← The PM Podcast
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- [00:00]
James Meissner
My first priority during the season is to do as much as I can as a dad, to give them a childhood free from fear, to open up their eyes to the perspective of others, so that I'm pouring into the next generation with the same things that I've learned over the past decades.
- [00:20]
Jay Frost
Welcome to the PM Podcast, brought to you by Donor Search, the show that takes you inside the lives of thought leaders, innovators and change makers in fundraising, philanthropy and civil society. I'm your host, Jay Frost. James Meissner is committed to building systems that create lasting impact. Growing up near Philadelphia in the 1990s, he was struck by his community's negative attitudes towards refugees from the Balkans and Rwanda. This led him to study political science, work in resettlement, and dedicate his career to helping nonprofits secure the resources they need to drive change. After roles in refugee resettlement at Wheaton Bible Church and McLean Bible Church, he spent a decade at World Relief as Senior Vice President, President of Strategic Engagement. Now, as founder and CEO of the Kipos Group, he helps small and mid sized nonprofits overcome fundraising barriers and grow sustainably. In this conversation, we explore his journey from hands on refugee work to rethinking nonprofit fundraising, beginning in the neighborhood where it all started.
- [01:24]
Unknown
Just ask you the kind of big question, which is, who is James Maestro?
- [01:30]
James Meissner
Oh my goodness. Well, I'm glad for this psychology session. This is gonna be great. Who is James? I'm a kid that grew up outside of Philadelphia. And as I was growing up, I watched the world change dramatically around me and particularly in the. In the mid-90s. So I'm either dating myself for the younger audience or showing how young I am for a more mature audience. Two things happened that were really interesting. One was during the war in the BALKANS in the mid-90s, a lot of refugees from Kosovo came to a place called the McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, right down the road from where I was growing up. And I heard people say the most horrible things about these refugees who had fled nearly certain death in the Balkans. And as a kid, as a teenager, that struck me, Jay, as just one of the worst things that you could possibly do. What was wrong about moms and dads and kids that were fleeing violence that made people so upset that they were living in temporary housing at an Air Force base at the same time? And I was a kid that liked the news. I like to read, I like to watch. At the same time, the genocide in Rwanda was happening. And I heard people using words like savages, animals, things like that. And as A kid. I forget how old I was. I just remember sitting back and saying, that's not right. Grown ups should not be talking about these people in that type of way. And this is. As the Internet's coming out, everybody's getting computers in their home for the first time. You know, I'm that in between generation. We didn't grow up with it, but by the time we were grown, we had it. Just thought, wow, there's so much happening in the world and I really want to be part of it. There's a faith component to that. I thought people in the church that I was growing up, if they really, you know, believed in the things that they were, you know, espousing on Sunday morning, they definitely shouldn't be talking, you know, about people that way. And it kind of set me off on a journey and lived through 911 in Jersey, you know, like the D.C. area. Very affected by that. Kind of opened your eyes to the rest of the world and what was going on in a further way. And then I thought, I want to change the world. Let's move to Washington, D.C. to do that. So I came, you know, down here for school and I realized I hated working in the government. I hated politics because it was slow and boring and messy. And that got me into the non profit space.
- [04:27]
Unknown
There was a lot of real estate in the middle of that answer. Because you lived through a couple of, at a time of two major genocides, really. They don't necessarily take up a lot of space in our minds these days. There's a tendency to forget or not be aware of things like this. As you say, though, you were right across the street from where there were people who were from refugee populations in places like Kosovo. And the people that you were hearing say all these terrible things about these people who were here as refugees. They were probably just neighbors. So what made the difference between your receptivity to their situation and others? Was it your family? Was it the faith based, you know, kind of life that you and your family led? What. What made you sensitive to these things in the way that others may have been unintentionally resistant?
- [05:30]
James Meissner
Yeah, mom and dad, if you're listening to this, sorry about what I'm gonna say, it was not my family. My parents were some of the ones saying the horrible things, and people at church were some of the ones saying the horrible things. I think there was a degree of right, when you're young, you're more malleable. I think it was the simplicity of just understanding the context that somebody came from and the simplicity of, oh my goodness, they had to run for their life and their kids just like me. And I can't imagine doing that. I think that's what did it. Even though my parents and the people at church were some of the ones saying the hard things, I remember being taught, you know, some of the things that Jesus talks about, you know, love your neighbor as yourself, like, okay, they are now my neighbor. And you don't get to choose where you live when you're a kid. Right. Your, your parents decide that on your behalf, like, okay, let's love them, let's love everybody. So I think that was a part of it. These kids didn't get to choose this. They're here now, they're in school with us. They went through something horrible. Let's be accepting of that. I think it was that simple as a young teenager. When you're a teenager, you think deeply, but when you're an adult and you look back on that, you realize that's a really simple thought.
- [07:06]
Unknown
Maybe, but not everybody's open to those thoughts, so they may not even occur to them when we get a little bit older. You talked about how they were in school just like you. Did you have classmates who were from these countries as well?
- [07:19]
James Meissner
Yeah, I don't think I had any folks from Kosovo. I remember, you know, this is the 90s, Soviet Union collapsed. There was a kid in my class that was a refugee from the former Soviet Union. His name was David. I remember that. And we used to ask him questions because kids ask questions he would never answer. There was such a deep trauma. I look back on it as an adult and I say, oh, I realized that he just didn't feel comfortable because of the trauma that he and his mom went through. There were several kids in my class that came from South Korea. Very different context, you know, obviously, but again, very uncomfortable talking about that situation. You know, Korea 30 years later is very different, you know, but we're uncomfortable talking about that.
