Do One Better with Alberto Lidji in Philanthropy, Sustainability and Social Entrepreneurship

Justin Steele spent a decade as a funder at Google.org, giving away hundreds of millions of dollars before leaving at the end of 2024 to co-found Outdoorithm Collective, a nonprofit focused on connecting families with public lands and campgrounds in the United States. Finding himself on the other side of the funding table for the first time, he quickly discovered how broken and fragmented the grant-prospecting process really is. That frustration, combined with a self-taught crash course in coding with AI tools, led him to build a simple matching tool for his own nonprofit. That tool became Kindora, a public benefit corporation he co-founded with Karibu Nayaga to serve as an AI-driven fundraising intelligence layer for the nonprofit and social enterprise sector.

In this conversation, Justin explains how Kindora crawls tens of thousands of funder websites and PDFs to build a searchable, continuously updated database of open grant opportunities, funder histories, program officers, and trustees, going back three years and covering the United States, Canada, and Europe, including the United Kingdom. He describes how organizations can access this intelligence for free through a simple AI chat interface, including as a connector inside Claude, and how paid credits unlock deeper research and evaluation tools. He also shares an early data finding from Kindora's own query logs: a striking gap between how much nonprofits are searching for technology and AI-related funding and how little of that funding is actually available.

Beyond the platform itself, Justin makes the case for why proximity to a problem, paired with AI-assisted building, may matter more right now than traditional academic pedigree. He talks candidly about the environmental and bias-related tradeoffs of AI, why he believes the people closest to social problems are best positioned to solve them, and where he sees Kindora heading next, from helping organizations find collaborators for joint grant applications to eventually helping funders discover trust-based connections to potential grantees.

In this episode, you'll learn:

How Justin Steele's own fundraising struggles at a brand-new nonprofit led him to build what became Kindora

How Kindora aggregates and structures grant and funder data from over 80,000 funder websites, including PDF-based disclosures

Why open grant opportunities, not just mission-fit matching, became the platform's core early product

How organizations can access Kindora for free through an AI chat interface, including as a connector inside Claude

What Kindora's own query data reveals about the mismatch between demand for AI and technology funding and its actual availability

Why Justin believes proximity to a problem and creative "taste," rather than formal engineering or business credentials, are becoming the real differentiators in building useful technology

How data transparency around philanthropic giving varies across the United States, the United Kingdom, and the rest of Europe

Where Kindora is headed next, including efforts to help organizations find collaborators for joint applications and to surface trust-based connections between funders and grantees

Visit our Knowledge Hub at Lidji.org for information on 350+ case studies and interviews with remarkable leaders in philanthropy, sustainability and social entrepreneurship.

Peter Singer co-founded Grand Challenges Canada and served as its CEO before joining its board, where he still sits today.

Over 15 years, the organisation has backed roughly 1,700 innovations across more than 100 countries, deployed over a billion dollars in funding — more than half from the Government of Canada — and reached 85 million people, improved 28 million lives, and saved an estimated 120,000 lives.

Peter shares vivid examples: a small grant that helped seed Mylab, now a billion-dollar Indian diagnostics unicorn; an early investment that led to Ubiologics' cholera vaccine now entering the global stockpile; and Tanzania's M-Mama, an Uber-style maternal transport service now operating at national scale within government.

Peter traces his path through four distinct careers: as a physician and professor of medicine focused on end-of-life care, sparked by a formative experience with a dying patient in 1984; as co-founder of a bioethics centre; as co-founder and CEO of Grand Challenges Canada; and later at the World Health Organization under Tedros, where he worked to embed a results-driven culture through the "triple billion" targets.

He reflects candidly on what worked and what didn't — the tools for measuring outcomes and outputs were built, but institutionalising accountability within a large multilateral bureaucracy proved far harder.

The conversation covers the state of philanthropy in Canada, contrasting its concentrated, strategic style with the greater density of giving in the US. Peter also discusses integrated innovation — blending technological, social, financial, and now digital and AI-driven approaches — and makes the case for social and service-delivery innovation being undervalued relative to flashier technological bets, using a comparison between a Gates Foundation toilet technology challenge and Grand Challenges Canada's portfolio of water and sanitation social enterprises.

On the Sustainable Development Goals, Peter is blunt: progress is weak, and he argues real success would come first from intellectual honesty about where things stand, and the accountability and data work needed to understand why.

He closes with advice for young people: find a problem that genuinely bothers you and solve it, seek out the right mentors, recognise a "rocket ship" opportunity when it appears, and let character and integrity anchor everything else.

Visit our Knowledge Hub at Lidji.org for information on 350+ case studies and interviews with remarkable leaders in philanthropy, sustainability and social entrepreneurship.

It's a pleasure to welcome Michael Thatcher back onto the Do One Better Podcast. Michael is President and Chief Executive Officer of Charity Navigator, the largest independent evaluator of nonprofits in the United States, now marking its 25th year and covering roughly 245,000 charities as a free public service to donors.

Michael last joined the show in 2022, and returns with a comprehensive update on how Charity Navigator has evolved since then — including a major overhaul to its rating methodology, a new partnership bringing cost-per-outcome impact data into the platform, and candid reflections on some of the biggest structural challenges facing the charitable sector today.

