Romanita Hairston & building stronger nonprofits through regional philanthropy

This week on Givers, Doers, & Thinkers, Jeremy Beer sits down with Romanita Hairston, CEO of the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, to explore the power and challenges of regional philanthropy. Reflecting on the legacy of Jack Murdock, Romanita shares how the Trust is investing in nonprofits through capacity building, leadership training, and a deeply relational approach to grantmaking. They discuss the shifting landscape of nonprofit funding, the growing pressure on organizations amid increasing demand, and why collaboration and innovation are more important than ever. 

Let’s go!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

This week on the podcast, join us as we speak with Romanita Hairston of the MJ Murdoch Charitable Trust about some of the great strains facing today's nonprofit leaders as well as some of the great opportunities facing them. Let's go. Welcome to Givers, Doers, and Thinkers, a podcast on philanthropy and civil society. I'm Jeremy Beer, and it's great to have you with us. Recording today on March 25th, 2026, and this season we continue to highlight some of the most interesting, innovative, strategic things being done by American givers, American philanthropic institutions. In light of the, but I've been, I've been saying in light of the ongoing celebration of America 250, I would so far that celebration seems a little bit more muted than I expected it to be when I planned this whole thing out. Maybe that will come up in our conversation here today. But very excited to have with us uh Romanita Hairston, CEO of the MJ Murdoch Charitable Trust, which has long been one of the most important uh philanthropic institutions in the United States, certainly one of the most important such institutions with a regional focus, in this case, the region of the Pacific Northwest. Romanita is a graduate of the University of Washington and has her MBA from Eastern University in Philadelphia. She began her career in the nonprofit sector at World Vision and then uh somehow made her way to a scrappy little for-profit company called Microsoft. And um, sometime after that, well, I know in 2022, I don't know the whole details of the winding rope, but in 2022, she became the CEO at the MJ Murdoch Charitable Trust. Romanita, welcome.

SPEAKER_02 1:50

Thank you. I appreciate you having me.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

Did I get anything wrong in the introduction in terms of your road to CEO at the Murdoch Trust?

SPEAKER_02 2:00

Generally, I think you covered the places that I worked. It felt like a fair introduction, and it by no means needed to be exhaustive. Um, I certainly would say thank you for the very kind things you said about the trust. I would say, you know, our focus and approach is on being a service-oriented organization that is relationally and dynamically engaged with the nonprofits that we serve and working in ways that are highly efficient and effective so that we get to see the benefit of the work that they do. We like to say our fruit grows on other people's trees. And I think that that hopefully is what marks who we are as the trust and how we go about doing our work.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

Tell me about um, or tell people about uh just a little bit of the background of the trust. It was uh started by a man or I don't know if it was started by Jack Murdoch or with his estate, but he was um the founder of something called Tektronix, I believe.

SPEAKER_02 2:56

Yes. Um our the trust um is just celebrated 50 years. Um we were 50 years um old last year. Um we were um sadly um founded at the untimely um nature of Jack's death. So his plane um went down in the Columbia River, um actually not too far from where our current um offices are located. Um Jack had no wife and he had no children, and he established the trust um in the um event of his passing. And the trust was founded to really invest in the cultural, social, spiritual, educational, and economic lives of um those that we would benefit. And so Jack had that foresight to put a trust in place, knowing that he had no wife and children. And the early trustees then did the work of carving out the trust, really honoring original donor intent in Jack's life in that process. And Jack was the co-founder along with a man named Howard Volum of Tektronics, which was um a very uh regionally important um early technology company that really helped to shape the landscape of technology um across the Pacific Northwest as well as um around the world in terms of the things that Tektronics did.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

Probably one of those undersung uh companies that helped make the Pacific Northwest sort of a tech hub in this uh in this country. Did he have a vision of probably not, I imagine, given the nature of his passing, but did he have a vision for giving regionally, or is that something the first trustee said, look, let's concentrate on the Pacific Northwest with our or giving to the trust?

