Please give a warm Georgia Tech. Welcome to Mr Tom Tony thank you. So I everybody my name's Tom and I want to be useful to you. The title of my talk is pretty ambitious. But talking about social sector some of you may be interested in that. And Step back of what's really happening in a way that might be useful to you folks someday plan to be and say What about plans going to be money. Debts how to talk to be in the context of giving because it turns out giving time is just as important as giving money and some of the ideas around Fleet's me apply to volunteering and I spend your time and then I want to talk throughout this and especially at the end about a topic that's near and dear to to each of us which is yourselves. I don't have answers but I might provoke a couple of questions. Today. If you were to step back and take a photograph of the social sector in America now make that a moving picture and let's say a moving picture extended back ten or fifteen years. So you can see dynamically what was going on with nonprofit organizations businesses and places that that somehow tried to serve society. You would see an amazing amount of change in fact you'd see two great themes colliding and telling around driving that change one thing relates to money. The other theme relates to talent. We talked about money first recently Warren Buffett don't want to Gates announce the Giving Pledge sixty nine billionaires. That's the number that have been publicly listed have agreed to give at least half their wealth to society. They might say gosh want to give all of it may have marketing all of it. But the notion that sixty nine billion years in this country would step forward and say all right I'll sign the Giving Pledge. Giving Pledge done or you can see who sign. You can see the essays they've written about what they're trying to do historically on precedented but it's not just about billionaires. Check out Network for Good Network for Good is an online giving organization that started years ago as a consortium and it was let's say it was A.O.L. Cisco and Yahoo. Before you bought it was what it is it is different era but never less great companies and they came together and said how can we help people find philanthropies Feinstein a nonprofit organization give small amounts of money to. They've helped unable hundreds of millions of dollars to go into new Many many many nonprofit organizations that would have would not have had otherwise. So you get big money not such big money maybe more traditional giving highly innovative technology driven giving. What about this talent flow stuff. Most businesspeople most folks that lead organizations and fought about such things and certainly all the great writers in business and leadership will say people matter more than money. Hands down. Hands down. If you're betting on an organization you're first and foremost betting on the organization or not betting on the organization's balance sheet. So money is necessary but not sufficient talent is what drives results every time. So it's going to talent Teach for America. You all know Teach for America fifty thousand applications for five thousand jobs. I knew Wendy Kopp went before she was going to come up in this concept why would people choose to work for very little money in an inner city school really tough conditions huge numbers of people apply. What's going on there. What's going on with this notion of encore careers if you google on careers. You will learn about people in their fifty's and sixty's sort of in the next phase back phase of their life who want to move from what someone's called success to significance. They want to work on serving society they want play golf. They want to quote retire. Then you see people need careers who are trying to shift. You see volunteerism an all time high. So participation in communities students on up all time high. It's this talent flow. That's ALL minute and tumble around with the money flow. That's helping drive this historic era in the social sector of America. Say gosh you know what you mean the Psystar here. So I get this in a minute but we wrote the business bridge span business plan when I was running a company in about one thousand nine hundred ninety ninety six and so if you think about what's happened the last fifteen years it's extraordinary. It's not it's not a tipping point as as is discussed it's actually a tipping phase and I'll just run down a list of the kinds of things that have occurred in the last fifteen years. All of this is new and it's it's new organizations it's new technologies it's it's it's just massive numbers of new stuff to start with new global activities Clinton Global Initiative didn't exist. Fifteen years ago endeavor global which develops kind of high impact on printers in various countries didn't exist. Did exist ten years fifteen years ago micro-finance field basically didn't exist ten to fifteen years ago new approaches to philanthropy talk about Donors Choose the donor advised funds where people give money. You know appreciate stock or something. If the deli or Schwab or or other and then they can subsequently give that money to charity. Tens of billions of dollars of assets now didn't exist fifteen years ago at Cap Why gaiters climate works five foundations get together committed billion dollars a billion dollars to work together to solve climate change didn't exist. The tiger Foundation which is Foundation in New York or Robert and foundation where they aggregate funding from wealthy people charitable events and other things in those cases both those cases to help reduce poverty in New York City. So you've got venture philanthropy Parcher partners Social Venture Partners giving circles that are circling L.A. with with it's all women. It's it's what is it two hundred women give five thousand dollars here a one million dollar your grant to a deserving on Prop. They've been at it ten years. These kinds of things did not exist fifteen years ago new financial models. You might read about impact investing or social investment bonds. We've got other kinds of financial tools that have a for profit or casual element to them. But where the social change is the objective new education avails vehicles fifteen years ago Harvard Business School launch something called the social enterprise initiative it was the first business school in America to begin to incorporate social enterprise the nonprofit sector into its business curriculum. Now and I know it's true here. It's true throughout American higher education and now more undergraduate education where the nonprofit sector serving society volunteering. The social sector is embedded into the curriculum. That's relatively new. You also have new mechanisms for an enhanced in Tallinn flow. We launched a job board to help. Nonprofit organizations find executive talent last year