Impact statements the world has been waiting for us to write

What Hillary loves most about this episode: I ask horsewomen to talk about whether or not impact statements are helpful. Turns out, they love theirs and they’re using it to design their equestrian workforce program.

Description: In this episode, Hillary Frances makes the case for impact statements that declare what it will take to solve a problem once and for all. Drawing lessons from tech’s 10x thinking, she explores why incremental gains rarely lead to systems change — and why definitive language can unlock sharper strategy, stronger alignment, and unexpected funding opportunities.

Hillary is joined by Becca and Joell from the Square Peg Foundation, a Northern California social enterprise whose impact statement commits to a future where people with autism shift from service users to service providers within our lifetime. Together, they discuss what changed when they stopped hedging — and how a bold impact statement now guides real decisions on the ground.

Mentioned: Kotashev, K. (2025, July 31). Startup Failure Rate: How Many Startups Fail and Why in 2025. Failory.

Lindzon, J. (2022, March 30). TIME100 Most Influential Companies 2022. TIME.

Zitelmann, R. (2019, June 17). Why successful entrepreneurs are often such difficult people. Forbes.

Teller, A. (2013, February 11). Moonshots matter — here’s how to make them happen. WIRED.

Shore, B., Hammond, D., & Celep, A. (2013). When good is not good enough. Stanford Social Innovation Review.

PR Newswire. (2021, April 14). Certified B Corp Classy raises $118M in Series D funding to help nonprofits increase their impact. PR Newswire.

Shaw, S. (2013, May 15). Google’s Page: We should be building great things that don’t exist. CNET.

Guests: Joell Dunlap is the founder of Square Peg Foundation and a lifelong equestrienne with professional experience across racing, polo, jumping, eventing, and horse training. A nationally published author on humane, creative teaching and horsemanship, Joell has spent more than two decades developing a teaching philosophy rooted in inspiration, curiosity, and deep respect for both horses and humans. She created Square Peg to offer neurodivergent students and retired racehorses a second—and sometimes third—chance to thrive. Joell is also the author of the novel A Damn Fine Hand, which benefits the foundation.

Becca Knopf, Square Peg’s Sonoma Program Director, is a Certified Horsemanship Association instructor and lifelong “horse girl.” Since joining Square Peg in 2015, Becca has helped expand the organization from its Half Moon Bay roots to its second location at Cadence Farm in Sonoma. Known for building trust through humor, kindness, and genuine engagement with eac

Transcript

My name is Hillary Frances, and one of the things I've been thinking about is how comfortable the social sector has become with gradual solutions. Tech entrepreneurs, for better or worse, are famous for making bold claims. They don't set out to contribute to a problem. They commit to solving it. Transportation information, housing language barriers. What makes those claims compelling isn't confidence. I think they could actually reel that back a bit. It's finality. These founders aren't launching companies to help around the edges. They're building toward an end point and quietly a new group of nonprofit and social enterprise leaders is starting to think the same way. Organizations like kaboom Charity, water and New Story aren't promising progress. They're writing impact statements that declare what the world will look like after the problem is solved. Today's episode is about that shift away from incremental language and toward impact statements that demand. We throw out the rule book. 

You are listening to tailwinds ideas, fueling nonprofit innovators and social entrepreneurs. Tailwinds is a project that brings momentum to the leaders tackling the world's most impossible problems. 

Coming up on today's episode, three parts. First, what I'm learning about why bold definitive solutions outperform incremental ones. Second, a conversation with two social enterprise leaders in Northern California about what changed when they committed to an impact statement that actually ends the problem. And finally, how boulder statements might garner bold investments. 

Okay. Astro Teller, CEO of X, a company launched by Google that is working on some of the most sci-fi ideas I've ever seen. Self-driving cars, they're working on things like drones for package delivery. Teller argues that making something 10 times better is easier than making it 10% better. Easier shooting for the moon. He says, or setting bold goals requires that you throw out the rule book, which is what makes it easier. If we just worked to make the problem, we're solving two times better. He says, we can achieve two times by tweaking something slightly. 10 x forces us to rethink basic assumptions. An example of an assumption. We know what our users want. Airbnb was willing to rethink their assumptions about what travelers wanted. Their original assumption was that travelers only stay in hotels. Private homes would never be an option for so many reasons. But Airbnb asked, could people trust strangers to let them stay in their homes? They could have tried to build a business around improving existing hotels slightly. Their two x solution would've been to make booking easier, improve hotel websites, add loyalty perks, or reduce check-in friction. The result would've been that hotels become a bit more convenient, but the fundamental assumptions of the market remain the same. Instead, they questioned. The core assumption, do people really need hotels at all? The result, a massive global lodging marketplace that disrupted the hotel industry and scaled far beyond what incremental tweaks could have achieved. Airbnb didn't tweak hotels at Reimagined hospitality. 

