YouSaid · the spoken record

Charles Best

lines on the record: 50
first: 2020-06-30
most recent: 2020-06-30
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Masters of Scale is a whitewater original. The show is recorded remotely with sanitized audio gear. Our executive producers are June Cohen and Darren Triff. Our supervising producer is Jay Punjabi. Our producers are Chris McLeod, Adam Skeuse, Jenny Cataldo, Jordan McLeod, Catherine Clark Gray, Halle Bondi, Christina Gonzalez, and Ben Manila. Our editor-at-large is Bob Saffian. Original music and sound design by Ryan Holliday and Daniel Nissenbaum. Audio editing by Keith J. Nelson. Mixing and mastering by Brian Pugh. Special thanks to Chrichier, Elisa Schreiber, David Sanford, Saida Sepieva, Adam Heiner, Emily McManus, Kelsey Capitano, Tim Cronin, Sarah Sandman, Charlie Maness, and Colin Howarth. Visit Masterscale.com to find a transcript for this episode. Be sure to subscribe to our email newsletter.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Can learn from home until it's safe to return to school. We're all hoping that soon donors choose, like everyone else, can revert to the regular funding models and routines. We're all hoping that we can find our way out of trying and troubling circumstances In times like these, small steps are sometimes the only ones we can take. So the more finite, tidy, achievable goals we can lay our hands on, the easier it will be to do the right thing, and then the next right thing. I'm Reid Hoffman. Thank you for listening.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So far, thousands of teachers have been connected with funding that will go straight to these student learn from home kits. A number that will surely be higher by the time this episode airs. If you've enjoyed this episode and you want to share it with a friend, an easy way to share it is to send this link listen dot master of scale dot com slash donors choose that's listen dot master of scale dot com slash donors choose. This link will go right to the episode and I'll open the episode in whatever podcast app your friend uses. Tackling inequality during a pandemic is a huge undertaking, but donors choose is fighting it in typical style. By zeroing in on a single manageable problem, they focused on optimizing their delivery of the basics, knowing that those small care packages will make a huge difference in how successfully.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Charles worries that one of the fallouts from the coronavirus is a deepening of the class divide, and thus the performance divide between richer and poorer students”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Once more, donors choose saw what gold Stephen needed to accomplish just as much as Stephen saw what they needed, and they worked to achieve it together. This approach has proven essential during this spring's unprecedented disruption due to the coronavirus. Avid listeners may remember I spoke with Charles back in April about what donors choose was doing during the COVID nineteen crisis. As stay at home orders drove kids of all ages out of schools and into remote learning environments, donors choose had to rethink entirely their mission and workflow.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was two thousand ten's rally to restore sanity and or fear, the sort of satirical but also real rally at the National Mall in Washington, DC. Colbert co hosted it with John Stewart of the Daily Show, and it drew around two hundred fifteen thousand people.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The data was clear. The name matching poem performed three times better than the runner-up, the one based on location. We could spend an entire follow up episode diving into the psychology of this insight. But the main point is crystal clear. Personalization matters when it comes to asking people to pitch in and solve problems. Our human need to do good in the world is so personal. Finding new ways to leverage that need into collective action has been the secret to donors chooses growth. From picking projects close to your heart or your name to receiving reams of photos and thank you letters, the act of giving is tangible, personal, and intimate. And when the project is complete, the evidence is right there in your hands. It gives both donor and recipient an almost addictive sense of accomplishment, a box fully checked, an achievement high. Stephen Colbert experienced that feeling too.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I want you to pay special attention to this insight from Charles. Donors Choose has built search functionality into their interface that lets donors find projects close to their heart, that's based on subject matter, geographical region, and even teacher name.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To re engage their mailing lists. That means from the donor's perspective, it can feel as though the work is never done. There are only so many urgent request emails you can get before you start tuning them all out. By contrast, the donor shoes classroom campaigns always have an end, and when it's time to re engage givers, they do it by flagging projects similar to ones they back before. It frames reengagement on a case by case opt in basis.