Hello. Welcome to the Judge Ben Show. My name is Ben Joseph. I'm a retired Vermont Superior Court Judge. This is one in a series of programs in which I interview people about issues that concern Vermont and enforcement of its laws. Today my guest is Doug DeSavito, who is now the state's attorney for Grand Isle County. I want to say that some time ago when I was sitting every day I was up in Grand Isle once and then came this young court officer Doug DeSavito and it seems almost in the blink of an eye he became an attorney and now he is the prosecutor for Grand Isle County and does according to all accounts a really very very good job and he's most respected in the community. Doug how long have you been the Grand Isle state's attorney? Six years. Six years? Yeah. My guy tonsil. Time flies and you were a court officer in Grand Isle right? Did I get that right? Yeah from 2006 to 2012 I was the court officer for the courthouse of North Hero. I passed the bar in May of 2011 and left the judiciary in July of 2012 and took a job at a small firm in Burlington and then I was elected state's attorney in November of 2014. Time flies. Well I want to just get right into this business. Have you proposed that some defendants convicted of repeated DUI offenses should have their automobiles confiscated? Yes. And is there a law in the books that makes such a confiscation possible? Yeah there is. The law was passed when Governor Howard Dean was in office and it was sponsored by and supported by many legislators some of which are still in the legislature today and it went into effect in 1999 and up until 2001 they had confiscated about 80 some odd vehicles and I think most of that was the state had hired a one prosecutor to have the budget for that to actually go after these convictions to get the vehicles confiscated and then it just went away. It went away. The law didn't go away but the use of the law sort of faded out. You know I think people aren't aware I know some of the statistics and in the four years prior to this year 63 people were killed in Vermont in accident where people have been driving under the influence of marijuana and I think people aren't aware of that. This year so far there have been 10 reported such cases from the Vermont Agency of Transportation where people were driving under the influence of marijuana and of course the numbers for alcohol are just out of this world. As of November 10th of this year there's been 67 fatalities on Vermont roads and at the same time last year in 2019 there were only 37 and over a 10-year average the 10-year average of fatalities is 53 and so there's a significant spike and I noticed this earlier in the year and I had a gutted it was I was getting several multiple DUI convictions someone DUI 3 DUI 4 and I felt that something needs to be done and so I issued a memo to the Vermont State Police the Department of Fish and Game and the Grand Isle County Sheriff's Department saying I want you to get a little bit more information I want to get the registered vehicle owner that the vet get everything in your affidavit because I'm going to start utilizing these laws and then just about a week after we had a really significant weekend of I think there was like five or six fatalities over that weekend wait in Vermont or Vermont and so then I decided I'm gonna let the press know and so I issued a press release saying that this is what's going to happen in Grand Isle County if you are convicted of driving without a license based on a prior DUI or driving under the influence second third fourth offense the law how the law reads if I can now go ahead the law reads that if you have a conviction of driving with your license suspended on the basis of a DUI conviction and you drive again and get convicted of that another DLS a DLS number two driving with license suspended DLS DLS number two right the state can actually ask the judge to immobilize that vehicle so it gets immobilized they don't forfeit it but it gets immobilized for a period of time I think upwards of 18 months whoa well where is the car they during that time is it in the court parking lot no no we would store that car you store yep and I've talked to the sheriff in the county him and I are constant communication on all things Grand Isle County so the law is is that it can be immobilized the same for a DUI number two driving under the influence second time it can be immobilized if you get convicted of a DUI number three or a DLS number three then the state can ask at the court order that it be forfeited and that's what that's I filed right now I think I have about seven or eight petitions in the Vermont Superior Court Grand Isle unit for immobilization or forfeiture have you ever been successful in forfeiting a vehicle for someone like under the circumstances since I just started doing this several months ago I have not had any of the cases that I filed result in a conviction yet and the mostly because the courts are are not hearing trials right now they're not doing a lot right now so but you know I often think of the Vermont Constitution that guarantees every citizen access to the courts and I know now from from you and from other people that the delays are just they're stretching into years people can wait years for it to get it get a case heard and people you know it I would really encourage more members of the public once the pandemic's over but to actually go to court you know in Grand Isle we have court on Thursdays and I think the public would benefit and justice would benefit if more of the members of the public were watching what's going on in the courtrooms so often like a DLS based on a DUI DLS number two there's this tendency to just minimize the behavior and I always I always argue on the other side that you know this this is this is criminal behavior this is something that's deemed criminal by the Vermont Legislature and I'm not a legislator it's not my job to legislate it's my job to enforce the laws and keep the public safe and if you're driving without a license for a second or third time there's going to be consequences and the same with the driving under the influence which is I think significantly worse because a lot of times the stop the stop of the intoxicated driver is a result of driving over the yellow line a lot of times we get a be on the lookout someone has called the police and said there's this car you know weaving in and out of the lanes almost hit me this is dangerous stuff and I know you used to refer to a case that happened in Grand Isle before my time where I think it was a result of an intoxicated driver and I think the victim ended up dying in the flames actually that was my case yeah in front of me and the intoxicated driver crossed the center line hit a car killing two people a man and his son and it's something that's been with me will be with me the rest of my life I stood I sat in court and the widow of the deceased man and the mother of this child stood before me with tears streaming down her face asking me for help and obviously there was you know this precious little I could do to help her that case eventually wound up with a substantial jail sentence but I think that the you know the common law which still applies in Vermont under our Constitution says that in sentencing someone you're supposed to consider general deterrent specific deterrents rehabilitation and punishment would that be state v. Corliss very good oh my goodness well you passed the bottle more recently than I but yes yes that's the one I use that case do you often yeah and then of course there's a Vermont statute which lays out other criteria the judge is supposed to consider and my point in raising this is that in the typical case you have to consider eight to ten different factors you know and each case is unique to its facts yes so it's not like you could say that do we want always gets this or do we two always gets that you have to consider among other things the person's history you know what's the nature of this offense have they've ever been convicted of it before well I think that that's a great point because I know when you and I were talking earlier about certain questions to ask I know one of the questions was like what is a typical sentence of a DUI one mm-hmm and it really there isn't a typical sentence because it really is based on the facts of the case you know you might have somebody that was just speeding when I say just speeding they're speeding right or they might have a registration at a date that's enough for an officer to pull them over mm-hmm and then they see signs of intoxication mm-hmm and they process them for DUI and maybe the numbers of 0.08 or 0.09 mm-hmm they're compliant with the officer they're cooperative they're not you know obstructing and for that case you know I would consider maybe amending it to a negligent operation or even offering them a deferred sentence I'm saying that if they have no record mm-hmm but there's other cases where they are unruly with the officer it's a high test they've been all over the road mm-hmm they've endangered the life of other drivers on the road we need something a little different mm-hmm so there well you know I think mm-hmm I know when I looked this up before I was they found that 80% of the cases in which someone is charged with DUI one they don't do it again now of course that's that's a good result that means it's been specific deterrents and then each case is different and it may require different consequences but in those cases where there are repeat offenses a DUI 2 a DUI 3 I've seen DUI 5 I have a pending DUI 5 right now a DUI 5 yes I do and that's one of the cases where I filed a petition to forfeit the vehicle what what do you think the consequences of forfeiture will be do you think it'll deter the person from driving more well we're taking the instrumentality away from them yeah not that they can get another car yeah but they do it again we'll come after their car again mm-hmm without question mm-hmm but I think it really does send a message and often the person that's driving the car is not the registered owner of the car the car has a lien on it that makes no difference mm-hmm they have they have I have to make I have to make them aware that I filed the petition they have a right to come in and argue against the forfeiture but I think it's gonna send a loud message to this is the general deterrence general deterrence yes and yeah general for people that maybe think twice about getting behind the wheel knowing that they might not see their car again mm-hmm and also specific deterrence mm-hmm you know every defendant is different and I know I've had you know you you remember certain cases and I also remember certain cases certain defendants mm-hmm and sometimes you'll get somebody that is convicted of a DUI mm-hmm or they've been charged and they're you know gonna change their plea and the steps that they've taken to address the behavior mm-hmm sometimes I see people that just minimize it and some people like take it head-on and I give those people so much credit I've had two different instances where well there's one that in particular where a woman drove under the influence and went off the road and she was she worked at a hospital and lost her job mm-hmm went to Florida for it in you know intensive inpatient treatment for alcohol well came back was so remorseful we had agreed on a plea agreement you know she was gonna plead guilty to this and hearing her in court you know I just I commended her I just said you know I just the state needs to tell you how impressed we are mm-hmm with what you've done and I'm just I'm sure we're never gonna see you again and congratulations and you know you don't always get to say that to a defendant as the prosecutor yeah well having been both a defense counsel and a prosecutor I understand oh my goodness what's the longest sentence you've ever imposed you've ever gotten imposed in Grand Dr. County on a DUI do you recall yes I actually do I know both of the longest sentences I've ever gotten on a case mm-hmm the one I got most recently was a gentleman mm-hmm that was charged with a DUI number four well he was also charged with DUI number four refusal and I'm not sure if the viewers understand what that is no we explain it to him so after you've been convicted once of a DUI mm-hmm the next time you have to submit to a Alka sensor and if you don't you can be charged criminally for that it's called criminal refusal and it's a separate