Missions to Movements
Missions to Movements is the nonprofit marketing and fundraising podcast that helps you grow recurring donors, scale monthly giving programs, and build digital campaigns that convert.
Hosted by Dana Snyder—speaker, strategist, and founder of Positive Equation—this show is packed with actionable nonprofit growth strategies, social media tips, and fundraising best practices.
Each week, you’ll hear how organizations are increasing donor retention, building thought leadership, and using digital fundraising to drive real impact. If you want to learn how to attract monthly donors, master nonprofit marketing, and transform your mission into a movement, this podcast is for you.
Missions to Movements
From UCLA to 70+ Cities: End Overdose Sparked a College Campus Movement with Maddie Ward
At just 23 years old, Maddie Ward became Chief Operating Officer of End Overdose, a nonprofit that’s trained over 500,000 people to identify and respond to opioid overdoses. What began as a grassroots effort at UCLA has since EXPLODED into a powerful, youth-driven network spanning 70+ cities, fueled by data, creativity, and pure heart.
Maddie offers a fresh perspective on how she built scalable systems for leadership, recruitment, and sustainability to empower students to take ownership of their local chapters. What’s also been key to their growth? Standardizing operations and giving volunteers autonomy!
We also explore End Overdose’s creative marketing partnerships with Insomniac Events, Goldenvoice (the producers of Coachella and Stagecoach), and major musicians to spark life-saving conversations across the country.
Resources & Links
Learn more about End Overdose on their website and Instagram and connect with Maddie on LinkedIn.
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Today's episode is so cool. I am so excited for you to be listening today because today's guest is proof that age is no barrier to impact. And this fuels me up because I feel like today's guest, it just brings me back to how I was when I was in college. At just 23 years old, Maddie Ward stepped into the role of Chief Operating Officer at N Overdose. They are a national nonprofit on a mission to end drug-related deaths through education, medical intervention, and public awareness. Now, what started as a student-led initiative at UCLA under Maddie's leadership has grown into a nationwide movement with chapters in more than 70 cities and over 500,000 people trained to identify and respond to opioid overdoses. And you're not getting those numbers wrong. Maddie brings a beautiful fresh perspective to nonprofit leadership through technology, community organizing, giving power to the people, the students on the ground, building these really creative partnerships at festivals like Coachella and Stagecoach. In this episode, Maddie will share with us how she's built her leadership brand so early in her career, the pivotal decisions that have really turned End Overdose into this national force and what it takes to create creative partnerships that resonate with young people and drive measurable change. I promise this episode is going to spark some ideas in your mind. And I cannot wait to hear from you what you think. Let's go meet Maddie.
SPEAKER_00:You shouldn't just be focused on like what can I accomplish in my time as the leader of this chapter. Like you also want to be thinking about sustainability and the long-term future of your team. And a huge part of that is making sure you're consistently recruiting new members and training them to take over your role when you're leaving all of these chapter team members. They really are working to empower their peers in a way that they haven't before. And they also have a developed understanding of their campus and their community. I think having those specific groups of people are like really tapped in and on the ground in those areas is so helpful for an organization's sustainability and also just ensuring like the outreach that you're doing is like equitable and really suited to that community.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, Maddie, I am thoroughly impressed. You became COO of a national nonprofit at 23 years old, which is huge kudos, props. How did that happen? Why do you think, or not why, but literally what do you think really prepared you personally, professionally to leap into a significant leadership role?