020 Turning Down Money You Need | Flourish Fund Founder & CEO Dan Vogel

Dan Vogel spent months building a partnership with a large institutional funder. Flourish Fund was barely a year old, still in startup mode, without a stable base of funding. The money would have been meaningful, and the credibility would have been great. 

Then it became clear the funder wanted more control than Dan could give without compromising the collaborative model he was building. So he told the granting institution it might not work.

He got off the call and immediately wondered if he had just blown up months of work and put his young organization at risk. 

What happened next surprised him (and me).

This conversation covers how Dan decided what he was willing to risk, why the honesty he feared would end the partnership was what saved it, and what he learned about holding the line when his team wanted the organization to speak out on current events. 

He also talks about waiting too long on his first firing decision and what it cost him, why he stayed in performance mode with his first board chair for two years, and what changed when he stopped trying to show that he was crushing it.

Dan Vogel is founder and CEO of Flourish Fund, a collaborative philanthropy fund launched in 2023 that pools capital from high-capacity givers to tackle problems too big for any one organization to solve, starting with the foster care system. He previously led the North America team of the Center for Public Impact, a nonprofit founded by BCG that grew to 40 staff and a $10 million budget.

Transcript

Introduction to Flourish Fund and Its Mission

Adam Jeske 0:04

Nonprofit CEOs are constantly making consequential decisions, often under pressure or in isolation. I'm Adam Jesky, the Nonprofit CEO Advisor, and this is the Nonprofit CEO Podcast, where CEOs talk about the decisions they carry. Today, our guest is Dan Vogel, founder and CEO at Flourish Fund. Welcome to the show, Dan.

Dan Vogel 0:23

Thanks so much for having me. Delighted to be here.

Adam Jeske 0:26

Tell the listeners about Flourish Fund.

Dan Vogel 0:31

We are a collaborative philanthropy fund that aims to empower high capacity givers to tackle big issues that matter to the heart of God. So we sometimes describe ourselves as almost like a private equity approach to philanthropy. We pick a topic, get close to folks who are working in the trenches on that issue, understand from them where's this problem stuck, where are innovative things happening, what are some big levers from change, pool capital and then deploy philanthropic capital uh in a way that we hope moves the needle on that topic. And you founded Flourish Fund about two years ago. That's right. Uh in the fall of 2023, uh I spent about 20 years in different kinds of social problem-solving roles, across government, private sector, philanthropy, had the combination of both feeling and strong desire to put my faith and my worldview at the center of my work in a way that I really hadn't before. And also like I was exposed to some models and things that were happening in mainstream philanthropy and social impact that felt missing in the world of faith-based philanthropy.

Adam Jeske 1:38

What were some of the things that you felt like were missing that you wanted to bring into faith-based philanthropy?

Dan Vogel 1:43

I mean, if I'm over-generalizing, I think there's a degree of rigor that is found in the way that, especially large institutional funders using data and evidence, working collaboratively at greater scale and more strategic ways. I think that like that's a macro point, but I observe that is way more common in secular philanthropy compared to faith-based philanthropy, where there's more, there's probably less institutional heft. There's more individual families giving meaningful amounts of dollars away, but maybe not with the same degree of rigor. So you see a lot more kind of giving based on stories and relationships. And I think I was particularly captivated by the idea of these collaborative funds that were aggregating capital at dramatically larger scale and in more strategic ways.

The Importance of Rigor in Philanthropy

Adam Jeske 2:34

In the course of these first couple of years of Flourish Fund, have you made a consequential decision that might be insightful to uh bring other leaders into? Sure.

Dan Vogel 2:46

I think one of the first things, because we are a collaborative philanthropy fund, part of what we're doing is gathering both individual families and institutional partners together. And I think we've had to make several consequential decisions on when to say yes or no to some uh some partners who wanted to wanted to give us money. And we had to evaluate are these the right kinds of partners for what we ultimately want to do for the community that we're we're building. So one specific example that comes to mind it was a large institutional funder that would have given us a ton of credibility, had an amazing network. There were a number of good reasons to say yes to the partnership. And yet we felt in the course of our discussions with them that they had a pretty strong point of view in terms of what partnership looked like. They were wanting to exert a higher degree of control than we've than that maybe pushed our comfort zone a little bit. And ultimately, it just felt like it may not be worth if if there's going to be elements of how they want to partner that fundamentally change parts of art, the character of who we want to be or what our model is about, then it may not be worth it. And so it was actually interesting how it played out. We I had had to have a hard conversation with a friend who was at that class, and we've been developing a relationship and a and a partnership structure over months and had to say, hey, I just am feeling like this may not work. And here's why. And what was actually, it was kind of a great example of just the ability to have an honest conversation can be an opening for, okay, let's let's talk about the real thing that we need to get to the heart of here in this partnership. They were actually open to changing and evolving some of what we had seen. And so, you know, a month later, after some additional kind of working through different elements of what partnership would look like, they came back and invested $250,000 in Flourish Fund. And it turned out to be a super fruitful and really collaborative partnership.

