Latest / We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits / 246. The Kiva.org Story + Leveraging the Power of Crowdfunding - Chris Tsakalakis

Transcript

246. The Kiva.org Story + Leveraging the Power of Crowdfunding - Chris Tsakalakis · We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits

• 0:00
  Becky Endicott: Hey, I'm John.
• 0:00
  Becky Endicott: And I'm Becky.
• 0:03
  Jonathan McCoy: And this is the we are for good podcast.
• 0:05
  Becky Endicott: Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more work, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.
• 0:14
  Jonathan McCoy: We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.
• 0:23
  Becky Endicott: So welcome to the good community. We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropist, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
• 0:34
  Jonathan McCoy: So let's get started. Oh, Becky, is this really happening?
• 0:38
  Becky Endicott: I know. Oh, my gosh, you guys, Kiva is here on the show. Today, we are beyond psyched.
• 0:45
  Jonathan McCoy: I mean, this was probably my first nonprofit crush Kiva. I remember discovering in the early 2000s of like, How could something so incredible exists and is pushing the sector from the technology perspective, but also from the beginning, threading storytelling and empathy on a global level. And they've done that really well for a really long time. And in fact, this last year was their biggest year ever. We're talking Kiva who gave out $224 million in loans, microfinance loans last year. So it is our huge honor to have the man behind Kiva right now. Mr.
• 1:16
  Jonathan McCoy: Chris Sacca Lacus on the podcast. He's the CEO of Kiva, but has an incredible journey that I hope he threads into this conversation today, because he has had his own impressive career where he was the CEO of the vino, the world's largest online wine marketplace. But he also served as the president of StubHub, a little organization may have heard,
• 1:36
  Becky Endicott: thank you for those concert tickets and sporting tickets. I really appreciate it, Chris.
• 1:41
  Jonathan McCoy: But Chris, you know, has had this business acumen. He's led these incredible corporations, but he has decided to channel his passion for good as he stepped into lead Kiva last year. He comes from an incredible, you know, background where he got his bachelor's in economics from the Wharton School. So we know that his pedigree is, you know, top notch over here today. But today, we're gonna bask in everything, crowdfunding, really unpacking what this love that Gen Z really has for this, but just talk to an expert in the field that's going to thread together, you know, how does business principles really apply and push us in the nonprofit sector to dream bigger and innovate more. And so Chris, it is our honor and honestly huge imposter syndrome to say, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for being here.
• 2:21
  Chris Tsakalakis: Thank you so much for having me down. And Becky, it's great to meet you guys. And I appreciate your your interest in Kiva.
• 2:27
  Jonathan McCoy: Yeah, well, we appreciate you being here. We'd love to just get to know your story. You know, tell us a little bit about growing up what channeled your passion and then talk about your transition over to Kiva last year?
• 2:36
  Chris Tsakalakis: Yeah, so I grew up in suburban Chicago, my parents both emigrated to the United States, from Greece, just before I was born. So I grew up in a household where we spoke a lot of Greek. We ate a lot of food. And I saw my parents live out the American dream. My my dad was electric, electrician had his own store in Greece. But when he came to the US, he really had nothing at a start from scratch. So he was a laborer at a steel mill at first and then did maintenance work, eventually found his way into the electrical union, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. And, you know, he became an apprentice again, in his 20s. And then he was he became a journeyman, then they had his own business. And when he started his business, he got a line of credit from the local bank. And he used that to build his business. My brother and I worked for him, many, many summers and weekends. And by building that business, he then started to take out loans to do small real estate development, small little shopping centers, strip malls type of thing. And that's what he was able to do.
• 3:43
  Chris Tsakalakis: And because of that work, he was able to send his three kids to college. And my brothers and I were the first in our family to finish high school, let alone go to college. So that's, that's the story that I came up from and the inspiration that I have, and part of their story, part of my my parents already part of my dad's story was access to capital, that when he wanted to build a business, when he wanted to start investing in real estate, he had a local bank Bridgeview bank, that would give him money, give him loans, and it ended up being a very good relationship on both sides. And my dad always said to us, you got to spend money to make money, money makes the world go round. Those are the things that he taught to us. And those are the things that he learned by being an entrepreneur in the United States.
