2947: Tech-Driven Philanthropy: GreenLight Fund's Role in Social Innovation

[00:00:01] How can social innovation be effectively scaled to tackle some of the most pressing community-wide challenges? Well, on today's episode of Tech Talks Daily, I'm excited to host John Simon. He's the co-founder and broad chair at GreenLight Fund, and he brings with him a unique perspective

[00:00:21] on using technology to bridge the gap between innovation and the needs of a community. He's done this by leveraging a VC approach to philanthropy. So I want to delve into how the GreenLight Fund is transforming the lives of millions by identifying and implementing high-impact solutions across many

[00:00:40] US cities right now. I also want to learn more about the challenges and the triumphs of leveraging technology to drive systemic change in areas such as financial wellness, education and family support.

[00:00:54] So buckle up and hold on tight as I beam your ears all the way to the US, where John is waiting to share his story. So a massive warm welcome to the show, John. Can you tell everyone listening a little about who you are and what you do?

[00:01:09] Well, first of all, thanks for having me on. Honored to be here. So John Simon, co-founder and board chair of the GreenLight Fund, which is now operating in 13, soon to be 16 US cities, making massive change

[00:01:22] around outcomes for low-income children and families. And then also still part-time in the venture capital business as a venture capital investor with Sigma Prime Ventures, and then my own entity called Venture for Good,

[00:01:36] investing in early-stage tech companies to benefit GreenLight and other charities, which is why we call it Venture for Good. So anyway, balanced activity on the investment side, on the for-profit side, and then on GreenLight, on the not-for-profit side. And just pleased to be here with you today.

[00:01:54] It's a pleasure to have you on the podcast. And as you said, 2024 GreenLight Fund is in multiple cities across the US. One of the things I always try and do with my guests is find out more about the origin story.

[00:02:05] So can you tell me more about the story behind founding GreenLight Fund? What inspired you to take the venture capital approach to this as well? Because there's got to be a story there, right?

[00:02:17] For sure. Yeah, so myself and my co-founder, Margaret Hall, about 21 years ago, we were sort of noodling every aspect of this and decided to incorporate the GreenLight Fund as a not-for-profit just about 20 years ago.

[00:02:30] We're just about to celebrate our 20th anniversary. And there are really two things that drove that. The first and most fundamental was the question of how do you drive change for metrics and outcomes that are so important for children and families navigating poverty?

[00:02:46] How do you put rungs back on the ladder to opportunity in a given city and create change? And unfortunately, Boston, my hometown, about 21, 22 years ago, I couldn't think of anything that was really changing dramatically for the better.

[00:03:02] And I started to look at all these metrics and outcomes that were really poor. And another way of conceptualizing them would be missing rungs on the ladder to opportunity. And just because Boston was struggling with issue X or issue Y or issue Z didn't mean that somewhere else,

[00:03:21] somebody had developed something that was really moving the needle on that outcome and probably had expanded to five or six cities. They just were never going to get to Boston. And so I realized if we created this new community utility called the Green Light Fund,

[00:03:37] basically every year we could look at something that was missing in Boston, an outcome that wasn't changing, and find something that worked in six other cities and then quote unquote green light it to come to Boston as its seventh city or eighth city

[00:03:52] and help make that program work in Boston that was game changer and outcome shifter. And we would get a change in an outcome that was really important.

[00:04:01] But if we didn't just do that once around one issue, we created a consistent, persistent community utility we would call the Green Light Fund. Like in 20 years, we could actually move the needle on 15 things in Boston, put 15 rungs back to the ladder of opportunity

[00:04:17] by bringing things that worked that were missing, missing puzzle pieces for Boston. I kind of realized if we did green light, we could do that. In 20 years, we can change 15 things. Whereas if we didn't do green light, probably nothing would change.

[00:04:30] And then I started to think more deeply about, of course, if we did this and we did it in multiple cities, we could create this network to spread to cities what they needed to make change. And just like in 20 years, we could change 15 things in Boston.

[00:04:45] We could do that in cities across the country and someday perhaps cities internationally. And after turning this over every which way in our mind, we finally decided, let's get going on this. Because if we don't get going, probably nothing's going to change.

[00:04:59] Lots of people doing great work, but still none of these metrics were changing. Just spoiler alert, 20 years down the road, because we're just about to celebrate our 20th anniversary, we brought 15 things to Boston that have changed 15 really important outcomes from X to Y,

[00:05:14] reaching a quarter of a million children and families a year and more. And raising and spending probably somewhere close to $40-50 million a year of state, federal and other resources that's flowing into Boston because we brought these things that are justifying and catching these resources to provide value.