In this conversation, Michael and Alberto discuss:

A 25-year milestone. How Charity Navigator evaluates nearly 245,000 charities with a team of just 35 people, largely by processing publicly available IRS tax filings.

The April 2026 ratings overhaul. A new methodology spanning 49 metrics across 10 evaluation areas — financial health, governance, leadership and impact measurement among them — plus a new partnership with True Impact to bring cost-per-outcome scoring to the platform.

How curated lists get built. Why a complete, high-quality data set and demonstrated effectiveness are required for an organisation to appear on one of Charity Navigator's roughly 50 curated lists — and how "whimsical" lists (most popular charities, celebrity-favoured causes) sit alongside more rigorously vetted ones.

Giving funds, explained. How Charity Navigator's roughly dozen thematic funds work as pooled, pass-through vehicles (not donor-advised funds), how allocations across organisations are rebalanced, and why full transparency into fund composition matters to donors.

Two unexpected donor demographics. Why younger donors are drawn to cause-based giving over brand loyalty, and why older donors are increasingly using Charity Navigator's funds as a dependable vehicle within estate and legacy planning.

The AI disintermediation challenge. How Charity Navigator's open, free data is increasingly being surfaced directly by large language models — reducing website traffic and, with it, the donation asks that fund the organisation's own operations.

A troubling giving trend. New research showing a steady, multi-year decline in the number of individual donors in the US even as total dollars given continues to rise — and why Charity Navigator's own research points to a "connection" problem rather than a trust problem.

Staying above the fray. How Charity Navigator has maintained credibility with donors across a polarised political landscape by consistently avoiding partisan positioning.

Visit our Knowledge Hub at Lidji.org for information on 350+ case studies and interviews with remarkable leaders in philanthropy, sustainability and social entrepreneurship.

Martin Burt, Founder and CEO of Fundación Paraguaya (Paraguay Development Foundation) and former Mayor of Asunción, joins Alberto Lidji to discuss a fundamentally different approach to eliminating poverty. Rather than focusing solely on income or government interventions, Burt argues that lasting change begins with families, dignity, and the entrepreneurial spirit.

The conversation explores the Poverty Stoplight, a framework now used in 62 countries that enables families to assess their own multidimensional poverty across objective measures such as housing and income, alongside subjective factors including motivation, self-esteem, and aspirations. By identifying their own priorities and connecting with practical solutions, families become active agents in their journey out of poverty.

Martin explains why empowerment matters as much as economics, why families should define what it means to be "not poor," and how this locally developed methodology from Paraguay is reshaping poverty alleviation across the Global South and the Global North. He also reflects on lessons from four decades in economic development, public service, and social innovation, offering a compelling vision for putting human flourishing at the heart of development.

Visit our Knowledge Hub at Lidji.org for information on 350+ case studies and interviews with remarkable leaders in philanthropy, sustainability and social entrepreneurship.

What does it take to change systems rather than simply address symptoms? In this episode of the Do One Better Podcast, Alberto Lidji speaks with Don Gips, CEO Emeritus of the Skoll Foundation, about the evolution of social entrepreneurship and the enduring role it plays in tackling the world's most complex challenges.

Drawing on a career spanning the private sector, government, diplomacy, and philanthropy, Don reflects on the Skoll Foundation's pioneering efforts to help establish social entrepreneurship as a global field. He discusses Jeff Skoll's founding vision, the creation of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at the University of Oxford, and the growth of the Skoll World Forum into one of the world's foremost gatherings of social innovators.

The conversation explores what distinguishes social entrepreneurship from traditional charitable approaches, emphasizing the pursuit of systems change through innovative models that reshape incentives, institutions, and outcomes. Don explains why successful social entrepreneurs increasingly build enduring organizations rather than relying on individual leadership, and why adaptability is essential when navigating resistance to systemic reform.

A central theme is the growing importance of "systems orchestrators": trusted leaders who convene diverse stakeholders, align incentives, and enable collective action across sectors. Don argues that these often overlooked actors play a critical role in advancing large-scale social change, even when their contributions resist conventional methods of attribution and measurement.

The discussion also examines philanthropy's relationship with risk, the challenges of funding systems change, and the need to move beyond linear models of impact toward collaborative approaches that recognize shared contribution. Don shares practical insights into how foundations can better support both social entrepreneurs and the broader ecosystems that enable transformational change.

Reflecting on his own career, Don recounts lessons from leadership roles including U.S. Ambassador to South Africa, domestic policy advisor to Vice President Al Gore, and CEO of the Skoll Foundation. 

The episode concludes with a simple but powerful principle that has shaped both the Skoll Foundation and Don's own career: bet on good people doing good things, then use your resources, relationships, and influence to help them succeed.

This conversation will appeal to anyone interested in philanthropy, social entrepreneurship, systems change, impact investing, leadership, and the future of social innovation.

Visit our Knowledge Hub at Lidji.org for information on 350+ case studies and interviews with remarkable leaders in philanthropy, sustainability and social entrepreneurship.