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so I've been involved in community service and community outreach most of my life. It was always kind of the activity that brought me the most joy throughout middle high school and college. When I was in my undergraduate at UCLA, that was when I first got introduced to Endoverdose. And I just had a lot of experience previously in kind of community organizing and trying to identify gaps in my area in terms of services that people needed and weren't having access to. I met Endoverdos' founder, Theo, when I was a sophomore at UCLA. And he was speaking to us about how he was trying to increase the accessibility of naloxone, a life-saving overdose reversal medication, and just trying to educate as many people as possible throughout the country. And I was like, we need this on college campuses. Like, have you reached out to any campuses? Do you have any campus chapters currently? And I was honestly very surprised to hear that they didn't. Theo himself had not been very involved on undergraduate campuses. He got asked to be a speaker at one of my other club meetings. And that was one of his first times, I think, speaking to kind of that age demographic. So I was ecstatic definitely because I had been looking for something I think on my campus to get more involved in. And definitely drug safety overall was an issue that I knew a lot of my peers cared about. It was something that had impacted me personally when I was in middle and high school. I'd lost peers to accidental fentanyl overdoses. So it was definitely something on the forefront of my mind. Yeah. When I got to UCLA. And I was really excited to be able to use the experience that I had in community service and community outreach to really respond to this need that I saw in my peers and on my campus community. So in college, I was a big multitasker. I was always doing something. I was balancing school, working for endoverdose part-time, volunteering for endoverdose and a few other service organizations on my campus. And that really gave me a lot of skills in a very short period of time in terms of time management, working with other people, being a UCLA student and being able to work with students on my campus as well as school administrators, as well as endoverdose employees, and trying to kind of balance the wants and needs of all of those different groups gave me a lot of skills in terms of communication and management that I think have been so helpful in the current role that I now have at Endoverdose. Additionally, just the mentorship aspect, Theo has been an incredible mentor for me. He's the CEO and founder of End Overdose. And I think that he has a great skill for recognizing what people's PowerPoints are and really encouraging them to pursue those. So I felt that my skills in terms of leadership developed a great deal because for the first time as a young person, I think a lot of the time we aren't given that space to really to grow our skills and show what we can do. And I felt he was one of the first older people I'd met who was like, no, like I believe you can do it too. Like you're saying you can do it, I think you can. Like, let's see if you can. Are you nervous at all about it? Yeah, definitely. When we first started the UCLA chapter, Theo was like, Well, we'll give you some Naloxa and we'll give you some test trips and some educational material. And like, if you're able to distribute it, awesome. If not, then maybe this won't work out. And my co-founder of the UCLA chapter, Gian and I, we got to work. I think within a few weeks, we trained around 500 students on our campus.
SPEAKER_02:Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_00:We were like, this is gonna work, this is gonna work. And we very quickly, like just through social media, because Gian and I were both college students, like everything we did, we were posting about on our story or telling our friends about it through social media. And we were able to expand the chapter program very quickly just through posting on our personal accounts. We had peers from high school or friends of friends who are reaching out and they're like, I go to this other campus in a different state, but I really want to bring this program there. So that was when we kind of more seriously sat down with the own. We're like, this is something that could be really big across the country on college campuses specifically. Like so many students across the country have been impacted by this, and it's something they're passionate about. And we should also give them the space to kind of grow as leaders and bring these initiatives to their schools. So that was kind of how I first got involved with underoverdose. And I think all of those experiences starting the UCLA chapter and developing that program really helped me with developing leadership and management skills that have been so helpful in my current role.
SPEAKER_02:Amazing. How long have you been in the position?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so I uh just recently became COO in early July. So prior to that, I'd been working for Endoverdose, thank you, full time for a year as our director of operations. My first year with Endoverdose, I was just a volunteer. After that, I worked part-time as like our programs coordinator when I was still a student at UCLA, and then uh moved into that director of operations role upon my graduation.
