If we have learned anything from the last several years, it is that while we have shared collective pain, a global health crisis, economic freefall, mass shootings, and political discourse so fractured we cannot agree that democracy is a core value, the impacts of these events have landed starkly unevenly. The data shows what progressive nonprofits know: low income, people of color, immigrants, and LGBTQ communities continue to be disproportionately harmed by systems, rooted in racism that make ...
Feb 27, 2023•36 min•Ep. 258
At its core, the N Street Village story is one of humanity, resistance, and advancing racial and housing justice. It began in 1972, when Pastor John Steinbruck opened the doors of Lutheran Place Memorial Church, at the center of Washington DC’s embattled 14th street corridor, to women and children in need of shelter and care. It was 6 years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, a devastating act that reverberated across the nation and ignited riots just blocks from the White House. T...
Feb 20, 2023•41 min•Ep. 257
When you live with racial injustice as a child and have parents who encourage your intellectual curiosity and impulse to advocate and serve you know what it means to live your values. In this episode of Power Station, Ty Hobson Powell describes a childhood in Washington DC marked by the loss of close friends to gun violence, limited access to resources, from grocery stores and parks, and resilient and underestimated friends and neighbors. His pathway to activism included graduating from high sch...
Feb 13, 2023•43 min•Ep. 256
The roots of racism in America run so deep they even determine who benefits from life extending clinical trials. This truth guides Dana Dornsife in advocating for equitable access to medical treatment, which should be but is not, a standard of care in our medical system. When Dana’s brother-in-law Mike was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, she immersed herself in enrolling him in a clinical trial. That experience, which allowed him to live another 19 months, inspired Dana to launch the Lazerex C...
Feb 06, 2023•47 min•Ep. 255
If you are a nonprofit leader who thinks about fundraising with the same intensity that you bring to tackling your mission, this is your episode. Chances are you have been denied the level of funding needed to scale your most impactful strategies or turned down for general operating support, which enables you to deploy resources as needed. In this episode of Power Station, we explore what happens when our most open-minded philanthropic leaders design a new model for identifying and investing in ...
Jan 30, 2023•41 min•Ep. 254
The acrimony in Congress and across the country reflects competing visions for America’s future. This is less a policy debate than a heated referendum on who is entitled to hold power in America. State legislatures are on a fast track to curtailing the rights of communities of color, immigrants, women, and LGBTQ people. Asian American Pacific Islanders, representing 50 ethnic groups, and speaking 100 languages, have been historically marginalized and are current targets of anti-Asian violence. N...
Jan 23, 2023•27 min•Ep. 253
As a child born at the end of the 1960s, inspired by The Jetsons, Keith Jones dreamed of becoming an aeronautical engineer and taking vacations on the moon. He was part of the first generation to come up after the most powerful mass movement in American history led to passage of Civil Rights Acts prohibiting discrimination in voting, housing, education, and employment based on race, disability, religion, sex, and family status. Keith grew up as a Black child with cerebral palsy in St. Louis, Mis...
Jan 16, 2023•42 min•Ep. 252
What happens when a well-resourced Community Development Financial Institution with a track record of $3B dollars in investments takes steps to become a measurably more racially equitable and power building nonprofit in the Black and Brown communities it serves? In Power Station’s first episode of 2023 I explore that question with Lucy Arellano Baglieri, one of the community development sector’s most impactful leaders. Lucy’s lived experience as a childhood immigrant from Mexico who navigated un...
Jan 09, 2023•47 min•Ep. 251
How do you look back on 2022? It’s been a year in which political, digital, and sometimes physical assaults on the civil and human rights of Americans by their fellow citizens have become commonplace. From book banning and public demonization of LGBTQ youth to partisan campaigns to undo voting rights in Black and Brown communities to criminalizing homelessness and protecting assault weapons over people, extremism has taken hold as a feature of American life. In this episode of Power Station, CDF...
Dec 26, 2022•41 min•Ep. 250
Every civil rights law enacted in America is preceded by a past we have not fully reckoned with. The Civil Rights Act of 1968, following the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr, was an antidote to the racism embedded in state and national policy making, from segregationist zoning laws to bank and insurance redlining. Known as the Fair Housing Act, it prohibits discrimination in housing based on race, religion, and national origin, later expanded to include gender as a protected class. Af...
