The following is a conversation between Avril Benoît, the Executive Director of Doctors Without Borders, and Denver Frederick, the Host of The Business of Giving.
Denver: Doctors Without Borders, also known as Médecins Sans Frontières, provides emergency medical assistance to populations in danger in more than 70 countries. It helps people whose survival is threatened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe primarily due to armed conflict, epidemics, malnutrition, exclusion from health care, or natural disasters.
And here to discuss this vital work with us is Avril Benoît, the Executive Director of Doctors Without Borders U.S.
Welcome to The Business of Giving, Avril.
Avril Benoît, the Executive Director of Doctors Without Borders
Avril: I’m so glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
“We are so independent in the way we work, and we abide by those humanitarian principles of impartiality, neutrality, but we are also known to be rather outspoken.”
Denver: MSF was founded in the aftermath of the war and famine in Biafra, Nigeria. Share with listeners some of the history and evolution of the organization.
Avril: Sure. Well, we’re known internationally, as you mentioned, as Médecins Sans Frontières, and the French name is because there were some volunteer doctors with the French Red Cross who came back from that experience in Biafra extremely frustrated. They had done this medical humanitarian work, and at the same time, they saw things that they thought it was important to denounce, to bear witness, to speak out about. And they were frustrated because the modus operandi of the Red Cross, the ICRC, in particular, is that discretion… it’s actually being very cautious, measured, not saying necessarily anything about atrocities that might concern the aid workers on the ground who want the suffering to stop.
So, those doctors returned… they got together with some journalists that they knew. It’s a whole bunch of white guys from France smoking cigarettes back in the day, 1970, with the long lapels and the mustaches, and they founded this organization with two core purposes.
So, we’ve got the medical humanitarian response and then the second one being bearing witness, or in French we use the word: “témoignage”– it means “to bear witness.” And so that is one of the reasons that we are so independent in the way we work, and we abide by those humanitarian principles of impartiality, neutrality, but we are also known to be rather outspoken.
Denver: You still are, 52 years later. Avril, with so many conflicts across the world, with climate events we see on TV every day and other kinds of natural disasters, this has to be a very difficult and exceedingly busy time for you. Share with listeners some of your current activities.
Avril: Well, we have so many places that we work that you would never particularly hear about in the North American media. So, for example, huge amount of work at the moment in South Sudan, in Democratic Republic of Congo. You’ve got Yemen, Northern Nigeria, across the Sahel where with the high levels of malnutrition… new issues such as diphtheria in West Africa. We have operations in more than 70 countries.
Right now though and in the last few years, we have been responding to the war in Ukraine, the conflict in Sudan where you’ve got 5.5 million people displaced, and earthquakes… so we have most recently Afghanistan, multiple earthquakes already in Herat,… and now, with the war between Hamas and Israel. This is also a place where we’ve worked for many years, and we’re in this situation where there are so many needs that obviously as an impartial humanitarian organization, it’s important for us to be able to offer assistance.
Denver: Yeah, it makes your head spin with all that’s going on.
I think a lot of listeners would be interested: How does the organization operate, Avril? I mean, how do you enter into an area? Who do you work with on the ground? What specific services do you provide, and so on?
Avril: We typically, initially, do an assessment with a team comprised of both medical and non-medical people. So, the medical people are looking at mortality, morbidity. They’re also looking at what are the services available for people, because our sense as humanitarians is that people should have a right to access life-saving medical attention.
And the logistical people are looking at, “Okay, what administrative barriers would there be? Can we bring in supplies? Can we set up? Is there a hospital or an infrastructure that we could use? What’s the water and sanitation like? Can we bring in energy for a hospital with diesel generators?”… now being replaced increasingly by solar panels, and what have you. So, that kind of assessment work is really looking at “What can we do?”, but also “What else is available?”
So, if we find, for example, that there’s a massive response, a highly capable medical system, technologically-advanced and well-staffed, well, there’s much less of a need for us. So, we will really focus on those places… and it’s often in conflict zones or places that are insecure… where there is a lack of available healthcare.
So that’s one of the reasons, for example, we work in Haiti, where for many years before the earthquake, for example, in 2010, we had a longstanding presence there. It was rather volatile. You always had high maternal mortality, things like that. But then when the earthquake happened, of course, the entire humanitarian community rushes in; they stayed for a few weeks, a few months. And then we remained, and we keep our foothold there because at different times, we can see that the health infrastructure, the Ministry of Health, is just not able to provide free healthcare to the 80 percent of the population that doesn’t have a cent to be able to pay for any of the fees that are imposed on them for even the most basic life-saving treatments.
