Hi and welcome to AwarePreneurs, the world's longest running social entrepreneur podcast. I'm Paul Zelizer, your host. If you could take a moment and hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app, it helps our guests help more social entrepreneurs make the world better and it costs you nothing. Thank you so much. Today our guest is Cole Hoover and our topic is creating Effective Impact networks in Chaotic times. Cole Hoover has spent 17 years designing the spaces where social impact leaders learn. Together, he's built fellowships, cohort programs and learning communities, serving over 1500 change makers globally. From social entrepreneurs in Ghana to corporate partners navigating sustainability transitions.

His work focuses on community infrastructure, the peer networks, shared analysis, and coordinated capacity that determine whether movements survive and scale. He is the founder of Ponto Social Impact Consulting. I'm super excited to welcome Cole Hoover to the awarepreneur show. Welcome, Cole.

Hey, thanks so much, Paul. Such a pleasure to be here.

We connected because of a wonderful LinkedIn series of posts you were doing about impact networks. And there's a lot going on in the impact world and we're going to talk, talk about all that. And I was super excited about your posts and reached out and said, hey, we should talk about this, but before we do that, just to give people a little bit of background about you. You've been building social enterprises and building impact networks for a really long time. Give people a little bit of sense of your backstory.

Yeah, yeah. Thank you so much, Paul. Really, really excited for this conversation. You know, my. My backstory, like the beginning of my career, I've realized, really, really influenced the last decade of my work in these communities of practice, around this community infrastructure. I was lucky enough to be a part of a handful of teams growing some really, really exciting social enterprises in the kind of early aughts. And during that time, one thing that really stood out to me was how much I was learning. Not only in the communities of practice that I was even either invited into or selected for, like a fellowship or something that maybe a funder was putting together, but also these informal communities.

Whether it was at a co working space like an impact hub, or I got my start in the microfinance and international development space where I'm based in Seattle. There was an event called Microfinance and Microbrews. Just these community infrastructure spaces where I got to speak with other leaders, hear the things that they were experiencing, the challenges they were addressing, maybe the mistakes that they'd made that they were generous enough to share with other leaders. So they didn't have to repeat the same ones. And, you know, after about a decade working and building these social enterprises, being a part of teams, either starting or scaling the work, I began to shift into more and more focusing on how to get really good at designing this community infrastructure, these fellowships, communities of practice, learning and collaboration communities. I saw in my life what an impact they were having, and then over the next decade saw what huge promise and potential there was if we could really nail it in creating these spaces for others.

So we just got started. Colin, you've already used the word community of practice. I don't know, half a dozen times maybe, right?

Yeah.

So I was going to ask you later on, but define your terms. Tell us about what is a community of practice. Some people might say it's similar or different than an impact network. And why are they important in 2026?

Yeah, great question. And you know, community of practice is something that it unfortunately can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. And I'd say, fortunately, that's okay in a way too. I've seen a lot of expressions of them over the years, but for me, what it is is a group of individuals. They could be bound together by a place like a place that they share, that they are interested in preserving. They could be bounded together by a beautiful question, something that they're all trying to learn. It could be a sector where they're sharing kind of a vocabulary about the work that they do and kind of learning and taking action collectively. There's all kinds of different communities of practice, but for me, at its core, it is a container of commitment where people are saying, I am committed to continuing to show up in this community to share the problems that I am facing, to kind of voice the concerns, voice.

The beautiful questions are coming up to me that I'm here to learn with other people. And kind of from doing that in community, it just amplifies the learning. It gives you inspiration from other sources that maybe you wouldn't have even considered. And at its core, it does something that I think is just absolutely in the DNA of any of this community infrastructure. And that is it creates relationships. It creates relationships that can live even beyond that container.

Yeah, I have this email pulled up. I got it today, literally three hours ago, and I was like, I got to read this to. I won't. I'll won't share the name of the individual here, but a very prominent person in New Mexico who, by the way, just got a really awesome grant to do some cool things in terms of ecosystem development and growing Things in New Mexico reached out to me, said, hi, Paul, I hope you're well. Your name came up today in a conversation about ecosystem leaders. I have an idea I want to share with you. Do you have time to chat later this week? Blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, oh, I got to.

I got to ask Cole this question because I bet you get emails like that fairly often. Right. And you probably send emails like that fairly.

I do, yeah.

