Transcript
A (0:00)
Nonprofit work, especially in 2026, isn't easy. But the good news is you do not have to figure it out all alone. You're invited to join me and hundreds of other change makers at Bloomerang's annual conference GiftCon, coming up May 17th through 20th. And trust me, this is the place to be if you want to sharpen your fundraising and communication skills. I'll be there leading a session called From Passive Posts to Powerful Campaigns. Social Media that Drives Donations. If you've been wanting to turn your content into real conversion, you're going to love this one. But here's the part you don't want to miss. Givecon's lowest registration rate is available right now. For the next few weeks, this is the perfect moment to grab your ticket and save your organization some budget. Join me and an incredible community of nonprofits at Givecon. Learn more and register@givecon.com that's G I V E C O N.com now on to the episode.
B (1:06)
Hello and welcome to Nonprofit Nation. I'm your host, Julia Campbell and I'm going to sit down with nonprofit industry experts, fundraisers, marketers, and everyone in between to get real and discuss what it takes to build that movement that you've been dreaming of. I created the Nonprofit Nation PODC to share practical wisdom and strategies to help you confidently find your voice, definitively grow your audience and effectively build your movement. If you're a nonprofit newbie or an experienced professional who's looking to get more visibility, reach more people and create even more impact, then you're in the right place. Let's get started.
C (1:55)
Hello. Hi everyone, this is Nonprofit Nation. I am your host, Julia Campbell. Thrilled to be here with you today. And in this episode I'm going to talk with Maya Cooperman, co founder and CEO of Temelio, which is a modern grants management software platform serving small to mid size foundations. We're going to talk about how technology can reduce administrative burdens, improve funder grantee relationships, and hopefully create more equitable access to funding. So Maya, I'm so excited to have you here. Welcome.
D (2:35)
Thank you so much. I'm super excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
C (2:39)
Okay, well, can you tell us a bit about your professional journey and sort of what led you to co found Tamelio?
D (2:47)
Yeah, happy to. I'll try to keep it somewhat brief, spare everyone the monologue. But I got my, I would say earliest start in the nonprofit space. When I was actually a teenager, I started a small nonprofit in Davis, California where I grew up that brought free dance classes to community centers that supported migrant farm workers in California. This was born out of the fact that I grew up dancing. And one day when I was 13 or 14, was sitting at the dinner table and my mom informed me that a lot of my classmates, I didn't take dance class because it cost money. And to me this was like a huge revelation. And I was like, this feels like a major. Well, I think now, many decades later, I realize, oh, it was an access issue. But in that moment I was just. My 13 brain was 13 year old brain was just like, this feels very unfair. So that was my first sort of like dip into nonprofit space. And then in undergrad I spent a lot of time running small orgs, mostly on the development side, so doing a lot of the grant application process as well as individual fundraising. And that sort of brought me actually to Sheryl Sandberg's family foundation, which was my first foray into philanthropy and really sort of opened my eyes to the broader nonprofit ecosystem and then had a variety of career zigzags. My, you know, first I would say first job out of undergrad, I was a consultant, but worked with mostly nonprofit or I would say impact oriented organizations. So my clients were local governments, large educational institutions, and large nonprofits. So continue to sort of understand a lot of the internal needs and functions of all types of impact organizations. And then after that, actually through a bit of a leap of faith, ended up in the software space as chief of staff to a software startup that was, you know, actually not even in the nonprofit or impact world, but was actually helping small businesses and startups claim tax credits from the government. And the tool that they were developing there felt so revolutionary to me. It was essentially similar to the honey extension, where you can plug in and see what discounts do I qualify for on this purchase. It was like that, but for tax credits. So a lot of the times small businesses and startups actually qualify for tens of thousands of dollars of tax credits from the government. They just don't know they exist. They don't know how to claim them. And so this tool essentially plugged into their HR data, their financial data, and said, here's what the government owes you. We are going to do all the work to claim it for you. And then, you know, you get sometimes tens of thousands, sometimes even hundreds of thousands of dollars back from the government. And so I'm sitting there like, oh my gosh, I had no idea that technology could sort of serve organizations in this way. And I, when I started doing reflection on that, I realized it was because I had never seen a tool in the nonprofit space feel that impactful. And as I reflected more on my own development work and my philanthropic work and my clients work, I just started to feel like nonprofit tech was, you know, decades behind what I now was seeing in the for profit, especially tech startup world. And that really started to sort of bother me. And so this was about three and a half years ago now. I was like, you know what? Like, I have an inkling that there's a problem here, but I am one person, you know, who am I to say that this problem exists? And so I started reaching out to literally anyone who would talk to me on LinkedIn. I probably sent a thousand direct messages to folks on the development side in nonprofit operations, philanthropy consultants, just asking, like, hey, can I, can I learn about what tools you're using, what you like, what you hate, what you wish existed, that doesn't. And that's really how Temelio was born. So through those conversations, I think we heard two big themes. One is that nonprofits who are applying for these grants are incredibly frustrated for a lot of very valid reasons.
