Talk A Mile was born around a kitchen table during the summer of 2020. After participating in peaceful marches following the murder of George Floyd, Justin and Erika Fogarty and their son Liam found themselves asking the same question every night: "What's next? What can we actually do?"

Their answer was disarmingly simple: pair young people of color with police trainees and have them walk a mile together, one conversation at a time. What started as a pilot in Portland in 2022 has since become embedded in the Portland Police Bureau's training curriculum. Every single trainee in the last three years has walked that mile. The program has been featured on OPB and KGW, and is now expanding to Seattle in partnership with the Seahawks.

But building a program that works was only half the challenge. Funding it is the other half. And for a lean nonprofit where the founders wear every hat, carving out time for corporate outreach was nearly impossible.

We sat down with Justin Fogarty, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Talk A Mile, to hear how Ecodrive's LinkedIn Appointment Setting service changed their fundraising pipeline overnight.

What was your fundraising outreach like before working with Ecodrive?

"It's one of those things that I've long thought would work, but I didn't have the time to put in to try to make it work. We've been bombarded with programs for the last month and a half. Between running events, training cohorts, and now expanding to Seattle, there just wasn't bandwidth to do sustained corporate outreach. I knew the conversations would be valuable if I could get in front of the right people. I just couldn't get there on my own."

How has the experience been so far?

"It's been really smooth. I was a little worried at first about whether the scheduling and calendar coordination would work, but the team and my calendar have been working well together. It's actually been a nice forcing function to make me take my calendar really, really seriously, which has been great."

"I'll take any meeting. If you want to talk, let's talk. A half hour is never really wasted. And that approach has been paying off because even the conversations that don't seem like an obvious fit end up opening doors."

What kinds of meetings have come through?

"Some really interesting ones. Honda was one of the first. I spoke with the head of their CSR team, and what came out of that conversation was something I never would have thought of. They have community liaison people at the local level who know the mayor, city council, judges, faith leaders, all the civic institutions. Her idea was to take our program to those teams and see if they'd want to bring it into the communities where Honda has a big footprint."

"That's a completely new model for us. If we can prove it out in one Honda community, they have facilities across the country. It could be a way to scale the program through corporate partners who are already embedded in these communities."

"We also had a meeting booked with the head of the foundation at LendingTree, and then some unexpected ones, like a former Paramount and MTV executive who's already made an introduction to someone who works with professional athletes on legacy projects. You just never know where these conversations lead."

The Results

In just the first three weeks, Ecodrive's LinkedIn Appointment Setting service delivered:

• 9 meetings booked with corporate donors and potential partners
• Meeting with the Head of CSR at Honda, opening a potential nationwide expansion model
• Meeting with the Head of the Foundation at LendingTree
• An introduction to a professional athletes legacy advisor through one of the early conversations
• A new strategic framework for scaling through corporate community partnerships

The initial expectation was five meetings in the first month. Talk A Mile exceeded that in under three weeks.

The Bigger Picture

For nonprofits, time is the scarcest resource. Program delivery, community engagement, and fundraising all compete for the same limited hours. Ecodrive's LinkedIn Appointment Setting service takes the outreach off the founder's plate so they can focus on what they do best: the mission.

Justin Fogarty puts it simply:

"It's proven out that this SDR approach to LinkedIn is actually pretty fruitful. The Honda and LendingTree meetings being two of the first is kind of crazy. When you have a unique enough value proposition and the mission resonates, it clearly works."

Talk A Mile is continuing to build its pipeline through the service, with meetings coming in weekly and the Seahawks partnership kicking off this summer.

For other nonprofits thinking about how to get in front of corporate donors: the conversations are out there. You just need to start them.