Latest / We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits / 449. Disruption for Good + The Business of Changing the World (Replay) - Raj Kumar

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449. Disruption for Good + The Business of Changing the World (Replay) - Raj Kumar · We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Hey friends, you know we love just really cultivating this idea of a global mindset in your corner of the world, and doing that by lifting voices that represent different movements and different impact happening around the globe.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Well, we sat down a couple of seasons ago with Raj Kumar.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: He was the founding president and editor-in-chief at DevX, which is just a powerhouse of information and development happening around the world, but he sat down and shared what does this season of innovation and change look like in the nonprofit sector?
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: How can we shift our focus to zero goals?
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, this conversation had so many takeaways that we were really excited to relift it on the podcast today, and I can't wait to hear what your thoughts are.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Hey, i'm John.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: And I'm Becky.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: And this is the We Are For Good podcast.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: 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.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: So welcome to the good community.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropists, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: So let's get started, Hey Becky.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: Welcome, everybody.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Okay, y'all, we're trying to contain the excitement and I'm just going to be really blunt.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: It is very hard to contain the excitement in the room today.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: We are in the presence of greatness, which is really ironic because we're set up strangely today that we look like anchors like news anchors.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: We look like news anchors sitting next to each other, and yet we have like the king of humanitarian news efforts with us today.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: What a good parallel.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: That is exactly right.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: We're talking to Raj Kumar today.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: He's the founding president and editor-in-chief at DevEx And you know, for us it was the first time learning about DevEx in the last few months and our heart has grown to understand that this exists.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: But if you think about the global development efforts, the humanitarian efforts happening around the world, 20-ish years ago, raj looked around and said there's no independent voice really speaking to the sector, to the people that are living and breathing and fighting on the front lines and raising money in all those aspects, and he built the table that he wanted to see in the world And that is DevEx today And it is a powerhouse.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: He is an author that has read just a real thought leadership book in the space called The Business of Changing the World, And his pedigree is everything you would expect somebody leading at this effort.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: I feel like he doesn't talk about it either.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: I know I'm like so humble Raj, you're so great.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: And that's more of the tone of this podcast too, because we want to hear about your story that led you here.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: We know you spent time in India at a young age.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: That really was formative.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: But Raj has just had an incredible experiences in life.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: He's been on the ground at some of the most formative world changing moments.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: He's been part of the Clinton administration and the strategic capacity and journalists, so he has had so many experiences threaded together.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: This is going to be an incredible conversation And, raj, it is our honor to sit with you today.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Thanks for being here.
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: Hey guys, the feeling is totally mutual.
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: You are the best.
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: I have had such a great time getting to know you and your organization listening to your podcast, So I'm just delighted to be here and have this discussion with you.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: Stick a fork at me.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: We're done.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Wrap up shop.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: Well, Raj, okay, could you start us?
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: kind of walk us through your story.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: I love the bravery that you showed and just standing up and saying I'm going to do something that hasn't been done yet before because you saw the need.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Would you kind of take us through your journey personally of how you love this sector and how you built this table?
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: I'd say bravery maybe is a good word, but also ignorance, like.
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: Sometimes not knowing is really helpful, not knowing how hard something's going to be.
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: I think had I known how tough it would be to start and lead DevEx, i'm not sure I would have done it in the beginning.
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: Things are often it's helpful being young and not knowing how the whole world actually works, and that benefited us in some ways.
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: But you mentioned I spent some time in India as a kid.
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: My dad was from there.
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: As a kid I got to go to India a lot when I was young and a lot of family there.
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: It just kind of opened my eyes to the realities of the world that we live in.
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: Like I used to play soccer in this little village where I would go and my aunt and uncle lived and who I'd stay with And I was the only kid who had sneakers, so we'd play in this kind of gravel field and those things really stick at you even when you're five years old or seven years old or whatever.
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: And so I always got this sense and my sister did too, my older sister that why does the world work this way?
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: Why is it set up this way?
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: And we had this really, really fortunate experience that I had not in an uncle from India who had dedicated their careers as academics to studying poverty and global development, and so they would take us on visits to villages and they would tell us about this world of global development which, you know, forget about.
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: Most kids, most adults, haven't really heard this term global development.
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: It's kind of an insider's, you know, industry term, but I got to know that it existed through my aunt and uncle when I was really young and had a sense that I think this is the thing I want to work on one day, you know, and I have been fortunate enough to get a chance to do that.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: I think one of the most extraordinary things to me about interviewing people who steep their businesses in empathy and equities is they have these stories of being a child and they notice inequities.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: I mean the story of understanding that you had privilege with your sneakers and not just noticing it but having it trigger you and say, hmm, this doesn't feel good, this doesn't feel right.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: I want everybody to have sneakers.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: We should all be able to go out and play soccer together And I love that.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: That thread followed you into DevX, which I mean people Raj is connecting and informing more than a million global development professionals around the world with this content.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: So I am so excited about what you're doing.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: It is very Becky Endicott style of talking.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: It punches you, it kind of hits you square between the eyes with what you're saying, and sometimes you need to do that to get someone's attention.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: It's that scroll stopping content.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: We want somebody to click on it, we want them to click and then we want them to activate and care, and so I would love for you to just give us kind of an overview of DevX, of your mission, your programs.