[00:05:33] That's the equivalent as if we donated like a billion dollars to the city of Boston at a 5% spend rate to change outcomes. So we've had this massive impact, even greater than we imagined.

[00:05:46] And of course, now it's the horizon of what about over the next 50 years changing 40 more things in Boston and of course doing this in cities all over the country. And I'll just say one thing is, the cool thing about this is this is a self-improving network.

[00:06:00] So when we do something in Boston or another city, we learn from it. So if we look at a similar issue to something we've done in Charlotte, and now we're going to do something in the Twin Cities, how do we do it even better?

[00:06:12] How do we get better outcomes? How do we get statewide faster? How do we get deeper partnerships? And so this network, which is now about to be 60 in cities, these 60 plus things that we've done, which is growing every year with the addition of one thing per city,

[00:06:28] are en route to reaching about a million children and families a year. And this is just this continuously improving network to make change driven by cities. So anyway, that's a little bit of the origin story, a little bit of how well it's gone.

[00:06:41] And now that we're at this date, the horizon of how do we do way more and way better over the next 10 years. It's absolutely phenomenal what you've achieved here, especially one of the things that put you on my radar was how you're leveraging technology

[00:06:56] and this community driven approach to tackle economic and racial inequities, remove barriers and create opportunities and improve economic mobility outcomes. When people think about technology, I don't think they automatically think of things like this. So it's a great story to share here on the podcast.

[00:07:15] I've got to ask though, it couldn't have been all plain sailing. You've achieved so much. But what were some of the biggest challenges that you encountered in bringing social innovation to these communities that need it most?

[00:07:26] Well, first of all, let me talk a little bit about technology for a second because you sort of mentioned it in the preamble. So interestingly enough, we started Greenlight 20 years ago. If I would have looked, let's say 10 years ago, we were operating in probably five or six cities.

[00:07:41] So every year in every city we looked at an issue and we brought something that made a difference. Mostly these were human services organizations that were doing tutoring and changing outcomes or organizations that were doing counseling and changing outcomes.

[00:07:55] So human powered services. In this past year, of all the things that we selected to bring to cities, and in every city it's a poll thing. What does that city need that it doesn't have? What's a rung missing on the ladder to opportunity?

[00:08:09] Let's say last year we did maybe about 10 things that we brought to one or the other of our cities. About, I think four or five of them were fundamentally technology based services where the software code was doing something really important for the outcome change.

[00:08:28] So organizations like Food Connect that were connecting families that need food with food banks and other entities that had food so that food could be picked up and delivered directly to them in sort of like an Uber-like experience. That's what Food Connect does.

[00:08:43] And while there's people powering it, fundamentally the code is a really important part of it. So an increasing portion of the things that we're doing in cities are human services that are powered by technology.

[00:09:01] And where Greenlight comes in is as non-profit entrepreneurs develop these code-based solutions to change outcomes, which is something, of course people are starting lots of companies based on AI and whatever that are for profit,

[00:09:16] but also people are starting lots of not-for-profits that are using technology in fundamental ways. There's a little bit of a naive assumption that you can just develop the technology and make it available on the web and people will use it, but that's not the case.

[00:09:31] Like we want people that are living in food insecurity in the Bay Area to utilize Food Connect and get food delivered, millions of meals to tens of thousands of families.

[00:09:42] Or we want folks in Kansas City to utilize Emreleaf, which enables them to get SNAP and food stamp benefits at dramatically higher rates than if they're going to try to access the benefits in another way.

[00:09:55] You can't just throw the technology up there. So where Greenlight comes in is we look at a city need and we're going to bring something that's technology-based. How do we make sure that it has the connections to all the entities that it's needed to connect to

[00:10:08] in order to be successful? How do we make sure that it has the trust? How does it make sure that it gets utilized? And this is the difference between technology like Food Connect making a massive difference

[00:10:18] for tens of thousands of families in the Bay Area, or Emreleaf making a difference for tens and tens of thousands of families in Kansas City, and it not being utilized. So the interesting thing is that as technology improves and changes and new platforms

[00:10:33] and new technologies are available, and I'm speaking directly to AI here, there's going to be applications for good, but you also need distribution and you need trust and you need to make sure that it's integrated in systems and community ecosystems