it was rated number two by two different is ations to have ninety seven ninety. Who knew ninety seven job boards for the nonprofit sector. How many were there ten years ago zero. There are all these other mechanisms for developing talent for finding talent that literally didn't exist idealist outward would be another example. Their inner man intermediaries. If you took a snapshot ten years ago or moving picture and a snapshot today ten years ago you'd say you know there weren't consulting firms executive search firms there weren't executive education organizations serving the nonprofit sector now there are dozens Guide Star idealist dot org span of course bridge star we mentioned a number of them dozens did not exist fifteen years ago. There's a language that didn't exist. The phrase social entrepreneur was mentioned earlier that didn't exist fifteen years ago social return on investment that didn't exist fifteen years ago venture philanthropy that didn't exist fifteen years ago so I could go on and on and I won't but you get the idea. We're looking at our movie fifteen years ago. We're looking at our movie today important thing. Amicably footnote. Most people can't think that manically most people aren't thinking about their life. They're not thinking about where they were where they are where they're going in a truly dynamic where we tend to focus on the here and now it's how we are we might look at a year. It's very hard to look at five years. It's very hard to remember what we didn't used to know. And what we didn't used to know was the size and growth and expansion of the social sector and how that's being to change America and by the way I don't have to say this to this group the lines are blurring also we try to find a corporation now the doesn't think about its environmental strategy at sustainability or at least isn't talking about it. Fifteen years ago was that case was Wal-Mart worrying about purchasing in a more in a more environmentally friendly way fifteen years ago. Not really you had body shops about it. So the boundaries between business and social sector are evolving the boundaries between government and social sector evolving. It's just extraordinary. Now I'm kind of aware of this because I've been in the middle of it and I'm only aware in kind of what I know is who are all hampered by what we don't know we don't know. So I can only I can only describe my my bit of it. But in the one nine hundred ninety S. I was running a pretty successful private multinational company. I've grown up in California. I went to a university called U.C. Davis really proud to go to when I graduated I was a bus driver and there's nothing wrong by the way with being a bus driver. It's a really good job. If you know where you're going. You know where you've been it's it's kind of for folks that like kind of predictability it's perfect. But it didn't have a lot of upside and then it up meeting someone who had worked at an engineering construction company nights that had some engineering in economics. His name was Bill and Bill's dad worked at a company called Bechtel. And through. Bunch of serendipitous stuff any of you know civil engineers around here. I know up as a field engineer in Africa and so there I am in Africa and I don't need to the whole life story but I want to there's a footnote on this one which is you know you can't always predict your future. And keep your eyes open for things that matter. Decide to apply to business school. I don't mean to play once in my life prior to going to Africa and that was to fly from Cisco to L.A. I've been out of the country once before that I want to my dad worked in a factory. So here I am in Africa. I apply to business school I get accepted lo and behold at Harvard Business School. Unbelievable. I was unsure where Harvard was I was sure it wasn't California it was all I was sure about and I learned later we KNOW I GOT ACCEPTED they you know I was the only application that you're from Algeria. And they sent me the there's this test and for instance there's this test this TOEFL test for non English speaking students have to it's English I aced it. I aced the puppy. And so I am I'm going from Iran Algeria to Cambridge and and you know Ron I understood construction under the blue collar stuff I was very very comfortable swearing and end up in Cambridge which was different. Quite a bit different and I had to wear a coat and people called me Mr Tierney at least at that time in our business school. It was bizarre. But nevertheless accommodated that and there are some arts and messages there because I remembered my roots. I remembered I remembered my roots. My dad was always a working class me and. He had an ideal of had a little live a life and I don't think he ever would have quoted these words but this was a theme and the theme was you know it's not what you have that matters it's who you are and who you are is a function of what you do not what you say your life is a life of action your life will be defined by what you do at the end of your days. It won't be defined by gosh I wish I would've should've coulda and it certainly won't be defined by what's in your bank account. Or what kind of how she have or what kind of car you drive and that's that's a value that I had when I was a DAVIS It's a value that I had as a bus driver it's a valid I had in Algeria and that's and it's everybody's value but it was my value. So in the mid ninety's here I am running running this company the company by the way is in the news a lot lately the private company but it's one of those funny things that life. You can't predict that company so Bain's in the news a lot because in one thousand and four we spun off a company called Bain Capital which was an investment company says this consulting company Vanco ank it spins off Bain Capital. The idea that we're really helping our clients consulting clients succeed. Let's invest. Raised outside money and started investing Bain Capital groom grew runback got a Mitt Romney who was in the news a lot. And then in one thousand I joined Bain in out of business school. It was my finishing I thought I'd say two years I say twenty those things happened too but I kept learning a lot of the state was winning by default but in one thousand nine hundred or so Bain got in trouble. It's all public. There was too much debt on the firm. The founders really had in transition to the next generation effectively the fine people they built the thing but we had a giant speed bump. We invited MIT into more than invited. We asked we requested we some I beg MIT to leave Bain Capital and come into Bain and Co It can help us restructure with busing go back to the founders he did that spent a year and a half then went back to being Kapil during that year and a half I worked with him ended up transitioning from Santa is going to go running