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Join the Carnelian Ventures team for candid conversations about what it actually takes to scale ventures that generate returns and create meaningful change. From early-stage operations and capital strategy to impact measurement that goes beyond metrics, each episode breaks down how founders navigate the critical decisions shaping sustainable businesses.
Building with Carnelian is produced by Carnelian Ventures, a venture studio supporting mission-driven founders through operational advisory, technology development, and impact analytics. Have feedback or want to suggest a guest? Reach out at podcast@carnelianventures.com.
We know the parents by name. We know the kids by name. We know what their stories are. And being able to understand where they're at in their journey and what we can do to help.
Lauren Chuhta:This is Building with Carnelian, a Carnelian Ventures podcast. Hello, everyone, and welcome to this episode of Building with Carnelian. I'm your host, Lauren Chuhta. Today, we get to sit down with the busy woman working at the crux of Impact First Enterprise.
Jonna Crocker:Hi everyone, my name is Jonna Crocker. I am the founder of Fighting Hard Foundation, and I also work as a marketing specialist for Interra Medical, which is a medical device company helping patients with gastroparesis take their seat back at the tape.
Lauren Chuhta:Jonna brings a rare blend of operator discipline, founder level creativity, and joint for profit and nonprofit fluency. She's a versatile voice in mission driven work. In this episode, she'll unpack what it means to build, run, and support enterprises that deliver real impact with rigor and heart. Now, Jonna, your nonprofit, the Fighting Heart Foundation, is coming up on its eleventh year. Is that right?
Lauren Chuhta:In August?
Jonna Crocker:That is, yes.
Lauren Chuhta:Congratulations. Take us back to the beginning. Why did you found it?
Jonna Crocker:So we founded Fighting Hard in 2015, and it started because my sister and I both have rare diseases. I was diagnosed at 11 years old, but my sister had been dealing with rare disease challenges for pretty much her whole entire life. She was really struggling and feeling isolated in her journey. And one of her doctors said, You should find an organization that you can be a part of with other kids like you who are dealing with similar conditions. And while she could find an organization that could help for one condition or focused on research for her rare disease, there really weren't any foundations that were focusing on supporting kids with rare diseases in our area.
Jonna Crocker:And so she said, Why don't we start one? And our whole family was like, That is a pretty crazy idea. But we ran with it, and we started fighting hard in 2015. With the mission of helping kids to not feel alone in their journey, I was diagnosed right around the same time. And so I had always known what it was like having a sister with a rare disease, but then I started learning what the rare disease journey was like myself, and same for her vice versa.
Jonna Crocker:And so together, living through the experience, we wanted to help others who are in our position to feel less alone.
Lauren Chuhta:Yeah. And that's a depth of perspective too, right? We had this perspective as someone with rare disease yourself and also this perspective as someone with a loved one who had a rare disease. So imagine that brought a lot of depth to what you're working to do with this organization.
Jonna Crocker:Absolutely. And our parents, very involved as well, and they bring in the perspective of having a child with a rare disease. So they know firsthand what that's like and they connect with the parents as well. So we're really able to come at it from all angles and take that personal experience and make some good out of it.
Lauren Chuhta:Tell me more about that process of going from the idea to the actual, here we are, we started an organization.
Jonna Crocker:So it started with little things like, What is our logo going to look like? And if you see our logo, it's actually made out of DNA strands. And that's because eighty percent of rare diseases are genetic in origin. So we were really intentional about creating this icon that was friendly, but using the DNA as inspiration there. We also came up with our core values, and at the time we called them our hardcore values, and each letter of hardcore corresponded with a different word.
Jonna Crocker:That was one of the values that we wanted to base our foundation around and really building out our mission, building out what we wanted to do. And at the time, was just supporting kids, so sending care packages and small packages with stickers and coloring books. And now it's grown to be so much more than we could have ever imagined at, what was it, 10 and 11 years old. We've really been able to do so much more. But at the time, it was just this small dream of, okay, what are the little things that we can do to make
Lauren Chuhta:a difference? How has that support expanded? It started out with your parents and you supporting your sister, and then you all supporting each other, and slowly building out this organization. Who else came into that network, and what did they offer?
Jonna Crocker:So to build the foundation, we started helping kids in our area. When I first got sick, I was in the hospital for months at a time. And so our first kids that we helped through the foundation were kids who I had met while I was admitted into the hospital. That was really special to be able to see firsthand what it's like for those kids to go through their journeys. You see them in their hospital gowns, going through procedures, going through everything that they are, and for us to be able to help that way.
