Creating Positive Social Impact Faster with OrgMatch

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Today’s episode is sponsored by SparkLoop. SparkLoop is the number one newsletter growth platform. I’m in the SparkLoop Partner program and within the first week I saw my email list grow by over 12,000%. That’s insane. Their newsletter, growth strategies and options are the most affordable rates I have ever seen on the market. I’m no longer paying between $5 and $10 per acquired email through online ads. Now I pay as little as $1 for warm emails that stay on my list and engaged for over 30 days. Everything is customizable in SparkLoop and they will set you up with a team member to help you through the process. Head on over to calanbreckon.com/SparkLoop for more details or just click the link in the show notes. Now let’s get into today’s episode.

Welcome to The Business Gay podcast, where we talk about all things business, marketing and entrepreneurship. I’m your host, Calan Breckon, and on today’s episode, I have co-founder and CEO of OrgMatch, Trevor Loke. Trevor has worked with dozens of community investment teams around the world, including Patagonia, to move over $100 million in capital. He currently lives in Vancouver, Canada, where he was previously a locally elected official. Now Trevor is working to grow OrgMatch, which is revolutionizing philanthropy by partnering funders with the best nonprofits to help them achieve their goals. OrgMatch’s mission is to create a world where social impact is maximized through effective partnerships. OrgMatch firmly believes that the key to creating sustainable change is by empowering nonprofits with the resources they need to make a difference. I’m excited about what OrgMatch is doing to help get funding into the hands of those who truly need it. So let’s jump in with Trevor.

All right, welcome to the podcast, Trevor. I’m so excited to have you. How are you doing?

[00:01:57] Trevor Loke: I’m doing just fine. Thank you for having me. I’m, yeah, really excited to be here today. Sunny weather in Vancouver. Thank you for sending that our way.

[00:02:06] Calan Breckon: Yes, it is not sunny weather in Toronto, so you’re welcome.

All right, so I want to jump right in, tell us about match and what it is exactly you do, because I think this is very, very interesting and fascinating work.

[00:02:21] Trevor Loke: I like to start with the conversation around trust. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, we kind of are having a bit of a trust issue right now in society. And I look at this at a few different levels. One is that we see friendships that are falling apart, especially among men, which is highly concerning among gay men, too. And then institutionally, we see a lot of distrust toward government, toward institutional brands.

And this is creating more isolation. This is keeping people apart. And if you’re one of these major brands or governments, you’re really concerned when you see numbers. Like a Gallup poll that came out recently showing Gen Z has a -84% trust in government and big tech. So, yeah, that’s obviously concerning. If you’re an incumbent, how do you build this trust backup? And that’s where match comes in, is we work with companies to help them align their capital with the outcomes that they say that they achieve. So when that’s a company like a bank, like, let’s say, RBC, they’re talking about, we help black Canadians, we help indigenous Canadians, we help people get financial skills and literacy. And the way that they do that is they move $200 million of capital every year to those communities to help them get the skill sets, get the opportunities that they’re talking about. And when they’re able to do that, align that capital to those communities, their trust significantly skyrockets.

So orgmat is all about aligning those community opportunities. The people on the ground who are doing the work to build the trust, to achieve the outcomes, solve the problems that are in society with the corporate capital. The companies that are so badly in need of that trust right now, they can partner with those communities to gain it back. And so that’s. That’s what match does at our heart. Um, the way that we work with companies is kind of threefold. Either a company isn’t currently making community investments right now, and they want to know how to do this effectively. The second is, you know, we’re doing this maybe not so well. How do we optimize to get better at it, make this, um, cost less internally, because about. Costs about 25% of the capital, operationally, for the company to move it out the door. And then the third is, you know, can we outsource this, or can you take on a particular task that we’re not skilled at or that we don’t have the capacity for? So we’ll do particular tasks for a company, whether that’s monitoring their incoming inquiries from nonprofit organizations and, you know, helping nonprofits navigate grant application systems, or whether it is, you know, doing data analytics and research or putting reports together. We can do those different elements, but at the end of the day, we are helping companies discover community opportunities that are authentic, that are grassroots, and that are highly impactful.

