From Bench to Community- Sparking Change Through Connection

Explore the wisdom, humor, and focus of strategic change-making with Shaun Floerke. As a judge, he shaped innovative specialty courts and programs fostering family unity within the legal system, but at the helm of the Duluth Superior Area Community Foundation, he has shaped a proactive, compassionate outreach, highlighting the power of collective action and shared purpose.

Forget the status quo, for Shaun it's about revolutionizing how we approach social issues, listening to the unheard voices, and constructing a mosaic of expertise to create lasting solutions.

He candidly discusses the need to balance action with reflection, committing to self-care as a way to re-charge, and for him, it’s biking to and from work every day in Duluth.

He closes with a contemplation on the transition from being a warrior in one's youth to becoming an elder who supports others, recognizing the value of passing the torch to future leaders.

LINKS:
Duluth Superior Area Community Foundation 
Don Coyhis, Mohican Elder 

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Chapters

• 0:06 Transformative Change Through Community Foundation
• 13:48 Transformational Grants and Making a Difference
• 23:48 Navigating Learning, Trust, and Community

Transcript

Pat:
Fill To Capacity where heart grit and irreverent humor collide. A podcast for people too stubborn to quit and too creative not to make a difference. Hi, I am Pat Benincasa, and welcome to Fill To Capacity. Today's episode "From Bench to Community- Sparking Change Through Connection." Now for this episode, I'm gonna change things up a little bit. I'm gonna start with a quote by Longfellow: "We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing while others judge us by what we have already done."

Pat:
My guest is a man that has a sky high expectation of what he is capable of doing, and he is indeed judged by his transformative and innovative work accomplished, but by no means. Finished. My guest, Shaun Floerke, served as a judge in Minnesota's Six Judicial District since 2004, including four years as a chief judge. So as a judge, he founded the South St. Louis DWI Court, which has been called one of the most effective specialty courts in the nation. And for our international listeners, DWI means "driving while intoxicated." On the bench, Floerke hosted meetings outside the courthouse in a building that housed a pantry and donated clothes. He utilized the Duluth Domestic Violence Restorative Circles process. And according to the Star Tribune newspaper, he helped establish the Safe Babies Court, which aims to help parents in child protection cases, maintain healthy relationships, and eventually reunite with their young children in foster care. He's traveled around the country providing training for justice agencies and giving talks. Now, let's fast forward here to three years ago.

Pat:
You got a lot here.

Shaun:
Skip. It's all boring. 

Pat:
Shaun retires as a judge to lead the Duluth Superior Area Community Foundation. Welcome, Shaun Floerke. I have been so looking forward to having you here.

Shaun:

Really good to be here.

Pat:
So, please tell us, what is the Duluth Superior Area Community Foundation? What does the foundation do?

Shaun:
So, a community foundation, this beautiful idea where folks who care about place and care about people and care about community can give their money, sometimes estate planning, sometimes a lifetime, but they can give their money into a pool that then is there. We we're a forever investor that then is in the community to fund great work in the community. So we do grant work, we do scholarship work, we're investing in community. It's really a beautiful idea.

Pat: 
Now before we go any further, I'd like to let our international listeners know that Duluth is a city on Lake Superior, about 150 miles northeast of Minneapolis. It has a population of about 300,000 and,

Shaun:
No, it's way less. We're about 85,000. Yeah. We punch bigger than we are.

Pat:
Okay, folks. Recorrect

Pat:
It's a population of 85,000 and it has spectacular hiking trails, Rocky bluffs, rugged, beautiful scenery, and Superior is a city in extreme northwestern Wisconsin that shares a natural harbor with Duluth. Now, Shaun, what did I miss in that explanation?

Shaun:
That kind of covers it and Superior's about 30,000 people. And we're really interested in community and that there's a lot of back and forth across the bridge, and people live on one side, work on the other side. So we're a neat little metropolitan area. And when I would travel around teaching and training, I would often say we are big enough to have resource and we're small enough to still have connection. I tell you, Pat, if I sent out an email today to 10 people saying, I need help, 11 would be there tomorrow. I mean, it's that kind of community. Yeah. It's just, it's really cool. It's a special place.

