 Hello everybody welcome to another episode of engaging ideas the Parsons TKO podcast where we like to talk with leaders and luminaries in the mission driven sector so we can get all kinds of ideas and insights to all of our friends here in the nonprofit community. Today, I am delighted to be joined by Mitch Stein, the co founder and CEO of pond. Welcome Mitch. Hey, Tony. Thanks for having me. I'm so happy you're here. I love what you're doing with pond. I think this is revolutionary right now in the nonprofit sector about how we can. Start to really think about how we're finding each other between firms contractors vendors nonprofits and this is really exciting that you're building community around it. I'm ready to dive in. Awesome. Let's jump in. Let's do it. All right, so from your bio. I was reading you seven years, you were seven years in investment banking and now you're a nonprofit community startup sounds like a bit of a transition. Yeah, I feel like we need to dive into an origin story for the superhero moment that's happened here like what made you want to dive into the pond if you will. Yeah, so I was I was an investment banker at Goldman in New York for seven years, I had a couple different jobs but I also kind of in my quote unquote for you time which objectively wasn't a lot of but you know service and and being involved in the industry was important to me and I got really involved with the LGBT Center here in New York City through folks I knew at Goldman and the LGBT network there. And I joined their fundraising event cycle for the cause, which is the Northeast AIDS ride from Boston to New York I had an uncle. I had a brother who passed away from AIDS, and my dad and I ended up joining that ride together. And it was just completely transformative for me as a person for my relationship with my family my dad going to be a part of this community. My uncle's memory, you know he lived in Indiana, the time when he passed away from AIDS in the early 90s. This wasn't something that could be celebrated there was still so much stigma and shame around it all that, you know, almost 20 years later over 20 years later, being able to revisit his memory it was just really life changing for everyone involved. So at from that point on I feel like I was just hooked at seeing how powerful these movements and organizations in communities can really be and so I started spending tons of my time outside of work on fundraising we were raising like over $100,000 a year for this ride. And before I knew it I was kind of like doing my own little development work. Like, I had my donor spreadsheet tracking year over year changes and, you know, email marketing campaign and you know all the stuff that I didn't call it those things but for me it was just sharing stories and trying to raise some money. But realizing I had this big passion for this space, and then also started to learn more about some of the frustrations that came along with the work of like, oh they're fundraising platform didn't work super well or I didn't like how, you know, much it costs donors when they all these transaction fees just different things that were bothering me and hearing stories that they were stuck in a bad contract or they like hated the role platform. And I was like, this doesn't make sense. Why is this the case and I just started getting really curious about it and asking questions of other folks are involved in other organizations and all of a sudden, I felt like I was just hearing the same similar story over and over again of these inefficiencies that were perpetuated by either bad tech, no tech and just the challenges of finding and adopting anything new and the challenges of making changes. And so this just became something I got really obsessed with I started actually a project internally at Goldman where I pitched them on like okay I know there's there's a lot of inefficiencies in this space can I focus on one thing that I have a close connection to and I was like what about banking like can we improve how nonprofits bank and manage their cash and Goldman has these new digital banking products maybe we could customize one for nonprofits. So I went through this whole accelerator process internally, and got all the way to the end I thought that was going to be my new life that I was going to be an intrapreneur there and working on this product. And at the very last step after like all these different pitch rounds that ended up declining it. And so I was sort of just in this weird space or I was like, Oh, now that I've seen the other side, both like personally I was enjoying that and I know there's this big problem out there that needs to be solved. I just couldn't go back I just started to like really be unhappy with my work. And so I made a plan as in five months I'm going to leave I don't know exactly what the business will be but we'll figure something out and so I spent that time reflecting on problems I'd seen and the feedback on why they didn't ultimately invest in that banking product idea was because you know the go to market is just too challenging to like hire a bunch of sales people, and for a big company like us it's just not we'll just keep it in our social impact part of our business as opposed to like part of our real business, even though it is a real business opportunity. And the more and more I reflected on that and the companies that I worked with in my day job as a banker working with lots of online marketplaces and software companies, I was like well the difference is, there is no marketplace even though this is a huge sector, spending tons of money every year, it's the fact that it's so fragmented and disconnected is keeping better providers of products and services out of the market, or the ones in the market keeping them smaller, or unable to like invest in their growth and improvement to the full capacity that they could. And so that to me was the nugget of like, oh well if the go to market is too challenging, maybe if we can find a way to fix that. It's better serving the end customers the nonprofit organizations, and better serving companies that could be, you know, providing better products and services for those organizations. So, that was like the nugget I just kept digging in on and I left with the plan, and five days later the pandemic hit and like everything kind of went out the window. So one of my parents ended up spending two years in Fort Wayne Indiana, feeling like kind of a mad scientist living at home alone, and took lots of twists and turns but that's still, you know, remained what we're trying to do is like can we introduce, instead of trying to introduce one product that is the end all be all or one service, understand the reality that there are tons of technologies and providers out there that can be helping organizations if we can just better connect everyone it will be a great service to the sector. That's wonderful thank you so much for the full origin story there. I took a bunch of notes to I really that's, is it truly how many trillions of dollars is in the nonprofit sector a year in the United States of America it's something phenomenal I think when you look at it in the aggregate. It's over 5% of