Navigating Partnerships and Decision-Making

Adam Jeske 4:45

Was there information that you didn't have that you wish you had had when you were considering how do I proceed forward as I'm making this decision and acting upon it?

Dan Vogel 4:55

Yeah. I think a lot of it actually had to do with our perceptions about or fears about how they actually operated. There were parts because they were large institutional funders, it was a, okay, there's a little bit of a black box on and behind some parts of how they operate. And I think we actually were reading into parts of that that were not actually accurate. And so actually the chance to stop and say, hey, there's parts of this that actually we're not maybe comfortable with was an opening to actually learn a lot more about like, well, here's, and let's talk about a couple of specific examples of how how will we handle it when, you know, one of your someone who is a uh an anchor investor in your thing and ours are both in the same foot. How will we share information? How will we reconcile that? Am I gonna have to always had a hat be on a in a meeting and have like one of your someone sort of riding shotgun to make sure that we're not running a foul of the relationship that you hold with that investor? There was a whole bunch of that that where I think I had I was making assumptions that weren't actually grounded in how they actually operated. But until we got to the point of having that hard, uncomfortable conversation, we didn't have any of that information available to us on the other side of the partnership wall. That makes sense.

Adam Jeske 6:18

Who were you able to talk to about the options you were considering and ultimately making the decision?

Dan Vogel 6:27

A couple, uh so one of our board members was was one person that I got on the phone with and just sort of said, Hey, here's how I'm thinking about this. This is my my take. This is of the trade-offs associated with this. I was also at the time an entrepreneur in residence at Praxis. And so uh that was an incredible gift. Praxis is another institutional partner. So worked closely with a few of their leaders, Dave Blanchard and Saj and George, talked to each of them about a number of different partnerships, but including this one. You know, try to get the both, hey, are there are there parts or do are there blind spots that I have in terms of how I'm sizing this situation up? But also, is there other intelligence that you have from your working with them or are uh your other experiences that that just might help me see this situation more fully? Um and they were super helpful.

Adam Jeske 7:19

Was there any point in the decision process or starting to act upon it when you thought, hold up, I might have gotten this wrong?

Dan Vogel 7:30

I think the the moment I got I remember when I had the phone conversation the first time that I communicated with uh with this partner, and I was in it, I was, I was out on a on a trip in Atlanta, and I was walking around a multifamily apartment complex where I happened to be getting ready to take my next meeting with another investor. And I think as soon as I got off the phone, I had this sense of, oh man, did I just completely mess that up? Like we've we've been developing this relationship for months. This is a partner that we've looked at and thought could have incredible potential. And yet now am I putting myself in a position where I just, you know, we're still still in scrappy startup mode. We don't really have the uh stable base of funding yet or the kind of runway that we really wanted. And yeah, I think there was immediately a little bit of a um, was that the wrong call? Because it might have put us at financial risk, you know. I think what was affirming was as I sat with it, both a little bit more, and then the relatively short time frame where my friend came back and said, Hey, I heard you. I understand your concerns, they're valid. Let me give you some more information in terms of how we're thinking about this. And that started a different kind of conversation that led us dow n a really different

Leadership Challenges at the Center for Public Impact

Dan Vogel 8:52

path.

Adam Jeske 8:52

Prior to your your launch of Flourish Fund, you were also leading at the Center for Public Impact, correct? Correct. Is there another decision during those years? I think you were there maybe about six years. Yes. Is there another decision you can tell us about uh during your leadership at the Center for Public Impact that might be of consequence, weighty, and insightful to other leaders?

