Enabling Local Communities to Create Change that Scales Nationally with John Simon

Just a note about this episode, I was traveling in Colombia, and I only had a portable headset. And the room was quite ugly, So the sound on my end was subpar. I'm sorry about that. It's the best I could do under the circumstances. And what John and Greenlight are doing his incredibly impactful work. Please hang in there. And again, apologies in advance for the sound issues. Echoey.

Wisdom from some of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. Our goal is to help you increase your positive impact, your profitability, and your quality of life. Before we get into today's topic, I have one request. If you could hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app, it helps more people learn how to have positive impact for values based business. Thank you so much. Today, I am thrilled to introduce you to John Simon. And our topic is enabling local communities to create change that scales nationally. John is the cofounder and board chair of Greenlight Buff and an active entrepreneur and investor in both the for profit and nonprofit sectors.

He's also the managing director at Sigma Prime Ventures, where he focuses on software based businesses and disruptive technology businesses. John, welcome to the show.

Paul, thank you for having me. It's really a joy to be here. I'm looking forward to the conversation.

Such a great topic. And I was doing some research just to give an An ample of, like, why I think this is important. I live in New Mexico. Listeners, New Mexico has 2.2 1,000,000 people in the whole state were a fairly rural state. And there are over 10,000 nonprofits in New Mexico. So do the math. There's There's, like, a nonprofit for, like, every 22100 people in our state. That's gonna be relevant in just a minute, but I wanted to give a little back proud because I'm the kind of person who pays attention to to stuff like that.

So, John, to start off with, what would somebody wanna know your background, your backstory, and how you got interested in helping scale change nationally by paying attention to what's happening in local communities.

Yeah. Well, the way the way I got to where I am now, which is, spending about half my time on the Greenlight Fund as the co founder and board chair, and about half my time on the venture capital business. In in my capacity at Greenlight, it's, you know, helping scale a nationwide network that is hopefully gonna impact 10% of children and families living in poverty across eventually 30 cities plus across the United States. And then in terms of my business Activities it's trying to find and invest in and help mentor and coach the the world's best software entrepreneurs that I can find and my firm Sigma Prime can find. The way I got here was, I guess, you know, first of all, to just love creating things and building things. And, after, you know, college and graduate school, I was lucky enough to get a job with a venture capital firm, Charles River Ventures, that hired me as a summer associate. And that was really where I first started to learn about the magic of creating things and seeing entrepreneurs create things. And, you know, since then, that's where I decided to make my career first, eventually as an entrepreneur myself, starting my own company at 27, Having licensed some technology from Harvard Medical School to build a company around that would help impact treatment for prostate cancer and other kinds of urological disorders, Building that from just an idea to eventually a multi 100 person company and a public company, and then, eventually selling that company And cofounding a venture of capital firm called General Catalyst and spending the next, you know, 30 years, investing in and Mentoring and coaching software entrepreneurs, all across the country, you know, that that that was kind of prelude to seeing the opportunity for Greenlight because I saw how innovation spreads in the for profit sector, but not the not for profit sector.

And the fact that you have children and families In need and all kinds of metrics that are out of whack in in in in cities around particular outcomes and all these great models that really work and work at scale We're actually never gonna get to a city that's that's needed. I start to envision a nationwide network of of green lights that would actually Decide on together with the city, like, what does the city need that it doesn't have? And then pull in something that it needed And sort of reenvisioning the way things would actually spread. And, I guess, that's a little bit about How I got to where I am now and living the problem was what really enabled me to to co found and help create the Greenlight Fund with my Partner in Greenlight and and co founder and our national CEO, Margaret Hall.

Nice. So when did you start Greenlight?

So we actually started it In 2004, we are about to celebrate our 20th anniversary, and it was really The 2002 to 2004 period that we really ideated and really tried to look at every angle of this. How could we create something That could stand the test of time, that could have a sustainable business model, even though it was a nonprofit, and that could city after city Succeed in, let's say, 20 years, helping change 16 outcomes in that city that residents wanna change, and how could we do this at scale, And how could we really build a network that would eventually hopefully become one of the most poverty the most important poverty fighting organizations, you know, in the United States, But then bringing it back to reality, how can we go improve that first for 8 years in a city To really show that it worked before we spread it. And that was kind of the thinking we did between 2002 and 2004, and then it was really 2004 that we incorporated as a not for profit, Got going, and the rest is history.

Yeah. So almost 20 years. Congratulations. Very exciting. And this idea of Empowering people in local communities, but then helping scale nationally, help our listeners understand why that's important And how Greenlight goes about doing that?