GDP, and when we've heard through the, the numbers of what what that money is being spent on aside from, you know, building expenses and, and, you know, people salaries and stuff, we calculated that over $370 billion is spent on software and professional services, consulting outsourced services, and obviously all the technology that they're using in the organization so that's a really massive industry that by and large is happening offline like when you ask someone over 75% of nonprofits to use vendors, exclusively based on the recommendation of a peer. So, I mean in some ways like it makes sense why that happens, but that also contributes to the market remaining super fragmented because you're just looking at someone next to you, because there isn't a good way to do trustworthy research that isn't completely overwhelming process, and that's the most effective way to make decisions because that's what your board or your leadership team is responds to best to so we've sort of like trapped ourselves in this cycle of just looking around us and I think that's kept the market from getting better connected and more ubiquitous. I'm getting super excited by a bunch of stuff saying here so I had written down in your the first part you brought it up again but trust reading about it starting to write about it. It's one of these things where I think it was in 2021 and now in 2022 it's top business trend in the US is, and then they put the word trust. What do you really mean by this and it sounds from you know what you're doing with pond is, can we really make a specific marketplace for the nonprofit sector. Right. My company works specifically in the nonprofit sector. Why, because we actually understand the business model. And I think some of this is with something like call out sales force why not everyone knows sales force but like a lot of nonprofits have it the tool wasn't designed for nonprofits at first right and so everyone's trying to fit it into their model or make it work or the tweak it into doing something and it works fine for a lot of groups but I think to your point there really could be a specific market and there are tools out there that do it and then, because the way the nonprofits have looked maybe I love that you know they don't, they don't get as much money so they're not able to grow as much as if they were a private sector, focused tech firm they would be getting series a or B or whatever you call it when you're getting investment rounds but you don't get it as much for groups that are trying to help this. You know, $370 billion a year spend you would think there might be more investment straight some of the technology there I love it thanks this is awesome. Yeah, I mean and there's some other like really interesting market dynamics because you have this philanthropy element right so that you just think about the economics, it kind of throws a wrench into things from traditional companies so you have a lot of founders of these companies that probably wanted to work in the space, not just because they're trying to be the next Jeff Bezos right there like truly want to help. And so you sort of have this imbalance of people trying to start like a lot of people starting companies and products serve the sector because of that good intent. We also are competing with the philanthropic efforts of really big companies that also want to get their products utilized by nonprofits, be it Salesforce or a sauna or Monday like every big tech company that has kind of a, what I'll describe as a small to medium business technology product, once nonprofits to use it, why, because social impact is becoming a bigger and bigger requirement of any big company for their staff, you know, for their investors looking for ESG things for the like cover of their annual report that makes everyone feel good about the technology that they're working on it's like oh well nonprofits use it to, and we have a nonprofit discount and all that stuff but if you think about what this is doing of like supply demand in the market it's creating this like really wacky environment for people to be serving as a vendor, especially if you're focused explicitly on nonprofits. Right. Hmm. So my next question was you know what lessons have you learned the process starting pond I feel like we're diving into that a little bit I mean but yeah in terms of building the company and in the in our warm up here you know you and I were talking about building a network and a community to that needs to be involved and that's sort of what makes some of this stuff work here for pond and in the nonprofit sector so yeah but lessons. What have you learned so far, what do we want to share with us. A few days. No. So long for a podcast talk as long as you want. So the things you brought up like the biggest challenge with any marketplace there's whole books right now there's a really great book called the cold start problem that I studied very intently, which is just funny because there's this people call it chicken and egg or cold start, a networked product, meaning it's only valuable if more than one person is there, zoom right so this conversation wouldn't really mean much if it was just me talking right it's it's we both need to be here to get the true value of zoom. That's a really simple example then you have things like Airbnb where like, okay well if there are no homes there I have zero utility as someone trying to rent homes. I don't have any of these marketplace models and then, and so what the book does is walk through probably 20 different examples of how company has got over the hump of that like empty room problem or cold start problem and there is just no right answer it is seemingly impossible until something works. So there's just sort of this constant experimentation of like what gets everyone there. What is the hard side of our marketplace, where we need to focus more of our energy, what keeps people there keeps engaged. So just learning about how, and we just experimented so much over the last two plus years of like every from both from product and like content. What is it that works for people and like user experiences and wouldn't say that we have it cracked but we've found a couple things that have been successful have definitely been whenever we are leaning into things that build trust with the audience like the hard side is definitely the nonprofit side, I mean the vendor side is relatively straightforward. They want to find new customers and if you can bring new customers to them that are the type of customers they want then like they're all in to give it a try and that's like a very straightforward part of their business. And nonprofits like this is a real this is so much more complex of like, I don't necessarily know if I'm in the market do I know if I'm doing something wrong or I could have a better vendor or like when we should shop so there isn't still cut and dry. They need that the space moves at the speed of trust is something that someone said to me, like probably a year ago that I think about all the time that in a startup you want to be moving really quickly and especially in a marketplace you want to be growing that audience really fast. And you