Jonna Crocker:So those were the first people that we helped. How did we get people to help us so we can help them, right? How did we start building that community network? And it really started with family and friends. We built it up in our school system.
Jonna Crocker:And so at the time, I was in middle school, and our friends in middle school and the teachers would participate in the events that we were creating. And then we built up the community based on who was around us. And we started to create our board of directors. One of the members of our board was my sister's baseball coach. And so, you know, as local community members who saw what we were doing, saw what we lived through as individuals, and wanted to give back and help our community.
Lauren Chuhta:This is a very personal structure, right? Like you said, community. How have you gone about looping in less personal entities maybe, right? So if we're getting support from a corporation or a business or someone outside this community. How do you go about creating that personal connection, looping people in to that community?
Jonna Crocker:So when we meet with businesses to talk about sponsorships or starting to support our organization, we have a conversation with them to tell them about what we do and why it's so important. So we share stories about some of our kids and what they're going through and how we're able to provide assistance and what their financial assistance will help us to be able to create. For example, we've partnered with a local car dealership, and one of the kids in our foundation was always in these infusion centers, and they had these old outdated iPads that would barely work, and that's what they'd give them for entertainment. And these kids are sitting in these infusion chairs for up to eight hours a day playing on these old, bad iPads. We told the story to one of our new supporters, they bought five brand new iPads to give to the kid so he could give them to the infusion center that he goes to.
Jonna Crocker:And so we try to build these relationships where figuring out what the donors are passionate about and being able to bring those things to life. So if they really want to help support kids with getting a specific medical device, or maybe they know someone with a feeding tube and they want to help us supply formula for a year for our kids in the foundation who have feeding tubes. We really try to build it to be a meaningful experience for them and help them contribute to specific projects that will make a big impact and so they can see that their work is is really being put into action.
Lauren Chuhta:Yeah. What I love about that iPad story is how that sponsor gave the iPads to the kid to then give to the center. Right? So creating this flow of connection and support. That's how it builds in.
Lauren Chuhta:Right? A connection to a, to connection to b, and that's a less personal way to talk about it. Right? Though these are names, and these are faces, and these are people that'll come together.
Jonna Crocker:Absolutely. And we went with the kid and together we delivered these iPads to the infusion centers and saw how joyful the nurses were to be able to provide that experience for their kids. And the kid was so excited to be able to be part of that. And that also helps him to not feel alone in his journey. That loops back to the original mission as well, right?
Jonna Crocker:Because now he's supporting other kids through similar experiences that he's having. So it helps him to feel less alone as well. We want our sponsors to feel part of that. We want them to be part of our journey with us. And some are more hands on involved than others.
Jonna Crocker:However, they wanna be part of that. When you join Fighting Hard, we always call it Fighting Hard Family. So as a sponsor, as a supporter, you automatically become involved in that family.
Lauren Chuhta:Yeah. Do you have any more of those stories? I'd love to hear.
Jonna Crocker:Oh my gosh. So many. We've had some loyal supporters. Our biggest event is a golf outing. Single year we have our fighting hard for the kids golf outing.
Jonna Crocker:Each year we highlight a certain family and what they're going through and use part of the proceeds to make a bigger gift that we wouldn't normally be able to do without big donations like that. One year, we highlighted one of our families. This girl, she's absolutely phenomenal. She has a disability where she, at the time, was not able to walk at all. So she was bound to a wheelchair, but was going through this treatment down in, I believe it was Texas, where she would balance on this walking plate, and it would vibrate, and it would help her legs to be able to understand how to walk again.
Jonna Crocker:It was slowly getting some progress, but she had to go to Texas every time to get the treatment. And she would be out there for several weeks, and it would help her. And then she wouldn't go out there for another year and they would lose the progress that they had built. So the plate was around $6,000 And with the funding that we received from our golf outing, we were able to purchase her that vibration plate. And at the next year's golf outing, she was walking around the gazebo.
Jonna Crocker:Wow. Literally, we gifted her the ability to be able to walk. So it's not something you think about every day to be able to give them that gift through the sponsorships that we've received, through the support that we had. And then you see her next year literally walking around and just enjoying life from this new lens that she was never able to see life in that way before. It it was really very special.
Lauren Chuhta:That's a very direct outcome. Right? Like you said it, $6,000 in, and then she was able to regain the ability to walk. It's very powerful.
