Hal Donaldson

• The tragedy that struck Hal's family early in his life, and why they had to survive on kindness from friends and neighbors (4:00)
• His face-to-face conversation with Mother Teresa - who gave him some powerful advice (5:23)
• The "secret sauce" behind Convoy of Hope's incredible growth and success (12:25)
• The questions Hal asks himself every day to keep his organization - and his life - moving in the right direction (25:31)

FRANK BLAKE: Hal, welcome to Crazy Good Turns. I have really been looking forward to this.

We have a lot of things to go over, the amazing success of Convoy of Hope, your new book, "What Really Matters," and many other things.

But I would love to start with your personal story.

HAL DONALDSON: Thank you. Yeah. When I was 12, my parents were hit by a drunken driver.

My father was killed instantly. My mother was seriously injured and she would suffer for the rest of her life.

She survived the accident, but had some very difficult days and my parents didn't have insurance.

And so our family was forced to survive on welfare and handouts.

And there was one family that took us in, and I have two younger brothers, a younger sister, and they took us into their home, but all they owned was a single-wide trailer.

And so for about a year after the accident, we live with this family.

Frank, I didn't turn bitter, I think in large part because this family wrapped their arms around me and were just incredibly kind.

One of the things that Bill Davis said to me, he used the owner of the small trailer, he said he saw that I was hurting and he said, "Hal, don't allow the tragedy of your youth to become a lifelong excuse, because where you start in life doesn't have to dictate where you end."

And those words stayed with me, but we had some very difficult days through my teens.

I thought the best way to escape poverty was through education.

I worked my way through college, earned several degrees and began writing books in my twenties.

And at the age of 29, I was invited to go to Calcutta, India, to write a book for some missionaries there.

And when I landed, they said, well, we want you to interview-

FRANK BLAKE: You were not starting with an idea of, "Here's what I'm going to be doing. I'm going to be starting a non-profit. That's my path in life."

HAL DONALDSON: Oh, totally, totally.

I was all about escaping poverty, building my resume, building my career, building my bank account.

But when I landed in Calcutta, they said, "Well, we want you to interview Mother Teresa, for our book."

And so here I am interviewing-

FRANK BLAKE: Oh.

HAL DONALDSON: Yeah, I'm interviewing Mother Teresa, and she turns the tables on me in the middle of the interview and she said, "Young man, let me ask you a question. What are you doing to help the poor and the suffering?"

And I figured I better not lie to her, better tell her the truth.

And so I did, and I said, "I'm really not doing much of anything."

And she replied, "Well, everyone can do something. Just do the next kind thing that God puts in front of you."

Well, those words were haunting for me, Frank. I mean, haunting.

I came back to the states and I had an idea for a book, and the idea was to travel to eight cities and to live in the streets for three days and three nights.

And so I went to Miami, Atlanta, Chicago, DC, New York, major cities and just walked the streets after midnight with a hidden tape recorder, rode with the police, and it just broke my heart, what I was seeing.

I came back home from one of those trips and I took $300 and I bought $300 worth of groceries, threw it in the back of a pickup truck and started passing them out to working poor families.

And that was the start of Convoy of Hope, 41 years ago.

Wow. So just before getting into Convoy of Hope, what was it like meeting Mother Teresa?

Was there an aura there? Did you go, boy, I am just in the presence of someone so special?

Or was it not as special as you thought? What was it like?

HAL DONALDSON: Well, I certainly expected that I expected her to walk in with a halo on.

FRANK BLAKE: Yeah, of course.

HAL DONALDSON: But she was so down to earth and I kept trying to talk about the deep secrets of life and the mysteries of life and theological issues, and she kept bringing it back to me and my family.

She wanted to know about my family and my wife and my aspirations. And so I'm there to interview her, but she in turn started to interview me.

FRANK BLAKE: Wow.

HAL DONALDSON: And so it was really special, but very down to earth, incredibly kind and gracious.

FRANK BLAKE: That's fascinating.

And again, just before we get into Convoy of Hope, I am always interested in dedications in books, and your most recent book you dedicate to your mom and your grandmother for teaching you about persistence.

