Growing a Childhood Nonprofit via Social Media and Word of Mouth

Civic Warriors Podcast Episode 5: Growing a Childhood Nonprofit via Social Media and Word of Mouth

“So, nonprofit, it just flows with my life a lot.”

Jonathan Alston, co-founder of 4 Little Souls, Inc., shares how he’s grown his childhood-started nonprofit through social media and the help of his church congregation to provide basic needs to the youth in his community.
Listen in as Withum’s Brad Caruso and Heather Campisi chat with Jonathan on how his faith and family history propelled him, his sister and childhood friends to create an organization that leaves local youth without want or need.
#CivicWarriors #WithumImpact

This Is Civic Warriors…Podcast Trailer

This podcast was transcribed through a third-party application. Please disregard any misrepresentations.

Civic Warriors: Innovative, dynamic, gritty, determined, warrior.

Hosts: This podcast is about the innovators, the leaders on the front lines of adversity, the all around good people doing good deeds. They are the civic warriors of the world. Our guests are the leaders in the nonprofit industry affecting change. They try, they fail, they overcome. Trough their stories we can join forces to become civic warriors.

Heather Campisi: So with us today, I’m really excited about this one. So we have, uh, Jon Alston with us. He goes by J. So your story is a little interesting, which I like. So you started an organization with your sister and a couple of your friends called 4 Little Souls. So I want to get into that a little bit. Um, I’m really intrigued, you know, the background. So why, I mean, you started this organization in 2002. How old were you when this, when this all started?

Jon Alston: I was about 10 years old and we started it because we are heavily in the church. We do a lot of church, community service and events. And um, both my parents grew up in the projects in New York City. My mom came from Puerto Rico and my dad’s family’s from South Carolina. So growing up, neither of them had many resources or money. They grew up pretty poor. And um, throughout the years… My dad’s a CPA as well. He owns his own firm and he does pretty well for us. So I’ve never experienced living in poverty or anything, but my parents have talked a lot about it and a lot of our family still lives and pretty, not too great financial, uh, living in New York City, Philly. So we like to help out young people. So that’s why we called it 4 Little Souls, and, there’s four of us and we like to do stuff for little souls. So that’s how we call it that.

Heather Campisi: That’s perfect. I mean, it’s great. It’s really interesting to me. So you have, you were 10 at the time, your sister was 12, right? Your friends were 11. You came to your dad. So I think does it help that your dad is an accountant that kind of said, all right, Hey dad, we want to, we want to do this. How did that all transpire and how did you get the support? He kind of helped you get this rolling.

Jon Alston: Yeah, definitely. He works with mainly nonprofits. So when we told him the idea is that we wanted to help people, he’s like, so why don’t you make it a nonprofit? And we were young and we didn’t know what that meant, but we were like, okay,

Brad Caruso: Yeah. Most cases, most kids at the age of 10 are like, where do I get my ice cream? Like how do I start a nonprofit? That’s awesome. Yeah.

Jon Alston: We thought of it like, oh, we’re starting a business and it’s a nonprofit. So after our dad gave us that good advice, we were like, yeah. So over the years it’s definitely been growing a little bit. Uh, we haven’t been putting too much in the growth as much as we just like to help people. So we all have full time jobs. My sister’s in masters, she’s doing her master’s at Columbia. Uh, our two friends, they work in the City, so we’re all over the place. But we do still find time every month to meet, uh, do events, raise money for all benefiting young, young youth.

Heather Campisi: That’s, that’s amazing to have such a mission, to see where you can go if you just have the right support and the right knowledge. And, um, so, so tell me a little about when, when you have these events and you know, the, the proceeds that you raise, what exactly is the organization doing with, with these funds?

Jon Alston: Uh, we do, uh, food drives, clothing drives, um, coat drives. Uh, we, we give back around Christmas time to families that can’t afford a presence for their kids because we know we never went at Christmas without gifts, but my parents, when they were young, they did. So we like to give back to kids around Thanksgiving time. We do between like 10 to 15 families. We give them Thanksgiving dinners. So we do back to school drives, many different things to help youth that don’t really have the economic means to get basic needs.

Brad Caruso: What geographic area do you concentrate in? I mean, are you focusing in area or are you more focused towards, uh, you know, specific individuals? Like how does, how does one find out about you? Right.

