Money in Motion, Not Money Warehoused

Most people who've heard of a community foundation think of it as a place to park charitable dollars. Kristin Todd would tell you that's the least interesting thing it does.

Kristin is President and CEO of the NoCo Foundation, the community foundation serving Northern Colorado. She came to the role after years as executive vice president for the Daniels Fund, one of the largest private foundations in the Rocky Mountain West. 

That path, from a national legacy fund to a place-based one, shapes how she sees the work: a community foundation isn't just a philanthropic bank, it's one of the few players that can get donors, nonprofits, and the wider community around the same table and actually move something forward.

Housing is the example she keeps coming back to. In a two-county region split between conservative ag country and a progressive university town, she's the one who can pull mayors, developers, city planners, and nonprofits into the same room, because the foundation has no axe to grind and 50 years of trust to draw on. She calls it being Switzerland. It's also a good description of the whole job.

She's a pragmatist at heart. She'd rather get people in a room and move than run another study to be sure. Compromise, act, learn in the real world instead of the boardroom. And after thirty years in this work, what keeps her going isn't that the sector's had an easy run lately, it hasn't, but what she watches people do when their community is on the line.

She and Eric get into why she'd rather call nonprofits businesses than charities, what a community foundation can do that a billion-dollar legacy fund can't, and why local work beats national fights.

Episode Highlights:

[00:01:00] Running a $1.5 billion legacy fund vs. a nimble community foundation 
[00:04:30] The three buckets: the philanthropic bank, strengthening the sector, and the wicked community problems 
[00:07:00] What nonprofits are actually facing right now, and why mergers stopped being a taboo word 
[00:08:00] "What if the disruption is the new normal?" 
[00:10:00] Fewer donors, bigger checks, and the rise of the donor-advised fund 
[00:11:30] How NoCo doubled its grant-making by keeping money in motion 
[00:12:30] The 5% floor that became a ceiling 
[00:19:00] The narrative problem: "And you do all of that as a volunteer?" 
[00:20:30] Stop calling them charities. They're businesses with social impact. 
[00:28:30] Becoming the Switzerland of a divided region to solve housing 
[00:34:00] Punching above your weight locally instead of waiting on Washington 
[00:36:00] What keeps an eternal optimist going
 

Notable Quotes:

[00:12:30]: "In the private foundation world, that 5% has become a ceiling, not a floor. It was intended to be a floor and it is a ceiling." Kristin Todd 

[00:11:30]: "We do not want to be a sponsor of DAFs that are warehousing dollars, and in fact we are not." Kristin Todd 

[00:08:10]: "What if this time of disruption is the new normal, and it's not going to settle down?" Kristin Todd 

[00:21:30]: "These are the hardest problems in the world that no one else has solved, and yet they're not getting the same attention as the latest AI startup."  Eric Ressler 

[00:13:10]: "It's almost like a reverse anchor. You now have permission to only spend down that much." Eric Ressler 

[00:31:20]: "We can be Switzerland. We can get mayors and city planners and real estate developers and nonprofits all at the same table and say, we've got to work together." Kristin Todd  

Resources & Links:

• NoCo Foundation — the Community Foundation of Northern Colorado, where Kristin serves as President & CEO
• Daniels Fund — the private foundation where Kristin previously served as Executive Vice President

Full Transcript:

Eric Ressler [00:30:00]: I'm picking up on some just logical pragmatism that's refreshing to hear because I think sometimes in this space every decision gets analyzed and picked apart. And at some point we just have to do our best here and then learn in the real world instead of in the boardroom. Kristin Todd, welcome to the show.

Kristin Todd [00:00:55]: Thanks so much, Eric. It's a pleasure to be here.

Eric Ressler [00:00:55]: So I think where I'd like to start today is just to hear your perspective as you've transitioned from a much larger foundation where you are overseeing upwards of $50 million in annual giving to a community foundation where maybe the sheer amount of giving is a little bit less, but the impact hits in sort of a different way. So I'd love to just kick us off by understanding from your point of view, what is the difference in running a fund of those different sizes and those different trajectories?

