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Break Fake Rules: Change Big Giving For Good: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Stupski Foundation
Some rules are meant to be broken—especially the fake ones! Break Fake Rules is a podcast that brings today’s news and big philanthropic issues into focus, challenging the self-imposed rules that shape the flow of money, power, and resources in America. Join Glen Galaich, CEO of the Stupski Foundation, and a rotating cast of co-hosts as they unpack the news of the day and engage in conversations with principled rulebreakers in philanthropy, nonprofits, government, media, and more. Each episode examines the fake rules holding the systems in place that don’t serve us—and which rules we must break to secure a better future for all. If you have ever questioned why we live by certain rules and wondered what becomes possible when we do things differently, this show is for you.
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- 2 weeks ago31 min
Rewriting Foundation Board Rules feat. Carol Cheney & Katie Carter
What if a foundation board’s most important exercise of power is knowing when to share it? In this live crossover episode with the Can we talk about…? podcast filmed at Philanthropy Northwest’s conference, co-hosts Mares Asfaha, Associate Director of Programs at Philanthropy Northwest, and Glen Galaich, CEO of the Stupski Foundation, are joined by Carol Cheney, CEO of The Collins Foundation, and Katie Carter, CEO of Pride Foundation, to challenge long-held assumptions about board authority and accountability. Together, they explore how inherited governance practices can shape whose voices are heard, whose priorities prevail, and who ultimately gets to make decisions that affect communities.Their experiences reveal that fake board rules often hold our sector back from realizing lasting change. Together, they question where power resides, how to build trust across an organization, and reconsider what it means to honor a legacy. From fiduciary responsibility to perpetuity, they challenge a fundamental assumption in philanthropy: that accountability requires control.This episode is also available on Can we talk about...?'s feed. Listen to more conversations about equity-centered philanthropy and subscribe here.💡 Katie Carter: “It turns out that the best role for the board was not deeply reviewing all of these grants, making that whole process take a whole lot longer and making it harder for us to get resources out to community.”💡 Carol Cheney: “The big question is, what is a legacy, and really examining what that really means for different people. And you know, a legacy can happen today. We can make a legacy happen right now.”💡 Mares Asfaha: “And maybe this is another fake rule we talk about. It's either 5% or perpetuity. There are so many numbers between five and 100.”💡 Glen Galaich: “This system has been built very much on centering donors and what donors need, much more than it's built on focusing on what communities need.”Explore Philanthropy Northwest and its work over 50 years to shift resources and power toward underinvested communities across the Northwest and beyond. Check out the Mentimeter results to see which foundation board rules audience members are ready to challenge.Visit The Collins Foundation to learn more about its work rethinking legacy, equity, and how a family foundation can respond to the needs of communities today.Explore Pride Foundation and its approach to putting decision-making power closer to the people and strategies shaping the work.Order your copy of Glen’s book, CONTROL: Why Big Giving Falls Short. Learn about the Stupski Foundation.Co-Hosts: Mares Asfaha & Glen GalaichGuests: Carol Cheney & Katie CarterExecutive Producers: <a href="https://stupski.org/people/claire-callahan/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_bl
- 3 weeks ago30 min
If You Want Nonprofits to Win, Fund the People Who Make It Possible feat. Jennifer Haas
What becomes possible when philanthropy invests in the well-being of the people doing the work? In this episode, co-hosts Jamie Allison, Executive Director of the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, and Glen Galaich sit down with Jennifer Haas, President of the Levi Strauss Foundation and founder of the Women’s Leadership and Wellbeing Award, to examine the connection between philanthropic impact and nonprofit worker wellness. Jennifer’s own experiment offers a different model. Through the Women’s Leadership and Wellbeing Award, women social justice leaders receive $15,000 tax-free personal checks with no proposal, reporting requirement, or prescribed definition of what well-being should look like. That choice opens a much larger conversation about trust, proximity, and philanthropy’s attachment to control. The question running through the episode is deceptively simple: if philanthropy is serious about helping organizations win, are its own practices designed to make that possible?💡 Jennifer Haas: “You're almost throwing money away if you give a grant to an organization and you don't consider the well-being of the staff and the team.”💡 Jamie Allison: “You can't contribute toward building a healthy community through unhealthy organizations. If the people inside of an organization are not doing well, that's going to take away from the community impact.”Learn more about Jennifer Haas and the Women’s Leadership and Wellbeing Award through the Levi Strauss Foundation.Order your copy of Glen’s book, CONTROL: Why Big Giving Falls Short. Learn about the Stupski Foundation.Co-Hosts: Jamie Allison & Glen GalaichGuest: Jennifer Haas Executive Producer: Claire CallahanProduction Team: Podfly Video Editing: Edith BelmontGraphic Design: Middle MGMT
- 4 weeks ago24 min
What If the Best Leadership Move Is Knowing When To Leave? feat. Kate Levin Markel
