Latest / We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits / 181. Fundraising on Zoom?! + How Tech is Powering Missions to Grow Impact - James Citron

Transcript

181. Fundraising on Zoom?! + How Tech is Powering Missions to Grow Impact - James Citron · We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits

• 0:00
  Jonathan McCoy: i'm john. And I'm Becky. And this is the we are for good podcast.
• 0:04
  Becky Endicott: 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.
• 0:13
  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.
• 0:21
  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.
• 0:32
  Jonathan McCoy: So let's get started. Hey, Becky. Hi, john.
• 0:36
  Jonathan McCoy: It's such a fun one.
• 0:37
  Becky Endicott: I hope your hearts are ready for the conversation we're about to have, you probably think you're coming in here to have a really evolved tech discussion. But I'm telling you that the conversation we're about to have is about innovation. It's about humanity. And I'm going to switch it up a little bit because I know we have a typical way that we like to introduce our friends and our guests, but I want to give some background about how I found them. And I was sitting in an a session for the raise more together summit that's hosted by our friend Jess Campbell. It's one of my favorite free professional summits of the year. And I go into it because the hook is so great. It's talking about that zoom actually has a button now for people to give. And I'm thinking that's really interesting, I want to learn about that. What I'm not prepared for as I walk into this session, and the CEO that our wonderful guests today have pledged Jameson trot is on. And he is not necessarily talking about zoom, he starts out the conversation, sharing a story.
• 1:39
  Becky Endicott: And he is so gracious in the way that he is pulling in his staff, the way that he is highlighting one of their partners. And he tells the story of how this platform intersected in the moment that the Afghan crisis refugee crisis was happening.
• 1:56
  Becky Endicott: And I was riveted, I'm gonna ask you to tell that story later, James. But what I saw unfold, there was so much less about, here's the practicality of tech.
• 2:04
  Becky Endicott: And it was more about here's why we do what we do. And this is why we're here. And here are the tools to get you to have an even bigger impact. So naturally, we are honored to have James center on the CEO of pledge on here, we're going to be talking in virtual events, innovation, zoom platform, I'm going to give just a very small background into the company and into James because I've already talked a lot already. But James is, is he is a world changer. And he dreamed so big. He was one of these early pioneers in tech, text messaging that set up platforms, you know, for people like if you've heard of them, President Barack Obama, companies like Salesforce crisis, text line, those kinds of things. And he has taken this tech, and it's blown up into this thing that meets the needs of the world today, of what is pledged today.
• 2:58
  Becky Endicott: And its pledge has been named like one of the most innovative companies and a world changing brand right now they put the first Donate button on zoom, and they're doing so many amazing things to help equip nonprofits and people to raise more money online. We're just honored that you're here. James, welcome to the podcast.
• 3:17
  James Citron: Thank you so much.
• 3:17
  James Citron: I'm honored to be here. And thank you for that intro. I'm, I'm humbled to work with a world changing team that's trying to really help elevate and solve some big problems for nonprofits. so honored to be here, longtime listener, and a big fan of all the work that you guys are doing.
• 3:38
  Becky Endicott: Super incredibly kind and I I just I listened to the way you talk, I see the way you care about people, not just your clients, but your own staff. I see you caring about missions. And I'm like, where does that come from? So tell us about James growing up what your little anecdotes about your life. Take us back and tell us where this story got hardwired into you.
• 4:02
  James Citron: Well, I will share a share a few anecdotes. So I'm kind of a rare bird. I'm a fraternal twin. I'm left handed.