• 4:29
  Becky Endicott: The irony of the full circle nature of your dad's story to what you're doing right now is just so heartening, and I love it very much. And I have to tell you, I feel like this is maybe my third or fourth time I've prefaced a story with this.
• 4:45
  Becky Endicott: But John came into my office one day about 15 years ago, and he said, I gotta show you something. And he pulled up Kiva for me and he said, and he explained what it is and of course he's showing me the marketing and in immediately, you know, I set up my account, and I end up loving the fact that I can pick the person that I'm going to benefit. And even if I mean, however, many years later, here I am. And the irony of the fact that I supported a rural Ugandan tea farmer who a 55 year old man with my first Kiva loan is so acute to me, because we now have a beloved member of our community now, who's very active, and we're for good Simon Kuranda. Hi, Simon, who is in rural Uganda, providing micro finance loans to women, specifically, because he understands that in his village, that women, once they get their businesses up and running, it creates a very systemic effect.
• 5:46
  Becky Endicott: And so I'm kind of having my deja vu as well, as I'm going through the fact that you all have been doing this for so long, you had this vision before anybody else. But I want to take it back a little bit for people who may not know Kiva, like, explain your wonderful mission to us. And what is the history and what makes you also unique,
• 6:10
  Chris Tsakalakis: I'm happy to do that. I just want to be clear, I'm not going to take credit for Kivas awesome history, I only joined in April.
• 6:15
  Chris Tsakalakis: So I want to be clear that I, I stand on all the hard work of many dedicated people who made Kiva happen over the years. So key was started in 2005. The idea was to take this innovation of micro lending micro loans, where you give a small loan to someone and support them. And couple that with technology use technology to really accelerate and augment the amount of micro lending you can do. So Kiva was one of the first platforms to do crowdfunding, the idea of taking in money from lots of individuals to fund a loan. So if you come to kiva.org, you can lend as little as $25. And that's, that would contribute towards a $500 loan, let's say, and a bunch of other people would contribute that $25. So essentially, Kiva took one innovation, micro lending and coupled it with another innovation that we think we created, called crowdfunding.
• 7:08
  Chris Tsakalakis: And that's what Kiva has done.
• 7:11
  Chris Tsakalakis: And so since our start, starting in 2005, the Kiva platform has helped to fund $1.7 billion worth of loans to over 4.2 million borrowers in 76 countries. I mean, what
• 7:27
  Jonathan McCoy: a humbling level of impact. And I feel like, you know, it comes back and it kind of threads to the bigger story, that it's about unlocking capital, you know, for underserved populations, and just the financial services discrepancies that are felt worldwide, because you kind of speak to, you know, what is this unlock for the families that y'all fund? And I think it's interesting, your story was laced with like, this bank that had this relationship with your dad, right? It's just the infrastructure is not there.
• 7:54
  Jonathan McCoy: It's not even possible. So what is this unlock? And what does it mean for the average person that's getting this loan?
• 7:59
  Chris Tsakalakis: Yeah, so my dad had Bridgeview bank, but for most people, they don't have that financial resource available to them. There are 1.7 billion people around the world who are unbanked or underserved financially. And Kiva really exists to provide access to financial services to capital to money to the people who ordinarily wouldn't be able to.
• 8:21
  Chris Tsakalakis: So the way that we think of ourselves, and part of the reason we're a nonprofit is we fill in the gaps in the financial system, the entry level in the financial system, where people can't get a hand on the rung of the ladder, they can't even jump up to it. So we were trying to give them a hand up so that they can start with a loan from Kiba. And through that can start to move up in the sort of financial scale and have access to sort of standard banks that are out
• 8:49
  Becky Endicott: there. John, can you even imagine, like I'm having to rewire my brain right now, how you would have to adapt your life, if you did not have a bank, if you didn't have a credit card, if you I mean, the things that we just take for granted that are built in structures in first world countries. I just I applaud you and your team. And historically, everyone who's had this vision that's been carrying it forward and poured into it at any point at Kiva, because it is such a progressive, and inclusive way of looking at lifting others because we know that thriving businesses are going to make thriving communities, they're going to make more vibrant human beings, they're going to make richer families. And so the ripple effect of this, and I love that you backed the train all the way up in areas that frankly, I just have so much privilege I didn't even understand. So thank you for educating us about that. I'm really curious about how your past experiences in the tech space influence this approach to philanthropy and leadership that you're experiencing right now and how could listeners kind of apply these lessons learned that you've seen over on the for profit side that are translating? Now for Cuba. Yeah.