Heather Campisi: Um, a lot of for our networking is word of mouth and people we know, and since we’re heavily in our church, our church is pretty big. There’s like 5,000 members, so,

Brad Caruso: Oh wow. 5000?! Yeah. Wow. That is a big church. Yeah.

Jon Alston: So our word gets spread a lot through there. And then from there, a lot of Facebook, Instagram, and that’s just how people find out about us. Word of mouth. We, um, like to run programs and like events that we do year over year. So people get excited and they look forward to it. And every year it just grows a little more.

Brad Caruso: What type of events do you do? Like what, what’s a, what’s a fun one? Do you have a good, a good fun one? Do you guys do, are good at engaging one that you do?

Jon Alston: A lot of the ladies like pocketbook bingo.

Brad Caruso: Oh yeah, yeah. Pocketbook. Yeah. Yeah. So you, you get like pocket books and things that donated?

Jon Alston: Yeah we have some connections where we got a lot donated and then we do buy some, but a lot of the stuff we get is donated. So it’s pocket books. And then there’s also like gift baskets that we fill with different things and we have other people donate those. So this year there was like a hundred and something gift baskets and like 90 pocketbooks and they’re all like nice pocketbooks.

Brad Caruso: Yeah. I have a client that does that, that does a pocket and they get, they get designers to donate a lot of designer bags and that. And that is, you know, I, I’m, I’m the minority in that room of, of male verse. It’s like, it’s like 1% males and that, which is awesome because you know, you get, you know, people are really, really excited about that. And my wife, my wife, when she won, she won a bag this year, which she was ecstatic. She was like, you know, cause it’s just, you know,

Heather Campisi: You can never have enough.

Brad Caruso: No, can’t have enough. No, but it’s awesome because, because people, you know, you’re able to get those donations so there’s no cost to you to actually hold the event. People walk away with something on top of walking away knowing that they gave money to a good cause and they got something. But for the most part they, you know, they walk away knowing that they donated to you, which is really cool.

Jon Alston: And all of those proceeds we give to scholarships for people.

Heather Campisi: Wow, that’s great. So how do you, how do you find the individuals that you’re giving to? Is it through the church? So on, I know you said it’s word of mouth, right? So is it the congregation shares with their local schools? And how do you go through that scholarship program too? I’m kind of curious.

Jon Alston: Um, we ha we get applications, so we send them out through people at our church and then we allow people to send it to people they know. And after we get the applications, we just look through them and we have a selection process. And then we try to, for the most applicants, we try to give at least a hundred to $250 for every applicant. But we do give higher ones for

Brad Caruso: And are most of these for, for uh, for post high school. So I couldn’t think of the word. There’s a word for it. It doesn’t matter. I didn’t want to say extra curricular, but post-secondary education. Yeah, that’s about it. That was the technical word I was looking for. Cool. And typically speaking, how many, how many applicants do you get a year?

Jon Alston: Um, last year, probably about 90. Around 90 last year.

Brad Caruso: Wow. So, yeah, that’s awesome. So that means that that, you know, and every small, I mean anybody that’s gone through college knows in 2019, then college is expensive. And you know, regardless of scholarships out there, every scholarship you get is important. Especially one where, uh, you know, a no strings attached scholarship in the sense that, you know, there’s not, uh, you don’t have to pay it back. You know, there’s not a lot of the federal loan requirements like, you know, to, to keep a Pell Grant you got to do X, Y, and Z and blah, blah, blah. Um, so that’s awesome. So that means you touched 90 lives a year through scholarships by doing just general fundraising. And if you put that in perspective, like that’s incredible. Like most people, even on some of these larger agencies don’t necessarily even do that. And you do that with limited resources, you know, you and your family members have full time jobs and you’re doing this on the side and still managing to, to engage into, to really help. So yeah. Kudos. That’s incredible.

Jon Alston: Yeah. And it feels good because parents come to you and like you covered our kids books for the whole semester.

Brad Caruso: Well, yeah, exactly. It feels good. Yeah. Yeah. Like you, you know, you helped someone pay for something that they would not have been able to do. You made someone’s life less stressful, uh, you know, with that, with that charitable focus. Yeah.

