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Foreign.
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Welcome to the Arcady Group Thinkers podcast. I'm your host, Justin McCord. With me is Ronnie Richard. Ronnie, we're top nine, buddy. Top nine. Top.
C
Pretty good place to be.
B
Top nine is a pretty good place to be. Yeah, as you know, context, there was a, a list as lists get published. There was a list published in the last week or two and, and it was the top. I forget if it was 50 or whatever it was hundred non profit podcasts. And look at our little thinking machine being number nine on the list.
C
Hey, look ma, we made it.
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Nine is a.
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Magic number.
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Prime number.
C
I think that's three. I think three was the magic number.
B
Yeah, I don't know.
C
I need to go back and watch Sesame Street.
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Our guest is Mark Cross. Tell us about Mark in nine words or less. Ronnie, that's.
C
Wow, I can't do that. So I'm just gonna go right out of the gates. It's a.
B
You already?
C
Yeah, I already messed it up. No, but Mark, Mark, he's joining us to talk a little bit about AI. He, he's just started a new role as head of sales at Hatch. And Hatch is an AI powered prospect research platform for nonprofits. And that part's important because we talked to Mark a little bit about his journey and we also talk a little Notre Dame football. So bear with us out of the outset there as we get through some football talk. But, but Mark, his journey through finding his way a little bit, which is something we, we see when we talk to people that sometimes it takes a little bit until they find the nonprofit space and then it just grabs hold and, and you can, you can tell Mark's passion for nonprofits and, and how he was telling his story and, and also his passion for AI. And when we dig into that a little bit and how that's reshaping the world and how, and how it's reshaping the nonprofit sector as well.
B
You know, I, I would encourage folks don't fast forward through the, the sports talk at the beginning and here's why. So we talk about some formative moments that occur in the lens, through the lens of sports wins or losses, specifically Mark's 11th birthday. And, and so much of the thinkers podcast is about formative moments and, and experiencing different things. And this actually, it comes back at the end. Some connections that he sets up in the very beginning that come back in a material and very special way at the end. And so just be on the lookout for, for those so. And I don't answer your question, Ronnie, about the Phoenix Suns. But the, the short and the long is. Look, as a respectful contrarian, I also appreciated Charles Barkley's bombastic personality as a player. And so whenever he left the Sixers and then went to the Suns, it was a chance to kind of take a dig at the Sixers, since I'm a Celtics fan. And, and so, yeah, there you go. That's your answer. Here is Mark Cross not talking about Charles Barkley on the Arcade Group Thinkers podcast? Okay, Mark, I, I never, I never, never, never do this. I never start with a topic that we've already talked about, but I, I have to start with your 11th birthday.
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Okay, so when I was a child in school, one of the questions that a teacher asked when you had to fill out those forms of like, what was your all about, Mark? And you turned it into the teacher so they could learn more about you. One of her questions was your favorite birthday. And I wrote my own. And my answer to that has haunted me for 35 years. Other people have reassured me that it is a perfectly adequate answer. But she read it aloud to the class and it was one of the most embarrassing moments of my young life that I can remember. What I should have said. My favorite birthday was my 11th birthday because that was November 13, 1993, when number two, Notre Dame beat number one Florida State. And in terms of your personal sports fandom, if you chart a, a course of that, mine hit its apex when I, the date of my 11th birthday, sitting in Notre Dame Stadium next to my dad, watching that, watching that game.
B
Here's why I love that. I love that for you, it's actually one of the two sports lows, maybe three, I don't know, it's, it's in the top five sports lows for me in my life. And you know, I was a rabid Florida State fan, specifically Charlie Ward, because he played quarterback and point guard. And as a basketball player, I know we've been around each other and I'm half your height, but I, I did play basketball in a small, dusty town in West Texas and was a point guard. And so Charlie Ward was electric on the football field and on the court. And so I had already become a Florida State fan at that point. And that was a heartbreak, an absolute heartbreak and in a really, really tough moment. And by the way, the, the Phoenix Suns losing to the Bulls was also, is also in my top five. And those occurred within like a 14 month period. And so I'm glad that your 11th birthday was so special for you, but I just need you to know that it was pretty darn bad for me.
A
Well, just number one, we all make mistakes, so it's not your fault. Number two, for, for anyone listening who doesn't have context, Charlie Ward was such an amazing quarterback that he ended up playing for the New York knicks. And number three is that in 1993, Notre Dame and Florida State had the exact same record at the end of the year and they had played each other and Notre Dame won. And so clearly Notre Dame would have been awarded the national championship if people thought critically. They did not back then in sports. And we didn't have a playoff. And so it was unceremoniously given away to Justin and the Florida State Seminole. So don't feel bad if you're listening to this.