Well, traditionally, the way people have thought about scaling things, is you you develop a successful model, and then you you build huge capacity at headquarters, And then you intentionally sort of decide, okay, what cities am I gonna scale this to? So think about, for instance, You know, a cellular network provider like AT and T in the early days, okay, how do you how do you build a network and then, you know, how do you set up market after market? But, you know, push from headquarters to sort of activate markets. That's classically the way people think about things as replicating from a hub, building a strong hub and replicating outward from that. At Greenlight, we sort of reenvisioned that a little bit because the first question is actually, if you're thinking about bringing something to a city, Does the city actually need it? Does the city actually want it? Is this a high priority for residents? Is this a high priority for the nonprofit community? Because there might be a gap in outcomes or in the fabric that if you brought something that filled that gap, It would it would rise all boats in an area and rise outcomes in an area. So we kinda thought about it from the reverse side, Not the headquarters point of view, but from a city's point of view, starting with what what do cities need that they don't have? What does local school systems need that they don't have in terms of programming? What does a local community need that it doesn't have? What do residents need that they don't have. What are the metrics that residents wanna change in their city? And then thinking about Once once you've set up an entity, we call it a green light to help a community sort of decide that, Then we systematically say, okay. For this issue, then if this community really wants change with an added piece of the puzzle or an added fabric that's missing, Now let's go find something that's worked in multiple cities and let's pull it in. So we've we've sort of envisioned Replication or scale as something that gets pulled from from the the the outside spokes in a network, Not that it's driven from a national hub. And I think that's a really important thing because it's really people that are Experiencing poverty or navigating poverty in cities that should be deciding for themselves what's missing as opposed to, you know, somebody somewhere else deciding that.

And and this simple but powerful concept has enabled us, you know, city after city, year after year, doing 1 thing per year per city To drive tremendous change. But the important thing is that it's locally driven, but nationally supplied, right? Because if you're gonna bring something to a community, change an outcome that they wanna change, wouldn't be wouldn't it be better to do that if it was already proven, if it was already scaled, If you knew, you could unlock state, federal, or other resources to help it scale. So we kinda try to do the best of both worlds, but make sure that it's locally driven.

Yeah. So walk us back early on, so 20 years ago or 15 years ago, like, where was Greenlight, you know, starting in terms of which city, and what were some of the issues that pretty early on those communities said to you all, here's where we wanna make a difference?

So 20 years ago when we started out, we focused just in Boston. It it was our hometown. It wasn't necessarily gonna Easiest place to do this by any means, but we knew it. We knew, the community foundation, United Way, the superintendent of public schools. We we we had a tremendous local context. We knew neighborhood associations, residents associations, Parent teachers associations, food banks, etcetera. We kinda knew the landscape, and we said, alright. Let's create a Greenlight Boston, And let's really, for 8 years, just focus on every year looking at a gap or a missing outcome and doing something In Boston, that would drive change over the long term because it worked elsewhere, but it was missing here.

And so for 8 years, we just focused on Boston. In the 1st year, we did something around at risk children and families who are statistically at risk at horrible outcomes and incarceration. And how could we bring something, which we brought something called friends of the children, that would radically change outcomes for hundreds and hundreds of children and families per year, And that's been hugely successful. And then the 2nd year, we looked, for instance, at reading readiness for children that were in ZIP codes where Kids were showing up ready to read in kindergarten at 10% or 20% rates. Instead of the 80% in more affluent areas, we brought something called raising a reader. And then the next year, we looked at and that's, of course, radically changed results in communities all over Boston and communities all over the state, really. And then the 3rd year, we looked at asset building for families that were struggling below the poverty line. Could we bring something that would actually have a material impact on earnings and savings accounts, and we brought something called UpTogether, which has helped half of several 1000 families that we worked with Go from below the poverty line to above the poverty line.

And I could keep going. But basically for 8 years, we did 8 things like the 3 things I just described. And then we looked at the results and the metrics and the outcomes by running the green light process every every year in Boston, And we saw that it was even better, even more impactful than in our wildest dreams. And so we said, you know what? Let's see if maybe we can raise Some some money to bring green light itself to the next couple cities. And we got an early commitment of $1,000,000 from Bank of America. My wife and I and others joined in To eventually match that. And then in 2012, we won this grant that was set up by the Obama White House, the Social Innovation Fund. We knew it would be competitive.

