Hal Donaldson, president and CEO of Convoy of Hope, talks about meeting Mother Teresa, living on the streets for research, receiving a perspective-changing health scare, the importance of life insurance to his employees, the simple value of just doing the next kind thing, and creating a different kind of bucket list, and why no one has a monopoly on compassion.
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Welcome to Let's Talk Legacy. My name is Gary Michaels. And today we have an amazing guest, Hal Donaldson, the president and CEO of Convoy of Hope, a global nonprofit organization that works with communities to address root causes of poverty and hunger. And that always has been a challenge that our world sees.
According to Forbes, Convoy of Hope is among the 50 largest charities in the United States. So I'm just excited to speak with Hal, and I know our listeners are excited to hear from you today, too. Welcome.
Hey, thank you for having me, Gary. Great to be with you and the podcast.
Let's dig right in. I want to start by talking about family. Your family and the legacy of your family had a huge impact on you and the way that you are now helping shape the legacies of so many others. The story of your grandfather... and the impact of his actions on your family is a powerful one.
How did that family history influence your own beliefs about success, failure, redemption, and other thoughts that come across your mind?
Yeah, you know, really, we have to go back before my grandfather and... talk about what happened to me when I was 12. And when I was 12, my parents were hit by a drunken driver and my father was killed instantly. My mother was seriously injured. She'd be in the hospital for quite some time, unable to work. Our family didn't have insurance, Gary.
And so as a result, our family was forced to survive on welfare and food stamps. So as a young boy, I really experienced the pain of poverty and the pain of suffering and the shame of all of it. And it was really the kindness of people who really reached out to me.
They just wrapped their arms around me and put new shoes on my feet when they saw that I have holes in my sneakers, brought groceries to our door. So it was really the kindness of those people that I think really affected me the most long term. My grandfather was extremely successful in his line of work, but he had really got full of himself and ended up losing his entire family along the way.
Certainly for me, that was something along the way that I did not want to replicate. I think the biggest impact of my life was really just living in poverty, trying to escape poverty. That really was the journey I was on as a teenager. I wasn't going to live like this, like my parents had lived. So, you know, I think that really played a big part in the formation of Convoy of Hope.
Your grandmother's advice seems to have been the guiding light in your life, though. Can you share how her words influenced you?
You know, she had observed my grandfather really just getting full of himself and making some poor choices. And her advice to me was, as you enter into the workforce, you just need to work hard, be a good person, treat people with integrity, do the right thing, and everything is going to take care of itself.
You don't need to go and become a climber and where you are harming people along your journey. You just need to be a good person and everything will take care of itself. And, you know, that advice really was extremely instrumental. You know, my story, Gary, is I became a writer in my 20s. I have a journalism degree. I began writing books in my 20s.
One of those projects took me to Calcutta, India, where I interviewed Mother Teresa. And it was in the course of interviewing Mother Teresa that she just stops me and she just said, hey, young man, what are you doing to help the poor and the suffering? And I figured it was probably not a good idea to lie to Mother Teresa. So I told her the truth. I said, hey, I'm really not doing much of anything.
And she said, everyone can do something. Just do the next kind of thing that God puts in front of you. And those words were haunting, but they dovetailed so well with what my grandmother had said. You know, just do the right thing, just do the kind thing, and everything is going to take care of itself. I came back after meeting Mother Teresa. I did what I call reconnaissance.
I traveled to eight cities. I lived in the streets for three days and three nights. I went to Miami, Atlanta, Chicago, D.C., New York, major cities. And I just walked the streets with a hidden tape recorder, interviewing drug addicts and gang members, prostitutes, runaways, and the homeless, and riding with the police on the midnight shift in each of those cities.
That's really what changed the course of my life. I saw pain and suffering on a scale I'd never seen before. Came back and loaded up a pickup truck with $300 worth of groceries 30 years ago now. And that was the beginning of Convoy of Hope.
