to do. It was pretty easy. You didn't write it states Canada and the UK, not necessarily India, you know, or other places, especially because there's a mix of municipal state, you know, federal law that impacts that. So I think there was some, some work to do to help formalize civil society that I think is, is good, you know, but, but that, you know, when the Mo more money could flow is that became identified, but we have this, these tax laws and restrictions that say it has to be that that's how we confer trust in public.
Speaker 3 00:17:10 Good. And I think what we can all see is that's not always true. Well, we have formal civil society, not acting in the interest of inclusiveness or democratic small D democratic activities. And we have informal movement building activities that are really pushing us to be better and more inclusive. And so, you know, with just that, you know, this isn't, I think it's about saying, okay, we've got a great method for extending the philanthropic supply chain to these organizations that we can identify now, how do we work on the next hard problem? And the next hard problem is how do we identify mutual native mutual aid networks? What are the mechanisms that we, that we use to do that? You know, what are the pressures that allow us to give? How do we trust that we're getting, getting the resources to people that are aligned with our values whenever they, you know, in those situations.
Speaker 3 00:18:08 And I think that's not an easy thing to answer. It's not like we look up the mutual aid directory, right. You know, and see what the answer is. And that's what makes it riskier in the world that we live in. It makes it riskier. No, no giver wants to wake up and open up the New York times to find out their gifts supported something that would never align with their values, you know? And so it makes it a hard choice to take. So I think we have to understand that those pressures are real pressures. Um, you know, and so how do we come together as a community to answer that question? How do we turn to the experts in the community to support answering that question? I think there's a lot of, um, promising work around, uh, distributed ledger technologies and some of the universal, basic income projects that are looking at ways for communities say, this is somebody that should get this universal, basic income as a distributed ledger.
Speaker 3 00:19:09 Yeah. I know what that is, but I think our listeners might not. Yeah. Blockchain, what will we often talk about is blockchain, cryptocurrencies, things like that. And I'm using the term distributed ledger, because I think so often when we think about blockchain, we think about, we think about Bitcoin. We think about one implementation of distributed ledger technologies, but distributed ledger technologies just means, I mean, so one of our board members is, um, is, uh, a renowned expert in this area. And Sheila, if you're listening to me now, I, um, I'm apologize for what I'm about to say, but I think of, you know, if you think of traditional ledger, like green bar, I'm old enough to think of a green bar ledger or a single spreadsheet or whatever it is. And there's one person in charge of recording what goes in there and what goes out of there.
Speaker 3 00:20:02 And that single thing that ledger is our source of truth. And if I take something out, I'm supposed to draw a certain kind of line across it to deal with it, right. Distributed ledger technologies just makes that available to a bunch of other people. You can put something in and Tracy and I can both say, oh, was that right or not? Right. Um, and vouch for it. And if you change it, there's something equivalent to that line. It just distributes. Who's allowed to write to that ledger and how we track that so that we can manage it rather than being a single person. I think what's promising about it for being a source of saying, yes, this group can get it as you could have community members that can say, Hey, they may not be a nonprofit, but this community, we would have more dead kids if they weren't there providing medical services to young people. And so I want them to get the resources that they need to continue. Conversely, you could have somebody saying, yeah, that's a real nonprofit organization, but I got to tell you, they're advocating that we don't give food or resources to anybody that isn't, you know, why and whose grandparents weren't also citizens in this country.
Speaker 1 00:21:17 Yep. Something I love that is embedded in what you're saying and gets to, excuse me. A long standing criticism I've had of charitable donation programs for technology is what you're talking about is greater transparency through systems of power and de formalizing status that is frequently conveyed by systems of power onto institutions that uphold those systems of power. Right. And by, by expanding this to, you know, civil service networks, I think of what happened in Afghanistan. And I think of the story I read about how one of the women's sports teams got out of the country. That was a function of civil society driven by essentially a dozen people in their mobile phones. And it might not even have been a permanent function, but it was one that was needed. How can we better identify those efforts in flight? How can we better enable them while they are in flight?
