Outro  0:01  
Welcome to Engaging Ideas, the bi weekly podcast from Parsons TKO, bringing you conversations with mission driven leaders and luminaries to shift your perspective and challenge your assumptions on the art of the possible.

Tony Kopetchny  0:17  
Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of engaging ideas, the Parsons TKO podcast where we like to explore all kinds of ideas, innovations and creative ways for nonprofits to think about their work and what we could be doing in the sector. at Parsons TKO, we are the Engagement Architecture consulting firm, we work with nonprofits and mission driven organizations around the country and now the world. Pulling together technology roadmaps manifesting into three years like in a governance we do a lot of work with data and analytics and data strategy. And today, I am delighted to be joined by my friend Chris Boardman, who is currently serving and he is the co founder, Chief partnership and strategy officer with Kinect humanity. Welcome, Chris.

Unknown Speaker  1:04  
Thank you. Pleasure to be here.

Tony Kopetchny  1:06  
So I am super excited to dive in my first question is going to be about CO founding a nonprofit organization, if somehow you are now my third nonprofit co founder I've interviewed. So it's fascinated me. So you've launched the nonprofit connected humanity? Can you tell us about what you're doing with Kuhn connected humanity? What motivated you to become a co founder of a nonprofit organization?

Unknown Speaker  1:31  
Sure. So connect humanity was formed during the pandemic, to essentially take a run at the digital divide. I mean, that's the simplest way of putting it, you know, one in two humans on the planet does not have access to the internet. And as you think about, you know, just stunning little factoids, like 80% of jobs in the United States are only posted online. Okay, well, 40% of African Americans, 40% of Latino Americans, and somewhere on the order of 70% of Native Americans don't have access to the internet. Yet 80% of jobs are online. The US census was conducted online last year, for the first time. trillions of dollars of money are determined by the Census, and the people who often rely on the services that the that those funds, ensure. Get them based on census data. But they're not online, you can see how this doesn't end well, that you know, health care is moving online, governments around the world are under a lot of pressure to digitalize government services, and get the people who need the most do not have access. Again, there's no way that this ends well. And it is rather, I think, appalling to think that the internet, one of the defining technologies of our time might become a wedge between the haves and have nots in society. And so during the pandemic, as this was painfully clear to the world

Unknown Speaker  3:08  
started a couple of conversations, working groups about how we might not have ended up here, you know, this sort of built back better line of conversations, what would it look like for society to come out of the pandemic stronger? And some of the conversations were initially revolving around the role of civil society in crisis. And one of the things that I had the privilege of understanding through years of working at TechSoup, you know, organization that this year will reach something on the order of 1.5 million grassroots organizations around the world was the breath of civil society, you know, this incredible community of humans, potentially 10 million organizations around the world, many more that are not legally registered entities, but you know, community formations of humans trying to tackle pain points in their lives, this enormous community that is intent upon leaving the world better than they found it. Think about what they witness every day. Think about what community health workers witness every single day, what teachers see what all of these people understand about what is broken in society, what policies are working or not working, what interventions are working or not working, what the what the trending concerns are, if you think about what they see this collective intelligence that is out there, that is essentially an unleveraged asset that we desperately need. We're entering a fascinating era that is going to require, I believe, the intelligence that that community has, but not just the intelligence And the the morality and the dignity that they bring to the equation, we need what they know. But we also need, why they know it, we need that sort of drive that the nonprofit community has to make the right decisions based on that data. They're not observing the world's pain points, because they want to capitalize on them. They're observing the world's pain points, because they want to fix them. And if we as humanity need that intelligence, that collective intelligence that is out there, we need a method to collect it. That looks like the internet. And if half the world doesn't have it, and they're the people that we care about the most, the ones who are being the most left behind the most affected by climate change, etc, etc, then, clearly, we got to jump in here. And one of the reasons we started this organization was simply we know how to end the divide. People have known how to connect communities from the middle of the Amazon to the Bronx to north of the Arctic Circle. For decades, we have chosen not to do so largely due to a lack of political will and greed, we have sort of bought into the idea that the corporate sector would solve the problem because they got such a good start on it. They did within communities where it was profitable. And then it sort of stopped corporate investment in extending new networks has been dropping year over year for the last several years, and government subsidy to try to change that hasn't changed it. Deloitte had a paper out recently that $56 billion of corporates have subsidy in the US from the government to the corporate sector to end the divide in the last decade, $56 billion has moved the needle 1%. Yeah, many humans still are unconnected outside of the US, it's worse. And again, this is something that none of us should sit around, no matter what you care about health care environment, whatever, you need information to make the right decisions, you're only going to get it from people being more online. You know, you care about AI not being racist, there's a way to change that get everybody online. So AI has the data in structures that will actually allow data to be representative of people that don't just look like me, a white dude. And so they're a white high Internet user. There, again, no matter kind of what you care about, we need to look at this. And we need philanthropy to engage, which, again, why did we start this because this is a broken market issue. And if philanthropy doesn't step in, and sort of find the market on ramps, or non market options to encourage communities to take control of this, start building and owning their own digital infrastructures, then they will be left behind see point ABC and D earlier about how that goes off the rails for basically all of us forever. So that's why we decided to do this. We can certainly talk about sort of approach as we go. But, you know, again, the very first thing I said, I think,

