Sadie Elliott & the new playbook for Christian school funding

This week on Givers, Doers, & Thinkers, Jeremy Beer sits down with Sadie Elliott, Director of the Herzog Foundation, to explore how innovative philanthropy is transforming K–12 Christian education. They discuss the challenges facing Christian school leaders, the importance of treating donors as mission-driven partners, and the measurable impact of strong donor development on long-term sustainability and growth. 

Let’s go!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

This week on the podcast, we talk to Sadie Elliott about the Herzlog Foundation's massive effort to scale K-12 Christian education and quickly. Let's go. Welcome to Givers, Doers, and Thinkers, a podcast on philanthropy and civil society. I am Jeremy Beer, and it's great to have you with us. We are recording on March 30, 2026. And this season we are highlighting some of the most strategic, interesting, innovative things happening in American philanthropy, especially in light of the celebration, very muted celebration so far of the American Semi-Quincentennial. That's America 250. And to that end, I'm excited to have with us today Sadie Elliott, director of the Herzog Foundation Institute, where she has since 2021 served. I'm not going to tell you how many uh school leaders and educators from how many schools representing how many kids, because we're going to ask Sadie about that right as we get started, but it's a lot. We'll talk about what that all means here today, uh what the Stanley Herzog Foundation is, uh what the institute is, and why it's all a pretty fascinating example of innovative philanthropy in action. I should note also that Sadie is on the board of the Providence School of Arts, a Christian school providing quality Christian education to an underserved community in Kansas City. And she is an alumna of the late great King's College. Sadie, thanks for joining us.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Jeremy, thanks for having me. I'm really looking forward to the conversation.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

So before we get back to what I just promised about all the numbers and how many people uh the institute is touching in the world of K 12 Christian education, we'll take a step back. The Herzog Foundation is pretty new. It was formed what year exactly, actually?

SPEAKER_01 1:57

We began our programming in 2021.

SPEAKER_02 2:00

Yeah. So super new. Stanley Herzog, contractor, asphalt, and yet amazingly successful and generous. Talk about who Stan Herzog was and why he started Herzog Foundation.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

Yeah, thanks for the question. Happy to talk about Stan Herzog. He was a businessman, entrepreneur, father, grandfather, patriot, very involved in politics, conservative politics, both in his home state of Missouri, but also nationally. He had a NASCAR racing team. He had a racing team. Jimmy Johnson was one of the drivers on his team.

SPEAKER_03 2:38

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

And yes, he did love shooting wild boar out of his helicopter in West Texas.

SPEAKER_02 2:44

It was the simple things that matter in line.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

Exactly. Yes, he had some great hobbies. But he loved this nation. He loved the values that America stood for, for hard work, for just family, faith, freedom, you know, all the things that this nation was really founded so that you could work hard and support your family. And he realized at some point in his life when he was deciding, you know, where to leave his wealth. His son Jake puts it this way: Jake Herzog says that Stan realized that the heart of the problem in this nation was a problem of the heart. And so he truly believed that K-12 Christian education was an upstream solution to all of the downstream sort of chaos that we're seeing in culture and politics. And so there are so many ways at the foundation that we hope to honor stand, not just in giving to K-12 Christian education, but in honoring who he was as a man and as a businessman. He patented over 20 inventions with Herz O Corp. He was an entrepreneur, like I said. He didn't care if you had the degrees and the credentialing. He cared if you were working hard, getting your job done, and that you were trustworthy. And so these are all aspects of his legacy, if you will, that we'd like to bring into our work in Christian education. The education sector is just inundated and chained down by so many things, the status quo and credentialing and certifications, and um, you know, you get paid based on how many degrees you have, not how great of an educator you are. And so there are so many ways in which I think we can learn from Stan's own influence, even in construction, and bring that into education.

SPEAKER_02 4:40

Did he, was it his, had he already decided when he passed away that this, I want this foundation's going to be established and it got to focus solely on Christian K through 12 education? Was that his decision?

SPEAKER_01 4:54

It was. So about 10 years before he passed, he had set up the foundation or the at least the idea of the foundation, but he it was interesting, he didn't leave a long to-do list on how to spend his wealth. But what he did was he said K-12 Christian Education within the US, nothing international. And then he hand selected the board of three board members whom he knew and trusted, and he wanted them to spend every dime. So he set a sunset of 15 to 20 years to spend down his how big was the foundation when it started?

