Melissa Walker is the Head of Giving Circles at the States Project. She makes a powerful case that the best way for individual citizens to make the best use of their time, energy, and resources to avoid regret is by focusing on America’s statehouses.
And she believes the best way to do that is through Giving Circles, where you engage your friends and family to elect majority-making candidates who will shift the balance of power in a state legislature.
AND she has the stats to back up how focusing on the right races at the right time can make massive differences to tens of millions of Americans, like the 63 votes that helped shift the Pennsylvania House and elect the first Black Speaker of the House in the state’s history.
¡AND! she makes a convincing case that by supporting top-notch down ballot candidates who are properly funded and guided to research-backed best practices, like knocking on doors instead of ringing up out-of-state-donors, you can also help elect great candidates at all levels of government in the nation’s tipping point states, while possibly helping prevent Donald Trump from stealing the presidency.
She’s so convincing that we’ve started our own Giving Circle “Flipping Arizona” to help win the four seats that will create a Democratic trifecta in the Grand Canyon state. You’re welcome to join us there. Please do. We need your help.
Or, if you want to really burn off some regrets, start your own Giving Circle. The democracy you save may be your own.
Catch up on all the episodes of “How are you feeling about democracy?” here. If you want to back this podcast, please join the earlyworm society – free or paid, your support matters.
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TRANSCRIPT
Jason Sattler: Let's start off with an origin story. How did you end up at the States Project?
Melissa Walker: I write young adult novels and middle grade novels. I still think of writing books as my career. And I attended a holiday party in December of 2016, so less than a month after Trump was elected, where I heard then New York State Senator Daniel Squadron speak. And the things that he said that night really turned my world around because I started to understand that everything that I was worried about and everything that I cared about domestically was really being decided in state capitals and not in Washington, D. C.
From education funding to environmental policy to health care to civil rights to the core of our of our democracy -- voting rights and gerrymandering, the drawing of the district lines that decide who goes to Congress and decide who goes to state legislatures -- all in the hands of state lawmakers whose names I really didn't know.
The things that inspired me that night were realizing all of those things and starting to recognize that things that had happened under an Obama presidency -- like the bathroom bill, which first happened in my home state of North Carolina, and then passed in dozens of other states -- and then the Stand Your Ground gun law -- which let Trayvon Martin's murder go free, and then passed in 26 other states outside of Florida -- I started to recognize, I don't know those lawmakers names in Raleigh and Tallahassee. But that's where that's w coming from.
When I started to look at state legislatures, I realized that there were these long ignored and unseen power centers in our country where the right wing had been building for decades. The thing that gave me hope about that was that Daniel Squadron also told us that night that it is often cheaper to change the balance of power in a state chamber than it is to win a single competitive congressional seat. Congressional races cost millions and millions of dollars and state legislative races do not.
So he told this room of 70 folks in Brooklyn, if we focused our time, attention, and resources on a state legislature, we could be one of the most powerful forces to actually shift power. And so I started to do that with a few other people who were in the room that night. We gathered our people into what we call the Giving Circle and we started moving our attention and resources towards state capitals, and we became the very first Giving Circle to work with the States Project, which was formed later in 2017. That's wxhen Daniel Squadron resigned from the New York State Senate to start the States Project, which exclusively focuses on state legislatures and electing majorities in states that are focused on improving lives.
So that's how I got involved from a publishing holiday party to a Giving Circle organizer to someone who runs a program with the States Project to focus on this level.
Jason Sattler: Are you still writing young adult novels?
Melissa Walker: I don't, sadly. My inner introvert is crying in a corner somewhere. Because what I mostly do is talk to people about why state legislatures matter, and how much they individually can do to impact outcomes in state legislatures. So writing will wait, and as my writer friends remind me, life is good for writing. So I'll bring more to the page when I do finally get back to it.
Jason Sattler: If you pay attention to state politics at all you know some of the wins that the States Project has been a part of. What are some of the biggest successes. and what are you working on for 2024?
Melissa Walker: We have been going since 2017. We gained a lot of ground along the way, but 2022 really was a year when we were able to meet our full capacity in the states we were in.
