Introduction and OSF Mission Overview

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking on the Donate button on the right side of the page under Support. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support.

Craig Woodfield [00:00:36] The kindly light amid th encircling gloom Lead thou me on the night is dark and I am far from home.

John Dehlin [00:00:52] Hello everyone, and welcome to a special edition of Mormon Stories Podcast brought to you by the Open Stories Foundation. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's May 25, 2017 and we are very excited to release this episode. This episode is going to be, as we do most years, we're going to be talking about a year in review. We're going to be talking about 2016 to coincide with the release of our financial reports this year, and we're also going to be talking about a lot of exciting things that happened both in 2016 and in the first quarter of 2017. And just to be candid, we've had a ton of interest and questions in the osf, and I'm just going to say flat out, we love interest, we love feedback, we love questions, we even love constructive criticism.

John Dehlin [00:01:43] I will say that transparency has been our value from day one. From the very first year we started publishing our financial statements at the end of each year. We've done that every year since. I've talked openly about my salary and other things, and I just want to say at the outset, that's always been a core value of ours. I've tried to do these annual reviews whenever we had time, and there was something to say and to talk about the future. So I'm excited to do it again. I think this is definitely the best year in a quarter we've ever had, so there's a ton of cool things to say.

John Dehlin [00:02:15] So thanks to everyone who's given us questions and comments and suggestions and even respectful criticism. All that helps us be better. Just to give a tiny bit of history for those who don't know, the Open Stories foundation papers were filed for it in 2010 during my second year of graduate school, and I think starting around 2011, we were sort of up and running as an official nonprofit. And for many years the Open Stories foundation was run while I was finishing my graduate school. So we did our best as a really small, fledgling nonprofit. And what was really cool about 2016 was it was the first year that I was able to do this full time.

John Dehlin [00:02:58] And so to coincide with that, I worked really hard to identify some fabulous people as board members. And we put a new board in place January 1, 2016. Natasha Alfer Parker, Dan Witherspoon and I were board members for several years before that, and they did an amazing job.

John Dehlin [00:03:18] And we just realized that it made sense to get several excellent people on the board who could help us out in really important ways. And that's what we did. So before we actually talk about the board members, though, we want to begin by just talking about our mission. Our board met in the fall of last year, and we came up with a mission statement. And I'm just going to read it. The mission statement is to promote understanding, healing, growth and community for people experiencing or impacted by religious transition. So that's our mission, and we actually have a tagline, authentic voices and connections. And so that's what the Open Stories foundation is about.

Open Stories Foundation Highlights of 2016

John Dehlin [00:04:00] And I love the mission to give a really quick year in review. I'm just going to provide just a little bit of highlights because the focus today is going to be on governance and finances and those sorts of things. But the Open Stories foundation has five main podcasts. Mormon Stories Podcast, hosted by me Mormon Matters podcast, hosted by Dan Witherspoon A Thoughtful Faith hosted by Gina Colvin Mormon Transitions podcast, which is co hosted by my wife Margi and myself and Mormon Mental Health Podcast, which is hosted by Natasha Helfer Parker. We also have Gay Mormon Stories podcast, which is not active at this time, Mormon Studies Podcast, which is not active at this time.

John Dehlin [00:04:44] But those. The files for those podcasts are still up and running. I'm really excited to announce as an accomplishment in 2016, that we achieved 2.7 million downloads of our episodes or views on YouTube of the videos on Mormon Stories. And that is a groundbreaking year. 4.7 million.

John Dehlin [00:05:06] So just wanted to sort of start off with that good news. So much incredible content released in these podcasts by these amazing hosts. And I'm just really proud to be associated with these people. And that's the bulk of what we do. And we could talk all day about the number of people whose lives have been changed.

John Dehlin [00:05:27] You know, marriages have been saved, families have been strengthened, relationships have been strengthened. You know, we've helped people who struggle with depression and anxiety and marital strife and LGBT concerns, ptsd, all sorts of things. We've tried to help through our podcast. Help People form community, help them navigate whether they're in or out of the church. We're committed to both supporting people who are staying in the church. And that's what Mormon matters and a thoughtful faith podcast do they support people who want to stay at actively engaged with the LDS Church. We love to support that population, more progressive and liberal Mormons. And then Mormon Stories supports people broadly, both in and out of the church, just helping them tell their stories.

John Dehlin [00:06:15] And of course, Mormon Transitions is about people who are either transitioning away from orthodoxy into progressive liberal Mormonism or for people who have transitioned or are transitioning out of Mormonism. But we sort of, you know, the LDS Church takes care of its orthodox members really well and we take care of the rest. And that's kind of what the Open Storage foundation is about.

John Dehlin [00:06:37] So super excited about the podcast and the progress there. One of the new additions to 2016 was our events. And so we released. We held at least nine events over 2016. That's my best count. There may have been more, but we went to Dallas, we went to Houston, we went to Las Vegas, we went to New York City, we went to Phoenix. We did Sunstone and we love Sunstone and it's coming up this year, so go to Sunstone. We did a workshop in Salt Lake City in June. We did a Salt Lake City retreat in July, and we did a donor thank you dinner at the end of 2016.

John Dehlin [00:07:17] Mindy Gledhill and Hyve Riot performed and it was. And Dustin, and it was amazing. But those have been our achievements, our main achievements for 2016. And I couldn't be prouder of what we've accomplished. And I want to thank everyone who has supported the Open Stories foundation, who donates to the podcasts, who attended the events, and of course, the donors who actually donated to the scholarship fund to help other people attend the events. The events were extremely highly rated. They got 4.9 out of 5. In pretty much every event we held, people said that they were life changing. And we've got several events coming up in 2017 and beyond.

John Dehlin [00:07:57] So check out MormonStories.org events for a list of the events. So that is sort of the highlights of 2016. 2017 has turned out to be a breakthrough year in terms of downloads and views and events. We're not going to go into that now.

John Dehlin [00:08:14] So what we're going to do now is start off the meat of this podcast by talking about the board of directors. I mentioned that we started a board of directors. We sort of brought a new set of people on January 1, 2016 to the board of Directors and I'm just gonna name the members of the Board of directors because one of the questions we've received is who's on the board? And so I'm gonna tell you. The Board of Directors currently has five people on it and I'm going to tell you about each person. So Lee Stoll is the Chairman of the Board. Lee. It sounds like a male name, but it's actually a female.

Introducing the OSF Board of Directors

John Dehlin [00:08:52] Lee is a Wall street salesperson and partner at a securities firm. Prior to her years in sales, she was a social worker in New York City working with homeless families, helping to stabilize housing and housing related issues for children in welfare hotels.

John Dehlin [00:09:09] I love Lee. She's brilliant and committed and passionate and she we couldn't have done this without her the past year and a half. So shout out to Lee. Our second board member is Roger McComber. Roger worked in New York City for most of his career as a financial analyst. He's been an active angel investor for over 20 years and currently serves on the boards of many small companies and charities. His charity generally supports groups focused on mental wellness, promoting secular education and general well being for youth. He's on the board of the Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University Go Aggies where he also funds many scholarships including one exclusively for women.

John Dehlin [00:09:48] He currently lives in Colleyville, Texas. Roger has also been amazing, committed, passionate and supportive. The third board member I'm going to name is Steve Holbrook. Steve is the newest board member. He just joined us relatively recently though. He he's been supporting our board for many months and he's been a dear friend of mine for years.

John Dehlin [00:10:11] Steve is a 30 plus year veteran of the information technology industry with over 15 years in international standards. He has served on several technical boards including the advisory boards of the World Wide Web Consortium and the INCITS Board of Directors. Steve is most known for helping to lead the world's largest in person support group for postmortemons called the Utah Valley Postmormons, which has over 2,500 members. He helped write the Open Mormon letter in 2014 and co founded the Mormon Spectrum foundation with Allison Udall in 2015 which provides a compendium of online resources including a map of over 220 in person communities worldwide. Check out mormonspectrum.org it's amazing.

John Dehlin [00:10:52] If you need to find a community or you want to create a community, go to Mormon Spectrum. Steve joins the OSF Board this month and he lives in Orem, Utah with his Wife, Chris. So that's our third board member. I'm the fourth member of the Open Storage foundation board.