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and to me, these are the most important issues in the world.
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: These are the issues that we shouldn't even have to jazz them up or dress them up We're talking about.
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: You know how the entire planet lives, how people you know get through their lives, get ahead.
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: You know, when you think about things like climate change, whether, as a species, we're going to do well in the future.
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: These are the biggest issues in the world, in my opinion.
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: And yet, as a news organization, we often find, like you know, our reporter will be in the room at some UN hearing or some Capitol Hill event And we're the only journalists there to talk about child poverty.
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: You know, like the somebody, somebody on stage saying any journalists here want to ask a question, and there's one hand, maybe, and that's not a good thing, you know, we think these are the most important issues.
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: We think people should be covering them And that's why we get started.
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: That's why we do what we do every day, which is to shed light through journalism on the most important issues in the world climate, poverty, disease.
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: Shed light on those issues, let people know what's happening, what's working and what's not working too, you know, to hold people and institutions accountable the biggest institutions, the World Bank, usaid, the UN agencies.
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: We're writing about what they're doing well, but also what they're doing that's failing.
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: And I think the power of journalism brought on a subject like this is really, is really significant, and that's that's what gets us up every morning.
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: Is this idea that you know we've got these sustainable development goals.
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: Before that there were the Millennium Development Goals, that kind of the goals for the whole world make sure no kid goes to bed hungry, you know, make sure that there isn't this level of inequality and poverty in the world.
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: And who's actually working on making sure we achieve those goals?
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: And really there's a whole industry built up around it.
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: You know a lot of the big nonprofits have plenty of people listening to this work of places like that.
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: You know care and Oxfam and Save the Children and places like that, there's a course big philanthropies Gates Foundation, Ford Foundation and so many others, big and small And there's the government agencies And if you add it all up, it's a huge industry.
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: We think it's like bigger than $200 billion a year that goes into these kinds of global development efforts, and what we're trying to do is document all that, write about it, talk about it, make it clear to people and really, you know, hold us all accountable to actually achieving the goals.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: I think the thing that I love the most about it because I want to compliment you, because we were talking to Ciann Haldane with Munch in London a couple weeks ago about the SDGs and what the UN is trying to do to move the needle, and it just has to be a grassroots effort That's what I took up from that conversation is it's not on DevX, it's not on Munch, it's not on the UN, it's about all of us pulling together.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: And you are reporting right now in a history of the world unlike anything we've ever seen before, and I want to compliment your style of reporting because it is so honest, which I think.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: There is such a mistrust of media right now And it's a massive problem, and I just see such transparency.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: These are the themes of development, what we want to do when we talk to donors, when we're trying to, you know, connect missions with philanthropy.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: It's like you're doing it through your reporting.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: You're showing up authentically, you are transparently saying what it is, you're not watering down And I just commend you, your reporters, the bravery I mean.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: I don't know about you, john, but I have been watching the Afghanistan coverage like on a loop, just very stressed about it, and these reporters that are so brave, to women reporters who are walking out and getting this hard hitting news.
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: I mean, talk to us about this social enterprise and communicating and lifting up these stories in the middle of a time such as this.
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a pretty extreme time right And you look around the world, there's some crisis happening, you know, everywhere.
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: Obviously, we're living through a global pandemic.
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: You've got Afghanistan, you got Haiti, which is living with your multiple crises.
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: There's a lot.
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: There's a lot happening And for us, part of the job is to make sure people are paying attention to those stories And the other part is making sure they have context around them, because it's not always just enough to say and you know this so well through all the various podcasts you've done and the issues you've highlighted it's not enough to say, well, you know, let's write a check and we're going to solve global poverty.
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: It's not just about the donation.
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: That's important.
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: Funding is important, But then it's about what do you do with that money And who has a voice in it, And is the local community empowered to actually solve this problem on their own?
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: Are we using the best evidence in the approaches to solve these issues?
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: So, do we have, you know, data to tell us whether what we're doing is working or not working?
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: And all of those things are so critical.
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: And if you look at the history of foreign aid and global development, there's a lot of mistakes.
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: I mean, there's just so many mistakes that have happened over the years And a lot of good too, But we feel like the key in a moment like this, when there's so much crisis and there's so many challenges, is to shed more light on it, You know, to make sure we first do no harm, We first like, don't make things worse in some way, And at the same time, we get funding and money and voice to the people who really are closest to the problems and can actually address them.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: Well, i think you know the people that listen to this show were wired to like want to help, and when these crisis keep on popping up, you want to just plug in, you want to be involved how you know.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: What kind of lens would you prescribe for people, as a funder, to really identify around the world?
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: What is the type of organizations that are doing that work?