SPEAKER_02:I love it because it seems like you so many times we don't really know what we want. And we're trying to figure that out, especially at a young age. And it seems like you have just jumped into this, like full on and seen, like, oh, I know how to do this. And this is also such a perfect fit for the audience that you're trying to reach and to put somebody into the space where I'm sure also when your peers see you in this position, it's respect. Like they see automated respect and they're like, oh, okay, yeah, I I believe her and what she's doing. So you have continued to, I think what's phenomenal, have a led chapter expansion now over 70 cities. Is that right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so we currently have 70 locations, 70 chapter locations. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Amazing. How long did it take for that to happen?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so the expansion is pretty quick. We had the UCLA chapter at the time. There were a couple like statewide chapters. I think we had one in Illinois and one in Michigan, but there wasn't really a set structure for them. Theo had been working with them lightly, but they weren't on college campuses and didn't really have like set leadership teams. So when we were starting the UCLA chapter, my co-founder Gian and I were both very type A people. We wrote down everything that we did. Like we were like, we just need to remember that we did this, and like this was how we we registered as an org or how we started recruiting members. So we had lists upon lists of like all these tasks that needed to be completed if someone were to start another chapter. So we kind of took all of that information and made it into like a standardized guide for how to lead a chapter on another campus. And we went through it and we were like, okay, these are things that are maybe really specific to our campus that someone's gonna have to find out, or someone as a student would have a better idea of, but us as individuals on a different campus aren't really gonna know about those processes. So kind of identifying those areas where new members would have to maybe put in a little bit more work to find out information about how it was structured on their school, and then also having this plethora of information of like this would work on any campus, this would work in any city. Yeah, yeah, the first year, I believe we expanded to around 20 chapter teams. Then we went to 50 the following year, and this year it hit 70, which was super exciting.
SPEAKER_02:Incredible. Yeah, what a huge accomplishment. That's amazing. What's so great about this is I remember in college and getting involved at Night Thon was my thing. So I was, I did Dance Marathon with Children's Miracle Network, but everybody has little pockets of things that they find an interest in. And what a great opportunity for organizations to reach those students in college that are going to be really passionate. And usually you like for me, Children's Miracle Network, anytime I see their balloon, like their icon at Publix or wherever they have their partnerships, I always give to this day. So I graduated from college in 2010, so it's been a minute, but I still continue to give because I was essentially like indoctrinated when I was in college and I was 18 years old to love this mission and this organization. Do you think that it would be worthwhile for other organizations? Obviously, it has to be the right fit, but I love the idea of having a presence on a college campus. Like, how popular is that? Is there a ton? Do new chapters pop up all the time? Do certain ones die out? Like, what's the ebb and flow of that like now?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So definitely I think having graduated college so recently and like having the culture of like a college campus on the forefront of my mind really helped with developing this program. And that was always something we're thinking about. We're like, people leave every four years, like typically. So like you're constantly recruiting new members, and that's something we really emphasize to our chapters is like you shouldn't just be focused on like what can I accomplish in my time as the leader of this chapter. Like, you also want to be thinking about sustainability and the long-term future of your team. And a huge part of that is making sure you're consistently recruiting new members and training them to take over your role when you're leaving. So we've really built that into a lot of aspects of our chapter program. But it has been so helpful, I think, not only for getting the word out there about our organization. Like so many people now have heard about us for the first time because they saw us on their college campus or their friend's sister, like posted about it on our Instagram story or something like that. But what we've also found is that all of these chapter team members, they really are working to empower their peers in a way that they they haven't before. And they also have a really developed understanding of their campus and their community that we as like our organization is headquartered in LA, like us as people living in LA, like we don't know what the climate is like on every other campus or in different states or in different cities. So having these people on the ground being like, no, like this is the best place to distribute resources. These are populations who really need support. This is like the best person to talk to to get the word out there about our organization. I think having those specific groups of people are like really tapped in and on the ground in those areas is so helpful for an organization sustainability and also just ensuring like the outreach that you're doing is like equitable and really suited to that community. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I love that. What would be your recommendation if a listener is right now being like, oh, this is a good idea? I should be thinking about this. What would be like a first step to get started in researching what it would be like to have a presence on a college campus? Or even like you mentioned, having the founder go and speak to a group on campus, even as a starter, maybe?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, I would definitely say like trying to find interested students is the best way to start out. Like getting a few interested students, maybe having like a pilot campus where you're launching the program for the first time, that will really allow you to kind of figure out like these are kind of problem areas maybe we need to find solutions to, or these are things that they needed extra support with throughout the year. But I always recommend like standardizing everything. Like we have so many lists about like what our team needs to do internally if we're going to start a new chapter, what our expectations are for the new chapter team as they're going through their onboarding, and really having all of that planned out in advance has been incredibly helpful for us. We have kind of a timeline we stick to each year in terms of like this is when the chapters will apply, this is when they'll go through orientation, like this is when we'll expect they'll be more active on their campus and starting to do more events. And if they're not, then we should be reaching out to them to make sure and see where we can support them in order to meet that goal. Yeah, I definitely think finding like the students to lead the program to helps a lot because even students who maybe have like a private Instagram with a hundred followers, like they are probably followed by a lot more college students than maybe like your nonprofit organization is. So having them as kind of like ambassadors promoting your mission and your messaging and even just getting the word out there about your organization is so helpful.
