 Welcome to another episode of the nonprofit show. We're really excited today to have the amazing Christy Moore, who started this amazing organization called social spin. And so we're going to be talking to Christy about her journey, being a founder, what it looks like, how they're growing, and all of the different pieces that come into this. We thought this was a great way to start the New Year conversation. And we might be surprised with some of the things that Christy shares with us. But before we get started, I want to make sure that we reintroduce myself. If you don't know who I am, I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American nonprofit Academy. Here at ransom, my intrepid co-host is not going to be with us for the rest of the week, but she'll be here week after next. She'll be here with her family in the South. And so we can't wait to hear what she has to say when she comes back. Again, thank you to all of our presenting sponsors without you. We would not be here having this amazing dialogue with a nonprofit leader as we get to do each and every day. This is our 450 plus something episode. So these sponsors have been with us from the beginning and continue on this journey. Okay, Christy Moore, welcome. Thank you. It's such an honor to be here. Thank you, Julia. You know, Christy Moore, I have to witness to you. And I've told you this privately, but I'll say this publicly. I am here today. Leading this wackadoo life that I lead because of you. I had been a publisher and print. In print media for more than 30 years, I had a very successful career was living life large. The queen bee of my community in so many ways. And I kind of had this like crisis of faith where I was like, what am I doing? You know, I don't need to have one more ballgown or go to one more pretty party. I need to be doing something meaningful. I sold my publications. And I did shout out of all my, my life that I was leading. And I'd always been in support of the nonprofit sector, always multi-generationally involved, but I wasn't doing the heavy lifting. I was asking for money. I was serving on boards. I was still getting good to go to the parties, right? And you, Christy Moore. I was a CEO of the S.W. Got me involved in value leadership, which was a training program that you were the CEO of. And at that time you said, look, I think you should do this. I was kind of a diversity candidate because I was old. I was older than most of your. Participants, mothers. And I thought, I don't need to be trained. I don't need to be trained. I don't need to be trained. I don't need to be trained. Okay. I'll do it. You really open my eyes to the future of my community. To the future of society. It was transformational. I've been talking about this now for too long. I'm going to let you talk. But amazing. I am here. I mean, honest to goodness. Because of you. Fill our communities. Queen B. No, we love you. Thank you. Thank you. The thing of it is that. I think what I learned from you is that leadership comes in many, many forms. And leadership. Is called upon at different times. For different reasons. And it shifts. And you. Shifted and did all those things. To open something called social spin. And it's. It's a really interesting. So tell us about the concept. And I even want to say the origin story of it. So my husband and I moved into our tiny new home. And our washer and dryer wasn't installed yet. So I Googled laundromats near me and jumped in my car to do this. And then I stepped into the laundromats, which I hadn't been to one in quite some time because we had our own washer and dryer. I used to go as a kid every now and then with my mom and my sisters, we all have, you know, big items like comforters or pet beds that don't fit into our washer dryer. Or you just want to get caught up on your laundry piles. So it's been quite some time since I've been to laundromat. And it's been a long time since I've been to the laundromats. Five years ago, I was so disheartened by the condition. It was like hot and miserable. And there were dead cockroaches on the floor and out of order signs everywhere. There's even a laundromat entailment charges people for toilet paper. And I just thought to myself, you know, this is a real missed opportunity. Like here we have our community coming together. And we're going to have our own laundry and a shared space. And we deserve better, right? Like we deserve to walk into a space that we could enjoy. So that night I came home. And my husband was eating at the time. And I just like flung open the door and I said, I'm putting my job and I'm going to open a laundromat. And it's going to have some kind of social spin to it, but I don't know what yet. So I called it that social spin and open a chain, not just one location. And I was like, okay. I knew nothing about the laundromat industry. I was still forming even the concept of what would make us different. I had about a hundred conversations with community members like you Julia around this idea, like can we somehow leverage laundromats to create. Some spaces that celebrate arts culture and community. And decided, yeah, I think let's give this a try and see if. Laundromats could be a safe and trusted space. That also provides essential services like access to clean clothes. So we started our wash and fold service to see if this revenue model would work. We got a hundred wash and fold customers signed up and we were processing laundry me and our first and only employee at the time who's still with us today. And we would wash laundry at other laundromats, rotating locations and talking to customers about what they liked with that laundromat, what they would change, what their hopes and expectations would be for a neighborhood laundromat. And then about six months later, we bought our first laundromat. And by then I had started connecting to people in the industry, understood the business matrix, understood what potential community partnerships could look like in that space. And then certainly had that context from both community members, who we consider champions and customers on what would make a laundromat their go to