The Charity Charge Show - Nonprofit Podcast

In episode 18 of The Charity Charge Show, Stephen Garten chats with Steve Wanta, Co-founder and CEO of JUST. JUST invest in female entrepreneurs with access to capital and coaching within a supportive community of peers. Their goal is to help their entrepreneurs build stronger businesses, build better money habits, and increase their social capital. Beyond the repayment of a loan, improved client outcomes will lead to their entrepreneurs increasing their savings. The goal is to instill the confidence around their own capacity to change and improve. This skill of learning and doing will result in more resilient communities. JUST's role continues to evolve to offer new, more, and better services for our community. These are positive steps forward toward a more just world where people can live with less stress and more joy. Steve is also the Co-founder of Impact Hub Austin and was tech Global Impact Director for nearly a decade at the Whole Planet Foundation(the nonprofit arm of Whole Foods). Topics covered: 1)How he got the inspiration to leave a global nonprofit at his role at Whole Planet Foundation and venture out to start his own nonprofit. 2)what is micro-credit and what has he learned in 15 years of doing micro-credit. what works, what doesn't, and how to do it properly.

In Episode 17 of the Charity Charge Show, Stephen Garten chats with Shannon Meyer, the Executive Director of Response. Response is an Aspen-based nonprofit agency that supports victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. Their mission is to work with communities to end domestic and sexual abuse and to support survivors in achieving safety and empowerment. Response’s services include a 24-hour crisis line, individual advocacy, emergency short-term shelter, help with safety planning and protection orders, referrals to other community organizations, and immigration assistance. Prevention education programs are presented in area schools on subjects such as healthy relationships, teen dating violence, gender stereotypes, and sexual assault bystander intervention. Shannon has a strong background working in the conservation profession. volunteer management, environmental policy, public speaking, and environmental education. Shannon holds a M.S. in Environmental Policy fro the University of Montana.

In Episode 16 of the Charity Charge Show, Stephen Garten chats with Matt Stephenson, the Co-founder of Code2College. Central Texas is facing a crisis. Despite its regional reputation for innovation, the nearly 5,000 technology companies with offices in the Austin area and several world-class research institutions, there remains a shortage of skilled, local talent to fill a wide variety of technical roles. Companies continue to source technical talent from outside of Texas and abroad, and as the explosive (and consistent) growth of the area would indicate, the pace is far from slowing down. What’s worse, there is a huge population of students in Central Texas who remain underserved. Facing a talent surplus and opportunity deficit, many girls, students of color and low-income students lack two of the most critical factors to entering pathways into STEM careers: exposure and practical experience. Students who haven’t met a data scientist, don’t have an anesthesiologist in the family, nor heard of the investment banking industry, are unlikely to pursue these or other technical fields. And those who do will find themselves behind the curve once matched against their affluent and/or well-resourced counterparts. Herein lies an opportunity to develop a pipeline of diverse, local technical talent for the region. Code2College is a multi-year, career prep and college access program that leverages local volunteer technical talent to teach coding and web development skills to traditionally underrepresented students in order to push them to and through college, and into STEM careers.

In Episode 15 of the Charity Charge Show, Stephen Garten chats with Shayna Dunitz, the former Director of Operations at 3 Day Startup and the current Chief Operations Officer at Central Athlete. 3 Day Startup (“3DS”) teaches entrepreneurial skills to university students in an extreme hands-on environment. This proven program provides students the tools they need to start successful companies. Over 12,000 3DS alumni from 400+ programs across 6 continents–at over 150 schools including Harvard, MIT, WHU (Germany), Technion (Israel), and the University of Texas–have launched more than 90 companies that have collectively raised $130 million in investor capital. Over 38 companies emerging from 3DS have been accepted to prestigious accelerators such as Y Combinator, TechStars, and Capital Factory. While early programs focused strictly on technology- and web-enabled startups, demand has led the team to expand the program to function across broader entrepreneurial endeavors. Schools have hosted 3DS programs focused on themes such as social innovation, energy, culinary, hardware, and more. Foregoing a grant-supported model, the founders developed an earned-revenues strategy—3DS charges universities, governments, and corporations to deliver programs—which allowed the organization to grow in a scalable and sustainable way while preserving mission autonomy. Running 3DS as a successful business operation keeps entrepreneurship in the organizational DNA and allows the organization to remain faithful to the philosophy of learning-by-doing.