• 9:59
  Becky Endicott: So
• 10:01
  Chris Tsakalakis: this is my first time running a nonprofit.
• 10:05
  Becky Endicott: Welcome. Glad you're here.
• 10:07
  Chris Tsakalakis: Thank you. My previous experience with philanthropy was really as a as a board member and volunteer with American Heart Association, and early on in my career had a small startup that sold charity auction services. But we won't go into that because it's too long of a story. But what I see is, and the whole idea behind Kiva was let's apply technology and the ideas behind technology to this sector in order to maximize the impact that that we have. So one of the founding board members of Kiva is Reed Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, and most of my board are people in the tech industry.
• 10:46
  Chris Tsakalakis: Some of them also have experience in micro finance. But the idea behind it is let's use technology to really accelerate the impact that we have to maximize the impact that we have. So fundamentally, kiva.org is a marketplace, it's a place where we connect one side that has money and one side that needs money, let's put it that way as simply as possible. So eBay, where I worked before as marketplace, StubHub, where I was president for eight years, is a marketplace. So instead of having buyers and sellers, we have lenders and borrowers or investors and entrepreneurs, because the people who come to Kiva are coming to invest in their fellow human beings, they're coming to invest in humanity, one person at a time, like you said, they can pick every single borrower that they want to lend money to. And all of the money that they put into Kiva for that loan goes to that person goes for that loan, we asked separately for a donation to pay for Kivas operating costs. So unlike a lot of charities, where you you put money in, you don't know exactly where it goes on Kiva, you know that your money is going directly towards that loan. But getting back to your question about technology. The idea here is on the marketplace side of things like is how do we make sure that we have a product experience and a marketing experience that brings in as many new lenders and as many as much new money as possible. And that means really understanding who your customers are, that means having a seamless product experience, that means ultimately spending some money on marketing, we don't spend a lot right now, because we're still experimenting and building out a new product experience on Kiva. But all of those factors that make it engaging to use Twitter or to use your favorite game, there are elements of those things or to go to, you know, to EBIT to Amazon or some other marketplace. All of those elements are the ones that we're starting to build into this new product experience at Kiba.
• 12:39
  Becky Endicott: John, you're geeking out I can. I'm kisses.
• 12:42
  Becky Endicott: So you're going to
• 12:42
  Jonathan McCoy: have Reed Hoffman on the board. I mean, he's like one of the legends in my book. I mean, you don't see the walls. And I think that's in the short time that we've spent with you. I think that's a benefit of you coming in that you've seen the power of marketplaces and what they do to empower people and, and how technology can power that in a really unique way. And you have been doing this to a huge degree for the last 15 plus years. So I mean, speak to us about the future of philanthropy, because for you, it probably doesn't intimidate you, because you've been in this space. But we're talking to nonprofits that need to take that first brave step into embracing technology. Where do we start? You know, where do you encourage somebody to start with innovating in this space, especially around software and kind of movement?
• 13:59
  Chris Tsakalakis: I'm going to say something that's gonna sound really dumb. But start by having a website. What I found with a pandemic was at a bunch of local businesses say, hey, we created our own e commerce site for the first time I've been in E commerce since 96. So someone telling me in 2020, that they're creating their first e commerce site literally blew my mind. So start with the basics. You don't need to necessarily do everything online or have your entire organization run online, the way that we do. Kiva is very much an online organization, online business, despite the fact that we're a nonprofit.
• 14:34
  Chris Tsakalakis: Anyone who gives has to know about your organization, right, as a nonprofit. So it starts with, how do they get information, everyone gets information through the internet. So you have to manage your reputation. You have to have a website, you have to have a way for, for people to engage and to find information. Often nonprofits have treasure troves of information that they share.
• 14:54
  Chris Tsakalakis: You know, a site like Nami, the National Association for mental illness has huge resources. So in tech speak, that's, that's great for SEO is great for search engine optimization. So put that information out there.
