Loading summary
Transcript64 lines
- [00:00]
Brent Grinna
He's like taking notes in his notepad. I had no idea what was going on. Next day, Scott Kersner publishes a story about Ever True, this new startup coming out of Harvard Business School. I barely had an email inbox set up at this point, but now I start getting inquiries. I got people, I got accountants who want to do my books. I'm like, there's not many books to talk about people applying for jobs. I'm like, well, there's no money to pay you. I've got but customer potential customers coming inbound as well. And so it was the least well managed startup launch in history.
- [00:36]
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. Brent Grinna is the founder and president of Evertrue, a platform reimagining how nonprofits connect with their supporters. Raised on a farm in Iowa, he went to Brown University where he captained the varsity football team and chaired the senior class gift campaign before moving into the private equity space and then earning his MBA at Harvard Business School. His early experiences in alumni fundraising led him to see how outdated systems held back meaningful relationships between institutions and donors. In response, he built Evertrue to bring data and digital tools into advancement work in ways that put people first. In this episode, we explore his journey from Iowa to the world of philanthropy and technology, the lessons he's learned along the way, and his vision for the future.
- [01:41]
Interviewer
So let me just ask you about the beginnings. I understand that you are born in Florida, but you're from Iowa and that your family was on a farm, what, about 160 acres?
- [01:56]
Jay Frost
Is that right?
- [01:57]
Brent Grinna
That's right. Not only was, but still is if you were to go check in with them today. So, yeah, I grew up on a very small farm in the northeastern most corner of Iowa. People picture Iowa as this sort of flat expanse of corn, which it mostly is. But in our specific corner of the state, the last glacier sort of missed us. It's called the driftless region and so it's much more hilly than you might expect, more maybe Vermont esque than what you might think of in Iowa. So that was sort of our pocket of the world. And yeah, incredibly remote. It was me, my parents, and my two younger brothers with our nearest neighbors being, you know, maybe not a mile away, but not half a mile away. Yeah.
- [02:45]
Interviewer
Yeah. Well, growing up in a place like that kind of shapes us to a degree. But it's not just Farm, because every farm is different. So what kind of farm was this?
- [02:53]
Jay Frost
What did your parents do?
- [02:55]
Brent Grinna
Historically, it was a dairy farm. My grandfather actually originally purchased the farm and had maybe call it 50 or so dairy cows. And then the rest of the acreage was primarily corn, maybe soybeans. And then my dad worked the farm for a few years in the 80s. But it was sort of at a time when 160 acres might sound big to a lot of folks listening, but it was pretty small and getting smaller in the landscape of agriculture. And so at that point, my parents decided to rent out the farm to some nearby farmers. And so while they weren't actively farming it, it was always sort of a big part of our life, the backdrop of our lives. But we did raise a handful of pigs so that we could get some early responsibility, go to the county fair as part of the 4H club. And so while we weren't a big operation, we did get a real taste of farming through that work.
- [04:00]
Interviewer
A lot of people now don't know that life. They don't Even know what 4H is.
- [04:05]
Brent Grinna
Yeah.
- [04:06]
Interviewer
Huge part of growing up in a place like that. Can you talk about that?
- [04:09]
Brent Grinna
Yeah. The 4H Club, I mean, I think. Right. People oftentimes. Right. Have familiarity with maybe the scouts historically. But in a rural America, the 4H club plays a big role in just creating a platform for community and leadership among young kids, especially those of us growing up on farms. And so the four H's head, heart, health, hands, if you're wondering. And we would open every meeting with the 4H pledge. And that was really one of my first leadership experiences, getting to be president of the 4H Club. And it was me and my brothers and my cousins and other friends, sort of from around the neighborhood, if you will. And very formative for me.
- [04:52]
Interviewer
You remember the pledge, I'm sure.
- [04:54]
Brent Grinna
Yeah. I pledge my head to clear thinking, my heart to greater loyalty. Yeah. I could. I could do the whole thing.
- [05:00]
Interviewer
In your sleep.
- [05:01]
Brent Grinna
Yeah.
- [05:01]
Interviewer
And then raising the animals is also a really big part of that life. And you. I guess you raised some prize pigs and cows or something like that, right?
- [05:10]
Brent Grinna
Yeah. Yeah. So we had. I would call us sort of a boutique operation. We would. We would get eight pigs, and we would have four for me, four for my middle brother, Brad. And we. We got eight, because when you go to the county fair, you need to have a pen of three. And so we kind of had a spare. So we would have our eight pigs that we'd raise. We'd feed them in the morning. Before school, we'd feed them when we got home. And for the most part, they're relatively low maintenance in between. So it was a really fun experience. Then you take it in the county fair, and then at the end of the county fair, you auction off your pigs to the highest bidder. And so you kind of go full circle with them, which was bittersweet, depending on how connected you were to. To the pigs.
- [05:57]
Interviewer
Right. But I guess growing up with 4H, you know, that's. That's what's going to happen. That's what's used to being able to raise something and then let it go.
- [06:05]
Brent Grinna
That's right. That's right.
- [06:08]
Interviewer
You mentioned school. So with the farms being that size, and not everybody lives on a farm there, but a lot of people do. What was the school like where you grew up? How. How big was it?
