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- [00:00]
HRT Taylor
We're the vanguard. We're the place where people who fall out of the success of the private sector and need help, we're the people there to help them. We're the people who says to a society that's having problems, there's some ways for us to work together to address these problems. While other people are thinking about how do we make money and exacerbating the problem, and others think about, well, we don't know what the policy can be. We're doing it.
- [00:31]
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. HRT Taylor is the President and CEO of the association of Fundraising Professionals, representing fundraisers who generate over $100 billion in charitable support each year. He previously led the BBB Wise Giving alliance for 23 years, advancing nonprofit transparency and donor trust, launching the accredited Charity Seal and givesafely IO and hosting the Heart of Giving podcast. In this conversation, we explore his life and career, beginning with his earliest days growing up in South Philadelphia. I'd love to begin by just asking a little bit about your journey and maybe even where you're from. I understand. Are you from Philadelphia? Is that right?
- [01:29]
HRT Taylor
I am from Philadelphia, and it's funny that you should ask me that question because lately I've been thinking about my life and how I share my origins and it's been dredging up a lot of my early history. So I grew up in South Philadelphia on a street. The street name was Peter street, the 1100 block of Peter street, and it's nestled in between Washington Avenue, which was a main thoroughfare, and I would say Ellsworth street, which was a smaller street, but right at Ellsworth street, our neighborhood shifted from being mostly black to mostly Italian. And on the street I grew up on, Peter street, it was bordered on the east end with a factory that was essentially a cheese manufacturer. It manufactured different cheese products, mostly ricotta cheese, from what I recall. And they also had at some point a product that they would put out with various kinds of juices and so forth, sugary juices. And across the street from my house, this is a small street. Now, across the street from my house were all these factory buildings that had for the most part gone defunct because of some of them were textile. One of them was a textile industry on Washington Avenue. At the other end of our block of the other end of the border, right, was the Curtis Music Publishing Company, had a Facility, Magic, massive facility. And along Washington Avenue, there were railroad tracks and so forth. But this one factory at the bottom of our block was owned by Maggio, the Maggio Company. And I'll never forget one day, kids being what they are, they two of the guys from my block, a couple of years older than me, they would try to break into this facility. And I was asked, must have been around eight years old, to kind of stand watch to see if anyone would come. And I was supposed to knock on the door and let them know that, you know, someone was coming. So I stand there, and they go in. And literally, like two minutes later, Jay, this man comes running down the street with a pistol. And I just take off. I just saw the pistol guy running, and there was literally no time for me to knock on that door without being caught myself. And I'm like, you know, I'm out of here. Wow. So somehow or another, the guys get away. And I never had a chance to talk about that episode until a few months ago. I caught up with one of the guys and asked him about that particular situation. He said, you know, I don't remember that particular one, but you were certainly right to run, he said. And he said, you know, we would always do things to irritate them. We would go in and take their trucks and drive them around and all kinds of things. And so we were just bothering them. And then he said, but one day, a car drives up to the top of our block, 12th street, and out of the car comes Angelo Bruno. Angelo Bruno was the crime boss of. Angelo Bruno comes out of the car and he gets them together, and he says, now, look, I can't have you disrupting my business. But I tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to allow you guys to have all of the sugary drinks you want for, you know, this. We're going to open it up for one day. You can have all the sugary drinks you want. And apparently that was the understanding, right? But I read more about this after I was told this story, because I'm still too young to really understand any of this stuff, right? But I read something about it the other day, and as it turns out, this building was at least the headquarters of. For Angelo Bruno's number writing.
- [07:16]
Jay Frost
Oh, underneath the cheese and the sweet drinks was a numbers operation.
- [07:24]
HRT Taylor
And a numbers operation, right? And it's. You know, I don't. I won't tell much more about Angelo Bruno. You can read about him. But it's just fascinating to me that I grew up Literally on the street, that was the headquarters of the numbers writing operation for the Philadelphia mob, or Mafia, or how they called it the crime syndicate back then. And, you know, there are other situations that it came up in my life once. I remember I played baseball at South Philadelphia High School, and our team was primarily Italian gentlemen kids. And one of my teammates I ran into some years later when I went to pay a parking ticket. And so I go to this place where you play these parking tickets, this big rotunda, and I pay my parking ticket, and I'm heading out the door, and way up at the top, someone yells down, yo, Artie, you should have told me. I would have fixed was one of my teammates mates. So about a year and a half later, the feds come in and shut down the entire traffic court operation because of ticket fixing. But, Jay, that's part of the world I grew up in. That's just like a small part of it. By the time I was 11, we were forced to move from our homes because this Maggio company wanted to take over the entire space. They needed more space to expand their operations. So we were all forced to move. We were all renters. And they demolished all the houses on that part of Peter Street. So anyway, I just. I'm going on and on, but the point is, that's part of the environment that I grew up in. And, you know, people want to know, well, where did you come from and how did you get through this? Well, I got through it because I had a fantastic mother who worked 37 years in the kitchen of a department store, barely made minimum wage, and at some point, she was able to own her own home. The place where we moved to. She moved into it as a rent to buy situation. And over time, she was able to own that house and raised two lawyers, two college graduates, two lawyers. And people say, well, how was she able to do that? Well, she did it because there was the help of a lot of nonprofits. The ymca, the Christian Street Y, where we grew up playing basketball. There was our church, St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, where we were choir boys and got actually paid to sing in the choir. Yeah, you know, I was a professional singer at like, 8, 9 years old, and did that every Sunday virtually until I went to college. My voice changed from little boy soprano to this, you know, baritone thing. But, you know, those are. So you get to see. I got to see some of the nuance that goes on in our world. Right. There were so many people who talked about, like, Angelo Bruno. When I read about him how he was this gentle don. He didn't believe in violence unless it was, you know, the worst of situations. And he took care of people. And then you juxtapose that with the men at the Y who raised. Helped raise me in the church. And so we're. I'm surrounded by all of these influences, and that the one stable point of this was my mother. And my mother, you know, God rest her soul, went through some stuff, too, because my father wasn't the most stable person in the world. And there was an evening I wrote about this at some point, where my father came into our house one night. He was estranged, in and out of jail from the time he was maybe 14 years old, but he was estranged. And he came into our house one night through the basement, and he crept up into our bedroom, my mother's bedroom. And the next thing I know, there are police and everything coming. Well, I didn't see my mother for another three months after that. And when I saw her, I could barely recognize her. Her face was beaten, literally, to a pulp. Jay. This was after three months, and my father had done that, and that was the last we'd ever see him alive or hear him alive, really. But that was what my mother had to go through. And I think about what my life would have been had she not survived.