- [08:12]
Unknown
There was martial law at the time, I believe, in South Korea right then or right before. Right.
- [08:17]
James Meissner
Okay. So that's, that's probably what that, that was. And they're my friends. Okay. We hang out together, we play sports together, we do instruments together, we do pizza movies in our parents basement on Friday night. Like, okay, these are the people that are there. And I think as a kid, you don't recognize the differences as much or you recognize them, but appreciate them much more.
- [08:46]
Unknown
So you left there and where did you go to school?
- [08:50]
James Meissner
Yeah, so I went to American University here in the district in my first degree was in political science and then I focused on the politics of African development. Of all the crazy things in the.
- [09:02]
Unknown
World and being in D.C. is that what led you to initially work in a political role? Because you said you tried out politics and you taste tested that and then decided to move to the NGO sector. How was the transition from that kind of studying of politics to being in politics to putting it aside?
- [09:21]
James Meissner
Yeah. So for those of you who are not from the greater Washington metropolitan area, everybody interns on Capitol Hill. You just part of the rite of passage here. I hated it. I absolutely hated it. The slowness of it. You watch on the news and it seems intense. The reality is 10 people are making decisions, you know, on all these things and everybody else sits back and waits for a word to come down on high and get to work. The, the real lack of interest in solving big problems and the, the greater interest in, you know, serving self for re election or positioning yourself for, for boards, you know, and things like that really rubbed me the wrong way. The pace of the bureaucracy as well was maddening to me. If you're, if you're a 20 something and you want to go out and change the world and you're working in the bureaucracy which is designed to move slowly so that nobody can make change very quickly without checks and balances and all that, if you want to go out and affect real change, that does not sit well with you. It didn't sit well with me. No. I think there is a huge place for that and people who do it and can be in the steady grind of a government to create just policies and you know, places more power to them. But that was not me. I wanted to get out there and get my hands dirty.
- [10:52]
Unknown
Right. You just said you wanted to change the world and not everybody studying politics necessarily wants to change the world. Maybe they just want to be a part of the mechanics of the world. What is it that you wanted to change?
- [11:04]
James Meissner
Yeah, I think my, my interest went very quickly to marginalized populations because of the things that I saw right at this point, 9, 11 had happened. The Internet was more ubiquitous. You know, I forget what year the iPhone came out. But I was young, you know, when the iPhone came out. So you're starting to get news feeds from the rest of the world. It's not just your local community and you know, Tom Brokaw on the nightly news anymore. It's, you know, you're getting all this stuff, you know, from everywhere. Also I went to one of the most international schools in the country and you start meeting people from the Middle east, from Africa, from Asia that are here studying and your eyes kind of get opened up to the, not the politics of poverty, but the people who are living in poverty and in broken systems. And that was something I wanted to see fixed also. I'll say this, you know, was 19 and I met a, a beautiful young lady whose family came as asylum seekers from Uganda. And I quickly fell in love and married into a huge Ugandan, you know, family and started to learn more personally what systems of injustice and poverty cost for people and the, the ingenuity and entrepreneurialism of both immigrant families and families who lived through, through war in Africa, had to flee or just living in slow burn poverty and all the things that they could do and you know, luckily began to realize as a young adult. My role here isn't to come up with solutions. These people are smart enough, way smarter than I am. They understand their context way better than I do. My role here might actually be as a broker of resources because they don't lack knowledge or know how, they lack resources to be able to implement some of the things that they deeply desire to do. So quickly kind of realized that in my early and mid-20s that I didn't have a lot to contribute on the quote unquote program side of things. There were a lot of people living in the areas that I wanted to see difference happen in the world that could do that better. Maybe the best thing that I could do was drum up some funds for it.
- [13:43]
Unknown
Well, before we get into the drumming up of the funds which you've done so much of, and we have a lot to talk about there, I don't want you to step too quickly away from your, your now partner of all these years. And I have a big question here. I think for many who are exposed to ideas, it's one thing, but then exposed to people is another. If she came from Uganda and you started to have that, at least the exposure to her experience through her, you heard her voice explaining her story and her family's story, etc. How much of your evolution do you think in your thinking about these things was influenced by being, you know, sitting down at a dinner table with somebody who now you're, you're fortunate to be with all this time, but to, to learn from them directly the stories that you know, the, the experience that influenced their life.
- [14:35]
James Meissner
There is nothing that an education institution, a book, a study abroad trip can teach you. Nothing compared to sitting down with, you know, a 19 year old and her mom and Seeing, hearing and seeing and experiencing the things that they went through. Nothing. Everything from what they say, but also what they don't say, what's too painful to say out loud, the perspectives that they have on things that frankly, would shock, you know, most Americans. Yet nothing compares to that experience of learning. And then you get introduced to aunts and uncles and cousins and, you know, all of that, and it just, it balloons out. I don't think there's anything that books or schools can teach you compared to actually befriending people, being in close proximity to them, and being in a position as a learner. So often those of us from the Western world, because of our unique cultural perspective, jump right to solutions before we actually try to learn. And we want to bring our know how and we want to fix things and we want to move quick. And I've seen more often than not that that actually creates more problems because we're unaware of all the things that are happening under the surface. But if we actually listen to people who are from those situations, the solution set actually becomes quite different. Quite different. And we can engage more as partners than as philanthropists or program staff or political leaders more as partners and create solutions together that actually do change things, rather than the traditional, hey, let's do a project for five years, and then we evaluate it five years after it's done, and nothing has changed because it's all just been from the outside, not from the community. I learned so much around a dinner table and preparing for dinner and, you know, all those different types of things that, you know, frankly, four years of undergrad at a great institution and several more years at a grad school at another great institution never even touched on.