Dan Vogel 9:22

So the Center for Public Impact was a BCG, uh a nonprofit foundation that was launched by the consulting firm BCG. And um we grew from a few of us to a team of 40 people and $10 million budget. We ran a bunch of programs in partnership with um other philanthropies like Mike Bloomberg or the Rockefeller Foundation. A lot of it was working with public and nonprofit and philanthropic leaders to be more human-centered and and collaborate differently. And I would say there was a unique challenge in that time period, which ran from about um 2017 to 2023, if I'm remembering correctly, that uh, you know, a lot of my team were these deeply passionate, wanted to change the world, young, energetic. They often had a hard time separating the their own personal political beliefs or ideological beliefs with the mission that we were on. And obviously, we were working on public innovation. So it was uh, there was a lot of people showed up because they loved our mission. They they it was deeply embedded with values that they held personally. But there were times when I think a lot of people had a hard time separating those two. So sorry, that's a lot of context. The decisions that I felt like I repeatedly had to navigate were, especially during that kind of post-COVID time of like meaningful upheaval, um, our country's racial reckoning, all of that. Often being in a situation where something would happen in the world and there would be uh an outcry from our team to say, well, what are we gonna do about this? What are we gonna say about this? So something like the Dobbs decision regarding um, you know, abortion in America, a huge consequential decision. There were a bunch of our team members that were upset about that decision, felt like this is this is something that runs afoul of kind of maybe my own personal beliefs around this, this very controversial topic. And I'm upset about this, and I see it maybe as in a broader something that flies in the face of this should be a we should stand up and say something about this. And I had several of my leadership team members coming to me saying, like, we should be not only putting out a statement, an email to the team, and I said, Hey, we're we're our our charge is about uh helping to reimagine government, helping to advance public innovation. Um, this is like way outside the domain of of what we're it's not, it's not really, I understand why it's an upsetting thing for a lot of people. And yet for us to say something publicly about it feels wildly inappropriate and not helpful from a lot of different dimensions of who how we want to try to represent our represent ourselves in the public square. There was an added layer of that particular decision that because I was a person of deep faith, uh, you know, there were plenty of folks on our team who, who identified also with, with like strong, that was an important part of their identity. And then there were many who were not that were, and so there was a little of that throughout that time period. I felt like I had to grapple with a lot of how do I balance connecting with a team that might be really different from me and maybe holds a certain set of judgments about who I am because of my faith identity, because of different parts of my background. How do I connect with them, empathize with with how they feel, but also be a good steward of the platform that we have and the organization that I'm that I'm stewarding? At the end of all that, I ended up, I did end up sending an email to our team that just acknowledged, hey, this is a big deal that happened in the world. And I know this this is an upsetting thing for some of you personally, but refrained from really taking any kind of stand positionally as a as an organization or anything further than that. Open door for having conversations around it, but also tried to frankly tamp down the kind of appetite and fervor for we need to talk about this. So it was like, you know what, we need to stay focused on the mission that we have before us. And if we do that really well, like let's let's you steward the platform and assets that we have at our capability to make a difference in the world, and that's the best thing you could do.

Adam Jeske 13:31

And in that situation, did you find yourself getting outside perspective from anyone about that decision?

Dan Vogel 13:41

You know, I led our North America team, and so we had a global executive director who is a uh a Brit who lived in Sweden. So I talked to him about it. I talked to several of my leadership team members. As I think about that, they were all really internal, more than as I contrast it with, you know, the talking to someone like David Sajin in the context of a Flourish Fund. I really didn't seek, you know, uh any external counsel, maybe aside from my wife, which I talk about everything with her, you know, um, and I and she's often my most trusted counselor on lots of things like this. Um yeah, that was really in that situation, it was it was my boss, my global executive director, and several people closest to me.

Adam Jeske 14:23

Yeah. And just wondering about your reflection after the fact were did you receive critique internally from some team members? Did people come take advantage of the open door policy? Um, did anyone leave over it? No one left over it.