- [13:24]
Jay Frost
You were quite young at that time, too.
- [13:26]
HRT Taylor
At that time, I was 11 years old.
- [13:28]
Jay Frost
Where did you go? How were you alone without.
- [13:33]
HRT Taylor
Without anybody there? For three months, We. We stayed with relatives. My Uncle Ed, who lives a few blocks away, and his wife and their family took us in. And I'll never forget spending that time with my uncle in particular, watching the New York Knicks play the Los Angeles Lakers in the last championship that the Knicks ever won. That was the last championship. I think it was 1970 or so, when they won the championship against the Los Angeles Lakers. It was during that period. And then we stayed some with my Aunt Vivian, my mother's sister, and her. Her husband and their family for some time, too. And Aunt Vivian just passed away earlier this year. She was 96. Yeah, so. But these are the. My life. I mean, it was. There's a lot more treachery that, you know, I had to live through, but my mother was the stable force. And I don't know what our life would have been like had it not been for her, surviving. And, you know, we think about episodes that come up that change us or shape us. And to this day, I struggle, Jay, with conflict, with conflict. And I. I didn't realize it really, until I did some consulting work. I did some volunteer consulting work for Joe Torrey's charity. You may know Joe Torrey, the former manager of the New York Yankees. But I was asked to come in and help his Safe at Home foundation through some strategic planning work. And Joe set up a charity to help kids who were not themselves the victims of physical violence, but who lived in a home where physical violence was present and the effects that it has on the children. Right. When a parent goes to that. Joe lived through that. His father was a police officer and had physical altercations, you know, abused his mother. And Joe. It took Joe many years to understand that he had difficulty managing conflict, which is natural. Right. I mean, we, as human beings, we're going to have conflicts, but he was shy away from it, and I noticed that about myself, and he helped me identify it. Just working with this group helped me identify that it's the discordance of conflict has an impact. And I always seek to find a path to peace or to avoid that conflict. Right. Which is not always a bad thing, but it's also important to let it play out sometimes and to realize that it doesn't need to end always in violence. Right. So. But it's something that I've worked on in my life to be able to. To manage better. Right. And to. To. To lead through. To lead others through when. When it happens. So, anyway, those. Those are just some. Some things I don't tell everybody about. But, hell, I'm 66 years old now. I can pretty much say whatever I want, I think. What are you going to do to me?
- [17:28]
Jay Frost
Well, you know, it's funny that you say that, because a lot of people I talk with now are doing things like writing memoirs or speaking their. Their history or their truth, and sometimes they're shy about it because of what you just said. Conflict avoidance.
- [17:44]
HRT Taylor
Yeah.
- [17:44]
Jay Frost
They've got relatives, friends, you know, their old neighbors who are willing to shout down from the eaves and say, you know, Artie, you should call me those. Those people embody part of our history, and sometimes we're careful about how we incorporate them into our stories. But as you just said, now you feel comfortable doing that. How important is it to be able to kind of, you know, articulate your story?
- [18:11]
HRT Taylor
Well, I don't know. I mean, I think when I'm gone, I don't know if there will be a lot of people out there wondering, who was this person? But I think it's important for my family to know my. My grandchildren to be able to know something about who Their grandfather really was. And if he tried to make an impact on society, what was that? And his origin story, really. And because maybe they'll be more comfortable with their own origin story and maybe they will seek to carry on in their own way this idea of trying to leave the world a little bit better than it was when we got here. Right. So. And I didn't. I didn't set out to have a career where I was doing that. By the way, it. It's a lot of serendipity.
- [19:12]
Jay Frost
Well, and let's go back to that. So there you were in Philadelphia. And by the way, the way you described it was so vivid.
- [19:20]
HRT Taylor
Yeah, no, I can remember like it was yesterday. Yeah. Yeah.
- [19:26]
Jay Frost
So you went from that neighborhood where it also sounds like. And for people who don't know Philadelphia, it's very diverse, but it is very much neighborhoods, right?
- [19:35]
HRT Taylor
That's right.
- [19:36]
Jay Frost
Sort of like some other places we would know New York or other places, especially at that time. And that must have had an influence too, that kind of diversity. I should just ask you that. You just described the street being next to an adjacent street. So it was more like an Italian neighborhood.
- [19:54]
HRT Taylor
That's right.
- [19:55]
Jay Frost
Black neighborhood next to industry. And what was that in terms of feeding your awareness of where you were in the world?
- [20:04]
HRT Taylor
Yeah. So my backyard on Peter street abutted to the backyard of Ms. Helen. Ms. Helen and Ms. Helen's was next door to Joey's family. And they were the Italians who lived on Ellsworth street in their yards, backed up to our yards. We were on Peter Street. And so they would donate clothes to us. I mean, hand me down clothes we would get from them. Now, I don't know how much better off they were financially. Their homes were nicer. Ellsworth street was a serious street. Ours was just sort of a. A smaller street in between two major streets, so to speak. And yet we were that close together, you know, and we went to a school. My school, Andrew Jackson Elementary. I don't know if it's still the same name now, but at 12th and 12th and Federal was full of all kinds of kids from everywhere. I mean, it was. It drew in Italians, Irish, some Jewish kids, Puerto Ricans who had moved to the area, and even some early Vietnamese went to. Went to our school. So our elementary school was among the most diverse experiences that I could have had and loved. Elementary school was. Couldn't wait to get there. Couldn't wait to get there. It was fun. We learned kids were just kids. It was a great experience. My elementary school, Andrew Jackson and the teachers were engaging. They cared about the kids. We were taught a certain discipline, believe it or not, you know, and not physical, but we respected, seems to me, our teachers, and they looked after us. And my teachers, I think, saw something in me. The reason I got to be in a choir was because we would have music instruments. People would come by. We had music program in the school where the school district would send in musical performers and the teachers who could teach different instruments. I played organ, I played flute. I played the cello, even I played saxophone. And I sang. And I'll never forget Mr. Pritchard came by and thought I could sing. And he did an audition, and I sang for him, and he said, oh, you should go try out for the All Philadelphia Boys Choir. And so I was accepted into the All Philadelphia Boys choir with about 300 other boys from around the city. And we would meet every Saturday for choir rehearsal at Benjamin Franklin High School in North Philadelphia. And from there, Jay, St. Mark's Church was recruiting boys to sing in the St. Mark's choir. And one of my classmates who was also in the choir had been. Had been accepted into the choir, and they were looking for more boys to sing. And he said, you should try out for this. And so I did and got into the choir there. And my. My brother, who came a little after me, he got into the choir, too. So we grew up as choir boys, you know.