Thousands and thousands and thousands of folks applied, but we we were one of the 4 that actually won it that year. So highly competitive just based on the data and outcomes we'd be able to achieve for 8 years in Boston. And that was a $5,000,000 over a 5 year grant That it was a fundamentally important thing in Greenlight's history. So with about $7,000,000 in commitments, we then said, and this is 8 years into the March Having just done Boston, we said, okay. Years 8 to 10 of our history here, let's create a green light. Philadelphia is our 2nd city And the green light bay area is our 3rd city with 3 and a half $1,000,000 committed to each, and let's run the green light cycle for 3 or 4 years in each city. And then c, are the results every bit as good and maybe even better than what we've been able to generate in Boston? And so for the next 3 years, really, we continued to run Boston, and we ran Philadelphia and the Bay Area to make sure the green light Selfless replicable. And we looked at the data and the outcomes for year our 1st 3 years in Philly and our 1st 3 years in the Bay.

We saw something that was surprising to us, which was the metrics around change and scale and leverage of state and federal dollars And real outcome change quantitatively was even better, in our 1st 3 years in Philadelphia in the Bay Area than it had been In our 1st 5 years in Boston, and we realized that what we had was a learning network because we were gonna learn from everything we did every year in every city to make it better and better. And we realized, you know, there's there's a magic in this because this is gonna get better and better and not more and more attenuated. Sometimes when you replicate things from a core, Nobody's as strong as the host city or the original city, but here we could see it was gonna get stronger and stronger. And so After year 10 in Greenlight's history, we started adding 1 new city a year. So fast forward to today, we're operating in 12 soon to be 15 cities with a a 10 to 15 city waiting list. So we're en route over the next 10 years to be eventually operating in hopefully close to 30 cities, reaching millions and millions of children and families per year. But, you know, this was really done In a high quality step by step way. Because if we tried to grow too fast Or grow without really knowing how we were doing or the data or metrics or the learnings around it.

If for instance, we said, instead of doing Boston for 8 years alone, we Reusable, let's do 3 cities right away. I'm a 100% sure we would've failed despite best intentions, having a great model and everything. You kind of have to build, it's like a house. You build a really strong foundation, then you build a really strong 1st floor, 2nd floor, all that will support hopefully Eventually, the building of a very tall building, which is gonna impact many, many children and families in many cities all across the country. But without doing it step by step, It wouldn't have worked.

Yeah. One of the things that sounds really important to the green line model is metrics and and being able to have data that both in inside the organization, are we having the impact, is quality happening? But also I imagine it's really helpful in terms of your vision of expanding and getting funding. Talk to us about those metrics. Like, what do you measure? How do you decide? What do you do with the data? It just seems really integral to the model when I was reading about it.

It's a 100% critical. So Greenlight is really a data oriented culture, data oriented organization, metric oriented, results oriented. And There's a whole bunch of ways that we sort of crystallize, explain this, and capture it. So the first, which is really fundamental, is when we're doing our, Discovery process of our 5 step method that we do every year in every city. So let's say green light Atlanta, which was the 8th city that we created, And all the decisions are made locally. So so our executive director and team in Greenlight Atlanta and then our selection advisory council in Atlanta, Let's say we're running our cycle to think about, in year 4, what might be the 4th issue that we address In Atlanta, the first thing we're looking for is what's a metric that's broken in Atlanta? And so our process can't even start Unless there's some metric that's broken. So recently, we brought something called Inner Explorer to Atlanta To help address mental health for youth in the public school system at scale. And that all began with knowing By through talking with the school superintendents and actually accessing the data that they had collected, what were the mental health crises In the school system, in terms of metrics around depression, metrics around anxiety, metrics around resiliency, metrics around, suicide ideation, metrics around ADD and ADHD and medication use and substance abuse.

Knowing what all those metrics were and that there really was a crisis, now we have it was a vague sense of unease we couldn't have had. We we don't we couldn't do anything because we wouldn't know what the problem was or the dimensions of it or know that what we did was effective if we remeasured it. So That is just an annual process every year in every city that begins it begins with a metric. If there's a problem, we need to be able to measure it to know what it is and what the dimensions of it. Then we can go look, and we found this organization called Inner Explorer, which is a guided meditation Platform, which teachers do together with students during class time. And obviously, it's it's individualized for language. It's also individualized for what a kindergarten teacher is gonna do with his or her class is different from What a 9th grade teacher is gonna do with his or her class, but this has been shown to have statistically significant, Incredibly meaningful results, improving resiliency, decreasing depression rates, decreasing anxiety rates, increasing resiliency rates. And this has been shown in multiple school systems.

So we know, okay, if we can take Inner Explorer and bring it to Atlanta And create the funding and and and the mechanic to do it as part of our annual process. We do one thing like this a year, and we give it 600,000 to $1,000,000 and make it happen capital to make sure it happens in that city now and we roll it out. We know what change we're expecting to see at what scale. And eventually, hopefully, this will reach a 100,000 plus children, students in the Atlanta public school system, Clayton County public school system, Fulton County, DeKalb County, etcetera. And those are gonna spread hopefully all through these school systems. We started with the Clayton County public school system. Could we show these differences? And the early data show that this is gonna be even better than we thought it would be. And now that gives us the strength and the thrust to hopefully expand it Throughout more school systems so we can eventually reach that 100,000 plus, you know, student mark and then Make that change.