John Dehlin [00:11:09] We can talk about that. I am also CEO of the Open Storage foundation and based on the guidance we received and later our guests can talk about this. But it is not uncommon for a CEO to also be a member of a board in a nonprofit, as long as the CEO recuses himself at any instance when there might be a conflict of interest or when it's important for she or he to do so.

John Dehlin [00:11:37] So yes, I'm on the board and I'm happy to be on the board. And finally, I'm going to introduce our guest today. So our guest today is Craig Woodfield. And Craig is a board member and he's also the financial director of the Open Stories Foundation. And instead of reading his bio, I'm just going to welcome you, Craig, to the Open Stores Foundation's sort of 2016 year in review and to Mormon Storage Podcast. Welcome, Craig.

Board Member Craig Woodfield on OSF's Year

Craig Woodfield [00:12:09] Thanks John. Appreciate the opportunity to be here. Tell us one real quick.

John Dehlin [00:12:14] Oh yeah, go ahead. No, go ahead.

Craig Woodfield [00:12:16] I just could say just one real quick correction on my title, the finance Director. I'm actually the chairman of the finance committee.

John Dehlin [00:12:23] Okay, great.

Craig Woodfield [00:12:24] We have other employees who are employee who handles all the finances for the company, but a minor port. But even more importantly, I noticed that you highlighted the fact that Steve is a 30 year plus veteran in his professional life. And I just wanted to point out that he started that when he was 10 years old. So he's not nearly as old as that comment may imply.

Craig Woodfield [00:12:46] But thanks for the introduction, John. And just real quick on my background, I'm the CPA on the board and in my professional life I'm an audit partner at a global accounting firm. I lead our audit practice in the south central part of the U.S. i'm based in Dallas, Texas. I've lived here for 25 years now.

Craig Woodfield [00:13:09] And so that's my day job and I spend most of my time during the day dealing with for profit entities, interacting with the boards of our clients who are very focused on their mission, which is primarily to increase shareholder value and make money for their shareholders and you know, consult with them on, you know, appropriate corporate governance. And by night though, and I really, really appreciate the chance to work with not for profit organizations because it's a great contrast from corporate America where there's nothing wrong with expanding shareholder value obviously. But you know, to be associated with a not for profit is really unique opportunity to really see how an organization can make a difference in individual lives.

Craig Woodfield [00:13:56] And that's been a passion of mine, you know, for years now. And I've, you know, I've served on as board chair and on the board for a Dallas based charity called Metrocrest Services, whose mission is to prevent homelessness, and had just a number of wonderful experiences with them and still involved with them to this day. I'm also on the accounting advisory board for the SMU Cox School of Business, which gives me the chance to interact with a lot of college students, helps keep me a little bit young on that side and have a real passion for that. And then this really segues also into my professional life.

Craig Woodfield [00:14:32] I'm on the advisory board of the North Texas Chapter, the National association of Corporate Directors, which is a. Not for profit in and of itself, but it's devoted to the education training of board members. And so I've had the opportunity to, you know, to lead seminars and participate on panels on the NACD events as we train board members on how to fulfill their responsibilities as members of the board. So, which leads me to osf. And, you know, this is a passion of mine as well. I've, you know, I was raised lds, have really loved Mormon stories, Mormon Matters, all the podcasts that OSF offers for at least eight years now, eight or nine years.

Craig Woodfield [00:15:16] And they've played a real important part in my life as I, you know, continue on my own journey. And part of that process is I've really seen firsthand the value of our mission statement, which is, you know, to promote understanding and community for people, no matter where they are on the religious spectrum and the belief spectrum.

Craig Woodfield [00:15:37] So I could go on on that, John, but I'll pause here for a second, give you a chance to kind of redirect this conversation if you'd like.

John Dehlin [00:15:44] No, that's great. Yeah. I can't say the mission enough to promote understanding, healing, growth and community for people experiencing or impacted by religious transition. And our tagline, developed by Steve Holbrook is authentic voices and connections. And. And we.

Craig Woodfield [00:16:03] Go ahead, John. Yeah, I say just one more thought on the mission that really is important in all aspects of the organization, but particularly for a board. The board of directors primary responsibility is to make sure that the organization is focused on its mission, focused on what it's trying to accomplish.

Craig Woodfield [00:16:23] And it's in that capacity that we as directors, and I know, you know, we have a wonderful group of directors of OSF that we're very united in the mission. You know, we're all pretty much in different places in the belief spectrum of Mormonism, but that doesn't matter, because we're united in supporting people no matter where they are. And that's a guiding principle that guides everything that we do. And so one of our primary responsibilities is to make sure that, you know, the OSF management team, which is pretty few in number right now, but growing, is focused on that mission and executing it in a very ethical and transparent way.

John Dehlin [00:17:06] Excellent. All right, Craig, well, welcome. We're so glad to have you. Other than what you've already said, can you just talk for those who don't know about nonprofits or for those who want to know about the OSF board itself, can you talk about the structure of the OSF board and any components or roles, governance that you want to talk about?

Craig Woodfield [00:17:27] Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things you mentioned in your introduction, John, was kind of a milestone event, I believe, in the OSF history, which is, you know, when you finish your PhD program. I think you said it was the fall of 2015.

John Dehlin [00:17:41] That's right, yeah. Summer.

Craig Woodfield [00:17:43] Yeah, that was. Yeah. Prior to that. And it's really remarkable how you were able to do this. But OSF did not have anyone devoted to the organization as their primary professional responsibility. You know, you were a student, you still had a family to support, and you were really doing this in your spare time. And there really were, there were no employees, it was manned by volunteers.

Craig Woodfield [00:18:10] It wasn't until 2015 when you made the decision to devote to make it your primary priority in your professional life, that we really had the firepower and the structure of a full time employee who was also the CEO. So you were CEO of an organization of one initially, but that's when the future mission of OSF really started to take shape. And the long term vision of continuing what OSF did really well, which was to provide great podcast content and community, but to make it much broader and to build an organization that is sustainable and that could really increase its reach and its impact on those we're trying to serve.

Craig Woodfield [00:18:54] And that really started, you know, when you finish your PhD program in 2015. And I remember, you know, I've only been on the board since 2016, but I remember talking to you back then at that time and as you kind of weighed back and forth your options and decided to go at this full time. And that was really a significant event. But that's important because when we view OSF as an organization and when we came on board in 2016, we really viewed it in many ways as similar to a startup. You know, all the required things were being done. You know, it was in compliance with all the irs, IRS regulations.

Craig Woodfield [00:19:30] And so those boxes were being checked. But because of, you know, how thin the resources were, and as I talked about it, didn't have any full time employees. There were a lot of things that still needed to be done. And so we've been on a journey to build that infrastructure here over the last 18 months or so.

Craig Woodfield [00:19:54] And there's been a lot of success that's happened. But the board we have now views this as a long term journey. You know, we view it as we're building something and we need to make sure at all times we're compliant in every way, that we treat our people ethically and those with whom we do business, but also that we continue to get better. And so we've structured the board so that we have that foundation now in place. And so as you mentioned, we have five board members.

Craig Woodfield [00:20:24] John is a member of management who is a board member. So we've been very careful to structure it so that anything related to his compensation, your bonus or anything that you might be have a limited objectivity to or the appearance thereof, that you're not part of those discussions. So we have a separate compensation committee that you're not a part of and I'm sure we'll talk more about that later. We also have a finance committee that's comprised of members of the board. And you know, as we continue to, to mature as an organization, we'll be adding other committees as well that many of you would expect to see with more mature organizations.

John Dehlin [00:21:09] Brilliant.

Craig Woodfield [00:21:09] Do I leave anything out, John?

John Dehlin [00:21:11] No, I mean, that's.

Craig Woodfield [00:21:11] I could keep talking.

John Dehlin [00:21:12] That's great. That's great. This is really great. And you know, we meet at least quarterly, to be honest. I think sometimes we meet monthly. We meet often and we're working. This is the hardest working board I've ever been a part of.

Craig Woodfield [00:21:28] Yeah, and that's probably something I should have mentioned that we do have because we're all experienced board members. We understand we're not management and that our role is to empower management to execute the mission of the organization. But at the same time, because, you know, there's, there's so few employees, we do maybe a lot more hands on than we might expect to down the road, but we're still very cognizant of what that line is between an appropriate board level activity versus a management activity. And that's one of the reasons I, you know, clarified my title, because that's something clearly I shouldn't be doing our accounting books and records nor Would I really want to, but that's not my job. It's more of an oversight role. And to make sure that's happening, but not to do it.