the company at his request and after the partners vote. I'm from sense is going to Boston back to being capital there and running bank we bought the company for a dollar and took on a lot of debt called management buyout looks great on paper it's really hard. It's really hard. And so I'm running this thing as best as I can. It's a partnership operations around the world. It was shrinking before it grew but by kind of the early ninety's late the late mid ninety's things were going well. Had phenomenal organization great partnership economy was a win was at our back and I started hearing a voice. And I want to those voices where you had too many beers and forty nine other voices. A different voice. Different force the voice that said what's your life about what your life about at the end of the day a voice that asked if you only had ten years to live. What would you do with it. A voice that said how do you think about yourself versus your community. What your legacy. This is the voice. A voice that reminded me of how I grew up and reminded me despite that I was in this fancy company and it was growing fast and making plenty of money more than you could ever want way more than my dad made you know in a life time and that will voice. So I started confronting the question once I'd said questions are more important. He answers and that is as near as I can tell absolutely true. If you are not asking the right question of yourself if you are not asking the right question in a business situation economics any situation. If you are not tracking on the right question. Guess what you're not going to find answers that are all that relevant. So I start asking the question what about my life. We're going to love bang love business love helping grow organizations love helping other people succeed but the boy said you know maybe there's more. Maybe it's not just about business maybe it's about service. The upshot of adding me taking to detail the upshot of that was beginning to store life of service. What would that look like and I started talking to people who are note. Don't do things abruptly experiment test get some data do not do things abruptly. Even if things look great. Don't get married in the first date. You don't do stuff like that as we're going to bang once a guy he. Now he was a new partner a great guy. I call him call him. Harvey and. Harvey had four kids or that was Trip think it's call from eight hundred says I got a great opportunity for it's terrific. It's let's call it in Oklahoma and you're going to Oklahoma. It is a great job and a long story short he got seduced and ends up in Oklahoma with his four five six kids. He's never been there before it turns out he like Obama nothing wrong with Oklahoma it's just he didn't he was running toward that. It was random a little too random. Anyway. Questions more important answers I'm asking this question I'm testing little business plan for something that became the bridge big group and decided at you know kind of I guess I was around forty four. To step down from a company I've been growing thirty thirty five percent a year and leave this organization that had twenty two hundred people in and out of twenty plus countries. And join a charity. Myself and three others at the time. No pay. And we've raised money we had a business plan so it wasn't it was like we were just doing this I thought hard about it had a board but it was a huge transition. And I had to my partners who I trusted and like your good friends come into office one day as after it's been announced and they said. With the door shut. Are you OK. And I didn't. They thought I'd receive bad news from a doctor. And I'll tell you what it. We're all the best you're going to do in life is to live a life that is that is useful and fulfilling useful to others and fulfilling to yourself and man it's hard it's hard to do that. And I kind of got lucky in a lot of ways guided by this notion of useful and fulfilling and so now it's been twelve years. And bridge span has a couple hundred people in three offices it does consulting services executive search the job or training a big part of what we do is knowledge. Teaching because we are nonprofit or. It is a shame and we can't begin to meet the demand for all of our services and what we want to do is influence as many as many folks as possible. So in that context we produce content in that context I coauthored a book called give smart. Last year about philanthropy and what I do now is shift into some of what we learned about philanthropy. Not because all of you are going to run foundations any time soon. Or you know make a few zillion dollars next week or if you do give me a call because I've got some ideas for it. But here's why it's because it turns out that while people have different amounts of money they'll the same amount of time. You'll get twenty four hours a day for whatever number of days God's going to give you and how you use that time matters a lot. It's the most scarce resource. So whether you're volunteering or writing checks you're still using a scarce resource to achieve something. It's only flag some of the themes we learned around philanthropy that are in the book them a twist to say how some of that might apply to our lives. The most defining characteristic of philanthropy today is an increasing desire to have an impact. You know people can give money away for a lot of reasons give money to give back. Right. Check easy Davis to give back and give money because if you feel the. I can give money because I'm asked. I give money if it's a lot of money as you want to protect from taxes then lots of different reasons. Lots of reasons. It's deeply personal. But sometimes and more increasingly people say you know I want something to happen as a consequence of my time and my money. I want to see results. There's of there's a beautiful. Hebrew phrase that a Jewish friend of my taught me some of you probably know is called to Khun along means to repair the world. To repair the world and one of the trends and see in philanthropy is an increasing number of people who are engaging at all levels with money and time combinations to try and repair the world. A few things. The key differentiator between philanthropists that achieve a lot and those that maybe don't. Is that excellence is self-imposed and one of the world's THAT me. Business has it easy if we all decided to start a restaurant and we could figure out what we want to menu and we opened our restaurant and customers came in we would know which of those entrees sold and which didn't. So maybe there were all sardines don't sell so well but the cheeseburgers are great. We get feedback from our customers wouldn't way we would know pretty quickly what working and what isn't working. That's true of most things in life there are feedback loops in philanthropy the