526. Building a Modern Movement + Activating the Next Generation of Changemakers (NMS Replay) - Ben Collier

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Overview

Meet Ben. As CEO, he’s led the transformation of The Farmlink Project from a college dorm initiative into a national hunger relief movement 🌱 Theirs is a nonprofit fairy tale story: three college students who saw a problem in the world and built a scrappy, grassroots solution that's changing the world 🌍 The Farmlink Project connects surplus food from farms to food banks all around the U.S. and has rescued more than 2000 million pounds of produce since its inception 🚜 Tune in for this replay of the insightful conversation we had with Ben during the Nonprofit Market Summit.

💡Learn

Overview + History of The Farmlink Project
Insights into Building a Modern Movement
Activating the Next Generation of Changemakers

Today’s Guest

Ben Collier, CEO, The Farmlink Project

“Storytelling is not just a part of our marketing and fundraising efforts. It’s a core part of our theory of change.”

— Ben Collier, CEO, The Farmlink Project

Episode Transcript

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Episode Highlights

The inspiration + origin story of The Farmlink Project (4:05)
Building a modern movement through community and innovation (9:00)
Farmlink's commitment to storytelling and media to scale their mission (13:05)
Entering a territorial space without pointing fingers + being open-handed (18:45)
Strategic partnerships for growth (23:45)
Activating team and volunteers for mission-driven work (26:50)
Engaging the next generation of donors and leaders in philanthropy (31:00)
A powerful moment of philanthropy in Ben’s life (34:05)
Ben’s One Good Thing: People are less in control of what you're upset about than you want them to be. (38:05)
How to connect with + support The Farmlink Project (39:30)

Impactful Quotes

"Our greatest contribution is not in this mission that we're working right now. It's in what's going to happen with the people that are part of this mission, and how they go out and change the world." -Ben

"Our fundraising philosophy is not as much tied to how well and how much we're engaging with younger generations as just our intention of having to be something people care about or willing to promote or willing to believe in." -Ben

"We entered Farmlink at a period of time that was actually perfect for the type of movement building that we did." -Ben

"We had an entire generation of people that were basically sidelined and not just sidelined from making a social impact from community from their school from their internships." -Ben

"We've found champions for our work, even amongst the 700 fellows that are the reason this whole community has succeeded." -Ben

“Storytelling is not just a part of our marketing and fundraising efforts. It's a core part of our theory of change.” -Ben

"Our storytelling work to date, I actually think has just scratched the surface of what it intends to be." -Ben

"We shouldn't settle even for our own solutions at Farmlink ever being able to explain them by saying that's the way it's always been." -Ben

"Our goal is to bring more amazing people into the space and give them the opportunity to be a part of it." -Ben