 Welcome to the non-profit show. We are so glad that you are spending your money with us. That's right. Yes, yes. Because Friday gets all the fun and Monday gets all the bad raps. So we're going to switch that mindset and make it positive. So glad to have you here for another episode of the non-profit show. Today, Julia and I are thrilled to have our guest in the hot seat, Laura Bullock. And she joins us as CEO and founder of Hopes Crossing. Laura's here to talk to us and you're going to meet her, the non-profit CEO, what it takes to lead women towards success. So stay with us. We have a couple of housekeeping items to take care of. But first of all, if you haven't met us yet, where the heck have you been? Just kidding. Julia Patrick is here, CEO of the American Non-profit Academy. I say this all the time, but I'm so grateful, Julia, that you had this grandiose idea back in March of 2020 to create this platform. And I'm Jarrett Ransom, your non-profit nerd, CEO of the Raven Group, honored to serve alongside Julia day in and day out as the co-host of these episodes. So we've produced nearly 800 episodes coming up soon, thanks to our amazing sponsors that allow us these unscripted opportunities. So a huge shout out to the Bloomerang American Non-profit Academy, your part-time controller, non-profit thought leader, fundraising academy at National University, staffing boutique, non-profit nerd, as well as non-profit tech talk. Again, thank you to these companies. They trusted us before we even quite knew what we were doing back in March of 2020. But many of us, many of them have actually been with us from the very beginning and we're so grateful to have their ongoing support. And as I mentioned, so many episodes for you to go back and watch or re-watch or share. So you can find us on streaming broadcast platforms. You can find us on a podcast platform for those of you that are just purely auditory. And then the latest and greatest is Julia grabs her smartphone, is you can download the app. And queue up the non-profit show wherever you choose to absorb. I'm going to use that word, all of this information, because there's so much free content and it's really, really solid. So again, thank you for joining us today, our guest. We are so glad to have you here, Laura. Again, for those of you watching and listening, Laura Bullock, CEO, founder, hopes crossing. Welcome, Laura. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm glad to be here. Yeah, well, start us off. If you would, first of all, I love the logo. It's beautiful. Tell us a little bit about yourself, Laura, and a little bit about hopes crossing. Wonderful. I can certainly do that. And first, let me just say that that logo was a design from my husband. He thought that he knew all things, hopes crossing and all things. Laura Bullock. And so he designed this and said, this is a representation of not only you, but the work you're going to do. So I often thank him for that. He's past now, but the logo lives on and I love it and it works well. And it's really a nice brand and people tend to really resonate with it. But a little bit about myself. I am a native Phoenician. I've been here all my life, never left. And just absolutely love the Valley of the Sun. But I have to admit that this year I've decided that this summer is just too much. And so I'm going to be taking a page out of Jared's book. And I'm going to find me a winter place to enjoy. But as it comes to hopes crossing, this is a passion of mine for quite some time. I've been really passionate about helping women become the best version of themselves for over 20 years. And finally in 2010, I was really not doing well medically. And God has a way of putting you in a position where you can do nothing but listen to him. And so I got strict orders that the project I was working on that I needed to implement that. And that was hopes crossing. And so in 2010, I was very obedient and I launched hopes crossing. Not really sure how this thing was going to be working and what I would be doing. And I just thought all the magic would happen organically. And we are we are serving women in the Valley of the Sun. All women 18 years and older and helping them really become the best version of who they're designed to be. Wonderful. You know, it's an interesting thing to think about how we focus on one gender, how we focus on maybe an age group or an ethnicity or environment. And that can be a hard sell. But talk to us about drilling down into this mission. You know, you as a founder, your founder story, I'm always fascinated by those. How did you narrow this down or or did you or what does that look like for figuring out what that mission is for hopes crossing? Well, you know, it was interesting because first of all, I'm a woman if you didn't know that. And so it can be an expert on me, right? I know all things me. And so I really felt that the things I experience and the feelings I have, the difficulties, the hardships, every woman has to be having that similar experience at some degree. So I felt like women was my that was my secret sauce. So like, I knew that I can relate to that. I can comprehend it. I can translate it and therefore I can teach to it, right? So that was really the the the idea around this narrow focus of women. But even more importantly, and I'm sure all the women listening will celebrate this with me, we really are the backbone to families and we're the backbone to communities. And if we are not whole and healthy, everything starts to crumble. And so I felt like being a woman, not only could I relate to them, but I knew how important it was for me and my family. And I know that that's the same experience that's happening with other families. And so women were key. And it was important that we are healthy emotionally and physically and mentally. But then there's skills that we need to have to ensure that our families can really operate and be contributing to a community. So that mission of women 18 years and older really struck me as the right place. But then even more of the experience that I was having is there's a lot of women that I had been connecting with that had either been incarcerated or