- [17:11]
Unknown
Which isn't to say that that didn't have value, but the value is different.
- [17:13]
James Meissner
It sounds like those things were great experiences. I would not trade them for the world, but never got to the depths of understanding someone else's lived experience.
- [17:24]
Unknown
Right. Well, that's certainly an argument for getting to know people whose experience is different from our own, whoever we are. And clearly it must have influenced what this, this path you took. So you were there on the Hill, as you say. It's. It's a. It's a place where many people around here go, and then you, you decided you had enough. So is that when you moved into the NGO world?
- [17:50]
James Meissner
Well, so this is really interesting. I didn't go straight to the NGO world. I actually went and I worked at a church. Okay. And there were several reasons behind that. One was, you know, you remember back to the story. People at church and my parents were saying all these awful things, you know, as you. As you grow and you read your religious text or your scriptures for yourself, you realize the actual reading of, you know, in my case, the Bible had no place for that kind of language in the Bible's central character, you know, Jesus was the most accepting person of people that were different than him and turned every damaging status quo on its head, whether it was immigrants in that context, whether it was people in poverty, whether it was women in the ancient world who were treated incredibly, you know, poorly, did everything to flip the script, you know, if you will, And I wanted to give, you know, a shot at, hey, can I take these things that I now, as an adult believed, you know, about the Bible and about Jesus and these areas in the world that I deeply care about, and can I kind of blend them together? So I ended up managing some really big projects overseas and working with refugees at two really large churches in the U.S. one in D.C. and one in Chicago. At the church in D.C. we partnered with an NGO that I ended up working at later on called World Relief, doing a massive project in Burundi. And at the same time, hundreds of Burundi and refugees from their civil war, which kind of mirrors Rwanda's civil war and genocide, were coming to the US and the church. We partnered with 30 of those arriving refugee families. So we organized communities from the church, whether they were small groups or Sunday school classes or whatever they were called to, surround these families, literally picking them up at Dulles Airport and walking with them for their first year in the US I don't know if I've ever had more fun in my career than doing that, Jay. It was so meaningful to see people who were retired in their 70s and 80s and 20 year olds, you know, college students, moms and dads with their kids surrounding these families that could not be more different from them and saying, hey, you're here now. You're our neighbor. Let's. Let's love on you in this great way and help you get set up here. And some of those families, you know, I personally, you know, and my wife personally engaged with, and they've become great friends, you know, over these past. Gosh, this was over 20 years ago. I. I absolutely loved. I absolutely loved every minute of that. It's fantastic.
- [20:54]
Unknown
It's. It's interesting that you mentioned Dulles because Dulles is in the area where we both live in that. What's called the dmv here is a major international airport. And it's a place also where Many people have come in who are fleeing different things around the world. And so there's been a tendency over the last few years, certainly maybe over the last decades, to have people greet people at the airport, sometimes from NGOs. Also there's, you know, the. The visitor services, I'm trying to remember the name of it now, also greeting people there. But that atmosphere has changed over time. It's gone a little bit back and forth about the country's receptivity and even the reception that people physically receive when they arrive at the airport. It sounds like right then, people from Burundi coming in, that there was a real welcome. How is it that we went from that to what we've seen in the last few years, where sometimes there's a welcoming for countries that people here may not know a great deal about, and sometimes they're simply not.
- [22:08]
James Meissner
One of the most interesting things that I've observed that we're going to move forward in history now is historically, the United States has been one of the most welcoming place for refugees. Refugees are the most securely vetted of all the immigrants that come to our country. They go through a year's process and then finally are invited here. Always has been, until recent history, a bipartisan issue in the US Not a lot of people always knew about it, but when they heard about it, oh, that's a really great thing for us to do. People who are fleeing persecution, violence, you know, hostilities, all of that, that all began to change, I believe, in 2015, and we might get a little bit political here. But, Jay, you and I live in D.C. so it's what we do. In 2015, when now President Trump came down the elevators at Trump Towers, he cast all the country's problems on immigrants and refugees. And not that there weren't real problems there, but. But for political expediency, we as a society said, let's ostracize, push these people out, you know, even prevent them from coming. Okay. And you saw, for the first time since the Refugee Resettlement act was signed in 1980, for the first time, the issue becoming not a bipartisan, all of us as Americans doing this, but an issue of political preference, where you saw people in the center and the left being welcoming of refugees, and you saw people on the right really being hostile towards refugees. During this period, I worked for, at the time, one of the nine agencies that had a public private partnership with the State Department to resettle refugees. And I was in a forward facing, media, fundraising, you know, advocacy type role. It went from being something that was celebrated to Something where we had to have FBI kits in our desk drawers to manage the hate mail and the death threats that we would get. And that happened overnight. Okay. But then something really interesting happened. Refugees are bad was the narrative, particularly from, from the right. But then the Afghan withdrawal happened in 2021, and because they were friends, you know, of the United States government, people who had turned their back on refugees from other places, from Syria, from Congo, from Sudan, from Iraq, were now scrambling to welcome Afghan refugees into the US because they worked with our military overseas. And I don't want to suggest for one second that those Afghan refugees or sids, whatever legal classification they came with, were not worthy of that, because they were. But so were the Syrians and the Iraqis and the Sudanese and the Congolese and the Burundians. It taught me that we as a society don't think really deeply about these things. We are letting our politics and our party affiliation shape our view of the world, rather than letting our view of the world shape our politics and our party affiliations. It was really hard for me in a resource development world to have communities and people go from we hate what you do and we frankly don't like you to please help us, please help us, please help us. We want to resettle Afghans. And that happened overnight and was, was, frankly, it still is, you know, all these years later, really disturbing. I quite, I haven't quite figured that out one out yet, Jay. So if you have any wisdom there, please share it.
