300. Meet the Farmlink Project: The Next Gen of Nonprofit + Evolved Leadership is Here - Aidan Reilly and Ben Collier

The Farmlink Project Co-Founders, Aidan Reilly, Ben Collier, We Are For Good Podcast

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Overview

Meet A iden and Ben. There's is a nonprofit fairy tale story: three college students who saw a problem in the world and built a scrappy, grassroots solution that's changing the world. The Farmlink Project connects surplus food from farms to food banks all around the country and has rescued nearly 70M# of produce since its inception. Tune in and help us fight for a world where everyone has access to the food they need.

💡Learn

Founding story of Farmlink
The new generation of nonprofits and nonprofit leadership - how rising GenZers are innovating the nonprofit experience
Their unique approach to corporate partnerships (that are working!)
What food insecurity & food waste looks like in the U.S. today.

Today’s Guests

Ben Collier, Co-CEO and Aidan Reilly, Head of Partnerships, The Farmlink Project

“We look at what we’re doing at Farmlink to be an amazing thing. But we all recognize inside that the biggest impact we’re gonna have is with what people who come through Farmlink are going to do after.”

— Aidan Reilly, Head of Partnerships, The Farmlink Project

Episode Transcript

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Episode Overview

Ben and Aidan’s stories and journey to where they are today (4:00)
The founding of Farmlink (12:00)
Media attention (20:00)
Partnerships and Farmlink’s mentality around partnering with companies (25:00)
Mindset shift to create systemic change (29:00)
- Create technical improvements to the space
- Create a shift in policy and adjust the rules of the environment
  Create a shift in social perspective about the problem that is being addressed
Philanthropy through the eyes of Gen Z (35:00)
Story of impact: Martha Barajas, United Hands of Compton (42:00)
Internal team story of impact (46:00)
Aidan’s One Good Thing: Find your purpose, but commit to what you’re doing in that moment. Go easy on yourself.
Ben’s One Good Thing: Find like minded individuals, then there is not an idea that is not worth sharing.

Powerful quotes

“When we go work with a company, we're trying to get as many eyes as possible on the message, and make the barrier to entry towards giving back helping and thinking about these things lower and lower, because once you're in, we don't see many people deciding they don't care about this.” -Aidan

“You're getting asked for and pulled in like 57 different different directions every day. People build up pretty good radars and self defense mechanisms to batt off these kinds of solicitations. People just want to engage with things that like are genuine and that they actually will care about.” -Aidan

“It’s not about just getting more food to food banks, but actually striving for destigmatizing receiving free food and increasing the level of control that those who are currently going to food banks have over how they're feeding themselves. That is a far more holistic mission and problem space for us to be operating in.” -Ben

“We look at what we're doing at Farmlink to be an amazing thing. But we all recognize inside that the biggest impact we're gonna have is with what people who come through Farmlink are going to do after.” -Aidan

“It's about the human connection. It's about the one to one. These problems are so massive in scale that we're fighting, and they seem so insurmountable, but if you can go back to the one you're going to stay centered.” -Becky

“If you feel as though you have [like minded individuals], there's not really an idea that's not worth sharing. It doesn't have to be perfect.” -Ben