How long is too long to lead a foundation? In this episode, Glen sits down with Kate Levin Markel, President of the McGregor Fund, to break a fake rule philanthropy rarely talks about: once foundation leaders get the job, there is very little incentive for them to leave. Kate explains why she made herself a promise to step aside after roughly a decade. As she demonstrates, staying too long can lead to stagnation and disconnection from community, while new leadership can expand our view of what is possible.Kate also shares how McGregor responded when its grant partners faced an increasingly uncertain political environment by doubling their payout from roughly 5% to 10%. For Kate, both decisions come back to the same question: are foundations willing to evolve when the communities they serve need something different from them?💡Kate Levin Markel: “I think the longer many of us are in these roles, the more disconnected we become from the community we are serving.” Learn about the McGregor Fund and how it is evolving its grantmaking and leadership to stay responsive to the communities it serves.Order your copy of Glen’s book, CONTROL: Why Big Giving Falls Short. Learn about the Stupski Foundation.Hosts: Glen GalaichGuest: Kate Levin Markel Executive Producer: Claire CallahanProduction Team: PodflyVideo Editing: Edith BelmontGraphic Design: Middle MGMT
- Oct 7, 202647 min
Who Should Control the Money? feat. Glen Galaich and Jamie Allison
Break Fake Rules listeners, enjoy this special feed swap from our partners at the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP), who invited our co-hosts, Glen Galaich and Jamie Allison, to guest star on their Giving Done Right podcast. Follow Giving Done Right here or wherever you get podcasts. New episodes of Break Fake Rules return next week.In this episode, co-hosts Phil Buchanan and Elisha Smith Arrillaga, CEP's vice president of Research, discuss some of philanthropy's oldest tensions: who should decide how charitable dollars get spent and how to balance short-term needs with the long view? Their guests, Glen Galaich, CEO of the Stupski Foundation, and Jamie Allison, executive director of the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, are usually the ones asking the questions, as frequent co-hosts on Glen’s podcast, Break Fake Rules.Glen makes the case from his new book, “CONTROL: Why Big Giving Falls Short”, that too much charitable wealth sits parked in private equity and hedge fund accounts rather than moving out to the communities that need it, and that donors should treat public stewardship, not private control, as their guiding value. Jamie pushes back on the idea that this is a binary choice between spending down and staying perpetual, describing how the Walter & Elise Haas Fund has worked to increase payout and shift toward larger, unrestricted grants without abandoning a long time horizon. Together, they debate what foundations with large endowments owe to this moment of crisis for nonprofits, why "responsiveness" matters more than any single spending formula, and what foundations might learn from everyday donors.Order your copy of Glen’s book, CONTROL: Why Big Giving Falls Short.
- Sep 30, 202644 min
Who Benefits When We Stop Trusting Each Other? feat. Dr. Ibram X. Kendi
Why are people willing to give up power in exchange for the promise of protection? Recorded live with Northern California Grantmakers at SFJAZZ, host Jamie Allison invited Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, renowned historian and scholar, and Glen Galaich, CEO of the Stupski Foundation, to discuss their new books, Dr. Kendi’s Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age, and Glen’s CONTROL: Why Big Giving Falls Short.Together, Dr. Kendi and Glen explore what it takes to move away from distrust and zero-sum thinking toward trust, solidarity, and shared responsibility. Their conversation asks a timely question of both democracy and philanthropy: what becomes possible when we stop treating one another as threats and start recognizing how connected we actually are?💡Dr. Ibram X. Kendi: “The weakest link in the chain of ideas are those who believe they're not connected to the rest of us.”Order Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s book, Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age, and his new children’s book, The Power of Our. Learn about his work at the Howard University Institute for Advanced Study. Learn about the Walter and Elise Haas Fund, Northern California Grantmakers, and the Stupski Foundation.Order your copy of Glen’s book, CONTROL: Why Big Giving Falls Short. Host: Jamie Allison Guests: Dr. Ibram X. Kendi & Glen GalaichExecutive Producer: Claire CallahanProduction Team: SFJazz and PodflyVideo Editing: SeeBoundlessGraphic Design: Middle MGMT
- Sep 16, 202632 min
Put Your Money Where Your Mission Is feat. Daniel Gould
When does protecting an endowment get in the way of the mission? In this episode, co-hosts Glen Galaich and Dr. Carmen Rojas, President and CEO of the Marguerite Casey Foundation, unpack the foundation’s bold decision to double its grantmaking over the next decade. They get into what fiduciary duty should really mean and why a mission has to show up in the dollars a foundation invests, not only the dollars it gives away.They’re joined by Daniel Gould, Vice President of Investments and Operations at Marguerite Casey Foundation, who helped move the foundation from roughly 12% to 100% mission-aligned assets. Daniel reveals what went into the foundation’s decision to give $500 million over the next decade, a timely move to increase its grantmaking in alignment with its mission. Together, they challenge funders to question inherited norms around endowments, investment committees, and what responsible stewardship is supposed to look like.💡Daniel Gould: “Don’t accept norms in this sector as facts or laws. You have to interrogate a lot of the underlying norms in our sector.”Learn more about Marguerite Casey Foundation and its bold decision to double its grantmaking in service of its mission.Read the RAND study on the nearly $80 trillion redistributed from the bottom 90% to the top 1% since 1975.Order your copy of Glen’s book, CONTROL: Why Big Giving Falls Short. Learn about the Stupski Foundation.Co-Hosts: Dr. Carmen Rojas & Glen GalaichGuests: Daniel Gould Executive Producer: Claire CallahanProduction Team: Podfly & Gary Community VenturesVideo Editing: Edith BelmontGraphic Design: Middle MGMT
