193 – Building Influence with Impact with Chris Wade and Matthew Cobble

December 18, 2025

Episode #193: Building Influence with Impact with Chris Wade and Matthew Cobble 

How do volunteer leaders move from being seen as “extra hands” to strategic drivers of mission success? 

In this episode of the Volunteer Nation Podcast, Tobi Johnson is joined by Chris Wade and Matthew Cobble, co-hosts of the Time for Impact Podcast in the UK, for a practical and thought-provoking conversation about building influence through impact. 

Together, they explore why volunteering needs to be reframed as community participation and talent, not just unpaid labor and how leaders of volunteers can use data, stories, and strategic thinking to elevate their role inside organizations. 

This episode goes beyond counting hours or outputs and dives into how volunteer engagement directly contributes to outcomes, organizational strategy, and long-term change. 

Influence with Impact – Episode Highlights

Helpful Links

• VolunteerPro Impact Lab  
• 2025 Volunteer Management Progress Report – The Recruitment Edition  
• Time for Impact Podcast, Tobi Johnson on the Challenging, Brave Journey of Volunteer Leadership  
• Volunteer Nation Episode #175: Outputs vs Outcomes: Why Counting Hours Isn’t Enough 
• Info on Lewin’s Force Field Analysis 
• Info on Balanced Scorecard for Nonprofits  
• Info on the Double Diamond Design Process  
• Info on the Outcomes Star  
• Info on Action Research  
• UN Year of the Volunteer  
• Volunteer Impact Scorecard Step-by-Step Tool 
• Benchmarked Volunteer Experience Survey  
• Find Chris on LinkedIn 
• Find Matthew on LinkedIn  

Contact Us

Have questions or suggestions for the show? Email us at wecare@volpro.net.

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Episode #193 Transcript: Building Influence with Impact with Chris Wade and Matthew Cobble 

Tobi: Hey, welcome to the Volunteer Nation Podcast, bringing you practical tips and big ideas on how to build, grow, and scale volunteer talent. I’m your host, Toby Johnson, and if you rely on volunteers to fuel your charity cause membership or movement, I made this podcast just for you.

Welcome everybody to another episode of the Volunteer Nation podcast. I’m your host, Toby Johnson, and I am got a treat. We are meeting with Chris Wade and Matthew Cobble from the Time for Impact Podcast in the uk. I was a guest on their podcast a couple months ago. I guess it was last month, and we are.

Chatting today, I thought I’d have them on to talk about building influence with impact. And by the way, I’ll link to the podcast episode where I appeared with them. I talked about, got kind of vulnerable about my leadership journey. So that was kind of fun. But this is really practical because not that my leadership journey isn’t practical and probably it, I’m assuming that I dropped some value bombs there, but maybe not.

But today I think we really wanna focus on building influence with impact. And it’s such a big topic and it’s something that we’ve covered in different ways in the last. Recent episodes here on the pod. One was on the Volunteer Nation, episode 1 75, where I talked about outputs versus outcomes and why counting hours isn’t enough.

So we know, I think this episode is really about taking it beyond our basic conversations about outcomes, metrics, and so let’s get started. Guys. Welcome to the pod.

Chris: Thanks for having us back, or in return. Nice to see you, Toby. Yeah,

Tobi: we’re doing a podcast swap, y’all. That’s what this is called. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s fantastic.

Let me. Introduce my two guests. Chris Wade is a consultant and extremely experienced executive and leader from the UK charity sector, having held CEO and director positions across the uh, sector. He, uh, also has a longstanding history of de of helping to develop volunteering in the UK as a former trustee of volunteering England and the National Council for Voluntary Organizations, and formerly the chair of the UK National Network for volunteer involving.

Agencies. But since 2023, Chris has headed up his own volunteering focused consultancy operation, primarily in the uk, but current customers in Arabia and Africa, so that you’re global. You’ve gone global. Chris, he started the Time for Impact podcast because he felt that volunteerism leaders are not getting the influence that volunteering needed and deserves.

So being a pragmatist, he set out to help them change that. So the mission for that podcast is to unmask the impact, unlock the potential, and shape the future of volunteering, and I can guarantee you it’s worth a listen. So Matthew Cobble is the head of volunteering for the m and D Association, a UK charity focused on improving access to care, research, and campaigning for people affected by Mor Motor Neuron Disease, formerly known as a LS in the us.

And prior to his. To this worked in nonprofit and volunteer leadership roles at writing for the Disabled association when not working in volunteering. Matt is a proud volunteer for the Scouts in the uk. So this is a fantastic conversation. I think it’s so wonderful to get different people’s takes on impact because I feel like there are so many ways to approach this.

But before we get started in talking about impact and building our influence and ability to impact, tell your audience a little bit about yourself and the work you do. So first off, let’s start with Matt. How did you get involved in volunteer engagement? Tell us sort of your birth story as it.

Matt: My journey in volunteering probably started when I was 14 and I was doing a scheme that lots of young people in the UK do.

In fact, lots of people over the world do. It’s particularly popular in the UK called the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award. And a key part of that is about you do various things and a lot of people associate with kind of backpacking in the world, but like there’s a key bit of it, which is also about doing some volunteering.

So I started volunteering at my. Local sports center coaching people, soccer or mm-hmm. Football. Mm-hmm. As we would call it here. That led me through various kinds of different volunteering. I ended up, when I left university, volunteering in an international center in Switzerland, so essentially managing and coordinating international programs of volunteers.

And then I came back from there and was, I really dunno what. To do with my life. I don’t really know where my career is going. I had a history degree, but I was able to leverage lots of my experiences into, into the sports sector. And so I began it writing for the Disabled Association running programs there, which were all about bringing young people into volunteering.

So that was really my bag as what I’ve got a lot of experience on. And then things moved on from there. And then in 2020 I joined the Motor Neuro Disease Association. I’ve been their head of volunteering since. We’ve seen a lot of growth and a lot of expansion in that time. A big increase in our profile.

And yeah, it’s a really, it’s a really exciting time to be in volunteerism from my perspective. Challenging time for sure, but a really excited time. Yeah.

Tobi: Congratulations on your growth. That’s good to hear. I think I, I’m also a former liberal arts major. Turn nonprofit sector leader. I feel like we come to this se, this sector from so many different places.

Let’s talk about, Chris. Let’s talk about how your, what your first journey was like.

