← Going Big! with Kevin Gentry
Going Big! with Kevin Gentry
Helping Others Improve Their Lives: Evan Feinberg on Addressing Poverty with a Bottom-Up Approach
00:46:55
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- [00:00]
Kevin Gentry
Hi there, I'm Kevin Gentry and welcome to the Going Big podcast where we'll explore some of the strategies that can help you transform your effectiveness by 10xing your fundraising. Each week we'll sit down with some of the most influential business leaders, CEOs and nonprofit visionaries to talk about leadership, the power of giving, and how you can make a real impact. If you want to make a transformational change to the cause you're working on, this is the place for that conversation. Also, take a Look at our website, 10xStrategies.com that's T E N X strategies.com for lots of free marketing and fundraising resources. And be sure to sign up for the free weekly fundraising tips. Now let's dive in. Well, greetings ladies and gentlemen. This is a special moment for us to have this special conversation as we're celebrating in the United States Thanksgiving. It's a time when people think not only about giving and about gratitude, but really about helping others and giving back. And so this topic of how do we really help people improve their lives in a way that's truly meaningful? How can we do that effectively? So I'm so pleased that have as my guest today, good friend Evan Feinberg. Evan is the chairman of Stand Together Foundation. And Evan, I, I want you, there's a lot for you to talk about today, so I'm just going to start. You have really dedicated much of your adult life to finding ways to really meaningfully help improve the lives of others. Tell us about that in that kind of open ended way and then we'll really bore in.
- [01:52]
Evan Feinberg
Well, sure, Kevin, it's such a pleasure to be with you and to think about how we can go big on some of the biggest problems facing our country. And as you mentioned, problems that I am particularly passionate about. You know, there are 40 million Americans experiencing poverty right now. If you just take the next layer of Americans, those that are sort of struggling and just outside of poverty, it's actually closer to 100 million Americans. It's like a third of the American people are sort of in poverty or near poverty. You think about the number of Americans struggling with mental health problems and addiction. It's, it's, it's tens of millions of Americans, 20 million are experiencing addiction, many more, anxiety, depression, a lack of belonging. You know, it's obvious that there are just such significant barriers preventing so many people from realizing their full potential. So when I think professionally about what it means to transform our country and really help us to live up to the ideals of our country or when I think about, you know, personally as a person of faith, as a person who cares about my neighbors. Knowing that so many people are struggling, it's hard to imagine something, you know, more motivating to dedicate your life to than removing the social barriers that are preventing each and every person from realizing their full potential.
- [03:17]
Kevin Gentry
Well, let's set the foundation for this a bit. So, I mean, I think we all agree that most people have great intentions about helping others. Yeah, we just haven't necessarily figured out how. Well, and whatever we may say, the federal government has spent trillions of dollars on the so called war on poverty on many of these programs. You've been pretty outspoken about what is meaningful and helpful first if you would talk about that approach. And then we're going to also talk about some of the way philanthropy and other efforts tackle it too.
- [03:57]
Evan Feinberg
Yeah, I mean, look, the, I think the war on poverty has been really well intentioned. People look around and they say, how can in a country so successful, so proud, prosperous, can so many people be struggling? And so if we just spend more money on, on programs and services and support for the least fortunate, we can eradicate poverty, we can end poverty, we can win the war on poverty. The problem isn't intentions. I'm sure there are some folks that are ill intentioned as they support some of those policies, but most people are just trying to get good things done. But they've literally spent tens of trillions of dollars. We now spend over a trillion dollars in government resources every year aimed at removing the social barriers that prevent people from rising. But the problem is they're solving the wrong problem. They think that we know the problem, that we know the solutions to poverty, we know the solutions to social barriers, and if we just invest in them, if we just resource them, that we can solve the problem. But it actually does the exact opposite because we don't know the answers to how to help people to improve their lives. There's no top down, expert driven solution that we know can work. So instead we've got to drive bottom up social entrepreneurship where neighbors helping neighbors and people helping people. And we're discovering with local nonprofits and local efforts what actually works. And when you inject all of those top down resources in, you just pick winners and losers and experts start driving the solutions and it just never works. So we've spent tens of trillions of dollars in government resources, the poverty rate in America hasn't budged, social and economic mobility in the country have stagnated. And all the while we're looking to far off people in Washington D.C. rather than ourselves to meet the needs of our neighbors and those in, in in need. And the result is sort of just brokenness in our communities and people sort of looking around wondering how do we get here and what can we do about it?
