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Happy 13th Birthday Charity Matters

I’m honestly not sure where the time went? How is it possible that Charity Matters celebrated its 13th birthday just a few days ago? It seems like yesterday that I started writing and now all these years later we have come so far, met so many incredible people and made a difference in our own way. This year we have two birthday gifts in celebration of thirteen years. The first is that we have a book title…..Change For Good and the book is finished! A miracle and huge accomplishment in itself.  We are starting our editing process this week.
The second gift was being featured in the recent issue of Canvas Rebel Magazine. It was a fun treat to share a little about my life before Charity Matters and some of our journey. I’m not sure how this will turn out in your emails so I provided the link above as well. Thank you all for making this journey so incredible by walking alongside through it all. So grateful for each of you and Happy birthday Charity Matters!

Meet Heidi Johnson

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STORIES & INSIGHTS

Meet Heidi Johnson

JULY 15, 2024
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Heidi, appreciate you joining us today.
Parents play a huge role in our development as youngsters and sometimes that impact follows us into adulthood and into our lives and careers. Looking back, what’s something you think you parents did right?

We never know as parents what seeds, good or bad, that we are planting in our children. We also never know when they are going to germinate, sprout or lay dormant. The seed that my parents planted was one of compassion, kindness and service to others. My mom and dad were fun, had a lot of friends, a house full of noise, guests, people and joy. Our house was the one that everyone wanted to be at. Not because it was fancy but because it was fun. My parents made people feel great about being welcome, they took strangers in every Christmas and Thanksgiving and everyone felt included.

More than being welcoming and kind, my parents gave back. They were super involved in our schools, in their church, in Little League and my mom with a number of charities. They showed us from an early age that we are all here to take care of one another. That seed of compassion was planted in me and my sisters and laid dormant for many years. When it did sprout it took off. Starting a nonprofit, running a nonprofit, interviewing nonprofit founders on my Charity Matters Podcast was all because of them. Today, the one thing that gives me great joy is knowing that I’m living my parents legacy through my nonprofit work.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you introduce yourself to our readers.

Hi, I’m Heidi Johnson. I’m a storyteller, nonprofit founder and a believer in good.

When you are little and people ask you what you want to be when you grow up, nonprofit founders usually don’t make the list. Something happens to you and you decide to leave your path to help others. That is my story and that of the 1.6 million other nonprofits in the United States. So far of the few hundred I’ve interviewed our paths to service all seem to take a similar course.

My life changed with a phone call in the middle of the night, you know the ones they warn you about. My parents had been in a horrible car accident while on vacation with 3 other couples in Mexico celebrating 60th birthdays. Their car was hit by a huge tour bus and 3 people were killed and one brain damaged. Every couple lost a spouse. My dad survived and was in a coma for a month and my mom was killed instantly. I sat by my dad’s beside with faith getting us through a very dark time for our family and friends who had all lost so much.

A year later a group of us were invited down to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles where my friend, Father John was the only chaplain for 100,000 children who went through CHLA each year. He asked us to help him create a nonprofit to provide chaplains of all faiths for the hospital. My previous work had been in the software business and none of us had ever started a nonprofit. We became entrepreneurs in those hallways that day and started the Spiritual Care Guild. Today we have chaplains, 24 hours a day, seven days a week and a $10 million dollar inner faith center. Spiritual Care has become a national template for pediatric chaplaincy. That was just the beginning of a series of life changing events .

It was 2003 and there wasn’t CNN Heroes or any information on nonprofit founders. Who were these people and what was their story? So I started a blog and then a podcast called Charity Matters. My mission was to learn their stories and discover why they changed their life to help others? These stories are beyond inspiring and truly are the best of humanity. Think about How I built this podcast but for charity. I just finished my book, Change for Good which comes out in October, sharing some of the life lessons I have learned from interviewing these remarkable humans for the past twelve years. We need to focus on what is good in this world!

I’m incredibly proud of the work we have done for CHLA. More than that, I think Charity Matters reminds us all that it is never to late to give back and to make a difference. It really why we are all here and I love inspiring others to do the same. I hope my new book continues that mission.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

None of us has a straight, clear or easy path. There are always obstacles along the way. In hindsight, those roadblocks appear more like road signs telling us which way to go. There were many obstacles along the way that prepared me for starting a nonprofit and becoming an entrepreneur.

I would say the biggest setback came early in my life and taught me the greatest lessons about hard work and not giving up. I was in college at the University of Arizona, and decided to transfer to USC and come back to LA for my Junior year. My parents had been paying for my college. When I came home and announced that I was coming back to LA to stay and was now going to USC. My parents informed me that they also had an announcement. My father’s paper business was bankrupt. While they wanted me to stay in school they had zero resources to help me. It was a defining moment for me because I was halfway through school and didn’t want to give up and had never had to rely on myself.