Chris: Yeah, no liberal arts degree, I’m afraid. My, my degree was in good old management, but, um, my master’s too. But I came, I suppose I came at the sector from all kinds of weird angles. I had a history as an aircraft engineer, a history as a hotel manager, an academic, but I suppose somewhere lurking in the background was always that civic action muscle.

My, my dad was for many years a local counselor, so would for the local village. So a, a civic leader, I suppose. American equipment is locally, which is a volunteer role, it’s not a paid role. And he was always active in the local community, running things, organizing people, making things happen, raising money for the community.

And I suppose that was my indoctrination, if you like. It’s interesting, on our podcast, we always ask similar questions. Toby, what was your background? How did you get into volunteerism? And so many people started at that young age doing something of that, this, that really early influence. Seems to be key.

So I guess that was mine. And then I came, kind of came back to it through the student movement, I guess, and I got quite involved in the National Union of Students in the UK and working with Loughborough University, which is a big university over here. Get involved in students in community Action. Again, you flexing that civic muscle.

And that was my introduction back into it. Then I went through the usual charity channels and ended up, first of all, as a trustee of volunteer in England, which was a real eye opener in terms of moving from Charity General to really focusing on the power. That volunteering brings to to community life.

And that was great. And then I also ended up at the m and d Association. Ooh. Which is where Matt and I employed Matt. So that’s where Matt and and I started the double act, I guess. And yeah.

Tobi: And the rest is history.

Chris: The rest is history as they say. So not a degree in history, but it’s history anyway.

Tobi: That’s right.

That’s right. We’re gonna talk about impact and influence, but I’m wondering why you think volunteerism things are evolving pretty quickly and I think we’re, if there, there’s nothing like a global pandemic to and sh total lockdown to start to shine a light on why things are important. When they’re not happening.

It’s kind of interesting to see what happens when they’re not happening versus when they’re happening. Why do you think volunteerism is particularly important in today’s world?

Chris: Gosh, in a sense, you’ve said, I mean, the pandemic’s one thing, but it’s such a turbulent world that we live in the pandemic for sure.

But the environmental situation we’re in, the politics we won’t go into, but the politics across the globe, which can be pretty turbulent, pretty divisive. People are, I think increasingly, uh. I think historically have looked to politicians to find the answers. Historically, maybe have looked to commercial organizations to help us consume our way out of problems.

But the problems that we have in society, the challenges that we face, are so systemic and so deep that I think it needs all of us to club together to find those solutions. And I think that means that I actually sense there’s an element of frustration where people want to have some agency to actually play a part in changing the world they live in, changing the communities that they participate in.

And there’s not a better expression of democracy or, or citizenship to me than actually taking part. In the community you live in or making changes to the problems that you see that aren’t working where you live. And for me, the best way of doing that is volunteering. In fact, that is what volunteering is, isn’t it?

Right. We give it a title, but actually it’s about people who have a, a passion or a annoyance even about something who wanna make things better.

Tobi: Yeah. And

Chris: doing something and actively doing something about it. And now seems the perfect time for that.

Tobi: Last night I was just pondering this community engagement and community involvement seems more of the right term to me than volunteerism.

Lately. It just, are we building community? Are we building community? Mm-hmm. Are we building community? And I’m, I’ve started asking it in all aspects. Like in my business, am I building community? Obviously I have an online community, I have a the Volunteer Pro impact lab, but then in other places, am I building community?

Am I building community? And it feels like volunteerism. Is in some ways that the term, and this is just like stuff that’s coming to mind last night, I was like, ponding this. I don’t know. It was random. I was just thinking, I, in some ways, volunteerism has a box around it. Yeah. Like what it can be, what it’s characterized as.

Even when we say there’s formal and informal even, we’re characterizing, we’re defining. But when I say am I building community? Am I getting the community involved? Are we working together And not even getting the community involved, but are we working together in community to solve a problem? And volunteerism is one method for that.

That for me, in my mind, it opens up things. Because there’s not like a set of rules. Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah. And it’s more about that personal impetus of like, I’m going to be in the collective. Right? Yeah.

Chris: Yeah. It’s taking part, I mean, Matt and I often talk about participation, but actually it’s about having a shared purpose and working together as a community, as a movement, whatever you want to call it, to actively take part and make a difference.

Volunteering, I think you’re right, makes a, it builds a kind of box because it sounds really formal and structured and it doesn’t have to be.

Matt: Yeah. It’s quite freeing as well to think about that differently. Like it enables you to think about things and solve problems and approach things in a real different way if you take it out of that box.

I think like it, all sorts of other things can be volunteering if you free yourself from the box that you, that you’ve put it in potentially, and I think that’s freeing for. For someone who’s worked in lots of charities, I think there’s still a, there’s still a challenge around that, but I’m sure how many of us have struggled with the internal conversation of like, what actually is volunteering here again?

Like, what is it? And then we sort of go, it’s kind of this, it’s kind of that. It’s, and really it’s all of those things and lots of other things that we haven’t even defined yet, and I think there’s a lot of power in that.

Tobi: Yeah. I think it’s almost like, what is the promise? Is the promise, volunteerism to the community or is the promise community to our friends and neighbors?

And it feels better. I think for people, it’s starting to really hit me that it’s really about more about community than volunteerism per se. However, we we’re here to talk about impact on organizations, so I wanna, but I like this lens of looking at it. Right. But let’s talk about, I’ve just been pondering this and I thought I’d run it by you and you got me thinking, but let’s talk about volunteers as a strategic asset and how we make sure they’re positioned that way as mission critical, not a set of pair of extra hands.

How does that misunderstanding challenge the level of influence leaders of volunteers can have? Do you think, in organizations? What are you seeing that are the points that when it’s mis, when that this idea of community in a lot of ways is misunderstood?

Matt: I can’t remember who this quote is attributed to, but it’s, I think it’s an interesting way of framing this, is that people talk about volunteers as our volunteers when really we are their organization.

Wow. Right. So good. And it comes back to this, uh, it comes, Bri may remember who that quote is attributed to, but I think we potentially, we ignore that or forget that at our peril. Right. And it comes back to this idea of community. How did lots of organizations start? They didn’t start with lots of infrastructure.

They didn’t start with lots of staff and lots of structure and volunteering. They started often as grassroots, small community-based organizations and grew from there. And I think that’s really, it’s really important to have that mindset when you’re thinking about. Volunteers within an organization and how you approach that.

Chris: Never doubt the power of a few, well-meaning people to change the world. They’re the only thing that ever has. Isn’t that the Margaret Mead quote?