Unknown Speaker  8:11  
one of the big challenges of our times, you know, I It's fascinating to get into conversations I was on a panel a while back where people were talking about sort of what's, what is the biggest challenge of our times? Is it the challenges to democracy, is it the challenges to the environment, you know, climate change issues. And there's a pretty strong argument that it's the challenges to the lack of information that we have, if you want to be you know, I would argue that governance beats climate, because fixing climate issues is going to take very strong political leadership, if we don't have strong political leadership, we're not going to fix it. And if nobody has good information, and we don't know what's actually happening, and we can't communicate to people about the effects of climate justice, or the failures of our governance systems, then we're going to make the wrong decision. So you know, I don't want to get into a pissing match about like, Who's Who's flagged needs to fly the highest. But it is not an understatement to say that we have not been paying enough attention to the lack of connectivity on the planet to the lack of digital equity, to working on ending digital poverty. sad fact, and then I'll stop this caffeine fueled ramble. less than point zero 4% of all American philanthropy in the last decade has gone to anything digital, we will be publishing a report on that shortly. less than point zero 4%. And if you put that in the scheme of climate for instance, if you compare that to the climate movement, something on the order of 600 grants per year going to anything digital in the United States versus 8000. For anything climate, she's okay. I'm glad we, I'm glad we're paying attention to climate great. We need to pay attention to digital.

Tony Kopetchny  10:09  
So when that report comes out, we'd love to post it up for everyone who's listening and make sure we can help you amplify it with your current research you're doing. And that number you just gave us about the lack of digital funding here, in the States at least, was COVID. Not a wake up call for folks that people aren't connected. I mean, that was brutal watching, especially in the beginning part of trying to transition that can you get, I just remember thinking like Jesus, Google could solve this whole thing you can give every kid in the country right now, Google, whatever they call those things, the book or whatever. But it didn't happen. Right? Yeah. I mean, did was it a wake up call did anything percolate from it?

Unknown Speaker  10:45  
It was a wake up call. Unfortunately, with people not having paid attention to this and philanthropy for so long, with a few exceptions, a few notable exceptions, the Ford Foundation, Schmidt Futures, a couple of major foundations have been paying attention. There's extremely little competency within the philanthropic sector to build a robust grant making program around this. So there was a spike in giving the spike in giving was a band aid work, which you can't fault anybody for people needed to get online. So there were a bunch of hotspots purchased, great hotspots will last year, a couple of years. And then what who's subsidizing them what they're not a they're not a robust infrastructure where they useful in the moment sure, again, I'm not faulting anybody for doing like the band aid thing in the moment. But I think it'll it is a bit to be seen how that translates into our philanthropic community, working on this more holistically and more intentionally. The thing that percolated out on the government level was the IGA. The don't ask me what that actually stands for, and be the infrastructure related to digital equity. I guess I can't remember what BT actually stands for. But these are the big announcements that have recently come out of the infrastructure bill, where the US government will put about $60 billion into ending into digital equity in the United States. So investing in broadband infrastructure, the US government response, this is unprecedented. It's a huge single shot at trying to fix the problem in the United States. It's a good step in the right direction, the unfortunate reality of it is in speaking with state level broadband officers, national folks at NTIA etc. The most generous estimate is that once that $60 billion is spent that of all unconnected Americans, 70% of them will still be unconnected, that we will solve maybe 30% of the problem. And baked into that are some structural challenges.