SPEAKER_02 4:29

Yeah, if you were look at sort of donor intent and the establishment of it in large philanthropy, many philanthropists lived well into the establishment of their foundations. Jack obviously didn't anticipate that he would die just a year after creating the trust. And so the early trustees were left with the responsibility to really define many aspects of the trust's work and to fundamentally really capture Jack's life and intent. Um, the good news is Jack personally selected the original trustees and he endowed them with the rights and responsibilities to do that through the establishment of a trust.

SPEAKER_01 5:08

What are some of the um the Pacific Northwest, as you guys define it, is let's see if I can get this right, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho.

SPEAKER_02 5:18

Is that um correct, and we have work that extends because of Cascadia into Canada. So when you think about the Cascades region, and then we do um some work because Jack also um supported some things that were outside of the region, and Jack's company um was global. We do have a small set of things that we support beyond the Pacific Northwest with very specific intentions around how we do.

SPEAKER_01 5:42

The bulk you're giving, the bulk of your energy and time is in in this region, the Pacific Northwest. What are some of the challenges of being a regional giver as opposed to like a national or an international giver? Like I assume there must be some things that are hard make harder than the other.

SPEAKER_02 6:00

Yeah. Yeah, well, I'll say a couple things. I'd actually think the distinction is probably regional, local, right? Which local could be community or statewide, right? When you think about funding or national. I tend to think that more local funders are deeply or more deeply connected to community. Now, that also depends on your strategy, right? Whether you're a community-based foundation, whether you're operating or not. So structure of the institution matters. But in general, I think it would be fair to say that funders who are working closer to the ground have a greater ability to be connected at the community level in different ways. And I would say that national funders who are nationwide tend to focus on systemic issues and things that are more cross-cutting across geographic regions as opposed to more contextual to specific communities. But there are always things about that I would say are kind of the caveat. An example of that would be: imagine you're a national funder who is focused on one very specific issue. You are deeply resourced to have connectivity into communities all around the country. That funder could actually potentially be more connected on a particular issue in particular parts of the country because they are organized, structured, and focused in that way. So, what I would say that really distinguishes most funders, whether not national or local, is actually mission, vision, and strategy. Those are the things that I think really actually distinguish the operating model that determine whether you're working at the systemic level, whether you're working around the issues of particular communities in a geography, or some hybrid of the two, and then the organizing model for staffing and the place-based nature of your work that comes alongside.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

And what is it for Murdoch then? How does Murdoch combine these two things?

SPEAKER_02 8:08

So we are a regional funder and we're centralized in terms of our offices, right, in the Vancouver, Southwest Washington area. We serve our regions really by focusing on a strategy that looks to the nonprofits and organizations we serve to be the ones that are closely connected to their communities. And so our evaluation of the work that an organization does or the impact that the organization intends to achieve is based on our assessment of that unique grant application at the time that it comes to us. So we are really focusing very much on that connectivity and that understanding of the organization. It's why a part of our service model is to be highly relational in the ways that we work with organizations, hoping that our engagement with them is curious while also being deeply analytical in the analysis work that we do. Because we do not require them to be working on our theory of change, and we are asking them about the outcomes that they intend to achieve and evaluating their track record of delivering impact.

SPEAKER_01 9:17

Right. You're not coming to them with like, here's a theory of how we think you should attack this. Could you implement this for us? You're this bubbling up from the ground more than it is coming from top down.