[00:05:14] Calan Breckon: Okay, so, in saying all that, you heavily work with nonprofits or do you strictly work with the nonprofits in regards to where the corporate funds are funneling down to?

[00:05:25] Trevor Loke: You know, our core belief is in the implementation of un Sustainable Development Goal 17, which is partnerships for the goals. And that is inherently helping nonprofit organizations access capital today that they haven’t had access to, typically.

But the way that we believe in achieving that is actually working with the funders. And so we actually spend our time with Fortune 500 companies and we help them change their systems and processes to, one, be more efficient for them, because every company cares about their capital allocation, the amount of time spent on tasks, and of course, with the outcomes of those tasks are. So we help them optimize those processes. And by doing that, we actually help flow more capital to grassroots organizations that are really hard to find, that you can’t just Google or, you know, pull out of a database that you actually need to, like, be on the ground and know about, but they can’t typically be found. So that’s really, I think, where the opportunity lies for those grassroots organizations is we certainly work with them to highlight their work, to pour those opportunities forward, and we’ll reach out to them at that time. But we start by helping to educate the funder around how their processes can be better and return more for the investments that they’re making. Nice.

[00:06:38] Calan Breckon: Okay. And so I want to try and phrase this question so that it’s correct, but basically, I want to ask why a company would want to give money to a nonprofit. Like, I understand why, but maybe let’s explain it from, like, the point of view of the company and then the point of view of the nonprofit, because I also know a lot of, like, nonprofits in this sector don’t think of big organizations as like, oh, they’re never going to give me money. So, like, explain the why that might happen, so that maybe somebody who is nonprofit can think, oh, maybe I should go after this more than I’ve been thinking, 100%.

[00:07:12] Trevor Loke: So the same year that JC Penney went bankrupt was the same year Patagonia posted record profits and just so happened to make the most nonprofit investments in its history.

And this is typically what I. The scenario I like to pull out is to say, you know, reputation matters and, you know, JC Penney’s case, you know, they’re flooding the airwaves with traditional tv ads to try to increase their reputation and awareness. Patagonia is doing that by giving money to stories that only they can tell. So when I started working with Patagonia in 2017, I went to Bellabella on the BC central coast. And I worked with a local nation there. The heck? And they were starting to make more investments in returning people to the land who had left, coming to places like where I live in Vancouver to find opportunity. And they were bringing opportunity back to the land. They had built a big house. They had new energy systems that were coming in that were sustainable. They built a beautiful ecotourism lodge for people to come and visit the land with full catering services, housing for people to live at.

When Patagonia learned about this project, they knew they had to be part of it. And what we were able to do was facilitate a tenure relationship between the nation and the company, where you could get consistent investments on the part of Patagonia to help build this vision that they had for their community and achieve it in real time, being a real partner, showing up as they were asked to. And at the same time, Patagonia was able to tell this story, to be able to show other communities what was possible and what good partnerships could look like. And that story is why Patagonia has a positive net reputation among Gen Z at a time when all of these other brands are significantly underwater. And so why would a company want to do this? Well, every company wants to be Patagonia. I’ve never met a company that I met with was like, oh, that’s a bad brand, or, that’s a brand we don’t want to be like. So companies are actually have put $80 billion into their budgets this year. This is around the world. To give money to nonprofits in exactly the pursuit of trying to achieve better reputation and regulatory benefits, too. There’s obviously tax incentives that come into play, and obviously government opportunities where they have these expectations of you in order to be able to work with them. So those are the two primary reasons why a company is doing this. What I would say is that when they’re putting this money out the door, they’re finding that the process of giving money away is not as easy as they had anticipated. And so a lot of it, two things happen. One is a lot of money just gets wasted on operations and admin. And the second thing is, a lot of money just defaults to the same organization. So if you’re a university or a hospital foundation, you are 30 times more likely to get cash than the rest of the marketplace. 60% of the money is given to 4% of organizations. So that means 96% of the market is fighting for 40% of the cash. And I think that this is obviously why we see a high rate of charitable failure. And it’s also why ultimately, in my opinion, a lot of problems aren’t being solved because money is being concentrated in the least effective organizations, the least grassroots organizations. So we need to flip that marketplace on its head. And so my belief is, in doing so, that’s actually going to unlock more opportunity for these businesses. The reason Patagonia has that great reputation is because they’re going into grassroots communities no one has heard of before. And telling stories of possibility and inspiration, that’s really hard to do if you’re a professional consulting firm and your logo is one of a hundred showing up on a sponsorship list and next to all of your competitors. So differentiation is actually in the interest of the company as much as it is in the interest of the marketplace. So that’s ultimately the hope that I have, is that we can actually help companies make more money as we help charities make more money, too.