[00:10:50] so that it actually benefits the people that need to access it, that for a large part aren't necessarily going to trust the technology. And so it turns out that what we built here is a tremendous distribution network

[00:11:01] not only for the best-in-class non-tech-based solutions that are making a difference, but also for tech-based solutions that are making a difference. And as Greenlight continues to grow and as eventually the proportion of the things that we do that are tech-based gradually increases over time,

[00:11:19] that's where 10 years from now we'll be operating in 25 to 30 cities and I believe we'll be reaching between 4 and 10 million children and families a year. And the fact that these tech platforms are coming online and that Greenlight has the capability to distribute them

[00:11:35] and make sure that they reach people who need them in the way that they need them and when they need them and as they need them, there's a huge growth opportunity downstream for Greenlight and really makes what we're doing at Greenlight I think more and more essential

[00:11:49] for driving change in cities across America. So anyway, that was just a little answer to the preamble, but quickly because you did ask it, challenges. The biggest challenge generally is when we're looking at a gap or a metric in a city,

[00:12:05] let's say it's a metric in the school system, summer learning loss between third and fourth grade, which can be a crushing metric and the school system is seeing that. We are discussing with the school system, here's this metric we're all agreeing is really bad,

[00:12:21] that has a fundamental impact on life outcomes and we could bring something that's been successful in six other cities and Greenlight can make it happen and make that choice this year, but we're not going to do it unless the school system will roll it out

[00:12:34] and support it system-wide the same way it's operating in these other cities. And so that's the challenge there, like knowing what the gap is, is not so much the challenge in getting the community input that we do every year on what gaps in Charlotte

[00:12:50] people most want Greenlight to address over the next 10 to 20 years. The gaps are pretty visible and the community feedback is pretty clear. You have to put in the time to get the community feedback and make sure that the folks that need these rungs on the ladder to opportunity

[00:13:09] are the ones that are driving the choices, but that part of it ends up being pretty clear. The things that work end up being pretty clear because having done this for 20 years now, we have a national database of a couple thousand organizations

[00:13:22] that make huge proven change in issue X, Y or Z and have proven it in an original city and multiple cities and also have revenue models that make them sustainable. But in order to make something successful locally, there's always this local ecosystem of partners.

[00:13:40] I gave the example of the school system that if you're going to do something and really make sure it's going to be hugely successful over time, those stakeholders have to be ready and want to embrace and want to dedicate time and resources.

[00:13:57] And that's always the tougher thing when we're looking in a city and here's three things we could do. We might have something magical that we think is the perfect time to do it. But if the school system says,

[00:14:07] no, we don't think we could do that until two years from now. Okay, we can't make that change that year. We have to do something else and then something else the following year. And then maybe two years down the road, we can make that change.

[00:14:20] So the biggest challenge is how to make sure that what we're thinking about doing really gets harnessed by the local landscape and accelerated. And timing is really important in that. Sometimes need is clear, a solution or opportunity is clear,

[00:14:40] but the local stakeholder just isn't ready to do it or the timing doesn't work, or you need the mayor's support, but the mayor is turning over a new election. And so we have to be sometimes patient for what to do at what time. That's the biggest challenge.

[00:14:57] And it's so refreshing to hear your problem first approach. I think in this age of AI and shiny new emerging technologies, very often we see a tech first approach and just end up with a solution looking for a problem to solve.

[00:15:09] So it's so refreshing to hear you doing it the right way around there. How do you identify these high impact solutions, though, and ensure that they address community identified needs before even thinking about the tech side of things?

[00:15:22] Yeah, so in the beginning, when we just started with Greenlight, nobody knew who Greenlight was. And we're just running our first cycle in Boston. And we were looking at, just as an example, statistically at-risk kids. And there were all these studies that showed that you could look at

[00:15:39] kids in kindergarten based on family situation, on behavioral acting out, contact with the criminal justice system, etc. And you could identify maybe 3,000 or 4,000 kids a year that were really statistically at risk of horrible outcomes and incarceration and all kinds of negative outcomes.

[00:15:58] And we were looking, could we bring something to Boston that maybe for 500 kids a year could change those outcomes? Rewrite that story, rewrite the statistics so that instead of being 90% likely to have negative outcomes, they would be 10% likely to have negative outcomes.