- [24:22]
Jay Frost
Do you still remember the music you were singing?
- [24:25]
HRT Taylor
Oh, my goodness. That was the other thing, Jay. I mean, the repertoire was very classical choral music. So we sang Bach, Palestrina, Brahms, Mozart, and then some of the more popular choral music. Like, popular, but more current. Current, like Copeland and Debussy. We sang a wide repertoire of classical music, classical choral music. And so we learned a lot about music in general. And still to this day, I sing. I sing in my church today. I sing solos when I. Sometimes I'll preach and I'll sing a hymn or two at church today. So it stuck with me. But I'll just tell you, so many different experiences that shape your life and make you obviously the person that you are. But the diversity of experiences for me were just incredible. Is the only way I can now. When I went to middle school, I don't know if this is where you want this conversation to go, but. But. So a friend of mine, Stacy Burrs. Stacy Burrs was a kid I looked up to. He was a couple years older than me, went to same elementary school, was a tremendous athlete. And so it was really through my interest and fun, hanging out With Stacy that I got interested in basketball. And so Stacy was in the choir as well, and he lived in the Italian neighborhood and actually got to play basketball in the places where blacks kind of weren't accepted. Now, Stacy was black, and somehow, because he was such a good athlete and really so smart, he was more accepted into this playground. The playground is a famous playground, capitola playground, at 10th and Wharton streets. It's also where pat steaks is. You may have heard of pat Steaks and Geno steaks, which, you know, kind of set the standard for steak sandwiches in Philadelphia. Well, we played basketball literally right across the street, Capitola Playground. But it wasn't really a smart thing to do to go down there unless you had a connection. My connection was Stacy, because they didn't really want a whole lot of black kids at capitola Playground. So I got to play basketball at capitola Playground. And that's kind of where it began for me as an athlete. And there's one other interesting connection I had at capitola. It was a kid by the name of Fred mcneil. I'm calling out names, but hopefully Freddie will appreciate this story if he hears it. When we were living on Peter street, my mother worked with Fred's mother. And so there was one night, we get a knock on the door, and it's Fred's mother and his entire family. It was Fred, his sisters, his older brothers. They had been evicted from their home and had nowhere to go. And my mother took them all in for a night or two, I don't remember how long. And then she helped them find a place to live which was closer to this Capitola playground on Clifton street. And so Fred's orientation was to go play at Capitola playground. And he became, because of his. The quality of his character and his ability to kind of get along with folk, he was accepted into Capitola. And so when I went there, there was always Freddie. We call him fat Freddy. But Fred mcneil was also a path for me to play at capitol playground, right there at pat Stakes. So look, there's so much diversity. When it was time to go to middle school, Jay, I wanted to follow Stacy to Thomas middle school. Now, Thomas middle school was located deep into south Philadelphia, somewhere around 11th and Big Lure, somewhere deep into south Philadelphia, way into the Italian neighborhood. And so I told my mother, I want to go to Thomas, because where we had moved would have had me go to Barrett middle school, which was my neighborhood middle school. I didn't know Barrett, and all I knew was if it was good for Stacy that's where I wanted to go. And I was pretty adamant about it. So one day, my mother's call to the school. The teachers know I want to go to Thomas. And at the. At the school, we go into an office, and in there is the head of the Philadelphia School District 3 superintendent, a man by the name of Hightower. Hightower. Black man. And he talks to me. He says, you want to go to Thomas? I understand. I said, yes. He said, well, you know, Barrett is a good school, too. He said, well, but thank you, but I want to go to Thomas. And he persisted, and he said, I want you to try Barrett, and if it doesn't work out, then we'll see about getting you to Thomas. He knew something that I did not know, which was that if I had gone to Thomas, the dynamics changed such in middle school that it might not have been safe for me there. And it took me a long time to really understand that in middle school, the dynamics changed. Kids below middle school are much more collegial, friendly, and then suddenly they begin to see things or they begin to be influenced by things in ways that I think affect how they see race. And Thomas was a predominantly white middle school. Barrett, on the other hand, was a 100% black school. And that was the most segregated situation that I was ever in middle school.
- [32:25]
Jay Frost
I'm wondering how you felt as a young boy being told that by this, you know, this imposing figure from the.
- [32:33]
HRT Taylor
And that was the way to describe it. Imposing. I was pretty, you know, adamant, but I was also the kind of kid who accepted what authority had to say. And to this day, I am, you know, really impressed that this gentleman would take his time to explain to. He didn't have to. He could just say, this is where you're going. That's it. But to sit down with me and my mother and explain to me the situation out. A lot of it might have had to do with my mother. She was, you know, she was like, wait a minute. My son wants to go to the school. We're going to see about that, you know. But as it turned out, I ended up going to Barrett, and that was a good situation. Now, the other good thing about going to Barrett was that I didn't go blind. So I had some connections there because I had started playing basketball at the Y and a couple of the other playgrounds in our neighborhood, and I was pretty good. So they kind of accepted me as a basketball player. And at Barrett, basketball was everything. So being a good basketball player, you are automatically in at Barrett. So I Didn't have to worry about a lot of the violence and threats and other things that a lot of kids had to deal with at that time. Given that Barrett was also the place where there were at least five turf gangs, you may not remember, but in the 1970s and 1960s, turf gangs were all over Philadelphia, and they were major turf gangs that located themselves, that had representation at Barrett middle school. But we were able to avoid all of that because we were basketball players, and they, for whatever reason, did not bother basketball players. So my middle school went relatively smooth. I only remember getting into one fight, and it lasted about a minute before it was broken up. And I still don't know why we were fighting, but that's neither here nor there. But the bottom line was I was able to get out of middle school in a good way and head into high school, South Philadelphia High, which was, again, a more diverse situation. So it was kind of amazing that way, how it turned out.
- [35:12]
Jay Frost
You were talking about how those two schools, that people change. And I think this is true of kids who go through middle school everywhere. But the change that you were encountering there sound like you were in a very diverse neighborhood where people looked out for each other, Whether it was the people, you know, in the house out back or, you know, giving you all clothes if you needed it, or even down to the. The guy who owned those factories and ran the numbers business was looking after people in his own way.
- [35:42]
HRT Taylor
That's.