Then when the criminal activity with the gangs and the violence between the gangs and the police and just all that complexity of being able to work there, we find ourselves increasingly alone in Port au Prince, in the capital, where you’ve got fiefdoms, almost like front lines. We have armed groups, these criminal gangs coming into medical facilities and dragging out patients and shooting them outside. You have lots of gunshot wounds, and meanwhile, you still need treatment for little children who live in shanty towns, who knock over the stove, who suffer catastrophic burns, and so we have a whole burn center there.
So we will continue to work in Haiti and keep that presence there, even if things… we hope that they do stabilize… even if things become quite calm, because we know there will always be needs, and there could be a surge of an emergency requirement.
It’s much more difficult, though, when you don’t have a presence in a country, an operational presence. In Morocco, we had the earthquake this year. We didn’t have operations in Morocco, and the Moroccan health authorities when we went to assess, they were on top of things; they were really able to staff up. They have mobilized from across the country. They had a few international partners, such as Turkey, et cetera. And they were telling us, “You know what? We have a few gaps. Help here and there, but for the most part, we’re okay.”
And so then, as an organization, we say, “No problem, we’ve got plenty of other places to work, and we will focus on those specific needs.” And as it turns out, it’s mental health, because it’s just not something that the health system there was ever prioritizing, and some workaround chronic diseases, which is often overlooked.
When you have even the war in Ukraine, one of the first things to fall off the priority list was making sure that people with cardiovascular disease or diabetes, things like that, to make sure that they had the medicine that keeps them alive, and so that becomes then the priority, a niche area where we can say, “Okay, no problem. We’ve got tremendous logistical capacity, good supply, pipelines, good procurement capacity, and we can deliver it to you”… and very much working in partnership with local ministries of health.
Denver: Which is great when you’re on the ground like that, as you say, when you operate in the country, you understand the culture, you have the relationships, and you see so often so many other groups come in when there’s a disaster with no context whatsoever. And as you said at the beginning, pretty much when the media leaves, you stay, you remain when the attention moves away, which is great.
You know, there are two major areas of concern that seem to have exponentially grown in recent years, and they have been health issues around climate change and the refugee crisis. How is MSF enhancing its readiness and response capabilities to address those two issues?
Avril: It’s a huge, huge concern for us. So I’ll start with the climate crisis, which we know, for many, many years, a lot of people were feeling a little detached from it, you know, “Oh, it’s going to happen in the future.”
And meanwhile, you had all the activists in the scientific community saying, “We have to address this. There will be more catastrophic weather events, floods, droughts. We’re going to have a shifting of patterns of vector-borne diseases like malaria and dengue. There’s going to be a phenomenon of people having to leave where they live as climate refugees, to seek a life somewhere else.” And that’s going to put a whole pressure on the entire system to conflict.
So, that, and many other issues are coming up when we think about the scenarios for the climate crisis. And even in a wealthy country, a high-income country, it can be devastating. But you can imagine a country that’s already on its knees with perhaps failed governance, perhaps mismanagement of the dams… like look at that huge flood we had in Libya with the dams; so they had catastrophic rains, but also a lack of investment in the infrastructure, and there was just no way that these old decrepit dams were going to be able to hold back the catastrophic rains.
And so, countries like that also that are suffering insecurity, it makes it all the more calamitous.
And the humanitarian community is absolutely alarmed. We think it’s going to overwhelm us. There is just no way we can be everywhere all at once. We know that we have to clean up our own act when it comes to our carbon emissions because if we’re at the table telling the world to reduce theirs in order to save people from sure hardship, we also have to look at ourselves.
So, there’s a lot of work happening now to transition us to greener technologies to run the hospitals, to provide the energy necessary, which in the old days, it would… and still to a large extent in many places, you’re counting on these stinky old generators with diesel fuel. We have a lot of concerns about cargo shipments on planes, so when there’s an emergency… of course we’ve got this fantastic logistical capacity to load up cargo planes and get everything on the ground that you could possibly need for those first days of an emergency. But if we can pre-position the stocks closer to where the emergencies could happen, all the better.
