The Nonprofit CEO Podcast

GivingTuesday began in 2012 as a hashtag, incubated inside the 92nd Street Y. Within a few years it had spread to more than a hundred countries, with no full-time staff. Then her program officer at the Gates Foundation asked Asha Curran whether it could stay inside another organization much longer. She had been putting off the same question.Staying meant a ceiling. Her case to the Y's board was that inside another institution, GivingTuesday "will simply experience failure to thrive." She didn't make the decision alone, but she carried a lot of the fear alone. If the spin-out failed, the blame would be hers.She also talks about the year of consultants and strategic planning before the move, building a board without a give-or-get rule, and why GivingTuesday works more like an ant colony than an org chart.Asha Curran is co-founder & CEO of GivingTuesday, a global generosity movement with about 70 staff and leaders in 111 countries.

When Jonathan Reckford became CEO of Habitat for Humanity in 2005, Habitat had more than 2,500 entities, no common logo, no legal agreements with its affiliates, and no standards. It was helping about 125,000 people a year.And Habitat was losing ground. "The gap between what it costs to create a unit of housing and what people can afford today is the worst it's ever been," he says. "So we are not winning."The decision was to change the question Habitat asked itself, from how many houses can we build to "what would it take to actually address the housing need in all the geographies we serve." That question took Habitat into advocacy, policy, and work with governments, then housing microfinance, building materials, and an innovation center. There was resistance. "If you threaten something they're doing, it's not just a small threat, it's a foundational threat," he says.By spring 2026, Habitat had about 1,000 entities worldwide and had helped over 3 million people the previous year.This conversation covers how the new question changed Habitat's work, why Habitat's old rule on government money was "a policy we weren't following and actually a policy that didn't make sense," and how the tsunami response and Hurricane Katrina, which hit days before he started, opened space for change.He also talks about the 51/49 decisions that reach the CEO, why he can't recall ever moving someone out of a role too soon, the CEO peer group he chairs and the coach he has met every two or three weeks for 18 years, and why he prefers pull to push across a federation of about 1,000 organizations.Jonathan Reckford is CEO of Habitat for Humanity International, the global Christian housing organization, and has led it since 2005. Habitat for Humanity International reported $370 million in revenue in fiscal year 2025.

In 2023, Ramsey Alwin had to decide when to bring the network of organizations on aging issues back together in person.The National Council on Aging's annual Age+ Action Conference had drawn more than 1,200 people at its peak, and it had gone virtual during the pandemic. The field wanted to come back. Aging network professionals had lost clients, colleagues, and family members, and they wanted to grieve together. They also work closely with older adults, many with multiple chronic conditions.Other aging conferences had outbreaks in the months before NCOA's, and some of Ramsey's own team caught COVID at them. "That weighed heavy on me," she says.With about a month and a half to decide and secure space, NCOA ran two conferences in one, virtual and in person, to test the waters. Attendees were tested and masked, and they used name tags, sticky notes, and dots to show how close they wanted to get. There was no outbreak. The next year, the conference went fully back in person."I wish I knew ahead of time everyone was going to be safe," she says.This conversation covers how she decided without all the facts, weighing conflicting information from the field and from other conferences, the CDC data NCOA had from its $50 million vaccine outreach work, and the coalitions of national leaders she drew on.She also talks about why the people part is the most complex part of the CEO role, what only the CEO can do, how she thinks about the power of the role, and the goal NCOA met ahead of schedule: improving the health and economic security of 40 million older adults.Ramsey Alwin is President and CEO of the National Council on Aging, which works with senior centers, area agencies on aging, and community and faith-based organizations to help older adults age well. NCOA reported $77.9 million in revenue in fiscal year 2025.

When Rick Santos became CEO of Church World Service, it was a homecoming. He had spent his first 13 years in international development there, left for more than a decade, and returned to succeed the leader he had once worked for. That leader had led the organization for 27 years.Some of the furniture was the same. So were some of the systems, and so was the CFO. The organization “had been functioning really well for about 20 years, but it hadn’t really changed much in those 20 years,” he says.He faced the question every new CEO faces: “What do I keep? What do I change?”He spent six months listening. Then he brought the staff and board a package of strategic priorities: one program team in place of two silos, a more nimble organization, a broader funding base, and transparent collaboration. Rick brought in outside consultants so his leaders would share an understanding of the problem, and he gave the leaders facing the biggest changes control over the pace. One answer never satisfies him when he asks why something is done a certain way: “'That’s how we’ve always done it.' For me, that’s never the right answer.”He also talks about the merger he previously led at IMA World Health, why nonprofit mergers are more complicated than corporate ones, why a 1% overhead rate would worry him, and the underrated work of being the bridge between the board and the staff.Rick Santos is President and CEO of Church World Service, which works in refugee resettlement, disaster relief, and long-term development in the US and overseas. Church World Service reported $279.9 million in revenue in fiscal year 2025.

