Most nonprofits chase the next big idea. You know what we’re talking about here: The viral campaign, clever quiz, or that killer big project… The thing that finally makes giving easy.
Josh Petersen has built a lot of those things (himself, by hand). He’s also watched most of them flop.
Josh is the Hub Director at The Hope Venture, a Lincoln-based nonprofit that connects donors to health and education projects for people living in extreme poverty around the world. Fifteen-plus years. Thirty-plus projects across South Asia and Africa. More than 100,000 people helped. All of it run out of a small space in Lincoln, Nebraska.
He’s an almost-trained architect who picked up graphic design, video, web design, and event design along the way. A maker. The kind of person who builds a life-size mud hut on wheels for a fundraiser.
So when Josh says the thing that actually turns a visitor into a donor isn’t the website, it’s worth listening.
In this episode, Jake and John sit down with Josh to talk about the 100% model, why his project quiz got zero donations, and what it looks like to lead with rest when the mission feels urgent.
Key Takeaways
- People give to people. The website is the tool, but a human sending the right link at the right moment is what closes the gap.
- The 100% model works because someone funds the overhead on purpose. Donors get to cover salaries and credit card fees so that every other dollar goes straight to the project.
- Start small, always. New partners begin with around $1,000 and a single project, then earn their way up. Slow at the start is a feature, not a flaw.
- The clever idea is rarely the thing that works. Josh’s “Which Project Am I?” quiz got under a hundred takers and zero donations. The success usually comes from somewhere you didn’t plan.
- Cut what isn’t working, even if it’s “supposed” to matter. Hope Venture paused most of its social media and email to double down on real relationships.
- The next best step is often to rest. Hope Venture gives every team member one unstructured “day of space” a month. No agenda. No deliverable.
Episode at a Glance
Josh walks through how The Hope Venture vets partners, why their website is the primary giving hub but not the closer, and what running on “unforced rhythms of grace” actually looks like. The big idea: build the tools, try the big swings, and hold all of it loosely, because the result almost never arrives the way you planned.
Action step: Pick the single action you most want visitors to take on your site. Then look at how it actually happens today. If your team makes it happen by hand every time (sending the link or having the conversation) your website isn’t doing that job yet. That’s the gap to close.
Main idea: Tools matter, but trust is what moves people. A great website lowers the friction. A real relationship is what earns the action.
Why it matters: Most businesses over-invest in clever features and under-invest in the human follow-up that actually converts. The slow, steady move is to do both, and to know which one is doing the heavy lifting.
Quick tool: A monthly “day of space.” One unstructured day, no agenda, to step back and notice whether you’re building something you actually care about.
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About Josh Petersen
Josh is the Hub Director at The Hope Venture, a Christian nonprofit based in Lincoln, Nebraska that connects donors to health and education projects for people in extreme poverty across South Asia and Africa. He leads the organization’s fundraising and marketing, and he built the website the whole giving operation runs on.
- Almost-trained architect who learned graphic design, videography, web design, event design, and systems and team building along the way. A maker at heart
- Worked his way through Hope Venture from graphic designer to creative director to marketing director to Hub Director over roughly ten years
- Helps run 30+ projects across India, Bangladesh, Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda, from 50-cent meals to a water pipeline serving 10,000 people
- Co-created The Hope Venture’s 100% model, where every dollar given to a project goes directly to that project
- Husband to Victoria, a wedding photographer, and dad to two boys
His mantra: “The unforced rhythms of grace. We inquire and leap, but then we wait and see what happens. Oftentimes the next best step is to rest.”
The Hope Venture: https://thehopeventure.org
The Heart Behind the Risk (Hope Venture’s new podcast on generosity): https://open.spotify.com/episode/5Js2F7NpEcHsYfXfhiapx7?si=c607654a4dc14333
Reach Josh directly: josh@thehopeventure.org / 402-770-6310
Instagram + YouTube: @thehopeventure
Highlights & Timestamps
00:00–04:00 — Welcome and the Unforced Rhythms of Grace
Who Josh is, what The Hope Venture does, and why his answer to “what does slow and steady mean to you?” was “the next best step is often to rest.”
04:00–09:00 — How They Vet Partners (And the 100% Model)
The pilot partner program, why new partners start with around $1,000, and how every dollar given to a project reaches that project while donors fund the overhead.
09:00–14:00 — From 50-Cent Meals to a Water Pipeline
The range of projects, including meal centers in India and a Kenyan filtration plant that brought water to 10,000 people who used to walk five kilometers for it.
14:00–17:00 — Boots on the Ground, Not a System You Inject
Why Hope Venture finds local leaders and starts small instead of dropping a one-size program into a community.
17:00–23:00 — The Almost-Architect Who Chose the Nonprofit
Josh’s 2016 East Coast trip where every door closed, the visit to Charity Water, and the choice to work under his mom’s leadership.
23:00–33:00 — The Website Is the Giving Hub
Three versions of the site, the donor dashboard and fundraisers, and the “Which Project Am I?” quiz that got plenty of attention and zero donations.
33:00–43:00 — People Give to People (and the Mud Hut That Fell Off the Trailer)
Why the human relationship is the real driver, cutting social and email to focus on it, and the life-size mud hut that destroyed itself on the way to the event.
43:00–52:00 — Unforced Rhythms of Grace
The monthly day of space, holding plans loosely, the first-ever $1M donation that came right after a missed goal, and the new podcast on the risk of giving.
The 100% Model (And Why Donors Get Excited About Overhead)
Charity has an image problem. Shady accounting. Vague spending. Money that goes somewhere other than the cause.
