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Pop quiz, listeners: How much greater is the risk of suicide that our veterans and service members face versus their peers who haven't served?

Before we answer that, let us introduce you to the Nonstop Nonprofit podcast guests today: Nick Black and Tina Starkey. Nick is the founder and CEO of social fundraising solution GoodUnited and he also founded powerhouse nonprofit Stop Soldier Suicide. Tina, Stop Soldier Suicide's Chief Growth Officer, brings a wealth of experience in the social realm, coming from the American Cancer Society as their Sr. Director of Social Marketing.

By uniting their abilities and planting a flag in the sand, in 2020, Stop Soldier Suicide raised $4M and gained 100k new donors through Facebook fundraising alone, allowing them to shrink the gap that stretches between soldiers at risk for suicide and our national population. It's a big, bold goal: Service members and veterans have a 50% higher rate of suicide than the national average here in the U.S.

One of our biggest takeaways from this conversation is how Stop Soldier Suicide's big, bold goal completely flipped their perspective. Like any other nonprofit, the founders saw a need and wanted to help—but when Nick started thinking concretely and looked at their capacity for impact, he realized that deeper donor relationships weren't just mission-critical, they were the key to being Mission Accomplished.

During this conversation, Nick and Tina are the embodiment of expert-yet-excited nonprofiteers innovating on the fly, applying expansive strategies targeted to very specific donor segments, and infusing their work with an urgency that blows past the reservations that often hold donors back, offering them a chance to invest in the lives of those who have invested everything in our liberty.