061 – The Power of Partnerships: Conscious Alliance Story with Justin Levy

Episode Transcription

David Pisarek: Welcome to the Non-profit Digital Success Podcast. I’m your host, David. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about how art can combat hunger.

I’ve got Justin Levy on the show today. Justin is the Executive Director of Conscious Alliance. They’ve been serving since 2012. Justin’s focus on expanding the organization, and distribution capabilities, resulted in the acquisition of a national distribution centre in Broomfield, Colorado in 2020, as well as the launch of new and innovative programs to accelerate delivery and impact.

Justin, honoured to have you here on the show today.

Justin Levy: David, I appreciate the opportunity. I’m looking forward to the conversation.

David Pisarek: Absolutely. I think this is going to be a really interesting and exciting episode. It’s a little bit different. We don’t typically have, or we haven’t had in the past, organizations really be the spotlight on the show.

So super excited to go into that with you. But let’s start off by talking about Conscious Alliance and what it is. So tell us what you’re all about.

Justin Levy: Conscious Alliance is a national hunger relief organization founded in 2002. We are a movement of artists, musicians, food makers, and music lovers on a mission to end hunger in underserved communities all across the country.

David Pisarek: That is quite a goal that you’re trying to achieve there. There are lots of people that are in need of food, whether it’s before school, before work, during the day, at night, whether they have a home and they’re struggling to make rent or they’re homeless. It’s such a great inspiration to everybody that’s listening to this.

Do you have any quick stats about what your organization has done in the past 20 years?

Justin Levy: Yeah. Again, in 2002, we started with a really simple idea of engaging young people in the fight against hunger by putting our efforts right in the middle of a good time.

So we teamed up with the band, The String Cheese Incident, to host our first-ever food drive at the Fillmore Auditorium in Denver. We worked with an artist by the name of Michael Everett to create a concert poster, and we went to Kinkos, and we printed that poster.

Michael has gone on to do now work for the Grateful Dead and so many other magnificent, well-known bands, but he did our first poster ever, and we brought it to the concert. We set up barrels outside of the show and the fans brought 4,000 pounds of food to the concert.

David Pisarek: Four thousand?

Justin Levy: About 250 pounds per barrel.

David Pisarek: Wow.

Justin Levy: And we’re like, “Oh, shit. Maybe we have something”, so we do it again with the band, and we bring in 8,000 pounds of food. We’re like, “All right, well, we have something going here”. The band went to their management company and said, “Hey, we want this to happen at every show”.

Their management was kind enough and smart enough and business oriented enough to say, “Let’s not just make this thing that doesn’t even exist yet as an organization just be our non-profit. Let’s introduce them to other folks in the industry”.

And so we brought that first load of food to Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Pine Ridge is 6 hours away from our home in Colorado, it is the most economically isolated community in our country. 40,000 people live there. It’s the same size as the state of Connecticut, but there’s only one grocery store. One grocery store in a community that’s only 6 hours away from Denver, Colorado, from Boulder, Colorado.

We went there with a truckload of food, and we met an elder in his family, and he said, “If you want to help our people, you’ll help feed our people”, and that’s where Conscious Alliance was built.

So we went from these first food drives, and today we work with over 100 musicians and bands. Michael Franti, The Lumineers, Nathaniel Rateliff, The Dead, STS9, The String Cheese Incident, and fans all over the country, not just in Denver, at concerts all across the country are showing up bringing food. So we’ve engaged multiple generations.

Our posters are not printed at Kinkos anymore, they’re limited edition screen prints that people wait in line for hours to contribute to combat hunger in their local communities everywhere the music plays. Our brand, Conscious Alliance: Art That Feeds, is at the forefront of all of our marketing and how we reach audiences.

David Pisarek: Talk about grassroots, “Come together, we have this small little idea, let’s do something with it”, and then huge success. Congratulations to you and to everybody on your team that’s helped you get there and the management team. That’s honestly a phenomenal story.