just move at the speed of trust in this space and that you have spent all of your time trying to build that and I think things that we've experiment with that have worked well, have been just creating really valuable content and just for people to connect. And we started testing some like live panel discussions that we do on LinkedIn and we were going to like hundreds of people coming to these things, and just clearly really hungry for some of that connection, and really wanting to feel like they were in this with their peers. And so I think a lot of that trust barrier comes from people feeling isolated in their work so often I mean even if you're so many people are at small nonprofits where they're wearing tons of hats so they inevitably are kind of the only one charge of solving a bunch of problems which is really isolating. But even if you're at a big organization you're always like everyone's always trying to do as much as they can with as little resources possible right that scarcity mindset really pervades the space. Everyone, even if you're at a large organization feels somewhat isolated in their roles, I think. And so they're really looking for those ways to connect with others learn bro. And then that's when they're comfortable to start questioning things with you or within the product to say like, well yeah actually I'm like, not totally sure we are doing all the right things with our fundraising event and we need to talk to a consultant or like maybe we aren't being effective with our grant writing do we need a new grant writer that's external or is it really time to think about a new CRM like whenever these those bigger questions come up you really need to be in a safe space to be able to ask them and trust that you're you know going to get valuable answers. And I think that is the most important lesson is like everything we do needs to go through that lens of is this trust building and trust building and valuable because it doesn't really they trust you but it's like well this isn't helpful. Like, you know, I'm too busy to pay this any mind but if it is genuinely helpful, even though everyone's really stretched for time, people really make time for things that they're going to find helpful I think there's a hesitation to bother people or like, oh they won't want to attend this thing live they're too busy to join a webinar for now or during the day. If it's something they really need help with they're starving for that help. And so you don't underestimate that people will take the time when you're doing it right. Oh, that's awesome. I was, yeah, I wrote a bunch of things here I was thinking to just for for nonprofits anyone listening from that space. One thing they've always talked about through the years that I've been doing this how do we connect better with the audience what we really do and I really like that idea I mean maybe they should just be doing a live. It's not about let me just this is just a message I'm always sending to you or this is just the event about the latest report or the facts we have it's like, I actually want to listen to you people who care about my cause and tell me what you think how do I get you more involved how do I like lure you not lure you in but get you trusted with me and you feel a part of it you know it. People feel that when somebody you know if I got $10 now I care more about this but then if I was actually able to talk to somebody there. You know that might might go a long way to help. I think what I really enjoy when I hear it most to and just talking to you and seeing what you're building is in the nonprofit sector. It still needs to run like a business. And I think a lot of the times with the technology or the outreach or did do we need this. There's a few things that affect it right there's generally a higher turnover rate. I think for staff that comes through there's not a lot of knowledge management that happens in transferring and then they say they need a new system and then the leaderships like well why it's like we check the box and we have that thing already. And then you're trying to internally articulate why it's not exactly right and you're having a hard time figuring that requirement out and then you just at that point you're like, I guess I'll just keep using this thing. I like that you're you're creating a space for people to be able to come together and you can't you're like I really need to figure out because this isn't the right fit. What's out there. I mean that's fantastic. Yeah, I mean, definitely we've definitely seen that our super users are super fans tend to be these people within an organization where they do meet that resistance right where they like they are the kind of person that looks at something. And it's like, I think this could be better. You know, I want to figure out how this could be better. That is such a gem of a person to have on staff. And I think when they're meeting resistance oftentimes that's why there is a lot of turnover is like to your point exactly if it appears to be too big of an uphill battle to just make positive changes because we're too stuck in our ways. There's I have a limited amount of fight in me to fight and people will just kind of move on to a place where that instinctive theirs is better received. So wait, I mean we've definitely seen that happen and and I would say two of the other lessons that we've learned are, I mean, I came into this, obviously a passionate person about nonprofit work but never to say me, Mitch Stein, I know everything about nonprofits so like let me design this thing and tell everybody to do. And, and I think that attitude has been really helpful. I mean, sometimes you just can't get away from it. Yeah, I've had kind of like nasty people are nasty grams be like well I don't know what you're doing here you've never worked in nonprofit. Everyone's while it happens. Okay, just kind of have to brush it off, but tons of other people have been like I'm so glad that you're re examining things because we so often are too stuck in our ways and it's really valuable to have someone with a different perspective. Come in and question things in a respectful way where I'm also just, I always have to be asking questions about everything we do, and not making assumptions. And when I don't I constantly get reminded like, oh no we need to make sure we're touching base with our users and I think that goes to what you're saying like a lesson for nonprofit work as well that you just need that constant communication with your audience that you're trying to engage be your donors, or people in your programs that that's a practice that you really hone in product and the other thing that I definitely think lots of nonprofits can benefit from. And the other thing is that we learn lessons, all the time for how our company should run from nonprofits, like, in the podcast that we host with nonprofit leaders called were it's kind of tongue in cheek to say so often nonprofits are looked at as like, oh, you should run more like a business. And I know that like that is correct like that there is a business to be run around this nonprofit but it's often spoken in a kind of meaning way or like kind of like making this