John Dehlin [00:22:15] Brilliant. One of the. And this is going to be kind of, you know, one of the tougher questions. I'm just going to hit you with it. And I can respond to some of the. Some of the people have asked, you know, what's our commitment to diversity? The. You know, currently, as presently constituted, the board has one female, and I guess, just to be candid, for white males. And any thoughts on that? And then I can give my thoughts as well.

Craig Woodfield [00:22:44] Yeah, well, of course, clearly, that's not where we want to be. It's where we are. And I think when we started, we were appropriately focused on getting fully engaged individuals in place with the right experience to grow this.

Craig Woodfield [00:23:01] And so we did that. But we fully acknowledge, and it's a high priority for us as we continue to move forward to make sure that the board is reflective of everyone we serve. We have a very diverse constituency who we want to help at osf, and the leadership of osf, and the board of directors in particular, needs to reflect that leadership, that constituency, not just from a belief standpoint, which we do believe. We need board members who hit all spectrums of belief on the.

Craig Woodfield [00:23:33] On the scale, but also, you know, from a, you know, from a racial or from a LGBT standpoint or all the different communities that we're looking to have a positive impact on. So we have some work to do.

John Dehlin [00:23:49] 100% agree. And to me, yeah, I. I think until we have a board that better represents our constituency, we'll be missing out. And so, for me, it's a top priority to expand the board and to include more women. And, you know, to the extent that we can find, you know, a person of color, an LGBT person or whatever, we want to make sure that they're well suited for the board, that they're committed to the organization, to making it successful, that they have the time and desire to really commit to it. But for me, it's among my top priorities, if not at the top. So that's just my perspective as well.

Craig Woodfield [00:24:34] I think I can speak on behalf of the whole board on that, too, Jeff. We're very much aligned on that.

John Dehlin [00:24:39] Beautiful. Really quickly, one of our listeners asked why the board isn't listed on the website. And the answer is, it is now.

Craig Woodfield [00:24:48] We.

John Dehlin [00:24:48] Amy, you know, I didn't before. One of the most exciting things about the OSF is that we have not only one employee, which we were able to hire starting January 1, 2016, which is me. We brought on Amy Grubbs November ish, late November 2016 and she's joined us as director of operations. She's been brilliant and you know, immediately she was given the fire hose of sort of managing every aspect of, of the nonprofit. And her job description was insane.

John Dehlin [00:25:25] Chief cook and bottle washer. But as we set our goals for 2017, you know, selecting and finding a customer relationship management system, upgrading the website, getting, you know, better and better financials in place, all the board meetings, all the content, a new podcast, Mormon Transitions.

John Dehlin [00:25:44] There's been so much we've been doing and bringing on a part time employee which is Cody Layton. One of the responsibilities has been upgrading the website because it's been sorely neglected. We've made a little bit of progress on it.

John Dehlin [00:25:59] We've actually been working for months. We found some volunteers to work on the website that didn't work out. We found a different vendor that didn't work out. And we finally settled on Noah Rasheta, he's secularbuddhism.com as our web designer and he's finishing up this week.

John Dehlin [00:26:19] He's been working on it for weeks and he's finishing up this week a first version of the website and then he's going to go on to do other things. So the answer is that's why we haven't had the board listed on the website until now. But it is and we're thrilled to have the board we have and have it on the website. Okay, so it's now time to dig into the financials which is one of the most important things, things that people are asking about. And we've just completed like literally today sort of a final report that we're ready to release.

OSF Financial Transparency and Reporting

John Dehlin [00:26:58] And there was just a question about, about that timing. Some people say that it's, you know, some people say that it's absolutely normal for a nonprofit to release their, you know, end of year financials around this time. Others say it's, it's troubling and egregious. And so Craig, having worked for a lot of nonprofits or worked with nonprofits and being in the accounting industry, can you talk to us just about the, the timing of, of financial reports as it relates to nonprofits?

Craig Woodfield [00:27:29] Yeah, absolutely. And I'll just state probably the most important thing first, which is that, you know, the timing is fine from a regulatory standpoint and a compliance standpoint. Not for profits are required to file their tax filing their form 990s. If you have a December 31st year end like we do, you know, five months and 15 days. And I'm not very good at math anymore, John, so I'll defer to you on what that is. 10 days.

John Dehlin [00:27:59] We're 10 days past the filing deadline.

Craig Woodfield [00:28:01] There you go. Thank you. But you know, as is commonly the place, there's an automatic three month extension that happens. Automatic extension, I believe is three months that you can apply for. That's routinely done. So we have, you know, in April we did file for that extension as we had planned. And so we're still well, well ahead of the regulatory deadline. So that's, that's obviously very important and that's just a very basic thing that, that we need to make sure we do. Now I will say that the timing of when this information is released and I take the, whatever criticism may have come to us for it being in May, I take that seriously and I think, I think there's some valid points there.

Craig Woodfield [00:28:42] But let me just maybe clarify this for a couple of reasons. I think as we went into this year and this, we talked about this a little while ago about how early stage we are as an organization, you know, in 2016, it wasn't until towards the end of the year that we had more than one employee and it was John, and some very effective and well meaning volunteers. But volunteers aren't the same as having employees who have this as their number one professional priority.

Craig Woodfield [00:29:15] The accounting and finance function had been mostly manned by volunteers. We did have an accountant that we put on board, very qualified CPA during 2016, but his time was limited to just the, a few hours a month. And so we didn't have a big infrastructure to address with that. And so, you know, as we as a finance committee and board considered, you know, the year end close process, you know, we were able to get the appropriate resources in place to have, you know, the year end books closed on a reasonable basis so we could get out all the donation contribution statements and 1099s and things, you know, on time towards the end of January, early February.

Craig Woodfield [00:30:02] But you know, we knew we were, we were short and it would take a tremendous amount of effort to get everything done in that time frame. And at the same time we also decided, you know, as a, as a board and John, you were also a big part of this to bring on a third party accounting firm, a very reputable firm in Utah, to provide some key control procedures over our accounting records to make sure that, you know, that they would reconcile our cash accounts, make sure that all the Cash coming in on donations was properly accounted for and really do a close look just to make sure that there wasn't anything unusual going on.

Craig Woodfield [00:30:43] Not that we doubted the ethics of our accountant, but that's just a good practice to have a separate set of eyes on everything. But in paying for that, that's not an insignificant expense. And being in the industry, I know this all too well that the rates for an accounting firm are very high and at a premium from January through the middle of April.

Craig Woodfield [00:31:03] So when we were negotiating with our accounting firm, we specifically set it up so they would do their control procedures and the procedures we needed to be done to finish our financial statements after their busy season was over, which meant that would be in May.

Craig Woodfield [00:31:20] And so that's what happened. So over the past few weeks, our accounting firm has been doing their review, doing their control procedures to make sure that our financial information is correct. They, last week they gave it to me as the, you know, as the chair of the finance Committee, and also you, John and Amy, so we could do our review, make sure they made sense to us. And we've been doing the finalized review at the board level here the past week and are now ready to release them. So this was all according to plan. And I acknowledge that, you know, as we continue to mature as an organization, it would add value to our constituents, primarily to our donors, to be able to get that information out earlier.

Craig Woodfield [00:32:07] We just made the decision that from a resource standpoint and a cost standpoint, that didn't make sense for us this year. But it is something that we definitely will listen to our constituents, primarily our donors, you know, and obviously they'll have a big voice. And if they view it as sufficient importance to accelerate that timeline significantly, then we'll, we'll definitely consider that if we look at the track record of the foundation, you know, despite having no full time accountant and manning that with volunteers, John, you've always released that information, so that's brilliant.

John Dehlin [00:32:41] All right. Now, as I look at the financial statements, the format's a little bit different and a lot of people are very interested in the, in the finances of the Open Stories Foundation. And if I compare just the two, let's just say pages three and four of the, of the financial statement, they actually provide maybe a little bit less information than the ones that we did in the past. So can you talk about the ones that we did in the past and why, why we've changed the format and then what the, what the page five and six are about?