Speaker 1 00:22:27 And how can we better track the outcomes they are producing? All of this is embedded in what you're saying. And I love it, uh, because that is what, in my opinion, non-profits should have been in the United States when that entity was formalized as a tax entity was all of that conveyance of distributing power rather than centralizing it. Now the follow-up question, I'm going to ask you, because it's something that's gotten me personally in trouble, like to the point where I was pulled aside at one point and said, Tracy, the lawyers are looking at what you are saying right now. And I can tell the context in which that happened, but a lot of technology platforms, a lot of technology, application developers, and a lot of technology distributors will simply say giving technology to a nonprofit is a enough, but I don't think that's true. I think we need to look at the outcomes that giving that technology enables and therefore, are there a subset of otherwise legally designated, or even functionally designated institutions that should not receive this stuff because they are doing things like enabling democratic backsliding in the United States or enabling the taking away of rights from folks, either immigrants or LGBT folks.
Speaker 3 00:24:02 I, um, you know, I would say that that, um, hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of employees at corporations in the U S would agree with you. We saw that, um, when they put pressure on the companies that they work with, to be more inclusive, to work, to support community efforts around black lives matter. And when they were upset that their donation couldn't get matched or their dollars for doers sort of volunteer to donation effort, didn't get matched because it wasn't a formalized non-profit. We shot in the political arena actually with some of the packs and the news of who some of those packs supported and, and what those. So I think we're seeing that people want a greater degree of flexibility and not just to say nonprofit equals good, not a nonprofit, you know, is like, nice, nice neighborhood bakes you, you know, and, and nothing else.
Speaker 3 00:25:03 And I think we need, you know, I think what we, I think this is, is a hard problem that deserves our attention. I don't think it's anybody's fault that we haven't solved it, you know, I think, but I think it's a hard problem that deserves our attention. Or we have to look at ways where we treat your civil society less as a, some of the activities and statuses and conferred trust that comes from a variety of ways so that we can have a more sophisticated way of saying, this is who I mean to give to than just a nonprofit. So if you, as a corporation say, you know what, uh, we don't want to be giving to anybody that enables democratic backsliding. You ha you have a way of saying that it isn't just mountains of research and one person's subjective opinion, right? Because that's a problem that isn't scalable, maybe scalable for some foundations, but it's not, it's not, it's not scalable, but again, I think this is a place where some of the modern technologies, the ability to provide user feedback, um, gives us more measures.
Speaker 3 00:26:13 And I, I have been thinking a lot about how sort of, what we use in finance can be modeled, like, like finding like credit scores and credit score. Isn't just about whether you have a job or not. What do you pay your bills on time or not your age where you live police record? You know, all those things are add up to saying, should I get a credit card or not? What should that limit be? You know, it's, it's not one of them, why can't we take some of those same models and apply it to civil society? So we say like, yeah, having a status meet for me as a corporation or whatever, I'm a little bit risk averse. I'm going to require that you have civil society status. Okay. But I'm also going to use these other things to balance it. That don't, that that maybe we can start to automate and make a more, my goal is that we make a more flexible supply chain that can get more resources to more organizations.
Speaker 3 00:27:13 And that's hard for us. The, the, my colleagues in the world of fiscally sponsored organizations, you know, would say, but you got and say to me and should, but you guys, aren't enabling that giving. And it's like, well, right, because it's not just about suddenly turning on a spigot, it's about getting the community of givers to agree to a set of standards that allows us to extend, to giving. And what we've done is used this nonprofit status as the proxy standard and nothing else. And now let's move on, let's move on and have more standards that enable more giving so that we can operationalize those things. We have to do some hard work to operationalize them, but the bigger hard work is in the community so that we can say, this is what it means to trust that this organization is who they say they are. And this is how we understand their behavior in the community, from the other people in the community with them.