- [26:16]
Unknown
Well, no, I mean, one of the reasons I'm exploring this is because I think we're all riddling on not just the politics of things, but everything from how do we meet one another as equals wherever we are and whoever we are with people we don't know or did not know before. And another dimension is what does that mean to those of us in the impact sector? And you were just talking about the church based work and going into that, that was one way, it sounds like, of addressing what you saw as an important need and coming through the lens of your faith. That's something I think a lot of people can identify with wherever they are politically. You found a church or churches that were not just amenable to that. It sounds like that was their mission focus. Is that right?
- [27:05]
James Meissner
Oh, absolutely. The church in D.C. it took a while for us to get going. There was some skepticism to it and like many things, the younger folks started with it and then it kind of permeated, you know, the culture at large. Got my hand slapped a few times, you know, for doing different things, but that's. That's okay. The church I was at in Chicago actually had a 30, 40 year robust history of welcome, welcoming refugees. And one of the things that I learned along the way, you know, now that there are refugees who have been in the US for decades, there always have been, but they weren't formally, you know, through a government program until the late 70s, early 80s. A really interesting dynamic came out, is that almost all of them were befriended by communities of faith, whether that was Christian, whether that was, you know, Jewish communities. Those were predominantly the largest ones. But now there are many, you know, mosques who were doing the same thing. Almost all of them had that similar thread through their story. People from this synagogue, from this church, they helped me, help me figure out how to live life here. That was my wife's family story. You know, they came. African refugees were already Christians, but a small little Baptist church in Maryland surrounded them, helped mom and dad learn English, help them get jobs, help them figure out how to navigate, you know, the grocery store system, you know, and all of that. And I saw that as a thread through, through all of these different stories. One of the really interesting things, I forget exactly who put out this study, but people research. How do adults change their mind when it comes to immigrants and refugees? There was one thing of hundreds of different variables that this study looked at that did it, and it was becoming friends with someone was the only variable. Education did not change it. Religious, you know, instruction did not change it, which is kind of maddening, you know, for those of us in that space, you know, pastor, you know, imam, you know, whomever talking about it at your weekend service didn't change their perspective one bit, when they actually met somebody and sat down with them and became friends. The only thing that changed their perspective, the only thing which kind of goes back to your point, which I think you were trying to get me to say earlier on, which was friendship. Knowing somebody putting yourself in their shoes is what gives us empathy, you know, for them in their play.
- [29:51]
Unknown
It's interesting because you just went through a litany of the different ways that we could learn about things, but I don't know that we have an easy mechanism for making friends in a digital era in the way that. And I'm not romanticizing this because I never did this, but there were pen pals when I was very young. This is also before the digital era, and I didn't have a pen pal. But my understanding from people who had them was they felt like they had built these friendships with people they couldn't see. So they didn't know what they looked like necessarily and they didn't know anything about the places where they were from. But they built this kind of affinity. I don't know what that is today. If it's not coming necessarily. Despite all the best intentions through our, our schools, through our, our social institutions, through our churches and synagogues and mosques. What is, what is that mechanism? It does it, does it leave it to the NGOs to try and foster these friendships?
- [30:58]
James Meissner
It's a great question. Somebody has to do it. I'm just going to riff here for a second. When you think about the digital world that we live in and how marketing works, all of the apps that we have, whether it's Facebook or Instagram or Twitter X whatever they are, they're designed to give us things that give us dopamine rushes. They literally have staff that are neuroscientists trying to do it. And the way that you get that is not by being put in uncomfortable situations. The way that you get that is being fed a constant stream of what you already know and like and then that getting more and more intense. You know, it's almost like a drug, right? I mean, I've never done drugs, but the first time you do it, apparently you get a high, but then the second time you need more of the drug, I guess to get, you know, the same level of, of high. And I think it's the same thing in our social sector. And you have these situations where people are being isolated in smaller and smaller subgroups and in order to get the same feeling of safety and security, they're having to ratchet up the rhetoric in order to feel the in group mentality. Somebody has to break that. Because humans learn a lot when we go through senses of states of disequilibrium, right? Something has to get kind of broken and then we learn from that. When you ride a bike, teaching a kid how to ride a bike, you think you can do it, right? I mean, what five year old doesn't think they can conquer the bike right away? But then they fall down and they get hurt and then that teaches them how to better balance, how to create momentum with the pedals. If you keep the kid in the state of I can ride a bike, I'm amazing, I'm a superhero, I'm teaching a four year old how to ride a bike right now. So these are real things. You're not doing them a service, you're actually doing them a disservice. The most loving thing is, hey buddy, let's get on the bike. I'm going to push you for 10ft, and then we're going to see what can happen. And it's going to fall off, it's going to scrape a knee, but then he'll learn how to do it more properly the next time. I think whether it's our religious institutions, whether it's schools and higher education, whether it's NGOs, we need to put people through those states of disequilibrium, through those situations where they go from, hey, I know it all. I have my view. I'm actually a superhero to getting on the bike and falling down and scraping a knee to realize, oh, I actually didn't have this all figured out. That's hard for us to do because we also live in a society that's becoming more and more focused on. On safety, more and more focused on not being uncomfortable and becoming less and less resilient, you know, as we go on. But I do think that's. That's the way that things change.