Tobi: Yeah. Yeah. Let’s get into this discussion about influence with impact. When volunteer contributions are invisible, it’s almost impossible to build influence. So I feel like visibility is key.

It’s everything in your mind, Chris, how can leaders of volunteers really start to build this visibility around their work and the work of the community supporting and contributing to their organization? Right.

Chris: Yeah. I mean, so many things. I mean, the first thing is to recognize that no one’s gonna do that for you.

That’s my first message there. Oh, yeah. I, I know. We often say that you see the job description of a volunteering leader. It very rarely says influencing other people, but that yet it, I think it’s about a third of your job very often, is influencing your colleagues, influencing your board, influencing your boss, your CEO, your funders and so on.

It is gonna be your job, and if you don’t do it. No one else is gonna do it. That’s my first thing. Recognize that bemoaning the problem is not gonna solve it. We need to come to the problem with evidence, with solutions, with intelligence. So that’s the first thing. I think there’s also something about speaking the right language of the audience that you’re trying to reach.

Understand what your finance director is looking for. Understand what your vice president or your CEO is motivated for. There’s something about cultural intelligence, understanding what the board and other people really react to, what they buy into someone that the lu force field analysis and those sort of things.

Understanding what the push and pull factors are for people in when they’re making decisions. If your board is very risk focused, be aware of those kind of things. If they’re very numbers focused, be aware of presenting things in, in, in a format, in a business format that is going to look attractive to them.

Focus on the strategy of the organization. Know that strategy inside out, upside down, back to front. Be able to recite it backwards. If you can know where the gaps are in the strategy, where the CEO and the board will say, we are not making enough traction here and think about work and volunteering, make some leverage here.

How can you go to your CEO and say. You know, what’s the thing that you’re struggling with the most? Because I’d like to see if I can leverage our volunteering to, to see if we can bridge that gap, be solutions focused. A lot of this stuff is about we, we, we focus on the research, collecting the right data, and all that’s important, of course, being academically rigorous and so on.

But essentially for me, the impact story is about building a narrative, almost a sales narrative that is selling the benefits, the value, the impact of volunteering. So the first thing is, I think we often go straight into measuring what we need, but actually you need to spend some time to really build the logic models from this is the activity that we do.

These are the outcomes and the impacts that our board and our, our executive might be looking for. These are the impacts that our funders current and future might be looking for. These are the impacts that our volunteers will be looking for. They’re going to join us or, or stay with us. This is what societies looking for us.

This is what our beneficiaries are looking for. And these are the opportunities where volunteering can make a future impact. And to be the, can be the driver for growth within the organization. But you need to build those logic models from activity to outcome. And that allowed you to tell the story of the impact that volunteering is having.

But also crucially important for me, the impact volunteering can have to drive things forward. ’cause we think of volunteering quite often as, or at least I think executives often think of volunteering is kind of. It’s kind of there. It’s part of the furniture, it’s in the background. It’s not new, it’s not glossy, it’s not exciting.

It’s something that’s essential, but it’s not driving things forward. So I think we sometimes need to build those logic models and so, no, it’s more than that. Yeah. It’s making a meaningful difference to people’s lives and to the bottom line or whatever it is that the cultural language that’s gonna work for your CEO.

Tobi: Yeah, I mean, and having a plan, a strategic plan that outlines Yeah. In writing. Like what? That’s what we do in Vision Week. Like the fir, we do our strategic planning bootcamp every. Fall and I spend the first day of that week doing the alignment work. Like how are we working, how are our goals and volunteer engagement laddering up to the organization’s goals.

Matt, let me ask you a question. Do you, as a leader of volunteers, do you think that leaders of volunteers underestimate their ability to shape organizational decisions? Do you think that’s why folks aren’t developing these narratives and focusing on these goals? Where do you think the sticking point is there?

I think

Matt: maybe, first of all, a story to bring what Chris has just said to life and then I’ll add to like, I think to illustrate why that was really important. I think what Chris has just said, uh, writing for the disabled, we sat down with a funder, myself and our chief executive sat down with a funder to talk about in a sort of reporting meeting, and we were very excited to present the work we’d done where we delivered this brilliant alert, what we thought was a brilliant learning program to lots of volunteers.

And we sat down and we. We said to him, Hey look, we’ve delivered all these courses, we’ve trained all these volunteers. Isn’t it brilliant? And he sat there and said, the funder sat there and said, that’s great. Now can you just tell me how have you improved one of the participants in your writing sessions outcomes through delivering all of these safeguarding courses?

Can you just tell me how this linked to your impact? And we were both Wow. Like, okay. We weren’t quite ready for that question. And so I think what, to come back to the question you asked, I think in lots of organizations, volunteers are the, they’re kind of the engine of the organization, right? They are the people doing the delivering, they’re the people generating the impact.

They’re people on the front line making the work of the organization happen. So I think people who lead volunteers. Naturally should be the people who are best placed to understand the impact that engine is having, right? How fast are we going? Are we going in the right direction? All of that kind of stuff.

Being able to articulate some of that is, is really important for us. ’cause we should be quite close to that. We should understand it and, and I think the lesson I learned that day sort of relatively early in my career, having that conversation about I’ve delivered all of these safeguarding courses, isn’t it brilliant?

I always need to be thinking as leader of volunteers, not just about the outputs or the things I am doing to support people, but like why what I’m doing to support people is supporting beneficiaries at the end. You always need to think to the end of that journey and think about all of those steps. And again, I think we’re often the people apart from volunteers themselves, we’re the people closest to that to see that and the people probably best placed to draw those connections together.

Yeah,

Tobi: and I think it’s. Challenging for some organ. For direct service organizations, it’s a little bit easier. Obviously, I’ve run mentoring programs, so if young people are getting impact from the mentoring and they’re feeling more confident, their career is growing, they’re getting jobs. Mine was working with homeless youth who were getting into employment and transitional living and getting off the streets, and those were very clear.

We can make some connection. Sometimes it’s correlative, though it’s not always direct. Sometimes it is direct, like people who do tax prep volunteering, it’s clear I help this person get X number of dollars back in their tax return. Mm-hmm. There’s also organizations, I think of some of them in our volunteer Pro impact lab that are arts and culture organizations, and it’s more about the community wellbeing.

And that’s a diff, fairly difficult thing sometimes to, you can track whether or not people are coming to events. You can do satisfaction surveys, you have fun at this event, but the community wellbeing is really a challenging, so that’s an ultimate impact, but there are ways to do that as well. What are you thinking on that?

