He previously served as a Senior Consultant for Bridge Philanthropic Consulting LLC, the nation's largest African-American fundraising firm. Prior, he was the Nonprofit Engagement Manager at CariClub, an AI tech company that connects young professionals to leadership roles on nonprofit boards.
He has formerly worked in a corporate philanthropic capacity for companies such as Morgan Stanley and Toyota.
Through these professional titles, he gained experience supporting an effective philanthropic strategy that increases social impact, external/internal engagement, and nonprofit capacity building. He was humbled to be named one of CauseArtists’s “20 Inspiring African Americans Impacting the World Through Social Impact & Social Innovation,” named one of Startup Boost’s NYC 33 under 33, and has been featured in several publications such as Black Enterprise, Blavity, Nonprofit Technology News, and Blacks in Technology. It’s Brandon’s passion to empower any constituent looking to make a positive social impact on the world.
- CEO Story: Brandon has always been a catalyst for change for the better world since he was still in his high school days, whether it's a fundraising activity or advocacies. He always believed that entrepreneurship is the pathway to creating generational wealth. Throughout his professional career, he has developed a mentality that the future of entrepreneurship was an evolution of business, and the impact was completely intertwined. When the pandemic hit, so many non-profit organizations were helping the most at-risk areas that didn’t have the resources they needed. While many companies wanted to engage and help the community but didn’t have the strategy and didn’t know who to support and that is where Brandon’s philanthropic idea was born.
- Business Service: Helping non-profit organizations with fundraising, strategy, and recruitment. To small businesses, help implement strategic initiatives that address critical social challenges while achieving business objectives. Completely customized for each client's needs.
- Secret Sauce: A diverse roster of talented consultants, who demonstrated the commitment and ability to create change.
- CEO Hack: Your network correlates with your net worth. Book mention: The Referral Lifetime – creates a framework of systematic way of generating a steady stream of new business through consistent and qualified referrals. Building authentic and trusting relationships rather than making a sale.
- CEO Nugget: Lean on to mentors. Identifying individuals who you look up to professionally. Learning the steps before they reach where they are. Build relationships and ask for advice.
- CEO Defined: Jack of all trades the master of none, so dynamic and multi-faceted. Wearing different hats from strategy, operations, and team building, leadership to product design and everything. To have a diverse skillset and mentality to really be successful.
Website: parkesphilanthropy.com
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Transcription
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00:26 – Intro
Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.
00:53 – Gresham Harkless
Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gretchen from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today at Brandon Parks of Parks Philanthropy. Brandon, super excited to have you on the show.
01:03 – Brandon Parkes
Thanks, Professor. Really appreciate it. Definitely looking forward to the conversation.
01:06 – Gresham Harkless
Yes, it should be an awesome conversation. You're doing so many phenomenal things. So before we jumped into that, I wanted to read a little bit more you can hear about some o things. Brandon is Ce of Parks Philanthropy, a firm, leveraging over 90 experience. Parks Philanth equips nonprofits, cor and Brandon is CEO and founder of Parks Philanthropy, a social impact consulting firm. Leveraging over 90 plus years of collective experience, Parks Philanthropy is dedicated to equipping nonprofits, corporations, and individuals with ideas and resources and support they need to positively impact the world. He previously served as a senior consultant for Bridge Philanthropic Consulting LLC, the nation's largest African-American fundraising firm. And prior was a head of the nonprofit engagement at Carry Club, an AI tech company that connects young professionals to leadership roles on nonprofit boards. He formerly worked in a corporate philanthropic capacity for companies such as Morgan Stanley and also Toyota. And through these professional titles, he gained experience supporting effective philanthropic strategy that increases social impact, external and internal engagement and nonprofit capacity building. He has been humbled to be named 1 of Cause Artists 20, inspiring African Americans impacting the world through social impact and social innovation. He's named 1 of startup booths NYC's 33 under 33. It has been featured in several publications such as Black Enterprise, Blavity, Nonprofit Technology News, and Black Sun Technology. It's Brandon's passion to empower and const any constituent looking to make a positive social impact on the world. Brandon, excited to have you on the show. You're doing so many phenomenal things. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?
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02:42 – Brandon Parkes
I am ready. Yeah, thanks. Appreciate it. That was a great bio.
02:46 – Gresham Harkless
I know. It was a lot easier reading that I imagined for you to accomplish all the things. So what I wanted to do, I guess, before we got to those accomplishments, we were 01:00. Here, a little bit more on how you guys started when I call your CEO story.