And then, obviously, when we created Greenlight Atlanta, we raised about A little less than $6,000,000 to make Greenlight Atlanta happen. It was a you know, in 6 years, we're gonna do 5 things like this. Well, at the end of 6 years, we come back and show our donors, hey, in 6 years, here's the 5 things we've done in Atlanta Just like this, there have been sort of massive social returns for the effort we've spent and the dollars we spent. Now let's raise a $6,000,000 plus Fund 2 in Atlanta so that the next 6 years, we can do another 5 things. So all that is happening In every city across the country that green light is in. But without data, none of it could happen. Right? Without Data understanding what the need was, we wouldn't know what to do. And then without data on the outcomes, we wouldn't know what to do.

And then making it happen and then measuring the data, that's what enables us to succeed and then expand. And then our track record of, You know, doing that year after year is what enables us to raise the funds to power the next 6 years of of outcomes and of change. And so if you think about it, this whole network that we built, Which is, again, locally driven, locally hold. The whole network Runs on the electricity of data. Right? Without without data, couldn't couldn't happen.

Yeah. Love that. So explain to us, Todd, like, Well, first of all, this makes a lot of sense. You find something that, in your words, is broken or isn't working well in a community and start there, whether it's mental health and public school students or, you know, kids ready to read or whatever it is. And then you bring in a program, whether that's Friends of the Children in Boston or Internet Explorer in Atlanta. What happens after, you know, you InterXplore, let's say it's year 2 in Atlanta, and that's the program that you're launching. Well, what happens in year 5 in Atlanta, right? Like, is InterXplore still up and running? What do you do to tend to sustainability as you're starting all these initiatives?

Yes. So whenever we're running an annual cycle, and our annual cycle is a 5 step method, 1st, we're discovering what the need or the issue is, then we're scouting all over the country for something incredibly successful that's Flip that outcome in multiple cities and been an important part of the fabric, but was missing in our city. And then we select it, because we're always looking at multiple issues, multiple things we could do, but we select, let's say, one thing for that city that year. And, again, all the decision making is made locally. There's Quality control and support, and then we invest in it, help make it happen, and then we measure it and make sure it's successful. But part of that annual cycle of saying, okay. This is the issue, and this is the thing we're gonna bring, and it takes a year to do it. We're building a whole 5 to 10 year to 15 year plan.

What's the road map for Inner Explorer in Atlanta? What's gonna be year 1, year 2, year 3, year 4, year 5? Ultimately, what's gonna look like After year 10, which is, you know, hopefully, that it's gonna be a cash flow breakeven, organization, You know, paid for by the public school systems in aggregate, reaching, you know, a 100,000 plus children and families a year and changing these kinds of outcomes And maybe even getting ready to expand further across the state of Georgia to other school systems, We we develop a whole road map. How do you go from just bringing it and just serving 20,000 kids in the Clayton County Public school system the 1st year and us funding a little bit of the founding deficit, how do you go from year 1 to year 10. And we chart a whole road map. Now that road map is based on what Internet Explorer has demonstrated, let's say, in 3 or 4 prior cities. So we're We're working with a model that we know works and we know is replicable and we know has been sustainable because if it had gotten to 4 cities, but it was only Working in its original city because it all failed, then, of course, that's not the model we're gonna bring. So we're we're we're working with a A problem that the city wants addressed and the residents wanna address, we're bringing something we know is gonna be sustainable and and will be successful. And then we have a joint road map, and we basically together make sure that that happens. And so as as we've expanded to 12 cities, I've I've been running for 20 years.

Obviously, some cities longer than others. Like, Boston, we've been running all 20 years, but Chicago, we're just doing our 1st selection cycle now. We've we've done somewhere between 50 60 cycles. All the organizations that we brought have been successful. They've been sustainable. They've sustained outcomes. And so we have this track record of making sure that we're gonna bring something, and we're developing a whole sustainability plan, And and we deliver on that. And that's really important because we're gonna disappoint people if we bring something that's gonna be successful for 3 years and then it falters.

Right? That's That would have been a waste of a cycle for us in the city. So we're we're doing everything we can to make sure that that that doesn't happen. Now we roll the clock forward, Now let's say in 15, 20 years, we're operating in 30 cities. We will have done hundreds of things, that are now operating in cities that otherwise wouldn't have got there to address issues that otherwise wouldn't have been moving, you know, it's certainly gonna be probable that some things falter or whatever, But our job is to, come as close to a 100% success rate for the long term as we can, and so far, we've been delivering on that.