Unknown Speaker  13:04  
To apply for that money as a small community, you know, I went to a I went to high school in a cornfield in Missouri, and the town Warrensburg 16,000 odd people, I would bet any of your listeners $5? Well, we'll stick with five that there's no, there's no network engineer on staff at the mayor's office there. These are skills that are rare that most people don't have them. So maybe big cities, some big cities might. But most of the communities who need this the most do not have the technical expertise in house to actually apply for the money. The second thing is they have to have a match. So they're going to have to match 25% minimum on the investment in a new network. New networks are not cheap. These, the money is prioritizing fiber. And, you know, we're doing a project in South Carolina right now. town about 30,000 people running fiber to the home in that community, probably $30 million. It's not cheap work is that community have 25% of 30 million just sitting around seven and a half million. No. So not only will most of the communities who need it most not have the technical expertise, they won't have the matching money, which means the ones who need it aren't gonna get it. And this is where yes, that's a great step in the right direction. But it's going to leave a lot of need on the table and some things that we're working on with philanthropy are doing those planning grants is not that expensive. It's it's not you know, we financed the digital equity master plan for Detroit, a city the size of Detroit $188,000 to build out a full technical feasibility study set of architectural plans engineering plans gi As maps of where there isn't, isn't internet, business modeling community engagement, not actually the $188,000, for any of the foundations that cares about Detroit, it's not a lot of money, a town the size of Warrensburg, where I went to high school, you're talking about 35 $40,000. This is not insane amounts of money to help those communities move to the front of the line to at least have a shot, then we get to the matching issue, that's a different conversation that we need to look at how we can do that work. But all of it is even if you don't end up getting the money. And this is essentially where connect humanity comes in. Even if you don't end up getting the money from the US government. There are other ways of financing networks, when you look at building, owning and operating networks, they are profitable. They are not unprofitable business enterprises just as Comcast and AT and T do you need to charge that much money? Absolutely not. We're about to release another report that I'm happy to share once we have it done that looks across all of these sort of what we call community connectivity partners or non traditional operators, municipal networks, the broadband cooperatives and other community networks, who are actively bringing high speed internet to everyone and communities that have been digitally redlined by corporate telcos as to poor or too remote to serve. They are incredible. There are a lot more of them than people understand as well. But to give me an example, Ammon, Idaho is one of the sort of poster children in this space in Amman, Idaho, they couldn't get the networks they needed. So the city built its own municipal fiber infrastructure, and then ran an open access model. So they treat fiber like water or electricity, it's run by the public utility, and then that they lease the fiber to anyone who wants to provide service. Last, if I'm not getting my numbers wrong, it's pretty close. Emmons got about 17,000 people, and they have 31 providers competing to provide service over that network, because you don't have to recoup costs. So it's all profit margin. If you're any of the ISPs, you don't have to pay off infrastructure, the city already built it. So it's very cheap for you to provide service. And the result of that is in Emmett, Idaho today, you can get a gigabit reciprocal so gigabit download gigabit upload to your home for under $10 a month. Think about that. When I lived in Oakland, in Silicon Valley, I was paying $80 a month to a telco who shall remain unnamed for 100, megabit down, 40 megabit up, after I yelled at them for not actually providing the service that I was paying for $80 a month for something that was less than 10% As good as what I should have been paying 10 bucks a month for why? Because it's actually incredibly robust infrastructure fiber, when it's in the ground, you've got 5060 years, it doesn't take a lot of maintenance, you don't have to charge people 80 bucks get down. And when people prioritize connectivity, over profit, they can do this. And they are doing it around the world. Those folks haven't had access to capital banks don't know how to talk to them. Again, this is where we come in, where we help educate banks, we help educate communities that they have alternatives. And then we help finance it

Tony Kopetchny  18:33  
digital red lines to I mean, holy fuck, like, can we get past the redlining of people and societies at some point, now we're doing? So I'm curious you because you talked about the network engineer being a person or a position that would really benefit being at some of these cities? But yeah, not a lot of folks are trained for that. But, you know, I sat there and COVID In the beginning, and I thought, okay, we need contact tracers wise, no, Trump was still present at the time. So needless to say, Why would anything? Yeah, but I couldn't we make a globe, like a Health Corps, train people get them doing this, they could do this from home, they could do this a resume, they could do it right. And then you're getting jobs and people are working again, they're not like I just said, you know, maybe the government can't be the place. But would there be a training that we can start putting together so you get these types of engineers? I feel so many people need we all globally, everybody's talking about the retraining? I think you refer to it as the fourth industrial revolution. How are we? Is there any programs like that out there to try to start getting some of these network engineer types that could be available?

Unknown Speaker  19:39  
Starting? Yeah, there are some that are starting up. And that is an area where we're looking to do some investment as well and job training programs because, you know, what we actually do is we work with communities who want to build own and operate their own digital infrastructure so that they can actually ensure digital equity in their community from the ground up and it for that to happen a couple of things. One, we provide the planning grants. So our grant making program supports communities with the sort of consultants, frankly, you know, it's a lot of technical assistance to do that work. We also support the community partners, you know, we don't expect anybody to do this work for free, because you gotta you gotta gather a bunch of data to say, Okay, so these are our options here. And when that when that's done, it looks like a digital equity master plan. It's the combination of technical assessments, a engineering, as I mentioned earlier, talking to the community about what else do they need devices, training, etc? What would it actually take to ensure there was high speed internet to the home for everybody in this community, the tools and skills to use it, and what's the business model that's going to make this work. So when that's done that plan, we then begin organizing the financing. So we've had several communities where that means moving them straight to available government funding. And now we're also starting to make our own investments in that sort of that capital stack that is essentially super low interest construction loans to get going. The but then comes the challenge of who's gonna build this stuff. So this is where we're definitely starting to get into this with a few HBCUs and a couple of HBCUs emphasize. So historically, black colleges and universities and minority serving institutions, looking at job training programs for network engineers, because they're going to be a lot of new jobs out of this. Absolutely. And those jobs aren't going to go away. You know, you've got network engineers, who not only design things, but then you got to maintain networks. It's not like, they break anytime soon, thankfully, especially fiber networks, you know, the, some of the oldest fiber networks are about 50 years old at this point, and they're still working. So they're pretty robust. But, you know, then the storm comes, you know, then there's a fire. And so there's a lot of network maintenance, that happens as well. And yeah, you know, somebody's got to do that work. So definitely, definitely something that we're looking into, there is some federal funding for that as well. But yeah, I got to do it. It's like we got to, you know, build a maintain roads, got to build and maintain fiber.