had direct connections and impactful connections to people that had been incarcerated. And so it was important to me that we deal with that issue, not just that they had been incarcerated, but what led them to that. And so that backstory is always the vital piece that we have to understand. And that was that was a journey that I started, which is to really understand how do women get to this place because it's not just a natural thing for it to happen. There had to be some contributing factors and we had to make sure we understood those things to even be able to begin to help them. Wow, that is so commendable. And, you know, I feel so fortunate, Laura, because I've had the opportunity to learn about you, your organization, the services that you provide. It's definitely a niche audience. So I appreciate that you talk about take 10 and begin. And I'm curious if you can tell us what that means, because that sounds like code for something. It is code for something. And, you know, it's interesting because, you know, you can take code and make it so scientific and it's, you know, and you're so strategic. And, you know, you put all of this wonderful stuff in there, right? All of this fancy corporate kind of stuff. But really, it is just you have to take a moment. You can say 10 minutes, 10 days, 10 weeks, 10 hours. But I think about 10 as a good number to really help us get everything under control. So if we're trying to slow our minds down because the mind is racing, 10 is a good number. If you're trying to connect with women to really, you know, settle in, 10 is a good number. And so take 10 and begin says, look, we know that there are so many things that are happening in your life right now. But when women come to our organization for support, first thing we do is we take 10 deep breaths. And we take them very slowly. We take them very intentionally and we take them very purposefully purposefully. And so take 10 is just that moment to say, I'm going to put everything else aside. It's all about me. And then we're going to start doing whatever work we're going to start doing. So take 10 and begin was really just a way for us to just settle everything in our in our spirit, settle everything in our heart, settle everything in our minds. And then let's commit to this great work that we're going to be doing. And it's all about healing and transformation. And we can't do that if our minds are racing, our hearts are racing. Our spirit is all up in a turmoil. It's really important to do that. So take 10 and begin really started around. How do we settle ourselves to get things going? I love that. And Julia, I'm going to put you on the spot because you taught me about the 10, 10, 10. And I feel like what Laura just shared, like it complements itself so well. Would you be willing to share that? It does. I mean, so that's why I'm just like, oh, my God, you're like my soulmate. Right. Because I've been of it and this is not my invention. This came by the way of Susie Walsh, who was an author, ultimately married Jack Walsh, the very important CEO in American business, and she wrote a book called the 10, 10, 10 rule. And it's when you're looking at an issue, a problem, a challenge, look at it in terms of the next and you can do 10 weeks, 10 minutes, 10 weeks, 10 months, you can do 10 weeks, 10 months, 10 years, whatever. Yes, yes, look at this trajectory. You might have different answers. And what you're going to do and focus on in the next 10 weeks might be different in the next 10 years, right? Or 10 months. So I love that you have this, especially in the nonprofit world, Jared, we talk about this a lot. There's so much duress, duress meaning it's an immediate problem. I mean, we're in the fire right now. And so how to pull back and say, OK, lengthen that view. Fascinating, really interesting. I mean, wow. And can I just add to that, Julia, one of the you're right, everything is is such is in such duress. But and that's what these women are experiencing when they show up with us. Everything has to happen right now, right now, right now. They have to get a job immediately. They have to, you know, get into counseling immediately. They have to get their kids back immediately. And nothing is going to happen that fast. And so for us, take 10 and begin is really helping these ladies understand it's not going to happen right now. And sometimes you have to prioritize yourself first in order to be effective at what you're trying to accomplish. And so that we tell them to park the park the stress at the door. Park the sense of urgency at the door because we're not going to fix it quickly. It didn't happen quickly and it's not going to be fixed quickly. You know, that's so honest. And I've got to ask you another honest question. And this is, you know, we ask the question, how do you build support for your nonprofit? But it's really code for how do you get white people that have no understanding or supposedly no understanding of incarceration and intend to think of it as these people did this to themselves? I'm not I can help out in other areas for other things. How do you build engagement in your nonprofit for somebody who might not understand this and dare I say needs to be reeducated? Like, how does it look like? You know, you're absolutely right when they think about it. And I always start out my conversation with people about our organization as this is not a sexy topic topic. It's not sexy. It's not fun. It's not going to be happy dance. It's none of that. I'm going to pull on your heartstrings. I'm going to connect you to their stories and I'm going to help you see why these women deserve another opportunity to get it right. If you think about and it's not always about the outcome, which is prison is the outcome, right? You got to think about the journey. You got to think about how do they get here? And I love that Oprah Winfrey wrote a book with a doctor and I can't remember his name right now. But the basic name of the book is what happened to you? And so we we everything about what we do is really attaching ourselves to their story. So when I work with these individuals and work with these ladies and learn about their stories, those