Wanted to give a short thank you.

Eugene Sepulveda is the CEO of the Entrepreneurs Foundation, a director and partner in Capital Factory. He also serves as a senior advisor & the campaign treasurer for Austin Mayor Steve Adler. He previously served as the President and CEO of Marfa Public Radio and as co-chair of President Obama's LGBT Leadership Council. He currently serves on the national finance council for former HUD Secretary Julian Castro’s presidential campaign. Eugene has over 30 years experience from banking, high tech startups, and higher education. He taught in the MBA and undergraduate programs at the University of Texas' McCombs School of Business, served as CFO for an Austin-based semiconductor startup, and was Austin's first technology banker. He currently serves as vice chair of Austin’s Airport Advisory Commission, on the board of the Barton Springs Conservancy, on the executive committee for the McDonald Observatory’s Board of Visitors, on the advisory board of the Sustainable Food Center, as chairman emeritus of People Fund, and as chair of Jolt Texas’ leadership council. Eugene's rewards and recognitions include being recognized as the Best Austin Booster (Austin Chronicle), Best Professor (Alpha Kappa Psi), as a nominee for Outstanding Elective Professor (UT MBA), the Human Rights Campaign’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the HRC Bettie Naylor Visibility Award, 2014 honoree by the Mex Net Alliance, an Austin Under Forty award winner, the Austin Business Journal Heavy Hitter in Finance, and honored by the Austin City Council by the declaration of a Eugene Sepulveda Day in 1994 and Eugene Sepulveda and Steven Tomlinson Day in February 2015. Eugene is married to Dr. Steven Robert Tomlinson. They have 6 nieces and nephews and 13 godchildren. Eugene can be reached at: [email protected]

This weeks Testimonial Tuesday comes from Alyssa Ikner, the Finance & Administration Manager at United Way of Blount County. “Our previous credit card was severely outdated. There were no rewards, rebates, points, or any other benefit. We were limited to one card and that card only had the organization’s name printed on it. Any time an employee needed to make a purchase, they would have to “check out” the card from a secured drawer. Sometimes merchants would question the authority of the employee signing for the purchase. This did not put us at ease. Also, if an employee was away at a conference, they would have the physical card and everyone back at the office would be without it. We also didn’t have online access to our account. We had to wait for the statement to come in the mail before we could reconcile all the transactions and pay the bill. I can’t tell you how much easier it is to have our new Charity Charge cards for each employee, with their name and organization name printed on them. The statement is available online and I can see right away who has made which purchases. We (United Way of Blount County) were looking to replace our old corporate credit card with a card that had the modern features we needed. We were struggling to meet our financial and internal control needs with only one physical card with a low limit. After researching several credit cards offered by our community banks, we still felt like there was something missing. We weren’t ready to commit to anything yet. Then, we learned about the Charity Charge Nonprofit Business Card, and it just made sense. We are always looking at ways to supplement our revenue and decrease expenses. After seeing the passion behind the founder of Charity Charge and seeing its mission align with ours, we knew we wanted to be a part of this on the ground level.” -Alyssa Ikner, Finance & Administration Manager at United Way of Blount County

In Episode 13 of the Charity Charge Show, Stephen Garten chats with Kate Williams, the CEO of One Percent for the Planet. 1% for the Planet is a global organization that connects dollars and doers to address the most pressing issues facing our planet. They are a network of 1,200 member companies and thousands of approved nonprofit partners located in more than 40 countries. Started in 2002 by Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia, and Craig Mathews, former owner of Blue Ribbon Flies, members have given more than $150 million to environmental nonprofits to date. Learn more at onepercentfortheplanet.org. Kate can be reached at: [email protected]

