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The first episode of Impact Innovations Podcast we sit down to discuss with Todd Manwaring about the Why behind creating the Impact Innovation Group.
Key Points of the Podcast:
2:16 | We are all involved in the charitable landscape at some point in out life
2:38 | But there is a distinction between engaging in a charitable mindset and a deliberate philanthropy mindset
3:00 | What is a charitable mindset?
Rooted in emotion and storytelling.
People give based on feeling good, but funding often goes to organizations that market well rather than those that create real impact.
Places halo effect on all charities and we think, "It must be a good organization!"
Society, families, and traditions reinforce this familiar but inefficient model.
5:04 | What is an impact mindset?
A data-driven, outcome-focused approach to giving.
Focused on using understanding what actually changes in peoples lives
It's less known but far more effective in addressing complex global problems.
Requires both heart and intellect, using business-like analysis to assess organizations before investing in them.
It is necessary to solve challenging, wicked problems.
5:58 | Understanding the difference in the effectiveness of charities
A study at the University of Washington found there is a significant difference between average and expert perspectives on the effectiveness of charities
The average donor views charities to be fairly equal across the board
The best are slightly better than the average and the worst are still doing a lot of good
The social impact expert perspective views the top charities to be 100x more effective than the average and the worst charities to actually cause harm rather than help.
7:45 | What are Outcomes, and why are they so important?
Outcomes are the expected effects from a program or solution, they are the changes that occur in peoples lives.
It can be useful to think of outcomes as the opposite of the negative effects of a social problem.
10:25 | Why More People Aren’t Deliberate Philanthropists
Lack of Awareness: Most people are raised in the charitable giving paradigm, not knowing there’s a better way.
Societal Influence: Friends, family, and the media reinforce emotional giving rather than data-driven philanthropy.
It's Hidden: Deliberate philanthropy isn't widely discussed, even though major figures like Bill and Melinda Gates practice it.
13:30 | Todd's personal journey shifting from the Charitable Mindset to the Impact Mindset
15:46 | What helps this transformation occur more easily
The transition to deliberate philanthropy is easier when done with others.
Learning from like-minded individuals helps people stick with the shift.
19:19 | The Impact Innovation Group exists to build this community—a space where philanthropists can learn, connect, and become more intentional about their giving.
Links from the Episode
Transcript
Tanner Mills - Welcome everyone to the first episode of the Impact Innovation Group podcast. The Impact Innovation Group is an in-person and online community that's designed to help donors and investors to elevate their philanthropy and maximize their impact. And this podcast is a way that we have developed to engage with the community and educate them on these important principles. Today, we're going to be focusing on the why behind the Impact Innovation Group. And we're going to be doing that by interviewing Todd Manwaring, who we'll introduce here in a minute.
But my name is Tanner Mills. I'm a fourth year analyst at UI Charitable Advisors where I oversee some of the measurement and evaluation consulting, impact consulting that we do there as well as impact investing initiatives. My co-host today is Jaxson Thomas. Jaxson, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Jaxson Thomas - Yeah, my name is Jackson. I'm an analyst at UI Charitable Advisors as well working on social impact consulting and measurement evaluation as well.
Tanner Mills - So our guest today is Todd Manwaring who I just mentioned, but I'm going to introduce a little bit about Todd. But Todd has directly been involved with Impact Philanthropy, which is a concept we'll be discussing today for the last 28 years. And in those 28 years, he's been instrumental in the founding of five amazing organizations. The first was Unitus in 1998, where he co-founded that organization. In 2002, he would go on to be a founder of BYU's Melvin J. Ballard Social Impact Center. In 2010, he would go on to be a co-founder of the University Impact Fund, which later became the University of Utah's Sorensen Impact Institute. In 2017, he was the founder of University Impact. And in 2020, he was a co-founder of UI Charitable Advisors. So we're grateful to have you here with us today, Todd.
Todd Manwaring - Thanks for that intro.
Tanner Mills - Well, today we're going to be discussing a little bit about this concept of impact philanthropy and how it might be seen as a mindset or a strategy and why it's essential for creating the meaningful and sustainable change that we all hope to accomplish in our philanthropic efforts. So Jaxson, why don't you get us started with your first question?