SPEAKER_02:So yeah, I mean, I think it always goes back to the trust. I mean, if there's trust with that person, then they're gonna take your word for it. And if they can, they're in person with them, there's an actual relationship that's established. That's everything. Are the members on the campuses of the different chapters also fundraising or fundraisers and raising money, or is it more awareness?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So the three main things we have them focus on are outreach, awareness, and then fundraising. So the way that we've structured our chapter program is it's really not based on like you need to fundraise a certain amount in order for our team to continue sending you supplies. We encourage chapters to do fundraising initiatives once per quarter, and then we give them like one off quarter, which is for most of our colleges, usually summertime. Yeah. We really give them like free reign in terms of like what do you want to do for a fundraising event? Like our UCLA chapter and our C U Boulder chapter very frequently have like larger festivals or concerts that they'll put on. And it's also allowed them to recruit a lot more leadership members because they're like, oh, maybe I'm not super interested in doing like medical trainings for my peers, but I love running events, or I'm a DJ, and I'd love to support like by fundraising in that capacity. So really allowing them to be like more creative, I would say, in terms of the fundraising events, like there's a lot less structure to those and the outreach events. So it's become kind of an exciting thing for a lot of the chapters, like doing the fundraising campaigns or coming up with ideas for those events. We loved it.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, when I think about Movember, they've been big at doing this for years, the largest men's health charity with mustaches, listener, if you're not aware. And then I mean, my time with Nython, I mean, it's crazy. When I was there, we were raising, we started at like$20,000. And I was like, this is pooy. This is horrible. And we have the largest undergrad community, which not a lot of people know. UCF is the largest undergrad or the largest college, I'm pretty sure, in the United States. And then I went back post-graduating, and they were raising over a million dollars a year. And dance marathons were at over a hundred universities. And I know UF does a really big one. I think Son had like a big one at Penn State. And so I love what you said about, and Movember does this too so well is giving up creativity. Like you have some parameters, obviously, around your branding, and that's gonna stay consistent. But giving creativity, I actually talk about this in my book, to allow people to build the movement on their own. And it will just take fire if you encourage that and promote that instead of being like locked jaws on everything and restricting of you have to do this, you have to do this. Because it they know their audience, they know what's gonna work and what's not gonna work. If you tell people to say, you have to do a dinner and it needs to be with this many people, they'd be like, nah, like that's not gonna happen.
SPEAKER_00:No, exactly, exactly.
SPEAKER_02:I love that. It's so cool. I want to switch gears a little bit. You also work really hard on campaigns and messaging and strategy, and you've done a very cool awareness campaign with some musicians. Can you talk a little bit about that and how you made those happen, interacting with Coachella and Stagecoach? Like, walk us through how those partnerships happen.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so our first like major festival partnership was with Insomniac Events, which is a huge EDM promoter within the United States. And they throw festivals like EDC Las Vegas, Nocturnal Wonderland, EDC Orlando. So lots of major music festivals across the country. And we were actually approached by the head of their organization, Pascual, about kind of increasing attendee safety at these events. Before that, we had been working with some like smaller DJs and musicians who were connected in some way to our mission. Maybe they came across our organization because it was something that was close to their heart and something that they wanted to support. Our publicist, Mike, is also super awesome and has a lot of experience in speaking with a lot of different musicians. He's written for quite a few different music publications. So kind of being able to utilize his network as well has been super helpful for kind of building those connections with musician partners.