Tony Kopetchny  22:20  
So I'm gonna take us just to that, I would definitely want to get into megatrends too, because I know, that's something you've talked about. But we get into that in earlier split. I worked in international development for several, many years. And you'd read reports, and it was the LeapFrog because everyone has access to a cell phone now. So what when you hear something like that, and then you're thinking about the world of digital divide? Where does cellular access come in versus access straight to a fiber or the internet node

Unknown Speaker  22:48  
that way? Yeah, well, I mean, there's still a pretty serious divide in cellular access. You know, when you look at 4g, LTE, mobile, friendly internet, or internet friendly mobile, not sure which way that actually goes. But basically, 4g LTE is 2.5 gigahertz spectrum. Most Americans had that in their communities, anywhere from eight to 15 years ago, the US government just made 4g LTE licenses available to tribal communities in the United States 18 months ago. So where most Americans had high speed internet on their phone 510 years ago, tribal communities don't today. So yes, mobile can be great. There are digital divides in mobile, as well. And I think that's something that gets overlooked. But I don't know the last time you tried to fill out your taxes on a smartphone. But I'm guessing you probably didn't. Nor did anybody else. I did know little screens are not good for a lot of things. And yes, I appreciate you know, there's access to information. And then there's the ability to use services online. And these are not the same thing. I think there have been great leaps forward and access to information. We have a partner in the Amazon called RISE America, who uses high speed, sorry, the emergency radio frequencies to do essentially, emergency high frequency emergency radio spectrum to wireless conversions. And what that means is for about 3000 bucks, they can pop up internet connectivity in a village basically anywhere in the Amazon training, including training people how to use it, including the equipment, and then the community is effectively online. Can they do a streaming call like this? No. But can they have email? Can they record a video of somebody cutting down the forest in their part of the Amazon and then send it to somebody? Yes. So they have access to information. But would that be good enough to do a remote medical procedure? No. And so I think there there are these gradations. And yeah, there, the mobile revolution has been amazing for the world. It's helped a lot. Is it the same as being fully online? No. And when you look at the statistics, about, you know, one in two people in the world not being online, hidden within that is the fact that of the people who are online, a good chunk of them are only online through their phone. And that gets you a certain amount of the way, but not all the way. So yeah, I think it's great. But we got a little ways to go still until either everybody has sort of full access to everything that we're trying to do over the internet, eg government services, or governments get really good at making tax reporting mobile friendly. I'm not sure which one of these elaborate first.

Tony Kopetchny  26:06  
I appreciate that, though, because it was, I think, the story line in my head. So maybe I'm not the only one of people who are listening, maybe they felt as to it sounded so positive, that there wasn't as big of a digital gap because of that mobile and brain. But yeah, as you were talking, I'm like, Yeah, I can't have the work I do I need to be on a different device, I'm not going to be doing it on my phone.

Unknown Speaker  26:26  
Yeah, the other thing that gets lost in that is, and there's some foundations who have been, unfortunately, complicit in this requiring, say, farmers to use certain kinds of apps so that they can fulfill their reporting requirements. So hey, farmer will subsidize X, Y, and Z, as long as you use this app so that we have our impact finish or I mean, metrics met. And when that happens, are they subsidizing the cost of data as well? And unfortunately, the answer has been no. And so you're putting farmers in this weird place of will, you know, you're, you're not a wealthy farmer, or you wouldn't be in this program, but we're not going to really pay for your data services. But what am I supposed to do? You know, you're you're asking me to actually take food out of my mouth, to use your reporting mechanism. So yeah, I've got access. But how much do I really have?

Tony Kopetchny  27:30  
Do you think, like that scenario, right, there is philanthropies just not thinking and piecing it together more than correct.

Unknown Speaker  27:40  
Okay. Yeah, yeah, no, and I think, you know, when we, when we look at our organization, our sort of vision or mission, sort of the end state that we're working towards is digital equity. digital equity is defined as essentially a status in which a person would have access to the internet, the tools and skills to use it entirely. And, you know, there are lots of ways of making that language more flowery. But basically, if you think about that is not that requires certain fundamental building points, you have to have internet access. And the Internet access needs to be fast enough and cheap enough, you have to have a device that is functional, you have to have software, and you have to know how to use these things. And you need somebody to train you. If somebody had Oh, and you need a policy environment, a digital rights environment, that in which being online doesn't make you less safe than staying offline. If you had those things, you could arguably be in a state of digital equity, whether you choose to use it or not, you would have the capacities. And a lot of what we've seen from philanthropy over the last kind of 1015 20 years in this space is taking a run at one piece only. Okay, well run it device access, the One Laptop per Child. Sure. Now everyone has a device. Do they have the internet? Do they have electricity? Do they have skills to use it? If they got online? Would they just be surveilled horribly by their government? I mean, there, you can just run out one of these pieces, you really do have to look at this holistically. Otherwise, you're kind of setting yourself up for failure. Does that make the job a little harder? Sure. But I don't know. Would we say that ending hunger is any less of a kind of multifarious challenge? No, I doubt it. Anybody that's worked on hunger would say, Well, you can't just work on supply chain, you have to work on X, Y, and Z. But we still do it. We do it because people are hungry. We need to be approaching this in a way that's a little more mature and robust and holistic because people are starving for information. So, you know. We're growing up in philanthropy, we're bringing I've been there.

