Mission, Money, and the Middle Ground: How Bill Strathman Learned to Lead Between Two Worlds
Former CEO of Network for Good and longtime social enterprise advocate Bill Strathman joins Buddy Teaster to share his extraordinary journey from childhood medical challenges to leading one of the most impactful digital fundraising platforms in the country, reshaping how nonprofits think about sustainability.
In this episode, Bill opens up about the struggle between following purpose vs. chasing profit, the collapse of Arthur Andersen, and the power of aligning mission with money. With candor and insight, he explains how social enterprise can unleash generosity at scale — and why the small, joyful moments matter most in the end.
The Tailspin:
Before he was helping nonprofits raise billions online, Bill Strathman was a kid in suburban D.C. who had already faced his first major setback.
“When I was two and a half, I just stopped growing,” he shares.
Bill was diagnosed with a severe growth hormone deficiency, leading to years of experimental treatment involving roughly 2,000 growth hormone injections from ages six to eighteen. The experience, rather than defeating him, became his first lesson on the power of resilience.
Bill describes his upbringing as “jack of all trades, master of none,” a self-aware reflection that followed him into adulthood. After majoring in philosophy — “tree hugger, hacky sack on the quad” — he stumbled into a startup that first awakened his interest in business as a force for good.
“I had no idea what I wanted to do in my life,” he says. “I fell into a startup after college, and that kind of got me the business bug. I was interested in business as a force for good.”
Inspired by Anita Roddick and Ben & Jerry’s, he entered business school planning to launch a green company. But life had other ideas.
A job offer from Arthur Andersen came at the same moment Bill and his wife were preparing to start a family, and the decision became his first big tug-of-war between purpose and paycheck.
“My mom said, ‘You can always start a green company, but you can't always get an offer from Arthur Andersen.’”
But just days into the new job, Bill received devastating news — his mother had been diagnosed with cancer. She died seven months later at age 54, and a few years later, his wife’s mother passed away, also in her fifties.
“It was really a kick in the ass for the guy who thought he was going to be changing the world rather than chasing the fat partner track at Arthur Andersen,” Bill reflects.
Seven years later came the collapse of Arthur Andersen following the Enron scandal, an experience that shook 80,000 careers, including Bill’s.
“That was another fundamental piece of my redirection,” he says. “What am I doing in my life if I'm only going to be on the planet till I'm 55?”
This was the beginning of Bill’s pivot towards using his business tools to solve social problems.
The Work:
While still consulting, Bill began joining nonprofit boards, fundraising through marathons, and launching a nonprofit practice inside Andersen. But the turning point came during the Chicago Marathon when he encountered online fundraising for the first time.
“It was so much easier, I thought, ‘If I could send an invite for a dinner party and say instead of bringing a bottle of wine, donate here — wouldn’t that be cool?’”
This idea led him to Network for Good, founded by AOL, Yahoo!, and Cisco with a $10 million grant. When Bill arrived in 2004, the organization had seven employees, a $2M budget, and was just months from missing payroll.
“I took the job in February, and we weren’t going to make payroll in June,” he admits.
Bill helped rebuild the model from the ground up, introducing small transaction fees and launched subscription-based software. “We were afraid that people wouldn't give using the internet if there was any fee associated,” he says. “But from 2004 to 2012, we raised another $10 million to fill the gap between our earned revenue alone.”
By 2012, Network for Good became fully self-sustaining on earned revenue — a milestone that created a new challenge.
“We were victims of our own success.” Bill shares it became increasingly difficult to make a case for raising funds when he wasn’t on the “front line.” “When you ask for money and you’re covering your expenses, the funder says, ‘There’s a guy eradicating malaria in the waiting room. He’s going to get the million dollars, not you.’”
This roadblock pushed Bill and his board into a bold decision: convert the nonprofit into a for-profit B Corp to unlock growth capital and talent.
They faced two investor concerns:
Serving small nonprofits — “Is this even a good market?”
Shared ownership — “My co-owners will be nonprofit board members who don’t care about an exit.”
Bill overcame both. Evidence showed the nonprofit tech market was growing, and he strategically recruited board members who’d founded billion-dollar companies to signal business rigor.
From 2012 to 2020, Network for Good distributed an extraordinary $4 billion to nonprofits — compared to under $1 billion in its first 12 years. What made the model so powerful was what Bill learned to call “collinearity.”
“Most of the decisions we had to make that were good for our mission were also good for our bottom line.”
This alignment became a cornerstone of his leadership philosophy.
The Tailwind:
After decades at the intersection of philanthropy and business, Bill has seen how social enterprise can unlock exponential impact — especially when paired with earned revenue.
“If I have earned revenue covering 50% of my expenses, now I only have to raise half a million dollars on a million-dollar budget, and I’m still having $10 million of impact.”
He believes nonprofits and for-profits alike need to rethink the outdated divide between money and mission.
“We tear the dollar in half — one half to make money, one half to do good. That’s such an old way of thinking.”
Bill champions “stakeholder capitalism,” a model driven not just by shareholders but by all who benefit from an organization’s success.
“We need more businesses attacking social problems,” he says. “If you can figure out a way to have earned revenue while you solve a social problem, those donated dollars go a lot farther.”
When asked what he hopes to remember 20 years from now, his answer wasn’t about exits, capital, or scale.
“I hope I remember the little laughter moments of joy” he shares. “The idiosyncrasies and mannerisms of the loved ones we’ve lost. The small moments.”
It’s a beautiful reminder from someone who has spent a career redesigning how generosity moves through the world. For Bill, impact isn’t just measured in billions of dollars raised, but in the quiet human moments that make those efforts worthwhile.
To hear more about Bill Strathman’s journey, the reinvention of Network for Good, and his vision for aligning capitalism with compassion, listen to the full episode of re:Purpose with Buddy Teaster.