The Hope Venture answers that with a simple promise. When you give to a project, 100% of your gift goes to that project. Not most of it. All of it.
“If you give to our backpack project full of school supplies, we don’t take any overhead out of that money. We fund all of our overhead separately and we send a hundred percent of what you gave directly to our partner.”
They go further than that. The credit card fee on your donation gets covered too, funded separately so the full amount reaches the field.
Here’s the part that surprised Josh. Donors get excited about funding the boring stuff. Salaries. Printing. Credit card fees. The infrastructure.
His framing is the key: “If I give to the overhead of an organization, I’m helping that infrastructure exist so that other people can give.” Funding overhead isn’t a cost. It’s a multiplier.
The lesson travels beyond nonprofits. The unglamorous parts of your business are what make the visible wins possible. Someone has to fund the foundation.
Start Small. Then Build.
Every Hope Venture partner starts the same way. Small.
New partners enter through a pilot program with around $1,000 and a single project. They build it, report back, hit their criteria. If it works, the next project might be $5,000. Then it grows from there.
“That’s a huge key. Just starting small with people and evaluating the work and, to your podcast name, going slow at the start and not jumping straight into something crazy right off the bat.”
It started this way out of necessity. In the early days there was no money. The first move was a $5,000 check to a contact in India named Charlie, then watching what happened next.
But the discipline stuck even after the money grew. Jake made the connection out loud: it’s the same way ARTILLERY brings on new people. A small project first. See how they work. See if it’s a fit. Then a step further, and a step further.
Slow at the start isn’t a limitation. It’s how you find out what’s real before you scale it.
People Give to People. The Website Is the Tool.
Josh built the website. He’s honest that it’s a work in progress, and that he wants to rebuild most of it. But the real lesson is about what a website can and can’t do.
The Hope Venture site is the primary giving hub. Donor dashboard, fundraisers, volunteer trips, the Backbone Team of recurring givers. It’s far more than a donate button.
And still, the website isn’t what closes the gift.
“People give to people. They want to build that trust with you. It doesn’t necessarily come from proven stats and your annual report and your data.”
So Josh tried to make the site do the matchmaking. He built a “Which Project Am I?” quiz, like a Harry Potter house sorter for giving. He was sure people would take it, get matched to a project, and give.
Fewer than a hundred people took it. Zero of them donated.
John had the exact same experience with a quiz at his old web design school. Tons of people took it. Almost nobody signed up. The quiz was fun. It just wasn’t the thing that prepared someone to act.
What actually works at Hope Venture is a hybrid. The team does the human work, then serves up the right page. A donor coach has the conversation, builds the relationship, and sends the one link that fits. “We do a lot of the work of probably what our website should do. We do it as people.”
That’s the real takeaway for anyone with a site. The website lowers friction. It does not replace trust. If your people are quietly doing the website’s job by hand every time, that’s your signal for what the site should learn to do, not proof the site can do it alone.
The Mud Hut That Fell Off the Trailer
Josh once spent a month, and a lot of team time, building a life-size mud hut on wheels to bring to a fundraiser. The idea was that donors could walk through an actual home from one of the communities they support.
It came in two halves. On the day of the event, one half went on the trailer, headed to the Rococo Theater, and fell off on the way. Completely destroyed.
The decision was immediate. Scrap it. Send the other half to the dump. Move on.
And they still hit their goal that night.
“You just gotta try things. I’m really thankful for a team that is willing to risk and see if an idea will work.”
Most of his favorite ideas, he admits, don’t hit. The quiz. The mud hut. A long list of others. The willingness to try is the engine. The attachment to any single try is the trap.
Next to the failures sits a win like the latest Night for Hope, where the team recorded 27 project locations with a 360 camera so donors could virtually walk through the work. Same instinct. Try the big swing. Some land.
Unforced Rhythms of Grace
We asked Josh what slow and steady means to him. He didn’t say grind. He said rest.
“It’s the unforced rhythms of grace. We inquire and leap, but then we wait and see what happens. The next best step is often just to rest.”
For a nonprofit that depends on momentum and follow-up, that’s an unusual answer. But Josh has watched it play out. You push hard on the idea you’re sure about. It falls apart. The success shows up somewhere you weren’t looking.
So Hope Venture protects the rest on purpose. Every team member gets one “day of space” a month. Unstructured. No direction, no agenda, not even a planning day. Just empty, and they guard the emptiness. Josh borrowed the practice from Harbor Ministries, and he’s clear they didn’t invent it.
The point isn’t doing nothing. It’s having room to notice whether you’re building something you actually care about, instead of running forever in a direction you never chose.
The clearest proof came two years ago. Hope Venture missed its goal at A Night for Hope. Josh was scared. Were college kids going to lose scholarships? Would they have to cancel projects?
Then this past year, they received their first-ever million-dollar donation. It opened doors they never thought possible. The $40,000 gap that terrified him turned out not to be the end of the story.
“The timeline is often not what we think.” Hold the plans loosely. Keep trying. Rest when rest is the next right step.
Call to Action
Want help building a website that actually moves people to act, instead of one your team has to work around?
Start here: https://artillerymedia.com/contact/
Show Credits
Hosts: Jake Kramer & John Wooten
Guest: Josh Petersen (The Hope Venture, https://thehopeventure.org)
Produced by: ARTILLERY, Lincoln, Nebraska
Slow & Steady — A Podcast by ARTILLERY 🎧
https://artillerymedia.com/podcast/
