Papa's Mattering Notes: A Conversation with Bill Crouch, Founder and CEO of BrightDot

Summary

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The PM Podcast

Episode: "Papa's Mattering Notes: A Conversation with Bill Crouch, Founder and CEO of BrightDot"
Host: Jay Frost
Guest: Bill Crouch
Date: August 1, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this moving and deeply personal conversation, Jay Frost sits down with Bill Crouch, celebrated fundraising strategist, author, and founder of BrightDot. Crouch shares the pivotal moments of his life: growing up in a pastor’s family in the South, navigating personal tragedies, struggling with worthiness, and discovering his lifetime calling to impact others. Bill discusses the concept of “mattership”—the belief that making people feel they matter is fundamental to healthy organizations and communities. Through stories ranging from childhood mischief to leading educational institutions and consulting nonprofits, Crouch explores purpose, resilience, community, and the profound impact of validating others.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Family, Childhood, and Early Lessons (01:54–07:20)

• Family Dynamics and Early Adversity
  • Bill shares about his artistic, caring mother and principled, minister father.
  • The family’s dynamic dramatically shifted when Bill’s younger sister, Debbie, became terminally ill at 16, requiring extended care and changing family priorities.
• Lessons in Fairness vs. Equality
  • Memorable quote from his father:

    “We're always... Your mom and I are going to always treat you fairly, but we can't treat you equally because Debbie needs us more than you need us.” (03:18)

• Living in the Segregated South
  • Early experiences in Jackson, Mississippi, left strong impressions regarding racial injustice and the power of witnessing courage.

2. Values in Action: Courage, Community, and Compassion (07:20–10:22)

• Witnessing Moral Courage
  • As a child, Bill saw his father stop preaching to tend to a Black man who was thrown out of their all-white church and injured:

    “My dad quit preaching and went out and cared for that gentleman who was bleeding and got blood all over his white suit. And that's a memory I've carried with me all my life.” (07:55–08:15)

• The Power of Example and Unanswered Questions
  • Reflects on what he never asked his parents and how those gaps shape later introspection.

3. A Secret and Its Lifelong Impact: The Parakeet Fire Story (14:17–23:11)

• Confession and the Roots of Worthiness
  • Bill reveals a childhood accident (starting a fire that killed 500 parakeets) he never publicly told before. Keeping that secret and then confessing to his father shaped lifelong feelings of unworthiness.
  • As an adult, therapy helped him realize he developed PTSD from this experience:

    “You’ve got PTSD. You’ve had it all your life and you’ve been an overcomer fighting this and never knew what it was.” (19:10–19:23, paraphrasing therapist)

• Work Ethic as Compensation
  • After this trauma, Bill became determined to never make his father cry again, overcompensating with relentless hard work.

4. Discovering Purpose and “Mattership” (25:40–29:10)

• A Calling to Impact Lives
  • At age 15 or 16, Bill felt called to make a difference:

    “I felt that God had given me the purpose to impact lives, and I was to spend my life helping other people impact their lives.” (25:50)

• Helping Others Out of Inner Prisons
  • Shares desire to help people escape internal struggles with worthiness:

    “They're in...a prison inside themselves, and the doors are open, but they don't know how to go through the doors.” (27:39)

5. Love, Resilience, and Building a New Family (29:10–32:03)

• Finding Love in Shared Tragedy
  • Both Bill and his wife Jan were shaped by loss—her first husband died in a car accident; both found solace and new purpose together.
  • Bill describes their union:

    “God took two tragedies and brought us together to do something beautiful with the rest of our lives.” (31:36)

6. The Importance of Being Told “You Matter” (33:16–37:35)

• Transition, Alienation, and Kindness
  • Moving to a large new school was traumatic, but support from caring adults helped Bill through adversity.
  • One mentor’s recurring affirmation:

    “He said, you matter, you matter.” (33:46)

• The Lasting Power of Community
  • Bill credits his family and mentors with instilling a strong sense of mattering, which now guides his own work and legacy.

7. “Papa’s Mattering Notes” and Generational Impact (37:35–40:07)

• Maintaining Family Connection
  • Bill writes a personal note to one of his nine grandchildren every week—“Papa’s mattering notes”—to ensure they feel valued.

    “Every week I write a handwritten note to a different one. And my kids, my children say, call these papa's mattering notes.” (37:54)

• A Tradition Rooted in His Father’s Example
  • Bill’s father also wrote him weekly notes during college and graduate school.

8. Debbie’s Legacy and the ADA (40:27–42:04)

• Sister’s Fight for Disability Rights
  • Bill’s sister not only overcame a dire prognosis, but became a disability rights advocate whose legal battle contributed to the ADA:

    “She sued the federal government...The lawsuit, which was then called the Crouch McKeithin bill, became the ADA bill. My sister was named the International Woman of the Year by the JCs in a wheelchair, dying because of what she had done.” (40:38–41:43)

9. Finding Ministry Beyond the Pulpit (43:06–46:25)

• Redefining Career and Calling
  • Bill discusses how he blended ministry and education—ultimately leading as a college president and later in fundraising.
  • Jerry Panas, famed fundraiser, recognized Crouch’s “ministry” as the core of his compassionate leadership.