I had worked in retail during the summers and went to my old bosses telling them my new concerns. They hired me as a personal shopper, which was a new concept back then. I worked Monday, Wednesday and Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. At the time, I was dressing the new female power brokers in dtla. On my days off, I went to school Tuesday and Thursday taking 22 units because it was cheaper. I couldn’t hang with most of my friends because I couldn’t afford too and no longer had the time. I worked so hard to put myself through USC and learned to appreciate hard work, time management and my education. The women I dressed became mentors to me and cheered me on.

At the time it happened, the roadblock felt insurmountable. Putting myself through college gave me resilience, strength, self-confidence and a work ethic that has never wavered in anything I have taken on. Everything I have done since then, whether my career in the software business, my nonprofit work, the podcast, the book and all of it was impacted from that experience.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Life is about seeing the obstacles as lessons and learning to pivot. We don’t have a choice because the roadblocks require us to go in a different direction. After graduating college, I worked in the software business where I was in charge of distribution nationwide for their consumer products division while pregnant with our first son. I adored my job and the company and loved that my clients were in Southern California and I would only have to travel occasionaly once our son was born.

There were a lot of layoffs happening before my maternity leave and we were in escrow for our house. I had asked my boss to put in writing for the bank that I wouldn’t be laid off, which he did more than a few times. True to his word I survived the layoffs, we closed escrow and I began maternity leave. During that time, the founder of our company decided he wanted me working in our Northern California headquarters in Scotts Valley. I explained that we had a baby coming and had just bought this house and all but one of my clients was in LA. I loved this job.

His reply was to write a nice check and show me the door.  I was stunned, sad and had really thought of that job as my identity at the time. The result of this unexpected situation was the ability for me to be home with my newborn son and not worry about anything. It gave me time to think, to work on our fixer upper and then to transition into consulting. This gave me the flexability to be with my now growing family and keep my foot in the door of my career.

When my parent’s accident happened a few years later, I was able to jump into starting a nonprofit and use those skills. Yet, another setback that resulted in changing my life for the better in an entirely new direction.

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CHARITY MATTERS.

 

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Charity Matters Inspiration

Duet

Duet Team

A few weeks ago I had lunch with Abby Mandell, the Executive Director of USC Marshall School’s Social Enterprise Lab. It is a remarkable undergraduate and graduate program that challenges today’s brightest students to come up with innovative solutions that solve some of humanity’s greatest challenges. Abby told me about some of the inspirational ideas her students have accomplished and one of them resulted in the creation of a nonprofit organization called Duet.

Stephanie Van Sickel in Lesvos, Greece

A team of six students in a USC Viterbi School of Engineering course took on an assignment of how to use human-centered design to create a system or a product around understanding the refugee crisis between Syria and Europe, with the goal to help alleviate at least one facet of the very complex issues facing refugees. Last week I connected with two of the team Co-Founder Michael Cesar and the head of Business Development, Stephanie Van Sickel to learn more about what these incredible students have achieved and where they are going with Duet.

Charity Matters: Tell us a little about what Duet does?

Michael Cesar: Through a class at USC, as a group of students we tried to create a new system of giving to tackles some of the older problems that have existed in philanthropy for awhile. We have created a new way of giving that is more transparent and more efficient. We did this to help Syrian refugees settling in Greece. We help rebuild their lives by giving them access to some of the key things that we all use every day such as basic necessities to things like a soccer ball that make you feel like yourself. We help them at the moment of resettlement to try to elevate them to a higher role of living.

Stephanie Van Sickel: All these people want to help and there are all these great organizations that let people help. The old model is the money goes to the organization and then items that people need are being shipped overseas or people donate on items that they assume are needed.

We are shifting that model by putting the power in the hands of the recipient. We enable refugees to go to the local store and decide what they need. When a donor decides they want to buy someone in our system diapers for example. The recipient goes to their local store and uses their duet credit to “purchase” the diaper size their child needs and as a result, they help the local economy and store owner’s business. There are two impacts here, it is not just for the refugees it is for the local community and economy.

Charity Matters: Tell us a little about how this class at USC works?

Stephanie Van Sickel: The class is about human-centered design and innovation in engineering for global grant challenges. It is an interdisciplinary course so graduate and undergraduate students and for a full year you are broken up into teams to find solutions to improve the lives of refugees. The class is partnered with the refugee camps and those situated outside the camps in Leptos, Greece.

Duet founders Rhys Richmond and Michael Cesar

Charity Matters: When you started this class did you think you were going to start a nonprofit?

Michael Cesar: No, initially but very quickly yes. We started believing quite early on that this was a real possibility. When I initially signed up for the class I thought I was going to probably drop it within the first few weeks.