[00:11:07] Calan Breckon: Yeah, it sounds like it’s like the changing of the guard is happening in terms of advertising, and the old way of just like, putting something in some, in front of somebody’s face isn’t exactly working anymore. And actually doing the work is what is working. And I mean, I could have told you this, like, how many years ago? We all could have told you this how many years ago? But when you actually put your money where your mouth is and you do these things that you’re not splashing across headlines just to be popular, be like, we did this thing. But actually changing lives in specific ways in specific places, that is what builds that loyalty. And I think a lot of newer up and coming brands, that is kind of the gears that they’re shifting towards. I know, especially the younger generations, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, that’s what they want to see. That’s what we wanted to see. The millennials, we wanted to see that we just didn’t know or necessarily have the tools. And we’re the ones who kind of had to figure out the Internet and figure out how to bring it all together and connect us all together, and so that all of these things could then start happening. So it makes me happy to see that there are organizations out there doing that now.

I recognize that theres obviously this pain point for the companies to deliver because you were talking about the funds only going to these kind of, what I would say is the conglomerates of fundraising. We all know those big brands that, that it’s like, oh, just donate to the Red Cross or donate over here because it’s easy, it’s a default mode. What is some of the ways that you help kind of, or let me rephrase, what pain point is.org match alleviating for those companies? Like how are you actually bringing together those donations from the company to the smaller organizations?

[00:12:54] Trevor Loke: That’s a great question. So the way that we find is most effective is collecting a lot of data that’s typically not available. So we do that through partnerships. We have a web scraper.

Obviously our users are putting data in and helping to build up profiles, almost like a wiki of information. So those are the three areas that our datasets are coming from overall. So we think like, number one, have the most data possible to be able to share as much as you can on the most number of organizations. The second challenge is presenting that information the way that the company needs to make a decision. So right now, in both cases, the way that the companies are generally doing this is, I would say a combination of Google and excel to try to basically put together a list in their own criteria and then try to present that in a way that their decision makers will be able to quickly say yes or no, or we need more due diligence. So I would say it’s collecting the data, presenting it in the right way, and then making it really easy for a decision maker to move to the next step. So that’s really what we’re automating. When we did this for ATB Financial, for instance, yeah, it was monitoring about 2000 hours their team was wasting on Google and Excel and in terms of just putting all of this together and so we were able to do the same process that took them three months and ten minutes. And so that is the level of scale we’re looking at because it’s like. And then again, too, I would say their information, their data sets, we did an A b test, right? It was like, okay, let’s see what your list looked like and then let’s see what our list looks like. You know, we were highlighting organizations they’d never heard of before. And of course, like ATB Financial, very community focused, you know, geographically focused on the province of Alberta, you know, communities where they were working in, where they have employees and they were organization they’d never heard of before with really cool projects that they wanted to be part of. So that’s, that’s, for us, how we kind of surface it is like, you know, pull the list, you know, highlight what those cool opportunities are in the right way and then like get them excited so that they’re starting to have that conversation at their decision making meeting. So that would, that’s what I would say is, like, the fundamental difference. It’s like, yeah, automate the admin, the research, and the due diligence as much as we can so that they can just quickly move into a relationship. Yeah.