charge and so I charge him with the DUI number four driving over the under the influence and with three prior DUI's count number two DUI number four mm-hmm three priors plus you refused an evidentiary test where the officer had reasonable you know grounds to believe you were operating under the influence mm-hmm he lied to the police and said somebody else was driving and and didn't have a license based on a DUI and he would not take responsibility for that so we went to trial and a jury convicted him and he got two to six years in jail mm-hmm and that's on a DUI so that was I find the way that the courts are imposing sentences in this day and age I felt that that was significant mm-hmm I had asked for much more mm-hmm I can't recall what I asked for but well I you know I I think well these go harking back to the case where the defending killed those two people mm-hmm I think I was I only had that as a status conference before me ultimately was in front of another judge and I think the sentence was six to fifteen and I think it's very difficult to know what the outcome will be with a specific defendant but in terms of the general deterrence argument like the world should know that if you drive drunk and kill people they're going to be very serious consequences and I think there's a value in that and it's hard to it's hard to quantify it but I think it's important that that should happen and the message needs to be sent that we're not going to tolerate this type of behavior the public is too precious and lives are too precious and we're not going to tolerate it and if you're going to put us to the test and want to go to trial we're prepared to put our case on and you know hold offenders accountable period well that's well mm-hmm well what's been the reaction to your proposed course of action positive several well I want to say numerous members of the public in Grand Isle County mm-hmm have reached out to me and supported me I've gotten notes in the mail oh really just thanking me for taking the stand and treating this seriously I've received correspondence from several law enforcement agencies in the county and outside the county both in Franklin and Chittenden counties thanking me for taking this on so I feel that I have this you know public sentiment is everything mm-hmm with it you can do everything without it you can can't really do much I think that was an Abraham Lincoln quote and so the sentiment here is that this is what would they want people to be held accountable mm-hmm we should feel that our roads are going to be safe for us for our loved ones and I want to make do whatever I can to keep our roads safe um I wanted to ask you about your position on cash bail in these cases what do you think should cash bail be imposed in some of these cases that's interesting because this is an issue that's come up very recently and mm-hmm another elected state's attorney has enacted a policy of directing mm-hmm any deputies in that office and the state's attorney to not request cash bail in any case so I and that that was in in in the news and so I wanted to make sure that people knew that we were still going to ask for cash bail I feel cash bail is appropriate in certain circumstances now if you're talking about it a DUI one or two it depends on whether they have a record of non-appearances so what people don't understand what some people don't understand some people do is bail is not to punish or to protect it's to ensure someone's appearance in court and there's been bail reform even in the state of Vermont in nine in 2018 our bail statutes were amended and now the judge actually has to take into consideration someone's financial status which they didn't have to before and there's caps on certain crimes a lot of misdemeanors now have a $200 cap cash bail but I don't support just eliminating cash bail all together and I'll give you an example just so we're clear in this bail is a can a bail condition can be imposed by a judge at the person's arraignment when they first appear in court and then a reply right that's correct okay and they the court can require in some cases that the person put up some money that'll only be returned to them after the case is over and they'll lose the money if they don't show up as ordered that's right that's right okay and what's your experience been with cash bail you know I think there's misinformation out in in the in the public that cash bail is used frequently it is rarely used in my experience mm-hmm it is not something that the the courts issue lightly and so if it's getting imposed there's a reason for it and a lot of times judge it's $200 $500 thousand dollars sometimes they only have to put up 10% you know so it's not what I think the message that's been put to the public is a little bit skewed and I'll give you an example of a case I have right now where I have a defendant I take my glasses off to read who's 37 years old and he's got six felony convictions and 30 misdemeanor convictions so 37 years old six felonies 30 29 misdemeanor 30 now two violations of probation two parole violations and eight failures to appear in court he also had been a fugitive from justice and the state asked for and obtained a $200 bail the state being you yes and because he failed to appear yeah and the court imposed that it was what it was a crime that was capped at $200 and the two hearings after that he showed he had to post the bail mm-hmm and then he he showed for those those those hearings so this message that there's all these other sort of levers the court can use to to ensure people's appearance I'm not sure what they are well do you have any examples of what they might be I don't think there was in one of the news interviews the American Civil Liberties Union was interviewed and said that they agree that cash bail should not be imposed and I think the quote was that there's enough threats from the criminal legal system that we don't need bail and so when I heard that I'm like what are those threats I'm trying to think the only thing I can think of judge is that they get a significant and severe tongue lashing from the sitting judge and say you you better appear next time well if they don't if they don't appear can they be prosecuted for failure to appear well there's violations of conditions of release well and so if they fail to appear yes you can do that but have you ever done that oh yeah and are there any consequences that flow from it well I actually not not significant ones I would think so but I just I feel that bail is appropriate in certain circumstances and I'm not sure what these are the threats are that that people are talking about and and I respect the ACLU I respect any state's attorney in the state of Vermont to have these policies they want to make I just have to do what I feel is appropriate in Grand Isle County and to ensure that public are safe and also the justice system and the court system is respected you know what this is I use this saying when I'm asking for a certain bail and the people aren't showing is like you know you give somebody a citation to appear it's not an invitation to tea this is this is an order you have to come to court and so that's my that's my position basically what you're saying is if people violate the court order there should be consequences yes okay and what are the consequences you've seen imposed I've seen stricter conditions I've seen curfews imposed but that's more for public safety that's really not to ensure appearance you get a condition you must appear in court well under the law you can't impose one judge can impose conditions to protect the public they can impose conditions to protect the public yes but protecting the public is different than ensuring your appearance in court well that's true but but but but that can that can be a basis for imposing a certain condition of course of course but in terms of ensuring your appearance outside a bail you can issue an unsecured appearance bond but that again plays into the the position of others that if they're gonna be treated differently if they don't if they're not wealthy and I understand that argument but I still believe that in some cases a minority of cases cash bail is appropriate and it's based on the person's past behavior their path they have they've created this record well 29 prior convictions for example they've created this record they've have a record of non-appearances the best the best predictor of future behavior oftentimes is past behavior and I think that's the basis for why the legislature has still has bail on the books and so well it's so hard to know because you you know each case being different yeah you're gonna impose the same conditions three times to get three different results yes you know that that's the way it is yeah difficult but again bail you know you got someone who three failures to appear four failures to appear I don't usually ask for that but you get in like six seven eight nine failures to appear on your record think about the resources that are wasted the time the court has set aside for that case the preparation by the state they're most often public defender that comes it's it the resources and the defendant just feels that well I and I think that the example that person's friends and know that he's getting away with it yes that he's not coming to court so it's a lesson to them you can ignore this yeah yeah that's really yeah that's really very difficult it is difficult yes it is now in terms of the the delays in the court system how have they affected your work for example this business about that happened in jury trials for months as I understand is that right that is correct and I think the first one is slated to happen this month down in Wyndham County I don't know which case that's gonna be but when's the last time you had a jury trial in Grandsville County oh my this is this is about I didn't mean to embarrass you has it been months I want I want to say late last year yeah this pandemic started in March so yeah and I have cases right now that are ready for trial but we haven't been given the green light from the judiciary and I and I understand why well why is because there hasn't been any resources given to the court so that they can have a sufficient personnel to do this work is that right but also the health the health risk that they are that they're acknowledging so you mean the jurors have to be six feet apart and all that yeah so if you're drawing a jury you're bringing in 40 50 people in a closed space and it's very difficult to maintain social distancing in that environment as well as the sizes of courthouses in courtrooms I think it could be done right now you have two jury boxes we have two jury boxes we have the pettit jury in the grand jury box and I feel that we could safely and successfully do that if we have people sort of stay in their cars and bring certain people in one by one fill the courtroom up with you know six feet apart and it'll be more time-consuming but do it that way and have a little bit of smaller pool at each time a pool of jurors to choose from and as you strike them bring more people in and I think we could do that successfully there's a lot of plexiglass up in the courthouse now my my table has plexiglass between the defense table the judge has plexiglass you know there's a lot so the jury the judiciary has taken some really good steps so I feel comfortable going into court and but I'd like I I would really like to see the resumption of trial soon are there people who are in jail waiting trial not in Grand Isle County I can't think of anybody that are being held waiting to go to trial so someone's charged with felony assault they're out they're out they're not being held in jail they're out on the street mm-hmm I mean I can think of any number of cases in which that would be very inappropriate yes now again not to alarm the public they're released under certain conditions so when you're saying out on the street well what are the consequences of violation the condition stricter conditions can be imposed you they can be released into the the custody of a responsible adult mm-hmm they have to be with they have to be curfew mm-hmm you know if they're for instance if they're in the Department of Corrections when I say that they're in their custody not that they're in jail mm-hmm and they're violated on furlough or have a violation of probation they can put what's called a scram unit or GPS unit on them and make sure that they're where they're