- [06:08]
Kevin Gentry
Well, well, thank you. I mean, that's pretty serious stuff. I mean, not only have we not helped the very people we've been intending to help, and in many cases we believe we've hurt many of those people or created additional obstacles while at the same time putting an enormous burden on the American people to pay for this thing that didn't work. And as you say, we. There's a lot of literature about the tragedy of experts that there is no perfect knowledge. Of course you touched on some of the solutions that are done right at the front lines through social entrepreneurs. Obviously we want to get to the solution. But just as government may not be the solution, a lot of well intentioned philanthropy and charitable organizations also aren't hitting the mark. Is that your sense? That's something certainly I've learned from you. Tell us a little bit more about that.
- [07:02]
Evan Feinberg
Yeah, I mean it's really about a top down paternalist mindset. That's the problem. And that certainly happens in the halls of Congress or in federal bureaucracies or other forms of government, but it happens in nonprofits and philanthropic organizations all the time. So we spend hundreds of billions of dollars every single year on human services through philanthropy, just private philanthropy. And you know, a lot of folks that might be listening are very generous contributors. And I think that these statistics will, will are a little shocking and don't tell the whole story, but we did a review of all of the literature out there that looks at nonprofit effectiveness. So random control studies for those that know the business and less than 2% of the publicly available random control studies on nonprofit interventions showed any meaningful statistically significant positive results from the nonprofit on the things that they say they were trying to accomplish. So not even on some objective standard. So very little of what we're doing in philanthropy, nonprofits, social services, is really making any difference at all. And so when we're thinking big together, one of my suggestions is we have to think differently if we're going to think big. We have to think disruptively if we're thinking big. Because if you're just thinking, well, let's just do a little bit more or something a little bit differently from what we're doing today, we're going to get the same results and we're not going to solve any of these problems.
- [08:52]
Kevin Gentry
So, okay, on the one hand, we could say, wow, this is really discouraging. But on the other hand, I know that because you've devoted your life to this, that you see a much more encouraging path forward. What do you see as a much more effective approach?
- [09:10]
Evan Feinberg
Yeah, I think we need an entirely different paradigm in communities. We need to go from they got this to we got this. And the they can be people in suits in Washington, D.C. or in boardrooms, or they can be, you know, non profit leaders. You know, with national organizations. We have to say, what does it mean for us as ordinary citizens to really think about how do we meaningfully engage to meet the needs of others? You take something as a problem as big as chronic homelessness in the country. You know, there's 143,000 chronically homeless individuals in America at any given time. Seems like a huge problem. We see on the news all the time the sort of intractable problem of the homeless population in America, but it's 143,000 individuals. Well, there's nearly 400,000 places of worship in the country. Churches, synagogues, mosques. And you think about it, if every one of those places of worship could help just one person off the streets, we'd eradicate chronic homelessness two and a half times over. I could tell similar stories about the number of kids in the child welfare system, the number of chronically jobless. These are solvable problems. But instead of thinking about the government as the only thing big enough to solve it, or the really massive nonprofit network is the only thing big enough to solve it, we have to start seeing our communities, people helping people, relationships, as the only thing big enough to solve problems. So to me, the future of the social sector is how do you organize people to meet the needs and develop relationships with those who are struggling. And in doing so, you're unlocking human potential in exceptional ways. And so even the nonprofits that are doing it, their role as social entrepreneurs is how do I organize people to solve problems rather than think about delivering sort of an evidence based program or service that somehow is going to solve a problem in ways that it never does?
- [11:25]
Kevin Gentry
All right, well, the term bottom up empowerment, I don't, not think necessarily it's unique to you, but I learned it from you, and you've been talking about that for a long time. And to your point, I think each of us can think about how we've helped our brothers and sisters, meaning we've helped somebody locally or somebody we know, or somebody close to us in some way get by what it would define bottom up empowerment and how does it address what you're trying to describe as a much more powerful path forward?