Speaker 1 00:28:07 And by virtue has sort of close the circle on this. If I understand this completely by virtue of the fact, because one could make a very good reasonable case that a credit score for example is a, is a very closed technology, right? And it enables systems of power, but by virtue of hindering this on democratic and transparent technology, rather than proprietary technology, the idea being that this next evaluative measure is then therefore better representative of actual need rather than just perpetuating another system of power.
Speaker 3 00:28:47 I hope so. I think that's what we can get to. And I think the models, I mean, you're right about credit score in the way that I described him getting mortgages, getting all those things. And certainly in, for anybody that's read, um, you know, weapons of mass destruction, um, you know, there's a great section in there that talks about how the lack of transparency about that system and the closed loop for that system was used to deliberately exclude people. Right? So,
Speaker 1 00:29:13 So that's kinda what I was drawing from.
Speaker 3 00:29:17 So you're absolutely, I agree with you. I think there are a lot of models though, in newer FinTech that are being applied to saying, how do you provide the services of a bank to people that have not been able to access a bank? And how can you use these technologies to say, okay, that person could never access a bank, still pay their debts regularly. And the community knows that, and then use that to be a credit score in and of itself, or provide an on-ramp to the traditional banking system that lets them start with a history, even if they didn't have a history, if they chose to have it. And so when I think about those models, I think probably what, well, not probably, definitely we don't want to replicate the lending practices of, you know, 1970s, us. Um, and probably we want to look at these newer technologies.
Speaker 3 00:30:12 We want to put an emphasis on transparency, but we also want to put an emphasis on community voice. And that, that doesn't come as, as we've seen in this country with a very recent Supreme court decision, putting an emphasis on community voice also comes with a set of problems and, and, and we have to be vigilant. These aren't things that didn't get solved. These are issues, democracy. Isn't something that's like, okay, we've got it. You know, it's something that we have to be vigilant about. And I think that's why we need this expansive view on civil society. And that's why it needs to be about inclusiveness and extension. And I think that's, yeah, I mean, you know, we're, we're working on this. We have a working group actually, uh, of corporations and foundations and individuals out in the world around expanding the philanthropic supply chain.
Speaker 3 00:31:06 That's trying to say, okay, what are the pressures to give to, you know, other kinds of organizations, what are the things that are stopping us? And, you know, what, what, what do we need to address those things? And, you know, and in a way that we can operationalize and scale it, not, not on day one, but in a way that we can get there. But I don't think the answer is going to be one, you know, bright person coming up with it. It's going to be the community agreeing to a study of standards that lets us extend trust in new ways.
Speaker 2 00:31:44 Tim, you're on mute. As you keep talking. The, like the complexity of what you're talking about just keeps like hitting me in waves. Like, yes, you want this to be a democratic process and you want to have local voices included. And at the same time, what you've done is guaranteed that local majority's are always going to overwrite minority voices, you know, so, and then you start, you enter a world in which funding, you know, comes with agendas from outside and crosses borders and geographies that may not be aligned to the best interest of localities. And so, I mean, it just, I am so glad to not have those problems to think about. And I'm also so glad to know that this is part of what you're looking at in supply chain, because I mean, when it comes down to it, I'm very grateful for the fact that there is a checkbox that allows me to say, okay, I know that this one's in that one's not that efficiency out of decision-making, you know, is so incredible. And at the same time, when you think about credit scores, like that is the least distributed ledger system that there is. And, and for good reason as well. I mean, all of this is just like, I don't even know how you make sense of that. Um, yeah. You know, um, thanks for introducing us to a level of problems that is just, um, so complex. Um,
Speaker 3 00:33:10 But that's why we have to run towards it. Yes. You know, we, we know that there are going to be millions of people crossing the borders because of climate change because of war because of repressive regimes, you know, over the next 20 years, we, we know that there are going to be areas of the world that become uninhabitable and they're going to cross borders and we need, we need more sophisticated ways of saying, you know, this is an entity doing good. Then I'm rooted in a particular place in a particular country and had enough time to get all of those forms filled out and have the legal presence to get all of those forms filled out. You know, like we got to do it. We don't have a choice.
