We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits

617. Centering Community and Justice: GreenLight Fund’s Model for Localized Impact - Ali Knight

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Meet Ali, the CEO of GreenLight Fund and former leader of Fresh Lifelines for Youth. He joins us to share how his lived experience fuels his commitment to equity-driven leadership and community transformation. 🩵

In this conversation, Ali unpacks GreenLight Fund’s unique model for scaling evidence-based nonprofits into new cities—and what it means to center community voice in every step. He speaks candidly about navigating leadership transitions, anchoring in values like justice and generosity, and why listening to those closest to the challenges is key to building lasting solutions. You'll hear timely insights for leading through change and striving for deeper, more sustainable impact. 🎧

Episode Highlights

  • Ali Knight’s Journey and Lived Experience (04:39)
  • Understanding the Greenlight Fund Model (06:21)
  • Hyper-Local Solutions to Community Needs (08:42)
  • Navigating Local Contexts for Impact (11:23)
  • Empowerment Through the Selection Advisory Council (14:00)
  • Real-World Impact: Success Stories from Greenlight (20:22)
  • Values that Anchor Leadership in Turbulent Times (25:29)
  • Moments of Philanthropy and Community Trust (28:58)
  • Ali’s One Good Thing: Listening to the Community (32:01)


Episode Shownotes: www.weareforgood.com/episode/617


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Speaker 1:

Hey, I'm John.

Speaker 2:

And I'm Becky.

Speaker 1:

And this is the we Are For Good podcast.

Speaker 2:

Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.

Speaker 1:

We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.

Speaker 2:

So welcome to the good community. We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropists, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.

Speaker 1:

So let's get started. Hey B, how's it going?

Speaker 2:

Hey, john, you know we have started 2025. We started talking about community as the epicenter of all of our solutions. We started it with our theme in January with community building, and there's been this through line that has come through so many episodes. We just talked to Rachel D'Souza with community centric fundraising. We were talking with Dr Tim Lampkin about how community can help center your narrative, and we've got Ollie Knight on the podcast. He is the CEO of Greenlight Fund and if you've not heard of Greenlight, hold on to your seats, because this is a national nonprofit network that is matching local communities' unmet needs with brilliant, evidence-based social innovations. And we have said since this podcast launched almost five years ago that the answers to communities' most systemic problems lie on the front lines. And when we turn that mic and when we really turn that focus to the people who can solve, everything shifts. And today we have such an expert.

Speaker 2:

So let me give you a little bit of background on Ali. He's bringing over 20 years of experience in public service leadership development and just has spent this career balancing this passion for justice with an integrated approach to people, leadership and community transformation. Can you have ever said, john, like that? You could have had a job like that. I wouldn't have even thought to have a job like that when I was growing up and he has just held such increasingly impactful roles in policy, program administration, research, evaluation and organizational development. And it's all really informed and shaped by his own lived experience as a former New York City foster care youth and it's a topic we have done a ton of conversation around as it's near and dear to the we Are For Good podcast.

Speaker 2:

But most recently he served as the president and CEO of Fresh Lifelines for Youth, which is FLY. It's a nationally recognized San Francisco Bay Area nonprofit that partners with young people to transform lives, communities and systems, and Ali spent nearly 10 years at FLY, helping this organization just scale tremendously across the Bay Area, leading to all this reform across the state of California through its advocacy work. So we are really excited to dive into who Ali is. How does he inform the system change? And we got to know him just a little bit before we started and we already know that he's a great human, a very in tune and present dad, and we're just excited to sit in your aura. So hi, ali, welcome to the we Are For Good podcast.

Speaker 3:

Hi Becky, Hi John, Thank you for the opportunity and the lovely, lovely introduction.

Speaker 2:

Well, we believe very deeply in lived experience and the lovely, lovely introduction. Well, we believe very deeply in lived experience and you have I didn't even get to read through all your bio but there is like an insane number of awards and accolades and roles that you've held. But before we get into any of that, like we would like to know about Ali as the human being like, take us back to little Ali growing up, like what was he about? What led him here?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, no, I appreciate the question and that's exactly where I'd like to start with a little bit about myself, my story and you hit on a lot of it, Becky, in the intro.