Dan Vogel 14:41

Uh there were and and as I think about that, was just one example. There were a number of different things where we had to make that same judgment call. Do we put out a statement of some kind? Repeatedly. There were instances where people were upset with me in those situations that where they they had a different point of view. They wanted me to be more um outspoken. And I mean, that that felt hard on plenty of weeks. It was like, this is a really less fun part of my job. It's emotionally draining. It feels like you know, we're distracting from the work that we should be doing. And it's also just never fun to be the guy at the top and feeling like the people don't are are don't like you in this situation. That said, I think you know, especially um there were many people who I who still I think of as really close friends that were on that team who had wildly different personal backgrounds, political beliefs, identities, and that the fact that we were able to use situations like that, and for me to be able to be a leader who was like, hey, this is this is where I'm coming from, this is why I'm making this decision, and then figure out how to bridge across some of those kinds of situations. Like I think Nette, I feel really good about like how there was often an interpersonal um, you know, where I had the most trouble with people who maybe were newer to our team, I hadn't built as much of that trust and relational capital. But in a lot of other situations, the immediate hard actually gave way to a longer-term opening for deeper relationship and bringing

The Loneliness of Leadership

Dan Vogel 16:11

a trust.

Adam Jeske 16:12

Let me shift to some short answer lightning round sort of questions. Great. Uh what parts of the CEO or executive director role in the nonprofit sector produce the most vexing decisions? That's fine.

Dan Vogel 16:31

You get you can take the gap. I do think the partnership, I think there are partnership often, um, partnership ones are most vexing where it's and the ones the partnership I was describing was a funder relationship. Do we want to accept funding from this partner? I think there were there are just as many. Okay, should we do this thing? There's this person who's kind of to the left or right or us that's similar, and maybe there's a complimentary relationship to be had, but there's always a trade-off and some operational, you know, how do we fit these two pieces together? I think those are often some of the trickiest things to navigate. Like which, where is there, I think tons of upside potential with great partnerships, but always lots of hard things to have to navigate. Personnel is another. I mean, I think when I think about some of the other hardest decisions I made in the context of CPI, it was when I had to fire someone, when I had to let someone go. Sometimes they were really clear. Although I think about the first person where I waited at least three, maybe six months too long before making that decision. And it was a huge learning for me, my first time leading an enterprise and having to do that. And then as soon as I did it, realizing there was a cost to me not making that decision earlier. And now I have to rebuild some trust. And so thereafter, like learning, okay, when you, when you have to, when you have to make that hard call, which is always good because there's a human at the center of it, uh, never a never a fun thing to do. Um, but being decisive with it uh being the right thing to do.

Adam Jeske 18:03

What do you wish someone had told you before you were leading at CPI or at Flourish Fund?

Dan Vogel 18:11

I think I've learned that these jobs can be very lonely sometimes. And especially if you have that you need other sources of counsel that are not the people that are the governance structure around you. Right. So even I've got some wonderful board members that I have that I can have really good dial. Although, as I think about my my first CBI board chair, I was probably in performance mode with him for the first two years of our relationship. Always wanted to kind of demonstrate how I was crushing it, how I was thinking ahead. When I finally got to a point of being able to change the tone of that with because I felt maybe more comfortable in my standing with him to be to actually say, here's where I'm struggling, here's what I don't, here's I don't know how to handle this situation. I'm not, this thing happened. I think I messed that up. Inviting him in in that way completely changed the nature of that relationship that we had. I got a ton more value out of it. But I think that's a natural tension that's present in a lot of people for whom there's an a formal relationship. And so just having a really deep bench of trusted counselors who have no formal affiliation at all, but just are people who are for you, who care about you, it could bring wisdom and encouragement on some lonely days. I think I've I've come to really appreciate, and I probably didn't appreciate before I was in those seats.

Adam Jeske 19:36

What's a book that was formational for your leadership and bonus points if it's an uncommon one?

Unconventional Leadership Styles

Dan Vogel 19:45

So the book that came to mind first was called Turn the Ship Around. It's by a Navy commander um named David Marquette. If I'm saying his name correctly. Um, but he was a submarine captain in the Navy who I uh inherited uh an uh a sub that had a lot of problems and he had sort of incoming assumptions about leadership that he learned were faulty. Essentially, the whole thing of turning the ship around is how do you empower people? How do you learn to delegate? How do you lean into the sources of expertise and wisdom that are already present in your team, but are kind of held at bay if you don't figure out how to actually empower and and solicit that kind of thing? So that was um, you know, we we had a lot of at CPI in particular, there was a lot of work that we did where we were trying to lead toward almost self-empowerment as a principle that that animated the whole organization. And turn the ship around was was like one really compelling example of how that happened.

Adam Jeske 20:53

Is there something about how you lead an organization that others would say is unconventional?

