There's a number treated like gospel in philanthropy: the 5% annual payout private foundations are required to hit. It was written into law as a floor.

Kristin Todd has watched it become a ceiling instead. After nearly two decades at the Daniels Fund, a $1.5 billion private foundation, she now leads the NoCo Foundation in Northern Colorado, where she's more than doubled annual grant-making by refusing to let donor dollars sit still.

Episode Highlights:

[00:01:00] Running a $1.5 billion legacy fund vs. a nimble community foundation
[00:07:00] Why mergers stopped being a taboo word for nonprofits
[00:11:30] How NoCo doubled its grant-making by keeping money in motion
[00:12:30] The 5% floor that became a ceiling
[00:20:30] Stop calling them charities. They're businesses with social impact.
[00:34:00] Punching above your weight locally instead of waiting on Washington

Notable Quotes:

Kristin Todd [00:12:30]: "In the private foundation world, that 5% has become a ceiling, not a floor."

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."

Eric Ressler [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."

Resources & Links:

• NoCo Foundation — nocofoundation.org
• Daniels Fund — danielsfund.org

Hosted by Eric Ressler, Founder & Creative Director of Cosmic, with co-host Jonathan Hicken, Executive Director of the Seymour Marine Discovery Center. New episodes every Tuesday.

→ Subscribe: designingtomorrow.show → Work with Cosmic: designbycosmic.com

Listeners, now you can text us your comments or questions by clicking this link.

*** If you liked this episode, please help spread the word. Share with your friends or co-workers, post it to social media, “follow” or “subscribe” in your podcast app, or write a review on Apple Podcasts. We could not do this without you!

We love hearing feedback from our community, so please email us with your questions or comments — including topics you’d like us to cover in future episodes — at podcast@designbycosmic.com

Thank you for all that you do for your cause and for being part of the movement to move humanity and the planet forward.

Everyone keeps predicting the death of the website. First it was social, now it is AI. But it is still the one channel you actually own and control, which is exactly what makes it your most durable asset. So when a site has gone untouched for five years and a redo runs six figures, the real question is whether it is worth it, and when.

Episode Highlights:

[00:03:00] The identity impact gap, and when a redo is the wrong call
[00:10:30] The 10-second homepage test 90% of nonprofit sites fail
[00:13:00] Brand as coherence: the Apple experience, and your version of it
[00:17:30] What happens the moment a funder leaves your meeting
[00:23:30] What funders actually look for: financials, team bios, clear impact
[00:28:00] The underperforming employee analogy, and the player on your team

Notable Quotes:

Eric Ressler [00:05:20]: "I still believe that your website is your most important and your most durable asset as a brand."

Eric Ressler [00:26:20]: "Your website should be your best fundraiser, not your only fundraiser."

Jonathan Hicken [00:29:10]: "Website is almost the wrong word. It's a player on your team."

Resources & Links:

• Seymour Marine Discovery Center — seymourcenter.ucsc.edu
• Candid — candid.org
• “Are Website's Dead?" — earlier Designing Tomorrow episode.
• Joel Breakstone interview — earlier Designing Tomorrow episode.

Hosted by Eric Ressler, Founder & Creative Director of Cosmic, with co-host Jonathan Hicken, Executive Director of the Seymour Marine Discovery Center. New episodes every Tuesday.

→ Subscribe: designingtomorrow.show → Work with Cosmic: designbycosmic.com

Listeners, now you can text us your comments or questions by clicking this link.

*** If you liked this episode, please help spread the word. Share with your friends or co-workers, post it to social media, “follow” or “subscribe” in your podcast app, or write a review on Apple Podcasts. We could not do this without you!

We love hearing feedback from our community, so please email us with your questions or comments — including topics you’d like us to cover in future episodes — at podcast@designbycosmic.com

Thank you for all that you do for your cause and for being part of the movement to move humanity and the planet forward.

For the last 50 years, we've operated under a single dominant idea: the purpose of business is to maximize shareholder value. But what if this whole era of extraction and short-termism isn't the natural order at all? What if it's just a blip? Sarah Gillard, CEO of Blueprint for Better Business, has spent 25 years inside major corporations watching what happens when companies forget what they're actually for, and she makes the case that business has both the power and the obligation to change it.