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Evan Feinberg
Yeah, well, empowerment is really about tapping into one's unique gifts and talents to contribute in the world. And when you're empowered to be the best version of yourself, you find meaning and purpose. And then of course, things like material success and all of the things that come along with somebody who is thriving. And then the question is, well, where does that empowerment happen? How do people begin to thrive as individuals? Well, you can't do it from the top down. You can't prescribe how it happens. You can't plan out how to drive it. It has to happen from the bottom up. It happens person to person. It happens in communities. It happens through discovery. Right. I had to discover my own gifts and talents and how to contribute and I had to do so through some very complex set of relationships with my family, my friends, my school. Then, you know, my, my employers and the people all around me all helped me in some way shape or form realize who I am and what I had to contribute. So bottom up empowerment is merely saying you, you can't do that through top down plans. You have to do it through discovery and social entrepreneurship and relationships. It's going to happen organically, spontaneously, even not through some top down control and plans.
- [13:26]
Kevin Gentry
Well, that's a, a great point too, because it is sort of a natural tendency for us to, you know, particularly if we have resources, can we just fix it? Can we just, you know, address it, fix it in that way to. So to some degree what you're proposing is counterintuitive, but to the extent that you've now, and I want to get into more of what you've done, to the extent that you've worked with what you call social entrepreneurs, people at the front lines who come up with innovative approaches to really addressing some of these ills, helping people directly. Are there a few examples that you could share that could bring this to life and help us really appreciate and understand what you're talking about?
- [14:06]
Evan Feinberg
Yeah, one of my favorites is an organization called Careportal. And I mentioned earlier the idea of 400,000 faith communities and 143,000 chronically homeless. But Care Portal is working on the child welfare system. So kids that are finding themselves in foster care or perhaps in need of adoption and Careportal looked at this and they said, well, there's 7 million kids at every year being referred to the front end of the foster care system only. Any, any given time, there's 400,000 kids that are currently in foster care. They said, well, what if, when we identify those vulnerable families, when a call's made to a social worker, if the social worker believes that a relationship or just some support could help keep that kid out of the system, what if we could deliver that relationship? And so Care Portal built technology to match the social workers who are identifying needs with people who want to meet those needs. And then they put a church at the center to distribute needs and then establish relationships. So let's say mom needs a crib in order to keep her child in her home rather than going into foster care. Anyone can meet the need of the crib, and then a church can go deliver that crib to the home and develop a meaningful relationship and say, well, if you needed a crib, what else do you need? And, and what, what's the situation that you find yourself in need of a crib in the first place? It's an incredible organization. Just in the last year, they've helped 120,000 kids stay out of the foster care system. They've got tens of thousands of churches serving as these, these relationship hubs all across the country and in all the states where they're active, they're seeing the foster care rate go way down as their engagement goes way up. And so this to me is the perfect example of social entrepreneurship. You know, if you're trying to solve the child welfare problem, you see all these big programs and plans to fix it, and then a technology product that connects people to people is solvent in way better ways than anyone else is. Maybe one more. Yeah, no, nice.
- [16:26]
Kevin Gentry
So, so what you're saying is there's the sort of old world, conventional, traditional approach of community relationship faith institutions like the church, but yet we live in this very complicated, complex world today. So we're overlaying technology and marrying the two together in such a way that we can still use these approaches that do work in a modern age.
- [16:48]
Evan Feinberg
Precisely.
- [16:49]
Kevin Gentry
All right, cool. Okay, tell us about a couple more. I know you and I want to get into more about you and what you do. But, but give us an example or two more before I ask you some follow up questions.