Dan Vogel 21:01

I don't know if this is unconventional, but I I don't think um I'd present as like a particularly uh charismatic, forceful leader. I'm a pretty chill, pretty even keeled guy. And I think part of that, there's there's also I came out of a BCG context where I was often having been and you know successful at different things, personally or vocationally. I remember getting to my in my early 30s, being in this job where I was told every day I was doing something wrong. And that was intensive feedback culture, it's pretty jarring. I learned to lean into that and find like that's actually not the way that most places operate. And when I had leaders there who actually said, Hey, you're really high capacity, like I'm gonna give you a I'm gonna support you, but I'm gonna give you a higher degree of freedom to actually do what you do. Like that for me was an unlock that I I all of a sudden, instead of feeling micromanaged, I felt like I can um just operate way more effectively. So I have brought that into, I would say, my own leadership style. It's like I'm not a particularly domineering leader. I don't want to have an overarching degree of control. I think they're they're oft, I've had to learn, oh, my team actually expects a lot of time for me to make that call or me to have a strong point of view. And and often I'll turn it back around on them and say, guys, like, what do you think? Uh I like you're closest to that. So I think it's like I'm gonna trust your judgment on that one. And if you're stuck between A and B, bring it to me and I can help you reconcile that, make a decision if you need to. But like I don't actually need to weigh in on that decision at all. That's that's your domain, and I trust you there. I don't know that that's unconventional, but I have found that it's a more hands-off style than some people are accustomed to. I think it's worked for me well enough, and I'm continuing to learn and grow like when I need to modulate that style, which I do plenty of times.

Adam Jeske 23:09

Is there a practice or habit that you utilize within how you do your work, within the role that helps sustain you in the work itself?

Dan Vogel 23:24

I don't know that it's within my role. I just think there's so much about being grounded in healthy community, especially in the context of the work that I'm doing right now, which is, you know, flourish fund, we talk about going out there and tackling issues that matter to the heart of God. We're motivated by Jesus' call to care for the most vulnerable. And so it's not like we're making socks or widgets. You know, we're we're trying to do big things that matter in the world, but we're operating in a spiritual sense. It's sort of my first time being a professional Christian, being a spiritual leader as well as an organizational leader. And I think in that vein, I've learned just how important it is to work from a place of emotional health, spiritual maturity, spiritual grounding, abiding and depending on God, as opposed to most of the prior work environments where my success was a function of my smarts or my hustle. And so it's kind of the same. When I when I reflect on the places where I've been at my healthiest or at my least healthy and maybe least effective in my tenure at Flourish Fund, it's it's often a function of the same things

Personal Reflections and Community Support

Dan Vogel 24:34

that are am I staying grounded in healthy community? Do I have friends around me who are encouraging me, holding me accountable? Am I doing the kind of everyday practices that allow me to stay connected to my God and grounded in my identity and who I am in him? Um when I've done more well or done poorly, it has actually very little to do with my role as CEO, but it does, it's the Dan Vogel as a person showing up in that role in either a good and healthy place or not.

Adam Jeske 25:05

Dan Vogel, founder and CEO of Flourish Fund. What do you love about your work?

Dan Vogel 25:12

I love thinking about big problems. And um I remember when I was first early in my career and I used to reflect, I was I was working in the Bush White House. My little sister was a kindergarten teacher, and I was I would look at her and say, that is amazing that you're doing work that transforms the lives of 25 kids every year. I am wired in such a way that I want to work on the systems that affect thousands or millions of kids. That's really what lights me up. And so that having a chance to do that every day in our role at Flourishon, our first initiative is all about trying to reimagine the broken foster care system in America, trying to unleash what we would call local ecosystems of care. I love chasing after that vision. I love thinking on that kind of large scale level. I also love the chance to interact with amazing social entrepreneurs who are doing really dynamic work. Um, anytime that I can get out of my office and closest to the people who are doing the work and the folks who are being served and affected, I'd love that. And it's it is actually really healthy and important for me to experience that regularly.

Future Initiatives and Closing Thoughts

Adam Jeske 26:33

Dan, thank you for joining us on the Nonprofit CEO podcast.

Dan Vogel 26:37

Thanks so much for having me.

Adam Jeske 26:39

Everyone, if you know a nonprofit CEO who's carrying something significant, send them the show. And if you want more of the patterns that I'm seeing across hundreds of conversations with great CEOs like this, you need the nonprofit CEO briefing delivered weekly, available at nonprofit CEO.com. I'm Adam Jeske, the nonprofit CEO advisor. Thank you for what you're leading.