WOTW Blog #005

I originally posted this on Facebook on Nov 22, 2024. The memory popped up today and it seems just as relevant today as it was when I wrote it.

I’m rather pleased to announce that the foundation has had a YouTube video go viral for all the right reasons. A veteran family in crisis. A baby in the NICU receiving excellent medical care. A CVMA chapter (33-5) raising funds to help the family through generous donations by its members. I could write many volumes about this but I’ll try to keep this short. When I was in grad school from 2010-2012 I was working on something called The Benevolence Project; the premise of this idea was to use my photography skills to help nonprofits get the word out about the good they were doing by me donating my creative skills with photography and videography to help nonprofits tell their stories.

Fast forward roughly 13 years from when I received the registered trademark for The Benevolence Project. I tried my hand at running a for-profit construction management consulting company, Fortitude. My goal with that company was to build a construction platoon of disabled veterans. While that didn’t happen per se I was able to employ several veterans for relatively small projects and Fortitude managed to put food on the table and a roof over our heads. The whole time I was running the company I knew in my heart I belonged in the nonprofit sector helping people but I didn’t know how.

Now it’s 2024. I’m running Warriors of the Wind Foundation hundreds of miles away in Central California. I’m using motorcycle films to document the good that local organizations are doing - including my own foundation’s good deeds.

Why am I sharing this with the world? Simple. Sometimes it takes time for ideas to take hold and make sense. A true entrepreneur (yes, I’m calling myself this because I’ve earned it) learns to ebb and flow with everything from economic downturns to untrustworthy clients and people in general. There are a lot of them out there. We find a way to survive and succeed despite the uncertainty, challenges, and blatantly parasitic people that take advantage of people with big hearts. Karma will catch up to them.

I absolutely belong in the nonprofit world and I will absolutely stay the course with Warriors of the Wind Foundation. This foundation is a series of lessons learned, hard life experiences, and a generous heart that found a place to land doing real and tangible good for veterans by way of motorcycle films and a whole lot of other things. I’ve been riding for less than two years and said I’d never own a motorcycle. I would have laughed hysterically if you told me I’d be doing these things at age 46 but it wasn’t my plan that mattered. The plan came from up-top. Top-top. I am a guy on a motorcycle. The foundation is run by a higher power that I talk to regularly.

I’ll drop a couple of YouTube links below about the Navy family we’re helping this week. Please take a look and know we’re working on getting a GiveSendGo set up to hopefully reduce their family’s burden. Please be generous when that announcement is made.

If you have a burning desire to do something in the nonprofit world - as MANY of you do but don’t know how - keep after it. We hear those voices in our heads and feel these things in our hearts because ‘someone’ put them there. For me the someone is God. For you it might be something or someone different; both are ok.

I don’t think anyone would argue with me that the world and our nation can benefit from more kindness and more people who care. Listen to the voices and pay attention to the universal nudges. They are there for a reason. Go for it - whatever ‘it’ means to you. Once you take the first step don’t give up. Be bold and believe in yourself. That’s how you’ll win.

 Videos in comments. No hashtags. Just some real talk from a nonprofit founder finding his way.