HAL DONALDSON: Yes.

FRANK BLAKE: There feels like there's a lot behind that.

HAL DONALDSON: There sure is. I'll take my mother first.

Being a welfare mom with four kids, she didn't have a college degree, and so she went out and took on two part-time jobs to try and make ends meet.

She was determined, Frank, that she wasn't going to be a welfare mom forever.

She did not like having to go into stores with food stamps. She didn't like the fact that she was having to send us to school at times without a sack lunch in our hand.

And my mom was determined and she worked her way up from a mail clerk position with the Dow Chemical Company.

And before her passing, she was a senior buyer-

FRANK BLAKE: Wow.

HAL DONALDSON: ...for Dow Chemical, she'd worked her way.

So her persistence was, what a testimony, an example.

My grandmother, a little bit different. My grandmother had gone through some domestic violence issues with her two husbands, and they had mistreated her terribly, but you never would've known it.

I mean, she had just incredible demeanor about her and that she was not going to allow herself to be a victim. She wasn't going to be a victim.

And she really tried to instill that in us. Once my father had passed, she came and lived with us for a number of years, and I owe her a great deal.

FRANK BLAKE: And as it played out, or as it has played out in your own life, how has that quality of persistence come to help you?

HAL DONALDSON: Yes, in the early days of our organization, and I know we'll talk about Convoy of Hope in just a moment, but in the early days of the organization, there were so many times I wanted to quit.

I had broken my own rules and I had maxed out my credit cards in order to feed the poor. And I didn't feel like people were hearing me.

I was standing up and just shouting, "Hey, these are working poor families. They need our help. They need just a little help, just a little help and hope will be restored and they will become productive members of society."

And I was ready to give up, Frank.

And there were so many times that I looked back at my mother and my grandmother and I said, "They didn't quit. So why should I?"

And I'll tell you one story is that we were doing food giveaways in Fresno, California, and I had made my mind up that if something didn't happen by that outreach, that I was going to pass the baton off and I was going to go off and go back to writing and go back to being editor.

FRANK BLAKE: What year would this be?

HAL DONALDSON: Yeah, that would've been like 1994.

FRANK BLAKE: Okay, so three years into it.

HAL DONALDSON: Yeah. Yeah. It was in the early days, and yet we had given all we could.

And at that particular event, a stranger walks up to me and he hands me an envelope and inside was a check for $25,000.

Now when you don't have two nickels to rub together, that was a big deal. But inside was a note and the note said, "God is with you."

And he underlined the word, "is."

I can tell you from that moment on, I've never looked back and I've never considered quitting.

FRANK BLAKE: That's extraordinary. And did you find out about the person, did you maintain contact?

Does he or she know the impact that they've had on your life and the life of so many others that you've helped?

HAL DONALDSON: Yes. In fact, we talked about it many times through the years and he became a 30-year friendship, and I actually was able to share that story at his funeral.

FRANK BLAKE: Oh, wow.

HAL DONALDSON: Yes. Yeah, so really grateful.

FRANK BLAKE: Wow. So tell our listeners a bit about Convoy of Hope, what it does.

It is amazing that over the last 30 years it's become one of the largest charities in the country.

What's the founding story and that growth story, the extraordinary growth story?

HAL DONALDSON: Yeah. People ask me all the time, "Well, what's the secret sauce?"

And I first, as a person of faith, I believe that God breathed on it, God blessed it, and that God has a heart for the poor, the suffering.

But beyond that, I think through the years we've just tried to do what we said we were going to do, under-promise and over-deliver, and operate at a high level of integrity.

And I think more and more people have seen Convoy of Hope almost as like a magnet. Yeah, we're the 27th-largest charity in the world now.

FRANK BLAKE: Wow.

HAL DONALDSON: Which is remarkable to think about, that 30 years ago we were operating out of the back of a pickup truck and we're mobilizing hundreds of thousands of people every year, and the volunteerism is incredible.

FRANK BLAKE: How do you describe your mission to people who go, Hal, what does Convoy of Hope do?

HAL DONALDSON: Yeah, I'll give you the headline and then I'll give you maybe some of the specifics.

