‍Transcription

00:00:04
            

Well, hey there, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Holy Donuts podcast. I'm your host, Matt Lombardi, and thanks so much for joining us today. And on our program today, we've got a very special guest, Nathan Mayo from trucherity. He is their vp of programs.        

00:00:18
            

And we're going to try to take a little bit of different spin. So usually we talk a lot about marketing and donor engagement. And so today I'm excited to talk to Nathan. I got a chance to meet him in Nashville a few months ago at an event put on by mission increase and Scott Harris, our mutual friend. And I was just really excited to hear more about the ways that they help nonprofits to really, especially in the poverty alleviation space, help them to better run their programs.        

00:00:42
            

And I think programs are often overlooked part of marketing. I do think they go hand in hand. So we'll talk a little bit more about that, but to get started. Nathan, thanks so much for joining me for one. And second, if you could just get us started by talking a little bit about your background, your history, how you got to work with trucharity, and then a little bit of true charity's history as well, that would be so helpful for the audience.        

00:01:04
            

Yeah. Well, thanks for having me here. Happy to share. So, I grew up originally in Alabama. I went to West Point, got a degree in economics.        

00:01:14
            

So then I was in the army for five years after that, mostly stationed in Germany. And I'm kind of a numbers guy, an analytical guy, and just started thinking from a kingdom perspective about what I could do. I realized that the army was kind of set up so that nobody can break it, which also means no one can change it. So it's not the best place for change agent oriented kind of people. So then I had a little kind of personal crisis trying to figure out where to go from there because I had a lot of interests, and I just felt like I could serve God a lot of different capacities.        

00:01:49
            

So ended up deciding on the nonprofit space, a focus on poverty alleviation, just because I figured, you know, the people who self select into poverty alleviation in particular tend to be people with great hearts. You know, they love to serve people in need, their pastors, their doctors, their social workers. The people with the analytical and strategy skills don't tend to gravitate towards that space. So I'm betting there's going to be a short supply of those skills, and I can probably do some good work there. So that was my hypothesis.        

00:02:21
            

My hypothesis was correct, as I've seen it. Yeah. So from there, my wife and I explored an opportunity to do some missions overseas. We explored an opportunity in Uganda and South Sudan that ended up not being a great fit, but allowed us to work in Haiti for a couple of years. So, showed up at a haitian american run small ministry, been around for 20 years, and I just learned about the nonprofit struggle bus and the degree to which ministries are under equipped and ministry workers are wearing too many hats and just trying to figure out so many things.        

00:03:00
            

I remember, you know, showed up expecting to be taught a lot. I was, in many ways, but I also tried to do my homework. So, you know, I read a book about fundraising and quickly realized that I was the subject matter expert in this organization on fundraising, because I read a book, you know, nobody else had ever had the time to do that. So I also just really realized that I had a heart to minister to ministers, right, to serve servants, people who are the overhead and the donors are like, I don't know why we really have to give you any money or resources, and they're just trying to make things work for God's kingdom. So that was my story.        

00:03:47
            

I had my eye out for opportunities to equip ministry leaders more broadly that intersected with true charity. So true charity grew out of the practical experience of a gospel rescue mission in Joplin, Missouri, where I now live. When they started almost 25 years ago, our founder, James Switford, and his wife said they had a heart for the poor, but not a mind for. So they gave a lot of things away. They saw a lot of the things they gave away end up in pawn shops the next day, and they just didn't see the life transformation that they got in the ministry to facilitate.        

00:04:26
            

So they did some reading and came across toxic charity, started to rethink their model, and they shifted to a work oriented earn it model, where they started asking people to do a little work to be a part of their own solutions. From day one, it's not too uncommon to have a social enterprise in a rescue mission, but usually that's like phase three of a work readiness program, and this was day one in exchange for basic needs. And when they did that, two things happened in pretty short order. Number one, not everybody was interested. So there are a lot of people that said, oh, I'm desperate.        

