So much of the success of any of our DEI work is rooted in our ability to communicate vision through metaphor. It is, after all, a metaphor that connects to emotion, to our human ability to find empathy and build affinity between us. Vision, often, starts with a metaphor built with the heart in mind. 

On this season of the show, we are talking about the role of storytelling in social change. And today’s guest has a natural gift for uplifting powerful and personal stories of impact from some of the nation’s most effective charities to build a more trusted charitable sector.

Art Taylor is president and CEO of the Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance. As head of the Alliance, he oversees the organization’s work, which includes setting standards, evaluating charities in relation to those standards, publishing the Wise Giving Guide, and promoting charity accountability, plus a whole lot more. Art led the Wise Giving Alliance to introduce the accredited charity seal, a symbol of trustworthiness used by national and local charities that adhere to the Better Business Bureau standards for charity accountability, and it’s estimated that more than a billion impressions of that charity seal exist in the public domain. This is the bellwether that indicates to donors whether an organization is trustworthy.

At the foundation of all this success, however, is Art’s vision of success. This is the story — the metaphor — that touches us, too. “America is a very competitive place. And there are always ten chairs and 15 people. But I believe that we can take those ten chairs, and if 15 people get together, we can rework those chairs and make a bench, a place for us all to be able to sit down. And that’s how we have to view the world. We keep viewing the world as a zero-sum game. It’s not. There’s always more that we can produce if we work together.”

This is a conversation not about building bridges between communities but building a bench and offering those with opposing views the opportunity to sit together on it in the greater spirit of charity, impact, and trust. We thank Art Taylor for joining us on this show this week.