[00:16:16] And so we had to go looking. And we talked to the Gates Foundation. We talked to all these people that were funding things in this area. And we also looked on the Internet, and we did research who had published results, etc.,

[00:16:30] and who did mayors think was delivering best results. So we had a venture capital firm, we had to go hunting. And we found this organization called Friends of the Children in Portland, Oregon, hugely successful, had spread to a couple of cities,

[00:16:44] and had 13- to 15-year data on how it changed outcomes and randomized studies that had been done. So we knew that the program worked, and we knew how it worked, and we knew it had worked over a long period of time in multiple cities.

[00:16:58] But of course, it wasn't going to come to Boston. That's the market problem we're fixing. There's no market system to do this. So anyway, we reach out, bring Friends of the Children to Boston, make it happen, it's been very successful. And then we had now a national database

[00:17:12] of a couple of programs that we had looked at. Because we didn't just look at Friends of the Children, we looked at maybe 5 to 10 other programs that had the potential to impact statistically at-risk kids and start very early and produce phenomenal results.

[00:17:26] But now that we've done this for 20 years, it's changed because every year in every city, we would look at multiple issues and multiple solutions and then in the end choose one thing to do. So let's say by five years operating in Boston,

[00:17:44] we had looked at maybe 50 things we had in our national database. Now, fast forward to today, 20 years in, and because we're every year... Like for instance, a year ago in Atlanta, we were looking at asset building for families that are living in affordable housing, homelessness prevention,

[00:18:02] and we were looking at access to capital for underserved and underrepresented folks that don't have access to small capital to pay the security deposit on a rental or buy a car that's going to get them to a job, etc. And we brought the capital good funds to Atlanta.

[00:18:18] So in that cycle, we're looking at three issues, multiple things, but having done this now for 20 years across cities, we have a national database of over 2,000 organizations coded by issue. Homelessness prevention, violence and homicide prevention, and public safety, kindergarten reading readiness,

[00:18:41] outcomes for kids aging out of the foster care system, asset building for families dramatically being able to increase savings in their savings accounts. So we have about 2,000 nonprofit entities that have been successful in an original city and have spread to multiple cities

[00:18:58] and have a revenue model all documented in our database coded by issue. So now when we're looking, let's say, in Detroit at Issue X, we might immediately be able to say, well, here's six solutions we know about that could be amazing. Now, none of them are in Detroit

[00:19:16] because if they were already in Detroit, the outcome would be changed. And so now we don't have to necessarily go looking. However, we're continually intaking, right? Because what about somebody that developed some AI-based tutoring solution that didn't exist like six years ago?

[00:19:35] Now it exists, but let's say two years from now, it'll be proven in three cities. We want to know about it. And so we're actively, we have a national portfolio and data team that's looking for things that have proven success the same way a venture capital firm

[00:19:49] would hunt for deals in software development and AI, for instance, or whatever. And also we have nonprofit leaders approaching us. So every year we're intaking a couple hundred organizations that say, hey, I've developed something that changes outcome X and I've proven it in three or four cities

[00:20:08] and I want Greenlight to know about it because maybe someday you could take it to 15 of your cities. And so we're also being, so that's the way that database or toolkit of solutions has grown organically over a 20-year period and is continuing to grow.

[00:20:27] And what's, again, where Greenlight is eliciting this is if you're a nonprofit leader and you develop something great, just like if you're an entrepreneur and you develop something great, you'd want to go pitch General Catalyst or you'd want to go pitch Entry's Norowitz or Sequoia.

[00:20:43] If you're an entrepreneur and you develop something great in the nonprofit world, you want Greenlight to know about it because maybe we could spread you nationwide. And so this is, it's also an incentive for people to start something, right? Like if without distribution,

[00:20:58] I don't know, should I start something if it's not going to reach that many people? But now that Greenlight exists as this whole distribution network, if I start something great, maybe it could be distributed. So that's the way that we built this toolkit which is ever expanding

[00:21:11] and we never want to get complacent about it because just because we've done something unbelievable around mental health in the school systems and we brought Inner Explorer to Atlanta where it's being rolled out across school systems to improve mental health for students, we brought it to Charlotte

[00:21:28] in partnership with Charlotte Mecklenburg School System, radically changed mental health outcomes for students. It doesn't mean we want to be complacent about that because maybe somebody someday develops something way better and we're looking at the same issue someday in Cincinnati. That's what we should bring to Cincinnati, right?