I think it’ll really resonate with people that are listening to this episode because it’s where a lot of the birth of humanitarian-based organizations comes from. It’s just like this idea, “I want to help. We need to do something about this”, and being able to take that and then grow it nationally in such a short amount of time, that’s incredible.

Justin Levy: Thank you. I think something that really works for us is truly leaning into the name Conscious Alliance.

What that means to us is that everyone is welcome. Everyone can have their mark on what makes this organization so special, whether you’re a first-time donor bringing hands of food to a concert in Nashville or at Red Rock’s Amphitheatre in Colorado, you’re a part of Conscious Alliance. Whether you’re creating your first poster with us or your hundredth poster.

When you take that stage as a musician, you’re in it. The part we haven’t talked about yet is how we engage the natural food community to bring all of this together. But whether it’s the first donation, whether it’s the first email you’ve sent on our behalf, everyone is a part of it.

David Pisarek: Creating that inclusivity, (I think, is the word that comes to mind) and making people feel like they’re contributing to something bigger than themselves.

Going to the store and buying a couple of boxes of Mac and cheese, I’m going to leave the brand name out there, but going and buying $5, $10 worth of non-perishable, it actually creates a lot of good.

Justin Levy: So much good. I’ve seen it.

I know I mentioned 4,000 and 8,000 pounds of food, and now we’re working at a scale where electric forest, food tripe, 34,000 pounds of food in an entire semi.

Our posters… The art is still donated by the artist. These are artists that are doing official album covers and rock posters for Pearl Jam and Nine Inch Nails and the best of the best.

We’ve created this opportunity where every time someone looks at the poster hanging on their wall, they’re like, “Oh, remember that good time I had? Remember when we gave back?”, and maybe they don’t know anything else about Conscious Alliance, but when they donate their third time, and they get that third poster and all of a sudden they look at the website at the bottom, and they go, “Holy shit. I didn’t know I was part of a movement providing two million meals annually to communities across the country. I thought it was about Humphrey’s McKee Food Drive”, and it is.

It’s also about the fact that no action is too small, and together we can create massive positive change.

David Pisarek: And that’s exactly what it is. Bringing people together, whether they really know about your organization or they buy tickets to a show, and it says, “Please bring some non-perishable to donate. It’s making a change, and it’s helping”.

And so I guess to that point, how do you get an artist, you mentioned that they donate their time and their effort and their skill to produce these limited edition prints I guess all the proceeds go back into Conscious Alliance to help because there’s still overhead that needs to be done.

You’ve got to pay for gas and trucks and delivery and all that stuff. There isn’t an organization that doesn’t have overhead, so let’s just level some of that.

Justin Levy: Absolutely.

David Pisarek: But how do you have a conversation with somebody saying, “Hey, you’re a professional, you get paid hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands or $500 (or whatever) for your time”… How can somebody bridge that gap and be like, “Can you donate the work that you normally get paid for to us?”

Justin Levy: Absolutely. Part of it is that now we’ve been doing it for 20 years, and you can look at the company we keep. So an artist may look and go, “Well, if Michael Everett and Jeff Wood and Justin Hilton are doing it (and these are just well-known artists with the rock art community)… If they’re doing it, I could do it once a year”.

There’s also the promotion that the artist gets as we promote the food drive on a national scale through the band. The artist is getting the promotion, then the piece on volunteering their time versus getting paid.

One, someone has to be in a place where they can do it, but I think this actually goes into a deeper conversation about utilizing people for what they’re already doing and what their talents are. I think about this and not to derail this, but I think about this when I think about our board of directors and other organizations that I’m a part of and volunteers are like, “Ask me to do something that I’m good at”.

When I’m on the board of an organization, it’s like, “Ask me to help you with an event. I’m good at it. Ask me to look at your fundraising strategy. I’m good at it. Don’t ask me to do something that’s completely out of my wheelhouse just because I’m on your board”. When we go to artists, and we say, “Hey, can you create a poster?” They’re like, “I create posters. Yes, I can do that”.

