Send us a text 'Big Brothers Big Sisters' began over 100 years ago as an alternative to the juvenile justice system when a group of adults realized they could help vulnerable kids by giving them connection and meaningful relationships. Now with over 230 chapters in the United States, they have many programs to help youth reach their full potential in a variety of ways. On this episode I feature Jill Sundstrom, who is the President and CEO of 'Big Brothers Big Sisters of Utah'. She shares some gr...
Jul 02, 2025•27 min
Send us a text Kenra Keddington has been a Camp Director for Royal Family Kids Camp for 22 years. These are week-long summer camps for 7 to 11 year old foster kids. Kenra says their main goal every year is to pour love and connection into each participant and give them the chance to just be a kid again. The camps are 100% volunteer run, with some of their volunteers being previous camp attendees who return as teenagers to help create those same experiences they enjoyed as kids. Kenra shares some...
Jun 04, 2025•30 min
Send us a text The story of Joe Tuia’ana’s nonprofit begins after he had the opportunity to help a man in a suicide crisis and literally love him off the ledge. After that experience, he learned that there weren’t any resources for men’s mental health and suicide prevention where he lived, so he decided to start creating them. Now he runs his nonprofit the ‘I Love You, Bro Project,’ where they sponsor support groups and hold workshops for men to help them find connection and purpose as they navi...
May 14, 2025•38 min
Send us a text Deb Yokshas is a volunteer with Utah County Search and Rescue, who handle all outdoor search and rescue operations in the county. Not only is their team of rescuers 100% volunteer, but they also each pay thousands of dollars of their own money to be certified and have the right personal gear. These are people who are committed on a whole new level to helping and serving in their community. Deb tells some great stories in this podcast about some of her experiences (I think she’s th...
Apr 30, 2025•37 min
Send us a text Training for and running a 5k can not only be a great goal to accomplish…but also a way to champion the causes you feel passionate about. Many nonprofits and other organizations use 5ks to create awareness and raise funds to support the work they do. In this episode I’m giving tips and encouragement so that the next time you see a 5k for a cause that matters to you, you can go and participate with full confidence. Give it a listen and be inspired to sign up for a race this summer....
Apr 23, 2025•25 min
Send us a text ‘Choose Kindness PG’ is a nonprofit located in Pleasant Grove, Utah. It all started after some citizens felt there was division in their community. They went to the city council proposing a plan to promote a culture of kindness and service in their city. It began with organizing kindness clubs in the local schools, and spread from there to community events, and now they also celebrate a ‘Choose Kindness’ month in February. My guests on this episode of the podcast, Rebecca Cardon a...
Apr 16, 2025•29 min
Send us a text 'Fish for Garbage' is a nonprofit that was organized by a bunch of outdoor enthusiasts who noticed significant amounts of trash littering stream banks and lakeshores of popular fishing locations in Utah. They started by encouraging local anglers to collect garbage each time they went out fishing, and then began organizing official events inviting volunteers and locals to come help pick up trash. Now they organize around six cleanups every year in the spring and summer that mobiliz...
Apr 09, 2025•27 min
Send us a text Looking for a very doable but also impactful way to serve someone around you today? Consider giving a genuine compliment, to a stranger or someone you know. It doesn’t need to feel forced either. Just take the good thoughts you’ve already had about somebody else, and have the courage to share them. You can do it through text, in person, or even write them a note. I originally aired this episode in August of 2023, but I wanted to share it again because in it I tell a cool experienc...
Apr 02, 2025•15 min
Send us a text Trigger warning: this episode mentions suicide Jen Spencer had spent 20 years as a meth addict and was living on the streets of Ogden, Utah during a particularly cold and bitter winter. She remembers the feeling of cold completely overwhelmed her, zapping her energy and even her will to live. During a particularly dark and broken moment, she decided to reach out to God in prayer. The answer she received during that prayer helped her to start a rehab program. Only three months into...
Mar 26, 2025•33 min
Send us a text Bryan Ware was out to dinner with his family one night when he wondered, could someone do something with all the restaurant crayons kids use and repurpose them? After pondering that question for a couple years and doing a little research, he finally started his nonprofit ‘The Crayon Initiative.’ Using his manufacturing background, he slowly figured out a way to collect recycled crayons, remake them into new crayons with a unique design, and donate those new boxes to children’s hos...