If we in the social impact sector were to ask a parallel design question, it would be what assumptions about our programs, staffing, delivery models, eligibility requirements, or even our understanding of the problem itself, would we have to break apart and rebuild? Because just like in Tech, two X gets you tweaks, 10 x forces you to run experiments. Then if we were on a roll, we would no longer write mission statements that serve as charters for endless incremental progress. Instead, we would write impact statements that chart our route to terminal solutions. An impact statement is a summary of what the world looks like when you are wildly successful with your mission. It is short, visual and makes no mention of how you will do this, just what the vision looks like. 

One of my favorite impact statements comes from the Square Peg Foundation. Square Peg provides job training to neurodiverse young people in Northern California through a therapeutic riding program with retired race horses. their statement is people with autism in Northern California shift from service users to service providers within our lifetime. Let me share a few more examples of impact statements from organizations I've had the pleasure of working with. Here's one. BIPOC Youth will no longer be the subject of stories. They will be the storytellers within our lifetime that comes from Big Picture Alliance. They're a digital media and filmmaking, social enterprise, offering apprenticeships to youth in Philadelphia. Next, we will reverse economic inequality in South Atlanta within our lifetime. That's from Carver Market. They're a social enterprise grocery store working on food access in South Atlanta. Here's another. Shelby Park and Bottoms will become a national model for activating inclusive community support for the care of an urban park that's from Friends of Shelby Park and Bottoms, their nonprofit that works alongside the city of Nashville to run programming and conservation in Shelby Park. Another, the income of every family in Hampton Roads will surpass the cost of living within our lifetime. That's from Neighborhood. Neighborhood is a workforce development organization with a very nuanced understanding of the problems that keep people locked out of economic mobility in Chesapeake, Virginia. 

So I said a minute ago that an impact statement should be definitive in its solution to the problem. In each of the examples you heard, the authors were willing to use definitive words like BIPOC youth will no longer be the subject of stories or reverse economic inequality, or the income will surpass the cost of living. Notice that they all could have hedged their bets a little and said things like, BIPOC youth will become more bold storytellers or BIPOC youth will become empowered to tell their stories. But notice that when Big Picture Alliance claims that BIPOC youth will no longer be the subject of stories, they will be the storytellers within our lifetime. This requires a cultural shift whereby anyone who likes to tell stories about BIPOC youth, all of the media will shift their narrative because places like Big Picture Alliance have done such a good job of permeating the market with youth-driven narratives. If they played it safe and said BIPOC, youth will become empowered to tell their stories. That could mean that the 50 teens they work with next summer could report feeling more empowered. And there they are. Another definitive solution is Neighborhood's. They're willing to say that the income of every family in Hampton Roads will surpass the cost of living within our lifetime. Most workforce development programs I know say things like we will generate economic growth for our neighbors through job training. But to say that the income of a family will surpass the cost of living is a very clear way of saying no more poverty, which is the point of a poverty alleviation program. 

So impact statements should challenge assumptions and then they should serve as a north star for decision making. This means that they should not just be decorations for your website and collateral, they should not be painted on the wall in the hallway, and that's that. They should be a useful filter, a filter for helping you make decisions. You also need to know that your impact statement is not something that you will be accountable for. You cannot do something this big single handedly. You can influence it, but you will not have to prove that you did it. For example, when Charity:Water says it wants to solve the water crisis within our lifetime, that means everyone at Charity:Water is waking up in the morning ready to work on the solution to the water crisis. It means they will need partners to help them. It means they're contributing to the solution. If they were to back off from that statement and say, we are working on an end to the water crisis in our lifetime, we would no longer see them as a leader in this field. You could say that I'm working on an end to the water crisis when I xeriscaped my front yard this summer. We need the statement to show that we believe the problem can be solved once and for all. 