- [34:12]
Unknown
I have to ask you this in the context, then, of what you. What you were doing with World Relief and what you've seen, you know, since, which is that when we want to appeal to people to support our work, whether as volunteers or advocates, and especially as donors, where they have to pull money out of their pocket, their bank account, their stock portfolio, whatever it is, and then give it to us instead of giving it to themselves or their kids, that's a. That's a decision that I wonder, is it more akin to the dopamine rush, or is it more like building the resilience and skinning your knee? Because not every time you give, do you necessarily get the same kind of feeling.
- [34:54]
Jay Frost
I'm not.
- [34:54]
Unknown
I'm not sure, actually. When you dealt with donors and you've given them an opportunity to support something that's important, were you only talking to those for whom this was already, you know, a fait accompli, they wanted to support this thing that was all about them? Or were you also introducing people to these ideas, to these new friends, so.
- [35:16]
James Meissner
They could support them both and everything in between? You know, when you were both in philanthropy, when you look at people who try to categorize, hey, there's these different types of donors, I kind of laugh because everybody's an individual and on their own journey, and yes, they fit into categories and boxes, but most of them break the boxes, too. I experienced both people who just were. I get so much joy when I write a check that I can't help but go Back to work and try to make more money so I can write a bigger check next time. Because I just love, I love this work that you guys are doing. Everything from, you know, hedge fund managers in Connecticut to seed producers in the rural Midwest have experienced it, you know, all across the country have also experienced people who were. This is really hard for me. I don't feel very comfortable right now. I don't necessarily like or support what you do, but I'm interested because there's something here. And what, what I would do with those folks, Jay, is I would introduce them to other real humans. And there's a story of a guy in North Carolina, so, you know, American south, really hostile to refugees and immigrants. Really hostile. But there was a need for people who were already here for transportation to and from jobs. And he thought, you know what? I think working is good, you know, so I'm going to drive these Kenyan ladies to work. Refugees, you know, and pick them up every day. Okay. He did it. They became the best of friends. He heard their. And you saw this guy go from like antagonist to massive advocate, you know, for these women. And now he got like his, whatever the license is called to drive a bus. He, like, drives buses of refugees all around North Carolina to and from work every day. And I've seen that story over and over again where I'm really uncomfortable with it, but if a fundraiser came and sat in his living room and tried to convince him to give money, it's just going to further entrench, you know, the guy and his point of view.
- [37:35]
Unknown
Can you talk about that more about the difference between trying to sell an idea for a charity, just trying to raise money, to somehow drawing people in the carrots versus the sticks in this world of philanthropy.
- [37:50]
James Meissner
Yeah. I'm not sure you can ever convince somebody to change their mind. People who are a lot smarter than me can write articles and studies, you know, on this. I'm not sure you can convince anybody to change your mind. I do think you can provide a pathway of self discovery for them where they change their mind on their own along the way. When somebody tells you you're wrong, think about something differently. All that does is tick you off. When my kid, when my teenager says, dad, you're wrong, that just really makes me mad, Jay. You know, when another adult does it, it makes me even 10 times, you know, matter. I don't love them like I love my kids. So I think there's very little utility, you know, in that. I think there's a lot of utility for, hey, will you come on a journey with me. Hey, this, you know, Thursday night, I'm going to do this, and I'm bringing some other folks, you know, with me. Hey, are you interested in that? I think that's where you start to see people, you know, become interested and willing to engage. I was always a big proponent of, you know, vision experiences or vision trips, because people need to see and experience what you're doing. Most Americans haven't been to rural sub Saharan Africa, you know, out and out in the bush. No amount of video production, no amount of pitch decks, no amount of storytelling can replace the, hey, I'm sitting here with a mom and dad and their five kids learning about that. The smells, the tastes, the sounds. Same with refugees. Same. Even if you're like a higher ed or a hospital fundraiser, there's nothing that beats that experience of being in there in person. Also, I'm a big proponent of understanding the donor that I'm with. And one of my rules was for my staff, if this person is not a great fit for us because it's clear that they are just so passionate about this other thing and we're not it. The thing I want you to do in that context is find the best thing for them, even if it's not us. So our family, all of our get. Not all of it, but most of our giving goes to causes in East Africa. And when people come and try to convince me, hey, give to give to the universities that we went to, I'm really resident to do it, hey, have you asked me what my giving priorities are? Have you asked me what I'm trying to change in the world? Have you asked me what type of impact would really, you know, just give me so much joy to make? No, you're asking me to fund the scholarship fund. You know, okay, I know that's your job, but if you had asked some questions, maybe you could have positioned it differently. Maybe it could be, hey, not the scholarship fund, but, hey, we have this Ugandan or Congolese or Burundian student, really just can't afford to go to school here. Could you be part of the solution so they can go back home and change their country rather than the blanket scholarship? You can contextualize it more once you understand a person's, you know, passions. Very few fundraising shops, I think, would actually ever do that. Jay, why is that? I think there's two or three reasons. One, the staff turnover so frequently in these organizations that they're just trying to hit a number and move on, and the donor becomes a commodity. That's number one. Number two, I think is really a crisis of leadership. Leaders coming in, trying to prove themselves and, you know, hit a number and, hey, let's get through 100 donor calls, you know, this week. So we hit the number rather than thinking through, you know, what it looks like, 5, 7, 10, 20 years down the road. And can we really turn a donor into an advocate? If you are a donor rep at American University right now, listening to this, if you ask me to fund the library, if you ask me to fund the scholarship, you know, bucket the answer. I'm not even going to respond to your email. But if you said, hey, we have a student from X country that's really struggling and they need a mentor, I'd probably be the first to sign up. And I drive downtown, you know, even though I hate driving into the city in traffic, I would do it and I would help the kid out. And then if you said, hey, help us develop a pipeline of people from that context, People aren't looking at the long game. They're looking at, can I close the budget gap this year. But you're going to do much better over the long term if you create those engagement pathways for people.