• 4:12
  James Citron: And I grew up with actually a lot of medical issues. And I think as a kid, a lot of those things, maybe want to do more. I had to overcome a lot of like health ailments to be a competitive athlete. I had a mom who is very active as a volunteer and, and that early on when I was a kid made me think I can do more, but we all have problems and how do we overcome them. Ultimately, that led me to getting into technology. And I'll talk about that for a minute. But the the culture of of giving and service and community really started at home. It's It started with a very You know, a very involved mom instead of parents, but my mom was just the type of mom that I was, I'm so grateful to have was like, it's not just about our, you know, we're lucky, we're mostly healthy, we're together, we got a wonderful family. But we got to help others. And so that's where the culture of giving kind of, it was embedded in me from a young age. Going through, I went to college, and I was lucky to go to a really, really competitive academic college, and I thought I was gonna be an architect,
• 5:33
  Becky Endicott: Princeton PS, but keep going.
• 5:36
  James Citron: Otherwise known as the College of New Jersey, but that's that's the one. I had this fascinating experience having me as a young kid, which was we had a terrible earthquake in Los Angeles. And my house was nearly destroyed. And we were very, very fortunate not to have any physical ailments. Every single window in the house was shattered my sister, I had to lift a bookshelf off of her. And my natural reaction was just this overcoming adversity, I want to go build the world's strongest buildings. And I'm going to go to Princeton, become an architect and build earthquake proof buildings.
• 6:14
  James Citron: Right around when I got to Princeton, started studying to become an architect software started changing the world. And I said, Oh, my God, instead of building one building, I could build anything in the world through technology. And that became kind of my entrepreneurial journey. And those two things kind of coalesced into what is now pledge my desire to solve giant challenges, big problems with technology, and my heart of how do we do more to help help others. And I want to share one story about text messaging for a minute, because it's really, it's the inspiration behind my personal story and pledge. It's around 20 2014. And I had started this company from scratch. It was really an early pioneer text messaging. We all remember the days of like, you know, when we all started texting, and you had t nine and all that stuff. So we had this vision. And you know, that text messaging was the new language of the world. And we built one of the early platforms and really started scaling it and like, it was crazy routing billions and billions of text messages, billions like plans.
• 7:22
  James Citron: And the biggest companies, governments were using our platform mentioned President Obama earlier, when he sent out a text message he was sending out through my platform, when Prime Minister Modi was sending out a text message to a billion people. He was using the platform that we helped build like crazy, crazy stuff, right?
• 7:43
  James Citron: But this little nonprofit reached out. And this amazing woman by the name of Nancy Lublin, the founder of Crisis Text Line, and she said, Hey, I need a text, I need a text platform, because I'm going to save lives via text. So the history of Crisis Text Line was, there's a young girl who is texting and texting is really the language of young people, right? 911 was ingrained in me as a young kid pre tax, like there's an urgent issue you call 911. But if you're 14, or 12, you don't pick up the phone and call anybody. You send a text.
• 8:18
  James Citron: And there was a story of a young girl, she texted 911 because she was being abused by her father.
• 8:21
  James Citron: Do you guys know what happens when you text 911 from your cell phone? Nothing happens. The carriers haven't figured it out.
• 8:28
  James Citron: The government entities that regulate it, have not figured it out. So no one knows what happened to this young girl. So Nancy said, if she was the founder of do something, what about all the young girls and boys who are going to have the same issue? How do we help someone in a moment of crisis, get connected with someone who's going to save their life, she emailed myself and one other text messaging platform, she chose us. And while we were sending billions of messages, I saw one by one 100 100 a week, 1000 a week, 10,000 a month, these text messages actually were saving lives. And a platform that I helped build and grow and scale. And I was lucky enough to work an incredible team to build actually was saving lives, but not because that's what we were setting out to do. But just because we built an incredible platform. And at that moment, I realized the next company I was going to build was going to be I like to joke I'm a recovering for profit entrepreneur. Because every company I'm going to build from now is a company a tech company with a social mission. So that's what led me to start pledge.
• 9:39
  Jonathan McCoy: Okay, okay.
• 9:40
  Becky Endicott: Where's my airborne? Where's my Arsenio Hall? fist pumping. Where is the confetti cannon? One incredible story. Absolutely love it. Thank you, Nancy, for everything you're doing over at Crisis Text Line. James, come on over, never leave us and take our hands and and help show was the way that's an extraordinary story?