Heather Campisi: Do you find that you have, so the individuals who’ve been doing this for quite some time now, 17 years? If my math is correct.

Jon Alston: The scholarships we started probably five years ago.

Heather Campisi: Okay. Yeah. So through those five years, you know, you’re starting to see kids coming out of college. Are you finding that anyone is kind of giving back and like paying it forward? You know, Hey, I really appreciate it. You helped me out. Now I’m in a position where I can kind of help someone else out. Are you finding that you’re building this contingency of future donors?

Jon Alston: Uh, some of them come and they help us as volunteers. Some of them give donations. So yeah, it, you do see people come back after and they’re like really thankful for it because they see that you help them out and they want to help others. So yeah. That’s great.

Heather Campisi: That’s amazing to see that grow and just come full circle for you. And, and like you said, word her mouth. So it’s not only are you sharing it through your congregations and people, you know, now that you’re having these 90 individuals, let’s say every year, compounded over five years, I mean, that’s a huge growth for your mission and what you’re trying to accomplish.

Brad Caruso: Yeah, I think it’s, I mean, it’s crazy and because you’re in a, you know, I think a lot of the individuals are probably members of your church members, members there. So, uh, you know, when they’re back from college you’re probably seeing them more often. You know, you’ve seen them every, every, you know, every weekend probably, uh, you know, and I bet some of them too, which, which I know that, you know, for myself, I always got a good feeling. You know, people probably look up to you. People always say that like, like they’re doing great things. Like they’re actually carrying out what, you know, what our religion teaches us to do, but they’re doing it, you know, they’re, it’s a lot to talk about it, but it’s hard to do it, you know, and things as simple. And I’m, what I’m curious about, how hard was it to just start a nonprofit? Like was it, you know, you got to go through all the paperwork, you got to get some legal documents in order, you know, you do have some help cause your dad’s a CPA.

Jon Alston: So took care of most of that. And then my mom did a lot of the financial side, getting the bank accounts started and all that. So we did have help and that was great. And it also taught us a lot. So

Brad Caruso: yeah, but it’s good to, you know, it’s important to know no one, no one starts anything without help. Anybody that thinks that they can do these things alone is, is, is not going about it the right way because you need help. You need people that can, that can guide you through the process that you know, can help you avoid some of the challenges, especially with like the, the beginning process. When you get to filing all that paperwork, it’s daunting. There’s a lot of questions, there’s a lot of things that you need to answer. Um, and a lot of times like the way you answer that actually dictates what you can and can’t do. And I think a lot of people don’t always consider that in the beginning. So lucky for you, you had some help there. But, uh, you know, for the, for other people out there, I know I’ve helped a few people and even myself, I look at some of these questions, I’m like, how do you answer that or, or it’s, we’re so new, I don’t know what it’s going to turn into. Like it’s, it’s a vague, well we might do this, we might do that, but it depends on where the money comes from. It depends on how we’re going to get there. So that’s pretty cool though. Definitely. Definitely pretty cool. So you know, you, you’ve been doing this for a long time. You’re in a very active member, a very active member in your church, large church. Uh, and then you join, you go, you go through college. Where did you go to school?

Jon Alston: I went to St John’s university in Queens.

Brad Caruso: Oh, St John’s. Awesome. Awesome. What made you be an accounting major?

Jon Alston: So my dad’s a CPA. Um, initially I didn’t want anything to do with accounting. And then in high school I had a business intro to business class and that was like my favorite teacher. She’s like, I teach accounting. So you should take that too. So I took it. I took three years of accounting with her and then my senior year I did a senior practicum where I ran the school business store, school bookstore, and I also taught accounting one. So I helped her teach that class.

Brad Caruso: You helped her teach a class while you were in school?

Jon Alston: Yeah, I was a senior when I taught.

Brad Caruso: Man, the plot thickens. That’s awesome.

New Speaker: Yeah, so after that I was like, accounting doesn’t seem too hard. So I was like, might as well just do accounting. Then it’s like accounting in college and here I am.