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No, I don't.
C
Yeah.
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No, I don't want the audience to feel bad and I still feel bad.
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Jacket because that national championship was stolen from us.
B
So it, it eluded you. It definitely eluded you.
C
Justin, I'm a little confused about your fandom because you. Yeah. And I would have thought that would translate maybe to a Notre Dame fan and then you throw in Phoenix Suns. I don't. I don't know what's going on.
B
So here's the thing where, like, your point of origin has so much to do with your influence and on your outlook. Right. And growing up in West Texas in the 80s and 90s and being a basketball fan, you're really like, maybe you're drawn to the spurs, like geographically maybe. And that was about the time that, you know, that was just before David Robinson and. And so. But everyone around me was obsessed with the Bulls and the Lakers and the Pistons and Ronnie, as you know, if everyone generally, if, if a lot of people like something, I will go take the other. The other path in many cases and, and love to be a. A respectful contrarian and so latched on to the Celtics in 85 and so had stuck and just stuck with them.
C
Right.
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And then, you know, as you. We're all influenced by so many factors from TV and from media and, you know, seeing Charlie Ward and seeing the. That those Florida State teams onto work done and Derek Brooks and on and on and on like that. Those were a draw. It's the same reason why, you know, my, my oldest, he is a. He is a diehard Michigan fan. He has no reason to be outside of. They're on TV and they're competitive and so there's a draw. He's also a Lamar Jackson fan because he saw him be electric. Right. And so there are certain factors that tend to influence us and awareness drives results. Right. Like to. To try and thread that to marketing.
A
Yeah, absolutely. I'm also realizing that the Respectful Contrarian should probably be the name of this podcast. It's got. It's got quite a hook to it.
B
Yes, I disagree.
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Mark.
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Respectfully.
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Look at, look at this. Respectfully.
B
Okay, so. So Mark here. But I appreciate you allowing us to start with your 11th birthday and because it shapes a little bit of your story and who you are and the, you know, just a little bit of the way that you think about how you show up and those sorts of things. Where I really want to start is how the heck did you end up in the non profit space? Like, talk to us about, like, that transition. Maybe, maybe it was your time at Blackbaud. Maybe there was something before it. Like, what was the. What was the. The path to get into this, this, this world that we're in?
A
Yeah. So the day after my 11th birthday. I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna start there. Right. We'll skip forward in the. In the story. There's a lot of grinding. Yeah. I often tell people. So I graduated from a small liberal arts college in the Midwest in 2005. And then I often tell people that I drifted pretty aimlessly through life for most of my time, up until I was about 30 years old, and I was working at a company called Angie's List, which a lot of people are familiar with in Indianapolis, Indiana. And I was doing sales. I'd done primarily sales my whole career up until that point. And I was horrible. I was so bad. I was on the verge of getting fired. And I was in a seminar with a training seminar with an instructor who had this really impassioned speech. And he stood up at the front of the class and he told everybody, you know, if this is a job, this is a great job. We have great hours. Everybody here is our great co workers. We do all these fun things outside of work. He said, if this is your career, this is a great career. We promote from within. He was telling his story. If he had been there 13 years and moved up and up and up. And then he said something that kind of stuck with me really for the rest of my life, which was, you're never going to be successful or happy unless this is truly your passion. And it clicked to me in that moment why I feel like I had never felt happy or successful in my professional career up until that moment where I just kind of said, like, oh, I don't care about roofers. Like, no, Offense to the roofers who may be listening. Although strange podcast choice, salt of the earth, respectfully. But helping them make another dollar wasn't very, like, inspiring to me. And so whenever the conversations around that of turned to the business, I didn't really pour my whole self into it. So I did get fired from that job because I was so horribly bad. Sitting next to me was a person that I knew during that time who also went to the same college that I went to. And he mentioned a mutual friend who worked for Blackbaud. I thought he said Blackboard, the education software company. And I was like, cool, I know Blackboard. Like, could you get me an interview there? I was very shocked when I got an interview at Blackbaud, and I had no idea what it was that they did. And I got the role. I had been there maybe two weeks, and I went home and told my wife, like, I don't really know what this company does. I don't. I don't think I really know what it is that they're selling or what I do here. But I do love it, and I feel so passionate about it, and I think this is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life. And