I tell people that we're in the business of restoring hope to the hopeless. That's really what we do.

And we do it a variety of ways. Internationally, we're feeding 639,000 children, every day.

Last year we took 61,000 women and girls through our empowerment program, and we've helped thousands of them start their own businesses.

So now the mothers can feed their own children.

We've also worked with, last year we worked with 40,000 farmers, helping them to increase their yields, 200, 300%.

We also respond to disasters, really across the United States and around the world. In the U.S., we also do city-wide festivals where we'll bring together businesses, civic organizations, churches, and they all come together on one day to provide free medical and dental care, job fairs, free shoes for kids, free haircuts, and a full menu of services.

So in a nutshell, coming back to what I said before, "We're trying to restore hope to people who have lost hope."

FRANK BLAKE: And what were you trying to capture with the name of the organization of Convoy of Hope?

HAL DONALDSON: Today Frank, we have a large fleet of semi trucks and box trucks.

And so someone had come up with the idea early on, that we would take seven semis to one location, and that location happened to be Watts, California.

And we take those semis in and help thousands and thousands of people.

And so in one of the brainstorming sessions, it just came up, "Well, so it's really a convoy of hope," and so that's where the name came from.

FRANK BLAKE: Wow. Well, I know from my time at Home Depot, I think of your organization very much in terms of disaster recovery. I know there are a lot of other things that you do, and I know that you all were intimately involved in a disaster that had personal significance to me because a Home Depot associate died in the tornado in Joplin, Missouri.

HAL DONALDSON: Wow.

FRANK BLAKE: And I saw what you did and how important you were to that town, and didn't you give a message to the whole city on the anniversary of that horrible event?

HAL DONALDSON: Yeah, well, you're bringing back a lot of memories.

One of our mantras is that, "When there's a disaster, we want to be the first on the ground, but the last to leave." And in the case of Joplin, I think that was very true.

And so on the one-year anniversary of that tragedy, they invited me to come and speak to, I don't know, 20,000 people that had gathered.

It was an amazing moment as they remembered the dead, and they honored our service heroes, the police and the fire departments and first responders.

It was just an incredible moment, and I'll never forget it.

FRANK BLAKE: As your organization has grown and you meet more needs, what have you found to be the most significant learnings on the positive side and learnings on the, "Oh, whoa, these are challenges that I didn't anticipate?"

HAL DONALDSON: Yeah, I think one of the things that we learned early on, so I think we've known this for a long time, is that no one has a monopoly on compassion. No one.

The churches, the businesses, the civic organizations, government officials, government agencies, we all want to make our communities a better place to live.

But what happens is, that we build up artificial walls, and our job is to really tear those walls down so that we can link arms to really work together, because we can do more together than we can alone.

And I know you're from Home Depot, but I've often said, "They should have renamed that organization. They should have named that organization, "Hope Depot," because of all that your corporation has done through organizations like Convoy of Hope, and in communities across the United States.

And I think Home Depot is a reflection of many corporations, many who have been willing just to say, okay, what can we do to help you help communities?

And so Frank, to answer your question, that's probably one of the most important things we've discovered.

Probably the flip side is that we've discovered that there is still some who think that they do have a monopoly on compassion, right?

FRANK BLAKE: Right. Right.

HAL DONALDSON: And they want to do their own thing and they want to put their name on it.

And when Convoy goes to a community, we're really not there to elevate Convoy.

It's not important for our name to be the headline.

We really want to give credit to all the churches, and the businesses, and the civic organizations that are linking arms.

FRANK BLAKE: I just come back to the tornado in Joplin and your comments on that first anniversary, because as I remember them, they were all about that, "doing away with divisiveness, how as a community, we respond so much more powerfully than, as you say, everybody thinking they have the corner on compassion or whatever."

HAL DONALDSON: That's right. Good memory. That's very true.

FRANK BLAKE: And are there some particular challenges that have come with your dramatic growth?

HAL DONALDSON: Yeah, I think probably the biggest challenge is, requests are pouring in from across the United States, requests for help, and requests from around the world. In America today-

FRANK BLAKE: So, you're now international, correct?