A lot that you're doing now is sustainability visioning and really being able to document that. I can only imagine. That makes it way more easy to engage people because you're not just, like you said, coming in for the short haul, but building an institution in that city for the long haul. Just love that job. So let's do this. Let's take a quick break, hear a word from our sponsor, and when we come back, I wanna hear what green light looks like now and some of the places you see yourself going. But first, a quick word from our sponsor. Are you facing 1 or more important decisions in your impact business? And you'd like an experienced thought partner to develop a plan about how to proceed in the complex times we're living, but You don't feel the need for an extended coaching or consulting contract that's gonna cost you many 1,000 of dollars.

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20 years in, Working in did I hear you say 12, soon to be 15 cities right now? Is that is that what I heard?

Yep. That's that's our current footprint. Yep.

Yeah. And how many programs about in those? Let's call it 15 cities in 2024.

Yeah. There's between 50 60, solutions or programs or initiatives that have proven that we're desperately needed that we've brought to our cities. And, obviously, cities like Boston, we've been operating for Close to 20 years, we brought 15 things, something like, you know, the Bay Area where we've been operating for, You know, 10 years plus, you know, we brought, I think, 8 things to the bay. So it depends on our longevity in the city, but you aggregate all the things we've done, it's between 5060. And, you know, next year, that'll grow by another approximately 12 Organizations. And then the following year, it'll grow by an approximately, you know, 13 or 14. So it's a ever expanding, portfolio of impact, adding basically 1 thing per year per city. It's all driven and decided by that local city.

Beautiful. So somewhere by the end of 2024, well past 60 different initiatives in 15 different cities all over the US. And Give our listeners a sense of, like, it it's a pretty wide scale of what you're working on. You mentioned mental health. You mentioned reading readiness. What are some of the other impact areas that Greenlight is focusing on in these different cities around the country?

Yes. So I'll highlight a a a a a few things that we've done, and issues that we've tackled. So we've looked at, homelessness prevention, and preventable addictions, and we've done this, you know, magical thing in in in Cincinnati, against that. We've looked at asset building, for families living in affordable housing, and we've done something, in Philadelphia incredibly dynamic about that. That's added tens and tens and tens of 1,000,000 of dollars to, documented, to family savings accounts. We've looked at early literacy. As you mentioned, we've done a number of things around early literacy in different cities, basically trying to dramatically change kindergarten reading readiness from the 10 and 20% levels to the 80% levels. We've, addressed childcare and, lack of access to good quality childcare and, not enough educational content in childcare, by doing something dramatic to help Kansas City, in in, in in those metrics.

We've done some things around, health care access, and making sure that people are, managing chronic conditions the right way and are also actually going and getting screenings and things done that they need to get for their health. We've done something rather dynamic around that. In Boston, for instance, by bringing care messaging to Boston, we have done, things around returning citizens and, helping dramatically change prison recidivism rates and, helping change access to credit and access to benefits for, returning citizens Because we have a huge problem in this country in terms of prison recidivism with, you know, people that have paid their debt to society coming back In large numbers, to try to build lives for themselves and basically not being able to do that and then ending up back in the prison system and huge cost expense and, of course, you know, a cost in terms of generational poverty. We've done things around changing outcomes for kids aging out of foster care. We've done things around changing, 8th grade math skills at scale, things around summer learning loss, which impacts communities dramatically, for for kids in in in certain grades. And can we turn summer learning loss into summer learning gain? I I could keep going, but basically, what we've shown is Greenlight is this community Swiss army knife to enable a community to look and say, okay. We're making progress on a lot of things. There's a lot of great stuff happening, but what's what's not happening? What's missing in our community? What's an outcome that's been bad, that's persistently bad, that maybe we need a new approach? Maybe if we wanna create a different outcome, we need to do something a little different.

And basically every year, we've sort of shown that we can pick off one of those areas and do something great. And so That that that's wonderful because it means that Atlanta, in 20 years, can get 16 things that it needs, but then Cincinnati in 20 years can get 16 things that it needs and wants. And there could be some overlap for those, certainly, but There'll be different priority, different ordering, and certainly some things that Cincinnati feels like it's desperately needing that wants that maybe For whatever reason or not, is needed in Atlanta, or there's already something in Atlanta that's addressing that. And so the beauty of this is It's happening nationally at scale with all this learning and this cross pollination between cities and is demonstrating dramatic results in accessing State and federal and other kinds of funding that come with things that have been proven at scale, but it's all customized and locally driven So that a local community is pulling what it wants or what it needs. And that is the critical factor for success.