Speaker 2 00:33:48 The, um, the bitter irony on that with privilege and power is just knowing that much. So many of the reasons for the migrations start with externalities, like those are externalities to, you know, decisions that powerful people have made that, you know, are five steps removed in terms of consequence. And so it, it, you know, um, I just think that, that, that is a hard reality to just look at and recognize. I also just want to, um, you know, in, in thinking through the, the ways that geography and, you know, distributed systems work, you're exactly right, that those formal legal structures you can maybe get to NGO outside of. Non-profit like in terms of, you know, classification, I will say the institutions that are the longest running that I've done the most around charity work for the longest amount of time, our faith institutions, which is, which is ironic because in an increasing it may mean increasingly globalized world.
Speaker 2 00:34:58 The problems created by faith institutions are also becoming more widely recognized. This is coming from a person that has a long history of involvement with faith institutions. And, and, you know, I, I look at my checkered past of what that looks like. And at the same time recognize it is one of the most consistent funding sources. It is, it is tied to some of the most important public benefit. Good. And it comes with its own set of externalities. Um, I just think that, that, you know, that again, to, to speak to the question of problems and complexity like that just introduces a whole other level and it can't be ignored. These institutions are generating a lot of public good and public harm. Um, I'm, I'm curious what that has looked like as you've thought about those structures, um, in, in the work that you're doing. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:35:53 I mean, the place I'll start is at personally, I'm convinced that I would not have one of my brothers without the Mormon church. He Mormon missionaries gave him a lifeline when he needed it. And that church provided ongoing community and support because they cared about the people inside their community, as, um, as, uh, uh, Manish lesbian, as I like to refer to myself, I would not be welcomed in that church. So I'm welcome in my brother's home. And I'm welcome in the community that he's a part of. So I think it's, it's even more complex because there's not one answer to that question. We can't look at the top level and say, well, this is what the leader at the top says. And therefore everybody that's affiliated is going to be acting that out. And I think this is, you know, showing up on a, on a, like I said, on a personal level, I see the, I I'm so thankful that that church exists and those missionaries knocked on his door that day.
Speaker 3 00:36:57 And, um, you know, and I see the complexity of course, uh, around the world that you were talking about, um, you know, the place that we've bumped up against this the most is with hunger in the United States. So we've long had a little app that we've built that is near and dear to my heart called range that shows the locations of summer meal programs for school, age youth in the United States school age, youth schools are not just a place where we deliver education in the U S that's where, you know, millions of young people get a meal. That's right.
Speaker 2 00:37:35 That was one of the concerns with the pandemic is absolutely.
Speaker 3 00:37:39 Absolutely. And when school shut down for the summer, or we go from having, you know, roughly a hundred thousand spots, public schools, um, where you can get a meal with no stigma, you're just going to school, you know, um, that's not true. Is there a stigma attached, but, you know, with, with, with less sits in the place that you're showing up every day, you know, it's, it's doing all of those things to having roughly 40,000 locations across the United States that may or may not all be open at the same time may or may not be open every day of the week. And aren't a place that you're expected by law to be at, or a certain number of hours. Every weekday, many of those places are churches and other religions. Many of them are churches. Um, and other rules that religious institutions in the United States, what we saw when we started talking, when we made this app and started talking to groups, is that, um, they were worried what, what they saw when they run headlines is that LGBTQ youth do not want to get food at churches because they have a particular view of a church that may be based on their lived experience.