Craig Woodfield [00:33:18] Yeah, absolutely. And we did talk a lot about this internally that, you know, in the past it was, you know, we keep, we use QuickBooks for our books and records. I think, John, you've been using that for a while now. And so. And again, because there was virtually no accounting staff and it was manned by volunteers who. And John, your desire to be transparent. It was simply a report that was generated by QuickBooks that you put out there on the website.

Craig Woodfield [00:33:46] And as a result it had very raw, disaggregated data which, you know, we have every, every reason to believe was accurate, but it wasn't in a format that you would ever see more professional accountant produce. If you were to go out, look at, you know, the published not for profit financial statements, they're not showing things in that level of detail, in that level of raw data.

Craig Woodfield [00:34:13] So what we have this year is, you know, reflecting the involvement of our third party accounting firm and also, you know, my experience and the experience of our other board members. We have a professional set of financial statements that have the look and feel of what a sophisticated donor who's used to looking at financial statements would expect to see. Now, we also acknowledge, and John, this is where, you know, I know you had a lot of input in this. We acknowledge that with that presentation, while it's easier to follow and easier to read, there is less information. And so that's why we've prepared the supplemental information on pages five and six.

Craig Woodfield [00:34:50] And I'll just remind everyone, none of this is required. And I think if you're in our experience with all the not for profits that my firm audits, and we're one of the biggest players in that space, you know, everyone has a Form 990 that can be accessed publicly, but there's a lot of not for profits and very large ones who don't publish anything else. Now, we're not saying that's what we should follow. We do believe that we should provide this, but this is all being done on a discretionary basis.

Craig Woodfield [00:35:20] And so, you know, in the spirit of that and wanting to be transparent and not wanting to provide less information than was provided last year, or at least less useful information, we've prepared the supplemental information on pages five and six to kind of drill down into the financial statement line items and provide some more information that we believe would be meaningful primarily to our donors. And let's face it, that's the group. They've, they've contributed their money to us. We take that very seriously and we feel responsible for reporting back to them and how it's being used.

Craig Woodfield [00:35:54] And so this is why we've prepared pages five and six. We think this is a very much a good faith effort to increase the professionalism of what we're doing and also provide good information. But bear in mind this is also a journey and we expect to continue to refine and improve this over time. And if any of you, particularly donors, would like to see something else, then we would welcome that feedback.

Reviewing the 2016 Financial Statements

John Dehlin [00:36:20] Excellent. Okay. If it's okay, let's just talk about some of the numbers and you can comment on them if you want. It shows total revenues and support 335,690. And two main components of that revenue are podcast revenue and event revenue. Podcast revenue was $215,978. Event revenue was $48,000. I'm particularly proud, well, both that the podcast revenues increased, but also that that event revenue didn't exist a year ago. So, you know, again, in the fall of 2015, I said we need to hire, we need to hire some people in the osf. Real quick, Craig, let's just say your average small nonprofit that's been around a while and that's kind of well functioning. How many staff would sort of a small, solid, well functioning nonprofit have? Or what would be the roles they would generally have?

Craig Woodfield [00:37:27] Okay, well, I'll use a personal experience from, you know, when I served as board chair on one here a few years ago, you know, it was a not for profit that our annual revenues or contributions was about 5 million.

Craig Woodfield [00:37:41] And the staff, you know, from an accounting and just an administrative support staff was, depending on how you define, anywhere from five to 10 people. And there was a full time CFO who was a professional individual with lots of experience. And then we also had a bookkeeper and some part time employees who would help at certain times of year when things got very busy. And then there was other folks to do a lot of the other administrative aspects as well. Clearly it's hard to do it with one person and this is an area that we need to focus on in 2017 to increase our resources in and we'll continue to do that.

Craig Woodfield [00:38:22] The volunteer component of a not for profit is really one of the, the most interesting aspects because not for Profits couldn't survive without volunteers. And that goes for OSF as well. And they play a really important role, but they can't take the place of a full time employee who is there at a predictable time of the day and it's their number one priority. You just can't run a not for profit with volunteers who are trying to do it on evenings and weekends. And so, you know, John, we do feel like right now we have a bare bones staff necessary to, you know, maintain our compliance with laws and regulations and do the bare bone minimum things.

Craig Woodfield [00:39:04] But we have higher aspirations than that as a board. And I know, you know, you and Amy do as well. And so we need to expand our staff. And that's already happened. You know, you've added a part time employee. We've added a part time employee this year. And we have in our budget the plans to add additional employees down the road as well.

John Dehlin [00:39:23] Excellent. So that comes to that, the line item, total liabilities and net assets, what does that mean? Net assets end of the year 100.

Craig Woodfield [00:39:32] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:39:32] So that's on the 192,829. What does that mean?

Craig Woodfield [00:39:36] Right. So that's on the condensed statement of financial position. And you know, those familiar with financial statements in the for profit world, this is a balance sheet, right. And then that net asset number is what you would think of as your equity. So if you wanted to, for a public company gauge what's the shareholder equity, that would be the net asset number. And again, these are how not for profit financial statements are presented. That's what accounting rules require. So the liabilities of net assets is simply, you know, what you would see on the right side of any balance sheet, which is just your liabilities and equity, which is the same as your total asset number. If you look up at the top and total assets, that 195,000 is your total asset number as well, hence the word balance sheet, because it balances.

John Dehlin [00:40:27] And just basically, if somebody were to go, oh my gosh, you've got all that cash at the end of the year, what would you say to that?

Craig Woodfield [00:40:36] It's a great question. And I think that's one of the reasons we are presenting it the way we are in building the organization. We have a mindset, we're building something that we want to be sustainable and here for the long haul. And so you'll see that the unrestricted cash balance of 37,000, that's the cash that's available to management to pay the expenses and fund the company, as we've sort of approved in the budget. And so that's sort of the discretionary spend for the budget money available. But we also have another $130,000, which is funds that are reserved for specific purposes. And there's two purposes there.

Craig Woodfield [00:41:18] One is a $50,000 donation that was given by a very generous donor. And that's, you know, there's a specific purpose for that donation that that money will be spent for. And so we're holding that back while we execute and prepare for the, for the program that will be supporting that specific donation at the request of the donor.

Craig Woodfield [00:41:40] Then the remaining amount, $80,000, is what the board has approved to be held back in reserves. And one of the things that, you know, that we kind of teach in the corporate governance world and also that we see in the better not for profits, is they all have cash reserves and, you know, they all need to be able to sustain themselves if there's a dip in donations and beat the merit bearer requirements.

Craig Woodfield [00:42:07] And so the board has allocated that $80,000 to be held in reserve for a rainy day or, you know, to fund future initiatives that will really expand the depth and reach of the foundation.

John Dehlin [00:42:23] Beautiful. Last question. Kind of about just the numbers themselves on page six at the bottom. Well, actually, there's a couple more questions, but one is about just expenses. You know, does the OSF have controls in place to, you know, make sure that expenses are taken care of, that no. Nobody's doing anything inappropriate, that no one's taking exorbitant trips or anything like that. What would you say about the controls and about, you know, those expenses that you list there?

Craig Woodfield [00:43:00] Yeah. So, you know, again, this is all in the context of we're continually improving and trying to do the most critical things first as we grow. And when during 2016, we assessed the primary priority from an accounting control standpoint to be to make sure that there's appropriate controls and oversight over cash and also how that money spent, which is where your expense question comes into play. That's pretty basic. You know, donors want to know that when they contribute to an organization that that money's going to be used in an appropriate way. So for that reason, that's why we brought in our accounting firm. Because with just one part time accountant, we couldn't put the right controls in place to make sure that there was an appropriate duplication of effort, segregation of duties to watch over that cash.

Craig Woodfield [00:43:55] So our accounting firm, on a quarterly basis comes in and a review of our bank reconciliations. They look at all the cash that comes into our various contribution sources, PayPal and Dropbox, and all the sources we have, and then they make sure that that cash is appropriately flowed through to our bank statements. And then they also look at what's coming out of the organization to make sure those expenses all look reasonable. So we've layered that control in on top of, you know, the. What we believe is we have a very good accountant in what, what he does to maintain the books and records on a, on a monthly basis.

John Dehlin [00:44:34] Perfect. So let's go ahead and switch to the topic of compensation. And you've already talked about a compensation committee, but do you, you know, maybe let's just start by talking about, you know, my salary and how the board set my salary and what my salary is or at least what it was in 2016 and we can get to 2017 later and, you know, thoughts on that from your perspective?