- [06:21]
Brent Grinna
Yeah, Postville Community School District. Very. Just classic small, rural school, K through 12. We had the elementary, the middle school, and the high school all in one facility. We had, you know, call it plus or minus 50 kids per class, per grade. And for the most part, it was very much a kind of quintessential rural upbringing that you might see in the movies. That being said, one real twist that ended up having a pretty big effect on my life is that there was a tremendous amount of immigration. Starting in the very late 80s, early 90s, there was a meatpacking plant in our town that had gone bankrupt, and it was purchased by a group of Hasidic rabbis who had come from a combination of New York and Israel. And they ended up forming, building the largest kosher meatpacking plant in the country. And so you had this sort of classic, you know, small town. You know, it was a mix of Catholics, Lutherans and Presbyterians, and there wasn't much more variety beyond that. All of a sudden, there was an influx of members of the Hasidic community to prepare the meat via kosher practices, and then a tremendous amount of immigration from a combination of Mexico, Guatemala, other parts of Central America. And this was right as the Soviet Union was collapsing. And so there was a big influx of folks from Russia and Ukraine. And so I remember in sixth grade, all of a sudden we had a new classmate named Slava Leontief. And for a bunch of kids who had grown up in northeast Iowa, we didn't really know what to make of it, but I thought it was the coolest thing on earth, like, to. To have the opportunity to all of a sudden meet people from all over the world in my little town. I mean, it was amazing and I loved it. I leaned into it. Slava ended up becoming a friend and teammate. And many other members of a variety of the immigrant communities became big parts of my life as I went through high school.
- [08:46]
Interviewer
And I know we're going to return to that almost as a theme because it's a big part of your life, but you just mentioned teams, so I have to touch on that because I know that's another huge piece and many people will listen to this, some will see it. There's a football behind you. And I know that's a big part of your story here. Starting at school, when did you take up athletics in addition to everything you were doing with the family?
- [09:08]
Brent Grinna
And just, I mean, look, small town Iowa. There weren't really anything else to do. We had no movie theater, we had no McDonald's, we had no stoplight. We had a four way stop sign in the middle of town. And so it was pretty much sports, school, farm, the end. Very, very little variety. And so, you know, from an early age, I was just doing whatever was in season. Baseball, football, basketball, track and field, swimming, you name it. And sports ended up, I mean, it. It absolutely transformed my life. I was fortunate in high school to have a really great coach named Chris Evers who very much took me under his wing and helped guide me and helped me sort of dream big. And I think the combination of his support and, and my mom in particular really encouraged me to explore, you know, the world outside of Northeast Iowa. And mom in particular, I think she must have, you know, back when you had to dub VHS tapes, she had my highlight reel from, from, from high school. And I think she dubbed about 50 of those tapes and sent them out to colleges all over the country, along with, you know, the bio of my ACT and gpa. And I'd been fortunate to do well academically and so quickly got on the radar of Ivy League institutions that I really had very little familiarity with. I remember getting my first letter from Brown, where I ultimately attended, and I thought it was from the Brown Institute of Technology, which was a vocational school in the Minneapolis area. I didn't know what Brown University was, just to set some context here. But they found out who I was and that helped create some options. And at the same time, I was really interested in the military academies. And so I went through the process and ultimately had a nomination to the Air Force Academy. And I was really committed sort of emotionally, mentally to Air Force. But a couple of the coaches at Dartmouth and Brown and, and Princeton sort of convinced me to do some visits out there before I made a final decision and then ultimately decided to. To go to Brown.
- [11:38]
Interviewer
Did you come from a service family? Is that one of the reasons that the Air Force Academy really resonated for you?
- [11:44]
Brent Grinna
I didn't come from a service family. I mean, other than maybe call it at the great uncle level, but there were some families. There was a family in a nearby town where one of the kids had gone to the Air Force Academy, and then another one of my peers was sort of in the process there. And so I had just some exposure. And we did go out and visit. And it's just a tremendous, you know, sort of community and experience. And I think, honestly, I think it could have. It could have worked out really well had I ended up going in that direction. Some would consider Brown the absolute polar opposite. So that probably tells you something about me because there weren't a lot of kids debating Air Force versus Brown that year or anything.
- [12:35]
Interviewer
I have to hear about why you think this is the opposite. But before. Before you answer that for you, as a kid, you just highlighted your mother's role and I guess your coach's role in feeding what I'm sure was a natural flame or a curiosity, or else you wouldn't have done any of this because you still have to do it yourself. But what were you thinking when you were 15, 16, when it comes to leaving a town like that? Because no matter how curious and intelligent a person might be, they aren't necessarily seeking to go out into the world. Some of us do, some of us don't. What was it for you?
- [13:13]
Brent Grinna
Yeah, I think for me. You mentioned it at the very beginning, but my parents, I mean, my dad grew up in the same farm I grew up on, and my mom grew up on a farm 15 miles away in a nearby town. And when they got married in the 70s, they had Florida or bust sign on the back of their car. And as recent, you know, as recent newlyweds who frankly hadn't known each other all that long, relatively quick engagement, neither had gone to college, and they took off for Fort Lauderdale, Florida in the late 70s. And so why did they do that? I don't know. But what I do know is when they moved back pregnant with my brother Brad, I was maybe a year old, 18 months old or so. All I remember growing up as I was the only Miami Dolphins fan in northeast Iowa, and I wasn't really sure why, but I say all of that because what my parents talked about all the time was their seven years in Florida and the people they met and all the parts of the world those people were from and all the different industries those people worked in. And so that was this sort of just aspirational story. And it was hard to imagine because we're sitting on a farm in northeast Iowa surrounded by eight pigs and 160 acres. My parents are talking about south Florida in the late 70s and early 80s. And so I think that that probably just planted a seed early on that there's definitely a bigger, you know, very exciting world out there. By the way, we love northeast Iowa. We still spend a lot of time back there, want our kids to have that experience, but not only that experience. And I think that was something that my parents intentionally or unintentionally instilled early on.