[00:21:45] So we never want to be complacent and rest on our laurels as far as deal flow is concerned. It's just inspiring what you've done here. And I love how both technology and your toolkit has helped you successfully scale and replicate social innovation to address this systemic community-wide challenges

[00:22:04] that are right across not just the US, but obviously these problems are all around the world. And I would imagine that it will inspire a lot of people listening in different continents around the world too. So just to bring to life the real impact that you're making here,

[00:22:18] are there any specific examples that you can share of how you've been able to scale and the difference that you've made? I'll give an example of how Greenlight works essentially. And again, I think for people listening in another city or another country or whatever,

[00:22:35] the analogy is, at least the way we kind of work, is, and again, there are many ways to generate change, but Greenlight's theory of change is, let's say there's a metric that's really important that's not moving, right? First understand it.

[00:22:49] And then, and listen, and be driven by it. As you said, be driven by the problem. And don't assume, like you need to talk to residents that are experiencing this issue. You need to really understand all the dimensions of it. And then go find something that may change

[00:23:02] and think about replicating that in your city because rather than piloting something or inventing something, like if there's something that will work, doing that and making change, and you know you're going to get a change in outcome or you're going to scale.

[00:23:17] And if there's a revenue model that's proven, you'll do it. So anyway, that's kind of the way of our thinking of how we drive additive change one issue per year in a city. So just to give an example of it, one year in Philadelphia,

[00:23:32] we were looking at essentially a savings account balances and having a financial safety net for families that were living in affordable housing. And I forget the exact number, maybe it was 5 to 10,000 families that were living in affordable housing. And data had come out

[00:23:47] that the average savings account balance was like $250. There was essentially no safety net. Like you were a car breakdown or a medical bill away from disaster. And obviously living in that kind of poverty is statistically predisposes that your kids don't have access

[00:24:06] to the things that they should have access to and that they're more likely to be in poverty as adults and whatever. And there's a lot of studies that show if you can build certain assets in your savings account, things will change in a positive way for generational poverty.

[00:24:20] So we started a dialogue, Greenlight Philadelphia, with the Philadelphia Housing Authority. If Greenlight could find something that had helped folks build assets would the housing authority be a partner for us? Could they provide funding, provide a platform that we could bring something in partnership with the housing authority

[00:24:38] that would reach residents? Make a very long story short, they said yes. And that they had actually funding available. If we could bring some financial literacy program that qualified, there was funding that flowed down from the federal government to them that actually would be accessible.

[00:24:54] So anyway, that year we looked at this issue amongst others and we brought this organization called Compass Working Capital that had been proven to Philadelphia and we brought it in partnership with the Philadelphia Housing Authority and other entities. Because when everything we bring is not an island

[00:25:09] it has to integrate and partner well with the entire ecosystem. So we brought Compass Working Capital to Philadelphia, started to draw down the money from the housing authority and provide outcomes. And as we could provide financial literacy and employment and start to get folks to increase

[00:25:23] their incomes and savings, because our program qualified Compass Working Capital qualified there were matching funds available from the federal self-sufficiency fund which is a federal government program. And so net-net, five years later, I think we had changed average savings accounts balances and obviously that's an average

[00:25:44] to maybe about somewhere between $5,000 and $7,000. So from $250 average to $5,000 to $7,000 average and clear discontinuity like it was $250, $250, $250 then Greenlight brought Compass Working Capital operated successfully and then you looked at the data it was $5,000 to $7,000. So that was an addition of tens and tens

[00:26:06] of millions of dollars of savings to people's savings accounts. Huge leverage on our decision and our one year process to make it happen in Philadelphia. And that's going to make transformative change for families, right? Like literally I think we've added somewhere between $50 and $70 million

[00:26:24] to people's savings accounts over time in Philly. And that's also enabled people to move out of affordable housing which has essentially increased the availability of affordable housing the equivalent if you spent hundreds of millions of dollars building new housing. So that's an example of

[00:26:41] what we do every year in every city. So imagine that we're doing something like that in a city but we're doing something like that in every city just about every year which is why we've done 60 things or close to 60 things like that.

[00:26:56] Anyway, that's the power of this model, right? Here was something that was unchanging. Here's something amazing that somebody developed and proved and then we can bring it and make it happen for our community and look at the change. But if Greenlight didn't exist I mean, there's

[00:27:13] a total market failure here just because Philadelphia had that need it wasn't going to happen. And you mentioned metrics earlier in your answer there and of course you can only improve what you measure. So how do you measure the success and indeed the impact

[00:27:27] of some of these initiatives that you support in terms of improving economic mobility for individuals and families, etc.? How do you measure something like that? It's a good question because obviously in the for-profit world there's a pretty consistent measuring stick but in the non-profit world