for the first time in my career, when I was at Blackbaud, I really started to feel success for the first time. And I think a lot of that was attributed to the fact that we spoke about our customers differently than I'd ever heard sales teams talk about their clients in the past. So as a person who started my career in subprime mortgage sales in 2005, which do a quick googling of your history if you want to know how that whole industry turned out. But kind of from one terrible sales role to the next, there was always this contempt for the customer. And there is specifically one conversation that I always remember. A colleague of mine heard me talking to a small nonprofit in Florida, and I was trying to sell data enrichment software and was trying to explain how we could help them better understand their donors to ask for and solicit larger gifts and more gifts, which you would typically do. And the woman was really talking about how she was uncomfortable with that level of data and talking about just, like, how she felt scummy when companies would use data to solicit her and using that as a reason not to consider this as a solution. And after that call, after that meeting, I turned to this colleague and said, like, oh, this woman, she's an idiot. She doesn't know what she's doing. She's in the Wrong profession. And this colleague said, she's not an idiot. She's probably a volunteer, probably older, doesn't really understand what it is that you're talking about. And she asked, do you, do you really think that this stuff would help their organization? And I was like, yeah. And I kind of articulated it all. And she said, well, that's the job. Like, these people don't understand why it's valuable. That's your job. She's not the idiot, you're the idiot. And I was like, I'm not the idiot, like, whatever. But that stuck with me for a long time and I still think about it today and teach it to the people that I work with. And that has really kind of separated my journey of my career before working with nonprofits and after which is that it was really an investment in nonprofits and their outcomes and getting to know them and their mission. And. And so the story from there was pretty quick. I really found a niche within peer to peer fundraising, was able to work my way up at blackbaud, took a promotion to bring my family here to where I am today in Charleston, South Carolina. And after that point, I had a local recruiter reach out and tell me about a company, Good United, who was helping nonprofits to get fundraiser and donor data from Facebook. And I remember telling him, like, respectfully, I don't think you know what you're talking about because like, if someone could do that, that would be an incredible business. And to his credit, he was not wrong. So I joined Good United as the third full time employee, was there for nearly six years, and helped them grow into servicing hundreds of customers and helping to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for a bunch of amazing causes. After that experience, I started doing some consulting and working directly with nonprofit tech companies. Really those companies that I had met along the way that were doing new and different and cool technology, which is how I connected with Moshe, the CEO at Hatch, which is an AI prospect research company. And he showed me what they were doing and it was really exciting and new and different and again, kind of sparking my curiosity and my passion. The same way I felt when I first joined that team at Blockbaud and later at Good United. And so that's in a nutshell how we ended up here today.
B
Just a stone's throw from your 11th birthday. So you mentioned your, the upward mobility that you had at blackbaud and at one point you were leading a team of more than 70. That's a big group. Like how, how did you think about or approach leading an organization that size.
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I was really fortunate in that blackbaud had and still has an incredible amount of infrastructure. So later I worked at Good United and now at Hatch. And the consulting along the way is much more in the startup vein. And I'm sure both of you have had those experiences of working for the large companies that have a lot of employees and resources and really have the processes put in place to support those kind of teams. And in a weird way, that was easier than working with teams of two or three or five in a startup environment where there is not that infrastructure. Because blackbaud had all of the internal sales trainings, if someone had a question about hr, there was a whole team of HR people that could figure that out. Or, you know, if you needed to get some help from marketing support, you had a whole team. Team of marketing support. But at a smaller company, in a smaller startup, if there's only one of you or two of you, your HR and marketing and business development and like those, dealing with those and figuring out those problems is, as strange as it may seem when I reflect back on it, is much harder than the moment. We had a team of 70 that was split into three groups and there were team leaders, and it was pretty much just like, okay, tell us what we're selling and who we're selling to. And then I got to put everything in motion and just kind of oversee it.
C
Did you feel like it was a big leap for you when you had been working at Blackbaud and Good United and then you co founded this consulting firm? Was that. Were you like, oh, man, I don't know if this is going to work, but I want to take a chance on it. Like, how did. What was your mindset going into that?