Yeah. Talk to us about that, John. I'm curious, like, now that you're almost at 15 different cities, what are you learning about Being in network and how Atlanta can inform what's happening in Boston or Bay Area can say, hey, Cincinnati, you might think about on this, you know, particular solution. What we found really helpful, like, how are you sharing and collaborating as a network?

Well, that that's that's the beauty. As we've attained scale and experience, we not only have executive directors, for instance, our leader of Greenlight Atlanta and Greenlight Charlotte and Greenlight Cincinnati sharing thoughts and ideas And kind of a a weekly conference call about how things are going and what we're learning. But as an executive director, let's say the ED of Greenlight Kansas City is running her cycle looking at certain issues can call upon all the data resident in our data banks, As well as our national team to which supports all our city teams, as well as peers who've Brought similar things to cities to say, all right, you brought Inner Explorer to Atlanta in partnership with the public school system. What did you learn from that that you wish you did you wish you did better? If you could wave a magic wand because And then over a 4 year period, you got such and such a footprint expanding from this school system, that school system, that school system, but you're still not statewide yet. If we do this in Kansas City, how could we get it to spread faster throughout the school systems, and how could we get it statewide faster? And then we we go and use that learning in Kansas City. And then let's say we're looking at a similar issue in Charlotte. Well, how do we learn from both what we did in Atlanta and what we did in Kansas City to do it even better in Charlotte? And that's the way this learning happens. And, in fact, we've set up, and hired a head of learning, at Greenlight just to make sure That we're disseminating all the learning internally and starting to share some of our learnings externally with the field.

It would have been a lot of hubris if we tried to start to share learnings when we were only 5 years old or 7 years old. Yeah. There might have been some things we thought we were learning and so on, but, You know, now that we're 20 years old and we have all this data and all this experience across many issues across multiple cities, You know, there's a lot more that credibly we can share with the field, to help people do this work better and more impactfully because We wanna essentially open source our learnings, as as an open platform.

What does the green light Teams look like nationally? Like, how many employees? Where are people concentrated? And also, what does the funding look like for green light. How much of it is, like, raised in Boston or Bay Area? How much is national funding starting to happen?

Yeah. So first, I'll start with how our organization looks in cities. So in every city, we have an executive director of Greenlight in that city. That's our leader in the city. And then he or she has, either, a 1 person sort of associate, You know, program manager, position or 2 positions. So it can be either a 2 person staff locally or a 3 person staff locally at our executive director's Discretion. And then we have the selection advisory council, which is made up of 30 plus community members. That is a sounding board as we go through our annual cycle About what issues we should look at and ultimately what issue we tunnel down to and then what thing that we do.

Continually getting all this community input From our selection advisory council in the community at large. So that's the way our, existing organization in a city looks like. And we probably spend Or commit way you could look at is roughly about $1,000,000 a year in a city in terms of spending on our personnel, which is a small amount of the expenditure. And then The thing that we bring that year and commit $600,000 to a1000000 too. So at any rate, that's the way our organization looks in cities. And for the 1st, 10, 12, 14 years, we kept national very small, only a couple people, because We we knew that if you had high capacity at national, it would help the network, but but we really had to prove that the network was working In order to get the national funding to build a national organization. So we kept the national organization very skinny in the early days, and we didn't wanna Lose focus on the real important thing, which was what what was happening in the cities. But once we had enough massive success and enough massive Things to keep track of and to help and cities to help.

We started to build national. And so today national is somewhere between 12 15 people. We spend somewhere, you know, between 3 and $4,000,000 a year nationally, and that is all the centralized functions, Finance, grants management, financial reporting, you know, cash custody, etcetera, etcetera. Also Marketing communications, our website, our data and learning team, our HR team, because we're continually hiring insights and growing to new sites to hire more people. And so those shared functions are national, Which as I say now requires between 12 to 15 people, about, you know, 3 to $4,000,000 a year spend. And the way that we That we raise money for that is essentially every 3 or 4 years, we raise a fund of maybe, let's say, about $15,000,000 For national corporate supporters and foundations and national donors who their return on their national donation is results across the whole network. So we basically raise that upfront, and then we're saying, okay. Over the next 3 or 4 years, this $15,000,000 is gonna buy is all this outcome change across all these cities across the country.