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: What are the kind of checks and boxes that you'd want to look for?
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Because the marketing can tell you anything right, and as journalists, i know that y'all cut through that.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: What do you think is most key for funders to be looking for?
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: for these, you know, solving these global issues.
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: I think nowadays what funders are really trying to do is get as local as they can.
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: You know they want to.
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: They want to go to the organization that really lives the issues And the people have, that lived experience they bring to them, and not just people like ourselves living maybe thousands of miles away who care about it, but really getting as close as they can to the ones who are doing the work.
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: So I see a couple of different trends happening.
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: One is funders who are trying to seek out those local groups and directly fund them, and sometimes the amounts are small because these can be really local community groups for for whom, you know, $5,000 can be a life changing amount of money.
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: It can really affect the way they operate.
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: The other thing I see is that these big international organizations are themselves trying to become more local, so their staff is generally becoming much more composed of people from the communities they're serving, even their leadership in the organization at the country level or local level or more reflective.
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: You know, there used to be this idea of expat jobs in global development.
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: You, you know, fly around the world, you get put up in a really nice house, you have a, maybe a car and a driver and you have all kinds of services and kids go to a private school and it's a great setup.
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: Right, i'm not saying that's gone completely, but it's diminished a lot, because the idea now is much, much as the corporate world has done is to say the talent, the professionals who are out there to do this kind of work, they exist in the countries that we're trying to serve, and so I think what you see funders trying to do more and more is is address this issue where they say the sector we're working in, the development sector, the nonprofit sector, is itself an outgrowth of an unequal history and is itself, you know, top down in a lot of ways, and we've got to address that right in our own backyard if we want to address these bigger issues in the communities we're trying to serve.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, I just learned so much right there, i know.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: And I think the thing that is so encouraging to me is, you know, as disheartening as it feels right now in the world.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: I mean the unbelievable suffering.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: We've been very stressed out about what's going on in Haiti.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: Thank you for mentioning Haiti.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: We've interviewed a couple of people on the podcast who have organizations there and the level of destruction is just devastating.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: But I also think your point about localizing and making things community-based is very exciting, and here's the thing it tells me is that it's no longer.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: We can no longer live in a society where we just had people who write checks.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: It is incumbent upon all of us to figure out what is the issue around me, How do I pour into it from my corner of the world, and it's going to take.
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's almost like the script has flipped and grassroots is starting to become the thing that is creating movements, creating community and moving issues forward, and I love that, because the accessibility of that means that anyone can jump in.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: And the way that the world is so digital now means that we are instantly connected to each other And that community can have this very fast ripple that just expands.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: And having the information correct information, i want to emphasize when you have factual, science-based information or people on the ground talking to the issues, talking at the heart of people who are experiencing these issues, it changes the lens, it simplifies and it humanize the story which we talk about all the time on this podcast.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: So I'm loving this conversation.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, please go ahead.
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: And I think it also helps to avoid making the mistakes I alluded to before.
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: Like you talked about Haiti, in my book, i talk about the American rice program in Haiti, where the American government said you know, people are hungry in that country, they eat a lot of rice.
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: Let's get rice from American farmers and let's ship it overseas and give it to people for free who are hungry and help them out.
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: And you know, it sounds great at one level.
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: It sounds very generous of the American government, the American people, to do this, but what they ended up doing was decimating the Haitian farmers, because the farmers, you know, no longer had a market to sell their own rice because rice was free.
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: And today's Haitian rice market is way smaller than it was before we started all this generosity.
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: And you know, haiti has to import rice now, even though they used to, you know, have a much larger amount, a much more abundant amount.
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: So there's all these examples where, when you don't go local, when you don't actually talk to the people who are trying to serve and say what would be useful to you, you can make really big mistakes.
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: I also highlight in my book the whole theme around orphanages, right where people want to help And orphanages are a way that it seems like a great way to help And they can be in some cases.
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: You know there may be examples, but they've also turned down to an industry And so in some countries kids who still have parents are pushed into orphanage life And they're used as kind of props for fundraising, and I mean there's horrible stories about it.
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: But this is not like a small number of kids.
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: This is in the tens of thousands around the world And some governments have had to just ban orphanages because of the problem of money.
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: Coming from well-meaning Americans, australians, europeans and others who see these pictures, they see these videos or they go traveling to these countries and think I want to help, and they don't realize in helping they're actually taking a kid away from their parents.
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: So there's real reason to be local and to listen to people locally.
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: It's not just that it's like the right thing to do, it is, but it also works better and it avoids mistakes And I think it's kind of an essential ingredient if we really want to achieve those big goals.
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: Like we have to actually center the work with the people in the communities where they live, just like we would want in our own communities to have a place in what's happening.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: Well, i love that you dedicated part of your life to just documenting this and going through the process of writing a book, and from speaking to other authors, i know you had to just immerse yourself so deeply to do this.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: Would you kind of take us through set the scene why did you decide to write this book and kind of what is the key takeaways of what's affecting global development in our world today?
