9 Podcasts for Nonprofits You Need on Your Radar

By Will Schmidt

Request a Demo

Learn how top nonprofits use Classy to power their fundraising.

Podcast can be an invaluable tool for your nonprofit as you work to scale your impact, grow your community of supporters, or apply new fundraising tactics to your strategy. The issue is that there are so many different nonprofit podcasts, it can be difficult to know where to begin or know what’s worth listening to.

To help, we rounded up some top recommendations from our blog readers, Classy staff, and nonprofit professionals. Below, you’ll get a quick brief about the podcast’s primary focus as well as a few recommendations of exciting episodes to start with. Most of these nonprofit podcasts have hundreds of episodes, so be sure to explore them all as you keep listening and learning.

1. The Stanford Social Innovation Review Podcast

The Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR) is popular across the social sector for their strong print articles, digital posts, and webinars. Their podcast also contributes to the sterling reputation SSIR has for providing informative content created by, and for, leaders across topics like human rights, impact investing, and nonprofit business models. Co-hosted by Eric Nee, editor in chief of SSIR, the podcast is designed as a TED-style talk that seeks to educate and inspire its listeners.

Hot topics include:

2. Good to Growth

The Nonprofit Hub community is dedicated to giving nonprofits tools and information to operate at their peak and serve their communities to the fullest. For example, they aim to help organizations increase their fundraising revenue, prioritize branding, and understand the power of self-investment. Executive director Randy Hawthorne carries this mindset into their podcast episodes, as he dives head-first into content designed to help you operate at your peak and serve your community to the fullest.

Hot topics include:

3. The Tim Ferriss Show

Often ranked as top-dog in the podcast world, The Tim Ferriss Show welcomes high-caliber guests who may not appear relevant to an audience of nonprofit professionals at first glance. However, Ferriss is adamant about identifying, extracting, and communicating their secrets of success to his audience with the goal to provide tactics, tools, and routines you can implement. In that light, his long-form, “raw” interviews contain countless golden nuggets for nonprofits to take back to the office and increase productivity, company culture, work-life balance, and so much more.

Hot topics include:

4. First Day Podcast

Short, sweet, and to the point: that’s the model Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy uses for their podcast. Each episode is about 10 minutes long, but jam packed with the most current news and research for nonprofit professionals to take their fundraising to the next level.

Hot topics include:

5. Nonprofits Are Messy, the Podcast

Joan Garry and her team decided to create a Nonprofits Are Messy podcast to better serve the readers of their blog, because they identified a need to dig into more detail than the written word could offer. Each 40 to 50 minute episode is focused on providing deep dives into difficult topics, personal perspectives on strategies, and best practices from high-profile individuals in the social sector.

Hot topics include:

6. The Nonprofit Leadership Podcast

Hosted by Dr. Rob Harter, The Nonprofit Leadership Podcast: Making Your World Better, features discussions around trends, issues, and opportunities facing nonprofit professionals and individuals embedded in the social sector. The goal of this podcast is to show you what it takes to be an effective nonprofit leader by sharing real-world stories and strategies from the people and organizations making a strong impact.

Hot topics include:

7. The Growth Show

Produced by HubSpot, and lead by vice president of marketing Meghan Keaney Anderson, The Growth Show focuses entirely on growth. Every episode is curated to showcase inspiring stories behind how people grow businesses, ideas, or movements. While the focus is primarily on for-profit businesses, the insights discussed are highly applicable to nonprofits interested in growing their own brand, audience, mission, and impact.

Hot topics include:

8. Impact Boom

Each week Impact Boom invites top social innovators, entrepreneurs, change-makers, designers, educators, thinkers, and doers onto their show to share their stories and inspiration. Everything discussed is focused on creating a lasting, positive social and environmental change. If it can help you maximize your impact, they’ll make sure you hear about it.

Hot topics include:

9. The Classy Podcast

Produced in-house by our staff here at Classy, The Classy Podcast tells the stories of today’s leading founders and executives in the social sector. Our goal in showcasing their expertise is to help your own nonprofit level-up areas like donor retention, marketing, growth, and more. Some of our notable guests include Shriners Hospitals for Children, Team Rubicon, Teach for America, Charity: Water, and Charity Navigator.

Hot topics include:

One of our core values here at Classy is to “Always Be Learning,” and these nonprofit podcasts are a great way to ensure we all live that value to its fullest every day. Even if you can only listen to a few minutes of one episode per day, it can pay off over time as you learn new strategies, tactics, and insights that help you achieve your mission. If we missed any great nonprofit podcasts, be sure to share them with us in the comments below!