HAL DONALDSON: Oh, yeah, international, yeah. Feeding the 639,000 kids a day and the thousands of mothers and the farmers, and responding to disasters.

I think one of the great challenges is that you receive a barrage of requests every day.

Every day is just, it's a barrage and learning not to lead with, "No." Learning to lead with, "maybe or yes." That's really the challenge.

And when you're overwhelmed, Frank, I think you get this, I mean, when you're overwhelmed, it's easy to start leading with, "No." And I think our organization has done a pretty decent job of saying, "Maybe let us see what we can do."

FRANK BLAKE: I actually think that's one of the great lessons, and it's one that connects very personally, because your instinct with the complexity and the size of organizations, is to lead with, "No," and it's not the right way to do it.

HAL DONALDSON: That's right.

FRANK BLAKE: And how difficult has that been for you, or does it sort of fit your personality anyways, and so it hasn't been that hard to learn?

HAL DONALDSON: Well, I'll give you a case in point from yesterday.

Personally, it's always been hard, and I hope that never changes. When I see impoverished people and I hear about needs, I still have tears, 31 years later.

So I hope that never changes because it's easy to become numb to the pain and the suffering. And so I hope it doesn't change.

But what happened yesterday, one corporation stepped up and they said, "We want to give you somewhere between 800 and 1,000 truckloads of emergency supplies, food, toys for kids."

And our supply chain, the person who over supply chain obviously had his eyes got big and saying, "Okay, how are we going to do that?"

I think 15 years ago we would've said, "we probably can't do that."

We huddled together and said, "We will do that. We will do that. We will take the 800 loads, 1,000 loads, and we will distribute it to the poor and the suffering, and we'll figure out a way."

FRANK BLAKE: Wow. Yeah, that is a great example.

Let me turn to your book, your most recent book, because it is a terrific book. We'll make it available to our listeners.

HAL DONALDSON: Thank you.

FRANK BLAKE: What prompted, what prompted this book?

The title being, "What Really Matters," and the subtitle is, "How to Care for Yourself and Serve a Hurting World."

HAL DONALDSON: I think what happened in my thirties and forties, again, having come off an interview with Mother Teresa and feeling like, "Okay, I found my destiny in life by helping the poor and the suffering."

I jumped in with both feet and I found myself traveling extensively. And I had four children and an amazing wife.

And there were times Frank, where I think I talk about this in the book, I'm in Afghanistan helping kids who are desperate, and meanwhile I'm missing my daughter's soccer game, or I'm in places like South America and my daughter is graduating or she's singing in a choir or something.

There was so much that I missed and I found myself at age 50 having worked at 125, 150 percent, and I found myself at age 50 in a hospital bed, with heart issues.

And lying in that bed, again, being a person of faith, I prayed. I prayed that I'd be able to leave that hospital, but I also prayed that God would teach me lessons.

And one of those lessons I learned was that, I was making sacrifices that God, nor anyone else, was asking me to make.

And I needed to dial it back a little bit.

And as a person of faith, I began to pray more and work less. And ironically, when I did that, Convoy began to grow exponentially.

FRANK BLAKE: Wow.

HAL DONALDSON: So that's really why I wrote the book. I wanted to tell that story of just some lessons I learned.

And the book is very practical, as you know, Frank. It's very practical. It's tips on how to just restore balance to your life.

FRANK BLAKE: There's, there's a lot of wisdom in the book, and I will tell you, one of my favorite chapters in the book is, you've got a chapter that's around the dangers of success.

What are the dangers of success?

HAL DONALDSON: Yeah, success I think is more dangerous than failure.

Because when you fail, you can learn a lesson from it. And when you're successful, you figure you probably don't need to learn anything.

And so, I think you can get really full of yourself, and when you do, you're no longer a co-worker, you're a dictator. The people you work with, success changes you.

And so I think that's one of the things, of the lessons that I learned is to try to lead with humility.

For the last half hour, we've been talking about the achievements of Convoy of Hope, so that doesn't sound very humble.