10. Mattership at Work: Consulting, Fundraising, and Emotional Intelligence (47:01–54:06)

• BrightDot’s Mission
  • Bill contrasts transactional “capital campaigns” with transformational relationship-building (mattership).
  • On why he shies away from simply running big campaigns:

    “It's too transactional. It's all measured by dollars at the end...We help build their philanthropic engine so that they can have a sustainable fundraising program.” (47:28–48:27)

• Helping Leaders See Themselves
  • Bill coaches leaders to embrace self-awareness:

    “Your biggest enemy is who you're looking at in the mirror in the morning...unless you're willing to think through some of the things that we're going to be sharing with you, we might discover that you're the biggest enemy that your nonprofit has.” (50:11–50:42)

• The Need for Significance
  • Especially touches on the struggles of aging women who feel unseen—and how nonprofits can affirm their value through programs like ethical wills.

11. Ripple Effect and Defining Success (54:06–58:00)

• The Quest for Significance
  • Bill’s audacious goal:

    “To impact 100 million lives before I die. And, and I'll never know if I do it. But...it's a ripple effect.” (56:06)

• Triggers and Tokens of Impact
  • Bill keeps visible reminders in his office—gifts from those he’s helped—to remind himself of his journey’s meaning.
• Jan’s Ministry and Family Legacy
  • Highlights his wife’s own commitment to serving the homeless, and the joy of watching their family perpetuate these values.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Worthiness and Trauma

  “I adopted a self awareness that I’m not worthy...all through my life, I’ve overcompensated by trying to prove over and over again that I’ve been worthy.” (18:27–19:07)
  —Bill Crouch

• On Purpose

  “What better way to impact lives than through education?...that’s always been my driving force: to impact lives.” (25:40–26:19)
  —Bill Crouch

• On Community

  “We’ve lost the sense of community. One thing that helped me all along...I had a community called our family, and our family was very, very close. Still are.” (27:35–28:46)
  —Bill Crouch

• On Validation

  “There were people there...who almost saved my life because they said to me, you matter.” (33:35–34:35)
  —Bill Crouch

• On Leadership

  “Your biggest enemy is who you’re looking at in the mirror in the morning when you wake up.” (50:11)
  —Bill Crouch

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Important Timestamps

• 01:54 – Bill begins sharing about family background and early childhood.
• 07:54 – Witnessing his father’s intervention at the church.
• 14:17–23:11 – The parakeet fire incident, confession, and the discovery of lifelong trauma.
• 25:50 – On discovering his purpose as a teenager.
• 29:10–32:03 – Meeting and marrying Jan after shared loss.
• 33:16–34:47 – The role of mentors and being told “you matter.”
• 37:35 – The tradition of “Papa’s mattering notes.”
• 40:38–41:43 – Debbie’s advocacy work and the road to the ADA.
• 47:01–51:24 – Discussing the foundation and philosophy of BrightDot, mattership, and moving beyond transactional fundraising.
• 54:06–56:35 – Legacy, significance, and the ripple effect.

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Final Thoughts

This episode is a testament to leadership grounded in compassion and the wisdom that purpose grows through adversity. Bill Crouch’s candor about personal wounds, the lifelong search for worthiness, and his model of “mattership” is both inspiring and practical. His story is a powerful reminder: to make a difference in the world, we must first make people feel they matter.

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Transcript

[Bill Crouch]

We were responsible. But of course I didn't say anything to anybody. And so for two weeks, the fire chief would show up at my house when I'd come home from the second grade and he'd be sitting on the front porch of our house and he'd say, hey, Bill, I want to talk to you in a few moments.

[Jay Frost]

Welcome to the PM Podcast brought to you by Evertru, 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. My guest today is Bill Crouch, founder and CEO, Bright Dot, nationally recognized fundraising strategist, speaker, author and former college president. For more than 40 years, Bill has worked in higher education, leadership, philanthropy and nonprofit advancement. He began his fundraising career at Gardner Webb University, Baptist Children's Homes of North Carolina, and Carson Newman University before serving for 22 years as President of Georgetown College, retiring from the presidency in 2013. He then joined Gerald Panis Lindsay and Partners as senior managing partner and in 2015, he left the firm to found Brightdot, where he helps organizations strengthen donor relationships and build cultures of generosity. Bill earned his bachelor's degree from Wake Forest and and master's and doctoral degrees from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. A former trustee and honorary fellow of Regent's Park College, Oxford, he is also the author of Start with Heart and his new book, Mattership. In this episode, we trace Bill's journey from childhood to what he calls the fourth quarter of his life. From ministry to the college presidency to national leadership in philanthropy and fundraising. Our conversation begins with the story of his tight knit family, neighborhood tragedy and the conversation with his father that shaped the course of his life.

[Bill Crouch]

My parents were remarkable people for a lot of reasons. My mother was a virtuo pianist, an artist, a dancer, and my father was the son of a Southern Baptist minister who never danced, never, I'm sure, never put up, picked up a paintbrush or any, any of that. But they fell in love in high school. They brought together all of their, their wonderful things together. My mother chose to give up a lot of her, her talents to be the spouse of a Baptist preacher because my father became a Baptist preacher as well and she raised her children, my siblings, in a very loving, caring environment until my sister, I'm the oldest and the sister just younger than me, two years younger, became terminally ill. And it was a tremendous change for our family where my mother became a caregiver. A lot of time I remember my father sitting us down there in a room. My, my brother and my other Sister and saying to me, I want to promise you kids something. We're always. Your mom and I are going to always treat you fairly, but we can't treat you equally because Debbie needs us more than you need us. During this period of time, how old

[Jay Frost]

were you and how old was Debbie at that time?

