Episode 16: Youth Ambassadors of Service

Please note: This is an AI generated transcription. There may be slight grammatical errors, spelling errors and/or misinterpretation of words. 

Speaker: Hello, and welcome to Mission and Markets, a podcast by CAPTRUST, where we explore trends and best practices for endowments and foundations related to mission engagement, fiduciary governance, and investment management. Hosted by CAPTRUST’s Heather Shanahan, each episode shares research, resources, and recommendations from industry insiders.

So your nonprofit can focus on what’s most important, the mission.

Heather: Hello, and welcome to Mission and Markets. My name is Heather Shanahan. I’m your host. And today I am joined by Sonali Ratnasingha, who is an amazing young woman, founder of Youth Ambassadors of Service, and a junior at UNC Chapel Hill. Sonali, welcome, and please tell us a little bit more about you and your background and what has been going on in your busy life over the last couple weeks.

Sonali: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. I am a junior at UNC. Yes. Double majoring in business administration and public policy with a minor in data science. So quite a mouthful. But in my other life, which is pretty amazing. Most of my life. I, of course, I’m the executive director and founder of Youth Ambassadors of Service, or better known as YAAS for those who are big fans of Gen Z terms.

And love doing speaking, sitting on boards, whatever I can do to really plug in and provide the most value for my community. So yeah, thank you so much for having me.

Heather: I’d love to learn a little bit more about YAS and the history, how you got started, the mission of your organization and what you’re working on there.

Sonali: Yeah. So, Youth Ambassadors of Service was for sure a passion project of mine. I was actually 16, so a junior in high school and COVID had just hit a few months prior. And so we were all going through it. Like we were all having those moments trying to figure out what this new reality looks like.

And I think for me, the biggest thing was I saw there was a huge need in our community and a growing need as everyone was losing their jobs. There was so much instability All the things that had come with the start of the pandemic. And I decided that I had the time. It’s not like we had all these classes and stuff happening.

So I might as well start fundraising. And so I started raising money for local nonprofits, seeing who I could support. It might’ve been like 2, 000 here, a few thousand dollars there, but it was really because I loved getting involved in the nonprofit sector and it was my own way of giving back. The craziest thing was I was talking to my peers and a lot of them came to me and said, hey, how are you doing this?

Like, how are you actually doing these passion projects? And it’s a lot of, how are you vetting the organizations? How are you choosing what nonprofits to support? How did you? Create a key pitch. What even was a key pitch? And we were all figuring that out. And so we decided to be a group of young people running around and doing good for the different local causes within the triangle.

And of course now beyond, but it was just our way of serving and giving back.

Heather: That’s a great story. How did you go from a looser group of individuals that just wanted to help out to the more formalized process of starting a 501c3?

Sonali: Yeah. So it happened authentically. We were 501c3 or even building an organization. That was more than just a bunch of little kids. At the time. Running around and doing good things. And so a lot of it was because we started serving more nonprofits. We started doing more outreach. So a little bit about our core programs is back in the day, we were just act in advance, which was our first program.

And I was really teaching students the basics of the nonprofit sector. So we would have guest speakers come in. From different SEC sectors of the nonprofit and like the Do Good Worlds, but then we would also be doing projects to benefit the nonprofit sector. And it was a great way for us to learn about all these new causes and all these things we’re up to, but at the same time plug in.

So we would also use that to find what we enjoy doing in the nonprofit sector and stuff. So it would be, we might do one projects for one organization, one event for another, really asking the nonprofits what they needed during that time and seeing how we could fill that gap. One thing we didn’t realize was how much it would help us as young people.

It was the, it was not just the college applications, but it was the lifelong passion for service we were developing. The experiential learning you are especially not getting during COVID. It was battling the epidemic of loneliness cause we were sitting there on our computers all day, every day, but we weren’t actually interacting with others.

And now what we’ve also seen is it’s creating a pipeline for the nonprofit sector. So a lot of the people who’ve come through our organization, especially in those first few years, now they’re off working in the nonprofit sector now that they’re graduated from high school and all the fun that comes with that.

Heather: Exciting.

Sonali: Yeah. And then of course now as things happens when I turned 18, we could finally become a 501c3. So that’s what we did. We started actually understanding what it takes to run a nonprofit. We were not going to operate like a regular student led group. We were going to operate like a nonprofit. The only difference is we’re run by young people.