- [42:55]
Unknown
Well, this is something I'm sure that you've seen in lots of contexts, but you must have seen it at World Relief because you were there for how many years?
- [43:02]
James Meissner
A little bit over a decade.
- [43:04]
Unknown
And you started in one role, I think a partnerships role. And then you. Then, of course, in the end you were, I guess, redirecting the shop. I can't remember your last title.
- [43:15]
James Meissner
I was overall strategy and resource development there.
- [43:20]
Unknown
So you must have seen that progression then and been able to affect it yourself with donors, because they would have come in almost like you to this, to this work, to this interest and then been able to find the right place where they could apply whatever time, talent and treasure that they had. But there has to be a doorway open to that. To your point, yeah, a lot of.
- [43:44]
James Meissner
That is just you, you do, as a fundraiser, have to pound the pavement, right? You have to find people that are somewhat interested in your work. Now, luckily, I joined an organization that was 70 years old, big database, you know, and I used, you know, tools like Dr. Surge and others to help me, you know, help me do that. But then you find communities that are really interested. You find churches, you find doctor groups that care about this. You find. One of the things that I love doing was finding employers, like business owners who needed people to work in their shop. And then like, oh, well, we have a pool of people that need jobs. You have a pool of people, you have a pool of openings to work in your factory, on your farm, you know, whatever. And playing matchmaker there, you help the donor actually meet their needs, to hire staff, and you're developing an advocate for life. You know, in that instance, there was one. It's a, a nationwide organic food trucking company based in suburban Chicago. Okay. They had distribution centers all over the country and they frankly couldn't find Americans willing to do the job. You know, it's a hard job. You're on trucks and, you know these things. We introduced them to a bunch of refugees and they hired these refugees and they were like, wow, these people are fantastic workers. We don't want them just on the factory distribution floor. We want them as managers. We want them in the corporate office because they're getting this more than anybody else we've ever hired. And so they actually created their own job pathway, you know, for folks. And at the same time, they were funding us to bring them more refugees, you know, to their community. I think that finding out what the giver is trying to do in the world, whether that's their personal philanthropy, whether that's their corporate, you know, priorities in playing broker, playing matchmaker, one of the best things that we can do.
- [45:56]
Unknown
That's the thrill of this, it sounds like for you. I know it's been always exciting for me to meet someone new who shares some kind of interest or an interest in a piece of the idea. But how are you finding them, especially when they're across the country. So as you said, 70 year old organization. But these are people who are new discoveries who have a heart for this work. How do people find that? When to your earlier point in the conversation, if they're not necessarily in your church or your synagogue or your mosque, and they aren't necessarily at your school, and they aren't even necessarily, no matter how much you love them in your family, how do you find these people who are ready?
- [46:35]
James Meissner
Yeah, I think the best way to find new givers is through your existing givers. And we're talking at a major gift level. Okay. We're not talking about monthly giving and annual fund. We can talk about digital strategies and all that. Talk about major givers. If you treat your major donors like a commodity, they will respond like a commodity and they'll write the check when you ask. If you treat them as partners and you're trying to do this thing together and you're the conduit for it, when you go and ask them a really Specific question. AJ I know that this has become a really big part of your life. I know that you get an absolute kick out of this. And it's checking two or three boxes for you. A work box, a private philanthropy box, a volunteer box. Could you help me think through two other people, two other guys that you and I could go talk to together so we can accelerate this work? I have never had somebody say no to me for that, ever. I have had people say no to when I was younger. Hey, can you introduce me to your friends? I have 300 friends. Which one is too broad of a question? And when it's all about helping me and not about helping Jay accelerate the things that Jay cares about. The dynamic is you to me instead of you through me to do this thing in the world. I don't think givers give to organizations anymore. I think they give through organizations to change something. And if you can position yourself that way as the conduit, as the broker, as the guide, and truly act that way, not just say you're doing that, but truly act that way. When I go and ask Jay or I ask Dan or I ask Kathy, hey, can we go find three or four more people to come on this journey? Not 20, not your whole Rolodex. We don't have not your whole contact list, but two or three people to come on this journey with us. They're thrilled to do it because you've provided such a great experience for them. I've always found that's the best way. And let's talk fundraising language. Right? Business language. When you do it that way, do you know what it does? It shortens your sales cycle, your fundraising cycle. You're not going from zero trying to get to 100, which would take 18 to 24 months. You're doing it in six months, which means you're more profitable with your time, which means at the end of six months, you go to the next person, hey, can you introduce me to three or four more folks? It shortens the length of building trust as well, because you're getting the trust that Jay puts on me, and it's going straight to Frank and Eric and Jane because they know and trust Jay. So now they know and trust James because Jay trusts James. It just snowballs over time.