[Bill Crouch]

Debbie was 16 when she, she was diagnosed. And, and she ended up having to have eight brain surgeries. They had to remove the right side of her skull. And she was in hospitals for months and months. And then she should develop multiple sclerosis. And then she developed epilepsy. And it was very, very traumatic, especially for my younger siblings, because I was getting ready to go off to college. They were still in, still in the home. And Deb sometimes would be in Houston, Texas for a year, and my mother would be down there with her.

[Jay Frost]

And you were living at the time. Where was your family?

[Bill Crouch]

We were in Charlotte.

[Jay Frost]

In Charlotte.

[Bill Crouch]

And I had just gone off to college. And my sister had grand mal seizures, which were very flailing. Grand mal seizures were like running a marathon in terms of the energy it took. And their biggest challenge was her swallowing her tongue. So all over, around her bedroom, there were tongue blades. And we had all been trained to get to her and get that blade in her, in her mouth. So that, and then we just, and so my, we ended up with broken bones, broken nose. Cause we're flailing arms. Yeah. So it wasn't, it wasn't normal in a sense, but we always had dinner, sitting around the dinner table. We always held hands and we prayed together. We, sometimes Debbie would be next to us in a wheelchair. Sometimes she wouldn't be. But it was a, a family of, of great love. My mother, looking back, my mother was robbed of a lot of her talents and abilities. She once, when Debbie died, mother, my mom began painting again. And it's really interesting now, all of all of the siblings. Our house is full of my mother's artwork. But when they, when she and my dad were alive, my dad was the one always getting the acclaim, getting everybody. He was a church of 3,000 members. He had a lot of opportunities, etc. Mom was always at home. But now the symbols are all about my mother. But the great thing is I grew up Jay. The first five years, six years of my life was in Jackson, Mississippi, during the 50s. And my dad was a pastor of a downtown Jackson church and an activist. And so I, I, I didn't know anything about except four bathrooms and two water fountains and, and all of that in the early years of my life. Which left a real impression on me. Being a caregiver, my mother was a rescuer. Anybody she saw that needed anything, she was going to rescue them.

[Jay Frost]

And you were very young living there. But I'm sure that that made an impression, not just in terms of the differences and the fairness or the lack of fairness, but also how your parents treated that and spoke about it.

[Bill Crouch]

I remember, Jay, my dad, on Easter Sunday, always preached in a white suit. And I was 7 years old, and a black man entered the church on Easter Sunday.

[Jay Frost]

And this was a white church. I should.

[Bill Crouch]

White church.

[Jay Frost]

Okay.

[Bill Crouch]

And a group of deacons got him and threw him out the back door. And my dad quit preaching and went out and cared for that gentleman who was bleeding and got blood all over his white suit. And I was standing there watching this. And that's a memory I've carried with me all my life. And I think it has a lot to do with who I am today and the careers that I've chosen. You know, have always been in the helping fields. But that left an impact.

[Jay Frost]

Sometimes there are things that people do, and then sometimes there are things that people say, and then when they're merged, they're particularly powerful. So you were observing this from a young age. I know that made an impression. You just talked about that. But did they also explain it? In other words, did they take the action and say, kids, this is why we're doing it. The same way they sat down with you about Debbie.

[Bill Crouch]

Yeah. So not really. So, for instance, we had Mary, who was a black woman, who was in our home 10 hours a day, seven days a week, or six days a week. I don't remember that exactly. Who helped prepare our food, who did our clothing and stuff like that? And Mary. We just thought of Mary as part of our family. A question I never asked my parents. And. And I've now got a long list of questions I wish I'd asked Mom and dad, but one of them would. I'd like to know, how much did you pay Mary? How did Mary get to our house? How did you know those type of questions? I just. I wouldn't. I wasn't old enough. I wasn't mature enough. I wasn't to know those type of those questions. But now they're just a part of that. So. So my. My parents, during that period of time, lived sort of in two different worlds. But that led my father to leave Mississippi and say, I got to get my family out of Mississippi, and we ended up back in North Carolina.

[Jay Frost]

Was that very different?

[Bill Crouch]

Yes, it certainly was. For, for him, for me in Mississippi, I was in the second grade when we moved in. School of white kids When I got to Winston Salem, North Carolina, I was put in the second grade as a bunch of white kids that were in my school. So I adapted pretty quickly and really didn't think about. But I always thought in my mind I wanted to go to Ole Miss for some reason. And it might have had a lot to do with Archie Manning more than anything else, but. But there was always that curiosity to go back and see what that was like. Now I did go back in a lot of different ways, but not physically.

[Jay Frost]

Well and I'd love to get back to the going back. But before we get too far away from your parents, they fell in love in high school, but you described how different they were. What was the attraction?

[Bill Crouch]

Well, my mother was very, very beautiful, so I know what my dad's attraction was. I've always wondered what his attraction was to dad. Except, you know, believe it or not, he was a football player. His dad was pastor of the large church in downtown. So there was some prestige, I guess associated with that. And they, they, my dad would say there was a heck of a lot of chemistry going on. And my, my grandfather, my mother's mother, mother was two years younger than dad. So when he was a senior in high school, she was a sophomore. The he, my father in law told my dad, you cannot marry my daughter till she's 21 years old. Also implying to him that you can't have sex with my daughter till she's 21 years old. Which is how I grew up in that type of world. And so that was my father's often described how hellish those two years were. They got married the day after my mother turned 21.