Jonna Crocker:Yeah. And they're not always like that. At the end of the day, that walking plate could have given her a little bit more mobility or could have just shown her that she could do it. Like, not all donations will directly correspond to this life changing outcome, but for the most part, every donation really is changing a life in a big or small way. So even for the smaller donations where we are helping a family, we'll send dinners after a long day at the hospital.
Jonna Crocker:If you think about that, that's a mom who has been in the hospital all day long, sometimes for weeks at a time with her child. Her mind's on a million different things, and now she doesn't have to worry about dinner, or she doesn't have to worry about gas. And so even smaller donations make a big impact. And I think that's something that's really special about fighting hard is that every single donation goes towards making a true impact for these families.
Lauren Chuhta:Absolutely. This phenomenon of the dollar goes in, we want impact to come out. What have you found about that process at the Fighting Heart Foundation? You talk here about this is a unique environment where you can really see that impact by alleviating stress to a bunch of different levels. Sometimes it's the ability to walk.
Lauren Chuhta:Sometimes it's relieving the stress off a mother for cooking. But for you as a founder and an operator, what was your biggest lesson in learning how to grease those wheels of that process?
Jonna Crocker:At Fighting Hard, we currently financially assist over 65 families. And so that's a lot of relationships to manage. At the beginning, it was really hard because you want to give so much to everyone, right? You see these families going through these challenges, and most of these families, you're dealing with chronic illnesses that are constant struggles for these families. So it's not just that you're going to give a $50 gift card and then they're going be okay.
Jonna Crocker:So a big part of it for us was trying to figure out how do we best support a large amount of families all at the same time. And what we learned is every family needs something different. Some families might be well off financially, but they're still dealing with the feelings of isolation of the rare disease world. So their kid wants to be around other people who get it. So for us, that's holding events where the kids can get together and talk to each other.
Jonna Crocker:We hold in person events, but we also hold virtual support groups. A lot of times, it's just being around other people that get it. Then we have other families who are living in the hospital for weeks or months at a time. So those families need more financial assistance when it comes to gas, traveling, somewhere to stay to be close to their child. A lot of times, some of that care is out of state.
Jonna Crocker:And so I think that was really the biggest challenge for us is how do we get to be the people who decide where that money goes and who gets the financial assistance and how much do they get? And it really came down to we know every family personally. We know the parents by name. We know the kids by name. We know what their stories are.
Jonna Crocker:And being able to understand where they're at in their journey and what we can do to help. We can't always do everything, but if we can't financially support all the way, then we'll also refer them to other organizations in the area who might be able to assist in different ways, or we'll be able to give part of the proceeds towards something that they're working on.
Lauren Chuhta:Yeah. And that personalized approach sounds like it's something that does really stem directly from the assets you have in your perspective, right? So you have this unique vision as a founder, as the operator, and as a constituent, right? As somebody who has benefited from this network of support, and that's rounded out underneath your business background as well. Do you see yourself as a bridge?
Lauren Chuhta:Do you enter different spaces and find yourself connecting people?
Jonna Crocker:I try. I think that it's really important to connect people together. And if they don't know what we're doing as a foundation, then they can't help because they don't know what our mission is and they don't know how they can support. Right? So as founder and board member and in charge of the foundation, it is important for me to be that bridge between our families and our network to these sponsors and these local businesses and organizations.
Jonna Crocker:So I'm a bridge in that way to connect our sponsors to our families. But also, we do try to bridge between different organizations as well. There are a lot of local organizations who are doing incredible things, and so if we can partner with them, that's always a really great experience. And so for us, we can't take on all of the cancer families in our area because we have limited funding and because we are trying to make sure that our resources go to the right places, but we also get to be that bridge to say, Hey, I know we can't financially support you at this stage. We'll send a care package to your child.
Jonna Crocker:We'll help them to know that they're not alone. If there are any local events that they'd like to come to, they're welcome to come. But for financial assistance or for extra assistance that you might need, here are these five organizations in our area who are all helping local kids with cancer, and here's how you can connect with them. And so I think sometimes we also are a bridge to other resources where sometimes we might not be able to provide all of the help, but we can bridge you to the places that can help. So do try to connect as many people as possible whenever we can.
Lauren Chuhta:That's sustainable impact all around. Right? So to be able to bridge internally, to bring in these voices and these people who you see can help each other out, and then also to be able to bridge externally. So knowing the extents at which you can operate, right, to maintain your quality of service, to maintain your quality of support, but also knowing that that support is elsewhere. So to make those connections and recognize it is a bigger team and a bigger game.