Matt: I’m thinking like if you come back to this impact point, right? How do you measure and understand impact fundamentally? I think basically there’s kind of, there’s two ways that most of us go back to, right? There is data and insight and there’s stories. Mm-hmm. Right there, there’s, and those two things together are really powerful.

Kind of no stories without data, no data without stories. Those two things really sort of nest together to tell the true story of impact. And again, I come back to where is the best place in the organization to. Start to generate both of those things. Powerful stories come from the connections often made through volunteers, right?

And sharing your story. If you think about a broad, the broad picture of volunteering itself, sharing your story almost as an active volunteering in itself, right? Mm-hmm. Or can be, that’s a great way of, that’s a great way of understanding impact. How do we go about collecting data? I think often we need to collect data close to the activity to understand what’s happening.

Again, I think if we are doing that well, I think volunteers have a really key role to play in that. Again, I’ll come back to my writing For the Disabled Dissociation days, we there had this challenge, which was really about 50-year-old organization who’d been doing this thing for years and years, which is helping and enabling disabled people to, to participate in equestrian activities.

And the question of like, is this a good thing? Essentially we’re sort of being relied on the fact that. Well, we’ve got loads of brilliant stories, but we don’t have any data. How do we get the data We need to engage the same people really, who are telling us these stories, these volunteers who are at the heart of the delivery, and we need to give them the tools and the systems to help us collect the data.

So we’ve got this really powerful picture of impact, both the stories and we’ve got loads of those, but also the data that sits alongside it to give a really compelling case of impact and change that the organization’s generating. And I think that’s, I think that’s so important.

Tobi: What do you think, Chris, what do you think are the biggest barriers that leaders of volunteers face when trying to build influence with impact?

Chris: Yeah, I mean, just to follow on from that to start with, to, to say that, I mean, one to state the obvious, but it’s so often forgotten, is that you have to plan for measuring impact. The times I’ve worked with programs when they’ve got to the end of the initiative and said, well, how are we gonna measure this?

Unbelievable. You really do need to think, again, back to the logic models. You really do need to build it into the DNA of the program from the start. This next thing I would say probably is, it’s so easy to think of volunteering in a really siloed department way. Yes. But the truth of volunteering is we’re integral to almost everything an organization does.

So you need to work with colleagues throughout the journey to just to capture the impact. But actually, again, on those logic models, on those discussions, and build a shared understanding with colleagues about what it is, what is the impact of volun of volunteering brings. Because so often there’s somebody in another part of the organization, in the finance department or something who just doesn’t see the positives of volunteering, and they’re not gonna get that without our help, but also in without their involvement in the conversation.

So I think conversations are really important. And the same goes for leadership. Leaders, of course, involving your senior stakeholders. You know, I, I think build, involve your volunteers in that process as well as Matt has said, in helping to shape that because they’re gonna know the impact better than you are.

Know who you allies are and nurture those allies, those people who can help you talk truth to power if you like. But also, just as I said before, I think understand what the challenges are for your CEO in terms of what are the bits of the strategy that isn’t being delivered. What are the opportunities where volunteering can increase your funds by bringing in new income?

Is there evidence that your volunteers are bigger donors to your organization? I bet there is. If you look hard enough, can you leverage that? Are there opportunities for, for you to make life easier for your colleagues in the organization? ’cause volunteers are taking time, pressure off them or, or making their work more effective or label them to focus on something else in the organization.

’cause of volunteers are doing such a great job, so are there’s some key processes that really deliver that impact. I think just sort of getting under the skin of those things just enables you to, to put that story across. And then the last one for me is think holistically. We often tend to measure one aspect of volunteering, so we’re looking at maybe the economic value of volunteering and that’s great, but actually we need to look at the economic value.

Of course we do, but we need to look at the impact on, on, on beneficiaries, the impact on society, the, the impact on, on, on different parts of the organization, different stakeholders. So a good, it’s much better to present an holistic view, a balanced view of how volunteering makes an impact than it’s bit like looking at Amazon and just looking at their share price.

You need more than that to know how much value everything you’re doing. You or Amazon’s probably a bad example, but you know what I mean. You don’t look at a commercial company. Yeah. Just by looking at their market share, you need a rounded picture of that organization. The same goes to volunteering. You need to see it in it in its whole, I think.

Matt: Don’t forget the value of volunteering for the volunteer themselves. Of course. Yeah, right. Of like that dual benefit notion is also really important. That’s good for attracting new people. It’s also good for attracting funding for volunteering programs as well. If you can talk about that dual benefit, not just the benefit you’re gonna.

Derive for others. But if you know, there’s that double benefit for volunteers themselves and being able to articulate that is also really good, I think.

Chris: And then think about reputation. Is there something that volunteering doing? I mean, your volunteers are the people in your local community. Very often they’re, they’re your local figureheads, they’re your local brand, they’re the people.

When you talk about your organization, it’s often the volunteers who the general public see and get to know how are your volunteers boosting the reputation of your organization? How are they mitigating risk in your organization? Whatever it is that excites your executives.

Tobi: Yeah. When I ponder this barriers, there’s a few mindsets that I think get in the way organizationally in our sector or lack of understanding.

One is. It doesn’t feel like sometimes that people are making the connection between talent and impact. So it’s your people. People will say, oh, we couldn’t do it without our volunteers. Our people are what makes us great. We’ll see these taglines, but we won’t see the investment in the people that are you fueling this impact and the fuel for the impact is the talent.

Matt, when you talked about this training that is growing your people to make this impact happen, and so figuring out how are those skills directly related to the quality of service provided to the service beneficiaries, reducing risk, all of those things that take that extra step to figure out how does our training really relate to that?

So there’s this. Lack of understanding or cognizance that talent is primarily fueling your impact. It’s, yes, your program model, but it’s the people working your program model. So there’s that piece. There’s also. Data and impact also is about iteration and innovation. So we’re in program design mode. When we’re doing impact analysis, it’s really about program design and then reflecting.

Okay, this is a design. I think sometimes it’s like you don’t see the forest for the trees. There is a design here, whether it’s intentional or not intentional, whether it’s organic and it’s just grown over time since, yeah. And your funders are driving why your program looks the way it does, or the preferences of volunteers are driving the way your program looks.

Or it’s intentional where you’re saying, you know what? We’ve looked at the evidence. We believe this type of intervention is going to bring about this result, and therefore we’re going to track that and make sure that it makes sense. And in the end. When we’re making iteration iterative changes, are we tracking that as well to see if that’s having a positive impact?