[00:27:45] it's a little different because you're looking for income change with outcome change or whatever but some programs have really deep change but reach very small numbers of people. Other programs have medium level change but reach large numbers of people. How do you compare and contrast? So for us

[00:28:07] what we're looking at is in Miami which will be announced as our 14th city later this year the big goal in 50 years can we change 40 things? In 20 years can we change 16 things for the better? And think about it as a basket of things. And then for everything

[00:28:27] it has its own metric because the process had kicked off I gave that example of Comcast working capital it was kicked off by a metric of the savings account balances a clearly known indisputable metric and then the question was could we break something

[00:28:45] that would radically change that metric and then could we measure some downstream outcomes too? So because we specialize in the measurable it's actually pretty easy for us and every year we produce a Greenlight National Annual Impact Report that's on our website publicly available, downloadable

[00:29:02] and we do this transparently every year the way a public company would produce an annual report which has all the metrics and KPIs around all the things that we've done every year in every city. But the reason why it's kind of easy for us

[00:29:14] is we specialize in the measurable because every year in every city that process is kicked off by a metric like if let's say people are looking at us to do something around homelessness in Denver if we can't measure it it's not for Greenlight

[00:29:30] but if there's a metric around of all the homelessness a thousand a year cases of homelessness are caused by preventable evictions well then maybe we could bring something to Denver that could prevent 800 of the thousand preventable evictions every year so that's kind of the way we work

[00:29:51] so the first is every year it starts with a metric in a city and then we go hunting for things they might already be in our database that have been proven to move that metric and have proven that they can measure and report on how they do that

[00:30:06] and so when we're then bringing something to Cincinnati to prevent preventable evictions we know what the metrics are we know we're bringing something that has been shown to move those metrics in four other cities and then we're gonna we're gonna rely on them to make that change

[00:30:24] and measure and report to us every quarter every year as part of in perpetuity as part of our you know contract where we're helping bring them to the community so it aggregates up into an unbelievable amount of metrics because every organization has one fundamental KPI

[00:30:42] and we have multiple KPIs and we learn from that right so let's say we brought Center for Employment Opportunities which is all around prison recidivism to a couple of green light cities and then we learned okay how do we bring we bring to the next city let's say

[00:30:58] Detroit how do we make how do we make it even more successful lesser recidivism how do we get statewide in Michigan faster than what happened in Pennsylvania so measuring the metrics is really important for knowing you're making a difference but it's also critically important for continuous improvement

[00:31:18] because if you can't if you can't measure how do you know how do you know that that you're doing it better the next city or better the next city so we're definitely kind of metric wonks but of course you can't lose sight of the fact that

[00:31:32] this is all about people and and outcomes for them and and so it's metrics but you gotta understand the human side of it too and I would imagine that the scale of change that we're talking about here is something that you simply cannot achieve on your own

[00:31:49] so what role do partnerships play in your model at Greenlight and how do you collaborate with local communities and maybe other organizations to to drive the change we're talking about partnerships are really fundamental and for for starters when we go to a community like this

[00:32:09] summer I'll be working on Washington D.C. as our 16th city and we meet hopefully like a thousand people in Washington D.C. in our pre-launch phase where we're basically getting to know them and what they do and what they think the issues and gaps are in Washington

[00:32:25] and then we're getting people on board so we have national funders that support our expansion into Washington but also local supporters and it's a 12 to 18 month period you get to know all stakeholders political leaders community leaders non-profit leaders for-profit leaders residents pastors reverends rabbis etc and basically

[00:32:48] make sure they kind of know who we are and what we're on earth to do in Washington D.C. over the next 20 years and how we work and we know them and we get their input and their thoughts and their guidance and then

[00:33:00] and we raise a fund it's usually about six million dollars that enables us to make Greenlight Washington D.C. happen as our 16th city and so already we're partnering with the local community local foundations usually United Way is participating Community Foundation is participating

[00:33:16] the mayor is facilitating and helping get great people involved in Greenlight we also hire a great person from D.C. to be our leader build a selection advisory council which is made up of all these community leaders and basically everybody is becoming a part of our family

[00:33:34] with the goal to make one change per year in Washington D.C. in a community driven way so the very way we come to communities is so partnership centric and then every year and I sort of talked about it when we're looking at what the gap is

[00:33:50] we're always looking in conjunction with local partners so if we're thinking about doing something with the school system we can't do it unless the local school system wants to partner with us right if we're thinking about doing something in partnership with food banks for distribution of food