When we reported back, 10,000 people were fed because of it. 1,000 people were fed because of it. We were also able to send a truck to this location with 30,000 meals on it because of your poster. It’s a win-win for everybody.

David Pisarek: 100%. I love the idea of asking somebody to help with something that they’re good at.

If you are a designer or an artist, and you love painting, it’s not going to feel like a lot of work because it’s something that you really like doing. It’s hitting the passion of the person.

When you’re passionate about something, what you’re doing doesn’t feel like effort. It’s just, “Yeah, sure. I’ll make another painting. Absolutely”. Or “I’ll design something on the computer. I’ll spend whatever it is, 40, 50 hours, 200 hours, whatever the time happens to be”.

Justin Levy: It might be more fulfilling. It doesn’t feel like working. It might be more fulfilling as a designer or as an agency. If we move away from our posters, and we think about our marketing material or the strategy, agencies or people in agencies can love all their clients, but when they get to be a part of a project that they know is making an impact in the world in a positive way, it pulls on their heart.

It engages their heart, engages their mind, and engages their talent.

That’s the leverage and opportunity that we have as non-profits. We can focus on educating folks on hunger all day long, but sometimes we just want to move them to action and then educate them on the back end. Not every one that contributes needs to know everything about hunger and that kids are hungry.

It doesn’t have to be a sad story. The first interaction can be “donate” or “bring food to a concert”. Let’s do it first and then let’s learn more later in some ways.

David Pisarek: Yeah, I think there’s a lot to be said about that, too. Getting people doing something because they feel, maybe some social pressure, like, “Oh, I’m going to this concert. There’s going to be, I don’t know, 800 people there. Everybody’s going to be donating something. I need to bring something, too, so I don’t feel left out”.

Then you can get them in the door with that, have a little bit of promo there or a little flyer or something that they can latch on or a sticker that you give out when they donate just to get them to eventually, hopefully, maybe on the off chance that it hasn’t fallen off, that it’s not stuck to the bottom of somebody’s shoe, that they remember and go, “Oh, yeah. What’s this about?” Then the next day or the week later that they come, and they check out what you’re up to and what you’re doing.

Justin Levy: Or capture their email address and send them a timely email blast that says, “Thank you so much for participating at the Dave Matthews concert. Here’s what you’re impacted, or here’s what we do on a national scale”. It’s connecting their action to their band, to how they’re a part of something bigger.

David Pisarek: I’ve mentioned it a number of times in a number of episodes, you need to create that emotional connection with people to get them to want to continue to do what it is that you want them to do.

If you can showcase the importance of what you do, I think a lot of people understand that there are a lot of hungry people out there. Certainly, the financial downturn, and the housing market crash at the end of 2007, and the beginning of 2008. There are people that lose their job. There are so many different life circumstances that drive people there.

The cause that you’re trying to help and that you’re fighting for and solving the problem with, you’ve been able to turn it into a community-wide social event that happens not just in one community, but you’ve been able to grow and scale. It’s multiple communities. But really at the core of it, I think it’s about helping the community.

Justin Levy: It’s about helping the community. It’s about bringing people together, about making a tangible difference.

But really in that marketing funnel, in that donor engagement funnel that we all hear about, it’s about allowing those actions to be easy to accomplish. Getting people into your funnel is a really important thing.

However, you want to say it: it’s an opportunity to gamify social good. “You bring food, and we’ll give you a poster, one that you actually want, by the way”. That’s the other key is how many companies hit us up on a daily basis. Buy pens with your organization’s name on them. Do this and that.

My philosophy is if you give something to someone, make sure it’s the best, make sure it’s something that they’ll actually use, that they’ll actually wear, that they’ll actually represent.