[00:15:07] Calan Breckon: And it sounds very efficient, and efficiency is one of my core values, so I love it, and I appreciate it.

[00:15:12] Trevor Loke: Oh, yeah, you’re speaking my language. Oh, yeah.

[00:15:14] Calan Breckon: Like, efficiency. I’m just like, oh, God, I love efficiency. Makes me so happy. Um, it sounds like this could also be something that could be applied to the LGBTQ community. Maybe not necessarily specifically just for nonprofits, but just, like, queer businesses in general. I know that the CGLCC is doing a lot of work to try and provide that access and try and connect those dots. Have you put any thought into how this could also affect the, you know, queer community and how it could help their businesses get more funding from these organizations? Even though it’s not nonprofit, it still is part of, you know, the DEI ness of it all.

[00:15:53] Trevor Loke: Of course. Yeah, no, I hear what you’re saying. Like, there’s a lot of impact we can have, and the nonprofit sector is not the only way of achieving that. And I think, like, you know, our business is a business, but we’re a social enterprise. You know, we have a mission. We believe in helping the world. We actually think that that will help us make money, not hinder us from doing so. So that’s our fundamental philosophy. I would say my background and the expertise, you know, Tim and I have in starting this business is more in the nonprofit sector, and that’s where we’ve started. But when we were working on the development of our AI algorithm last year, we looked at a lot of different ways that the matchmaking recommendation engine that we generated could actually solve a number of different problems. Supplier registration. You mentioned that for companies, for instance, even in terms of hiring, looking at this not just on an organizational level, but as an individual candidate to organization level, could we make some recommendations, too? There are certainly future applications there. I would say our focus is still, how do we serve this sector in particular and do this really, really well? And we have work to do. I mean, we’ve got a really good manual process, I would say, in terms of helping the companies to do this, but there’s a lot that we can still automate, make more efficient, provide more value through our product, and we really want to serve this community as the one that we do that for first, once we do that really well, I think it makes sense. How do we get into other markets? How do we help more people? But I think if we did that now, it would be too early and we wouldn’t be giving as much value as the community deserves.

[00:17:26] Calan Breckon: Yeah, you still need to really reach that product market fit and get it to a good place and, like, scale before you can take it. But there’s definitely possibilities there in saying that. I mean, just listening to you speak, I know that the market must be huge, but how big is this market that you’re looking at?

[00:17:43] Trevor Loke: So, yeah, we’re estimating, you know, $80 billion in capital just from like, corporations to nonprofits this year. And that’s a world worldwide level. So about half of that is in the United States. Unsurprisingly, they’ve really created the model for this in Canada will be between one point five to two billion dollars. We’re estimating so a significant amount. Certainly enough for us to be able to test the marketplace and see how we can optimize our processes before we go into the US market or the european market, where there’s a lot more capital flowing. So, yeah, I mean, Canada has limited opportunity, but we think this is like a really good country to start in because it’s a bit more risk adverse. So if a product is going to work here, I think the likelihood of it working in a us market has good validation and good reason to move into that marketplace. And, yeah, I think the other reason is you’ve got to be more intentional. There’s only a few thousand companies that do this in Canada, a few thousand organizations that do this in Canada. So we know our customers really well, we get to know them pretty intimately, whereas in the US, again, much bigger marketplace, much different. So our belief is let’s do something really well for a market we really want to serve and then use that as the beachhead for growth.

[00:19:00] Calan Breckon: Yeah, I want to track back to the companies that maybe aren’t giving currently or don’t have that in the pipeline. What would you say to those companies?