- [17:01]
Evan Feinberg
I mean, I think another great example is a group called the Phoenix. The Phoenix is a peer to peer addiction recovery effort, primarily through physical fitness, but really through the power of community. So if you think about the prevailing top down approaches to addressing substance use disorder, they're mostly clinical treatment programs, rehab programs, you know, things that sort of follow an evidence based standard of care, and none of them are working. The average person relapses seven times. The average relapse rates of the best clinical programs in the country are in the, like, the 20, I should say only about their success rates are only about 25, 30%. So 70 to 75% of people will relapse coming out of a rehab program. So nothing that we're doing is working. And yet this is a problem that I imagine every single one of your listeners can, can picture somebody in their life right now struggling with substance use disorder. A friend, a loved one, a coworker. And if they don't know who those people are, there's someone in their life who is. And so you take a problem that big and say, well, what can we do about it? Along comes a guy named Scott Strode. Scott's in recovery himself. And the thing that got him over his addiction was going to the boxing gym with some other guys and working out together. And the support and the accountability of that group of guys got him over his addiction. So he starts the Phoenix. He said, well, if that can help me, maybe I, I'm just a guy with a bike. I can go on a bike ride with some other people in recovery. I can go climbing with others in recovery. And, you know, we can, we can build a movement of people helping people to overcome their addiction. We met Scott when they had 4,000 members a few years ago. They're mostly doing CrossFit style workouts in gyms. And today the Phoenix is Now well over 500,000 members all across the country. Anyone, anywhere can download the Phoenix app and join a Phoenix community on their phone. It's really exciting growth. And it was all because what they did was they didn't try to deliver a program. This is our, our, our standard of practice for addiction recovery. They said the insight was belonging and community could overcome addiction and helping people discover their own resilience. And they wear their sober shirts proudly in community and say, my sobriety becomes an asset to the other people in my community. And so they're wildly successful and growing like crazy, and we need a whole lot more stuff like that taking the country by storm.
- [19:48]
Kevin Gentry
All right, one more. Give us another example. Well, these are good.
- [19:51]
Evan Feinberg
You know, I, I, I. Another favorite of mine is a group called Cafe Momentum. It's a restaurant staffed almost entirely by kids coming out of the juvenile justice system. And so these are kids that everyone else is treating as a danger to society. And how do we protect ourselves from them? And along comes a guy named Chad Hauser, and he says, you know what? I'm going to do. I'm going to teach him to play with knives and fire, and I'm going to help him run the very best restaurant in the entire city of Dallas. And he got all the way up to the number three ranked restaurant in all of Dallas. And it was totally transforming the lives of these young men and women as they were trusted to run this incredible restaurant. And it was changing the perspective of every single person that walked through those doors and dined to Cafe Madam and said, this is one of the best meals I've ever had, some of the best service. I, I now can check all the stereotypes I had in my head about those young men and women and realizing that relationships and trust, right, that Chad really builds a familial environment among those young men and women can solve problems where others can't. So if you said, well, what is the. What do you learn when you go into social work school about how to help kids coming out of the juvenile justice system? You know, no one immediately says, well, I should start a restaurant. I should teach them how to cook. But. But there is something underneath that while they, you need stable relationships, you need. You need to be trusted. You need to be believed in. You need to have earned success in your life. And so a social entrepreneur like Chad takes all of those principles, organizes them in a really interesting and new way, and starts Cafe Momentum that's now opening up restaurants in Pittsburgh and Atlanta and Denver and soon many other cities. And they've got the NFL involved. And, you know, Kim Hayward's there hanging out with the kids in Pittsburgh, and it's very exciting. And, and the, the point being someone else might take from that story, oh, I should start restaurants that employed kids coming out of the juvenile justice system. And that would be great, but they'd have missed the point. The point was that Chad really thought through, what is it. What is it going to take for these young men and women that I can influence to realize their full potential? And he did something creative to meet their needs. And we need. We need thousands of Chad Housers out there doing different things, not just seeing one Chad Houser or one model go to scale.
- [22:26]
Kevin Gentry
All right, so, you know, this is the Going Big podcast, and you and I have worked together on some efforts in philanthropy to go big. The idea is how can we really get to the root causes of big problems, Help people in a. In a big, profound way, partner with philanthropists, generous donors, in a big, profound way to truly make a difference. So I want to offer a path forward for our listeners to figure out how they can do this. But first I want to sort of set the table with you and your journey because I think that can help us all. So you mentioned earlier about, you know, turning to friends and family to help understand your gifts. How did you figure out this was an area that you should focus your life? Tell us a little bit about your personal journey and how you got to this point. Evan.