And so that prepositioning is more likely to happen on ships now. It takes months and months and months, but the more we do that advanced planning, the better. So, for the climate crisis, we’re absolutely stricken with the risks that are before us. We know we have to step up and respond.
And just to pivot now to your question about people on the move. So, people who are forced to flee from violence or from climate catastrophes, it’s one of the reasons that, as an organization, we have always held up very strongly, firmly, and vocally the principle that people who are fleeing for their lives need to be treated like human beings, and they have certain rights. They have a right, for example, to claim asylum, to put in their dossier to make the request. They have a right to humanitarian aid, to be able to receive assistance, and they have a right to be able to live, and not be condemned because of the bad luck of their birth to a place that’s unlivable.
And so that’s one of the reasons you’ll often hear us speaking quite vocally about policies that harm people… migration policies, for example, immigration policies, asylum policies, because, you know, there are international norms, and we just call on governments, including the United States. to respect the norms.
Denver: No shortage of complexity in what you do. You know, I think about climate sometimes, and it appeared to so many people to be a slow-moving disaster, and all of a sudden, the slow moving part of it disappeared, and it just just came up, particularly this last year or two, at such an extraordinary rate.
You know, something I’ve always wondered about, and that is, you know, Doctors Without Borders has a commitment to independence and neutrality, but at the same time, it does bear witness to what is going on. And how do you balance those things? And how does the organization maybe decide when to speak out publicly versus addressing issues privately, and particularly in some politically-sensitive situations?
Avril: In this polarized world, it’s always sensitive.
Denver: Yeah.
Avril: Even something that you would think is as simple as declaring, “Hey, there’s cholera here. We need more attention to the cholera.” A government might say, “You know what? Don’t mention cholera. We haven’t declared it ourselves. We don’t want you to say that. It’s bad for the economy.” Or “It brings stigma and shame upon us, and we don’t want that.”
So there’s always this negotiation ahead of time to alert authorities, “Okay, here’s what we’re seeing, and here’s what we’re planning to say.” And then in some instances, we have to be very careful. So if you think of the bombing of hospitals in Syria that was going on relentlessly, you had Islamic State obviously committing atrocities, and we are working in areas adjacent to that.
In the initial days or months, we were able to work within zones controlled by Islamic State, but then it obviously became far too dangerous. So, we’re working in other areas where hospitals are being bombed. And we decided: You know what? We have to speak out forcefully. Because we had done everything possible to alert the Russian Air Force, the Syria Coalition. But the Russian forces were the ones for the most part with the planes dropping the bombs. We would try to say, “Okay, this is a hospital. Leave it be. Safeguard it. Under International Humanitarian Law, it has a right to exist and be a haven of safety.” And then they would bomb it.
So there would be huge discussions behind the scenes with our Syrian colleagues… and don’t forget, nine out of ten of all of our staff on the ground, including leadership staff are local from the area; the internationals are just a small part of it. And we’re having discussions with them: What is the best thing for preserving the safety of this hospital? Do we speak out? Or do we stay quiet? Do we let those with the bombs know where this location is? Or do we not? Do we put a big cross, a red cross, on the top, you know, the international symbol of “This is a medical facility,” or do we paint that on the roof? Or not?
And so these are very complex issues. And they get, for the most part, decided as close as possible to that operational reality because if somebody like me in a headquarter position far away, I think, “Oh, I know better, and here’s what we should do or say,” I could endanger other colleagues and the life-saving work that is the core reason that we’re working in a place.
Denver: Yeah, you know, you’re absolutely right. Those who are closest to the front lines are going to have the pulse and have the best gauge of what to do, and you never really know what to do because it’s just crazy… people will say that this was a haven, whatever they want, you know, and they just go from there.
What’s the role of Doctors Without Borders in the U.S.? You have about 230 people, I think, and obviously you have country organizations around the world and then HQ over in France… give us a little sense as to how the organization functions and the role that you play here in this country.
Avril: We have an international secretariat in Geneva, but for the most part, the decision making, the inputs, it’s almost like a matrix organization– very, very spread out. And so what the U.S. is providing is not only that core representation– very strategic and critical at the United Nations in New York, but at the Washington DC level, both with political people, the World Bank, various think tanks and so forth that are incredibly influential in the kind of humanitarian context that we work. But, beyond that, I mean, the media hub of the United States, we have powerful, dominant global media especially coming out of New York. And so a big part of our role is to amplify that witnessing that we do in operations with the work that we’ll do here in the U.S. And then the other major contribution… and I cannot understate the importance of it… is that Americans really support us financially.