Staff Compensation and John's Role

Craig Woodfield [00:45:06] From the board's perspective, yeah, sure. And forgive me for keep referring back to, you know, 2015 when you came in this full time, John, but I think that's very relevant here because as you were deciding what you wanted your professional focus to be after you got your PhD, you know, you made the decision, you wanted to do this full time and you wanted to devote all your time and efforts to osf.

Craig Woodfield [00:45:31] And as the board looked at that, you know, obviously in order for you to do that, you've got to be compensated in a way that makes sense. If, and I know we did discuss, and I remember even before I was on the board just talking about different scenarios with you and some of the others involved, there were scenarios, if I remember correctly, about you maybe doing this part time, having reduced hours so that the salary could be lower. I remember that correctly. Right, John?

John Dehlin [00:46:01] Yeah.

Craig Woodfield [00:46:01] As far as having more of a practice. Yeah. And I think that the strong desire of the board was that, no, we feel passionate about our mission and we want you to be in this full time and all in. So it was important to us that you had a salary that would allow you to do that, that you wouldn't have to, you know, be involved in a lot of other activities to support your family. So that was a real significant factor for us. And all this is being done by the compensation committee, of which you were not a part.

Craig Woodfield [00:46:32] It was all independent directors. None of us are paid, none of us have any financial interest at all other than we're donors in the organization. So we've set it up so that we're independent in that respect and we're not tied financially to the foundation. And so we balance our desire to have you devoted 100% of your time to the foundation with also making sure that we were being responsible because we have a fiduciary responsibility, directors that we weren't paying you too much or too little based on where the organization was. So we put two filters on that. One was what can we afford?

Craig Woodfield [00:47:13] And the other one was what do other CEOs make in the market. And, you know, there is some data out there. I have my own experience in this and there is some reference guides we can use to set that. And to be honest, there's a pretty wide range.

Craig Woodfield [00:47:32] So there's no exact number that you could say, well, there's a mirror image foundation similar to osf. We'll just do what they do. That information just isn't there. But we were able to get good enough information that we felt comfortable that the salary we set was responsible and wasn't an outlier for where OSF was.

Craig Woodfield [00:47:53] And, you know, it's not appropriate to gauge your salary based on the level of donations coming in. This is a startup organization. You know, it really just got launched in a big way, as we've talked about, at the end of 2015. And no startup is going to have a significant amount of revenues that will make the proportion of salary to revenue look like a more mature company would.

Craig Woodfield [00:48:19] And so that really wasn't a factor. But I know some may look at that, but we didn't think that was appropriate. It will be down the road, but we didn't now. But we did feel like it was appropriate to set at a level you could reasonably support your family and devote your time and attention to this. But also was within what we thought was a reasonable range of what we could afford and what the market would tell us was a reasonable salary.

Craig Woodfield [00:48:46] And so we set it at 75,000 for 2016. There was also a provision in our bylaws that allows us to, again, this is the compensation committee to approve a bonus for you. And we did approve a $15,000 bonus that you were paid in 2016. And again, that's when we consider that one of the biggest considerations is do we have the funds to do that? And the second one is how did you do from a performance standpoint? And when we set your compensation and your salary, there was an acknowledgement that we had as a compensation committee that if the foundation continued to execute the mission the way we wanted you to, that you would qualify for a bonus.

Craig Woodfield [00:49:31] And that's what happened. And so that same process, we expect to follow that process every year. And I do believe this is one area in particular where we do have a very mature process that you would expect from an organization that's been around much longer than we have. So I feel real good about our process from a compensation committee. CEO compensation side.

John Dehlin [00:49:54] One listener wanted to know if I am compensated in an extra for the events, retreats and workshops that I participate in no.

Craig Woodfield [00:50:03] And that's one of the reasons you're under a different compensation structure than the podcasters. First of all, they're contract employees, so it's sort of apples to oranges. But secondly, even though the most visible thing you do is as the host of Mormon Stories and Mormon Transitions, it's really a small part of your job. You're running an organization here, and part of that responsibility is events and seminars, and so you're not paid extra for that. That's part of your job and part of your responsibilities.

John Dehlin [00:50:33] Yeah. And I'll just say, just so people get an understanding, I don't expect them to know. Yeah. I don't just do Mormon Stories. I do Mormon Transitions. You know, we don't have an IT guy, so I do all most of our, you know, web stuff that isn't design. I'm not a designer. But whenever there are problems with the websites or uploading files. For a long time, through most of 2016, actually, I think through all of 2016, I did all the audio and video editing for all the episodes. I did all that myself. And then if you just think about hire hr, overseeing accounting, overseeing marketing, overseeing fundraising and donations, and again, preparing the content for all the events and, you know, working with the board and attending board meetings as a board member, it's a.

John Dehlin [00:51:22] You know, honestly, Mormon stories is like 5% of my time. And I, you know, I don't. I don't mean to be sort of arguing for myself, but I just want to make sure people understand that running a nonprofit in a way that it should be run is a Herculean effort. And I work 60, 70 hours a week. My wife will tell you that. And pretty much it's all for the osf.

Craig Woodfield [00:51:51] And candidly, John, one of the things that we need to continue to step up on is. Is helping focus your time on those activities that are of the highest impact. Because candidly and I know we've talked about this, and you agree that having you deal with IT issues is not the highest and best use of your time that can help us execute our mission in the most effective way. And so as we balance the need to. Or the desire to accelerate our financial reporting process, well, that takes time and money, you know, and we've got to think through, okay, what's the best option here? Is it to get a better IT structures so that you can focus more on podcast content?

Craig Woodfield [00:52:35] Is it to build up our accounting functions so that we can move up the timeline on these things? These are the types of decisions that we're continually making right now. How much of our reserve funds do we use for these types of initiatives, which clearly we can do that and we will consider that.

Craig Woodfield [00:52:52] So that's all part of the growth process that we're going through now and why we'll continue to get better, because there's a lot of opportunities like that to get better. And those are just a few of them.

John Dehlin [00:53:03] And one more question came in from listeners about the fact that I have sort of a coaching practice on the side. And it's true, I most weeks I don't see clients because I'm too busy. Maybe on average, if I do see a client, it's maybe one to two clients a week. So, you know, maybe three hours at the most. But I would say more weeks than not. I haven't, you know, at the most I've seen one client or two. I don't know that I've ever gone over that. So, you know, that's something that I talked to the board about before we started, and that's something that takes up an extremely small amount of my time. But I do do it. I'll also just. Oh, go ahead, Craig. Were you going to say something?

Craig Woodfield [00:53:49] Yeah, I just say now you're right. That's fully with the board's approval. And that's part of the agreement we have with you, John. And John is working under an employment agreement that you are allowed to do those things, but it requires board approval. And one of the things the board's going to consider is is this going to divert away from you, your attention to OSF in any significant way? And if we thought it would, then we wouldn't approve it and we wouldn't hesitate to not do that. But we're very comfortable that that's an appropriate use of your time and it's not interfering with your role as CEO.

John Dehlin [00:54:27] And yeah, and then, and then some people asked about my license. I intentionally decided not to pursue a psychotherapy license yet. I can. I'm fully trained. I have the full training of a PhD in clinical and counseling psychology. All that I like to get my license, literally, is to take the eppp, which is a test that you sit down for a few hours and take, but it takes six months to study for. And honestly, I wanted to start the OSF and I put that off. And again, I could take three months off and study for it and go past it. But the stuff that I do when I do do a life coaching, it's not, it's not psychotherapy.

John Dehlin [00:55:08] I'm not treating people for depression or anxiety. I'm not treating people for PTSD or any of the things in the dsm. I'm literally talking to them about things like, you know, what's your. What's your faith crisis? Like, how is it affecting your relationships?

John Dehlin [00:55:23] You know, what are some strategies to communicate better with family and friends? How do we, you know, help you and your partner, you know, get along and maybe not get divorced? And so, you know, I don't need a license for that, and I'm happy to do that in a limited way. And I just wanted to add that, you know, it's really important to disclose to your clients the difference between therapy and life coaching. And if you went to my website, which I'm not going to mention, because that's. I'm just trying to be cool, and it talks about very explicitly, it basically says, this is not therapy, this is not psychotherapy.