false comparison between the two. And so often, and especially people that come into the sector from the business world or on the board that are from the business world that are like well this is what we do in my company or this is what we've done and so let me tell you how it works. I think there should be way more back and forth learning. So one of the questions I ask every single person our podcast is like, if you were in a room or when you're in a boardroom for a for profit business like what would be the lesson you want them to learn from your nonprofit work, because there's actually a tremendous amount that we've learned about things we can do in our company that I think more and more companies could be listening and I think more nonprofit leaders should be on for profit boards. And that we too often underestimate the value of the lived and worked experience of people in the sector. I agree with you yes and I do I feel that too yeah it's it always comes off a little demeaning like, oh you're not doing it the way the private sector does, you should be doing it like this it's like we're not the private sector. There's not there's not a single bottom line to rally around right there's we have a different thing we're chasing as metrics and what we're trying to achieve as an organization and yes we need money and to be able to manage it but it is very different than I just got to hit this quota at the end of q4. I mean I think the way to get to get to a similar outcome with without sounding demeaning or. You know, because it just turns people off to like I came to work at a nonprofit to not be in the more profit sector so like, well you know that kind of close your ears up, but it's more like hey get let's get specific, what do you mean by that. You know, and I think that helps getting away from generalities and getting specific and then providing examples that are also in their context. So it doesn't have to be more like a business you're like, hey, well, you know, XYZ nonprofit on the street did XY did this to change their operations and increase their visibility and flow and like you can understand why that's valuable in the nonprofit setting without it needing to be a black white comparison between the for profit nonprofit sector, while getting to the same point. So so what are some of the things you've heard on your while you're doing your podcast and we'll definitely make sure there's links to everything you're talking about here and show notes for everyone hopefully get them over to your podcast to. Yeah, what are some of the when you ask that question like what are, is there a trend in the responses. I mean, I think they're very often is like better. Plenty of nonprofit leaders nonprofit organizations who kind of have to prioritize their staff experience more than a for profit company, because they aren't able to pay like massive bonuses that sort of help people forget the other bad parts of their job. So if they're doing it well they really do have to think about their staff and care for them and oftentimes their staff, it has a lot of overlap with the audience that they're serving. And I think that is a really interesting frame when it comes to like people management so that I'm just the LGBT Center in New York where I also got to interview the executive director there. You know when there's things that happen that you need to care for your community, you're also caring for your staff and by and large, you know over 80% of their staff also identifies as LGBTQ plus. And so it's like if there's something traumatic that happens in the community. It's also traumatic for your staff. And I think that's true for a lot of specially social justice organizations. I think that those sort of like people management lessons are huge where that like caring for your people and the impact that has has been really powerful. I think that the understanding mission and like engaging community is big and something that not very many develop like a real community of their audience. That's really unique when you see that at a company where people have this like in when you had mentioned an example of Patagonia earlier but the you know people that are, you know, die hard Patagonia they understand they're connected to that like environmental mission of the company, but that's pretty rare that people experience brands and companies at that like missional level, whereas that's like you have no choice as a nonprofit that is like 100% of what you do. So I think that's where a lot of people have lessons to learn and lessons to share. And then I also just think not being so simplistic of single bottom line is the only thing that we focus on but having the ability to hold more complex and multivariate outcomes as success is another thing that nonprofits have to do really well, which is hard like it's just more complex and I think that's what a lot of people miss what comes up a lot in the podcast interview and like, yeah, it, people do kind of think you, you know, someone in the nonprofit world couldn't make it if they in a in a for profit business like there's this sort of like false dichotomy again of people at work in the space and it's like actually it's arguably harder in so many ways and more complex and by the way, we're tackling problems that like are falling through the gaps of societies that other people can't solve including your company. So like we are, we are tackling harder bigger problems, often in our communities, then even like the government or these big companies in the area so I think that sort of under appreciation of the complexity of the work comes across a lot. Thank you for that. Yeah, I can see that coming through you, you had used a phrase earlier me use it again, the challenge of change. And I think even just that last statement there you know everything is really hard and complex and dealing with these heavy issues that you do feel involved with. It's hard to pull your head up to to just get out of the day to find the camaraderie and the community to realize everyone's going through these similar challenges and I think that's something. You know, I want to ask you a little bit about what you hope on is going to achieve over the long term but I think there is something to be said about the community you're striving to build where people can step up away from the day to day just a little bit and then I'll talk about that tech problem they're having and see that other people have it is what I have found in my career change management's a lot of what we do and we did a report, we're trying to do this content study and really what it turned out, we talked to everyone was like, Well, I don't think we're doing that great but I just really want to know what everybody else is doing. And because they don't really have the time to get up and see their colleagues that aren't in the same org and then start to think about a community wide and nonprofit sector ads or solving things so I just yeah I mean what impact do you hope on is going to have over the long term. Yeah, I think something you just brought up there that we've seen a ton that is unique about the space is kind of this camaraderie amongst people working in this