Kristin Todd [00:01:25]: Yeah, I love that question because it's been a journey for me and I have lots of thoughts on that. I came from working for two different private foundations where you're working for the legacy of one single individual or one single family. In my case, neither of those parties were still living. And so I was part of a staff executing on someone's vision. And while the resources were vast, I often felt like there was some level of disconnect between what the community needs here and now versus what someone's thought and approach and legacy might have been decades before. And so being on the community foundation side where you are truly place-based and you are truly working in the moment, helping a community solve some of its biggest challenges, in my opinion, allows us to go deeper, be in partnership with the community and figure out the best way to invest those dollars in a way that is focused on the here and now, on what the issues are, in a way that you're not able to do when you are executing someone's vision that may have been identified many years earlier. And it's not that that legacy is a bad thing. It's just not as nimble as I believe we can be in the community foundation space where we can shift on a dime as the community needs are changing.

Eric Ressler [00:03:05]: You surfaced really early on an interesting tension from my point of view, and this starts to really bubble up to the contradiction of philanthropy in general, which is that for a lot of institutional philanthropy, wealth was gained through often private markets and the priorities are often shaped by whoever was in charge of that wealth and their priorities and what they care about in the world. And in the best of cases, they care about things in the world that are real problems that need to be solved and it all works out. And nonetheless, who gets to decide which problems are most important in the world? The pro-government crowd would say, well, that's the purpose of government and your representatives and who you vote for. So it's a tangled mess, this whole space. And so what I love about the frame of a community foundation, as you mentioned, is that it's place-based, it's nimble.

Kristin Todd [00:04:30]: Yep, you bet. So I answer that question with a little bit of a framework of how we organize our work, because to me it's at the crux of what we do and how we try to be matchmakers between community need and donors. And so at the NoCo Foundation, and I don't think this is dissimilar from other community foundations, maybe my bucket analogy will be different. People use different language, but I use three buckets to describe our work. One is sort of bread and butter community foundation work where we are aggregating dollars, we're a philanthropic bank, if you will, we're the philanthropic easy button. We're helping donors and DAFs give responsibly. I think every community foundation does that. Our second bucket is working to strengthen the nonprofit sector. Our belief is that if we have a healthy, robust, vibrant nonprofit sector, philanthropic dollars go further, quality of life is enhanced, community wellbeing is enhanced. So what can we do from our position as a community foundation to work to strengthen the capacity and the health of our nonprofit sector? And then our third bucket is, what are the greatest needs in the community? How do we know that? So we are producing reports, we're doing community indicator reports. We understand what the greatest needs are and we are bringing people together to solve big wicked societal issues. In our case, we're working on water sustainability. We live in a high desert area in Northern Colorado. Water is a big issue. Affordable housing is arguably our largest complex challenge. So what are those issues that we as a region are facing and what's our responsibility and our ability to convene and catalyze and move the community towards solution? So that framework is our three buckets of work. To answer your question, it's how do we create continuity and crossover among those three buckets? So how do we educate our donors who are making grants out of their donor advised funds? How do we educate them on our bucket three work, which is what are the greatest community needs, making sure or at least encouraging them to give dollars toward those greatest needs, and better yet, are they willing to come alongside us in the work that we're doing on affordable housing, water sustainability, and help support that work? Likewise, if we can play matchmaker between the nonprofits in bucket two with those donors, we again are doing the best service to the greater good and the community. And so how do we blend those three buckets is how I think we sit in a position to get at what you're talking about.

Eric Ressler [00:07:20]: I want to focus for a minute on bucket two, strengthening the nonprofit community. It's been a tough couple of years just at large for nonprofits in America especially, but I would say the social impact sector has been tumultuous with the funding ecosystem in rapid change right now. What are you seeing on the ground as surfacing as some of the greatest needs and some of the greatest challenges that nonprofits are facing right now?