feedback loops are muted and distorted. If you give money away you don't actually know what happened as a consequence of that oftentimes it's really are very expensive or just impossible to figure out the causality of it if you volunteer time how do you know if you're mentoring a child you know whether that child succeeded or not and got into high school or went to college but lots of times you just plain do not know. The key characteristic then between folks who over time achieve more. Is that they asked. They say I want to be is I want to do this. Well I can do it. How can I do it better. They ask questions. All the time they are never complacent. I had a professor it was his name who insisted on calling me Mr Cherry which always scared me and he was one of these quintessential. Time pressures of the boat. He lives in Maine he's now is a disease a close friend he writes me over his house one night and I walk in and he says have a seat and he said never get comfortable and being kind of dumb. I thought he's talking about the sofa I was sitting on. He was not talking about that. So if I was sitting on what he meant was do not be complacent never get comfortable do not feel like everything is A OK because why you'll stop at the tough questions like How can I do a better. My doing the right thing. What's working what isn't working so this notion of I want to get better and I ask my tough questions. I'm to raise the bar higher and higher is central to successful philanthropy. It's why we organized to give smart around six questions. There are six questions around fully answer but this questions have a more power than that. Here they are the first three are strategic. For philanthropist their strategic What are my values and beliefs. That's a simple one. The reason that's important. Flanges raise if you don't know what you care about really care about how you spend money. The climate change is a poverty is my local neighborhood is in Africa where what are my anchor points what's really important. What are my values and beliefs. What is success and how we can achieve it. Success Boy that's an elusive thing. What's a successful life depends on you your definition. What is success. If you're giving money or you're trying to change pop policy or what does success look like it's a tough question there question is a really tough one of my accountable for accountable me accountable I'm just writing a check and just volunteering what are my account for. Those are strategic kinds of questions. The back of the book or more execution questions. What is it what does it take to get the job done. Most things in life take longer and cost more guarantee it will posture put it in the bank in a matter. If you're doing your car breaks down it will cost more to fix it than you expected to it just will no matter what. And it will break down again. Everything tends to cost more and take longer. So what does it really take to do whatever it is you're trying to accomplish. How do I work grantees is ques chapter five or in this context it might be. How do I work with others and Question six the most important question the book for philanthropist I think the most important question book for most of us. Am I getting better. I'm really getting better when you're in school you kind of know how you're trending you have a lot of feedback loops. Getting grades were better for worse track over time and if you're getting jobs you're looking at this. There's a lot of short term feedback loops. Out there in the real world the feedback loops are a little bit more distorted not just in Flansburgh but in everything else you work in a company you get into a performance review. May be useful. Maybe not useful but once a year is not enough so as am I getting better question is one that loops back to a week. Skinner and the complacency thing don't get comfortable. Those are some themes some questions around philanthropy there for patterns that aren't explicitly outlined in the book that on the fly for you now there are patterns around successful philanthropy patterns that may in fact be relevant. Beyond that. Pattern number one. I've already highlighted it's this really obsession with getting better at whatever it is you're doing keeping that bar up there imposing excellence on yourself. Pattern Number two if you are bigger longer. Well the rules that mean if you're bigger longer you guys know this if you want to get good at something you have to do it multiple times. If we all decided to take up sickle instrument and all of you chose one instrument and I chose five and we got back together a year from now. Every one of you would be better than me because I'm trying to choose five Now for those of us that are you know the. I like to make definitive decisions was how we built you three instruments and see which one I'm best at. Yeah the patterns excuse will pattern you want to achieve stuff in life do fewer things in a more significant way for a longer period of time. Another way of saying it's the magic of compound he put a nickel in the bank and it grows ten for under five percent a year not right now but normal times then what happens over time you make a lot more money you compound in your skill set you compound in your reputation you compound in the people you know in your social networks all of those are compounding things. And so weird. You want that count pounding to occur if you're bigger longer important for this conversation time influence tend to be more important than money influence be who you look at the patterns back there in all the success stories. It wasn't just about writing checks. It's never just about writing checks if it were just about writing checks. We would have fewer problems. Our schools in America would do better. Our environment would be better. It has not been a problem of money. It's not the more money isn't useful. It's that money alone doesn't solve problems people solve problems. It's back to that talent thing. Insight solve problems. Innovation solve problems not just peace not just not just money and the final one which merits. A lot of consideration for those of us that there are like to think about things is that execution matters more than strategy pervasive pattern in philanthropy the base of present throughout the social sector. That's spoken from somebody who has let's say three decades of strategy related stuff books and articles and advising and lot of a lot of the law not to mention general management. Execution matters more than strategy. This is not the strategy doesn't matter. But think about any sports team is it the playbook or the players. The Playbook has to be good enough to Doggone it's the players that's the point. It's the players and so in life you ask how does that hasn't had to get things done and why the back. The book with those four questions are so