supposed to be but in in certain cases like violation of probation and in certain cases like when you're talking about like a significant assault they can be held without bail so they can be held without bail other people in jail from Grand Isle County who being held without bail now no not that I'm aware of and again have you ever have you ever made that request oh yes and what happens I they were held without bail okay so you've had people held without bail I have had people held without bail it just so happens right now that I don't have I don't have anybody that that meets that criteria but if someone without bail and then it takes months to get a jury trial that person sits in jail for months before they can come to court and and get their rights respected yeah there is one right now that I will be asking to be held without bail who has fled the state so well there's a reason well we will get him back mm-hmm and hold them without bail hopefully so the thing I think often think about in some of these cases where there have been crimes of violence say domestic violence there's a risk that there'll be a repeat if the person is put back on the street mm-hmm and you also have you know victims you know victims are are frightened yes there you know they their position needs to be respected and they have a voice in my office in every state's attorney's office they we have a victim advocate or some offices have more than one and there they are to make sure the victim's voice is heard they are they're kept abreast of of of the progress of the case along the way so well the victim's rights advocates are do you think they're effective yes mine is mm-hmm and once I've come into contact with absolutely do they have an impact on the conditions of release that are said yes oh yeah well that's good and do they stay in touch with the defendant pardon me with the complainant yes yeah so that I think that kind of contacts very important it's very important very important so do you have adequate resources for that I do I'd like to have a little bit more my office is by statute I'm a part-time state's attorney so by statute it says the state's attorneys from Grand Isle County and Essex County shall not serve full-time and so what that means is had if I wanted to practice privately I could but I devote all my time to Grand Isle County and my job as state's attorney so you think in in practice it really is a full-time job yes but they don't have to pay you on a full-time basis correct by statute however I'm like my my admin I have a wonderful admin assistant who works 32 hours a week and I have an add my victim advocate works 20 hours a week I'd like to see more hours I'd like to have a full-time office where our phones are answered you know as all other phones are answered throughout the state at state's attorneys offices but so people call leave a message and then you have to call them back when you're free on those eight hours that I don't have an admin yes so or sometimes I'm in the office when he's not and I'll pick up the phone right now as many people and many Vermonters we're working remotely and so I I am in the office once or twice a week and so is my admin and my victim advocate usually not at the same time but and how has that affected your your job this remote business it's difficult we're making do I actually between March and September I wasn't going into the courthouse I was ever doing everything remotely and that I was asked to do that by the judge since I don't have a client like a public defender or a defense attorney does but I felt that I wasn't at being as effective by appearing on the phone or appearing by Webex so I've started going back and so I'm not doing anything remotely anymore I'm most of I'm not doing remotely but if there's gonna be several parties they've asked me to do it remotely and I will you know honor that request do these delays tend to help the defense sometimes there are witnesses who kind of disappear or don't cooperate because of long delays sometimes but we'll make every effort we can to get to those people but some cases go away because you can't bring in the witnesses anymore because I can't bring a witness in no no but because people don't cooperate with you sometimes yeah you know we're getting a little bit off course of DWI's and DLS's but often is the case your honor in domestic violence cases where you've got a complaining witness a victim who recants or and stops communicating with the state's attorney's office or the victim advocate and that could be problematic well forgive me for changing the subject but it is my show that's right yeah there you go well that's fine I'm happy to talk about it but I just well I I'm very concerned about this stuff you know I the consequences of domestic violence I can be just horrific particularly when it goes on for a long time it affects the children it's it's very very difficult it's my experience I've had several where I had one case in particular where it was the gentleman had a lengthy record quite a lengthy record and I charged him with domestic assault and his attorney filed a motion to dismiss and the victim was in cooperating minimizing the behavior actually recanting and actually creating an alternative set of facts that were not even supported by the dash cam footage and audio that was captured by the officer and we had a hearing and the victim is on the stand testifying and I actually had to ask the judge to stop the hearing because I felt that she needed an attorney because I was worried that she was exposing herself to perjury and she was able to get an attorney the court appointed an attorney for her but I'll eventually the court granted the motion to dismiss and so it wasn't that the state dismissed it but the court dismissed the domestic assault case and that was you know tough because my experience that's more often happens when there are long delays so that the defendant can there was some significant delays in this yes so the defendant can put pressure on the complainant to withdraw her complaint yeah yeah well that was a couple years ago but yeah well I suspect things in that regard haven't changed very much well dug I is there anything else you'd like to tell the world when you got the opportunity here well no I just I really appreciate the invitation I really appreciate in that giving giving me some airtime to talk about what we're doing up in Grand Isle County I'm really proud of the work that I've done and my office has done over the last six years I'm proud of the work that the Grand Isle County Sheriff's Department the Vermont State Police and the Vermont Fish and Game Wardens do up in our neck of the woods in this state and I'm really proud to support all their efforts and also you know my role in keeping the county safe and keeping our roadways safe responding to the needs of victims and also responding to the needs of defendants oftentimes these people need resources and they need mental health treatment alcohol treatment counseling and while I'm the prosecutor you know my job is to make sure that justice is served and if we can help in any way to help those people we'll do it but they're all we just want we want the message to be sent that court orders need to be respected the law needs to be respected and if you are going to commit these crimes if you're going to be a repeat DUI offender or repeat driving with your license suspended because of DUIs you're going to be held accountable there will be consequences and there's a risk that your vehicle is going to be immobilized or forfeited so well Doug I just thank you very much for coming in I think it's very important that people like yourself get an opportunity to speak broadly to the public I'm going to try well I'm going to get a tape of this show and I'm going to send it to a lot of people to take take a look to understand what you're doing great thank you great great and thank you all for looking in this has been a pleasure thank you bye bye


Hi, my name is Stacy Murphy. I'm the founder of BK Farm Yards. We grow and sell fresh, affordable food for low-income communities in Brooklyn. It started BK Farm Yards about three years ago when I didn't have any food in my refrigerator and I couldn't find any in my neighborhood. And I had to go about 20 minutes by bike to find some food that was expensive because it's organic. And so myself, like many other people in my community, are looking for access to good food that we want to eat and also things that are culturally appropriate. So in my community, there's a lot of West Indian communities that really want Kalalu. They don't know where to get that, so we grow it. So one of the things that we're doing to solve this issue is that we're transforming underutilized land in Brooklyn communities, low-income communities. And we're training farmers so that they can start their own ventures. So we have about five farms and we're growing about 30,000 pounds of produce yearly, serving 165 customers per week. And we believe that everyone has a role to play in our food system. And so I'm really excited to be introducing this panel because we leverage volunteers as well as what we call food citizens to really boost our business. And what I mean by that is that we're creating roles or deepening roles for people to get engaged and to really be co-producers of our food scape. And so as you can imagine, we have a lot of volunteers on the farm. That's pretty easy to imagine, hands in the dirt. But we also use them for fundraising. We used to have them host dinner parties to help us raise money for the farm. So I'm excited to be here and interested to hear questions about how to keep volunteers engaged long-term and also what kinds of activities are really great for volunteers.  Thank you. Great, thanks so much. Well, this panel was born really out of demand rather than supply. I mean, if I run an organization called Village Capital and we run programs around the world for early stage, social ventures and we see thousands of entrepreneurs every year and if I had to say, being in a position that we're in, we see consistent themes around social change and one of them and probably the most consistent theme we've seen in the last three years is solutions that leverage people to drive change. So this could be everything from crowdfunding to collaborative consumption to volunteers and platforms to, hey, I've got this Indiegogo Kickstarter-like platform that has this specific application. It's probably the most consistent thing we see and what we realize is that people out there are hungry to engage their friends, their neighbors, their community to make change in the world and that's probably the biggest theme I've seen in this sector. So we, typically our programs are location focused but we partnered this year with Points of Light and Michelle will talk about what Points of Light does to do a sector-focused program around these kinds of civic ventures and the most important thing to realize about this is that this is not new. Ben Retray of change.org runs probably the most successful social enterprise that is incredibly on the radar about being a social enterprise, they're just an enterprise. They engage people across the country to do things like change government policy on human rights abuses and end ATM fees for those of you like me who bank with Bank of America. So I thank you specifically, Ben, for that one. I'm expecting a little bit of money. Five dollars is what they're charging. Kyle Acevedo leverages collaborative consumption to build better and more sustainable communities through his enterprise via cycle and Michelle runs probably the largest volunteer and based organization on Earth. I don't know about Mars, but on Earth we know you're the biggest. But what's consistent is that people are hungry to use platforms, companies, organizations to drive change and we've got some unbelievable change makers here who make a living off of engaging regular ordinary people who wanna make their community better and that's really where I see the biggest potential and the whole social capital market's going. So what we're going to do in the spirit of civic engagement is these three folks are gonna introduce themselves about five minutes each and what they do and specifically how they think through and if you can get intellectual psychological for it, like how you think through engaging people to take responsibility over their own communities. That would be how I'd love for