Tony Kopetchny  30:01  
It's just I think, somebody one of my questions is, and I've got a quote from you about scenario process design. So I feel like we're getting a touch of how you'd like to work with that and thinking of all these pieces and how they come together. So I'm excited to keep diving into that. And we're just living through such massive transitions and transformations globally right now that it feels anxiety producing a lot of times when you think of all the pieces, but then I think to the point, you're making the bright light there, we do have access to information, we got the knowledge, we know how it could come together, what we need is some willpower now and some focus, maybe yeah, which is, focus can be hard to come by when for those of us that have the cell phones, I keep bringing in telling us to look at it. It's true. So I have this corporate news that I recently find myself dwelling geeking out on scenario design processes examining the role of civil society, philanthropy and infrastructure organizations like TechSoup, in an era of converging megatrends to do you want to talk to the audience, just so they get think just, you know, when you think of scenario, process design, is it everything we've been talking about where you take a step back, and you say, I want to work on digital divide? What are the what are all the pieces? And how does it come together? Is there something else in your thought process when you start working on the scenario process design?

Unknown Speaker  31:23  
Yeah. So I think what I like about scenario work is that it is good at getting people to accept a if done, well, gets people to be humble about the fact that we can't predict the future, that a lot of us sort of think we know what's happening, we're making these strategies, we're making strategies that are generally based on what we do right now, as if that will be relevant, three to five years from now. And I think the world is constantly proving us wrong in that regard. And yet, here we are, especially in philanthropy, not being very humble about the fact that we're kind of making a lot of this stuff up as we go along. And so, scenario design work for me is the, it's helpful in a world that is facing these massive mega trends. As you brought up earlier, climate change. Yeah, the one that I didn't bring up earlier, one that I that I find fascinating is demographic decline. So we have theoretically, we're very quickly approaching peak human, the way that we had Peak Oil, that there will be in not too far in the future, fewer humans on the planet every day than there were the day before. Think about that for a second. Probably around 2040, they keep moving the timeline up India has now gone into demographic decline, Europe has been a demographic decline for ages, the US would be in demographic decline, if it wasn't for immigration, and the all of our economy, our economy is essentially driven by the idea that there will be more consumers tomorrow, that there will be more washing machines sold. But there won't. Because people don't need them. You only need one washing machine, maybe two depending on the size of your family or whatever. But that there'll be fewer humans every day changes everything about the way our capitalist world is built. Okay, that's, that's something we need to think about in philanthropy. What does that actually mean for society, and you throw that into the mix with that, because that alone will change our economic models. It'll change our consumption models, it'll change how we think about structuring economy. That's a big one says climate justice, like everything going on in climate change. So is the fourth industrial revolution. So is the fact that we are apparently unable to govern ourselves in a sort of democratic liberal sense anymore. And I'm not using liberal with a big ol I'm using, like participatory democracy seems to be failing in large chunks of the world, taking us back to something that looks like the 1930s and all the wrong ways. So, you know, if you look at these things coming together, sitting around and thinking that we can predict the future is asinine. Okay. So what do you do about it? Well, you start doing something like scenario design, where you are thinking about the intersection of things that you care about in the world, and what drives those spaces. And what are you going to do if they start going one way or the other? That's a really important thing for people to think about so that we're not caught with our pants down. And I because we can't be we can't afford to be in philanthropy. We can't afford to be caught off guard when things go sideways, or the people that are always going to suffer the most will suffer more. And again, that's just not something that I think any of us should be okay with. So that's why I get I think So into scenario work, because there's some opportunity there to have hard conversations about what might be versus what we want to be and get ready.

Tony Kopetchny  35:11  
So I know so few organizations, at least that I've worked with that really do it at the scale I think you're talking about, they might do scenario planning for a year, maybe like a five year outlook. And sure, I've maybe COVID is changing it for a lot of people here in the States. But I've seen very few do it based on this mega trend idea. And you have said, you know, we're living in the mega the era of mega trends converging. Yeah, how, you know, if, if an organization is going to start taking this on? What does it really look like? I mean, how many scenarios do you is it one mega scenario? Is it multiple scenarios? How often do you update it? Because I think you're, I think you're 100%. Right? You can't predict the future. But you could have been prepared for something like a pandemic, and so on, you know, had something in your playbook maybe is it a playbook? Yeah. Tell me more. What do people do?