[Jay Frost]

Oh my. When you first said that, I was thinking about, not about intimacy but about education because that's what comes to mind for me is you can't get married, you can't hit your wagons until everybody's able to stand on their own. Was that a part of it too?

[Bill Crouch]

Well, on both sides of my parents family education was a long, long road. I mean you, there was no question everybody's going to college, right? So my grandfather had a doctor's degree. My, My other. My mother's dad on the major transportation company. So education that was just assumed that was all going to happen and it did.

[Jay Frost]

Did you have an image when you were growing up? This is before really everything that happened, I guess with Debbie of who you were going to be because leaving then at a traumatic Moment like that, I'm sure had an impact on you. But before I ask you what that impact was, to leave your family at a time like that, who did you imagine yourself to be as a child? Did you see that presence in your father? Or was it in the, was it in the. The players at Ole Miss or what was it?

[Bill Crouch]

So. So I'm going to tell you. I'm going to tell you something I've never told publicly before. But I think it. I'm. I feel free to do it. And it's part of, part of my story also. When I was seven years old, I was in Cub Scouts and we were preparing to go on our first camping trip ever. And so the, the week before we were to go, we had a little mini, a mini experience out in the backyard of the church where we put up a tent and started a little fire and make sure we could do all that stuff and so on. On the Wednesday before we were to go on this camping trip, I was out in my backyard shooting basketball. And one of the Cub Scout guys came, showed up in the backyard and he said, bill, let's go practice what we learned this week. I said, okay, what was that? He said, let's go see if we can start a fire and put it out. So he had a book of matches. So we went over behind my neighbor's garage and we put together a lot of leaves and we set them on fire and then we dug a hole. We put the leaves in the hole, got a water hose, watered them down, dug up dirt and put on top of, put on top of it, and there was no smoke, there was nothing. And we gave each other a high five and said, good job. Well, that night at church, because we were Baptist people who went to church on Wednesday nights, my dad was doing the devotional and somebody ran in the back door and said the, but Crouch's house is on fire. So everybody took off running. And when we got. Because we were in a. Lived in a parsonage next to the church. And when we got there, it wasn't our house, it was my next door neighbor's garage. And he had just retired and for retirement from R.J. reynolds, they gave him a brand new Cadillac. And he had decided that in retirement he wanted to race parakeets. And he had 500 parakeets in his garage. And all of them perished. And we and the whole church congregation stood and watched this happen. And of course I knew that we were responsible, but of course I didn't say anything to anybody. And so for two Weeks, the fire chief would show up at my house when I'd come home from the second grade, and he'd be sitting on the front porch of our house, and he'd say, hey, Bill, I want to talk to you in a few moments. He said, this fire was awful, and we think we know who did it, but we're trying to see if that person could admit it. And I wonder if you'd have anything to say to us about it. And I'd say no, and I'd go inside the house. Well, after about a week or so of doing that one night, midnight or something, I got up and I went downstairs to our family room. And my dad was sitting there, his pajamas, watching tv. And I got in his lap and I said, dad, I started the fire and my dad started crying. I never saw my dad cry again until my sister died. And I said to myself, I can clearly remember saying to myself, I will never do anything again to make my dad cry. But what happened, Jay, which I only figured out two years ago, that I adopted a self awareness that I'm not worthy. I'm. I'm not worthy to be my father's son. And therefore, all through my life, I've overcompensated by trying to prove over and over and over again that I've been worthy. And what's really interesting, about 18 months ago, I started getting all these what, what I call witch messages. All these things running through my mind telling me how unworthy I am. And, you know, I got a pretty good resume, but that was still there. So I went to a therapist and I said, I need help. And, you know, I'm 73 years old at that time. I need help. I can't figure this out. So he immediately went to ch. He said, let's talk about your childhood. And when I told him that story, he said, stop. You've got ptsd. You've had it all your life

[Jay Frost]

and

[Bill Crouch]

you've been an overcomer fighting this and never knew what it was, knew how to. How to deal with it. But we're going to. We're going to. We're going to remove that from you for the rest of your life. And said the first thing we're going to do that, you're going to go home, you're going to put your. You're going to put your siblings on the phone, on the zoom call, and you're going to tell them, and then you're going to call your five children and you're going to have a zoom call, and you're going to tell them. And then he had asked me for my resume in advance before he ever met with me the first time. And I sent it to him, and he held it up and said, I have never seen anybody with PTSD who've done this, so get over this fact that you're not worthy. Right. And you got 25 more years, you know, to. To celebrate who you are. Now, Jay, you've known me a long time, and this is probably pretty surprising, you know, that. That about this reality. But I trace it back to watching my father in a white suit down on the ground saying, what. What an incredible man my father is. And then two or three or four months later, this incident happens. And I said, oh, my gosh, am I worthy to be his son?

[Jay Frost]

Do you remember. Do you remember his reaction when you confessed to him when you were that little child in his lap?

[Bill Crouch]

Yeah, he cried, and. And he said to me, I'm not. I'm not crying because you did this, because people do make mistakes. I'm crying because you lied to me for two weeks about your role in this. And. And that was the conversation. It's interesting. I know. I know my mother probably. Oh, let me tell you this piece of it. I got sentenced. I had to go to court along with the other. The other young man, and we got sentenced for destroying public property. He got sent to a juvenile detention home because he had some other things that had happened that I wasn't even aware of. Yeah, I was sentenced for six weeks. Every Tuesday afternoon when I got out of school to go to the firehouse, my parents dropped me off. They put me in what I now call a closet, and I had to look at pictures of destruction, of fire, including bodies of people who had been killed in fires. I had to do that every Tuesday for six weeks. And I can. I can. I can visualize sitting in that room. But my parents never. Never got me counseling or anything. I'm sure my mother loved me and hugged me and put me to bed every night during that period of time. I'm sure my dad did things that were great. I just don't rem any of that happening. But I. I do remember being put in the closet, which, of course, would be totally illegal activity in today's world.