• 10:02
  Jonathan McCoy: Well, I mean, I think it's a perfect segue into you kind of walking us through a pledges today. I know y'all serve nonprofits in a really deep way, I'd love for you to kind of walk us through some of those things, but it's not lost on me this parallel that you went off, I just keep thinking, I'd be the same way. It's like, I want to build a stronger house to say, to protect my family.
• 10:19
  Jonathan McCoy: But it's instead you created this, like, shell, like this framework that candidates help everybody, you know, it takes away, it's still focused on the one you're gonna help that one family, but now you can help everybody else in the process.
• 10:32
  Jonathan McCoy: Like I just think that's the power of the entrepreneurial mindset in this vision to really replicate things. And I just love that,
• 10:40
  James Citron: and thinking big, you know, I don't think there's there's many challenges that we can solve by working together and technology's an enabler in many ways to solve and to enable faster solutions to problems. So pledge was founded several years ago, and we envision a world where it's very easy, integrated donation to everything that we do. So we actually initially really got started by doing a really breakthrough partnership with Evite. And now on Evite, which largest invitation platform, and it's been live for several years, actually now, there's millions and millions of vents on Evite, and very seamlessly, similar to the Facebook donation functionality.
• 11:26
  James Citron: You can say in lieu gifts for my my birthday party, please donate to my favorite charity, or my favorite nonprofit. Well, one quick story about about that. So this was my first few months launching pledge. Okay, I met the CEO. He's like, I love this idea. Can you make it happen? I said, Sure. We my CTO, who's just unbelievable. He joined me from my last two startups. So he's, you know, he's the guy who really deserves the credit on a lot of text messaging him and his tech team, I just get to tell the stories. Super humble guy, he joined me, I'm like, hey, Paul, we got to build this thing. So that everyone planning a birthday party can actually like, say, in lieu of gifts, please donate to any charity in United States. So Victor is the CEO of VI, VI. And he's like, Hey, man, like I know, we're about to go live. But I got this idea. And I'm actually the keynote for this big conference.
• 12:17
  James Citron: And I want to introduce this as part of the new mission of E ite. And like, we're all going o be live for like, eight ours. Let's go on stage. And ou I'm going to give the eynote and you can come in like ive minutes later and talk a ittle about this new donation unction on device. Sure. So I o on stage, I text Paul, five inutes, put on stage like we're nly barely live, and you want o use this thing. And he said, here's an eight year old girl n Milwaukee, she, she literally s doing a bounce house birthday arty. And she just got $1,000 onation to Smile Train, it's onna fund three cleft lip urgeries, like eight hours ive, a Donate button on E vite, 1,000, to smile, train, Smile rain, didn't have to do nything. By being part of ledge, they got $1,000. This, his young, eight year old irl's birthday party, you know, as has a huge impact. And hat's kind of how we got tarted.
• 13:17
  Becky Endicott: I love these stories. And I love these Inception stories. And I have to just say, for everyone that's not watching James actually on the TV, like we are like on video, His face is so lit up.
• 13:26
  Becky Endicott: When he talks about these missions, I can tell the way that it fuels you and how in that fuel is like making the little synapses in your brain fire in the best way because you're creating and innovating on iterating all the time. So as you kind of look at our sector right now, give us kind of your overview of what you're seeing.
• 13:51
  Becky Endicott: That's the current state of virtual live stream ecommerce and hybrid event fundraising. I think everybody is curious about it. Because we were all in the mindset of Oh, we've got to survive this one year. And then it'll be great up. Here we are second year, this is the new normal, we have got to get comfortable with it. So kind of set the scene by diving with the current state of virtual events.