space. You definitely don't you know if I'm just, I don't know working in like enterprise sales and at one company and, you know, I meet someone that works in enterprise software sales to another company. There's there's not necessarily this like hindered, we're in this fight together you probably feel more competitive. And I just think there's this really unique sense of people in this in the nonprofit world and social impact world of like we kind of have this shared mission, even though we're all focusing in our lanes. We have this connection of choosing to spend our valuable professional time tackling these really seemingly insurmountable problems. And because of that, you just find people's willingness to help each other much higher and I think that is a really important for community building, but I do think there has been the communities that I've come across are either localized. So they're within literally a local community, which I'm none of these are bad things it's just like evidence of the fragmentation of the sector so you've got like local community groups, maybe at an industry level so within a certain like sliver of the nonprofit sector like all the folks that work at aquariums might like each other or be in a group around the space. Otherwise, there isn't that sort of central gathering place where people are connected around shared issues as opposed to just I'm in this geographic location or work in this like sub sector of the nonprofit world, even though there's tons of crossover between those different sub sectors in terms of their operational and business needs. So that is what I think there's a lot to capitalize there on of like okay if we can bring this into a more universal platform. Can we start to really develop and hold up for people. The examples of problems encountered and how they're solved and what's working well and get to a more universal catalog of best practices and good outcomes and what does success look like in the sector. You're just, there's your it's it's about like avoiding bad outcomes, because I don't think people really have a good definition of what success looks like, like, you'll you know there's raising more money, and you can see that on their, you know, big organizations tend to get a lot of attention of like oh they're successful so we should do what they do. But I think if there's a way to get down to clear and more consistent definitions of success. When you're doing these using new technology using a new vendor new service provider, these things are really scary and intimidating, you can standardize both the process for acquiring or procuring those new vendors and also understanding good outcomes. I just think that makes both the the the search and decision process, and also the like funding or budget decision process so much easier I think a huge contributor to why this is the change is so hard is there just is no standard. And so it tends to be so finger in the air what did someone else do really ad hoc and with this happening and occurring in a similar fashion in so many places around the country we know this we know that just 10s of thousands if not hundreds of thousands these purchase decisions are happening every year in isolation. And I think everyone will be helping each other by bringing this into a central place. And beyond that, like, you know, long, long term, just like we talked about earlier, I think we have to start with a space dedicated to nonprofits, but I really see the broader world converging around impact. And so I think that there's going to be a time when it's about like what are the highest impact solutions, because that's what a nonprofit's looking for at the end of the day that is different and how they purchased from a business. And so I do sort of feel like having a space that is all about identifying and holding up solutions and use cases for things that are driving impact is also when you just where the world has to go right like it can't we can't isolate impact to nonprofits that we have to expect that of every organization that's operating. And I see this in the startup world today it's like if you don't have a like reason if you don't have a mission, like a positive outcome and externality what you're doing aside from just making money. It's actually pretty hard to get funded and interest in it. And so I genuinely believe the world is heading towards centering impact as a part of every business organization. Yeah, I mean, I wrote down a bunch of stuff a lot of thoughts which are talking there just the whole operation of business model within the nonprofit space and for nonprofit organizations. I mean, a lot of stuff is driven with how they're funded then what the grant makers asking for and what's in the grant. And then a lot of times it's, you know, I've had talked in other episodes about this there's that tax for the communications and fundraising team that has to come out of the programs funds because 501 C threes want to keep overhead air quote low to a certain percentage I forget what it is like can't be more than 10% 20% by to remember I was working in house I've worked in houses several nonprofits and I asked somebody where does that number come from like is that real the IRS check this they're like, No, it's just a standard we all feel safe by that we won't get but I'm like you have to have infrastructure and operational teams to run on profit you shouldn't be the afterthought so I think there's a little bit of when you get the money for that project finally or that system. It's like there's extra weight on you because now everybody in the organization staring at you is a the system is going to touch everybody in the org they got you the money for that year to get it done and like, all the pressure is just on you, like, I felt I'm speaking from personal experience and some of the nonprofits I worked at. I felt that pressure internally right and you had to deliver and you had to make things up and then on impact to I think I like the way you phrase it better is outcomes like what are the outcomes are because a lot of times Grant makes just say and now I want to impact report, but I don't tell you what metrics they don't tell you what they're really looking for they don't tell you what signals they assume along the way would be positive signals to see I think there's something else you're you're talking about there too with the standards and like where's the, I feel like we need playbooks. Like, these are the set these are the playbooks we're seeing for what's happening in the space how could that fit to you because you know there's a whole thing about benchmarks people love benchmarks I want to know what everyone else is doing but like, benchmark doesn't necessarily apply to you unless it's an exact one for one organization to what you're doing other than that it's like, I guess that's happening in the industry but you just benchmarking against yourself where it was like you could have playbooks. Hey, these are the types of systems tools and this is what they do this is why you would use that. And now let's figure it out. So yeah I mean I love where you're moving all of this I think it's exciting conversation for me I could riff