Power Station

  In the first week of a presidential administration marked by executive actions banning the education of Air Force members about the Tuskegee airmen, freezing scientific research grants at the NIH, immigration raids intended to fast-track deportation and the purging of DEI programs across federal agencies, remember that it is the nonprofit sector that continues to move democracy forward. In this...

Innovation, disruption and problem-solving, these are words often used to describe how technology impacts society. But the sector does not center those powers on equity, ensuring that all people can access housing, livable wages, healthcare and education. That work is the business of the nonprofit sector, which  is particularly potent in local nonprofits with deep community roots. Too often these...

We are at moment in which grappling with America's history of racism, recognizing the impacts of generational injustice and creating solutions to those harms is being met with fury by our president elect and his allies. including Elon Musk, a ceaseless purveyor of misinformation. Trump has memorialized his plans to eradicate DEI-Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives within federal agencies a...

My wish for 2025, a year for which Donald Trump's plan to weaken democracy and human rights is memorialized in his Project 2025 blueprint is that more people, from our families to the business sector and the media, recognize that the complex business of protecting both is the daily business of the nonprofit sector. Nonprofits, especially those guided by the communities they serve, are powerful pro...

I am obsessed by the business of changemaking, the generation of solutions to our most pressing unmet human needs. I am drawn to people who are moved to action by their own lived experience and by those with a deeply felt sense of responsibility to redress injustice. And I see nonprofits, the best of them, as the infrastructure needed to produce enlightening data, build connections and organize co...

Whatever challenges you navigate during your day there is tremendous comfort in knowing where you will lay your head at night. For too many Americans, that safe place is out of reach, a consequence of failed housing policies and artificially low wages that perpetuate the racial wealth gap. In Montgomery County, Maryland, one of our nation's wealthiest counties, there is a deep well of poverty that...

Origin stories are powerful in shaping both people and organizations. In this episode of Power Station, Lelaine Bigelow, the outstanding executive director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality, shares how her family inspired her all-in career as an advocate for racial, economic and gender equity. She credits civil rights champion and Georgetown University Law Professor Peter Edelman...

  In the Ghanaian culture, a mythical bird called Sankofa honors the African Diaspora, symbolizing the need to look to the past and carry forward the truth and wisdom found there to benefit future generations. The image is so powerful that filmmakers, educators and entrepreneurs Shirikiana and Haile Gerima named both their groundbreaking 1993 movie and their incomparable bookstore, Sankofa. It was...

Music not only feeds the soul it has also been, throughout history, a vital means of creative expression and resistance against social and political repression. While some musicians become chart-topping bestsellers, most are with small labels or are entirely independent. And while we may view digital platforms like Spotify as providing access to less well-known musicians they do not feature or com...

If you doubt the power of cooperatives to build community and generate economic equity you need to know the Cooperative Purchasing Alliance (CPA) story. It emerged from an energy deregulation crisis in Washington DC that burdened houses of workshop with utility costs that exceeded clergy's salaries. The Washington Interfaith Network came together to find a solution, which they achieved through a c...

Here is the hard reality: In 2024, a majority of voters can no longer distinguish between fact and fiction. This truth is disturbing and dangerous but not that surprising. As a recent Pew Research Center study reveals, most voters cite friends and families, not newspapers, television or academic studies as their primary source of news and information. We are all subject to a deluge of misinformati...

Our news feeds are brimming with stories about America as a divided nation which cannot agree on who deserves to live here or whether to ensure that families do not go hungry. But there is a different vision for America, one that Power Station guests strive every day to bring to life. They are overcoming disinvestment and disenfranchisement with community power-building and capital. Many of them v...

America has a complicated relationship with those who leave behind their families, culture and countries of origin to pursue a greater future in ours. Throughout U.S. history we have both celebrated the risk-taking and resilience of our own descendants in making a new life here and reviled, in the grip of nationalistic political forces, migrants fleeing poverty, violence and a lack of opportunity....

It is rare to feel enlightened, deeply distressed and optimistic during a single conversation. I experienced all of that with Manjit Singh, co-founder of the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund, (SALDEF), my guest on this episode of Power Station. His formative years in India during the 1980s were shaped by conflict and violence against Sikhs, a faith that values and practices humility,...

I invite compelling people to be my guests on Power Station, the podcast I created to amplify the voices, solutions and stories of accomplished nonprofit leaders. Most know that a 40 minute episode can move and influence allies, policy makers and funders and are onboard. We break down the social, racial and economic injustices their organizations confront and the under-reported yet meaningful syst...

It is difficult to reconcile the human, cultural and economic contributions of immigrants to America, both historically and now, with their relentless vilification by extremist political leaders. And it is deeply frustrating that attempts to enact legislation to repair a broken immigration system have failed because of political opportunism. The experience of asylum seekers, those who fled torture...

One voice that is often overlooked or not even considered in deliberations about ending homelessness in America is that of people who are experiencing homelessness themselves. That paradigm is being upended by the National Coalition for the Homeless, which organizes, trains and engages people with lived experience as partners at policymaking tables. Their first-hand knowledge of housing and homele...

It should not feel astonishing, but it does. In a national debate and many state campaign stops, presidential and vice presidential candidates are asserting that housing is a human right and sounding a call to end homelessness in America. Their declaration is both overdue and exhilarating. Getting there is the North Star of Funders Together to End Homelessness, which brings together grant makers,...

A few years into hosting Power Station, outstanding audio engineer Rob Ford said, "People should really hear what you and your guests talk about off-mic." He was right, which led, eventually, to today's inaugural episode of Power Hour, a segment of Power Station that brings those off-mic conversations into the light. It is where social change leaders share what concerns and enlivens them, beyond t...

Sometimes an organization's backstory speaks volumes, which is definitely true of The Women's Foundation of the South (WFS). It was co-created into existence by a cohort of women, all accomplished grant makers of color who were compelled to build what the philanthropic sector lacked, a public foundation dedicated to the advancement of women and girls of color in the American south. They started to...

If you want to know about the state of our public schools and how parents are advocating for the needs and aspirations of all children, you will need to look beyond the headlines. Parents who disrupt school board meetings to spew hate about books and classes that value diversity and inclusion may make the news, but their actions tear schools apart, not build them up. In this episode of Power Stati...

In America, small business and entrepreneurship is venerated and often romanticized in popular culture and by the media and politicians. But for aspiring entrepreneurs who are not wealthy or well connected, starting a new business is fraught with challenges and inequities. The data reveals that 85% of our businesses are microenterprises, companies of five or fewer people, launched with $50k or les...

  If you want to know what matters most to your elected leaders, the answer is found not in their rhetoric, but in their choices during the budget making process. When the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities was founded in 1981, the mission was to understand how federal spending, or the lack of it, impacted low income Americans, particularly their ability to access healthcare and housing. It al...

The next time you visit your local farmers market take a moment to consider who produced the bounty of just-harvested fruits and vegetables and brought them with care to your urban neighborhood. As Hugo Mogollon shares on this episode of Power Station every farmer, from new entries in the sector to Black farmers carrying the toll of historical exclusion from federal resources to immigrants managin...

Sindy Benavides leads Latino Victory with strategic saavy, optimism and a deep belief in the ability of Latinos, and other communities of color, to engage in the electoral process and generate a more equitable America.  I am excited to reshare this very edifying and inspiring episode with Sindy. We learn about her own road to organizing, the communities that poured into her, the talented cohort of...