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: And give us the title, because I love it.
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the business of changing the world, and I got into this situation where I felt like I was just repeating myself all the time.
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: I would go to even talk to my wife or just talking to my friends, go to events and I'm like I'm just saying a lot of the same stuff.
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: I'm really interested in this stuff And maybe I need to go through the process of actually putting it down on paper, and that process is pretty rigorous.
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: It forces you to fact check everything, and I found some of the things I was saying weren't exactly right.
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: And once I actually looked into the facts and the details and it forced me to really think through, kind of where I thought this whole sector is going, where does global philanthropy head from here.
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: And so it was a lot of work, as I'm sure you've heard from other authors, but I think it turned out to be really useful to me personally just to kind of ground my own thinking on what I consider a pretty important set of topics, and so to me, the book was a way to take stock of what I've learned in the last couple of decades since we started DevEx, since I was a grad student, and we thought of this idea And what it led me to realize is this kind of revolution that I thought was happening 20 years ago in global aid and philanthropy and development actually didn't happen.
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: Back then We were kind of wrong about it.
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: Our timing was sort of off and away when I was, when we were starting DevEx, myself and some friends and that is happening now like it's right in front of us right now.
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: And the interesting thing, we're very used to talking about industries going through disruption think about Tesla and Uber, how they're disrupting the automobile industry, or think about Facebook and Craigslist and websites like that totally disrupting newspapers But when it comes to nonprofits, we often don't think about ourselves as an industry in a way, and so this idea of like commercial disruption doesn't touch us in the same sense, and I think it really does, you know, and I think that we're basically going through the same kind of radical disruption that these other industries have gone through that we're so used to talking about right now, and we better pay attention to it, because we can use this opportunity if we, if we pay attention to it well.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: We're taking a quick pause to get real with you, friends.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: Because, let's face it, it's a new world.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: Donor expectations are higher than ever And donors want to know what their personal impact will be, which means we need to start by building a truly resonant message.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: And if you follow, we are for good.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: you know we're advocates for nonprofits need to disrupt and adapt in order to grow, and our friends at Foster Avenue agree you might know Foster Avenue by their former name, snavely Associates.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: But here's the thing they're evolving alongside the sector to as a philanthropic communications consulting and creative agency.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: they see how campaign communications are facing a revolution these days And, luckily for us, they're sharing their insights.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: The Foster Avenue team is sharing a 10 point checklist for creating campaign communications that meet the moment, and we want to get this checklist into your hands so you can start refining your messaging right away.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: Grab it today at foster avenuecom.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: backslash good.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: So, whether your campaign launch is three years away or six months away, foster Avenue can help you accelerate to the next phase.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: We want to see your campaign have all kinds of success, so hope you will check out Foster Avenue.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: That's foster avenuecom.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: slash good, raj.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: Okay, you're speaking to my soul.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: I know I'm so excited.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: We can't leave this topic.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: Keep going because that may be what people think.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: It's just not the reality And I love that you're speaking that into being.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: it's like you can't live outside of this world is not changing at this pace, which is why the nonprofit industry is so behind in a lot of ways.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: So thank you for speaking that with clarity.
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: And it just speaks to the need to stay current, to stay relevant, to embrace innovation, to make space within your budget, within your timeline, for creativity, because, you know, this is such a trigger word for john and I.
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: But doing the same thing, the way that it's always been done, will not be effective in this day and age And it also has a deafening I think you know counter effect where you're not listening, if you're doing things the exact same way, and if we're going to continue to evolve, if we're going to continue to rise to what our for profit peers, our entrepreneurial peers, are embracing, then we have to come over and say, okay, the way that it's been done has gotten us this far, you know, and we have very nicely grown, but I want to see some linear growth, i want to see a skyrocket in this time.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: And so what would be your suggestion to nonprofits right now?
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: What are the opportunities that they could seize to kind of embrace this brave new world?
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: I think there's so much to talk about on this, becky, i would just first of all bring up this concept of zero goals.
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: So there's different levels of ambition you can have.
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: You say I want my nonprofit to double in revenue or I want to hire more staff, but think about zero goals as a way to examine how ambitious you're being.
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: Zero goals are things like I want to end all child marriage The whole world.
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: I think there should be no more forced marriage of kids.
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: That's a really big goal.
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: It's a zero goal because if you get to that state, there will be no more of that happening.
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: You see a lot of zero goals around health issues because they're maybe a little bit easier to measure, like polio.
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: We're close to the global eradication of polio And zero goals are really compelling.
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: People really sit up in their chairs when you talk about this stuff.
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: It's like this is something that we can do and then it will be over for the rest of the world forever.
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: And there's only one disease in human history smallpox that was ever fully eradicated, but now there's like seven or eight more that we're close to that maybe in the next decade or so could get eradicated.
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: So I think first of all, we got to ask ourselves are we being ambitious enough?
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: Are we looking at these really big goals?