SPEAKER_02 9:26

Yeah, for the bulk of our work, that is definitely true. Um, there are things that we do that are a combination. So you asked as a regional funder how um does that work? And so for our strategic grant making, that's exactly how it works. What we define are our priorities, the areas in which we're gonna focus. So across this five state region, we have five areas of focus. Within those five areas of focus, um, there are roughly 36 potential sectors of which we are focused today on roughly 18 of them. Um, and then within that, we look at what the eligibility criteria is within those sectors, right? So areas of focus to sectors to very prioritized things, and organizations can then apply to us. That's the model that works in terms of the way that you said it. We're really looking to those organizations who come to us to tell us what they want to achieve. But here's something that happens when you are deeply engaged with organizations and things work the way you want them to work. You start to see trends and themes. That's the benefit of being regional, right? Working with every tier one institution that does research or working across a sector, things start to emerge. You're also building social capital and relationships with organizations. And so as you do that work, themes start to emerge. Leaders are talking to you about similar issues. In those places where we can be supportive to the sector, we then will support convenings and initiatives that are a response to that. A great example of that so that it doesn't sound just to some ways kind of more in the theory of it, but practically a great example of that is our commercialization initiative, right? We were funding a lot of scientific research. We're a 50-year funder, right, of scientific research. We noticed that there were a number of ideas at the research stage that were funding, but we saw that there was a gap between the research stage and then getting those good ideas to market. Commercialization arose as an initiative for us in scientific research, whereby we actually then invite organizations that are eligible to present proposals to us for commercialization. So that's not an open call. We're not saying what they need to take to market, but we have a special initiative that is designed with particular criteria that needs to be met in order to be funded. And so we have majority of our grants that are in the strategic grants. We have another portion that sit in that initiative space, and then we have another portion of our work that is around the convening and the learning aspects of the work. And then the last thing we do, which we've discovered, is you know, money is one resource of what we can provide to our grantees. We take the time to understand what are the felt, so perceived needs that leaders and organizations have, and what are the practical needs that we see through our processing of many grants. And we deliver programming that is designed to build capacity in those spaces. And so we do board leadership training, we do training for fundraising, and we do leadership development training as a part of what we would then consider a full-bodied approach to capacity building, which is really our North Star in terms of our mission.

SPEAKER_01 12:47

Tell people what capacity building. So I because actually that's one of the most interesting things you do, I think, is the board training, the leadership development training, the what was the third one? The board leadership fundraising training?

SPEAKER_02 12:58

Leadership fundraising.

SPEAKER_01 13:00

That those things are central to building capacity at a nonprofit organization. That's that's sort of the theory here, that that's really what helps grow. We talk about capacity, we're helping to grow from here to here, right? Or to put a bigger foundation below so you can build more programs, right? And serve more people.

SPEAKER_02 13:16

Well, so yeah, so the way that I would say it is so let me maybe give our um full construct. So our vision is human flourishing for the common good. And that ties back to a statement from Jack about our primary task being to unleash the creative forces in mankind and to essentially reduce those of destruction and despair. That sounds and feels like human flourishing for the common good. And we know a lot about that from Jack's own personality. So we anchor there with that vision as a North Star, and then it gets into our mission of capacity building. So first, we see everything that we have, the relationships that we engage in, the money that we deliver, the places where we gather, and the programs we do, all as building capacity. Capacity being defined as increasing skills, knowledge, experience, and capability of organizations to achieve their mission. So that's taking the full complement of what we have alongside what others bring to the table too. Other foundations, other capacity-building organizations like the nonprofit associations, who are so critical to building capabilities and other things, those things come together and they help to build capacity in organizations alongside what organizations are doing for themselves. And so then when you take that as the capacity building definition, right? Enhancing skills, capabilities, knowledge, experience, and capacity to do the work that's being done, we look at a full capacity building model. And leadership fundraising and board development are just three areas of capacity building. There are several other areas that capacity can be built in that the trust doesn't do. A great example of that might be around talent and people development. Another area might be strategy and planning. And we have a model and we pick the places where we believe we are best equipped to build capacity and come alongside the ecosystem that builds capacity to help organizations.

SPEAKER_01 15:20

How do people respond to the opportunities that you provide in those areas? Is it really, really highly valued? Do you or um is it not valued as highly as it should be? Uh is it, does it, do you think that's really good ROI kind of expenditure for you guys on those capacity building things that you do? What's your sense?