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I suspect you got there anyway. It was a natural kind of like, ooh, we have smartphones. The teachers have a smartphone. What can we do to make this more human? Because obviously reducing friction is one of the really important things that get to scale, but people don't realize that increasing the value, the emotional connectivity also creates the ability to scale, right? And so it isn't just like, okay, how do we take all the friction off? That's important, but also how do we create that emotional touch, that magical moment, because obviously as you guys are the leaders in, is that magical moment then brings the donor back to do it again harnessing this so-called magical moment is key to leveraging small wins to tackle big problems. Much like customer outreach is a constant in business. Development directors work hard to find new ways.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One small thing you might do is you might have the teacher upload the pictures of the letters because then you could create like a little digital montage. You know, you could even have like all the kids say thank you into the smartphone, right? Like, you know, hey, thank you, yay! So forth, with a little montage, and you could create a digital thing that way. Still do the physical letters, but you could do that as an add-in that I think might be fun.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“From my own experience as a donor, let me tell you that receiving the thank you packet from the kids is a pure delight. It's a human, tangible way to close a loop between donors and students. So it wasn't a part of the process they could compromise.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This attitude embodies what makes donors choose approach so compelling. It's hard to manifest a sense of growing momentum from crossing off a shopping list. But helping a special project get funded is an excitement generator. It's the heart of what crowdfunding is all about. But back to the problem at hand. How to scale the process of vetting those projects The one area that Charles says donors choose is having a harder time doing that is in one of the most valued handcrafted aspects of the donor experience. The student thank you letters. You'll remember that core of the life cycle of each project is documentation by teachers and students. They take pictures on their field trip or hatching their butterfly cocoons. They then send those photos with handwritten thank yous to donors choose AQ where the letters are verified and sent to the donors themselves.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Making sure all listed projects were worthy of donors' choose standards was paramount to maintaining donors' trust. But it's also a challenge to scale. Charles couldn't afford to throw money at the problem. Once again, Charles looked more closely at the resources he already had, and took it one step or one F tag at a time. Last time the answer was using his own students to hand address letters. This time the answer lay with teachers.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The expansion to other regions marked a massive jump in scale for the organization, which meant all of those handcrafted, high touch ways donors choose did things would have to find a way to grow as well.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But there's a reason Charles didn't listen. He knew there was value in building this intense layer of integrity assurance. Seemingly scalable or not. We'll dig into that guarantee a little more in a moment, but it was that promise of integrity that helped bring donors choose to someone whose endorsement is a scale multiplier all on its own. In two thousand three, Oprah had Charles Honor Show. You can guess what happened next.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Remember, donors choose all the classroom supplies, and so they found themselves shipping them off to schools in farther and farther flung districts.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it is awesome even in these small crisis moments to see people rise above themselves and rise above ego to say, look, your stupid email isn't what matters here. Charles' ability to make amends simply, not to mention that reporter's understanding, led to donors' chooses enjoying steady growth after a round of national press. But as they scaled, their high touch approach proved to be a challenge.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're back with Charles Best, founder and CO of Donors Choose. When we left Charles, he had utterly blown it with a reporter from the Times, putting his feature story in jeopardy. He wasn't sure what to do, so he just put one foot in front of the other and walked himself over to the cupboard where they keep humble pie.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Charles took that opening and spent the weekend sending her a rundown of projects from classrooms near Ground Zero. He also called and left a voicemail asking for one last look.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Alter wrote up donors' shoes for Newsweek's website, calling in an experiment that might one day change the face of philanthropy. The Newsweek piece was Charles' first big press write up, and Charles sought to leverage this small win into a bigger one. So he reached out again to that reporter from the Times.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Charles saw that this could be a moment to highlight these classrooms in their time of need. It was time to leverage the power of small goals into a larger movement. He started reaching out to press outlets to try to get some traction.