- [15:10]
Interviewer
And it sounds like then you had an echo of that when you saw all these people moving into the community, doing all these different things. And they were from all over the world, no doubt. So then you, I guess you decided to go to school. So. And I know you had the opportunity, but it was a decision, and you could have been anywhere, but you chose to go to this school that you'd never heard of before. That was after, I knows, series of college visits. But what did you mean when you said it was the polar opposite of the Air Force Academy?
- [15:41]
Brent Grinna
Well, I just think if people look at, you know, Brown University as an incredibly liberal, open curriculum, choose your own adventure, make your way, invent your major, there's all these things that are true to a certain degree. There's just tremendous flexibility and freedom there. I don't think you find all that much flexibility when you're, you know, doing the morning drills at the Air Force Academy. So big, big spectrum there. But for me, getting exposure. Brown. I mean, again, I was. I was pretty uninformed. I mean, I did not have family members that I was able to bounce these ideas off of. I didn't have. I mean, I had some good mentors. By way of my coach, for example, I mentioned, but didn't have perspective on these specific scenarios. And so, truthfully, a lot of it, the way I thought about it was like, once I narrowed it down to thinking about playing Ivy League football, for example, that in the end, which specific school, it wouldn't really matter, right? I mean, everybody makes the case as to why one program might be better, etc. But I thought for me it was going to be more about, like, where. Where could I fit? And truthfully, connecting with our head coach, Phil Estes, at the time, on my recruiting trip, he lived in Cedar Rapids Iowa till he was, you know, 10 years old or so. And we really connected on that level. And I just felt like if I'm going to be a really long way from home, I want to be playing for somebody who frankly could almost be like, you know, who would feel a bit like a surrogate parent. And that was what I felt with Coach and his staff as well and absolutely went and experienced that. Also. Brown did present quite a bit of flexibility from, from an academic perspective and I had developed a, a real interest in language. And so I intended to, I thought about doing the medical school path, but, but quickly felt that international relations with a specific language focus would be, would be a great fit for me given all of the kind of immigrant community experiences that I'd had in Iowa growing up. And so I ended up studying Spanish, Portuguese and Italian when I was at Brown, you know, in addition to doing football and just had a really, really rich experience doing that.
- [18:04]
Interviewer
And the football experience at Brown, how was, how was that for you? Because it's not, it's not high school, but it's also, you know, it's. I don't even know what the, what the district is. It's with the Ivys.
- [18:15]
Brent Grinna
Yeah, well, we're technically. So. So if you think about historically what you would have thought of as Division 1 or Division 1 double A, now it's FBF, basically the bowl series or else what they call the championship series. So Brown is in that second division. Right. We're mostly playing schools in the, in the Ivy League and then we're playing schools like Brown has their opening game against Georgetown this weekend, actually, which I'm going to take my family to. And so competitive, you know, definitely not Top tier Division 1 football, but competitive and really great tradition, history and I think for being from a rural kind of area without having any kind of network in the northeast, showing up 15 days before the academic year started and having football camp, you know, by the time first year orientation started, I already had 100 acquaintances and a bunch of friends on the football team, which, which is there. There are pros and cons to that because it meant that I kind of had a built in community at the same time. You end up spending so much of your schedule around football, on football that it definitely limits your ability to, you know, fully connect with all of the other activities that, you know, that folks that weren't committed to sports could explore.
- [19:38]
Interviewer
But it sounds like you made it work. I mean, you played all four years, right? You as captain, I believe, of the team.
- [19:44]
Brent Grinna
Yeah, no, that's right. Ended up playing all four years and we had a pretty big group to start, you know, over 30 folks came in, 30 teammates as, as first year students and by the end we were maybe down to 15, but a pretty die hard group and absolutely loved that, that experience. We had some success. We were competitive in, you know, most of the games that we played and am still in amazing touch, you know, consistent touch with a lot of those guys and will be forever.
- [20:18]
Interviewer
So tell me honestly now, when you wake up in the morning, you haul yourself out of bed, make your way across the room, how many aches and pains do you have from the hits you took?
- [20:27]
Brent Grinna
Man, I made it okay. You know, I'm probably worried about, you know, my, my head more and more as right. Research comes out. But overall I made it. I made it out pretty good. And frankly, if anything I'd say when I'm dragging myself out of the bed, you know, oftentimes it's to go to the gym and do some of the same exercises I was doing 25 years ago. And so I feel pretty, pretty fortunate to be able to do that and just try to keep consistent, you know, as, as time goes on.
- [20:58]
Interviewer
Right, right. And I know that that's been a part of your, your work life too, your investment life. So that'll be really fun to talk about. But, but keeping on that through line for a second, you, you, you made your way through Brown, you studied those languages, you were an ir, as you said, international relations. So all of that's of a theme. Did you have in mind what you were going to do with that when you got out? And, and did you see sports as just the thing that you loved and enjoyed, but not as a thing that you would continue to do? I should.