Speaker 3:

I am at the core, a city kid born and raised in New York City. In the 80s and the 90s. I was a latchkey kid. I was a kid who grew up poor, whose family was plagued by many of the worst parts of living in large, complex American cities in the 80s and the 90s. I survived by the kindness of few in my community who saw my potential and who were willing to invest in me as a person, and I was also able to navigate the complexities of the systems and sometimes worked the systems that sometimes didn't work, whether it be public education or, as you mentioned, foster care. It was always a balance of individuals who cared about me and when the system was responsive to my needs and the needs of others similar to me and my experiences, and so I'm a big believer in the ingenuity of the nonprofit sector, the power of kindness of others and community-driven approaches to solving community problems, which brings me here to Greenlight, the Greenlight Fund.

Speaker 1:

Holy heck. I mean you are so our people, ali. I mean hearing how you can so clearly see the thread in your own life and I think that power of having people believe in you and listen to you when you're speaking truth about your experience definitely carries through with the work that y'all are doing at Greenlight Fund. It's not hard to see that, but I'd love for you to give some context For those listening that have never heard of the Greenlight Fund.

Speaker 3:

How would you describe your model and what drew you to the organization? Yeah, I mean, I'd start by just saying that Greenlight aims to at this point in 2025, leverage our 20 plus years of measurable impact across multiple American cities to become a driving force for reducing urban poverty across the nation. We're described in many ways, but I'd like to describe us in three ways. One is we are an incubator of scalable solutions to American cities' most complex problems. Functionally, we are a collaborative fund model that builds coalitions of local investors that respond to community-prioritized needs by pulling into these communities, proving models to address those needs and achieve measurable impact. And we are a growing network of 14 and counting sites in cities and metropolitan areas across the country, and each site implements our method to drive consistent community change in service of achieving measurable national impact.

Speaker 3:

So what does that all mean? So I think at the core, we are a hyper-localized, community-driven approach. Every year, we commit to running our community-driven method to identify and prioritize one local need. Then we identify a model that works in other places in a country and help pull them into this new place, and we provide four years of financial support and strategic and social capital to help that model take root and achieve sustainable, measurable impact in this new community. So we establish a local team to run this method in cycles and we build a coalition of local investors and community leaders who we call them selection advisory council to help identify and prioritize the need and then support the pull effect of our model to bring in a proven approach to addressing that need, and we do this on an annual basis. Bring in one new solution in response to the community prioritized need every year in every city. And we do this while growing to one new city every year. Wow.

Speaker 2:

That is super cool. I mean I need you to just break this down for me. I'm doing the. Michael Scott, explain it to me like I'm five years old, break it down. Give me one example of what you've done in one city, one theme, one topic. What you've been able to do, because I am really obsessed with this hyperlocal.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely.

Speaker 3:

It's important to remember that our ultimate goal is to remove structural barriers to inclusive prosperity and to create opportunities for social and economic mobility for all, and we understand that to achieve this change that benefits all, we have to address racial inequity in our approach, we have to center the needs of the people most marginalized for any number of reasons that have nothing to do with will or opportunity.

Speaker 3:

So to do that, we help organizations scale and replicate models that address issues such as financial inequities, financial insecurity, limited access to education, limited access to steady employment, housing security, family support. These are all examples of issues that we focus on and we try to solve through our model. And so, to give you one example of one thing we've done and we've brought to a new community, there's an organization by the name of Food Connect. It's a Philadelphia-based nonprofit that addresses food insecurity and seeks to eliminate food waste using their logistics technology platform to get excess food to individuals and families who need it most. And we've helped Food Connect get to San Francisco Bay Area, where they've helped deliver over 400 meals to more than 250,000 individuals last year and over the past two years we've helped Food Connect expand their reach, not only in the San Francisco Bay Area, but now in Kansas City and in Twin Cities, where they'll deliver over a million meals to more than half a million children, family and citizens in food deserts in these cities.