This weeks Testimonial Tuesday comes from Jill Zimmerman, the Chief Financial Officer at Villa Montessori School. I wanted to drop you a quick note to say thank you so much for being able to set a new credit line with Charity Charge that will help our school meet our purchasing needs! For years, we have had credit cards through a large, national bank, that also acts as our school bond trustee. This bank wouldn’t give us a limit higher than $35,000, because we didn’t maintain a depository relationship with them. This made larger purchases during the summer months very difficult, as we had to pay the balance down weekly to free up availability. Our depository relationship is with another bank, and while that bank offered us a higher limit, their cards were continuously hacked online and we were regularly cancelling and replacing cards due to poor fraud controls built into those credit cards. In no time at all, Charity Charge was able to get us a credit line of $100,000, based on the strength of our financials and our operations. We are very grateful for your help in getting us a credit line and resulting credit cards that will actually meet our operational needs on a regular basis. Thank you so much! We are looking forward to working with you going forward! - Jill Zimmerman, Chief Financial Officer at Villa Montessori School

In Episode 12 of the Charity Charge Show, Stephen Garten chats with EP 12: Tim Scott – the founder of Mitscoots and UT Professor Stan Richards School of Advertising and Public Relations Tim is the founder of Mitscoots Outfitters, a social enterprise on a mission to outfit and employ individuals transitioning out of homelessness. Leveraging some past military and ad world experience, he has guided the team in growing Mitscoots into a national brand that has ultimately helped to lift individuals off the streets and out of homelessness. Through strategy, community building and grit, they've bootstrapped a great social enterprise into 200+ retail partnerships with a significant e-commerce presence. Pivoting off that experience and at the insistence of colleagues, Tim founded Benefit Branding, a full service ad agency focused on social impact branding. With a unique technique for strategy, target audience insights, and long term planning, the team helps clients build customer relationships by telling their story in the best way possible, everywhere possible. Tim also teaches branding and strategy as a faculty lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin in the Stan Richards School of Advertising and Public Relations. Tim can be reached at: [email protected]

This is a brand new segment we will be doing each and every Tuesday. Our founder, Stephen Garten will be reading testimonials from nonprofits who have shared their excitement and thoughts about working with Charity Charge. Hope you enjoy. :) "Thank you and to your team for working really hard to get ALPFA a CC with a nice line of credit that we can use without having to pay the credit card in advance of each payment based on our needs. ALPFA has gone through 4 years of insolvency and it has been really, really difficult to get any bank to give us any form of credit, including major banks. However, our financials and our cash situation are in much better shape now with $5.5M in sales yearly (past 4 years) and only about $250K of debt compared to $5M same time 4 years ago. You saw this for yourselves and helped us! The impact we want to do for our Latino community on furthering their education and obtaining their first career jobs cannot be done alone and very happy to see Charity Card as a partner on this endeavor!" - Selene Benavides, CFO at ALPFA

In Episode 11 of the Charity Charge Show, Stephen Garten chats with Scott McAninch, the Executive Director of The Nonprofit Council. The Nonprofit Council is a membership organization comprised of the Executive Directors, Presidents and CEO's of 501(c)3 organizations along with nonprofit professionals and for-profit businesses in South Central Texas. Our mission is to SUPPORT, CONNECT and STRENGTHEN the leadership of nonprofit organizations. We strive to accomplish that mission through advocacy, training, resource sharing and the strength and extensive knowledge of our combined membership. Scott began his marketing/promotion career with the launch of independent television station KABB in 1985. After 20 years of successful broadcasting marketing and promotion work, Scott made a move to the nonprofit sector consulting for The San Antonio Nonprofit Council. He was hired as the Executive Director in 2007. In 2015, The San Antonio Nonprofit Council became The Nonprofit Council and opened their membership to all 501c3 organizations in an effort to expand their service and membership in South Central Texas. Scott can be reached at: [email protected]