- [21:25]
Brent Grinna
Oh yeah, too. Yeah. I was very pragmatic. You know, there are people who show up with NFL dreams. I was not one of really looking at it as my ticket to opportunity and relationships. And it really was. I had no idea what I was going to do. I had no idea what the career path for somebody with international relations and three languages might be. But again, major theme throughout my life has just been the importance of mentorship. And so the Brown Football association is an organization that I'm a part of. It's sort of a subsidiary of the Brown University Sports Foundation. And there was a night in 2002, my junior year, I remember it, it was a very cold night. I'm going to say it was in February where the Football association brought a group of alumni together. We were in A room above the basketball gym at Brown. And they brought alumni in just to talk about their career paths and what they did. I had no idea. I had no idea what. I knew what a doctor was. I knew what a lawyer was at a high level, but I didn't know all of the different paths. And there was a guy that showed up at that event that night. His name was John Skinner. And John and I connected. He'd grown up in the Boston area, and he asked me if I'd ever considered investment banking as a career. I mean, when I heard banking, I thought, right, ATM and a teller, if my. I had an aunt who was a, you know, worked at a bank in small town. I had no idea what an investment banker might do. But John offered to set up a. A call. And he really walked me through that part of the professional world and encouraged me to think about putting my hat in the ring when investment banking recruiting came up that. That fall. And so I did. And he. I mean, this was. You know, there was Internet, but there was not a lot of research and content the way there is today. And so really, I remember doing calls with John where he's like, hey, look, an investment banker. You know, he was. He made it very relatable. He's like, hey, if you want to sell your house, what do you. What do you hire? Well, you get a real estate agent, and real estate agent helps find people that might want to buy your house. They help you set the price of your house, right? They might work through the closing process if somebody has to get a loan to buy a house, right? Well, if you want to buy or sell a company, it's the exact same process. People use more complicated words, and it sounds a little fancier, but it's essentially the same process. And so investment bankers can help people buy or sell a company, right? They can help an entrepreneur buy or sell their company. Maybe it's all the company. Maybe it's a stake in the company. Maybe there's debt, maybe it's just equity, right? All these words that I didn't know at all at the time. He made it really relatable. And I went through the investment banking recruiting process the fall of my senior year, which is very structured. And I remember the very first time that I went to Manhattan was to interview at Lehman Brothers in the fall of 2003. And I remember just staring up at the building and coming down and. And standing in Times Square afterwards. It was right in Times Square. And at the same time, John had connected me with a guy, another Football alum in Chicago named Mike Lascott. Mike was an investment banker at a firm called William Blair and Company, which is not a firm I'd heard of. And I spent a bunch of time with Mike over the phone, and Mike similarly just went out of his way to help me. And I went through the initial phase remotely and then had the opportunity to go do the final round interview in Chicago. So I went from sort of not really ever having been to downtown New York City or downtown Chicago to sort of back to back weekends, and in the end had the opportunity to work at, you know, received offers from. From both of those firms. And it was sort of another example where a lot of people are like, you clearly go to Lehman Brothers like, it's the big brand. They were the hot firm at the time. This was before they had all their issues during the financial crisis, but. But at the time, they were a hot firm. And I said, I really connected with those folks in Chicago, and it felt a little more my speed. Maybe. I don't know. I was a big Cubs fan growing up. Maybe I just felt more comfortable. But I ended up joining William Blair and company in Chicago in 2004. And again, Mike and John played such a huge role. And then so many of the things that have happened in my life, my entrepreneurial ventures, I mean, it all traces back to those guys just going out of their way and helping me with my resume, helping me find my first really step out of college.
- [26:22]
Interviewer
What do you think that they saw in you that was something they thought was a good fit for this work? Because it's not about intelligence, capability, or even that connection you had just through Plan Ball. But there was something else. It must have been chemistry or personality to do that kind of work. It requires a lot of things, but it also requires that fit. What do they see in you and what did you see in the work then afterwards that made it comfortable for you?
- [26:48]
Brent Grinna
Yeah, I'm not really sure. I think maybe I was. I was definitely extremely naive, but I was very passionate. I was very eager. And I think that they maybe saw somebody who was definitely trying to make the most of his opportunity. And I think that they definitely appreciated the. The story of my upbringing and the fact that I. I was, you know, maybe not coming from nothing, but coming from not much and really trying to. Yeah, just make the most of every. Every opportunity. And I'd been very involved in a variety of campus leadership positions and just wanted. Yeah, just. I just felt like I'd been given this gift and I wanted to make the Most of it. And maybe they saw that, I'm not sure. What they didn't see was a kid who was particularly well positioned to hit the ground running as it related to financial analysis. What they didn't see was somebody who had, you know, focused on an academic curriculum that would be well suited with the core financial modeling that you do in an entry level finance role. And so they didn't see those things. They saw something and I do think they felt like, hey, look, a lot of that stuff you can learn and what we think that you'll stick with it, that you can work hard and that you'll learn. And I feel like I did that.
- [28:05]
Interviewer
Kind of self discipline and almost you said before pragmatism. That sounds very pragmatic. I mean the decision about whether or not to go to school, where to go to school, what to do when you got there, what to do when you got out. It looked like you looked at the opportunities and you picked the one that let you just have the greatest experience at that point in time.
