Episodes

Welcome to a very special final episode of Season Four! In this episode, you’ll learn how one foundation built the internal political will to make internal reforms so they can provide grants that better serve their grantees and their communities. Host Rusty Stahl sits down with Kenneth Jones, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Equity Officer of one of America’s major foundations, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. They discuss why and how MacArthur Foundation has increased the am...

In this episode, you’ll get an insider’s view of The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s journey to contribute to the full costs of grantees in an adequate and equitable fashion. Our guest is Katie Tetrault, the Foundation’s Vice President of Finance and Grants Management. Tetrault manages all of the Foundation’s budgeting, accounting, financial, and grantmaking policies and operations. Katie shares how and why the Foundation’s recently changed from paying only 10% toward “indirect costs” on project and...

In this episode, you’ll gain an understanding of how bias commonly plays out in the hiring process, and how organizations can better recruit and retain a powerful, diverse workforce that expands opportunity across lines of race and gender. Our guests are Trina C. Olson and Alfonso T. Wenker, co-leaders of the consultancy Team Dynamics and co-authors of Hiring Revolution: A Guide to Disrupt Racism and Sexism in Hiring. In this conversation, they share powerful, practical approaches to the hiring...

Over half of mid-level nonprofit staff in Western New York State don’t make enough to support themselves or their families. This number grows to 68% for those who work at nonprofits with budgets of less than a million dollars. This is one of many powerful findings in new research about the wellbeing of the nonprofit workforce. How does it relate to what’s happening in your nonprofit community? In this episode, you’ll get important new data on the health of the nonprofit workforce. Drawn from th...

So many nonprofits right now are experiencing challenges with recruitment, burnout, retention, and internal conflict around issues of equity and compensation. Sometimes we don’t know where to start. Sometimes we don’t have a vision for where to go on these issues. So we’ve got an important, helpful, and mind-expanding conversation for you today. The brilliant consultant and thought-leader Mala Nagarajan returns to our podcast to share six practices that nonprofits can use to de-link privilege (...

In this second installment of our series, Smashing the Overhead Myth Ones and For All, you’ll get an insider’s view of how things are changing inside the Ford Foundation, one of the largest private funders in the world, as their team seeks to provide more equitable and effective grants to the organizations they support in the U.S. and around the world. Our guests today are the ones making challenging operational decisions, guiding changes to organizational policy, practice and culture, and exec...

In this episode, we examine The Resilience Initiative, a model of foundation-initiated capacity-building work on behalf of grantee organizations that has sought to help progressive nonprofits tackle the mounting political, economic, and health crises that have impacted organizations in recent years. The Resilience Initiative has developed a highly-responsive approach that is increasingly focused on the well-being of nonprofit people and organizations. You’ll hear from the two top-notch consulta...

Welcome to the first installment of our special series, “Smashing the Overhead Myth – Once and For All.” In this episode, we hear the story of Funders for Real Costs, Real Change, a learning collaborative among a dozen funders who sought to better understand how they could do their part to end the nonprofit starvation cycle. These funders examined the realities of overhead and indirect costs in their grants and grantee organizations – and some are making major changes as a result. Our guest is...

In this episode, we speak with Jan Masaoka, CEO of California Association of Nonprofits (CalNonprofits), and one of the most respected and outspoken organizers, advocates, authors, and capacity-builders in the nonprofit sector. Jan recently announced her departure from CalNonprofits, and she shares sage wisdom (and rage!) on a range of issues including advocating for a better relationship between government and nonprofits, addressing the “overhead” myth, funding full costs, dealing with nonprof...

Welcome to the first episode of Season 4 of Fund the People - A Podcast with Rusty Stahl! In this episode, host Rusty Stahl welcomes you back, and sets up the theme for an amazing new season! Each season of this show has a theme, and together they follow the outline of our Funding that Works Framework. Season 1 explored the problem facing the social sector as a deficit of investment in the nonprofit workforce. Season 2 introduced the concept of Talent-Investing, “the intentional deployment o...

In celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, we’re pleased to welcome special guest Michael Smith, the eighth CEO of AmeriCorps, the federal agency for service and volunteering. This special episode explores the role of AmeriCorps as the federal government’s anchor institution, ensuring that MLK National Day of Service is a “day on,” not a “day off.” Our conversation also examines the role of AmeriCorps as a partnership between the federal government and the nonprofit sector for advancing pub...