- [49:39]
Unknown
And the trust that you're talking about now, that's, of course, one of the major topics of our time is the erosion of trust. And it's occurring for lots of reasons that we could discuss all day. But I wonder if maybe what you're describing is A solution not just for the ability to find new sources of revenue for our work, by finding friends through friends, in order to help them to do the thing that they really want to do. Not just to help us, but to do the thing that's impactful, make their lives meaningful. But maybe it's also a recipe for addressing this distrust which permeates everything, including our politics, where a lot of this discussion started. But before we maybe go into that and what you're doing today, you've mentioned something about going on these trips as another avenue to help people see things for themselves, to make friends for real. It's no longer theory or on the page. And I'm wondering if you've had that experience as well.
- [50:44]
James Meissner
If I've had the experience of going on one of the trips, I think the first big experience was just meeting my wife and her family. And then that showed me, when you go to the NGO world, there's this debate about trips and are they worth it and the time, any potential damage that might come, and there are, there. There are truly ways to do it that are very damaging to communities. But the ways that you can do it that are very helpful. Of the things I cut my teeth on very young, was figuring out ways to do it that are helpful, where people don't come in and feel like they're a rock star, but they come in with a position of humility to ask questions. And a lot of that requires a significant amount of prep time from the NGO or the nonprofit to their community, which also has to be done very humbly because people are especially wealthy. People are wealthy for a reason. They figured something out in the world that they can leverage. Taking them through a journey where they can put themselves in somebody else's shoes is not the easiest thing in the world. You have to build deep trust in those relationships. You also have to build deep trust in the communities that you will take them to. And you have to prep both sides really well for what they'll see. You have to prep, you know, in my case, I did a lot of trips to Sub Saharan Africa. You have to prep those communities for what a trip means and what a trip doesn't mean. You also have to prep donors for what people say, do mean that are different, you know, than they might expect. You have to be on the entire time. When I would leave these trips, I would have so much fun doing it, but I would sleep about four to five hours a night. And from the second I woke up to the second I closed my eyes, you have to be in that role as cultural broker, being very attuned to every different element of what's going on around you. And it is not for the faint of heart to do it well.
- [52:59]
Unknown
Which trip had the most impact for you? Can you think of one that really, even though you are already transformed, you're already dedicated to this work that really hits your heart?
- [53:11]
James Meissner
I think there were two. One, I was leading a group to Eastern Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, big Congo for the Africanists out there. And actually it's timely that we're talking about this because a rebel group called M23 had just seated surrendered from the region. It's a Rwandan backed rebel group. And I took these potential givers to visit world relief projects that were dealing with sexual and gender based violence and heard directly from women who are willing to tell their stories of multiple acts of sexual violation to them, which were some of the most horrific that I've ever heard in the world. And there was something really impactful that happened and that was in that context, probably true in context over the world, these women's husbands would generally leave them after they had been raped and they had no recourse after that. And it was just a very culturally accepted, is a culturally accepted thing to do. We met with some of those families, but then also met with families where the husband and the wife and the kids and both sets of families had gone through a process that world relief staff, Congolese staff, had developed of bringing them back together again. And you saw instances of husbands telling the story of I kicked my wife out after she was raped because that's what I thought I was supposed to do. And then I went and I asked forgiveness because of how horrible that was. And she is now back in the home and we're trying to figure this out together. I don't think there's a clear cut case of something wrong and broken in the world being more broken, you know, after it happens to reconciliation and forgiveness and trust being built up. That for me was just an incredibly impactful trip. One of the others was in 20, 25 years, going in and out of Africa was in South Sudan right after it became a new country. And the reason this was both of these were so impactful for me was because of how uncomfortable I was in the moment. You know, women and husbands telling that story of sexual abuse, being kicked out, reconciliation, that's not something we openly talk about, you know, in the United States culture. I remember like literally sweating through my shirt because I was so uncomfortable in this. In the South Sudanese context after Decades of civil war. I generally don't get physically uncomfortable. You know, on these trips, I was very physically uncomfortable. We were sleeping in a shipping container, you know, all these different things. There were snakes, there were spiders, the whole thing. And I just remember being like, oh, this is what my donors must feel like when I take them to Kenya, which is a nice place to travel. You know, it's great if I feel this way, having done this for 20 years here, this is what they must feel like when I take them to these other places. And it gave me a lot more empathy because I realized just how uncomfortable I was in the situation. But those, I think were the two most impactful trips for me. And I decompressed the same exact way on the way home. You know, you're flying home, you're watching a movie. And the Congo trip was right when Toy Story 3 had come out. And this is, you know, Andy goes to college at the end. And for those of you who have seen it, I sat on the plane and cried for like an hour watching Toy Story 3 because you need to have that emotional outlet, you know, when you're done leading these trips as a.
- [57:14]
Unknown
As a fundraiser, this stuff doesn't leave you. I mean, I'm sure it hasn't left you in your current work. Yeah. And, and for that matter, because of your wife and her family, I'm sure you're reminded of things. How did you decide to go from there to founding your firm? And how do you keep in touch with these things that, that have been so central?
- [57:39]
James Meissner
Yeah.
- [57:39]
Unknown
Your, your life, not just your work.