You are about to hear pieces of my conversation with Joelle and Becca at the Square Peg Foundation. While it may seem like they just drank my Kool-Aid and love the idea of having an impact statement, this interview happened two years after we worked together. Also, noteworthy the idea of an impact statement is normally something that people who have bandwidth for philosophical ideas tend to gravitate toward think EDs with a big staff running programming or board chairs. I normally don't see a boots on the ground team get excited about this. Last thing for context, I had the chance to visit their farm at Half Moon Bay and I have to say that I'm in awe. Of their love for these horses. In fact, they're so committed to the care for these brilliant special horses that I see how hard of a decision they made to make their priority. The neurodiverse young people that they serve, they could have tried to write an impact statement that featured both the rehab of the horses and the transformation of the young people. But as you'll hear, they doubled down on the humans. Just a note for anyone who has two competing focus populations. Listen for what happens when you choose just one. I.

I get to introduce you to two women from the Square Peg Foundation, a place built on a simple but radical idea. Everyone fits Square Peg creates recreational, vocational, and educational experiences for neurodivergent kids and families, especially those navigating autism and trauma alongside a herd of deeply opinionated retired racehorses. They have two locations in Sonoma and Half Moon Bay, California. Joelle Dunlap, the founder of Square Peg. Joelle is an equestrian through and through. She's done everything from racing to polo to three day eventing, but her real genius is in how she listens to kids, to horses, to what's unsaid. She's built a teaching model rooted in curiosity, and she's the kind of leader who's willing to rethink. The entire logic of education or workforce development. Joining Joelle is Becca. The self-described chaos coordinator of Square Peg and one of the most joyful, creative nonprofit leaders you'll ever meet. She's been a certified horsemanship association riding instructor since 2012. Becca has helped Square Peg grow from one location into two, and I had the pleasure of working with her while she filled in for Joelle during Joelle's sabbatical. During my first Zoom call with Joelle and Becca, they were in their tack room surrounded by saddles, helmets, ribbons, and alfalfa dust. Then I had the pleasure of visiting their Half Moon Bay Ranch in person. I really want you to meet two social entrepreneurs who are also going to take a very theoretical idea and make it useful to them. We're going to talk to horse women about impact statements. That's like saying we're going to talk to astronauts about NASA's goals. They're only going to tolerate the part that's useful to them, and I'm excited to hear what that is now that it's been about a year and a half since we talked about this topic. So my first question to both of you is, if we were doing this interview in a location that would represent your work, what would be going on in the background? the background? Um,


I feel like every time I'm on a Zoom meeting or anything where there's like a recording happening that have kids running into the office with like a makeshift bow and arrow or a water gun. Then they're spraying it at someone and then a horse will walk by with a kid sitting backwards on it, and that's just like normal. forget that. That's not normal.

Mm-hmm. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. We could talk to great extent about how your program is different from most therapeutic writing experiences, um, because you've already just given us some examples of, from what I've seen, you approach it really differently. But let's, let's talk about that through the topic of the impact statement. Because this episode is featuring, how do we write them and then how do we benefit from them? So if you could think back to when we first talked about impact statements, do you remember what it was like to work on yours and your initial thoughts about the value of doing this task?

I remember it really vividly. Um, Becca will laugh in knowing that, you know, I have an allergy to what I worry about is another meeting that could have been an email. Um. because, you know, we're hours are short and, um, and, and our happy place really is out doing the work. And so, um, I tend to be, um, pretty defensive of that time. And so, uh, like office busy work. And when we started Square Peg back in 2004, we were really intentional with our mission statement. And that mission statement was simply, we turn, I wish into I can. that was cheeky. That was not a traditional mission statement. And it served us really beautifully. And of course people would complain, it's too vague, it's too this, it's too that, you know, it's not specific enough, but it, it guided us. You know, to that point where we got with you. So when the impact statement discussion came up, know, it wasn't quite eyeball rolling, but I, I get there pretty easily to the eyeball rolling space. But it was like, no, our, we know that our mission statement is cheeky. We know that it's this, you know, why do we have to do one more thing and what's it gonna serve? Um, and what came out of that? How you guided us through it transformational. And the reason it was is, you know, with the mission statement as vague as we turn, I wish into ican, um, that was about agency, right? It was helping whatever learner. Understand that their hopes and dreams are valid and that we can help them towards that. But as we honed in as an organization to serving the neurodiversity community, a mission statement, that broad mission creep, and that can be the death of even a for-profit organization and certainly for a nonprofit, and we were. Becca and I were opportunists, so we like new things. We're your basic a, DD horse girls. And, um, so a mission statement that vague and that broad wasn't helping us make decisions. the great thing about the impact statement was that it absolutely from the very first moment helped us make decisions.