Lauren Chuhta:Jonna, what would you share as advice or insight for someone else who's looking to found their own organization?
Jonna Crocker:I would say it's a long process. It can be hard. We use that word a lot, right? It can be a hard journey, but also it's one of the most fulfilling things that I have ever done. And it really brings me so much joy when I see a family that is able to be together with their kid and enjoy experiences that they wouldn't be able to without us.
Jonna Crocker:It's really incredible when you look at it that way and you see the impact that you are making. So I would say it is a hard journey, but it is so fulfilling and so worth it. I would really look at what you're thinking about doing and see if those resources already exist in your community. If they do exist in your community, you can become involved in that organization, become a volunteer, help, and possibly even become part of their board or part of their advisors. Look around what's in your community.
Jonna Crocker:If you can find something that aligns with your interests and what you're passionate about, be part of it. If you can't find anything, don't be afraid to be the person to create it because that gap exists, and you can bridge that gap. Don't be afraid to take the initiative. If you're passionate about it, if you have the time to do it, if you have the resources, go for it. Connect with other founders.
Jonna Crocker:The founder community is really important in helping each other know what to do, know how to get started, but you can definitely do it. And it's a really fulfilling experience.
Lauren Chuhta:Jonna, you have had over ten years of this experience. Right? What insight do you have as far as not getting burnt out or being able to sustain the effort that you're putting in, but also the joy that you're getting out?
Jonna Crocker:Burnout is a very real thing, and it's something that you have to be careful with. The work that we do, it fuels me to know that we're making a difference, but it can become hard on the back end, especially you're taking on the burden of these families as well. We unfortunately had a loss in the foundation, and that's really hard when you care so deeply about these families. And so I think that, for me, the biggest way that I've tried to avoid burnout is to lean on the people around me, to lean on the network that we've built. We have a phenomenal board of directors who's always there to help us.
Jonna Crocker:We have amazing volunteers who help to make our events run very smoothly. Sometimes with big events like the golf outing or clothing drives or gift auctions, there's a lot happening all at once, and you cannot take all of that on your own. And so people aren't always going to ask you what they can do. But if you ask them and say, Hey, we're looking for people who are going to give us a couple hours of their time to volunteer at our golf outing, almost always we've been able to fill up those slots very quickly because people want to help. They just don't know how.
Jonna Crocker:And so giving people ways to help, giving people opportunities to get involved, to help, I think that was a really big thing for me to learn, that you can't always do it all on your own. And if you have big ideas, you have to be able to delegate those ideas and work with others on those ideas to make them happen. Honestly, my family has been a very big resource. We all pitch in to the foundation. We all have our areas of strength.
Jonna Crocker:My mom will talk on the phone with parents all the time to help them not feel alone and to ask them what's going on and to be there as a support system. My sister has created the entire website that we have from scratch. She does most of our social media work. And so I feel like we all have our roles and our pieces, and that helps to reduce burnout when everybody's working together on the goal.
Lauren Chuhta:Absolutely. Jonna, we have had a rich conversation on the different actors in this impact landscape, right, specific to your foundation. I'm interested to dive into the business partners here. So you come from a business background. You run the foundation while working full time at this medical company.
Lauren Chuhta:How do you think that business can sustainably support social good?
Jonna Crocker:That's a great question. So like you mentioned, I went to business school. And while I'd founded the foundation before and worked on it beforehand in college, My college's motto was, Our business is a better world. I feel like that's the reason that I went there because I resonated with it. But I also learned a lot more about that phrase through the work that I did at school and being hands on.
Jonna Crocker:Business is a better world means that, yes, as a business, there's always gonna be profit as a big motivation. Like, I'm not gonna sugarcoat it and say that profit isn't a driving factor in businesses. That's how you have to run. That's how you have to sustain yourself. But how can you be conscious about social good at the same time, and how can you make an impact through your business and through your organization?
Jonna Crocker:For some organizations, it's through the work that they're doing. I work for a medical device company, and we are changing lives. By being able to provide this device, it's very special to be on the back end of that and be able to get people access to this device and help them to know that it exists. That alone is social good because whether the device would work for them or not, at least letting them know that it's available option for them is almost an obligation. Right?
Jonna Crocker:There are businesses that might have nothing to do on the outside. You might not think it has anything to do with social good or social impact. Right? But how can that business then give back to local organizations? Or think about ESG, think about sustainability, think about how to run their business in a way that is making things better for the community around them.