Unknown Speaker  36:01  
Yeah, you know, I think you can do them based on different sort of, you could look at them based on things like climate, or digitalization, I think the ones that I've found most interesting are based more on questions about governance, and questions like in a questions about authority. So who will people listen to, in a world where climate is, you know, literally turning up the heat on everything we care about? Who because I think that that question is one that regardless of which sort of mega trend issue you're interested in, who people will listen to, how will we govern? How will civil society be able to live up to its potential as the sort of moral compass that would help humanity navigate through whatever issue with human dignity centered, that that is something we should all think about in civil society, because one of the, I think unfortunate things that has been happening around the world is, as people challenge democracies, they're challenging the fundamentals of the space in which civil society operates, the right to freedom of association, the right to freedom of speech, the right to come together and try to solve problems on our own when governments or the corporate sector failed to do so. That's something that we should take very seriously, if we're concerned about the ability of our space to respond and act. So again, I think you can do scenarios around a lot of different things I, I would probably, I would encourage people to do them about ourselves in a way, and sort of what we think will be motivational who we think will be motivational to humanity. And right now, I think a lot of the the answer on a macro level doesn't look like civil society a lot of the time. And that's something we need to be honest about and work on.

Tony Kopetchny  38:07  
So you do talk a lot about civil society, and its plays its role. I mean, how, how have you seen groups come together in the past, and maybe that we could pull a lesson from from where we're sitting today of how to, I am sitting here in the US, I am sitting here, unfortunately, very depressed state. I have a lot of anxieties, recent things that have been happening. I mean, my wife and I are how do we get? How do we get engaged and how we get more people around us to engage with us to get something going. So you know, what, what's your experience been for civil society to be able to rise up successfully from your experiences?

Unknown Speaker  38:44  
So, I mean, I think it's a, it's a couple of things that that seem to make a bit of a difference. One is having good infrastructure organizations, nimbly is extremely critical. So having organizations who are able to mobilize others able to mobilize funding intermediaries that kind of, you know, a lot of philanthropy, wants to pay, like if I put in $1, here, I get a tree out there kind of thing. And that sort of transactional ROI interest tends to cut out the middleman, the middleman in a lot of parts of the world, the civil society, the rights focus sort of organizations that all they do is stand up for Civil Society, the National Council of Nonprofits, the that kind of organization, when push comes to shove, you need somebody like that, who is able to work across the sector to push back on policy issues to fight for particular policy issues, whatever so you need that community pretty badly. And then crisis Do you know Christ? There's, I can't remember who it might be no Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky 's book, great book for people to read about sort of how to encourage power amongst people who consider themselves powerless. None of us are powerless. And that doesn't mean we haven't bought into a concept of our own powerlessness. But we are not powerless. We have power as humanity and as individual humans to motivate others get things go in. But I think it was in that book, there's a sort of statement that happy people don't change the world. And it's true. If we're all sitting around content, we're not going to go to the streets, we're not going to call our legislators, we're not going to give money to people that need money to fight the good fight on our behalf. We're not going to because we're fine. We've got that extra ski doo. But unfortunately, you know, there times when crisis happens, and then people do get off the sidelines, they need nonprofits there to help channel their anger, or they just do it themselves fine. Like you don't always need a nonprofit to I remember, when Iraq invasion two happened. Doing a little protest. And one of the I was in college and somebody had a sign up about Boehner Bose and because, you know, I've apparently this is a biologist, friend of mine in college, bonobos solved their grievances by having sex. And so like, is sort of like a riff on like a very geeky biology joke about make love, not war. And somebody came up this older individual and gotten our face about protesting wrong, that we weren't doing it right. But they'd been a Vietnam protester. And we just didn't know what we were doing. Come on, give me a break. We were there for the right reason, being angry for the right reasons in a way that was meaningful to us. Were other people paying attention, I don't know, for people paying attention to her at the time, I don't know. But that the the motivation was right. So you don't always need an authority of a nonprofit to do it. But we wouldn't have been there if there wasn't a crisis. And so you know, I think what's happening in America today is going to create a lot of individual crisis of conscience, there are going to be a lot of individuals who are going to have to grapple with the fact that they are that there is a minority of political leadership, that is manipulating a conversation that is going to hurt them. And when it does, they're going to stand up. And things will change. They're going to need friends, they're going to need allies, they're going to need free press, and they're going to need intermediary nonprofits on some level, to provide them some political cover when they get sent to jail. But I don't know, you know, it's a it's a, I think, what I've seen work in sort of mass social change, and I spent, you know, a decade in Eastern Europe working on anti corruption issues working on some very serious things.