SPEAKER_02 15:38

No, we believe, we believe deeply in capacity building. And I believe that organizations want to grow. They want to develop. I believe leaders are interested in building their teams and people. I believe the sector in and of itself is a sector that's geared towards hopeful optimism and innovation. I would say that the sector itself, the funding model, has a number of challenges to funding those things that build capacity. Um, so if you think about the way funding happens in the nonprofit sector, most of the funding is what I call last mile funding. So most of the funding models are built around service delivery, right? The cost to serve a child or an adult or a community. And those who are giving rightfully so want to understand that their funding is helping to put shoes on feet or food in the mouth of those who are in need or to achieve the programmatic outcome. Unlike business, which having run my own business and then having been a part of Microsoft and being in a family of small business owners, business income for RD, talent development typically comes from the sale of a product. In the nonprofit sector, we don't necessarily factor in, right, research and development, training and capacity building. Typically, in the sector, we're thinning out right the cost of delivery as opposed to building those things in. And so I find that oftentimes the sector has less money to put in RD or capacity development or evaluation and learning, because you don't typically build those things into the delivery of service. And so when we come along, when the nonprofit associations come along, or when organizations make that investment, they really have to figure out how to do that within their funding model and envelope. And we come alongside, and I find that organizations are responsive, that they're highly interested and invested, and that they see wonderful results.

SPEAKER_01 17:47

Because so few funders I mean, kind of the point I was getting at, tend to want to invest in exactly these areas. Most seem to want to invest more in the last mile, the programmatic stuff.

SPEAKER_02 18:00

You know, it's a good question. I don't know if fund if donors are uninterested. I think we have a way the system has worked. And I think a part of what every leader who leads an organization has the opportunity to ask is would our donors be interested in this, in these things? Have we fully loaded, would be the way that I would say it, the cost of service delivery to include living wages for staff, learning and development, RD, right, and training and capacity development. And do we inherently see those things as a part of what we expect to pay for when we're donating and investing in organizations? So I probably step back and away from the question of do people want to do it? I don't know the answer to that question. I know we haven't, in many cases, built models that give them the opportunity to do so. And I think that's an opportunity in front of us as much more than it is a critique of where we've been. I think it's the emerging reality of what the sector needs. And I think in a number of innovative organizations, they're really thinking that through. They're thinking about how to do that. And many of the organizations we fund, we have roughly under 10,000 unique organizations who have approached us. We have roughly 6,000 or so, give or take, who have applied, and then just under 4,000 unique organizations who've been awarded a grant. That's roughly 3 to 4% of the number of organizations that could be eligible in our market potentially to come to us, right? Just taking the total market size that we have. So when you think about that, you know, the organizations we're seeing, they are typically thinking those things through. In order to be effective, they need to learn and grow, do research and development, develop their staff, and pay living wages. And so I think there's probably unevenness of how that's happening in the sector for a lot of different reasons, to be honest.

SPEAKER_01 20:10

That's one challenge, broadly speaking, kind of facing uh nonprofits in your region. What are some of the other kind of big ones uh that you see facing sort of the kinds of nonprofit organizations that you all would work with?

SPEAKER_02 20:25

Great question. And I'd say these are probably regional and somewhat national. I'll try to think about whether there are things that I think are really specific to the region. I think the renegotiation of the social contract has introduced some disruption, right? Who's responsible to fund what, right? I think government retraction and funding has a lot of conversation happening around if it is not going to be government, what's the role of private philanthropy? What's the role of business? What's the role of major philanthropists and individual donors? And so we have a renegotiation of that, looking at where things will settle out. Um, we also have the very real emergence of that disrupting the sector and producing the need to think about new organizing structures. Will there be collaborations to do more effective service? Will there be consolidations of work? Meaning we see organizations who are coming together. And might we see really the closure of some organizations sadly, because um the services that they provided are not being funded through philanthropic means? And so that's a major challenge. And while it's difficult for sure for the organizations that are closing, those families and individuals who are served, the people who are not employed, for which we have a deep level of empathy, it also then creates greater service needs for those organizations that remain, right, who continue to do those services. Services who have to think about in the face of increasing demand how to do their work. So that's one. I'll stop there in case you want to talk about that one and then maybe move to a second.