Pat:
Oh, very nice. Now, Shaun, during your tenure as a judge, you developed groundbreaking programs and you left the judiciary for a different role. What does the foundation enable you to do that the judiciary could not?

Shaun:
Okay, I gotta tell you this story that kind of fires me. There's a gentleman, uh, named Don Coyhis, who's a Mohican Elder. He's told this story at a conference 20 years ago, and it just grabbed me and I asked him, can I share your story? He is like, yeah, he even sent me his PowerPoints and stuff. But it's The Story Of The Three Sisters. Three sisters come to a river and in the river, babies are drowning. River's full of babies. First sister pulls kids out and is making progress and doing wonderful stuff, but still overwhelmed. Second sister thinks, boy, if I can teach people how to swim, they can be helpers too. She jumps in, starts doing that. They're making progress, and they're not getting it done. People are still dying. They look at the third sister and say, how can you stand there? Get in, get in, get in.

Shaun:
And she turned and ran away. And she was running upstream to figure out why on earth were babies in the water in the first place and how to stop it up there. That changed the way I did judicial work, that I heard that in my first three months of work, and it affected everything. But it felt like in the courtroom we were doing absolute first sister work and we were building models that then became second sister work. We were talking all over the country, even internationally, a little bit about how to try to do better for people. What a foundation lets you do is try to be that third sister and go upstream. I would sentence people, and you could see back through their history, if you could have corrected the situation when they were six months, a year, two years, they wouldn't be there. And we needed first sister. We need second sister when you get it all. Um, but I thought, boy, if I get a chance before I, you know, go into that sunset to do third sister stuff, that's what I wanna do. So that's, that's what our foundation does. Um, there's nobody who works here on my board who doesn't understand what we talk about going upstream. They understand that's what we're here to do.

Pat:
That's a sea change in terms of instead of getting people mid problem or life tragedies, you are doing something actually proactive.

Shaun:
Right. We're looking to, we're looking to change the environment. Don used to say, he would say, you know, you can heal a sapling, but if the sapling is in toxic soil and dirty air and poisoned water, you're gonna just be constantly healing sapling. So yes, heal sapling, but is there a way to care for the air, water, and soil in a way that then you'll have healthier saplings as you go? Yeah.

Pat:
Now, from everything I've read about you and watched on YouTube, I get the distinct impression. Now, I don't mean to be personal, but you are not a fan of the status quo.

Shaun:
When they interviewed me for this job, they said, why should we hire you? I said, literally, if you want me to protect your status quo, don't - be warned. I'm a maximizer and I'm always looking at systems and think, how do we make this thing hum? What do we do to make it really work for people?

Pat:
And you know, it, it seems like you have a natural predisposition to see beyond institutional norms, like your approach to justice, that creating that DWI court or finding ways to keep families together as they go through the legal system. Have you always been like this and that's my first question. My second one is, how do you create new programs within an institution, whether it be judiciary or foundation, without blowback or stepping on someone else's sacred turf?

Shaun:
Boy, that's a good question. I'll answer the first one, but I've always been like this. Yeah. If you're equipped and, I'm a futurist visionary, and I just, I'm always seeing in the future, how do you build it in maybe entrenched or oppositional systems. You keep people in the story and you work with the willing. My metaphor is fire, right? I'm fire. That's how I see the world. I'm on fire. That's energy. I learned a long time ago that if you got people who are buckets of water, don't spend time there. Look for the willing, then move fast and prove it up. Do good work and prove it up, and then tell those stories and share those stories. Um, it got to the point, we were starting something brand new, and in a lot of ways, a drug court, people hadn't seen this in the DWI I realm much, but over time people trusted it 'cause they felt it.