03:00 – Brandon Parkes
Yeah, 100%. So I'd say just growing up as an LGBTQ Black American, catalyzing efforts towards a more equitable world has always been extremely important to me. Whether it was organizing advocacy and fundraising events in high school, galvanizing my fraternity for volunteer efforts in college, my passion for really catalyzing a measurable change was always pretty palpable.
From there, I dedicated my career to the social sector, particularly working for and with corporations and leaders to really build initiatives and pathways to support innovative organizations making that measurable change. Concurrently, being a first generation son, it had always been important me as well to really leverage the opportunities my parents created for me to further develop an enduring family legacy. And from a young age, I always believed that entrepreneurship was a pathway to creating generational wealth and was always perpetually creating side hustles, small businesses throughout my entire youth. So throughout my professional career, I'd really developed the mentality that the future of entrepreneurship was an evolution where business and impact were completely intertwined rather than mutually exclusive. So why did I start my business? Well, when the pandemic hit, I'd seen so many nonprofit organizations who were helping just the most at-risk communities that didn't have the resources and support they needed to really meet the new challenges of today. So many companies desperately wanting to engage their employees in community efforts in this digital era, but didn't have the support or strategies in place to do so, and individuals who really wanted to help others, but didn't know how, what organizations to support, etc. And actually when the idea of Park Philanthropy came about, my co-founder Ed and I both had worked in the social sector for a while now, had just such a great network of just amazing social impact practitioners. And that's when we really got to work to really develop the operations systems, the processes in place, and especially the team of consultants to really just create a consulting firm to really just supply just any type of constituent, like you mentioned with the resource and support they need, it's really making meaningful change.
04:54 – 05:16
Gresham Harkless: Nice. I absolutely love that. And, you know, definitely, you know, 1 of those things that came out, you know, during the pandemic, a lot of times when there's so much disruption and change, we sometimes forget that there's a lot of opportunity and you having that opportunity to kind of, you know, take the bull by the reins, so to speak, and be able to kind of create that, you know, the first of all, the ability, the resources that you talked about. But I think even, you know, like you, we saw a lot of organizations that wanted to
05:16 – 05:22
Gresham Harkless: do good, but didn't know how to do good or what steps to take. And it sounds like you've been able to kind of build something that was able to bridge that gap.
05:22 – 05:50
Brandon Parkes: 100%. It was interesting because during the pandemic, you know, during that time, we didn't know when it was going to quote unquote, end. So and I was always like, okay, let's launch this week, next week. And now he's always like, oh, let's wait another week, a few weeks, a month. And then we were like, you know, let's just do it. And it actually, we skyrocketed. There was just so much demand and so much need for the resources that we're providing, the solutions we're providing, access to our team that we're providing that, yeah, we were able to
05:50 – 05:56
Brandon Parkes: just create a really profitable business and also supporting just the societal needs within our community, which is
05:56 – 06:17
Gresham Harkless: great. Yeah, absolutely. And I love that you had that entrepreneurial, you know, temperature, that spirit at a very young age and was always doing those things. And, and I love how you know, you talked about, you know, not having to, you know, figure out should I do good or should I build a successful business when you can do both together. And I think that's where the true innovation happens. You don't have to choose either or you can have both and make a huge
06:18 – 06:19
Brandon Parkes: impact. Could not be more.
06:19 – 06:28
Gresham Harkless: Awesome, awesome, awesome. So I wanted to drill down a little bit more, hear a little bit more about Parks Philanthropy. Could you take us through a little bit more on how you serve these clients, how you're making that impact?
06:28 – 07:04
Brandon Parkes: Yeah, 100%. So similarly what you mentioned, like leveraging over 90 plus years of collected experience, partial land to be equips nonprofits, corporations, individuals with the ideas, resources and support they need to really make an impact. So for nonprofit organizations, we support them with fundraising efforts, strategy, hiring needs, recruitment for small medium sized businesses. We help them innovate and implement strategic initiatives that address critical social challenges while achieving business objectives. And for individuals, we support them with the planning, developing, and execution of any philanthropic mission that's personally meaningful to them while also ensuring that they're making a
07:04 – 07:19
Brandon Parkes: measurable impact. So the way that we operate is we build completely customized teams of our consultants for each of our partner engagement to really ensure that each 1 of our clients or partners is getting not only that specific expertise, but really a culture fit of the team to really ensure success.