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: It could be a zero goal, it could be something like you see in the sustainable development goals, but if you're in this space, there's no point in being in it.
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: If you're not being really ambitious.
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: That doesn't have to mean I want to scale something globally.
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: It could just be in your own neighborhood, but am I being ambitious enough about what I'm trying to do, or is it a check the box activity?
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: Is it like we're gonna keep going and do what we've done last year?
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: And I think the world and the scale of the problems is just demanding more from all of us, And I think the market shift in our space is that it used to be enough to bring good intentions to the table And say I just really want to help and I have these great intentions.
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: I think that's still really important, but that's not enough on its own.
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: We now have to bring a much stronger focus on results.
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: Like, is the thing we're out there to do?
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: is it working?
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: How do we know it's working?
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: Are we honest with ourselves when it's not?
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: And therefore pivoting to the things that might work, and I think we're being really called to be much tougher on our own selves to make sure, as nonprofit leaders or as international development professionals, that the work we do is the right kind of work, it's having the kind of effect we want it to have.
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: And I'll just give one quick example which is around this organization called Give Directly I talk about in my book as well.
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: We cover at DevX all the time.
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: It's a group of economists who said why don't we just literally give money to poor people?
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: Like, why are all these nonprofits set up to do education programs and health programs and agriculture programs?
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: If we know these people are poor, why don't we just give them money and they won't be poor anymore?
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: And it's a very simplistic concept in many ways, and so people laughed at it at first.
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: They sort of said, yeah, this doesn't work.
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: If you give poor people money, they'll probably gonna go out and spend it on alcohol And other vices, you know, and you're not gonna actually address these issues.
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: And they said, but do we know that Or are we just assuming that?
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: And so this group got together and they started very rigorously measuring this approach.
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: They used satellite photography and they went to East Africa and they said, okay, if we find a village and a lot of people have tin roofs, they must be doing okay, but the huts that only have, you know, thatched roofs made out of grass, they probably have less resources.
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: We'll target those homes and, through mobile money right to their cell phone, we'll give them $1,000, you know unheard of amount of money in those communities And then we'll really track what they do with it.
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: And they did this and they did it really rigorously And they found you know what.
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: Actually it's some pretty positive effects.
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: People weren't wasting the money.
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: People were spending it on things that you would, you and I would spend it on.
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: They were making their homes a little bit better.
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: They were spending on school clothes for their kids, on food to improve their nutrition, and so this concept started to grow.
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: They got money from a couple of big foundations in Silicon Valley, including Googleorg, and I think they've now given away more than $150 million directly to poor people.
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: Now, it's not a panacea And I think the folks over at GiveDirectly would say that themselves.
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: This is not gonna just solve everything, but it is kind of a call to action to all the nonprofits out there that don't do cash programming and instead do health or education or agriculture to say can you measure the results of your program and show that they are at least as strong, or ideally a lot stronger than just giving away money?
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: Because if you can't, then why don't you just give away money?
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: It basically brings a strong competitive element into the nonprofit space, where we might have before just sort of had a glossy brochure with pictures and said look at the great work I do.
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: There are a lot of smiling kids, they're happy.
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: And now you have to say, well, givedirectly gets this impact when they give away $1,000.
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: What impact do we get when we spend $1,000 on our program?
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: Wow, yeah, i mean everything you're saying is threading together And I think last season we talked a lot about dreaming big.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: That kept coming up in these conversations And I feel like this zero goals is going to that next step.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: It's like, okay, we need to get out of the ethereal, we need to get down to what are we really trying to do and actually do that and make sure it's not to the detriment of a host of other things.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: I loved your rice example too.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: I don't think I got a chance to comment on that, but at what expense are our programs or whatever you think that we're doing positively?
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: is it happening downstream?
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: Is it costing people their jobs, or is it costing the economic stability of a country even?
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, that is such a powerful example and just connects it all together for me.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: So thank you so much for that.
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: And it's making me think of, like Water4, who everybody knows we just love so much who is saying, no, we're here to eradicate the water crisis.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: That's our mission.
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: It's as simple as that.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: We want you to put us out of business.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: And it wasn't just about give us donation so we can do it.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: It's like we are going to teach the people in Africa.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: We're going to create an entrepreneurial program So they are driving their own business.
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: They're creating businesses out of getting water to people, and it's not about putting a well in the middle of the village.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: It's about getting water in their houses.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: And I think about Harry Rosen.
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: Have you heard the story of Harry Rosen?
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: This is like a self-made millionaire for Orlando.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: He did exactly what you just described.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: These economists do And, by the way, i believe in economists.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: Economists have the answers.
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: I'm not surprised at all by this, but he literally went into an incredibly impoverished neighborhood in Orlando And he said Tangelo Park, i am going to take you on with my money.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: And all he did was provide free day care for everybody.
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: And he gave every kid a college scholarship And the college graduation rate went from 25% to 100% And house prices ended up quadrupling.
