In this special Five Minute Friday episode, host Jacob Leaf discusses his 15‑year journey of serving an extremely impoverished community by staying laser‑focused on deep, long‑term impact rather than chasing expansion. He emphasizes the importance of discipline in funding—learning to say no to large, glamorous grants that misalign with the organization’s mission, likening unsuitable money to “drug money” that harms the soul. Jacob draws parallels between nonprofit financing and Silicon Valley startup fundraising, urging nonprofit leaders to curate their donor portfolios and resist the pressure of accepting any available money. The conversation also explores the frustration of trying to attract massive funding for a single‑town initiative, the boredom donors feel with sustained, incremental success, and the need for continual branding and marketing reinvention to keep supporters engaged. Throughout, Jacob stresses that real change requires time, love, hard work, and energy, and that there is no “magic bullet” for raising children or communities.
Chapters
This is Five Minute Friday. Welcome everyone to today's episode, very special episode with a guy by the name of Jacob Leaf who has dedicated the last 15 years of his life to serving people and to serving a specific community to change their entire mindset, their entire process, their entire way of living to have it all in life, to improve their lifestyle in a place where poverty is extreme, to improve their education process, to improve the way people feel about themselves.
So what's really worked for us is about staying focused, right? We're in one area.
Not shiny balls, like going to the next city or trying to expand or do things, but just diving deep.
Yeah, being prepared and having the discipline to say no to money. Not all, I think one, you know, it took us a long time to learn, but not all money is equal. Not every dollar is worth the same. And so, you know, we used to raise $89 million a year, but we were taking a lot of this huge foundation money and government money that was forcing us to do things we didn't like. You know, we called it drug money. It was sexy, it was exciting. It would get us to big conferences, but it was killing our soul. You know, we were getting a lot of, it was very glamorous, a lot of stuff attached to a lot of this money. And having the discipline to say no, to turn it down if it's not right for your organization. You know, I made an analogy to, you know, startups in Northern California, but you're in Silicon Valley with the tech set. You spend a lot of time talking about who you want investing in your company, right? What type, what should your portfolio look like? And we don't do enough of that in the nonprofit sector. And I'm really encouraging nonprofit leadership to have that discussion with their team and not just take all money because it's there. Because a lot of it can do a lot more harm than good. Remember that as a nonprofit, you know your business better than others. Just because some guy made billions of dollars creating Uber doesn't mean he knows how to do your global health, right?
Exactly, yeah.
And you might have some great ideas, but it's like, I say that because oftentimes a lot of those with the financial means dictate the agenda. And we have to listen a lot more to nonprofit leadership. So you mentioned Scott and I both spent a good majority of their careers understanding their issues, right? From global education, clean water initiatives. Let them tell you what needs to be done.
Yeah, that's cool. Okay.
So where is this all heading for us? I think one of the biggest frustrations before I get to that for us has been and what we continue to struggle with is we work in one little corner of the world. And how do you attract the massive funding? Now if I wanted to expand to seven regions, we could climb to $20 million organization pretty quickly. So how do you continue to sell people on the idea of one little town. And let me tell you, sustained success isn't exciting for people. It's weird. Like, you know, if you have your money in some stock that just kept going up each year, you wouldn't take your money out, you'd leave it in. But in the nonprofit sector, people get bored. They want the next big magic bullet. And what we've realized is there's no magic in raising children. Right.
It takes time, energy and a lot of love.
A lot of love, a lot of hard work, a lot of energy. that's all it is and that, so how do you from a marketing standpoint think Scott has just done, I mean you mentioned Scott and Charity, what are they, I mean I look at what they've done as a model from a branding perspective and how do you reinvent yourself in a way, you know, to constantly come up with new ways of selling yourself and they do it very well, really they really do. So that's what we've struggled with is, you know, taking we're constantly having to reinvent ourselves to sell the same product, really.
Hey, guys, if you enjoyed this inspirational clip from a past episode of the show, then you'll love the free book I'm giving away right now. It's called the millionaire morning. It includes some of my best tips for starting off your day with a millionaire. get your free copy at themillionairemorning.com and just pay shipping. Again, check it out right now, themillionairemorning.com.