for hours on the operational I mean, when you when you brought up playbooks I think that is really smart because one of my favorite quotes I have no idea who to attribute it to but there, it's that there's no such thing as good advice there's only great stories. And I think that's what you're getting at and that every nonprofit has their own unique situation. And the problem is they look to someone they know and like oh this work for them and I'll just use that, because it's, it's hard to do the alternative well of, you know, assessing exactly what's all out there and what meets your needs specifically but I think if you have clear stories, like you said you know, playbooks frameworks, where you understand how different solutions have worked for different problems people are have been able to solve. Now I can apply that through the lens and context of my own situation to make an informed decision without, you know, 100 hours of work. That would be amazing. And I think that's what we would love to continue building is like as more and more people are finding their, you know, solutions to their problems through the pond platform. We are building this library of playbooks for different types of organizations and problems to be able to look at and be like, Oh, well that's when you can use this or this work for similar kinds of organizations and have that repository to be able to hold up what what again what success looks like like what good, what's possible. That is something that a lot of people don't know if you haven't maybe if you've been in the same organization for a while, you've always worked at similar organizations. It's hard to like see beyond that to know what's possible. And I, and I think that being more visible. It happens with community that happens when you're better connected with your peers and their settings and have that space to understand other people's experience and not settle. I think that's huge. Yeah, yeah, I've been thinking a lot to coming through the pandemic I mean, excuse me, any bit of a status quo that was out there I mean, this is the moment of change and transformation it is, but it's thrust upon you in a way where it's unavoidable. It only amplifies the discomfort and it amplifies the sense of urgency, coupled probably with anxiety because you're trying to figure out so many things at once right now like, are we going back to the office, do we have an office where do I hire people from what does that look like and then Oh my God, everything is digital. I am way behind. I've got to ramp this up. You know, and I just think there's a lot happening there and I think the more people to your point can get out and just talk with each other and realize hey I'm not in this alone. This is happening. Let me look up a little bit. But the industry is changing status quo is not getting anybody anywhere at this point from what we've come through. You know, switch just, you know, I mean a little bit may change up a little bit but to get just a little bit of the procurement process for for nonprofits, you know, I think you've made it a point earlier right the nonprofits a lot of times you have board members who've only ever been private sector and then you've got different groups and you know, even the government has tried to figure out how to contract faster. They're legally bound to certain things. I'm curious how are you reaching out to nonprofits and educating them about any of the downsides of a typical RFP process or what they could be doing as they start to maybe look for consultants or different groups or different technologies in a way they haven't before. Yeah, and this is something that we're actively working to improve based on feedback from folks out there is like the RFP process is a requirement without any standards. You know, even big organizations, they'll just kind of repurpose all this the last RFP we use so someone go like fill this in and and then we'll just put it out there and whoever reach grade and they'll post it on social media maybe or on our website. And so the problems with that RFP structure are many fold. It's very time intensive, right because you're kind of like figuring it you don't have a standard to go by and so you're, you don't actually know if this is all the information you need, but you don't want to waste too much time on it. And so a really, really lengthy RFP which they tend to be sometimes that's done without having total clarity of what you really need. So you're boxing the responses, your responders into something you predetermined as your need or the outcome, but maybe you don't actually know your outcome yet. That can limit the ultimately who you're engaging with and what you're getting out of it. It also tends to gather a lot of information that maybe you don't need and so you might be wasting a lot of time from vendors, which ultimately just drives up the price of what you're what you end up getting because they have to spend time on applying to those things. Not to say that they like, oh the vendors something but like it does ultimately impact them. And the last thing is just the process of like posting and getting responses to RFPs tends to be limited to your existing network or like second order network that you reach, or really big firms that pay someone to be scraping the internet to find RFPs somewhere, which is typically not in reach for smaller organizations. And so then the last thing I'd point out is we are woefully bad in the space about supporting minority and women and businesses, because there is, they tend to be newer or smaller. And there's this risk aversion in a space where you we put an outsized amount of importance on how long the company has been around. You know, you've got like time wasted, things becoming more expensive, and then like not really aligning to pretty much anyone's mission by kind of leaving out this like social gender racial equity component that they could be supporting in the process. So what we've tried to do within the pond platform is to number one have a place that is accessible to any vendors and, you know, also being able to flag vendors being able to flag their own identity of being, you know, a diverse, owned or run business, which I haven't seen in other places. And so it's totally accessible. And we just ask a couple simple questions to get you started. And I think it's more in line with what some people are for to as an RFI or request for information, where like, you know, you don't need to start with the giant formal, you know, 50 question long RFP. And if there were a simpler way to get quick responses and a quick vetting so you're able to list acute a few key pieces of information about your problem and what you're looking for. You can actually ask a couple vetting questions all directly within the platform. So, you know, you could respond and be like, Hey, I think it would be a great fit for this project. Here's what we do. You know, does it, you know, just to clarify, are you looking for this offering and like so both sides are able to save so much time but just asking a few questions might be like hey actually we don't need to get on a call. Like it's not the best fit and then you save different time