Episode Highlights:

[00:02:42] Two very different business models: profit maximization vs. employee ownership, from inside the same industry
[00:06:37] The ESG rollback in context: what the data actually shows about corporate commitments
[00:09:03] The forces of gravity that act on companies as they scale, and why purpose needs structural defense
[00:12:17] The 70% problem: why intangible assets dominate organizational value but get ignored
[00:15:27] Rethinking the social contract: why government, business, and civil society can't afford separate swim lanes
[00:27:07] AI as a force for good or fragility: the questions businesses aren't asking but should be
[00:37:58] Blueprint for Better Business's two foundational ideas, and why neither is as radical as it sounds

Notable Quotes:

Eric Ressler [00:25:20]: "We need more in culture imagining what that future could and should be, instead of constantly only warning about what it's looking like it's going to be."

Sarah Gillard [00:38:40]: "Historically we will see these last 50-odd years as an odd blip. How do we take the most powerful shaper of our societies and just go: just focus on the money? Just weird."

Sarah Gillard [00:40:20]: "Good intentions are necessary, but not sufficient. You need legal and governance mechanisms that keep you on track even when there is significant pressure to move."

Resources & Links:

• Blueprint for Better Business — Sarah's organization; the one-page AI framework for boardrooms is available on their website
• John Lewis Partnership — The UK's largest employee-owned business, where Sarah led purpose strategy
• The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
• Dear Alice: Utopian anime yogurt commercial — mentioned by Eric as a rare example of positive future imagery

Hosted by Eric Ressler, Founder & Creative Director of Cosmic, with co-host Jonathan Hicken, Executive Director of the Seymour Marine Discovery Center. New episodes every Tuesday.

→ Subscribe: designingtomorrow.show → Work with Cosmic: designbycosmic.com

Listeners, now you can text us your comments or questions by clicking this link.

*** If you liked this episode, please help spread the word. Share with your friends or co-workers, post it to social media, “follow” or “subscribe” in your podcast app, or write a review on Apple Podcasts. We could not do this without you!

We love hearing feedback from our community, so please email us with your questions or comments — including topics you’d like us to cover in future episodes — at podcast@designbycosmic.com

Thank you for all that you do for your cause and for being part of the movement to move humanity and the planet forward.

Jonathan recently learned that the Seymour Center is about to absorb a permanent new expense in the $150,000 to $200,000 range. On a $2.2 million operating budget, that's roughly 10% of the whole thing, and it's not a one-time hit.

The instinct for most leaders is to pull back: tighten the budget, pause the big swings, and try again in a few years. But contraction changes the story you can tell funders, and that cost is harder to recover from than the budget hit itself.

Episode Highlights:

[00:00:30] Contract or keep pushing? The fundamental question.
[00:02:00] The outdated overhead myth and why it makes budget shocks worse
[00:05:30] The power of flexibility that reserves actually buy you
[00:08:00] Eric's pandemic-era decisions at Cosmic: no layoffs, no pay cuts in 16 years
[00:12:00] Why liftoff windows are sacred and rarely repeat on your timeline
[00:17:00] The story you can tell funders when you're in motion vs. when you've pulled back
[00:20:30] Separating ego from mission in high-stakes financial decisions
[00:22:30] The case for nonprofit mergers in a shrinking funding landscape

Notable Quotes:

Jonathan Hicken [00:17:00]: "I can go to those meetings right now and sit down at the table and look at these people in the eye and authentically tell the story of this liftoff. If I start to contract, I can't do that."

Eric Ressler [00:18:10]: "There's a saying in the business world: never need a deal. I think we're wired as humans to just be super attuned to desperation."

Resources & Links:

• Seymour Marine Discovery Center — https://seymourcenter.ucsc.edu
• Visibility Beats Impact — Designing Tomorrow podcast episode

Hosted by Eric Ressler, Founder & Creative Director of Cosmic, with co-host Jonathan Hicken, Executive Director of the Seymour Marine Discovery Center. New episodes every Tuesday.

→ Subscribe: designingtomorrow.show → Work with Cosmic: designbycosmic.com

Listeners, now you can text us your comments or questions by clicking this link.

*** If you liked this episode, please help spread the word. Share with your friends or co-workers, post it to social media, “follow” or “subscribe” in your podcast app, or write a review on Apple Podcasts. We could not do this without you!

We love hearing feedback from our community, so please email us with your questions or comments — including topics you’d like us to cover in future episodes — at podcast@designbycosmic.com

Thank you for all that you do for your cause and for being part of the movement to move humanity and the planet forward.