• 15:08
  Chris Tsakalakis: People want it, they want to be able to get to it and access it.
• 15:11
  Chris Tsakalakis: It's a way to let them in and to understand the work that you're doing. So obviously take donations online, we see some of our colleagues taking crypto currency donations online, you know, there are things like that you can do. But ultimately, I think innovation doesn't have to be just about technology. It's really about doing things differently. And to do things differently. You really need to understand your customer and what you're trying to solve for Have them. For us. You know, our main customer are the borrowers the Kiva exists in order to help people in the world get access to capital. That's why we exist.
• 15:42
  Chris Tsakalakis: But the money that they get comes through lenders. So we really have to understand lenders, what they're looking for what they want, where they get information. And we're using that information, the research that we're doing with those folks to create different ways of presenting ourselves different product experience, those types of things. And those broad principles can be applied to any organization whether or not it's a nonprofit.
• 16:07
  Jonathan McCoy: Hey, friends, we've got to pause the podcast for a minute, we have some really exciting news to share.
• 16:12
  Becky Endicott: Yeah, we're partnering up with our friends at virtuous to co host this year's free responsive nonprofit summit on April 20, and 21st.
• 16:17
  Becky Endicott: And we want to see you there.
• 16:20
  Jonathan McCoy: So come and join 1000s of like minded forward thinking nonprofit leaders for two days at fresh insights, helpful workshops, and genuine conversations as we gather virtually from wherever you find yourself in the world.
• 16:32
  Becky Endicott: We're curating some amazing panels to help you build better systems and strategies to help you grow your impact. You may even recognize some of our past podcast guests and favorite thought leaders to
• 16:42
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• 17:18
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• 17:28
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• 17:44
  Becky Endicott: Some of the themes I just keep hearing you say is just this constant innovation, and always listening. And you're you're staying so in touch with the moment and I think I'm not at all surprised that you were sort of in beta, and then launch crowdsourcing as an actual method to gather community and to fundraise. And so I would love to just kind of talk about how you're using that future focus lens that is just innate to Kiva to reach this next generation of givers. What what are you doing with Gen Z? I mean, you're already leveraging this crowdsourcing, which is absolutely brilliant. Talk to us about Gen Z, and how you're bringing them in to this discussion, because there's already so hardwired and aligned with what you're doing. They seem like such a great avatar for you to actually target moving in, and probably generation alpha two, I would guess.
• 18:37
  Chris Tsakalakis: Yeah. So because he has been around since 2005, we have a core group of lenders who look more like me, a middle aged white man than the Gen Z years are out there. So we started asking ourselves, How can we start attracting this younger generation, we've done a bunch of research. And what we found were a couple of things.
• 18:52
  Chris Tsakalakis: One is the idea of being able to put your money where your mouth is to actually enable social impact, not just tweet about it, or post about it on Instagram, that's pretty powerful. We all want to change the world. But it's hard to know how to do that. And doing it in a group on a platform where we can show historically, we've made real impact. That's a pretty powerful proposition. The other thing that we found is that those younger generations are really interested in specific causes.
• 19:23
  Chris Tsakalakis: They really care about specific things. One, one area, of course, is sustainability and climate change. That's true, actually, across all generations. That's probably the number one cause that people are concerned about. But there are others. Of course, for us, it's gender equity, 80% of the loans on Kiva go to women, agriculture is a big sector. So there, there are many causes. And if you go to kiva.org, you can actually look for loans based on the cause that you're most interested in. The last aspect of it is making it easy. So the traditional way of going to Kiva is, as you said, Becky, you kind of read these borrower stories, and you kind of pick one borrower at a time, and lots of people like doing it that way.
• 20:05
  Chris Tsakalakis: But we also have a solution where if you decide, hey, I'm really interested in this cause we can start matching borrowers to the cause. And we can start auto lending, we can essentially pick the loans for you and make it easy for you to do at one time or to do it on a monthly basis. So we have a subscription service called monthly good that allows you to say, hey, I can put in $5 a month or $25 a month, and I'm interested in these causes and Kiba will then automatically match your cost and your dollars to the loans that that make the most sense.
• 20:36
  Chris Tsakalakis: And that's a way for anyone to be able to easily contribute and invest in their fellow human beings.