In 2022, we were able to help out in both chambers in Michigan as the largest donor in the effort to flip the state legislature. We're able to flip both of those chambers by fewer than 400 votes. Each Michigan now has one seat majorities in the state house and the state Senate. And of course, governor Gretchen Whitmer. So that means it is a Democratic trifecta state power in the governor's mansion and both state chambers. And that has enabled Michigan to do incredible things policy wise including codifying the right to abortion in the state expanding free breakfast and lunch for school children in the state, ending those so-called "right to work" laws to make unions strong again, and passing the strongest climate bill in the country.
So these are the types of policies that can change when we shift majorities and those wins in 2022, again, we're on the margins.
Same thing in Minnesota, where we were able to help defend the statehouse and flip the state Senate in 2022 by 191 votes in one district. So a one seat majority in the Minnesota State Senate, and we were able to watch them pass incredible, as well. The press was calling it "the Minnesota Miracle" when they started getting their legislation through.
A new stat that I just that I just came upon is that last year, Congress passed almost 30 bills. Michigan passed 321.
This is the type of thing where the rubber hits the road on policy in state capitals. And states are really meant to be laboratories for democracy, right? They're meant to be marriage equality going from state to federal. Health care going from Hawaii to Massachusetts to becoming the Affordable Care Act. These are the places where we can seed those ideas and make them those laboratories of democracy.
So Michigan and Minnesota were great for us in 2022. We were also in Pennsylvania where we were really working very hard to flip a whopping 12 seats to gain power in the state house. And we were the top donor there in that effort. And we were able to get all 12 of those seats in 2022, including the final one, which we won last year by 63 votes. 63 votes shifted power in Harrisburg and allowed the state house there to have the first Black woman speaker of the house in Joanna McClinton, who's been an incredible partner in our work.
That's the type of change we're really looking for. There's a real power shift when we are able to win these new majorities.
We've been in Arizona for a while. We've been trying to flip both chambers in Arizona. The In 2018, we were able to flip four statehouse seats that brought Phoenix to the closest balance of power since 1966. And it has remained tantalizingly close since then we are one seat away from a tie two seats away from a flip in each chamber in Arizona. In 2024 we are going after both of those chambers. There's a slim path to do it, but we see the path and we think it's possible. Also, we will be there. And of course, Arizona has some of the most right wing bills and laws coming out of it now. And we watch that majority just do bad things to the citizens of Arizona. So we'd really like to get a power shift there.
We are also in Kansas to try to break right wing super majority for a Democratic governor. And the same situation in North Carolina, where we are trying to break a right wing supermajority in the House to make sure that a governor has veto power. The governor's race is also happening in North Carolina, of course.
Those are two states where we're looking at that kind of power shift. We're in Nevada to try to build a supermajority. There's a governor, right wing governor, who vetoes the supermajority. a lot of things that would be really good for people. So we'd like to build a supermajority there to be able to overturn those vetoes.
And we're in New Hampshire to try to flip the state house and try to get to a tie in the state Senate. We see a path to tying the state Senate and setting ourselves up for 2026. We will of course be back in the States that I mentioned, Minnesota to defend the house, Michigan to defend the house, Pennsylvania to defend the house -- and to work on the Senate. We do see a path to tying the Senate in 2024 and building to a flip in 2026.
And we just recently added Wisconsin, which is a state that has new maps, of course. We do now see a path -- it's not an easy path -- but we do see a path on those fairer maps to flipping the state house, which they call the Assembly in Wisconsin. So we will be working there as well.
Jason Sattler: In Michigan, we're very excited to see our neighbor across the lake finally become a functioning democracy again.
The amazing thing you pointed out is how small the money is, how few the votes are compared to the presidential election, drops in the bucket compared to the Niagara Falls of the presidential election. Is that what you think brings people into Giving Circles that these numbers actually make sense and fit into our head?
Melissa Walker: I do. It certainly activated me. It felt like something really tangible where I could see my own impact. I think that especially with organizing donations and organizing dollars for political purposes, it's hard to figure out if you were a drop in the bucket that mattered or if your dollars did anything good.
What we really know is that in 2022, we were involved in 59 races that were decided by fewer than 1000 votes. Some of those were losses. Most of them were wins. And again, these power shifts that we saw happened by fewer than a thousand votes in these states, those power shifts have meant everything. And what I say to every Giving Circle is that was you, because if every piece of the basket we've hadn't been there to help help these candidates in tipping point districts run full campaigns that have research based evidence based practices behind them. Then who knows if we would have gotten that final seat that made the difference in shifting power.