- [28:25]
Brent Grinna
Yeah, and when I got there, you know, I showed up in Chicago, we did our training program. I remember, you know, going to the security desk. I mean I had even just getting clothes like getting appropriate clothes. I never bought clothes like that to, to, you know, just even have a wardrobe to do that kind of work. And but I mean I remember the first person I met in, on the security desk that day as we were checking in. His name was Ahad Khan and he was a first year analyst with me from Ohio. Pakistani parents, we just hit it off right away and we just talked two weeks ago for an hour and had an incredibly in depth conversation. And just I think with both football and then that sort of entry level finance role, it's, it's there, there's a level of intensity that really creates bonding and forms. Yeah, you're just with, with kindred spirits and so ended up just diving in. You know, the investment banking analyst role is not glamorous. It was very much a 9am to midnight kind of role and oftentimes later, rarely earlier and, but at the same time you sort of got two or three times the learning in the two years of that program. And that being said, outside of work I did, I didn't really know anybody in Chicago, so I had my fellow analysts and then I, I turned to the alma mater and I remember looking up the Brown University chapter, they called it the Brown Club of Chicago. And I saw that it was going to be at a lawyer's office and I just walked in one night. And I left that meeting, the young alumni coordinator of the Brown Club of Chicago. And so I really just worked. And then outside of work, my limited cycles I had. It was trying to bring people together around the Brown affinity, if you will.
- [30:20]
Interviewer
Yeah, you haven't mentioned, and I haven't asked about kind of service or philanthropy related things, but the relationship piece is here in this whole story that you've been sharing so far, especially about now Brown and the Alumni association, but also just remembering the people that you meet and keeping in contact with them. Those seem to be kind of staples of what you've been describing. But is there a part that I'm missing in terms of where you saw the importance of, I don't know, however you phrase it, giving back or being involved in these organizations, especially the charitable ones, is that, oh yeah, I mean.
- [30:56]
Brent Grinna
Look, I think, for example, the Brown Football association, you know, I can trace back to you and me talking today to a guy taking me under his wing, you know, on a cold February night in 2002. And so I did not think twice about getting involved with that organization, both as a mentor to, you know, current student athletes and then to, you know, get involved over time with fundraising, other activities. Haven't thought twice. Have been involved every year since I graduated and hope to be involved for every year that I'm alive as long as they'll have me. And, and at the same time with the Brown Club of Chicago as well. It's just like this constant recurring theme of just relationships, the kind of impact that a single relationship that you aren't planning, right. You're not going out planning to make a relationship one day that's going to change your life. But those relationships compound over time. And I just saw this Brown community in Chicago, I remember, and some of this links back to founding Evertrue eventually. But I remember reaching out to somebody in school and I was like, hey, who are the people from Brown in Chicago and what can I do to get them together? And at that time they, they sent me a list. It was a PDF from advance, their, their CRM system, which they probably weren't supposed to send me. But I remember being something like 2000 names in the greater Chicago area. And, and I remember just looking at this list and, and sort of being blown away that there was that many people because it felt like we were a long way from Providence. It was incredibly disconnected. And I just thought, hey, let's bring people together. So we started doing things like a game watch when the football team would be televised we didn't get a lot of televised games, but when we did, we would do a game watch at a local, at a local bar, for example. Then we started doing industry specific networking nights and I realized, whoa, if you look at the finance community, there's like the leader of my investment bank, there was a co founder of a private equity firm. There was the, you know, senior level person at LaSalle Bank. There were all of these leaders and they didn't even know each other. They were Brown alumni leaders in the finance community in Chicago who barely knew each other. And so I started planning events and they were happy to help create access or space or even funding if it was required to put on the event. And in doing so, especially around industry verticals, which we had not really done historically, all of a sudden people came out of the woodwork because they wanted to meet these people that were in positions of influence and power with great stories and, and I just was sort of at the center of that now as the convener, which meant that I was building my relationships and I wasn't going into it with this like, oh, how do I build my network? But it just happened. And ultimately we did a whole series of events and I still see some of those folks. I just saw one of them a couple weeks ago and again, it just, it just compounds over time. But specifically I ended up meeting a gentleman named Sam and cough who was the co founder and at the time president of a firm called Madison Dearborn Partners. It was the largest private equity firm in Chicago. It was the place that every investment banking analyst wanted to work in Chicago and beyond. And I met Sam by way of hosting an alumni event where I invited him to be a speaker. And again, he saw something in me that ultimately led to me joining his firm, which was an absolutely, just another life changing experience. And I spent a couple of years working with his firm at Madison Dearborn Partners. Now instead of being the real estate agent, helping people buy or sell the company and private equity, you're the buyer. And we were buying companies and at a scale that, you know, very few firms were at that time. And, and again with another group of 10 or so associates, we were upgraded from analysts to associates at that time, some of whom are, you know, still very close friends and colleagues today. And, and all of a sudden when you're in that environment, everybody there that was at a position beyond associate had an MBA and they. I'm not sure I knew what MBA stood for when I got to my first job in Chicago. But then when you're surrounded by people that have gone and pursued that degree. That becomes the next aspirational goal. And I ended up applying to business school, got into Harvard in 2008 and went there that fall. And.
- [35:42]
Interviewer
And I guess it was at Harvard where you ultimately then incubated or created the idea of forever true. Is that right?