00:04:59
            

I'm in a crisis. I'll do anything. Well, can you. Can you work for 30 minutes? No, I'm not that desperate.        

00:05:05
            

My crisis isn't that bad. But on the positive side, they saw better outcomes, and not only in percent terms, but actually, in absolute terms, they saw more people coming to Christ, getting out of homelessness, reconnecting with family, connecting with churches, all the things that matter in the long run. They saw more of that as they were able to serve fewer people, slow down, and really shift from perpetual crisis relief to long term development. Yeah. And so talking to ministry leaders around the country, I just see people get the theory.        

00:05:41
            

There's a very. There's a very high level of agreement. We want to teach a man to fish. We want to give a hand up, not a handout. We read when helping hurts, we don't want to do that.        

00:05:51
            

But there's a big gap between theory and practice. And so when I ask ministry leaders, okay, so what fraction of your clients do you think just need short term crisis assistance? And then they're going to be good. And what fraction really needs some sort of long term development? I'll usually get an answer around 90 ten in favor of development.        

00:06:11
            

Yeah. And then you ask about programs, and usually the program structure is about 90 ten in the opposite direction. And people will say, I'll ask questions like, oh, so 20 years from now, what do you think will be different in the lives of the people you're serving? And I've had ministry leaders tell me, well, honestly, I think we're going to be feeding their kids. And that's about the only difference.        

00:06:35
            

So that's what true charity exists to help with the transformation that water gardens rescue mission went through. True charity exists to equip churches and nonprofits to implement effective, privately funded, kingdom driven charity in their context, where we're shifting to match our practice to our slogans. Right. We have a tremendous amount of resources for doing that. We have a national network of churches and nonprofits.        

00:07:04
            

We launched it when I joined the team back in 2020. So just a little over three years ago now. And we've got, at this point, 178 churches and nonprofits in 30 states. So there's a lot of hunger for practical tools, step by step guides for innovative models, as well as toolkits to help with broader challenges like fundraising and outcomes measurement and mental illness and case management and things that affect a lot of different programs. Yeah.        

00:07:31
            

So that's the backstory on what we do. That's amazing and super inspiring that there are organizations out there that are ministering to ministers. They're saying, hey, we want to help you get to a healthy spot, because I'm sure as people are listening to that, every person in the audience is going to resonate with the ministry struggle bus. Right. And then also that.        

00:07:52
            

Yep, it's always a crisis. It seems like it's always, well, we need that yesterday. And I think what you're pointing to is something really I've not thought of before, to be honest, is that we're serving so many people in crisis mode oftentimes, and we're not doing long term development. So, of course, the pace at which everything is needed from, whether it's a marketing team or development team, also pairs of that same urgency. Right.        

00:08:16
            

If your programs are all crisis urgency mode, then sure enough, the rest of your organization is going to kind of be that way as well. So as you all at true charity come into organizations or give them resources, have there been any kind of themes of like, hey, this is how, you know, your organizations may be ready for a transition? Cause everyone's gonna say, yes, we want that. You know, we want, we want to teach man to fish. Yeah, like, exactly.        

00:08:39
            

Like you said, all the, all the little, you know, platitudes that they get thrown around. Are there other indicators that you've seen with organizations of, like, okay, when this is happening or when this is happening internally with your team, this is an indication that you're actually ready to make the shift into this different kind of a model? Well, so one of the things we emphasize with our network is we don't have a sort of line in the sand mentality where, well, these are the organizations on the good side of the line and these are the organizations who are bad. It's really about a North Star, which for us, we talk about three pillars of effective charity. We think the best programs are gonna be privately funded, people given up their own time and money to help people in need.        

00:09:20
            

We think the best programs are going to be challenge oriented, challenging people to be part of their own solutions through development, relationship and accountability. And then we think the best programs are going to be outcome driven. So we're measuring our results and not just the quantity of stuff we give away. So that's our North Star. Everybody in our network says, you know, we may not be there, but we all want to move in that direction.        