or you don't have to fill out, you know, a massive RFP when it's really wasn't going to be a good fit for you all. And so I think there's a ton of efficiency there and also avoiding an assumption that you figured everything out. Now, I think there are some requirements when you work this is what we're learning about from our users and trying to build around is like, if we take government money, there are certain requirements for like how we run our process and where things are posted. And so we've talked about like, okay, can we add just like an upload of an RFP document if you need to have that out there for people as reference. You know, so I think that's something that'll be helpful but it gets back to the way things have been done. Like you said, sometimes the requirement sometimes it's just like a bit of a status quo, but I think pretty universally, almost everyone I've ever talked to views the RFP as a four letter word, you know, like a negative thing. So we've even talked about like, can we even use that term is that just going to people just not even want to hear about it at all. Because it just feels like if you can, if we can leverage this platform and network to make that more efficient for people and also achieve more of their impact goals even in their vendor search. You know, I think that's a huge win for everybody. Thank you for that. I mean, I was shaking my head emphatically on the outsized weighting of size of an org, you know, or 10 year of the org, and it really does exclude a lot. And for smaller orgs, even like mine, I mean, some of the groups I've worked with, talk about how they really prize working with smaller firms and then they ask you to up your insurance and they ask you to do all of these things as if, you know, we're 500 person company. We're just not. And so sometimes that gets tough too. And there's probably summer in the middle. It's interesting to hear you're talking about like, no, the RFP I think has a the intention is good behind it. Like this could be open and anybody can come and I should get the most favorable price and be able to see what happens. And then I often find though there's so much detail lacking I think to the point you were making. You know, I've worked in house like I mentioned before to few and it was like, do you put a price in here or not. And it was like, if you don't put a budget range in I mean, gosh, you get things all over the board. And that doesn't help you either. Now you're weeding through so much to try to find and get to one or two that felt like they were within your range. People get really sensitive about that. So I just, you know, I'd pitch for anyone like it's okay to put a budget range in, like it's really going to help everything move a little faster. And you're still going to be able to get a fair price out of it. No one's trying to gain you for it. And I'd say to just getting help and getting focused, you know, I think that goes a long way too. Because sometimes I think to your point, an RFP gets released, it's massive, they want everything under the sun in it, but they don't really know what it's supposed to be at the end when the outcome comes. And so it's really hard to get there when our fruit to fruit comparison of whatever people are submitting because you could get a wide range of potential solutions then if that outcome is not as defined. Yeah, I feel like the other thing that we don't necessarily have an answer for yet, but when your process is an RFP, it's like this really massive undertaking that takes forever to get started. And I just wish there people would leverage something like pond to just be like, Hey, we're like contemplating a new website, but like, I don't have my RFP yet together I don't necessarily know what to look like. I'm just curious, right and just using that as a chance to have some question have some questions answered, and it could be from a few vendors but like they're just going to be helpful because they see this all the time. And so to your point is that using that as like a first step before it's a formal process to make sure that your formal process is well informed, and that ultimately takes you less time because you're going to be more specific. And I just so often see people that are like, Oh, no, well, we're not starting that search to look you for or, you know, my, I guess I'll have to check with my boss and it becomes this like big bureaucratic process and it's like, if you know you're going to be responsible for this. It's much sooner, start just getting those questions answered and it'll ultimately save you a ton of time and get you to a better outcome. Yeah, love it. I think, yes. Yeah. And I think that's the one thing that gets missed for any firms that are to do listen to this podcast just you to realize to internally, I think to Mitch's point it's a long time and work that went into that RFP when you finally see it. So people are already three months into the zone of trying to produce this and they're trying to move as fast as they can. So they're already carrying a lot of that weight into some of those conversations. So I think just so everyone can keep that top of mind when you're having a more broad for the community and I'm fascinated for these answers from you, you know, what trends are you seeing in the nonprofit space based on your conversations. And I know you have a lot of them. So I'm really curious, you know, are there are their trends and like worries or hopes or frustrations that you're hearing right now. There's definitely a lot of anxiety about economic outlook and what that's going to do. We were just talking to this on a team call this morning. Someone made the comparison to chicken little feels like, you know, it's been a pretty good and strong fundraising environment for pretty long time. It's like everyone kind of has a sense like when is it going to go wrong. And so I just think that creates a bit of anxiety among people so I would just generally say that to be mindful of that. For anyone listening who either with your teams, or for vendors that are working in the space that that just is like a bit of an overhang and worry for people right now. And so I've definitely heard a lot about that. Like I said that the people that come to pond tend to be the like agitators for change that's why they're there they're either interested in learning or interested in doing something new. I definitely see people because of the tight labor market. Those people don't stick around if they're not getting heard and listened to. And so we've seen people changing jobs and moving to new roles where they feel like they're going to be able to have that impact they know they can have. So I think, you know, honestly, it's a lot of empowerment for people in this space which I think is is exciting. And there's a lot of issues in the like individual person experience working in the nonprofit world around pay and benefits and and all that kind of stuff which you know we isn't really the topic of this conversation but I think a big theme that is changing because of this mobility created for people in the sector to, you know, work remotely or be in different organizations and that they're they're not