Jaxson Thomas - Absolutely. Thanks for the introduction, Tanner. Todd, many of us have been involved in the charitable space to some extent, including myself. We're involved in different ways and with our time, with our donations. Can you elaborate a little bit more on what it means to have an impact mindset in philanthropy as opposed to the traditional mindset that all of us might be more familiar with?
Todd Manwaring - Yeah, and in fact, I think it's useful to understand what I call the charitable mindset, the mindset that we are all involved in and help differentiate that a bit from the impact mindset. I've got three slides to share. And so let me share this first one. You'll see basically it just describes, yeah, there's a split. There's a charitable mindset that exists. Everyone participates in this charitable mindset. It's just something that's ingrained in us. It's part of what our parents did, our grandparents did. Society supports us in this viewpoint.
The impact mindset is something that takes effort to be able to grasp, become part of, and to participate in. In the second slide, you'll notice just five kinds of key components of each one of these.
The charitable mindset is based predominantly on stories. And so we connect to organizations and other people in the charitable mindset because of the stories we hear. And those stories pull us emotionally into being involved and placing real benefit into what we're doing. We take a viewpoint of this organization's doing and trying to help people, so it must be good. And I'll just often hear people talk about that. Well, it must be good because it's helping this group of people. It's a feel-good space because our culture supports that. And so in our own families, at home, with our neighbors, people find out we're involved in some charitable activities and it's recognized as something that really does help us have that feel good, that sense.
But it's a bit of a broken marketplace. And it's a broken marketplace because there are some great organizations, but there are also some terrible organizations.
And in the charitable mindset, the organization that gets the money is the one that tells the best story, the one that grabs our emotion the best. It isn't the organization that's doing the best. So all of us start there. Some of us stay there our entire lives.
The second side is the impact mindset. And here we're interested in the stories, but we're even more interested in outcomes, which are the changes in people's lives we want to see. We're interested in emotionally being tied to what's going on. But we want to bring our intellect, our skills, the way we look at the world into being involved in our philanthropic efforts. And instead of a must-be-good perspective, we have a might-be-good perspective. And so we recognize some of these groups are great. Some of these groups are not so great. And we want to be involved with the great ones.
And so the impact mindset is a place where world changing activity really happens. And because of that, it's creating marketplaces. Marketplaces where the best groups get the funding. So there's a big differentiation. And this last slide, this is a study that I think really will kind of, you know, bring this home to a lot of us. On the left hand side, what you're seeing is a charitable perspective.
On the right hand side, what you're seeing is that impact mindset. This is the perspective that people have on an average charity, the best charity, and the worst charity. And you'll see on the left hand side, this charitable mindset says, yeah, the average charity is pretty good. And the best one is a bit better. And the worst one, it's a bit worse. But they're all good, right? Just like we just talked about.
The right hand side are people who are experts in the field and their perspective of what's happening. And you'll notice here that the average charitable organization is not doing that great. And that the best organization is literally perceived to be a 100X better than the average. And unfortunately, it's hard to see with this graph, but the left hand side actually goes negative because we're hurting people.
And this is a perspective that I share, being involved in this world for 28 years, as I've connected with hundreds of different organizations, this is actually what happens. There are some fantastic organizations, and they are far superior to the average everyday organization.
Jaxson Thomas - Well, the difference is profound that you can see between the best groups and then those that are average and those that are the worst. We definitely want to be involved with those that are the best. You mentioned some of the aspects that make up those groups are using intellect and data and analytics and outcomes. Can you dive a little bit deeper into what those things mean and what it looks like in an organization that's really impactful in the philanthropic space?
Todd Manwaring - Yeah, let me describe what an outcome is from that perspective. What we're hoping is these organizations have as their goal an outcome that they do the measurements you're talking about that they try to understand or are they meeting those. But many times in the charitable mindset, we tend to think of an outcome as something that the organization does. “We taught this many people.” What we really want as an outcome and as a goal is what change occurred in someone's life. And so one of the best ways to determine that is to look at the negative consequences of the social problem.
So for instance, we spend a lot of time connecting with organizations who are working in the developing world. They're trying to help people out of poverty. That's the social issue. The negative consequences to poverty are huge. 900, 2000 list long. But when we get organizations to really think about, well, what is it that really matters? The things that are negative consequences of poverty, it's things like our kids aren't in school. We're not eating well. We're not healthy in this home. Our home isn't secure. We're not safe here. Right? There's just so many things that are the consequences of poverty occurring. And an outcome should be measuring that change.