And I think when you’re doing some of these pilot testing and impact, Ana, you’re going to get funders lean into this. They love this stuff. Having worked with, I’ve built programs from scratch for, I built a couple programs for at-Risk Youth and Youth Unhoused, youth and employment and training programs, and I worked with funders to develop, luckily we got seed money and I developed the outcome metrics for the program.

So I got to work side by side with the funder and they loved the fact that we were really testing. Our hypotheses about what would help these kids the most get off the street. And I could have said like, I don’t need volunteers. They didn’t require me to have volunteers. But I thought to myself in the program model, I believe my hypothesis is that these young people are going to benefit from having a trusted guide who is an employed person inside the community that understands and can navigate the intricacies and subtleties of the workplace that my staff doesn’t have time to do, and I certainly don’t have time to do because I’m running the program.

Right? So there’s that design sort of thinking. And then I think this idea of just talked about talent, but also this idea of inve targeted investment in particular ways. To make impact happen. And I think there, I think that kind of thinking those kinds of areas are, are sometimes missing. When we do Vision Week, you’d be surprised how many people do not know how to write just an annual plan for volunteer engagement.

That’s like objectives, goal goals, objectives, activities, outcomes. I mean, it’s very. Clear the way we teach it at Vision Week. But many leaders of volunteers come on board in at Vision Week and they struggle with this. And it takes, by the fourth year, we’ve done it four years now. I’ve had people, I’m in my fourth year and I’ve really figured it out.

It’s working. It’s not an easy thing. It’s planning is not a skillset that we’re born with.

Chris: No. And a lot of volunteer leaders are people first and probably planners and data managers secondary. I mean, that tends to be the way and not always our favorite thing. ’cause we tend to come into this industry because we like working with people.

And so as few things that one of, as you speaking, one thing took me back to the point you made right at the beginning, which is about volunteering, being almost like a resource thing. We, we are thinking of unpaid resources, providing a service. Almost like a conveyor belt of doing the same roles for an unpaid basis, almost like unpaid staff.

Whereas actually, if you start thinking that as soon as you start thinking about talent, you start thinking of your volunteers more like partners in the calls that we’re trying to achieve. And then that whole mindset frees for me, frees your away from looking at processes. This is what we do, we, and we manage the risk as we go along and we make sure this works nice and smoothly into thinking how do we leverage this brilliant talent?

Yes. Of lived experience and skills that volunteers bring to make an impact for beneficiaries, for the environment, for the community, whatever your cause is. I mean, I think there’s a mindset shift that kind of goes with, so I think your point about talent I think is really, really important. Toby, and then for me, there’s the.

If you get to the end of this journey, back to your point on planning, really if you get, just think of the strength, the position of strength, you do get to at the end of this, when as a volunteering leader, you have a logic model that shows how your volunteering is making a big impact on your beneficiaries and your volunteers and et cetera, et cetera.

And you’ve got data and stories and narrative that back that up. Uh, maybe bringing in some external data from other people’s work as well to really add extra value to it. Once you get to that point, not only can you make a really a much stronger volunteering strategy for yourself because you know what works, what doesn’t, where the investment need is needed and where will make the biggest impact.

The next time that you go to write your volunteering, your, your organizational strategy, next time your CEO and your executives and your vice president, whoever is, are in a room trying to think, how do we. Put together the organization’s new five year plan. You’ve called the data already, you’ve got evidence of how you are gonna help drive this stuff forward.

So it puts the volunteerism person in a much stronger position going forward. And then you become a trusted partner in the organization because you are seen as more strategic, not just your volunteers. So I think it’s a win-win.

Tobi: I think too, you come not only with data, but with insights. Yes. That data is nothing by itself.

It’s the insights. And often data brings more questions. Right? And here’s what where this gives us wonders. We did our volunteer management progress report for 10 years every year. The data that I generated in that report gave me more questions than answers sometimes. And I’m like, yeah, that’s good research for you.

Let’s take a quick break. But Matt, before we take that break, I know you wanna add to this conversation, then we’re gonna take a break and I wanna get into sort of the how to of this, what get into the roll up our sleeves and how would we make this happen. But Matt, tell me your thoughts on this conversation.

Matt: I was gonna almost come back to the middle point about the design thinking point. ’cause I think that’s the, the tools we reach for to achieve this are really important too. And I think Chris and I were talking about this recently on a podcast about design thinking tools, right? And applying slightly different approaches to, to how we think through problems and how we think through challenges.

And I think some of those. Design thinking processes are by their very nature it’s more collaborative. Yes. They’re more exploratory. They really cha, you know, one of my favorite is this sort of double diamond design process, right? And that’s these kind of four stages. And the first stage is really about de determining what the problem is, discovery and defining that in quite tight terms.

That’s gonna require data, that’s gonna require collaboration. That’s gonna require really sharpening your mindset around what is it we’re trying to do here. And that really helps with impact because if you drill down and you think through things in that way, you achieve this certain clarity with your program.

It’s like, what actually is the problem here we’re trying to solve? What is it we’re trying to achieve? And only then you move on to, so what’s the solution to that? How do we develop it and how do we deliver it? And again, not being afraid to sort of prototype and try things is that thing that we set out to achieve actually achieving that end and co constantly going back.

And I think it challenges you to measure things and test things in a way that perhaps some of our more traditional approaches. Haven’t done or perhaps haven’t done as organically as a tool like that,

Tobi: and I think people will say, I can hear people. When do I have time to do that? Wait, when do I have time to do that?

Couple answers to the folks who are listening saying, when would I ever have time to do all of that? First of all, going back to this conversation about siloing. Are you the person who should be doing that? For example, collecting data, analyzing data. Do you not have a data analyst on in your organization?

Do you not have an IT department that is writing and helping provide data? For example, grant reports. Usually there’s an IT or a data group or person in an organization, a nonprofit who’s working with the development department. The development department isn’t generating the program data. There’s also D folks in program that are generating data for their grant reports.

I used to run programs that were funded by federal and state talk about generating data. So is the data, does this fall on the shoulders of the volunteer manager or the leader of volunteers? I, it’s a good question.

Chris: And fundraisers, fund fundraisers. Are your friends in this because they want the data to, to make the cases to get new money in, so there’s another

Tobi: Exactly.

Ex, exactly. So there’s like, where would you find the time? You actually don’t have to find the time you need to partner within your organization because it’s maybe not your job. So there’s that. Just a question to ask yourself. Right. The other question to ask yourself is where are you spending your time?