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: And it's like he didn't take a nonprofit with his fancy brochure.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: He just again took his money straight to the source and said I'm going to put it in these two problems And bam, the community ended up thriving at a local level.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: So I guess what we're saying is everything you're saying is true And we're drinking all of this Kool-Aid Yeah, and I wish it made it easy.
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: There is no easy answer to it.
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: There was a study Brookings put out that calculated to take every person in the world living in extreme poverty and get them out of that And extreme poverty, by the way, you're listeners, i'm sure know but it's $1.90 or less.
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: So if you make $1.90 per day, not per hour, per day or less, you are technically living in extreme poverty.
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: It's a totally arbitrary number.
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: Why is it not $2 or $2.50?
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: It's arbitrary but it gives you a sense of the extreme conditions that so many people live in.
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: And right now it's about a billion people who are living in extreme poverty.
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: It was quite a bit less than that before the pandemic, but a lot of people got thrown into it during the pandemic And anyway they had calculated.
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: At one point it was like $66 billion a year.
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: So if somebody could write a check that big, you could take all the people out of extreme poverty and put them into one level above that $1.91 a year or something.
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: Well, it's just not that easy.
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: Who's going to write that check?
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: How do you get it to?
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: people.
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: How do you not just store it?
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: Jeff Bezos, are you listening?
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: But even if you did right, how do you not like you're going to have to do other kinds of things to make sure that people get that money then can use it to get the food or the education or the health care services that they want?
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: It's not that simple, but it is important to think in these terms because otherwise it's easy to just have a non-profit organization that's kind of going year to year.
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: It has a good mission, it's people care about what they're doing but never really get to that point of showing the next level of results.
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: And I think that's what we're all given the crises today.
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: And because we got on this topic, i think the crises are so extreme now we need to be thinking more ambitiously about how we get there.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: I think something I've seen you write about is this global mindset, and I feel like you kind of described in your story how that was shaped at an early age too for you.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: Could you give some counsel to somebody that wants to cultivate that in their own life?
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, we talk a lot on the podcast.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: It doesn't mean go fly and start building the house overseas Like that's probably the worst.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: that you could probably do right.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: But what are ways that we can cultivate a global mindset in the middle of America?
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: We're in Oklahoma.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: How can we encourage our friends, our neighbors, our families, us to do that?
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: Well, i think so many of the issues we're talking about really are global, and the first thing to remember is whatever challenges you see in your own life or in your own neighborhood or community, they're probably pretty similar.
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: The scale might be really different, but people are pretty similar And if you're worried about your kids getting good education, that's probably a very similar feeling that a refugee family will have if they're fleeing Syria, turns out.
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: That's actually true.
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: If you talk to refugee families, a lot of their concerns are things like that What my kids get education right now, while we're kind of on the move, we're in refugee camp what are they going to provide?
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: So oftentimes, the first thing you can do is just realize that people are people and that these issues are pretty universal.
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: The second thing is a lot of the biggest issues on our minds today are actually global issues, meaning, even if you do everything right on climate change in your neighborhood, it doesn't really matter if the whole world is not going forward.
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: It doesn't mean don't do it, but it just means that it's worth it to be thinking about how can my work actually impact this global issue beyond just working in my community.
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: Same thing goes for something like the pandemic as we're all experiencing.
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: Right, we can get vaccines and have a fantastic program in one little area and really address the virus here, but it's a virus.
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: It doesn't respect borders and variants can come from different places and we need a global health system that has to be strong.
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: We all know about health care in our own neighborhood state community.
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: It's a big political issue in the US.
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: obviously It's not just a national issue.
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: Health care is a global issue.
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: If a country does not have a strong health system in place, that's when diseases can crop up and cross borders and come.
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: And we've just been reporting on a country in West Africa this week that had a case of Ebola and a case of Marburg disease.
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: Oh my gosh.
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: And because of the fact that they've got a better health system than before, in part due to the Ebola crisis five or six years ago, they were able to find these cases and isolate and trace.
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: So an American sitting thousands of miles away might say well, that's out in West Africa, who cares?
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: Well, it can travel.
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: If those countries don't have the right surveillance systems in place, you could get a global pandemic.
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: So we're really in this.
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: We're only as strong as kind of the weakest health system in the world, and that applies to so many other issues, and so my main advice, i guess, is to get that global mindset is just think about the issues you care about, and you'll quickly see that there's a connection that connects to people everywhere.
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: And I think the bottom line is pour into what you're caring about.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: You know, yes, go follow them on social.
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: Yes, make your year in gift.
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: But I think if we're going to follow the Raj Kumar challenge to us of rising to be incredibly ambitious, it's going to require us to do more than hit the like button, to hit the give button.
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: We have to figure out how are we going to pour into it.
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: And I think you know, even if you have nothing financially to give right now, your voice is an important space.
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: I think the brand of who you are, how you show up in the world, is a very important brand.
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: You have something to say.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: You have a heart and a passion for something.
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: Tell that story, bring somebody along, have them care with you, put a call to action of I'm doing this.