So I tell all Giving Circle leaders that they really are turning on the porch night for strategic political giving for their friends and their families and their networks. And that's something that. Everyone is looking for, especially in a year like 2024 when there is going to be wild emotional political giving that happens. People get scared, people get emotional, people get angry, and you end up clicking the donate button a bunch of times and not really understanding where the dollars went and not really knowing if you made a difference with those clicks.
I really do think of Giving Circles as a gift to everyone around you. When your friend forms a Giving Circle, the emotional part is, "Let's do this together. Let's do this with the community of people who are, have the same values and really want to improve people's lives across the country." And then the strategic part is baked in. We've narrowed it down to strategic States. So from our list of strategic States, people can choose with their hearts. And then we start to tell folks in Giving Circles the stories of what we're doing in these states and the tactics that we're bringing and people can really get in the weeds and develop a political fluency about what wins these races, how we're strategizing what we're doing on the ground, and all of that stuff leads to a more deeply engaged democracy.
Everyone who starts a Giving Circle also starts to understand how to organize the people around them to bring attention and resources to something very strategic. And when you know how to do that, you walk with more power for the rest of your life in whatever you want to bring those resources to. That's why I am a big fan of organizing political dollars this way in Giving Circles.
Jason Sattler: Notably, the States Project is involved in every swing state that's going to decide this election, plus Kansas.
We keep hearing about big donors who are moving up the ballot to focus just on the presidential election. It's understandable. When we're asking people to defeat a maniac fraud who wants to be a dictator focusing on state legislatures may seem a bit trivial. Just to ease people's mind. Can you explain how this actually could help defeat Trump?
Melissa Walker: I think that gives me a lot of hope, and this kind of speaks to how I answered your opening question, the thing that gives me a lot of hope about working at this level is what we're really doing is we're in these tipping point seats, and we're making sure that the candidate is able to get their message out to their voters in their district.
One of the tactics that we really incentivize is candidate door knocking. The candidates themselves getting out on doors wherever possible, in every state possible, we run a door knocking challenge where the top door knockers in our target districts get additional campaign contributions when they tell us how many doors they've knocked. And that really incentivizes people to stop, dialing for dollars out of state and start meeting voters on the doors, meeting voters on the doors, especially when it's the candidate doing it. Is the persuasion knock. It is the tactic that cuts through the national noise or Fox News in the background. And it really helps to have someone local running for office talking about the grass on the softball field or the cracks in the sidewalk and bringing things back to the human level. We have to get back to that scale and working on this brings us right back there. It brings us back to people who we call "state-leg famous."
We love to see candidates and have research on candidates who have gone to the local high schools, who own a business in town, who have been a football coach or a PTA president, because they have a better chance of winning these races. And it really is about meeting and connecting with people. And when campaigns go back to that tactic, it brings me a lot of hope.
And of course, we are in these battleground states that everyone talks about. And one of the big things that's really important about winning state legislative majorities in those states, is that the path. That the right wing tried to steal the presidency in 2020 ran directly through state legislatures. So it wasn't Senators and Congresspeople who Trump called into the Oval Office in December of 2020. It was state lawmakers from Pennsylvania and Michigan and Arizona. And he was calling them in to talk about changing the electoral college votes of their state.
And that is a path that they will try again in 2024.
But when we are able to shift majority. Parties and break right wing majorities in these states. We block that path. We put a stop sign right in front of it. And that is incredibly important for the foundations of our democracy. So this is not unrelated to the presidential.
And the other thing that I often say is this is a real bang for your buck. State legislatures have control over all the kitchen table issues that we've mentioned. They also, in 70 percent of the country, draw the district lines that decide who goes to Congress. And if you care about the Supreme Court, you should care about state legislatures, because the Supreme Court doesn't write laws. They rule on laws, many of which are coming out of state legislatures, right? It was a Mississippi law that took down Roe. And if that one hadn't done it, there were 16 other states that had queued up abortion bans specifically to rise up to the Supreme Court to challenge Roe.
That is coming from state legislatures.
So we have ignored this level of government to our peril, and the right wing has been building power there. The way to build our country back is from the bottom up, not the top down, in these 50 mini congresses that have so much control over policy and also have a unique lever over federal power.
And so I firmly believe in working here as the place where we need to build back, not just to win these state legislative majorities, but also to protect our democracy in Washington, D. C as well.