- [23:16]
Evan Feinberg
Yeah, I don't know what it was inside of me, but as a, as a young kid growing up in the south hills of Western Pennsylvania in a modest family, I just had this desire to do big things and change the world from a young age. It may have been watching the West Wing and a little bit too much Aaron Sorkin influence in my early life, but I had this idea that I, that I wanted to go do things at a societal level and what would actually drive change. So like a lot of folks, that means I kind of got interested in politics and policy. And so I was a political science major in college and moved down to Washington D.C. right after I graduated and found myself working on Capitol Hill doing public policy issues for a couple different senators. And then, you know, I ran for congress myself in 2012 and I, I lost pretty handedly and, and you know, I was coming back to Washington D.C. it was in Pittsburgh. Came back down to Washington D.C. with my wife and my, my, my oldest son was, was very young at the time and so we moved back to community in Northern Virginia and, and I just was thinking I want to do something big. I don't think I want to go back to Capitol Hill and of work on, you know, the blocking and tackling of legislation in, in D.C. and along came an opportunity to come work for the Charles Koch Institute. And so I started reading about Charles Koch's ideas. He had written a couple of books at that point. I, I had read the Science of Success, which was about how Charles built his business and went really big with Koch Industries. And, and I was just inspired by how Charles had taken the ideas of freedom and bottom up empowerment and he'd applied them to a business management philosophy. And something clicked for me in that moment that I could think about how to apply the right ideas in new and different ways. And so I joined the Charles Koch Institute. I led a millennial advocacy group for a little while here, but I became passionate while I was doing the work that we could transform community based philanthropy, non profit work, the social sector with these ideas. So apply the broad sort of canon of classical liberalism and philosophy of freedom and free people and apply it to non profits and community based work. And so we started down that path that was about, you know, nine, ten years ago now. And, and it's been a really exciting and fun journey to be on ever since.
- [25:58]
Kevin Gentry
Well, you've earned a spot in the going big hall of fame. Tell us about Stand Together Today, nine years later.
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Evan Feinberg
Well, at the time Stand Together, what didn't exist and you know, the, the philanthropic community that Charles Koch led was called the Seminar Network. And it was a philanthropic community of business leaders that wanted to go big on solving problems. And we started this effort and we called it Stand Together in Communities and, and really that began to take over the whole ethos of everything we were doing. And so we then changed the name of the overall entity to Stand Together. But then Stand Together more broadly began to reflect that ethos. So fast forward those nine years, Stand Together Today as a philanthropic community of our country's most successful business leaders, most generous business leaders who just want to solve the country's toughest problems by applying core American principles of bottom up empowerment, of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. And, and we're now working not only in public policy and politics, which is an area that Stand Together had been engaged in previously, but in communities in education and what it means to take a bottom up approach to healthcare and how our kids get educated. And so it's very gratifying to me to see that evolution of our work because it's, it's really who we've always been, it's what we've always wanted to be at Stand Together. And we've now today built the capabilities to, to really build movements among the American people to not just support a specific set of ideas about say, the role of government in society or what have you, but instead who are we as Americans? Who do we want to be as Americans? How do I empower my neighbors to live their best lives as I live mine? And I think that evolution of Stand Together has been really inspiring to me and something that I think is exactly what the country needs.
- [28:02]
Kevin Gentry
Well, that's helpful. You're a key part of the leadership team of the bigger, broader Stand Together community. The Stand Together foundation is that particular piece that focuses on just on the communities that which you were describing with respect to Careportal and the Phoenix and Caffeine Momentum. You're the founder, you're the chairman of that today. Tell us a little bit more about also the Stand Together foundation piece and how that works and perhaps if somebody listening is very motivated and inspired by the way you're describing things, how they might become more involved.