Speaker 3 00:38:51 It may be based on media, you know, that sort of top level that without my brother, I would have of the Mormon church, um, you know, and so they didn't want to go there. So they were, they were talking to us, I went, we couldn't implement this at this time, but we're looking at it again of how do people say no, this church is a kind of church you're thinking of, but this church is not, you can go there, you're going to meet, get a meal. Nobody's going to convert you. I mean, the law in the United States says, if you're doing these food programs, you can evangelize before. That doesn't mean that's how it plays out or how it feels to a kid.
Speaker 1 00:39:28 There's no enforcement mechanism whatsoever.
Speaker 3 00:39:32 Yeah. But there are a million ways to apply that pressure, that it can be the posters on the wall, in the room that you're thinking doesn't have to be, you know what ha like, anyhow, so the, um, you know, I think that's a great example of a place where we it's, you're not going to get that because some enforcement agent for the state of Pennsylvania shows up at your Baptist church on one day, because you're gonna meet up for their visit. That's right.
Speaker 1 00:40:01 That's exactly.
Speaker 3 00:40:02 Um, you're going to get that because kids are saying to other kids, this is don't, don't go here and do, do go here because you have a system that allows peers to say, as a group, this is what's important to us. So when I say it's safe, you can trust it's safe,
Speaker 1 00:40:20 Which is just capturing the communication mechanisms that already have, and do exist between these networks of young people and homeless folks. And a lot of things like
Speaker 3 00:40:35 Facebook, yeah.
Speaker 1 00:40:39 Harvest their data by the way, and harvest their data. And
Speaker 3 00:40:43 So it's, if we can figure out how to do it to, you know, fund Facebook, why like for God's sakes, let's apply that to, you know, kids having lunch in peace.
Speaker 1 00:40:54 And this has always existed. You know, like this goes back to even during the depression, there were ways that folks who were homeless and riding the rails, there was a whole symbol, logical alphabet that folks can use to communicate the safety of spaces and places that just went right under the radar of everybody else. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 00:41:18 And the other, the other piece I want to throw in here is that those communities, there, there are informal community structures in place that don't get recognized that are incredibly effective. I think about the nomadic street youth on Haight. And one of my friends worked with, um, like went to a prestigious university and then came out to San Francisco and put on street clothes and, you know, lived among those nomadic streets for years getting to know them and, um, being mentored by them. They were shut down with a PDA, like, you know, like a handspring, trying to make appointments with when she just had a lot to learn. And this is one of my best friends. He said, um, one time, one of his mentors named Joe had lived down the street for years. It was like, Hey, I'm hungry. Let's go to the fridge.
Speaker 2 00:42:09 And my friend was like, what do you mean? And they went to, you know, that McDonald's, that was right at the end, by the park, right across the street. From there, this series of magazine racks, and three in like the third one, you just opened it. And it was all the tea, you know, leave a half a burrito, take a half a burrito spot that they would just leave food for each other if they had more than they needed. And they would go get it. If they didn't have enough, this community was taking care of itself. And, you know, I was working in churches, in San Francisco at that time. And all of this was, you know, invisible to us. These structures did not, it, it didn't look like these, these worked. And so, um, and just to say my, um, as the, as a, you know, a person that was raised homophobic and then has a lesbian daughter, like I now get it in a way that it was so invisible to me before I didn't, you know?
Speaker 2 00:43:08 And so, um, yeah, when I think about, if, if my daughter needed a place to go for help, you're S like, it's so important to know that it's safe and it gets at this question of belonging. Yeah. That I think is at the center of all of this in almost a mystical metaphysical way that just, you can, you can get away from because of the technology. You can make it all about bits and bytes and not realized that it is about community and about belonging. And if you can't, if you don't create places for people to belong, like all of the rest falls apart.
Speaker 3 00:43:49 Yeah. A thousand percent. Yes. And I think this gets at this, the people in the community that you were talking about and showing where the fridge was for food, they found a way to confer trust, right. Um, uh, because they couldn't trust the dominant systems like stamp of trust. So they found a way to confer. And I think we have to recognize that that still exists, that that's still here. It doesn't mean the trust conferred by the dominant system where we're a legally recognized NGO. It doesn't mean that that has no value. It does have value. I can take funding, I can move things around, but we have to have more extensive ways of conferring that so that we can, if, if the people in that community wish plug resources into that. And if they say at some point, Hey, it would benefit us to formalize.