Kristin Todd [00:07:45]: Yeah, I agree. It is certainly a time of chaos and disruption and a lot of nonprofits are feeling that, they're feeling it daily. And from where we sit at the community foundation, I think we're able to be a trusted resource and a trusted advisor to our nonprofit community. And some of the things that we're seeing are, my observation would be, what if this time of disruption, we're not waiting for the new normal to happen? What if this time of disruption is the new normal and it's not going to settle down? And so how do we equip our nonprofit leaders to be resilient and to be bold and to be strategic and to figure out how to navigate if this disruption is the new normal? And I would borrow Churchill's words to say, never let a good crisis go wasted. So what can this crisis teach us about being resilient and maybe being creative and doing things differently to allow us to come out stronger? Dare I say on the other side, because there may not be another side. It may be this may be the new normal. And so we're brokering a lot of conversations right now about strategic alliances, mergers even, and taboo words in the nonprofit sector that have been very difficult in prior years are becoming more and more a reality. And thankfully, I feel honored that the community foundation is this trusted resource where nonprofits in our community are reaching out to us and saying, will you help us? Would you bring some of our stakeholders together and help have this conversation? And so we're seeing things along that whole spectrum of people, organizations really looking at full mergers to the other end where maybe it's just a strategic alliance or some kind of shared service model that will help them really get through these trying times.

Eric Ressler [00:10:05]: One of the things that we've heard over and over again on our show and just observing the space is that there actually is more money than ever before being poured into nonprofits, especially from private individuals. But the concentration of that money means that there's less donors overall, but the donors who are giving overall are giving more. And I think what that's leading to alongside the disruption in government funding is more and more nonprofits essentially competing for these resources and shifting their modalities of fundraising more towards high net worth individuals, donor advised funds, which have been this kind of standard thing for community foundations since the beginning, are now becoming this hot vehicle for giving in a way that I think is different than even a couple years ago, at least from my view. And there's some criticism about DAFs too, right? DAFs are a great way to park your wealth and there's not requirements around how much you spend down. And then the pro-DAF people will say, well, actually on average, DAFs spend down faster than private foundations. So how do you ensure as the broker of impact between boots on the ground social impact organizations and generous donors in the community who want to give back that those dollars are being spent not just wisely, but they're actually spending down in this time of need?

Kristin Todd [00:11:25]: It's a good question. And from where I sit in our community, we talk about money in motion. And so we do not want to be a sponsor of DAFs that are warehousing dollars and in fact we are not. And so in the five years that I've been here, we've been able to more than double the grant making that we are putting out through our DAFs into the community. And I would argue that that is largely because we are being more proactive in working with our donors, introducing them to nonprofits, getting nonprofits in front of our donors and playing matchmaker. And so we are very intentionally doing everything in our power to make those dollars move. And it's been very successful here in our community. We went from granting $7 million annually pretty steadily and now we're at about 16 and a half million annually and we continue to grow, and it's simply because we are intentionally saying, here's a need, here's a project, and putting people together. And I would say in the private foundation world, that 5% has become a ceiling, not a floor. It was intended to be a floor and it is a ceiling. And in our community foundation, and I believe nationally, DAFs are putting out upwards of 15, 18% a year. And so I think if we put a percentage requirement for DAFs, we might end up in the same place where that becomes a ceiling and not a floor. I don't know. That's kind of been my experience coming from private foundation to community foundation and seeing the difference between the two.

Eric Ressler [00:13:10]: It's almost like a reverse anchor. It's like you have now permission to only spend down that much. Whereas now because there's no minimum, it actually doesn't anchor the DAFs to be there. I've never actually thought about it that way before, but it's intriguing. I do wonder, one of the things that we hear even major private philanthropies say is like, well, we need to make sure that we are making investments so that our endowment and our funds can grow so that we'll be here in 10 years when we're still needed. And I think there's some good truth to that to a degree, but I also think that we're coming out of a time where those funds are gaining much more than 5% per year over the last five years on average. And we've seen even some admirable commitments to six, seven, 8%, sometimes even more. We've interviewed folks on the show who have become a spend down philanthropy where they're spending their money down as fast as they possibly can. I'm not here to judge one way or another. I have my own beliefs on this, but I'd be curious to hear from your view how you think about that spending down, accelerating, getting money into the community and also ensuring that there is coffers for the next need that happen the year after and the year after that. How do you think about that balance?