SPEAKER_02 5:30

How much is the money?

SPEAKER_01 5:31

Yeah, 350 million. And that is a lot to Steward. And yet at the same time, it's really a drop in the bucket of what Christian education as a national sector needs to grow. And that will come into play as we talk about some of our philosophy of giving.

SPEAKER_02 5:48

Yeah. So did he also say, I mean, this is a chance for you to speak about exactly how you all go about spending that money, but did he say, and I want it to be, don't want it to be given away in sort of the regular grant-making way? I'd like you to do this other thing that the foundation is doing, or is that something that the board members came up with as like the most strategic way to spend down this corpus?

SPEAKER_01 6:12

That's right. Yep. The board decided that. So, like I said, other than those five or six things I just listed off about what Stan said, it was very back of a napkin. But he knew and trusted the board that he selected. He was good friends with our chairman, Todd Graves. And so he he trusted them implicitly. And it's so interesting to me, sort of um, the providence of it all, if you will. So Stan passed early. Um, he had just turned 71, I believe, in 2019. And so, as the board is structuring the first ever foundation to be focused exclusively on Christian education at a national scale, COVID hits and absolutely disrupts the K-12 ecosystem in this country. And so that's where the board really decided, okay, took a hard look at Christian education and said 350 million is a lot to steward. And yet, if we were just to build buildings in the COVID economy, especially, you know, we may help 10 or 15 schools, but what have we really done at scale to change the narrative? And so that's why we've launched a handful of our programs and become an exclusively programmatic foundation where we don't give anything really in direct grant making. It's all targeted towards the national narrative. So things like the lion in our publication, towards fueling startups through our school box program, and then through fueling leadership and educator development through the institute.

SPEAKER_02 7:50

Yeah. The training thing is what, and that really so that's the strategic choice that the board makes, and this the training part of all this, which is housed in the Herzlog Foundation Institute, correct? That you direct. That is really what's unique. Talk about how many already since 2021. I was gonna read the numbers before we started recording, you're like, actually, those are probably low now. Like, how many, just so people get a sense of the scale of what's happening here, how many Christian school leaders and educators from how many schools have come through these programs already?

SPEAKER_01 8:26

So we started started small in 2021 with just a few trainings. And now today in 2026, we run 100 trainings a year with an average of 80 people at each training. So 8,000 educators annually are running through our trainings. And it's such an honor as a graduate of a Christian school to be able to invest in educators. But it's also, we have the responsibility, I think, as the foundation to kind of look from the watchtower we're in, if you will, nationally, to say, okay, we really need to change or fortify these aspects of Christian education if we're going to not only grow, but deliver on our promises of being authentically Christian schools that care deeply about academic and intellectual formation. And so we've been able to do that through the institute, I believe, in just addressing the issues of running an organization, but especially running a school that will prevent growth or prevent quality of our offerings.

SPEAKER_02 9:32

So there's three areas you're doing this for for these. By the way, we didn't say how many numbers, it's 8,000 a year. So there must be well over 10,000, 15,000 educators that have been through already, which is crazy. Uh, I know it's from over 1,500 schools around the country. Um and do they pay, by the way, to come to these things?

SPEAKER_01 9:51

No, they're their only investment on behalf of the school is travel. So we run these trainings across the country to be geographically accessible. So you drive or fly, and then we foot the bill from there.

SPEAKER_02 10:03

Yeah, it's incredible. If you're if you're listening to this podcast and you are at a Christian school or know people who are at one, make sure they know about Herzog, uh the Herzog Foundation Institute. So there's these three areas. I'm going to run through each one of them with you that you're doing, you're resourcing people on leadership development, organizational development, and uh teacher development. What are let's go as well one by one. So just take leadership development at first. What are some of the biggest challenges that a Christian school leader, like what are the problems are coming into these training with right? Or I say problem. We're also say problem, everything's a challenge or an opportunity. But I, you know, the the things that are like weighing them down that you're that you guys might be able to help them with.

