The Nonprofit CEO Podcast

Ted Esler launched a partially self-funded health insurance program for the staff of Missio Nexus member organizations. It grew from zero to $22 million in about 18 months. Then COVID arrived. Claims went quiet while people stayed away from the doctor, so the program looked healthy when it was not. The bills landed all at once when they came back, and the losses grew large enough to threaten an association running about $2 million a year. His consultants told him to ride it out. H...

Michael Wear had a clear vision for the Center for Christianity and Public Life: deep formation work, deep investment in cohorts of twelve to sixteen fellows, commitments measured in years. Some potential funders kept pointing to cheaper models. Other organizations were reaching thousands for less. The constant temptation was to take a shortcut, starting with something splashy and backfill the real work later. Michael kept asking one question: a shortcut to what? A shortcut would have built s...

Myal Greene inherited an organization with a mission statement that everyone loved. World Relief had run on that mission statement for fifteen years. Internal staff admired it. External donors knew it. Myal knew it needed to change anyway. This conversation is about the eighteen-month, discerning, board-engaged process. Myal walks through how the decision surfaced during strategic planning, why he never saw himself as the decision maker but as the person facilitating the board toward a good d...

Phil Ryken had believed for years that Wheaton College's signature orientation program should be required for every new student. The research was there, and he saw what it could mean for Wheaton. But that meant scaling a high-connection, immersion program from 200 students to 550 in a single year. And that, in turn, meant recruiting 45 additional faculty members, asking them to give up two weeks of August and solving problems that didn't have easy answers. And yet, Phil made the change....

Everything was up and to the right. Hope International had just received an award for innovating in a post-conflict setting. Peter Greer the biggest champion of more. Then the cracks started to show. Peter had to stop, own the mistake, and go tell the donors who had believed what he told them. Peter is one of the most intentional leaders I've interviewed about building a personal network of advisors. He also names something I think every CEO should wrestle with: not whether you and your organ...

In one month, CEO Bill Simmons shipped more than 15 working applications and 70,000 lines of code to his team, without adding a single software license or outside developer. He did it with about $25,000 in internal time, replacing software that would have cost over $750,000 to build. Most nonprofit CEOs are still asking whether to pay attention to AI. He's already restructuring how his organization functions by using it. Bill Simmons is President and CEO of Hope Rises International, a C...

Curtis Chang set out to build a nonprofit nobody would ever know by name. He wanted Good Faith to be like Target: the store as the brand, not the founder. Four years later, Curtis, David French, and Russell Moore were at the center of the most prominent faith-and-politics curriculum in the country. A quarter million people had used it. This conversation is about how a founder navigates a pivot, and why market need and relationships sometimes rewrite the plan. He also talks about the two...

Olivia Mulerwa spent months carrying a decision she couldn't talk about with anyone who didn't already have a stake in the outcome. She needed to have a hard conversation with a beloved board member. The rest of the board was unwilling to even discuss it. She had to decide in isolation. This conversation covers how she made that call, the listening process she used in advance, and the one person she thinks of before making any major decision at Mission ONE. Olivia also talks about stepping ...

On this episode of The Nonprofit CEO Podcast, hosts Adam Jeske and Krish Kandiah dive into the complex, consequential decisions that shape nonprofit leadership. Krish Kandiah, founder of the Sanctuary Foundation and a key figure in driving the UK’s response to refugee crises, shares his journey from fostering children in his own home to influencing national policy and launching innovative charities. Together, they explore the challenges of starting organizations rooted in personal conviction,...

The role of the nonprofit CEO role is isolating. The decisions are high-stakes, the support is often thin, and the margin for error can literally be life and death. The Nonprofit CEO Podcast is where those decisions get talked about honestly. Hosted by Adam Jeske, The Nonprofit CEO Advisor, this podcast goes beyond theory and best practices to the real choices that define careers and shape communities. If you're a nonprofit CEO navigating tough calls, or you know one who is, this is t...