Kristin Todd [00:14:25]: I guess I would say I don't think there's one single answer to that. It's complicated and I think probably a balanced approach is what will serve us best. I do believe that there is an argument to be made for endowing funds for the future and to maintain those sources of funding for future generations. And also I recognize that the needs are great today and we shouldn't not spend today. And so I do believe that there are so many different types of philanthropists. There are different values, there are different approaches that my hope is that the tent is big enough to bring all philanthropists together and embrace whatever feels right to them. And then in the aggregate, we've got some that are spending down, we've got some that favor spending today and some that favor spending in the long term, but on the whole, we've got a balanced approach.

Eric Ressler [00:15:30]: Hey friends, real quick before we continue today's episode, I'm Eric Ressler, founder and creative director at Cosmic. Cosmic is a creative agency purpose built for nonprofits and mission driven organizations. For the last 15 years, we've helped leaders like you nail your impact story and sharpen your strategy, but we're not here to just leave you with a fancy slide deck and a pat on the back. We roll up our sleeves and help you bring our ideas to life through campaigns, creative, and digital experiences. Our work together helps you earn trust, connect deeply with your supporters and grow your fundraising and your impact. If you value the thinking we share here and want it applied to your biggest challenges, let's talk at designbycosmic.com. 

All right, back to today's conversation. From the point of view of a community foundation, you have a unique setup compared to some private foundations where the initial investment is there and the only way for it to grow is through future investments of that initial capital. Whereas from a community foundation standpoint, there's constantly new sources of capital being invested year after year. So in the best case scenario, every year more and more money is coming in and more and more money is going out.

Kristin Todd [00:16:45]: Yeah, 100%. And I think again, that speaks to the versatility and the nimbleness of a community foundation, that we can meet the moment and we can meet donors and philanthropists' desires today and we can also meet donors and philanthropists' desire for building a legacy for the future. And as long as we're doing both and filling both coffers, I feel like it's the best of both worlds. At the end of the day, we consider one of our core values and at the core of our mission is to inspire more philanthropy and to bring in all kinds of philanthropy and meet people where they are and help them think through what's important to them and why, and how do you factor in the needs of the community so that community needs are also part of the mix. But the more philanthropy we can bring to bear, the better off we all are. And so we do a lot of listening for new donors and new folks that are coming into our world to say, what do you want to accomplish? What is meaningful to you and how do we help build a vehicle and a plan that achieves that?

Eric Ressler [00:18:00]: One of the things that I'm particularly interested in as we work with our clients and just as a curious person about this space and how social change happens is, how do we build a more resilient social impact and nonprofit sector? And I think that's a really big question that we're certainly not going to answer in our show here today, but I like to poke and prod at it and get my guests' thoughts on those things. And one of the things that I think clearly isn't working is when nonprofits are under-resourced for the scope and the scale of the missions that they're set out to create. And so we've seen a lot more sector-wide pontificating about trust-based philanthropy and multi-year general operating support and trying to get away from measurement of success being measured only by overhead percentage. So I see those conversations happening in my professional life and then in my personal life, talking to friends, talking to family, it feels like those conversations are just not breaking through to the public. And if anything, there almost seems to be more skepticism of nonprofits and social impact organizations being scams or tax write-offs. What are you seeing out there in this space? Is this just internet talk happening?

Kristin Todd [00:19:15]: I am an eternal optimist and I have spent my entire career, so now more than 30 years in the nonprofit sector, in the social impact sector. I picked up that you're calling it social impact sector and I think that's part of the issue, right? I think we've got a narrative problem and I think that people hear about, oh, these cute little nonprofits, these cute little charities, that they're not doing real work. And I think about this story, a dear friend of mine who's been a nonprofit CEO of a major, major social impact organization and was on a flight sitting next to someone, had a two hour conversation talking about all of the great work that they do, the significant deep work that they do, and the woman who herself was an executive said, and you do all of that as a volunteer?