- [35:50]
Brent Grinna
Yeah, exactly. It's sort of one thing leads to another. While I'm in my first semester at hbs, somebody from Brown reached out and said, hey, your fifth reunion's rolling around. You're a good volunteer for us in Chicago and with the football Association. Would you be willing to help lead your fundraising campaign? And I said, all right, how does that work? And. And they sent me a spreadsheet of my classmates. And I remember looking at the spreadsheet, and right away it was clear that most of the information was out of date or incomplete. They didn't know where people worked. They didn't have good contact information. And I remember talking about that with my contact. And she said, yeah, this is a huge issue. And I said, well, but these people are more findable than ever before. They're on LinkedIn, they're on Facebook, they're on Twitter. They're coded as lost alumni in the spreadsheet. They're not lost. They know exactly where they are, and so do I. And it was just the sort of moment where. And I was very into technology. I liked. I was definitely an early adopter of whatever the next thing was. And I just remember sort of being like, cross referencing the spreadsheet, going out to LinkedIn, going out to these other sites, and just being like, why isn't this stuff connected? And so I had my reunion. We had a great time. I came back from my second year of business school, and I decided to do an independent study where I just wanted to learn about the nonprofit technology landscape. Initially, I was thinking that I would go as a good volunteer, find the right solution that Brown really should be using so that they didn't have all these issues around data quality and access. And as I did that research, I started learning about the traditional CRM systems. I started learning about social platforms. The iPhone had been introduced. Android was exploding. And it just seemed like there was this big disconnect between traditional systems, the social web and mobile. And that is where I just started pulling the thread. Pulling the thread. Actually reached out to a friend who I'd worked with at Madison Dearborn Partners named Rick Desai. Rick had been building up some offshore software development talent in India and decided to work on a little Bit of a prototype concept with Rick. And so the first thing we did was design this vision for what a mobile application would look like. That brought together data from Brown University's CRM systems, the spreadsheets they'd been sending me, and platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook, and then put it together in a, in a, in a mobile experience that would be reminiscent of Zillow or other solutions that people were seeing transform other industries. And I took those mockups to meet with Todd Andrews, who is the then Vice President of Alumni Relations at Brown University. And I said, hey, Todd, I've been a volunteer for five years. These are the problems that I've seen. This is a potential solution. What do you think? And he said, can you do that? And I said, absolutely. And he said, well, if you can do that, we would be willing to be your pilot customer.
- [39:14]
Interviewer
Well, first of all, among the many remarkable parts about this is that you found a, an open and responsive party. So I know part of this is you and the way you pitch this and you had something that could solve their problem, but also says something about Todd and about Brown, because many places you've run into this now throughout the rest of your career are kind of wedded to whatever they do at the moment. And what you were introducing was something which intuitively makes great sense, but it would have required some degree of change. So going from that pilot to what it became, how did you get other people to do what Todd did?
- [39:52]
Brent Grinna
Well, I mean, Todd, thank you. Because it was a big risk for him, you know, big risk. It was definitely a risk. It was an unproven concept. It was undeveloped technology. Incubating startups is not something universities are typically going to do. Not in the manner, you know, this wasn't a spin out or a research or a faculty thing. This was, you know, an eager alum.
- [40:21]
Interviewer
Trying of their control make a difference with no control. Yeah.
- [40:25]
Brent Grinna
And Todd, he gave me that chance. We had a deadline of trying to get a prototype out for Reunion that, that spring in 2010. And at the same time I was finishing up my mba, I had a bunch of student loans that I had just taken out. I was going down a interview path with, you know, different companies and, and getting job offers. And I was, you know, I, I was married to my wife Katie. And so, and so I had to figure out what I was going to do. Was this just a interesting independent study research prototype or was I going to run with it? And the reason Todd sponsoring this pilot was so important is because then I entered the business plan contest at hbs. And I remember going to that contest, it must have been in late April or so, maybe mid April. And I presented this idea for a company called Ever True. Ever True is Brown's fight song. It plays when the football team scores touchdowns, which I did one time my junior year against Dartmouth. And I presented this whole concept, the idea that there were sort of this legacy software landscape that hadn't innovated, that wasn't working aggressively in mobile, that wasn't embedding in social, that I could do that. And not only could I do that, but I had a pilot customer that was paying me money, and that customer was Brown University. I presented that to a group of venture capitalists who were the judges for this business plan contest. And I remember getting the scorecards. I ended up making the semifinals. I didn't win the business plan contest. There were some incredible companies that year. But I remember getting the scorecard and one of the judges wrote, I would invest in this. Invest in this, in, in this PowerPoint that I just did with a, you know, basic prototype. And I remember I went and met with that judge at the, at the, at a hotel in Boston. We went to the hotel bar and, and I sort of was just trying to get feedback on, like, what did you mean? And he was just explaining that, yeah, as venture capitalists, because I had come from investment banking, private equity, late stage, lots of revenue, lots of profit, all those things. I'd never been at the napkin stage sort of idea. He's like, yeah, that's what we do. We find motivated people like you that see a problem, that want to go solve it, that maybe have some basic level attraction, but not much else. And we, we fund you to go pursue that instead of taking whatever job it is you take. And so that was really the moment when I decided, you know what, I gotta, I gotta go for this. And I did. And so that was in.
- [43:16]
Interviewer
When. When was that?
- [43:17]
Brent Grinna
In 2010, early 2010.