An example, again, in that same space is, many groups try to help people get a job or create a new business as a way to get out of poverty. And that is a great way to do this, but it's the means to the end. And the end is the outcome. The means is what we call an output. So this is one of the aspects of impact philanthropy. We've got to learn new vocabulary. And that's a very key one that I found. It takes people about five to six times of hearing that and actually practicing it and really working with it to really understand what a good negative consequence based outcome is. Right. So it's not just about what we do in this space, but the effect that we have on the people that we're trying to help.
Jaxson Thomas - Yeah, exactly. That makes a lot of sense. You mentioned there at the end that a large majority of people are still in this charitable mindset. They're on this other side of this paradigm that you mentioned. It's pretty evident and clear that the impact mindset is the right way to go. It makes more sense. It's more focused on the changes that are occurring in people's lives and making a real difference. Why do you think there are so many people that are still stuck on this charitable mindset and are having difficulty getting into the impact mindset?
Todd Manwaring - Yeah, really, it's because it's a mindset. It's a paradigm. It's the way we see the world and we grow up in it. We're supported on every side into this kind of a mindset. And so that's really the problem is it's hard to change paradigms, whether that paradigm is, it's the 1800s and I should be washing my hands in between operations to this. And so it is a place where higher impact happens. And we encourage people to make this shift, but it takes an "ahh ha” moment, takes some guidance to recognize that this is actually there.
Jaxson Thomas - That makes a lot of sense. Could you maybe give us an example of someone or an organization that's really great at implementing the impact mindset and philanthropy, just so we can kind of have a frame of reference or someone to model ourselves after maybe?
Todd Manwaring - Yeah. So let me describe a person who we all kind of know, or at least have heard their name. I think that'll be useful, but in some ways we'll also say, wait, they're super wealthy, I'm not that. But let me start there. I think a great example of a person who's made this shift, no doubtably was in the charitable mindset, moved to an impact mindset, is Melinda French Gates. And I recognized that when I read her book, The Moment of Lift. And the key thing I learned in that moment of lift, because you think, she's a billionaire, she knows this. She understands this. And the book is really a book about the humility that she took to learn how to approach things differently, because she had all these previous perspectives. It's this way, it's that way, this is what's important, that's what's important. And she talks about in this book how she made this shift meeting people, connecting with organizations and how it took her multiple years.
So I think that's a great example. Again though, it's easy to say, but wait, she's a billionaire. Of course she was able to do this. What we really are doing with the Impact Innovation Group is trying to make this accessible to everyone. No matter your wealth level, no matter your engagement level, the amount of time you have, how do we help you become an impact philanthropist.
Jaxson Thomas - Cool, that's awesome. Those are the questions I had. Tanner, I know you've got some questions as well.
Tanner Mills - Yeah, so just zooming out a little bit just in context. So 28 years is a long time. And for many of us who are involved in philanthropy, it also includes our family. And so I would just love to learn a little bit more about how after an incredibly successful career, why did you and your wife transition into this higher level of thinking or the impact mindset of philanthropy and how you went about doing that?
Todd Manwaring - Yeah, so you've heard this story before. I guess that's why you're asking. And for us, I mean, we were solidly in this charitable mindset and really looking at we were having enough success at my work that we are trying to figure out what do we do with this money?
And we were lucky enough to be invited to a breakfast fundraiser that Muhammad Yunus came to. This was the mid-1990s. The mid-1990s. And Muhammad Yunus, recognized as one of the grandfathers of microfinance, received the Nobel Peace Prize 10 years later. He talked about this microfinance movement and that really caught our eyes in this charitable mindset.
And then he took a few moments to describe how the world of helping people was being completely disrupted, upended, being changed phenomenally. And as he described that world, that's what I realized. Well, that was the same world I was involved in the computer industry. Huge changes are happening all the time.
And I recognize, wait, there's something different what he's saying right now. He's talking about how organizations are having a higher impact because they're changing what they do and how they measure what they do versus when he just talked about this microfinance piece. My wife caught the same thing for us. It was a moment. It was that “ahh ha” moment. Right. Where we recognize there's something different here. We've got to learn what it is. We've got to figure out how to connect with it. And that was the start of our journey.