00:09:42
            

So I really don't know of a single organization that isn't in a position to move in that direction. You might be, you know, you've got a 20 year backstory of handing stuff out and the whole staff and donor base has bought in on it. Okay, so your first step might be, maybe you need to do some reading. Maybe you need to visit some other places that are doing things more developmentally. So their first step is much more gradual.        

00:10:09
            

Whereas somebody who's already gotten a little bit of internal buy in, the leader gets they need to make a shift. Well, at that point, if they're in the true charity network, we have step by step guides for how to run a food co op as an alternative to a traditional food pantry, how to run an affordable Christmas market as an alternative to a Christmas gift giveaway, how to build transitional housing programs, residential life transformation programs, you name it. So we have step by step guides. So you've got to get the buy in first and then you can go to shifting a couple of your programs. A lot of times people are just shifting one or two of their programs and then they're leaving.        

00:10:48
            

Some. They have some transformational programs now, and they also have some kind of transactional programs that maybe they're not as happy about, but it's harder to wean themselves off of them. But it's just a process. And even organizations that have shifted all their programs are transformational. They did it.        

00:11:03
            

They shifted ten years ago. They can still continue to improve on that and make those programs more effective and generate better outcomes. So I think everyone is ready to move. That's so helpful. Yeah, there's always the next step someone can take to become more transformational and less transactional, no matter where they are.        

00:11:21
            

And like you said, it may even just be reading. Or it may be, hey, you and your small little window of the organization, you can take these small steps for what you're in charge of and then be an inspiration to the rest of your organization of how it could be done different. Well, hey there. Holy donuts. Listeners, ever feel like your nonprofit's donor experience is like a jelly filled donut with no jelly.        

00:11:43
            

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00:11:48
            

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00:12:10
            

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00:12:41
            

As you work with a ton of nonprofits and your team at true charity does, what are some of the best strategies you've seen for. Obviously, some of these may just be straight playbooks or things from true charity, but some of the best strategies for not only moving these programs to more of a transformational model, but really communicating that to donors, I think, because that's something our audience cares a lot about, is how do you communicate that sort of change to donors. So any strategies around how you do that? Well, yeah. So I think the main thing that the development marketing folks are going to need to key in on is outcomes measurement.        

00:13:18
            

So your programs team is usually going to do the outcomes measurement, but marketing and development can generate some positive pressure to push them to do that well. So as ministries shift from being more relief oriented to being more development oriented, the trend that I mentioned at our founding rescue mission, water gardens, it happens over and over. You end up serving fewer people and seeing better results. And that's a little bit of a mindset shift, because a lot of times your donor, your marketing team is going to be in the habit of broadcasting just how many people you're serving. What we would call outputs, big numbers, right?        

00:14:00
            

Right. So we fed so many people meals, we gave away so many boxes of food, so many shelter nights, whatever the case is. So now you have to shift from measuring and broadcasting outputs to measuring and broadcasting outcomes. So a transitional housing ministry that we've worked with over the years, they have a little card, they have their kind of outputs on one side, they have their outcomes on another. On their outputs, they're just talking about how many housing units they have, how many people they have in housing, but on their outcomes, they're talking about personal stability.        

00:14:37
            

So they have a like a ten point composite index based on surveys they go through, case managers, they have recovery history. So how, you know, how many months or years of sobriety do the people have on average? What about their community and spiritual involvement? So how many people do you feel like you could call in the event of an emergency? Well, when you showed up, you said one.        

00:15:01
            

Now that you've been in our intentional community for a year, now you've got eight people that you feel like you could call. So that's a measure of social capital, something very intangible, but which you can put numbers on and numbers that are intuitive to people. Finances are relatively easy to measure. You can look at credit score, you can look at debt, you can use it. Look at whether you're using a written budget, yes or no, employment, length of employment.        