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Yeah, for anybody who has never experienced that, going from a really big organization to one that's really small, whether that be like a nonprofit that has thousands of employees and now you're joining one that has five, or you're going from this big, established, publicly traded company like a Blackbaud, to, at the time, Good United, there were five of us. It was a much larger leap than I realized. I didn't grasp what I was diving into. A couple of people tried to warn me about what it would be like, but it's much like parenthood in that people can tell you what that's going to be like, but actually stepping into it, you're like, oh, man, not only was I not prepared, but there's like no way I ever really could have prepared until you just kind of got thrown into it. And so figuring all of that out and really the fun that I had being a part of that in the early stage and real shout out to the co founders of Good United, Jeremy Berman and Nick Black, who were super supportive. And when I left Good United States, I was kind of looking for something that was in that similar startupy vein and really wasn't finding that great experience and had been pushed by them to start doing consulting and got a lot of great advice in creating that business and scaling it up. And I would say there's two things that gave me the probably false sense of confidence or hope to do that, which is one, I had seen it done at a small scale and it really is true in my experience that when you see someone and get to know them as a founder or co founder and then see them build something successful, you start to realize like, oh, there's nothing, there's nothing incredibly special about these people. Like they are special. They're hardworking, they're talented or they're smart, but they're not like superheroes, they're just people. And they, they had an idea and they followed a process and they started it and they found traction and they made some good decisions. And so like anyone can do that. The other piece of it, it was AI, to be honest, and ChatGPT, which I didn't need a financial advisor right away, I didn't need a lawyer right away. For anybody who's ever started a business, you just get paperwork in the mail immediately and it's all like, we can help your business do this, this and this. And it's all very alarmist, like if you don't have your OSHA compliance posted in your office, you could be fined by the government. And if I didn't know, how would I know that? That's not true. Like I could assume, but you really don't know what to do. But AI and ChatGPT was just the easiest copilot of like, I want to do this, literally what's first? And then when it says something like you need to get a business license and you need to file an ein, you can go one step further and there's no dumb questions about like literally tell me step one, step two, step three, how do I do this? Where this paperwork, where do I mail it? What do I have to pay? What do I have to do? I started bringing on other people within the industry that I'd gotten to know along the way to help with some projects and some, some great people. But I had a ton of questions around like, are these employees and how do I pay them? What are the tax consequences? And like, it was invaluable having like the assistant to just like some very out of touch old millennial who's like, I don't know how to do any of this. Hold my hand, please. And you get all of those answers. And so that helped to close the gap in many ways of like, being around others and seeing them do that kind of stuff, as well as having that AI copilot along the way who can really help figure it all out for you. I don't know if I could have done it at any other point in my life.
B
I don't know if you're Ironman, but that I've never seen. I've never seen.
A
Yeah, yeah.
B
I've never seen you and Iron man in the same room together. So I don't know. But, but the picture that you're painting to me feels very Tony Stark with Jarvis like that. It is like, it is truly that side by side help to, to get from A to B and all of the little micro steps in between. And what a, what a fortunate moment that we have to be able to do these things as fast as we can. The when you launched Constant Method, I know because we had had some conversations that there was a little bit of a burning feeling in your stomach on why this particular part of the sector you wanted to help through consulting around helping, you know, companies who sell to and support nonprofits. What did you see that you wanted to solve or help improve?
A
So I think this is pretty universal for anybody within the nonprofit tech world and probably in the nonprofit world as well, in that you have experience in your company or your organization hiring consultants because they do something really well. What that consultant doesn't have often is just some like, inherent or ingrained knowledge about your specific niche or industry. And working for a startup that helped to sell to and service nonprofits. What I realized was that there are a lot of great business consultants, people that know marketing really well, they know content marketing really well, they know how to do LinkedIn, advertising, whatever the, whatever the niche, fractional thing is that you need done. There are a lot of talented people that have that skill set. What they don't quite understand are nonprofits and the nonprofit industry. And what was kind of endlessly frustrating to me is when we would hire a consultant and then there was like a two month period where every meeting with that person was just educating them about the differences between nonprofits and for profits. Like, we're not talking about sales we're talking about donations, and we're not talking about a sales team. We're talking about a development team. And here's why we use constituent instead of donor. And you go through all of those minutiae, minute details because that nuance is the way that you separate yourself and succeed. But the problem is you're paying a consultant that whole time that you're educating them. And so what our pitch to the market was, and happy to say it's going to continue with my colleague Casey Bowers, who's going to keep doing this, because I think there is a tremendous need, which is there are a lot of great consultants who can help nonprofits. They've worked at nonprofits. They can work with you to help you raise more money. There are a ton of business consultants. They can tell you how to run a business. As far as we saw, there was no fractional help. There was no consulting help that you could reach out to for anybody who had worked specifically to sell to and support nonprofit. So the concept of business consulting that was specifically around the companies that sell to and service nonprofits was our niche and kind of our moat. And we just communicated our, our history in that consulting experience of like, yeah, these are great consultants, but do I have to educate them for two months? Because that's expensive and infuriating.