Stephanie Van Sickel: I think we fell in love with the problem, not necessarily the solution. Then when you realize that you have the possibility to actually make a difference, you have to keep going forward.

Charity Matters: What was the moment you knew you needed to act and start Duet?

Michael Cesar: The first realization was when we visited the camps for the first time and quickly realized the inefficiency of current aid. We saw so much waste, we saw donations that came that didn’t fit or coats coming in the summer, we saw tons of toys donated but no one had underwear or children’s books in the wrong language. We were so frustrated because the outpouring of love was real and yet it wasn’t being funneled the correct way.

We saw the pain of the people being handed things. These refugees have been stripped of the choices they make from the clothes they are wearing, which were not their own and the lack of autonomy over their lives. We walked into a few local stores and asked if they would be interested in a system where refugees could shop and be a part of a new system of support for the refugees and the store owners were excited to be able to help and be a part of a solution.

Stephanie Van Sickel: We realized pretty quickly that locals were wary of nonprofits because since the refugee crisis began in 2015 so many organizations came and left. The store owners were trying to sell a good and then a nonprofit would come in with a million pieces of that item for refugees and the store owner couldn’t survive. So these store owners were cautious initially in trusting us but when we said that we wanted to work with them and the stores are a critical piece of the solution they were excited to partner with us.

Charity Matters: What are your biggest challenges?

Stephanie Van Sickel: We are asking people to look at philanthropy differently as opposed to an organization that tells you what you need. In this case, the refugees know best what they need and it is a shift as to how people look at giving and philanthropy. The refugee crisis is a big complicated issue so getting people to the starting line to understand what we do and why we do it and then going from there. We may feel small but we think big at Duet. Duet can really help people who are being rehoused or rehomed in many different opportunities whether it is because of a fire or coming out of homelessness, there are a lot of different opportunities to use the model we have built.

Michael Cesar: We are trying to focus on the way people think about giving. The challenge comes in shifting the power dynamic from the old model where the donor is the hero. To the new model where the donor is the supporter. It is a shift in belief systems.

Charity Matters: What fuels you to keep doing this work?

Stephanie Van Sickel: For me, this is what I have decided to dedicate my life too. It’s why I came to get my MBA. This has been the work I have wanted to be in my entire life. Now knowing the faces on the other side and seeing the true impact of what we are doing. So now when its 1 am and I have one more thing to do, you just push through. This is bigger than you and that’s what helps to drive you.

Michael Cesar:  For me, I really, really want to fix the problem. I’m quite stubborn as a person. The idea that there is a problem that we have all seen that exists, that it could be fixed and that could radically change the way that love, generosity, and kindness is shared around the world, is sort of infuriating to me. The idea of chipping away at the roadblock is what I have become obsessed with. To let the kindness and humanity come out and to let people engage and remove the roadblock has been such a wonderful problem to try and fix.

Charity Matters: When do you know you have made a difference?

Stephanie Van Sickel: I went back to Greece this past fall to meet with everyone and see how things were going, especially with our store partners. The stores said that the families thank us so much even though we are only part of this, someone else donated the diapers that they got to pick up from our store but we get thanked. The stores asked if we could have the duet families’ names and we asked why. They said that these Duet families who come in to get their things become friends and we would love to be able to make them feel more welcome when we see them by knowing their names. We didn’t set out to integrate the community but to see the shift in the way these two groups are referring to each other as neighbors and friends was so inspiring.

Michael Cesar: When a refugee picks up an item that has been donated at their local store we ask for a photo confirmation to make sure that our donors know that the item they paid for was received by the person they intended it for. What has been unexpected is that when the refugee is taking their picture to confirm they received the item, they ask that we send along with their photo with a thank you message to the donor who bought this item for them. It has been so touching and unexpected. 

Charity Matters: Tell us what success you have had? What has your impact been?

Stephanie Van Sickel: We like breaking our impact up into different buckets. We say that we have had 320 items put into the lives of refugees to rebuild their lives. Beyond that, we have moved $10,000 of direct profit into small family-owned businesses in towns impacted by the refugee crisis. We have almost 150 unique donors from all over the world.

Michael Cesar:  I think we have one story that best explains what happens when you let people maximize what they receive by letting them choose you can change their lives. We had one guy who was a single father and he only requested diapers for a very long time. We told him he could ask for other items and finally, months later he requested a $400 laptop, which was the highest request we had ever received. We asked why and he explained that he had 200,000 youtube followers in his homeland who watched his phone repair videos and if he could get a laptop he would be able to be paid again by youtube and could support his family. One of our donors bought him his laptop and he is now becoming self-sufficient caring for his child.

This is a group of talented resourceful hard working people and if you give them the basic tools they will succeed beyond your expectations.

Charity Matters: If you could dream any dream for Duet what would that be?