• 14:12
  James Citron: Yeah, it's a great question. All of us have gone through such incredible challenges, growth, and evolutions over the last 18 plus months and there's more changes to come. And for us, when we saw the move, the shutdown with the pandemic, to us that meant let's open up our platform, let's make it as accessible to anyone. Any virtual events, anyone looking to fundraise and that culminated last year, by the way over the last 18 months or so, we've done over 100,000 virtual events, Holy smokes. Crazy, from the small little virtual events to I'm in Southern California. So some of these celebrity events get a lot of A lot of airtime like the Fast Times at ridgemont, high table read, which mean Brad Pitt?
• 15:41
  Becky Endicott: Yes, that was fun. By the
• 15:43
  James Citron: way, that was a fundraiser for core, which does free free COVID testing clinics around the country. Most people watch for the entertainment, but there's actually a real big donation call to action there.
• 15:53
  James Citron: So we did all of these different events, you know, working with 1000s of different nonprofits, but also individuals, musicians, gamers, Twitch, YouTube, zoom, you name it hop in. And the thing that was so amazing, I would say there's two two things that we saw, and and what we think are going to stay forever, the creativity of humanities and being lievable. humankind can be so innovative when we're, we're forced into it. So the analysts predicted one out of three nonprofits were going to go out of business last year. I mean, think about, think about the cataclysmic effect on the world, if one out of three nonprofits were to go out of business, those innovated around virtual, we have a number of examples, literally, many of them had their best years ever. So virtual events, dramatically increased audience, right, you don't have to battle traffic, someone's kids sick, someone has a late work meaning and can't come to the gala, that's gone, people can come from anywhere in the world. So bigger audiences, the costs, sometimes 50 to 80% less to do a virtual or hybrid event and in person event. Third virtual events you can do, you can do virtual fundraising all the time, you can have a board meeting and just pop on a little Hey, do you want to continue contributing our mission, you can have your your virtual luncheons, fundraising could be more easily integrated into a virtual or hybrid world. And those are the things that are going to stay virtual is not going to go away. We survey often our nonprofit partners, and what we hear is 80 to 90% of them are planning on virtual as always a component of what they do. There might be some small, you know, events that we do in person, or maybe a year or two from now, planning, you know, more of a larger gatherings. But because of the successes of virtual because of how frictionless and easy it can be, hopefully through the pledge platform, you know, it's just a great additive to the the toolkit of every fundraiser a nonprofit,
• 18:02
  Becky Endicott: and it's not scary. Tell everyone, James that it's not as scary as we think it is.
• 18:09
  James Citron: Yeah, it's it's so easy, and it's not scary at all.
• 18:12
  James Citron: And I think one of the things is so great about it, because a lot of the nonprofit's that we worked with, were so scared, of course, because it's like, I've got $100,000 donor that I usually have this whole production and way that I engage with them. And now I'm just gonna tell them to click on this link and hop on zoom, and ask them to give Well, we talked to a lot of donors, you know, this afghan campaign we'll talk about in a minute. We had major, major donor million dollar donor six, a lot of big, big donors. We talked to a lot of them, they go, you know what, we don't want to go back to a gala. Yeah, can I give an example that blew my mind about a virtual event that we did on zoom. It's an incredible nonprofit called my aggro. And their mission is to uplift small farmers out of poverty. And in the world of fundraising, you guys are all experts and your listeners are experts to several years ago, we all used to think about VR and like, imagine the impact of putting on the headset and being transported to the waterwell that's being built and feeling the impact. That never really happened. VR hasn't scaled. And I don't know if that's ever really going to happen as a technologist. I don't think that's going to be pervasive for for some time. Well, at the gala, you have that mission moment someone gets up and they tell their heartwarming story, but you have a limited audience.
• 19:41
  James Citron: Well, with niagra, we did an event last year on Giving Tuesday, Executive Director hops up on the screen opens on zoom just like we're here. She she shares the mission, what they've been doing. Two minutes later, pops up another zoom window takes you to Mali, Africa, to a community meeting, a village meeting where you can meet the farmers, where if you're donating, actually couldn't visualize and see your impact.
