Multiple Guests

• Find out who got the award, and how the team made our decision (29:18)
• Hear how finalist Hearts and Hooves equine therapy center is providing emotional, social, and physical benefits for people of different abilities in Tennessee (6:56)
• Learn about finalist Just Keep Smiling in Alabama, a nonprofit created by three women who each lost their children and wanted to help other families dealing with medical crises (12:14)
• Meet finalist Joshua's Place, an organization helping families overcome barriers to stability, and hear one employee's emotional explanation of why working there is a crazy good turn to her (22:43)

FRANK BLAKE: Well, I have been looking forward to this episode for a long time, ever since we announced our $10,000 award program.

So we have Brian Sabin, who is the producer of the show, Megan Hanlon, our associate producer, and Leslie Nunn, whom I always describe as the person who keeps us all coordinated and makes this all work.

What we're going to do is we're going to go through our process for picking the organization that is, we think, worthy of particular recognition.

And we did get a lot of these.

And thank you again for taking the time to make your recommendations.

And what I'm going to start with is turn it over to Brian to describe how we structured our internal process for deciding on winning submissions.

BRIAN SABIN: Well, thank you Frank.

So we reached out to our audience and asked, "What's an organization that not enough people know about? Who's doing great work that you would like to acknowledge, that you would like to see receive a $10,000 grant?"

And the response was awesome.

We received more than 50 nominations from our listeners in about a month, so a couple a day basically.

So as you can imagine, Frank, and you saw firsthand, choosing amongst that group was really, really difficult.

So what we ended up doing was coming down to a list of 10 finalists, and from there we wanted to reach out to each of these organizations and learn more.

So I'd love to invite Megan then to talk about the process of reaching these 10 finalists because she led the charge, really, in contacting them and hearing their stories.

MEGAN HANLON: Thanks, Brian.

I reached out to each one of the organizations and asked them to sit down for a short interview to get a little bit more information about how they were founded and where they plan to go in the future, the sort of people and the sort of difference that they're making on a regular basis and how much a $10,000 grant would impact them.

And Brian, if you want to speak a little bit more about what our criteria were when we were narrowing it down further.

BRIAN SABIN: Yeah, I'd be happy to do that.

So this whole process is new to Crazy Good Turns.

We had never done something quite like this before.

We didn't know how it was going to go.

I think each of us had our own preferences or things that we looked for. But I can tell you the four criteria that I was looking at personally.

Number one was direct impact. Is an organization helping somebody directly versus raising awareness or doing research and things like that?

So direct impact mattered a whole lot to me.

Number two, and I think this just goes without saying is the strength of the story.

You're going to hear some incredible stories of these finalists… people who are doing powerful work.

Number three, I really loved when the nomination had a personal connection.

So often we heard from somebody who said, "Not only is this organization great, but they help my kids," or, "I have seen what a difference this organization makes in the life of a friend or a relative."

So that personal connection said on behalf of a Crazy Good Turns listener, to me, spoke volumes.

And then lastly, we looked for an organization for whom a $10,000 reward would make a meaningful difference.

Could it be something that helps that organization take the next step forward and achieve a bigger goal or help more people?

FRANK BLAKE: Yeah, thanks Brian. We narrowed the 10 down to three.

And so what I've asked each of our team members to do is to take the lead in talking about the three organizations that we think are particularly worth our listeners taking the time to recognize and celebrate by listening to their stories on this podcast.

And turn it first over to Brian for an organization called Hearts and Hooves.

BRIAN SABIN: Well, thank you, Frank. Yeah.

Hearts and Hooves is an organization that was nominated by a listener named Savannah Alderink.

Savannah wrote to us and said, "My daughter has been receiving services for almost a year now from Hearts and Hooves, and it is one of her weekly highlights.

"They take great care in ensuring her safety, helping her work toward her goals and encouraging her to use signs and communication tools as she's non-speaking.

"I really appreciate all they do for our family in giving our little girl some fun in her therapy."

So when we contacted the founder of Hearts and Hooves, her name is Cindy Whittemore, we asked her about what her organization does with Savannah's little girl.

And here's what she said.

CINDY WHITTEMORE: So Savannah has three children.

The oldest is Marie and she has some chromosome disorders.