It's like, guilty as charged. Right. And my question is, it's not uncommon for me to get, you know, an email like that. You know, I don't get one every day, but it's certainly not once a year either. I don't know how often is, but it's. It. It's more often now. And some of that is.

I've just been at this for a while, but there's something about these times we're living in. This is my question. We're living in very chaotic times, and we can talk about why that is. For instance, I just did an episode that'll go live tomorrow morning about climate tech and clean tech founders raising money in this environment when, you know, in the US there's been a huge pulling back of federal funds and climate's become a dirty word. Or is it a dirty word? I'm not sure if it's a dirty. Yes, it's a dirty word in this state, but Mexico is not really a. It's complicated. Right.

And which. And these technologies, these communities being impacted, it's not monolithic, you know, fires happening in one place and. And, you know, certain places are getting just absolutely flooded. In other places it's heat, and in other places it's cold. It's just not predictable the way change is happening. It's not evenly distributed and. And we kind of need to be talking to each other because we're not quite sure what's going to be happening in any one community a year from now, let alone five. Right.

Yeah.

I'm seeing more people wanting the benefits of communities of practice and impact networks. At the same time, there's this, like, loneliness epidemic, and people have not been practicing their muscles in communities, so. Well, that's Paul's analysis. Does any of that ring true to you?

Oh, absolutely, yeah. It's. It's interesting. Like, not only do we have, you know, decades long, kind of like the Robert Putnam Bowling Alone type dilemmas, if we have less. Less clubs we're joining, less third places we're going to. That's been going on for a while. We also have you know, these collective traumatic events like the pandemic, where, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm seeing that show up every day, as I'm sure you and your listeners are as well, in the types of connection people are open to. Like I was talking to someone the other day who I had not seen in a while, was really interested to connect, but because we couldn't find an in person time, they wanted to really prolong the time because they just did not want to show up virtually.

They had like a real embodied trauma around that. And I feel really grateful that I've been able to help a lot of organizations distribute it all around the world to make virtual feel beautiful and feel human. But it's a trauma that I think a lot of people have out there. And so I think in addition to, as you were implying in your question, in addition to these real material challenges that we're facing, we're also facing a challenge in the mirror of how we are feeling, how we are showing up, kind of the, the self reflection we need to do to be able to be participants in community. I, I love the quote that everyone wants a village, but no one wants to be a villager. I, that's such a beautiful quote. Yeah. And, and it's just, it's a reminder.

It's not, it's not a quote to kind of sow cynicism. It's more just like a, hey, remember, you got to show up for this. Like, this is important and it takes commitment. Do it.

Yeah, yeah. So in this time where there has been a lot that's been shaken up and whether it's due to pandemic or political polarization or, you know, we're starting to see some climate changes in certain communities.

Yeah.

How do you help individual organizations or cities or regions build an impact network when so much over the past 20, 30 years has been, like you said, we haven't all been great villagers and some infrastructure is fraying and some of it is just kind of aging out because it hasn't been maintained. How do you come in as somebody who cares about communities of practice and impact networks and say, all right, I know there is been a trend that we haven't been as social, as caring for networks as a whole, but in this instance, we're going to do something different here?

Great question. I, you know, I think there's a, I think there's a lot. The thing that, that occurs to me over the last couple years, I have consulted for a variety of kind of legacy networks, communities of practice, where historically they would gather all these people, these aligned folks, these professionals, these leaders around, often like a marquee conference or gathering or. Or some. Some big thing where all the energies go into one place. And in many of these cases, these were organizations that knew they needed to adapt to this new moment. They were feeling like they had memberships that weren't engaged enough. They were.

They had memberships who had some needs that weren't getting met. And instead of saying, hey, let's. Let's maybe do a gigantic survey and let's just optimize for making that one marquee gathering even better. We can do that, but why don't we actually just start with little experiments? Like, I. A lot of my background is in the human centered design space, and I am such a fan of practicing prototypes, putting little things out into the world to see how people react. And so I have a couple cases from last year where I went to these networks, these kind of existing impact networks, and said, why don't you just start offering something, whatever cadence makes the most sense every couple weeks, every month, See who shows up, see where the energy is, see what the container feels like. What are the beautiful questions that are arising? What are the needs? Where's the energy flowing? And study that. And, you know, I've definitely been in situations where either pointing to case studies or kind of making the theory of change, you can convince funders and others the importance of this community infrastructure.