trusted space. So I want to, and for those of you that have joined us and you're thinking, wow, the nonprofit show, wait a minute, this is like a business show today, but really there's a nexus between human dignity. We generally see marginalized members of our community in laundromats, unless you have a problem, you're not going to see a well to do white woman from say Paradise Valley, which is the Ladi Da zip code of our community going in unless she has a problem, right? You're going to see people that have been driven to this environment as part of their life. And it's generally just another negative aspect of their life, right? And so I'm fascinated that you add the concept of dignity, of access. You touched on this briefly, but I love for you to expand. You've really become a go to place where your patrons can find additional services. Talk about that. That is to me is fascinating. Yeah, we love this. So it's really what we specialize in is connecting our customers to care and it's care that they drive. So we have a chalkboard that's floor to ceiling in size, and it says we want to have a conversation about, and our customers indicate their struggles within on that chalkboard. So they need affordable childcare, access to education. They need a vaccine for COVID. They need housing services. So based on what they communicate to us through not just the chalkboard, but also conversations that we have with our customers, we broker partnerships with our nonprofit community to come into that space and deliver care during what we call our wash with care Wednesdays. So every Wednesdays, we provide free laundry service to anyone in need. If you walk through the door and free service would help lighten your load. You're welcome to come at our Phoenix location. We also have free food. So we have a local food truck. That's typically owned by a local woman who's a woman of color, because we have a very specific vendor criteria. We are very conscious in how we spend our resources. So there's food. There's a DJ. There's a coffee truck. And there's free laundry. It's amazing. And then we go and we do it at our Mesa location from one to four. And there's a community partner. And it's a community partner. And it's a community partner that's requested by our customers ready to serve our community. And it's a beautiful thing. So that's the tactical. And then. Deep or dive. I'm a social worker by profession. Right. And have a lot of respect for the sense of community tool. And the proof it has around. Civic engagement and our civic engagement indicators. So we have a lot of respect for the community. And we have a lot of respect for the school to get the language neighborhood change to laundromat. And surveyed our customers in both English and Spanish. On the sense of community that we've created at our location. And what we know is that the majority of our customers. Feel safe in that space. They know that they'll be able to get the help that they need. And so that allows us to create this. And so that allows us to create this. For us to be able to have. Authentic relationships. With our customers who are our neighbors. So 80% of our customers come from within a two mile radius. And they typically come. Every week. For two hours. And so that allows us to create this authentic relationship. With our customers. And so that allows us to create this. And so that allows us to create this. And so we're able to help also triage and support. Both the customer and their family units. Okay. So this is like, oh my gosh. I'm so proud. First of all, I'm so proud of you. I'm just like so proud of you. Because when you came and I'll witness. When you came to talk to me. I was pretty much a Nancy negative. I knew that so many people loved you. And we'd be like, go girl, you got this. Every time that we talk to each other. We just made a more negative picture. And so I think I laid out pretty harsh. And hopefully you don't remember those, but that was what I. Of course I remember every piece of advice. You'd give me Julia. It was horrible, but it was good because it was, it was real. But this is the thing. I am fascinated by this link. Are you now having nonprofits come to you and say how do we get in front of these people? I mean I would imagine that you have everybody that's interested in things like from voting to healthcare to I mean whatever. Talk to us about that. How are you managing some of these relationships? Yeah that's absolutely right. We actually have a social work intern specifically assigned to our community relations. We have three social work interns at a given time and one of them solely focused on booking our community resources. You know it's all customer driven. We are just the vehicle for our customers who are nonprofits and definitely nonprofits want access to our customers and we're very protective of our customers and so unless we hear that it's a service that they want or need in their space we don't move forward with that partnership but certainly there's so much need and there's so many amazing customers. We've done everything to like what you said from spade and neutering pets for free to the COVID vaccine to GED testing or preparation it's amazing. The community partners who recognize that you have to go to where people are and laundromats are naturally high volume spaces within neighborhoods of need and so it just is a perfect space for them to come together. You know it's so it's so innovative but yet it's so basic. You know the human need and dignity that we have by our appearance and cleanliness and clothing and all that I mean that is such a foundational aspect for somebody and how they feel about themselves how they feel empowered or not and so I understand this whole process so much when I look at it through that lens but I'm really really interested in how you've told this story and how you're telling this story because for a lot of people to be like laundromat did they still exist? I mean how are you navigating this and you've done so much in such a short period of time? Thank you so just like me a lot of people haven't been in laundromats for quite some time so