C
Mark, I want to jump back a little bit. You were talking about AI and how ChatGPT helped you prepare for the business and learn a lot of things about that. Well, your new company, Hatch, works in AI, and we're at such an interesting moment with AI just across every business, across the entire economy, and how it's reshaping everything. I wanted to get your thoughts on the evolution of AI over the last couple of years, what that's looked like.
B
And.
C
What do you think about AI in this moment and how it applies to nonprofits and the work they do.
A
I think this is a really cool moment when we're seeing a technology that we all know for certain is going to be world changing. If we look 20 years ahead, the world will be vastly different today because of OpenAI and what they've built with ChatGPT. We were all there recently in that moment when ChatGPT was released to the public and we were putting in stuff and getting back results that we had never seen before from anything that was claiming to be AI. And it was usable and it made sense, and you could tell that it was going to change the world. And for those of us who are old enough to remember our lives pre Internet and post Internet, it very much reminds me of that period that was just in the middle there. There's that famous clip of the Today show talking about the URL, do you guys remember that? Or the email address where they're like, they like, can't understand what they're saying out loud. And in hindsight, we look at that, we just laugh and scoff. But, like, it's important for people to recognize that back then we knew the Internet was going to be game changing. And there were a lot of theories about how. There were a lot of people who were saying, like, it's not going to change anything. It's a fad, it's going to go away. And those were in the fringe. And if you replace the word Internet for AI, we're having all of those same discussions today. And it feels very much in that moment of like, this is going to be game changing. But we don't always know. We can't really predict exactly how. And that's cool to me. And then I think what's really sped up even within the last year or year and a half. Did any of you catch the new ChatGPT commercials that ran during Monday Night Football last night? No.
C
No, I didn't. I was watching, but I didn't notice.
A
If anybody hasn't seen them, I would encourage you to check them out. They're very artistic and cool and it looks like an indie movie scene. And the text is kind of like the credits you would familiar be seeing in some sort of A21 production. But what it is is like a guy cooking on a first date and they're showing the results of his ChatGPT log of where he's learning how to cook this recipe. And why I think that's super interesting is because the ads for AI are doing something that even six months ago they were not doing. Did you guys see the Salesforce Matthew McConaughey commercial when he's like eating outside in the rain?
B
Yes.
A
That commercial bugs me to death because that's not a real problem. And I don't think AI is solving it. A restaurant doesn't seat people out in the rain. You're solving a problem that doesn't exist. And the early AI commercials were doing this weird thing where they were inventing problems and being like, here's the AI solution to that. And I think what's illustrated in the difference between those two commercials just being six months apart from each other is we've gone from this era of, well, we know it's super powerful, but what are what are the defining use cases that will actually change people's lives? And it's interesting to see now we're seeing a lot more of it being distilled down and directed to solving real world problems. And that's kind of a microcosm, I think, of that larger, broader question of, like, how I feel about the moment of AI and where we're at with it is that it feels very life changing and world changing. And while we might not know exactly how that's going to happen, I think we're starting to see some real legitimate use cases that are exciting to me.
B
Mark, we appreciate the time today and the chance to hang out and learn a little bit about you and your journey and just appreciate the work that you're doing both with Hatch, but even just more broadly, as you just said and landed the plane on how you're kind of elevating the, the discourse and elevating the curiosity, even if sometimes you feel like it's in your own little golden dome there in, in Charleston.
A
But.
B
But it matters, man. Thank you. I appreciate that, Ronnie, but it matters. And, and so we appreciate you in the way that you show up and just appreciate you spending the time with us today.