• 20:08
  Becky Endicott: And all of a sudden, it's not a nameless, faceless beneficiary on the other end, you can almost you can almost touch it, it feels like because the emotion that that lends you could never be captured, if you had them in a room. And you talked about that story. Wow.
• 20:26
  Jonathan McCoy: And I think there's two I mean a couple of things. I'm thinking in my head.
• 20:28
  Jonathan McCoy: I'm really going back because a lot of people talk about how the pandemic just fell. fast forwarded progress, you know, we're already moving toward virtual work, you work from home work from anywhere, but it was gonna take years to get where we got because of the pandemic, for example, I just remember, you know, when online shopping was coming out not to really date ourselves, right? But I remember legitimately thinking, I'm never gonna buy this stuff online, like I'd rather go, like try it on or whatever I'm going to do.
• 20:56
  Jonathan McCoy: And now I can't imagine wanting to go to the store, I want to buy everything online. And it's just like, our minds have to catch up to that. And so I think the people that are hard fast saying, No, this is gonna return relationship in person is never gonna die. I'm not saying it's never gonna die at certain levels, but we have to make it about honoring this relationship. And if their currency has time, and they want to live in Timbuktu, this may be the way to connect with them at a way that makes sense for people. And so it's like, we've got to adjust and make it truly, I don't know, aligning values on that. And it's not really about coming to the gala. And sitting in the certain chair, it's adopted connection, and it's about understanding people's values. And that can happen, of course, on the computer, you know, we all are witness to that.
• 21:40
  James Citron: I think you're exactly right. Yeah, we all have to meet donors and in humans where they are. Yeah, right.
• 21:47
  James Citron: And, and, and that's now more geographically disparate than ever before, time, time zones are almost irrelevant, right, we can all connect in ways that fit our schedules, technologies, and made it made it more easily accessible. And I think that's, that's a big innovation for, for all the nonprofits to to, to change that mindset of how they connect and engage.
• 22:12
  Jonathan McCoy: And just the immediacy to I mean, I think I would love for it to go back to the Afghan story because I mean, this is not let's print some letters and find the list or buy a list God for saying that my process, I mean, at the bed, this is immediately like we all were glued to the TV and phone trying to get updates on this and wanting to know how to plug in, and it speaks to just having a way to connect immediately.
• 22:35
  Jonathan McCoy: That's what we're looking to do when these things are unfolding.
• 22:38
  Jonathan McCoy: And we feel like we're gonna play a game where you kind of share the behind the scenes of what happened.
• 22:42
  James Citron: Yeah. So on a Thursday night, a handful of weeks ago, I got a phone call from the head of a foundation that we worked very closely with for some years. And she said, Hey, James, I know a few folks who were very plugged in, in Afghanistan, and they're trying to trying to create a fundraiser to help literally evacuated 350 people out of Afghanistan. And the airport's closing, wasn't probably as closely covered in the media was the folks that were being evacuated first by the government, our, you know, politician ambassadors, folks who were on the, if you look at the hierarchy of who's going to get out first people with connections, the US government, military, etc. And there was a lot of folks from Afghan activists, artists, to even citizens of other countries who are not going to make the priority list of the back military evacuations. And these are the folks that view these fundraisers in New York, called up and said, we have to raise millions of dollars, because we found an organization that can literally charter a plane and get into Afghanistan. But we need a platform that immediately can get set up. That's super easy, like 10 minutes, we can set up a fundraiser page. That's super frictionless. We have a lot of celebrities, who literally we want to text them a link, and make it super simple.
• 24:22
  James Citron: And literally, we have to do this right now because we don't know what's going to happen in the next 24 to 48 hours. So this was a Thursday night, like seven o'clock, we set up a fundraiser that night. Part of the magic of pledge is everything is super frictionless, just like the donate button on zoom. We were the first people to launch Apple Pay and Google pay. So when you set up a fundraiser on pledge, that's all stuff is built in.