[00:34:08] we can't do it if the food banks don't want to partner with us if we're thinking about doing something in partnership with the housing authority like what I described that we did with Compass Working Capital in partnership with the Philadelphia Housing Authority

[00:34:20] if we want to do that with the housing authority in D.C. to reach residents we can't do it unless they want to partner with us so it's what we do requires deep relationship building trust and really executing on some core partnerships every year

[00:34:41] which aggregate into these deep long term relationships so that's really important because without local partners in the community we wouldn't be able to do one thing let alone in 20 years 16 things now it's also important for us to partner with non-profit leaders who develop great things because

[00:35:01] we can't bring Compass Working Capital to Philadelphia or Center for Employment Opportunities to Detroit unless those non-profit leaders want to partner with Greenlight to come to Greenlight Cities we're not just going to say sorry you can't do it but we'll try to hack your model

[00:35:23] no, they're the ones that execute flawlessly and have proven it over time in multiple cities we want to do the best for our city we want to bring them to our city that requires a partnership so there's it's so partnership centric and again

[00:35:39] maybe some of my venture training helped me because the way you partner with entrepreneurs the way you partner with co-investors the way you partner with channel partners like you you can't do anything as an island essentially and so so partnerships are unbelievably critical also partnerships with state governments

[00:35:56] partnership with the federal government when we brought Compass Working Capital to Philadelphia the partnership with the federal government and the federal self-sufficiency fund was fundamental without that we wouldn't have been able to generate those results so it's we're we're this like innovation superhighway

[00:36:17] to bring things that are needed that work to cities and make dramatic change over time putting all these rungs back on the ladder to opportunity but it just requires deep serial long-term partnership with many many entities and once you've built those that enables

[00:36:37] like in Boston now in 20 years we've done multiple things with the school system that have been unbelievable and obviously that lays down the track that if a school system wants to make another change in some metric maybe they have budget and they want to change some outcome

[00:36:52] and think a third party program operating the school system might be the way to do it now the dialogue is so deep we'll discuss with Greenlight we'll go find bringing it we probably roll it out system-wide a lot faster than the first couple of things we did together

[00:37:08] it's one of the things it's one of the reasons why it's so important that we're this persistent long-term entity because people value partnerships more if they know it's a partnership that's not just going to work this year but maybe 5 years from now 10 years from now 15 years from now

[00:37:24] and speaking of that long-term plan if we were to look ahead what are your plans for expansion over the next 10 years and how do you envision the organization's impact evolving in that 10 years and also of course what role do you see tech playing

[00:37:40] on this journey that you're on first of all there's some of the I mean some of these numbers are going to seem a little bit outlandish but it's really just math we're going to over the next 10 years we're going to grow from 13 soon to be 16 cities to 25

[00:37:57] soon to be 30 cities we've done about 60 things to date but if we roll the clock forward 10 years we will have done close to 250 things because every year in every city we add one thing so while we put 60 rungs back in the ladder to opportunity across

[00:38:17] our cities to date 10 years from now that will be somewhere between 200 and 250 rungs we will put back on the ladder of opportunity in one city or another and so there's huge expansion and thrust and scale in what we're doing I would I would guesstimate that those

[00:38:38] let's just call them 250 things that we will have brought will be reaching somewhere between 4 and 10 million children and families a year and that will be somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of all Americans living in major cities below the poverty line so huge scale and impact and

[00:38:59] the average thing that we bring to a city ends up having a 2 to 3 million dollar a year budget whether the revenue is state, federal client or customer pay or partner pay or the public school system pay or whatever so if we think about it 10 years from now

[00:39:16] those 250 things will be drawing down I'll be conservative somewhere between 500 and 700 million a year of state, federal and other revenue to make change that will be flowing to green light communities that otherwise wouldn't flow because organizations wouldn't be there and be qualifying

[00:39:33] and if you think about it that's the same as if I created a nationwide endowment of like 15 billion you know at a 4 percent spend rate to make change so we're gonna be this fundamental engine of community driven change massive scale, massive impact

[00:39:52] and we'll hopefully be at the table with policy makers federal government other folks world's best non-profit entrepreneurs develop great tech solutions that they think should be in cities across the country and green light will be kind of a major player help architect and make these things happen

[00:40:14] for cities and so that's kind of where we're headed and long term strategically how do we relate to the federal government is a very interesting thing green light itself is apolitical bipartisan, non-partisan we don't lobby it's just basically every year what's the metric in a city we can