SPEAKER_00 22:12

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SPEAKER_01 22:41

That's gotta be one of the things that that reality has to be something that keeps a, if I were the leader of a foundation, that's a keep me up at night sort of thing. Um, because it's what do we do? What how do we respond maybe differently than we've responded in the past to essentially what you're talking about is essentially like a recession, sort of, so to speak, in the nonprofit funding environment, um, because of, as you put it, the renegotiation of the social contract, or uh if if I if I am putting that correctly.

SPEAKER_02 23:10

I just said a renegotiation, I did say a renegotiation of the social contract before how things are funded. And um, really, it's about social obligation and our commitments to one another and what sectors of society and are responsible for certain things and how individuals are responsible. But what I heard you say at the end of your question was sort of how does that land with us? What are we doing and how are we thinking differently? And then we can come back to kind of what might be unique to the region. Um, you know, the first is um we are trying to be actively present and aware of what disruption produces in terms of concern, worry. There's a real emotional quotient to this. And so we're trying to stay extremely close to our own humanity, to remember that on the end of any and all of these decisions are people, right? And people whose lives are disrupted and impacted, people who rely on critical services, and that we have to remember in our humanity to care for one another through these seasons of change. And so we're trying to care for those we serve and care about them, and to remember that while we can only serve and fund a portion of the need, our hearts are big enough to care about all of it, right? And so that's the first thing we're trying to do is remember our own humanity in the midst of it and have open hearts to not just what we can do, but open hearts to all of what is happening and the mindset that considers that within the scope of what is our control. So I like to say there's scope of control, scope of influence, and scope of care. Our scope of care is as big as the sector is and beyond. Our scope of influence are the things that people look to us to have thoughts about and to help shape the common discourse and the direction. And we try to be mindful, thoughtful, and empathetic in how we do those things. And then within the scope of control, um, we are trying to really um be clear, right? Um, we have said our program, our chief program and impact officer, Pauline Um Fong, has said, you know, clarity is kindness. And I think the words, and I'd like to say clarity is compassionate, right? And so if clarity is kind and clarity is compassionate, we've tried to become really clear about our priorities. So that's one of the first things we're doing. Um, we want organizations to know whether they're eligible and to spend as little time as possible seeking um funding from us while also having that mutual accountability that we need. So we've clarified and continue to clarify our guidelines. Um, and here's some just math about how we think about this. Organizations apply to funding and they're, if they're using kind of a really detailed strategy, they're thinking about probabilities, right? If you have a 1% probability of a grant, you need to write a hundred of them for every for those dollars, right? If you have a 90% probability, right, you need to write one or two. If you have a 50% probability, you need to write one or two. We're trying to keep our probabilities of success high at both the LOI stage and also at the grant stage. At the LOI stage, the way we get to good probability ratios is by making sure that the eligibility guidelines are clear.

SPEAKER_01 26:34

By discouraging LOIs from people who are just not eligible, right?

SPEAKER_02 26:39

Right, exactly. And exactly, and um helping people to sort of self-evaluate without having to go through our process. So that's one way. Um the second way is by helping to make it clear what we're then, once you are eligible, um, what we're reviewing grants on the basis of so that organizations have the ability to know if they're ready or not to move to grants. Because it's one thing to be eligible and it's another thing to be ready, right?

SPEAKER_01 27:08

Do you like people to kind of is there um foundations are all over the place on this? We're gonna get back to the regional thing, but like take people to communicate with you prior to putting an LOI, like an email or a call, say, hey, what do you think? Or do you know, just go through the process and self-evaluate and it's a great question.