Dec 19, 2022•33 min•Ep. 249
If you have lived through the harrowing experience of eviction and the long slide or quick jolt into homelessness or advocated for those who have, this conversation with Marisol Bello is a tribute to you. It is critical listening for journalists who report on homelessness without fully grasping the nuances of the insurmountable gaps between low wages and spiraling rents. It is for politicians with homeless constituents who can either criminalize them through sweeps or invest in affordable housin...
Dec 12, 2022•46 min•Ep. 248
What will you do when your community is under assault? In our increasingly fractured society, in which elected officials demonize marginalized people and threaten violence when elections don’t go their way, this is a question based in reason, not hyperbole. Hate crimes in the form of mass shootings have become a regular feature of American life. For Nadine Bridges, executive director of One Colorado, the state’s largest advocacy organization for the civil rights and advancement of LGBTQ people, ...
Dec 05, 2022•32 min•Ep. 247
It takes a powerful amalgam of dynamics to produce a groundbreaking book. This is what Brandi Collins Dexter, lawyer, researcher, activist, and stand-out nonprofit advocate has achieved with the publication of Black Skinhead: Reflections on Blackness and Our Political Future. She takes on, with curiosity, deep personal investment, and an openness to views she may not share, the reasons for and consequences of the disillusionment of Black voters with the Democratic Party. This sensibility mirrors...
Nov 28, 2022•37 min•Ep. 246
How is your mental health? Schroeder Stribling, President and CEO of Mental Health America, believes we should all live in the open about our stories and support one another when we are challenged. She is inspired by Clifford Beers who founded Mental Health America in 1909 to dismantle the system of institutionalization of those, like him, who suffered from mental illness. MHA embraced Clifford’s vision for a reform movement, fundamentally changing America’s approach to mental health. MHA is a c...
Nov 21, 2022•44 min•Ep. 245
When Cleofas Rodriguez says that leading the National Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Association is his dream job, believe him. He knows first-hand the risks that farmworkers face because of their immigration status and exposure to dangers in the fields. As executive director of NMSHSA, Cleo honors farmworkers by ensuring that their children are educated. He does this by supporting Head Start agencies in over 30 states that serve families who may move multiple times a year to harvest crops. Doi...
Nov 14, 2022•43 min•Ep. 244
White House staffer and public health advocate Natalie Davis was all-in when President Barack Obama signed on to expand and transform our nation’s ailing health care system. And she was instrumental in navigating the choppy waters of its implementation after the Affordable Care Act was signed into law in 2010. As an advisor to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Andy Slavitt, she was deeply engaged in one the country’s largest expansions of health care in modern history. ...
Nov 07, 2022•41 min•Ep. 243
At a moment of profound national and global upheaval it is important to consider what makes bold, transformational change possible. How can illicit conduct in industries ranging from banking to pharmaceuticals to technology and nuclear energy be exposed and repaired? Calling out corruption, waste and fraud may involve politicians and pundits, but it starts with brave individuals, employees of government agencies, corporations, and nonprofits who are driven by personal integrity. In this episode ...
Oct 31, 2022•38 min•Ep. 242
We are living in extraordinary times. The racism, misogyny and anti-immigrant vitriol unleashed by the Trump presidency has generated tremendous social discord in America. Decades of public policies crafted to bridge a cavernous racial wealth gap imploded under this administration. Even the most vigilant news consumers are hard pressed to keep up with right wing attacks on voting rights, bodily autonomy, and democracy itself. But mainstream reporting does not often tell the whole story of what i...
Oct 24, 2022•36 min•Ep. 241
In 1984, Billy and Debby Shore founded Share our Strength in response to famine in Ethiopia, a mission that soon expanded to ending hunger in America. Their singular focus on hunger deepened our collective consciousness and involved elected officials, the culinary industry, advocates, and low-income communities in securing solutions. They launched No Kid Hungry, a campaign that connects families, many of whom are working people of color with low wage jobs, to public resources, from WIC to SNAP. ...
Oct 17, 2022•43 min•Ep. 240
A conversation with Maritza Silva Farrell, executive director of ALIGN NY, is a master class in organizing for systemic and transformational change. She starts by listening to people, primarily low-wage workers from communities of color who are disproportionately harmed by unjust and economically extractive public policies and corporate practices. ALIGN NY was founded to unite the labor and environmental movements and position them to tackle the most pressing challenges of our time, income inequ...