SPEAKER_01 10:45

Yes. I mean, that that's a really big question. I'm happy to unpack that because running a nonprofit in general is really nuanced work. You know, you have to take the best of running a business and then also staying true to your mission and honoring your donors, and there's so much wrapped up in that. And then for a school leader, for a head of school who we would consider the executive director of the school, then you add on the fact that parents are your customers. That you're talking about faith, finances, politics, you know, uh your child's grades, I mean, all of the things that are most dear to a parent and that's who you're serving. And so, man, I there's a few ways that I want to take this. The first is the average tenure of a Christian school head of school in the US is somewhere between two and three years. And so if you, yes, if you just look at that, it's like, how in the world would we expect to build momentum as an organization, let alone as a national movement, if every two or three years your head of school is turning, your executive is turning over? I mean, there's no way in which you can build institutional longevity and organizational trust and healthy donor bases and all the things that you need to thrive if that leader continues to roll over. And so what we did in the early days at Herzog is we asked, well, why is that happening? What are the factors happening there? And there's a few things at play. One is that oftentimes, at least in Christian schools, but sometimes in nonprofits in general, someone who's really passionate about the mission, as the organization grows, gets tapped to become the executive of that organization because they're really passionate about that mission. They are passionate about saving the babies and educating the children and serving women, right? Whatever that might be. But then oftentimes nonprofit boards fall short when it comes to actually providing them the leadership skill set and training that they need to balance a budget, run effective board meetings, um, manage a team, treat donors well, right? And improve their donor development courses. So that was really the birth of the leadership development series of the institute is to come alongside people who love the mission and say, okay, we get that you love the mission, and also you have to balance your budget and you have to lead a board well. And so we that's how we developed our leadership series. We think of it kind of as an executive MBA in Christian school management. A lot of the practices really are, I use the term best practices lightly because I actually think some best practices are bogus. But um, but really, what are the best practices for Christian education? And so we cover topics in our leadership series. We do a board leadership retreat for the head of school with either their church if they're a church school or their board if they're an independent school, donor development, marketing and enrollment, uh, spiritual formation, that this idea of our mission must drive everything, culture building, and so we and leadership, just a general leadership in Christian education. Those are the six in our leadership series.

SPEAKER_02 14:05

I mean, you really put your finger on it. Um that it is this is the sort of, maybe not the, but one of the few major structural challenges with nonprofit organizations is that the leader of the organization very, very often never really sought to be the leader of an organization, hasn't been, uh, hasn't received an education uh commensurate to being the leader of an organization, may still not really want to be the leader of an organization. They'd rather be in the classroom, they'd rather rather be in the field, they'd rather be delivering the program, whatever nonprofit we're talking about. That this is the one of the essential differences between nonprofits and the for-profit world that I think um oftentimes business people actually don't have a hard time understanding and coming to terms with. Would you agree with that?

SPEAKER_01 14:55

Absolutely. And we we talk about this at our trainings, where if you know, if you're in the seat you're in because you're afraid no one else is gonna do it, no one else is gonna step up the plate to do it. That I mean, that's that's a sort of negligence. And I know that sounds harsh, but um if you're not all in, if you're afraid to make an ask and you're a development director, get out of that seat. And so it's like it's time to to learn the skill and commit to it or to walk away. And I think I you know, sometimes we talk a lot about trust. We talk about organizations move at the speed of trust. Do you does your do your employees trust you as a leader? Do your donors trust you? Does your board trust you? Do you trust your board? I mean, there's a lot of trust going around. And and I think sometimes people think that that's a silly question because they equate trust with sort of um their character. Like I'm not gonna do anything illegal or I'm not going to I don't know. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 16:02

It's just the super negative stuff, right?

SPEAKER_01 16:04

Exactly. But actually, trust is sort of the currency of confidence. Like, do I am I confident that you're going to deliver on the promise that you've set out to deliver?

SPEAKER_02 16:14

Um and I think that's Is that part of good you can you successfully instill confidence in people?

SPEAKER_01 16:21

I think you can I think you can del develop effective plans and then I think you can deliver on that. And I think the boot the burden of proof is on the executive director or head of school, whatever that role is, to do that.

SPEAKER_02 16:35

I know you do get, I know you guys are very um committed to measuring outcomes as much as you can of these trainings. And um talk a bit about you know, when you talk about fear among leaders, school leaders in particular, the donor development part of that is is I'm guessing one of the things that they're most fearful about. That's a it's definitely an area in which probably none of them ever, you know, decide I want to become a school head because of I get to think I want to go after people for money.

SPEAKER_01 17:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:05

Exactly. Talk about how you all go about equipping them to do that and what kind of results.

