Justin is Funraise's CEO, a co-founder, and a bad-ass, experienced nonprofit fundraiser. Like a true fundraiser-turned-founder, he breaks down the concepts behind Funraise's mission everywhere he can make nonprofits' voices heard.

Billion Dollar Headlines!

That's the theme for this week's Nonstop Nonprofit NOW episode.

Here are the cliff notes:

• 💰 The Ford Foundation pioneers a new and unusual way to double down on their yearly $500M+ charitable giving.
• 🤯 Jack Dorsey pledges $1B to charity and makes it easy for us ALL to monitor his commitment. 
• 💯 Funraise announces it will gift its software to nonprofits on the frontlines of fighting racial injustice.

Enjoy the show!

‍Can't listen to the video? Scroll down to read the transcript.

Transcript

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Nonstop Nonprofit NOW! Today, I'm excited to talk about three major things that have happened in the nonprofit community over the last week or so.

First up, some major disruption happening in the foundation world. Second, what mega transparency looks like, thanks to Jack Dorsey over at Twitter. And lastly, I'm excited to talk about a FREE offering for nonprofits working on the frontlines of racial injustice.

So let's jump in to number one. Earlier this week, Ford Foundation announced that it would double down on its commitment of philanthropy dollars. Normally, it gives $500,000,000+ a year to charity. And after receiving frantic calls from its grantees, the foundation took a very unique approach and many others, some of the largest in the country, have followed suit. As many of you nonprofiteers must know, over a trillion dollars today is endowed through foundations and typically in times of economic downturn, foundations stop giving to protect their endowments. But what Ford Foundation has done is they're doubling down on their efforts. They've borrowed a billion dollars and we'll distribute that over the next two years to its grantees on top of it's already $500,000,000+ giving to charities. Why is this interesting? If you are funded by a foundation, you should really think about calling the foundation, talking to the individual that you interact with and seeing if they are doing anything similar to help you through these hard times.

The second thing that I wanted to share was something that I found pretty amazing, which was Jack Dorsey giving a billion dollars to fight Covid-19 and other important issues. But he took it a step further and he made this tracker using Google Sheets. Now, I think this level of transparency in which he is promoting how he is giving is a really great example to nonprofit organizations on easy and effective ways to be transparent about the impact you are making. So I think this parallel is super fascinating. But as an organization or as an individual, you can scroll through and see all of Jack Dorsey's gifts and why he's giving to these nonprofits. This is incredibly transparent, something that's normally hard to do from high net worth major givers like Jack. And so kudos to him for setting the bar high. But also, again, back to nonprofits, if you're thinking that we have to have technology to be transparent in these ways, think again. All Jack did was use a Google Sheet and it has become all the talk in the nonprofit space.

The last thing I wanted to highlight today was my company Funraise, we want to join the fight on the front lines. And so we will be giving Funraise out for FREE to nonprofits that are on the frontlines of racial injustice in this country. And so if that's you or if you know someone that is running an organization that is fighting this injustice in our country today, please let me know. You can message me in the comments, you can send me a D.M. We'd love to learn about these organizations that we can provide them with the infrastructure they need to scale and to continue delivering that important impact.

That's it for me today on Nonstop Nonprofit NOW. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, stay safe and peace out!