[00:19:13] Trevor Loke: Yeah, I mean, every business is different, right? I think you have to ask what’s working for you, what’s not working for you. What I hear generally is traditional marketing is not working. We’re in a spam filled world now where nobody asks for permission anymore, and so people are inundated and therefore are ignored more. So. I think what I would say to these companies is if you’re not grabbing people’s attention and you would like to reinforce what your core narrative and message is to the public through your community investments, and that’s going to be a much more effective means of marketing and getting your story out there than the, you know, the money you’re setting on fire by, you know, doing all of those traditional ads, because, I mean, we know how expensive they are and we know how about how little they return. So that, that’s what I would say to those companies. But look, I mean, you know, for companies that were, reputation is maybe not as big of a concern. Maybe this is not something, something for them. I would obviously still encourage them to take a look at it. I would have them explore the regulatory benefits of doing this work as well and the tax benefits of doing it. But maybe this isn’t for every company. But I would say if you are a company that is concerned about your reputation, you certainly should be thinking about what your community investments look like and how they reflect your values and the message you’re putting out into the world, because if there’s not alignment between those things, you’re adding to distrust. And if you are aligned on those things, you’re building trust. So I would just ask, which one of the two are you doing? Very good.

[00:20:45] Calan Breckon: Very good. All right, shifting gears a little bit, because we have lots of entrepreneurs that listen to this. Have you had any investor rounds? We talked about this for a minute before we jumped on, but have you had any investor rounds for match, or are you planning any for the future?

[00:21:00] Trevor Loke: We are not currently planning. We’ve had a false start before where we thought we wanted to fundraise, and then during the process, discovered that it wasn’t for us and we weren’t getting the right matches. So we’ve definitely gotten very close to raising money and, um, and then not followed through on it, which I’m, you know, isn’t an experience in and of itself. I think, you know, being a founder, there’s a lot of pressures all the time, right? And, I mean, one of the most intense pressures is capital and cash flow. How do I, you know, how do I keep my balance sheet, you know, going so that I’m not, you know, racking up debts or owing people, people money that I can’t pay back? And how am I making sure the cash is coming in to be able to keep all of those people I need to work with to run my business happy? And we really, especially in the early days of our business, we weren’t sure how we were going to make money. We were really figuring out what is our price point look like? What is the exact service offering? What’s the customer journey we’re looking on? Interestingly enough, as we were fundraising, we were getting more customer interest and enough so that we were able to raise enough customer capital to offset our need to fundraise. And so that was certainly a huge blessing for us and changed the need for us to fundraise. So we haven’t gone back to the market since, but we are certainly. Yeah, it’s certainly something we’re thinking about in the future. We do want to scale. We want to be a big company, but we also recognize that being bootstrapped allows us to show up more authentically, serve our customers the way that we know how to best do without outside interference. And for Tim and I, as co founders, we have a really trusting relationship. And so if we want to bring somebody in to that, we want to have the same level of trust that we have with each other. And I think we’re doing a disservice to ourselves if we don’t feel that way.

[00:22:55] Calan Breckon: Yeah. Especially with the industry that you’re in.

[00:22:58] Trevor Loke: Specifically.

[00:22:58] Calan Breckon: Specifically, like, when you get into nonprofit, you really do have to make sure that you’re, you know, dotting all your. Is, crossing all your t’s, doing everything with integrity, because that’s kind of what the company’s representing.

[00:23:10] Trevor Loke: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. If we, you know, everything we do, I mean, that, you know, it reflects on us as founders, but, yeah, it reflects on our brand, you know, and I have recognized, like, being a founder is a privilege, and it’s also a huge responsibility because how I behave, how I act, how I treat people, it’s not just the Trevor show anymore. Like, I can. I can show up and apologize for who I am, but if it’s hurting my business, if it’s hurting the people who have trusted in this company, who believe in the mission we have, you know, that’s a whole. That’s a whole other thing. So, you know, I, you know, I have to definitely change how I show up and elevate myself all the time, too, as a founder, to be like, yeah, this is a huge responsibility to have this business. Especially when the first thing we talk about is trust. Right. It’s like, okay, now we’re really setting that expectation for ourselves, because if we do anything to undermine trust, it’s really hard to come back to. I like the. There’s an expression that trust is earned in drips and lost in buckets, and I think that’s absolutely true.