- [43:20]
Interviewer
So that was the launch, I guess, which is amazing because it was a. It wasn't eitherware. You really had a client and you had now, I guess, an investor and, and you knew the rest. But how did you get other people to be willing to make that same kind of change that Brown was willing to do and that, you know, that foresightful investor was willing to make?
- [43:41]
Brent Grinna
Yeah. So just again, was fortunate to. To find my next chapter mentor. And I was at. There was a big venture capital event In June of 2010, right after I graduated that was hosted at Harvard Business School. And I Remember seeing this event and it was like a who's who. They called it the Venture Summit east. And it was like who's who of venture capitalists at Harvard Business School. I was living just on the other side of the river in my off campus apartment. And I remember being like, I've got to go to this event. But it was 2,000 bucks a ticket. There was zero percent chance I was going to be cutting a $2,000 check to go to this event. So I reached out to the organizer and I said, hey, I'm a recent grad working on a startup. Need any volunteers for this event? He said, sure, you can come work the, the ticket desk, the registration check in and then you can hang out afterwards. And so I did that. And at lunch at that event after volunteering at the ticket desk, I sat down next to a guy named Walt Doyle, who I didn't know at the time. Walt was an entrepreneur that was building a company called Wear, which is one of the first mobile local social applications in the certainly the Boston area, if not the country. And they had done a really good job catching the, you know, there's an app for that early wave and getting some marketing air cover from, from Apple and so forth. And ultimately Walt went to sell that business for over $100 million to PayPal. It became PayPal's Boston office for a long period of time. And so I sat next to Walt and Walt is one of the most dynamic, inspiring guys you've ever met. And he was just all in. He's like, how can I help? Where are you working out of? I said, I'm working out of my, my, my, you know, apartment across the river. He said, no, I've got a new office on Washington Street. We got all this extra space, come down and work out of our office. And I was like, okay. So I walked into his office, but the other guy sitting at the table was a guy named Scott Kirschner, who was a reporter for the Boston Globe. He's, he's sort of the Boston tech writer. And the whole time I'm talking to Walt, he's like taking notes in his notepad. I had no idea what was going on. Next day, Scott Kirner publishes a story about Ever True this new startup coming out of Harvard Business School. I barely had an email inbox set up at this point, but now I start getting inquiries. I got people, I got accountants who want to do my books. I'm like, there's not many books to talk about people applying for jobs. I'm like, well, there's no money to pay you. I've got but customer potential customers coming inbound as well. And so I. It was the least well managed, you know, startup launch in history. But at that point it was like sort of I was in it, I was doing it. And then I spent a bunch of time with Walt. He helped us get into this program called techstars Boston, which is one of the leading accelerators that led to working with Walt. I was able to recruit my CTO and co founder, my first, my co founder, Eric Carlstrom, our cto, my co founder Jesse Bardo, who really ended up becoming my like lead evangelist out there working the Northeast, sort of really K12 private and boarding school community and just helping us evangelize. And how do we do it? Jay we went out and we just talked about this intersection of traditional donor database systems, social media and mobile. Sixteen years later, I'm still talking about those three things, except I'm also talking about how AI is going to make it possible to take things to the next level and make things even more intuitive and actionable from here on out. But it's really just been a story of one foot in front of another with amazing mentors who have stepped in for whatever reason and helped me every single step of the way.
- [47:36]
Interviewer
But that also takes us kind of to the present. I mean, I know we just ran over 15 years, but you've been doing a lot since then. You've relocated, right? You're now working, I guess, pretty much remotely from Puerto Rico. Is that right?
- [47:51]
Brent Grinna
Yeah, that's right. Really up until the pandemic, we were in Boston. The company was based in Boston. During the pandemic, everybody shifted to a remote model. We had a lot of teammates that, you know, that relocated to other places, found the remote working approach extremely efficient, didn't really skip a beat. In fact, accelerated in a lot of ways. And then during that time had the opportunity to partner and merge with. Thank you. And you know, so along the way, in addition to pounding the pavement, meeting different universities and K12 partners, we were all over the conference circuit and trying to present and tell our story. And in doing that built some great relationships. Founder of thank you. JDB became a friend. They were growing extremely quickly. We saw a tremendous opportunity at the intersection of our work at Ever True, what they were doing from a donor relations and stewardship perspective to bring that together. And so we partnered with the private equity firm in 2021 to come together, bring the companies together. And then at the same time we saw this potential to Consolidate what was a very fragmented industry. There were a lot of entrepreneurs doing really good, specific, focused applications. But what we're hearing from customers was they wanted more integration, they wanted more coordination among their different vendors. And we felt like if we could keep a high bar and identify companies that were mission aligned, that were serving the same customers with different applications, we could bring those together to both coordinate and integrate the solutions. Which led us to then acquiring a business called Pledge Mind, which is doing really compelling personalized print, right? Marrying personalized video via thank you with personalized print from PledgeMind, with better campaign intelligence from Evertrue, was a natural fit. We got to know a team that was doing excellent work around analytics dashboards, reporting with tableau, going campus to campus and standing up beautiful reporting environments. But they were going campus to campus one at a time. We had hundreds of customers and so we acquired that company was called the Solas Group, with a vision that we've now executed on to embed that kind of reporting and analytics natively and ever true. We then had the opportunity to acquire a business called Fund Driver which is doing endowed and restricted fund reporting. And so at Evertrue, historically we've been helping universities and nonprofits raise the money. But after the money is raised, what happens to it? It's invested. And then when it invests, it grows or it doesn't. There's distributions or there aren't, there's impact. And we wanted to be able to tell that story end to end so that we could go from money being raised to money being invested to money being distributed to impact being generated in an end to end system. And then more recently had the absolute privilege to partner and complete an acquisition of Donor Search, where we've known that team for a long time. But the ability to now marry identification, right? Understanding who people are, what they care about, what the charitable gifts are they've made elsewhere, and then understand them in the context of a specific organization creates tremendous opportunity at the beginning of the process from a donor identification perspective. And then as gifts occur, a chance to re qualify and elevate people that have the capacity, the ability to do more with an organization to have an even more personalized stewardship experience. And so it's been an absolute transformational run. The company is still called Ever True today, but very little of it is the Ever True that I founded years ago. And now it's this combination of mission aligned, founder led businesses that are serving over 15,000 nonprofits.