SPEAKER_02:Love that. Don't sleep on that point she just gave a publicist. I have hired one. It can do a lot more than just getting you certain press pieces, relationships again, everything. Sorry.
SPEAKER_00:Continue. Definitely, yeah, definitely a huge, huge part of I think our success on our different media campaigns. Yeah, working with Insomniac really opened the door for us in a lot of ways because so many musicians were hearing about us for the first time because Insomniac has crazy lineups with like 50 plus DJs at some of their events and overdose was being marked on their map. So it was being pushed in people's faces before they even got to events. We very shortly after that developed a relationship with Golden Voice, who runs Stagecoach and Coachella and a number of other music festivals throughout the state of California, which has also allowed us to expand a great deal. But being physically present at the festivals is just a huge promotion thing for us because we have attendees, like hundreds of thousands of attendees walking by the booth seeing us. Maybe even if they don't stop by, they'll remember our name and look us up on social media after. We'll have the festivals putting us on the map so people are seeing it. But really, what we've seen, and when I go to these events, my favorite thing to see is people coming back to the booth who've been to the booth at other festivals, and they're like, hey, like this is my training card from when you guys trained me two years ago. Like, I need more naloxone. I knew you guys would be here. And what I've found, especially for a lot of the younger festival attendees, is they're busy and they've they've got crazy lives going on. They might not have time in their day-to-day life to go to a specific place to pick up naloxone, but they'll see that they have Coachella on their calendar coming up and they know that we'll be there distributing that resource and that they can stop by. So that's been just a huge promotion thing for us. Even with our chapters, when we were doing interviews this year, I was asking them, like, how did you first hear about our organization? And so many of them were like, My friend was at Coachella and she posted it on our story, or I saw you guys at this festival, or I heard I saw this festival post you on their story. And that's just been such a great awareness thing for us. Absolutely. Yeah, not only musicians, but also just attendees, potential volunteers, and potential fundraisers, all of that.
SPEAKER_02:Incredible, incredible. And then I know you've worked specifically with like Limbiscuit has been there and the you've been there, and like that's I think having proximity creates the popularity within the right spaces. And that's what you've done. Is like, like you were saying, we were on the map when they came into it. Like they had to see that on us and whether or not it was something that they were gonna want to go to in person or they're gonna look you up afterwards. I'm sure you probably saw social and website spikes after each of those things. For an organization that's listening, I would just really brainstorm and think about who are partners you might not have thought about before that are out there that could give you that proximity to the people that you're trying to reach. I think that's so crucial. So far, and I know you're just getting started in all that you want to do. What has really been a leadership lesson at this stage and maybe really one unique partnership insight that you would recommend to your peers that might be listening?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, for leadership insights, I would definitely say what has allowed me to grow so much as a leader and what I've seen be so helpful for all of our chapter team members is really promoting like empowerment of others. Like with our chapter teams, it's so big for me to be able to like delegate tasks to them and trust them to be able to grow their organization on their campus and really kind of giving the reins to them to do that and giving them the space to do that. Because I think a lot of the times, like people aren't able to experience that level of growth. They're not able to become true leaders because they're never given the opportunity to do so. So, especially for the young people that we work with, giving them the tools to be able to make the right decisions, but allowing them to make those decisions for themselves is something that's so important to me. And I've seen so many of our chapter team members like grow so much in their leadership skills and their ability to delegate tasks to other people, their ability to organize events. And I'm so happy to be part of an organization that really gives young people the space to do that. Because I do think that that's a very rare thing, but a very important thing. Yes, agreed.