important. Now I opened up my remarks today by saying that we are in historic era. And I think we are when it comes to the social sector and amazingly story here. And since in my co-author Jill Fleishman I published a book last April or so we've done dozens of events with groups of all kinds around the country even in the U.K. of literally been interacting with I don't know few thousand people. And what's been fast and I step back over the holidays to kind of reflect on on what what were the surprises and I'll tell you one of the big surprises and wrap up now and it's the back end of my of my chat here. The Big One of the big surprises is people have come up and said you know those questions in the book those themes those patents actually apply to my life apply to my life. They're just part of giving money away a part of my life and remember the first person of those who would be talking about this is no this isn't the kind of career book What Color Is Your Parachute or whatever. I mean it's not that good book but you know it's not that they said no no no. What are my values and beliefs. I got to get anchored in that. What is success in my life. That's like a negative voice that I listen to remember that question what's a lie. What's it mean what if you only had ten years to live what in that countable for accountable for my account of what I'm with my cannibal for volunteering or my accountable for making the world better place than I found it in my accountable for voting what I counted before. Well those are tough questions and by that last question am I getting better. The they go our one of them over this last few months has been people taking questions around philanthropy and translating them into questions around life. I want to replay the book and don't worry about buying the book gives more thought or the questions there. Most of the content of the you know the come to the publisher was put on line is. There. So we're Don't worry about that but do worry about the following orders not worry but consider if we're right that we're in this historic year. And there's an old There's an old phrase that I really love that all time is not equal all time is not equal. And for any of us any point in time we like to think our time is really an equal time is the coolest time ever. There's a lot going on here. Yeah but right now this decade. Is there is I can tell from my windows. This is a highly unequal time. It's an equal time time of the social sector because the dynamics that are going on there. The innovation that's going on there. The blurring of boundaries the wealth transfer that talent infusion all the new organizations all the new ideas. That's an equal time. It's also an equal time into the needs of our communities in our country in the world are increasing in the resources may not be increasing as fast. It's also an equal time because we had twenty twenty five years of dramatic economic expansion in this country we may not have that X. twenty five. It may be different. That doesn't mean it will be worse but it may be different that will be worse. So it's an unequal time. It's now unequal times can be scary. Gosh my gosh what's going to happen when businesses in industries that hit turmoil times when businesses are in those unequal times the biggest mistake a business makes and I think the biggest mistake people can make and even countries possibly is to hunker down. You do not hunker down in an equal time to do just the opposite you stand up and you think. And you ask the tough questions and try to figure out what's going on now all these conversations I've had all these people over the last few months. It is extraordinary. The amount of energy and goodwill that's out there in America. I have a seventeen year old son who's headed off to college next year. And headed south. Not this far south but south of Boston. And he says you know I feel better when I don't listen to the news and don't read the paper. And don't go online and just try that if you just turn it all off because you know people are still people we're all Americans. We're all trying to do the right thing. Most people are trying to lead meaningful lives most people trying to be lead useful lies and lead fulfilling lives most of us are doing that as best as we can do it every day. And as the years I can see we are in this an equal time that is actually really exciting and I am an optimist so you know warning label but the optimist the optimist in me says there is there will be more opportunities during this unequal time for people like you who confront the questions that matter to you the most who don't get too comfortable on the sofa who are willing to create and innovate who are willing to take a little bit of risk. It always seem scarier than it really is when say you know what's right for me. How do I lead this this useful fulfilling life not just for a year but for decades. So I'm going to wrap up there. We do some questions but I'm just going to wrap up with with a little request. Just a little tiny request. You know our country our communities will depend upon people stepping forward people engaging in the one thing that's really important at an equal time is by standards by standers are not allowed. You know this is not the time to be a spectator. This is time to engage in gauging whatever way you want to engage in gauge with you know an hour a week or an hour a month engage on asking you know what is your value added to the world. Maybe a little bit. Now maybe more twenty years from now maybe when you're you know successful in whatever way you want to be successful. Maybe you're a bus driver in age forty five and say you know what I want to be a mentor who knows. Ask yourself the tough questions and step. Just step forward. You know part of what I'm going to be and is in a little way. What my parents taught me to do and mention the front of the book and that is to to do my share and then some. So I know you guys will do that. Do your share. Thanks. Thank you thank you. Thank you. We have some time for question and it kind of question any kind of quick that doesn't only answer it but please. All the positions that you wish to do in yourself and or other people. The question you hear you know of all the jobs I've had. It's a great question. I think the way I answer that is it maybe isn't the position but it's the value added of the position so what I have what I have taken the most joy in has been helping others succeed. And it's one of those things where. You know that doesn't mean it's not of any and all of us have our own selfish but that is that is brought in great brought great joy and I said if I looked at it if somebody else answered that question. They would probably say that creating bridge stand starting a new organization that scaled. Successfully. Has so far you know been more important