part of our purpose is to remind people that laundromats are a thing and they need to stay and so when we talk about gentrification and the neighborhood laundromat disappearing that's a crisis and we experienced that we were displaced during COVID we had 30 days to move from our location that was our very first location for three years and I was so traumatized the whole team was traumatized we kept all of our employees they just shifted over to Mesa we had a temporary partnership with the family resource center down the street at Creighton we were still able to provide laundry services and free services but it was horrific and so we bought we bought property we bought property less than two miles away so it's 1.5 miles from where we were so we stayed in the neighborhood and our plan is to build our purpose driven laundromat and include this time a community kitchen and a barista station and build on top dozens of affordable housing units for our employees and our customers so we we purchased in October we started activating the space in December we have free laundry from that space every Wednesday and it's beautiful because we could be who we are without restrictions and we could invite people who haven't thought of the importance of laundromats or the importance of clean clothes to come and gather and see our customers and their needs firsthand so what is unique is we have two different populations we have people without disposable income and people with disposable income so we serve those with disposable income through our laundry service and we let them know how their investment in our service as conscious consumers is impacting those people in positive ways that don't have resources to wash a load of clothes and when we talk about like the statistics around the importance of clean clothes we know with children if they have clean clothes they're less likely to be bullied they have better attendance at school better performance at schools we have stories of customers who the smell of dirty clothes triggers them reminds them of a time when they were maybe actively using and so they want to relapse because of the smell and the memories they have and so just just making that connection between both populations are paying customers and our community our neighbors of need and make sure that both of them realize that they're part of this solution together oh my god you're a saintly woman i'm just like stunned i i love how you how articulate you are i can't even say that word i'm so the clump so this is one of those things christie and this is like me you know being your mother you you articulate your story in a way that is very modern and corporate which is super cool to hear because you're not just you know telling the the sob story that you know kiss i like to call that christ kiss and cry moment you're drawing a nexus between the realities of situations the needs solutions it's so fascinating how you have taken this story and taken this process and put it into a vernacular that corporate donors if you will can or investors social investors can intellectualize it's fascinating it's really really cool i would imagine because of that you're able to garner um better support and i really want to end our time together which is like blowing by uh so ding dang quickly about your foundation because i would imagine that there are a lot of people that become so attached to this concept and the trust that you're building with your community and real solutions but they want to fund it through a philanthropic way and not a corporate way talk to us about this yeah so we've been in business almost five years now and we just started the foundation a year ago and a lot of that time was spent me just kicking my feet not wanting to start a nonprofit because philosophically i think that there are so many nonprofits i was convinced that we could achieve the fundraising support we needed through partnerships i was convinced that we could educate our philanthropies about the benefits of investing in benefit corporations as opposed to nonprofits and then i got tired like i think we're close to donors understanding the importance of supporting good business but we're not there yet and so we started the foundation as a way to generate support more traditional traditionally so the foundation is actually the purchaser of our new property we were able to receive loans from individuals that are being paid back through a capital campaign that we just launched so the capital campaign will allow us to contribute to this massive construction project for affordable housing which is awesome and certainly has piqued the interest of people who have been supporting us since day one they now are able to support us financially in larger amounts so we do think that it'll certainly accelerate our efforts in ensuring that everyone has access to clean clothes but it was i was reluctant and um but also thankful that we finally went this direction so i run the business we have a separate um CEO for the nonprofit a separate board she's our chief change maker um she started out as a customer to volunteer to employee to now the CEO of the foundation so she's been with us for three to four years which is amazing and you know everything separate we've got this business and now we have this foundation so it's been a whirlwind of change now you are a b-corp so just a b-corp so for those of you who are looking at this that's a something that's really picking up momentum across the country and it is the corporate status structure that allows more flexibility for social interest so which i think is a great thing okay this is like the tough question of the day where do you see yourself you've ventured through in five years in a tough five years the global pandemic and we always like to say here on the nonprofit show we've had a health pandemic we've had a civil pandemic we've had an economic pandemic and then we have um you know the social justice aspect so lots of things going on in this transition period of time what's the next five years going to look like for social spin um because when we started five years ago i said i wanted