SPEAKER_01 17:10

Absolutely. Yeah. So I think philosophically, and I think we're we definitely align. I know, Amphil, you all serve a wide swath of types of nonprofits and different organizations. But at the end of the day, the executive director of the nonprofit, so in our instance, the head of school of the Christian school is the chief development officer. Whether or not you have a CDO, that the executive is the chief development officer. And donors want the relationship with the executive, and they want to be able to, like I said, trust that the executive is going to be able to deliver on the promise or the plan. And so what we do a lot of work on the development side of things with school leaders, and I think there's a lot of just bad stuff out there. Can I say that on this podcast? Yeah, you can say that. Bad consultants and bad advice.

SPEAKER_02 18:02

We have a company, Katie. Yeah. Thanks to those things.

SPEAKER_01 18:05

Amphil is not one of those. We obviously uh we there are very few consultants that we would that we'd recommend to schools because very few share the philosophy, I think, that Amphil and Herzog share. That you know, donor development at its core is about uh cultivating strong relationships with donors. And development is really the fuel. That's what our our coach on development, Zach Clark, says development's the fuel that that drives your ministry forward. And so when it comes to training people in development, I think that there are a lot of myths you have to bust first. You have to bust the myth that it's about it's about the big events. You gotta get the big events right. Or that it's transactional, it's all about the ask. And we'd bust the myth about friend raising as well, that you well, you just need to be friendly enough with donors. I think for us, when we train school leaders, we want to break development down into really easily implementable disciplines. But at the end of the day, if the executive can just understand that a donor is is an investor and see them as an investor, I think that that really shifts your mindset towards donors. And then they become a partner in the work that you're inviting them into uh rather than sort of, I gotta get ya, you know, I gotta figure out how to get ya. And maybe it's the right event or maybe it's the right mailer at the right time, and it's just events and mailers can be part of it, but at its core that you have to treat donors like investors.

SPEAKER_00 19:42

Hi, I'm Chris Kidmeyer, CEO of Amphil. I'm excited to share that this season of Givers, Doers, and Thinkers Podcast is sponsored by Amphil. Whether your nonprofit needs help raising major gifts, building your donor pipeline, or crafting a winning fundraising message, Amphil has the expertise to help your organization thrive. We work with mission-driven organizations across the country to help them raise more money and advance their mission. Learn more at Amphil.com. That's A-M-P-H-I-L.com.

SPEAKER_02 20:12

And you're getting results. I know you break this down into digestible components. And um you have shared with me in previous another conversation some of the results you see, and um it answers my question. Like you can make a difference. Like the training and education can really make a difference. Talk about the differences you see among schools where they've where the leaders have come through your development courses.

SPEAKER_01 20:36

Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, Herzog, the Herzog board, we and as an institute, we took the gamble that said we can invest in school leaders and get a return on that. And so instead of direct grant making and being able to see a return on our investment of okay, that building went up, that program got started, those families got access to school because they were given funds. That's a direct return. So we we said, you know what? We want to invest in a way where we can measure return on our dollars. But training people is that you're gonna get soft results, if you will. Sometimes it's hard to quantify that. But we asked the question in 2023, after about two years of running our development trainings, is it working? Because if not, we need to fix something or pivot our strategy. And so we procured a third-party review to study about 150 schools that had been to donor development. And so they were studied 12 months after they came to a Herzog training. And here are some stats. Uh, I love numbers, so I'll share some numbers first and then I'll share some soft statistics as well. Prior to coming to the Herzog Foundation training, only 16% of respondents reported that they had a donor. Prospect Lane. Only 16% of the schools we serve. Those are all clear.

SPEAKER_02 22:07

That's not good. Yeah, that's not good.

SPEAKER_01 22:14

Post-training that went up to 72%. Now, what happened to the other 28%? I'm not sure that it can be helped. But we at least got that up to 72%, which is a pretty you know great increase.

SPEAKER_03 22:27

Robust. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:28

Yes. The prior to coming to a Herzog event, about 76% of our schools were having less than five in-person meetings with donors a year.

SPEAKER_02 22:43

Not a month, a year.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 22:45

That was again just to get some context for people. I mean, a very typical plan for one development leader or president would be 10, at least 10 meetings a month. So five less than five a year is not ideal. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

And a lot of this goes back to what we had just talked about with the the nuance of the head of school being unprepared for their role and just the that role, I don't envy the person in the head of school role. There's so many things at hand. But donor development, really, we would say a mature school, their head of school is spending at least 50% of their time on gender development. More in a campaign, obviously. And then here's a big one. Prior to attending Herzog Foundation trainings, the average monthly donations for a school was$9,500 a month. Post-training, so 12 months later, after implementing some of our practices, that rose to$19,900 a month in donor revenue. Yes. And it's, you know, we definitely adopt the kind of keep it simple, stupid, you know, um mentality of like keep it simple. Thank your donors, make the phone calls, schedule the meetings on their time and on their turf.