[Jay Frost]

What happened to your friend? I mean, he went to juvenile detention, and then what?

[Bill Crouch]

Their family ended up leaving town, and I just don't know, but never knew whatever happened to him. And so it was just an interesting, Interesting dramatic. And I've learned now that when children go through crisis, as children, one of two things can happen, and my therapist shared this with me. You either become incredibly resilient or you become an addict and, and rely on alcohol, drugs to help get you through the pain that's inside you. Right? And I, I, my, I adopted this theory that got, got confirmed for me along the way. I adopted this theory that I might not ever be the smartest person in the room. I might ever, might not be the most worthy person in the room, but nobody was ever going to outwork me. I was always going to work, work harder. And when I played college basketball, after one game, we, this, the star of our team was injured. He couldn't play. I took his place. The other team didn't know who I was, so they didn't guard me the first half, and I scored 17 points. We went into the locker room and our coach said, if everybody would hustle as much as Crouch does, we would never lose a game. Then he paused and said, it's just too bad he doesn't have any talent. And I thought, there we go. That's, that's sort of my life story where. Yeah, and it's, you know, it's, I've always worked really, really hard.

[Jay Frost]

Okay, but work alone clearly is not the only virtue that, that you were pursuing that you were, you know, making amends for. It's also this kind of honesty. I mean, what you've just done right now in sharing that story or the, the way it's guided you through work. So it's not just the hard work, it's something else.

[Bill Crouch]

So there's something else. And what it was was I discovered my purpose early on, and I was 15, 16 years old. I was on a hike. I stopped on the side of a mountain to rest, sat on a rock, looked out. Beautiful, beautiful view. And I felt that the God had given me the purpose to impact lives, and I was to spend my life helping other people's impact, their lives. And that has been what's driven me all this time. So I decided the pathway. I thought maybe I was to be a minister. I found out that wasn't it. I went into education. What better way to impact lives than through education? And, and didn't have a clue that it would be basically through the fundraising arm of that. I thought it might, you know, be a professor or something like that, but that's always been the driving, My driving force is to impact lives, which I. That's why I'm still working now.

[Jay Frost]

You didn't describe it as a calling, but I've often Heard people use that term. Did you think of it that way? Is it just not a term that you choose to use?

[Bill Crouch]

No, I thought it that way because I'd grown up in that environment where we're going to let the Lord lead us. I felt it as a very spiritual moment of. I didn't hear God's voice speaking from heaven, but I just had this feeling that that was what they're.

[Jay Frost]

And when.

[Bill Crouch]

The reason I'm telling you the story that I just told you, that now at this age, I think there's a lot of people are hurting or suffering who are holding things inside. They're in. I call it a prison inside themselves, and the doors are open, but they don't know how to go through the doors. And. And I'm thinking, you know, and that's. That's sort of what led to me writing this book as well. I Is. There's. There's a lot of people who are in the fourth quarter or the third quarter or second quarter who are struggling with their worthiness, struggling with their purpose, and we've lost the sense of community. One thing is it that helped me all along. Mel. Boy, I had a community called our Family, and our family was. Was very, very, very, very close still. We're still very, very close. And my children are very, very close to each other. And. And so it's just a real. And. And I'm married. Jan, who you've met, who was an only child, who can't even remember as a child growing up, being hugged.

[Jay Frost]

Oh, my.

[Bill Crouch]

And. And we got connected, and it's. It's amazing. And we're gonna. We're gonna be married almost 45 years into. In two days, three days.

[Jay Frost]

Oh, it was your anniversary. So how did. Okay, now, I asked you about how your parents found each other, not literally, but in terms of personalities, when they were so different. What about you and Jan? Because when you come from a big family. I come from a family of five. My grandmother's generation, she was one of 16. So there's a lot of family there. My wife is one of two, and a family that's quite different from overseas. You know that Jen's a soloist, right? An only child. How did you find each other's spirit?

[Bill Crouch]

Well, it was. It was very interesting. So when I was in graduate school, I was pastoring a small rural church, and I. I had gotten married at age 18 because I. I have found somebody that attracted me and. But my family, my parents didn't feel they were the right person. Oh, we went off and Got married. And after a while, we decided that that wasn't the. The track for us together. Okay. So we went through a divorce.

[Jay Frost]

Yeah.

[Bill Crouch]

My. There was. I became very. Lost confidence a lot in who I was and whatever. At the same time, Jan was married and had just moved to. From South Carolina to North Carolina with her husband. They just had a baby. They joined a church that my father was the pastor of and my mother was their Sunday school teacher. And her husband got killed in a car wreck, hit by a drunk driver. Oh. And all of a sudden she had this two year old, two month old son. And when my. When my parents would call me, say, how you doing, Bill? I'd say, well, I'm hurting. They said, get over it. Let me tell you what's happened to this young couple in our church. So eventually I drove to Charlotte to meet the young widow. And the rest is. The rest is history. And I say, oftentimes we both say that God took two tragedies and brought us together to do something beautiful with the rest of our lives. And we produced a wonderful family. And there were two tragic events that we got ourselves together.