- [35:43]
Jay Frost
Everybody was. And your mother, certainly. And then things change. Did you start to recognize that difference, too? You. It sounds like you were kind of this figure who's kind of living his. His life, and you weren't really obsessed with all that kind of nonsense, but.
- [36:05]
HRT Taylor
No, no, we were. We were aware of it. I don't want to make it sound like we didn't know that black people are treated differently than others. Right.
- [36:14]
Jay Frost
But there's a different awareness when you're in. In middle school, I'm sure.
- [36:17]
HRT Taylor
Yeah. Well, I think middle school, there's so much else going on. Right. I mean, our bodies are changing. We don't know we're testing authority in different ways. And. Right. Kids are looking for ways to protect themselves. Right. From ridicule or from being ostracized and wanting to find community. Right. And had I gone to Thomas.
- [36:50]
Jay Frost
I.
- [36:50]
HRT Taylor
Don'T know if I would have had the same opportunities to excel the way I did at Barrett. At Barrett, I graduated. I was the school scholar athlete, and I played base soft. We didn't have baseball. I played softball and basketball, and if you had the great grades, which I did, I graduated with the award for the school scholar athlete. Did the same thing in high school, by the way. High school. I was our school scholar athlete, won that award. But, you know, the thing is, you are aware and you understand the boundaries of the situation and how you needed to conduct yourself and where you needed to be and where you needed to not be, depending on the time and circumstances. You learned that at a very early age. We went to a camp that required us to as kids, this is maybe seven, eight years old, where we had to walk through an Italian neighborhood. So I had to go from like 11th street all the way down to 5th street to the Reed house and 5th and Reed. And that took me through serious Italian neighborhood. And they weren't necessarily fond of having kids from other neighborhoods go through there. At least the kids weren't the parent, the adults weren't so worried about the kids. But the kids would see us and they would, you know, call us the N word, chase us out. And so we would be very cautious when we went through certain parts of that area. And we knew when we hit 10th street to look out because there were always going to be these guys hanging out and we would have to be ready to run or ready to get away from anything that might happen to us as a result of these guys looking out and expecting us to get down there. So, you know, you know that you have to be careful and you know, you hope that you'll get out and get through these places unscathed. My, some did and some, unfortunately did not sometimes. But there wasn't a whole lot of weapons. It was more physical hand to hand violence, you know, people using sticks and things of that nature, but you still didn't want to be a part of it. Most of the time we were able to just get away. But you, you had a certain degree of, of awareness of the potential danger of venturing into these places. Yeah, yeah.
- [39:57]
Jay Frost
So then you were back in high school. It sounds like it went very well. I know you received that, that recognition.
- [40:04]
HRT Taylor
High school was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. I got to play three sports. We learned a lot. I didn't actually go to the main building at South Philadelphia High School. There was a annex program they had called the South Philadelphia High School Motivation Program. And it was for kids who could go either way and they wanted to keep us from going the wrong way. I didn't think I was one of the kids who could have gone either way, but I kind of felt that I was going to go the right way, but at that point there was this program created and it took a small segment of kids who had promise and put us into environment together. So we were away from the larger school, which had about 3,500 students in our high school. Our high school probably had closer to 300. So we were part of South Philadelphia High School, but we attended in a different building and we were taught by different teachers and we had a different kind of community there, which was very nurturing and very supportive. So high school was fun. Played sports, participated in student government, was well thought after. You know, when you walked into South Philadelphia High School, you see my picture there in the, in the box, the trophy case of the. You know, this is the basketball player of the. You know, it was. It was a great experience for me personally. And I look back on high school very finely. A very diverse situation too. Maybe by that time kids grew up and kind of realized that, well, we're different in some ways, we want to be perceived differently, but we got to go to school and there was a lot more of let's just get along and learn and be friends to the extent that we could be. Nobody went home to anybody else's house. I mean, if you were black, you went to your home and you went to your neighborhood. But when we came to school, we were all friends and we, you know, went to, took our studies seriously and our friendships and let that play out to the best that we could.
- [42:35]
Jay Frost
And then you went from there to. Again, you went to school and got a CPA and you got a JD but that caused you to leave. Right? I mean, you didn't you go to Franklin and Marshall?
- [42:46]
HRT Taylor
So you must have left Franklin Marshall College. Yeah, Franklin Marshall College was the most important academic experience in my life. I did very well in high school, but didn't realize how under prepared I was for college academically. And, you know, that's a sad kind of situation that students today find themselves in. And today I don't think there would ever be a kid who would go to Franklin and Marshall College from South Philadelphia High School. And that's because a place like Franklin and Marshall would never have South Philadelphia High School on its map of kids to recruit. And the only reason I think I was recruited was because of sports. The coach at Franklin and Marshall, man named Glenn Robinson, who by the way, is the winningest basketball coach in the history of Division 3. He has over a thousand victories. Wow. And in all of the divisions, I think he's ranked somewhere in the top 10 of all time winning coaches in basketball. So I had a great coach and he came and recruited because he found out about me playing in, you know, I would get stories written about me and all that, and they would see that Newt. I wasn't quite good enough to play in Division 1, but I was good enough to play at Division 3. So he recruited me. And my second choice would have been Dickinson College, another liberal arts school. But Franklin and Marshall was closer to home and it had an accounting program. So I chose Franklin.
- [44:55]
Jay Frost
That's what you wanted to study or.
- [44:57]
HRT Taylor
I had no idea what I was going to do. So I looked in the newspaper and I said, well, where are the jobs? Back then all the jobs were in accounting. So, okay, I guess I'm going to be an accountant. It's a funny story because I tell kids today ask, what do you want to do? And he said, I don't know, maybe I'll be a teacher. Why do you want to be a teacher? I don't know. Well, why don't you, like, figure out how to make a billion dollars and if that doesn't work out for you, then you can be a teacher. Why start out, you know, you're a poor kid. Why do you want to be a teacher? I mean, mother was an influence in.
- [45:37]
Jay Frost
A lot of this stuff. What did she have to say about all this?