Speaker 1:

I mean, we're obsessed with this idea of taking an idea. We call it. What starts here ripples Like it's very core to the. We are for good idea that an idea is such a powerful tool to transform. But I'm so curious because, going city to city you don't know this, my friend, but we're on a family road trip across the U? S we are seeing dozens of States, dozens of national parks. I'm actually calling from my Airstream right now.

Speaker 2:

In Delaware. Yeah, let's get some context. I'm not too far from Philly.

Speaker 3:

Let's just cruise up there and check it out.

Speaker 1:

But I just can't help but find like you know, community is everywhere, right People that love their town. They're fighting for their people everywhere. But the nuance of cities is poignant. I mean, it is different city to city. How have y'all found to go deeper in a city with so many different contexts and their own histories and pieces, bringing into this and their own assets too? What does it look like to jump into a new city and replicate something?

Speaker 3:

Great question, john. So I think what's important for us is two things. One is that this remains a community-driven process, that community identifies and prioritizes the needs. We leverage our model, our network, to determine where things are working elsewhere that might work into this new city. But then we've got a very specific process to determine whether or not the local context fits. So something might work in Philadelphia, might work in Baltimore. How do we make sure it works in a city like Newark? Well, part of it is leveraging this selection advisory council, leveraging our understanding of the community, leveraging our process to understand whether or not, what are the conditions for success, for this model to work in Newark. And so that I would say the first part of the answer is making sure that the local context is heavily considered when we select something and invest in it. The second is to leverage our beyond the check supports.

Speaker 3:

I talked about the financial support. We give general operating support over a period of four years In order for the thing that we bring to sort of actually be able to leverage our dollars to sort of support what it costs, support the cost associated with replicating the model, but also leveraging it to get access to other dollars, but in addition to the financial support, we offer strategic support. We're providing technical support. We serve on local advisory boards for organizations that we help bring into cities. We make connections to other local funders, to systems partners and systems leaders to ensure that the partnerships that are important to the success of the model are forged and made and connected earlier on in the implementation process. And so I say all of that to say that it's both the general operating support, it's the strategic support, it's the social capital, but it's also making sure that it's the right local fit, that the context is the right context to ensure that whatever we bring to a city has the best chance of succeeding. So good.

Speaker 2:

Okay, I know we just met each other and I hope this does not sound patronizing, but I'm so proud of you and your team for doing this. I truly am. I'm sitting here listening to you unpack this and I see this complete absence of power, of you coming in with power and just affirming what works and pushing that into the cities. This posture of fit of making sure that culture and nuance and that power is pushed to the front lines says to me that this approach will be successful. And I really want to double click on this selection advisory council, because I think when we traditionally in the nonprofit sector have heard words like this, we're thinking very top-down approach, and this is actually the opposite. Your selection advisory council is made up of local leaders, of teachers, of residents, of experts. Talk a little bit about this theory that you all have of empowerment there and what leaders can learn from this structure of decision-making that you've built. That's really nuanced.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, no, I appreciate it, Becky. And a couple of things before I get into sort of how, the how behind it, the Selection Advisory Council, Before I get into sort of the how behind the Selection Advisory Council. The first is I want to just really sort of double click on your point around. We see ourselves as sort of a conduit for getting proven solutions to places where they're needed most, and the method is really about the pull effect. And so we're very careful not to push, not to advance an agenda, not to posit what will work in a community without the community essentially saying to itself that this is the thing that we need. And so we sort of call it the pull effect, right, like it's less that we're sort of advancing an agenda or advancing a model that we think will work, but more of what we're positioning things that have worked elsewhere, you know, to sort of bring it to the community, the advisory council, to say what will it take for this to work, if it is to work here, and how do we support this in working? And so that pull effect is an important dynamic, because we never want to be in a position where we are sort of pushing things on communities or individuals. We want it to be something that's wanted and needed, as determined by the community. So just double click on your point and thank you for seeing that and raising that as an important part of our model. But how we leverage the community is interesting because there's the codified approach.