How is it helping you make decisions?

You know, the, the, the, the nonprofit fundraising landscape is, is shifting. It's always shifting. Um, but it seems like it's kind of some seismic shifts right now. And so as we're trying to make sustainable programs, a lot of what we're looking at are strategic partnerships and. We can use the lens of the impact statement, you know, changing service users into service providers, we can hold that up to a potential partner. And if that's not their North star, if their North Star is, you know, and it doesn't mean that just committing to serving a population or helping or supporting them anything other than admirable and good. But this shift of. Having the service users become service providers. That's all about agency. That's all about flipping the dynamic. That's not just about, you know, helping people regulate their nervous systems. This is about, this is about helping people see themselves as capable leaders, as people who are contributing rather than constantly extracting from their communities. And, um. And that's been like the first and the most critical asset test for evaluating, um, a partner. Even, um, evaluating, potential funders, you know, like is this organization, you know, what are they committed to?

When you know that the impact statement is that you're shifting people from service users to service providers, how does that change, like the way you do riding lessons or the way you do chores or the way that you debrief a riding lesson, like that's such a high order. So how do, how does it change your day-to-day operations?

Yeah. Yeah, actually, exactly. I've got one individual who was recently diagnosed with autism. She is. Like my secret weapon for lessons now, um, or secret, maybe I should say secret sauce instead of weapon. She is like just the bee's knees. She is magic. She comes in and speaks our kids' language in a way that, you know, I as a, as a normie, if you will, can't, um, you know, even with all my experience, you know, I'm, I'm able to, but she just has this different way of being able to connect with our, with our young learners in their sessions. So she's been really amazing to kind of support in that process of like learning how to conduct a session, how to, you know, transition kids is a little bit hard for her still because she has a little bit of trouble with some transitions as well. So that's been very cool. It's like, you know, by helping support her in learning how to be a service provider, we are actually supporting her in her learning about how to serve herself in a really deep way. The other part of that is I'm taking the public outreach portion of what we do. I'm really trying to bring interns with me into those. Conversations so that, you know, when we go to the farmer's market, I'm not the one talking about the program. I'm trying to get handed off to my other interns, be like, why don't you guys share about your experience with our program.

So I wanna talk about how bold your impact statement is. An impact statement should be bold enough that it requires us to challenge our original assumptions in order to meet it. And I'm sharing the example of Airbnb throwing out the assumption. Do people really need hotels? So they didn't just tweak hotels, they reimagined hospitality. Um, a bold impact statement forces us to do that. So what assumptions had you had in the past about how we prepare people for jobs? Or life that had to shift when you decided on this impact statement.

Becca uses a term, actually I think coined by some partners of ours, that said that there is dignity and risk and and we think about that a lot. when we first moved into the job training space. The idea was to create a space that was so safe and so trusted that people would thrive in Bloom. And then of course the real world is much bigger than that. Um, and can be very unkind to people, who are adverse to change and transitions, um, and whose reactions may seem, you know, really, unmanageable. and so, when we, when we really looked at this impact statement and then I saw where Becca was going with it, this notion about dignity and risk really, really comes up time and time again.

One of our interns, he was talking about one of his jobs and he, he's like, oh yeah, I've got job experience. Like, okay, tell me more about it. And he was like, yeah, I clean windows for a local, you know, restaurant. And then for payment, they give me a chicken sandwich

Yeah, so the assumption was that neurodivergent people need an incubator in order to thrive, and you're throwing that out and saying, actually, I think dignity and risk means that they need. Uh, like to be on their growth edge of slight, what would you say? Like discomfort or Slight,

The growth zone, right? Going back to the impact statement, the impact statement saying that service users are going to go. To change from service users, to service providers. That's, that's all about agency. That takes, we, we turn, I wish into I can and goes one step further that says, you're no longer the recipient of services. You are delivering services and that means you have value. And that's where everything changes when you believe you have value. Everything shifts. And that, that's exciting. And I don't, I don't know that we could have gotten to that from a mission statement, the mission statement that we had. This notion of service users into service providers. We actually nicked from, um, one of our heroes, um, uh, David Doyle, who runs Liskennett Equestrian Center in, in, in, uh, County Cork, Ireland. Um, that was something he came up with, so I wanna give him credit for that out loud. Um. But turning that into an impact statement was this really succinct way to, to just hyperfocus on, on our core values. You know, it just, it, it got there and, and it was so cool. 'cause we all knew when we had gotten there, it was just like this quiet with the three of us. Like, Ooh, I think we're done.