- [45:39]
HRT Taylor
My mother? Oh, my mother was pretty direct about it. She do what you want, but just realize you got to have a. Make a living. My mother was really clear and pragmatic. For her, it was all about being able to take care of yourself and your family. So, you know, you, you. My mother had an eighth grade education. Jay. Her parents died. Her mother died when she was in eighth grade, when she was 13 years old. And so she moved to Philadelphia and she kind of made a way connecting with other relatives and waited until she had children, until she was in her 30s. But when she had children, she was in completely devoted to them. But she was also very pragmatic. There was no, I don't know where my mother found fun in life. Maybe just watching tv. She always had the most up to date tv. And she, she would drink, she would come home and she'd have a quart of beer and she was a smoker. And so she'd come home, smoke a couple cigarettes, drink her beer, watch her TV shows, go to bed, wake up the next morning, do it again, lather, rinse, repeat. She was like the most consistent person you'd ever want to know and the only free time she had Away from us was when we spent two years, two weeks. Sorry. In the summer at the YMCA camps. Don't know what she did then. I hope she had a great time, but that was the only time. And we never really saw her break character. And you know that. Wait a minute. There's got to be something going on. As I thought when I got older. Right. She had to be doing. But I can never think back to a time when she broke character and did something that was just completely unexpected. I mean, I don't know where you get that level of consistency from, but that was her devotion to her sons. So, anyway, back to Franklin and Marshall. Franklin and Marshall was really important because there I understood, whoa, I'm behind. And for the first time in my life, Jay, I had trouble competing academically with my peers. And it was eye opening. And I felt like the only way I'm going to get out of here is if I give everything I have to these studies and I have to get out. There's no, like, you're going to drop out of college. What's that? No way in the world. So we stuck with it. And what I learned, Jay, was that I am smart. I'm just not prepared. And years later, I was able to describe my situation as how you would describe impact. Right. There's different ways of measuring impact. One is you went from point A to point B. Well, there were a lot of kids at Franklin and Marshall who benefited from their college educations, but some of them came there with experiences and education that made it a lot easier for them. So their growth wasn't anywhere near my growth. What I got out of Franklin and Marshall was tons more than they got, at least from an academic standpoint, because I had to get it all. I had to learn Algebra J in high school, I mean, in college, I mean, and I'm trying to be an accountant. So, you know, you. You figure all this stuff out. And that when I look at my life now and I think of what's possible, I. I don't have any doubts that I could achieve anything. I mean, I've never done anything more difficult academically at work than I did at Franklin Marshall and law school. Passing the CPA exam was tough. I had to take it a few times. But law school was challenging just because I was doing it part time and it was ahead of the distractions. I was working full time, had a baby and a family.
- [50:25]
Jay Frost
Oh, what? Wait, so what? Okay, so you finish your academic work in accounting and you were playing sports at the same time, right?
- [50:36]
HRT Taylor
Well, during college, yeah, I was playing sports, played two sports, baseball and basketball, and got my accounting degree with all that. Right. But then after college I went to work for a big eight accounting firm. So I started working for, it was back then, Touche Ross and Company.
- [50:59]
Jay Frost
And that's a lot of hours.
- [51:01]
HRT Taylor
Oh yeah, yeah. So at Touche Ross, the story is, I tell this story around diversity. I get hired by two Shrosh and company. By the way, there are probably 10 maybe, maybe 10 CPAs who were African American in Philadelphia at that time.
- [51:23]
Jay Frost
Out of, out of how many? Just for.
- [51:25]
HRT Taylor
Well, let me give you just a small example. There were eight firms represented. And let's see, when I started at Touche Ross and Company, which is now, I guess Deloitte and touche, there were 195 accountants in that firm in the Philadelphia office, I was the only African American, the only one when I started. And I tell the story that there's such a difference today between what we expect from diversity programs today than what there was then. So back then maybe they were interested in some degree of diversity because they said, well, we at least got to have one, right? So they hired me. Interestingly, one of their clients was an organization by the name of OIC Opportunities Industrialization Centers, founded by a man named Leon Sullivan. And I'll tell more about, if we have time, I'll tell about that story too. But Leon Sullivan started oic and I'll tell you about that story. But it was an African American led nonprofit job training center. And so I guess they felt, how can we continue to do the books for OIC if we only have at least one black person? Because Leon was all about selective patronage, meaning that he led a series of boycotts in Philadelphia, which we call selective patronage, in late 1950s that, that sought to get companies in Philadelphia to hire at least one black person, just one.
- [53:36]
Jay Frost
Which sounds small to today's audience, but it was a big lift then because of the, the environment, the atmosphere that people don't understand.
- [53:44]
HRT Taylor
There were no. So you know, he would go, he would organize 400 preachers in Philadelphia, 400 black preachers. And every Sunday they would go to their pulpits and they say, this week we're boycotting XYZ company So we don't want you to buy any of their products. And then they would go to the company and say, so are you going to hire one? And many of them say, okay, we'll hire one. And the famous case was this tasty cake company. I don't know if you ever heard Tasty. Yeah. Well, Tasty Cake prided itself on having the freshest cakes in the world. Right. And so they wouldn't hire one black. So the preachers decided they would boycott Tasty Cake, and those cakes were drying up on the shelves.
- [54:40]
Jay Frost
And what year was this again, Art?
- [54:41]
HRT Taylor
This was in the late 1950s, early 1960s. And so ultimately, Tasty Cake decided they would hire someone. And what that did was open it up for others, too. But what they found out was that while they were hiring these black people to work in there, in their factories and their stores, there also wasn't the training necessary for them to be successful. So that led to the creation of a job training program that became wildly successful, still in existence today. And I was ultimately hired, skipping over a lot of detail, I became, at one point, the CFO of that organization. Oh. But while I was at Touche Ross, I got finally put on a job. I'll go back to that. Because when I started at Touch Ross, they would have me sit in the office weeks without getting on the job. All my peers, I started with another about 24 people in my class. They all got put on audits. I was sitting in the office, and I thought, why wouldn't they want me to be on the job? Well, obviously, maybe some of the clients don't want to see a black face doing their books. They wouldn't want to risk that. So they found the one place they could put me, which was oic to do those audits.
- [56:16]
Jay Frost
I just have to ask you something. When you look back at that, was it the clients or was it the firm?
- [56:25]
HRT Taylor
Probably both. The firm didn't want to take the risk. But, you know, I often say, I don't know how great of an accountant I would have been in what you were saying, but I do know this. They didn't know either. Right, Right. Because you didn't give me a chance. Right. So. And the way it works in that business. The way it works in that business, the. The people above you choose you to be on audits. Okay. Right. They choose you to join their team to. To go out and do a particular Art. Person's assigned. A senior auditor is assigned to be the person who directs the field work. And so you get picked by them to be on a team. And if no one picks you, then you don't get a job. You don't get an opportunity. Wow.
- [57:14]
Jay Frost
So you're sitting there for weeks, really not doing anything, which that must have felt a little scary. I mean, not just bad, but also scary because, you know, you can't stay.