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: I'm writing a letter.
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: I'm calling somebody.
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: You know, i'm calling my state legislator about this crisis and asking him what they're doing about it.
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: You know, to your point about climate change, it's like we have got to be pouring into this because it's something that's going to affect generations and because a healthier world makes our local community healthier.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: So I'm just loving this conversation And I just am curious with all of these wonderful stories that you have And I honestly love every one of them And I think people need to go get the business of changing the world and go buy that book because there are some really great stories in there.
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: What is a story that you have heard, either with DevEx or maybe personally, where you've seen philanthropy or humanity converge And it's just a story that sticks with you.
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: I mean there's so many and I get into a bunch of these in my book.
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: One that I think a lot of people relate to when I tell this one is the Uber for tractors.
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: So we all know Uber.
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: They're huge now in most of the world.
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: But somebody, a young man he was working in banking, He did his degree in Georgia, was down in Florida.
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: He was working in banking like a lot of young MBAs would, And he sort of thought I don't feel like I'm having enough impact in the world, Like I'm not connecting to a mission.
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: And he understood and had some experience in West Africa and Nigeria that there was a big issue there where poor farmers couldn't get access to a tractor.
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: And in fact if you travel in many of these countries in the world, you'll see farmers are still using the same kind of tools that they used hundreds and hundreds of years ago Just a hoe or basic materials to prepare their field for planning.
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: It takes, on average, 40 hours to prepare a field for planning And if you're using hand tools and it takes eight hours with a tractor, So sorry, 40 days if you're doing it by hand 40 days.
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: Eight hours with a tractor.
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: So it's a huge difference, right?
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: And this is why sometimes kids don't go to school, because they need their help in the fields, because it takes too much effort to do this sort of work.
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: So this young guy's name is Jahil Oliver.
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: He said well, why can't we use the same concept of ride sharing that we're using for cars here in America?
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: Why can't we do that in a place like Nigeria for tractors?
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: And you know, probably 20 years ago he wouldn't have been able to do this for many reasons.
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: Obviously, technology wasn't there.
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: But also the whole nonprofit sector would have said I don't know who's going to grant money to this young guy with his idea No track record, really, and you know we don't do grants that way.
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: Plus, this is kind of a business.
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: You have to do a technology investment.
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: It's probably a for-profit model of social enterprise.
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: It would have just never gotten past the idea stage.
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: But he did this in 2015.
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: And you know, at that point there were some people ready to do kind of venture philanthropy and risk a little bit of money.
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: And even the US government was ready to do tiered funding where they said you know, we'll give you a small amount of money $50,000.
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: Maybe, if you meet certain criteria, if you do really well with it, then we'll give you a few hundred thousand.
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: If you do really well with that, then we can talk about it even more.
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: Long story short, hello.
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: Tractor that's what they're called has now grown to be a major player in the provision of kind of an Uber for tractors platform.
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: They've got 75% of all the new tractors in Nigeria, use their technology And they're in five countries in Africa.
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: And the basic concept is if you had enough money to own a tractor now, you get a lot more use out of it.
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: People can borrow it from you And you could even have a business doing like a fleet of tractors and getting them rented out.
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: And if you don't have the money to have a tractor of your own, you can pay a small amount and actually get one for use.
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: And it's a kind of thing that, to me, is really powerful, because the center of it is seeing that farmer as a customer.
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: You know not saying, hey, this is a really poor person and what can we do for them?
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: You know, give them food, aid or something.
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: Instead it's saying, ok, what do you need?
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: You need a tractor?
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: Well, let's just find a way, a financial engineering way, to get you one.
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: You are a customer too.
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: Even if the amount of money you have is really small, maybe it's enough to meet your basic needs.
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: And building a business around that person as the agent of change in their own life, i think is a really powerful, powerful concept And one that I think shows me at least where we're kind of headed as a global development, as a nonprofit, as a philanthropy world.
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: It's this nexus of seeing the people we're trying to serve as customers, as partners, not as just somebody in need.
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: OK, we look like Cheshire cats right now.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: And we're like Googling Hello Tractors, which casual Barack.
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: Obama is like quoted at the very front.
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: And it's like, Mr Oliver, good on you because you are so right, Raj, We are moving in this philanthropic sector in this moment in time.
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: We are moving away from hey.
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: We want you to give, we want you to empower.
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: Your gift can be a vessel to empower.
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: Your gift is not something that just provides funding.
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: It's like getting somebody to figure out how to fish.
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: We don't want to just give the man a fish, We want to teach him how to fish.
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: And I have to tell you, I am here for it And I am excited.
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: I hope that this is the future of philanthropy, because I think there has got to be some space for venture.
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: Philanthropy converges with very traditional philanthropy, which converges with major foundation giving.
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: What a phenomenal story.
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: I just love it.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: And it's just.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: it's removing all the labels, like who cares how it's organized, like it's focused on solving the problem.