And so she has difficulty keeping her core balance, keeping her balance just in walking and functioning.

And so what we do with our horses is, she does all kinds of exercise.

A lot of these kids do traditional therapy, and it's sit ups.

It's just the same old exercises that adults do and they just get tired of doing them, frankly.

And so with the horses, it becomes fun.

So she's sitting on a horse, the horse is moving, so she's using those core muscles without even trying to."

And then we also do things to have her reach out, so that she's using the side muscles.

Also with the horses that we use, they're non gated, so their hip movements mimic our hip movements.

And so it helps her to get her digestive system functioning more normally.

It uses those same muscles so that it builds that strength for her to be able to carry herself.

And it just makes it so much fun, that they love coming.

BRIAN SABIN: What Cindy's referencing there, the physical aspect of the therapy was something that totally surprised me.

I'm not a horseback rider other than having done it maybe once or twice.

I had no idea that riding a horse is basically like a core workout.

I also didn't realize the emotional impact that a horse can have on a person.

I didn't know how aware horses are of the emotions of other people and how that changes the way that the horse will respond or interact with you.

Here's how Cindy describes it.

CINDY WHITTEMORE: Horses are so intuitive. They can hear your heart.

No, they can feel your heartbeat up to 40 feet away and know whose heartbeat it belongs to, and they can hear your heartbeat up to 4 feet away and know who it belongs to.

So if you are angry, say we're doing a counseling session and you're angry, but you're not owning the fact that you're angry, "No, it didn't bother me. I'm fine. I'm fine."

The horse is like, "No, no, no, you're not."

BRIAN SABIN: So what happens according to Cindy is that the person learns to self-regulate.

The horse needs them to calm down so they calm down because they want to interact with the horse.

Or if they're working with a child who has ADHD, they need to focus in order to get the horse to trust them.

So they do.

Because they want to interact with the horse.

So this becomes like a form of practice, teaching a person to generate the emotional state that they need.

But another thing that really stuck out to me from what Cindy said is just how well a horse can serve as a counselor without saying a word.

CINDY WHITTEMORE: Sometimes the exercise is just simply walking around with the horse, if they just need to talk, because some things are so big, you don't want to look at another individual and tell it.

You don't want to have to sit and stare at a wall or the floor or the ceiling.

The horse is big enough to cover you and to take what you've got and be the wall.

And there's something about brushing a horse that loosens the muscle from the brain to the tongue and they feel safer and more details can come out, so you can get there faster.

BRIAN SABIN: Let's talk about that last part that Cindy mentions, brushing.

It's another part of the story here that to me reminds me of our message at Crazy Good Turns.

Frank, you've written about how the surest way to find joy in yourself is through serving others.

And I love that so many of the breakthroughs at Hearts and Hooves come when a person is brushing or otherwise grooming, taking care of the horse.

By taking care of someone or something else, we can get out of our own heads and move on to doing the work that we need to do.

Lastly, what I'd say that I love about the story is how they gave us an opportunity to have a real impact.

Hearts and Hooves is a small bootstrap nonprofit.

They're doing the work because they can. And they're doing it with the resources they have available.

And so when we asked Cindy what a $10,000 grant might mean to them, she had a very clear vision.

FRANK BLAKE: So great, great stories from Hearts and Hooves and Cindy Whittemore is just an amazing person.

I'd like to turn now, Megan, to Just Keep Smiling, another organization that just does phenomenal things for others.

MEGAN HANLON: Thanks, Frank.

So Just Keep Smiling is a nonprofit in Gardendale, Alabama, which is near Birmingham, and it was founded in 2005.

And I was very interested in this organization from the moment I read the submission from Carla Doss, who has supported Just Keep Smiling since its inception and just recently joined their team.

So Carla was able to connect me with Jeanne Busby and Jeanne Busby shared this amazing story about the founding of the organization.

And her stepmom is one of the three founders who is a group of women who had all lost children, one to a boating accident, one to a muscle deterioration disease and one to a congenital heart defect.

This is a group of women who have lived through the worst tragedy imaginable and yet turn their experiences into an opportunity to help others.

Just Keep Smiling exists to help families who have children with critical or fatal illnesses.