07:20 – 07:30
Gresham Harkless: Awesome, awesome, awesome. So what would you consider to be what I like to call your secret sauce? And this could be for yourself individually, the organization, or a combination of both. But what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?
07:30 – 08:01
Brandon Parkes: Definitely. I'd say their secret sauce, honestly, is just our diverse roster of talented consultants, which basically is just an amazing collective of just the most dynamic individuals. Honestly, I've had the privilege of meeting what each really demonstrated the commitment and ability to creating change through their lifelong career dedicated to positive social impact. So every single 1 of our consultants has had just an entire career dedicated to this work, for example. They all are just inherently driven by making a change. And yeah, I'd say that really is what our secret sauce is. And for each of our
08:01 – 08:28
Brandon Parkes: partner engagements, like I mentioned, we build customized teams of our consultants and then as a firm provide the oversight and management needed for flawless execution. So I'd say, you know, our consultants just bring such a wealth of experience to each of our engagements. They have a commitment of doing things differently. They just really offer just a fresh perspective and like really customized counsel that even when I'm getting in the weeds of some of our client engagements, it just sparks such innovative thinking and delivers such adaptive solutions to our clients that it really just, it just really
08:28 – 08:33
Brandon Parkes: is just unparalleled to me on the understanding that they have of really driving tangible change.
08:34 – 08:50
Gresham Harkless: Yeah, that's so huge. And I love, as you said, to have a kind of commitment or maybe even a history of doing things differently. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or a habit that you have. What's something that makes you more effective and efficient?
08:51 – 09:18
Brandon Parkes: Yeah, 100%. So I'd say in terms of like a book, if you will. So I'm all about the network effect and really believe that your network correlates with your network. So I usually believe that an individual is just a few degrees away from any individual you're looking to connect with if you really do your research or deep dive into your personal professional network, who's a friend of a friend of a friend, for instance, and a book that I had read early in my career is called the referral of a lifetime, which essentially creates a framework for
09:18 – 09:49
Brandon Parkes: a system, a systematic way to really generate just a steady stream of just new business through consistent and qualified referrals. It really just emphasizes that any CEO, business owner, individual really should be focusing on people, Just really building those authentic relationships and trust rather than just making a sale can be really transformative to just your deal flow, the way that you're able to make more business, for example, really ensuring that your mom, your dad, your cousins, for example, anybody who you're really familiar with are also very familiar of yourself, what your offerings are, for if and
09:49 – 10:18
Brandon Parkes: when they're in communication or conversations with somebody who potentially may need your services or what you're providing. And they think of you top of mind also. So really just focusing on the networking fact, really be focusing on just building just authentic and trusting relationships with individuals rather than making that sale. Because I feel like when we're creating partnerships, for example, we not only want to ensure that we are working with individuals or companies or leaders that really are inherently trying to just make a change and do good in the world. But then also, you know, you
10:18 – 10:32
Brandon Parkes: want to work with people who you vibe with and really have that connection with. So when you do have that authentic relationship, it really does create just a strong pipeline of new opportunities and really ensures that the opportunities that partnerships you really are working on are just really mutually beneficial for each party.
10:32 – 10:56
Gresham Harkless: Nice, I absolutely love that. I have not heard of that book. I actually have to check that out and just hear all the awesome things, but I love that network in effect. Cause I think so many times I say, you know, in life and definitely in business as well too, I say, we forget about the human aspect of business. Obviously in the work that you could do, you could definitely see in here that you have that at the forefront. But I think so many times we're getting so focused on, I have to make this goal or
10:56 – 11:12
Gresham Harkless: this sale or whatever it might be that we forget about the why of what it is that we're doing, which is to impact people usually in a positive way. So we get back to doing that in our relationships and our organizations and everything we can in our business, then I think really phenomenal things can happen from there.
11:12 – 11:37
Brandon Parkes: You hit the nail on the head there. I definitely think also just with the pandemic and the spiritual age. It really is, you know, we're just always grinding, always operating, always executing, for example. And it really, even for myself, I always have to remind myself to just get back to that why, for example, just really realize that, you know, this isn't just another check mark on my to-do list, but this is really, you know, a person, an individual, for example, not just a sale, this is my team members, not just individuals who I need to support
11:37 – 11:48
Brandon Parkes: and really work with, not just my COO or 1 of my consultants. And really kind of just ensuring that we are really relating back to the people aspect of things and not just the business aspect of any of our initiatives or endeavors.