But I give God the glory and I give all the people who are doing the work and the corporations and churches. But I think humility is really an important aspect of leadership.

FRANK BLAKE: There's also, you've got a great list, I'd recommend this, everybody ought to read your book.

But the list on the dangers of success, just struck me as so wise, in terms of taking credit for stuff that isn't, I mean, we all think we're better than we are.

But there's also a note in there about being careless with God's resources that I thought was a really interesting comment.

How did you do that? What were you seeing?

HAL DONALDSON: Yeah, because I had friends who were in the same area of work that I'm in, and I was seeing them fall. Again, they'd had success, but they were falling, their lives were unraveling.

And I guess, I tried to learn from their mistakes and I talked to them, families that were unraveling.

And I talked to these leaders and I became a student, and I just said, "Well, I don't want to go down that path for sure."

Yeah, I think one of the things that probably I harken back to is that, I don't want to lead with pride, because that is the antithesis of helping the poor and suffering.

And that's not what Mother Teresa was saying. She was saying, become a servant.

Don't try to become a king, become a servant.

And I think that's kind of been my goal, my underlying goal.

And there are two questions I ask every night before I go to bed. The first question is, "Am I on good terms with God? Am I on good terms with other people?"

But secondly, "Is my organization on good terms?"

And sometimes the answer is no.

And if you ask that question honestly and you answer it honestly, then it allows you to make course corrections. And through the years, I've made many course corrections because I had made mistakes.

FRANK BLAKE: What's an example of a course correction that Convoy of Hope has been through?

HAL DONALDSON: Yeah, so I'll give you a relatively recent example.

Probably in the last couple of years, we decided to go to a particular country and establish a beachhead and do some work there.

But we were premature. We really had not thought it through, and we had not really figured out the cost the way we should.

And so I think great leaders, good leaders know when to retrace their steps. And in this case, we had to retrace our steps.

We had to say, okay, let's go back and really think through this, and then when we do go back, we're going to do it right and we're going to do it better.

I know you've experienced that with the corporate world, but the same is true with Convoy.

Sometimes you can move too quickly, and we certainly did. And when we went back in, we did do it right and we did it better with better people and with a better vision.

FRANK BLAKE: What recharges your battery? What gets you the most, "Boy, this really is inspired work."

HAL DONALDSON: It's my four daughters, and it's seeing who they've become, being able to be with them is pretty special.

My daughters are between the ages of 24 and 32, I think.

And just being with them, it just gives me life, and they're so kind and generous and gracious.

And what's so amazing about that is because I spent so much time away from home in my thirties and forties, it's truly miraculous that they've turned out the way that they have.

But yeah, I would say that, and again, a more biblical way, I would say just being able to stop and pray, those things, those two things probably recharge my batteries more than anything else.

FRANK BLAKE: And are there, are there also stories of people and families that Convoy of Hope has touched, that you just say, "This is further confirmation of the path that I'm on."

HAL DONALDSON: Thousands.

FRANK BLAKE: Yeah.

HAL DONALDSON: Just thousands. I was in Nicaragua just a few weeks ago, and the Dominican Republic, I also went to Cuba.

And to see the work on the ground, but to see the gratitude of the people who are receiving it.

I'll just tell you one story. I've gotten so many. I was in Cuba, and we have a feeding initiative there at a school, and this boy comes up to me, and he had to have been, maybe five.

And this particular day somehow they'd gotten a bag of Froot Loops, the cereal, and they had parceled out the Froot Loops.

So this kid had six, I think he had six or eight Froot Loops and takes them off of his plate.

And he walks over to me and he opens up his palm. He was giving me his Froot Loops, that did something to my heart.

FRANK BLAKE: Wow.

HAL DONALDSON: I had another one, I'll tell you one more.

I was in New York, and with these community-wide festivals that we do, we were doing them every year at this one location.

And a woman, she comes running up to me and she gives me a big kiss on my cheek.

And she said, "A year ago I was standing in these lines to receive food, to go through the job fair, to get free medical and dental care. But this year, I'm back as a volunteer. Because what happened last year at this outreach, this event, I met some people and they have brought me back to health. I'm no longer on drugs. I have a job, and I'm here today as a volunteer."