Shaun:
They'd met Pat, they'd met Bonnie, they'd heard the stories they'd seen. And the beautiful thing about drug courts kind of to go macro on it, is they're really good done right, and you can do it wrong. Done right, they're awesome for human beings. Humans get their lives back and they save us all money. So no matter where you land on kind of spectrums, they're a win. Right? I got people working, buying businesses, paying taxes, raising children, living, loving, and it's saving money. So pick your purpose. I think you start small. You, you develop team, you do really good work, and you'd be willing to, to look at it. And if you're making a mistake, back up and do it differently. Right? We tapped data. We knew whether it was working for our people or not.

Shaun:
We could get to the point where we had a good sense of why it wasn't working for some. And I always said, if the data shows us we're doing harm, we're gonna change. And we always learned early on, we didn't have a mental health provider on our team. And, and an evaluation came back and, you know, this was a long time ago and said, you know, you're not doing a great job connecting folks with mental health issues up to treatment. I went out and called somebody and said, please join our team. And made all the difference, right? But then they came and they were helping and they were connecting. So that's a big idea. Work with the willing, prove it up, be willing to learn, always learn, always adjust, always chase best practice. And that you'll always have naysayers and folks who will say no. But we found that it really changed the system. You couldn't meet anybody. You didn't understand the principles of thoughtful, smart engagement with clients.

Pat:
Yeah. You're kind of leading into my next question now. You've been at the helm of the foundation for three years. Can you share a pivotal moment or project that you think really defines your leadership or what you're trying to do?

Shaun:
Oh, man, that's a great question. Okay. So we have completely revamped our large grant priorities in the past year. And our priorities are belonging. Our world desperately needs belonging, human connection, dialogue, resilience. The idea that if back to Don's idea, if you make a community strong, you can handle the winds, you can handle the challenges, you, you bounce back, right? We want strong community that is connected and bounces back. And then opportunity, there are haves and there are have not, and what barriers do we need to remove? How do we need to source and, and walk with people so they can be everything they wanna be and everything they can be. So those three priorities. And then for the first time, we're doing what we're calling transformational grants, where we're doing a five year, a hundred thousand a year. So half a million dollars worth of grants. So it's a long term kind of grant process with folks working in partnership to go upstream and solve for issues. We just opened that up. We've got 16 beautiful applications we have to choose from. Oh, but that's not just me, but that's me. And, and our teams saying, how can we be absolutely what matters in the world? How can we take every bit of our resource, time, talent, treasure, big mouth and use it for impact?

Pat:
You know, I'm struck Shaun, that we live at a time of post COVID, uncivil discourse, an empathy drain. There's so much happening that is so stressful to folks, right?

Shaun:
Right. People are activated. Oh, Yeah.

Pat:
And here you are, and I'm not gonna say Don Quixote tilting at windmills because, because you're doing something, you're not tilting, man. You, you're bolting into the challenge. And so you have quite a backdrop here in the cultural moment.

Shaun:
Yeah. And, and you said before we started filming, you wanna make a difference. You wanna spend your day making a difference. And we collectively can be that taking a swing at it. Yeah. It's been fun. We have our local homeless shelter and programming is doing a work up here just up the hill and I'm pointing up the hill. And they're trying to fundraise. And I was sitting in a meeting with them. I thought, oh, I see what you're trying to do. And I know somebody who'd be really interested in that. I gave them a call. I said, Hey, you wanna go see something with me? I think you'd be interested. He is like, yeah, let's go. So Wednesday, a week later, we get there. He's kind of hobbling around. He's, he's not healthy, but he's, he's still going, walked through it and came out into the parking lot and said, let's, let's give $200,000 to that project. It was really beautiful to see a huge community need and to know this man with this huge heart and know that I get to be kind of connecting and say, Hey, come look at this. Hey, I love it. Let's do it. You know, and, and try to be that connector of a real impact.

Pat:
It seems like you're kind of a hands-on guy.

Shaun:
Yeah. Right? I like being in the mix. Yeah. Maybe too much. Maybe sometimes people would like me to kind of quiet down.