Jason Sattler: One thing that you said that really made my ears perk up and my head tilt was "2026." You are focused on several election cycles. That's what it takes to really shift power. That's what it took here at Michigan. That's what we'll take in Arizona. If we're ever going to shift power in Kansas it's going to take election after election.
Can you give us an idea what the opposition looks like? What is the Republican version of the States Project?
Melissa Walker: We know that the right wing has invested heavily in state legislatures. And of course, it's been happening really since the 70s but was supercharged after 2008 when Karl Rove put in the Project REDMAP into place the plans to win state legislatures and then gerrymander to win Congress. He wrote about that plan a lot. And it's a really obvious name for what he was trying to do. I wonder why folks didn't pay more attention, but it definitely worked.
We see that effort continuing. They know that there is real power here.
The other thing is that right-wing billionaires have a real return on investment in working in state legislatures. We were the number one donor on the Democratic side in Michigan to the house caucuses in 2022, and the DeVos family was the number one donor on the right wing side. There is a real return on investment to deregulation in states and, they actually get dollars back in their pockets.
So we do see a heavy investment from the right-wing side. And to be honest, not enough investment from our side.
In 2023, States Project Giving Circles were in Virginia and we were able to defend the State Senate and flip the House of Delegates to put a wall in front of Governor Youngkin's right-wing agenda, which is incredible. It is the reason why there has not been an abortion ban in Virginia. And States Project Giving Circles organized more dollars into Virginia than the National Party did. And that is both inspiring and I wish there were more. I wish there were more focus on state legislatures. And when we run our full program, it is still often less than a single federal race raises.
The spotlight races that raise a lot and need to raise a lot, but sometimes I think there's a little too much focus there. And so we really do see this as a place to male change for pennies on the dollar. And there is so much power.
We used to have a sign in our office that said, not where the glamour is, just where the power is. And that's really how we see state legislatures.
Jason Sattler: And you also saved us from people pretending that Glen Younkin could actually become president.
Melissa Walker: I will say there were a lot of articles about Glenn Youngkin last fall, but I haven't seen that many lately.
Jason Sattler: You also saved us from his voice, which I would describe as maniacal accountant.
And speaking of accountancy, do you have any idea: how much normal state legislative race costs?
Melissa Walker: So to be honest, it really varies from state to state because there are different campaign finance laws. And so some states it's a, it's very low, it's 20, 000 on average. And then some states it gets to, it gets very pretty high, never as high as the spotlight federal races. But it can get high. I think on average we calculated it one year and it was a little over a hundred thousand dollars, but that's kind of misleading because all over the country, it's wildly different.
It really is true, though, that focusing on the tipping point seats that we need and investing in those to shift power is a fraction of what it costs to even win a single competitive congressional race. And it really is because It's not three dimensional chess. It's Connect Four. Folks need a campaign manager, a good strategy some dollars for television and digital ads, a field team, and and the opportunity to take time to knock on doors. And so that's really what we try to provide to the candidates in these tipping point seats. It just isn't as big of an investment as a statewide campaign or even a big congressional campaign that's going to spend a lot more.
And it's become personal from for me because part of this what we're doing is trying to focus on Arizona, and we started focusing on Arizona when I spoke to you a few months ago, and and I've been paying attention mostly just trying to learn the lay of the land so I could talk about it without seeming like I was too much for Michigan and I don't think I've overcome that but It made it incredibly personally almost offensive when the ruling came down yesterday.
The full abortion ban that's from 1864 which kind of parallels the law that's from the 1870s. The Republicans want to use the ban abortion nationwide. If Trump gets an office it put it really into perspective and you start thinking Oh what's Senator Birch going to think about this?
And, you start to know who's on the ground and you see how bad the Arizona Republicans really are. They, Are like the Michigan, the parallels between Michigan and Arizona are incredible because as we become more competitive in Michigan, what we've seen is her Republican party has decided to curl up into a QAnon shaped fetal position and just get stranger and stranger every day.
To the point where the business Republicans in the state are trying to The wrestling back control the party. I don't even see that wrestling back control the party thing going on Arizona, at least not yet. I'm not paying attention. So focusing on Arizona, how, what should I do? How can I start to get my Giving Circle going?
I am just like you. I am not as well spoken, but I am as and probably more introverted than you'll probably ever be. What can I do to start my Giving Circle? And what are as a model for what other people could do if they want to start their own?