But there's a part of me that just really believes in the more organic show, don't tell. Like, start to give them an opportunity to witness what does their network want, what does it look like, and then go from there. And I found that in many cases, not only do they start to see opportunities arise, they also realize things that they'd been missing because it gets expressed in this really, really human way by the people that they're actually serving and in relationship with.

I love. I'm sitting there with a huge smile on my face. You can't see listeners, but I love what you're talking about because I. I care very deeply about community. I do a lot of community work. I mean, a lot, no doubt, that I don't get paid for, right?

Yeah.

Because I care about the various communities that I'm part of. And I got asked to do a lot more that I can't say yes to. But, yeah, one recent moment that just really meant a lot to me. Um, so we have a group here called NM Climate, and it's not even a nonprofit. It's just like like this. It used to be called Batteries and Beer. It's so funny that you were talking about.

Right, yeah.

It was a group of climate people building batteries and battery startups and it was, you know, meet at local breweries and talk about what was happening. And that has eventually grown to really robust, but still very informal network of clean tech people in New Mexico recently when the state decided to offer a very substantial grant, million, up to a million dollars per award, they reached out to us and said, hey, can we come to NM Climate and talk about this grant? Because you're the place to go in New Mexico where things get done, right?

Yeah.

We didn't write grant. We don't exist. It wasn't some strategic planning process. It was a community building things who wanted to help each other get better. Because some of us, you know, are thinking about sustainability in New Mexico. And then I've been to other things where there's incredibly sophisticated strategic planning process and you know, focus groups and online service surveys with 57 questions and, and nothing ever comes out of them. Right.

They don't last.

Right. So I just want to highlight how much I appreciate what you're saying about. Really listen, like, like create an experience together is what I heard you say. Like start an experiment, see how people respond and really listen through how people are voting with their feet rather than, you know, over building or, you know, just making more busy work. Because a lot of us feel like, oh my gosh, there's so many surveys already. We get so many like strategic plans and we come to this meeting and another meeting and another meeting. But like, I go and then I give input and it's the same thing next year. And I'm not gonna go next year, right?

Yeah, totally. Totally. A term that comes up for me. I, I've been a fan of this for a while. I, I believe I am pronouncing it correctly. Have you ever heard of the term cacanomics?

No. Okay, okay.

I don't even remember how I stumbled on it, but it honestly is one of those like, see the Matrix moments where you just like after you hear it, you can't unsee it and everything around looks different as I recall it. Cakeonomics is this description of almost like a shared agreement around mediocrity and to give an example of like the perfect one and, and, and honestly, something that I not only have striven to do differently, but also has influenced the way I think about gathering is the traditional conference. So just like what you're talking about, people come together, you know, there's a sage on stage, they, they talk at you. A sponsor comes and does a really like kind of thinly veiled pitch that kind of is about the theme. If you're lucky, you get some breakout groups, but then at the end maybe some swag.

Right.

Don't forget you get some swag that you're unlikely to take from the back of your cabinet. Yeah, but the thing that one of the things that I found the most mediocre about the whole experience is all these people come with brilliance that doesn't get kind of acted on either in the space or beyond. And so years ago I got to work with one of my all time favorite collaborators, Dr. Julie Pham. And we, we were re envisioning a cross sector collaboration conference. And one of the things that we did differently was we created what was called a playbook. And this was a set of insights. It was a highly interactive conference.

We had tons of breakouts, lots of facilitation and at the end we actually distilled what were the things that people wanted to carry forward. We then went out, we got access to funding and staffing to actually see where the energy was and start bringing some of these ideas to life. So not only would they energize the conference the next year, but they would happen in between them. And I think that kind of to economics, we have this agreement that we're going to show up and none of the stuff we talk about is actually going to go anywhere. But if we think differently and we actually honor that container and we see it truly as a space for transformation, so much more is possible. And, and yeah, I totally resonate with what you were sharing.

So if you were going to help somebody think about an effective impact network, you've given us a great example there, Cole. But let's say it's somebody who wants more than mediocrity and isn't just, isn't just chasing. We actually connected on LinkedIn because I made I think a more forthcoming. You were hinting at it. I was more in your face about it because I'm a New York Jew and that's what I do. But how often some times the processes that people design are for their own funding or profit motive rather than to actually serve. Not that they're against the communities they want to help or no than that, but, but oftentimes people design for what's going to get funded rather than how is this actually going to help. And yep, I'm willing to say that the nonprofit industrial complex is a thing for sure.