five locations in five years um and that's pretty intense capital wise and that's where we really see a lot of inequities in the laundromat so rarely are owners customers and customers owners and a lot of laundromat owners are passive owners so it's retirement income for them if you will um gotcha and so that really kind of made us think through our growth plan i really think that we have an opportunity to make sure that laundromats purpose driven laundromats are built into the footprint of affordable housing in our community um because we have a natural gathering space that's safe for the residents and so our focus over the next four years is really to build this unit in central phoenix and see if it makes sense for us to replicate um throughout our community and beyond it's amazing and you know i love that you found something so basic but so foundational at the same time i mean all basic people say it's innovative and i'm like what are you talking about it's clean clothes for people and a clean space and it's affordable housing for our employees because 100% of our employees have an unjust barrier to employment so our population of employees are youth transitioning out of foster care or adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities people formerly incarcerated and so it's housing for them and it's housing for our customers and to me like innovation shouldn't even be a thought when describing social spin like this is so basic um and i think that sometimes as a society we are chasing those big ideas and right in front of us is an opportunity to make small adjustments just spread loving kindness and a high volume space that have like tremendous impact on the neighborhood well oh my gosh i mean i i've always been like one of your biggest fans and it's such an honor to see you flourish and to be around you and to see into that mind of yours and how you draw these these parallels between what's reality what's needed what's possible and you are an innovative thinker i mean you you are you are taking an idea and twisting it in a way that is innovative using some things that are probably more foundational than we realize but still my friend that is innovative so i mean you got to own that oh my gosh you know this today's episode makes me just love my life and what i do because i get to talk with people each and every day that are doing amazing things across our country that really um are so inspirational and you my friend christy more you are one of those people so i want to put your information back up here check out social spin laundermat.com you can take a look at their journey they have a great blog post on there they talk about the different people that they're working with and you can learn a little bit more about christy and her background really beautifully beautifully marketed and structured christy that that site is a wonderful wonderful um engagement piece i guess would be the thing to say um really really exciting um i think we're going to have to have you back on and we're going to have to do like a temperature check to see like what you've learned and the lessons i'm really interested to explore with you as you move forward um if you suffer the indignities in the issues of um founder syndrome and how you you know continue to navigate this journey and and bring people from all different walks of life along with you and i think we're going to be really interested to learn um how you navigate the foundation part because yeah i mean that's tough but i think you've done the right thing you know by you you know and maybe there'll be a point in time when you personally as the founder navigate to the foundation and the leadership of the foundation and you have a ceo that moves into the the navigation of the the b corp you know as a thought leader i'm just point i'm just saying you know it's it's such an interesting thing okay we only have three minutes left today as it stands the 11th of january what is it that you need to be successful right now oh um so the first thing that comes up is money because we have this capital campaign um yeah i just got to a space where um because we're super conservative on the business side so i buy time so i've completely shifted myself out of the laundromat practices as of like two weeks ago um and so now i have a time to focus on the campaign which is awesome so now we need people to listen to our story and see if we're a good fit for their funding interest awesome um would you would you share with us what your capital campaign dollar amount is and what your goal to completion is 1.7 in the next 18 months 18 months okay great all right well this has been a joy and a pleasure my friend oh my gosh christy more you are a woman to watch an athena winner in our community amin amongst many other awards and accolades that you have earned over the years but this is such a cool thing and i could not be more excited to share the story definitely check us out in our archives on roku youtube we're on amazon fire tv as well as vimeo because i'm sure you're going to want to watch this story again because it's so exciting again many many thanks to our intrepid sponsors who are with us day in and day out with the nonprofit show just to remind everybody we are the nation's only daily broadcast for the nonprofit sector in our nation we're just moving into year three so um it's really an awesome thing that we have garnered the support of these people so that we could share the story of christy more and social spin okay sister you are rocking it thank you so much this is a gift we really appreciate it oh my gosh you are a gift are you kidding me i just am so proud of you i'm just so inspired and i think that you are a lesson in so many ways um for so many of us and i just feel like this is a story that i really want to keep following and to really really help explore and support because it's filled with a lot of great things and so thank you christy thank you thank you all right hey everybody as we end every episode we want to share the sentiment stay well so you can do well we'll see you back here tomorrow everyone thanks christy thank you