00:15:28
            

So there are a lot of measurables around financial stability. Those are the kinds of things that we would call outcomes because they speak to long term change in somebody's life that you have to measure and then you have to educate your donors and say, yeah, we used to tell you just how many meals we've served, but now we're realizing that the quantity of free stuff you give away is not necessarily a measure of need. Right. So the main, well, I'll give you, for instance, so when the COVID happened and the USDA was given away boxes and boxes and boxes of food, I got a fair number of boxes of those food, not because I wanted them, but because I lived in kind of a lower middle income neighborhood and there were people that were just dropping them off on doorsteps. I didn't need that.        

00:16:22
            

That was an extreme example. And I don't, I've got a social barrier. I'm not going to stand in line to get something free if I don't need it. There are other people who aren't as ethical and they might not need something and they might stand in line to get it anyways because it's free. So a lot of the urgency we create in our programs, it's self driven in terms of just a quantity of stuff we give out.        

00:16:50
            

But yeah, that's the best strategy. I think as your programs become better, you measure your outcomes instead of your outputs and that makes big difference to donors. Yeah. And I love that you're highlighting, you have to educate your donors on this because they may be giving, you know, I think of it this way, like they may be giving to, you know, a dozen other ministries or five or ten and if those are still all outputs based, right. It's almost, I think of it like vanity metrics and marketing terms, right?        

00:17:19
            

Like, you know, if Facebook tells you, oh, you had, you know, 25,000 impressions, it's like, well, what does that even mean? Yeah, it's like, it looks good to say 25,000. Oh, it's a little dopamine hit, but it doesn't actually mean anything. What you actually care about is, well, how many actual comments did you get? How many people actually are engaged with the content?        

00:17:38
            

And it's the same thing, you know, if a donor is getting all these different kind of outputs, communication, that's like vanity metrics for them, right? It's like, wow, we saw 5000 students show up to this rally or we hand out this many tens of thousands of boxes of food and it's like, well, that's great, but like, how many people were actually rescued, right? How many people actually saw life change? And so there's going to be a tremendous amount, I would think, of donor communication around that and explain the why to donors of here's why we're moving to this, this way of thinking and this cultural transformation because we actually care about what we do with your money. We don't want to just stroke your ego anymore.        

00:18:17
            

But that's, I think donors are savvy enough that you have to actually tell them, here's why we're doing it and here's why it's better for every dollar you put in. And I think if you do that, they'll meet that with really a high degree of respect and trust for your organization. So as, yeah, I think, I think you're right on. And I would add, I think donors are much more receptive to it than people are afraid they will be. You'll also find there are a lot of donors who are, they already know it and they don't know if you know it or not.        

00:18:49
            

And they're potential donors. They're not giving or they're giving in very small quantities because you work in their community, but they're not giving you a lot because they don't trust you that much because they just see your measuring outputs. Major donors, people who write, you know, five figure checks, those people are particularly attuned to the significance of outcomes because they are a lot of times successful in business, and that's where you have to care about outcomes. So I think, yeah, I think people are a lot smarter than we give them credit for. So you have to do a little re education, but they catch on to it very quickly.        

00:19:21
            

Talk to a lot of ministries that have made a shift and they'll have, let's say, a big education event. Bring in all their volunteers. Hey, we're changing our soup kitchen. We're doing something different. And the volunteers say it's about time.        

00:19:34
            

Yeah. And they're like, oh, we were not expecting that. Everyone, it's the change everyone's been waiting for. They just never would speak up and give language to it. So, Nathan, as we kind of look at the broader.        

00:19:48
            

Right, so you guys worked a lot of individual charities and ministries. What's maybe a trend that you're seeing in general nonprofit space that has you a little bit concerned? And then on the other side, what's one that's got you pretty excited. So on the excited side, the trend that is a little, it's different from outcomes measurement, but it's connected is the trend towards devaluing overhead as a metric that people care about. So there's some good books that have come out about that.        