That's an example of what we're talking about, transformational.

FRANK BLAKE: That's amazing.

And I have to just ask out of curiosity because in my lifetime I probably won't make it to Cuba.

Is it as impoverished and in as dire straits as one reads about or, what's it like in Cuba?

HAL DONALDSON: Yeah, there's a need for sure, for sure. But probably more so on the eastern side of the island, which often goes unnoticed because it's not Havana.

The majority of the population is in Havana. But when you go across the island, that's where the greatest need is, and we're doing our best to make a difference there.

FRANK BLAKE: That must have been an extraordinary experience to be there.

I know so many people, and I know personally, I know a lot of people who draw inspiration from you.

HAL DONALDSON: Thank you.

FRANK BLAKE: Who inspires you?

Who do you look to in your universe and say, "Wow, this is an amazing person. He or she is an inspiration to me"?

HAL DONALDSON: Well, first is my wife and my daughters and my two sons-in-law's. They speak truth.

And a lot of times leaders surround themselves with cheerleaders rather than truth-tellers.

And I think as I look back on my life, that's one of the things I've been fortunate to have around me, truth-tellers.

And I think there's a tendency to idolize people who have the biggest network, who have the largest platform.

Those aren't necessarily people that I look up to.

I admire what they do, but I could give you a list of servants, people who are just in the trenches doing amazing things.

As I listened to some of your podcasts Frank, and some of the people you've had on, those are people that aren't getting a lot of recognition.

But, you know what? Those are the people I really look up to.

And many years ago as a journalist, I had the opportunity to interview Dan Rather and other news anchors-

FRANK BLAKE: Oh, interesting.

HAL DONALDSON: ... in New York City. Yeah.

And I remember I was like 25 maybe at the time, and I remember walking away from that interview just like my palms were just sweating.

I was perspiring through my suit, and I just began to pray, "god, I don't want to be so nervous."

So anyway, yeah, I don't know that I'm impressed by people, but I sure am really impressed by people like those you've had on your podcast.

FRANK BLAKE: Yeah, and with you, I mean, it is the people who see a need.

Your Mother Teresa story, really tells so much. It is so profound and so interesting.

Did you have any notion of the success or reach that Convoy of Hope would have when you started?

HAL DONALDSON: Oh, no idea. I'll tell you a story.

Our facility, we had been working out of multiple facilities in Missouri where we're based, which is the Central United States.

So it's perfect for a trucking organization like Convoy.

But some years ago, five, six years ago, we decided we were going to build a facility, and I walked into the board and I said, "Okay, well, we're going to have to raise $70 million and we're going to have to do it without deflecting $1 away from our mission, because we're not going to pull kids out of feeding lines. We're not going to walk away from mothers.

"We're not going to abandon farmers. And so do you guys feel like we can do that?"

And they looked around nodded, and they said, "Let's go for it." And so we did. And so yeah, we were able to raise that $70 million so that we could really build this training facility that we're in.

And I hope sometime Frank, that I can coax you up here to take a look at it.

FRANK BLAKE: Absolutely.

HAL DONALDSON: But yeah, I think it never was about building an organization.

Even today, I'm really not about building Convoy, I don't think our leadership is, we're about helping more people. That's how we measure success.

That's the outcomes we're looking for. It's not growing up the ladder on the Forbes list, it's about helping millions more.

And by the year 2030, we are on a quest to feed a million children every day.

FRANK BLAKE: Wow.

HAL DONALDSON: And so every year, I could show you a spreadsheet. Every year we are like clockwork.

We're adding children, we're adding women, we're adding farmers to a program, so we can get there.

FRANK BLAKE: Wow, that's so impressive. And if I could ask, what do you do with the farmers?

What's the farmer part of this equation?

HAL DONALDSON: So we have a team of agronomists, and these are university-trained agronomists who will go and they will help the farmers really understand some of the dangers that they may be facing related to weather, could be insects, but also helping them find the exact crops that will grow well in their particular areas.

And so, that's some of the training we do.