Speaker 3 00:44:43 We give them a way to formalize that gives them all the credit of all the impact that they've had for all of those years, if they're not starting out without the credit of that impact. Right. And I think, I think that's the hard problem that we need to be running towards next, recognizing that at the national level, we're not a very stable world recognizing that, you know, the problems that we're facing are complex and no one's kind of actor. We need each other, you know, we need each other at these big global aggregate levels and we need each other at the human level. We just finished this. We just published a study from a global data handling survey that we did last August. And, you know, what we saw that organizations relied on peer recommendations, you know, for what
Speaker 1 00:45:35 Technologies
Speaker 3 00:45:36 They would choose. Right. And that's the story that you were just providing. We're doing interviews with food security organizations, um, throughout the United States, a qualitative research project. And what we found out is they want to talk to each other and want to talk to each other, and we can mediate some of that with technology, you know, w we can do, we can do those things. We can support those things. That is the, the promise of something like Facebook. But instead of, you know, you asked me at the beginning about what does it mean that we're a nonprofit organization? What it means is that, you know, what is valuable on Facebook or Amazon or these other things is the aggregate behavior of all of these folks.
Speaker 1 00:46:20 That's right. It's about global inefficiencies have been talking about this for a long time on this podcast about all the solutions right now are geared towards solving micro inefficiencies, not global inefficiencies. And we see these things play themselves out as business partners and implementers for technology where like, well, golly, there's a ton of global inefficiencies. We see across all of our projects that we don't have enough power or ability to do anything about by virtue of how we need to exist. Right.
Speaker 3 00:46:56 Yeah. But we have this company that is enormous, that has made a living off of me, recommending a movie to my friends.
Speaker 1 00:47:05 Yeah,
Speaker 3 00:47:06 Exactly. Figure out how to do that. Then we, we, that is a hyper-local fragmented market, you know, and Marnie is the only one, that's an expert at that. But what makes that valuable is they're able to slice and dice me in a bunch of different ways and say, well, if you're this age and you live in this place and you like this movie, then you're probably going to buy this car, select, show that up.
Speaker 1 00:47:29 And what's amazing to me is during the course of this conversation, I've just kind of been tracking some things. And now it is we, we, we opened up with the idea that we need better mechanisms that indicate the true impact of the work being done. We, we have never once first talked about the things like SDGs or ESGs, or, you know, any of the three-letter logos that now exist, like ABCs PCPs. That's probably dating me anyhow. You know? Um, so like one, clearly those are not necessarily the answers we might think they are. But what we have talked about a lot are indicators of enablement. We've talked about indicators of democratic enablement. We've talked about indicators of community participation. We've talked about indicators of inclusivity, right? And, and I think this is where the hard work needs to get done because those terms, democracy, inclusion, participation themselves have different definitions based on the subjective realities of our lived lives. So what the problem that we're seemingly trying to solve here is how can we align to a community defined understanding of these terms that enable us to better evaluate real impact?
Speaker 3 00:49:10 Yeah. And I think that is the conversations we need to engage in, and we need to acknowledge that democracy is hard and messy. You know, it's not easy. It's not one viewpoint. I can't go into a bubble and just talk to the people in Berkeley that agree with me. You know, you, you have to be able to extend outside of your circle and engage in the mess of democracy to even get to any hope of inclusiveness. And it's not about changing people's mind. It's about having a space. I mean, I don't, I don't think it's, I think we have to have a way, um, as a, yeah, I think we have to have a way where we can say, actually, if you're trying to take rights away from people, that's a problem. You know, if you're identifying people as a group and you're trying to take away rights from humans, that's a problem because taking away rights from human has to, has to be super considered.