you to introduce yourself. And in the meantime, in the spirit of putting people to the center for change, we want the rest of the panel to be determined by you. So how many of you, you all have business cards, right? Or most of you do or scraps of paper or something while they're introducing themselves, I am going to stand to the side out of the lights and collect questions that you'd like to have either can either be specifically directed at one of these folks or generally around the topic and the rest of the panel will be determined by what you guys wanna talk about because it's late in the day, we're standing in between you and happy hour and it's gonna be more fun if we talk about what you wanna hear about. So this is gonna be a completely people driven panel and we're gonna practice what we preach. So without further ado, I'm gonna step off stage, write down questions and bring them to me and we're gonna have Ben, Michelle and Kyle, thank you so much for your time. I think this is three of the most impressive people in the world working on social enterprise and I'm really, really lucky to be on a panel with all three of you. So introduce yourself. Talk about how you think through people driving change. Can I hear myself? Oh, this is awesome, this is an echo. It reminds me of the eighth grade when I was in my first play, first and last play. And it sounded a lot like this but lower or higher in voice. So my name is Ben Ratchray, founder and CEO of change.org. So we started about five years ago and systemically failed for about three and a half years which wasn't very fun. Subsequent to which we finally found a model that was fairly successful, ripped everything else out and they've been optimizing on that ever since. It's a very simple thing. So anyone anywhere can start a campaign or any issue they care about, pretty straightforward. About 20,000 people a month start campaigns. About 20 million people a month taking action, about two million new members a month. And I think we're now winning or people are winning on the platform about a half a dozen times a day. And everything for very, very local things, saving a local park. It's around stopping foreclosure in a local community to helping women in Saudi Arabia fight for the right to drive, ending corrective rape in South Africa. So really the massive gamut. In fact, my favorite campaign over the past two weeks was helping a very famous baseball player who in 2005 had his first and only at bat. He was hit in the head first pitch, knocked out Vertigo out for a year, tried to get back to the big leagues, wasn't able to do so for a long time as a campaign that started on the site about three months ago and after massive overwhelming support, huge and ESPN, another place is he was given his first official at bat in major league baseball yesterday. And he struck out in three pitches actually. That's a sad side of the story. You're not supposed to tell that part. I guess the important here is this wide range, just an open platform for anyone to start campaigns. And we think that's a hugely important part of a broad swath of people getting involved in social change. And so I wanna talk about I guess two things broadly to kick off. One is the opportunity, what's really exciting. And the second is the challenges that people face. As far as the opportunities that Ross mentioned, there has just been one of the systemic difficulties barriers to effective social movements is the expense of collective action. It's very expensive in time and resources and by virtue of that there's fairly limited local rapid response collective action. It's oftentimes through very large national nonprofits. In increasingly in America over the past 40 years, there's been sort of representation by proxy where people give money to citizen sort of driven organizations nominally but not actually participate substantively because organizations are representing them in Congress at a national level almost always. And for us we just see this sort of largely disengaged and people aren't apathetic by nature but are born to be that over time when it's time and again demonstrated that they actually have very marginal impact. And what we're trying to do is to demonstrate that there's been no tool ever invented in all of history at more effective and overcoming collective action costs than the internet in general and social media in particular. So it's not like a small change, not like it's twice as effective or easy not five times, not 10 times but hundreds of times easier to mobilize people in rapid response. And the consequence of this is not just having more campaigns but different types of campaigns. So there's campaigns at a national level that creates sort of a lot of skepticism by the effectiveness of online petitions, of online campaigns, things like asking President Obama to stop climate change or asking Congress to sort of change the banking system. It's actually quite local. And when anyone can start a movement, when anybody can start a campaign, you get these very specific objects of mobilization that are much more winnable, right? Much more amenable to victory and you start going from one victory on foreclosure to 10 to 100 to thousands of campaigns on the site, fighting against very clear unjust foreclosures. And the interesting sort of impact of this is it starts to change the structural incentives of people that make decisions in power. So we hear this on a regular basis where companies that are being lobbied on a regular basis from sort of citizen activists will start to, when they're sitting around a boardroom and making decisions in previous obscurity, now recognize that any decision they make both is going to be transparent and could easily spawn a rap response lobbying group through Twitter, through Facebook, and then on change.org and by virtue that changes the incentive structure they face. So really exciting. So I think this is sort of the opportunity that's a bit about how we approach it but how to mobilize people's voices in ways like rapidity and sort of regularity that was never before possible with sort of the kind of the mobilization that goes from small to sort of big. The second thing I just know, I think is really important to recognize is that this stuff is really difficult. So we fail for three and a half years and as is often commented in the consumer internet, you have to be both good and lucky, right? And like we're pretty good but we are damn lucky. And this is really rare. It's just not often the case. You have a binary existence in consumer internet properties where you have for any given vertical the massive outlying huge power law distribution where it was like 5,000 video sites on the web but video is YouTube and in auctions is eBay and books is Amazon and searches, Google and social change. There's no analogous platform but it's noteworthy that hundreds of millions of dollars have been thrown into these and all but one are almost always a failure. And so I just think it's worth noting that this is really difficult that the fact that many fail isn't an indication of a broken system, right? It's also not necessarily an indication that we're getting things right but you tend to have these strong outliers like what we're saying right now on Change.org which is a function certainly of competence but also of happening at the right object at the right time and doubling down when you see it. And in the spirit of civic ventures the entire panel's questions are going to be generated by you. So if you have a business card or a scrap of paper with a question wave your hand and I'll collect it. If you haven't, please come up with a question because we would love to hear from you. Michelle, CEO of Points of Light. So Ben, one of my favorite of the challenges or movements of late has been was pointing out that we haven't had a woman moderator for the debates, presidential debates for 20 years. So I'm wondering how many folks do you know how many have signed that petition? There's about 170,000 people started by three 16-year-old girls in New Jersey who rocked it in two weeks afterwards the first female moderator presidential debate announced after 20 years. Rock stars, young kids are just killing it on the site. So very exciting. I think it points to what Ben has experienced is this extraordinary capacity for people to create change at a scale and at a pace that's truly remarkable. And so I think that's what I wanna talk about. For the last 20 years, seeing the power of people to create change, I might just, I'll tell you just a little bit about my own story, which started after college, a group of us got together and said we need to find new ways to engage people in our community in Atlanta. And we had, we gathered at the local tavern, manuals tavern, everybody put in $50 into the beer mug and we started to send out postcards. This gives you a sense of how much things have changed. To people to invite them to come out to service projects. And we started out with a half a dozen service projects. And that effort has grown to what is now about 235,000 projects that are happening every year, over 5 million people that are serving and volunteering. And along the way, I've met all these extraordinary people like the 16 year olds that mobilized through change.org. But activating a lot of them on a local level. So Stuart Evans, who was a computer programmer who realized that there were people that couldn't leave their homes because they didn't have wheelchair ramps. And he started working with a local disability organization and figured out how do you build a wheelchair ramp and how do you get other people to help you build a wheelchair ramp. And Richard Goldsmith, who is a plumbing executive who read an article about a failing school in Atlanta and went to meet with the principal and said, what can I do to help? And he said, we need more adults in the after school time, in the out of school time. And so Richard started coming on Saturdays. And the first day that he came, wondering if there would be any kids that would show up, there were 120 kids waiting for the principal to open the door. And Richard and 20 volunteers started, it's what they called the Discovery Program. And Richard has been volunteering there pretty much every Saturday for the last 20 years. And so these are the kinds of experiences that I've seen that I think are manifestations of a huge hunger for people to find meaning, to create meaningful solutions to tough challenges in our communities and to operate in a different scale. I think there's new capacities for people to create change more so now than ever before when we were sending out our postcards and putting in our $50 in the beer mugs. And so points of light is all about how do we inspire? How do we equip? How do we mobilize people to create change? How do we put people at the center of change? One of the newest endeavors and ways that we're thinking about this, which partly brings us here to this conference, is a partnership with Village Capital, with Ross and his team to create a Civic Accelerator. And we know, I know that y'all are familiar with the Accelerator model, but it's a little bit new to the nonprofit sector. And the focus that we have is to create a national accelerator that calls upon Civic Ventures, whether they be for-profit or non-profit. And that means basically that involve people and putting people together to create change in that framework. And we started actually, we just launched a call to folks to see if there were any folks out there that would be interested in this program. It's a 12-week program. It'll start in November. It's supported by Starbucks and PWC Foundation. And we had 168 applicants for the 10 slots. So really great, innovative, creative ideas for how everything from seniors can Skype with kids and do tutoring and reading that way. Seniors that are in elder senior homes to something called Turbo Voting, which helps people figure out how and where to vote no matter where they move and how they go geographically. And so, I guess my reflections are that we have really significant challenges and the only inexhaustible resource that we have is human capital. And it's more powerful than it ever has been before and that there's a way of infusing that in all of our ventures in some form or fashion and a really exciting conversation to be had around the power of people. And I just wanna point out, I have Aisha Khanna and Jay Crammon who are the sort of startup entrepreneurs to relaunching the Civic Accelerator and excited to be in conversation with folks around the table. Thanks, Michelle. So one of, you know, putting people at the center of change, Village Capital, the organization around that's partnering with Michelle and the Civic Accelerator, we are an investment fund.   