• 20:45
  Jonathan McCoy: Wow. Yeah, it's just so smart. Because I mean, we haven't even talked about this aspect of how Kiva is unique. But the whole repayment process. I mean, I remember, the first time I got the notification that you've been repaid for your loan, back in probably it probably was 2005 is really early on. It is such a disruptive platform, because I've got to imagine the repayment rate I see online is 97%. I mean, compared to any other loan that is just through the roof, right.
• 21:12
  Chris Tsakalakis: Certainly, compared to, I think, you know, loans in the US that are for people who are underserved have more like a 70% repayment rate.
• 21:20
  Jonathan McCoy: Yeah. So I think it speaks to this, that culture and gratitude that's just in this space, but also like, how cool is the culture of givers?
• 21:27
  Jonathan McCoy: You know, the people that choose to put this autopilot investment happening in I mean, I love that disruptive nature that you've created with that what? What was kind of your mindsets, philosophies behind launching a program like that? Because I do think some would challenge that.
• 21:42
  Jonathan McCoy: It's like putting it on autopilot, or you taking some of the decision making out, but I think it's so smart, because it's meeting the moment. Yeah,
• 21:48
  Chris Tsakalakis: so the idea behind monthly subscription was just to make it easier for you to do good. That's all. Yeah.
• 21:55
  Chris Tsakalakis: And one aspect of engaging and understanding who you're helping, and really understanding the impact of your loan is to pick each borrower upfront, which a lot of people want to do. And that's, that's great. But not everyone has the time or wants to do it that way.
• 22:09
  Chris Tsakalakis: So for those people and and for everyone else, it's really saying, okay, when that repayment is made, is really telling them the story. So what happened to my loan, no one comes to Kiva to make money, the lenders get 0% interest. And the repayment rate, as you said, is like 96 97%. So effectively, they get a negative 4% interest on their loan. So they're not doing it to make money. They're doing it to help humanity. And so what we want to do for all of our lenders, is to tell them the stories of these borrowers, here's what happened, not just that they repaid the loan. But here's what they did with the money. Here's how it changed their lives. Because that's what we're all about. We're doing this to help improve people's lives,
• 22:47
  Becky Endicott: I just want to compliment you, because I think it was so forward thinking of you to really hone in on Gen Z.
• 22:55
  Becky Endicott: And I feel like you nailed them very it like you just nailed who they are and what their motivations are, just by starting giving very early and getting that gift in their budget at a very small price point, gets them going, I have to speak to the level of trust that they must having you to get to allow you to relinquish control and say you make the decision, Kiva, I trust you. You put this where you think it's going to going to help most. But I'm curious about the storytelling piece. Tell me how you're going in on the back end.
• 23:31
  Becky Endicott: And and I would love just even a personal example, if you have one of how this is helping. How have you seen this play out and change someone's life on the other side of the world? And how have you taken that story and come back to the donor? Because I would think if I saw something like that, even at 25, I would think oh my gosh, I've got to replicate that feeling. I definitely want to keep giving that maybe I'll give a little bit more, because I'd like to help another person. I can just see the compounding nature of it. Love to hear your thoughts on storytelling.
• 24:02
  Chris Tsakalakis: Yeah. I mean, the stories of our borrowers are why people come to Kiva. It's, it's what you saw when you picked your first loan on Kiva, Becky, so for every loan that's on Kiva, there's a photo and there's a short story about what who this borrower is and what they're going to use the money for. This is a woman in Tajikistan who wants to improve her pigsty, because she's raising pigs. It is a woman in Zimbabwe who wants to start a bakery, and she wants to take her love of making food and actually make it into a business. It's a 16 year old in the United States who wants to start a cupcake business as a way to give back to her community, their stories like that. And we have that kind of brief story for each of these borrowers. When you come to Kiva, you have an explanation of what they're going to use the money for, why they need the money, we're trying to do a better job of is telling the after story, what happens after the loan is paid. And what's happened. So traditionally, our field partners have captured these stories, taken a photograph or in this short paragraph about each of the borrowers. But now we're we're experimenting with new ways to capture these stories, sending people out into the field to do video to do longer form interviews. And we're trying to we're starting to build that into our marketing and what we're doing on the site, so that the stories are more rich that you get more detail, because when we show these stories to people, they're like, this is great, but tell me more. They don't say that it's too long.
