Episode 120
Episode 120 of Tales From the Trenches Tuesdays again features Mario Hernandez, a two-time exited founder, proud father and husband, and someone who has made a deliberate pivot toward something that matters deeply to him: helping nonprofits raise more money through LinkedIn and building an AI venture for the sector. He came to this work through a college consulting competition at Babson — a semester-long project where he chose to work with a small, lonely nonprofit table while everyone else chased Nike and Apple. That decision stuck with him. Years later, it became his life’s work.
We started our conversation talking about LinkedIn metrics, and Mario didn’t hold back. The platform keeps shifting — views became impressions, algorithms change every few weeks — and too many nonprofits are chasing numbers that don’t translate into dollars raised or relationships built. Mario shared a story that stopped me in my tracks: a CEO in Aruba hired him for a keynote after discovering him through a LinkedIn post. She never liked it. Never commented. Never even sent a connection request. She just read it, resonated with it, and booked him.
Stop focusing on the impressions. Stop focusing on the virality. That doesn’t move the needle forward.
The takeaway isn’t that impressions are useless — it’s that chasing them is a distraction. Mario’s advice is to focus on the five people who reacted, reach out to them, ask how you can help, and build from there. Relationship-first. Always.
The Future of Philanthropy
We also got into the future of fundraising, and Mario’s outlook is genuinely exciting. He believes corporate philanthropy — currently hovering around 5% of total giving — is going to grow significantly, driven by internal employee pressure and external consumer expectations. And here’s the part that surprised me: he’s not talking about Fortune 500 companies. He’s talking about small and medium enterprises, which he says generate more trust with individual donors than the big names do. Nonprofits that figure that out now will have a real competitive advantage.
We also touched on the über-wealthy — like Mackenzie Scott — and Mario made a point I think is worth sitting with. Over-relying on mega-donors is the philanthropic equivalent of hollowing out the middle class. It’s not sustainable, and it’s not a strategy. His alternative? Venture philanthropy tied to startup exits. Six hundred billion dollars a year flows through liquidity events, and almost none of it is directed toward causes. Even a small percentage earmarked at the moment of an IPO or acquisition could change the funding landscape for nonprofits dramatically.
Mario left me with more to think about than almost any guest I’ve had on this show. And I barely got through my list of questions.
Just click on the picture of Mario below to hear our conversation.
L’chaim,
jack