It's entrepreneurs peers. It's communities of entrepreneurs. They lift up the folks who are the most successful. So Kyle Azevedo is one of these folks. He came through our most recent concluded program in Atlanta. He and his team, ViaCycle, they do bike sharing and Kyle will tell you more about that. But we found that ventures that engage communities tend to do really well when put into communities of entrepreneurs. So I think Kyle's story is not unique. And the business model is amazing. What's amazing is the potential in America as a community. So Kyle, introduce yourself. Sure, yeah. So yeah, my name is Kyle Azevedo. I'm the co-founder and CEO of ViaCycle. And essentially what we aim to be is on the surface, it's a zip car for bicycles. We create a technology platform that lets us set up networks of bikes in a neighborhood or on a university campus, really in any community. And we let people find and use them or rent them using only their cell phone. And so some of you are probably familiar with existing bike sharing programs around the world. There are huge initiatives in Paris, London, Washington DC, soon to be New York and they've been very successful. And we essentially are trying to bring that to more places by, and the way we do that is with mobile technology. We make it less expensive and require less infrastructure to set up a collaborative consumption platform like a fleet of shared bicycles. So I am definitely the young in of this panel and so my resume is not nearly as impressive as Michelle or Ben's, I guess by my watch I'm about two years and two, Ben's three and a half years of failure. And, but we've been very fortunate and hopefully are on a great trajectory. I think we are. But for us, we are not a civic platform in the traditional sense of the word. I don't think, and normally when you talk about that term it's often about activism or volunteers. But I think the interesting thing about our model and what we're trying to do is we're really focused on creating business models that help our customers become the agents of change within the community. And so in the case of bike sharing, it turns out that the sort of car only culture in the United States is not because people don't, not because people don't care or because people don't think that bicycles or other alternative forms of transportation are not a viable options. It's fundamentally an access problem that people are not conditioned to have a bike around or to use a bicycle. And so if you give them access to one, they're very inclined to use it. And I think some surveys that have been done say that over 70% of Americans would ride a bike more often if they had one available.  So really what we're working towards is creating a model where you can provide the sustainable service and actually make it a profitable service and bring people together through that. So we can take Boston as an example. Boston five years ago was ranked as the worst city in America for bicycling. People would talk about it as a death sentence if you were trying to get around by bicycle. And they decided to put the hubway system in which they started with 600 bikes and they just sort of threw it on the ground. And five years later they're now in the top five cities in America to cycle. And as a side effect not only do you have more bicyclists on the road but you have more people outside. You have more people engaged with local shopping centers. You have more people using public transit. And so it just goes to show you that you can cause a lot of cascading changes by implementing really what is a business model. It doesn't have to be a large philanthropic project or be throwing a lot of money away. And this summer we've been out in the Bay Area. We were participating in the Y Combinator Accelerator Program and I had the opportunity to listen to Brian Chesky, the co-founder of Airbnb Speak. And one of the things that really struck me was that he spoke about the origins of Airbnb and the thing that got him most excited was not that they were gobbling up the hotel industry or making money hand over fist and they're doing both of those things. But what got him most excited was that they were enabling all these new experiences and interactions between people. And simply by using these resources that are already there and just sort of connecting the dots with their own technology platform, they were creating new friendships and allowing people to connect in a way that they never had before. And that to him was really the secret of their product and their success. They don't tell that to the Silicon Valley investors who are giving them hundreds of millions of dollars because that's not what they wanna hear. They wanna hear that it's a vacation rental platform and part of this big travel market. But that is fundamentally what has driven their success and I think there's so much potential, both for us and for other ventures, whether they be for-profit or non-profit, to utilize existing resources and bring people together with elements of their community that are already in place, just finding out how to make them accessible. Great, thank you, thank you all. So we have some questions from the audience and if you didn't give me a sheet of paper, it's probably too late. I think we've decided what these guys are gonna dig into. That's not very civic venturi but if you have a burning question, you can leave something here on the stage. But I wanna dig into some things because you guys have some really, really insightful points to dig into. So I'm gonna start with Ben. Ben, Sarah would like to know, this is great volunteerism, et cetera, but whether it's non-profit or for-profit, the social capital markets piece of this is how do we pay the bills? So what is change.org's revenue stream? Yep, hi, Sarah. So the way we make money is we send an advertising platform for social issues. So there's 20 million people coming onto the site every month taking action on everything from environmental issues to human rights to women's issues and based on that we map people's interests and then we work with several hundred of the largest non-profits in the world who are looking for people who care about those issues and we recommend campaigns like sponsored links on Google, sponsored videos on YouTube, we have sponsored petitions and so it'll be groups like Oxfam or Amnesty International, Sierra Club and then we recommend those campaigns to users that they take action, they then engage further with that non-profit. So it's really sort of a marketplace for social issues between people that wanna make a difference in organizations that need their support. Ben, I'm gonna ask a follow-up question. So when you got the idea for change.org, typically the volunteerism or collective action world is a non-profit or a political action committee structure. Why a for-profit company? So we started, when I started the organization really in 2006 as a non-profit, like we wanna advance change, naturally we should be a non-profit. I came back to the valley at the school at Stanford so a bunch of my friends were there and I said, look, this is what we're planning and everyone I talked about too was like, well, you should do this as a social venture and I was like, well, why? And the biggest thing for us is sort of flexibility. One thing, you know, in the political landscape, it's actually the case that you're legally prohibited from sort of being involved in too much express advocacy if you're a non-profit and it's also the sort of the tenor of the valley. We very much see ourselves not as an activist organization using technology but as an internet platform enabling activism or sort of collective action. And it's really a deep identity that we have as an organization. You have a lot in the high tech sector and the startup community frankly some amount of skepticism if you're all about sort of social change but you don't think you have a robust enough business model to sustain a company. And so we are all about the non-profit sector, all about building power but we think that there's just a hugely exciting landscape right now of sustainable, scalable, flexible businesses in technology for social change whether they're for profit or non-profit but the company way that we found is the most effective way of building a massive sort of staff of outstanding technologists. So Michelle, I'll ask a follow-up question to that. When we decided to do the Civic Accelerator together we've decided on half non-profits and half for profits. You run one of the most recognizable non-profits in the world. Speaking from an enterprise standpoint what is the role of non-profits alongside for profits? We're not talking about traditional non-profits like churches and soup kitchens. From an enterprise standpoint what's the role of non-profit social enterprises alongside for profit social enterprises? So we are a traditional non-profit and we partner a lot with businesses but we have earned income streams but we are reliant by and large still upon film-profit dollars so we'd love to change that equation a little bit more towards our income but I do think that there are different enterprises demand different models and that you have to be mindful of what is your purpose and what is the best structure that's gonna facilitate that. So one of the things that we contemplated when we did the Civic Venture was is it appropriate for us as a non-profit to support for profit enterprises? And I think one of the evolutions that you're seeing in the non-profit community is there is a way in which non-profits and for profits can work side by side and in fact we can advance our social mission and probably will be best served to advance our social mission by electing to support not only non-profit ventures but for profit ventures like the ones that we've heard about today in the next, whatever that next iteration of those might be and so I think we're seeing the blurring of lines here but I personally believe that there is still a rationale for both and that there are not always going to be market revenue based ways of supporting non-profit community activity in every circumstance and that we have to, I mean we've seen non-profits over the last 30 years we have 1.9 million non-profits in the country they've doubled over the last 30 years so we're seeing a growing industry it's 10% of our employment so I think we have a vibrant non-profit sector that can be supplemented and complimented by social enterprise and private sector and by cross-sector learning and so I think there's complementary ways of working together. Let me ask you a follow-up question so assume that there is a philanthropist either in the audience or watching us on simulcast or reading us on Twitter and they say okay I really buy into this civic ventures thing I do want to use philanthropic money but I want the highest, I want to hit a very high leverage point for people driving better communities and I would say we should join us in supporting the civic accelerator but you're not allowed to say that he says okay I get that or she says okay I get that what's the second best option what are some leverage points for philanthropy that you've seen really effective in building better communities? In civic ventures. In civic ventures specifically. Yeah. So since I'm not allowed to say investing in the civic accelerator. Well we know that's the best option. Yes of course. So I think that there are a lot of catalytic entrepreneurial organizations that are supporting civic ventures along with other kinds of ventures whether it be Ashoka or whether it be Echoing Green so I think if people want to be in that sort of generative formative supporting new ideas that there are plenty of pipelines for that but I also would point out that I think that there's a huge number of nonprofits at least that are operating at what I would call subscale that need additional funding to go fully to scale and there are organizations like New Profit that are helping some of these organizations that have proven models that the Social Innovation Fund the Corporation for National and Community Services running is attracting and engaging