Tanner Mills - So what attributes help people or helped you and your wife learn about and really absorb and apply these principles the most?
Todd Manwaring -I mean, I think there's many and people grasp this from many different kinds of backgrounds, but I have to admit it seems like a few backgrounds really help people more. A common one, for instance, are people who either work or maybe they were educated in spaces where people talk about outcomes. So health fields, public health, or nursing, or someone becoming a doctor, outcomes are what we talk about there all the time. People who are involved at their business and they're using skills to try to measure what's really occurring as people use our product or service. Those people seem to catch it quicker as well.
I think another group that catches it are people in the business space who are involved in strategy setting. Because when you're involved in strategy setting, you're trying to look at what's occurring now. Where do we really want to head? What do our, the people we're serving, these customers, what is it they need? What is it that they're going to desire enough that they'll pay for this product or service? And that kind of a person, catches the same strategic thinking that occurs really in this impact mindset. I think people involved in that, you know, having those kinds of experiences, I think that's a common, you know, easy catch for some of them.
Tanner Mills - Vocabulary, the framework, the skills.
Todd Manwaring - Exactly. So if I'm starting to make this shift towards the deliberate or the impact, philanthropy mindset. What challenges beyond just the awareness or the vocabulary should I expect or did you experience?
Todd Manwaring - Yeah, I go back to kind of wrapping this up maybe with a few concrete things. A, it's just hard changing who we are. And really, that charitable mindset, it's who we've been ever, you know, ever since our parents helped us understand. This is what we do as a family at Christmas time. We are goning to give and help here. It's what we learn at school. It's really hard to make that paradigm shift change. I think that's a key thing that makes this troublesome for people. And so they just tend to see things in their old existing paradigm rather than this new one.
They don't notice what different organizations are doing. I think another thing is it's just easy to miss. Yeah, it's hidden and it's not hidden on purpose. It's hidden because of this paradigm issue. It's been happening for generations, just like the charitable mindset. Sure. There are people whose grandparents and parents taught them this other side, but it's such a small set of people that it seems hidden. If you're in that charitable mindset, you're like, What? This exists? That's a common kind of refrain people have. I didn't even imagine. What? What's going on here? How is this occurring? And so I think that's really another big issue.
Tanner Mills - Sure. So after these 28 years, you're starting the Impact Innovation Group to help people overcome those challenges. So why are you involved with the Impact Innovation Group? Why aren't you off doing other amazing things?
Todd Manwaring - Yeah, that's a good question. So I think, A, it's very personal. My wife and I made this switch. Left the corporate world to focus on how do we help change people's lives. And when I was asked to create what then became the Ballard Social Impact Center, really what we were trying to do was figuring out through classes and different experiences, how do we train students in the vocabulary, the skills, the way of looking at what this impact space is. And very importantly, we created a community where a tenth of BYU students participate in these activities every year.
And becoming part of a community when you're learning a new paradigm is really important because then that community starts building this new culture, new perspectives, new beliefs. And the reason really then for creating the Impact Innovation Group is we need to do the same things. We've got to learn a new vocabulary. We have to learn some new skills and it's best done in the community. And so that's why. As you described at the very beginning of the podcast, what we're trying to do is create this community of in-person events, events like this through podcasts and different connections where we help people recognize and learn and participate with others in that experience. So that's really what I'm about, is how do we help non-students to have that same kind of experience?
Tanner Mills - Yeah. Well, just wrapping up where we kind of started, the Impact Innovation Group is a place that exists to guide and support individuals that want to participate in this highest level of impact by providing them with not only the knowledge, but also the resources and the networks that are necessary to maximize their impact with what they're trying to do.
So we thank everyone for joining us on the first episode of the Impact Innovation Group. Thank you, Todd. Thank you, Jaxson. And we invite you to participate in more impactful philanthropy by becoming a part of the community. Through the Impact Innovation Group, you have the opportunity to connect with passionate and strategic individuals, learn how to amplify your philanthropic efforts, and collaborate to drive meaningful and sustainable change that we discussed.
So we look forward to future episodes where we will delve deeper into what impact philanthropy is and how you can actually participate in creating the lasting positive change that we all want to see. We would like to thank Silicon Slopes for supporting us today and filming and recording this podcast. And thank you again, Todd, for joining us. And we look forward to the next episode.
Thanks.
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