John Dehlin [00:56:06] It actually explicitly says the difference between coaching and therapy. This is what life coaches do when they are also therapists or people might perceive that they're therapists. And I don't think you'll find a client of mine that didn't get a very clear description of what they are receiving, which is coaching, and what they're not receiving, which is any type of therapy or psychotherapy. And I should add that this is extremely common for mental health professionals in the Mormon arena and outside. And if you, you know, if you talk to Kristi Money, she does this. And Natasha Alpha Parker does this, Jenny Morrow does this. Jennifer Finlayson Fife does this.

John Dehlin [00:56:44] It's pretty much what, you know, anyone with a training in mental health does. They do some life coaching because sometimes you don't do psychotherapy. And so that's what I do a little bit. There was a. There was a. The word psychotherapy, I think, was on my bio on the Mormon Stories page. And as soon as someone alerted me to that, I took it off. And I was grateful for those who alerted me to that. But I think I wrote that when I was still about to finish my program and wasn't sure whether I was going to do the OSF full time or not and was considering a psychotherapy practice and was planning to take the eppp.

John Dehlin [00:57:19] So anyway, I'm grateful for the people who have helped us understand and who have asked questions about this. And I hope that makes sense. All right, so that's my salary, and I hope that answers any questions people might have.

New Compensation Structure for Podcasters

John Dehlin [00:57:38] Now, a major undertaking that we engaged in in 2016 was, was to come up with a new structure for our Podcasters. And believe it or not, we started in early 2016, and we worked all the way through and with all the other things we were doing. Finally we came up with a formula at the end of 2016. Craig, you were part of that. Do you want to just talk a little bit about that and what happened and why we did it?

Craig Woodfield [00:58:05] Yeah, yeah. I think part of creating a stronger organization, one that's more scalable and. And position for the future, is to get more clarity on how podcasters are compensated and just what's expected of them. So it was a very high priority for the board.

Craig Woodfield [00:58:27] And, John, for you, obviously, this is an area that a lot of times management may take care of this. This is an area that we did step in and help roll up our sleeves and help just because of the effort that it was going to take.

Craig Woodfield [00:58:42] And so we're very familiar the not for profit guidelines on this. So there's some very important differences in how someone can be compensated for a podcast if you're a for profit versus not for profit. So I don't think we'll go into all those details here, but we did make sure, you know, some of us had some experience with this, but we did make sure that we involved some of our volunteers and resources with a legal background who were specialists in this area to ensure that the agreement that we came up with would not compromise our status as a 501c not for profit. So we're very comfortable with that.

Craig Woodfield [00:59:22] But even more important than that is we just wanted to provide structure for our podcasters and for the foundation so we could budget, you know, what the expense was going to be, and also so they could obviously know from their standpoint what their compensation was going to be.

Craig Woodfield [00:59:39] So we, and this is described in the supplemental information, but we came up with a structure, and we've seen this. We kind of piggybacked on what we've seen in other not for profits as well, but came up with a structure that, you know, is not based on the contributions coming in to the podcast. That's something that we can't do for a variety of reasons as a not for profit, but it is based on, you know, the amount of content that they produce and also the number of downloads they produce with no link to the actual contributions because there is some sensitivity and it's prohibited in the IRS guidelines that there's sort of a flow through of that cash to the podcaster.

Craig Woodfield [01:00:20] So we, we created it based on that structure. The contract that we have is consistent for all of our podcasters you know, there's not a different one for any particular podcast. The rates that are paid are the same.

Craig Woodfield [01:00:35] There's a minimum amount that they'll receive if they produce the designated amount of content, and then they have the opportunity to earn more than that on a per download basis if the downloads exceed those minimums. So we're very happy with the result. I think it's been well received by our podcasters.

Craig Woodfield [01:00:54] Now, there was a pretty robust review process place, and our podcasters are great. We had a lot of really good discussions with them and. And very productive, and we tried to balance things in the appropriate way, and we're very happy with what we ended up with.

John Dehlin [01:01:15] Yeah. And, you know, just to be just direct about one particular thing, you know, the issue about, you know, gender disparity in the payment of podcasters has been brought up, you know, many times over the past year or two, and it's something that I don't totally understand and I don't like, which is that sometimes male podcasters in Mormonism get paid compensated more by donors.

John Dehlin [01:01:43] And so I just want to say explicitly that the formula that we reached explicitly intended to address that issue. And in Gina's case, you know, she's been really. Gina Colvin has just been really open to just say that, you know, the compensation she receives from the OSF is actually much more than her podcast brings in.

John Dehlin [01:02:04] And because people donate to the OSF and we have some extra cash, we're able to pay Gina, you know, more than what atf, the podcast itself brings in. And we're thrilled to do that. So we just want people to know that we're sensitive to those important issues that have been brought up, and we're doing our best to address them, and we'll keep making adjustments if we need to, to make sure that happens.

Craig Woodfield [01:02:28] That's right. And I'll just make one other comment that we, you know, I think we were transparent with our podcasters as we went through this process. And, you know, at that time, you know, we had a. We have and had then a great suite of podcasters, a great family of podcasts that we wanted to retain all of them, and we had good faith discussions with all them on the contract. You know, they were free to accept it or to come back to us with comments. And ultimately the decision was theirs on whether or not they wanted to, you know, agree to this in the future.

Craig Woodfield [01:03:01] And, you know, and we did have one podcaster who we wanted to retain, and she had done a great job for us, and she decided that she wanted to do something else, and that was fine. But this is something that is always done in an arm's length standpoint. And all the podcasters were treated consistently through this process.

John Dehlin [01:03:23] Excellent. And we'll talk a little bit more about that podcast, in particular, Mormon Transitions. But I'm proud of the compensation structure that we have. And you guys worked really hard. You'd think it'd be just really easy, but it was not. Because there's no. You can't go to a nonprofit and say, how do you compensate your podcasters? We couldn't find a nonprofit that had podcasters that they compensated. So if you're going to do that and you want to make it sustainable so you could afford to pay them, but also, you know, fair and equitable, it's, you know, figure it out if you got a better structure to go for.

Craig Woodfield [01:03:59] I think we all would have. Sorry to interrupt. I think we all would have loved to see how NPR does it, but they don't really have that information available for us to look at. So we did consult the number of, you know, legal attorneys who are familiar with these and feel like what we came up with makes sense and is not that unusual.

John Dehlin [01:04:22] Yeah. So really quickly somebody asks, where does all the money go? Do you have a quick answer for that?

Craig Woodfield [01:04:31] Yeah, I think you can see. And I would just draw their attention to one point. If you look at the supplemental information, and I'll use Mormon stories as an example, it brought in 139,000, almost $140,000 last year. In a for profit world, John, you would be completely entitled to just pocket that. Right. But because we have a structure in place, you're a salaried employee.

Craig Woodfield [01:04:56] You didn't receive that much in compensation because your compensation isn't tied to the amount that comes in to any individual podcast. And so you can look at. During 2016, it was really a year where we build up. We wanted the foundation to be on a solid financial footing so that we can last into the future and expand what we do. So we still need to grow our contribution base, but we feel good that we've got a good reserve fund now and we've got plans in the future to use that. But without the level of support we received last year, we wouldn't be in this position we're in now with the reserve fund that we have to really launch and do some great things in the next couple of years.

John Dehlin [01:05:43] Excellent. We've covered this a bit, but I'll just ask it because the listener asks, what are the Parameters to, let's see, to sort of monitor meals and travel and incidentals and those sorts of things.

Craig Woodfield [01:05:59] Yeah. As you would expect, we have just a standard any company would have. We have an expense report. There's a review and approval process that, you know, John, you can't approve your own expense report. Amy doesn't approve her own expense report. And we just have all those normal controls in place you would expect to have at any company.

John Dehlin [01:06:21] Okay, and real quick, someone asked, why did the OSF organize as a nonprofit instead of a for profit?

Craig Woodfield [01:06:33] You know, I think that the most obvious answer to that is for our donors so that they get the benefit of a tax deduction for their contributions. So that's the primary reason. And I also think that given the. And this is my editorial comment, John. So this is not the, you know, the CPA Finance Committee chair speaking. This is, Craig is a, you know, someone who's passionate about osf. It seems entirely consistent to me with our mission that it's not about making money, it's about furthering a cause. And that's very consistent with the whole notion of a not for profit. You know, they're structured so that they're to further a mission and to make a difference in the community and not maximize shareholder value or generate profit.