SPEAKER_02:Real quick, I just want to say to that, I remember we had CMNH now, Children's Marathon Work Hospitals, had like somebody who, because the dance marathon programs were growing so rapidly, had somebody from the national office that came out to visit our school. And I remember we felt so seen and like as college students, and we felt like we were taken seriously. Like, oh, they're sending somebody from the national office because they're seeing what we're doing and it matters. And I think that's huge. Anytime that there can be that touch point, and one, you're giving the autonomy for the chapter to succeed and really be leaders on their own, but then to have the mutual respect of being like, hey, I'm just I'm here to see what you guys are doing. I'm not here to tell you what to do. I'm here to support you, give you resources if you need it, brainstorm if you need it, but not being like coming to watch over. We were always so psyched when we knew that somebody was coming.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I I definitely think that recognition piece is so big too. And we try to highlight different chapters each week and mention specific things they're doing. Also for our chapter orientation each year, we'll ask chapters from the previous year who maybe did a really good job fundraising to speak with the other teams about successes that they had or challenges that they faced or successes they had in media campaigns. And I think really opening the door and being like, hey, like these are other people your same age, like doing incredible things, like you could do this too, and and showing them that like we do recognize when you guys accomplish amazing things like this is definitely a huge thing. In terms of the yeah, the partnership insight, I think what I always think about when we're either approached by a new partner, looking at another organization or business to partner with, is definitely identifying like our shared values and then also finding ways for it to be mutually beneficial for both of your organizations. And the benefits might look different for different partners. Like when we're doing work with Insomnia at Golden Voice, we're really looking to like increase our media reach numbers through social media campaigns. Also, our training and distribution numbers are really bolstered by a lot of those events. And on their side of things, it's really increasing attendee awareness and participation in the event outside of just attending these music sets, also reducing those their overall risk and liability in terms of safety at those events. But I think the most sustainable partnerships really do come from those impacts being seen by both partners on both sides and them really feeling that the partnership is worthwhile.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. Absolutely. I couldn't say that better myself. Maddie, I am so stoked to watch your career continue to climb and the work that you're doing. Everyone, go check out their website and social, which would be where, Maddie.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so our website is endoverdose.net and on most social media platforms, we're at end.overdose.
SPEAKER_02:Awesome. Is there somewhere that people can connect with you specifically? Is LinkedIn the best place?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, definitely on LinkedIn. Yeah, LinkedIn would be great.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, LinkedIn would be awesome. And then where do you go to connect with peers in the sector? Like, have you found a group to collaborate with, whether it's local in the LA area or nationally? Like, where do you go for continued learning?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, definitely going to conferences has been a huge part of my role kind of since going full-time. And I love being able to go in person to a conference where I'm meeting a bunch of different people who are interested in the same things I am. That's where we've been able to get some of our new partners. Very recently, I went to Nature 360, which is like the National Association of County and City Health officials. In February, I'll be at Fest Forums, which is a festival for a conference for music festival promoters. So yeah, definitely for end overdose, I'd say because we kind of occupy a few different like niche areas. There's a lot of different conferences for different things and finding your way to like kind of fit into that and also looking generally at the different groups that our partners are a part of has been really helpful. But I love LinkedIn. My friends call me a LinkedIn warrior now. I'm on LinkedIn constantly. And that's also just been so helpful. Like at a conference, you're gonna meet so many people, but really remembering like one piece from your conversation with them and including that in your LinkedIn invite to them, I think has been so helpful for me, kind of maintaining those relationships long term.
SPEAKER_02:So good. So good. Basically, everybody just rewind this episode and listen back and write down all the pointers. So inspiring. Love what you're doing, Maddie. And I am so appreciative that you filled out the form to be on this show. So thank you again so much for all you're doing and grateful.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you so much. It's great speaking with you.
SPEAKER_01:You too. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode of Missions to Movement. If you enjoyed our conversation and found it helpful, I would love for you to take a moment to leave a review wherever you're listening. Your feedback helps us reach more change makers like you and continue bringing impactful stories and strategies to the show. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button too, so you'll never miss an episode. And until next time, keep turning your mission into a movie.