And And I'm frustrated with it. And that's part of the reason I love social entrepreneurship so much. I can say that on this podcast. And I don't really care. People get pissed at me. I'll be.

I'll be on your side.

But, but. So, so there is that. But then there are our listeners really do care. Really do want to understand. Well, Cole. All right. I'm starting to understand some of the examples that you're pointing to. But if I'm.

Either I've inherited a conference or I've inherited a network that's suboptimal, or I'm starting something and I don't want it to be that, like, oh my God, can I just like, smash my head against the wall? Because it would be more helpful than this particular experience I'm going through right now. Now, right. What. What do I do if I'm somebody who's genuinely interested in creating a community practice in a time when communities aren't thriving, at least across the whole, and communities are really suffering with. With big impact needs that many modern systems are failing at? That's a, That's a not an easy design problem. And you're a human design person. So how do we design for that?

Yeah, it's. It's a really good question. You know, I think at the center of it, at least for me and so many of the. Of my collaborators in the space, it starts with a belief in kind of what is possible. And for me, real community infrastructure. It's this durable capacity for organizations not only to learn together, to coordinate when it matters, and more than anything to adapt faster than they could if they were just working in isolation. So if we start from that belief and maybe we even use it as a conversation prompt, like we talk to the organizations who will be involved in our conference, or we speak with the not for profits and our larger affiliation, and we get people's reactions like, how does that land with them? Do they believe it?

What.

What could they imagine is possible? We start to plant some seeds of a different way of being. Like, we get out of that mediocrity and we start to imagine a new path. Like, I think there are those large theory of change structural pieces that are important. I think there's really the self awareness as well. You know, an example from kind of my personal community world is I. I've spent a lot of my career working abroad, but Seattle's almost always been my home base in my adult working life. And you may or may not be familiar with it, but one of the stereotypes About Seattle is this idea, the Seattle Freeze, it's changed a little bit because so many people have moved here. Like, how could it be possible if there's all these new people? But a way I always oriented towards that is the Seattle Freeze is us.

It's us choosing not to be friendly. It's us choosing not to invite people over to dinner or to say hi to a stranger. And so the more that you are committed to doing something differently, the more it changes and to act like it's this force of nature outside of your control. My godmother, Brooklyn Jew from Sheepshead, you know, really who lived in Seattle for years, she's like, if you can show up in Seattle with a Brooklyn attitude, you will be queen working. And I always took that to heart. And I think honestly, we can bring that to some of these less inspiring, not for profit spaces that we are showing up in. And then the third piece, which I'll just like plan to see it and we can talk more about in depth, is, is the funder side. Like, I think that we need to get more funders who are believing that they need to fund the connective tissue, not just the nodes.

They need to move from a place where it's not all out competition and you know, not for profits, are just trying to, you know, get attribution for one of their ideas, but instead, like they want, they're getting rewarded for contributing to some community infrastructure. Like those shifts need to happen. And it would be delusional to think that all of the power to make a change is just on the organization side. Like we need the funders to step up in this moment. Which was why in the series of posts that you'd mentioned that I was writing, that was a big focus that I took in it.

Yeah, yeah. So let's do this. In a moment, I want to come back and get even more down into the details of how communities and impact networks can thrive in these chaotic times. And also, what are some of the ones you're most excited about working on? Before we do that, I just want to take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor. If you got the chance to interview over 300 of the world's top social entrepreneurs and impact investors, you'd have to be pretty clueless not to learn something. Fortunately, I've been paying attention. Over the years, some clear patterns have emerged. Balancing profit and purpose isn't optional.

It's a strategic advantage. Impact driven business models often break the mold and that's a good thing. Raising funds for climate and Social ventures can be harder or easier, it just depends on which investors you target. Marketing can be trickier in this space, but when it works, it builds deep trust. In my 18 plus years of work, I've supported more than 30,000 leaders and team members who are committed to creating changes through values based business. If you're looking to grow your impact venture or raise funding more strategically, I offer a 90 minute strategy session. It includes a customized intake process, a focused 90 minute call, three to seven clear action steps, and two weeks of follow up email support to help you implement those steps in your context. Use the link below to reach out about scheduling your strategy session.