So everyone in our organization running the day to day operations is under the age of 21. But at the same time, we’re now building out our programs. We’re doing the community needs assessments. We’re doing the program evaluation. Anything that a nonprofit needs to do, we’re making that happen.

And so we’ve built out our programs. So now we also have our fellowship program called the Young Nonprofit Fellowship where Students said, hey, we love the work of Acts in Advance, but what happens once it’s worked? And so now it’s a program for students who know they want to go into the nonprofit or that do get space often and make that larger impact by doing a nine month internship with a host organization, but then also plugging in by hosting an impact initiative and going through a curriculum learning how to run a nonprofit organization.

Heather: So, you started this during COVID. How did you mobilize people in a world where you had some challenges connecting and now that you’re on the other side of that, how have things changed?

Sonali: I feel like the core of who we are hasn’t changed all that much. Or at least, so I think. And what we really saw back then was the fact that people were really actually looking to plug in. They just didn’t know how. To be honest, I don’t think it was that hard to mobilize people. They were looking where to fit in and they just didn’t have that many options.

Especially for young people, I think the big thing that they loved about us and our work was the fact that we were providing that knowledge of how to plug in. We are not just about serving one organization, we serve tens. And so students had options. They could learn about what the landscape looks like, and I think that’s still very core to what we do.

When students join our organization, we ask them how many nonprofits they think there are in North Carolina, and they’ll usually say between the numbers of 502, 000, when in reality, that number is tens of thousands. And so it’s really showcasing to them, like what that landscape looks like. And the fact that 10 percent of the workforce in the United States works for a nonprofit, right?

So really showcasing what that need looks like and how they can best plug that gap. But even now. especially as we’re starting to come back in person with our programming or in a hybrid model, we’re able to actually execute more because we’re in person, there’s that personal connection.

There’s that bond being built, like real relationships that just sometimes is missed

Heather: Absolutely. So tell us a little bit about what you’ve been doing outside of YAS especially the last couple of weeks. You have been super busy.

Sonali: Oh my God, girl. Couldn’t even tell you where I’m starting. But the last two weeks I spent with the Giving Tuesday team out in Indianapolis. Those who don’t know, Giving Tuesday is a movement for radical generosity. You probably know of it as the Tuesday after Thanksgiving where every nonprofit asks you to really plug in and a lot of them are creating grassroots movements to actually serve their community.

But for Giving Tuesday, we are actually one of the leading youth movements Even though they’re an international organization they found us when we were Not even two years old. So, before we were a nonprofit, but back then they realized the value YAS has provided for their community and wanted us to plug in.

So, the greatest thing about that event was we were actually meeting other grassroots leaders that were giving Tuesday chapters and. It was an amazing experience to actually hear the work of the people on the ground, especially from different communities, but all working to mobilize their community in similar ways.

then afterward to do the extreme opposite, I was at the UN General Assembly and their summit of the future. For those who don’t know, the United Nations has these things called Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs, where it talks about the breadth of their work and all the goals they want to have succeed by 2030.

This was created back in 2015, and I think the challenging part of this work was the part of the summit, and largely the summit of the future was talking about, we are only 17 percent on track to reach goals by 2030. From war to climate change to partnerships for the goals, all of these things, we are literally only 17 percent on track to meet them.

So what this means was we were having a summit to talk about how we could actually bring in those grassroots leaders and stuff because the United Nations is such a high level organization, the opposite of a grassroots organization. So how can we actually mobilize buy in from countries, organizations corporations every stakeholder to really bring depth to these goals and bring it to reality. I loved that opportunity because I was able to represent young people and actually YAS while I was there. But I think the best thing for me was their prioritization of young people. So I got to actually meet other people my age doing this work, which I don’t get to do quite often,

Heather: That’s fantastic. So, would you say between those two experiences that the connections that you’ve been able to make were your biggest takeaway? And what other takeaways do you have from those couple of weeks

Sonali: Honestly, I think it was the kindness of people. I think we always talk about what we see on the news or on social media, especially for those who spend a little bit more time there. it feels so separated. it makes us feel like there’s only the extremes, the people you meet are going to be rude, they’re going to be brash, those kinds of things.