- [57:42]
James Meissner
Yeah. One of the things that I realized as you know, as you know, I moved up in the NGO world is the larger, the NGO does not equal better or deeper impact. It just means they have a better fundraising program, to be honest. And I met lots of smaller, you know, small and mid sized organizations and NGOs that had really innovative projects, designs and really unique impact. And there's nothing wrong with big NGOs. I mean, we have them as our clients, they're fantastic. But I really just developed this deep sense of passion for the little guy that was out there, that had something that was worth scaling and I wanted to invest my time to help them. I also didn't want to travel every single week of my life anymore, which is part of it, but it was really this passion for, let's help the small and mid sized organizations out. And so what we do as our firm is we actually look for small and mid sized organizations that have discovered something in their programming that's worthy of being scaled and we join with them to help them scale it. I keep touch to these passion areas through a lot of our clients right now, whether it's a federally qualified health center in a lower 9th Ward in New Orleans, who has developed a really innovative outreach program and needs to scale it, or an NGO working in a, you know, in a cross in Ghana and has developed a way to help street kids out in a way that's completely African, you know, led, not Western led to, to. This is really interesting. An organization that has figured out the most scalable way to prevent human trafficking that I've ever seen by doing intercepts at border crossings, land border crossings. And we're working right now. How do you double that organization in the next year? Because they have amazing data that shows that trafficking has decreased 17% in the last two years in every country that they work, because they've trained all these intercept agents at border crossings. You've never heard of this organization, and I had it before two months ago either. I want to help them scale and become the big NGO to affect new generations of change.
- [60:06]
Unknown
What is the name of that organization?
- [60:08]
James Meissner
That organization is called Love justice. And if you have a passion for stopping trafficking in any form, you should check them out.
- [60:15]
Unknown
Yeah. And this is all your work through Kippos, which is.
- [60:19]
James Meissner
That's right.
- [60:20]
Unknown
Yeah, yeah. And you formed that just. What is that, three years ago now?
- [60:25]
James Meissner
Something like three years old now. So kind of coming out of the pandemic was a great, you know, resetting, exciting for everybody. Decided I wanted to spend the next season doing this.
- [60:34]
Unknown
The next season is a great way of thinking about these things because you have gone through this big period where you not only did very consequential work, but you were involved in it in a very particular way. Now that you're at the helm of a firm where you get to sort of, like you said, scale these different operations that maybe didn't have that much support previously, and you're giving them the tools and the coaching to do that. How do you imagine this next season for you, particularly in the environment we find ourselves in now? And this is a very particular moment in time. We're recording this in early 2025. We're seeing a lot of changes, at least at the executive branch level in the last three weeks. What are you thinking about right now and how do you imagine yourself participating in that?
- [61:31]
James Meissner
I think there's three levels to the answer. And I've given a lot of deep thought to this, you know, since the November Election. The first level is actually personal. It's family. You know, I married into an immigrant family. I have kids. I have two kids, two biological kids that are. We call them our African Americans, half Ugandan, half. Half American. And we have an adopted son from Burundi. My first priority during the season is to do as much as I can as a dad, to give them a childhood free from fear, to open up their eyes to the perspective of others, so that I'm pouring into the next generation with the same things that I've learned over the past decades. You know, as a. With our kids, we pray every night. I'm sorry for those of you who aren't religious, because we've talked a lot about religion, but we pray every night. Jesus, teach us to love you more. Teach us to love each other more, and teach us to love other people more, especially people who are different than us. I want my kids to not be like those folks in New Jersey and Philly, where I grew up, that talk badly about other people, even if they don't like them, even if they don't understand them. I want them to always try to love people who are different than them. I think that's my most important job in this season. Jay. I don't think I know that's my most important job. The second is with our clients. There's very few nonprofits out there that don't have some type of funding that comes from the federal government, whether they know it or not. A lot of nonprofits get state funding and don't realize it's federal pass through funding. So we've had to help a lot of people understand that these past few weeks, helping them make the switch, or the pivot, maybe not the switch to diving into private resource development more than they probably had in the past. A lot of refugee organizations we're working with right now, a lot of climate organizations that we're working with that really do need to tap into private philanthropy more. And I do think, you know, people always talk about, are Americans giving more or less, or is it just the wealthy who are giving more? I generally think that most people want to affect change in the world in some way, that if you treat them right, you'll be treated right in the end. So I really want to help our clients, you know, survive and thrive during this complicated season. And then there's a role, this is tertiary, this is the third role, to use whatever voice that I have and that our firm has to talk about creating systems that are just in the world. We're small. We are not even a fly on the wall of politicians. We're maybe a gnat in parking lot, you know, of, of people who are making changes and policies right now. But to use our voice to engender courage for those that maybe have a different seat at the table right now and to help them both with the courage and the confidence, but also the, the longevity to stay in the game. One of the things I learned, you know, working in refugee resettlement during the first Trump administration, then through the pandemic, the Afghan withdrawal, the Ukrainian situation, was that to stay in this game long term, you need to take care of yourself and you need to have your priorities straight. And if we can use our voice to help people who are at the table be healthy as they're at the table right now, that's something we'd really like to be able to contribute to.
- [65:29]
Jay Frost
Well, that's it for this episode of the PM Podcast. You can learn more about James and his work work@thekeeposgroup.com our thanks to our sponsor, Donor Search, the world leader in AI and donor research for nonprofit fundraising. Our producer is Jack Frost, and our theme music is Moving Out, Moving in by Jay Taylor and is provided courtesy of Epidemic Sound. If you like what you heard, make sure to subscribe wherever you like to listen. Check out our sister shows, Front Lines of Social Good and How to Raise. And come back next weekend for another conversation with a leader in the world of social good. Until then, this is Jay Frost. Thanks for joining me.