Welcome back everybody. Today I'm thrilled to be here with Cole Hoover and we are talking about creating effective impact networks in chaotic times. If there's no chaotic times you're seeing in your life, then you probably tuned in on the wrong podcast. So it was nice meeting you. But if you feel like there's some challenging times in the circle as you move and the communities you care about, Kohl's just given us such fantastic significance suggestions and calls. I wanted to come back to. Yeah, a few examples. A real helpful school of learning and approaching this work for me has been something called Appreciative inquiry.

Right. Two, two big questions of appreciative Inquiry. What's going right and what do we want to do more of? Right. So in the spirit of appreciative inquiry, what are some impact networks? You feel like even though things are challenging in many communities right now, they're doing a really good job and there's some things specifically that you might share about what they're doing. Well, so others who wanted to, you know, have a model that they could go take a look at it.

Yeah, yeah, great question. You know, I, I get this question a lot and one of the things that I find really interesting actually is there, there are absolutely some global or even national examples. You know, whether it's, you know, Skoll foundation has done some pretty progressive funding. In one of the pieces I was writing, they really had done a lot to try to incentivize contribution metrics like how are the groups that are a part of our network actually contributing to it? So they're not so worried just about their individual credit. The Knight Foundation, Kaufman Foundation, Ford foundation, sadly shuttered a really, really beautiful progressive community of practice called the Build Community, where for five years they were offering general operating support plus capacity building and organizational strengthening within a community infrastructure. For orgs that they were funding like those, those examples are out there and there's many, many more. And for any listener, feel free to reach out. I'd be happy to have a conversation about it.

But the thing that I've actually found most interesting from answering that question has been to turn it back on people and, and ask them to really look around in their community. Because what I've been seeing from my research and my lived experience, not only in Seattle and some of the other cities that I've spent more time in, is that there are more and more local examples of this. People coming together to address some kind of challenge, a cross sector working group to address something that not only one group would have the mind space or have the perspective to really show up for. And kind of an archetype that I've been seeing, that is something that I've done a lot of in my consulting work, is working with funders who are starting to see that they can't just be providing grants or impact investments. They also need to be providing operating funding and providing a little bit of a foundation for learning, for capacity building, for adaptation, for relationship building. And I've been really inspired by seeing more and more funders start to wake up to the need for that. Not just funding in isolation, but funding for connection. Funding for doing things that maybe wouldn't be possible as just one organization.

Like what? What could be imagined if that space was created?

Well, the funding for connection. That makes me smile just hearing that. I like that a lot.

Yeah, yeah. And it's definitely not happening enough. But I think that the more and more we highlight when it is happening, the more and more opportunities we'll see.

Yeah. That post that you were describing, where we first connected on LinkedIn, I was sharing about a collaborative organization that I'm the co founder of. I didn't start it. I got asked to be join an awesome ride that I didn't know I needed, but I'm super grateful to be on called NM Tech Talks. And it's a group of eight Tech for good organizations here in New Mexico. Whether that's Taqueria Latinx Folks in Technology or Rubber Ducks, Women in Technology in New Mexico or NM Climate, Clean Tech, et cetera, et cetera. Right. Stem Boomerang is doing workforce development, career pathway work for young people from communities that don't always have good paying tech careers on their radar.

And let's get it on their radar and help them find a way into it if they want to. Super cool people doing amazing things. And New Mexico is a small state, only 2.1 million people, so each of these Organizations just by definition would be under resourced to really be able to live up to its mission. Right. These are big, exciting missions, but you know, we just don't have that much to go around because we're a really small, historically anemic economy type of state. And some really smart people said we need to come together. And now we have this thing called NM Tech talks and we do impact hackathons. And our tech fest is a little bit like south by Southwest, New Mexico south by Southwest, but with a very robust impact focus.

And together it's like, wow, we're like making things happen. Because we just took these eight organizations, put them under one umbrella and said, what do you need and how can we collaborate? And you know, and it's been just rocket fuel to watch what these organizations of very competent but under resourced people are doing together. And as I am reflecting on what happened in the past year for me in this role as co founder of this incredible organization, that again wasn't from a five year strategic plan, we just started doing what you're talking about, collaborating and doing things together. It just keeps getting bigger. It's almost like the flip side of this not having as much community and people, you know, getting more lonely and getting more disconnected is when something starts to get a little bit of momentum, it can just take off. Like, wow, this is like rocket fuel, right?

Yeah.