Wow. It's one thing to know about it, but you're right. It's another thing to experience it. Yes. My father was a police officer and I said, I want to do the ride-alongs because I want to see what you experience, okay, with these people, the human beings that at some point were living normal lives and something affected them. That's very good.
You know, I had an opportunity to go to San Quentin prison. My father would take a group of his students. For years, he taught teachers how to work with delinquent youths. We got to go into San Quentin prison. We went in there and they have a program that they work with students. that maybe are on borderline of getting into the streets and having problems, and say, you don't want to get there.
And these prisoners were like coaches, and they talked to us about how to be and work with them. And it touched my heart because most of them said that they come from poor families, they come from rich families, they come from all over the universe here, but most of them, their switch was when they were early teenagers. Right. Yeah. Oh, yeah. How have you grown this thing so big?
Because I can tell just talking to you have the biggest heart, but not everybody's like that. Not everybody's kind. How have you been able to build this thing?
Yeah, you know, people ask me that. They say, what's the secret sauce? How has it gone from the back of a pickup truck to being, I think we're actually number 35 on Forbes list? You know, I can honestly tell you that I believe vision is incremental. You know, it's just doing the right thing, doing the opportunistic thing. Opportunities come your way, doing it and doing it well.
And just building upon that, I don't know that 30 years ago that we had this massive strategic plan that it was going to be, you know, something this large. It really was just responding to needs. You know, I'm a person of faith, and so I believe that God puts needs in front of you, and it gives you opportunities to respond to those needs. And the same for your listeners.
As they go through their daily life, when they encounter someone who's hurting, someone who's lonely, it's as simple as that. And I really think that's been the story of Convoy of Hope. We've just responded to needs for 30 years and tried to do it in a way that helps people maintain their dignity. You know, we feed nearly 600,000 children every day around the world.
About 50,000 women and girls go through our jobs training, our teaching every year. We have 25, 30,000 farmers that go through training. so that they can increase their yields. It wasn't a big plan. It was just like, hey, here's an opportunity. Let's step into it. Let's do the best job we can, see where it takes us.
And I know that's probably not a good business model, but it's certainly how we've grown. You're doing something right.
Now, as president and CEO of Convoy of Hope, that's a big thing. Sometimes the challenges that you faced aren't talked about. Yeah. And sacrifices you personally put into this. Talk to me a little bit about some of the struggles you've had of getting this thing up and running, not just for your company, okay, for your organization, but personally personally.
Yeah. Well, as you know, Gary, I have a book and it's entitled, What Really Matters? How to Care for Yourself and Serve a Hurting World. And my hope is that people will learn from my mistakes. Because in the early days, I was so passionate about helping people escape poverty. Again, because of my upbringing.
And when I saw poverty in the lives of other people, I just, you know, I want to do everything I can. And I found myself really traveling all over the world, all over the United States, spending 150 nights, 200 nights away from home. I had four small daughters. And so, you know, I think I had reckless ambition, much like my grandfather. I was abusing my family. because I wasn't there.
And when I was there, sure. I mean, I took good care of them. I told my kids bedtime stories. I tucked them in. I did everything that a loving father should do. But there's something to be said about time and time away. You know, it hit me probably about the age of 50, it really hit me that I had paid too great a price. I was making sacrifices I didn't need to make.
Those sacrifices were time, they were finances, they were health. And you tell yourself, you know what, I can sacrifice sleep, I can sacrifice nutrition, I can sacrifice et cetera, et cetera, because I'm doing such a good work around the world. But what I discovered is that when you take care of yourself, that's not a selfish deed.
That's actually a selfless thing because it enables you to help more people. And not to operate from this constant deficit. That's huge. What was it? Was there a health scare? Yeah, I was sitting at my desk and I had a short pain in my back. And I thought, okay, well, this feels like it might be a kidney stone. And so I left work, drove home. It didn't get any better.
I told my wife, I said, hey, I think you need to take me to emergency. They need to give me something to pass the stone. And here I am with... a blood pressure cuff on my arm. And all of a sudden, the nurse said, this isn't a kidney stone. I think you're on the verge of a heart attack. And I just couldn't believe it.