than anything else a way to think about talking another guy last night about this is is if I didn't do that. I being any of us if we weren't there. What difference would it make. So if you ever find yourself in a situation where you know if you turn the clock back in the last two years I didn't want to do literally didn't show up. What difference would it make you know and best as possible. You'd like to be in positions in life where actually if you don't show up if you want the person in that. Job something what change and it may not be obvious that maybe ever watch that movie. It's beautiful beautiful life before old you know the movie the play around the holiday time. Wonderful Life should know that it seemed to lean times. So you see you see the lead character is. You know passes away and can see how the world would have been without him. And it wasn't all that great. So we don't always know what impact we're having. But I think in general the answer your question is trying to find positions where where your value added is special. Where if you weren't doing that whatever it happens to be something would be different. And you know it has to be not just about what you're achieving but also your fulfillment. The. No one has ever lived. No one in the history of the world No one has ever existed. Like you or like you are like you're you know one that is just a fact. It is just a fact no one has ever lived like you one of the ideas that makes me nuts in this is not exactly as your question but it might be useful a little way. Is this this notion that I'm on track on track in companies is all the time you're on track. Track. Who put the tracks here. Why am I on the tracks. I just you know this is the image of journalists this track that the somebody else put down. You do not know who put the track down. You do not where it's going it's not your track. It's somebody else's track. You might want to be on that track but make the decision to be on that track. Do not let the track win by default. No one has ever lived like you. No one's ever live at this time. No one's ever been here in this day at this point in history. You figure out what your special calling is. And it may be to be a bus driver. Then be the best draft bus driver possible and influence the other bus driver and influence the passengers and build a better bus company. Don't judge through other people's eyes judge their own heart and soul judge through your own values. You know business schools for example are wonderful things you know and it would greatly value my my management education but sometimes management educations and I guess all kinds of educations can put and lot of emphasis on building a resume rather than building a life and I don't know it. I think about a seventy year old I mentioned earlier our twenty four year old is an entrepreneur. A lot of the their peer group and maybe some of you you know gosh they were focused on college and they're about six. Not my sons but many kids are and you kind of got to do that and you worry about you know how I look on paper. How do I look on paper. How do I look on paper. That's important in some ways but building a resume is not building a life. It's not. And so part of the answer your question. I don't mean to be too philosophical here but you know focus on building your unique life whatever that means and do not be afraid to pursue your own track and if it is somebody else's track great but make it a conscious decision. Slightly longer answer. Sorry. You know at least traditionally if like you bringing companies they would measure success more Trekkie portfolio their clients looking at their stock appreciation roll to the appreciation of sort of general market indices and so the serve as a proxy of the impact that billion had in terms of making their clients successful. I was curious the Birch Bayh and. Rich store. How do you build your success because as you noted earlier this is much. Fuzzier the economic measures that you are Jewish. In the marketplace. It could explain a bit more about exactly what brooch mean actually. You know certain measure the impact it would. OK. The idea behind bridge span was to create a professional services firm So think about a Bain and company that does consulting or a Bain Capital that doesn't vestment or a bank that that works with finance or an executive search or educational institution the trains people the idea of Enbridge band was to create a professional services firm. That serves nonprofit organizations and foundations now important caviar out. You can take the social sector and put it into buckets crudely speaking. One bucket are nonprofit organizations that have wealthy beneficiaries this one universities have wealthy beneficiaries arts organizations. I go to the Boston Symphony. Wealthy people are sitting there listening to music they consume the product hospitals have what he meant officiers does not say these organizations don't matter. They just have a different set of constituents. Oftentimes they have earned income they often have down once they often have bricks and mortar there's another portion of the social sector that actually do not have wealth beneficiaries organising human service organizations serving disadvantaged populations environmental organizations serving problems of the commons they do not so bridge span decided in our early idea early days were to be a professional services firm that serves those organizations that do not have all the beneficiaries especially disadvantaged populations civic engagement social justice the environment things like that. Why. Because we the organizations in that space are disadvantaged themselves this kind of market failure going on there. You know these other work is ations have access to people like Bain and McKinsey and things like that these other. Since the we're focused on dog. So they say Aha. How what success look like remember my question what does success look like our mission was to help these organizations achieve breakthrough results. Holy calf breakthrough results in either example our first client because that is what we aspire to do. First client was a company a company a nonprofit in Harlem called real unclick. It then became Harlem Children Zone. We started with Ritalin clinic twelve years ago. They were in seventeen or eighteen businesses they're dealing with a certain segment of high of kids in Harlem and the leader. Jeff Canada a brilliant guy not a manager this thing had scale. I don't remember the numbers exactly it might have been fifty million in revenue so pretty big but pretty small relative to the problem. Fast forward now twelve years hard Harlem Children Zone is now called is not only sixty or seventy million in revenue. It is the model for other similar programs in other cities when the president started the social enterprise