Mar 19, 2025•27 min
Send us a text Giving of our time and volunteering is important and a great way to serve in our communities, but in this episode I’m switching my focus just a little bit and talking about how important it is to donate money and physical goods as well…especially to the nonprofits in our community. Donations, large and small, are their lifeblood and they are truly appreciative of any amount someone can give. I’m sharing a few tips on how anyone can make donating a regular part of their life by lea...
Mar 12, 2025•16 min
Send us a text While navigating her husband’s sudden job loss, Emily Buss wanted to still be able to provide a fun birthday for her daughters…but after looking around for community resources didn’t know how she could do it. A friend ended up anonymously sharing a list with the community, and packages started arriving on Emily’s doorstep…even down to the cute cat napkins her daughter had requested. From there Emily realized there was a real need in the community to provide birthday supplies to ot...
Mar 05, 2025•29 min
Send us a text Allison Bond is 28 years old, has cerebral palsy, and lives in Lincoln, Arkansas. During the COVID pandemic she decided she wanted to do something to make a difference and started writing letters to various people. Several years and almost 6,000 letters later…she’s touched a lot of people and lives. She writes to individuals in many different situations…people in prison or serving in the military to people affected by natural disasters or even people in her own community. This can...
Feb 26, 2025•19 min
Send us a text I think many of us have found ourselves in a moment where we felt like we wanted to offer our service, or help, or assistance to someone…but we weren’t quite sure what to say or do. This is a topic I have pondered and studied for the last 7-8 years. I’ve even kept pages in notebooks where I’ve written down phrases and questions I have heard others use when they were trying to offer service or help to someone. So this episode is my attempt to share a small piece of that wisdom and ...
Feb 19, 2025•23 min
Send us a text ‘Joyful Welcome’ started after the founder saw a father leaving the hospital with his new baby wrapped in his coat. She decided to start making welcome kits with essential baby items for newborns and their families and distributing them to her local hospital. My guest, Brenda Sanford, is now the chair of ‘Joyful Welcome’. She learned about what they do at a local church meeting, and felt inspired to start volunteering. It was a short time later when the founder thought she might h...
Feb 12, 2025•23 min
Send us a text One of Amy Chandler’s missions with her nonprofit is to be a catapult for lasting transformation. She is the Founder and Executive Director of 'My Story Matters' and they’ve developed courses to help people take ownership of their story and have the tools they need to live with intention and create real change in their lives. Amy emphasizes that their curriculum is really for anyone, but she’s had the opportunity to lead these courses in many places, including the prison system. A...
Feb 05, 2025•32 min
Send us a text Service is a great tool for building a sense of community…and we can also use our communities to serve in big ways. In this episode I’m sharing some ideas I’ve seen from different organizations and people and how they use the power of gathering people together to serve and lift in many beautiful ways. I also give my thoughts on why using this power of community to serve with our families is a good idea too. Listen and you might hear an idea that could help you, your family, or you...
Jan 29, 2025•14 min
Send us a text She’s been in media outlets all over the U.S. championing the ‘free range kids’ movement, and I feel honored to have the opportunity to feature Lenore Skenazy on this episode of the podcast. Lenore shares how she became the standard bearer for this idea of helping parents foster growth in their kids by allowing them to have independent experiences. We also talk about the nonprofit she co-founded called ‘Let Grow.’ Its goal is to make it easy, normal and legal to give kids the inde...
Jan 15, 2025•37 min
Send us a text As a culinary student at a school in downtown Salt Lake City, Jessica Lowe realized that instead of throwing out the food they prepared each week, she and her classmates could share it with the homeless people they often saw on their way to and from class. And that’s exactly what she started to do and continued to do for several weeks. After the class was finished, Jessica realized she wanted to keep serving food and meals, and her nonprofit 'A Little Too Kind' was born. Now each ...
Jan 08, 2025•32 min
Send us a text Cindy Trussel describes herself as a ‘doer’ and a hard worker. She likes to solve problems and has used that tenacity in many ways to serve and lift those around her. She came to the United States from Australia with her family as a young girl and knows what it’s like to navigate a new country and culture. After raising five biological children and then adopting three more, she felt pulled to the nonprofit world. She was involved in different ways and eventually found her life’s c...