Next thing I know, I'm being strapped to a gurney and rushed into surgery, and they put two stents in my heart. That was a wake-up call. I literally came out of that surgery. And at the time, I was writing books. I was traveling and speaking a lot. I was working as the editor-in-chief of an international magazine. I was trying to do it all.
I was on like eight boards, board of directors of different organizations around the country, major organizations. I stepped off every one of them, and I quit two of my jobs, and I gave my life and my focus to Convoy of Hope, and that proved to be a very good decision.
Wow. So through your programs over the years, Convoy has distributed more than $2.5 billion worth of food and supplies, helped more than 250 million people, and currently feeds more than 570,000 children. And I wanted to make sure I was correct on that.
yeah it's grown what is the convoy mission today and has it changed at all over the years is it is it more encompassing than just making sure they're fed yes especially i would say like in the u.s like we do these city-wide festivals where we actually go in and provide free medical and dental care job fairs we help people prepare a resume we uh
provide them with groceries we have things for kids we have new shoes and give them clothes and the list goes on it's a full menu of services here's what we've discovered in the united states is that no one has a monopoly on compassion that if you come in and you're neutral you can bring you can bring churches civic groups government and businesses all together to touch their city
Often, they're working apart, and we've found that it's amazing to see them work together to make their communities a better place to live. Internationally, one of the things we found, we started with a feeding program of children, but we found that the mothers of these children would come to bring their kids, and they would just hang around all day while these kids were in school.
We feed the kids in school because that keeps them in school. You don't feed them in school, parents have them out on street corners begging or scavenging off of garbage heaps. You know, convoy typically what we'll do is we'll provide one meal a day at school, at lunch. And then for the weekends, they'll take home rations for their family.
But what we found was that the mothers were hanging around. And so we said, well, what if we started a job training program for the mothers so that We don't have to feed their kids. They're feeding their own kids. And every year, 50,000 women go through the program.
That is awesome. Do you have a success story that really touches your heart about a community? I'm sure there's many, but is there one at the top of your head that touches your heart?
Yeah, I think, you know, our goal is not to go to a community and stay. Our goal is to go to a community and make sure that community is healthy and then leave to go to another community. And so one example would be in Nepal following earthquake some years ago.
Convoy Hope came in and we began working with the farmers to really expand their yield and to show them what other crops they could be growing that would be financially lucrative for them. And over the course of a couple of years, we were able to bring that community back to health. We had a feeding program for kids, but they began feeding themselves and began feeding their own kids.
And so we moved 10 miles down the road to another village and to another community. And then And after that one became healthy, we went to another community. And so I think that's one example. Here in the States, I think one of the things that we've done that, and I say we, I say that collectively, I think we've been able to activate churches.
You know, churches typically have a heart for what we're doing. The Bible commands them to help the poor, but they don't necessarily have a track to run on. And so one of the things I think we've been able to do is not only introduce them to businesses and civic groups in their own community so that they can work together, but also to activate them, to show them what they can do
And I believe that the church in America is almost like a sleeping giant. I mean, there are millions of people who attend churches of different faiths who have a heart for this, but they don't necessarily know what to do. And so across America, I think we've been able to activate churches. Yeah.
Now, you mentioned at the beginning that your parents didn't have life insurance, didn't have insurance. And this show is by no means even aware a life insurance company. Is it really pushing life insurance? I've seen being in the business now how having this protection has helped so many families and not burden the kids. and not burden the spouse when something happens.
But what's been your experience with life insurance and what you've seen over the years with your employees and even the people that you serve?
Yeah. Well, first with the employees, we really emphasize the importance of it. You know, we've lost some really dear people. Um, I lost during COVID, I lost six close friends, uh, in a period of 14 months. And, um, They were all healthy, you know, and so it's very difficult to deal with that if you don't have adequate life insurance. So I know you didn't ask for a plug, but I'm a strong believer.