Pat:
I don't think so. I think you're exactly doing what people want you to be doing. Well,

Shaun:
I hope so. I had an employee once who went to a seminar and the seminar said that everybody has one crazy maker in their life. And she came back and she said, you know, you're everybody's crazy maker.

Pat:
That's a compliment.

Shaun:
Yeah. It was good. I've had to learn how to not force things, right? This, I feel that, but this isn't the time. And let it let it kind of mature and come. And, it's not just me kind of, let's go, let's go, let's go. It's, people, are there and people are ready and people are picking it up and contributing. I love that. That's an age thing. I think, you know, as a younger person, you tend to want to push things hard.

 Pat:
Well, as one who has burned several bridges in my youth, I've gone from burning bridges to appreciating that a bridge isn't a bridge till the first person walks across it. And what you're talking about with age, and I agree there is an age thing here that everyone has a right to walk their own path. Everyone. And we're not road rescue. We can't go in even though we want to and change a situation. We can't do that. But in your position, it sounds like you spend a lot of time assessing and feeling, intuiting what is needed.

Shaun:
Listening. And then it becomes a story I can share and an invitation. I can open up. And then what I do is I hire people smarter than me and better than me. And what I need is somebody, you can see it with me, but then starts, oh, how do we build that? I see. Oh, we gotta get over there. And they're like, oh, we're gonna need a bridge.

Shaun:
And here's the bridge will have to be, and let's do this and we'll need this bunch of resources and we'll need that. And I'm like, and I can help with that, but I don't think that way. So it's a really sweet, powerful combination. We talk about we are looking to thrive together here in service of a bigger purpose. We wanna thrive in our work and in our friendships and in our lives in service of that bigger purpose, both at the same time. You know?

Pat:
Yes. Now, Shaun, you're starting to sound like an artist. Now, let me explain.

Pat:
As an artist, I always yield to the idea when I get an idea and start researching the idea begs for the right material. So I'm not gonna use art glass for something. I wanna build it. It's not load bearing. But if I want to play with reflection and refraction and color bouncing and filling the space, I'll go to the glass. And it seems, that an artist knows when to shift gears into what material. And it seems like you have a palette of experts, people that know their stuff, people that wanna roll up their sleeves and work. And on the other side of that, the canvas, the community is receptive. You really have a dynamic combination there.

Shaun:
I hadn't thought of it that way, but I think you're exactly right. And my teams would always laugh at me, 'cause I'd go to conferences, you know, everybody else brings home three ring binders. I bring home researchers. I would invariably find somebody who was tracking data and thinking about best practices or teaching. And I'd be like, Hey, can I email you? 'cause I'd love to hear what you, you know, so it's, it's connecting to the resource that you can then So that's, I think that's probably your palette idea. Yeah. I'm not much of an artist in, in the traditional sense, but I, yeah, that's it. I'm looking for connection and, and, and how that plays out.

Pat:
Well, as someone who uses materials in an iconoclastic way, I don't go by tradition, like traditional methods. There's something very freeing about knowing what to use, whether it's sheet metal or hardware store paint. It doesn't matter what's in your hands. It's bringing it to life, and that's what you do.

Shaun:
Right. And somebody telling you, well, but Pat, we always do it this way. How do you react - Wave a red flag? Or someone says, you know, that's not been done before. Why would you make it?

Shaun:
Oh, geez. Right. I'm like, awesome . Yeah. Like, okay, let's do it. You get To be the first. That's awesome. 

Pat:
Okay. Now, when I was reading about when you were leaving the judiciary and making that transition, you said you were happy for the first time, not walk in a room and everybody having to stand up.

Shaun:
Right.

Pat:
Now, reflecting on that transition from your judicial career to your current role, what have been the most unexpected challenges you faced?