Speaker 5: And that’s it. And that’s funny because yeah, like my wife and I are both CPAs and I’m like, I know our kid’s going to be like, absolutely not. Like I’m going to go, I’m going to go be like, I dunno a hot dog, truck vendor or something because he’s going to, he sees like the nonsense that is, that is accounting. And you know, some of it’s boring, some of it’s exciting, some of it you’re on the road, some of you going on all over the place. But that’s interesting that it actually, one of your bigger influences was it was a teacher, which is very interesting cause that I think most people overlook that, that a lot of, you know, the teachers of the world, they’re actually such a huge influence on a lot of people. How they get to where they need to go. And um, you know, and then you’re finding that too. So you taught a class, I bet you learned more by being the teacher of the class even by being in the class cause you gotta be on point.

Jon Alston: Yeah.

Brad Caruso: Yeah. So how did you, so, so you’re a natural teacher based on that, now you’re in, now you’re in a public accounting firm. How do you carry that on and you know, do you find that, that, that you can carry that on that like the teaching aspects to now, the next generation?

Jon Alston: It come in handy because you know that they’re not going to get it right away. But you also know to take your time and like explain them through it. And then you also teach them tricks that they wouldn’t have known unless somebody told them. So the teaching aspect, it does help a lot, even in the professional world.

Brad Caruso: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So, you know, and you’ve been here, I’m sure, uh, you know, I’m sure you’re a couple of years here too. You’ve had some people internally that have, that have taught you things and you kind of pass it. I know, I know with myself, I always kinda had a, um, someone above me that would always, you know, people would always teach things. People would always, always guide you in the right way and some of that you need that and some of that you need to go through the fire yourself because people can tell you all you want, but until there’s a real problem and we all learn from emergencies and problems, which there’s no lack of that in a deadline driven world. Uh, yeah, you, you don’t get that until you really run through it yourself. But, but knowing that there’s someone there that can help you, I think is, is a great aspect. Yeah. So that’s cool. So, so you work on, you work on a lot of not for profits now, uh, you know, what, what made you outside of everything we talked about, what made you want to do that? What made you want to kinda, you know, commit a little bit to I want to do a little more of this work and a little bit, a little less of that work.

Jon Alston: Uh, what drew me do working on nonprofit is I like seeing how they run like different businesses run. And since I’m heavily into the nonprofit world, I kinda like to see how nonprofits run. And it’s also brought me to a little bit of real estate where they do like new communities and other organizations where their nonprofits and real estate companies.

Brad Caruso: Like low income housing developers.

Jon Alston: Like HUD and different things. So I kinda like how it brought me to a different field that I like too. Cause I like real estate a lot now too. And you can bring both together. So the nonprofit, it just flows with my life a lot and I get it more than for-profit.

Heather Campisi: Are you finding some of those principles? So now that you’re working on these organizations and you have your own organization, are you applying any of those principles, business functions, event planning, because you’re seeing the whole scope of how these organizations run, into your own specific organization?

Jon Alston: Uh, so for golf outings, I noticed that when I started working here, almost every nonprofit has a golf outing. So I’ve been talking about I want to get one going and my dad has a nonprofit as well where he teaches churches, um, how to do bookkeeping and stuff. So we’re going to partner and have a nonprofit golfing event.

Heather Campisi: Nice. So the bigger question is, do you and your dad know how to golf?

Jon Alston: My dad knows how to golf way better than I do. I just started a couple years ago. I’m getting better.

Heather Campisi: As long as the ball gets down to the green.

Jon Alston: I’m working it, I’m working on it.

Brad Caruso: Yeah, yeah. That’s what I tell myself afterwards. I’m like, this is just for charity. This was not for my own enjoyment.

Jon Alston: Yeah. I’m working on that aspect. Yeah.

Brad Caruso: Well you could do, uh, the charity I’m with, uh, we, we work somewhat in that, that quasi real estate market. We connect developers with a nonprofit agencies to build housing for homeless. And uh, you know, we’ve been go through the golf outing route a few times and every year we’ve actually tried a different type of golf outing. And here’s the, here’s the weird part. So one year, one year we did a real golf outing. We kind of broke, even, didn’t really make it actually lost money. The next year we said, you know what, we’re going to, we’ll try Top Golf. Right. Great success for a golf outing because less people have to know how to golf to go. You get more engagement from different, you know, typically speaking, um, you know, there’s the golfer crowd and the non golfer crowd and golf outings cater to the golfer crowd, not the non golfer crowd. You know, whoever that may be. And then you hold that at like a Top Golf and it’s like a bowling alley, right? Everybody has a beer. Everybody can play. If you don’t want to play, you can just stop at any time and it’s only a couple, it’s only two hours or whatever it is that you’re in a bay as opposed to a golf outing, which could be eight hours of your day.