If you’re not spending your time generating greater understanding of the impact of volunteers you’re working on influence with impact. If you’re not doing that, what are you doing? And if you’re working on spreadsheets and you don’t have the software tools to actually a save time, or if you’re putting out fires because you haven’t set good boundaries about the guidelines of how folks in your organization need to work with volun, the volunteer department, even if you’re a department of one, even if you’re a part-time or you’re doing things that a volunteer could do.

It’s a hard transition. I know from being like down in the weeds to thinking strategically and being that strategic leader, but I do not believe that if you keep down in the weeds, you will ever get the influence and investment you need until you get into that strategic thinking mode. I mean, I’ve seen it in our Impact Lab members as they make that transition, they start to get invited to more meetings, they start to get more investment because they have become that strategic person.

So I feel like when people ask How am I gonna have the time to do this? How do you have the time not to do it? But also do you need to do all of it? Right. Let’s take a quick break ’cause I wanna talk more specifically, ’cause I know people would love to have some practical how-tos. So let’s take a break from my chat with Chris Wayne and Matthew cobble on how to build influence with impact.

We will be right back and we’re gonna give you some how-tos, so don’t go anywhere. Hey, are you looking to upgrade and modernize your volunteer program? Or maybe you’re building one from scratch and you’re just not sure where to start? If so, we’ve got the perfect resource for you. The Volunteer Pro Impact Lab, having built several direct service programs from the ground up, I know that it doesn’t happen by accident.

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If you’re interested in learning more, go to ball pro.net/join and we’ll share how to get started and what’s involved. Again, that’s ball pro.net/join. Okay, we’re back with a conversation about building influence with impact with Chris Wade and Matthew Kabul. This has been such a great conversation about challenges, about mindset, about maybe shifting our thinking about volunteerism in general, but let’s get into the bras tacks here.

How do you recommend that leaders of volunteers show volunteers measurable influence on organizational success? We’ve talked a little bit, but let’s get into more detail. What do you feel are the most compelling measurements of change? And let’s set aside for a minute the stories that folks tell. We talked about this before the break.

There is that de human decision making is often driven by emotions, and so the stories of individuals and how they’ve been impacted by the work of volunteers and the work of the organization. Are things that help tip, tip the scale often, but we’ve also need to show where has that investment gone and what change has happened.

So what are some of those measures that you feel are really top line that you found in your experience that people lean into and go, oh, that’s interesting.

Chris: S So often it comes down to money, doesn’t it? But you can’t get away from it. So especially when you’re trying to influence executives or indeed funders.

So opportunities to sh show how you can le leverage that to bring in more income to the organization. Leverage volunteering to save time and make the organization more effective and efficient. Build up the reputation of the organization, but then also stories that really show or sorry, or evidence that really shows.

Life changing experiences, particularly when you, as you say, in a service organization. So evidence that really shows a quality of life change for the people you’re working with. Evidence that shows that people’s health outcomes become better. And then externally thinking about, particularly with partner organizations, if you’re getting money from statutory or governmental bodies and so on, how you have shown how your volunteers, for instance, an organization I like a lot over here called Volunteer Matters, provides lots of data to show that they’re small community programs.

Maybe a program helping retirees combat loneliness and get connected to a new kind of social life. After volunteering, you know that they will come forward with data that shows how it’s reduced their, the chances that they’re gonna turn up in, in the doctor’s, um, waiting room with a socially isolation kind related situation.

So it’s saving money for the health service over here, which of course is all publicly funded or that people are going to be out of. People are in a hospital program, are gonna be outta hospital much, much quicker and freeing up beds in the hospital to saving hospital money. Those kind of things really.

Tend to make a difference, and with a little bit of planning, it’s quite possible to get that kind of data to really show how the work that your volunteers are doing is making a meaningful difference to people’s lives. But it does mean taking the before and after measure very often, which you have to remember.

Tobi: Yes. Yes. Matt, what are your favorite ways, favorite outcomes? What? What are the what? What’s the evidence that you find is the most compelling? When you’re trying to leverage influence with impact,

Matt: I think you’ve got to take a little bit of a moment to look at like what’s your organizational objectives?

What’s your organization trying to achieve, and what are some of the local community goals, or what are some of the societal goals that are looking to be achieved? And some of that is about looking internally, what’s your own organization trying to achieve and trying to deliver for the world? What problem are you trying to solve?

What, what is it that you know and think around that, but also looking externally, what are the challenges in the local community? What are the challenges, society? My, my interesting example around this one, I suppose again. It goes back to my writing for the Disabled Association days. We did a, we did a study on dual benefit of volunteering.

So we were really interested in how, although we weren’t an organization that was like our core purpose wasn’t to deliver volunteering. We had 18,000 volunteers all over the UK benefiting from this. And we did a study to understand the impact of that. And the key things that came out of that were things like reducing social isolation and loneliness, people developing skills and learning things.

We had some really interesting stuff around physical activity, which really linked into the world of sport. And one of our, one of our big funders was an organization called Sport England. And what was their objectives? One of their big objectives was trying to get people more physically active. We had.

Thousands of volunteers that were being more physically active through our program. Mm-hmm. That was the impact of it. It was an unintended consequences, but it was delivered. This was also around the time when, when the government was of the time was, and I hope they get back to this at some point, but was really focusing in on mental health, tackling, loneliness, social isolation.

And we found that there was a lot around that as well. So we could really connect this stuff through our own organization, what were volunteers helping our own organization achieve, but we could also link this into these wider societal issues that were almost unintended consequences. And it was a really, it was a really powerful and persuasive.

Activity for us, for funders, for government as well. We were looking at trying to influence more social prescribing at the time and things like that as well. So yeah, really. Yeah. Lots of opportunities around that. And practical examples, hopefully.

Tobi: Yeah, I think, uh, we talk about, I, I do a lot of training on alignment and I love this idea of this trifecta, this gold trifecta of the community, the volunteer in the organization.

And when you can find things that are right in the middle where that those Venn diagrams overlap, that is the most compelling outcome you can choose. So for example, when I was working with unhoused youth, we are tr getting folks into transitional living, getting them off the streets. So you think about the community or the employer.

The, what’s their interest? I don’t want kids hanging out in front of my doorstep because I, it scares away my customers and it creates a mess in front of my storefront, right? For volunteers, it’s, Hey, I may have been unhoused myself. I, or I understand in the past, or I understand what employment means to people ’cause I’ve struggled in my life or for some other reason.