It helps pay mortgage bills, utility bills, and day-to-day living expenses so the parents can concentrate on being with their children through hospital stays and doctor's appointments and all of those things that come with suffering from a debilitating illness.

FRANK BLAKE: Megan, was there an example of a family or a situation where they helped that seemed particularly important to you?

MEGAN HANLON: Yes.

Jeanne told us this incredible, heart-rending story of one family in Alabama who the organization had helped beyond measure.

JEANNE BUSBY: Yeah, it was a young man.

He was 15 and his mom had very recently left.

So dad was raising him and his brother, who I believe was 17 at the time.

And the father had simply told the boys to go clean their rooms, and the older child didn't want to, so he picked up a gun and shot his father, and killed him.

The younger brother ran to the kitchen, got a knife, and went after his brother.

So he tried to stop his brother from shooting him as well, but his brother did shoot him, and he is now paralyzed from the waist down.

So this family, the mom is out of the picture now. The dad has passed away.

The older brother is in prison, and there's this young man who's 15 years old.

His grandparents who had recently retired, took him in to start taking care of him.

Well, the young man wanted to live in the house that he grew up in, which was where all of this had taken place, but the grandparents did whatever they could to make it good for him.

But the grandfather that was taking care of him, if you can imagine a 15-year-old man, and if you can imagine a 76, 78 year old grandfather, and this young man is still growing, he would have to pick him up.

They did not even have the resources to... I mean, he had to put him in the back of his SUV, because the young man, once he got out of the hospital doing all the therapy, couldn't walk, couldn't take care of himself.

He has arm strength, and he can speak, and he's come so far mentally. And I know this young man personally, and he's come so far.

It is only by the grace of God.

But all of that to say if you fast forward, Just Keep Smiling created a founder's grant that...

Not really a grant, but a founder's program.

And it has to be approved by the board of directors, but it's the one and only time that we've ever been able to really gift something in a huge special way.

And at Christmas, this family thought they were coming into town, and they were to go to Children's of Alabama for their clinic, but we had them stop at our office so that they probably expected we would give them some type of gift card or something, but we gifted them with a wheelchair accessible van.

The grandmother and grandfather, but the grandfather that was having to lift him physically and put him in the car could no longer lift him into the seat.

So they would lift the tailgate and put him in luggage in the back. They had no safety, but it's the only way they could get him here.

And so we did, we purchased this van. And it was such an amazing thing to witness.

Because it's a regular van with the chairs moved out of the back, and just a wheelchair ramp that you just physically fold out.

And now the young man can wheel himself up into it, and it locks in.

That was the craziest good turn that I ever got to experience being here.

And just keeping in touch with that family has been an amazing thing.

The grandmother still will send me messages.

And it's been several years now, but that was probably the craziest, most rewarding experience to me that I've been involved in.

FRANK BLAKE: I think she referenced that there were many, many other stories that they could tell, but they do want to protect the privacy of the folks that they help so we're not going to go through many more, any of those other stories, but they are incredible, incredible stories.

The other one that struck me was the impact that the founder and CEO of Publix had on her life and how that led, in part, to her involvement in Just Keep Smiling.

And we asked her as we ask all our guests, "Who's done a Crazy Good Turn for you?"

And it was that person from Publix.

MEGAN HANLON: That's right.

So Patrice shared this story and we'll let her tell it in her own words.

PATRICE BROOKS: Wow, this is an unbelievable opportunity for me to give a shout-out to someone who did, Mr. George Jenkins, who started Publix Super Market.

I started working for Publix when I was 16, the day I turned 16.

And I worked for them all the way through my first two years of college.

My father had died when I was 15, and so I had money to get through those two years, but past that, I was stuck.

So I took a year off and I wanted to be a school teacher.

And so I began to meet, I met this lady that would come through my line each week and we began to be friends and share prayer requests and different things like that.

Little did I know that she was good friends with Mr. George.

And so she went to Mr. George and told him about my heart and the employee that I was trying to be for Publix and how long I had worked for them.

And he called me to come into his office, he wanted to meet me. And he paid for my last two years of college.

And it was a beautiful thing. And the only thing when I got my degree, I took it back to him.

I said, "I want to give this to you because I couldn't have gotten it without you."