And what's awesome is, that right here on our grounds, we have what we call high tunnels, or greenhouses maybe is, what most people know them as, and we use them to replicate the soils and the conditions of places around the world.

And through technology, which is an iPhone, we're able to train farmers even from afar. It's really amazing to see.

FRANK BLAKE: Wow. And that's to increase yields. Is that the purpose,-

HAL DONALDSON: Yes.

FRANK BLAKE: ... some of that food come back for your distribution? Is that how, that that constant-

HAL DONALDSON: Yes.

FRANK BLAKE: Yeah.

HAL DONALDSON: Yeah, great question. Yeah.

So what we do is we say to the farmers, "If we help you increase their yields 200, 300%, we just request that you give back 10% of your crops to help us feed more children in your community."

FRANK BLAKE: Wow, what a great virtuous circle. That's true.

HAL DONALDSON: Yeah.

FRANK BLAKE: That is great. And that's a significant part of your mission.

HAL DONALDSON: Last year was 40,000 farmers that we helped to increase their yields.

FRANK BLAKE: That seems to me a really interesting innovation off of your basic mission.

If I just want to spend a second on it, when did you start doing that?

HAL DONALDSON: Yeah, probably about 15 years ago, maybe 14 years ago. And we really saw it as vertical integration. As a way to just increase our supply chain to the kids.

And what was happening is that we always start with feeding programs, and then what happens is the mothers and the fathers come and we begin to develop a relationship with them.

And we saw these parents just sitting around all day while their kids were in school, and we thought, well, what if we could give them something to do?

And that's really why we started the women's program and the farming program.

And another aspect of the agriculture initiative is, that in the schools where we're feeding, we also teach the children how to grow a garden.

And so that's something, they're learning basic skills that they can take back to their home and help their family grow food as well.

FRANK BLAKE: That's phenomenal. That's just great.

So I ask everybody who's on the podcast, who has done a crazy good turn for them, who's not a crazy good turn for you, Hal, in your life?

HAL DONALDSON: Yeah. I'll tell you this story.

I've never told this story to anybody, but I'm going to tell it to you Frank, because I think you'll appreciate it. Some years ago, I had a meeting with a business leader and I walked away from that business meeting or that luncheon, and thinking, "That didn't go real well."

And he asked a lot of questions, but again, I just didn't think much of it.

That man turned around and he said this to me, he said, "Hal, you know what? I'm not sure I fully understand the scope of what you're envisioning, but you know what? I believe in you. I believe in you. I'm going to get behind you."

That man has given, and his family have given millions of dollars, out of a meeting I thought went really poorly.

So I do want to just give a shout-out to that family. I won't name them, but they're amazing.

FRANK BLAKE: Yeah, that's a crazy good turn, a bad meeting that turns into a lot of support. Well done.

HAL DONALDSON: Right.

FRANK BLAKE: So this has just been phenomenal.

We will make free copies of your book available to our listeners, and as I said, just got a lot of wisdom in there and you're a great person to listen to and to read about your experiences.

Where should our listeners go to learn more about Convoy of Hope?

HAL DONALDSON: It's convoyofhope.org.

FRANK BLAKE: All right.

HAL DONALDSON: It's pretty simple, yes.

FRANK BLAKE: That's pretty simple. And any other resources that you direct them to?

HAL DONALDSON: Yeah, there's several things that I like to tell people is, "If they feel led that they want to give, that's great. They can give through Convoy."

But I think it's as important, if not more important, that they give to local organizations and to local churches in their own community.

So I don't like Convoy of Hope to succeed at the expense of local work, if that makes any sense to you.

We so believe in organizations and churches that are doing an amazing work, and we don't want to deflect their giving.

That's just, that's counter-productive because it's about the movements and it's about communities and not about just building another charity.

FRANK BLAKE: Well, Convoy of Hope is an amazing, amazing organization. You're an amazing leader, and thank you for sharing your time with us.

HAL DONALDSON: Thank you.

Well, I want to say to you, thank you for inviting me into your home and for an hour or so, being able to, just to glean wisdom from you.

You're an amazing leader, grateful for you.

FRANK BLAKE: Thank you for that.