Speaker 3 00:50:13 There are some groups, or perhaps that's what you should do. There may be some individuals that you, that you need to, but, but if you're a lawyer, you can't enshrine that those have to be the extreme exceptions. You know, you, you can't incline that we have to be enshrining in the other direction of extending of extending rights, extending inclusivity. And I think we have to accept that doing that is hard and messy, and it doesn't happen because we snap our fingers. It happens because we keep working on it and we go into unfamiliar places and we're willing to take risks. I mean, we started this talking about some of the giving, the civil society that, that conservative view, I don't want to take any risks. So I'm going to go with the checkbox, because that provides me with the protection I need. We see are seen that fall away. As people are saying, actually, that legal non-profits, it's something really awful. And you corporation gave to them and your employee is super pissed off about it.
Speaker 1 00:51:10 Exactly. That was the context in which I was informed. Lawyers are looking at what you're doing, Tracy. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 00:51:20 And also, I just want to put a plug in that rights are the lowest bar of civil. <inaudible> not even talking about what's best for someone else. Just talking about the lowest.
Speaker 3 00:51:37 I have hunger in the United States,
Speaker 2 00:51:40 Really. We're not like, and that, I think that is, uh, I'm strange. I don't know why this conversation has left me hopeful instead of depressed, but it has. And some of that money, I think, is your passion. And just knowing that, so knowing that a group of people are thinking about this and that they have a supply chain in mind. So I think about this and I don't, I, I'm not, we're not the last mile on distribution for software to some of the world's smallest non-profits. And, and the fact that you, you are that your title is community impact officer, and that you care about the belonging of people, distributed rights, distributed, ledgers, and ways to protect the rights of, uh, it brings me hope to know that that is being thought about because it does require thought intention and leadership. Um, yeah, those are overwhelming problems. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:52:37 Thank you for that. I appreciate that. I will say, you know, I, I need to put myself and sort of my organization on notice a little bit, because we need to not just think about it. We need to be able to figure out how to act on it. And I think that's the hard part is taking this big knotted problem and being able to say like, okay, we can start solving this one. We can start solving this one and not get stuck behind the, everything this yes. So that we don't make a motion.
Speaker 2 00:53:06 I would see the paralysis being so easy on that because there's no good way forward except not moving forward. Right.
Speaker 3 00:53:13 Yeah, exactly. What kills me.
Speaker 1 00:53:15 This is the thing that this needs is money, time and space. And I swear that the last thing that if you are any, given it company looking to do quote unquote charity with your software, the last thing that it would occur to them to fund is the money, time and space necessary to do this because it's always connected to the marketing or profit margins of the institution doing the giving. Right? But like, this is where I see a cognitive dissonance between what particularly large corporate it says it's trying to solve and what it actually does, because I don't understand why you don't have 15 or $20 million and all the resources necessary from every single major software company on earth to solve this problem, because this would benefit this. Isn't the, like let's solve quarter for sales. This is let's solve 2150s existence problem,
Speaker 3 00:54:27 Because I think it's hard. I mean, this is the place where I really do understand those companies also have huge bank accounts to ch to, to, you know, monitor and it can be hard for them to convince, to give to nonprofits, you know, let alone than saying, Hey, I want you to give to a group of people in Guatemala that I'm pretty sure are trying to say for us the think tank with no. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. But I think if we can think about it as extending the supply chain, and I think if we can think about it as, so where do we start? You don't start. When you extend any supply chain, you don't go to the harvest market first. So great. Let's identify fiscally sponsored organizations and let's start there because they do have an alternate tax code.
Speaker 1 00:55:18 Well, it's just not one. We know how to work with natively. That's right.
Speaker 3 00:55:22 So let's start there and we have to make some of our systems or too rigid. So we have to put those in place on ourselves. That's why we've been involved in this growth capital campaign to make our systems be able to be more flexible and adaptive. We've been trying to get at 11.5 million. So close to the number you just mentioned.