social fund Social Investment Fund whatever eighteen or twenty four months ago he in the press release Nom highlighted for nonprofit organizations as models for what they wanted to achieve help achieve scaling what works was the phrase and children always want to by the way all four were Bridge band clients. We can't serve very many clients but this breakthrough results you you actually know when an organization is achieving breakthrough results because other people start to emulate it. Because they can say you know we are really getting results with these kids look what's happening. They're getting they're getting into high school they're getting out of high school they're actually getting to colleges. So bridge fan success is is a function of the success of organizations and people we serve. And we measure that in a lot of different ways some ways like hundred jobs on you actually know when it's happy. It usually takes time. We have other kinds of measures we do surveys of our client every single client engagement anonymous survey. We're now starting to do data collection on what's happened to clients a year and even three years after we worked there were nonprofit organizations nobody has a bonus. There's no there's no upside to taking more work. We're totally sold out all the time and so part of our dilemma by the way is to pick the right spots. We have a client selection committee. I guarantee you professional services firms that work for profit not a class action committees they try to make the right decision with clients but three of the clients pay in all this and that fine. I mean was last time the law firm said we're not going to take your work because our client's next committee rejected you. You know or the accounting firm anybody else doesn't work that we have clients actually meet certain criteria. One of which is you have to be a role model for other people. If you succeed other people need to be able to follow another is we need to create knowledge together that useful for others Harlem Children Zone. We publish case studies are written articles we use them in many many many examples. So that's how we think about it because we need a huge multiplier Bridge fans strategy for the next decade which is way harder than what we've done the last decade is to increase our social impact one hundred times while no more than doubling the size of the organization. So scaling impact not just scaling new organization. It is relatively easy to scale the organization we can go from seventy five consulting projects here one hundred fifty projects here. We know how to do that is funny to me and that would be fine. We can double that. But how do you create impact one hundred X. one not sure we know what has to do with new ways of doing things we move into executive education. We're now in educating dozens soon hundreds of nonprofit leaders around the country. We know it has the technology we know it has to do with IP hence the book. Hence a lot of other articles and content big investment in the web our web presence but how do you increase hundred X. and by the way the. Azman question it's relatively easy when you're in direct services to understand causality what you've done and whether your client succeeds downstream or not. And maybe what they think of your value added. And what other things have your value added. Once you move from the two X. to the further out of that rings one hundred X.. So somebody might read give smart and they might change their behavior as a consequence of that. How do we ever know. Hung out how does this university know its value added to students. Do they can they say here was the here was the potential as a freshman. Here's the potential as a graduating senior and the delta is two point three. How do we know maybe the university just is really smart his admissions process and all of you would succeed anyway. Those who are students who knows. So there are different kinds of value added and different kinds of causality. The reason it's really important by the way to have some sense from the results you're getting is to allocate your scarce resources. Just like you know Britain has scarce resources all of you have scarce resources only so much time. So I asked Josh which of those you know investment you're making of those scarce resources are paying off great question. There was a question over here. I've got an answer slower or faster something. I work with a clinic in Haiti where we give free treatment and Pharmac pharmaceuticals to the people. Incidentally And we want to get better. Of course for that funding or an organization that has very little overhead and no paid American exact so we don't have a grant writer or anything like that. How would you recommend an organization like Haiti clinic goes about applying for grants and trying to get funding. OK. No magic answer on this stuff. But I'll tell you it is generally true that relationships proceed check writing. Just generally. You know. So in gauging individuals in what you're doing will be a precursor to even those individuals to write checks. And this by the way is true whether whether you're a small nonprofit organization. Eighty or whether you're a. You know over there. Jeff Kent in city or I mean city or in children so. Why because philanthropy is personal and people need to be personally engaged. We have a you write once while we write checks to things we don't know about and you know we may go to Donors Choose And you know give it a little gift or something but the reality is people want to be connected emotionally. So getting people connected emotionally is the way to do that now that means. OK how do you know you don't know how to meet those people lots of nonprofits address that by by putting together an advisory board or a board of some kind of people who have their own their own networks and you build on that you just feel that there are no shortcuts. There just are no shortcuts and this issue of. Capital for nonprofits is a giant issue it's one of the reasons that the nonprofit sector is more complicated in some ways in the business sector in business if you have a really successful company. If you're Mark Zuckerberg and you're at Facebook. You have no problem attracting more money. Or or any other success story. Right because if you're growing then and the numbers are all there. You're going to track capital growth capital is easy to find in the social in the nonprofit in she's in the business sector in the social sector nonprofit sector it's hard to find it's really hard to find and in fact there's even a path ology that if you're doing really well and you earn some you know you've got some grants coming in donors will say well you know you've already got enough money they have got it but I'm serving five hundred children I could serve a thousand and look what to do with