• 24:43
  James Citron: You can also set it up for multiple nonprofits. So we had two nonprofits that are a part of it. One that was chartering the plane, another that's actually handling all the resettlement of the Afghan folks who are being evacuated. And there's a number of crazy things that happens. But the first, you know, 48 hours, a million half dollars was raised. But when we talk to the folks who initially set up the fundraiser page, and who were texting celebrities links to this and they're like, Oh my god, it's happening.
• 25:14
  James Citron: People are people are who've made commitments are actually pledging. We wired the money, literally the first, the first funds to get out the plane in 48 hours as soon as they cleared and what was really amazing was we were actually able to get four planes out. So what started 350 people ended up as 13 180 people successfully evacuated out of Afghanistan.
• 25:40
  Becky Endicott: I mean, I've heard this story. It still makes me weepy. I mean, this is what happens to us, a nonprofit with a need pops up like that. We just find a way to pivot and get resourceful and get scrappy, and figure out how to get it done.
• 25:58
  Becky Endicott: Bravo.
• 25:59
  Jonathan McCoy: Well, James, I mean, y'all have grown to have just a lot of different hooks that nonprofits can plug into.
• 26:05
  Jonathan McCoy: Could you just kind of quickly give us a quick overview of what all those are? And how do people get connected with y'all in those things? I mean, is it something that you can just add on to what you're already using?
• 26:13
  Jonathan McCoy: Or how does it work? Yeah,
• 26:16
  James Citron: great question. We have a really flexible platform that a lot of nonprofits uses for everything. So they use this for their online fundraising.
• 26:24
  James Citron: They uses their Donate button on their website. big shots are one nonprofit, or is Lawrence Henson Foundation, founded by Taraji P.
• 26:32
  James Citron: Henson, if you guys know her.
• 26:38
  James Citron: Yeah, she's amazing, amazing, amazing. And I'll give you an example with with organization so that we power the donations on our website, we've done zoom fundraisers with her, we actually introduce her to zoom.
• 26:48
  James Citron: And zoom did a big event A few months ago, which raised over half a million dollars for her organization. Awesome. So they use us for text to donate online donations, social donations, and also peer to peer fundraising.
• 27:03
  James Citron: So some organizations, we're kind of a one stop shop for their fundraising, other organizations. They might use us just for the zoom Donate button.
• 27:10
  James Citron: And by the way, please take a look at it. We'd love your feedback. If you go to pledge pledge dot two that's to you can find our website, one click you can find the zoom Donate button, spend a lot of press, the founder of of zoom, Eric, he just highlighted the zoom Donate button in their big annual keynote yesterday. It's their biggest user Conference of the year and showcased pledge because it's core to their mission to deliver happiness.
• 27:40
  James Citron: And they made a an investment actually in pledge to because they're so aligned with the mission and serving nonprofits.
• 27:47
  James Citron: So those are some of the ways and I would say the last, the last interesting, new innovation that we brought into, and there's many more coming into the lives of nonprofits, where we launched and won all these awards for the first donation capability on Shopify. You know, Jonathan, you were talking about like, I can't imagine going to a store anymore. Well, Shopify has gone from like a billion dollar company, like a $200 billion company, because everyone's on Shopify, everyone's buying and getting sent to their house, right? Well, why isn't there a transaction? Why isn't there a donation, integrating every single transaction and that's this is crazy. $300 million of products had been bought, with a donation attached through pledge. Here's the power for the nonprofit like St. Jude was like, we have all these corporate partners. How do we use a pledge technology to go to all of our e commerce merchants and go Hey, let's round up round up and add $1 at checkout to St.
• 28:43
  James Citron: Jude. So an example is this cool little company called neuro gum they make this like awesome gum that helps improve performance, neuro gum out of the pledge given grow app, that's our Shopify app, and raise $20,000 like that for St. Jude. Wow.