Craig Woodfield [01:07:22] So I think the tax reason alone is enough. But it also seems very consistent to me that we would be in the not for profit world for just our focus on what we do and not how much we make.

Mormon Transitions Podcast and Expenses

John Dehlin [01:07:38] Excellent. Okay, so there's been a lot of interest in the Mormon Transitions Podcast and the Mormon Transitions Podcast, you know, it got a lot of Steam in 2016, but it actually started in 2015. So, Craig, for this one, I'm going to just kind of tell a bit of the history about that, and then I'm going to have you comment at the end. Is that okay?

Craig Woodfield [01:08:05] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:08:05] Okay. So I went back and looked in. Around September of 2015, which incidentally was the month after I think I graduated from my internship for my PhD, I launched the Mormon Transitions Project. And I went back and scanned through the video that I released there. It's still on the Internet. It basically mentions four areas that we wanted to grow as a nonprofit. Academic research, new content, new communities, and services to support healing and growth, which meant conferences, workshops, retreats, and multimedia resources.

John Dehlin [01:08:41] So I launched that project in September of 2015, and immediately a ton of people stepped up to donate to it. So, you know, those last months of 2015, we had, you know, we had strong contributions to this project. We created a Facebook group to support people transitioning. We started holding workshops and retreats in earnest in the fall of 2015.

John Dehlin [01:09:07] And I released Mormon Transitions Podcast. And I think I released somewhere like four or five episodes. But I realized how incredibly difficult 2016 was going to be in terms of all the board stuff and the governance stuff and the CEO stuff that I was responsible for. And I knew there was no way that even though I had that vision of Mormon Transitions, that I was gonna be able to, you know, make a lot of progress on it in at least in the area of content. I definitely. We made great progress on events. We made a little bit of progress on communities. We've done some great stuff with academic research that I'll talk about.

John Dehlin [01:09:51] But in terms of the podcast, I discovered, well, I had been friends with Kristi Money for a while. Christy, you know, is wise, and she's. You know, people just love, you know, talking to her and working with her. And so I approached Christy and I said, listen, Christy, we can't, you know, we want to see the Mormon Transitions Podcast continue. But like all podcasts, you know, we don't just immediately pay our podcast hosts.

John Dehlin [01:10:25] You know, Mormon Stories went, I think, at least a couple years before I made anything substantive. Dan Witherspoon started Mormon Matters without any money. He had to earn it. Micah Nicolaisson started a thoughtful faith and was not paid for it. And that's just the way it's done. Gina Colvin, same thing. So, as we've done with all our podcasters, we asked Christy if she was interested to.

John Dehlin [01:10:52] To host Mormon Transitions at first as a volunteer, and she accepted. And in our talks, I think one of the reasons she accepted was because, you know, she was just starting her own psychotherapy practice and coaching. And I think she believed in the mission of the podcast and of the OSF and also thought it would be helpful for, you know, her growing career. And so that was awesome. It was a match made in heaven. And Christy, around February 14, 2016, started Mormon Transitions Podcast, and she released a lot of episodes. And I know several people who enjoyed what she did, and we're so grateful for the work that she did all through 2016 on Mormon transitions Podcast.

John Dehlin [01:11:40] Now, the board was furiously trying to figure out a compensation formula. So with that, we had to wait until they figured out the compensation formula before we could figure out how to pay Christy. So I told Christy, we plan on paying you at some point. We just need to see how it goes, see how downloads are, see how donations go, and figure out a compensation structure. So that we could apply it to you, just like we're, you know, we had already applied it to Dan and Gina.

John Dehlin [01:12:14] So by the end of 2016, the board finalized their compensation formula. We drafted a contract, and we offered it to Dan, Gina, and Christy. So we offered Christy a position as a podcaster for 2017, either to be co host of Mormon Transitions. With me, that was always the plan, that after I finished the CEO work of 2016, I would come back and start Mormon transitions, hopefully by 2017.

John Dehlin [01:12:48] So we offered her a position as co host of Mormon Transitions or her own podcast of the topic that she chose. And I should add that we paid her for her work, so she definitely was paid for her work throughout 2016 on Mormon transitions Podcast.

John Dehlin [01:13:09] And then Christy thought about it, and she decided that she wanted to start her own podcast and her own nonprofit. And in many ways, I was sad to see that happen. But we, you know, she's talented and is doing good stuff, so we wished her well and she left. But, you know, that was the history of Mormon Transitions through kind of the Christie Money era.

Margi Joining Mormon Stories

John Dehlin [01:13:36] At the end of December, I interviewed my wife, Margi, for Mormon Stories. And the feedback on Margi was just really strong. And a lot of people, listeners just started saying, we want to hear more from Margi. We want to hear more from Margi. And Margi, up until that point, had never really raised her voice, only in a few retreats.

John Dehlin [01:14:03] So maybe I'll pause there for a second. And, Craig, since you were part of the compensation committee and the committee that ultimately kind of figured out what Margi's role should and shouldn't be, do you want to talk about kind of Margi becoming a podcaster and your role in that?

Craig Woodfield [01:14:24] Yeah, absolutely. And I'll say this is where the board obviously needs to step in, just to make sure that whenever there's a family member or a close friend or someone who's involved in an organization with any kind of financial relationship, then there's always can be an appearance of lack of objectivity. And so we've structured our governance such that if John ever comes across any one of those situations, that it requires board involvement. And John was very good at. And John, I'm speaking to you like you're not here, so I'll say. And you were very good.

Craig Woodfield [01:15:05] You were very good at coming forward with us. Right when you started thinking about doing this, I think after the reaction to Margi's interview was so strong, I think it was sort of a natural, logical next thought. And so you. You came to the board with that proactively, and let us know, you know, what you were thinking and we give you permission to do that.

Craig Woodfield [01:15:26] And then as far as, you know, using her as a podcaster, the financial arrangements around that, fortunately we already have a structure in place, so that was a little bit easier. That's something that all was subject to board approval and board oversight in a very detailed way as, as someone would expect.

John Dehlin [01:15:45] And did you start paying Margi from day one of the podcast?

Craig Woodfield [01:15:49] No, she. She was put on a trial period initially, just like all the other podcasters are. And to be honest, John, I can't remember if we've actually started paying her yet. If we have, it hasn't happened recently.

John Dehlin [01:16:02] Started. She started being paid in May, so she went four months without as a volunteer. And we monitor downloads. And to be honest, the downloads for Mormon transitions has been spectacular and we monitored donations just to kind of see if it was going to be sustainable. So again, yes, Margi started getting paid. She got started being paid in May after a four month trial. And was I part of those talks? Just,

Craig Woodfield [01:16:39] I mean, obviously as a CEO, you gave us your opinion and I mean, we could see the download results just like anyone could. And it was obvious that, you know, Mormon transition really got taken to a new level from a download standpoint. It was really exciting to see that happen and the reception. So it made perfect sense. And I think the next step was pretty obvious to all of us. And so we encourage that.

John Dehlin [01:17:04] So listeners have asked, you know, they have asked. I think it's a fair question. What about nepotism? I mean, I'm the CEO and now my wife is also, you know, getting compensation. And it's, it's a fair question. And maybe, you know, what do you. How would you respond to that, Craig? And how did the board decide that that was actually okay?

Craig Woodfield [01:17:25] Yeah, well, this is where a strong board's important. You know, a board that's willing to say no and a board that's willing to, you know, if we see something happening that looks like it's not objective, then we'll put a stop to it. And so we're comfortable that, you know, anyone who would listen to our board meetings understands that we're all very direct speakers, we speak our mind and that will continue in this case. And so I have every confidence that it's always going to be on an arm's length basis and our oversight will be much closer, knowing that, you know, you and Margi are obviously married. So that's where we come in.

John Dehlin [01:18:06] I Also just need to say, well, can you talk just a tiny bit? Do you remember the details about the formula for Margi versus the formula for Dan and Gina?

Craig Woodfield [01:18:17] Well, there was a. Yes, there, there was a acknowledgement that because it's a co hosted podcast, that the level of effort she put in wasn't the same as, you know, Dan and Gina have on theirs where they, they do everything they hosted and they, you know, they're overall responsible for it. So her, her compensation was cut accordingly, acknowledging that, you know, it was a shared podcast experience.