Jonna Crocker:So I think business and enterprise have a role in making our world and our communities a better place. And I think that there are a lot of different ways that they can do that.
Lauren Chuhta:Absolutely. And so you had mentioned earlier that people wanna help. It's a matter of presenting that opportunity. Do you think the same holds true for businesses? Do businesses wanna help and they need to be presented with that opportunity?
Jonna Crocker:I do think so. From the experiences that I've had, businesses are supportive of what we do. I know I've mentioned the golf outing several times. With our golf outing, we had 39 sponsors this past year, all of those being local businesses who wanted to help and be there. Some of those sponsors were there on the golf course with us for the day and meeting the families and talking to them and seeing what they do.
Jonna Crocker:For others, it's sending in that donation and just knowing that it is going towards good, right? Some business leaders choose to be super hands on and they want to see the impact for themselves. They want to meet the families. They want to be there and feel connected to it on this physical, visible level. Others will send us a donation and just trust that we are doing the right thing with it and that that money is going towards something good.
Jonna Crocker:And so we always acknowledge all of our sponsors. We always send a thank you letter after an event, we tell them what the money went towards. I think it's important to acknowledge where your money is coming from and to thank those people and to tell them what they're impacting. I think that's important. But I do believe that people want to help, that people are there.
Jonna Crocker:If you think about it for your own personal self and for your journey, I think that there are always opportunities that present themselves. Because at the end of
Lauren Chuhta:the day, it is people who run businesses, right? So this phenomenon that you have found in these interpersonal connections, you do think that scales pretty strongly?
Jonna Crocker:I believe it does. And as we've grown the foundation, that support has just become tenfold. The way we've grown the foundation is by having these amazing supporters and these amazing businesses behind us. And I think that at the end of the day, we are all people, and people run businesses. Behind it, they're still a human being.
Jonna Crocker:They still have emotions. They still care about things. And I think if we can all come together and think about what you're passionate about and if you can use business for social good. And like I said, that comes in many different forms. So if you're a business owner or a business leader out there, I would really encourage you to think about what you're doing through your business and what you're passionate about and what causes are close to your heart and how you might be able to support those.
Jonna Crocker:Jonna, and you
Lauren Chuhta:are a testament to the joy and the fulfillment that can come out of realizing that passion. I feel that very strongly having known you and having had this conversation today.
Jonna Crocker:Thank you. I feel super passionate about it, and I feel that everybody can find their passions in different areas. But for me, it just kind of got handed to me. Living with a rare disease was not my choice, and you would not wish it on anyone. But by living through it, I realized the importance of supporting people through that.
Jonna Crocker:I think that everybody has similar experiences where whatever it is that you deal with in life, your hardships, your struggles, to be able to take that and make something positive out of it is a really fulfilling experience. You don't have to create your own organization out of it. If you can find ways to give back, if there are people around you who are working towards similar missions, think it's really special. I think my biggest word that I always go back to is community. Community is so essential.
Jonna Crocker:And by building communities, wherever that is, whatever that's for, you're making a difference in the world, and communities are all around you. So you open your eyes and you look around and you find those areas of joy, I think you can find joy yourself by being part of a community no matter what that is.
Lauren Chuhta:Jonna, what's next for the Fighting Hard Foundation?
Jonna Crocker:So we just hit $1,000,000 raised, and we are really excited about that. It's a goal that could have never envisioned at 11 years old that we would be raising a million dollars. And so we really want to take that momentum and roll with it and just keep growing, keep moving forward. We're really trying to build more relationships like the one I mentioned with the car company, where finding companies that have specific goals in mind or helping companies create that. Recently, we've purchased three adaptive tricycles.
Jonna Crocker:And these kids who previously were not able to ride a bike with their siblings or their friends now have this custom bike that's made for them and that will grow with them so they can ride their bike with their family. They can be out in the neighborhood, enjoy the fresh air, and they'll have this gift for years to come. Right now, we're looking for a company who's willing to sponsor several more bikes so we can provide that opportunity for more kids. So finding opportunities like that where companies can make this tangible impact and they can see that their work is going towards something so exciting for these families, building more of those relationships like that, and just continuing to build. So that's something that I'm really looking forward to.
Lauren Chuhta:Jonna, I'm excited to stay tuned. You can learn more about Jonna's work at fightinghardfoundation.org. Thanks for listening to this episode of Building with Carnelian. If you enjoyed today's conversation, take a second to visit carnelianventures.com and learn more about her work at the intersection of impact.