Do you also see that potential that if you can hang in there and get a little bit of the flywheel effect going in the realm of an impact network, There's a. Such a hunger and such a. There's been a decline of that part of, at least in many western countries that when something starts to get traction, it, it really stands out and can get a lot of momentum very quickly. Do you see that at all?

Oh yeah. Absolute. From so many angles and both from first off, I think your observation is spot on. And I think there's a lot of design principles that can go into making that happen more often in a more regular basis. One, one thinker, a dear friend and collaborator of mine, Dr. Brett Yamamoto, who wrote the Soil of Leadership and has been supporting social entrepreneur leaders his whole career. I love the metaphor. You know, a lot of the metaphors in his book, a lot of them are around farming and gardening and it's about how do we create the conditions.

Like instead of focusing on leaders as the plant like that we are growing. Let's talk about the soil. Let's talk about what it takes to, you know, be this substrate that will allow more and more Great things to happen. And so, you know, to start things out, what do we need to do? Is it. We need to have a third place where people can regularly show up and have the cheers effect, where people start to know their name, where you can run into people, you can have a. A spot with friendly faces. You can, over time, have beautiful questions that you're interrogating. How do we then honor the next season of it? A concept that has come up again, again in my work and inspired by a dear friend.

David Ehrlichman, the author of Impact talks a lot about, like, the seasons of a community. So you need a different thing at the beginning than you need later on. And it can be really meaningful to have these. Have these beats, kind of have these stories that you're involved in so you can actually meet people where they're at everywhere from that seed stage to germination, to growing, to harvest, to moving forward. And so kind of back to what we were talking about earlier, I think you are absolutely right that once the momentum starts, it can just be contagious and exhilarating, and there's a lot of beautiful design principles that we can bring to make sure it happens more often.

Love that. So I'm a pretty realistic guy, and I want people to succeed. So I feel like we have to name, or at least my integrity wants to name that A lot of impact leaders are really tired right now.

Yeah, right. Totally.

It's not an easy time. I'm not sure it's ever an easy time to be a change agent, and this is not the easiest of time to be a change agent. So. Yeah, and it takes work to get a network going and sustain it and deal with humans and the complexities of humans, especially around the kinds of issues that you and I both care a lot about. How do we be thoughtful? How do we be skillful? Asking impact leaders who already are feeling like, oh, this is hard. I'm maybe just trying to keep my organization afloat. I'm trying to keep my family afloat. I'm trying to make sure I can deal with the cost of living crisis and just keep a roof over my head and keep my kids fed if I have kids.

Right. Keep my health insurance going. And you want me to create an impact network, like, okay, I get it. And that's a lot. What?

Yeah.

How do we. I want to just offer, like, an opportunity for compassion and empathy for what it's like to be an impact leader right now. And how do we help impact leaders find their way into a kind expression of Moving towards an impact network when this isn't the easiest time to be an impact leader.

Yeah, I love that. And what you're grounding is something that I think needs to be central to any of this work. Like these learning communities are for human beings. Human beings are complicated. Human beings have lives outside of their work. You know, in the impact space. Sometimes we can have that challenge of it taking up a bit more of our lives than, than we always would want it, but that we still have lives out of our work. And to me, when you're designing and when you're starting to imagine the potential for the community infrastructure, the container that you're creating, you need to meet people where they're at.

Like a piece of advice that I often give when I'm consulting or working with funders or others is no matter what, start with some individual utility and then expand from it. Like it can be so tempting to lead with a lofty collective vision. We're going to change the field shift, shift power, build movement, capacity. But busy people need to see how it's going to help them. And it could either be help them in their job, like something that could help them learn and strengthen in their role, or just be a place to vent, be a place to have relationships. Like doing this work alone is so much harder than doing it together. And so I've definitely found cases where we would begin with an intention. Like we'd love to get to a place where this is a fully functioning impact network that is truly kind of changing the way that we think about the systems we're a part of.

But maybe it needs to start with a little bit more of a space for people just to share where they're at, to do some self reflection, to feel like they're not alone in these gigantic problems that they're facing. Like those can be absolutely as meaningful of a foundation as anything else. And often if you don't do that first, you'll lose people before the bigger possibilities open up.