In Episode 10 of the Charity Charge Show, Stephen Garten chats with Kathy Terry, CEO and Founder, InLieu. inLieu allows users to make donations in lieu of purchasing material gifts and at the same time makes donating fast, easy and social! (So unique we have a patent pending). inLieu provides a live social feed of every transaction that can be liked and shared with friends. It’s never been easier to support your friends by supporting their cause. How does In Lieu work? For individuals: You want to support your friends and the causes they love, but it’s not easy. For one, you have to find the website for the charity, fill out a long profile and hope that your friend gets notified of your donation. And if they do receive a notice it could be months after you made your donation. For nonprofits: You want to make donating easier for your donors whether it’s at an event, supporting individual fundraising efforts or giving your supporters an easy platform to just make donations. inLieu does this and more. What if you could send a message and tell all your supporters in lieu of that second cup… Kathy is also the Co-founder of P. Terry's Burger Stand and Taco Ranch in Austin, TX. Kathy can be reached at [email protected]

In Episode 9 of the Charity Charge Show, Stephen Garten chats with Katie Russell, the Demand Generation Manager at SAFE Alliance. The SAFE Alliance (SAFE) is a merger of Austin Children’s Shelter and SafePlace, and is dedicated to ending violence and abuse for everyone. SAFE is a merger of Austin Children’s Shelter and SafePlace, and is dedicated to ending violence and abuse for everyone in our community. The organization's stand against child abuse and neglect, sexual assault and exploitation, and domestic violence. SAFE delivers comprehensive services to address the broad spectrum of needs for these survivors and works diligently to create awareness and capacity for prevention through innovative, collaboration, and highly-effective programs for at-risk demographics. SAFE is committed to changing lives (by effecting outcomes for survivors), systems (by making them more responsive), and communities (by generating healthier, more respectful environments). SAFE | Stop Abuse For Everyone. Contact Katie: [email protected]

In Episode 8 of the Charity Charge Show, Stephen Garten chats with Jye Turk, the Founder & Executive Director of SolvED. SolvED serves individuals and communities that experience a disconnect in life, particularly historically underserved populations facing challenges involving education, access, and community. Their unique solution to these challenges is a comprehensive tutoring approach that addresses social, communication, and behavioral needs of individuals. Not only does the tutoring approach set students up on a positive life trajectory, but also taps into the brilliance of the Greater Austin community, employing tutors who have lived experiences similar to the students they serve. The organization believes that addressing the needs of the multiple generations within communities is key to building equitable outcomes and developing generational wealth. You can reach out to Jye via his email here: [email protected]

In Episode 7 of the Charity Charge Show, Stephen Garten chats with Zane Wilemon, the Founder of Ubuntu Life. Ubuntu Life grew out of a friendship between Jeremiah Kuria and Zane Wilemon, pastors from Kenya and Texas. Meeting weekly over lunch in Maai Mahiu, a transit hub an hour outside Nairobi, they talked about faith, growth, and empowerment. Together they created a center for children with disabilities, providing life-changing therapy and medical care for kids who suffer from physical challenges and social stigma. Over 15 years at the head of Ubuntu Life, Zane has helped the organization grow from a charity with 3 employees to a blended nonprofit business employing over 80 individuals in Kenya and the United States, with sustained revenues over $1.5 million annually. Zane is a frequent inspirational speaker, recipient of the Charles J. Cook Award in Servant Leadership from the Seminary of the Southwest.

In Episode 6 of the Charity Charge Show, the founder of Charity Charge chats with Don Wettrick, the Founder of StartEdUp and the STARTedUP Foundation. StartEdUp is a global network of the most renowned innovators, educators and entrepreneurs. They define and employ the tactics of real innovation and leave the buzzwords in the dust. Their nonprofit wing, The STARTedUP Foundation, empowers student entrepreneurs and innovators with collaborative, immersive experiences, accelerator programs, and the first seed fund for students 14-18. Our goal is to prepare students to be enterprising contributors in this changing world.