So I would say internationally and even in the U.S., I have a deep concern that there are many families that are month to month and they don't have insurance of any kind. And as someone that had to go through that in my teens, it's brutal. When you are not insured, it is brutal. And so I couldn't say more that from a convoy standpoint, our job is to keep people healthy.
And once they get healthy and get a job, then insurance certainly is an important part of it. I'm a strong believer. And I get to see firsthand being in the business.
I'm a strong believer. Yeah. So a lot of guests we've had on the program come from families of backgrounds of great legacy and great achievements, but find it sometimes challenging to forge their own. What advice would you give to someone struggling to identify kind of what their force is, what their dream is?
I mean, what could you share that would give people some optimism of even if you're not there yet of knowing what you want to do in your life? What would you give people as advice there? Yeah.
Well, the first would be don't be afraid to do reconnaissance. You know, when I went to the eight cities, I mean, that was recon. You can do reconnaissance in your community or other communities or someplace around the world. You may go there and not know what you're going to see or what you're going to do. It may be right for you. It may not be right for you.
But all of us need to have something that goes beyond our everyday work. We need something that we're also investing in, people we're investing in. And A good way to find that out is recon. The second thing is to create a different kind of bucket list. My bucket list for years was I want to go to Antarctica, I want to go to Wimbledon, I want to walk the red carpet, you know, those kind of things.
But I think... In time, I began to realize that I needed a different kind of bucket list. Those things were good, well and good, and they're still on the bucket list. But then there's another question is, what kind of imprint do I want to leave on the world? What good do I want to do for the world to make it a better place? And to add that to your bucket list. And I did that some years ago.
And that was, in itself, the whole exercise was really, I think, instrumental in doing what I'm doing now. So what does the word legacy mean to you? Again, I'm a person of faith. And so the first word that comes to mind is obedience. And I believe God puts ideas and opportunities in front of us. And so that would be one. But secondly is obedience.
I want my children and grandchildren to know that I was genuine, that I really did care about people, and that I was the same person at home as I was on stage. I was the same person at home as I was in the refugee camps. I want them to know that they didn't have three dads. They had one.
If I can leave with them that kind of imprint that he was generous, he was kind, but he was always the same and he treated everybody the same way, then I've done something.
That's huge. With your own family, what type of legacy would you like to leave with Convoy of Hope?
I've thought about that a lot. Certainly in my age, I've thought about that a lot. And I want them to know that we are stewards of this organization. We're not owners. I believe it belongs to God. And there's things that God wants to do for millions of people around the world. And so we have a responsibility to operate at the highest level of integrity to do what we say we're going to do.
That's the legacy I want to leave with them. So what's next? Yeah, I think Convoy has some goals and so certainly want to see those achieved. We want to be feeding a million children a day and We want to be training 250,000 women and girls every year and 100,000 farmers. So those are some goals that are out there. But in the United States, we want to establish regional distribution centers.
We have two now, but we want to become more regionalized because that will allow us to help more people in those communities and help us respond to disasters. Whenever there's a major disaster, Convoy's responding. And so by having regional distribution centers, it will allow us to do more And then on a personal level, my first grandchild is being born.
So having four daughters, I guess four grandchildren will come along. And so I just want to spend more time with my kids and my grandkids.
Awesome. So if someone wants to get involved or get a copy of your book or in some way just be attached to what you're doing, how would they reach you?
Well, the book is available, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, a lot of different ways. But convoyofhope.org, they just go to the website. They can get a hold of me or they can find out volunteer opportunities or trips that we're taking around the world. We encourage people to go to convoyofhope.org. Awesome. You know what? You touched my heart. Thanks for having me.
I really, really appreciate it. If you've enjoyed today's podcast and want to learn more, visit us at southwesternlegacy.com. Shoot us an email via our easy contact form to find out how you can become an agent or how we can meet your needs for final expense coverage.
You can find this and other episodes at letstalklegacypod.com on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, and anywhere else you listen to podcasts. Let's Talk Legacy is a presentation of the Southwestern Legacy Insurance Group, a member of Southwestern Family of Companies.