Yes, it was. It was, it was, um, I also wanna point out that it is pretty ambitious. So, a non ambitious version of this would've said, we will empower neurodivergent people to have more agency.

Yeah. Blah, blah, blah. Right?

Yeah. And so you weren't afraid to kind of put a a line in the sand and say what good looks like to you? Good. Looks like good work for us. Looks like that. There's this shift from a recipient to pro, which actually sets you up to want to see your. People become leaders or, or, you know, that, that, that's ambitious. So talk to folks who might be nervous about setting themselves up for something that, that might make them look like they're not being realistic.

I think if you work in the nonprofit space, you've, you've, you've faced the, are you being realistic thing? A lot already. You know, your family's like, wow, your sister works for the power company and she makes so much more money and she, she has a retirement. And, um, so I think, um, you know, if you wanna change the world, uh, you know, the first person who says, is that realistic? If you let that kill you, then, then, then, uh, there's jobs of the power company, which there's nothing wrong with of course, but, so. I think the boldness energizing. And when you feel scared, like, is this too bold? That's, I think that's a, that's a good temperature check. And just like, well, what if it is bold? Right. Um, and, uh, you know, what is it? There's a, there's a. There's a passage from, I think it's the Talmud says, you know, you're not, you're not responsible to fix all the wrongs of the world, but you have to, you, you don't have to finish the work, but you have to get it started. And that start felt really good, you know, um, 'cause. I think in the nonprofit world, we're all, we're trying to make everything better and we're trying to serve our donors and we're trying to serve our service users and we're to serve our communities and, but a good impact statement is your North Star and then you know where you're going you know, mission creep is something Becca and I have talked a a lot about lately, and, and, and the impact statement saved us from mission creep. And I think that you can spend a lot of energy and your organization can fail because of mission creep. We can look at each other and say, every day we are making progress towards this goal. Yeah. And if, sorry, when we're successful, other organizations are going, that's gonna become the new normal. And that's, that's waves, right? That's that ripple effect.

Yeah.

So let's see what we've learned about the ingredients of a great impact statement. An impact statement should do two things. It should be definitive in its solution to the problem. And serve as your organization's North Star, which means that it guides decisions and clarifies activities. It should not aim to summarize what you do or how you do it. That's something else. That's probably your mission statement. Why is this so hard? In my experience, many social sector leaders hedge their bets, not because they're timid, but because their sustainability depends on funders who ask for smart goals and acronym that describes realism and reinforces the value of tangible progress. Very few funders ask for bold goals or the new solution to an old problem. Philanthropy has a preservationist approach to capital management, which in turn limits the imagination of nonprofits. As a result, the leaders we meet often begin with phrases like, let's start small. What's realistic and practically speaking. Yet, there is a growing cohort of nonprofit leaders willing to use 10 x thinking, who are demonstrating correlated revenue growth. And in some cases, this revenue comes from venture capital known as venture philanthropy. Venture funding toward nonprofits continues to show signs of growth for example, VC-backed New Story uses 3D printing technology to build homes in Latin America. It is set up. A dedicated investment company fueling its work called New Story Capital with a team managing impact investors. Classy, a fundraising software platform, raised 118 million in venture funding recently, so I do believe that there's a correlation between bold innovation and bold commitment from philanthropic investors moving forward. 

My friends, let's write impact statements that require us to throw out the rule book in order to meet them. The problem you've chosen to solve deserves this level of commitment. 

Tailwinds is a production of Flying Whale Strategies, a consulting firm that is equipping teams to solve impossible problems. I'd like to thank the Big Picture Alliance Carver Market, friends of Shelby Park and Bottoms and Neighborhood for permission to share their work with you in this episode. And I'd especially like to thank Becca and Joelle from the Square Peg Foundation for the conversation about their impact statement. If you wanna learn more about their work and see a profile on each of their opinionated retired race horses, visit squarepegfoundation.org. They even have links to some of their horses racing history. Continue to hold fast, my friends. If you'd like to learn more about Flying Whale Strategies, please visit our website at flyingwhalestrategies.com. Thanks for listening.