020 Turning Down Money You Need | Founder & CEO Flourish Fund Dan Vogel

020 Turning Down Money You Need | Founder & CEO Flourish Fund Dan Vogel

Dan Vogel spent months building a partnership with a large institutional funder. Flourish Fund was barely a year old, still in startup mode, without a stable base of funding. The money would have been meaningful, and the credibility would have been great.  Then it became clear the funder wanted more control than Dan could give without compromising the collaborative model he was building. So he told the granting institution it might not work. He got off the call and immediately wondered if he had just blown up months of work and put his young organization at risk.  What happened next surprised him (and me). This conversation covers how Dan decided what he was willing to risk, why the honesty he feared would end the partnership was what saved it, and what he learned about holding the line when his team wanted the organization to speak out on current events.  He also talks about waiting too long on his first firing decision and what it cost him, why he stayed in performance mode with his first board chair for two years, and what changed when he stopped trying to show that he was crushing it. Dan Vogel is founder and CEO of Flourish Fund, a collaborative philanthropy fund launched in 2023 that pools capital from high-capacity givers to tackle problems too big for any one organization to solve, starting with the foster care system. He previously led the North America team of the Center for Public Impact, a nonprofit founded by BCG that grew to 40 staff and a $10 million budget.

019 The Mud Floor Test | Exec. Dir. Mennonite Central Committee U.S. Ann Graber Hershberger

Ann Graber Hershberger spent nearly four decades connected to Mennonite Central Committee before she led it: first as a worker in Nicaragua and El Salvador, then through years of board service, alongside a 33-year career as a nursing professor. She is retiring this summer as its executive director. When she set out to address racial equity at MCC, the question wasn't whether to act. The organization had tried before, more than once, and those efforts had ended up on a shelf. The hard part was how to do it so something would actually change. This conversation covers how she chose a process built for quiet, lasting change over public declaration, and what it felt like to hold that decision as a white woman with institutional power and no personal experience of what she was trying to address. She also talks about the decisions a CEO has to carry without being able to explain them, the mental test she set for herself years ago to stay grounded, and what she wishes she'd understood about technology before taking the job. Ann Graber Hershberger has served as Executive Director of Mennonite Central Committee, a relief, development, and peace organization that has worked through Anabaptist churches for over 100 years in approximately 45 countries.

018 Pulling the Plug on a $22 Million Program | President and CEO of Missio Nexus Ted Esler

Ted Esler launched a partially self-funded health insurance program for the staff of Missio Nexus member organizations. It grew from zero to $22 million in about 18 months. Then COVID arrived.  Claims went quiet while people stayed away from the doctor, so the program looked healthy when it was not. The bills landed all at once when they came back, and the losses grew large enough to threaten an association running about $2 million a year.  His consultants told him to ride it out. He decided to pull the plug.  Then he laid the full numbers in front of his members, against advice that this was too much transparency, and asked them to help cover the debt. Every one of them agreed, each paying an extra month's premium to keep the group whole. The conversation opens out from there. Ted has watched many CEOs make these calls up close, and he names the inability to say no as the most vexing problem he sees capable leaders face.  He talks about strategy as choosing what you will not do, and the pruning season his own team is in right now. He also holds a quieter conviction: a CEO with no life outside the work will not last in it. His standard icebreaker asks leaders to name a hobby, and rules out family and reading, because he wants to know who they are when the job is not in the way. Ted Esler is President and CEO of Missio Nexus, the trade association for the faith-based mission agency world. The organization is  109 years old and serves 340 member agencies whose staff work across the globe, including active conflict zones. Ted has led Missio Nexus for over 10 years.

017 Speaking Calmly While Holding a Powder Keg | President of the Alliance to End Hunger Eric Mitchell

A member publicly demanded to know where the Alliance to End Hunger stood on the Gaza conflict. Half of Eric Mitchell's coalition supported one side. Half supported the other.  Silence was its own answer. He held off as long as he could, then decided to speak.  Before the statement went public, he pulled leaders from both sides into crafting it. He talks through how he kept the consultation tight, who he brought in, and why staying strictly in the lane of food access let the Alliance say something true while helping people on both sides of the conflict. Eric also leads a bipartisan organization in a city that wants to sort everyone onto one side of the aisle. He is candid about the gap between the job he trained for and the job he got. He came up on Capitol Hill. He now spends half his time raising money. Eric Mitchell is President of the Alliance to End Hunger, a 107-member coalition spanning corporations, faith groups, universities, and nonprofits working to end hunger in the U.S. and globally.

016 Should I Take This Shortcut? | Founder, President & CEO of the Center for Christianity and Public Life Michael Wear

Michael Wear had a clear vision for the Center for Christianity and Public Life: deep formation work, deep investment in cohorts of twelve to sixteen fellows, commitments measured in years. Some potential funders kept pointing to cheaper models. Other organizations were reaching thousands for less. The constant temptation was to take a shortcut, starting with something splashy and backfill the real work later. Michael kept asking one question: a shortcut to what? A shortcut would have built something else entirely. He launched in October 2022 without a full year's budget, watching financial thresholds with the runway ahead quickly running out. His first hire came on two weeks before launch. He talks about what it took to know the moment was right: a board that embodied the mission rather than just orbiting it, the intuition that comes from knowing something inside out,  the pressure of asking someone else to divert their career to join you in something unproven, and and why he framed CCPL as a 30-year mission from day one. Michael Wear is the Founder, President, and CEO of the Center for Christianity and Public Life, a nonpartisan institution dedicated to the formation of Christians for the sake of public life. CCPL's flagship Public Life Fellowship Program is now in its fourth year. He previously served in the White House directing faith outreach and writes regularly for The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post.