But the only thing he said to me was, "This is all I want. If you ever get an opportunity to do something for someone else, that's what I want you to do."

And I said, "Yes, sir, I will."

So in another way, this is my way of saying thank you to Mr. George also.

MEGAN HANLON: So because of George Jenkins, Patrice was able to build a life and have a family, and through her struggles created this nonprofit that now supports other families.

And that is just another amazing example of the way generosity continues to ripple forward.

FRANK BLAKE: And they've been doing this for almost 20 years.

MEGAN HANLON: 18 years now.

FRANK BLAKE: That's amazing.

BRIAN SABIN: Amazing.

FRANK BLAKE: A great, great group.

BRIAN SABIN: Absolutely.

Frank, if you don't mind, Megan, one of the things that Patrice said that keeps rolling around in my head is if it doesn't make you better, it makes you bitter.

That's her message to others who are going through this.

Did she say anything else to you that helps explain how they can keep doing this?

MEGAN HANLON: She did. She- Patrice's son had a rare form of muscular dystrophy, and he actually passed a few years ago at age 28.

And during her interview, she shared how it was her son who taught her during his illness while they were in and out of hospitals and doctor's appointments to look at others.

And this is where she explained it to us.

PATRICE BROOKS: Well, when my son was so sick and we would be in the hospital, my heart was always so focused on him, my husband and I, we were looking at his every move, and that is what you do when your child's in the hospital.

But my son had this heart that looked out, and he would notice that when we went to the National Institute of Health for special trial studies and things, he would notice children getting off the plane, and they didn't have their parents with them.

And he would say things like, "Why don't they have their parents with them?" And I would say, "Well, son, not everybody can afford for their mom and dad to take off work. They lose their insurance."

And I would always try to tell him, "You're just in a situation where Dad and I both have jobs that are flexible and we can go with you."

And then when we would be in the hospital, he would always see that there was somebody next door that was alone or somebody that needed something.

And so he really taught me to stop looking at him so much and start looking out, which was a saving grace.

And so that in turn helped me to realize that if this was the journey God had our family on, that he wanted us to do more with it.

And so that really just prompted me to begin to pray.

And then along came Sue, and along came Deb, and we put our heads together.

I just feel like what God leads you to, he leads you through.

And there's always purpose in it. It's never for naught unless you let it be.

MEGAN HANLON: And I thought that last line, that "It's never for naught unless you let it be."

That was really, really powerful.

FRANK BLAKE: Amazing. Amazingly powerful. Thank you, Megan.

And now, Leslie, would you describe Joshua's Place?

LESLIE NUNN: Of course.

First off, thank you, Frank. I would be remiss if I didn't take this opportunity to thank you for all you're doing for everyone with this podcast and what a great team you guys are.

Y'all are all just so fantastic, Brian, Megan, you do an amazing job.

And Frank, it wouldn't be possible without you. So thank you to each and every one of you.

Joshua's Place started 15 years ago as a food pantry in a suburb of, I think it's South Lebanon, Ohio, in their basement.

They had about 15 families that they served and 10 volunteers.

It started off as a food pantry, but as they went along, they recognized that there's so much more to it.

They realized there needed to be more to help them.

So they decided that they wanted to have relationships with the people rather than just, "Oh, here, come get some food."

So as they went along, they recognized too that they could connect with people through churches and schools and the school districts became very important in their mission because they would help them identify families in need.

This is Kevin Peyton, executive director of Joshua's Place and lead pastor of The Village Church.

KEVIN PEYTON: Honestly, our school districts do so much more than just education these days.

There's so many social issues and things that are going on.

And so we began to work closely with them and find out that there were other needs that we could help with using their help.

And in a roundabout way over time, came up with a model that was pretty reproducible, that we could really plug into any school district, frankly, anywhere in America.

Do an initial assessment as to what needs were there, which look fairly similar across the board, but then also understand what's happening.

We don't have any desire to be redundant in our service or programs.

And so had a very flexible, adaptable approach to saying, what's there, what's needed, and where can we help?

And then just started to mobilize the resources around that.

We're somewhere close to 500 volunteers at this point, better than 30 churches in our five communities that we're serving that are part of it.

LESLIE NUNN: Over 15 years, the program has grown to include weekend food programs, a program called the Care Closet, which is food and hydration at school for kids.