The second piece of that is, never to give somebody something and ask them for something in return at the same time. Like, “Hey, I’m going to give you this coffee mug, but I’d like you to do this”.

David Pisarek: How do you bridge that, then? Because ultimately you’re asking people to donate food or money or maybe time, and they will get something in return. But you’re saying not to do that. What is it that you’re suggesting there?

Justin Levy: I think with the poster, we’re creating a different opportunity. It’s like when you donate, we’re going to give you something.

What I was suggesting before is not to hand somebody something first and then ask them to give. So not sending a water bottle in the mail or a pen or whatever it is, a shirt, and then expecting something back.

A gift is a gift. And then ask us and ask them, so don’t connect the two. So in one way, we’re doing the opposite.

We’re rewarding the action. If you take action, you’re going to be rewarded.

David Pisarek: You have a Pavlov’s dog situation, “You do this, you get the reward”. You can build trust with that, especially if you’re giving something away that is, quote-unquote, coveted.

Something that people really want, like this limited edition print. It’s a really great idea, especially if it’s well-designed, and you’ve got a name behind it that, “Hey, this artist is super famous. He’s done these covers, and I’ve got one of 1,000 limited prints or 500” or whatever your number is.

Justin Levy: Absolutely. The other benefit is it has the band’s name on it.

If you’re at a Dave Matthews concert, Dave Matthews is participating by letting us put his name on the poster. Michael Franti, same thing. You love the band. That’s why you’re at the show.

The band is related to the organization, so let’s support what they care about.

David Pisarek: It almost feels like the product red campaign. But you’re doing this at a different level, a different type of campaign, but it’s the same idea where you’ve got big organizations, artists, the musicians that are backing it and helping to drive your mission forward. So that’s really cool.

Justin Levy: Absolutely. I mean, that is a huge piece of why we’ve grown as an organization and grown from 30,000 meals to 50,000 meals to two million meals a year.

David Pisarek: So, how do you work with maybe larger food brands to help your organization with combating hunger?

Justin Levy: So in 2008, we met Justin Gold, who had just launched a very small peanut butter company in Boulder, Colorado, where we were based. And by now, you may have heard of Justin’s Peanut Butter (and hopefully, you’ve tried their Peanut Butter Cups, but if not, I highly recommend it).

Justin and his three employees were sitting around a picnic table trying to decide what non-profit they were going to support as they grew as a brand. And after going through the whole Rolodex of all the non-profits nationally and also locally in Colorado, they chose Conscious Alliance because of our work to provide food to underserved communities and going the extra mile to reach communities that may otherwise be forgotten about. They really honoured that.

In the beginning, they didn’t really have products to donate, and they didn’t have money to donate, but they had time. We were a small organization. We didn’t really have products to donate and at that exact moment, we went to Pine Ridge Reservation together just in a car, and we just spent time together.

They got to know the community with us, what our work has done, and what impact we’ve had in that particular community. They really owned it and continued that. They then would do company-wide trips with us to different communities and support the organization.

Then as they started to have products available, they would donate products to us. Then, as they had money but maybe less time, they would donate money to the organization. It was, again, really a grassroots organic relationship.

I think that that plays back to, from a marketing side, how we should be interacting as non-profits. It’s like, “Let’s not just ask for money, let’s ask for support. Let’s bring people into the fold, give them an opportunity to really plug in and watch it grow from there”. That was my first experience with that.

I had somebody one time, a development director somewhere, we had a 10-minute conversation. They handed me a branded pen and told me to use that pen when I wrote my first check to the organization. I was like, “Well, that was strange. I have so much to offer you. (Not because I am who I am. I think we all have what to offer. But my internal feelings), I have so much to offer you that could bring you so much more money than what I have as an executive director running a non-profit. I’m already engaged in your work”. It was the wrong ask.

I think back to Justin’s relationship to say, “Look, we brought them in. They volunteered. They’re deeply committed. It’s a company culture that is connected to us. I just think it’s interesting”, and then that same year, Whole Foods bought the grocery store Wild Oats, and they donated a million dollars worth of private-label food to Conscious Alliance.