11:49 – 12:02
Gresham Harkless: Awesome, awesome, awesome. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this is a little bit more word of wisdom or piece of advice, but it's something you might tell your younger business self if you were to hop into a time machine or potentially something that you would tell your favorite client?
12:03 – 12:19
Brandon Parkes: 100%. So I'm, like you mentioned about the networking fact and the people aspect of the thing, I always think another is just always cultivating nurturing relationships with potential mentors or advisors. Just really identifying individuals that you look up to professionally or personally, in your industry, your profession,
12:20 – 12:20
Gresham Harkless: really just kind
12:20 – 12:46
Brandon Parkes: of, I'm not studying them, but really learning what steps and mistakes that they made to really get to where they are and really try to develop relationships with individuals who you look up to and who you believe in to really just gain that kind of strategic advice. With that, with advisors and mentors, they also, you know, just looking for people who really believe in you and your mission really can be transformative to your business. I'd say, you know, nobody knows all the answers. So I'm all about, you know, just leveraging support strategically within your network, identifying
12:47 – 12:56
Brandon Parkes: individuals who you really look up to, to really kind of just idolize, really learn from them to ensure that, you know, you have just the community infrastructure in place to really skyrocket and really be successful.
12:57 – 13:07
Gresham Harkless: Nice. And so I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote unquote CEOs on this show. So Brandon, what does being a CEO mean to you?
13:08 – 13:40
Brandon Parkes: Yeah, I'd honestly say being a CEO to me means almost being a jack of all trades, master of none. Just the life of a CEO I feel like is just so dynamic, multifaceted, and it means you're just wearing so many different hats from strategy to operations, to team building, to leadership, to product design, everything that you know, you just have to have just a really diverse skill set and mentality to really kind of be successful. I also think with being a CEO and with that notion, it's also realizing where you're lacking or where you don't necessarily
13:40 – 13:49
Brandon Parkes: have the best insights or where you're lacking in certain skill sets and expectations to really ensure that you're building and empowering a team that really complements you to really ensure success.
13:50 – 14:06
Gresham Harkless: Perfect, perfect, perfect. Well, Brandon, truly appreciate that definition. Of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and of course how best people can get out of view find out about all the awesome things you entertain more kind of.
14:06 – 14:38
Brandon Parkes: Yeah thank you really appreciate it. Yeah I just say I advise like any CEO or business owner or leader to really always think about how they can activate their employees, their brand, their operations, their leadership to really just addressing pressing social issues of our time that really align with company values. I feel like just doing good, just being impactful, it's good business. I think when I'm really speaking to early stage startups or CEOs of like seed stage, pre-seed companies, they're really focused on just business growth, sales, for example, building their team. And they really kind of
14:38 – 15:05
Brandon Parkes: don't realize that, you know, you can create these different initiatives and embed social impact in the DNA of your company, where you're really addressing vital social needs while also extremely achieving business objectives. So really always trying to take a look at, you know, what and how you're doing, what your why is, for instance, how you can potentially even do just low hanging fruit of ideas and initiatives to really just leverage yourself on and leverage your brand and leverage your operations to really just do good in the world as well. They're not mutually exclusive.
15:06 – 15:10
Gresham Harkless: Absolutely, absolutely. And people that want to get a hold of you, what's the best way for them to do that?
15:10 – 15:30
Brandon Parkes: Yeah, so definitely can be reached at Brandon at Parkchillanthropy.com and our website is www.parkchillanthropy.com as well. So yeah, if anybody is interested in, you know, any resources to support really deepen their impact, whether a nonprofit organization, corporation, individual, wealth management firm, we're always more than happy to help and really listening to see what your needs are and seeing how we could potentially team up.
15:30 – 15:56
Gresham Harkless: Absolutely love that. And we will have the links and information in the show notes. And I absolutely, again, love all the awesome things that you're doing. Love even more, I think, what it represents, where sometimes, again, we could get in the kind of mind frame and the focus of saying either or. But if we can actually say not either or but both and both but better because we're thinking about how we can make that impact in such a unique way. I absolutely love that and everything that you're doing and the kind of like the domino effect
15:56 – 16:05
Gresham Harkless: that it creates in the organizations that you work with and helping them to think differently and just how that trickles down from there. So definitely appreciate you, my friend, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of
16:05 – 16:09
Brandon Parkes: the day. You too, thanks for the opportunity, Rush. And really thank you for creating this space. It's really appreciated.
16:09 – Outro
Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.
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