- [57:24]
HRT Taylor
If you can't, you have no opportunity. So. But, you know, naive me, you know, I'm just thinking, you know, look, eventually it'll work itself out. It didn't. I did stay the requisite three years to get my cpa, two plus years. But OIC was a client that I spent a lot of time on. Ultimately, I got on some other jobs too, and we got promoted to senior accountant before I left. Passed the CPA exam, all that. But the story is that I. The takeaway is that as a person of color in that firm, there was little interest in diversity. There was no interest in inclusion. No interest in inclusion. Right. No interest in equity. So I talked to young people today about this. Now think about this though, Jay. The challenge that we have with these programs idea work is that CEOs of these companies back then loved affirmative action. I commit that they loved affirmative action because with affirmative action, okay, what's the number that we need to hit? And all we have to do is find enough people to bring in and hit the number and we're good. I mean, places like IBM, black people flourished because IBM knew, all right, let's hit the number, bring them in, we'll train them how to be sales people, and they'll do great work. And they did. A lot of people made a lot of money. A lot of black people made a lot of money working IBM. And so if you think about the inclusion aspect, though, if you were willing to adapt what you were to meet the requirements of the company, you had a shot. But no one was interested in who you were authentically. I mean, I listened to that term and we should be able to be our authentic selves. Well, good luck with that. Back in that day, there was an expectation that you would adapt to that culture if you were going to have any chance of succeeding. Which meant, okay, when we have social events, we go out after work and we drink beer until we're oblivious or we go play golf. I never played golf before. How am I going to connect with that, you know? Or we, you know, we go out and do different things that were in neighborhoods that I never grew up in or never were part of. So there was little interest in finding out what my interest was. Although there was one thing that they included me and that was basketball team. We had a CPA league and our basketball team won a championship because of me and another guy named Mike Purcell. Mike Purcell became a partner there, had a great career as an accountant. Terrific man. But yeah, I mean, I was on a basketball team Maybe that's why they hired me. I don't know. So they could win the CPA league. But the bottom line here is today it's harder for CEOs to know what the measure is. Right? When we talk about belonging. What I need to feel like I belong, Jay, is very different than what you might feel like you need to belong.
- [61:36]
Jay Frost
So it's harder to come up with that measure that's applicable to everybody.
- [61:40]
HRT Taylor
It's hard to come up with the standard and then enforce it. Right? And so CEOs are like, okay, we feel like we have a diverse group of people here, but how do we make everyone feel like they're included? Now, I'm sure there's some who succeeded with that, but it's a much different. It's much harder metric to come up with. You can do surveys and that kind of thing, but there will always be people who say, you're not doing enough, and others who are feeling like you're doing too much. Why are you doing all this stuff? And so the belonging question is more challenging for CEOs, and I just worry. And we've seen this. When the pressure's on, what does the CEO do then? Meaning pressure is basically saying, we're doing all this stuff and people are still not happy, and there's pressure on us to dismantle it. Well, maybe we'll just dismantle it, because all the stuff we're trying to do, we're not getting any credit for because people are still not happy and we don't know what else to do in order to make that so. And maybe there isn't anything else you can do because you have to manage a business. And at the same time, you have to find a way to make every single person in that organization feel like they're belonging. And now what is different today and why belonging matters, Maybe it didn't matter as much then, too. Is that today I firmly believe, and studies show that companies perform better when people feel like they belong. So back then, I'm the only black person in a firm. 195 professionals. They're not sure the clients want to see me. The firm is uncomfortable, put me out there, and they're making plenty of money. You know, my existence wasn't going to help them make any more money. At least that's how they fought. I didn't have any connections, business, anything. So, you know, what do we. Why do we need to change anything for this person? For me, they only change anything they're making playing money. Today. I don't know if that is true. I don't think you can make plenty of money today and not have everyone in your organization feel like they belong and that they're producing. The world is too diverse. We've crossed the threshold of having people in places from diverse backgrounds who matter and who are able to make a difference and who you must contend with who you want in your businesses. The markets have changed. People are looking for new ideas that come from these emerging people in our culture. And so I don't think you can actually be successful long term unless you're finding ways to make these groups feel like they belong. So what was a moral question in my day? It's the right thing to do. To give people a chance is now a business issue. We can't really grow our business unless we're able to reach audiences across the board. That's the difference. And so I don't really speak about belonging much from a moral standpoint. It's like a cultural war thing right now. Weird, right? But if you ask the businesses, they're like, we're not getting rid of this program. We need these people. We need our. We need our diversity now. Some are, but I don't think those companies will succeed in the long run because our country will continue to grow. We can do everything we want to try to eliminate diversity in this country. I don't think it's going to happen. I don't think it's scalable. It's not scalable to think that you can eliminate America's diversity and whip everybody into a culture that is based on white supremacy. Just don't think you can do it. Good luck with these. I know they're trying mightily.
- [66:13]
Jay Frost
Right. That's what I wanted to ask you. So the pressure now it sounds like, from what you're saying, the pressure isn't within the companies and organizations, the nonprofits we know and love. It's not there. They're trying to figure this out because the value of diversity is not just a moral value, it's a business value. It's one that enables them to raise money, to spend money, to work the economy. It's the right thing to do. But the government is taking a very different position. So I know we've jumped ahead quite a bit, but.
- [66:47]
HRT Taylor
No, that's cool.
- [66:48]
Jay Frost
Where are you taking that now? Not only within the AFP role that you have, where that has to be a consideration, but also just broadly within the sector as organizations try to figure out, do we scrub the language from our website and still consider ourselves devoted to making sure we have an environment of belonging. How do you deal with both the.
- [67:09]
HRT Taylor
Legal and organizations are going to do what they have to do to survive? And I could not question the decisions that any of them make. Some will say, you know, we're not changing anything, forget them. Others will say we have to change it because it's going to affect us in ways that we couldn't recover from if we change, if we get called out or like Columbia, Columbia University, where I teach, by the way. Think about that, Jay.
- [67:49]
Jay Frost
Well, and you're kid from South Philadelphia.
- [67:51]
HRT Taylor
Teaching at like ethics at the kid and I grew up on the street with Angelo Bruno number racket teaching ethics at Columbia University in school professional studies. Think about that for a minute.
- [68:03]
Jay Frost
Well, and ethics is at the core of this whole debate with Columbia about whether or not it's ethical to do what they're doing, to submit.