A
Yeah, I appreciate you completing the circle there with the golden dome reference. I would also be remiss if I did not say one of the things that really fires my passion in this industry is. Next to me at my 11th birthday was my dad, who passed away from a fall when he had Parkinson's later in his life. And through that experience, I'd created a fundraiser for the Michael J. Fox foundation and had gotten to know that team really well. And they shared with me after my dad had passed and done this fundraiser. It was January a few years ago. They had sent an advanced copy of a press release that they were going to put out saying they had just found the genetic marker for Parkinson's, which was such a huge breakthrough. And to know that the work that you did along the way, because while at Good United, we helped them raise a ton of money. And we know that money was given to researchers, and those researchers were doing genetic testing to figure out what is this marker. And they were able to share this is something we did with the money that you all helped raise. Now, I didn't give all that money. There's no way in my life I'll ever have the capacity to give that much money. I didn't go out and knock on doors and collect checks. My fundraiser was very small in comparison to my personal fundraiser. But the Total work of our team at Good United and the way that we were able to help the Michael J. Fox team engage with those supporters and raise that money. Having that money give a direct impact to a cause that you care about that so closely resonates with you, those are the things that drive me both individually and I always challenge people to find personally when they work with nonprofits because that is the great joy in working in this industry. We often talk about and hear and read about on LinkedIn about like, this is the challenge of being a nonprofit. And if you work in the tech industry, you'll often hear people say, or consulting or a marketing agency or wherever it may be. Well, if you're working with nonprofits, don't expect to get rich from this. I'm sure you guys have had someone close to you in your life tell you that and like, well, sure, but I'm not going to feel any better about my life if I spend 30 years improving the KPIs for a socket wrench company. Again, no shade to the socket wrench industry. But the fact that we get to get up and have these discussions and work with nonprofits and have successes that lead to money raise that positively impacts the world is such a, such an amazing, just joy and really to me is one of the best parts about working in this industry. So I appreciate you guys having me on and getting the opportunity to tell my story in my own little way and continue to work in this industry and have an impact in the way that you do because it's important and it's meaningful maybe more than ever in our current times, to have people that are standing on the front lines and fighting for what's right out there in the way that they can.
B
Yeah, right on, man. That's well said. And we're thankful for you sharing your story and personalizing it. I mean, ultimately, and this gets into a little bit of just the ethos of, of rkd. Like what is life if you're not working for something bigger than yourself? Different form of range it is. And so you know, that mindset is so important. And how fortunate are we, the three of us and the, the colleagues that we get to work around day in, day out, that we get to, to do this and get to set that example for how purpose delivers such a different form of meaning in our lives. It is truly unmatched. And all three of us came from different industries, in different sectors and marketed different things or sold different things or wrote about different things or in different ways. And so, you know, when you tap into that different source of purpose, personally and professionally, I think it's a it is a rocket ship to a different way to live. And it's cool to hear your story as a part of it. Group Thinkers is a production of RKD Group.
A
For more information, including how you can partner with RKD to accelerate growth for.
B
Your fundraising and nonprofit marketing needs needs, visit rkdgroup.com.
Podcast: RKD Group: Thinkers
Host: Justin McCord with Ronnie Richard
Guest: Mark Cross, Head of Sales at Hatch
Date: October 13, 2025
This episode explores the journey and evolving passion of Mark Cross in the nonprofit technology sector. The conversation dives into pivotal life moments, the unique challenges and gratifications of working in nonprofit tech, leadership experiences, and the transformative impact of AI in the sector. Mark shares both personal stories and professional insights, offering listeners relatable anecdotes, strategic advice, and touching reflections on mission-driven work.
[03:59 - 09:43]
Insight:
Formative childhood and sports moments can shape how individuals approach meaning, influence, and purpose later in life.
[10:36 - 18:04]
Insight:
Authentic passion for a field, especially in nonprofit work, is vital for both personal fulfillment and professional success.
[18:04 - 20:25]
Insight:
Leadership in startups versus established organizations requires different skill sets; lack of support infrastructure in startups demands adaptability and resourcefulness.
[20:25 - 26:18]
Insight:
Modern AI serves as an on-demand business mentor and administrative assistant, dramatically lowering barriers for entrepreneurs and innovators.
[26:18 - 29:10]
Insight:
Sector-specific expertise is crucial; nonprofits deserve consultants who bring context, not just generalizable skills.
[29:10 - 33:56]
Insight:
AI is at a cultural inflection point, and nonprofits must remain agile and curious in leveraging this rapidly evolving technology for good.
[34:44 - 38:21]
Insight:
Deep personal connection to nonprofit missions fuels purpose-driven achievement and satisfaction, contrasting transactional work in other sectors.
Mark’s stories are candid, tongue-in-cheek, and earnest, blending humor and humility. The hosts foster a warm, reflective environment, encouraging both genuine admiration for nonprofit work and open engagement with the sector’s challenges and evolving technologies.
This episode provides a rich, relatable view into the journey of purpose-driven work in nonprofit tech. Mark Cross’s narrative—from awkward formative moments to impactful, AI-driven consulting—reminds listeners that authentic success is rooted in passion, empathy, and the persistent pursuit of meaningful impact. Both emerging and longtime nonprofit professionals will find actionable insights and inspiration in Mark's experience.