00:20:20
            

I think even a film recently about the problems with looking at just your percentage of dollars to fundraising and to administration as a measure of how much good you do. That is also connected, of course, to the nonprofit starvation cycle, which is just the idea that nonprofits are under pressure to cut out the irrelevant people, like all the members of your audience who are in donor development and marketing, all those overhead people, which is, of course, terrible for the ministry or the organization to under equip and under resource and underhire in all of those departments. So I think a lot of people are realizing, okay, overhead's not a great measure anymore, never really was. But that's not to say we can't measure anything of significance. And that's where I think outcomes come in as the measurement we were looking for all along that nonprofits didn't offer.        

00:21:17
            

So I think if you put your outcomes front and center on your website, your overhead rate can be buried pretty deep, if it's on there at all, because people are going to be less interested in searching for that once they see, oh, this is the impact per dollar, this is the number of lives transformed by this ministry. Absolutely, absolutely. And then on the concerning side, what's the trend that's got you a little bit concerned? Yeah. So I think in the outcome space, as well as in effective popular alleviation, there are a lot of people who've read the books, they've captured the language, but they haven't changed the practice.        

00:21:58
            

And so that's both an opportunity, but it's, it's also a threat. It's an opportunity if they continue down the path and they continue to change, but it's a threat if they just keep the slogans they even. I've seen lots of ministries that have gotten better about using the word outcomes, but now they're just talking about the number of meals they give away as their outcomes. Well, you've missed the concept. So those terms, you know, development, effective charity outcomes, those can all be devalued if people just shift their language and don't actually shift their practice to match.        

00:22:39
            

And I think there is a fair deal of that that goes on. Yeah, it's as if someone can be, I think of it like a vaccine almost inoculated to it, right, where they get a little bit of it, just enough to keep them from actually getting the full blown version of it. Right. And so it's almost like this inoculation. We see the same thing in marketing with, you know, as organizations say, everyone wants to be data driven, right?        

00:23:01
            

And so if they can use the buzzword enough or say, oh, yeah, we really care about the data on this, or, you know, what that really means sometimes, like, well, we just set up our Google Analytics and, you know, every few months we check it, and now all of a sudden data driven, where it's like, no, that wasn't really what that meant. And I wish you just wouldn't have done it at all, because now you act like you are so totally understand that what are some resources that you love to give away? Could be something that your charity has? Could be something that you just love to give away to nonprofits. Yeah.        

00:23:32
            

So the main resource that we have around outcomes is our outcomes toolkit. So a toolkit is, for us, a step by step guide of how to work through a process. With the true charity network, everything is included with memberships, $240 a year flat rate for an entire church or nonprofit. That gives you access to ten individuals on our members portal. That includes all the model action plans.        

00:23:56
            

I talked about, step by step guides for innovative models. That includes also our toolkits. So the outcomes toolkit, in particular what we've done with it, is build you a process for how to think through your outcome domains, how to break those down into specific outcomes, how to find indicators. And there's just, there's a fair number of books out there that are pretty dry and technical about outcomes measurement, but they don't leave you with a process. And the other thing we wanted to leave people with, in addition to a process, and this is just what we love to do, is really practical copy paste kind of solutions.        

00:24:35
            

So rather than just tell you, here's what you could measure and give you a handful of examples like I did earlier with the transitional housing organization, we just give you everything we know of anyone measuring anywhere that's worth anything. And we give you a client survey that has 26 questions. Please don't use all 26 questions. You pick the five to eight that are relevant to your context. So we just try to make things easy for people because you've got too much urgent stuff going on to sit down and reinvent every important thing that you need.        

00:25:08
            

So that's what we do. So love to share that with folks. And then if any of your audience is going to be at the CLA conference in Jacksonville, I'm going to be there with the booth and would love to connect people there. You know, for us, I talk about outcomes. I don't just want to preach it, we also want to practice it as an organization.        