- [68:11]
HRT Taylor
Yeah. And you know, when we think about ethics, we like to try to create these bright line standards, which I get right. But here's the thing, and I'm not defending Columbia one way or another, but I can kind of understand how they could come to a decision like they did. All right, let's think about it this way from the standpoint of stakeholders. So a lot of this was around research dollars. Right. It was the research dollars that they stood the risk of losing. Right.
- [68:51]
Jay Frost
Hundreds of millions.
- [68:52]
HRT Taylor
Hundreds of millions. They're obviously black people and people of color who are running some of these research programs without the money, what happens to them? There are studies that could impact the quality of life for people from diverse backgrounds. And if you discontinue those studies, when do you get to pick them up again? Some of them may have been longitudinal, I don't know, but they could have been longitudinal studies where if you break them off, the data is no good anymore. You've lost decades maybe of information and you can't pick it up anymore. So I'm just like some could look at it as purely an economic decision that Colombia made. We don't want to lose the money. But think about it this way. Columbia doesn't net any revenues from that. I mean, if you get a government grant, you're spending it. The institution doesn't net any revenues from it.
- [70:04]
Jay Frost
There is overhead, a little.
- [70:06]
HRT Taylor
Yeah, well, overhead is overhead. You got to have overhead, of course. Yes, got to have overhead, but they're not netting anything from it. So you're essentially, basically saying we're just going to kill all these research programs. Now. I still don't know, Jay, what it means internally to the institution because, and I might hope I don't cause more scrutiny by kind of out in this, but Columbia School of Professional Studies still has a chief diversity officer who looks into these issues. There's still a committee within Columbia that focuses on these issues. They still have conversations about it. So there probably have been some changes made and some things that are now done differently. But I mean, I can tell you that at least in sps, we're still trying to do things to make sure everybody has opportunity. So now we'll see what happened. Now that I said that it might be, oh, let's get that, too. But, you know, I don't know. I think organizations are going to try to decide how far to go with this, but also to recognize that we can't succeed unless we have diversity. So we're going to do what we have to do to make it palatable to this administration, which is problematic in some ways, but we're also going to make sure that we continue to work to the extent that we can because we can't live without it.
- [72:01]
Jay Frost
I do want to ask you about one thing with this. It's not restricted to Colombia. It's really about philanthropy in general. Yeah, if we believe that a grant maker, a philanthropic entity, in this case it's the government grants, but it might be a foundation somewhere or an individual donor. And that's happened at a number of these institutions where they've had significant influence about how they will respond to these government inquiries, congressional inquiries, if they ask an institution to do something which they feel is discriminatory to one or another population within that university, let's say community, Is there a line? I mean, are there any lines at all? I understand what you said before, that if they're just abstract lines and we lose hundreds of millions, we lose studies, they impact all of us, including a lot of people who have been, you know, underserved, discriminated against. But, but if receipt of the funds in the first place or changes to those funds necessitates some form of what might be interpreted as discrimination, is that a line that institutions should consider not crossing?
- [73:21]
HRT Taylor
Well, again, I think every institution is going to have to decide that. And there's also, I'll say maybe. Maybe doesn't work in every situation, but there is potentially the need for institutions to think about, I guess we called it back in the day, what you would consider making it up for people who got, who were affected in a certain way by a racist policy, giving something to people who are impacted so that while you may Hurt them in one way by doing something. You're trying to find ways to. To mollify that effect by doing something else. And I don't know if that works in every case, but I think we have to begin thinking like that too. In other words, if I'm going to do something that I know is good for our business but has the effect of holding a particular group back, what can we do as an institution to make up for that? I don't know. I'm just putting that out there as a concept. But are there things we can do to address that? I don't know the answer to that, but I think that's how you have to think. Right? I mean, just in an everyday business, we might tell an employee, I need you to work this weekend, but I'm going to give you a few days off next week. Right. Are there things that we can do? I'm not saying I got the answer and people might listen to me. Aren't you're nuts. What are you talking about? And I accept that. But if you don't believe that we're in this for the long haul and you believe that what is happening here during this period of time is the end of it, then you see things differently. I personally believe it's a long game. And I am not as torn up as some. I'm torn up, but I'm not torn up as some about this period. There's always been periods of success followed by retrenchment, right? There's always been that through the struggle for civil rights. There's always been, starting with reconstruction, periods of success and movement, and then followed by Jim Crow. And so we're going to see that it's not fun to go through the troughs. But history has shown that we've made progress over the long term. And what America is dealing with right now is not simply about race or gender or identity. It's more now about how we see ourselves as a nation. Do we see ourselves as a nation that cares for each other and wants to see the best for every possible citizen, or are we less concerned about the needs of everyone and only focused on, quote, the winners? The winners. I think that's what we're really fighting over here. Race is embedded in that gender, and these culture wars are embedded in that. But to me, it's more about this broader question of how we see ourselves as a society. And again, I don't quite know how you can have success in an economy, in an enterprise, or in a society if people don't feel like they have a shot.
- [78:24]
Jay Frost
How do we. How do we show people that they have a shot so they don't feel like they're trying to figure it out in isolation?
- [78:41]
HRT Taylor
Well, let's put the government aside for a minute because. And by the way, and their federal government, which is an institution, but certainly every person inside of the government, our government doesn't see things this way. Right. So that's part of that. But what we have to do is show that we care. Just show that we care. Just, you know, offer condolence or support or whatever we can for people. Right. I don't know. I mean, I think that when we were doing work for the generosity Commission, which I really appreciated the work of this group, trying to figure out why we were seeing such a decline in giving, in participation in giving, we were looking at what we could do to get government to inspire giving to institutions. And we did our research, and we've come up with a few things. But I think what we came away with, or at least what I came away with, is this is more cultural than it is policy. Policy could help, but there's something going on in our culture that drives people to not want to give to institutions. We got to figure out what that is. And we also discovered, though, that people are still generous. They're just giving in different ways. They're not giving to institutions, but they. We need to hold that up. We need to continue to push that. Because ultimately, if you're giving to a neighbor who's struggling, and you see after 15 weeks of giving to that neighbor, that that neighbor is still struggling, at some point you're going to ask yourself, well, what can we do so that we don't have to keep helping that neighbor? And that will lead you back to some type of organized activity. And the organized activity leads ultimately to some type of small institution and maybe grows into something bigger. So I just think that, you know, we. We have to continue to support the idea of giving regardless of what happens with government. People need help, people need support, people need encouragement. No gift is too small. We just have to give what we can and realize that when we give Jay, we feel good. I feel empowered whenever I give something to somebody, whether it's advice, whether it's a pat on the back, whether it's money or time. I feel great when I do that. Sometimes you don't feel good going into it. It's like, oh, man, I gotta do this. But when you're doing feels great. And when you get that thank you at the end, it's like A light that just came over you, right? No matter what's going on in your life. So we gotta keep pushing that. Wouldn't it be great if instead of, like, leaning on government for everything, which we should be able to lean on government for more? Don't get me wrong, but maybe some of our cultural icons would begin shining a light on the importance of doing that. What if people like Taylor Swift and LeBron James, who are very generous people, by the way, also said to the broader society, participate with us, give what you can. It might make a difference. Hearing from LeBron James about the importance of giving, it might make a difference. Hearing from Taylor Swift, it might make a difference from hearing from people who are very active in our society and who we kind of look up to to have a message about giving back. I know it's tricky because some people say, well, they got lots of money. Of course they're going to say that we don't have that. But when they tell us to buy shoes, we buy them. We don't say, well, they could buy a million pairs of shoes. So, you know, of course they're telling us. Right. You know what I'm saying? So I think we need the movie stars, we need the, the influencers to come out and talk about not everything political, but just human to human interaction. That person to person, we can help make a difference. That's, I think, where we gotta go.
