A podcast for nonprofit program leaders
The Business of Helping
Stories from the people who deliver nonprofit programs.
Fundraising gets most of the sector’s airtime. This show is about the other side of the work: how shelters, crisis lines, and case management programs actually run, told by the people who run them.

The Business of Helping

Each episode, one program leader walks through how their program actually runs — intake to outcome — in enough detail that a peer could borrow it.
Season One
Out now The Second Step
How a four-person team in Prescott, Arizona moves women from an emergency shelter bed to permanent housing inside a 90-day window.
Carmen Frederic — Executive Director, Prescott Area Shelter Services
29 min
Out now Out of the ER
Why a sexual assault center of about twenty-one people built its own forensic medical unit, and what that changed for survivors in Savannah.
Doris L. Williams — Executive Director, Mary’s Place: Sexual Assault Center of the Coastal Empire
28 min
Out now Punching Above Our Weight
The area’s only shelter for elders experiencing abuse, and a kosher meals route where the meal is the smallest thing delivered.
Jay Sinclair — Director, Syracuse Jewish Family Service
28 min
Out now From Outcry to Adjudication
The hotline, the shelter, the forensic team, the children’s advocacy center and the school prevention program, all run by one organization in one Texas county.
Ginger Johnson — Executive Director, Abigail’s Arms Cooke County Family Crisis Center
29 min
“I like to start by saying you are not here to deliver meals. The meal is ancillary to the social contact and connection that our volunteers can make with some of our clients.”
Run a program worth studying?
We’re lining up guests for the next season. If you lead program delivery at a nonprofit — shelter, casework, crisis response, community services — tell us how your work runs. If it would teach a peer something, we’d like to have you on.
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About the show
The Business of Helping is hosted by Scott Brereton and produced by Societ. Episodes run about half an hour. Guests review sensitive material before anything is published, and nothing on the show is a sales pitch — that is the deal that makes honest conversations possible.
Produced by Societ · Tools and services for nonprofits