stories are what I use to connect to people because although these women have been in prison, they may have been. And I'm going to be honest with you. I have never seen so much childhood molestation in my life. Everybody can relate to that in some way. It some type of abuse, whether it's verbal abuse, physical abuse, mental abuse. There's been some type of rejection, abandonment. Those those words are not very specific to a population of people. Those are universal terms. We all know those emotions. We know those stories. We know those feelings. And so when I'm trying to build support with community, I talk about those things that they can relate to. And oh, yeah, by the way, it ended up for this person in prison, but it's not her story. That's not her story. I can't heal her prison stay. But what we can heal is all of those emotional impacts that they have. And I call it the seed of trauma. If we can look at the seed of trauma, what what planted this traumatic experience for these individuals? That's how you make the connection. And so as you can imagine, I do a lot of talking. I do a lot of outreach and community engagement. I'm doing a lot of panel conversations, these types of podcast shows and things like that to try to help people understand that prison is just the outcome. It's not it's not really the problem. The problem is that seed of trauma and we have to deal with trauma. Yeah, and I feel like the incarceration is what has the stigma, right? And what I heard you say, Laura is, you know, and I believe we all at some point in our life have a traumatic episode. Some of us have many more, right? It's really looking at our trauma score and how that shows up and impacts really everything that we do. So working around maybe the stigma of the trauma course, if you will, taking, you know, that individual into incarceration. Yes, Garner support from the community. I mean, is it by telling these stories? It is by telling these stories. And and I think and you said something really important. We've all had trauma experiences and it's not just that some have had more than others, it's that how did that trauma experience impact me? Right. Right. So if if I had five trauma stories and you had 10, but those five were so impactful that I just could not withstand it, then it doesn't matter what our number is, it's the impact. And that's where that's why I call it a seed, because the seed can germinate into other things. But if you can't understand that seed, right, we all have a seed. All of us have a seed. We were born with something planted inside of us. And it's just how do we nurture that and allow that to manifest itself for us to become the people we're designed to be? And sometimes the seed is a healthy seed, and sometimes it's not. And so it just depends. And we have to tell the stories of the women. And the other way I garner support is to show the success, right? So we have these graduation ceremonies of women that have completed certain aspects of programming, and we celebrate their success. And we let them tell their story. And, oh, my God, is it so powerful at that point? I can imagine that's extremely powerful. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. So what about your donors, right? Like, what are the donors searching for with their donations? You know, I like to say what's in it for me, the what's with them, what's in it, you know, for them kind of thing. So we talk about often here on the nonprofit show, 1.8 million nonprofits registered in the U.S., right? What are donors searching for when they are donating to Hope's Crossing? You know, I think they're looking for those healing stories. I think they're looking for, well, they certainly want to make sure their dollars are being utilized in the most effective way. And it's, you know, and it's connecting to programs and all of that. But I think behind all of that, they want to see those success stories. They want to hear about my dollars. Yeah, it went to program and you were able to serve people. But what did those people do? How did my dollars impact who they have become? And I think and that's why telling those stories are so important that this is where they started and this is where they are now. That journey, that healing journey is what I call it. They have to see that outcome of those dollars. It's, again, it's great that we can, you know, build housing for people and we can put people in housing. But if we don't give people the skills necessary to be successful in having independent living, then what's the point, right? So I'm sharing the outcome that the person has accomplished. This is the success you're going to see. So we're doing lots of little videos of the ladies in class and then graduation. So the journey is what we're really telling the story about and showing the outcome of their dollars. And sometimes that outcome doesn't show up right away. That's the other hard part is it might be a year before you see the outcome. And so know that you're planning to see it again. It's that seed you're planning to see you're investing in this person long term. And then you're going to see the outcome. We just have to keep telling the story and showing the journey at each leg of that of that person's growth. You know, I have a follow up question to that. Like, how are you in educating your donors or potential donors into a world that they might not know about? Like, how do you tell that impact with hope and also drill down a little bit to the scientific aspect or the more brass tacks of it, the metrics and the data? So we're definitely keeping all kinds of measurements. There's data captured every step of the way, of course. And we're sharing that data in newsletters and all types of events that we have going on. And that data is pushed out through all throughout the community. We connect ourselves to other data points that are out there about the number of women in prison and are those numbers going up or down? We show the recidivism rate of women in our program and how effective that program is. But we do it through a lot of events where we, again, tell the story. So we have an event coming up. And one of the things in this event