Eric Ressler [00:20:10]: Right.

Kristin Todd [00:20:15]: There's just this complete disconnect and lack of understanding. I think part of it is our own nomenclature of calling it the nonprofit sector and the charitable sector, which somehow to me feels less than. How do we change the narrative to say these are businesses, they are businesses that have social impact, and how do we educate the general public about the importance of these organizations to our society, civil society?

Eric Ressler [00:20:45]: 100%. I mean, preach it. I so agree with you. And that's one of the reasons that I've deliberately always used social impact to describe this sector, A, because it's not just nonprofits, right? It is public-private partnerships, governments in the mix, funders are in the mix, some of which are nonprofits, some of which are not. And I believe that's what it's going to take. And I do think there is this kind of like, oh, isn't that cute, you're doing good work and you're passionate about it, but we know this isn't as serious as working for a tech company for some reason. But when you're in this space and if you've been in the seat as an executive director or a funder or even like my point of view, supporting and being inspired by these organizations, you realize these are the hardest problems in the world that no one else has solved or is willing or able to solve, and yet they are not getting the same amount of time, energy, resources or attention as the latest AI startup. And so there is this contradiction and I don't know if this is because we're so motivated by profit here in America and globally to a degree as well, or because there are some examples of organizations that can't break past that like, well, it's a good cause but the impact frankly isn't really meaningful. And that does happen too, because going from zero to one as a social impact organization is really difficult, and when it's being funded by generosity, there's this extra scrutiny that's attached to it. Whereas if a billionaire investor loses all of their investment on a new tech startup, no one's shedding any tears over that, which I think is right overall.

Kristin Todd [00:22:25]: There's this total double standard and lack of understanding that we should not fund capacity and infrastructure of a social impact organization and startup and capital and investment in the same way that we do in the private sector. I don't know what that is, but I hear you and it is a complete disconnect. And until we can really, I think, genuinely treat the social impact sector as essential and not this nice to have and invest in the infrastructure of those organizations in the same way, we're not going to get there. But I, again, I'm an eternal optimist and I feel like there's a little bit of a shift happening. And to bring it back to this disruptive time we're in right now, what opportunity, I guess, is what I would ask is how can we use this time of disruption to further that cause that it sounds like you and I are both a part of?

Eric Ressler [00:23:30]: Yeah. And I feel like we're up here in the clouds and I can hang out here all day, trust me, but how do we bring this back to, if there is a nonprofit executive listening to the show right now, they're well aware of the pain of this problem, and maybe they haven't thought about it in exactly this way, but most likely they have, and yet they've got payroll to make next week, right? They've got a program that just got spun down because what used to be a government grant just disappeared overnight last year. So what do we do about it? What are the practical things that, and I have my point of view on this and it comes really from communications and brand building and identity and the things that I specialize in that I do believe are a huge lever that's underutilized for all the reasons we were just talking about.

Kristin Todd [00:24:25]: I would say like any nonprofit exec that is listening, if you're not already connected in a peer network, that's a place to start. And to reach out to your local community foundation, or if there is a private foundation that you have a relationship with, see if they can partner with you to be a convener or an intermediary, for instance. So we do several things here in Northern Colorado. We have created a peer network of nonprofit execs. They get together monthly, and on one hand they are each other's support system and they can share challenges and good news and highlights, and we can listen and mine for common challenges that are surfacing in the group, and then we have gone and created programming to bring back to them. And so we've created a training, or we contract and bring experts in on branding, communication strategy, advocacy, board relations. And so we can bring resources to the sector, to this peer network. And the luxury we have is that we're not leaving those peer network meetings and going back to be in our jobs where you're worried about making payroll and you're worried about running the nonprofit and all of the things. We can continue to look at it from the 30,000 foot level and hear what the needs are and bring resources and continue to convene and create partnership and peer networks. That is at least a start. So nonprofit execs know that they're not in this alone and there is power in numbers, and there are these intermediary organizations like a community foundation that can serve that role.