Shaun:
Oh, those are good questions. So it's been an internal challenge, Pat, and it's that I came from a place of real mastery. And I hope that doesn't sound arrogant. I, have an ego. I don't pretend to be non ego but I had real mastery And ability to speak.. I mean, there are courts around the nation that are different 'cause of what we were able to share with them. And then I come into this new area where I don't know a dang thing, and I'm biased to action. So the temptation is to walk in and say, have you met me? I'm awesome. Let's do this right away. And I had a dear friend, she's the person who has helped me build those bridges. She always trusted my vision and then would say, okay, how do we get there?

Shaun :
Let me figure out how to get there. She said to me, she said, better make sure they trust you before you start kicking over shit. I said, that's fair. But I hope they trust pretty fast! But, one of the, one of the challenges has been shutting my mouth and learning and, and having it not necessarily match up with other people's timeframes. Yeah. Um, and that I, that's been a real challenge. And I'll have folks say, well, what's your, what's your, what's your, and I'm like, uh, we're not actually, we're not here to have all the answers. We're actually here to hear the, the good answers from the community and help those thrive. So that's one thing. But two, there's a big dang organization, I mean, 12 counties, two states, 470 funds, millions going out every year. There's a lot to learn, especially when you're talking about how do we move from status quo smartly in a way that helps the community. Right. Yeah. So I think that's been a real, just being, comfortable learning and listening and asking questions.

 Pat:
Now I have to digress for a moment. I read something about you and I thought, this cannot be true. Is it true that you bicycle 365 days a year? No. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Before you answer again, for my international listeners, this is Minnesota and Minnesota minus 40 wind chills ice storms. And Duluth is very hilly.

Shaun:
Right, right.

Pat:Okay, Shaun, explain yourself.

Shaun:
Oh, boy. Okay. So 18 years ago, gas hit three bucks a gallon for the first time. Do you remember those glory days? And I thought, geez, I can ride my bike to work during the summer. And I rode, and we live out on the west side, and I climb almost 700 feet to get home. And that first day I nearly died. I thought I was gonna puke. I was in terrible shape, but I'm a little bit stubborn. And so I kept doing it. And about, and this is a principle you will understand, and trauma-informed folks understand. Four or five or six weeks in, I realized that I was a better dad on the days I rode. And what was happening was I was in nature in the sunrise, I was in nature in the sunset, I was working hard, getting home, and I was, and I was working through the vicarious trauma of the day in the exercise and in the separation from home.

Shaun:
So I wasn't as tightly wound. When I got home, I was a better dad. And I thought, I'm just not gonna stop. And so I have, and it's become my thing. Right? The coldest day I've ridden, it was 28 below with the 54 below windchill. And I'm not, those are not fun days. They're kind of grim, especially climbing home at 10 or 15 below. It's just tough. But it's become part of who I am, and it is a way for me to manage the trauma load and the stress load and stay healthier. And then I get to be that crazy guy on the bike. So nobody messes with me.

Pat :
Well, now you kind of walked into my next question. It seems like there are so many people, families, communities in need, and there are only so many hours in a day. And I was gonna ask, how do you pace yourself with this work? Now, one aspect is biking and, and releasing that kind of tension. But God, you must see a lot of need?

Shaun:
Yeah. And the answer is I haven't done a great job of it. I've learned over time, I have a meditation practice, I do Tai Chi, I do the biking. I'm always trying to eat better. And sleep, I insist on trying to get seven or more hours of sleep. I'm always doing research on what the neuroscientists say about the best practice. What I find hard now is you could say yes to a million things. Right? We have 16 incredible applications. So that's $16 million worth of application, or sorry, $8 million worth of application over the years. And I'm, we're gonna have to say no to probably all but one or two. So it's, how do you, how do you try to get to highest best? What is that? And yeah, I, that's super challenging, but if you don't say no, you're just spent, right? Yeah. Um, Amber, my scholarships person said to me the other day, she says, Shaun, you can do anything, but you can't do everything. And I thought, okay, yep, that's spot on. So that's, I think the no, or the yes will lead you to the no. And then you gotta hold that no viciously so that you can do the Yes.