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: You know we're not all going to, we're all going to die someday in preserving our nonprofit for the sake of being a nonprofit is not the worthy mission.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: It's trying to solve the actual big problem.
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: Yes, if the focus is on the one, the one tractor, then that is the starting point.
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: And I think, if you're a nonprofit listening right now, picture your one, who is your customer avatar, who is your donor.
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: Find that person and run your creative, run your strategic goals through the lens of the one That's right, and not all the donors are there yet, but they're getting there, you know.
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: And so if you're, if you're a nonprofit that still thinks well, you know, my donors are moved by the photos, by the glossy pictures, by the, by the human stories.
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, maybe some of your donors still are and you can still do some of that.
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: But just know that where donors are going is they want more than that, they want to see the evidence, they want to see the data, and that you've got competitors as a nonprofit who are out there telling a different story, and they're telling that story of using technology, of enabling customers, you know, of really thinking in a different way about impact.
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: And you know nonprofits, i think, are going to have a shakeout.
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: Just like every other industry has had one, this sector will have one too, where some will do really well and grow and some will actually go out.
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: They'll go under.
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: They'll go under.
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: They won't be able to survive, unfortunately, but they won't if they don't change with the times.
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, wow, okay.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: I'm just like so excited.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: This has got me all amped up, raj, you know we end all of our episodes asking for your one good thing, and I honestly can't wait to hear what you're going to say.
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: This could be a secret to your success or a habit that you've instilled.
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: What resonates with you today?
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: I mean, the one thing that came to mind for me is a class I took on, journalism class I took in college, and the professor showed us this video clip from the time of the Vietnam War And it was, you know, what you'd expect from an old newsreel from back then.
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: Right, there's a serious reporter in a kind of a safari suit and he's standing in front of a trail of Cambodian refugees And he's speaking in a really deep voice and he's saying something like, you know, one can only imagine what's going through the minds of these refugees.
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: And the professor showed us this clip because he's like this is the wrong kind of journalism, like what you should, what should this person do?
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: Turn around and ask them, just ask them what's going through their mind.
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: You don't have to imagine And I think we do a lot of that in the nonprofit and especially in the global development sector, you know, just given that so much of the work happens in places like Sub-Saharan Africa but a lot of the money and authority and power comes in places like the United States, right, we do a lot of this, imagining what other people think or imagining what they might want.
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: And the good, the one good thing that I try to do is to remind myself like you got to listen a little bit more.
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: You've got to don't assume that you get it, that you understand all the context and you understand how it all works.
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: Got to go out there and talk to that next source, talk to that next person and just say how are you seeing this from your standpoint, or what am I missing?
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: And if you don't get that context, then I think you kind of miss the whole story.
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: And that's what we as journalists at DevEx like that's our job is to get that story.
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: So that's the thing I think everybody who works in the space can do more of is just a little bit more listening.
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: Okay, i have to correlate that, because we had a major philanthropist on the show in season one, given multimillion dollars to many organizations, and his one good thing was that development officers do poorly is listen.
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: And so here we are again.
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: It's about stop listen, and so I'm just so grateful that you would come and hang in our space.
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: So how can people connect with you?
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: Where can they find you on social?
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: How can they find DevEx?
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: Give us all the links.
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: Book for sure.
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah well, I love to talk to people.
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: You can find me on Twitter Raj underscore DevEx.
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: You can find me on LinkedIn.
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: You know, tell me what you think to read the book and tell me you know what I missed or got wrong or what you're working on.
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: I love to, and one of the best ways I learned about what's happened in our space just hearing from people directly about what they're what they're working on.
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: You know, DevEx is a news platform and go to devexcom.
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: You can read our content.
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: We've got some of our newsletters.
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: We've got a newsletter called the Newswire.
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: It's sort of like the must read newsletter.
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: If you're in the development space and global development space And you want to know what's happening with World Bank or the Gates Foundation or USAID, Like.
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: This is the.
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: This is the thing that our reporters are putting together every morning And it's free and you should check it out.
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: It's called the Newswire, So subscribe to that And you know, I think you'll find a lot of ways to connect with us once you're in the DevEx community.
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: We do we do all kinds of events around the world.
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: We have all kinds of different content.
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: We have a whole platform with one million development professionals who have registered their profiles on our site.
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: So come and check it out and and tell me what you think when you, when you find me on social.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: This has been amazing.
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being here and for all that you've done over the last goodness 20 plus years.
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: You're such a good human.
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: Thank you John, Thank you Becky.
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: It's been great, Really nice to be with you all.
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much for being here.
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: We hope you're loving the summer of evolution series and to learn more you can head over to weareforgoodcom.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: Slash evolution all the playlists, resources and other ways to help you get inspired and activated this summer.
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: We'd also love for you to join the conversation, Share what you're learning on social media or join us at our free community at weareforgoodcommunitycom.
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: Bonus points for snapping a picture and showing us where you're listening from.
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: Can't wait for the next conversation.
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: See you soon, friends.