[Jay Frost]

Well, it sounds like you were tested more than once as a very young person. I mean, obviously as a child, you were tested in a pretty dramatic fashion.

[Bill Crouch]

And there's one other thing I gotta tell you, because when I was in high school, in the 11th grade, I was an all county basketball player. I was going to a new high school. We only had 400 students. I was a popular guy because I could dribble ball and shoot it and you know, that type stuff. One week before my senior year, my father announces. We're moving to Charlotte. So I. In the. Charlotte. The high school, East Mecklenburg was the largest high school in the state, had 3,000 students. So I was a hot dog at a school of 400, going to a school of 3,000 where nobody would even know my name. My basketball coach at the small school asked my parents if I could live with him for my senior year. And they said, no, you're going with us.

[Jay Frost]

Yeah.

[Bill Crouch]

And there was just another traumatic. I mean, it was a year from hell, Jay, when that. My senior year in high school. And it was just another. Just another one of these traumatic experiences that. That I went through. And there were people there. I could tell you. I could tell you two or three people who I. Who almost saved my life because they said to me, you matter. So I had it. I had a Sunday school teacher, a gentleman who's 60 years old, who every other Tuesday called me up and he took me to Shoney's and let me get a hot fudge cake and just said, how are you doing? Right? And I thought, wow, he doesn't have to do that. But he said, you matter, you matter. And it was always somewhere, all the way through my life, there's been somebody or someone who stepped up and said, you matter. And that's what's kept me believing that God put me here for a purpose and that life situations can happen, but that I still matter in this process.

[Jay Frost]

Now, when things like that happen to folks, those are opportunities, they're also risks, because any people who present themselves to us can, can be virtuous or not, but you have to have a certain amount of openness to be willing to go out for that piece of fudge cake. So what was it in your life, your family, your own character, that let you be open to the people who then could tell you that you mattered?

[Bill Crouch]

That's really interesting because I've never thought of it that way. But what my. What I saw in both of my parents all my life were going to the underdogs and saying to them, you matter. My mother. My mother would stop and pick up a homeless person and take them somewhere if. If she felt she could help them. My dad, as a pastor, spent a lot of time in people's homes who are going through. Through crises. I remember him saying to me one time, he said, bill, every family said from, from a ministerial perspective, every family will go through a crisis at least once every seven years. So when you have a congregation of 3,000 people, somebody's going through a crisis every single day. And my dad would get up for meals, he would give up his Saturday golf games to go minister to people who are going through crisis. And, and he was saying to them, you matter, you matter, you matter. And. And he didn't differentiate from the rich or the poor neither. Neither did my mom. And I remember when my dad died. This is interesting. When my dad died, one of, one of the things he was so proud of during his 45 years as a minister is how many of the young people ended up becoming ministers. He saw that as a real passing of, of his ministry. When at his death, a lot of those guys showed up, guys and women, and they were coming through the line and they would say to me over and over again, man, your dad really mattered to me. And finally, after about five or six, said that, I stopped him and said, why didn't you say that to him? Because my dad died, the lonely guy, he died when he retired and moved to a city where he didn't know anybody. He died because nobody asked him for help.

[Jay Frost]

He lost his purpose.

[Bill Crouch]

He lost his sense of mattering and purpose. And one of the reasons I'm not going to do that is I'm not going to. I don't think that God's given me this purpose and say I can retire from it. I think it's a lifelong calling. I got one thing I'll show you real quickly. One thing I love doing and my kids love the most. And I'm getting ready to do this right now. Every. Every week I have nine grandchildren. And every week I write a handwritten note to a different one. And my kids, my children say, call these papa's mattering notes. And they're keeping them for the, for the kids to have.

[Jay Frost]

And for those who can't see it, you held up a card that on the front says a note from Papa. And I guess the inside is the space for you to write about what matters.

[Bill Crouch]

And it's got all nine of their names on it.

[Jay Frost]

Right.

[Bill Crouch]

And I circle the kid's name that I'm writing the note.

[Jay Frost]

Well, that has another interesting effect because it makes it personal to them. They can see their names in print, which is different from just writing it down once. But it also puts them in a community on that card.

[Bill Crouch]

Yes, yes, we are. We're a very close community. And, you know, and our grandchildren now go from sophomores and college to 6 years old. And I was just with one of the college students. And as I was leaving her house, I hugged her and she said, I know, Papa, I matter to you. And so that's, you know, I'll do, I'll do that for as long as I live. My dad interesting enough every Tuesday that I was in college and graduate school, every Tuesday I'd get a handwritten note from my dad. And I've got them. And most of the time it might be two sentences said, hey, we had a great, we had a great Sunday at church. I hope you're doing okay. But I knew every Tuesday there was a letter in the mail. Occasionally it put a twenty dollar bill in it or something, but that's who my parents were.

[Jay Frost]

I gotta ask you, Bill. Well, first of all, did your mom pass before your dad? Is that why he was alone? Okay, but you went off to school. Your sister was in the throes of this thing where the whole family had to pitch in. She must have passed, I guess, not long after or what?

[Bill Crouch]

Well, it was interesting, Jay. They, they doctors told us she would live to be 20 to 23 years old. She died at 50.

[Jay Frost]

Oh, my gosh.