five hundred. Who say yeah but you know you're already doing want to go do something else. It's kind of nutty. But capital does not flow rationally in the social sector in so that means a lot of effort. We did a survey a few years ago of nonprofit leaders these were smaller nonprofits but not tiny not really tiny few million dollars here in gross receipts. The average executive director of those spent about seventy percent of his or her time fundraising. So I didn't I didn't get into the business to be a sales person I got in the business to help kids or the cause or whatever that's just the deal. And so that means Boy a lot of investment is required and then there are other things you can get it to try to break out. There's a fellow bridge band that that co-founded the one acre fund which is this neat nonprofit he became a school warden winner. And so that's sort of also been catapulted them so they're in are you applying for those things trying to break out of the pack is another useful strategy or questions. You have a perfect. My cholesterol. OK all right there you are. I'm so once curious of working at Richmond which there are and developing talent in the companies you work with what are some of the major challenges you face or are differences that you know goodness early have been or were OK. The devout business versus a social sector kind of talent. It's a really great question. So let me try to try to do that. We work a lot with with folks that are moving from one sector to another we call them Bridger's and you hear a certain theme in this right. Bridging business the social sector bring it. Bridging sources of capital he says of capital we said what are the the qualities that do and don't transfer from say a business space to a nonprofit or social sector space. The one of the bigger differences has to do with culture. You know most of nonprofits are powered by passion. You know people aren't there for the stock options they care deeply about whatever cause whatever problems are solving whatever beneficiaries the children who are there turn out that they care about businesses can be powered by Passion of the boy it's different and so that cultural part is hard for folks. The actual business models are really different. In business which. Said growth capital is easier to come by in the social sector there is a fellow we are placing and we have a little Executive Search business that we started because many of our clients it with weren't getting the right level of service from the search industry they were too small the jobs and pay well enough so we said well we're going to we're going to build this to serve our client base this fellow is moving from the business world in the nonprofit world and he met with the board they reviewed all the financials and said gosh you only have four months of cash in this nonprofit and I have four months of cash who's running a business and the chairman board look and say you know we've never had so much cash. It's great. So you know the cultures are different the business models are different. The issue of how you get things done is dramatically different Why. Well in business you can exercise what Jim Collins would call executive leadership which is your the executive you tell me to do something now we might have consensus but you are the boss. And I got that now in the social sector how does that work you have volunteers home. Can you fire a volunteer and pay us. Know you've got stakeholders you've got donors that are sitting on your board. What corporations have Wall Street investors sitting on their board. Isn't that kind of weird to have two hats on. You've got employees colleagues in the organization that are there for passion reasons they may have a different view of what the organization needs to do than you. You can say listen you don't do that you don't fall in line you're hearing a smaller bonus they get no bones. So this issue of executive authority in the business world. Contrasts with more legislative authority more consensus building. You know business people in the nonprofit sector gosh everything moves so slowly. There's a reason for that whenever something's happening ask yourself why is that happening. And why is something not happening is also a root cause the root cause when you have a lot of stakeholders you have to persuade you can't force and that takes time you have to participate. You can't control and that takes time and by the way the problems are different. It turns out and I love business. I just love love love love love business I wish I could live two lives or three lives. I love business. That said it is easier to make a widget and to change a life. It just yes it is easier to create a new app than it is to fix a school system. It just is why those other problems their big hairy problems they got all the other constituents you can't control things there's a million dimensions to it. Those big problems exist for a reason the little problems exist for a reason. So for a bunch of of really understandable structural reasons structural around talent to occur on capital structure around strategy the social sector any you know if you had a five million down on profit and five million are business it is harder to get results of the five million dollar nonprofit then it is to get results or business all over the wall because they're kind of the structural there is it's different now that said there's a bunch of things from business the translate exactly and then wrap up basic management principles we say most nonprofits are strongly led and under managed their strongly lead in or in a major Why is that their strong lead because if you don't have a zealot leading who can sell who can marshal volunteers who can convince people the impossible is doable if you don't have that you want to track funding. You won't attract talent. You're toast. So strongly lead is a requirement management that's one requirement Emeryville go into the social sectors our own to be a manager. Now I want help the kids I want to lower my own I want to do so but it's not me and. So they don't train the management they can't reason. And for me enjoyment mansion is not valued as much as the other things they're doing and so strongly under managed what translates great are management skills from business and social sector some of it's basic financial stuff basic budgeting resource allocation a lot of the blocking and tackling that that managers and people in business learn translates really well but the culture is different the structural situation is different. Making decisions is different so I want to thank all of you for taking time out today and just one one one request just one request I got got to ask. I'm going to ask that no free lunch or. You have many decades ahead of you. God willing. Please do your share. Thanks. Thank you.