is we talk about the young ladies, little black dress story, right? Because we all have a little black dress. These women do not. So we're telling the story for these women to get to that little black dress. But we tell it inside of this campaign that we have called the Little Black Dress Initiative. And so everything is connected to those stories and the outcomes of these women and the journey that they're on. And those journeys, again, can be short for some, long for most, depending on how many traumas they've experienced and how impactful those traumas were. And it's and it's just it's one of those things that you just have to keep telling the story, plus showing the data and connecting all the points together. It's fascinating. Yeah. And so it started. It did it. Hope's Crossing Forum in 2010. Was that the first year? Yes. OK. Yes. And so it's been every year. It's just been, you know, it's been a challenge, you know, nonprofit world. It's a challenge always. But we've been very blessed to sustain ourselves, to keep connecting to people that are really invested in the work that we're doing and really passionate about, you know, the work and the impact of the work. And I think what happens is people really relate to these stories. And that's why these stories are so important. I had a young lady tell me the other day, you know, I was a single mom and I know how hard it is for single moms. So can I talk to you a little bit more later about what you do? And I said, absolutely. So they're connecting to those stories and they and it relates. And they're they're really connecting and it's relative to them. And so that's the way that it happens. And it's a beautiful thing. Yeah. Wow. Laura, I'm curious. What does your next 12 months look like? Or maybe I should say 10, right? What is your next 10? Right. Well, there's there's lots of growth in our future. It's already happening because of all of the other contributing factors in the community, of course, with housing and homelessness and women that are that are, you know, coming out of this COVID experience and all of the support they were getting through COVID that they're not going to be getting. So there's a lot of growth in our program and the women that we serve. And I think we're also looking at now expanding our programming because we're seeing a greater need that's not really being met right now. And, you know, we're redesigning or working with a partner and designing some very specific financial literacy types of programming because it's not our traditional financial literacy for these young ladies. It's more than that. It's basic budgeting, basic money, basic you know, expenses, money in, money out. It's the very basic parts of financial literacy. And so we're looking working with this partner to redesign something that they already have that is going to very be very specific to what the needs of our ladies are. So things like that where we're expanding programming, we're expanding the number of women we're seeing. We love the space we're in. We're probably looking at building that out a little bit more. So it's more specific and able to handle more volume. And just really continue to serve. Fantastic. Yeah, I think this has been amazing. I have loved, I've loved sharing this time with you. And I've learned so much and especially about your approach and dealing with a super topic, a super tough topic, you know, that it's not all, as they say, rainbows and unicorns. I mean, it's, you know, a tough thing. And yet you move forward and communicate that. And again, with that name of Hope, it's brilliant. Laura Bullock, CEO and founder of Hope's Crossing. Check out hopescrossing.org and learn more about their work and the work that Laura does as well, because she has a very robust coaching and consulting arm of her own personal business as well. You can learn more about what she does as well. Really, Jared, do you think this has been a great conversation to start the week? Yeah, especially as we celebrated Mother's Day this weekend, right? Like adding on to that, having the conversation of Hope, right? For all of us, I think is really important. Yeah, it's been great. Really, really an interesting dialogue. And, you know, we're going to be watching you and hoping that you have continued success and really learning more from you. Again, everybody, I'm Julia Patrick. I've been joined today by the nonprofit nerd herself, Jared Ransom, CEO of the Raven Group. Again, we would not be here having these amazing conversations, which, by the way, I like to point this out every once in a while. Jared, you and I know this, but, you know, our sponsors, who most of them have been with us from the get-go, they do not exert any editorial control over us. So we have the ability and that we're very prideful of that, that this content that we deliver is of our own doing. So for good or for bad, you know, but, you know, they don't exert pressure on us to only talk about a certain thing or with a certain group of people. Yeah, really, it really is. That's awesome. Not always the case with sponsors. Yes. So anyway, our amazing sponsors include Bloomerang American Nonprofit Academy, your part-time controller, non-profit thought leader, fundraising academy at National University, staffing boutique, non-profit nerd and non-profit tech talk. These are the folks that join us day in and day out with just this really amazing broadcast like we've had today with Laura Bullock. Amazing. And I'm excited to start the week. Laura, thank you for. You're very welcome. Thank you. Yeah, it's. You're very welcome. Where were you yesterday, Laura? I don't know. I'm a day late and a dollar short on this particular thing. Oh, my God. Well, if you didn't, if you weren't with us in the green room, chatter, chatter, I confessed. I was grumpy yesterday. So Laura needed to meet me about 24 hours ago. But that's another story. We're all good. We're all reset because. You're all reset. Monday. Monday. It's a brand new day. Hey, everybody, as every episode comes to a conclusion, we like to share our heartfelt thought, and that is to stay well so you can do well. See you back here tomorrow. Yes, that's awesome.