Most social impact campaigns are built on two ingredients: information and emotion. The data makes the case. The storytelling makes people care. But caring, on its own, has a shelf life. Saralynn Finn, founder of Sett & Sley Consulting, joins Eric in the studio to argue that the third ingredient, what she calls "the hands", is where campaigns succeed or quietly die. Not more awareness, not more storytelling, but actionable pathways that give audiences something real to do with everything they now know and feel.

Episode Highlights:

[00:01:30] The head, heart, and hands framework for social impact campaigns
[00:05:00] "the hands": actionable, attainable pathways that create real impact
[00:06:00] Why "the hands" breakout at Skoll World Forum was the most well-attended
[00:10:00] The celebrity collaboration that drove 30K subscribers but didn't change healthcare
[00:15:30] Vote by mail in 2020: same message, radically different messengers
[00:26:00] The end-of-year fundraising campaign that 5X'd revenue

Notable Quotes:

Saralynn Finn [00:06:00]: "It's the piece of most campaigns that's missing, that people are trying to break the nut of and figure out: how do I create a pathway?"

Eric Ressler [00:13:00]: "Campaigns need their own little mini theory of change."

Resources & Links:

• Skoll World Forum — https://skoll.org/skoll-world-forum/
• Represent Us — https://represent.us/
• Saralynn's LinkedIn article about the AI documentary in Rural America.

Hosted by Eric Ressler, Founder & Creative Director of Cosmic, with co-host Jonathan Hicken, Executive Director of the Seymour Marine Discovery Center. New episodes every Tuesday.

→ Subscribe: designingtomorrow.show → Work with Cosmic: designbycosmic.com

Listeners, now you can text us your comments or questions by clicking this link.

*** If you liked this episode, please help spread the word. Share with your friends or co-workers, post it to social media, “follow” or “subscribe” in your podcast app, or write a review on Apple Podcasts. We could not do this without you!

We love hearing feedback from our community, so please email us with your questions or comments — including topics you’d like us to cover in future episodes — at podcast@designbycosmic.com

Thank you for all that you do for your cause and for being part of the movement to move humanity and the planet forward.

Most social impact leaders got into this work because they care deeply about the mission, not because they wanted to be public figures with opinions. But that instinct to stay quiet and let the work speak for itself may be doing more harm than good. Developing and sharing a strong point of view isn't a nice-to-have; it's a moral obligation for leaders in this space.

Episode Highlights:

[00:01:00] The hesitancy Eric keeps seeing in leaders who won't go public with their thinking
[00:04:00] Defining "point of view" as a pattern of lived experience, not expertise
[00:08:00] Eric's origin story: from attention economy manifesto to a new framework
[00:10:30] Introducing the identity impact gap
[00:18:00] Why therapy made Jonathan a better leader
[00:24:00] Devil's advocate: what about pure open-mindedness as a leadership philosophy?

Notable Quotes:

Eric Ressler [00:11:05]: "The bigger the difference between who you actually are and how you are perceived by the people that you care about reaching, the bigger all of your problems are going to be."

Eric Ressler [00:29:35]: "People need to do research, they need to develop hypotheses, they need to publish those, not just think about them in their brains."

Resources & Links:

• Seymour Marine Discovery Center — seymourcenter.ucsc.edu
• Kevin L. Brown — Mighty Ally
• Glen Galaich — Stupski Foundation
• Kevin Starr — Mulago Foundation
• Skull World Forum
• Strategy Tier ranking episode - "Most of Your Brand Strategy is a Waste of Time"

Hosted by Eric Ressler, Founder & Creative Director of Cosmic, with co-host Jonathan Hicken, Executive Director of the Seymour Marine Discovery Center. New episodes every Tuesday.

→ Subscribe: designingtomorrow.show → Work with Cosmic: designbycosmic.com

Listeners, now you can text us your comments or questions by clicking this link.

*** If you liked this episode, please help spread the word. Share with your friends or co-workers, post it to social media, “follow” or “subscribe” in your podcast app, or write a review on Apple Podcasts. We could not do this without you!

We love hearing feedback from our community, so please email us with your questions or comments — including topics you’d like us to cover in future episodes — at podcast@designbycosmic.com

Thank you for all that you do for your cause and for being part of the movement to move humanity and the planet forward.