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Evan Feinberg
Yeah, so Stand Together foundation started traveling all over the country and looking for the social entrepreneurs and change makers that are out there in every single community. The Scott Strodes and Chad Housers of the world that I talked about earlier, they went out and we started to find those people and started to figure out what do they need from us. Well, they needed some training, some management frameworks. They also needed some affirmation that they were doing something differently than everyone else. They always felt like the, the weird people trying to disrupt and innovate while everyone else was trying to follow the standards and practices that were being pushed down on them. And so we cultivated what is now, I believe, the largest anti poverty portfolio of organizations in the country. Or at the very least the largest one that's aligned to this concept of bottom up empowerment anywhere in the country. And those hundreds of organizations now, 350 or so different organizations that are a part of that effort, they all see themselves as doing different things, but they all see themselves as doing one thing, this idea of bottom up empowerment. And so that effort continues. And then we invest in ones that like Careportal and the Phoenix that are ready for massive scale. We help invest in those efforts to sort of accomplish everything that they can accomplish for our country and for people. So that's going really, really well. Very excited about that progress. For me, the frontier from here is to now engage the American people to enable citizens to take action in their communities. And so we're developing capabilities to match volunteers with the best opportunities that are out there and just give, give the American people a way to be civically engaged, broadly understood, not just in politics and things like that, but to be civically engaged in the life of their community in a way that can make a real difference. And so, yeah, that effort continues to grow and it's, I think, an exciting thing that our country needs.
- [30:46]
Kevin Gentry
Well, you hit on something, I think that vexes us all. And you mentioned sort of connecting people to the organizations that are making a difference. How do you figure out who is making a difference and truly helping improve the lives of others? You know, we, we might this time of the year involve ourselves directly in something like a soup kitchen or a, something to a food pantry or, or make it maybe just make contributions. You know, soon Salvation army will be having its bell ringers at kettles all across the world. And we also know that, you know, this time of the year people are very charitable. About 30, 35% of all charitable contributions are made in the last 45 days of the year. But we always wonder, but am I making a difference? Is this going to a word of the cause? What, what advice do you have as we're trying to figure that out?
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Evan Feinberg
Well, I mentioned that stat earlier that less than 2% of all nonprofits are effective on the, even on the measures that they share. And that can be a, that could put a chilling effect on people's generosity. And that's why I kind of hedged that comment earlier, because being charitable is so, so important. But, but first, let me start with a stat that I think would resonate with a lot of people out there. You know, the American people are extremely generous and charitable, and they actually define success in living the American dream as making a positive impact in the lives of others. In fact, it's the most consistent attribute of what people say is living a successful life or living the American dream is making a positive impact on my community. But then if you take all of the different success metrics that people put out there, this is populous research, take all those different things that they say is living a successful life and making a positive impact on their community is in the bottom five of all attributes. Of those 65 or so attributes that they test, people are more likely to think that they're successfully paying off debt than they are making a positive impact on their community. And the American people are not very successful at paying off debt. So this is something that people want to be good at, whether they're a big philanthropist or a citizen who wants to volunteer. This is what I encounter every day in my job, is people saying, I just want to get good things done, but I'm not sure if I'm making a difference or how I might. And so I'd start here first. Don't trust any of the measures that you're getting from the nonprofits that are sharing with you. They're mostly cherry picking. One study from five years ago that is only a sliver of their work anyhow. And cherry picking results. Even the really great nonprofits, I don't really trust the measures that they give of their work at this point. What I would trust is your own intuition and gut when you see, touch and feel what they're doing right. So I would encourage folks to go visit nonprofits, talk to the people they serve, and determine whether it's the type of person that if you were an investor, you'd invest in their company. Is this the kind of person and operation that I believe in? So that would be my first recommendation. The second is when you're when you are asking for measures, ask for customer measures. Ask what their people say about them. Ask if they have any survey results of the people that they're working with. We at Stand Together foundation have pioneered what we call customer first measurement. Much like customer service organizations ask their customers, were you satisfied with your services? Would you recommend them to a friend or a family member? You know, did they solve the problem that you came in to solve? We believe that those measures are more predictive of value than these sort of observable high school graduation rates or job placements or whatever else you might be getting from the organization. And then finally, give because it meets your service motive. Give because it helps you be joyous in what you're doing. So if it feels like you're giving out of obligation because somebody came to your door or rang a bell in front of you, it's the wrong reason to give. Give because there's a way that you can be an investor and you're in. You sort of have skin in the game of the results of that work and find ways that you can bring your time and your talent, if possible. Alongside those resources is something you truly believe in. And if that just means asking the right questions before you give or whatever it might be, you know, give to things that you feel good about and then, and then don't worry about the effectiveness nearly as much because you're gonna. Everything's a risk in this space, but we need to inspire more of this bottom up entrepreneurship, not less. And so to sort of hold back because you want to be, want proof that it's going to work is, is I think, the wrong sort of heart to go into this season with.
