99. Charity Matters: Storytelling, Service, and Start Something That Matters with Heidi Johnson

About this episode

Heidi Johnson discusses the importance of integrating service into everyday leadership and shares her experiences founding Spiritual Care at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

Service often gets framed as something people do on the side, yet this episode shows what happens when service becomes a sustained practice—built into systems, relationships, and everyday leadership. Heidi shares the story behind founding Spiritual Care at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, after personal loss reshaped her understanding of what families need in moments of trauma. The conversation explores how nonprofit work actually grows in the real world: finding the right people early, learning by doing, building trust and community, and shifting from transactional charity towards relational support. Along the way, Heidi draws on insights from years of interviewing nonprofit founders through Charity Matters, offering grounded lessons for changemakers about partnerships, storytelling, and why the future of impact may depend less on scale and more on strengthening local connection. About Our Guest: Heidi is the founder of Spiritual Care, a nonprofit established in 2003 to provide interfaith chaplaincy support for families at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, offering presence and care in moments of crisis regardless of faith background. Under her leadership, the organisation became…

People in this episode

Guest: Heidi Johnson

Topics covered

• service
• nonprofit work
• storytelling
• community building
• trauma support
• leadership

Keywords

• service
• nonprofit
• storytelling
• community
• trauma
• leadership
• charity

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Spiritual Care, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Charity Matters

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