• 25:25
  Chris Tsakalakis: They want to know more of the detail. They want to know what's going on because again, it's about human connection. We are connecting one lender at a time to one borrower at a time. And each of those lenders wants to know, did I help? Did I? Did I help this person's life? That's all I really care about?
• 25:42
  Jonathan McCoy: Well, I think I mean, when you talk about these stories, your face lights up. I mean, I love that this next chapter of your life moving from probably the really fast paced tech world and all these acquisitions and big things happening. This, what does this last year look like for you personally, to step into a role that's so human, so empathetic in a time like this, that we could bring the world together?
• 26:04
  Jonathan McCoy: You know, in a divisive time in our own country? What does it look like for you stepping into this?
• 26:10
  Chris Tsakalakis: It's been really great in the last 10 months with COVID that I haven't been able to talk to, and connect with as many borrowers and partners as I'd like to. But the great thing about Kiva is, we have what asked employees, what, what are the top three things they like about Kiva, every single person I talked to says, one of three things, it's the mission is the people, it's a culture. And those are all kind of brought together because people come here for the mission, the mission of financial inclusion, to help the financial industry underserved.
• 26:38
  Chris Tsakalakis: And that attracts really great people, high quality people. And because of that, because of their connection to the mission, because of their dedication to the mission, the culture is one of figuring it out, figuring out problems getting things done.
• 26:51
  Chris Tsakalakis: And so that's been a really great thing to step into. And to be the beneficiary of all the great work that preceded me in the last 15 years. The other piece of it is, frankly, there's a lot of basic SEO work that happens at any company. So it's assessing the team and looking at the goals and making sure they're connected and make sure people are connected. But the number one reason people are here, it's really for the mission. And putting that front and center makes it a lot more interesting than selling wine or tickets like I did before.
• 27:21
  Becky Endicott: I think the thread that is so common, and all of this is just this, this desire to help humanity, I just keep hearing, I want to help, I want to I want to help another human. And I love that we don't know each other, but we see struggle, and we want to affect change through our philanthropy and, and I don't bring this up, because I feel like sometimes it's trite. But in this instance, it seems kind of poignant, you know that philanthropy means the love of mankind, and the fact that you've wrapped your entire mission and culture, I think the culture piece is actually really interesting. Because if you can have such a vibrant culture, you're going to attract the most brilliant minds, the most progressive thought leaders, the best innovators, we want Kiva, to have the greatest tech and storytelling, because the more that you scale, the more you're helping people. And so I just really commend you all, I just think this is an extraordinary organization. And I just think about your lived experience from growing up, as you know, this little boy in Chicago, working with your dad to now tell me about a story of philanthropy that you feel like has changed you or left some kind of an indelible imprint on your life,
• 28:37
  Chris Tsakalakis: in my mind, the borrowers that we have those entrepreneurs, all they want to do is make a better life for themselves and their families. I see them in the same way I saw my parents, they have the same ideal. And so it's that the kind of universality of that desire, and the necessity of needing some money to be able to do that. What's interesting to me beyond that is that we have lenders that come from all over also. So initially, when I joined, I said, Okay, I've worked at businesses where we take money, the buyers are people who have a lot of disposable income. And so I came in with this assumption, like people on Kiva, the lenders on Kiva are rich, and that's not true. They are rich in spirit.
• 29:24
  Chris Tsakalakis: They are rich in this love of humanity. But they come from all over and they have different experiences. We had one guy we spoke to who had been in the Peace Corps in Tajikistan, and so all of his loans went to people. Tajikistan is American guy, but he had this huge connection with that country and the time that he spent there.
• 29:39
  Chris Tsakalakis: And he was so grateful for the time that he spent there, that that's what it was about. And we had another guy who was in the UK, you know, this is just a kid, like a young kid, he wasn't making a lot of money, but he was saying like, he would wait to get a loan repayment, and maybe put another $5 in, in order to fund a loan. And he was really interested in doing that.
• 29:59
  Chris Tsakalakis: And this is not the type of person who had a lot of money to spare, but he had a lot of hearts. He had a lot of love for his fellow human beings. And that, to me, is probably the most interesting piece that I've discovered in the last year.