[Bill Crouch]

But here's what's more important. Yeah, she sued the federal government because she. She was disabled, but she was very, very, very bright, and she wanted to work, but if she got a job, she would lose her insurance. So she sued the federal government. She had to testify at the Capitol. I and my dad took her to Washington, D.C. this was in 1967, 68, something like that. The Capitol was not handicapped accessible. Ted Kennedy and Jesse Helms met us at the bottom of the staircase and carried her in her wheelchair up to the top of the stairs. The. The lawsuit, which was then called the Crouch McKeithin bill, became the ADA bill. My sister was named the International Woman of the Year by the jcs in a wheelchair, dying because of what she had done. So there's some DNA there. Yeah, that was inserted into our. Our lives.

[Jay Frost]

So I guess what I was going to, before I heard that, which is remarkable, is how you must have felt leaving because she was going through this horribly difficult circumstance. But you saw her continue to be her own person, really, much more than her own person. A person for others, again, a life of purpose. And that's pretty remarkable. I next wanted to ask you about. In your own journey, you talked about all the people who had gone through the church. Your father's work touched so many people, and he effectively raised so many pastors and. But you chose ultimately not to go down that path. So I wonder how that was for the two of you when you made a different kind of pastoral journey, because the work you do is certainly pastoral, but it's not in that you're not doing services. So how was that for the two of you as you made that change?

[Bill Crouch]

Well, it's interesting because my. My father was my biggest supporter, and he. He was always, you know, put. Always knew that I had to get a college education. I have no clue who paid for my college education. You know, he did not put that on me. He said, I want you. I ended up going to Wake Forest. That's not an expensive place. But I never knew how that was done. I. He said, son, whatever you've got the ability and you got. And you don't understand right now how important it could be for your career to get a doctor's degree. I didn't want to go back to school. I've been really, you know, struggling to do it. But I did. I did want to make my dad unhappy. I went to school. I did the. I did the ministry thing while I was there doing that because it was close by and I needed some income and I did it. But then. But then the sense was, no, I don't have to follow his path and professionally in order to do what I'm supposed to do. And that's when I decided to. To go the higher education route. And in our very good friend Jerry Panis, when he invited me up to Chicago for that first famous visit that we. We have with him, and he said, hey, I want you to be a part of this. I said, why? And he said, because I know you're a minister. And to me, this is some. This is a ministry, what I do. And I thought, well, that's really interesting. I thought I was going there because I was a, you know, college president that knew a little bit about fundraising, and that was important. But he saw something in me that he articulated that made me very proud, that that was. That came through somehow.

[Jay Frost]

Was he right about that? In other words, that ministry was kind of the core of who you were at that point as a. As an educator, as a college president for. For many years, and also as a fundraiser, which led you into that role?

[Bill Crouch]

Yeah, he was right. Absolutely right about it. So I. I would. I could say with great pride that all my life I've been a minister, and I've been able to fulfill that through being a college president. Now, through the work I'm doing now, you know, it's. It's a. It goes back to the calling. I've been very faithful to the calling that. That I received. And Jay, my. My grandchildren have no emotional understanding that their grandfather was a college president. All they know of me is. Is what I'm doing now.

[Jay Frost]

What do they. Okay, well, first of all, how do they understand what you're doing now? Because it's hard to explain this work.

[Bill Crouch]

All I know is I got a business that I really enjoy doing because they're not capable of really understanding. I'm not sure my children really understand exactly how.

[Jay Frost]

Well, how do you explain it? Because as a minister of one form or another, you do have to encapsulate the value of this work, its profound impact. How do you tell people who have no idea what this is about, what it is?

[Bill Crouch]

Well, you know, I often say we are not a typical fundraising consulting company. We're a company that wants to impact lives, and we. I just do not like doing capital campaigns.

[Jay Frost]

And why is that?

[Bill Crouch]

You know, it's too. It's too transactional. It's too bang, bang, bang, bang. It's all, it's all measured by dollars at the end. And so. But what I realized quickly after I got into my. Starting my own little company is that people will pay for capital campaigns, but they don't pay for you ministering to them.

[Jay Frost]

Right.

[Bill Crouch]

All right. They. They used to. Well, we started talking about helping people with emotional intelligence. That's what we were going to do. People loved it, but they saw it as fluff. Well, that's great, but I don't need your help making our staff more emotional, intelligent. I just need you to help them go raise more money. So we've now, We've now transitioned. We will help people prepare to do a capital campaign, but we don't want to run a capital campaign. And so we now call it that. What we do is help build their philanthropic engine so that they can have a sustainable fundraising program. And it's really working for us. And then at the end of our time, most of our work is 18 months long. At the end of the 18 months, go hire a capital campaign company to take you from where you are to raise all the dollars that you, you

[Jay Frost]

need the tactical plan and the sales force to get it done. But, but the emotional intelligence part, which is really where you started Bright Dot, when you were doing this initially, that's still the chief component, isn't that. I mean, because can, can you do any of this work really, not just effectively short term, but make it a part of the DNA of the organization and its relationship to all those who support us and the people we serve without understanding who you are in relation to them.

[Bill Crouch]

Exactly. We just changed the word from emotional intelligence. We call it mattership.

[Jay Frost]

And I understand it's important to have a term that is a good fit for you, for the organization, for brand, all these things. But, but why is it that you think that people have so much difficulty in investing in things that they ultimately describe as fluff, when in fact they're central? I mean, it's sort of like saying, I don't. Don't tell me about the food, but if they don't eat, they die. I mean, so why, why is it that people have so much difficulty in dealing with these emotional matters?