SPEAKER_02 24:02

Oh, we never said, wait, we never said how many meetings it went up to. So it was fewer than five a year.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

Yes, thank you for flagging that. Post-training, that 40% moved to more than five. I don't have the exact number in front of me, but post-training, yeah, at least most of them started making more in-person meetings.

SPEAKER_02 24:21

Yeah, and it must have too, because you don't have this. It's super impressive to um for the average to have doubled amount of terms of how much is raised on a monthly basis. That's hard to do in it's based at 12 months. We're not talking about huge numbers here. I realize that we're talking about going essentially from$10,000 to$20,000 a month. But hey, you gotta start somewhere and B, just from a proportion standpoint, that's um shows that this works. I mean, if you how many schools went through the training in this time period? Do you have any idea? Was it a few hundred or a couple hundred?

SPEAKER_01 24:56

So this, yes, the survey covered 150 schools, but since then, I mean, we've served just in our donor development trainings, they're our largest trainings. We've served, oh gosh, well over five or six hundred schools in that one training alone.

SPEAKER_02 25:15

And it's on average, you're getting them ten thousand dollars more per month. And then we gotta take this times twelve. You're pumping 70, 72 million dollars more per year uh into the Christian K through 12 ecosystem, which is unbelievable bang for the buck. I'm gonna guess you're not spending that much on this program.

SPEAKER_01 25:36

No, exactly that. So that's what I was gonna say is we each training is about$1,500 per person. And then we ask for two people per school to come together. So, you know, if you do the math on 200 schools, 400 people, that's about 600,000. But then you look at the return and it's just, you know, it's dollars we would never, could never give. Um, even if we wanted to give grants, we couldn't give that much in grant making. And so I think that's where when we when we think about sort of our philosophy of giving of philanthropy, we wanted to um to really address some of the core barriers to the growth and and mostly the sustainability as well as the growth of Christian education. And this this is a big one. Now, yes, now schools, interestingly, you know, I find that donor development is kind of our gateway drug, right? I don't know if you guys see this with your clients as well, but if you start to train on just a few improved practices on donor development, it actually really has ripple effects. And so if you're going to prepare and present a plan to donors, you've got to have things in your house in order to, you know, be able to share the data and come up with the plan and whatnot. And so we definitely see donor development oftentimes as a gateway drug to change management.

SPEAKER_02 27:05

It improves so much else, right? Because in order to do that, well, now we have to how are we talking about our school? What are we saying our vision is? What do we? I mean, it does it. You're right, it ramifies into all these other questions, which anybody who's works in development realizes that they have to run over, they you end up helping program just describe what it is they do. And you may have to you help them figure out well, you need to be able to measure outcomes of the program. So I gotta sell something. I mean, I gotta sell something. I have to engage people effectively with something that'll be successful.

SPEAKER_01 27:37

And what's more than even just to sell is that, you know, then I have to report on it. Successful donor development. And sometimes that's reporting what doesn't work, and that's okay. And that's where I would say, you know, trust building, that confidence building is no donor, no investor thinks you're gonna bat a thousand all the time. But how you handle when you fall short really speaks, speaks volumes to the leadership and the caliber of the leadership of the school or organization.

SPEAKER_02 28:05

You'd be amazed how patient donors slash investors can be if you have a strong relationship with them that's open and honest and can't. They might wait for years and years for you to figure out how to measure, to get the outcomes you wanted or to even be able to assess them. So that's leadership development. There's obviously a lot more we could talk about there, but organizational development. What is what's that?

SPEAKER_01 28:27

So we launched the leadership development series first, and then we realized we kind of just opened a can of worms. And so if you're gonna do donor development well, uh, well, you actually have to have a robust and sustainable financial model. At least for Christian schools, they actually have a revenue model, unlike many nonprofits. And so we launched the org series to go deeper into some of these hyper, I would say it's the infrastructure of our schools. So we have a financial leadership training. How do you budget? How do you create a five-year strategic plan?

SPEAKER_02 29:06

You talk about tuition in there too, like how to price things and discount?