investors in that work. So I think there's both startup capacity for philanthropy but also what we lack in the sector more than anything I think is the capital markets to support scale and to try and to reach the kind of scale that Ben's reached with change.org and that very few nonprofits can reach in a very short period of time so I think there's a real opportunity for leverage there for philanthropists to think about that. Excellent. So Kyle, I have a question for you from Lindsay. So there's DC bike share and whatever they have in London and Paris which are like cities have decided people you will do this, you will share bikes. Here's as much more people driven. And if you can speak out via cycle or just more generally how do people power movements, ventures fit in or bump up against more structural top down ventures? So I think that in our case individually and actually in general as well anytime that you can create a market solution or a ground up solution that empowers people at an individual level it's much, much easier to implement than something that's top down and we've actually seen this in our own business activities. I mean we started out selling our solution in the same way that the London program and the DC program and the companies behind those systems sell and we would sell it as a package to these various organizations and well you basically have to convince them to decree from on high that yes, we will put a bike sharing program in and we'll invest all this money and we will make this happen and then you still have to worry about getting all of these people engaged that are gonna use it. So you almost give yourself twice the work. You have two customers, you have to sell the program and then you still have to sell to all of the individuals and get them to make that change. Whereas what we're starting to look at as we continue to bring our costs down and continue to make our system easier to implement and build a platform is that we can bring this to communities on a very granular individual level. We can deliver five of these bikes to an individual apartment complex and in our case we can even start to finance them ourselves in some cases and just get permission to put bikes in and bring them directly to the consumer. And so in that case you bring it down just to the individual's decision to use the program or not. And that's a much simpler model. And so I think in our own experiences we found that if you give people access to a good product and a good way to create change in our case by using a bicycle instead of taking a car but for all of these collaborative consumption platforms it's a different value proposition but if you make it easy enough for people they not only will use it but they'll become passionate advocates for your brand. I mean we have people tell us all the time that they want to help out, they want to spread the word and that's fantastic to see. That's excellent. Michelle, a question from Stacy. How do you keep volunteers engaged especially in non-glamorous tasks? Well I think people continue to serve when they feel like they are creating impact and or through relationships. And so I think the main driver for people to build upon their commitment is a sense of the efficacy of their work. And then there are all sorts of other reinforcers. I mean people volunteer for community and connection and relationships and so forth. So I think it's connecting even those things that might seem mundane to the larger cause that is being affected. And I would just also add that I think that the nonprofit sector is getting better and better around finding really meaningful tasks for people to participate in. That it doesn't have to, you don't have to be relegated to mundane tasks. There are always some mundane tasks to be done but that we're doing a much better job of tapping people's skills, tapping people's passions and capacities to create change at a much higher level. There's a, we've been a part of and housing and initiative called a billion and change which is trying to get companies to commit to pro bono work to get their skill-based volunteers engaged rather than just painting a mural to actually be consultants and financial or technological or whatever it might be. And we've gotten, we just reached the $1.9 billion mark of commitments in less than a year. And so- $1.9 billion? $1.9 billion worth of commitment. So I think there's a way in which we're seeing an evolution around how we're utilizing people in more and more effective and empowering ways. I wanna, so one point, that's unbelievable. Very nice work, by the way. Congratulations. Thanks guys. I just wanna say, I mean, I think about the scale of the civic engagement world in the US. I went to Points of Light's annual conference in June and there were 6,000 people there and it was like an average annual conference for these guys. And they were regular folks from across America who cared about making their communities better. And we think that SoCAP is a zoo with 1,400 people, like 6,000 is the average. And I'm gonna bet that every single one of those people at that conference would be interested in the things going on here. And so if we really care about expanding social enterprise, there are entire pockets of America that our social entrepreneurs every day that have never heard of the term social entrepreneurship have never heard of this conference, et cetera. I met hundreds of them at your conference. So I'd say that if we say civic ventures, there are a lot more people for whom that resonates every day than people for whom the term social enterprise resonates every day. I think there's a lot of cross-fertilization. So it would be great to figure out how to do that more effectively. I mean, how many of the 500,000 people who sign every big petition you do would be jazzed to be here this week? Yeah, I was gonna make a comment about, your comment about sort of addiction through efficacy. We see this on a regular basis. It's predicated on like people, again, are disenchanted largely out of demonstrated incapacity to make a difference. And when you deliver sort of the sort of experience, first we deliver victories. That's a commitment to people. It's, you know, they're not born apathetic. They're bred to be that way over time with demonstrated ineffectiveness. And if you change that, you breathe the kind of addiction that we want, addiction for good. It's been follow-up question. So that's what you do now and you do it great. Thank you again every time I use my ATM card, love it. Why did change.org fail in the early years, as you said? And what did you learn from it? So I didn't understand the internet, which is a problem if you're running an internet company. I think that there are two things. One is the assumption that many people wake up every day and say, I wanna make a difference, which is not what most people do. Maybe people in this room, but not most people. And the second is more of a mechanical part of the consumer internet, which is giving people too many options for what to do and not demonstrating they're effective. So we had literally these communities around issues around advanced gay rights and stop global warming. There's very big groupings of cause areas and you can do everything from skills-based volunteerism to social fundraising and a virtual political action committee. It was a disaster and people would come and they wouldn't know what to do and they get confused or whatnot. And so what we did is we ripped everything away. And actually it's literally, we had probably five to 10 times more features the day we launched with a single engineer, a co-founder than we do today. And so I think that's sort of like deeply understanding what people wanna do. How big is your team now? About 150, well staff around the world, not engineers I wish, we are on that path. But yeah, giving both people sort of a sense of, not just wake up every day and I wanna make a difference but actually compelling content on a regular basis. It's a viral that makes people wanna participate, not just because they want in the abstract to advance change. They see something in their Facebook news feed, they see something in the Twitter. It's compelling content they want to take action on and they're making it simple enough for that to be effective. Excellent. So Michelle, the interest among young people today for lives that integrate making a living and making a difference is exploding. What's the most important thing we can do to catalyze this enthusiasm? Well, I think per our conversation earlier is to show people the efficacy of their and their capacity to make a difference. We've seen in the last 20 years an explosion of young people who are interested in volunteering. It's literally doubled the number of people that are volunteering at a young age. But at the same time, we've seen some apathy around voting and political engagement. And I think that is because people aren't feeling a sense of their own power to affect change through that process. So I think, how do we build, building out the capacity for people to see how they can make a difference through their time, through their talent, through their voice, through their philanthropy, through their consumer choices. And then I would also say, I do think that part of this is instilling in a culture of service. And that goes to everything from service learning at a young age and giving people an opportunity to participate through a lifetime of service. And literally starting young, we know that kids that start serving and voting and being involved civically when they see their parents vote, et cetera, are twice as likely to go on to be active citizens. And so I think it's continuing to give people the pathways for creating change and then also continuing to build a culture of service that's going to engender that next generation of great citizens. That's great. There's a follow-up question here that I promise was generated by the crowd. It's a perfect follow-up question. So you didn't sign your name to this, but it's a great follow-up question. So Ben, what happens when a petition gets a lot of support and does not become an actionable next step? Do people get disillusioned when a popular petition doesn't actually drive change? We ignored and pretended never happened. No, so what's notable, never that we've done it before, didn't work very well, what's notable is that it's almost always a case of the kind of campaigns that take off or the kind of campaigns that have a strong, what we call theory of change. It's a very actually core concept in citizen mobilization is what is the theory by which the action you take will result in the change you seek. So signing a petition, ask Congress to end global poverty. It doesn't have a very strong theory of change asking a local mayor to extend the hours of soup kitchens when they're shutting down at four o'clock before lots of people are able to sort of go from lunch to dinner. That's actually a pretty strong theory of change. It really is a case that it's quite rare that a campaign takes off with no real potential for impact. Now, not all win, but it's rarely the case that they don't at least change, often times the incentives of actors, you often times won't win campaigns. I'll actually give you an example. This is a hilarious example, but it kind of demonstrates this point where there's a campaign that went viral. I don't know if you guys know this really heinous band called Nickelback, and it's a widely hated band. And they're like a boy band wannabe.  They're like a wannabe boy band. Double whammy, and they're from Canada, which no offense to Canadians, but it isn't the most popular. And Detroit, Michigan, because they were gonna play for the Thanksgiving Day game for Detroit Lions.  