[00:24:12] Calan Breckon: Definitely. Definitely. How was your transition from working? I guess it was in the public sector because you worked for, you were an elected official at one point. How was it moving from that into the entrepreneurship mindset? Because it is very different worlds.

[00:24:31] Trevor Loke: Very different worlds. Yeah. How do I explain it? So, yeah, I was a locally elected official in Vancouver ten years ago now, but, yeah, so I was quite young in my early twenties, but it was, you know, kind of the Vancouver Olympics actually allowed me to get into that because I was, long story short, playing hockey. The local park board, the board I was eventually elected to, was basically restricting community sports and nonprofit and society sports in place of major athletes without giving the community spaces to recreate. And so we fought back against that, and we’re like, actually, there’s better ways of doing this, better ways of partnering and working with community. It just so happened that that turned into a campaign that got me elected. So I was very lucky. Right place, right time, very interesting experience being, yeah, locally elected official, and taught me a lot.

But, yeah, I went from that, you know, got into the foundation fundraising world and, you know, learned, yeah, learned a lot from there, you know, and again, like, all about trust, right? Like, you know, when you’re a public elected official, okay, how do I build trust with my constituents then when I, you know, you’re raising money, how do I build trust with my donors? When I was granting money in the foundation world after that, it was, okay, well, how do I build trust with both the people’s dollars I’m advising and the communities who I’m giving to so that they will still have this relationship with each other that’s trusting, even though I’m kind of this middle person. Right. So a lot of trust there. So it kind of just reinforced how important trust was, I think, across the board for folks. Interestingly enough, like, this business happened by complete accident. I was, um, you know, living in the UK, actually working for a university, helping them set up a fundraising, um, a fundraising function for their. For their school and COVID hit and kind of just every wrench went into everything. You know, my partner lost his job, my parents were. Got sick. I, you know, there was a lot of uncertainty in my workplace and, like, okay, well, what do we want to do? We moved back to Canada and I had this idea in the back of my head, like, there’s got to be a way of automating and simplifying this process around relationship building between the right people who don’t know each other. Right. And I think that’s kind of what got me started on this mission and starting so complete accident, but also probably couldn’t have happened any other way.

[00:27:00] Calan Breckon: Wow, that sounds like a pretty good story. And then how is the transition into entrepreneurship and the mental switches of like, working for yourself and doing your own thing now?

[00:27:10] Trevor Loke: Well, yeah, I mean, when you’re like a public official and you like, yeah, you can’t, like, breaking rules as a public official isn’t as a non starter as you might imagine, whereas in business, like, you are, like, you have to constantly push boundaries and break rules. And so those things are like directly in opposition to each other, I would say, in terms of my mental switch because, yeah, it’s like, for me, in one mode, showing up with integrity and being authentic meant the public, trust me, I need to treat every tax dollar like it’s the last dollar on earth and I’m spending it very wisely. I need to make sure what I say in public or if I’m going to make a promise, I’m going to do my best to achieve it. Not that I don’t do those things to an entrepreneur, but I find oftentimes, because it’s so competitive out there, because there’s so much noise, you are constantly having to do things that say, how do I stand out to be seen?

Because, like that, that’s the only way to move forward, right, in the business. And, yeah, sometimes that’s like, hey, I need to like, have this megaphone and, you know, shout from the rooftops or, you know, do things that, like, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t have typically done in my other life. So that was just a very big mindset shift in terms of the mental health component. I think it’s a lot of pressure, just in a different way. Again, being in public life, the pressure is more how are people feeling about my performance as an entrepreneur? It doesn’t really matter how people feel about my performance. If there’s no money in the bank and I can’t pay my staff, the priorities change significantly. That way. I’ve got to make sure that our finances, our capital flow, our trajectory as a business is moving forward. And my likability and whether people agree with my decision making or not is kind of inconsequential because my performance is the only thing that matters. And there’s an ultimate accountability mechanism in money, right? Agree or disagree with the capitalist system we’re in. That’s just the way it is.