Donations that we get from more than a million people in the U.S., big and small Very small, a tiny portion is corporate. Very small proportion is the foundations, the big foundations. For the most part, our donors are just individuals.
Denver: Wow.
Avril: And that is funding a third of the global income for the whole organization. So, the work we do in 70 countries, a third of that is actually funded by the generosity of people giving from the U.S. And that is work that we do. We try to do very lean. It’s difficult. We try to do it with a good amount of coverage from the media, but also on social media, digital, et cetera.
And then, having that relationship with donors where we say, “Look, we’re not going to sugarcoat this. Here’s what’s going on here, the challenges we’re facing.” And we find that our supporters really appreciate that we tell it to them without the gloss and too much trying to put a shiny smile and coating on the fact that we work in crisis zones; we work with people who are really suffering the worst calamities that you can possibly imagine, and we’re doing this essential work. So please support us, and people do so through doctorswithoutborders.org.
“I spent a month there really working on an assignment to try to encourage other aid agencies, including the United Nations, to scale up massively, and what they were all telling me is the funding is short everywhere.”
Denver: Yeah, and I guess it’s those kinds of unrestricted gifts that you get from the general public like that that helps you keep your independence… and not taking the government money, but being able to to be an independent entity. Anything new in your fundraising? I mean, are there any new angles or tactics or strategies that you’ve been employing? Because I spent a lot of my life in fundraising. I do know how difficult it is.
Avril: It’s always very difficult, and one of the biggest challenges is just the volatility of it. So, we really encourage our supporters to give that undesignated funding, which as you mentioned allows us to respond quickly to emergencies without having to then go back and request grants and stand in line with all the other international aid agencies.
And to be honest, I was in the Democratic Republic of Congo in North Kivu this past year, and I spent a month there really working on an assignment to try to encourage other aid agencies, including the United Nations, to scale up massively, and what they were all telling me is the funding is short everywhere, Ukraine… and then all the other high level emergencies that are going on, all at the same time, has stretched the entire aid sector, and we are in the same boat.
We worry that we’re not going to be able to make our commitments. We worry that whenever there is something in the news that attracts people’s attention, it takes their attention away from perhaps under-reported places. So, even last year toward the end of the year–which often is kind of when people who want to support us send in their checks, or they make their donation right at the very end of the year, it creates this volatility so that sometimes, oh, the stock market has gone down in those last few weeks, and we see that the donations do as well.
And that’s one of the reasons that we’re just always encouraging people to give even small amounts, but as monthly sustaining donors, and keeping those gifts not linked to one specific emergency… because you never know when there’s going to be an emergency that pops up where there isn’t going to be that outpouring of compassion and generosity.
“It has happened to me many times where I think I know, and then people speak up, and I realize I didn’t know. And so it’s just important for us to be able to create that space to hear all the voices at the table.”
Denver: Well, they’re popping up. There’s no question about it ,and I know the prevailing winds in philanthropy are difficult. I think last year or the year before was the first time that less than one out of every two American families gave to charity, so it is a tough, tough market, and you just gotta keep your foot on the pedal all the time.
What about your corporate culture? I mean, you are such a unique and special organization, Avril. How would you describe it– the workplace culture at Doctors Without Borders? And is there any feature or two of it that you think makes it really distinctive and special?
Avril: Well, we have so many cultures, don’t we? I mean, we’ve got offices all over the world, and the culture in the Tokyo office is going to be different than the one in Johannesburg is going to be different than the one in New York. One thing that does seem to be a through line, and I’m now in my 17th year with this organization… and I’ve worked in different places around the world, and so I can tell this to you as really one of the through lines… is that we encourage a culture of debate. And it’s very annoying when you’re the leader and you say, “Okay, we’re going this way,” and everybody stands up and says, “Well, wait a minute. What about that way?” You just want to be able to move everybody with you. But the truth is we value that. We value people at every level of the organization being able to participate in finding the right path to be able to help people.