In my history or in my experience, I understand why this is so important that these kids find a different way to live and be able to get into employment and be able to improve their quality of life. So that’s for the volunteer. And then you think the organization, well, our organization was a homeless youth serving organ organization that had a 360 degree services.

And when I was brought on, that was the thing that was missing was employment and training and getting people back into employment, back in off the, not only off the street, but actually making a living wage so that they could afford their own apartment, et cetera. And so those three things went really well into this.

Im outcome metric of how many kids get jobs. How many kids get jobs and stay and another outcome is and are able to transition into independent living. So that made, it makes so I can tell that story and collect those data and share those data. It was really easy for everybody to understand. It was compelling, it was central.

It wasn’t how many volunteers are satisfied or what the retention rates are on volunteerism. It had nothing to do with that. We didn’t even track that. Actually. We focused entirely on like the impact.

Chris: I do a lot of work. I’m a big fan of a balanced scorecard. I’m in fact, most of the work I do with clients when we do impact work is around balance scorecards.

And I even got a one to online balance scorecard tool. And the reason I like that, back to that holistic bit is accurate. You described in one level you’ve got what does it deliver for the organization and the organization’s be beneficiaries. That’s one perspective. One group people, what does it deliver for the volunteers themselves.

And that’s. Important. What does it deliver for the investors or the potential investors and the funders in your organization? What does it deliver for the wider community? See, and then if you balance scorecard, there’s always two other sections, which is, one is what’s, how does your organization or your volunteering add value and how can it add growth to an organization?

So there’s a, that’s the potential. That’s where can I go next? Where can I, where I can, where can I get that backlog of things I want to fund in volunteering funded? ’cause I can demonstrate there’s a growth potential. And what are the processes that really make life easier for my colleagues? What are the things that really work?

So once you start taking that holistic thing? Yeah, I mean, so for instance, I worked with a food bank and some of the big things are really obvious. People are getting food. We are feeding families who weren’t otherwise been fed. But when you really start to think what we gonna measure in terms of the life impact of that volunteering, it was more things like, what was the, were kids in school, in that family as a result of it, have their grades improved as a result of actually having food on the table?

That this particular organization partnered with Benefits advice agency as well. So when they were getting, also getting their food parcels, they were able to speak to somebody about how to get more government benefits. So there was another benefit they had because it was helping them out of this sort of trap of poverty.

And we went right down to the micro level where we had V, they were noticing one of their sites when they had a volunteer stand outside the building. P people, they realized there were people who were sitting in their cars and too nervous to come into the building because they felt embarrassed to ask for free food.

But by having someone really welcoming on the outside of the building, they were able to entice people in much quicker. So they actually got more people through that whole funnel in the first place to get all the benefits that followed. But you just need to just really think quite holistically, but also quite deeper what’s, it’s not about process.

It’s not about volunteers do X, Y, and Z and that happens. It’s about what is the life changing influ influences, what are the long term impacts of what happens as a result of volunteering? And yeah, it gets so exciting once you get into, you get people in a nice room with a load of flip chart papers and, and some sticky notes and really start to build this, you know, what are we, what are we actually delivering for our volunteering?

It’s, yeah, I, yeah, I think it’s really exciting, Toby.

Tobi: Yeah, absolutely. Matt. Share. I think people are kind of wondering, maybe at this point, okay, I wanna do this, but how? How do I collect evidence? What have you found to be the easiest? Maybe not to say it’s easy, maybe simple. What have, or what are the different ways you’ve collected evidence?

And maybe did you collaborate with anybody else in the organization? Was it you only collecting the evidence? Give us some sort of case study of something or some ways, some methods of collecting evidence.

Matt: Yeah, no problem. I’ll talk about, I’ll talk about too, and I’ll sort of lean into the data side rather than the story side for this.

So a real kind of, this isn’t necessarily easy, but I think a good tool still and one that you can, an approach you can use is almost sort of like an action research approach, which I would call it using a tool like an outcome star or something like that. An outcome star essentially is, it looks like a bit of a star, it looks like a bit of a graph.

You choose a number of areas and you essentially do a sort of before and after intervention measurement, right? So. We were using this to track the impact made through riding activities for disabled people, and we’d have a number of measures like confidence, enjoyment, physical change, bits and pieces like that.

Right. This isn’t, this isn’t like hard academic research necessarily, right? This is that kind of action research. That’s right. It’s, I think you need to have a. Good enough approach and my personal advice would be, don’t get too academic about this. This is a tool to measure change and measuring change in some form is, is better than not doing it at all.

A simple five point scale, doing a doing one measurement at the start, perhaps one measurement six weeks later. That was a tool that really worked for me in my setting. And if you scale that up, it was easy for volunteers to do. It was easy to explain. You can do it with hardly any money. ’cause you can do a paper-based system.

If you want a fancy digital system, great. There’s probably digital tools out there now that would help you do all of that. But you can go very basic on this or you can go very advanced. But it’s a nice way to do a before and after measure. And so that’s one I would take. So yeah, outcome stars, five point scales, measure some of this stuff before and after the other area is surveys, right?

Like it sounds so basic, but most of us have got, I suspect, access to some sort of basic surveying tools. And I think don’t underestimate the power of a very simple survey, one or two questions even. Delivered consistently in the right way can be a really powerful way to, to measure change. I mentioned that report we did where we were looking at the benefits to volunteers.

That one was driven a lot through surveys. Also, where I work now at the Motor Neuro Disease Association, we have a sort of volunteer visiting survey and we’ve used surveys in the past there to really understand the difference that the people experiencing that service feel, how it benefits them, but also the volunteer, how they feel it benefits them as well.

And again, this is not like. My advice really would be, don’t overthink this. Don’t sort of, don’t make it through academic, right? This is about getting a good enough approach to get some data that’s gonna help you understand the impact of your work and the approaches you’re taking.

Tobi: Yeah. I mean we’re not gonna do like unless you get funding to do like, yeah, regression analysis and correlation and all that good stuff is great if you get funding for that.

But for your purposes, you’re just trying to leverage in influence with impact and you need to show that impact to get that influence. And I love this idea before and after pre and post. I love this idea of, I like point of service survey perception surveys when you’re working with human beings and human change, if you don’t have access to school records, to people’s health records, to all of those things that might help you determine whether or not you’ve had an impact.