- Sep 2, 202629 min
Is Philanthropy Funding Democracy With the Wrong Tools? feat. Leah Greenberg
What will it take for philanthropy to unlock the extraordinary potential of 501(c)(4)s? In this episode, co-hosts Glen Galaich and Ralph Lewin, Executive Director of the Peter E. Haas Jr. Family Fund, challenge the fake rules telling philanthropy to stay neutral, avoid risk, stick to funding 501(c)(3)s, and keep political work at arm’s length. They’re joined by Leah Greenberg, Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director of Indivisible, a nationwide movement of everyday people organizing across all 50 states. Leah pulls back the curtain on what happens after the protest: local organizing, voter registration, advocacy, mutual aid, relationship-building, and the hard work of turning moments of public anger into sustained political participation. She also challenges funders to stop treating 501(c)(3) status as a moral status and to take seriously what well-resourced 501(c)(4) work can unlock. Together, Leah, Ralph, and Glen pose a sharper question to philanthropy: if the goal is real democratic change, are funders willing to back the people actually organizing to win?💡Leah Greenberg: “Anybody who's frustrated with, “why am I not unlocking the impact that I should have with the amount of resources that I am putting in,” should really think about whether they're actually putting their resources in in a way that allows us to tap into that impact.” 💡Ralph Lewin: “Organized people shift what's possible, and then institutions and politicians follow.”Learn more and get involved with Indivisible. Check out its Hands Off Our Vote movement, supporting efforts to ensure eligible voters can cast their ballots and have those ballots counted.Order your copy of Glen’s book, CONTROL: Why Big Giving Falls Short. Learn about the Stupski Foundation.Co-Hosts: Ralph Lewin & Glen GalaichGuest: Leah Greenberg Executive Producer: Claire CallahanProduction Team: Podfly Video Editing: Edith BelmontGraphic Design: Middle MGMT
- Aug 19, 202629 min
Philanthropy Needs a Youth-Led Update feat. Gilbert Murillo & Godswill Uyon
Philanthropy needs a reboot. Youth are nearly non-existent in the rooms where decisions are made about where charitable dollars flow. So what changes when we bring in young people to help direct these dollars? In this episode, co-hosts, Stupski Foundation CEO Glen Galaich and Malila Becton-Consuegra, Stupski’s Bay Area Postsecondary Success Program Officer, welcome two young leaders in philanthropy, Gilbert Murillo and Godswill Uyong, for a conversation about youth voice, power, and who gets to decide where dollars go. Part case study, part vision for the future, they use Stupski’s six-year internship program as an example of how philanthropy can give young people real grantmaking responsibility, space to question established practices, and access to a field whose decisions directly affect their communities.Gilbert and Godswill share their perspectives on philanthropy and what they learned from interviewing nonprofit leaders about Stupski’s spend down. They challenge the idea that foundations should preserve wealth in perpetuity, question why the 5% payout minimum so often becomes a ceiling, and call on philanthropy to move beyond transactional giving. Glen and Malila also consider how foundations can teach young people about the sector without training away the fresh perspectives that make their participation so valuable.At the heart of the conversation is a call to recognize youth leadership as essential to better decision-making and bring relationship, accountability, and love back into philanthropy. 💡Gilbert Murillo: “The rules aren't fake. They are designed the way they're designed, and it's been like that for 400 plus years already.”💡Godswill Uyong: “When youth help drive grant making, factually, there's more collective knowledge and experience being used to make decisions.” Learn more about California Youth Power Fund, its youth leadership work co-led with Youth Organize! California (YO! Cali), and its partnership with Northern California Grantmakers.Order your copy of Glen’s book, CONTROL: Why Big Giving Falls Short. Learn about the Stupski Foundation.Co-Hosts: Glen Galaich & Malia Becton ConsuegraGuests: Gilbert Murillo and Godswill UyongExecutive Producer: Claire CallahanProduction Team: Podfly & Gary Community VenturesVideo Editing: Edith BelmontGraphic Design: Middle MGMT
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About Break Fake Rules: Change Big Giving For Good
Some rules are meant to be broken—especially the fake ones! Break Fake Rules is a podcast that brings today’s news and big philanthropic issues into focus, challenging the self-imposed rules that shape the flow of money, power, and resources in America. Join Glen Galaich, CEO of the Stupski Foundation, and a rotating cast of co-hosts as they unpack the news of the day and engage in conversations with principled rulebreakers in philanthropy, nonprofits, government, media, and more. Each episode examines the fake rules holding the systems in place that don’t serve us—and which rules we must break to secure a better future for all. If you have ever questioned why we live by certain rules and wondered what becomes possible when we do things differently, this show is for you.
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