And I might have my background. You have your background. I have my training; you have your training. I have my experience and things I’ve tried before that worked or failed, and likewise you have those, and we’re all trying to do the right thing. And that’s what makes me extremely patient when it comes to that because while we work fast… we’re known for that… we do need to just take the time to hear everyone to make sure that there aren’t things we didn’t think of because people didn’t feel psychologically safe… to use the terminology of the day… to actually express our challenge, the view of the decision makers. And so that culture of debate is something obviously, it gets wobbly sometimes; it can get a little ugly internally as we’re trying to hash it out.
Denver: Sure.
Avril: But for the most part, it’s a group of people who express themselves. And I consider that something that makes us so much stronger because it has happened to me many times where I think I know, and then people speak up, and I realize I didn’t know. And so it’s just important for us to be able to create that space to hear all the voices at the table and in a project, on the ground in South Sudan… it could come from the driver; it could come from the head of the hospital. You just have to be willing to create that space for people to express what they think is the right thing to do.
Denver: Yeah, yeah, it’s very healthy. And the fact of the matter is often too is that even if you go in a direction that somebody didn’t like, once they’ve had a chance to express themselves, they tend to get on board. It’s when they haven’t had that chance that it festers underneath and they kind of go more through the motion, so it really is a very healthy way to get it….let it all hang out there… not only get good insights, but get everybody pulling in the same direction.
Now, your background is that of a journalist and I wonder, Avril, how that has influenced your perspective and leadership at the organization.
Avril: As a journalist, I covered Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières. I admired the organization, and I really was intrigued by this notion that journalists had been part of its original conception.
And so when I was, after 20 years as a journalist, thinking, “Huh, okay, I’ve been around the block a few times here.” I am constantly holding myself back from being an actor. You know, I’d be covering something and telling the story and observing and relaying that, but I was feeling frequently challenged because I wanted to jump in and help.
And so when the opportunity came up for me to join MSF… I use the acronym, it was in a communications role. And I always was able to bring to that work: How does the rest of the world see this? How does the public see this? How can we tell the story to make people care? And over all my years now of being thrust into one position after the other, and I spent many years in operations, and I spent several years in Geneva at that headquarter operational center level, I have carried that with me.
There are certain instincts that you build up from journalism, and one of them is being able to see things the way others see it, and to be able to synthesize information, to be able to scope out: What is the crux of the issue here, and what do we need to focus on in terms of relaying to the public and our supporters what is happening in a place? What is the challenge? So, I haven’t lost that ability, and I bring that into my work every day.
Denver: Yeah, and probably another thing, if I can add, you probably ask a lot of questions the way a journalist does.
Avril: Oh, yes.
Denver: And leaders don’t tend to ask as many questions, but with what you have in your DNA, I’m sure you’re asking them of your team all the time.
Avril: I’ve always been curious about all the moving parts of the organization. So even when I was in operations, I wanted to know what was going on with Human Resources. I wanted to understand supply issues. I’ve just always been fascinated by all this medical work because I don’t come from a medical background and there’s always something new. There are new developments, new treatments, new options in terms of models of care. I find all of it fascinating. I learn new things every day.
Denver: Yeah.
Avril: And it’s one of the reasons that I stay with the organization because for all that it’s meaningful work… and I know I’m contributing and I know that I’m… you know, it’s this incredible opportunity to use my skills for a great cause. I also get so much out of it. I find it stimulating. There’s just, yeah, it just is always challenging me, and that is something that I’m drawn to.
“That is something that… I continue to work on, as a leader. It is just to get the pulse of what is going to keep these very talented, knowledgeable, experienced people with us motivated and not feeling like the demands upon them are unreasonable.”
Denver: Yeah, it helps that you’re surrounded by so many brilliant people, too, who know so many different aspects of a problem. With that being said, how do you think the nature of leadership of a major social enterprise is changing, particularly over these last couple years? And has your leadership approach and philosophy changed at all over the last three or four years?
Avril: One of the biggest challenges of the pandemic was that pivot to having more and more colleagues, if not all of them, working remotely. I struggled with this. I’m an in-person kind of person.
Denver: I can tell.
Avril: I just.. Here I am at the office as I talk to you, and where we landed, just to share it, we landed for our headquarter colleagues, we all come in two days a week to have those in-person collaboration days, and then the other days of the week are optional virtual; or come in, either way.
And what we also fully understood, I think, leaders around the world, but especially in North America, we understood that, that staff, both with their experience of the pandemic and the primal scream, for example, of mothers who had to juggle the lessons of their children while juggling their jobs and all the other demands, and I call it that group in particular because I think they had a disproportionate burden to carry over the pandemic.