Yeah, love that. When we started Enum Climate, I just started posting climate jobs, you know, so climate is about great. Yeah, kind of think of three buckets. There's founders of climate tech startups who are looking for funding and talent. There's talent, there's people who want to work in climate and are really, really concerned about what's going on in the world and the changes we're making and they're looking for jobs or opportunities. And then there's investors who want investable companies in the clean tech space. And New Mexico is historically We've got really smart people, but we don't have. We've had one unicorn, one billion dollar company ever in the history of all sectors in New Mexico, and it took 20 years to get there.

Not the classic VC, exciting hockey stick growth pattern. Right, sure. So in each of these buckets, somebody wanted something. And I was, all right, let's, let's bring a grant. You know, let's bring awareness of a grant. Let's post a job opportunity on LinkedIn. Let's talk about somebody who got some funding. Let's share somebody who, you know, is looking for a job and wants to iterate their way into climate from a project manager role or, you know, computer engineer role or finance role.

I just talked to somebody a couple weeks ago who, a year ago we were talking about her getting into climate, and now she's in climate and she stayed in New Mexico, didn't have to move to do it. Right. Just listening to what were the challenges and kind of knowing those three buckets, it was like, okay, I don't have a ton of resources, but I'm smart and I have a network. So, like, let's just start crowdsourcing what's out there in terms of those. Even if they're small opportunities, it's something. And in an ecosystem where there wasn't a lot happening, that allowed us to get some traction in a very tangible way. Right. I can do a search.

What, what Climate roles are either remote or somewhere in the southwestern US that I could post on LinkedIn. And people are like, oh, like somebody's doing something. And so. Right. It wasn't, it didn't take a lot of time, but it was just, I listened and this is what people were saying from where we started. Right. And I tried to help us start to learn to lean into those three buckets. And anything anybody had, we would do our best to get word out about that.

And that created value when we had no budget, no grant, no nothing. It wasn't a business, wasn't a nonprofit, it was just a meetup group. But it allowed us to get traction and it cost us nothing but care.

Yeah.

So I love what you're saying there. Yeah. So, Cole, if you zoom out, we've been talking about the people who are leading and launching impact networks, but a lot of your work are the people who are supporting or funding are adjacent to impact. Want the results of an impact network. Right?

Yeah.

Whether that's a foundation or a government entity or ecosystem builder who, who want strong impact networks in the work that they're doing and either because they can't, given the role they sit in. If they're a government employee, it might not be their role to start that Impact Network, but it's really essential to the long term success of what they're there to do. What do you say to folks like that who want the results of Impact Network? Not as a side initiative, but understand this is essential to what we're trying to do in this organization or this government entity and we're not the right ones to at least lead it. How do we help folks like that, again, be skillful and be as supportive and great community members from that chair?

Yeah, such a good question. A fundamental thing is just the orientation. It's about funding, not just the content. So say you want to engage a certain group of professionals around, maybe a speaker series or a curriculum. You know, just doing those things are not enough to make a learning and collaboration community. Like the real value comes from structures that hold people in relationship over time. And so whether it's kind of for a funder moving from kind of fixed near term funding to more of a multi year flexible funding, or if it's kind of moving from project grants to infrastructure grants, how can you actually create opportunities for new things to happen? I think that one thing I've witnessed too is taking some of the ego out of it. A great example that I've witnessed in Seattle that I get to be a part of some of the early conversations around an awesome climate tech and climate justice co working space called nine zero.

It's a space that there was in San Francisco and we've gotten one in Seattle. And at the beginning we had all these players like the University of Washington, the city of Seattle, some certain impact investors that all had different ideas for kind of how they wanted to go about funding and supporting this work. But in coming together and having these facilitated conversations, it emerged that they all had these shared goals around. How could we make Seattle more of a hub for people doing this extremely important work in the world? And what would the container for these people need to look like? And from that there was a realization that this organization, nine zero, who'd created a model down in the Bay, they were interested in coming to other cities. And if all of those groups could contribute funding and energy and communications and commitments to this existing container, more beautiful things could happen. Like building off that connective tissue to make something more possible and finding ways where you're maybe not just focusing on your program, but you're seeing the bigger picture about what would it look like to Collaborate as a funder, as someone who's really, really starting to build the infrastructure.

So, Cole, fast forward with me five years.

Sure.

So it's a world where effective impact networks are thriving. More leaders understand their importance, how they can be supportive, if not actually roll up their sleeves and help run them and start them.

Yeah.