- [51:51]
Interviewer
It's a lot. It's a lot that's happened to you, to all your colleagues, to your family over the last 15 years, as you did all this, what's been the hardest part of this for you?
- [52:06]
Brent Grinna
I'd say the hardest part for me is I have been with it from the beginning. And there are chapters, right? There are chapters, there's the founding journey of just getting this thing from concept to a real operating business. And there are people that are amazing partners during that founding journey that at some point realize it's time for them to move on. And they do. And then there's this middle part of our chapter where people join me when we had something but needed to take it to a more scalable level. And those people joined and they helped me shape it into a sustainable organization. And then it was time for them to move on. And now we're in this next level of scale with M and A, with integration, with a whole new level. Serving over 10,000 customers is very different than serving your first 10 customers. And so there's a whole new team that has that skill set and alignment and interest. And I've been here from the beginning till now. And so the balance of having sort of deep commitment and loyalty to a team that goes both ways, but then having to go through those changes where people that become friends who invest their precious careers in this vision and mission, it's never easy for those people to move on.
- [53:53]
Interviewer
And that said, then what's the part that's the most satisfying about it right now? Because this has gone through major transformation.
- [54:01]
Brent Grinna
The most satisfying part is absolutely when we are able to connect the dots between everything we've built over the last 15 plus years to philanthropy and that when we can connect that philanthropy to the life changing outcomes. It is hard sometimes as a vendor partner because you're somewhat separate, right? You're serving the institution, you're serving the development officer, the development officer is serving the donor. Right? The donor's making the philanthropy and then that philanthropy, what happens? And I think we're now in this position where we're actually able to answer that question. From the first meeting, from the first event that they, that they attend, to the, to the gift closing, to the money being invested, to seeing the distributions, to seeing that kid from Iowa who's a first generation student that is now getting their own life changing journey. That is what it's all about. That is what motivates me. And the more that we can bring that to our team, doesn't mean we're the ones raising the money, but the closer we can get to that end. Impact, I think Just the more motivating and inspiring it is for us, the more we want to improve, the more we want to innovate, because we know that we can multiply those stories if we can get our work even more right than it is today.
- [55:33]
Interviewer
And what about for you? As you look forward? Where do you imagine this is taking you?
- [55:38]
Brent Grinna
Well, I think the constant here has been through those different chapters, change and evolution and thinking about what role I can play to help the company the most and how that has evolved over time. And so I think as we enter this era now where Evertrue and Donor Search have come together, I actually view it as a whole new learning experience because Donor Search has such strong representation as such a strong client base in the healthcare world, for example, which is not something that I know deeply. So I'm going to be going to my first AHP conference in October, and I'm very excited to learn there. And then to look at the broader nonprofit space, the way that Donor Search is partnered with channel partners like Bloomerang, like Virtuous, like donorperfect and others, that's a whole new experience for me and one that I've been incredibly impressed by. And so I think we're at this moment now where what I have always focused on is helping set the overall mission and vision, identifying the partners, the people, the customer, relationships that can come together and go make that a reality. And of course, the backdrop with Generative AI right now means we can dream about things, we can do things. That year, even a few years ago, were literally impossible for a company like ours. And so it's really created this moment of just innovation and motivation that is impossible to overstate how exciting that is for our team, for our customers, and honestly for the donors. Like, there are donors out there who are going to have a materially better experience in the coming years because of the scale and personalization afforded by AI. Now we're going to have to weave that together the right way because there were, you know, every time there's a new technology, wait, people think that's going to be the thing that fixes it. All right? Like email was going to fix that. Once you can email donors, well, then we'll be good, right? And then it was like, once you can text message, well, once we can text message donors, well, then it will just be up into the right, right? So, like, yes, those things can be used really effectively. They can also be used really ineffectively. And so I think we're at this phase now, of course. How do we learn from those past waves of technology evolution to ensure that as we harness AI, we are elevating personalization, not just faking it, that we are improving the authenticity, not just pretending it's authentic. And that's a challenge that we're up for.
- [58:29]
Jay Frost
Well, that's it for this episode of the PM podcast. You can learn more about evertrue@evertrue.com and more about Brent@grinna.org Our thanks to our sponsor, Donor Search, the global leader in AI powered fundraising intelligence solutions for the nonprofit space. 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.
- [59:11]
Interviewer
Thanks for joining me.