Pat:
Yeah. It seems like when you try to be all things to all people, you dilute any kind of meaningful action change or agency, actually.

Shaun:
Right. You know, we talked about aging. I, I, as I get older, I think a ton about energy. Right. And when I was a young man, I felt like I had an unlimited energy. I could just push and go and push and go and push and go. And now I'm 59 and I don't have that anymore. If I don't rest, it'll break. Um, so it's paying. So, and what draws your energy? What sucks your energy, you know, I spend a lot of time thinking about what is the energy and what draws you and what is that highest best? What is that purpose that we want the big purpose, capital B, capital P, what's the big, you know,

Pat:
I think aging does require a certain amount of discernment. At my age, I, I'm discerning as to who I surround myself with. I'm discerning as to where I spend my energy. And, life and time is so precious, but in my twenties, I could spend 12, 15 hours in the studio standing and working. I wouldn't blink. Now, if I do seven hours, I'm thinking, oh my God, is it nap time yet?

Shaun:
Right.

Pat:
Rejuvenate, then I'm back at it.

Shaun:
Right, right.

Pat:
But in your work, I would think discernment, self-care, you know, the compassion is there, the empathy is there. But I think at the heart of it is, how can I be effective? What can I do to be effective?

Shaun:
Right. Right.

Shaun :
The people I love and the obligations that I truly wanna meet.

Shaun:
And that's back to yeses and nos, right?

Pat:
So it's clear that personal connection is important to you. How have you fostered this within the foundation and with the communities you serve? And I wanna add one other piece to that. You must run into people that city or state or community institutions have not been kind to them or good to them. There must be a level of mistrust or unease. So this personal connection, how do you deal with that in the diverse groups that you meet?

Shaun: 
 And there's a hundred different ways to think about that. So what I bring with me, and what I realize now is that all I learned about trauma-informed work, holding space for people, you don't heal unless you're safe. Right? So if I'm not in a safe place, the big debate in treatment courts was often, or the big demand was they need to trust us. They need to start telling the truth. I'm like, I gotta prove myself trustworthy before. So I realize all of that stuff comes right into this work, right? We represent folks of means, right? The people who tend to give it to us are folks with, with a lot of means. They've done well, they're successful. Um, we've gotta prove our self trustworthy. We gotta show up, be steady and in, and we gotta be listening, and we gotta be, we gotta know.

Shaun:
I mean, I'm a 59-year-old white guy with a lot of dang privilege, right? I gotta know when to shut my mouth. Yeah, you know, and I got younger people to talk. So for me, it's always about, and I have an ability to find a common ground with, with just about anybody, right? So it's being there, being present, listening, connecting. And then I see lots of different connections where I can, oh, let's connect these folks. Let's connect those folks. So I, I kinda see the web, which is helpful, that I can connect. Like that conversation with Chum, I saw a connection with a guy they'd never, they'd have never talked to. And I was able to reach out and say, Hey, come see this beautiful opportunity. So I'm thinking, you tell me what you think of this, the idea of being an elder.

Shaun:
And that can have all kind of weird kind of, I'm just talking about kind of wisdom, right? And I was at a thing last week and the woman said the question was, how do you know whether you are an elder or not? And she said, well, it'll depend on how intractable your warrior is. And I've been thinking about that a lot. 'cause, you know, we spend our, our youth warrioring. I signed up to be a lawyer 'cause I wanted to fight for the underdog. I wanted to fight hard. Right? But as we are older, I think to move into a wisdom frame and letting others lead the frame and, you guys are the future. It all depends on whether that lawyer is intractable or not. Whether you're willing to let go of that warrior role and step into a different role, or supporting others supporting community. Um, I don't have to be in front. I tell people all the time, I've had my name on a lot of stuff. I don't need my name on anything anymore. How do I raise up and give energy for other people to lead with and run with and shine with?

Pat:
I think when you talk about elder, that resonates with me being a first generation Italian American. And I honor my ancestors every morning. I ask them to help me, guide me, guide what comes outta my mouth. And I, I take elder as something sacred. It is a sacred obligation. In fact, my morning prayer is fortify my warrior spirit that I may be a blessing for others.