- [83:51]
Jay Frost
You've been working on this stuff a long time, Art. I know we jumped right from college and CPA to, to what you're thinking about right now. And I'm not going to make you go over your resume because it's all out there. But I would like to ask you, as you compare two very different experiences, one quite new, but it's something you've been attached to for a long time, and the other one, you spent a lot of years at first with the Wise Giving alliance. And particularly among all the things you did there, Better Business Bureau, Wise Giving alliance, you had that podcast, which I think is pretty remarkable, the conversations that you held with people. And then today you're having a lot of conversations because you're managing a wonderful but sometimes unruly group of people who are trying to help their own charities across the country and around the globe. I mean, there are over 30,000, 40,000.
- [84:41]
HRT Taylor
I don't know, 25,000 members, something like that.
- [84:46]
Jay Frost
They punch above their weight. So I think the number is larger. But in both of those situations, you probably had to listen to a lot of people as well as share and Teach, is there something that you found over that time? Because now it's what, three and a half decades that's consistent in all this that leads you to think with hope. And when you think about the solutions to the trough that we're in.
- [85:15]
HRT Taylor
Well, I've been saying to people lately what I'll tell you, and it's that as leaders and as individuals, we have to generate, find ways to generate and maintain positive energy, period. Because if you're going to do non profit work, you're always going to be up against constraints and you have to find ways to get past them. And it doesn't help for you to be negative or doubtful that you can do that. Now, I understand that you have to be realistic about your situation, right? And you can't just look at a challenge and say, well, we're just going to do it. That's ignorant. But you do have to have a certain degree of faith that the answers to questions for which you're still struggling will eventually come to you if you are able to be positive and supportive. And it doesn't help, Jay, if you're negative, because if you, if you want to be negative and doubtful and depressed, the world will help you with that. That's easy to get support for that. There's a million people will tell you why you can't do something, right? There's always a reason why you can't. So what I say to people is, fine, if you want to be that way, it's going to just be harder to do something. And being positive doesn't guarantee that you're going to be successful. But maybe you'll do it with more joy and maybe you'll do it with more resolve, and maybe you'll do it with more appreciation for the challenge and, and you'll be able to inspire others. See, all of this has to be done in collaboration or in community. And how do you inspire people if you're negative and down about everything? So in the fundraising profession, what donor wants to hear from a nonprofit leader who's like, well, if you give us this grant, I don't know what's going to happen. You know, they'll be like, okay, thank you, here's a few dollars. Go away. They want to hear about why you're excited. They know it may not work, but they want to see your level of excitement and enthusiasm and your reasons for why this thing might work, why you're hopeful so that you can give them hope that their grant can be something. Most fundraisers are that way. And so that's the thing. And it's harder when you're in an environment that doesn't seem to support that. Right. Like we seem to be in now. The environment is such that, my goodness, everything we're trying to do is being undermined. And it's harder, you know, now because of that. We still have to be positive and hopeful. We just have to find different ways. Unfortunately, probably some organizations won't make it because they were heavily dependent on a funding source that is no longer going to be there. But remember too, we've gone from 66% of families giving to nonprofits to 49.5% in a 20 year period ending in 2018. There are lots of people out there that we have to reach. And if we can reach them, maybe we can do more. There are new technologies that are enabling us to do things that we couldn't have dreamed of before. Let's get smarter, right? There are people who still have yet to understand the joy in giving back and supporting an institution and seeing the value of it. Think about the people who are leaving government. All of these folk, I'm assuming, entered government for a couple of reasons. One, they thought they could make a stable living, but secondly, maybe they thought that this is a way for them to help make a difference in the world. Come on over to our sector. And I see our sector, Jay, as the vanguard. We're sort of in between government and in the private sector trying to hold democracy together. We appeal to government, we demonstrate to government what can happen when people work together on a problem and that maybe becomes policy. And on the business side, we try to make profit doing things. And sometimes it's not always in the best interest of people, but we hold them accountable, right? And we get them to participate. We're the vanguard. We're the place where people who fall out of the success of the private sector and need help, we're the people there to help them. We're the people who says to a society that's having problems, there's some ways for us to work together to address these problems. While other people are thinking about how do we make money and exacerbating the problem. And others think about, well, we don't know what the policy can be. We're doing it. So the vanguard has to have positive energy in order to hold this democracy together. And I know we're under attack, but think about this. If we are the vanguard and if part of our democracy isn't necessarily favoring the role that we're playing, it just means we have to fight all the more to make sure that we are doing what we're here to do. And there's probably, as I said, going to be some, some sacrifice. There's going to be some who don't quite make it. But if our society is going to make it, then we have to find a way to make it. And it takes positive energy to do, takes fearlessness. And that doesn't mean being afraid. Sometimes you can be afraid, but you gotta get over it, gotta do it anyway. You know, when, when you first learn how to swim, you're afraid of that water. But you gotta get over it and you gotta learn how to swim. I think we're just learning how to swim again in a new, in a new body of water.
- [92:38]
Jay Frost
Well, that's it for this episode of the PM podcast. You can learn more about afpfpglobal.org and you can catch past episodes of the Heart ofgiving@heartgiving.podbean.com Our thanks to our sponsor, Donor Search, the global leader in AI powered fundraising intelligence solutions for the nonprofit sector. 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.
- [93:25]
HRT Taylor
Thanks for joining me.