A Modern Nonprofit Podcast · The Charity CFO, LLC

Episode 132: Find Your People: How Advocacy Helped One Founder Build a Mission-Driven Nonprofit

·41 min·2 clips

Lee wrote a four-page letter explaining why a restaurant-prepared meal mattered during breast cancer treatment.

Tasha opens by naming advocacy as the day's topic. She frames it as part of the harder work of starting and growing a nonprofit. Courtney Johnson joins as the founder of Culinary Care. Tasha notes that Courtney started the organization when she was 23. She also points out that the work has expanded beyond the Chicago area. The conversation stays close to the question of how a mission gets taken seriously. It asks what it takes to get a foot in the door. It also asks how to make the mission resonate with the public on a bigger scale and a smaller scale. Courtney talks candidly about the early frustration of asking for money. She says she needed confidence and a clearer skill set before fundraising felt natural. For roughly two and a half years, she kept a full-time job while moving the project forward. On lunch breaks, she kept the program alive. Family and friends helped deliver meals when patients requested them. That small, practical start gave the team a way to learn before the work got bigger. The episode then turns to the original operating model. A car, gas, donated meals, and a 501(c)(3) were part of the basic setup. Courtney explains that the nonprofit structure mattered because restaurants needed a way to donate food and food safety pushed the group toward a more formal arrangement. The conversation keeps circling back to the people who make the work real: donors, volunteers, and the community around the mission. It leaves the sense that advocacy is not just messaging. It is the slow work of building trust, capacity, and support around a cause people can actually join.

As heard by us

Advocacy here is the work of finding people, money, and momentum.

Advocacy is presented as practical work: finding people, asking for help, and building enough trust for a mission to keep moving. Tasha Anderson speaks with Courtney Johnson, founder of Culinary Care, about starting young, reaching beyond the Chicago area, and getting a…

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If your nonprofit needs a way in before it feels established, this gives you one.

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