Eric Ressler [00:26:20]: Yeah. And I think that from my point of view, before I was in this space, I had maybe tangentially heard of the community foundation here in Santa Cruz where I am, but I didn't really know exactly what they did. And I actually didn't realize similarly how much a community foundation is an important element of gluing the community together, especially in times of true disasters. So environmental disasters, like a community foundation is one of the first places to activate support networks, money, funds, whatever it takes. Do you think there's a similar thing that happens for nonprofits as well where they're just not aware of the benefits of being in network with the community foundation?

Kristin Todd [00:27:05]: I think for sure. And again, I think that there's 900 community foundations around the country. We often laugh and say, you've met one community foundation, you've met one community foundation. So we're all different, but it's certainly a place to start. And more and more I'm seeing community foundations lean into their role of exactly what we've been talking about. Getting outside of just being that philanthropic bank, getting outside of just servicing the donors and the donor advised funds, and really leaning into community and leaning into the health and wellbeing of the nonprofit sector. So I think it's a great place to start as a nonprofit social impact ED. If you're not connected with your local community foundation, it's a great place to reach out and figure out if there is something happening there that you could be a part of.

Eric Ressler [00:28:00]: Let's talk a little bit about, you mentioned at the top of this episode, one of the things that you're doing is listening and unearthing what the greatest needs of a community are. That sounds like difficult work to me when there's so many competing priorities, when things are becoming polarized and divisive. Let's even just take the example of housing. Huge issue here in California, even very directly here in Santa Cruz where I am, but becoming more and more of an issue across the United States, and I know it's an issue in Colorado as well. How do you as an organization figure out how to assess the need, how to prioritize and stack rank the needs? That's messy work. What's your process like there?

Kristin Todd [00:28:40]: So it is messy work and I would say it's evolving and I'm not sure that we've got it all figured out, but what we have done is we often start with data. And so I live in a region, Northern Colorado, and it is primarily a two county region that we serve and the two counties are very different. One is like ag, oil, very much more conservative. The other county is much more progressive university town, et cetera. So very different politically, geographically, industry across the board. Yet the issues don't change when you go across the border. Housing is still the number one issue. And so we started with data, and there had never been a two county regional community needs assessment or a community indicator report that had ever been done. So we thought, well, that's a value add that the community foundation could do. And I would also add that we are this trusted institution. We've been around 50 years. We're very careful to say neutral in the sense that we can bring lots of different perspectives to the table, not neutral in that we don't have an opinion, but people will come to the table when we invite them. So first we start with data, and right now housing is one that no one can argue with right now. It is our number one issue and we are on this trajectory that is just untenable for our region. And so the data bears that out. And so then we are able to say, okay, let's start working on this together. Let's get out of our silos. Let's get our municipal leaders to the table. Let's get our developers to the table. And two sides that don't always see eye to eye. And so the developers often point fingers at the city planners and vice versa, and you've got the narrative of the greedy developers. Well, really none and all of that is true at the same time, but if we don't come together at the same table and try to figure it out, we won't get anywhere. And so I think because it's an acute issue and people know that and they're willing to say, okay, everything's got to be on the table because we can't continue in the way we're continuing. And then if we invite them, they will come. And we have had really rich conversations over the last year with all facets and all perspectives of the issue, and we're starting to get somewhere. But I think it's this unique role that a community foundation can play and does play in many, many communities around the country, that we can be Switzerland. We don't have geographic borders and we can get mayors and city planners and real estate developers and nonprofits all at the same table and say, we've got to work together.