SPEAKER_02 27:25

I mean, to some extent it depends, but let me maybe talk about the philosophy behind that. One of our things that we really try to focus on is accessibility, right? We have for many years of our history been open access 24-7, meaning you could apply for a grant at any point in time. But in our total addressable market, the total number of nonprofits is above 100,000 in our region, right? So you take that number, and then the eligible number is probably something smaller than that. But let's say the eligible number is 50,000. Let's say it's 50% of that 100,000, we do roughly 300 grants a year. So when you think about that, if we want to be accessible, if we take calls from even the 300 grantees with 40 staff, because we also want to be efficient, you can do the math and see do we want to take calls? Would we love to take calls? Absolutely. But with a total addressable market, well into the thousands with a small staff, your heart's desire is not what you can functionally achieve and do your mission. So, what we've tried to do is to create systems that help people to self-serve. Here's the benefit of self-service, right? I like to say self-service is also kindness. Clarity is kindness, clarity is compassion, self-service is kindness, and self-service is compassionate. If you can get people in the information they need in real time, and there is no disadvantage to them of self-servicing, getting information they need when they need it, right? The right information at the right time in the right way, you have better serviced your grant seekers than if they need to wait to talk to you on your time when you're in the office from eight to five on the day that you're not in other meetings or making decisions about grants. And so we really see that self-service is really a way of doing good customer service for organizations. That then escalates the real hard problems to staff members, and it helps us to really address the things that actually do require that human touch. And so it's why we were we ask everyone to go to GrantTed Murdoch Trust.org, right, to really, if they've got those questions. And so we've got the website, we've got an email address, we've got all these things that help organizations to be able to do that self-service for themselves.

SPEAKER_01 30:04

I don't even remember where this question started now. Because yeah, we do.

SPEAKER_02 30:07

It started, I can tell you where it started. It started with regional differences. And so we had talked about um the funding model and all of that. Um, you know, and then we were flowing into how organizations are different at the regional um levels. And now I think the third thing I would talk about that's sort of maybe unique in this environment that nonprofits are facing, right, is um actually the challenge of overwhelming demand. Just like philanthropic organizations have overwhelming um demand. We talked about how this renegotiation, which is one of those factors, um, has also led to organizations having overwhelming demand. And that overwhelming demand taxes those folks who are, right, what we've called through COVID the frontline workers, right? So I like to say um that we need to, it's a fundamental issue of leadership. And so I'm gonna bring together a couple of things that I think have happened. One, we've seen an increasing proximity of the swan type events, meaning the things that no one expected to happen, kind of things that we couldn't, that we couldn't predict, like COVID, right? Um, and I like to say that was a quadruple pandemic. So we had a health pandemic that led to an economic pandemic. During the midst of that, we had a social justice pandemic, which led and flowed into a political pandemic, which a lot of people are calling polarization today, or at least perceived polarization for those who have lived at different times in history. There is a real palpable sense amongst communities that that's the case, and that there's a greater sense of need on top of that. Um, so nonprofit leaders are dealing with two things. They are dealing with their core mission, and then they're dealing with this broader set of environmental, economic, social, political, and other factors that wherever they stand on issues, they need to navigate, right, between the people that they serve, that they have to have effective leadership to bring people together on behalf of their mission. And we know that leaders in our communities and every leadership gathering that we've got, they're saying, yes, as we try to end homelessness or serve the homeless, as we try to bring communities together for economic development, we're also dealing with what I call the other job, right? And so we've got a community of leaders who already had difficult jobs, who now have that other job of dealing with everything that has happened in the quadruple pandemic from greater health-related issues to greater economic issues, greater social concerns, and greater political questions. And they have to be responsive to that.

SPEAKER_01 32:53

You could really add a fifth part of the pandemic with education, really, it'd be really what happened with education as well in those years. So I would even call the Quintuple pandemic.