Oh, and by the way, With this national support, in the next 5 years, we'll add another 5 to 6 cities to the network, which eventually is gonna impact, You know, half a 1000000 to a 1000000 children and families in those cities, and that's what our national donors are getting. So so we we we kinda have this fund structure Similar to what I might have learned in in venture capital and private equity where we're raising all the money up front, but getting it committed over a 5 or 5 or so year period. And we're saying folks, okay, if you'll invest in this fund, this national fund, here's the results and the return, the social return that we aim to deliver over the next 5 years that you can measure us against that. And the 1st national fund that we raised was, I think, about a $10,000,000 fund. And the second one we raised was about a $15,000,000 fund. And the third we raised, I think, will be somewhere between 15 and 20. And I think that that progression shows How great the returns have been on the national dollars that enable us to have a national team. Similarly, locally, Our models, when we go to a new city, like we're about to announce a green light Denver as our 13th city, and we raise about $6,000,000 a group to a green light Denver From a mix of national and local donors, that 6,000,000 is gonna enable us over a a 6 year period to do 4 or 5 things in Denver and then come back and report to people.

And hopefully, you're 6, 7, we're raising another larger fund to do over the next 7, 8 years, the next 5 or 6 things in Denver. And it is working. Like, the way it worked in the Bay Area, the first fund was 3 and a half $1,000,000, Enabled us to go, like, 4 years and do 3 things. Next fund was 4 and a half $1,000,000, enabled us to go, you know, 4 plus years and do, I think, 4 things. And recently, we announced our 3rd fund, Greenlight Bay Area 3, was $10,010,000,000 plus plus, and that's gonna enable us to go, And so if I were to sum up all the funds we've raised over the course of our last 20 years, nationally and in cities, That's been about $100,000,000 of commitments, which is obviously very substantial scale, and the reason is because of the data and the metrics and the substantial scale we're getting to. So, literally, we've raised this money in such a way that over the next 5 years, As we raise follow on funds in cities, you know, these will be, like, another 100,000,000, another 100,000,000, and so on and so forth. So we've created this financial model that works at national because it works for national donors in terms of results and works locally because it works for local donors in terms of results. And, that's great.

I mean, we have this really strong sustainable model as Greenlight itself, as well as the things that we've done. But I wanna emphasize that only works as long as, you know, what we do works every year in every city. Right? If we start to, You know, take our eye off the ball or, you know, pontificate and, you know, Speechify or whatever and not actually get stuff done or do stuff that doesn't sustain or doesn't work or doesn't change outcomes, You know, then in a heartbeat, we can change our reputation. Right? A mentor once told me, you know, it can take a lifetime to build a reputation And then, you know, I don't know, 30 seconds to lose it. Right? So we are not in the least bit complacent about anything And basically trying to, you know, every day, every week, every month, every year, make sure that We are making local change that's locally driven that works year after year, city after city after city after city, year after year after year, issue after And we really want everything to a 100% work, and we throw ourselves into it. And everybody at Greenlight is committed to that.

Yeah. Beautiful. So you're almost 20 years in, and congratulations. So fast forward 20 years from now, John, and it's 2044. Talk to me, like, what does green light look like? What's the scale you're operating on, and what's It's different 40 years into the organizational journey.

Well, I mean, for one thing, our footprint at that point Should be that we're hopefully somewhere in 30 to 40 cities in the United States that we've brought Hundreds and hundreds. Maybe even at that point, I have to do the math. It'll approach a 1,000 things that we will have brought to cities that otherwise wouldn't be there. Each of those things will be having an impact. The average thing we bring to a city eventually has about a 2 or $3,000,000 a year, budget, State, federal, or other kinds of funding that follows on from the make it happen funding that we create. And so if that those ratios hold true, You know, we'll be operating in, you know, 30 to 40 cities. We'll be reaching 3 to 6000000 children and families a year across a 1,000 different dimensions. Those 1,000 things will be raising and spending If they have an average budget of 2 to 3,000,000, 2 to $3,000,000,000 a year of state, federal, and other resources Directing those resources to things that communities needed that otherwise they wouldn't have that are now working at scale.

And that, let's say, 2, $3,000,000,000 a year, that would be the equivalent as if we set up a $50,000,000,000 national endowment at a 40%, I'm sorry, at a 4% spend rate To change outcomes in cities across America. So there'll be this absolutely massive footprint, and we'll Have learned more and more, and so you'll actually see economic and social mobility in communities changing Right now in certain communities, you might have if you're in poverty, might have a 95% chance that your kids are gonna be in poverty and their kids' kids are gonna be in poverty might be another 90% chance. With all the things Greenlight is doing to tear down barriers and change outcomes, You know, hopefully, that metric will be way different. There'll be way more economic and social mobility because of these gaps we will have filled in communities across the country, And people have, you know, real equal opportunity to realize their dreams in life, and all of these structural barriers will be removed or overcome with these bridges we're building. And greenlight itself will be a force when it comes to state government, federal government. People will talk to us about Things that are needed, places they wanna spend money, things that might work that green light could distribute to communities as and if they need them. And new social entrepreneurs will be developing new interventions, new things using technology or whatever, And thinking about Greenlight as the distribution network for them, and that'll create more innovation and more change because people will be more motivated to create more change if you could spread faster. And even maybe greenlight will have started to expand internationally, and we can start to bring innovation to cities across the world and benefit increasingly by things that are developed in India or in Canada or in the UK or whatever.