Speaker 3:

We've got what we call the green light method and it's essentially a series of three meetings where we use our method to determine what's important and we go through what's called the discovery phase. We look at what problems are most important to the city in this moment. No-transcript no-transcript wants to sort of focus on. It's on our team's job to then go and look through our database of over a thousand different organizations all that have replicated and or have done good work elsewhere across a whole host of different issue areas and we say, well, which are the eight or nine that we think could be a good fit for this community, based on the problems that were identified? And then we come to the next meeting and we bring the committee together and we say, okay, here's the problems we've identified. Here are eight organizations across these four problems. Which organizations do we want to learn a little bit more about? Which organizations do we want to learn a little bit more about which ones do we want to do our due diligence around to determine whether or not it would actually work in this context. That's a deeply engaging conversation with the local selection advisory committee and we hope to get it down to maybe two or three finalists, two or three organizations that are doing good work elsewhere that we think would fit and work in this community context, this local context. And then it's on the Greenlights team to sort of do our diligence to determine whether or not the model actually could work in this context.

Speaker 3:

To answer the tough questions around sustainability, around what are the conditions for success. Do those conditions exist in this community? Who are the champions you need? Can we connect you with those champions? And then, what's the sustainability plan beyond Greenlight's four years of support? And then the hope is to sort of bring in two or three finalists to the community and for the community to advise the local leader on which one is the one. Sometimes we might invest in two, depending on conditions, but hopefully get to the one right thing that we think has a good chance of solving or at least being part of the solution for a problem that our city's identified. And that's the model. We do that every year. Once a year, we try and bring one new thing in every city a year, and this is coupled with our desire to grow to multiple cities. So one new city. So in addition to running this process in every city to bring one new thing to every city, we're also adding one new city to our network every year.

Speaker 2:

Amazing, ripple, ripple.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you can actually see the ripple grow right in front of y'all. Just love this approach so much. I think we talk a lot about the power of embracing white space and knowing what you're deeply good at and leaving space to lock arms with others. That's a through line of so many conversations and I'm like y'all are doing that, understanding where our gaps are and where others can help fill in. Those is the only way we're ever going to solve these bigger issues, and y'all are actually funding that and fueling this in so many ways. So I just love that and your name. Can I, as a brand guy over here, be like? I love that? It's green light, just so much it ties into the book too. Tell me this Like, can you what's an example Like? What's a nonprofit that like pangs your heart of? Like man, that's a moment that when it was greenlighted, we just saw the ripple effect. And take us there.

Speaker 3:

Well, I'll tell you one recent example. I was um last week. I was in Detroit, um, and we were celebrating the um, the launch of a new organization that we brought to Detroit or we're bringing to Detroit, called bottom Line. And Bottom Line is a nonprofit that was started in New York that has expanded to multiple cities that essentially works with students high school students that would be first year generation college students helping them sort of apply for college, but not just apply for college and graduate college, but not just apply for college and graduate college, but to do it with the least amount of debt as possible.

Speaker 3:

As someone who personally was first generation, first person to go to college in my family, first person to go to graduate school, kid who was in foster kid kid grew up in poor, had decent grades in high school, but not wonderful grades because I was always on a precipice of dropping out of high school. I never got the opportunity, but I always knew I wanted to go to college, but no one helped me navigate that. No one helped me understand what it means to fill out your FAFSA, what sort of scholarships that might I be eligible for, and so I graduated college with a little bit of debt. And then you know I wanted to go to graduate school because I wanted to learn a specific skill around nonprofit management. I wanted to go to a good grad school, so I applied and luckily got into New York University's Wagner School and incurred a lot of debt, and I'm grateful for my education. But, like had I had someone help me navigate the complexities of post-secondary enrollment, persistence and sort of applications, I might've found myself in a different situation. And so Bottom Line is an organization that is going to help thousands of Detroit high school students get into college, graduate from college with the least amount of debt, and so I was excited that we were bringing bottom line to Detroit.

