The Nonprofit CEO Podcast

008 Using AI to Rewire a Whole Nonprofit | Hope Rises International President and CEO Bill Simmons

In one month, CEO Bill Simmons shipped more than 15 working applications and 70,000 lines of code to his team, without adding a single software license or outside developer. He did it with about $25,000 in internal time, replacing software that would have cost over $750,000 to build. Most nonprofit CEOs are still asking whether to pay attention to AI. He's already restructuring how his organization functions by using it.Bill Simmons is President and CEO of Hope Rises International, a Christian global health organization working in more than 50 partnerships across Africa and Asia to address neglected tropical diseases. Annual revenue: $11.3 million. This is the first time I've seen how AI can transform the processes and outcomes of the nonprofit sector.

007 Seven Years In. Feeling Nauseous. | Social Current President and CEO Jody Levison-Johnson

Jody Levison-Johnson had a big idea and had to decide whether to bet her organization's resources on it. A film was coming out that could either quietly fade or become an inflection point for how the country thinks about the nonprofit sector. She had to decide if Social Current should lead the campaign that followed, and how much to ask her board for.She also talks about the two ways CEOs drift into bad decisions: chasing off-mission funding and refusing to sunset programs they love, plus why she thinks the hardest decision most nonprofit CEOs eventually face is knowing when to leave.Dr. Jody Levison-Johnson is President and CEO of Social Current, a national organization that accredits, trains, and advocates for a network of approximately 1,800 human service organizations across the US and Canada.

006 Pivoting Away from Your Original Vision | Good Faith Founding Executive Director Curtis Chang

Curtis Chang set out to build a nonprofit nobody would ever know by name. He wanted Good Faith to be like Target: the store as the brand, not the founder. Four years later, Curtis, David French, and Russell Moore were at the center of the most prominent faith-and-politics curriculum in the country. A quarter million people had used it. This conversation is about how a founder navigates a pivot, and why market need and relationships sometimes rewrite the plan.He also talks about the two ways nonprofit CEOs drift into bad decisions: chasing off-mission funding and staying stuck in a rut. And he offers a reframe on anxiety that has real implications for how CEOs lead through loss. Curtis calls it "holding," and he thinks the CEO's job in seasons of organizational pain is something closer to Chief Grieving Officer.Curtis Chang is Founder and Executive Director of Good Faith, an organization at the intersection of Christian faith and public life. The After Party, its flagship curriculum on faith and politics, has reached over 250,000 users. The Good Faith Podcast ranks in the top 0.5% of all podcasts globally.

005 The Hidden Vulnerability of the Nonprofit CEO | Praxis Partner Andy Crouch

Andy Crouch uses a framework from Peter Greer to name a structural problem with honest at the heart of many nonprofits. It's the stakeholder gap, and he argues it creates built-in incentives to not tell the whole truth all the time. And the better you are at fundraising, the more danger you're in.Andy also traces the 40-year collapse of institutional trust to something deeper than politics: the unmasking of prestige as mere dominance. And he makes an unexpected case that the generation coming into the workforce right now may be the best in decades, if you can earn their trust first.Andy Crouch is Partner for Theology and Culture at Praxis, a New York-based nonprofit that supports faith-driven founders, funders, and innovators, from early-stage ventures to both nonprofits and businesses operating at meaningful scale across every sector.

004 Asking a Beloved Board Member to Resign | Mission ONE President Olivia Mulerwa

Olivia Mulerwa spent months carrying a decision she couldn't talk about with anyone who didn't already have a stake in the outcome. She needed to have a hard conversation with a beloved board member. The rest of the board was unwilling to even discuss it. She had to decide in isolation.This conversation covers how she made that call, the listening process she used in advance, and the one person she thinks of before making any major decision at Mission ONE.Olivia also talks about stepping into the President's role just three months after being hired as a program director, rejecting some conventional wisdom about founder relationships, and how colleagues interpreted her actions differently the moment her title changed.Olivia Mulerwa is President of Mission ONE, a nonprofit that supports over 600 local leaders across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.