• 30:13
  Chris Tsakalakis: Obviously, the borrower stories are really, really powerful, but on the lender side, it's this mix of people. It's not just folks who have a lot of money.
• 30:24
  Chris Tsakalakis: It's really people who have a lot of love.
• 30:27
  Jonathan McCoy: I was beautiful.
• 30:27
  Jonathan McCoy: And I mean, I think it supports everything that we believe and talk about on this podcast, too.
• 30:32
  Jonathan McCoy: That's not just about the money.
• 30:32
  Jonathan McCoy: It's about believers and galvanizing that support. And that's how we're going to create the worldwide impact is getting everybody seen and plugged in to whatever level that they can do.
• 30:42
  Jonathan McCoy: Okay, Chris, I don't want to ask this because this is our last question. So I start to get really sad that our time's wrapping up. But what's one good thing you know, we ask all of our guests kind of distill down what's a mantra that's been really true to your life, or maybe it's a life hack or something that you want to leave a piece of advice for us.
• 30:58
  Chris Tsakalakis: My advice to every entrepreneur, and really, anyone who's who's working in business is secure your mask before helping others, it's what they tell you on a plane, when the oxygen masks come down, you need to secure your mask before you try to help anyone else. And by that I mean, you got to take care of yourself physically, mentally, yourself and your family, I always say and I tell the people here that's and I said, Vivino, to your family, and your, your health and your family come first. Because if you don't have that, frankly, you can't work. Those are the number one things like you got to take care of yourself. And, and I think when you do that, when you're in the right mindset, when you when you're physically and mentally well, and you're not worrying about your family, then you can excel as a leader. But if you don't have those things, you can't even be a good leader, let alone a great leader. So one of the things that I do is I block my schedule, every day, in the morning, in the evening mornings, or for workouts in the evenings or for time with my family. And I just make that a priority.
• 31:58
  Becky Endicott: I have to tell you, I don't know that I would have agreed with that five years ago, before I had had sort of my own mental health crisis and then watch the effects of the pandemic. But I have to tell you, that is absolutely true.
• 32:11
  Becky Endicott: And I think it was even Melinda Gates that said, like your family is only as healthy as the one who's doing who's struggling the most. And so if everybody's vibrant in your community, there are in your family, everything around you seems to be in more harmony. So I think that was excellent advice. It's not a selfish inclination friends to secure your mask first, because we need you healthy and well to be able to do this really tough work that we do in our missions and in social impacts. So okay, Chris, tell everybody how they can sign up with Kiva, how they connect with you any special programs and where you are on social media?
• 32:52
  Chris Tsakalakis: Yeah, absolutely. So if you want to join the 2 million borrowers that have invested $1.7 billion in their fellow humans, please come to kiva.org That's ki VA dot o RG, pick a cause or just start looking for borrowers based on what you're interested in. Maybe in certain parts of the world, maybe you're interested in certain types of loans that go to climate change or agriculture, you can do all of that@kiva.org, you can do kind of one set of loans, or you can sign up for a monthly good subscription program, which allows you to give as little as$5 a month, and then have that tied to the causes that you care about so that your loans get funded based on those causes. So that's the easiest place to find this.
• 33:34
  Becky Endicott: Wonderful.
• 33:34
  Becky Endicott: Awesome. Come join John and I were over there on Kiva. And we really like it over there. It's human. It's warm, and you find like minded people who care about the same things that you do.
• 33:47
  Jonathan McCoy: Thanks so much, Chris.
• 33:48
  Chris Tsakalakis: Thank you both. I really enjoyed this. And I wish you both well.
• 33:53
  Jonathan McCoy: Thanks for joining us. Today's episode was brought to you by our good friends at auth zero. Without zero your nonprofit can do more with a login box. Greet prospects and rabid fans of your mission with authenticity simply make it easier for your team to manage data. There's so much adopt zero login experience can do visit auth zero.org For more info.
• 34:12
  Becky Endicott: If you enjoyed this episode, we know you'll love being part of the we're for good community. It's like our own social network where you can find like minded friends, ask questions, share resources and find inspiration anytime. Sign up today at we are for good.com backslash hello
• 34:28
  Jonathan McCoy: thanks friends.