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Charles had finally gotten his momentum. He watched as donor's shoes grew, incrementally but steadily from a few schools in the Bronx to classrooms all over the city. Then came september eleventh, and classrooms in lower Manhattan needed the city's support.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Isolating the needs of the teachers into something simple, tangible, and finite. Each donor played their part in achieving this satisfying effag.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As Hail Mary's go, this one was well aimed. Charles had graduated from Yale, and before that, from an exclusive private boarding school, his alumni lists were flush with targets that might be in a good position to help. But more importantly, his outreach strategy made a modest, specific ask. Give ten dollars, become a classroom hero. The letters addressed by real students in their own real handwriting. Charles and his volunteers were offering a simple, clear step toward feeling like a hero. They could leverage the simplicity of their request to immediate effect. thirty thousand dollars later the donor side of the flywheel was up and running donors choose was on its way Charles Insight had been not only in spotting and harnessing this invisible network of helpers, it was in identifying the hook that would compel them to tackle.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Charles knew he had to get that flywheel turning by any means necessary. Because if your platform doesn't start gaining momentum, your marketplace falls apart. But in this case, it was only gaining momentum on one side. There weren't actually scores of funders awaiting these projects. So Charles leaned on another part of his teeny ecosystem.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've spoken before on this show about the importance of handcrafting your core experience and getting your first interactions right before trying to scale them. That's true in spades for donors choose. The first interactions were so handcrafted they were almost exclusively sourced from Charles himself.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Once received, the teachers and students document themselves using the donated goods. Pictures of kids reading the books or sewing their quilts or attending the museum along with the handwritten thank yous and a full financial report are then sent to every door who contributed. Charles' first great challenge was to build this charitable marketplace from scratch, which is definitely a beeh. But Charles turned this beeh into a series of F tags I asked him about it. You know, a marketplace startup is, you know, it's not one of those things where you build it and people will come. What were some of the secret tips or the grit or the hustle for getting that initial flywheel going?”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Barebones website aside, Charles Vision for Donors Shoes was as a sort of philanthropic marketplace. Any public teacher can list a class project on the site, but unlike most other crowdfunding platforms, the money donated isn't sent to the school itself. Donors choose stays in the equation.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The teachers of Wing's Academy in the Bronx were certainly on the front lines. Public schools have always been chronically underfunded, especially in lower income neighborhoods. Schools tend to supplement hollow budgets with things like bake sales or raffles for the parents. But in our poorest communities, that's just shifting the burden to families that are already struggling. Charles wanted a way to reach beyond those families, to people, maybe even strangers with the means to help.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The ban was shortened around $60,000. Their manager told them they would need to find something else to do So the band reached out to their email list contacts, all 6,000 of them. They hit their goal, then hit the road. Oh, and they fired their manager. To this day, Merillion is cited as the fathers of online crowdfunding. But they hadn't built a platform to collect donations, which brings us back to Charles.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is a fascinating piece of history we can take just a moment to revisit. 1885, a disassembled Statue of Liberty sits in New York Harbor. Funds to install the statue have dried up, and Congress can't agree on a bill to fix it. Enter Renault newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer. He runs ads in his paper, The New York World, asking citizens to chip in. 160,000 people do, with most donations coming in at less than a dollar each. Of course, we know how that story ends, and we have the statue to prove it. But do you know the story of the first online crowdfunding campaign?”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Charles was talking about crowdfunding, a system that's utterly commonplace today, for filmmakers looking to finish a short or founders looking to fund a product. In the year two thousand, this crowdfunding concept was decidedly less mainstream, but it wasn't entirely new.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Charles was a first year history teacher at Wings Academy in the Bronx, lacking a budget for basic supplies was an everyday reality for him and his fellow teachers.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Listen dot masterscale dot com slash donors choose that's listen dot master donors choose donors choose was the world's first online crowdfunding platform founded years before Kickstarter Patreon or Indiegogo But Charles didn't set out to make crowdfunding history. He had a more modest goal in mind.