Insights on Building Mission-Driven Organizations
Practical lessons from 15+ years of leadership across nonprofits, real estate, and healthtech. Topics include AI implementation, nonprofit operations, business systems, and what it takes to scale organizations without losing your mission.
Why I Published Mission-Driven Ecommerce on Kindle and Why I’m Now Releasing It for Free
When I first published Mission-Driven Ecommerce on Kindle, it wasn’t because I thought it would be a bestseller. It was because I wanted the book to exist in a real, durable way.
Kindle was a forcing function. It made the book feel finished. It required decisions instead of drafts, structure instead of loose notes. It turned a lived experience into something that could be cited, shared, and referenced, not just blogged about and forgotten.
2011: The Year We Almost Didn't Make It
By the end of 2011, Stupid Cancer had $13,000 in the bank.
That number still sits heavy when I say it out loud.
It wasn't just a low balance. It was the weight of a year that had gone completely sideways. Behind the scenes, people were updating resumes. Conversations got careful. Nobody was optimistic about what came next or if there would even be a next.
How AI Can Strengthen Nonprofit Operations Without Replacing Human Relationship Work
When I first started at Stupid Cancer, I took the CEO’s Outlook contacts from years of his personal advocacy work and manually entered every single one into SugarCRM. Line by line. Name, email, organization, phone number. Copy, paste, save. It took hours. And none of it felt connected to the mission. It was my first real glimpse into something every nonprofit eventually discovers. The work you care about is always competing with the work you can’t avoid.
For years, that kind of administrative drag was just part of the job. You powered through it. You made peace with the backlog. You assumed the operational chaos was permanent. The calls you didn’t return. The follow ups you meant to send. The donor updates that slipped because your CRM was a mess. It was constant.