We went from trying to find food to going, “Oh, shit. How do we deliver a million dollars worth of food in a warehouse full of food?” That brought us to natural food.

From there, we met Neil Grimmer, who had launched Plum Organics, the leading organic baby food company.

Again, he went on a trip with us and was so empowered and impassioned that he was standing in the lobby of a hotel on Pine Ridge Reservation and called Jeff Church, who is the CEO of Succulent Juice, and said, “I found your 12th Whole Foods flavour. No question, you have to support Conscious Alliance”.

And so, again, going back to that grassroots food drive, we were grassroots getting into natural food.

Where it all really clicked for us was when I learned about use-by, sell-by and best-by dates, and the team started educating ourselves on how those dates are pretty arbitrary on most products, like a bag of pasta, rice, and products, and so many others.

We realized a few things. One, we have a national scale because we’ve been around with bands travelling across the country.

We know trucking and logistics. We have met what I call hunger heroes in every single community we’ve ever worked. People who are on the ground day in and day out, whether they’re in Atlanta, Chicago, Colorado, Pine Ridge, or Navajo Reservation, are the folks that are really doing the work every day.

What we decided to do is not shift gears, but add another pillar to what makes up Conscious Alliance, which is picking up unsellable products from brands’ warehouses before they hit the grocery store shelf. The grocery store won’t buy them.

We use our touring and logistics experience to pick it up and deliver it to our hunger heroes all across the country, then make sure it’s getting into the hands of kiddos and families in need.

The second piece of that, that you mentioned at the beginning of the show, was the acquisition of our National Distribution Centre here in Colorado. It’s where we can bring products in, and mix them together.

Maybe 37 palettes of barbecue sauce aren’t the right fit for a community, but one palate of that and one palate of organic milk and one palate of peanut butter and so on so forth is the right mix.

We bring it all in and then distribute it out. It’s also a space for people to come see all the art that we’ve ever created, come take a tour and learn about all that we’re doing.

For us, it’s more than a building, it’s a home where somebody can come and see and touch and feel all things, Conscious Alliance.

David Pisarek: A lot of insight and information to unpack.

There are a few things that stood out for me. I made a couple of notes here… The story you’re talking about with Justin’s and with Whole Foods. Having them come with you and experience sharing and really getting to understand the impact.

It’s one thing to send out an email and say, “Oh, we’ve helped 300 families or whatever”. It’s another to actually bring people in and have them witness it.

I think a lot of organizations, maybe don’t have the scale or the size or the connections that you do, but if they take some video footage of the people or staff as they’re packing food hampers, let’s say, to help feed hungry people in their community, take some video, take some pictures, use those to show the impact, send those out to donors, send those out to prospects.

Get it up on your website, get it on social, and put the message out there, so people can really understand how it’s actually helping and the work that’s getting put into it.

Because asking for $50, what does that do? But seeing, “Okay, this is part of a bigger plan”. This is part of a much bigger thing than just the $50 that will help pull those heartstrings that you need to create, that emotional connection.

Justin Levy: Yes, exactly. I think there are a couple of other pieces there, which are, as you say, with our scale and our growth.

I sort of laugh to myself because I also remember the day of sitting on my couch in my condo, hiring a second person, (and it doesn’t feel that long ago), as we talk about these relationships, I also think back to it wasn’t that long ago that I felt like I was talking to a wall. The other piece is that, yes, share on socials. Then also, again, I’ll go back to invite people in to use their skills to empower and inspire and grow the organization.

Because if you can bring someone in and leverage their skills (from a volunteer base, by the way, also from a staff base, if we’re talking about growing, but from a volunteer base), bring them in, let them feel it. Then they have their own story and connection.