In Episode 05 of the Charity Charge Show, the founder of Charity Charge chats with Page Whalen, Founder of We Are No Alamo Today, people living with serious mental health concerns still experience social stigmas and negative misconceptions. But the fact is, people can expect a better quality of life than ever before. Medications have improved, new evidence-based therapies have developed, and organizations like We Are No Alamo (WANA) are building initiatives to bring renewed awareness surrounding mental health. WANA promotes the engagement of open and honest conversations about mental health. A growing amount of research shows that offering positive support to those suffering with MI, compared to promoting lifestyle and behavioral changes, helps those struggling live healthier and more productive lives. WANA seeks to build a community of acceptance and connection. To help shape this future, WANA started a podcast! The podcast provides a “stigma free zone” for people to open up about their mental health struggles and share their stories, while also providing mental health information and resources. WANA is dedicated to improving the lives of people affected by mental illness. We strive to shape a future where all people affected by MI can experience hope, recovery and wellness in a world free of stigma.

Across Central Texas, children live with the shame and stigma that often comes with being challenged by parental incarceration. When a child loses a parent to incarceration, they lose possibly the most significant person in their life. As a result they face significant risk factors that can make it difficult to succeed in school. Seedling believes in the promise of every child: the promise of an education, the promise of a future, and the promise of all they can contribute to society.bThe Seedling mission is to support children challenged by parental incarceration with innovative, research driven, school-based mentoring.

In Episode 03 of the Charity Charge Show, the founder of Charity Charge chats with Morgan Hurley, Director of the Texas Stars Foundation. The Texas Stars Foundation is a charitable organization dedicated to enhancing the community through various forms of support including financial contributions, gifts in kind and volunteerism. Formed in the summer of 2010, the Texas Stars Foundation is the official charity of the Texas Stars Hockey Club. The Foundation strives to utilize the talents and resources of the Texas Stars players, families, staff and ownership to enrich the greater central Texas area and military children throughout the United States. The Texas Stars Foundation has three pillars of focus for their giving, programs and partnerships: youth engagement, honoring military families, and assisting those in need. The Texas Stars Foundation supports local charities and organizations by distributing more than $100,000 in cash gifts and grants during the 2018-2019 season. Texas Stars players, staff, and mascot Ringo, make numerous community appearances at hospitals, local nonprofits, schools and central Texas businesses. Thanks to the generous support of fans, players, players families and staff, the Texas Stars Foundation has distributed over $900,000 during the 2010-19 seasons in cash donations and gifts in-kind to more than 700 different local nonprofits.

In Episode 02 of the Charity Charge Show, the founder of Charity Charge chats with Bob Pearson, the CEO of the Medic Alert Foundation. For more than 55 years, the foundation has worked with leading emergency and healthcare professionals to develop state-of-the-art medical information standards and married these with unequaled information security and technology to deliver the most dependable, the most responsive, the most intelligent, the most trusted emergency identification and medical information network. Their industry-leading medical information collection and guaranteed information delivery ensures that emergency responders and hospital staff get your up-to-date medical information when they need it, to make informed decisions about your treatment and care.

In Episode 01 of the Charity Charge Show, the founder of Charity Charge chats with Cami Hawkins, the CEO of Marathon Kids. Marathon Kids works for any kid, at any fitness level. Kids set their goals and track their progress on a journey to complete four marathons, or 104.8 miles, over the course of the running club season. They run, or walk, one lap at a time, one day at a time, and before they know it they’ve gone farther than they ever dreamed. They learn how to fuel their bodies so they can run faster, better, longer. And for a little extra motivation, they earn fun Nike rewards at milestones along the way. They have a network of dedicated adults showing them how it’s done, and most importantly, a motivated and inspiring coach supporting them every step of the way. Research shows that when kids participate in Marathon Kids, they have a much better chance of getting enough daily physical activity. That’s good news for their bodies, and their minds. When they feel healthy, they perform better in school and exhibit better behavior. The organizations methods have been tested and verified by the scientific community. Research shows that our running clubs effectively jump-start healthy, long-lasting change. Participant rewards are the best around – kids love them and feel even more motivated to reach their goals. But more than anything, Marathon Kids love running because it’s fun. Running means speed and freedom, healthy competition and accomplishment. The program teaches kids the joy in running a distance (104.8 miles) that plenty of people think is impossible.