• 28:59
  James Citron: Talk about a story for the brand's
• 29:01
  Jonathan McCoy: James's brain.
• 29:01
  Jonathan McCoy: This is what I think's powerful.
• 29:04
  Jonathan McCoy: You could have stayed in the for profit and be a bazillionaire.
• 29:07
  Jonathan McCoy: You can be the next Elan musk man. But you took a hard pivot I'm curious about that part of your story. You know, you step back over this way. We talk a ton about entrepreneurial mindsets, because we just want nonprofits to embrace those you know, and think of themselves as a business not in the shoe army sense of a business. But in a look, we need to be innovating and we need to be leading edge.
• 29:29
  Jonathan McCoy: We don't need to be the last to the table, you know, at all these things. What's like your entrepreneurial advice for nonprofits.
• 29:37
  James Citron: If anyone's read the shoe dog by Phil Knight, founder of Nike, great book, you know, obviously their, their their motto, just do it. I would say just try it, try a virtual event, try the zoom Donate button. You know, my pivot into being a social entrepreneur and trying to raise billions of dollars for nonprofits was because personally that that's the story arc and the career journey that I want to be on.
• 30:05
  James Citron: When I got into the nonprofit world, I found a lot of clunky technology and technology's scary. You know, I came from a world where had a lot of developers. And you know, nonprofits don't have the budgets, the technology, oftentimes the developers, but companies like ours are built to make things so easy, so accessible to just try and the beginning of every single entrepreneurial success that I've seen, that turns into something really big. It all started with just trying something out. And the best entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, they get started with a little idea. It's not perfect.
• 30:42
  James Citron: everything, every Bell and whistle isn't great, but they try it out. And that little kernel of just trying something new, particularly with technology, seeing if it's working, and then scaling that.
• 30:57
  James Citron: That's my advice. Just try it.
• 30:57
  James Citron: And I think, you know, what I'm most excited about today is the zoom Donate button. Because when I compare when I think of disruptive forces and fundraising, Facebook bill has done billions for philanthropy, but nonprofits don't actually get the donor information. They don't actually see the impact.
• 31:17
  James Citron: GoFundMe is primarily crowdfunding, it's not the best experience for nonprofits doesn't have Apple Pay. It's not frictionless, it's all these things. But to me, zoom donate is so powerful, because we can have this personal experience, we can see each other, we feel like we're all next to each other, we can show impact, and then you get all the data. So I would say, just try it. Get Started.
• 31:45
  Becky Endicott: James, literally just use the we're for good, try stuff, try it, try stuff. And I just have to think that like the James is of the world, the Jonathan McCoy's of the world who are literally just sitting around, and their mind is thinking and spinning all the time of the next great big thing. If you we can even give you guys just some space, to dream about it. That That goes for you all listening as well.
• 32:12
  Becky Endicott: create some space to try some stuff. And get out there and and just innovate. And I really think that it will shock you the response in the global community that will come to you. So James, I cannot wait to hear your answer to this question. But we ask all of our guests about a moment of philanthropy that has stayed with them, you are literally sitting in front of the wallpaper of impact letters I really hope people get on and we'll take a picture and put it on socials of your background is nothing but letters of people saying thank you. And this is what happened when we use your product. And they have three stories of your building. And they're everywhere in this building, which is so wonderful, because you never lose your why in any room that you walk into.
• 32:58
  Becky Endicott: Tell me a story that has moved you.
• 33:02
  James Citron: So there, I'm a father of two of the most beautiful, wonderful, amazing little angels 96% of the time.
• 33:15
  James Citron: There were there so fortunate.