locked into any one organization and that they have so much more flexibility so that's definitely a big one is how are we retaining those people for sure. On the technology front, I think during the pandemic, there was just sort of this forced disruption of everyone's process everyone and some people, you know, maybe they had made a bigger digital transformation and so they were well set up but by large, most people had to make some sort of technology changes, adopting new software like there's just been a lot of change that's happened in the past two plus years. And I think that now there's a bit of space to like be a bit more intentional with like, okay, we made a bunch of fast decisions or made a bunch of these changes, like what is going to be the long term picture for us and is now, maybe we're in a good place to think about like a broader overhaul of our core serum system or our overall website like I've heard a lot of that like people feel like things the dust has settled enough to think longer term. And so a lot of people coming to us with that kind of framing which I think is exciting like they're they're just better informed now they've tried things. They've done things with their priorities they feel confident about the outlook of now what the new normal looks like, and able to make some of those longer term decisions. The last piece that I would just throw in there is, I think that the, the kind of racial justice awakening that happened around George Floyd's murder in 2020 is like very much still a process but I is still something that whenever we post conversations where we are centering that it is the most popular content and event that we do. And so I would just employ and we've done a lot of interviews and studies with people around how that intersects their priorities with vendors. And so I would just implore folks in the vendor space to be mindful ways that you can avoid turning people off by not appearing to have a good grounding and understanding in your own company for racial and social justice if those are the kinds of organizations you're going to be working with. And I think that historically people put up with it. You know if they just their vendor they just had lower expectations of their vendors of being at mission aligned at a deeper level. And I think that that is definitely changing and it's something that we are also working on some different partnerships around like how can we help empower vendors to better meet those needs as well of organizations. I love that phrasing mission alignment. I mean that that feels right across the board like what you're saying there too. I mean maybe they're I like the long term thinking is coming back. And I think the shock of the pandemic probably helps with you know I talked about the difference between spinning and pivoting earlier but you can have a long term plan. If you know there's going to be there's likely to be shocks and things are going to happen and how you know having the ability to understand how you pivot when you need to pivot why you need to pivot. What's going on and I think to sum all that to write the systemic change that has to happen every part of our country let alone just within the nonprofit space and I'm happy to see a lot of in this sector that we work in the leadership that's coming out that I think a lot of private sector companies start looking to the work that's being done. I think on the racial justice equity and the movement here in the nonprofit space I do think we're leading which is great. I'm seeing a lot coming from the foundations things that they're asking for to so a long term thinking to take the system change inside of it, and that discomfort of change management transfer major like it's all here. And so it's like, we're putting it all back together and hopefully we're doing it the right way. Yeah and I think it's it is a clear understanding of the fact that your spend as an organization, and the vendors you work with. It's a part of, you know needs to reflect your mission as well. I think we're on the cusp of people having a better understanding of that I was chatting with someone local here in New York City who's worked on an effort of that locally and as they interviewed the nonprofits in New York spend like $75 billion a year on that could be going to different vendors and it's like 99% of the spend is going to white male owned businesses or something you know really offensive. And as they dug into especially the large organizations which obviously account for a larger percentage of that, the primary decision makers tend to be the COO and CFO, and the vast majority of them were, you know, older white cis straight men. And it's like, well, the other networks are going to be similar to them and all these things that contribute to it so like, I think we're just starting to have a greater realization of that as a component of the work is all the partners we work with because every nonprofit is working with vendors like it's a core component of running your organization. And so it's definitely a miss to not be mindful of where that can be, you know, completely mission aligned to. Yeah, thank you for that reminder. That's really wonderful. So anyone has been listening for a while I'm going to have one last final question for you much before we get there you know join pond.com. And we're going to get a link to your podcast which you had said was called the kids table. Yes, and heck, I assume LinkedIn is a great way if anybody wants to find you and reach out to you. Yes, I am as loud as one can be on a written platform. So definitely reach out love to connect or chat there. I'm on it way too much. But I love it. I love LinkedIn. I really like LinkedIn too. So yeah, I see you on there a lot. So if anyone's listening is interested, they'll give you a reach out but to get to our last question here, what is your go to song when you need a boost and why man, I have a really really soft spot for Florence and the machine and their song dog days are over I just think is like the most energizing song. I was my favorite genre of music I describe as dance around the kitchen music, which I think is it's different from like dance like dancing at a club it's like silly just kind of like throwing around with your family. And that to me is like quintessential that version you're just like jumping up and down so for me. I love dancing and there's a very specific kinds that you do when no one's around. And it's just like a fun song to throw yourself around. And I think that gets my I will do that sometimes I work at home by the way, just like the middle of the day. When I need a boost. That's awesome. Thank you for sharing that it's a dancer in the kitchen is very good. I can, we do that in our household. So yes, that happens a lot. It was more referenced to where I grew up in my apartment here in New York City my dance would just be like in place. Thank you so much for everything and your time today and all the thoughts and ideas you shared with us. I always enjoy talking with you, Mitch. I might have to have a follow up on this one too. Maybe in a little while, but thank you. And I'll see you next time. Thanks so much for having me Tony.