Denver: Right.
Avril: We realized that we have to be more flexible; we have to be more empathetic, and this is something that frankly is a little bit hard for somebody like me who has, I know what conditions my colleagues working in Gaza are under right now. I know the hardships and the challenges and the hours they’re putting in. And sometimes those of us with an operational background can come into an office space and expect everybody to work at that pace and that level of intensity, and it’s not sustainable, it’s just not.
And so we have to read the room and that is something that I have certainly… I continue to work on as a leader. It is just to get the pulse of what is going to keep these very talented, knowledgeable, experienced people with us, motivated, and not feeling like the demands upon them are unreasonable.
Denver: Yeah, and it will always continue to change as you point out. You just don’t get it and say, “I have a fix on it,” because six months later, it’s going to be completely different; so having that ear to the ground is really critical.
Finally, Avril, looking at the future, how does MSF envision, I don’t know, the trajectory of global humanitarianism, and what emerging challenges or maybe opportunities does the organization foresee in the next decade?
Avril: We’ve talked about the climate crisis, which I know is going to overwhelm us in many of the low-income countries and the countries that are already in crisis… this is just going to exacerbate all the problems that they already are facing. We also have touched on a strong state… certain countries don’t want our help; they don’t want independent humanitarian aid; they don’t want witnesses to the atrocities they’re committing against their people or to the failures of their response to needs. And increasingly, I think the aid sector is up against this, where you have places that we cannot work.
We also have a phenomenon of misinformation and disinformation, of deep fakes, of trolling, of really damaging efforts to undermine reality and direct reporting, and so one’s reputation is always on the line, and all you can really do is try to be consistent and accurate.
And that’s something we really insist on here is just to make sure if we’re putting something out, we’ve fact-checked it a million ways… we know this is the reality as we see it as we are witnessing it. And that’s one of the reasons we don’t comment on things where we’re not directly operationally on the ground witnessing because we’re under pressure all the time to take a stance here or there on different topics that are important… and human rights topics, for example, but if we don’t have teams on the ground witnessing certain things and being able to corroborate, you know, “This is what’s happened. This is the issue. This hospital has been bombed. We know because we’re there,” we don’t comment.
And that also puts us in a bit of a challenging position as far as our staff go, because they’re saying, “Well, why aren’t you commenting on the pro- democracy activists in Hong Kong?” for example? “Why aren’t we commenting on Julian Assange and whatever he’s going through?” You know, these things have nothing to do with our patients or the populations we assist. I could go on and on about issues in the United States that concern me– gun violence, mass shootings, all kinds of things; abortion, but we’re not going to comment on those issues where we don’t have an operational presence.
And that’s in part because of this error of the risk of misinformation, disinformation, our stuff getting twisted and a slippery slope in terms of losing our standing in the eyes of our supporters and of our colleagues and the populations we assist.
Denver: Yeah, it just takes a lot of discipline, and this is something in which I think a lot of nonprofit organizations are facing… when particularly the younger employees want statements on everything, and sometimes it’s not even directly related to the work you’re doing, and it’s just difficult to issue. And then, of course, if you don’t issue one on something… Why did you speak about this and not about that? So it’s… but you guys have it probably to an exponential degree.
Avril, for listeners who want to learn more about Doctors Without Borders, I want you to tell us what’s on your website, and more importantly, how people and listeners can help financially support this unbelievable work the organization is doing.
Avril: Well, thank you for asking. doctorswithoutborders.org is our website, and that’s where we publish the updates on what’s happening operationally, what we’re seeing. We also are present in all the social media. I have left Twitter, or X, because I just found it far too toxic, but we do still post there reluctantly as the official channel of the organization. But then, yeah, you’ll find us in all the usual places. But doctorswithoutborders.org really is the best place, not only to learn about us, to learn about our work, to learn about the emergencies we’re responding to, but also to make a donation, and we really appreciate it. Every small little amount really makes a difference for us.
Denver: Well, thanks very much for being here today, Avril. It was a real, real pleasure to have you on the program.
Avril: Thank you so much for having me.
Denver Frederick, Host of The Business of Giving serves as a Trusted Advisor and Executive Coach to Nonprofit Leaders. His Book, The Business of Giving: New Best Practices for Nonprofit and Philanthropic Leaders in an Uncertain World, is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.