Yeah, absolutely. So we do have a lot of sample language and podcasts like this one really helps. So thank you for letting us spread our message here and share these stories. I think also we have videos and things to share.
But it really is about reaching out to people and telling them two stories. One is why state legislatures? Why do they matter? Why would I focus there?
What kind of power is there? And once people hear that story, a lot of light bulbs start to go off about how our democracy actually works and where things. actually move. And I think that's really valuable for people, bringing them that information, making sure that everyone in your network knows exactly who goes to their state capitol for them.
Because it's sometimes hard to know. And they're not always in the news, and they're not always out there. Again, not where the glamour is, just where the power is. So they're not a spotlight. And the other story is the story of the state that you choose. So you have chosen Arizona. It is a state that for better or worse has a lot of stories coming out of it right now.
There was, of course a few weeks ago a right wing representative in Arizona who said that women should keep an aspirin between their knees if they wanted to prevent having an abortion. That type of thing is happening in Phoenix. And we are seeing more and more of a spotlight on that behavior and those types of opinions which I think is only helpful because Arizona is also going to have a reproductive rights initiative on the ballot which could bring, can bring out voters. And it's a real, it's a year when we have a real opportunity to win those final seats, one seat to tie in each chamber, two seats to flip power entirely under Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs. So I think laying out the steps the opportunity, and then talking about some of the wild things that are coming out of the right wing there, and things like this abortion ban, which it's a pre statehood law, before women could vote and they're reverting to it from 1864. This is wild what's happening there.
And if we shift the state legislature, it all stops.
Now, every once in a while, I'll read a big sprawling story. In fact, a couple of years ago in the New Yorker, Jane Mayer wrote a big, one of those big New Yorker pieces about the Arizona right wing and its danger to the presidency in 2020.
What I really wanted to see at the very end was, but here's what you can do. All we have to do to change this is flip one seat in the House and one seat in the Senate. That ties it and shifts power. Two seats flips entirely, changes everything about what's happening in the state.
I think when people hear that, and when they hear that it's not even a Senate seat or a congressional seat, but state legislative seats, where a single, Giving Circle can raise, some thousands of dollars that can actually do this.
That's incredible. I want to be a part of that. I am a part of that because my Giving Circle will also work on Arizona. But I do think it's offering people a real opportunity to have an impact that they didn't know was possible. And I, whenever I talk to folks who care about something like reproductive rights, what I say is, we do have.
To do the work, of course, of funding abortion funds and helping people immediately in need. We also have to do the structural work of legally protecting that and that is happening in state capitals. That is where we need to win power to do that. So both at the same time, and Arizona is certainly a huge target for that this year.
So I'm Happy that you've chosen it. And I hope you'll invite everyone, including all the listeners of this podcast to join you and give to the Giving Circle a one time contribution, a monthly contribution of whatever they'd like to give all of that is welcome. Every bit matters. There's no minimum and no maximum gift to the Giving Circle.
Jason Sattler: Here's where I'm going to get a little personal. When we talked about doing this podcast, I said that you would need to give me some tips about how to be human being. I'm naturally an introvert. People flee me in public. I'm just looking for some tips about how to connect with people.
One of the things you used to hear is that you should imagine the audience you're speaking to is naked. We're on the internet all the time now. So that may actually be true.
You seem to have reached that Nirvana state you're not selling people are pleading with them or begging. You just giving them an opportunity to do something that they would want to do themselves if they knew about it beforehand.
Can you give me any tips on achieving that state of Nirvana? or at least not embarrassing myself in front of everybody I meet?
Melissa Walker: It's funny. When I started working with the States Project, a couple months in a friend of mine said, "Oh, how's the fundraising gig going?"
And I said, " Oh, I'm not fundraising. I'm flipping state legislatures."
She was like, "You're fundraising."
And I was like, "Oh my gosh, am I fundraising?"
And it made me very nervous to think that I was fundraising. Because I honestly felt that every time I entered a room, I was about to tell people about a real opportunity that they had to get involved in something that didn't know was a path to involvement in politics. I was always leaving a room and being like, "You're welcome." And that felt really good to me.