Dec 17, 2024•40 min
Send us a text It's the Christmas season and many of us are busy with to do lists and hoping to make this time a fun and magical one for our families and those around us. But today I am going to be sharing simple ideas on how you can 'Light the World' with simple acts of kindness and service. This isn't meant to be another burden or thing to add to your to do list. This is meant to be a resource and a source of inspiration and joy as we all do our best to lift those around us this Christmas seas...
Dec 11, 2024•16 min
Send us a text Chauncy and Kelli Johnson experienced tragedy on Christmas Eve in 2010 after a snowboarder collided with Kelli and their five-year-old daughter, Elise, while they were skiing. Elise and the snowboarder both ended up passing away, and Kelli spent several months recovering from a traumatic brain injury. It was because of these experiences and the passion they have had for skiing their whole lives that they decided to start their 'Snow Angel Foundation'. With this foundation they beg...
Nov 26, 2024•37 min
Send us a text Everyone needs to feel at times like they matter or that what they do matters. Expressing gratitude to those around us for the ways they have helped us and inspired us can be a beautiful way of helping others feel seen and loved…but it can also be a simple and profound way to serve. Listen to this episode to hear my thoughts on how you can craft a sincere ‘thank you’ that can truly make a difference in someone else’s life. Follow the podcast on social media: Do Something More Inst...
Nov 19, 2024•19 min
Send us a text This week is unique for the podcast because I’m featuring a museum for the first time…the Springville Museum of Art. My guests Jacquelynn Sokol and Emily Larsen both work for the museum and they share some great thoughts about the power of art and the museum’s mission to make art accessible to everyone in their community. They share about the many programs the museum does, and also about some of the unique and long-running exhibits they do each year. I especially loved the message...
Nov 05, 2024•30 min
Send us a text Holly Christensen is a wife and homeschooling mom of three children, running her nonprofit ‘The Magic Yarn Project’ from her home. It all started several years ago when she decided to make a soft Rapunzel wig for a friend’s little girl who had been diagnosed with cancer. The wig was a hit…and Holly then started making more wigs for her local hospital, and from there her nonprofit took off. They’ve now delivered over 60,000 wigs to all 50 states and 52 countries around the world. I...
Oct 29, 2024•35 min
Send us a text With Hurricanes Helene and Milton that have recently hit the United States, the topic of how to help after a natural disaster is at the forefront of many people’s minds. In this episode I’m sharing just a few ideas of ways you can serve and support communities that have experienced a natural disaster. Many of us have good intentions and truly want to offer help where it’s needed, so one thing I stress in this episode is making sure you offer your service in a coordinated way throu...
Oct 23, 2024•15 min
Send us a text This week on the podcast I am featuring my niece, Mckell Draper. Mckell is currently serving as a service missionary for our church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As a service missionary, she is dedicating 18 months to full time service at a variety of church and community organizations. Mckell takes us through what a typical day and week look like for her, she shares about some of the service sites she gets to work at, and she tells some really touching stories...
Oct 15, 2024•33 min
Send us a text Ashlee Taylor has worked with nonprofits for her entire career and she now serves as the Executive Director of The Refuge Utah, a center that assists victims and survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence. This can be a sensitive topic to cover, but I think an essential one as well. I really appreciated the ways Ashlee shared about the variety of services they offer, the real needs their center is actively fulfilling in their community, and even the stories of some of the p...
Oct 08, 2024•33 min
Send us a text It’s that time of year when many families are finally getting settled into their school routine and schedule. Life can be busy! Running kids around, balancing many responsibilities in and outside our homes, and keeping up with all that life has to offer. So with this episode I wanted to take a minute to give the reminder that volunteering in our children’s schools is a great way for parents…and even grandparents…to serve and make a difference! I share my personal reasons for why t...
Sep 25, 2024•31 min
Send us a text Danielle Simko graduated from high school this last May and along with everything else that you can imagine a busy senior doing, she also competed in her local city’s pageant with the Miss America organization. On this episode Danielle shares about the community service initiative she started called ‘Lead with Light’. Her goal with it is to teach different areas of leadership to children and youth, giving an especial focus on service and helping those around you. I love how we wer...
Sep 18, 2024•26 min