And even then you can’t claim causation. No. But you can ca claim correlation, right? But you can use, I remember I was in the Atlanta airport. In the Atlanta airport, they just have a simple three ordinal scale. It’s a frown, a neutral, and a smiley face. And as you leave the bathroom it asks you how clean was the bathroom today?

And like I’m kind of thinking, do I wanna touch that screen? That’s a whole nother story. But this point of service data collection, you could have a couple of questions, a poll. People are like, oh, how am I gonna get the data? How am I gonna get people to fill out the data? How about just having a tablet that you ask?

So can you tell us? And you hand ’em the tablet, they type in and they, you can even use ordinal scales where it’s just happy faces. Like our pain scales when we go to the doctor. And you can collect these data really quickly. Doesn’t have to be like overly onerous, but you can check over time too. If you make an, if you have a.

If you’re collecting over time and you make an intervention, like let’s say you change your volunteer training for example, then you can see did satisfaction or I like Net Promoter Score as a really great loyalty score that also speaks to satisfaction, that kind of thing. I know, Chris, you’ve been, you, I know you’ve got something to add because you’re leaning in and, but we’re almost, we’re really to the top of the hour, so Chris, share what you’d like to share and then I think we’ll wrap up.

Yeah, yeah, sure.

Chris: Just, just a few. I mean, I absolutely echo everything everybody said, but just a few practical things as you were speaking is, one is I think sometimes when I work with clients, they’re collecting too much data.

Tobi: Yeah, so

Chris: sometimes just be really clear about what’s the stuff that really matters, and not least because volunteers get fed up of collecting too much data too.

So be really focused. I love a really small scale, simple pilot. It can tell you so much and it doesn’t have to cost the earth. So a really simple pilot that then you can extend to other sites or other parts of your volunteering really powerful and tells a good story. And then my last little tip, and it harks back to somebody, a guest we had on one of our podcasts called Matthew Hick from the Science Museum Group, who deployed a brilliant group of volunteers whose role was to gather impact, gather evidence, and do research.

So just don’t feel you need to do it yourself sometimes. ’cause actually there are some experts with lived experience and educational experience who can do this for you.

Tobi: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, when I was on our executive board at Master Gardeners where I volunteer, I’m in my 10th year now volunteering with them.

When I was on the executive committee, we ran our own survey of our volunteers. We, we wanted to know, we were doing a strategic plan and we wanted to know what, how people were feeling about their experience, where we could make improvements and we ran it ourselves. And one of the board members had access to Qualtrics and this whole thing.

We really were able to do this on our own and learn a lot in the process and be very responsive to what our volunteers needs were. This has been such a great conversation, a little philosophical, a little bit of how to, a little bit of just reflection on transformation and I think that’s the key. How can we show.

Incredible ways, the transformations that are happening every day inside our volunteer programs. And I think that’s the big question really on the table. And so I think we’ve gotten lots of information from Matt and Chris. This has been a great conversation. Before we wrap up though, I’d love to ask, and I’ll start with Matt, what’s one big thing you’re looking forward to in the year ahead?

Matt: Oh, good question. I am in my work role, in my volunteering role, my volunteering hat on, I, I’m really excited next year to, we’re, we’re gonna try some new things with recruitment and I’m really excited to start to think about that in some new ways. There’s some real, I really, I’m really looking forward to bringing together lots of the different things that Chris and I have been really lucky.

We’ve had some great guests on our podcast and had some great conversations, including yourself, Toby. But really trying to bring all of that insight together and some of the, lots of the things I’ve learned and really. Activating some new approaches to volunteer recruitment, and that’s what I’m excited about in that world anyway.

Yeah.

Tobi: Awesome. What about you, Chris? What are you looking forward to?

Chris: Wow. I mean, apart from loads more great podcast conversations, which I, I do, it’s a labor of love. That’s something I really enjoy. Your yours are now? Yes. And ours as well, but I think I’ve been doing lots more work in this impact space, so I probably should finish there to say that I’ve been working, as you said now overseas, and I’ve got partners in, particularly in Arabia who are really driving this kind of work forward.

And what excites me is. Certainly in the UK and certainly there I am hearing more appetite for people to really think about the impact of volunteering than I’ve heard for many years. It feels like it’s a hot topic and I’m all for that and I’m just hope that really means that we as a profession really start to sing our successes much more louder, much more loudly even, and really make a difference in, in and elevate volunteer into the position it deserves in our organizations.

Tobi: And 2026 is the UN International year, the volunteer. So here we are. So it. Here it is. What are the, what’s the best way for folks to get in touch with you? Both. I am gonna put lots of links in the show notes and I also, I’ve been taking notes on some of the resources that you and ideas you’ve been sharing and I’m gonna look those up and link to those as well.

We, I’ve done training on balance scorecard, we have information on that, but we can also link to those. So if folks are interested in ideas, I can put those in the show notes. But what’s the best way to get in touch with you, Chris?

Chris: Well, you could find me on LinkedIn as very long weird LinkedIn address, which is Chris Wade chartered, F-C-I-P-D, which, but, uh, I really must shorten that and find a better one.

Or you can contact me via my website, which is www dot time. T-I-I-M-T-I-M-E-F-O-R impact.co.uk. So www dot time for Impact do co uk

Tobi: and you’ve got a Volunteer Impact Scorecard as well as a benchmark volunteer experience survey there. So those resources I will post in the show notes gang. So don’t hesitate to afford yourself of those resources.

Matt, what about you? What’s the best way to get in touch with you?

Matt: Best way to find me is probably on LinkedIn. I’m Matthew Cobble on LinkedIn. I have a more straightforward LinkedIn handle than Chris. I’d love to carry on the conversation about this kind of stuff with anyone that anyone wants to. I’m really passionate about, about Impact.

I’m really passionate about volunteering and community and movement building. Yeah, we’d love to. Would love to speak more with anyone that would like to.

Tobi: Awesome. This has been great. I love this free flow. Ideas across the pond around the world. It’s so amazing. We’re more alike than different. I think the more I talk with people around the world, the more I realize we’re more alike than different, and we’re all struggling with the same things.

So it is community that will be the solution, and it’s so fun to build community on this podcast. So I really appreciate you both being here. And folks, if you like this episode and wanna share it with others, I really recommend you do. And also, of course, we always would love to have ratings and reviews, those five star ratings, keep us visible to others that might benefit from what we do.

So appreciate you all. Have a great rest of your week. Happy holidays, folks. We’ll be here next week. We’re not taking any breaks in the holidays, so we’ll be here every week, same time, same place here on the Volunteer Nations. So take care everybody.