SPEAKER_02 33:02

Hey, we we could probably, and here's the here's the reality of that, which, you know, is actually it's quite serious in a lot of ways, right? As you get up, you wake up, you're a person who's devoted to community and to the lives of community, and you're here to do a mission. You've got people who have come around you and who are gathered to that mission, and you are fundamentally needing to then do this respond, right, to this broader set of concerns and to do that with skill and the kind of adeptness. So, you know, I think the other job is I would call it, which those things are important, but they have become as weighty as the day-to-day work in a lot of cases for leaders. And so that's a question about prioritization and time. Let me add to that this one comment. The other thing that I would say is we also have a leadership challenge that's separate from the work. So that's about the leadership challenge within the work. And, you know, my heart goes out to those leaders who are navigating that. Um, and also I applaud those leaders who are doing that well, who are remaining focused on the mission while also dealing with the very real external environmental realities that they have to address. The second thing I would say is when you think about where we've been, you had the great resignation, right? We had a real turnover and shift in leadership. Um, that drains bench strength in organizations. Um the second is you've got um quiet quitting. Um, a lot of studies on productivity show that, you know, 100% of the people are there, the lights, meaning how focused they were on mission, the lights were at a, it's like the lights in your house. They used to be at 100% and now they might be at 75 or 50, right? And so productivity quotients have gone down, and that's the quiet quitting phenomenon where people are there and they're in the seat, but something about what they're experiencing in life in the world, they've quietly quit. And so they're less productive. And I think we have to think about all the things that are coming out around the majority of people feeling isolated, right? That the study that showed that many Americans can't name one other person to whom they're close. So you've got the great resignation, quiet quitting, and then you've got compassion fatigue. The work in the nonprofit sector is um relentlessly and awesomely human. And that has led in the face of demand to compassion fatigue. So if you layer those things together, you look at this great recession and sort of a draining of bench strength and kind of what they call brain drain, you look at quiet quitting, which affects productivity, and you look at compassion fatigue all wrapped in this ball of isolation. It says we've got work to do to build the bank, the bench, to connect people's purpose and passion to the missions and to adequately support the sector that people can do this deeply human work. So that's the other thing, the sector spacing. So we've done funding model, we've done the renegotiation of the social contract, um, we've done the leadership within the work with the quadruple pandemic, and we've also done kind of the leadership uh vacuum and the leadership challenge, right? Those are four things that I don't know if they're unique to our region, but they are a part of the landscape.

SPEAKER_01 36:32

Well, I've never had anybody else list those four things before. Those are those are put in a unique way. And well, given that, and I only have two questions left for you, given what you're facing there, what what are cut what are two things you're really excited about, what the Murdoch Trust is is doing? We'll start there and then we'll then we'll wrap this up.

SPEAKER_02 36:50

Well, let me say what I also think is unique to the region, which I think is um the other question I might propose we should be asking are the opportunities that are in front of us. Because there are things that I think are unique about our region, and that I think our unique regional approach gives us the ability to see. I think the region is a purple region. I like to say we're a purple nation, right? I believe we're fundamentally stronger together. And I think we share a lot of values. The more in common research says that, you know, 70% or so of Americans at the core really want the same things. We want safe communities. We want jobs that help us take care of our families, right? We want to live in places that have great opportunities for us to engage, right? That there's a lot that we share in common. And yes, we also think differently about how to solve the challenges that we face, but we also have a history as a nation of being resilient, of being able to figure out how to work through these times, to find solutions that impact the common good. And I think nonprofits are a critical part of that. A great opportunity in our region is for those nonprofits who are leading in these spaces to be doing that work, to be those bridge-building leaders who bring people together who want the same things, who may want to do it differently, to find out, to figure out how to do that. And so that's something that we see is the opportunity for collaboration. Um, that's one. Um, we see the opportunity to do things differently in that way and to do more of what we've been doing. Collaboration is not new to the sector, but we're gonna have to strengthen that muscle to go forward. And we want to be one of those organizations who are really supporting those effective collaborations and innovation and models. Um, the other is disruption does bring the opportunity for innovation. And so we want to also be that organization that's looking at those places where growth is happening and where innovation is happening, and that we're open to really understanding that and being part of supporting innovative changes that help us to address the challenges facing communities. Um, and we do that by working through the nonprofits that we support, and we want to come alongside those leaders who are doing that work. So that's the second um big opportunity. Um, the third one, which I don't know how to answer or solve that question, and I think that's important. Um, I think the opportunity right now is for us to really be clear around the things where we feel like we've got value add, but to also say what we don't know. And there are things that we don't know, right? And one of the things that I don't know, but that I think is really important to the sector, is thinking about the funding model itself and making sure that the funding models are working in such a way that they enable and sustain work in effective ways. One challenge I think the sector has is when you've got sort of service models that end in sort of service gaps, right? So this part of the model works really well. A great example of that might be in helping someone who has been houseless get to being housed. One part of the model might help the person to get to skills, but skills then have to connect to a job. A job may need to connect to housing, right? Depending on how that model's built. And you want to make sure that the service lines, right, or the ways we support people that they connect to that next step so that the individuals on the other ends of those services can get to where they need to go. And so I say that to say funding model changes aren't just about how do we support learning, RD, capacity building, and living wages in organizations, but they're also how do we support collaboration. And I think that's an opportunity. I don't fully know how to solve that, but we're working in every way that we can to understand how our contribution to that doesn't make that work more difficult for organizations and that for the organizations that we fund, that we're asking good questions about whether the grants we're giving are robust in the way that they're being funded to enable the project that we're supporting, right? And that's one way that we can do that. But I think there's a lot of other things that can be done, and I think that's a great opportunity for us, honestly, in the sector.