00:25:28
            

It's a little tricky because we're not client facing in the sense that we don't directly serve people in poverty. But the outcome that we care about at true charity is not just do people join our network, do they use our stuff, but does it actually change their practice? So we do our own annual outcome survey and we call all of our members, we survey them, we get answers and we find out what fraction of them have actually used our resources to fundamentally change a program. And we just did our annual outcome survey. It's 56% of our members have made a transition in a program that they attribute to our tools and training.        

00:26:08
            

So it's so awesome to see the hunger is there, the hunger is legitimate. What was missing is the path, the resource to take you to the next step, to measure outcomes, to improve your programs, what have you. And it's just a blessing to be able to see that that is coming to fruition. Absolutely. So folks want to connect with either you personally, but maybe more likely if there are poverty alleviation ministry out there they want connected to true charity.        

00:26:37
            

Access some of these tools, resources. What's the best place just tactically to go and kind of find out more about true charity? Get plugged into everything you guys are doing. Yeah. So trucharity us, that's our website.        

00:26:50
            

You can go to trucharity us join. That gives you all the information about membership. You can navigate through the website and find that as well. I'm Nathan at Trucharity us. Anybody is free to reach out to me as well.        

00:27:02
            

We're really passionate, like I said, about ministering to ministers and making it easy for nonprofit folks to do this important stuff. Well, yeah. Well, Nathan, thank you so much for joining me today. Like probably everyone else is listening, I learned a ton. Going to be a lot that I'm able to kind of think on.        

00:27:21
            

Take to ministries that we work with and just say, hey, have you guys thought about maybe measuring outcomes instead of just these outputs? So thank you so much for taking the time to join me today. Appreciate it. My pleasure.        

Linkedin Article

From Handouts to Hand-Ups: Nonprofit Leader's Journey to Sustainable Charity

What if we could transform charity programs to create lasting solutions for those in need rather than just temporary relief? In this exclusive interview, Nathan Mayo shares his journey to becoming a nonprofit leader focused on equipping ministries with practical tools for delivering true, life-changing impact.

"We want to teach a man to fish. We want to give a hand up, not a handout," Nathan quotes, encapsulating the vision he discovered at a Missouri rescue mission. By asking people to contribute sweat equity in exchange for assistance, the mission saw greater life transformation despite serving fewer individuals. "The best programs are going to be privately funded, challenge oriented, and outcome driven," Nathan explains regarding the three pillars of effective charity he seeks to propagate.

From his career as an army officer to working abroad in Haiti, Nathan's analytical skills and heart to serve have led him to focus on poverty alleviation. He noticed a gap: Ministries understand the theory of developmental, personalized care over mere crisis relief, but their programs remained 90% transactional handouts. True Charity exists to bridge this gap through equipping churches to shift to sustainable models that facilitate growth.

The key, Nathan notes, is measurable outcomes, not just outputs. Tracking metrics like financial stability or social connections conveys impact better than meals provided. "Donors are much more receptive to it than people are afraid they will be," he encourages. Quantifying life change helps fundraising teams motivate supporters around a compelling vision of lasting solutions.

Toolkits, step-by-step guides for launching transitional housing or work-readiness initiatives, and a customizable outcomes measurement process facilitate this program transformation. Already, 56% of their 178-member network has implemented impactful changes thanks to True Charity's resources. Join the movement at trucharity.us or reach out to Nathan directly. The hunger for practical ways to shape lives is real; now ministries have a path to walk it out.

What outcomes would you like to see nonprofit programs in your community achieve? How can we come around these groups and help equip them for meaningful, measurable impact?

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This tone of voice is laid-back, casual, informal and personable. Like how you'd talk to a friend, keeping them in a positive mood without being overly bubbly 

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2. Use an active voice in your writing.

3. Include transition words to guide readers through your post.  

4. Keep sentences concise and easy to understand - avoid overly long constructions. 

5. Break up your text into short, digestible paragraphs to maintain reader interest and clearly convey your main points. Avoid excessively long paragraphs.  

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