Shaun:
That's awesome.

Pat:
I'm a fighter. I'm from Detroit, Shaun. I mean, get in your face. But, but I also know I've been tempered with time. And it is about listening and seeing what can I do in this situation. Yeah. And I also think being an artist when I teach, and students would be like crushed by societal events or people getting elected, that they were horrified. I mean, whatever was happening. And I would say to them very gently, 'cause they know I fiercely respected them, we cannot let events in the world crush our spirit. It will be all right. We just steady on.

Shaun:
Right. Find your way through the obstacle is the way forward. Right? Yeah. Well, and, and the, the woman sharing this warrior story, she said, you still have your dagger in your pocket.

Pat:
Oh, hell yes!

Shaun:
You still have fights that you're, you got some fights left in you. But to, but to withdraw and move into a place of wisdom as opposed to, I, I've been thinking about that a lot.

Pat:
It's a wonderful position to be in. And I think the world, the world, so needs Elder voices.

Shaun:
Right? We were in Japan in March and April. Our youngest son is in the Marine Corps in Okinawa. To see the culture of honoring and, and the idea that by honoring you, um, I honor myself and my ancestors past and future. And the idea of being connected, one-to-one, and then to the ancestors and to the, it was a powerful, what a beautiful place to kind of similar to, to what you're sharing from Yeah. Italy, your ancestors.

Pat:
So what would you say, Shaun, what core belief guides you in determining your focus and how you go into the world?

Shaun:
Hmm. Dang. That's a good question. My core belief goes back to what Don Coyhis has said. The idea of honoring all of the sisters and making sure that somebody's running upstream. So I'm trying to look at the whole spectrum of human suffering, human trauma, human need, and okay, how do we account for all of that? But how do we also try to change for future? And I thought more and more about the sisters aren't about making a perfect stream or a perfect forest. The sisters are about training the community of connected human beings to be caretakers. Right? I can't predict what's on the horizon in a hundred years, but if we can be raising up people who care, people who tend, people who guard people who walk in compassion, mutuality, interdependence, honor, that's what I think about a lot, is how do we, how do we try to join for better humanity? Yeah. I don't know what that all looks like. And it can sound pretty dang pie in the sky, but we need folks who can tend and heal and cure and make places better. And we'll need them in 50 years. We'll need 'em a hundred years. We'll need 'em in 200 years. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

Pat:
Well, as we get near the end of our conversation, I have to say, looking at all of your foundation social media posts, there's so many diverse intergenerational groups, project events, marathons, sunrise, yoga, uh, restaurant gatherings, housing initiatives, just to name a few. And that indicates a dynamic community engagement. And Shaun, I think by uniting all of these people and interests, you kind of create a shared momentum for transformative change. And, you and your resourceful creative staff of the Duluth Superior Area Community Foundation are a pivotal force for this deep community partnership. Or I'm gonna put it in your words quote: "It isn't the heart you start with that matters. It's the heart we end with that we really want to keep track of."

Shaun:
Working through. Yeah. What a job. Right? And you get paid to do. I'm like, I think all the time about generous community, you know, we work in the philanthropy business, which talks about it. Philanthropy tends to focus on the giver. But I think about generous community and all the people who bring to the table. Somebody brings a big checkbook. Awesome. Somebody brings their grandma's fried chicken recipe. Somebody brings blankets. Somebody brings their 5-year-old who dances. There's a, there's a collectivity to all of it. That is a mutual joining. That's so beautiful. It's not just a one way flow. It's a generous community.

Pat:
Well, Shaun, thank you for joining us today on Fill To Capacity. It was great having you on.

Shaun:
It's great talking to you. I'm excited for all you're doing.

Pat:
Thank you, Shaun.

Pat:
Thank you. Listeners, if you enjoy today's podcast, please tell your friends and subscribe. Thank you. And bye.