Now you have an advocate, now you have another spokesperson for your organization. Do it again, now you have two. Have them invite two people. Now you have four. It’s a math game, everyone’s invited. That’s where all of a sudden you have 1,000 people helping you grow in the direction you’re trying to go and make an impact.

The second piece there is, and it takes a while, and it’s really hard, but start to quantify, what does $50 do? What does $5,000 do? What does $50,000 do? Because that’s important.

Because I may look at an organization and say, “They’re too big, I can’t make an impact as Justin”. Maybe they’re already well funded, or maybe “I can’t make an impact on a small organization because of the $100 I can donate or the $10 I can donate. They need more than that. I can’t get them there.

Creating the opportunity, which we do with our art, but at $10, $10 bucks, $5 bucks… “At 5 dollars, you’re providing 10 meals. At 10 dollars, you’re providing 20 meals. If you grab a poster, you’re now providing 80 meals.”

Again, everyone’s welcome, even at a dollar. A dollar provides two meals. Then you scale that up to say, “Well, what’s happening at 10 grand and 20 grand?” Because even if we look at our own personal journey, maybe I could give $10 years ago. Maybe I could give $100 now. Who knows? It’s not about that one-time gift. It’s about bringing people along with you.

When I started with Conscious Alliance, I was 18 years old, and I didn’t have any money to give. I had time and energy, and the organization allowed me to give my time and energy for years until I got hired.

Then all of a sudden I’m running their operations, and then over a decade ago becoming the executive director, what if they had told me no? I can say that about multiple other people because we grew up together. We were 18 years old and volunteering. Today, folks work for natural food companies. They own a restaurant. They took over their family’s foundation.

Whatever it is, Conscious Alliance was that first interaction where we’re hitting folks at a generation where we are maybe the first organization that they’re choosing on their own to give to. But it’s not just for today because who knows where we’re all going to be in 10 years. Fostering relationship.

David Pisarek: Nobody knows where the future goes and what the future holds. Look at COVID, for example. Talk about it, there were an industrial revolution decades and decades and decades ago.

I call what COVID did the “technology revolution”, bringing people into Zoom. We’re recording this on Zoom right now. Four years ago, maybe this interview wouldn’t have happened. We wouldn’t have been able to connect in the same way because there are different situations and circumstances.

I’m curious, so 2020 comes, COVID happens, and events for the most part, I would say, pretty much shut down. How did Conscious Alliance pivot to stay operational and still help the communities that you want to help?

Justin Levy: I’ll just say it was really hard. I remember telling the team, “Grab your computers, grab your monitors, grab your stuff, we’re going to go home on Thursday. In three days, we’re going to go home”.

We were just paying attention to the folks that were bigger than us. Being in the concert world, watching things get pulled, what was this organization doing? What were the Denver Broncos doing? Truly. Leaning on our board to say, “What is your company doing?” There are nine of us, maybe eight of us at the time, “What’s your company doing?”.

I remember that we had just purchased Zoom. You have the free version of Zoom. We had just purchased Zoom, and we got on our first Zoom call and someone asked, “Are we still working? What are we doing?” I remember saying back, “This is what we’re built for. This is what we’re here for. I don’t know how it’s going to turn, but we’re going to do it until we can’t do it anymore”.

Events are fully down, there weren’t events. Just to add to your point, yes, there were no events. Our natural food partners started calling us and grocery was going well in some categories. Personal phone calls, not talking about work, but checking in on our friends, our supporters.

We were in a place where folks that had helped us build our brand, the artists, the musicians, the managers and agents of bands, the stage crew, the lighting, and the security guards all went to zero income. When I say overnight, I mean overnight within a two, or three-day period.

All these folks that had believed in Conscious Alliance all of a sudden, maybe went from the best-earning years of their lives, the concert industry was popping off, you know, the Red Rocks are now going from April to December.

We did a couple of things. We got a call from World Central Kitchen and I said, “Look, people that have helped us build our brand, these touring professionals, need support”.