Speaker 3:

I got to actually see the selection process in Detroit back in the fall, and that was an amazing meeting to see this community come together and select something that it had rejected in the past.

Speaker 3:

Now see that the timing was right for this particular model, and I think one of the key parts of why the timing was right for this particular model and I think one of the key parts of why the timing was right was the organization that hired this woman Her name is Danielle North, who is from Detroit, who's sort of a first-generation college graduate, herself first in her family, and just hearing her talk about her passion for this work, her journey through post-secondary success and her professional journey, I was just so blown away and so inspired by seeing this person from the community of the community be part of the solution for one of its largest complex problems one of America's largest, most complex problems, but certainly in Detroit. I was really, really touched by that and for me it reinforced the belief that our model is community-driven, it's locally-driven and it's about solving problems that are identified, prioritized and often led by the community itself.

Speaker 2:

I'm just sitting here watching you have this pride in Danielle that she could be a part of the solution for her community, and it's not lost on me that you are pouring into all the Ali's of the world, and that's what this work feels like and that's why I think community is everything is such a drumbeat, because when we are relieved of the idea that we don't have to carry everything in our lives on our own and we are not built to carry everything in our lives on our own and that the kindness of strangers, that the abundance of people around us wanting us to succeed, feels better to all of us, it creates more thriving societies.

Speaker 2:

And I just it appears to me, ollie, like you have been in this position your entire career of taking in moments of transition. You know whether the leader is in transition, whether it's a season like we are standing in right now. I mean, I cannot even imagine when you talk about going in to deal with inherent racism, with what's happening in our country right now. That is such a big first hurdle and I want to know what has anchored you in these seasons of just upheaval. What's some counsel that you could give to other leaders who are trying to navigate seasons like this?

Speaker 3:

100% and thank you for that, becky. And I would just refer back to sort of why Greenlight and why this work is so important to me and my personal story I mean my personal values. Are justice, generosity and community important that we see our work as work? That's about fairness and inclusiveness, about everyone having an opportunity to thrive and discover their hidden genius, whatever that is and however it shows up, and however it contributes to the greater whole that everyone should have an opportunity to do that.

Speaker 3:

I think generosity is important because, you know, society is an imperfect concept. There will be haves and have nots and some of that will be a function of privilege and opportunity and burden. And, you know, I think it's incumbent upon all of us to see our privilege as well as our burdens. And we've all gotten to a place wherever we are in our station in life thanks in large parts, of the opportunities presented, the generosity and kindness of others, and I believe it's important that you pay it forward. And I also think that that is how you build a thriving, a sustainable community, right Like there's an accountability to justice and generosity. We're accountable to each other and because I believe those things, I believe those things deeply in my core.

Speaker 3:

It's, it's what I teach my, my personal kids, my family sort of values are, um, you know, fairness for everyone, family first. Sharing is caring, that's the, that's the things that my kids know and believe and it's how they show up, not just in our household but in the schoolyard and the afterschool programs. It's how we live it and so, because that's so core to who I am as a person, it's important that I show up as a leader and as a public servant in that way, and so I'm excited to be leading the Greenlight Fund following a founder who I think did incredible work, working with a co-founder, a founder as our board chair who continues to believe in a purpose and a potential of the Green Light model, and I'm excited to sort of help bring it to its next chapter of impact on a national level. But I lean into that with both humility and grace, but also courageousness and urgency for what's needed for the future that I want for myself, for my kids and for all the young people across the country of America.

Speaker 2:

I just want to be your friend, Ali. That's all I keep thinking is I'm about to flip this table and start standing over here.

Speaker 1:

This is so good.

Speaker 2:

Like I want to hang with you. I love the way you look at life.

Speaker 3:

Thank you. We are friends, becky, so thank you.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, come on over, you've got a seat at my kitchen table. I see Becky threading a friendship bracelet over there, for sure it's happening.