SPEAKER_01 41:20

All right, Romanita, that's a great answer as well. Very thoughtful. One last question, which isn't I don't think it's it's as big a question as you just answered, but it's an interesting one, I think, for people to hear from a funder on what factor, maybe one or two factors, again, really set separates in your mind, when you think back, what factor or factors separate the grants that go really, really well from those that don't go as well?

SPEAKER_02 41:45

Yeah, so I think that there are, I mean, there are many components, but I guess I'll highlight a couple. I think one is always about um governance and leadership, right? Governance sets policy and in partnership with leadership, strategy, and direction. And I think those projects that are well designed within the organization's strategy and mission are stronger and that are governed well, right? And that have leadership that sets vision all the way through to execution. So governance and leadership are really important to defining priorities, also that will endure, right? To not have a project that is the priority today, but not the priority tomorrow. So governance and leadership are certainly important. And then planning and design. Um, so you know, um, there's a term um DME, design monitoring, and evaluation, right? And they all speak to the planning cycle, that projects are well designed, that they're thoughtful, that uh we've considered how we're gonna implement the work, as well as what do we hope will be true when we've done that work, right? And that's a part of the design, how we monitor it to see if it's effective, and then how do we evaluate if it did what it was supposed to do or if it did some things that were wonderful and unexpected, and how we learn from the things that we didn't expect it to do. And so that design monitoring and evaluation or planning is really important. And then the last thing that I would say is inside of planning is that fiscal modeling, right? And um how the work is done. And then the last thing I would add is about community and stakeholder engagement. I think those projects that really think about those that they serve, not just as beneficiaries who should be grateful to receive the work, but really as customers, right? Um, so often we think of our service to individuals who are in need in particular, but to anyone, we don't think about that as they're a fundamental customer of our service, that there is something we hope to give them that results in a fundamental and unique change in their life. And I think the more we seek customer insights, connection, and engagement, the better, the better the projects are. So those would be the three things that I would highlight amongst a number of other things, but that really stand out to me as things that are really important.

SPEAKER_01 44:06

The characteristically thoughtful answer. So thank you, Romanita, for your um your time and your wisdom and your insights. That's really an enjoyable conversation. I appreciate your coming on.

SPEAKER_02 44:19

Well you are very kind um thank you for the opportunity to be on and to any of your listeners who listen to this, a thank you to them for taking the time to hear it. We're always humbled and deeply appreciative of an opportunity to engage, hoping we've offered something that will be beneficial to those who are listening. So thank you and thank you for what you do. Thank you. Bringing these insights to your audience.

SPEAKER_01 44:43

Murdochtrust.org if you want to learn more about the MJ Murdoch Charitable Trust and what they're doing in the Pacific Northwest in particular, and about Romanita, Romanita Hriston CEO, who's been our guest here today. Thanks so much.

SPEAKER_02 44:57

Thank you, Jeremy.

SPEAKER_01 44:59

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 mvil.com. Thanks