We activated two restaurants in Colorado and one of, I don’t know, three restaurants on Pine Ridge, maybe, and we were able to do, in Colorado, 1,900 free meals a week for multiple months. Our field director on Pine Ridge was delivering warm meals to people’s doorsteps on the reservation.

We were a safe place for touring professionals who maybe never accessed a food bank before and didn’t know how. It was emotional and there were barriers. We were a safe place for them to come each week.

We also teamed up with a stage crew team that dropped the food off to them, and then their colleagues and coworkers went to them to get food.

In addition to the school-aged kids and the schools that we were already supporting, that was like an added layer of our work just got harder. More people got added to just in need. I also think that it created an opportunity where we all realized, and a lot of folks around the country realized, that hunger affects people in every single community across the United States.

It’s not this far-off thing. If you have a kid, likely there’s somebody struggling with food insecurity in their classroom, your neighbour, or somebody down the street, it’s not that far.

And that many of us aren’t that far away from maybe needing food assistance if all of a sudden our industry goes away for a week, or a month. I think there’s still a lot of us living paycheck to paycheck, even though our salaries are growing, like you talked about earlier, like inflation, cost of groceries going up, cost of housing and heating going up. It’s not just folks that don’t have a job. Sometimes it’s two parents working 40 hours a week, both of them with two kids. It’s hard to shine a light on, “Let’s rally and do what we can”.

I think as a community, we really, hopefully, made some people’s days just a little bit brighter. But part of that was like, “Are we going to keep working? Yes, we’re going to keep working until there’s no more money in the bank”. And truly, that was the year we purchased a National Distribution Centre, not because we wanted a flashy building, but because we knew that there was more to do.

It’s not about, “Oh, we have a building”. It’s that we can put all our operations under one roof and have a greater impact. It’s all about the communities we serve.

David Pisarek: That’s amazing. Exactly what your organization was created to do, helping out those people on top of that second layer of the community. If you think about concentric circles, you’ve got the main core that you’re trying to help and assist, and then you’ve got the people that help with the organization.

They need help in being able to fulfill themselves, their psyche, and their soul, and helping these other people that have helped them and giving back to them. It’s such a wonderful thing to do.

Justin Levy: People would ask, “What’s your day like?” I’m like, “It’s a roller coaster. One hour is good, and one hour sucks”. During the middle of that, I think the part that can get lost on non-profits and business in general, really, I think it’s, “Hey, we’re out there to solve a problem”, or “We have this technology”, or “we created this food for the consumer”, whatever your industry is. But the biggest piece is taking care of the team that fulfills that every day.

Starting at home, taking care of your staff. And I mean that on so many levels, I don’t mean just cutting their check for their salary because we all know that that’s not the only reason why people do anything anymore.

But just if we can support each other, then we can support the greater community. And if we don’t start there, then one, it’s not worth doing, and two, it’s not sustainable. It’s not.

David Pisarek: If you take a flight somewhere, there’s always this little video or the flight crew staff showing you how to put on a mask.

They always say, “Look, if you’ve got somebody with you that’s young, if you have a child or somebody elderly or somebody that can’t care for themselves, put your mask on first and then help them. You need to be sustainable. You need to be able to do what you need to do before you can help somebody else”.

If you can sustain like you were just talking about your staff and the people around you and get them in a good place, you’ll be able to help more people, and you’ll be able to be out there doing more good and more, better, for the people that you want to help.

Absolutely. That’s a great analogy and something that we’ve all experienced. Most of us have been on flights and heard that, but it hits differently as you restate it.

David Pisarek: So somebody who’s thinking, “You know what? I need to help. I know there’s a lot of hungry people in my community, in my local, in my city, in my village, in my town, whatever it is that they live in”.

How can somebody maybe get started in helping to combat underserved communities? Get started at helping to combat hunger in underserved communities.

Justin Levy: Absolutely. There are a lot of resources out there. I think one thing to do is just do a quick search of local organizations, local food banks, and local pantries.