It gives them snacks, and it also provides personal hygiene products for junior high and high school students, tutoring programs and afterschool reading literacy programs, summer camps, adult food cooperatives, and adult development courses.

And currently they're operating in five school districts.

The program director is Kelli Peyton.

She grew up in one of the schools where Joshua's Place started.

She grew up disadvantaged and joined Joshua's Place after recognizing how beneficial it would've been for her to have had assistance like that.

And as we touch on Kelli and Kelli's personal journey in getting a job with Joshua's Place, Megan, I believe you had personal experiences growing up too.

MEGAN HANLON: Thanks, Leslie. I did.

I grew up in a family that regularly straddled the poverty line, and we often needed help from community pantries and back to school drives, holiday giving trees and lots of other things.

So this organization's mission really resonated with me.

I almost felt grateful on behalf of these students who were being helped so much by Joshua's Place because it is me.

And even though it isn't me, it's still something that had I had access to that rather than having to go to outside organizations in high school or in junior high, it would've made such a difference both in my ability to feel more comfortable and also to help my parents for the things that we needed at home because food stamps don't cover everything.

Food stamps don't cover toilet paper and shampoo.

And those are some of the things that Joshua's Place is helping provide and helping families work toward being able to get them themselves.

FRANK BLAKE: I thought also, one of the great parts of the discussion with Kelli was when we asked her, "Who's done a Crazy Good Turn for you?"

Which again is the question we ask all our guests, and that her answer referenced back to the fact that she's now working and helping the students in the same school where she was a student herself.

And I think we have a clip on that.

KELLI PEYTON: I feel like for me, getting into this line of work came from a place of growing up as the person on the other side of living in a community where there were a lot of different types of people, a lot more affluent people, but growing up in poverty.

And I've just found in the last 10 to 15 years of my life, just the joy of being able to be a bridge and see myself in all of those people.

And never I've figured something out that they haven't figured out or any kind of looking down upon, but just to be able to see them and acknowledge them and also share with my peers that we're all just humans on a human journey here.

So that is wonderful.

I knew I had this calling on my life to do this work. So getting to work for Joshua's Place really was for me a good turn.

I feel like I get the privilege of doing work, it is the calling of my life and impacting and walking the halls in the school I grew up in, even where our headquarters is in my elementary school.

This has been a good turn for me.

MEGAN HANLON: I know from experience, having grown up in a place where you're struggling at home, those relationships that you can make with adults who are stable and will support you are so vital and so important.

And I know that they had told a couple of stories to us about kids that they had helped throughout high school and helped apply for college and helped really become the best adults that they could be.

And like I said, I know that that is a crucial point of breaking the cycle of poverty and getting out.

And that was one of the reasons I thought Joshua's Place was such a wonderful program.

FRANK BLAKE: That's terrific.

Thank you, Megan. Thank you, Leslie. Thank you, Brian.

The interesting thing I think for all of us is that to capture what makes these organizations wonderful, to capture that in five or 10 minutes is truly close to impossible but I hope for you as listeners, you get some sense of why these organizations, the people behind the organizations and the listeners who cared about the organizations, why all of that is so special and so worth celebrating and recognizing.

If you've listened to just how great these three organizations are, we decided that we could not make up our minds.

We could not decide amongst these three which would be most worthy of the $10,000 because they're all worthy of it, they all deserve it, and many of the others, but these top three for sure.

And so we decided to give $10,000 to each of them.

PATRICE BROOKS: Are you serious? Oh my soul! Thank you so much!

KEVIN PEYTON: Thanks, Frank. We are so grateful. Thanks for picking us.

CINDY WHITTEMORE: Oh my goodness. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.

I just can't tell you what that means. Thank you.

FRANK BLAKE: If there were something that you'd want our listeners to know, either about what you do or about whether the $10,000 is meaningful to you or what would you like them to know?

CINDY WHITTEMORE: I would like them to know what a blessing this money is going to be.

We are going to be able to open up new spaces, sorry, we're going to be able to add a round pin so we can do two lessons at once and not just be limited to one child at a time or one person at a time.

We're going to be able to extend our evening hours, which is most beneficial to the families because of school and work.

We'll be able to do it in the evenings because we'll be able to put lighting at the arena.