So, you know, that would be All a bit over the horizon, right, of what's currently kind of within our sights, but I would say not so over the horizon that it wouldn't be a dream that could come true. And that's what I would wish, that it would come true.

Nice. John, I could hang out with you all day, and I know you're a busy human and our listeners are really busy too. We'll certainly put the links to Greenlight and some of the programs that you've mentioned. Check out the show notes listeners. But if there was something you were hoping we were gonna get to today that an impact oriented listener. We'd really wanna know about greenlight, but we haven't touched on it yet, or, something you've learned from your journey that you wanna leave our listeners with as we start to say goodbye, what would that be?

I mean, the biggest thing is I just think there are so many people out there that wanna have impact, But the don't know where to take the 1st step or how to take the 1st step. And, I mean, the first thing, of course, Little maybe self centered to say is if there's a green light in your city or you're interested in bringing a green light to to or helping bring a green light to your city, Obviously, that would be something incredible to be involved in because to be involved in that is to be involved in, you know, in 30 years, making 24 changes in your community. And so, you know, one easy step if you're in a green light community is potentially get involved in green light. Volunteer on our selection advisory council or volunteer for one of the things that we do or, you know, pick something that we've done in a city that you wanna Be on the board of, and you wanna give money to and help supercharge or whatever. So that's that's that's certainly one idea that could be on the table that, You know? I hadn't mentioned that we can mention, but but the broader thing is I forget which, you know, Chinese philosopher it was that said, Hey. You know, the journey of a 1000 miles, you know, begins with a single step. I I I would just say, you know, hopefully, this is inspiring to people as just one example of Stuff that can be done. And to leave this podcast with, you know, I'm gonna put in my new year's resolution over the next 12 months.

You know, I'm gonna I'm gonna do one thing to make the world a better place that I'm not already doing. And, I just wanna add that one thing of good to my portfolio, and I I'm determined to take a step to do something. And, And if you kinda make a a new year's resolution out of that and you do it, you won't look back. You'll regret it, and it may open all kinds of new channels for you because I know If we thought about Greenlight for a lot, and we just it it it it might have been in some ways easy because we're all busy, like, Not to actually take action. You create it and go do it and go prove it in Boston. And if we hadn't taken that first step, none of this would be happening. So Action bias. Make a resolution to take 1 step, 1 additional step, and go actually make that step.

I love that about your model, John. Like, not only just take a step, but stay with it long enough to get the Right? Like, you do 1 new initiative per city, per year. So, like, social entrepreneurs, I I was thinking of, you know, translating it into my own journey. Like, Launching a podcast was not easy. And it's not just something you, like, do for 3 episodes and then decide as a failure or over something you're gonna do for the long haul. It took me time, and this has been the best business move I've ever made, but I had to invest. It's not You know, you launch your podcast and then the money falls out of the sky. It's a long term investment, and it's allowed me to scale and have impact all around the world.

I was just posting on LinkedIn 2 awesome countries where we have a lot of listeners are in Ireland and Kuwait. Talk about very different places with really different unique challenges and strengths. Anyway, how cool is that? Right? But it took years to get to that point. It's I use that as an example of, like, I love what you're doing, John. You launch an initiative, you listen deeply, and then you Stay with it and think about sustainability. And then the next year, you think about what's the next thing in Boston, or the next staying in Charlotte and the next thing in Denver when you're up and running in Denver. And I I just wanna highlight that, listeners. Like, Find something, dig in, get good data, stay with it.

And then when you got traction, then think about what ugly. And I see some social entrepreneurs go from thing to thing to thing so quickly that they never get traction. So just Big congratulations, and I wanted to highlight that, John. Thank you so much for your work, and thanks for being on the show today.

Paul, thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure. Congrats on the work that you do And that your listeners do and that you inspire them to do. You know, really happy to be part of the part of the family, part of the network, and thanks for having me on. Yeah.

It's a pleasure. So listeners, do what we do here on this show. Go check out Greenlight. Go tell your friends. Go amplify. Go learn. Check out the show notes. And before we go, just a reminder, we love listeners suggested topics and guests.

So please, If you got an idea, go to the AwarePreneur's website, go to our contact page, take a look at our guidelines, and send in your ideas. So for now, I just wanna say thank you so much for listening. Please take really good care in these intense times, and thank you for all the positive impact that you're working for in our world.