Jon Alston: That’s a great idea. I never thought about that actually.

Brad Caruso: There ya go. Just inviting wisdom. And so we’ve been, we did that success next year. We said, yeah, let’s try something else. We just keep trying other things. And next year we did mini golf. Uh, mini golf was okay. I didn’t do as good as top golf, but we did, it was not expensive cause we actually had the mini golf place donated. So they donated the time and everything. And the, I don’t wanna say donate the land, but they donated the use of the space. I’m thinking of 990 terms. Right. Donated use of space. Um, they donated to us. And so, you know, that works. We got some people, we had like a little dance, we had a karaoke machine, all that stuff. So that was fun. Um, and then this year we did a traditional golf outting again, but because we, those couple of years we’ve got more of a contact base, like a networking base. Our golf outing this year, traditional one, was actually successful. We actually had a lot more sponsors. We had a lot more people. Uh, and if there’s anything you learn, sponsorships are where you make your money with golf outings, you don’t make your money off participation. You only lose money on participation if you don’t get enough people. Yeah. Good luck with that. Cause it’s fun.

Jon Alston: I’m going to think about doing the Top Golf one.

Brad Caruso: It’s fun. Oh you should. You absolutely should. Yeah, if you have a top golf near you, you can get people to go, um, they’re good, you know, Top Golf and they make it very easy for you. And I’m not, not promoting Top Golf sponsorship perspective. We’re not sponsored by Top Golf, but we had a good experience there and they made it easy for us to go listen to some of these and they interject with sponsors. But that sounded just like that. No, we’re not, you know, we’re not, we’re not paid independently by anybody. We’re charitable. We do this for free. Uh, yeah. But that’s cool though. Good luck with that, cause that’ll, that’ll, yeah.

Jon Alston: Thank you.

Heather Campisi: I want to get back to, so you started this organization, is there any gap that you see through the congregation with ages? Right, generationally?

Jon Alston: When I was younger there was definitely a lot of younger people in church. And these days I think it’s a lot less. So it’s mainly grownups that attend church these days and the children that come, their parents like forced them to come. So I mean, it definitely dropped off a lot.

Brad Caruso: It hasn’t changed over time. I mean, I think parents are usually forced kids to go. Yeah. But, but, but kind of the bigger picture, you know, do you see a lot of, a lot of, uh, like people in their twenties? I think that’s a good, to me that’s a tell all like you see a lot of people in their twenties and do you see a change over time of that? Like people in their twenties in, you know, in church or in religious stuff?

Jon Alston: I has definitely dropped off a lot. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. It’s dropped every year. I think it just drops even more.

Brad Caruso: And you’re, you’re there. What do you think contributes to you being, you know, why do you want to be there and, and you know?

Jon Alston: I go because I enjoy it. I’ve been going for my whole life. Um, it’s normal for me now and after I leave church I just feel like I’m in a better mood. So that contributes to a lot. Um, my grandfather is a pastor and my dad actually is a pastor as well, so he went to New Brunswick Seminary.

Brad Caruso: Okay. He went to theological seminary? Oh, awesome. Yeah, it was, we’re always trying to find, you know, how to, how to, how do you engage the, how do you engage the next generation, you know, how do you, how do you get the next generation to be like you or to want that? You know, because I think, I don’t think there’s anyone in the world that once they go, they don’t feel that way. I think it’s how do you, how do you become a catalyst to get people there. I think that’s a lot of life too. A lot of life is, it’s not necessarily that people don’t have the ideas. It’s not to say that people don’t enjoy things is that people don’t have like that fire to like do it or to make it happen.

Jon Alston: I think younger people like a different type of environment where it’s not, you have to dress nicer to go to church. Like I’ve been to some like, I guess you could call them more in churches and everyone wears jeans and like tee shirts and they’re singing, it’s like a rock concert almost. So in those churches I have seen a lot more younger people around my age.

Brad Caruso: So that’s interesting. Really interesting. Actually. I don’t know if Heather has the same thought I have, but.

Heather Campisi: Yeah, I mean you see it, right? So I, you know, I look at it, I, I grew up in church as well and um, I think it’s just, you know, it’s with anything, right? You have this, this shift in what’s expected. I think you look at the work, you look at the workplace even, you know, now you know, our company along with many other companies have dress for your day. You see this more casual, but the principles are still the same. So I think it’s interesting, right? You have to kind of switch switch how you’re engaging with these different demographics. And I’m seeing this stare from Brad and I’m like, I’m curious where he’s going with this. But, um, perfect example, you know, we spoke with someone yesterday who was talking about engaging and finding new talent for her organization. It’s not necessarily the same way that you go about that nonprofits did 15 years ago, 10 years ago. And even with your organization, J, you know, you said that you have social media is your biggest presence. Website actually is not huge for you, probably too because you guys have full time jobs and the upkeep with that and everything. But it’s how are you engaging with these people to keep them coming back for more? So I, you know, I’ll leave it up to you guys.

Brad Caruso: It’s a change. It’s a change in dynamic. But the real challenge is that is that you’re now catering to both parties. So, so what does that, so what does that do? So now we’ve, now we’ve changed the dynamic, right? But now people that are historically traditional, I’ll call it traditional, you wear a suit to church where you know you’re there 15 minutes before you leave, 15 minutes after you have, you know, donuts afterwards. And they have a new generation that gets there five minutes late that wants to wear jeans there that wants to sing, not sit down and stand up and sit down and stand up. They want to be engaged the whole time. You have to cater to both.

Jon Alston: And they want shorter services.

Brad Caruso: That’s what I mean. So they want, they want their attention whether their attention span is last or not, but they want a shorter service. So an hour maybe too long. Especially when you have kids like you know, bringing the two year old into church is a, you know, you’re, you’re sweating the whole time.

Heather Campisi: Here’s the Cheerios, here’s the toy.

Brad Caruso: Yeah, I know. I know they don’t, I know they don’t judge in these establishments but you feel you’re being judged cause your kid’s like yelling and screaming and running around. But anyway, that’s, see that’s the challenge. That’s the challenge I keep seeing is how do you cater, how do you cater to all parties but, but keep, keep your values? But at the same token, we need, we know we need to change like how and when, you know, do we do that? But I agree with you. I think that’s a really good point. And then for anybody out there, I think that’s a really good point that the next, you know, the next generation, you’re gonna change for them. You know, you’re not going to hand out the little paper flyers at church anymore. You’re going to either send someone an email or there’s going to be a social media post that someone’s going to click on and say, Oh, now I can go. This is how I’m going to go. I don’t need, I don’t want the piece of paper. But if you stopped printing the piece of paper, you’re going to get a lot of complaints from the crowd that’s been done for a long time. You didn’t give me the piece of paper.

Heather Campisi: Yeah. You know what I also think is interesting too, right? So we’re talking about how are these changing and how are we reaching different people. Um, a lot of religious organizations and churches, podcasts. So you know why you might not be seeing a ton of people with their bodies in the seats in the pews. How many people are actually engaging for those churches, their services and podcasts. Because you think about it generationally. I think this millennial generation is really like almost podcast addicts, right? So I, you know, I’m curious how many are engaging there and you know, are the, are they tracking those analytics and seeing like, Hey, our congregation is X, but tenfold it’s actually this.

Jon Alston: Yeah. See, my church has a online live stream so you could watch the whole thing online. So I mean, I’d imagine a lot of the 20 something year olds are probably in bed watching it.

Brad Caruso: Anybody who has kids. Yes. This is so much easier. Yeah. It doesn’t help them when they turn five and you’re like, all right, we’re going to go to church. They’re going like, no TV time. Yeah, yeah, no that, but, but I mean the challenge I see, and I always divert directly to kind of like the numbers and sense of things. If you have to keep doing new things, but you have to keep doing the old things, your costs are going to go up because you’re going to, not only you’re going to invest in the technology to cater to the next generation, but you’re going to keep paying for the things you were always paying for, to keep the generation before them happy or to keep them engaged. Cause if you, if you upset one and not the other, or if you upset one in that process, well now you now you could be at zero whereas you know, and you’re trying to double it. So yeah.

Heather Campisi: Yeah, that’s a great rule of thumb for any nonprofit out there. I mean, how are, you’re going to have to spend that little extra or figure out and be a little creative. And I think, you know, to your point, J social is great. You know, it’s pretty much free. So engaging those generations without having to put those extra dollars into all these different technologies and platforms. Um, huge, huge way to reach your donors for sure.

Brad Caruso: Yeah, I want, the one thing we’ve been finding is, uh, you know, we’ve done some surveys internally, um, with understanding like, you know, how people give, why they give what they do. And one of the things we found, which I thought was really interesting is that, uh, kind of like the next generation called millennial generation, um, you know, they may not have the resources cause the student loan debt and everything going on to give, but they actually want to give time or they want to donate that time. And so if you think about that, you know, some of this, as far as, you know, for the most part people power’s how you get things done, you know. Yes, you have to pay for technology. Yes, you have to pay for things, but time is actually what makes things happen. And so it’s having you engage not only from a monetary perspective but from a volunteer perspective, engaging people. So you know, as your example, social media, well if you don’t know how to run social media, well maybe there’s a youth out there that’s really good at it that wants to volunteer their time and help your charity. And that’s, you know, just thinking out loud. That’s one thing I just kind of thought of is you know what’s probably find a kid who was like, Oh I don’t have any money but heck, I’ll, I’ll give you a couple of hours a week and yeah, I’ll get your platform off the ground. And they’ll do it better than we can. You know, I’m no wizard with Instagram. I just post pictures of my kids so

Jon Alston: Yeah, I have seen nonprofits that they have um, youth run their social media.

Heather Campisi: Tell me, you know, a couple of the challenges running, running an organization, I’m sure at a younger age you had a lot of that guidance and a lot of that help, but any challenges that you ran into then or that you’re finding now, now that you know your time is limited, you’re the four of you, the four souls are, are spread across the board. What is, what are some of the things that you’re facing right now?

Jon Alston: Um, time, since we’re all working full time. The time factor is it’s harder for us to meet together and actually plan these events. So we’ll have a date set, we’ll start planning it, and then we really have to hop on calls and video Skypes just to make sure that we keep planning. And that’s our biggest thing is time. And if we want to grow it more, we’re going to need a little like to put more time into it. And that’s the biggest thing.

Heather Campisi: Sure, sure. But it’s, I mean, it’s nice the technology is giving you the avenue, right. Without it bringing all of you from all these different locations pulling you together, your sister’s at school. Um, yeah, it’s, it’s great. So have you seen, you know, I know that it’s been growing a little bit. Have you been finding that, are you putting more time in as this growth happens? Are you kind of staying stagnant with the time and you’re still seeing those numbers grow in terms of engagement and donors?

Jon Alston: I think we’re growing because like the pocket book bingo and we have a, um, a happy hour event in the city every year. So we have events that people look forward to and they tell people about to come to the next year. So we’ve been growing mainly off of that. So it’s word of mouth and people actually looking forward to the event so that that helps us a lot.

Heather Campisi: If someone wants to get involved with four little souls, um, whether they have a few extra dollars to help out, whether they have some time, whether they want to donate items. How do they, how do they get in touch with you? How did they find you?

Jon Alston: Um, we have a Facebook page and our Instagram page is 4 Little Souls Inc. And that’s the number 4 Little Souls Inc and we’re pretty active on there. We respond quick and if you guys want to help us out you could give your time, donations and we’re happy for every little bit helps.

Heather Campisi: Well I want to thank you so much for sitting with us today. This was really enlightening and to see such a young, vibrant gentlemen getting involved in the community and really making a difference. And taking, you know, what you’ve seen in how your parents have shaped you and your morals has shaped you and your values have shaped you to now giving to others and just kind of bringing them into that. That mindset is, it’s really inspirational. So I applaud you for your efforts.

Jon Alston: Thank you.

Heather Campisi: You’re welcome.

Brad Caruso: Hey, warriors. Thanks for tuning in. On the next episode of Civic Warriors, we’ll talk with Eileen O’Donnell from Coming Home of Middlesex about creating and implementing a system to end homelessness. Make sure to subscribe to Civic Warriors, and thanks for all your support and have a great day.