And that means that we'll be able to take people off of our waiting list and go ahead and start helping them.

And the money that's left over will be put into a scholarship for people that can't afford it.

And so it just opens up so much for so many more people.

FRANK BLAKE: Well, and I hope this turns out to open up other things as well.

It is always interesting to me and so reassuring about humanity that there are people like yourselves out dedicated to doing things for others.

And I love what it is you do, and it must be just amazingly fun to see these kids and adults interact with the horses.

It must just be amazing.

CINDY WHITTEMORE: Yeah, we love the smiles. Absolutely love them.

FRANK BLAKE: And beyond that, I want to say there were a couple of other recommendations for organizations that we here at Crazy Good Turns have been longtime supporters of and who have been subject to their own episodes.

So we got a number of recommendations on behalf of No Longer Bound, which if you go back to season four, episode one, we highlighted No Longer Bound.

It's an addiction treatment program north of Atlanta. Just does phenomenal things.

It's a great organization and as I said, we've supported them in the past and we will give them $10,000 this year as well.

First in recognition of the great things that they do.

They're part of the Crazy Good Turns family and a number of our listeners are fans as well.

And then the second organization is Curt's Café, which is in Evanston, Illinois.

Which you can learn more about in season three, episode 25.

They help, frankly, youths who have troubled backgrounds and they give them skills and teach them all about the workplace and how to make great use of their lives. And a number of our listeners recommended them.

And we have one of my favorite listeners, because he's always coming up with suggestions and interacting with us.

Rick Planos suggested Curt's Café. So we will give Curt's Café $10,000 this year as well.

Over the years having done this podcast, I can't tell you how much I appreciate all of you, our listeners.

I feel like we have a community of celebration and recognition of people who do great things for others.

And part of this $10,000 donation program is really in recognition of what you all do because at some level there are a lot of other things you can listen to.

We've got a world that's full of contentious stories and difficult stories and things that upset us and things that trigger different reactions from us.

And I think it is such a constructive thing that all of you are taking some of your time to listen to and appreciate the stories from the three organizations that in effect now are new to the Crazy Good Turns family, Hearts and Hooves and Just Keep Smiling and Joshua's Place, we welcome them into the family and also welcome the continuing great work at No Longer Bound and Curt's Cafe.

And to be honest, this may be more of a teaser, but there are other organizations that were highlighted and recommended to us that may be...

Brian may tell me that we need to make them part of a future Crazy Good Turns episode.

BRIAN SABIN: Absolutely. There's a lot of great stories out there.

FRANK BLAKE: There are a lot of great stories. There are a lot of great stories.

And I appreciate Leslie's comments on the team in particular. We've got a great team.

You start with something like this $10,000 donation and you never really know where it's going to go.

But one of the things that was most interesting to me was first the strong reaction from our listeners, and second, frankly, it was just a lot of reinforcement, I think for the four of us, on the great things that people are doing out in the country.

We do have people who are phenomenal and it is worth taking the time to celebrate and recognize them.

So let me turn it back to the team to see if they have some last comments or thoughts, and then we will wrap up this episode.

BRIAN SABIN: Frank, thank you again for having us be part of this.

It is a tremendous experience to be a member of the Crazy Good Turns team and this show brings joy to my life.

We get to tell great stories and meet great people. So that's just a tremendous benefit to me personally.

One thing that I would say that stuck with me about this $10,000 program was something that you said to Cindy toward the end of your interview with her.

I loved this comment that you said, which was one of the things behind this award is that, look, you're doing a good thing. It's difficult work, but it's good work and people notice it.

I thought that that was just a great message for this program, that we're taking the time to notice and reward people who are doing something good because it's good.

They're not asking to be noticed or rewarded, but we're getting the opportunity to do that.

FRANK BLAKE: Yeah. Well said, Brian. Well said.

MEGAN HANLON: I'd like to say congratulations to all three of these organizations and let them know that they inspire me and also they touch my heart.

And I'm so grateful on behalf of the people that I don't know, but people that are helping because I was one of those people once upon a time, and I'm so grateful for what they're doing.

LESLIE NUNN: Those are all tough shoes to follow, so I'm just going to say ditto to everything. Y'all are amazing.