Proof of Impact is the nonprofit podcast that actually asks the hard questions. The sector is full of people doing extraordinary work, and a culture that is very good at staying comfortable. No pushback. No tension. Just carefully managed conversations that leave the most important things unsaid. Host Elizabeth "E" Kitzenberg has spent decades inside the nonprofit world, leading major campaigns at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard, and now running The Kitzenberg Group, her own institutional fundraising consultancy. She knows where the guard goes up. This show is about what happens when it comes down. Honest conversations with nonprofit leaders. No filter. No apologies.
Chris Knopf: All Victories Are Temporary (Friends of the Boundary Waters)
"All victories are temporary, and every defeat is permanent." That's how Chris Knopf describes the fight to protect one of Minnesota's most beloved places. As executive director of Friends of the Boundary Waters, he leads the advocacy, education, and conservation work to keep the Boundary Waters clean, wild, and open to everyone. This is a fight his organization has waged, in one form or another, for 50 years. In this episode, host Elizabeth Kitzenberg talks with Chris about what it takes to lead that fight without burning out: the entrepreneurial mindset he brings to nonprofit leadership, why he refuses to let his team embrace scarcity, and how meeting the moment turned a planned fundraiser into an overwhelming show of support. In this episode: Why Chris runs a conservation nonprofit like an entrepreneur (and where that instinct came from) The decision to move a fundraiser up by a week to meet a political moment, and what happened when they did Why he'd "blow up" the way charities are judged on overhead The case for nonprofits embracing advocacy, lobbying, and politics rather than fearing those words Getting kids who live at the edge of the wilderness into it for the first time What it means to build a movement, not just an organization A conversation about urgency, nerve, and refusing to sit on the sidelines when the stakes are permanent. 🎙️ Proof of Impact is a production of Gleam Tower Media, recorded at Picnic Linden Hills in southwest Minneapolis. 📬 Connect with Elizabeth Kitzenberg on LinkedIn, or learn more about nonprofit consulting at thekitzenberggroup.com.
Jazz Hampton: Lawyer, Founder, and former Mayoral Candidate
Since posting, Jazz has stepped down as CEO of TurnSignl. -- Jazz Hampton has sat in every seat that shapes how a community solves its problems: as a nonprofit board member, a for-profit founder, and a candidate for public office. In this wide-ranging conversation, he and host Elizabeth Kitzenberg dig into what the nonprofit sector can learn from the way startups ask for money and why confidence, not scarcity, is the real fundraising strategy. Jazz co-founded TurnSignl, an app that connects drivers to a live attorney in the moment they need one most, in the wake of George Floyd's murder. He built it as a for-profit on purpose. Along the way, he's served on the boards of Catholic Charities Twin Cities, the Minneapolis Foundation, and the Great North Innocence Project, helped exonerate a man wrongfully imprisoned for nearly two decades, and ran a campaign for mayor of Minneapolis. In this episode: "Call your shot" — why asking for advice gets you money, and asking for money gets you advice The marathon-with-no-food problem: how "doing more with less" became a badge of honor that holds the sector back What people actually want from leaders in a crisis: a vision, not a ten-point plan Why the "Midas touch" leader's real job is to give it away and build an organization that outlasts them Why nonprofits hide failure when startups treat it as a badge of honor The myth Jazz wants to bust about who the "talented" people really are How a board should empower a leader and when to step back A conversation about confidence, storytelling, and refusing to make the work smaller than it is. 🎙️ Proof of Impact is a production of Gleam Tower Media, recorded at Picnic Linden Hills in southwest Minneapolis. 📬 Connect with Elizabeth Kitzenberg on LinkedIn or learn more about nonprofit consulting at thekitzenberggroup.com.
Stephanie March and Tracy Dyer: What We Lose When We Lose Restaurants (Salt Cure Fund)
When Operation Metro Surge swept the Twin Cities last winter, the restaurant industry was hit first and hardest, but they stayed quiet about it, because hospitality's whole job is to project joy even when the bottom is falling out. Steph March and Tracy Dyer didn't wait for permission to respond. Within weeks, the two of them (outsiders to philanthropy, insiders to food and community) stood up the Salt Cure Fund, partnered with the Minneapolis Foundation, and started moving emergency grants to restaurants that couldn't afford to wait for a traditional funding cycle. In this episode, host Elizabeth "E" Kitzenberg digs into how they did it, and what the rest of the sector can learn from two people who didn't know the rules well enough to be slowed down by them. In this episode: Why restaurants are "third spaces," the community anchors where organizing happens, isolation breaks, and small businesses begin The case for radical transparency: why Salt Cure published exactly how much money they had, and how they decided who got it "Build the plane while you fly it," standing up a grantmaking operation in a week when you can't legally form a nonprofit that fast How a single trade-magazine article turned into a national Day of Giving and a $200K corporate match Why the biggest restaurant groups mostly declined the money (and what they did instead) What "proof of impact" looks like when the dollars raised will never match the scale of the loss A conversation about speed, honesty, and the unglamorous infrastructure of showing up for each other. 🎙️ Proof of Impact is a production of Gleam Tower Media, recorded at Picnic Linden Hills in southwest Minneapolis. 📬 Connect with Elizabeth "E" Kitzenberg on LinkedIn, or learn more about nonprofit consulting at thekitzenberggroup.com.
When Did Scarcity Become a Virtue?
Welcome to Proof of Impact. In this debut episode, host Elizabeth Kitzenberg lays out the case for why this show exists, and why the nonprofit sector is overdue for a different kind of conversation. After 20 years working alongside cancer researchers, philanthropists, and nonprofit leaders, Elizabeth has watched brilliant people do world-changing work while being trained to make it sound smaller than it is. This episode is her thesis: that the sector has institutionalized scarcity, mistaken martyrdom for mission, and taught its best leaders to apologize for ambition and that it doesn't have to be this way. In this episode: The fundraising legend who banned the word "charity" from her office and why The Harvard philanthropist's "loaded rifle" rule that changed how Elizabeth thinks about the big ask Why "donors are just generous" is the most damaging myth in the sector The Silicon Valley contrast: when a pitch deck raises $50M, and a working pilot can't get $500K A preview of the Minnesota leaders joining the season, including Steve Grove (Star Tribune), Maggie Emery (Protect Minnesota), Matthew Ayers (Joyce Uptown Foodshelf), and Steph March (Salt Cure Fund) This is a show about nonprofit leaders who are done apologizing, done shrinking the ask, and done treating scarcity like a virtue. 🎙️ Recorded at Picnic Linden Hills in southwest Minneapolis.