SPEAKER_01 29:10

Um, in that one, we also cover things like crisis management. Um, right, it's one thing to have a great mission, but if we're not, um, like I said, if we don't have our house in order in some of these areas, especially today, I mean, you look at how many religious liberty cases there are. I mean, groups like First Liberty and ADF are full are are busy because there's so many states or organizations coming or people coming after Christian organizations. And so things like crisis management, things like special education, that's a pushback that Christian education gets is oh, well, you can only serve a a certain type of student. And it's honestly not the case. And so we train schools on how to serve kids who learn differently. So there's a myriad of just like I said, the infrastructure. So the I see the leadership series as the foundation, then the org series as really the infrastructure of our schools, is where that comes in.

SPEAKER_02 30:04

The third area is teacher development. So these are teachers coming in to Herzog events. What can you guys do for them that they're that the ed school that they went to? Well, many of them probably didn't go to an ed school if they're teaching in a Christian uh school, I suppose. In fact, is maybe that's the point. Are you is this pedagogy or is this um how to teach, or is it uh about content? Both? What's that about?

SPEAKER_01 30:27

Yes, so great question. At our teacher trainings, we actually do not primarily focus on content, classroom management, pedagogy, because we believe that in a Christian school, being a Christian educator is much more about how you go about what you do than it is specifically what you do. Um, so for example, we would say that the teacher is the living curriculum of the classroom. And so what we talk deeply about at our teacher trainings is a lot about a teacher's view on the human person, a teacher's anthropology, a teacher's view on their philosophy of education. And so what you're much deeper.

SPEAKER_02 31:13

That's that's interesting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:15

Yeah. And we get into, you know, why read great books and why speak Socratically and why do grades differently maybe in the early years. But that's really the question is all for all too often the teachers' unions or Department of Education have had way too, in my opinion, much of an too much of an influence on private education. We don't have to do it that way. And so we come in with trainings at our teacher level. The art of teaching boys is a training that we run in partnership with the height school. And reading the great books is a training we run, and then teacher apologetics are the ones that we really focus on with our educators.

SPEAKER_02 31:56

Yeah, these are not things we'd find in a typical, well, certainly in no ed school across or across the country. But give me one thing on the art of teaching boys. What's what's one thing that people don't realize?

SPEAKER_01 32:07

Okay. Gosh, you know, we we run this, like I said, in partnership with the Heights School in Maryland and the Heights Forum. And if you're listening to this, check and especially if you have young boys, check them out. Um, they're putting out some really great content. But how do I say this nicely, Jeremy?

SPEAKER_02 32:28

I don't want you to say it nicely.

SPEAKER_01 32:31

We've stopped forming men. We largely we've stopped forming men. We've stopped teaching resilience. We've stopped teaching, we're in this sort of bubble wrap era of let's just like bubble wrap our kids. Go let them play and learn through play. Go let them break the bone. It's okay. It will it will heal. Go let them build resilience and read great stories. Go let go read Lord of the Rings with them and then talk about it. And I think we've just feminized education by and large. And I will say that as a woman on here. And that's not to say that women can't teach young boys, but I do think that it's worth looking at and saying, okay, what what's the role of building resilience? What's the role of play and of debate and of arguing with one another? There's something there. Uh, there's a lesson in that for your boy that goes beyond sitting in a row in a classroom.

SPEAKER_02 33:34

Yeah. I thought, yeah, I thought maybe one of the answers too is don't make them sit for too long. It's probably part of the art of teaching boys. And you mentioned the Heights uh school in Maryland as your partner on this. So, which on it's a Catholic school, I believe. How ecumenical is the Herzog Foundation's approach to Christian K-12 education?

SPEAKER_01 33:52

Absolutely. We are what we would say big tent. So we will serve any K-12 Protestant or Catholic school in the country.

SPEAKER_02 34:02

So good to know. Good, good that we pointed that out. Is there anybody else doing, or was anybody else doing this in the Christian K through 12 ecosystem? I mean, it it's the amount of sort of um leverage you've gotten so fast, and the amount of engagement, I guess I should say, just in these tens of thousands of people. Did you fill a gap or is it um you're just doing something differently or better than others are doing?