John Dehlin [01:18:47] Okay, all right, well, that's. That kind of reviews, 2016. And again, you know, it's been, it was an amazing year and I'm just so honored. So let's jump to 2017 really quickly. We talked about my salary and compensation in 2016, and I don't think we talked about my benefits either. So why don't you just talk about what my salary and bonus and benefits are for 2017.

Craig Woodfield [01:19:21] Boy, now you're testing my memory, John.

John Dehlin [01:19:24] I can help you.

Craig Woodfield [01:19:24] Obviously you're. Yeah, obviously it's premature to talk about your bonus because we're still in the year. But, you know, given the year we've had, there will be strong consideration for that, and that's something that we'll finalize. Your bonus amount will be finalized at the end of the year. As far as your compensation, is it 85, am I remembering correctly?

John Dehlin [01:19:45] 85. I think it's 82.

Craig Woodfield [01:19:46] 82. Okay. No, I didn't just give you a $3,000 raise. I don't have that authority, so I apologize for that. But, yeah, it's 82,000. And again, that was determined by the compensation committee. As far as benefits go, we don't. Unfortunately, at this time, we don't have a 401k plan or any kind of retirement benefits. That's something that we'd like to do at some point, but unfortunately, probably not in the near term. So we're not able to offer you or any of the employees that at this time. But we do provide healthcare, and so you do get your health care taken care of. And also obviously, reimbursement for expenses, travel expenses, and other expenses you incur on behalf of osf. And that's subject to the normal expense report approval process that we referenced earlier.

John Dehlin [01:20:39] Excellent. Well, I don't know that we were able to answer every question that has been asked, but I think we've answered most of them. And most importantly, I think we've reviewed what I think was an outstanding year and an outstanding first quarter. I should say that I won't give the numbers, but the first four months of 2017 kind of blow the doors off of any, any four month period before. So we've actually set way higher records for downloads and views. So that's exciting.

Craig Woodfield [01:21:17] Yeah, and I'll just echo that. I'm really excited where the foundation, the foundation is right now. I think we're executing well on our plans for the future and there's great things to come. And I'll just make one other comment, you know, if interacting with, you know, the other board members, you know, the OSF staff and also, you know, our donors and just those who attend conferences and are part of the organization as podcast listeners or in whatever way, it's just really a great experience, you know, for me. And I love being part of an organization that kind of welcomes all perspectives, that values the dialogue, values where people are in their journeys.

Craig Woodfield [01:21:58] And that's what we want to. That's what we want to accomplish. And so we welcome constructive feedback. You know, we're all in this together, so let's continue to support each other. And I just appreciate everybody's support and just being involved in this organization is a real honor for me.

John Dehlin [01:22:15] Thank you. Craig, I just want to add. Well, not only Craig do, I just want to give a thanks to you and to Roger and Lee and Steve, our newest addition. This would have all disappeared if you guys hadn't have stepped in in 2015 and offered to help out. Because I was at a crossroads. And Frankly, I went 10 years not making a lot of money, at least nothing like what I could have done if I'd stayed at Microsoft or whatever, mit. But you guys sort of encouraged me and said, no, let's do this and let's try and make this work. And.

John Dehlin [01:22:50] And I couldn't have done it without you guys, so I'm so thankful. In addition, I just want to say, for me, the most exciting thing that came out of 2016 and 2017 is the hiring of Amy Grubbs as director of operations. Again, she joined us around November of 2016, and she's been phenomenal. So helpful, just taking over so much of the burden and helping us take things to a new level. She's only been here five, you know, six months. A little over six months maybe, or around six months, but her impact has been huge. And that's why Our numbers for 2017 in terms of downloads are so high, because I've been able to produce, you know, two podcasts instead of one, and way more episodes than I normally did before, you know, try to talk to donors a little bit more.

John Dehlin [01:23:42] And, you know, we've been renovating our website. We selected a customer relationship management system to help us track our donors better. We've started to implement that. And then she was able to help us get Cody Layton, who's joined us to help with the audio and video editing. He helps with events. Of course, Amy's been running all our events since she joined, and it's been so amazing. And we have a lot of really good events coming up.

John Dehlin [01:24:08] But anyway, so that's something that I'm just super excited about. So, Amy and Cody, welcome to the Open Stories foundation family. And we're hopefully gonna have a really bright future. I think we will. So that's it. Any final words, Craig?

Craig Woodfield [01:24:25] It's been fun and looking for even greater things down the road.

Closing Thoughts and Listener Questions

John Dehlin [01:24:29] All right. And I just want to thank everyone who send us in the questions, who asked us questions. We didn't get to all the questions, but we can answer other questions. If anyone wants to email the board of directors, Open Stories Foundation, I think it's openstoriesboardmail.com Any questions that we didn't answer, send them to the board. And Craig and Lee and Roger and Steve will answer them as they're appropriate.

John Dehlin [01:24:56] And we want to thank everyone who asked us questions, thank everyone who. Who supported us, all the donors make this possible. We have a long way to go in terms of fundraising to be able to have the staff we need to really help all the people that we want to. So we hope you'll continue supporting us and that new people will support us. And we are just so excited for the coming things. And I just can't help but plug the events that are coming up.

John Dehlin [01:25:25] MormonStories.org events. Something's coming up in Dallas in July. We've got a mixed faith marriage retreat coming up in August. We're coming to Seattle in September, I believe October. We're going to Sydney, Australia. Just incidentally about Sydney, I would have never chosen Sydney, but the folks in Sydney reached out and asked us to come to Sydney. And Gina Colvin is in New Zealand. And because we try and value international, you know, listeners, and not just domestic listeners, with Gina's encouragement and with the amazing people who stepped up to support us in Australia, we decided to go ahead and plan an event in Australia.

John Dehlin [01:26:13] And so we're going to do that, and we're grateful that they reached out. If any of you want to bring a retreat or a workshop to your city or country, if you've got enough interest, please do it. You know, all the expenses from these events, workshops and retreats come from the people who pay registration fees. So if any of your donors and you're concerned that you'll be, you know, funding travel or whatever with your donations for these events, if that's a problem for you, just know that that's not what happens. Your, your donations go straight to supporting the osf. And, and we've never had an event where the registration fees didn't pay for any travel or lodging or meals that were needed to make the event happen.

John Dehlin [01:26:58] That was a bit of a sidetrack. We're going to come to the Bay Area in November and lots of exciting things in 2018, so had to plug our events. Anyway, I also want to plug

Craig Woodfield [01:27:17] I

John Dehlin [01:27:17] also want to plug our podcast. So please check out Mormon Matters Podcast with Dan Witherspoon Thoughtful Faith with Gina Colvin. Mormon Transitions Podcast has also merged with Mormon Stories to give it a wider reach. After it had so much success, we didn't want to hold it back from its widest release possible, so we added it to the Mormon Stories podcast feed. We just did that, I think, in March or April.

John Dehlin [01:27:45] And one podcast I don't want to end without mentioning is Natasha Hilfer Parker's Mormon Mental Health Podcast. It is a phenomenal podcast and it's all about mental health and helping people navigate important issues around mental health and people don't know about it. So we've worked over the past month or two to make it more prevalent on our website. Natasha has really stepped up her content again. Continue to deliver excellent content on Mormon Mental Health Podcast. So check that out and please donate to support Natasha. So that's it. We've talked about lots of stuff and if you've held on this long, you deserve an ice cream. So, you know, hit me up.

Craig Woodfield [01:28:27] I'll give you your corporate governance badge. You deserve it.

John Dehlin [01:28:31] Thank you. Hope you guys have enjoyed it. Hope you've appreciated this transparency. If you can find another nonprofit in America that does a podcast reviewing at this level of depth, I'll give you a steak dinner. And again, thanks for all supporters. We love you guys. And please tune in again for more episodes of Mormon Stories, Mormon Matters of Thoughtful Faith, Mormon Transitions and Mormon Mental Health. Take care everybody. And Craig, thanks. You're brilliant and phenomenal.

Craig Woodfield [01:28:59] Thanks, John.

John Dehlin [01:29:00] So glad to have you. Take care, everybody. Thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org music for this episode was provided by the Lower Lights and other sources.

Craig Woodfield [01:29:23] Seeds to Make Me Whole

John Dehlin [01:29:31] when with

Craig Woodfield [01:29:32] the wounded heart, anger or malice I

John Dehlin [01:29:42] draw myself apart, searching my soul.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.