[00:40:34] objectively look at and make change and so we're this really neutral trusted resource but long term partnering with the federal government as new initiatives are funded for preschool education or vocational training or whatever how could green light be at the table

[00:40:56] to make sure that those things are architected the right way so that then real success and real change can reach our cities with things we can bring and then longer term international could potentially be an opportunity for green light, right there's no reason London, Berlin Delhi

[00:41:16] there's no reason somebody couldn't do something like green light in those cities and we could somehow facilitate that or be a part of it or whatever there's so much important work to do in the US and so much synergy that's not in our 10 year roadmap but eventually

[00:41:33] I think there's some some pretty compelling very long term opportunities there incredibly cool what you're doing here and thank you so much for sharing your insights and shining a light on how techies are helping you make a huge social impact

[00:41:48] but I'm going to ask you to leave one final gift before I let you go and that is is there a book that has inspired or mean something to you that you would recommend everyone listening we have an Amazon wish list here

[00:41:59] I'd love to add a book that you would choose what would you like to add yeah so I mean tough choice to just add one but one I would suggest is a book called The Other Westmore it was written by one of our founding green light Baltimore donors

[00:42:15] who's now governor of the state of Maryland unbelievable guy and he essentially wrote this story because he was having all this success in his career and doing fantastic after kind of a rough childhood and he read a newspaper article about another young man named Westmore

[00:42:35] who was living not too far from him who had a similar story but actually ended up committing a crime and being in jail and he sort of traced it back he was fascinated with we were we both had the same name we were living in the same neighborhood

[00:42:52] we had the same kind of rough childhood with some of the same bad habits and he ended up in jail and I ended up at the time he hadn't become governor of the state of Maryland but eventually he's become governor of the state of Maryland this unbelievable guy

[00:43:10] and he was obsessed with how is it that this happened to me whereas the other Westmore had another path just in a nutshell he traced it back to a few people that came into his life at certain times and kind of helped him onto the right track

[00:43:29] and what it shows is the big so one of the stories it shows how just being just a little bit helpful to somebody at the right time can make a massive difference in trajectory and I think inspires people who read it it's a great story well written

[00:43:50] but inspires people that read it well geez maybe maybe I could help the trajectory of people just by doing something a little bit nice it would be massive change or doing something on a massive scale like what Greenlight's doing to generate massive change it didn't matter it just

[00:44:09] inspires you to do something and it's a great read oh wow I'll get that added straight to our Amazon wishlist and I think that is a beautiful moment to end our conversation today but before I do let you go anyone listening wanting to find out more information

[00:44:22] about Greenlight Fund maybe they want to reach out ask a few questions to you or your team or anything at all where would you like to point everyone? yeah I mean our website www.greenlight.org they can also email me directly and I can make sure

[00:44:39] that depending upon what the subject is it gets allocated to the Greenlight team who are focused on issue X or Y or Z so yeah we're an open platform and feedback, ideas thoughts, suggestions are welcome and people that want to get involved or volunteer

[00:44:54] for Greenlight in their cities or for things that Greenlight's done it's always welcome so encourage people to reach out I cannot thank you enough for coming on here today sharing your first-hand experience around some of the challenges of bringing social innovation to communities that need it most

[00:45:10] and also this mission you're on leveraging technology and scaling and replicating these changes across today's most systemic community-wide challenges from financial wellness to access to education to steady employment and family support so many big talking points and everything I just mentioned that people don't always or very seldom

[00:45:30] associate with technology so thank you for sharing a lot on this today and the great work that you're doing thanks again thank you Neil for having me having listened to John now I think his passion and enthusiasm for making a difference with technology to communities really shines through

[00:45:45] and I think it's evident that the Greenlight Fund is at the forefront of social innovation by bringing meaningful change to communities across the US and hopefully beyond in the future but what are the big next steps for scaling these efforts how can technology further enhance these solutions

[00:46:02] we all see the doom and gloom tech headlines but we don't concentrate enough on the difference it can make for the better so John thanks so much for sharing your expertise and vision with us today everybody listening to this conversation I'd love to hear your thoughts

[00:46:17] what social innovations do you believe are most critical for our communities and how can we all be the change that we want to see in the world as always share your views join the dialogue by emailing me techblogwriteroutlook.com x linkedin instagram at neilchughes

[00:46:35] nice and easy to find there so much food for thought from my conversation with John today hopefully you'll join me again tomorrow we'll have another conversation on a completely different topic but thanks for listening today and until next time don't be a stranger