Eric Ressler [00:31:35]: Yeah. I'm picking up on some just logical pragmatism that's refreshing to hear because I think sometimes in this space, and I think it's exacerbated by this media environment that we're in where every decision gets analyzed and picked apart and agendaized if that's a word. And at some point we just have to do our best here. We have to take the inputs and we want to be diligent and we want to be rigorous around how we do that, but we've seen that diligence and rigor progress to a fault where we could spend years running studies and reports and doing listening sessions and community convenings. And at a certain point some stakeholders just need to make a call and do what they think is best and execute and then learn in the real world instead of in the boardroom. And I think that striking that balance is a really tough position to be in as a leader, especially when positions that used to be kind of insulated from too much public opinion, maybe you'd get a bad op-ed, now suddenly people can show up outside your house and stalk you on social media. And so the stakes are a lot harder. And what I worry about is we're seeing, or I'm observing, less people being willing to engage in quote unquote politics or even just civic engagement in general for fear of just being ostracized or just the exposure of being a public figure at all. And I think that's a bad trajectory.

Kristin Todd [00:33:00]: Yeah. I mean, what I see here, and knock on wood, is those two counties that I described could not be more different, but there's a level of pragmatism where, and I don't know that this is everywhere, but here in Northern Colorado, leaders are willing to come together and put differences aside for the good of the community and will find that there is often more common ground than they would think. And so it just sometimes takes somebody to get everybody together and go through an exercise and talk about values and what do we want for our community and what do we want our community to be for our kids and our grandkids? And then we see that we're really pretty well aligned on that visioning. And so then we just have to figure out what are we going to compromise on and what are we going to do to move this forward? But there is a level of pragmatism that I feel like is baked into at least this region, which is helpful.

Eric Ressler [00:34:00]: Yeah. And to almost argue with my last question to myself, how much of that is just the internet and let's go touch grass. And when I'm in these rooms where sure, there's divisive meetings and there's organizing and some of that's just like healthy politics, right? We should have strong opinions on these things, but at the end of the day, I think we need to just be in action, right? That is the main thing, because if we don't move, we'll never fix these issues. And we have to be willing to move and fail sometimes.

Kristin Todd [00:34:30]: Yes. My experience in working at the local level is there is far less divisive vitriol than there is at the national level. And I think if we can just focus on our local communities, we'd be so much better off.

Eric Ressler [00:34:50]: I think that's really good advice in general and something I've been thinking about a lot and feeling the urge to get more involved in not even just like local politics, but just like local community in general and civic service and the issues that I care about and supporting some of the nonprofits that are doing good work around education or advocacy or infrastructure or whatever the things are. Transportation has been on my mind a lot as something that, coming back from a trip in Europe and coming back to America and saying, being reminded we've got a lot of work to do on transportation even in our own community here, and feeling the urge to be part of that. So I think that's a really good thing to consider, like what is your sphere of influence? And you can usually punch above your weight locally compared to national issues. National issues matter. We can't solve everything at a local level, but there's a lot that we can solve there.

Kristin Todd [00:35:40]: I think that's true, totally. We can't put blinders on and pretend like the national dialogue is not happening and there's not that context, but I'm filled with gratitude and optimism every day seeing what is happening at the local level.

Eric Ressler [00:36:00]: So as we move to wrap up, I'd actually like to end there. You describe yourself as an eternal optimist. I love asking this question to our guests on the show. What is it that keeps you in that space and keeps you going even when it does get tough, either personally or in the moment in your community? What keeps you in that eternal optimist mindset?

Kristin Todd [00:36:15]: I think seeing how deeply people care about their community and how they are willing to show up and give back and solve problems and do hard things. People really care about their community, and when something is at risk for the future of their community, people show up. And so I see that every day and it gives me hope and fills me with optimism. But seeing how people show up is really what gives me that sense.

Eric Ressler [00:36:50]: Amazing. Kristin, I think that's a beautiful place to end. Thank you so much today for your time and sharing your point of view on this work. It was really inspiring and hopefully have you on the show again at some point in the future.

Kristin Todd [00:37:05]: Sounds great. Thanks so much for the opportunity.

Eric Ressler [00:37:10]: If you enjoyed today's video, please be sure to hit like and subscribe or even leave us a comment. It really helps. Thank you. And thank you for all that you do for your cause and for being part of the movement to move humanity and the planet forward.