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Kevin Gentry
All right, I got a couple more questions before we wrap up. Many of the charitable organizations that exist are outgrowth of the church. They have a faith component. Many churches focus on mission and outreach. If you would tell us a little bit about your sense of the influence of faith in this space, even from your own personal standpoint. And, and how should we consider that?
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Evan Feinberg
Yeah, there's a, A, a Baylor University study that, that they update periodically out of their religious studies department there. And it estimates that faith communities every year at a minimum or somewhere around $1.2 trillion worth of value added to the economy in America, to people's lives in America, and they estimate the upward bounds of that is actually more like $4 trillion. They can't estimate it with much precision. That's bigger than the economies of almost every country in the world. And so faith communities in America are just this incredible force for good. And most of that is sort of illegible to us. Like you can't really see it. You can't measure it as easily. It's just relationships. It's just people doing things for others within their church communities or within their faith communities or toward others. And so I'd start by saying it's this enormous force for good. As a person of faith, I sit on the, the vestry of my Anglican church and I think often about how our church can make a real difference within our community and then our, within our church community, within our physical community in Washington, D.C. i just think it's so critically important to think about if people are the real bottom up empowerment force for good. Faith communities are a place where people are naturally organized and they're naturally motivated to love and serve their neighbor. So social entrepreneurship, like I mentioned Care Portal earlier, or there's, there's literally dozens and dozens of nonprofits we work with that. What they do is equip faith communities to just be more effective at meeting the needs of their neighbors. I think it's a huge, huge, huge opportunity. You know, the, the idea that the only thing big enough to solve problems is sort of some far off big government program. When we've got a church on nearly every corner in nearly every city, it just sort of betrays common sense. And yet that's sort of how we operate. It's certainly my hope as part of our work at Stand Together and then a part of, part of my, you know, personal passion that we would sort of reinvigorate faith and hope in the idea that faith communities can be a leader in solving these problems.
- [38:59]
Kevin Gentry
All right, one more question and then we're going to end on a big meta question. But the next question is there's a tendency in charitable giving to somehow think giving is a cost, that, you know, I'm going to part with something of mine to give to others, maybe in need, and maybe hopefully there's some satisfaction in that. But you've been arguing that that's not the case, that we can actually help improve our own lives when we help improve the lives of others. Could you speak to that?
- [39:33]
Evan Feinberg
Yeah, I hate when people talk about philanthropy and charity. And I mean, this is no offense to any of your listeners who have said these very words, but I challenge them to be introspective about them when they say, well, I'm giving back, right? As if I got these resources by taking and extracting. No, I mean those resources are, I'm sure, hard earned and they were they came from creating value for others. So we're not giving back. But even still giving back suggests, well, then I just sort of give back some of what I have, which I don't think is the right mental model at all. Giving is a way to invest in improving the lives of others. And it is who we are as human beings. We get meaning, we get purpose by, by contributing in ways that we see other people benefit. In fact, this service motive explains so much more of human activity than you could ever explain from like the economic profit motive. Right? Yeah, sure, I, I come to work and I create value for others for and for economic benefit. But I'm a husband, a father, a church member, a friend. I do all those things because of the mutual benefit of who I want to be for others. There's a service motive that comes in my, my kids aren't paying me to be their dad, and I get more joy and satisfaction out of being their dad than anything that I've ever been paid for. They cost a little bit too. And so this idea of giving really should be about the meaning and purpose that I get as a giver for making a difference in the lives of others. And then it goes even further than that, because if we live in a country where we all do that for one another, we just have a more vibrant society all around us. It creates the country that we want to live and it creates the neighborhoods and communities we want to live in. And so there's a real mutual benefit here, right? We, we give and we invest to improve others lives. And in doing so, we improve our life and the lives of all of us around us. It is not some zero sum game of redistributing our resources. When we improve lives, it creates more value for everyone and the world's a better place.