There's an unspoken rule in the social impact sector: we tell the truth, we follow the science, we play fair. But those rules are increasingly a losing strategy, because the industries we're up against don't have to win the argument. They just have to muddy it. Joelle Lester, Executive Director of the Public Health Law Center, has spent 25 years studying how Big Tobacco manufactured doubt, and how that same playbook now drives opposition to progress on climate, food, and public health.

Episode Highlights:

[00:04:00] Merchants of doubt: how the tobacco industry wrote the playbook for manufacturing scientific uncertainty
[00:09:00] Why philanthropy needs to step up right now, and which foundations are leading
[00:15:00] The strategic calculus of when to resist publicly versus when to go underground
[00:24:00] Why scientists with integrity are at a structural disadvantage against opponents with none
[00:33:00] “Cultural engineering” — Alessandra Orofino: why culture is always upstream of public policy
[00:40:30] Why public health groups need to get better at storytelling and soundbites

Notable Quotes:

Joelle Lester [00:05:00]: "The art of it is that they don't try to disprove it. They just try to raise doubt in people's minds about how believable the science is."

Joelle Lester [00:41:05]: "Having all the evidence and having the legal authority and being right is not getting us where we need to go."

Resources & Links:

• Public Health Law Center — https://www.publichealthlawcenter.org/
• Cooking with Smoke report — https://www.publichealthlawcenter.org/sites/default/files/resources/Cooking-With-Smoke.pdf
• Merchants of Doubt (book & film) — https://www.merchantsofdoubt.org/

Hosted by Eric Ressler, Founder & Creative Director of Cosmic, with co-host Jonathan Hicken, Executive Director of the Seymour Marine Discovery Center. New episodes every Tuesday.

→ Subscribe: designingtomorrow.show → Work with Cosmic: designbycosmic.com

Listeners, now you can text us your comments or questions by clicking this link.

*** If you liked this episode, please help spread the word. Share with your friends or co-workers, post it to social media, “follow” or “subscribe” in your podcast app, or write a review on Apple Podcasts. We could not do this without you!

We love hearing feedback from our community, so please email us with your questions or comments — including topics you’d like us to cover in future episodes — at podcast@designbycosmic.com

Thank you for all that you do for your cause and for being part of the movement to move humanity and the planet forward.

There's a trend called looksmaxxing that says appearance is everything, and optimizing it is just pragmatism. Apply that same logic to nonprofits and you get an interesting thought experiment: what happens when an organization goes all in on brand? And what happens when one deliberately strips brand away entirely?

This episode explores the spectrum between "brandmaxxing" and "debranding," two extremes that reveal something important about how the sector thinks about visibility. The social impact sector has been structurally imbalanced toward the debranding end for decades, and the reluctance to invest in brand often masquerades as virtue. But humans are influenced by brand the same way they're influenced by appearance, and refusing to play the game doesn't make the game go away.

Episode Highlights:

[00:00:00] The looksmaxxing trend as a lens for brand strategy
[00:01:00] Defining brandmaxxing vs. debranding as a spectrum
[00:06:25] Why brand is a game you have to play, even in social impact
[00:08:50] Trust through depth vs. trust through visibility
[00:14:00] People follow people, not logos: the Amanda Litman insight
[00:23:00] False humility and the arrogance of staying behind the scenes

Notable Quotes:

Eric Ressler [00:06:30]: "Humans are influenced by brand. You can be humble about it, but at some level, you got to realize you have to play the game."

Eric Ressler [00:23:15]: "Get over yourself, because that is actually kind of a pretentious point of view. You're not saying you're not good enough. You're saying you're too good to put yourself out there."

Resources & Links:

• Amanda Litman, co-founder of Run for Something — Prior Spotlight episode.
• Amanda Litman’s Substack
• Run for Something
• Science, Solutions, Santa Cruz

Hosted by Eric Ressler, Founder & Creative Director of Cosmic, with co-host Jonathan Hicken, Executive Director of the Seymour Marine Discovery Center. New episodes every Tuesday.

→ Subscribe: designingtomorrow.show → Work with Cosmic: designbycosmic.com

Listeners, now you can text us your comments or questions by clicking this link.

*** If you liked this episode, please help spread the word. Share with your friends or co-workers, post it to social media, “follow” or “subscribe” in your podcast app, or write a review on Apple Podcasts. We could not do this without you!

We love hearing feedback from our community, so please email us with your questions or comments — including topics you’d like us to cover in future episodes — at podcast@designbycosmic.com

Thank you for all that you do for your cause and for being part of the movement to move humanity and the planet forward.