So it's a good example. The campaign tragically did not win. However, I'm talking to one of the guys on our team at the time, and I was like, it's like do you think this is gonna win? He's like, I don't think so. But I sure as hell bet you that the NBA is not gonna ask them to play the halftime game for the All-Star game, right? So you have this idea where you actually, by having massively explosive campaigns, it may not win on a regular basis, but it changes incentives for targets and decision makers who recognize more and more that's an issue that people care about, and will change their decision-making incentives in the future. I'm sorry if you like Nickelback. No. For you. Actually. Well done. Well done, you. So this is a question, I have two questions. I'll just say one thing about that. Did you like Nickelback? I love them. No, sorry. I think one thing that's interesting and that's hard, I think we all have to challenge ourselves around is how do we engage people, and it gets to the question of how do we continue to encourage young people, but how do we engage people over the long-term around sustainable change? And so, for instance, not getting defeated on a single victory if Nickelback still plays, but what's the long-term change? And if you think about the great social movements, they're built over not just necessarily decades, but over generations in some instances. And so I think there's an interesting, I mean in all of the work that we're doing, how do we help people get a sense of the immediacy of their change to build upon that, but also keep in mind the much broader, how are we gonna end global poverty over the decades? And so, and how do we connect the individual actions to those larger goals? And Martin Luther King talked about building cathedrals and how people who build cathedrals don't actually ever see the end game. They are, their sons and daughters and so forth may still be working on the cathedrals over time, but I just think that's an important thing for us to sort of grapple with. And particular, I mean, and this actually leads into the next question, but particularly in the social enterprise world, because the promise of social enterprise is really interesting, right?  That's a really compelling promise. It is very, very hard to build a good business that doesn't care about social value. It is 10 times harder trying to build a good business that does care about social value. So we have a lot of people coming in that think this will be easy and get pretty disillusioned very quickly. I don't know if there are any people in this room, but I think it's a really important message to say this is very, very hard work, but it's going to create intergenerational value in a way that some forms of mainstream business don't. So that's, I think that that's a really, really good message here. Just a pile on there is, and we hear this on a regular basis, sort of younger people starting social enterprises. And actually, if you look at Y Combinator, which is sort of the program that Kyle was involved with, which spawned in part Airbnb and Dropbox and Reddit and lots of other awesome sort of consumer internet properties. Paul Graham runs that program, talks about the primary determinant of the success of a consumer internet property or entrepreneurship in general is the relentless determination to do whatever necessary to succeed. Like we've failed so many times, like we just didn't stop. And it doesn't guarantee you're gonna win, but you're guaranteed to fail if you don't do that. And one of the problems you have, this is an entrepreneurship in general, but the outlier effect, all the organizations you see are successful by definition, because that's why you see them. You don't see the failures, which are like an order of magnitude greater in numbers. And that sense that there's a lot of conversation in the nonprofit sector about burnout. You never hear that. In the for-profit sector. Like you are not allowed to burn out. And to some extent, it seems harsh and demanding. Like if you wanna build something amazing, you have to crush it every single day. And that relentless aggressive determination is the primary factor, I think, of success and failure. And we see a lot of, I think, failure in institutions because there's not that aggressiveness. I think that's a great point. So we've time for probably two more questions. I'm gonna ask both to the whole panel. And I mean, this is very hard work. So that brings true with me, I know. And I'm sure many people in the room are vigorously nodding at what you just said. Number one is from Matt. We'll ask all of you. I'd love your very brief answer to this. I know many mid-career professionals that are highly interested in becoming more involved with social change. Both through volunteerism and through career changes that could be more full-time work. We feel lost in knowing where to start. What advice or resources do you have? I think I'm the closest to mid-career here, so I don't know. Actually, there's a great set of organizations. There's one here called Civic Ventures. It's based in San Francisco that is really recreating this whole idea of encore careers and how people can get their second or third act lived out and through social change. Whether that is volunteering, entrepreneurship, they run something called the Purpose Prize, which is all about entrepreneurs who are over 50 or 55 who are creating amazing transformational ventures. We also know there's a lot of entrepreneurs out there that are actually middle-aged and that are starting organizations and some of the most successful ones. I think there's increasingly, I think there's some infrastructure around this and also some resources. I would start with Civic Ventures, but be encouraged because I think there's a lot of great role models. Any other ideas, Collin? Sure, yeah. Ben talked earlier about how, if you're doing any kind of venture, it takes an incredible amount of hard work and it also takes and usually an incredible amount of luck if you're going to be very successful. And so I think one of the primary aims of all of these accelerator programs that have been developing is to reduce the amount of luck required. Basically, to give you the essential toolkit that you need to at least maximize your chances of success, even though you'll never be able to approach 100%. So for us, we certainly are, we're very reliant on people who knew more than we did when we first started the journey. And so if people are looking to get started in the space, I would say, find either an accelerator program or a local entrepreneurial support network. In Atlanta, we have the ATDC, the Invest Technology Development Center. There are programs like Village Capital that rely on community mentors, hub ventures here in the Bay Area. And they're always looking for people who are knowledgeable, not necessarily about just the social aspect, but about running a good business or running a good organization. And that can be invaluable for the entrepreneurs coming through the program. So that would be my suggestion. Great. We're taking applications. Looking for a COO. So the one quick note I'd make here is that there's a lot of concern from people that are mid-career and for-profit ventures that they have to have lots of experience in the nonprofit sector to be considered. Like not at all. Often I am just depending on the position, more advantageous to come over, which is also sort of perverse, but that is not at all barrier. Great. All right, we got five minutes. Last question. We'll start with Kyle and work our way this way. What is, this is from Ginny Yancey. What is most meaningful for you in dedicating your time and talents to your enterprise? In other words, why do you personally do this work and what meaning do you get from the work that you do? That's a great question. And I might add one bit, Ginny.  So if you can answer this through the lens of what's most meaningful about this massive, massive individual engagement aspect of the work too. Sure. So the things that are most meaningful for me, you know, I'm an engineer by training. So I think naturally technology is my tool for enacting change, but what we're trying to do with VIA Cycle is use technology to touch people's lives in a very real and physical way. And so when I see the actual change that we create and someone riding on one of our bikes instead of taking their car out of the parking garage, and when I can talk to people about how we're providing a service that's changed their habits and slowly, brick by brick and trip by trip is changing the communities in which we operate. I think that's the most rewarding thing. And really what we are trying to do is create tools that help people leverage their own small actions. Ben talked about collecting these small actions and the fact that people don't wake up thinking about what they can do to change the world. But if you can figure out how to harness the times that they do and build it into something bigger, that is a really, really cool thing. And that's what gets me up in the morning. So what gets you up in the morning? You know, I think I believe that people are in search of meaning and community and that giving folks the opportunity to be of service is a way of tapping into that. And I find that for myself. And so the experience of being involved in this work is hugely fulfilling and gratifying. And obviously I think all of us are trying to figure out how do we make a difference in the world and how we do that. I think I see manifest all the time how people can create extraordinary change. And that's hugely, hugely inspiring. I went on a cross country trip this summer and met with folks literally across the country. And one of my favorite volunteers was a guy who's a GE executive who started a clinic to serve the needs of homeless individuals and to, it's a foot care ministry. And so for three days a week, for 20 years, he's been cutting the toenails of homeless individuals, giving them new shoes, new socks, and giving them, and bathing their feet. And you know, I mean, he said the best thank you he's ever gotten was not a paycheck but it's the thousand thank yous that he gets every year from those homeless individuals. And those are the kinds of interactions that are happening every single day that are giving meaning and purpose and creating impact. Thanks a lot. Ben, you wanna send us home? Yeah, so I'll illustrate why I do what I do by many means of example. And this is an amazing sort of case that happened on the site about a little over a year ago. There's a woman that was walking down the street in Cape Town, South Africa. And she was grabbed and thrown into a shack and raped and almost killed. The reason is she's a lesbian woman and the man was trying to turn her straight. It's a thing called corrective rape in South Africa happens about 10 times a week alone in Cape Town. It's awful, awful practice. And in response, instead of doing nothing, a good friend of hers, whose partner had this happen to her as well, who sees a campaign Uganda around gay rights, goes to a shanty town internet cafe in Cape Town and starts a petition asking the government to for the first time recognize this issue and take action. No semblance of potential hope. And the next week she gets 170,000 people from 150 countries take action. The internet's an amazing place sometimes. And I get this call on my cell phone on a Sunday from the Minister of Justice Chief of Staff in South Africa saying, you have to stop. I was like, why? I said, we can't email anybody. I said, what do you mean? He said, well, email servers are down because all the messages that are being sent in. So what happens when you sign a petition and make a comment? And I said, well, look, these women want a meeting. Are you going to give them a meeting? He's like, no. I said, well, then we're going to go to the press. We'll help people with the press. And the next 24 hours, it was covered by the BBC and Al Jazeera English and the biggest newspaper in South Africa, the biggest radio station. And the Minister of Justice is brought on to national television and interrogated for lack of response. And he finally agrees to a meeting. And the way the story goes is they then have a meeting. We help them organize an offline protest. And after about a month of campaigning, the parliament, after entirely ignoring the issue for decades, or decades, passes a national task force to investigate and to stop the incidents of corrective rape in that country.  And so when I found out this had won, I literally, I'm like not a crier at all, as you can probably estimate. But I wapped. I was like, this is an amazing demonstration of people power and sort of we're in the fortune circumstance of being in the position to empower that around the world every day. Thanks so much. And thanks to the three of you. And there are millions of people in this country and billions of people in the world who have the opportunity to change their city, change their country, no matter what voice there is because of the ventures that you guys are building. So it's an honor to be on the same stage with you. Thank you very much. Thank you.