- [41:49]
Kevin Gentry
Hear, hear. That's, that's terrific. All right, so you know, this is the Going Big podcast, really trying to inspire, motivate others to go big in a consequential way. You and I have talked about the story, one of the most famous of the Jimmy Fund, which was created out of the variety club of New England back in the 1920s. I think it actually started originally in your hometown of Pittsburgh, but ultimately became this philanthropic arm. It raised funds, was kind of like an early community fund or donor advised fund or something. And they famously went to Boston Children's hospital in the 1940s and went to the head of the hematology department and said, okay, we've got these funds. What would you do with a significant contribution and the guy says, well, I'd probably buy another microscope. And true story. Dr. Sydney Farber, down the hallway hears this, comes out of his office and said, with funds like that, I'd find a cure for cancer. And of course, we know the Dana Farber Cancer Institute today is in a very profound way, not only working on that, but making substantial progress. Progress. Dr. Sydney Farber, the father of modern chemotherapy. It's extraordinary story that really is a. Is a really. Is a great metaphor for everything that we're trying to. To do here. So this is your opportunity, Evan. Send us out with some go big inspiring words. You're in a lofty spot. You're an important, inspiring leader for us all, and you've really built this community into something that is consequential and will have very positive consequences for a long time in helping to improve the lives of others. So the ball is yours. Help us kind of go out of here in a way that we can be inspired to do, to really, truly go big.
- [43:40]
Evan Feinberg
Well, if we're going to go big, the thing that I'd want to go big on right now is healing the toxic division and polarization that's happening in our country. That I think is happening because we are. We are seeing all these problems that I started us with tens of millions of Americans experiencing poverty and social barriers, all kinds of problems that we see all around us from people realizing their full potential. And the natural tendency is to. Is to point fingers at one another, to look for who are we going to blame for that and what powerful people can we get to solve those problems? And that is a vicious cycle that ends in ruin for our country. That's the problem that I want your listeners to come to come away today and say, we can solve that. Well, how can we solve that? We can change the paradigm in this country that we can solve all of those giant problems not by finding the proverbial cure for cancer in the cure for poverty. It's actually quite different than that. It's. Poverty is not a disease the way that cancer is. There's not sort of a scientific discovery to be made to solve it. But we can do the equivalent of eradicating the social barriers that we're describing. When we reignite the American spirit of neighbors helping neighbors and people helping people, and social entrepreneurs like the Scott Strodes and Chad Housers and care portals of the world, discovering new and better ways to see those in their communities realizing their full potential. When we inspire people to believe they can do something about these problems, and we all get in the game, big things happen. And every philanthropist who's listening, every nonprofit leader who's listening, every citizen who's listening can do things to be an exemplar in their community that can spread like wildfire. And we can replace the toxic division with unity of purpose by seeing and serving one another in our communities. And I really believe that if everyone listening to the Go Big podcast took that ethos on, that would be big enough to change our country.
- [45:49]
Kevin Gentry
All right, Evan Feinberg, Stand Together Foundation. Thanks for helping us think about how to go big and giving us a good path forward. Thanks a lot. It's always good to be with you, Evan.
- [45:59]
Evan Feinberg
Such a pleasure with you. Kevin. Thanks.
- [46:01]
Kevin Gentry
Thanks for listening to today's Going Big podcast. Hopefully you were inspired to go big for your cause. Remember, this is all about transforming your effectiveness by 10xing your fundraising. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe or leave us a review at iTunes, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also catch this episode on YouTube. And also there are lots of resources available to you at my website, which is 10xstrategies.com that's t e n xstrategies.com you can sign up also for our free weekly fundraising tips. This is all about helping you get to the root causes of some of the biggest problems in society today by transforming your fundraising and your effectiveness. Thanks again. We'll see you again soon. Bye.