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Proof of Impact: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Gleam Tower Media
Proof of Impact is the nonprofit podcast that actually asks the hard questions.The sector is full of people doing extraordinary work, and a culture that is very good at staying comfortable. No pushback. No tension. Just carefully managed conversations that leave the most important things unsaid.Host Elizabeth "E" Kitzenberg has spent decades inside the nonprofit world, leading major campaigns at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard, and now running The Kitzenberg Group, her own institutional fundraising consultancy. She knows where the guard goes up. This show is about what happens when it comes down.Honest conversations with nonprofit leaders. No filter. No apologies.
Latest Episodes
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- 4 days ago52 min
Are We Really in a Generosity Crisis? | Jenna Ray, CEO of GiveMN
Giving participation is down. But the desire to be generous has never been higher. For Jenna Ray, that gap changes everything. As CEO and Executive Director of GiveMN — the organization behind Give to the Max Day, Minnesota’s statewide giving holiday — Jenna sees more of this state’s generosity than almost anyone. And her diagnosis is hopeful: the sector isn’t facing a generosity crisis at all, but a crisis of relevance, meaning-making, and storytelling. The good news? That’s a solvable probl...
- Oct 9, 20261h 2m
Food Shelves Aren't About Food, They're About Income | Matthew Ayres, Executive Director of Joyce Uptown Food Shelf
Matthew Ayres runs one of Minneapolis's oldest and smallest food shelves — two staff, three hundred volunteers, a 110-year-old Victorian house in Uptown. Over the past year, Joyce Uptown has bounced from crisis to crisis, and in the thick of it raised and spent its entire annual budget twice over, becoming a lifeline not just for its own neighbors but for other organizations across the city. In this conversation, host Elizabeth Kitzenberg talks with Matthew about what it means to spend everyt...
- Sep 25, 202650 min
The Foundation That's Giving It All Away | Stephanie Sauer, Sauer Family Foundation
Most foundations are built to last forever. The Sauer Family Foundation decided to do the opposite. Started in 1996 as a 30th-anniversary gift between Stephanie Sauer's parents, the foundation has spent nearly three decades strengthening the well-being of children and families across Minnesota. Now, rather than existing in perpetuity, the family has made the unusual and deliberate choice to spend down their resources and sunset the foundation — betting that a big impact now matters more than ...
- Sep 11, 202652 min
Urgency Without Being Hurried | Chanda Smith Baker, President & CEO of the Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation
Chanda Smith Baker leads the largest community foundation in Minnesota — nearly $2 billion in charitable assets, more than 9,000 grants a year — and she came to the role with a career's worth of hard-won wisdom about how change actually happens. Her answer, again and again: not by rushing. In this conversation, host Elizabeth Kitzenberg talks with Chanda about the discipline of protecting time to think, what it means to lead a team through crisis without becoming reactive, and why the most im...
- Aug 28, 202635 min
You Don't Win by Looking Needy | Steve Grove, CEO of The Minnesota Star Tribune
Steve Grove left a career in Silicon Valley to come home and take on one of the hardest jobs in American media: leading a nearly 160-year-old newspaper into a future it isn't guaranteed to have. As CEO and publisher of the Minnesota Star Tribune, Grove is trying to do what almost no one in the country has pulled off: transform a legacy newspaper into a thriving digital media company without losing the culture, the credibility, or the mission that made it matter. In this conversation, host Eli...
- Aug 14, 202654 min
Is Gun Violence Actually Solvable? | Maggiy Emery, Protect Minnesota
Maggiy Emery leads Protect Minnesota, the only statewide, independent gun violence prevention organization in the state. Her work sits at the intersection of the most contentious politics in America — and she approaches it with a clarity that's hard to look away from: this is a solvable problem. In this conversation, host Elizabeth Kitzenberg talks with Maggiy about what most people get wrong about gun violence, why she doesn't spend her energy trying to change the minds of her fiercest oppon...
- Jul 31, 202656 min
All Victories Are Temporary | Chris Knopf, Friends of the Boundary Waters
"All victories are temporary, and every defeat is permanent." That's how Chris Knopf describes the fight to protect one of Minnesota's most beloved places. As executive director of Friends of the Boundary Waters, he leads the advocacy, education, and conservation work to keep the Boundary Waters clean, wild, and open to everyone. This is a fight his organization has waged, in one form or another, for 50 years. In this episode, host Elizabeth Kitzenberg talks with Chris about what it takes to ...
- Jul 17, 20261h 20m
Why Nonprofits Need to Stop Being Afraid of Ambition | Jazz Hampton
Since posting, Jazz has stepped down as CEO of TurnSignl. -- Jazz Hampton has sat in every seat that shapes how a community solves its problems: as a nonprofit board member, a for-profit founder, and a candidate for public office. In this wide-ranging conversation, he and host Elizabeth Kitzenberg dig into what the nonprofit sector can learn from the way startups ask for money and why confidence, not scarcity, is the real fundraising strategy. Jazz co-founded TurnSignl, an app that connects ...
About Proof of Impact
Proof of Impact is the nonprofit podcast that actually asks the hard questions.The sector is full of people doing extraordinary work, and a culture that is very good at staying comfortable. No pushback. No tension. Just carefully managed conversations that leave the most important things unsaid.Host Elizabeth "E" Kitzenberg has spent decades inside the nonprofit world, leading major campaigns at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard, and now running The Kitzenberg Group, her own institutional fundraising consultancy. She knows where the guard goes up. This show is about what happens when it comes down.Honest conversations with nonprofit leaders. No filter. No apologies.
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