Speaker 1 00:55:41 But every time I do the math on this to just create the entity, to do the work seems to come between 10 and 50 million and then to do the work seems to come between two and 10 billion every time I do the math.
Speaker 3 00:55:56 Absolutely. So I think we have to say, how do we extend? And then let's extend from there and go to tribal organizations. That's another place where we can identify tribal organizations and we have a way of doing that. Great. It's two problems off. Now let's extend to, you know, human rights defenders. Um, you know, let's just, let's extend to, and let's find an external expert. Uh, somebody like an Internews to be the chap because they already are. Let's extend to LGBTQ oriented groups in places where that's illegal and let's look at, I think they're called outright in the city and thing that they're, they're an expert. Let's let, let's let them help. Because again, we have the technology now that we can do that. The help desk ticket that says is this a real org, instead of going to a staff person that gets a check that says tech soup up on the side, why can't it go to one of the folks at work there?
Speaker 3 00:56:49 And they say, yep, Nope, thumbs up. That's good. So I think, I think we can get there. I think we have to be willing to move it in spaces. It, you know, and it, and extend it. And so that we can, and, and allow all givers to identify their risks tolerance, um, and then choose where they want to be on that spectrum based on their risk tolerance, around different issues. So we have to give them the flexibility to give who they need to be giving to. And, um, you know, they do have shareholder values. They, they have to do. And I think we can also, we also have to figure out that's part of why we have to figure out how to extend it to foundations and people whose, whose, you know, th their responsibility is a different one and maybe set up funds that support this. So, so other entities could administer them.
Speaker 2 00:57:40 Marty. I'm so appreciative. You are in cloud incentive in your calculations, because I think as I think nonprofits are so values driven that they often just leave incentive out. And as an economist, that's like an architect, pretending gravity doesn't exist. You have to, you have to say, why does it, why is this worth doing? And, you know, um, and so I, I just, I love the examples that you're bringing up that are practical, that are not starting with the most, you know, the furthest away from the supply chain, but are looking at some, you know, some winnable, uh, pieces that are, you know, in the informal market, but still identifiable and mostly recognizable to everybody. So, yeah.
Speaker 1 00:58:26 Thank you for landing that exactly where I was hoping you might, because, uh, one of my, one of the things that I'm really good at sometimes is I, like, I know what I'm seeing when I see it. And I'm like, I'm pointing at this thing and screeching at it like a monkey saying, this is something we need to pay attention to, but I don't always know why. And it was that itemization of things that you just gave that has landed me with the most hope coming in, out of this conversation, because it's like, okay, for anybody listening and who really wants to do this for your corporate giving structure, what are the next things that are easily attainable? And what does that sort of like hierarchy look like? Well, that's that bullet point list that you just gave, you know, like I could scream at it and be like, there's gotta be something there, but like, that was it. Thank you deeply. Thank you,
Speaker 2 00:59:22 Marnie. Thanks for your time. Thank you so much for joining our show. Um, it was be talking about that.
Speaker 1 00:59:30 Oh, well, it's usually the feedback that people give us. So thank you. I think,
Speaker 2 00:59:36 Um, yeah, it's really great to, to get to know a little bit more about who you are and see some of the work that you do and, and to view the world from your desk, I think is just really, really helpful, including all the music behind your desk. Yeah. Thank you so much for your time. Thank
Speaker 1 00:59:52 You so much, Marty. Thank you very
Speaker 2 00:59:54 Much. I'm Tim lucky.
Speaker 1 00:59:57 I'm Tracy. Crohn's Zack and you've been listening to why it matters.
Speaker 2 01:00:02 Why it matters is a thought leadership project of now it matters a strategic services firm offering advising and guiding to nonprofit and social impact organizations.
Speaker 1 01:00:10 If you like what you've heard, please subscribe, check out our playlist and visit us at now. It matters.com to learn more about us.