• 33:15
  James Citron: And there's this amazing nonprofit called worthy of love and their mission. It literally got started because if you're a homeless child, you don't have a birthday party. And so they started with this mission of how do we and they partnered with a big shelter parents are in California with how do we provide birthday parties for all the kids in the shelter. And it started with dozens and now hundreds and soon to be 1000s in Skid Row. So as a father, as a human, when I heard this story, I was just blown away, blown away. When you think about the excesses of many birthday parties, and we're, you know, obviously with the E vite.
• 33:58
  James Citron: Story. We never want birthday, we don't want any gifts. We don't need anything for my kids.
• 34:01
  James Citron: But to think about that. Those children who don't, whose parents desire to give something to their children, but don't have the means. So the parties that actually worthy love puts together they do one party a month. For all the kids, let's say it's November, all the kids in November, will have a party.
• 34:19
  James Citron: They've done parties at Dodger Stadium where Dodgers will come out. They'll have incredible musicians, all volunteers there to celebrate the children. So that's an example of an organization that just will live on forever and my heart and I'm proud to help and see them succeed and grow their impact.
• 34:44
  Jonathan McCoy: And I think you know, we just had Eric Newman on the podcast recently and he had said you know, his organization supports families that had cancer or kids that had cancer and he said I can't cure cancer, but I can help the kid forget about it for a period of time, which is such a gift and I just think that story. All of us need to lean into whatever that passion is because she can't cure eradicate homelessness, but she can create that space you know, for just the kid to be able to breathe and feel like seen for that time. So I love that and I love it, how it connects to your story to so much very cool. So okay, our last question is here, James, what's your one good thing. It's gonna be a tip or a piece of advice that you can leave our community with.
• 35:27
  James Citron: I was gonna say just try it. I would just say for anyone, any anyone listening, we want to, we want to help you best break through, whether it's on virtual events, whether it's just building the best experience for your donors on a on a great web mobile text to donate like experience. So we're here to help serve you. We want to see all of your impact on our walls, and help you achieve your mission. And so I'm happy to share my email for anyone listening who goes, I need help. And I want to, you know, someone who, if they think we can help, we're here to serve.
• 36:13
  Jonathan McCoy: Yeah, thanks.
• 36:13
  Jonathan McCoy: And we'd love for our community to connect with y'all. What's the best way to do that? Is it through LinkedIn or email or what?
• 36:19
  James Citron: Yeah, feel free to follow us on social shoot me a DM or you can email me to back to pledge to
• 36:31
  Becky Endicott: James I have just enjoyed this. We are the three of us are smiling and feeling so buoyed by this conversation. I am happy to know that you and your incredible team are in the world. And I want to give one last shout out to someone who I feel like cast this first stone into James's hand. And it's James's mom, James's mom, thank you for being a loving and credible human that could bring something like this out of your child that could go and impacts so many. So it has been a joy to just hang with you. We are rooting for pledge.
• 37:07
  Becky Endicott: Please go check them out.
• 37:08
  James Citron: Thank you so much, Becky. Jonathan. Julie, thank you to my incredible team. And I'm going to definitely play that soundbite to my mom who's going to be overjoyed hearing hearing that
• 37:21
  Jonathan McCoy: this has been an honor.
• 37:22
  Becky Endicott: Thank you, my friend. Take care.
• 37:24
  Julie Confer: Hey, friends.
• 37:24
  Julie Confer: Thanks so much for being here.
• 37:26
  Julie Confer: Did you know we create a landing page for each podcast episode with helpful links, freebies and even shareable graphics. Be sure to check it out at the link in this episode's description. You probably hear it in our voices but we love connecting you with the most innovative people to help you achieve more for your mission than ever before. We'd love for you to join our good community it's free and you can think of it as the after party to each podcast episode. You can sign up today at we are for goods comm backslash Hello. One more thing if you loved what you heard today, would you mind leaving us a podcast rating and review? It means the world to us and Your support helps more people find our community.
• 37:57
  Julie Confer: Thanks friends. I'm our producer Julie Confer and our theme song is sunray by Remy Boris boom