But in reality, as you spend time with people from different backgrounds and stuff, you’re able to bridge those gaps. And so, I’ll give you the perfect example while I was there, I was actually staying in New Jersey with family because I did not want to put the New York City expenses on the, on my dime or on the non dime to put it kindly.

And so it was an hour and a half commute one way.

It was a lot. And usually I’d have sessions that would start at eight in the morning and at 10 PM, like the conferences and the galas and all this stuff they went pretty long. And it was so sweet because I actually met these two wonderful Irish youth delegates to the UN and they were like, Oh, we are 10 minutes from the UN.

Stay with us. And I stayed with them for the next week. And it’s just the kindness of people like that.

The generosity they 100 percent did not have to offer. And it was really building relationships like that. That really meant the most to me.

Heather: That’s excellent. Yeah, I can’t help but think I’ve been reading a book called The Anxious Generation that pertains to your generation uniquely and the impact of social media and not being engaged really The whole time you’ve been growing up, but certainly your teen years, do you find that these types of opportunities to connect with people in person and to work on common goals helps to ease some of those issues and help people connect in a more meaningful way.

Sonali: Oh my gosh, 110%. I think about that even with what YAS does. We have students coming to us say that they finally found their purpose. They finally found their community, but it’s largely because a lot of that comes from belonging and how you find belonging well, it’s finding that sense of purpose with like-minded people doing the same good work

And so, to actually talk about what partnerships would look like and to see how social media can actually be used to build those relationships, not Contain the relationships, really showcase that. To give you another perfect example a week or two before I actually headed to New York, I reached out to the United Nations Youth Observer, which is basically representing American youth to the UN.

And surprisingly enough, he responded. And to actually see and meet him, but also to be able to spend time with all the people he’s introduced me to it just meant so much more of course, social media facilitated that relationship and started it, but then we were able to take it to the next level.

And just become real friends, not just online friends per se. Or another example was that moment. His name was Oscar. Oscar actually invited me to attend and speak with him on a panel. And it was a great way for me to now connect to the new set of wonderful people

And so it really showcases to me what online relationships can facilitate, especially because I like to think about it, like we basically have access. To everyone via their email. You can Google it and find it, or you can do some sleuthing, but everyone has an email, and if you can use that email or their dms or whatever it might take to build a real relationship outside of just social media, then you’re able to really find that sense of belonging and battle the epidemic of loneliness.

Heather: That’s fantastic. That’s just another added benefit, right? what guidance would you give to nonprofit organizations that want to reach people your age that want to reach volunteers and obviously potential donors someday? What would you say it’s the best way and what should they consider?

Sonali: I think for me the biggest thing that I’ve seen is tokenism in nonprofit roles. I’ve been asked to join so many boards and be on so many panels where in reality, I just, you can see through it as a young person immediately. Or if you don’t, you’ll see it in the first few meetings

And really what that looks like is you’re just doing it to check a box. If you are not genuinely looking for the opinion of a young person, why bring the young person into the room to begin with? Of course, I was in so many wonderful rooms while I was at the United Nations, but there were some rooms where you could feel that.

Of course, one of the themes was to bring the voice of the young people. In some rooms, you would have young people talking, bringing conversation to the table. And yes, their voice was there, but their voice was also not being listened to. So, I think something really important that came to me was, there needs to actually be a strategy here.

You can’t just be saying, I want a young person to shoot out a message to a few young people saying, join our board, trust, and let that be it. You need to figure out how you’re not going to just bring that youth voice to the table, but also listen to that youth voice. And so to me, my recommendation is create a plan because if you don’t have young people at the forefront of your conversations, you’re not going to be able to innovate the way you need to.

And so also seeing that it’s not just a value for funders to see or whatever, but also to your organization directly to have a young person’s perspective. We’ll take things to a level that you just wouldn’t see otherwise.

Heather: That’s excellent guidance. Do you find that, and this is a broad question, but do you find that among your peers, there’s some issues and themes that are resonating right now?

Sonali: Yeah, I think one thing I love about YAS is I can see the trends of what students love to support and the types of causes they’re super interested in and I’d say I think two that will always be at the forefront will be climate change and women’s rights. Just because it’s something that touches us very closely.