Speaker 1:

Ali, you know you've gotten to listen to the show and we, just we always want to center our conversations at these moments of philanthropy. You know we believe in the bigger term of philanthropy, like you, that it's about kindness, it's about love of our humankind. Is there a moment that you would take us back to a philanthropy that just stopped you in your tracks? It could be a gift, it could be a major gift, it could be a small gift or it could just be a small moment of your journey that you would share.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, no, I appreciate the question and I think so I'm. I'm new to philanthropy. This is my I've. I've operated in sort of an intermediary space in other roles, but this is the first formal role in which I'm leading an organization or working in an organization where we get to decide how we invest dollars for social impact. And so you know again, this aligns with my personal goals of sort of justice, generosity and community personal goals of sort of justice, generosity and community.

Speaker 3:

But just in the year that I've been in a seat, I've been incredibly moved by how the community comes together to entrust Greenlight with the honor, privilege and responsibility to sort of identify what needs support and then trust Greenlight to figure out what's out there that can actually solve a problem or be part of the solution in a local context. So I'm constantly moved by that. I think the Selection Advisory Council meetings we see it every day. But you see, both investors as well as local leaders say this is a problem. This is a problem that's important to this city. There are folks doing this work, but we need more, we need different, we need new and trust in Greenlight to figure out what's out there, to be able to support that and contribute and add to it, and so that's.

Speaker 3:

I've seen that several times in my first year in a role through these selection advisory council meetings and I'm constantly sort of moved by. I will say Denver is our 13th site. Denver was launched in 2024 when I started, so I got to actually see the first set of SAC meetings in Denver and so get to see a city for the first time to come together to sort of rally around a green light method and say here are the four or five things that are incredibly important and then narrow it down to one thing that's incredibly important and complex, like housing, and then support the local leader and say we're going to bring this model that's worked elsewhere to help solve a slice of the housing problem, because no one organization can do it all. But sort of seeing us as part of that larger pie, part of that larger solution, it's really, really inspiring part of that larger solution.

Speaker 2:

It's really really inspiring, absolutely. I just sit back and think. You know you're planting seeds under whose shade you will, may never stand, but your children will and our children will, and that is what is so powerful about this concept and why I just think that Greenlight has got something going on that so many of us can replicate. So you've listened to the podcast, ali. You know we're going to take it down to a one good thing at the very end. What would be your one good thing that you'd leave with the audience? Piece of advice, quote what's bubbling up for you today?

Speaker 3:

Absolutely, and my one good thing, the thing that I believe wholeheartedly and deep in my core, is what's integral to our method, and that's listen to community. I think those most proximate to the problems are best positioned to come up with the solutions, and so I think proximity is incredibly important to philanthropic efforts. I think agency and power sharing, in the form of allowing community to have voice, is incredibly important to developing solutions that stick and that actually have achieved measurable change, and so I think it all starts and ends with listening to community.

Speaker 1:

Of course, you grounded this convo in the most thoughtful, community-centered way, Ali. Connect our listeners to where you hang out online and how we can get more information about all your good work and get plugged in to Greenlight.

Speaker 3:

You can certainly find out more about us at Greenlight's website, greenlightfundorg. You can find a lot about our method, about where we are, about the investments we've made in communities and the measurable impact we've been able to support in our 20 plus years of operating. And you can find me personally on LinkedIn. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn and so find my LinkedIn profile Awesome.

Speaker 2:

I just think you are the perfect person to lead an effort like this. I'm just so encouraged by the concept, by the power, the abundance of it. We are truly rooting you on every step of the way. So just a true pleasure to know you. Thank you for bringing these big ideas in here for us to reevaluate the way that we build community together. I just think it's absolutely luminary Way to go.

Speaker 3:

Well, it's truly an honor and a privilege and a burden and responsibility that I take very seriously. So thank you both for the opportunity to talk a little bit about Greenlight and to tell a little bit about my story, and I'm a big fan of the show, as I mentioned, and so honored to be a part of the movement with you all.

Speaker 1:

Honored to know you Keep going.