SPEAKER_01 34:27

Yeah, I think there are other organizations training. There's your creditors, there's there's other organizations, and there's some organizations doing really great stuff in the space. But we did see a gap in training that really questioned the educational status quo. And so to go full circle from talking about Stan Herzog, a man who absolutely questioned the status quo and wanted to be a disruptor. I think when you're able to just provide simplified practical guidance, people are hungry for that. I think what we saw was we saw a lot of conferences and you might leave feeling more energized or encouraged from a conference, but we don't want people just to feel better about their work or their call. We want people to be equipped. And for those that that don't feel up to it, we want them to to find maybe a new seat on the list. And so I think that's what educators and school leaders have been drawn to with our trainings is we're going to give these nonprofit leaders hard truth and love and we're gonna show them practical ways to do things better. Because we have a moment right now for educational pluralism more broadly, but especially for Christian education, that um that gosh, I don't wanna I don't wanna have to tell the Lord one day how we squandered it. So we're trying to do the most we can in in a short amount of time.

SPEAKER_02 36:06

Is there we can end with that actually, Sadie? Um I'm sure you're alluding to several things when you say that, uh, including sort of sort of what's happening in mainstream sort of public district education, as well as sort of the opportunities being opened up by the passage of education savings accounts in state after state after state. Am I right in assuming?

SPEAKER_03 36:28

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 36:29

Are you, do you guys have internally any kind of um goal for how much you think Christian K through 12 education could grow in this country?

SPEAKER_01 36:42

Yes, and it's something that we are hoping to be a leading voice in rallying around as well with with donors, with other organizations. But we would say that Christian education, both homeschooling and Christian private schools in this country currently serve about 11% of school age population. 11%. And we're go big or go home kind of organization. So we would love to see Christian education represent 25% of school-aged kids by the time we're done spending St. Stan's dollars. But the thing I want to mention on that, and you know, we can talk, we could do a whole nother podcast on education trends. But you know, you talked, we talked early on about the Herzog Foundation corpus was$350 million that Stan left. And I mentioned that that's a large amount, but a drop in the bucket of what we're gonna need nationally. And just two quick sort of data points on that to expand our vision on education. Here is public expenditures on K-12 education in this country are$762 billion annually. Billion dollars annually.

SPEAKER_02 37:58

I actually thought I'm surprised it's under a trillion. I'll be honest with you.

SPEAKER_01 38:01

Yes. I I pulled out higher ed from that number. That's about the most accurate number that I think I could pull.

SPEAKER_03 38:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:09

$762 billion. Current school choice programs account for 1.1% of public expenditures. So we think we, you know, we're on a big trajectory and school choice continues to grow, continues to grow, praise God. But but we are a long way from being able to serve all the families that deserve to choose where their child gets educated. And so I want to maybe, and I'll just throw this last one out here because I think this is important. During, you know, when when COVID hit, when we s when Herzog Foundation started, right around 2020, 2021, I was worried that after COVID died down, after the dust of COVID settled, masks went away, six feet separation went away, all this stuff that demand or interest in private Christian education would dwindle. And we have not seen that. In fact, the national uh school choice, I believe it's the National School Choice Awareness Foundation recently put out that 36% of families currently in a public school setting uh would like to explore private education for their child. 36%. That is up 5% since 2022. So we're continuing to see interest in in Christian education grow. And so I think between growth in choice and growth in interest, we have a huge moment here to to serve families who don't feel like their kid has the best school that they could.

SPEAKER_02 39:39

And to your point, it's not, it won't be an easy lift. It's uh$762 billion uh in public funds toward K 12 education in this country is that's about$160 billion more than the entire charitable sector uh in the United States. So um, yeah, it's it's a beam. Uh and um to move that needle, we'll take everything the Herzog Foundation and all of its allies and partners can do. So Sadie, thanks so much for uh joining us and for what you're doing.

SPEAKER_01 40:14

Yeah, thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02 40:15

How can people find out more about the Herzog Foundation and the Institute in particular?

SPEAKER_01 40:20

Absolutely. So Herzog Foundation.com will have all the information you could want on us. It'll have links to readline.com, the publication I mentioned, as well as the event dates for the institute. If you are a church or a school looking at K-12 Christian Education, we are here to serve you.

SPEAKER_02 40:39

This is needs to be your first contact. So thanks, Sadie Elliott, very much for joining us. We appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 40:46

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_02 40:47

Hey, thanks for listening to this episode and what is going to be the last season of the Givers, Doers, and Thinkers Podcast. Nevertheless, I invite you to like and follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. And as always, if you want to learn more, check out mphil.com. Thanks.