But I think something else we also see is the sense of hopelessness when students first join our organization. Because they feel like the past generations have not been prioritizing us. You, we feel like we haven’t seen a world Where we were cared for in the same way. Yes. By our immediate family and such, but I’m talking on a societal level.

So, to find the impact they want to make, they want to be able to support the future generations the way that they didn’t feel like they were supported. And if you even think of climate change as that perfect example, think about the amount of young leaders in the climate change movement, and part of that is so our future generations can have the hope that we often didn’t, and it’s really pulling from that.

So, it’s really figuring out how to find the cause that’s right for you. And I think as a young person, it’s all about finding your niche. And you only do that by experimentation with different causes to see what really matters and means most to you.

Heather: Yeah, raise your hand and actually do something right.

Sonali: Exactly.

Heather: You’ve also participated in the Clinton Global Initiative since May of this year. What have you learned there?

Sonali: Oh my gosh. It’s been such a wonderful experience. Again, it always comes back to the people I’ve been meeting in these rooms. Because even while I was in New York City and all the fun stuff that’s come with that, I met so many other Clinton global initiative fellows and university students.

And of course, almost all the activists that I’ve ever dreamed of meeting were in New York. And so it was quite insane to see that come to life. But I think for me. It’s more learning from watching others. I have watched others start nonprofits, scale their social impacts, social entrepreneurship, startups, all of these things.

And it’s been genuinely inspiring. But then on the other side of things also. Seeing that we have all these learning opportunities and that adults are investing in us. And so we have sessions such as storytelling, building partnerships. Like yesterday, we just have a, we had a wonderful session with a Chelsea Clinton talking about what it means to build real partnerships and relationships for our work.

And the way it has supported YAS through professional development, support and leadership training is more than I could have asked for. And it’s just so wonderful to be a part of that community as well. Now,

Heather: That’s amazing. You are definitely one of the busiest people I know. I believe you don’t sleep.

Sonali: I don’t get my seven and a half hours of sleep. I’m going to be a zombie through life.

Heather: I’m glad you’re committed to that. I don’t know how you balance schoolwork with everything. What’s next for you? What’s next for YAS? What’s next for Sonali?

Sonali: Okay. So many big things happening. I’m looking to get more involved in teaching and speaking, so scaling that for sure. Always looking for fun opportunities in that space. But on the YAS side of things. I want to be able to take y’all to the next level. We finally figured out our proven process as I like to call it.

We’ve been evaluating our programs and it’s now just making the small tweaks to always improve. But now we’re looking to see what does scaling beyond North Carolina look like. So right now we serve North Carolina and we’re trying to figure out what sort of online community hub model, that kind of thing.

What can we actually do to take our organization to the next steps? But then also on the other hand, just making sure we’re really finding depth in the students we serve and not just saying, Oh, we helped them with one project, we’re done. Check a box for our grant applications. It’s really about showcasing to them that we want to prioritize them and it’s how can we find that breadth and really scale to the next level with YAS as well.

Heather: If our listeners are interested in reaching you, learning more about YAS, how’s the best way to go about doing that?

Sonali: Probably LinkedIn. My LinkedIn is literally just my name and I can promise there’s not more than one Sonali Ratnasingha. So, you can find me there, connect shoot me a note. And we can for sure chat about that, or I can connect you to the right person. But otherwise youthambassadorsofservice.org will be the best way to find our organization as well.

Heather: Final question. We always ask our guests since the name of our podcast is Mission and Markets. Mission Impact. What does that mean to you?

Sonali: Mission Impact. It really showcases to me that we’re looking to make a real difference in our communities and how we do that is through actually following through on that strategic plan. And the core of that is your mission, right? We always talk about things like mission drift in our organization, how to recenter, how to make sure we’re really bringing our full selves to the table to make that largest impact.

Heather: Fantastic. It has been a pleasure spending time with you today. Thank you. I can’t wait to see what you do in the world going forward. I’m honored that I’ve had the opportunity to connect with you. And so grateful for your time, grateful for all the work that you’re doing, grateful for all that you’re doing to rally youth, not only in North Carolina, but beyond and wish you awesome future success as you as you move forward.

Sonali: Thank you so much. And thank you for all the work you’re doing with CAPTRUST and CAPTRUST foundation and all the wonderful things.

Heather: Thanks.

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