Oct 10, 2022•42 min•Ep. 239
An organization’s origin story reveals the values of its founders. The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans was launched in 1990 by Vietnam-era veterans who met while attending conferences focused on expanding after-service employment opportunities. They volunteered in communities across the country, helping fellow vets to find needed resources. And they heard over and over that their peers were unable to access or afford housing and that veterans were disproportionately represented in the n...
Oct 03, 2022•33 min•Ep. 238
The shockwave that rocked this nation after the Supreme Court issued the Dobbs decision, holding that the U.S. Constitution does not confer the right to an abortion, continues to reverberate across the nation. An ensuing onslaught of bills passed in state legislatures has restricted or banned abortions in many states. The implications are particularly devastating in marginalized communities where women’s sole access to health care is through visits to a gynecologist. The National Latina Institut...
Sep 26, 2022•39 min•Ep. 237
When three urban planning students launched the news magazine Next City in 2003, they were pushing against the prevailing cultural tide. As their peers were building careers in emerging technologies, they were hyper focused on urban communities beset with deteriorated housing, broken transit systems and environmental hazards. Politicians and the media often characterized urban areas as places to escape and blamed community members for their circumstances. But founders Adam Gordon, Seth A. Brown,...
Sep 19, 2022•39 min•Ep. 236
Since its founding 10 years ago, Alliance for Youth Action has transformed how nonprofits build power and strengthen democracy in America. It was launched by young people who had seen first-hand what is possible when people in low-income and communities of color organize to access their voting rights, stop the separation of children from their immigrant parents and repair environmental degradation. They knew that local organizing is where progressive changemaking happens and that investing in a ...
Sep 12, 2022•39 min•Ep. 235
If the last several years have taught us anything it is that democracy is fragile. And that all of us need to engage with the systems, institutions and policy processes that determine our collective fates. It takes nonprofit organizations with community roots, technical expertise, and advocacy capacities to make that level of social progress possible. The Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), one of the nation’s leading anti-poverty organizations, emerged 50 years ago to highlight and addres...
Sep 05, 2022•47 min•Ep. 234
It is shocking, but no longer surprising, that the hate and disinformation which permeates social media provokes real-life harms. Conspiracy theories promulgated by a small cadre of hatemongers persuaded thousands to reject life-saving vaccines leading to preventable deaths. Children persecuted by anti-LGBTQ groups have succumbed to suicide. White nationalist groups breached the Capitol on January 6, based on an internet-based lie, that the presidential election had been stolen. This is the unsa...
Aug 29, 2022•40 min•Ep. 233
The year was 1881 when 17 women gathered for an unprecedented meeting called by recent college graduate Margaret Talbot and her mentor, Ellen Swallow Richards. Having defied social norms by attending college and pursuing careers they were determined to increase women’s access to higher education. Their persistence led to the founding of the American Association for University Women, which has championed the civil, educational, and economic rights of women for 140 years. AAUW is devoted to achiev...
Aug 22, 2022•43 min•Ep. 232
Words are powerful. Whether Patrice Sulton is telling the story of Washington DC’s criminal justice system or drafting legislation to overhaul it, she uses hers to advance bold changes in its policing, courts, and jails. For years, as a criminal defense and civil rights attorney, Patrice saw first-hand what the data confirms: virtually all criminalized people in this city are poor, Black, and native Washingtonians. In 2020, she founded DC Justice Lab to reimagine failed systems through research,...
Aug 15, 2022•35 min•Ep. 231
Every great organization has a compelling origin story. In the case of Native American Youth and Family (NAYA) Center, parents and elders came together in the 1970s, concerned about the low graduation rate, only 24%, of Native students in the Portland, Oregon school system. Their organizing generated after-school programming and eventually, in 1994, led to the nonprofit incorporation of the NAYA Center, which now serves the entire community from infancy to elders. And the needs are profound, fro...
Aug 08, 2022•32 min•Ep. 230
What would your nonprofit be able to achieve with a law firm on its side? This question was tested when, in the wake of the 2016 presidential election, a small group of experienced litigators launched Democracy Forward, taking on the Trump administration’s assaults on the voting, environmental, immigration, reproductive, and health care rights of low income and communities of color. They quickly mobilized a team of legal, communications and policy experts and partnered with nonprofits working on...
Aug 01, 2022•37 min•Ep. 229