Michael Cesar: I would love the moment where thirty other organizations have adopted our model and the world has moved to this new way of giving. We don’t decide what people need and the receiver does. I would love if this went into other organizations, new nonprofits, even the United Nations could adopt this new mentality. I would love for this app to be something that makes us think about how we are treating those who we are trying to help.

Stephanie Van Sickel: I would like to see Duet grow and become a new philanthropic model being used all over the world and shifting the way people look at philanthropy.

Charity Matters: How has this journey changed you?

Michael Cesar: My emotions are much closer to the surface now. 

Stephanie Van Sickel: Growing up I thought I wanted to be close to these issues. I got into development because I wanted to make an impact larger than myself. If I couldn’t give a million dollars at least I could raise it to make the impact and move the needle. Duet has opened up my eyes that I want to be closer to the problem and more boots on the ground to continue to make more of a human impact.

Charity Matters: What life lessons have you learned from this experience?

Stephanie Van Sickel: Being such a small team we realize that if we are not asking on social media the giving comes to a complete stop. If you don’t ask you don’t receive.

Michael Cesar: Dignity isn’t something you can never take away from someone. Everybody has it and it is far more important than I previously thought. You treat people with dignity and you respect the dignity that other people have. I have also learned the difference I can make in other people’s lives. 

CHARITY MATTERS.

YOUR REFERRAL IS THE GREATEST COMPLIMENT,  IF YOU ARE SO MOVED OR INSPIRED, WE WOULD LOVE YOU TO SHARE AND INSPIRE ANOTHER.

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The Giving Tree

Over the years I’ve written a number of posts about helping the helpers, caring for the caregivers and self-care. The magical thing about all of these nonprofit founders is that their passion and purpose rules their lives. No matter how many people they help, there are always more who need them. These selfless heroes start an organization out of their core belief that their work and effort will ensure that the next human will not go through whatever tragic event they went through, cancer, rape, sex trafficking….and the list goes on. And they are right, their work does change the world but the other side of my amazing heroes is their selflessness often comes to the point of burnout. They give and give and give until there is nothing left.

My nonprofit founders remind me of one of my favorite childhood books, The Giving Tree. The tree gives shade to the child, it gives limbs to climb, it gives its fruit to sell, it gives itself for wood to build a home and ultimately it has nothing left to give. This is often the reality of the nonprofit founder, they give until they are empty. The needs of humanity are endless and can truly never be met and yet, they keep on giving and giving.

I understand this because I suffer from the same disease. I am not Mother Teresa nor as saintly as those I love to interview but I confess that I am hardwired for burnout. Like an energizer bunny, I go full throttle into projects, meetings, running a nonprofit, writing these posts and trying to connect people to causes. I love my work, am passionate about making a difference with my life and am full of gratitude. The downside to these gifts is the burnout. The tank that is suddenly on empty and is so low on gas you are pretty sure that even if you can find a gas station, you will run out of gas long before that tank can possibly be refueled again.

So how do we help the helpers? How do we care for the caregivers or even more importantly care for ourselves more, regardless of our careers? I  think the challenge is that the answer is exactly that, to care for ourselves, to slow down, to walk to win the race and not run. Even typing those words feels like its opposite day. How can we get everything done if we move slowly, thoughtfully and walk through life?

The reality of this is finally sinking in for me and I am not alone. According to a recent article in Thrive Global, author Stephanie Fairyington states that “two-thirds of Americans are suffering from burnout.”  The pace of life can often times feel unsustainable. The race ahead appears too big and too long to run. As I look ahead to the future and all that I hope to accomplish, I see that the only hope to keep giving is to start here first. To slowly fill up the tank and not feel guilty while doing so. To set realistic goals and expectations about what can actually be accomplished in a day, a week, a month. The mindset and commitment to that alone is the first step.

 

Next, the action plan towards self-care. First, sleep and turning off the devices, with clear time limits set. Second, fuel type, some people put 87 octanes in their cars and some like to put 91 and I usually fall in the middle at 89, my diet is exactly the same. I put some great fuel in my body and some not so great fuel, this needs to change. I need to upgrade on the fuel choices more regularly. After those basic maintenance steps, it is carving out time for myself. Giving myself the gifts that fuel me whether a run, coffee with a friend, writing, and the list goes on.

While it feels backward being selfish will only fuel my ability to be selfless. The more I can care for myself, the more energy I will have to care for others and the causes I am passionate about. So as we are entering a time of spring and renewal, I am committing to myself (you are my witnesses) that this Giving Tree will keep her limbs, branches, and fruit so that she can continue to give year after year.

Charity Matters.

 

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Copyright © 2019 Charity Matters. This article may not be reproduced without explicit written permission; if you are not reading this in your newsreader, the site you are viewing is illegally infringing our copyright. We would be grateful if you contact us.

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