Microglia are increasingly implicated in brain pathology, particularly neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and motor neuron disease. To better understand these diseases, there is a need for authentic, efficient in vitro models to study human microglial pathological mechanisms. Embryonic MYB-independent IPSC-derived macrophages can be differentiated into microglia, which can then be co-cultured with IPSC-derived cortical neurons. This co-culture retains neuronal maturity and functionality for many weeks, and microglia express key microglia-specific markers and neurodegenerative disease-relevant genes. They also develop highly dynamic ramifications and release multiple microglia-relevant cytokines upon activation. Furthermore, this co-culture promotes a more anti-inflammatory and pro-remodeling cytokine response than corresponding monocultures, demonstrating that co-cultures are preferable for modeling authentic microglial physiology. This article was authored by Walter Hensler, Stephen N. Sandsam, Julian Buchrezer, and others. We are article.tv, links in the description below.


Hello, my name is Caroline Weiler. I am an intern at the Yolo County Historical Museum, commonly known as the Gibson House. The Gibson House has a history that stretches back to the 1800s. The family that lived there made important contributions to the growth of early Yolo County. Later, it became the home of the Yolo County Historical Museum. The Gibson House is unique because it is the only historic home in Yolo County open to the public and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The Gibson House hosts annual events, is opened for tours, and every year, third graders come from around the county to learn about local history. It's also a great place to hold special events, weddings, graduations, and anniversaries. Consider getting involved as a docent or member and becoming more acquainted with these historic grounds. You can contact us at www.gibsonhouse.org or call us at<PHONE_NUMBER>.


The main reason that both Dennis and I looked at soil health was actually just to keep the family farm afloat. Margins of commodities can be very, very slim at times. And so we were trying to think of how we can maybe run more cattle on the pastures that we actually have. Gene and I are mainly a cow calf operation with some crops and do a lot of rotational grazing. We use cover crops as much as possible and we try to blend everything together so everything complements each other. The crops on top of the Cato Hills, you know, it's probably not like going to give you the yields like you are in the flats. But with no-till practices, it really does make a huge difference. Maybe not right away, but you'll see it in three or four years down the road. And with cover crops, you start to see the yield differences that you have because your ground is doing what it's supposed to be doing. Switching to no-till has really helped us on fuel savings, being able to do more with less machinery. We have a lot less inputs in our machinery. It has made a big difference, I think, on erosion, especially up here when we have a lot of slopes. We have a lot of very good topsoil and a lot of our soils. It hasn't been farmed as long as other places. We're also bordering a lot of water and a lot of waterways. So we have to be careful with not over-fertilizing or over-spraying, because it can get into our water systems. We definitely have a shorter growing season than just a few miles to the west of here. Winters can be tough, but also summers can be cooler, which is quite an advantage in our pastures and for our cattle. So I would say the opportunities probably outweigh the challenges. Across the county, this year, it has been extremely wet. We had like 90 inches of snow over winter and it hasn't really stopped raining. I think what you see is a lot of the situations where people do tillage every year. They'll do some fall tillage or spring tillage and they'll just do a corn bean rotation on the crops. They're going to have a standing water on their fields. When you have people like Dennis and a lot of other guys in the county who do cover crops, have a rotation, corn, bean, wheat, oats, whatever else in their rotation, they got a better infiltration system with the cover crops and the biological activity. And they're the ones that actually got the crops in the ground and they're the ones that are actually able to get the crops off the ground. As our cow herd started to increase, Gene and I were approached with the idea of rotational grazing. And we did start slowly at first. Immediately saw some benefits from it and started to make our pasture smaller. Started to move the cows more frequently. We also had some crop land that we turned back into pasture and even some of our pastures that were a solid cool season grass. We interceded big blue stem and side oats and Indian grass. So when the cool season grasses are slowly coming to an end, those warm seasons kick in and it really makes a difference. I have to admit that I was quite reluctant getting into the cover crop. So I had to rethink my whole thought process on what is actually happening underneath the soil. Biologists and scientists say that when the prairie was broken to farm that our organic matter number that they gave it was between eight and nine. So it was rejuvenating itself every year. Sadly over the years, most of our soils can be as low as one to three. And that is the bad news. The good news is that that can be changed. And through the use of cover crop and especially running cattle on a cover crop you can change that organic matter in a very short time. It's never too late to start and you're never too old to learn. And that is our goal now is to get that organic matter increasing both in our crops and our pastures.


One of the functions of soil that farmers most value is its ability to infiltrate or drain and then to hold water for the next crop. Now one may ask, does tillage help or hinder infiltration? It seems so intuitive that if one breaks and mixes the soil with tillage that we actually help the process, right? SDSU's Dr. Tom Schumacher and team did some great research that looked at this very question. We had a rainfall simulator and this is a very large simulator that was used originally in developing the USLE. So we're applying two and three-quarter inches per hour on these plots. That's a one in ten year storm here in South Dakota and we did that on these plots. We had replicated plots and so forth. And what we see here are some of the results. Now they have a little bit of a blue cast to it. This is not snow, this is water pundit on the surface. And the mulbore plow, water pundit on the chisel plow. And then in the no-till, no-water all. And they were receiving the same rate, the same amount. But that two and three-quarter inches per hour was applied over an hour period. And what we're looking at on the top here then is we have probes at 10 cm and at 4 cm, TDR probes. And they're measuring water content on a volumetric basis that would be inches per inch. So we start here basically 100 minutes before we apply the rain. And at zero here is when we start the rainfall. And what you can see here in the 10 cm or roughly 4 inches. You can see an immediate jump showing that water is at that 4 inch level, but not at the 40 cm level. We really don't see any changes there until we're very done with the rainfall. Let's review the results so far. Well first we saw ponding from the mulbore and chisel plow treatments, but none from the no-till treatment. And second we saw almost instantaneous wetting at the 4 inch level, but it took over 50 minutes for any change in soil moisture at 16 inches for that mulbore plow treatment. So what's going on here? Dr. Tom now explains why this happens. So what's happening here is that that upper layer is getting, becoming saturated. Up here we're saturated and now it's ponding. And when it's, as it gets ponded, and that's what we're seeing here, that will start, that ponded applies pressure to the water to get into those smaller pores in the soil. Now when we first started here you get a seal occurring. So now we don't have any macro pores. It's got to get into those small, real small pores. In order to do that you have to have a head of water on the top. But that head of water is on a slope. It's also going downhill till. So you're getting a lot of it moving downhill. In fact, 70% of the water off of the mulbore plow here ended up going downhill. Wow, did you catch that? 70% or 1.8 inches ran off? Yeah, and that means that of the two and three-quarter inches of rain that fell, less than one inch made it into the soil. And very little of that actually made it to 16 inches. That sounds a bit like a paradox here. More tillage, less infiltration? Exactly. Tillage is a quick fix. But it destroys the structure and stability of natural macro pores. As soon as the rain hits, these pores collapse and form that seal. And that's why you see it get really wet at four inches. But the 16 inch layer stays bone dry for over 50 minutes. Join us in our next video as we continue with Dr. Tom, who shows what happens with the no-till and chisel plow system. See you soon. If you're interested in further investigating Dr. Tom Schumacher and team's work, we hope these references prove useful.