Tailwinds: Ideas Fueling Nonprofit Innovators and Social Entrepreneurs

About Tailwinds: Ideas Fueling Nonprofit Innovators and Social Entrepreneurs

Tailwinds is a project that brings momentum to the leaders tackling the world’s most impossible problems. Created by Flying Whale Strategies, the show delivers ideas, insight, and energy to the people doing work that often feels impossible. Each episode features brass tacks strategy that can be implemented tomorrow. Hillary Frances interviews social sector leaders who are in the messy middle of building their organizations. And since we are talking about bold solutions to intractable problems, she also brings in insight from the for-profit world.

Publisher

Flying Whale Strategies

Category

business · business · business

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

1 Dec 2025

Latest episode

28 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

21 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   28 Sept 2026

   Inside a major gift conversation

   Major gift fundraisers rarely get to study each other's work the way athletes study game tape — what was said, when, in what order, over how many months. This episode is Hillary's attempt at getting as close to that tape as possible: a rare three-way conversation between a fundraiser, her donor, and the host trying to reverse-engineer what actually happened between them. Hillary sits down with Deema Salem Syed, Senior Director of Individual Giving at Central Park Conservancy, and Nadia Block,...

2. 

   14 Sept 2026

   The relationship strategy behind a $5.5M grant portfolio

   Riley Janeway and Emily Brown help run a $5.5M grant portfolio—up from $3 million in 2024, for Emma's Torch, a culinary training nonprofit for refugees and asylum seekers. Their secret isn't better writing. It's that 90% of the grants they won last year involved a real conversation with the funder first. In this episode, Hillary Frances sits down with Riley and Emily to break down exactly how that plays out — including a funder who took years of quiet courtship before ever inviting an applica...

3. 

   31 Aug 2026

   Capital Stacks: How to ask donors to leverage, not just give

   The for-profit world is accessing capital because they know how to walk into a room and say "I don't need you to just hand me money, I need you to change the terms of another deal I have." In this episode, Hillary lays out why for-profit entrepreneurs have an easier time unlocking capital than nonprofit leaders do — and makes the case that we're missing a whole menu of creative asks beyond "grant or loan." She is joined by Paige Byron, development director at Colorado West Land Trust, w...

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

3 ratings

Contact Tailwinds: Ideas Fueling Nonprofit Innovators and Social Entrepreneurs

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.