To go a level deeper, what are the individual schools doing for their kiddos? If you have a kiddo in a school, if you have a niece or a nephew or a neighbour at a school, maybe check in to see if there’s a way to plug in there.

We use schools a lot of times in community organizations as outlets for food distribution because the teachers know the kiddos that need it. If you’re looking on a national level, we have an amazing program set up and technology actually set up through our partners at Impact Tree and Guru Media Solutions.

But you can log on to our website, ConsciousAlliance.org/takeaction. There, if you complete three actions towards hunger, which are watching a video, making a donation, and learning about hunger across the country, you get entered to win two tickets to see any one concert at Red Rocks in 2023.

By doing a little bit of education, by taking action on our website, ConsciousAlliance.org/takeaction, you can also win an opportunity to go to one of the most amazing venues in the country and see the concert of your choice.

David Pisarek: That’s amazing. I think there’s certainly a lot of inspiration and a lot of motivation in terms of what we’ve spoken about so far today.

Justin, thank you so much for your time. I hope that the people listening today have been able to get some great advice or insight or feel inspired to do something maybe a little bit different or approach somebody who you may not have thought about approaching in terms of a way that you might be able to bring them into your non-profit’s community.

By community, I mean staff, employees, volunteers, donors, and people that participate in your programs or services, or even just walk by down the street.

I want to challenge everybody listening to just take one insight that Justin has mentioned today and implement it, or talk to somebody else in your organization about it and be like, “Hey, I just heard about this idea. This is what Justin has done with Conscious Alliance. Is there anything here? Is there something we might be able to do?” I think that’s super awesome.

Justin, if anybody wants to get in touch with you, what do they need to do?

Justin Levy: The best thing to do to get in touch with me is to jump on LinkedIn. You can find me there. My handle is Justin Levy, so really easy.

The last thing that I’ll say is, and you mentioned this, jump on and see what Conscious Alliance is doing. Look at our website, look at the technology we’re using. The reason I say that is there’s no competition here.

We are all doing good and there is so much to be done. Please take a look, please reach out to other folks in your network. Maybe you think somebody is a competition, or we’re doing something similar, so they won’t share. I mean, 20% of my week is sharing and learning from other people. We’re all in this together.

Again, no action is too small, it’s not a competition. Let’s keep going.

David Pisarek: Wouldn’t it be fantastic if there were three or four other organizations doing the same scale and work that you’re doing?

Justin Levy: Absolutely. Actually, we work with some of them all the time. We trade truckloads of food. We do a lot of work with a lot of organizations. And I think that folks are often like, “I didn’t realize you worked with that”. Yes, they’re in the same lane as us. And look what we can accomplish together.

David Pisarek: Creating those partnerships, those alliances, maybe, as you said before, you get 30k pounds of barbecue sauce. Really, what are you going to do with that? But if you can share it and spread it, and you call up this other organization, be like, “Look, do you need 20 palettes of a product? Yeah. Oh, no, no. You know what? We don’t need because we also got. But call this other organization”.

We’re all here doing the work we’re doing in the non-profits and with non-profits to help and to better humanity and to create a positive impact.

And to your point, there really isn’t any competition. You think there is, but there really isn’t, right? So call another organization if you’re focused on cancer research, call another organization that’s focused on cancer research. Have a conversation, and see where you can partner. Maybe you’re focused on a different type. I think there’s a lot of opportunity. I think there’s a lot of good that can come from those conversations.

Justin Levy: Absolutely. It’s always worth the time.

David Pisarek: Fantastic. Justin, thank you so much for coming to the episode today. It’s been great having you on the Non-profit Digital Success Podcast.

To everybody listening, if you want any of the resources or the links that Justin provided, just head over to our podcast page at nonprofitdigitalsuccess.com. Click on this episode for all the details.

And until next time, keep on being successful.

Justin Levy: Thank you.