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To grab first. Hint it should probably be one you can reach. On today's episode, we're going to set aside the beehs, the big Harriadaceous goals, and focus on the F tags, finite, tidy, achievable goals. I wanted to talk to Charles Best about this because as founder and CO of the charity donors choose, he knows all about F tags. For twenty years donors has been helping public school teachers get funding and supplies for the classroom. In that time, the organization has grown from funding a handful of projects at a single school in the Bronx to funding thousands of projects in all fifty states. This spring, they raise millions of dollars and counting for the coronavirus relief fund, providing teachers with learned home kits to send to students lacking vital resources. And I should add, if you'd like to share this episode with a friend, send this.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is Masters of Scale. Emrid Hoffman, co founder of LinkedIn, partner at Greylock, and your host, and I believe the secret to success lies in F tags, finite, tidy, achievable goals if you leverage each small win into the next and the next and the next. Here's a riddle for you. What do you get when you cross the wicked witch with a bumblebee? Answer Agades aside, behag also means something else. Behag is short for big, hairy, audacious goal. It's a concept Jim Collins introduced in his book Built to Last, and business leaders talk about Behags constantly. There's nothing wrong with setting big, audacious goals. In fact, I encourage it, but setting wildly ambitious long range objectives doesn't tell you much about how to start. If you set out to climb a mountain, you need to know.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Today, Stephen Colbert is on their board of directors and has raised millions of dollars for donors choose. But it started with a single self contained success. I believe the secret to success lies in F tags, finite, tidy, achievable goals. If you leverage each small win into the next and the next and the next.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the donations poured in. Thousands of people donated to Philadelphia classrooms and hundreds of thousands of dollars were raised. A fake campaign with real results for donors choose. And it's worth pausing just a moment to ask why Stephen said yes to Charles in the first place. Yes, Charles solved the problem of campaign donations, and yes, Stephen is a generous soul. But Stephen says there was also something else.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Stephen understood the platform that he had, and he leveraged it to achieve his new goal. Use his political momentum to get money in the hands of classrooms that needed it.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was a serious setback, but you recall that Stephen's actual goal wasn't to get elected, it was to shed light on the electoral process and how it moves money. For this, Stephen was still in the game, with donors shoes at his side. Meanwhile, back on the actual campaign trail, things were heating up. A young senator named Barack Obama had come out of nowhere and was neck and neck with a legendary Hillary Clinton”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Colbert won that straw poll, but the real winners were the public schools of South Carolina. Stephen's on-air promotion drove huge donations. So Stephen was meeting goal after goal in his quest to run for president. But there was trouble ahead.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was a neat solution to a vexing challenge. Gaul achieved, but donors choose founder Charles Best took the idea to the next level.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Donors choose a non profit that connects donors with local classrooms in need of supplies for students all over the country. And Craig Newmark was a board member.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Stephen launched his parody campaign to shine a light on money and politics. Now real voters wanted to give him real money, which was a problem.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Overcome this problem, Stephen would fight fiery chips with fiery chips. His legal team found a loophole. Instead of Doritos sponsoring his candidacy, they would sponsor his coverage of his own candidacy”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At the time, Stephen wasn't a host of a late night talk show. He was the fake host of a fake talk show, as he reminds us.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was nothing compared to the goal Stephen took in 2007. Possibly the most daunting goal there is. He ran for president of the United States.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Although daunting for some, Stephen is now accustomed to being his own production team thanks to three months of filming at home during quarantine. Also knows that to achieve any goal, you have to start somewhere. In this case, start screwing in the mic stand.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Stephen Colbert is the kind of guy who always has a goal. Currently, his goal is to set up the microphone we sent him for our interview. It arrives in a serious-looking Pelican case.”
2020-06-30 · Masters of Scale · Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT