Funding Rural | Episode #11 | Season 2: Greg Weatherford “Fostering Service”
There’s a stereotype these days that young people don’t get involved and serve their communities—that they’re not volunteering; they’re on their phones or computers all the time instead. If you talk to Greg Weatherford, that stigma couldn’t be further from the truth. Greg started his first nonprofit when he was just 12 years old, and it was that work that inspired his career in philanthropy. He is now the Managing Director of the AllState Foundation Social Impact Team and oversees their philanthropic work across the country, including their work in youth empowerment.
“Just go start. There are so many people around you that need help or need support.”
–Greg Weatherford
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More about Gregg Weatherford
Greg Weatherford II is the Managing Director of The Allstate Foundation & Social Impact. In this role, he oversees the Foundation’s social impact areas, including relationship abuse, youth empowerment and nonprofit capacity building. Prior to this role, he built the Foundation’s youth empowerment strategy centered around youth-led, youth-driven service.
Greg’s career began at age 12 when he started his first nonprofit to provide youth the knowledge and resources to create their own service-learning projects. At 18, he was recruited by a Fortune 100 company to lead an annual $5 million philanthropic initiative. He also created a sports and enrichment programming company to provide thousands of families with affordable summer camps nationally.
In July 2022, he joined The Allstate Foundation to lead and reimagine their youth empowerment pillar. A few months later, he successfully proposed shifting the pillar’s focus. Since then, he has built a robust and comprehensive national strategy focused on empowering youth (ages 5 – 25) to serve and improve communities. In less than two years, the Foundation and its partners are being recognized for contributing meaningful work to the field.
Some highlights of this work include: building Service Stars, a partnership with TIME and TIME for Kids that provides youth with resources and inspiration to make the world a better place; creating an innovative K – 12 grant program with DonorsChoose that has awarded more than $796K to 1,500 classrooms to help educators incorporate service; and providing more than $1M to colleges, universities, and HBCUs to increase student-led service on their campuses.
“…We can be so prescriptive—which sometimes a situation calls for that,—but sometimes, you just gotta go listen.”
–Greg Weatherford
Discussion Questions
- In reflecting on Greg’s imperative to just go start, what are some low effort, low resistance ways that you or your organization can make more positive impacts now?
- What opportunities are there for you or your organization to go learn from potential rural partners? Can you show up with no agenda, only the desire to listen and learn?
- As Greg mentions, it’s okay to mess up. If more funders are going to enter rural spaces, they are going to need to try new things and mistakes will be made. As you wade into new funding spaces, is it possible for your organization to also open-source your learnings so others can benefit from your experience? What could you share that will help the next organization make more impact, faster?
Resources
- Nonprofit Capacity Building: The Allstate Foundation Greater Good Nonprofit Leaders Program | eePRO
- Nonprofit Leadership Center | Allstate Corporation
- Greg Weatherford II – The Allstate Foundation | LinkedIn
- Greg Weatherford II
- Greg Weatherford| SXSW Speaker
- Better Together: How 30 Days of Service Changed My Life
“…Never find yourself to be too busy to do an act of kindness, and don’t feel burdened by having to create something that can be measured and researched. And yes, those things are very important, but you know, you really do have the power to change lives within yourself and with what you already have and what you can already do.”
–Greg Weatherford
Transcript: Episode #11 | Season 2: “Fostering Service”
Erin Borla 0:00
Welcome back to Funding Rural, a show that explores how philanthropy can better serve rural and indigenous communities. I’m Erin Borla with the Sisters Oregon based Roundhouse Foundation. One of the best things I’ve found in making this show is connecting with listeners all over the philanthropic world and beyond. My guest today is one of those new podcast friends. So thanks for listening along, and don’t hesitate to reach out. There’s a stereotype these days that young people don’t want to get involved and serve their communities. They’re not volunteering because they’re on their phones or computers all the time instead. Well, if you talk to Greg Weatherford, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Greg is the managing director of the Allstate Foundation Social Impact team, and oversees their philanthropic work across the country, including their youth empowerment work. Greg has a history of community service that goes much deeper than his current role, which is awesome, by the way, he just got a promotion. He started his first nonprofit when he was just 12 years old, living in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas, and it was that work that inspired his career in philanthropy. I started out by asking Greg about that very first nonprofit he started, and what inspired him to do it.
Greg Weatherford 1:18
So a lot of what I was seeing was that young people and a lot of the service opportunities that existed were adult directed. And obviously there’s nothing wrong with that, but they’re just time after time and again, I saw there was some misalignment with what the service actually was, with what young people wanted to do and what they were passionate about. So I decided, What if we flipped that on its head and make opportunities for young people to have the resources to then build service projects that spoke to their own passions and lived experiences. So we created an organization where we would pull resources, mainly financial, and then young people could write a paragraph or a half page synopsis grant application where they could say, I’m passionate about the elderly or animal care. Can I please have 250 bucks or $500 to do a service project right here in my community, and they didn’t have to worry about all the rigmarole of starting a 501c3, or all of those other barriers that could prevent their own service and leadership, we tried to remove that as much as possible, and we saw really exciting things happen after that.
Erin Borla 2:35
Yeah, well, and it’s like seed money, right? We talk about sort of seeding those ideas, because real change comes from passionate people, and then passionate people have to find those resources. And sometimes there’s that block between finding the connecting the passion and the resource, but when you remove that barrier and you encourage and tell people things are possible, especially young people, then magic happens.
Greg Weatherford 2:58
Yeah, I think today we really have an opportunity to say, let’s replace that, that narrative around apathy with it’s often barriers and not being invited to serve. There is the interest, there is the passion, there is the excitement, and really there’s the belief that they can actually have an impact. But we have to invite them in and give them those opportunities to do so.
Erin Borla 3:22
Well, and that’s something we hear, sort of in the national rhetoric, is that young people no longer want to do service, no longer participate in their community, are very, you know, focused on themselves, or only focused on their phone with your engagement with youth or younger people, even for the last several years is that really the case?
Greg Weatherford 3:42
No, it’s it’s not. And of course, you know, there’s no monolith, but I see so many times young people are really passionate about how they can get involved in their communities, but like a lot of things, they just don’t maybe know how, or no one has asked them. And so some of the cool things that we’ve seen is that 80% of young people actually see the benefits of service, both for themselves and their communities. We just really believe that it’s important for us to give them the resources and the opportunities to get involved in service. And when you do that, great things happen.
Erin Borla 4:18
It’s super interesting, and I love that you took that experience growing up and then were mentoring other young people, and now you’ve pushed it into philanthropy. So this podcast is a lot about how rural philanthropy, how we can impact communities outside of places you live in Dallas now or outside of Dallas, right? It’s not a rural place. I think most people know that. People are like, Why are you talking to Greg? Let’s figure this out. But I think there are so many lessons that come alongside, whether we’re in an urban center or we’re in a rural community, and especially when we talk about philanthropy, how those lessons can shape community, a community is a community, whether. It’s a smaller community, indigenous community, an inner city community. Doesn’t matter, but talk about how you got into philanthropy. How did that trajectory happen?
Greg Weatherford 5:10
So, I actually had an opportunity many years ago to participate in a program that was leading a corporate philanthropy where young people were empowered to give funds to other young people to lead service projects. So very much in line with my organization, that I had started middle school. And so I had an opportunity to do that. And that opportunity stuck with me, was a fantastic opportunity. And so I always said, even though I went on to entrepreneurship and education, that if the timing was ever right and the opportunity was right, that I would look to get back into philanthropy, you know, more, in a corporate sense, at some point. And in 2022 the right opportunity came along to lead this work at Allstate, and it was just a perfect match. And so, you know, I’ve so enjoyed being back in in in the arena of philanthropy, and really have tried to redefine how philanthropy is done and how philanthropy philanthropists show up, back to the point that you just talked about with rural communities and perspectives from rural communities. One of the things that we have really tried to be intentional about is bringing so many different perspectives, yes, of all people, but really around young people and so two fantastic young people that have been, I’ll say it’s been a dual mentorship, because they have really poured into me so much with their rural perspectives. Have been Zoe and Abriana, one is from Kentucky and one is from a rural part of New Mexico, and they keep me so honest about having perspectives of of young rural kids and young adults, and how do we make sure we’re showing up for them, and how do we make sure that they have a seat at the table and that their unique experience is represented, and that we are making sure that we expand opportunities to them? So that has been fantastic, and I always want to shout them out for for keeping me honest and mentoring me on that. So our entire youth empowerment strategy is built around empowering youth, ages five to 25 to serve and improve their communities. And so we really do that through a three prong strategy. One, we want to engage youth in as many in service opportunities. And so we’ve really looked at, how do we fund as many service opportunities that are that have as few barriers as possible for young people? The second part is around equipping youth to serve. So say, a young person has a little bit more inclination they want to start a sustained project, or they may want to start a 501c3, we know that for very experienced adults, that can be challenging, and so we really want to make sure that one, we support them with the funds to do that. But also we know that funding that may not be beneficial if they don’t have the knowledge and the mentorship and the support to actually best apply those funds and navigate the nonprofit terrain. So that equip strategy is really around, how do we get them the knowledge and the funds to actually execute their social impact projects in a way that’s kind of set them in the workup for success? And then the third prong is, how do we prepare adults? One to know the importance of service, to really understand that it’s an intervention that is as potent as STEM and arts and sports, that service really can be that catalyst to develop all those skills we talked about earlier. And so we really want to make sure that adults know that one first and foremost, but then provide them with resources to incorporate youth led service in their areas of domain. So schools and at home with parents.
Erin Borla 9:17
That is remarkable, and I want to touch on all of those a little bit. But I think what is most interesting to me, and what I hear as it relates to philanthropy, especially our philanthropic partners that are like, we want to do a youth development board. We want to get more involved with young people. It’s It’s understanding all those barriers as an adult to bringing those voices forward. So talk a little bit about some of the things that you and the foundation do to be able to prepare adults, to help support students.
Greg Weatherford 9:49
Well, I think the first thing that you can do is say what we say as adults. I’m going to try something, and it doesn’t have to go perfect, but I’m going to give myself the grace of knowing that I’m trying and I am well intentioned to support these young people. So I think when you first give yourself that permission slip, it really does give you an opportunity to take off the pressure of trying to get it right or having to crack the codes. Because as we said, young people are not a monolith. People are busy. There’s a lot going on, there’s a lot of barriers. So just take that pressure off yourself and say that I’m going to go in this well intention and do the best that I can. And I think after you do that, a natural next step is really talking to young people and saying, what is it that you feel your barriers are to getting to getting you more involved in the community? What type of work would you like to do in the community? What are some things you see that interest you, that you would like to work on and then let them really play a role in building out what this opportunity or this experience looks like. And I think so often we try to design things without the without the youth in in mind or participating in the process, as we talked about. And when you really give yourself that permission, I think that comes with letting young people see that it’s going to be messy, letting them see that it’s not going to be perfect, but again, you’re well intentioned, and you really are serious about empowering them. So that’s two that’s two first steps that I often really encourage people to start with.
Erin Borla 11:30
Yeah, I love that, letting it, letting them know it’s going to be messy. I think that that’s something we talk about. Philanthropy has a hard time saying that we don’t know everything, in we call it paying tuition. Like, yeah, we may screw something up. Let’s talk about that, and let’s talk about what those big, epic failures are, because that’s how we learn and how we adjust. If we don’t try things, we never know if it’s going to work or not. And we encourage that with our with our young people, when they’re learning to walk or crawl, or, you know, trying new foods and all those things. Why wouldn’t we encourage that as they’re looking at making a difference?
Greg Weatherford 12:06
Yeah, I so agree with you.
Erin Borla 12:10
Yeah. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel as as philanthropic communities, we can come together and say, Hey, what Greg’s doing is really great. Is there a way that we can either replicate it or come alongside or utilize that model? So we don’t have to build our own program, but we can empower through this current program.
Greg Weatherford 12:27
Yes, and I’ll be the first to say, one of the wonderful things that we do at the Allstate Foundation is we really do believe in strengthening the sector, the nonprofit sector, but also our philanthropic peers, we are very much so about open source and sharing learnings and mistakes and resources and so you know, all of our youth empowerment resources, whether it’s the two research reports that we’ve done where we really look at redefining what youth service is in a contemporary context, or it’s the service star 70 page workbook that’s completely about teaching young kids about service and fun ways, all of those resources we’re happy to, you know, make a available to other funders and obviously the community at large. But we definitely want others to join us in this, because we see this as as the as the Earth’s work. You know, really it’s, it’s important to share these opportunities and resources so that we can all do this together.
Erin Borla 13:31
Yeah, yeah. And I think that’s an important thing to talk about as a as the community of funders, right? We’re all trying to make positive impact on the communities that we serve. So leaning on and working with each other is really important.
Greg Weatherford 13:46
Why, I must say, I’ve one of the things that I’ve enjoyed about my cold outreach to you is, you know, I think we have had such an open exchange of people and contacts and resources and perspectives. So, you know, I think there’s a lot of that going on, and I just implore everybody else to to let down some of those walls and reach out to your fellow funders and others that are doing this work, because we really there. The answers are here. We all have them and together, where we don’t have them, we can. We’re a lot more likely to figure them out if we work together.
Erin Borla 14:24
Yeah, I totally agree. It’s been so fun to get to know you and watch all the different things that you’re working on. And let’s talk about your new role that you have so you’re still overseeing the youth empowerment work, but talk about your new role,
Greg Weatherford 14:37
Yeah, so in this role, I oversee and partner with our phenomenal program team to that includes our relationship abuse work, which is all about, how do we disrupt the cycle and prevalence of domestic violence and other forms of relationship abuse. And then we also have our nonprofit capacity building work that we’re doing, which is a multi prong one, one of which is the Allstate Foundation, non profit Leadership Center at Northwestern University. But we also really try to empower Allstaters, which is our employees and agents and everyone in the Allstate family, to support and lend their expertise back out through things like skill based volunteerism and pro bono work and things like that. So all of that is kind of under that umbrella that I now oversee, which is, which is really fantastic, because I truly have been so impressed by the work that was that was already there, and it’s been fun to get to really dig into that a lot more. You know, foundation. Why we really try to lean into the tenets of trust based philanthropy, especially, you know, where we can. And I think it is so much beyond just providing that financial support. It’s, you know, how do we provide the professional development through our nonprofit capacity building? You know how are we making sure that the requirements aren’t so burdensome for a nonprofit, especially as funding becomes more scarce, how can we lean into authentic and true partnership to try to approach these great societal challenges that we have and not make a nonprofit feel like they’re having to jump through a million hoops just to placate an agenda of someone else. And so we really are on this learning journey. And going back to what you said, you know, we don’t have it all the way down. We’re being very vulnerable and open that we’re learning and trying to always do better as a funder, but we definitely are well intentioned in the fact that we really want to support nonprofits and our partners and their leaders and employees in a 360 degree fashion.
Erin Borla 16:51
Yeah, so this podcast is really about rural folks. You know, philanthropic dollars, about 7% of national philanthropic dollars impact rural places point 4% for indigenous communities. Why do you think that is? What do you think the misstep is there, and how can we work together, especially as a national organization like, what are some of the barriers that rural place based funders can help break down for national funders? What? How else can we better partner together in that space?
Greg Weatherford 17:19
Yeah, I mean, I think one podcasts like this are so important, really important. Because I think we have to shine a light on things. I think, like in philanthropy or government, it is so easy to just keep the budget the same, fund the same things. Fund who you know, fund what you’ve done, and I think it’s on funders to really get out there and roll your sleeves up and do the work to find, find these statistics of 7% of those dollars only going to rural and find out why that is so. Again, I kind of think it’s similar what I said before. You know, no, it’s going to be a little messy. No, we’re going to have to do some work. No, we may not have all the answers, but let’s, let’s really explore this, because we are truly as a society, if we don’t pay attention and address some of these things, we really will leave, continue to leave behind some of our neighbors, which I know is not the intention, so it’s, how do we how do we address these gaps, and how do we do it in partnership? Well, we got to start by really rolling back the covers and seeing why these inequities exist.
Erin Borla 18:35
Yeah, we talk about, well, with my kids, I talk about intent versus impact all the time, right? Whatever you intended may not have the impact that you you really wanted it to. So how do we look at both of those things? And I think that’s it’s really important as we try to build those relationships. And again, stepping in with grace and going, Hey, I don’t know how to do this, but I’m trying. Or who does know how to do this, and how do I work with them in that space?
Greg Weatherford 19:06
And I think, I think that’s, I think sometimes we can be so prescriptive, which sometimes a situation calls for that, but sometimes you just gotta go listen, yeah, like you just have to go listen, you know. And that can be, you know, going to a community with your hands open and your arms open wide, and just saying, you know, please inform me, please share your experiences, please share what you are observing. And then just take a beat, just take a pause and digest that information. And I think sometimes we are afraid, again, societally, to take on a challenge or explore a challenge, because we think we will not be in in that swoop, to actually reach a conclusion or to reach success, but learning in itself can be success. And I think it’s all about reframing what is success. And so I think just investigating and exploring and making the connections and the relationships, that’s a great first step. It doesn’t have to be, you know, okay, we’re going to come in, we’re going to build this program out for this, in this, this, this, creating this over promise scenario or this undue expectation for yourself, go in with open arms, open ears, open hearts, open minds and listen and learn, yeah, yeah. And then what? Well, you know, I think then from there, I think then from there, you evaluate what’s possible, you know, some of which may not be able to happen, but I think you know that again, goes to your intention versus impact. You know, when you’re really intentional about listening, there is an opportunity to then look at what partnerships can be developed in tandem with the communities that have not been reached. And then I think you start to say, Okay, we’re going to chip away at things piece by piece. We may not be able to do it all, but we do. Now that I’ve actually listened to you, oh, I can actually help you accomplish that. I didn’t even know that was an issue, but now that I’ve heard that, oh, that’s actually something that we can do and do well, but without doing that first step, you’re never going to know that, and you’re just going to probably be going, you know, off of assumptions and or a lack of information and do nothing overall. I would even challenge, I would even challenge other funders, you know, carve out a piece of your budget and your time to do a convening. It doesn’t have to be a national you know, 500 people convening some of the best conversations that I’ve had. I’ve been in a room with 10 very passionate people from from a local area. So I would also look at the power of convening and really bringing people together again when we feel so disconnected and we feel so out of touch with folks that we maybe previously knew or communities that we previously knew, you know, really looking at, how can I use the power of convening to bring people together and to learn from each other?
Erin Borla 22:19
So one piece of advice you would give for folks that are interested in beginning their service journey, whether they’re 5, 15, 45 or 85 what’s your best piece of advice?
Greg Weatherford 22:31
Just go start. There are so many people around you that need help or need support. Life is tough, and it can be anything from opening a door for someone, asking someone how they’re doing, offering to take someone to lunch, writing a thank you card to someone. There really is a spectrum of service, but what there also is, is a spectrum of impact. And although we may think that the harder the service project is, the longer it takes, the more expensive it is, the more impact it may have. That’s not true. You know, literally picking up the phone today and calling someone who’s been sick or, you know, has been going through something really can save and or change their life, and so never find yourself to be too busy to do an act of kindness, and don’t feel burdened by having to create something that can be measured and researched. And yes, those things are very important, but you know, you really do have the power to change lives within yourself and with what you already have and what you can already do.
Erin Borla 23:54
You should be my morning wake up call every day. I so appreciate you, I have loved getting to know you and and I think I’m so thankful that we got connected, and you’re such an inspiration. And what a what a gift to young people in our communities across the country, and what a gift to the philanthropic sector. Thank you.
Greg Weatherford 24:19
Thank you so much. It has been an absolute pleasure. Also, I feel my cup has been so you know, filled by getting to know you as well. And I just thank you for all that you’re doing to bring such a spotlight to this important topic and being a voice for so many that have not often been heard.
Erin Borla 24:49
I mentioned it in the conversation with Greg directly, but he is such an inspiration, and how lucky are the young people that get to connect with him to recognize how important it is to just try something. Thing to be brave and learn from your mistakes and how it’s okay to show your mistakes. That’s something philanthropic institutions can really learn from. It’s okay to mess up. Where do we mess up? How do we learn from that? And how do we move forward? I really appreciate that Allstate Foundation is open sourcing their learnings as well. I know a lot of other philanthropic institutions do a lot of research and a lot of story sharing and things like that. Let’s find a way to really connect with one another and share that data. How do we work within each of our own institutions to be able to share information and share learnings and and work with different nonprofit and direct service organizations on the ground to say, Hey, we’ve tried this in this one community. Maybe you could try it here. How do we adapt it and change it for those different regions and learn from one another? We’re going to link to all states Nonprofit Leadership Center in our show notes, they work in partnership with Northwestern University to support nonprofits in a variety of ways, from doing virtual cohort trainings with nonprofit employees to nonprofit executive leadership coaching. I think it’s also important to note that my buddy Greg co wrote a book with a student he mentored better together, how 30 days of service changed my life. Be sure to check that out, and let’s follow Greg’s advice. Just go start. Just do that one act of kindness. Just show up and listen. Just go start. Head over to FundingRural.com for more information.
Transcribed by AI.