Unknown Speaker  43:15  
When there was an actual crisis, things changed. But when times were not that bad, and the nonprofits were saying they're going to be they didn't get the mass movements, then then somebody got hurt. And then there was a movement. So you know, I, I wish that it didn't have to be that way. But I don't necessarily, in my experience, yeah, some policy changes can happen when there aren't crises. But I don't know that you get the sort of deep social sea change until there is and the more people do silly things around laws that actually go against the will of the majority. There's a point where that change will come. And, you know, I hope that it, I hope it's managed peacefully, I hope that it is managed. Well, I don't know that it will be. But you know, I, my family is Quaker, so I go for the peaceful one, if we could.

Tony Kopetchny  44:19  
I hope this helps with you, too. And yeah, my co founding partner, Nate, he's Quaker by race, too. So yeah, we have a lot of the ethos of pacifism within our company here too.

Unknown Speaker  44:30  
Well, and random fact that their Institute for Peace did a big piece of work a couple of years ago. Revolutions, and I'm not a advocate for revolution, but the revolutions of the 20th century, the ones that happen peacefully succeeded. The ones that happened violently five years later, they were under a different kind of authoritarian. So you know, the funny thing there too, was, it only took 3% of the populace by standing up to actually change government 3%, which is good news and bad news.

Tony Kopetchny  45:09  
Wow, that's amazing. That is actually super fascinating. Yeah, I mean, it's, we're talking about crisis as an impetus, burning platform metaphor and change management people always talk about. But with the mega trends, I mean, there's so many happening once, it's pretty overwhelming. I have thought about it before the pandemic, and then through the pandemic, it was hitting me to just what, you know, every nonprofit could be working on everything all at once, like, what's the new movie everything everywhere, all at the same time? What's the role of that vertical specialization still within nonprofits, when everything is kind of converging on it. So there's this group and their focus just on the ocean, but they can't just like the ocean feeds most of the world's population, they get a lot of food from it, and we're not getting that. And then there's plastics, and there's plastic industry, and then it's the economy. And then its governance, like, what it do you think there's a convergence bound to happen in the mission driven sector to where maybe these groups need to get bigger, to be able to handle all of it? Or is it better to have more of them that are doing you know, individual goodness? Do you have any thoughts on? That's

Unknown Speaker  46:20  
a good? That's a good question, I think, I think, maybe more partnerships, you know, it's hard to get bigger without the infrastructure or financing to do so. Whereas creating coalitions is maybe not as hard or not as capital intensive. So I think there's a certain kind of capital restraint on just get bigger, that may be less of a restraint on grow horizontally in partnership with others. I think that's something that will also help people have more kind of clear understanding about the systems that they're operating in. You know, everybody trying to be a specialist in everything is real hard, versus getting a bunch of people who are really specialists to understand the system that they're working in, maybe less hard. So I think there's there's something there. But I also think there's something that we forget about the role of the nonprofit sector being an embodiment of democracy, it with a little tea. So the earlier I mentioned the right, the freedom of association, the right to free speech, the idea that if you are pissed off, that you have the right to stand up and do something about it, because somebody took a swing at your disabled brother, because somebody hurt your African American sister, because somebody killed the dog that was barking all the time, and that dog sucked, but nobody should have killed it, or whatever your issue is that you, as a human have a right to say that was unjust. And I want to try to do something about it, that that energy, of wanting to try to leave the world better than you found it of structurally taking on a pain point, and trying to remove it from society. The right to participate in that is, I would argue, as important as the result. So a whole bunch of civil society, just trying to achieve the mission statement they have on their website or not website, as the case may be, is great. That's motivational. It's an organizing principle, it's an idea. But the fact of organization is how we reinforce the norms that allow it to exist, the ability to practice, civil society, is as important, I think, in what it teaches people about their role as a citizen, and their responsibility as a citizen to do the right thing, as whatever that mission statement has to be. So yeah, I think, again, this is something that I feel we maybe take a little for granted in our space in the US in particular, where this has been less challenged than in a lot of other parts of the world. But at a time like this, where America's sitting around wondering how we could be so irresponsible to so many still, then perhaps we need to reconnect with that conversation, that participatory democracy, the way that we learn democracy and citizenship through participation in civil society is as important or more important than solving problem x itself. We need to solve those problems. And we can do them better together through civil society. Yes, but the process versus the product as something that you can't outsource your conscience.

Tony Kopetchny  49:52  
Yet at least an AI comes in then we can upload our

Unknown Speaker  49:56  
brain try I mean, people try to outsource it by just you know, contributing money to whatever. Sure, yeah, fair. Yes. But maybe don't just contribute your money if you have the capacity to engage do so, you know, get get beyond that. Money is good, though. Don't get me wrong. nonprofits need it.