[00:29:22] Calan Breckon: Yeah, that’s the world we live in.

[00:29:24] Trevor Loke: That’s the world we live in.

[00:29:25] Calan Breckon: That’s the world we live in. I always, I used to be very utopian when I was younger because I think a lot of us are more utopian thinking when we’re younger. And then as I got older, I was like, well, you know what? Sometimes you just gotta. You have to be okay with being the villain in some people’s stories. Sometimes it’s just the way it is.

[00:29:44] Trevor Loke: Well, you have to stand for something, right. I mean, you know, again, like in politics, like, you know, as a public official, I’m like. I’m trying to. You know, you want to listen to people. You want to have a diverse set of views and call into question, what judgments am I making? Am I in line with where the public is at? I don’t need to think about where the public is at anymore. Right. I see the world the way it is. I see the world in terms of how I want to change it, and I need to fight for that, because the status quo cannot change unless somebody’s fighting for that. Yeah. Fundamental difference in how I’m showing up as an entrepreneur that way, too.

[00:30:24] Calan Breckon: Yeah, definitely. Cause it’s usually the crazy ones with the microphones who are actually changing the world.

[00:30:29] Trevor Loke: I’ve had to figure that out.

[00:30:32] Calan Breckon: Yeah, you can’t. I mean, I’m sure you can change the world just sitting quietly at home, maybe being a coder. Definitely there’s ways, but, like, eventually it will become loud. Like, you can’t stay quiet forever. If you want to actually make an impact and make a change and do the things, you’re gonna have to grab that microphone, allowed it very shout, or shout it very loudly from the top of your lungs to make sure that people are paying attention. Cause that’s how change actually happens.

[00:30:56] Trevor Loke: Hundred percent. And, you know, like, I think before I was comfortable picking up that megaphone, putting myself out there more, I had to ask. I had to do some work around, like, what’s my message? What? Like, how do I wanna show up in the world? How do I wanna talk to people? How do I wanna inspire them or leave them with things? And that was really. That was, you know, going back to your transition question, really challenging, because when I went from kind of like this government and then to this foundation philanthropy world and then to entrepreneurship, like, each of those is, like, kind of a different identity or a different set of skills in a different way. So I was like, what of those is the real me? And it was only through that process where it was like, oh, they’re all the real me. And each of them draws different parts of me out, and so what’s the story that binds them together, and how do I want to take the lessons I’ve learned in each of those capacities forward with me? So. But it wasn’t until, like, I had to do that reflection. I was like, okay, now I know what I stand for, and now I realize what my own story is, and I can tell that to people and maybe help them find their path.

[00:31:56] Calan Breckon: Nice. Well, I think that that’s a great place for us to end off on today. Uh, where can people find out about you and what you do?

[00:32:05] Trevor Loke: So you can go to my LinkedIn profile. If you type trevorloke.com or Trevorloke dot ca, it’ll just redirect you right there. So please follow connect if you want to learn more.

[00:32:17] Calan Breckon: Awesome. And where can people find out more about match?

[00:32:20] Trevor Loke: You can go to OrgMatch.com, or you can send an email to infogmatch.com and we will be in touch. Perfect.

[00:32:26] Calan Breckon: And I’ll make sure that all of that information is in the show. Notes for everybody. Thank you so much for your conversation today, Trevor. This has been absolutely fantastic.

[00:32:35] Trevor Loke: It’s been my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

[00:32:37] Calan Breckon: I loved this conversation with Trevor. I find it really fascinating what OrgMatch is doing to connect the people with the money to the people who need the money. And like I said in the episode, I think it could be really beneficial, especially to the LGBTQ community and other underserved communities, to really help them move forward and progress and get money into the hands of those that need it the most. Thank you again so much for listening today. Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button. And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, I would love a star rating for you from you. It really helps the show, and it makes me feel good. The business gay podcast is written, produced, and edited by me, Calan Breckon. That’s it for today. Peace, love, rainbows.