What role do you personally hope to be playing in shaping, like, getting to that. And what do you see your role is? We're five years down the road and collectively really move the needle in terms of impact networks. There's a lot more of them who are doing good things.

Yeah, yeah. You know, I. I'm seeing a world where there is far. There are far more people who know who to call when the crisis is happening. You know, we talk a lot about these chaotic times and, you know, if we don't set things up in advance, people won't know who to turn to when the really challenging things are coming down. And so I see a world where people feel more supported and more kind of resourced with people that they can turn to. As far as the role that I want to continuously play in it, I want to see cross pollination from these networks. I want to see the things that are working, the things that aren't, the ways that they can partner, the ways they can go off on their own side quests and then come back and report learnings.

I think a practical way that this happens is not only we invest in more containers, ongoing infrastructure for people to build relationships and hold beautiful questions together over time, but also we are investing in. Something that a group of colleagues and I have been really trying to kind of beat the drum around for years, is the importance of facilitation in this. I think facilitation is a area that we take for granted a lot in our professional spaces. But having learning designers, having facilitators, people who can really hold a high degree of intention around how human beings come together, collaborate, learn, communicate, and then go back out into their lives to only be invited to come again and share what they've learned. It's. It's a real craft and I think it's something that we need to be spending more money and time to resource and spread throughout these networks. So those are some of the things that I'd be really excited to see more and more momentum around.

So, Cole, I could hang with you all day and see our listeners are busy, so I wouldn't do that to you. But if somebody wants to learn more, I know you've been writing a series on LinkedIn that might be. Tell us about that series and other places where somebody's like, I like what Cole's saying. How do I find out more?

Yeah, I think a couple places to check out. So, again, yeah, like, like you mentioned, Paul, I've been writing on LinkedIn and I'll be compiling all those writings into, into one piece. But really it's been this idea of what's the gap? Like, what is the gap that we're seeing in not having the infrastructure to come together and respond to challenging moments like this? What is community infrastructure? What isn't it? Like, what are we talking about when we're sharing about these concepts? And then what are the things that funders and builders can do to shift their mindsets and take more generative actions to truly build the kind of infrastructure that will endure? And if you're interested in the component of how do I hold the space better? So I've got people I want to bring together, I've got a container in mind. But how do I do it in a way that honors how people learn, how people communicate, how they collaborate. My teammates and I have created a podcast series called Facilitating Change where we interview authors, impact network leaders, social entrepreneurs, and we really focus on what is it to facilitate these spaces? Well, what is it to create connection? That's another space you might find interesting. And then a final one, feel free to reach out. My consulting practice, Ponto, we focus a lot on what are the bridges that we need to build, what are the containers we need to design, what are the learning journeys that we need to begin to get to a place of much greater equity and impact in the future. So all in all, lots of places I'd love to engage with folks around and I am open.

Cool.

I'll put links to all that in the show, notes listeners, so you can go find it and go connect all these great resources that Cole is creating. So, Cole, if there was something that I didn't ask you about in this topic that you think would be really helpful, or there's something you want to leave our listeners with as we start to say goodbye, what would that be?

Yeah, thank you so much for the question. You've asked me some beautiful questions. You know, to me, I, I would just really put it out there. I mentioned it a little bit. But if you are in a place where either you are a funder providing grants, you're a government who has a certain budget for developing local programs, or even you're a leader of a well resourced social enterprise or not for profit, I want you to imagine what would be possible if you set aside a little bit of funding, a little bit of time to actually bring together the people in your larger community. Maybe it's an informal community, a practice that exists, but run an experiment. Bring together some leaders. Ask them what they're seeing, what they're sensing, what are the gaps that they're noticing, what are questions that they're exploring.

Start at that point, run an experiment, see what's possible, and then really honor what they say and see what it would look like to carry it forward. That'd be my invitation.

What a great way to end Cole. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Yeah, yeah, thank you, Paul.

So, listeners, again, all the resources that Cole shared are in the show notes. Go take a look. Go follow Cole on LinkedIn. And I want to thank Cole for joining us and sharing a social entrepreneur journey to our listeners. If this episode stirs something in you, please share it. You know somebody who's trying to figure out how to create a more impactful community or you wouldn't be here. So please share this with them. If you're needing a little help with a strategy for your own impact business or organization, you can take a look at my services@paul zelizer.com and until next time, I want to thank you for working for positive impact and letting your values guide your business.

Sam.