In 2021, YouVersion’s Bible App passed half a billion devices. The team celebrated. Bobby Gruenewald knew growth was barely above flat, and the milestone “felt very hollow.” He decided that if he wasn’t going to steward it well, someone else should. He started looking for a CEO who had led at that scale. When he asked one of his closest advisors who it should be, the advisor said, “Well, it needs to be you.”Bobby pushed back: “We need a real CEO.”But two other people he trusted agreed with the advisor. So in January 2022, Bobby stepped into the CEO role full time, “reluctantly and uncomfortably.” Then, in his words, “nothing actually went well that year.” The right candidates didn’t come, the numbers stayed flat, the team was in flux, and for the first time the ministry was spending money it didn’t have. By December, the leaders he needed arrived and the numbers began to turn.This conversation covers why he labeled YouVersion’s first website a failure three months in, why he re-risked the work, and why he believes organizations lose speed and flexibility unless a leader pushes for them.Bobby Gruenewald is founder and CEO of YouVersion, the ministry behind the free Bible App, which launched with Apple’s App Store in 2008 and is now on more than a billion devices. YouVersion is non-commercial and supported entirely by donors.

In six months, the Community Food Club grew by 47 percent. AJ Fossel had six people on staff. She was stocking onions in the back because there was nobody else. A trusted teammate told her she was going to leave.AJ sat in her office after hours and cried.She knew she needed to hire. She also knew that meant dipping into reserves, having a hard conversation with the board, and asking for help in a way that felt like admitting she didn't have all the answers. She took her board chair — who came from grocery — out to breakfast, because she couldn't leave the store at lunch.This conversation covers what she brought to that board meeting, why being transparent with donors about exactly where the food club stood built more trust than a polished plan would have, and what the board authorized that finally let her lead without second-guessing every dollar.She also talks about a member advisory council that makes calls she would not have made herself, and why charging a monthly fee matters — it turns members into customers.AJ Fossel is Executive Director of the Community Food Club in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a nonprofit grocery store serving households across Kent County, with $4.5 million in revenue in fiscal year 2025.

Three days into his tenure, Will Jones was asked to sign a letter moving $150,000 from Thompson's endowment to cover a $200,000 payroll. Two weeks later, the same letter was back on his desk. Thompson was spending about $5 million a year more than it brought in, and its leaders were telling staff the model could not work any other way. Will concluded the organization had more people than work. On a three-day beach trip with his family, he told his wife, "I know what I need to do." He would take a reduction in force to the board, and if they would not back him, this was not the right mission for him. A board member asked whether it could wait six months. Will said it could, but in six months the number would be 50. The board backed him. This conversation covers what it cost him to be "the heavy" in a leadership team that was "okay with the mission shutting down," and how Thompson innovated to serve more kids that were falling through cracks in the system elsewhere. He also talks about why he stopped his executive team from voting on decisions, why leaders who can grow but don't want to are the worst fit for a growing organization, and why nearly all his peers are for-profit leaders. Will Jones is President and CEO of Thompson Child & Family Focus, a 140-year-old youth-serving organization in the Charlotte area that works in five states. Thompson reported $49.4 million in revenue in fiscal year 2025.

The hard calls, the ones that are 51/49, are supposed to land on the CEO's desk. Romanita Hairston warns that without a clear escalation framework, you'll be doing the wrong work. "You can be making 51/49 decisions, but not the most consequential ones," she says. One of her first moves after becoming CEO of the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust in 2022 was a strategy decision. The Trust affirmed its identity as a capacity-building institution and cut the sectors it served in half, from about 80 to 38. A second review narrowed that list by roughly half again. Her reasoning runs through the whole conversation: "Strategic intent always exceeds strategic capacity, no matter how large you are as a foundation."We talk about how she builds strategy from principle-level choices down to business plans, and why decision speed depends more on business rhythm than on layers of management. She also explains how her team deals with a question that no guideline covers, and why feedback runs all year long.She also shares what she tells new CEOs, and what books she re-reads.Romanita Hairston is CEO of the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, a 50-year-old foundation that invests in nonprofits across Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska. She has also led her own consulting practice and previously served at World Vision.

The Fellowship of Christian Athletes had worked the same way with high school and college athletes since 1954. Then someone asked a question in a leadership meeting that nobody could answer well, and it started a decade of change.Shane Williamson became the CEO in 2017. The reset came down to three words: engage, equip, empower. I was surprised that the vision and the mission then changed to match, not the other way around. And it was a radical expansion of their work to new age brackets, and many more types of sport. They began working with leagues for six-year-olds, as well as surf camps and motocross, radically different from their first 60 years. That smells like mission drift to some people. Shane says the why never moved, and the how and the where are supposed to.Shane Williamson is President and CEO of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which has 3,500 staff and about 1.5 million volunteers. FCA reported $262 million in revenue in fiscal year 2025, up 138% since the reset.

Heather Rice-Minus walked out of a board meeting without an important approval. She had presented a new mission and vision for Prison Fellowship, built over a year of listening in prisons and long work with her leadership team. The lawyers wordsmithed. Her board chair asked whether people would understand it. The words went back on the shelf.She went home and sat with her husband, wondering what she had signed up for.Four months later, at her first board meeting as CEO, she put the same words back on the screen. She had sent a memo in advance explaining why each one was chosen. The vote to approve was unanimous.This conversation covers what happened in between, including the January meeting where she asked her leadership team to tell her what to change in the draft, and the cascading decisions that followed the vote.She also talks about the board selection process she has been rebuilding, why she would rather have 13 board members than the maximum of 21, the parental leave policy she announced in her first all-staff meeting, and why the people slightly askew from your vision are the hardest ones to see.Heather Rice-Minus is President and CEO of Prison Fellowship, the nation's largest Christian nonprofit serving people in prison, their families, and those coming home. Prison Fellowship reported $70.3 million in revenue in fiscal year 2025 and is celebrating its 50th year in 2026.