So I have to say that for whatever reason, I started in that nirvana state. And I do work to maintain it because I really believe in the value of this particular work and investment. I will also say that personally for me, it gives me great comfort. I'm on year eight of my Giving Circle now, and it is my major political investment for the year. Every once in a while, a commercial makes me cry and I'll send $10. I'll do it. It's not strategic, but it makes me feel good sometimes to hit the button, but generally. I really do let the rest go. I know what I want to invest in my Giving Circle one meaningful donation a year.
I do it. And then I don't worry about the flurry of texts that I get and emails that I get from other folks because I know that I've invested in a strategic way where I can see what's happening. That's what I hope for all Giving Circle leaders and members.
And I'll tell this quick story. I started my Giving Circle with some authors who are wildly more successful with their books than I am. So when they said what their annual contribution was going to be, it was like a wildly large number for me. And it felt really out of reach. I wanted to back out of the room, but what I realized was, I didn't have to give as much as they were giving. I could organize that much because this is a math problem.
And I say to everyone, the first year I did give a thousand dollars. It was the most that I had ever given to anything at any one time. And I wondered whether I'd have to cook for the rest of the year, but I was okay. And it was a little ouchy the next month. I'm not going to lie on my credit card bill, but I was okay.
I did that because the pain of what's happening in this country has not come to my personal doorstep. I live a comfortable life in Brooklyn with my husband and my two daughters and my daughters will always have access to abortion because I have the resources to make sure that they will, but other people don't and won't.
And it's my job to do as much as I can to work on the problems in our country. At the root at the foundations, and this is the best place that I found to do that. And so I try to give a little more each year. And last year I bought a couch and I realized that I had spent more on my couch than I gave to my Giving Circle.
And that made me want to match what I spent on the couch for the Giving Circle, which I did. And sometimes when I talk to people who are thinking about joining a Giving Circle, again, there's no minimum and no maximum, but I do ask people to think about it. What they spent on their last birthday dinner or you know what they might spend on a weekend away and maybe it's half of that. Because we all have places where we invest in our lives. And for me, this place is the best place to put my dollars where my values are and try to move the needle. So I think asking people to be a part of the math problem is a really powerful way. To do it. You've got a lot of listeners.
And if everyone jumps in the math problem becomes really easy. And if people want to take an action and bring more people into the Giving Circle, I always say that everybody can raise 1, 000 because 1, 000 Is asking 20 people for 50 bucks each or 25 people for 40 bucks each, or however you want to break down the math problem.
It's really doable, especially with sample language and podcasts like this. And just a little join me invitation because it really is an invitation to have an impact that I think most people haven't taken a look at yet.
Jason Sattler: I'm going to date myself a bit here and say there's kind of an old school Tupperware party vibe to the Giving Circles. It sounds like a way for people to unite and be creative without the low density polyethylene. What are some ways you've seen people make Giving Circles, for lack of a better term, fun?
Melissa Walker: So I love this question. Giving Circles can get really creative. I just went to a gathering a couple weeks ago where they had a signature cocktail at the gathering and it was called the State House Smash and there was a little asterisk next to that and it said, it's stronger than you think, which is a really funny way to reference power of state legislatures.
So I think there's a lot of fun in doing a Giving Circle. There's a lot of collective community building that happens when people get together and really care about the same things and want the same things for our country.
Every Giving Circle gets to choose their target state. You've chosen in Arizona, sometimes Giving Circles form and they choose together what target state they'd like to go into. So they'll hold a vote and everyone will be wearing t shirts and sweatshirts from the state of their choice, the one that they're stumping for. They're getting up and saying how important it is to defend Michigan or to flip New Hampshire or to break that Republican supermajority in North Carolina. So that's that's the kind of thing and creativity and energy that we see from Giving Circles. And the truth is that there's a really big emotional component to political involvement. The emotional part of Giving Circles is doing it with your community, your friends and your family and your neighbors. And the strategic part, luckily, is already built in. So watching people really have fun with that and gather in community, it's a real bomb against the news and everything we see coming out, especially at the federal level.
And it gives people a place to focus.
Jason Sattler: You could almost call it group therapy. And I will.
I want to thank you for your time and the work you're doing and for your story. It's the kind of story that other people want to tell other people, and I think that's the only way you make change happen. So thanks for doing it.
Melissa Walker: Thank you so much for jumping in Jason. I really appreciate it. And can't wait to watch your Giving Circle go.
"Here's what you can do about it" with Melissa Walker