[Bill Crouch]

You know, and I think there, I think that is a part of it. And the way they get out of it, the way they excuse themselves from. From the way they excuse themselves, is that it costs too much money. So I know Jay, and I say this to every CEO I work with. Your biggest enemy is who you're looking at in the mirror in the morning when you Wake up. Right. And unless you're willing to think through some of the things that we're going to be sharing with you, we might discover that you're the biggest enemy that your non profit has. Right. So it comes down to self awareness. Are you willing to look in the mirror, see who you are? Are you willing to give your staff the opportunities to look in the mirror and see who they are and let us provide you some tools that can help you move forward? So our first four months of every contract is really spent in that area. Right. Really helping them. But we, we, we call it different things so that they can, they'll be more accepting of it, but they will not. We've discovered they will. Very seldom will they pay just for that piece.

[Jay Frost]

Well, it's funny because I, I don't know what the economics of running a church are, but most, you know, good, good houses of worship of any size, it's. People don't do it for the money. Most of them don't do it for the money. Right. But they go because of something else.

[Bill Crouch]

Yeah, yeah. And, and so that's why, that's why I believe, I, I believe that this whole concept that we're trying to develop now is that we focus so much on providing care for the people that we serve. We have a real great opportunity to provide emotional care for people who have the resources. I believe every person's on a quest for significance. If you can tie what you're doing as a nonprofit and hit the person with the revenues, quest for significance, then you're gonna, you're gonna raise a lot of money. Right? And so, and particularly the older a person gets. And you know what Jay, was something we've discovered. You know, there's a lot of wealth with women over the age of 70 and a lot of them are sitting in senior living facilities and they've been important people all their lives. And then they get to the senior living center and they wake up every day and somebody else in the center has died. They wake up every day and their grandchildren aren't calling them like they used to call them. Their own children rarely get to drop by unless they live within a block or so. And then all of a sudden they're beginning to feel unseen, unheard, unvalued. And there's the opportunity to reach out and say, hey, you are of value, you know, and that's why we've, we've adopted this pro, this thing called the ethical will, where we go in and ask women to write their ethical wills and then share them with the non profit community and they give some a sense of value and morph again and, you know, all that kind of stuff. So I learned this when I was doing some work in Bridgeport, Connecticut. And it, and it was really difficult. You know, in Bridgeport, Connecticut is a rare community that has the highest wealth of any county in America with the largest amount of poverty.

[Jay Frost]

I know it well.

[Bill Crouch]

And we were hired to come in and help the poverty women who were pregnant be able to get prenatal care. And we couldn't, we couldn't get any, anybody wanting to, to help other than, you know, United Way doing stuff. But we discovered that the people living on the west, the southwest side of that county who got up every morning and drove to the city, they're not even a Walmart in, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, because there's not enough money to support a Walmart. Right. So we finally broke through and found one, one woman who got excited about what we were doing. She said we were calling it Women in Philanthropy Helping women in Poverty. She said, no, no, no, no. You need to call it grandmothers that give a hoot and go after the wealthy grandmother's hearts who care about grandbabies. And it doesn't matter if they're black, white or red. And we were able to generate some resources to make a difference. And that's where the light bulbs begin to go off, that you got to help those, the people with the resources know that they still matter even more than just their money. They matter because they have a purpose too. Anyway, so I get up every day, Jay, as excited today as I was when I was 39 years old and became a college president. And we're being successful as we're still a little company just trying to help some folks along the way. And it's, it's a joy.

[Jay Frost]

So what is your quest for significance?

[Bill Crouch]

To impact 100 million lives before I die. And, and I'll never know if I, I'll never know if I do it. But if I help one non profit who helps 500 people get better medical care and they go out and impact 10 lives because they're living longer, you know, it's just a real. It's a ripple effect.

[Jay Frost]

So if, if you'll never know if you reach the goal is the point, the quest and not actually the, the goal post.

[Bill Crouch]

Yeah. So let me show you something I won't see if I can raise. My office is full of what I call triggers. And it's things that people have given to me because I helped, I impacted their lives and all I have to do is look around, turn around and look at the and look at the stories and know that there are many, many stories I never hear. Right. I don't do much of Facebook, but what I when I do and I see an alum who I signed the diploma, who's now doing incredible stuff, I give myself a thumbs up. I had a little bit to do with where that person is today.

[Jay Frost]

Right? Yeah.

[Bill Crouch]

And, and I've got in Jan. Jan has been running the homeless ministry at our church for 11 years. That's where she's finding her value. The story she tells me when she gets home from from doing that are just incredible. And I imagine that the two of us are going to always find some way to be doing something beyond ourselves and our children are following in our pathways. And it's so great to see that that's where the real joy comes.

[Jay Frost]

That's it for this episode of the PM Podcast. You can learn more about Bill Crouch and his [e-mail] our thanks to our sponsor, Evertrue, a Philanthropy first intelligence platform that helps fundraising teams turn data into action and build real donor relationships, working with nonprofits, healthcare organizations and educational institutions across the country. Our producer is Jack Frost, and our theme music is Moving Out, Moving in by Jay Taylor, courtesy of Epidemic Sound. If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to subscribe and check out our sister shows, Frontlines of Social Good and How to Raise all part of the Philanthropy Mastermind series. Until next time. I'm Jay Frost. Thanks for joining me.