Tony Kopetchny  50:17  
Yes, yeah, money. Money is a key factor, right? I mean, it is it's, it's oxygen, it's fuel. It makes things happen. It is important, but I really like what you're saying there. I mean, it's the process, not the product. It's the you know, it's the journey. It's not the end state it's we got to do you got to do the thing to be in thing. Not necessarily we're and then nothing ever ends the way you perceive it to be. Dream When you dream it up at start, right. So

Unknown Speaker  50:43  
well, there's there are a lot of fascinating folks working in this sort of political philosophy space that you would compare it to, sort of traffic rules, traffic rules are a social construct, they don't exist, unless we practice them. So the same is true of society. The same is true of all the things that we say we care about in the world. They don't happen unless we actually practice them and reinforce them and learn them through practice. So social justice isn't a thing. It's a concept that is real, because we do it. Not because we talk about it. So that's I think it's an important thing for us to again, just think about in a time where the world is getting harder. And it doesn't get easier by us. Not engaging.

Tony Kopetchny  51:35  
Yeah, I'm listening to a great courses called Big History. And his whole fill out the sorry. Hello, podcast world, that is my daughter walking in. It is summer vacation, and the big history that he's getting into human beings. It's not necessarily where we're at now. homosapiens biological evolution, culture that changes us. It's culture that we that this, like shared knowledge we have that can change things is fascinating. I am feeling really, really inspired by talking with you. I hope others are too it occurred to me when you were talking about the role of the nonprofit sector. They're almost like beacons of justice. And I think coming through the pandemic, I hear it and you read it, and people are tired, or they're worn out, or they're burnout. And she's just like, it's the now's the time not to be like how do we help people get the resilience back to get reinvigorated? Because the work needs to be done now. And I think you're making a strong point to like, just show up. Get into the process. Be there today. Don't be alone. Get out there and make it work. This is. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  52:48  
yeah. Well, and I, yeah, it's funny. One of my colleagues asked me one time on a, she was moderating a panel I was on she's like, if if you're so like, all these big, major issues, these mega trend challenges, how do you have hope in the world, and I have hoped because of civil society. And it's not, as I earlier said, you know, maybe 10 million organizations that are registered on the planet, like actual, like legal nonprofits, great, critical part of the community. But that is a drop in the bucket compared to the overwhelming amount of human response to pain. There's a report out from giving Tuesday this week, that if I remember correctly, 2.5% of the giving, that they were tracking went to an organized nonprofit. Think about that, the other 97 and a half percent of what we call philanthropy, going to community groups, going to friends and family organizing to do something. That's incredible. And that blows the 10 million organizations out of the water, God bless them for all that they do. But I think the point is that like, how many people talk about the US being this, like super advanced, nonprofit society? Sure. There are a million plus nonprofits in the US after a couple 100 years of law that would allow them to form their a million. Okay, that means a million people in the US actually decided to register something over a couple 100 years and how many 100 million Americans and I'm not, I'm not casting shade on the community. I'm saying that it's, it's the tip of the iceberg. And that does give me a lot of hope that when push comes to shove, people will stand up for their rights. And they have under every system of governance that has tried to screw them opposite. So there's a lot of there's a lot of hope. I think it's incumbent upon all of us, especially those of us in organized civil society to fight for people's right to do so.

Tony Kopetchny  54:52  
Dress this has been an awesome conversation. I could probably keep talking to you forever, so I might beg you to come back on first. I can episode eventually. So we can talk some more than I definitely want to get your reports out there. A lot of the work you're doing on the digital divide reminds me of another nonprofit that I really like to their focus was called shoes that fit, they get brand new athletic shoes to kids in need. And then like, that's what I focus on. But the ramifications that ripple out from that, you know, the confidence really kids, the education system can get better the than they can get into more, and get them access to different types of food if they're hungry. And it's I feel it did work to do on digital divide. It's specific, but then it ripples so big into everything that could really start to help us as a society. So thank you for your startup and all the work you're doing, and this great information you're bringing. So as anyone who's been listening knows, we have started a Spotify channel, and I'm glad we ended up with a little bit of hope, Dr. Chris, because my last question to you is, what is your go to song when you need a boost? And why? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  55:58  
you know, it's thinking about that. What many people don't guess looking at my six, three, self is that by my undergrad, I'm a classical flute player. And so a lot of classical pieces that came to mind as like incredible, incredible music, like Beethoven seven movement to just has this swell of emotion to it. That's incredible to listen to. That said, you know, they're also, I was a swimmer, and we always had these warm up tapes with exciting music on them, like, Welcome to the Jungle just gets you going in the morning. You know, I and it's also it's a it's a good thing for us in civil society in the jungle that we. Yeah, get ready. So it depends on the day, it depends on the mood. It might be, you know, something out in the Middle Ages, or it might be something from, you know, Dead Presidents also. Fantastic. So,

Tony Kopetchny  57:07  
thank you. I'm gonna get, we'll get both of those songs. We'll get Beethoven and guns and roses in the Spotify channel. Thank you for your time today. This has been wonderful. I really do appreciate you being here. So thank you. My pleasure. All right. Audience until next time, and Chris, I'll see you later. Sounds good.

Outro  57:29  
Thank you for listening. Join us again for more engaging ideas with your host Parsons TKO CEO Tony Kopetchny. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a comment and share with your friends. Send us your feedback at create change at Parsons tko.com.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai