What happens when you respond to a need before you know what you're doing?
For Tom Cottar, Founder of Backpack Friends, the answer is a nonprofit that now delivers weekend food kits to over 200,000 children across Central Texas every single week. But the beginning of that story looks nothing like the end of it.
In a recent episode of 501(c) Drop, host Leya Simmons, Co-Founder and CEO of BetterUnite, sat down with Tom for one of the most honest, grounding conversations we've had on the show. If you've ever felt like you needed a five-year strategic plan before you could make a difference, this one's for you.
Tom didn't come from a nonprofit background. He's a musician. A networker. Someone who, by his own admission, just had to count to four.
What he did have was a memory. As a kid, he was one of the children who relied on a special meal program at school. So when he learned that a girl at a local campus had passed out from hunger over the weekend, something clicked.
"I wasn't just helping Mari out," Tom shared. "I was helping kids like me."
He started small. Twelve kids on one campus. Then 34. Then 56. No blueprint. No graduate degree in nonprofit management. Just a clear why and a willingness to figure out the how as he went.
The moment Backpack Friends became official is the kind of story that makes you believe in things bigger than coincidence.
Tom received two donations in the same week. A woman he'd never met handed him an envelope in a Target parking lot containing eight $100 bills and four quarters her daughter had added from the cupholder. A retired schoolteacher in Pasadena mailed him $30. Total raised: $831.
Around the same time, a CPA friend offered to handle all the legal setup to incorporate as a nonprofit. His fee? $830.
Tom pulled the trigger. And when he registered with the state of Texas the following morning, the nonprofit filing fee came to exactly $1, which cleaned out the four quarters to the cent.
"It was at that point I kind of went, oh my gosh. There's a purpose here. There's a bigger thing at work."
One of the most refreshing parts of this conversation is how openly Tom talks about not knowing what he was doing and doing it anyway.
He networked constantly, even when imposter syndrome told him not to. He showed up to food pantries, churches, and community events, looking for one nugget to bring back and make one thing a little bit better. He leaned on other people's expertise instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.
And when COVID hit and schools shut down, Backpack Friends had to pivot fast. Tom went on social media, announced locations, and families showed up. The scale of need was undeniable.
"You can't be afraid to be seen starting small," Tom said. "I think that holds a lot of us back."
As Backpack Friends grew from one campus to thirty-plus, Tom had to learn one of the hardest lessons in leadership: letting go.
"I had to realize this was so much bigger than me. I needed people around me. Tools. Teams. Platforms. And I had to let go of control to do all of that."
The mission stayed fixed. The methods stayed flexible. And that tension between the two is where most of the growth happened.
It also meant staying in his lane. When families on their program needed coats, shoes, or help with an electric bill, the answer wasn't to become everything for everyone. It was to partner with organizations that could fill those gaps while Backpack Friends stayed focused on what they did best.
"Tiger Woods didn't care about physics. He just wanted to hit the ball."
One of the things that makes the Backpack Friends model worth studying is the intentional anonymity built into how they serve families.
When a school signs on, a liaison registers the children and distributes bags. The kids in the program are never identified publicly. That protects dignity. It also allows Backpack Friends to build real relationships with campus contacts, so they know when a family is going through something harder than hunger.
"Everything we try to do, we do with dignity and respect. Right at the top of the list."
That human-first approach has shaped everything from their school partnership model to the way they talk to volunteers who question whether certain families "really" need help.
As Tom put it, borrowing from Brené Brown: people are hard to hate close up. So move in.
Near the end of the conversation, Tom came back to a phrase he's become known for in nonprofit circles.
There's no magic formula. But the magic is doing what only you can do.
For Tom, that meant drawing on lived experience, showing up as himself, and trusting that his unique combination of empathy, hustle, and community relationships could build something no one else could have built in quite the same way.
"Your experiences, your talents, your gifts, your strengths, your skills are uniquely housed in you. If you can leverage those, you can do things I can't figure out how to do at all."
It's not about passion alone. It's about finding where your strengths and your purpose meet, and then doing that thing with everything you've got.
At a volunteer event with a corporate partner, a young woman in the back of the room raised her hand during Q&A. She told Tom she had relied on Backpack Friends bags all four years of high school. When her employer announced the volunteer event, she signed up immediately because she wanted to give back.
Tom got emotional telling it. Because that's the ripple effect. You never know the imprint you're making.
"You never know the impact you're going to have. Just keep going."
Transcript Recording:
Leya Simmons (00:00)
Hi, hi, how is everybody? Welcome to today's 501c drop. This is such a special edition for me personally. ⁓ My friend Tom is joining us, Tom Cotter. He's with backpack backpack friends.
And I just wait until we dive into both his story and honestly what we were just talking about before we became live, how he and I met back in 2018, very early days of Better Unite and maybe even earlier days for Backpack Friends. This is just an incredible story of determination, grit.
stumbling into your purpose and I'm thrilled to have my friend Tom here to share it. Welcome Tom!
Tom Cottar (00:47)
Well, thank you, man. It's really great to see you. I'm just super pumped about being here in our conversation. And I do want to say at the very beginning that I'm really grateful for y'all. The way you have helped us grow like you, I was just saying this, you have helped us feed kids from the very beginning because of your support and the platform and the way you guys have supported us. So ⁓ I'm really excited to be here.
Leya Simmons (01:16)
Oh, Tom, that just fills my heart. really does. These, these full circle moments just, I don't know, I live for this. So thank you again. Thanks for being here and everybody else. Thank you for spending a little bit of time with Tom and I today. We're thrilled to have you. Let me just point out a couple of things before we kind of just dive right in. Our 501 C drop is our weekly webinar podcast where we talk about all things nonprofit for our nonprofit people of every ilk.
Tom Cottar (01:24)
Yeah. Yeah.
Leya Simmons (01:45)
to absorb and learn more about our sector and from each other as you will today. If you have comments or questions for Tom or myself, please feel free to put those here in our chat. That is going to ⁓ be, it's actually available to you right now. And if you have questions and you're watching, then you are also welcome to, let's see, I'm gonna click down here and make sure I've got all this going. Yes.
So if you're watching this as a recording, you are also very welcome to email any questions to support at better unite.com as well. So we're just going to dive right in. I'm going to stop sharing my screen here because we've got Tom up on the stage. I would love to read. I'm going to read for you this, this introduction because truly it's staggering what Tom has accomplished. Tom Cotter. Did I say it right?
Tom Cotter, yay. Tom Cotter is the founder of Backpack Friends, a nonprofit based out of Pflugerville, Texas, just north of where Better Unite is located in Austin, Texas, where I am as well. That began, the nonprofit began with a simple but urgent idea. No child should go hungry.
over the weekend simply because school isn't in session. What started as a response to just 12 kids at a single campus has grown into an organization that now serves 200,000 children across multiple campuses and school districts week in and week out. Tom's path to this work was not a straight line.
He didn't come out of a graduate nonprofit program or nonprofit management program with a five year strategic plan. He stumbled into his purpose, built while figuring it out and created a model that's rooted in community, dignity, school partnerships and doing what only he could do. His story is exactly the kind of story that we here at Better Unite believe nonprofit leaders need right now. Tom, again, welcome and thank you for being here.
Tom Cottar (03:50)
Yeah, thank you. Thank you. I love that intro. I'm have to write that down and find more about it, you know, about this guy. He sounds great.
Leya Simmons (03:58)
It's, you've got an inspiring story.
So let's just, let's jump in. Let's start at the beginning because I mean, again, the origin story is ⁓ unique to backpack friends and also not unique at all in our nonprofit world. So ⁓ I think a lot of people in our audience will really connect to your story that will really resonate with them. So you, ⁓ you know, you often talk about stumbling into your purpose.
What, I've followed Tom on LinkedIn ⁓ since the first time we met at a Williamson County, was it like a volunteer day or something like that? Williamson County is north of Austin. Yeah. And he had, you had just received your certification from the state. Better Unite was like a five minutes old and we chatted and connected and Tom rolled the dice on.
Tom Cottar (04:32)
Think so.
Leya Simmons (04:45)
a woman who was a development director and had a cool idea in some new and different tech and we grew alongside each other, just like Tom said at the beginning. So stumbling into your purpose, I would love for you Tom to tell me, like, how did that feel in the early days before you knew what backpack friends would become today?
Tom Cottar (05:05)
You know, that's so funny that it's like, people use this phrase all the time, it's like drinking from a fire hose, right? You see something and we knew that, or at least I had this belief that we can't do it, I can't do everything, but could do something, right? ⁓ And you don't know what you don't know, which is funny, we can talk about that in a minute, but it was just this moment of,
my gosh, there's something here that is incredibly fulfilling, right? It's got purpose. It has impact. There's something about it that resonates with me on a real personal level. you know, you say yes and you figure it out on the way. You know, like you say, like I did not, I'm a, we'll joke about this later, but I am ⁓ like everybody else in Austin.
Leya Simmons (05:40)
Mm.
Tom Cottar (06:03)
I'm a musician, like I play guitar, like everybody else in town. I just have to count to four. I don't have to have a big five-year plan to gig, right? ⁓ And so when this thing happened, ⁓ part of it is I realized that I was one of those kids growing up. And so it became a very real moment for me ⁓ when...
Leya Simmons (06:22)
Hmm.
Tom Cottar (06:31)
When the first girl who passed out, first girl that was on our radar, she passed out because she was, she passed out at school because she didn't have food over the weekend. And I went, my gosh, that was, I was one of those kids who was hungry. And so I wasn't just helping Mari out, but I was helping these kids like me. And it was just this flood as any founder knows, any entrepreneur knows you start and you have these grand ideas. And it's just like,
it's drinking from a fire hose. There is so much to do, so much to learn, so much that can be overwhelming, right? So in those early days, if I'd known now, no then what I know now, like I would have done things a little bit differently, I'm sure. But yeah, stumbling into your purpose is a great way to phrase that.
Leya Simmons (07:06)
Mm-hmm.
I mean, that's such an honest answer. It's ⁓ such a, I mean, an honest way to frame that. That definitely resonates with me as an entrepreneur. You know, every thing that you unbox, there's another set of boxes in there. Every step you take, there's three steps backwards that you're working to solve to different problems. And the empathy that you uniquely had for...
⁓ Did you say her name is Mari? The first girl? ⁓ Tom, I? Mari, yes.
Tom Cottar (07:58)
Yeah, well,
it's like, yeah. Well, and it's like those little, you know, those little Russian nesting dolls, right, that like sit inside of each other. That's exactly it. That's exactly you. You see something and you go, I can do this. And then you open that one and there's another one. And it's just this never, never ending thing. ⁓ There was a moment that ⁓ I realized this
Leya Simmons (08:06)
Yeah, that's exactly, yeah, that's what I thinking.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Tom Cottar (08:28)
wasn't just a one-time thing. Like this was a very growing, it was a bigger calling, right? It was a much bigger thing. We were, and I joke a lot, we had started feeding 12 kids and then that grew to 34 to 56 to 87 or 88. And we had this little small footprint on about four different campuses in the area. And it was just kind of, this was before you and I met, this was just kind of a passion project.
And I got a call one day from I got a text one day from a woman who says, Hey, I've been watching on social media on your phone how you guys are feeding kids. And my husband and I, want to say thank you. We want to give you a gift. Can you meet me at the local Target parking lot? And ⁓ I'll be honest with you. I don't usually meet strange women at the Target parking lot.
Leya Simmons (09:26)
Ha!
Tom Cottar (09:28)
⁓
Leya Simmons (09:28)
It's
an unusual way to go about a donation of any sort, will say. Yeah, probably not.
Tom Cottar (09:32)
Right. Yeah, that's not a that's not something I recommend to founders is hey go meet
women at the Target parking lot. But I literally texted my wife and said, hey, I'm going to go here. I'm this woman. If my body goes missing, like start looking here. Well, she pulls up. Right. Well, she pulls up in this in this minivan. She's getting out of the car. She has this envelope. And as she's handed it to me, one of her girls in the back seat reaches in the cup holder.
Leya Simmons (09:46)
Here's where we start.
Tom Cottar (10:00)
puts it in the envelope and grabs some change out of the cup holder, puts it in the envelope and hands it to me. And she says, this is just for y'all. We just wanna say thank you for what you're doing. You're feeding these kids and it's a beautiful thing. Just thanks for trying to make an impact in the community. I hug her neck, I tell her thank you. I reach in the envelope and there are eight $100 bills in the envelope and four quarters.
Leya Simmons (10:25)
⁓
Tom Cottar (10:28)
that the little girl stuck in there, which is super sweet, Hug ⁓ her neck, tell her thank you, go home. And then there's a, when I get home, there's ⁓ another envelope at home from someone in Pasadena. Same kind of thing. I'm watching on social media how you guys are feeding kids. Retired school teacher, here's $30, put it to the cause. So we have $831 and I joke that I don't want to get in trouble with the IRS.
Leya Simmons (10:30)
Yeah.
Tom Cottar (10:58)
I don't want to, you know, there's all these things. Like I said, I just have to count to four. I'm not an accountant, a CPA, an MBA, any of those things. So I reach out to this buddy of mine who is a CPA in Houston and tell Floyd, we want to start a nonprofit and I don't know where to start. And he says, I can take care of all of those things that we founders have to do. Your EIN, your, you know, articles of incorporation, all of those things.
And our fee for that is $830.
Leya Simmons (11:31)
That's what you had just gotten.
Tom Cottar (11:32)
Yes, and I thought this is bigger than me, right? So we pull the trigger, we do all the things, and the whole time my wife is saying, yeah, but we still have four quarters left. Like, we got four quarters. We're gonna buy like a juice box. Like, what are we gonna do with those four quarters? Well, like you don't know what you don't know when you start off. And so we pull the trigger, start doing all the things.
Leya Simmons (11:37)
For sure.
Tom Cottar (12:00)
I register with the IRS as Backpack Friends Incorporated. We're all excited. I wake up in the middle of the night on a Saturday night in a panic because I didn't check with the state of Texas, the comptroller website, to see if Backpack Friends, if that name was available to use in Texas, right? You don't know what you don't know. ⁓ So I run to the computer, I erase the computer. It's available, obviously.
Leya Simmons (12:19)
⁓ sure.
Tom Cottar (12:29)
It's free to do the search. It's about $40 to register the state of Texas, not a big expense. So I register with the state and when I get up the next morning, I realized that because we're nonprofit, they charge us $1, which took the four quarters out of that envelope. So it was at that point that I kind of went, my gosh, like there's a purpose here. Like there's a bigger thing at work here. ⁓ We have to...
We have to take this seriously. We have to really lean into this. And that was kind of a watershed moment for us.
Leya Simmons (13:04)
⁓ absolutely. And I love your first experience of fundraising being a totally dodgy experience in a parking lot, but that it worked out to be exactly what you needed is truly kismet, truly incredible. also, I think just hearing your story is, it almost gives permission to other people that might be wondering if this is the right step for them or.
that you don't have to have it all figured out, that sometimes exactly what you need will show up as soon as you need it. That's really incredible. So you've described that, you realized it was bigger. Was there like a moment that you could kind of, that you identify as that moment that you knew, okay, the problem is bigger than I thought?
Tom Cottar (13:59)
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So you hear the statistic that one in four kids doesn't have food when they're away from school in the state of Texas. They don't have food when they're away from school on the weekends. And that doesn't really compute in our brains. Like we think, that can't be true. That's not, you know, that's hyperbole. That somebody's just making that up. So when we started when the, how do I say this?
Leya Simmons (14:16)
Right?
Tom Cottar (14:28)
when the virus that shall not be named came through in 2020 ⁓ and the schools shut down, excuse me, we had to pivot like everyone else and realize, my gosh, how do we get this food to these kids? So we would just show up on campuses. I would go on social media and say, hey, we're gonna be at the, you know, the Leah Simmons Elementary School at three o'clock ⁓ and people would just show up.
Leya Simmons (14:32)
it.
Right?
Tom Cottar (14:58)
It was massive to see these families in need ⁓ just to show up out of the blue. ⁓ You know, I think part of it is it can be so overwhelming when you step into the nonprofit world, you step into that space of, you know, we're all excited, we're going to make a difference, we're going to make an impact, we're going to change the world. And we are. But that can come with some overwhelm.
Leya Simmons (15:03)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Ha!
Tom Cottar (15:28)
at times.
And that was one of those moments of, my gosh, this is one campus. When we branch out to 30 plus campuses, that becomes exponential. And so that was very much an overwhelmed kind of moment there.
Leya Simmons (15:39)
Right.
So then what was it that helped you, you you had those 12 kids at one campus, you, you know, described you kind of, you went 32 and on and on. What, what helped you take the next step in spite of that sense of overwhelm or, know, what, did you do so that you did not only experience overwhelm in those, in those moments? mean, particularly with, like you said, drinking out of a fire hydrant, mean,
COVID would have definitely been that fire hydrant, you know, even if it weren't for the hunger space, which is so enormous itself anyway. So how did you manage that, Tom?
Tom Cottar (16:17)
Yeah.
It was a challenge. really was. ⁓ I joke about my background being in music, right? When we moved to Austin and I started gigging, I did some songwriting and there's a great thing. I won some awards with the Austin Songwriters and the Texas Songwriters Association and had some great experience. But part of that whole experience was if you have ever...
⁓ written a poem, written a story, written a song, whatever, and then performed it in front of somebody. It's, it's like, it's like standing naked in front of all your friends and then pointing out your flaws. Right. So that was real. That was a real similar experience of you can't be afraid to number one, be seen starting small. think that holds a lot of us back.
Leya Simmons (17:08)
Yeah.
Tom Cottar (17:23)
is we want to start these things and we get to this point of overwhelm. There's a lot that we don't know and it becomes very intimidating because we don't want to start, especially with social media, we don't want to be seen starting small. And that was a real help to me to know that number one, if I'm starting small, maybe no one will notice. Like maybe everybody's looking at somebody else and I can get away with it. You you have this imposter syndrome, especially when you start something like that.
Leya Simmons (17:49)
Yeah.
Tom Cottar (17:53)
I, I networked like a madman. Like that was how we met. Right. ⁓ anywhere and everywhere that I could go, even though I was struggling with this imposter syndrome, cause it was, this was so new to me. ⁓ I knew that I had to learn quickly and I knew that I had to get into new rooms and meet new people and learn new skills.
Leya Simmons (17:59)
That's exactly right, yeah.
Mm.
Tom Cottar (18:20)
which was also a little bit exhilarating. So you kind of, as an entrepreneur, you kind of become addicted to the high of, want to learn something new, I want to achieve something new, I want to grow in a certain way. So it was like one big challenge in that sense. You know, for me, the... Go ahead.
Leya Simmons (18:35)
Hmm.
I hear that.
No, you keep going. For me, the...
Tom Cottar (18:46)
Well, for me, the problem came when I realized I was trying to solve everything myself. Right? Because I had this, I had such a passion for this and I had such this thing that resonated with me about doing this. ⁓ I had to realize that this was so much bigger than me that I needed people around me. I needed support systems. I needed...
Leya Simmons (18:53)
⁓ right.
Tom Cottar (19:13)
Gosh, I needed platforms like Better Unite and I needed tools and teams and all that kind of thing. And I had to let go of control to do all of that because it's your baby and you feel like this is the way I want to run our mission. I learned, gosh, Leah, I learned to hold really tightly to the why, but hold really loosely to the how.
Leya Simmons (19:16)
Yeah.
Yeah.
that's a great way to put that. It absolutely does. It absolutely does. I mean, not just in business, definitely as a scaling entrepreneur, but I mean, even as a parent, as you know, like we have to allow other people in, in order for something to grow. So that's a very, that's such, so, so very well said. ⁓
Tom Cottar (19:43)
Does that make sense?
Leya Simmons (20:07)
I wonder too, and I'm hearing in your story, and like I said in the introduction, that you didn't set out with this five point strategic plan. You built it as things came, you dealt with those, and those happened. But I do think that a barrier that lot of nonprofit leaders experience is the sense that they cannot do or...
you know, cannot create without that level of planning in advance. Do you have any advice or guidance on figuring it out as you go?
Tom Cottar (20:47)
⁓ You know, for me, I would say you can't be afraid to ask for help. Like, you can't, don't spend a lot of time trying to reinvent the wheel, especially if you just want to put your name on it. Like there are other wheels that are already there. ⁓ Leverage those. You know, I, in fact, I met a woman.
Leya Simmons (20:56)
Right?
Right.
Tom Cottar (21:14)
When all this happened, I met a woman at our church who introduced me to a woman named Jen Jones, who invited me to the meeting where I met you.
⁓ And so there is that sense of when you, think when you start doing something like that, ⁓ people will show up to support you. People will catch that vision. They'll show up to support you. So when you ask for help, excuse me, ⁓ these Austin allergies are killing me. gosh. ⁓
Leya Simmons (21:46)
my gosh, this is the worst here right now, it really is.
Tom Cottar (21:50)
But you can always learn from somebody else. So, you know, it kind of goes back to the networking thing. Like I went to the serving center, I met you, I went to churches and food pantries and hoping that I could just find one nugget to bring back to make one thing a little bit better, one thing a little bit easier, one thing more efficient. So I kind of built that strategic plan on the fly.
Leya Simmons (22:16)
just like by putting yourself out there. Yeah.
Tom Cottar (22:19)
Yeah, yeah, for sure,
for sure. Just stepping out and thinking, okay, I have to figure this out. don't, somebody out there either will help me figure it out or I'll find someone I can hand it to and say, okay, now this is yours. You're doing it. So yeah, you just have to.
Leya Simmons (22:34)
Yeah.
Tom Cottar (22:39)
Help me. Those are the two biggest words I've ever learned how to say.
Leya Simmons (22:43)
⁓ The thousand pound phone, right? Pick it up. Well, so there's and I don't know if you've said it yet today, but you you've definitely said it at some point in a LinkedIn post at some time. Tom and I have obviously known each other for a few years, although I haven't actually seen you since probably, you know, pre covid. So ⁓ but you you've talked before about and I'm going to get this wrong. Let me try and say actually I it written down here. ⁓
Tom Cottar (22:46)
my gosh. Yes. Yeah.
Right.
Leya Simmons (23:11)
You've said there's no magic formula, but that the magic is doing what only you can do, which I just love that. So my question is how, for you, how did you figure out what that actually meant, like personally as a founder? What was the magic that only you could do? I I can just imagine that it took some soul searching and some real effort to get there.
Tom Cottar (23:18)
Thank you.
Yeah, so, well, thank you. That means a lot.
Like I said, I didn't have any other choice. I didn't come out of a training for this. I didn't have that kind of background. ⁓ I had someone tell me, his name is Daniel, who told me early on, trust your gift. Just trust your gift. Hindsight is always 20-20, right? Looking back, you can see, ⁓ well,
Leya Simmons (23:51)
Right.
Tom Cottar (24:11)
I had this life experience. was one of those kids who I had, I'm old enough, I will be 59 this year and I'm old enough to know, to remember the day of like paper meal tickets. You you would go through the lunch line, you would have to get your meal ticket punched. And after you got all the holes punched, I know we had electricity, it was amazing. ⁓
Leya Simmons (24:32)
⁓ interesting.
Ha ha ha!
Tom Cottar (24:38)
But after you got all your holes punched, you had to go back to the office and pay to get another meal ticket. Well, I remember standing in the lunch line and pulling the meal ticket out of my pocket and my buddy Kent next to me saying, I was in probably fourth grade. Hey, man, how come yours is blue and mine's red? Well, I didn't realize I was one of those kids on a special meal program. And so looking back,
Leya Simmons (24:44)
Hmm.
Interesting.
Tom Cottar (25:08)
I tell people, like I...
There are certain things that only you can do. Like I won the lottery. I had a mom who brainwashed me to think I could do anything I wanted to do. Right. And then I had a dad who came alongside her and said, yes, but you have to work for it. So I got my work ethic from him and my dreamer, you know, kind of from her. And so it was like that was that that were the two or three things that were in my toolkit to do. And so I feel like
Leya Simmons (25:40)
Yeah.
Tom Cottar (25:41)
You know, there's, the world doesn't need another Tom. The world needs a Leia to do what only Leia can do, you know? ⁓ And your experiences, your talents, your gifts, your strengths, your skills are uniquely housed in you. And if you can leverage those, then you can do things I can't figure out how to do at all. So I think there's something to just...
Leya Simmons (25:50)
Mm-hmm.
Tom Cottar (26:11)
The magic is doing what only you can do.
Leya Simmons (26:17)
and then really leaning into that. I just think that's such an incredible and motivating.
Testament and so wonderful particularly for young kids to hear as well that you know find that and it's you know It's what it's what's interesting is I hear you saying you're not quite saying find your passion you're saying find something you're good at and do that thing and You know that but but for you, it's led you to fulfilling this this I mean, you know, I Doesn't it doesn't sound to me and correct me if I'm wrong as though you knew all along that this was going to be something
Tom Cottar (26:40)
Yes.
Leya Simmons (26:53)
to do that you would do. You ended up pulling your talents into it when you saw the need that was there. Is that really how it happened? Yeah.
Tom Cottar (27:00)
That is 100 % Leia.
so yeah, it's not that it doesn't, finding things that you're good at, finding things that you can do that align with those skills and strengths that can bring you passion, right? That can align with that. But I'm also, today's Tuesday, I'm also passionate about tacos. Like there are lots of things that I'm passionate about, right?
Leya Simmons (27:09)
Mm-hmm.
Sure, 100%.
That's right, exactly.
Yeah.
Tom Cottar (27:26)
⁓
And in Austin, we have great tacos. So come see us. But there are tons of things that you can be passionate about. But I think when you align that with your strengths, confidence comes from your skill set, which I think you and I, we all enjoy things we're good at. ⁓ I don't enjoy doing my taxes.
Leya Simmons (27:38)
Mm-hmm.
Tom Cottar (27:54)
don't enjoy changing the oil on my truck. Like there's certain things that I just don't, I'm not passionate about because that's not a skill set I love or have. So I think you're right. think there's a connection there.
Leya Simmons (28:09)
Absolutely. when you're ⁓ going back to the actual organization, Backpack Friends,
you're a big part of what has made you all successful is the school partnership program, which I'm fascinated by. was a part of a nonprofit early, actually kind of mid career, but I was just a volunteer for the nonprofit. didn't, I served on the board. ⁓ and it was an organization, community yoga Austin was now merged with another organization. ⁓ and, and we were always working to get mindfulness and yoga training into schools. I mean, I happen to know that that is not an easy task. Like it sounds like, Hey, this
Tom Cottar (28:35)
cool.
Leya Simmons (28:47)
is, you know, of course you partner with schools, that process of setting up those partnerships is a lengthy one sometimes, is not easy. So what had those school partnerships taught you and how did you manage to facilitate those in the first place?
Tom Cottar (29:09)
Yeah, no, you're right. those school partnerships are, they're vital to what we do. You know, they're a key integral part of that. ⁓ They're not always easy. There has to be some trust built. You know, I guess the way we started maybe helped a little bit because we started with one campus and I knew the counselor there. She'd been there forever. I had a relationship with her. ⁓ She knew me. She, kind of had some similar
Leya Simmons (29:15)
huge.
Mm-hmm.
Tom Cottar (29:39)
friendships and relationships that we had in common. And so we were able to do that and have proof of concept before we move on to the second campus and then add another campus for a year and then move on and add a third. So we kind of built slowly and intentionally in the beginning. Part of that is listening well, you know, as a founder, as someone who's passionate about something.
The tendency for me, I can only speak for me, but sometimes my tendencies are to run in and go, hey, Leigh, guess what? We're doing this and there's this and there's one out of four kids. And I mean, can just like, because I'm passionate about it. ⁓ That's not always beneficial if I'm not listening well to those campuses or those, if I'm assuming that, know, campus A, that their problems, their issues are the same as campus B, right?
Leya Simmons (30:35)
⁓ interesting. So you
had to kind of discern among them what difference, yeah.
Tom Cottar (30:40)
Yeah, yeah,
different demographics, different families, different economics. Like there's a lot of things there. And there's that Venn diagram where there's definitely a commonality in the center, which we try to live in. That's the easiest thing to do. ⁓ But you know, it's kind of like there are families and kids that we serve that come from all backgrounds.
Leya Simmons (30:44)
Sure.
Sure.
Tom Cottar (31:09)
right, whether it's culture or faith or economics or whatever it is. ⁓ And there is a stigma attached to some of those things. So everything we try to do, we do with dignity and respect, right? ⁓ At the top of the list. And anyone who is new volunteers, you know, it's not unusual to have conversations of, well, why are those, why is that family?
in your program? Are those kids in your program? Have you seen the car their mom drives? you, you know, do they have jobs? Do they, you know, they've got a hundred pair, a hundred dollar pair of Jordans on. They've got, they all have, they all have a, what's one I like to hear all the time. Everybody has a cell phone. They have a cell phone. They can afford a cell phone. Brene Brown has this great quote that she says, people are hard to hate close up. So move in. Right. I love Brene. Good Texas girl.
Leya Simmons (31:55)
right.
Me too.
I just need some text. That's right.
Tom Cottar (32:10)
But that's true. I mean, as you move in, then you realize people's stories are not all the same. You don't know the sequence of events that brought them to you, to your program. And one of the things I like to say is that we're real good at pointing fingers, but we're not real good at pointing thumbs. Like we need to be sure that
Leya Simmons (32:17)
Right.
Tom Cottar (32:36)
we're being led by our thumbs and not our fingers. I mean, it's taught me like to move in closer into to remember that we're human. Like there's at the very beginning of this, it needs to be a human element to it. And so those partnerships and listening to people and schools and counselors and nurses, ⁓ we have to keep our humanity at the center of it. I think that's been a huge thing.
Leya Simmons (33:07)
that is, and you know, you do talk about this as well in things that I've read, you post about backpack friends over the years and in your campaigns as well, the dignity, the human dignity that you hope to honor, restore when necessary and hold at the center. I...
I think that's part of what makes your model so honestly like practical really and it feels local and driven by community. So how do you as, when I'm using these words local and community, as you're growing, as you're scaling this, how have you ⁓ worked when you're adding campuses, you've got more districts, you've got more volume?
How are you making sure that growth doesn't come at the expense of that very human side of what you're doing?
Tom Cottar (34:00)
gosh. that's such a great, that's a great question. Well, it's an important question, right? Because I think no matter what our lane is in the nonprofit sector, like we can all get caught up in numbers and metrics and impact reports. And all of those numbers represent a human being, right? They represent a... ⁓
Leya Simmons (34:02)
Small question.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Tom Cottar (34:24)
a mom or a dad or a child or a grandparent or somebody struggling or somebody who's a veteran who's been impacted. Like they all represent people, right? They represent dogs and horses and a thousand different things. ⁓ One of the things that we have done, the way our program works is we keep all of the kids in our program anonymous. And so if...
Leya Simmons (34:48)
⁓
Tom Cottar (34:50)
I'll go back to if people at Leia Simmons Elementary decide they want to register 100 kids in our program, then what we do is we contract to bring food every week for those 100 kids. the nurse, the teacher, the coach, the principal, whoever that liaison is, distributes those. So that there's where some dignity and respect anonymity comes in. ⁓
Leya Simmons (35:06)
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Tom Cottar (35:20)
But it also gives us a relationship with that campus liaison so that we know, hey, here's a sibling group and the first grader is going through chemo. He just found out he's had leukemia or the mom just passed away from cancer. Dad's taking a second job and grandma's moving in to help. So we know those dynamics that we can be a little bit more sensitive to. And then that really helps us.
It helps us partner with other nonprofits because we can't do it all, you know, but if someone else has another program that can help supplement kind of come alongside and lock arms with what we're doing and we can stay in our lane and do our thing the best, know, Tiger Woods didn't care about physics. Like he just wants to hit the ball. So if we can worry about it, we can focus on our ball and then someone else can come in and focus on their ball and
Leya Simmons (35:51)
really? That's interesting, yeah.
Tom Cottar (36:17)
pour those resources into that same family group. Like that moves the needle in a bigger way than just us doing it by ourselves. Yeah.
Leya Simmons (36:24)
It really does. Oh, that's
got my, that's just incredible. I think that
I think that when we think about growth, right, like the numbers sound wonderful, like, you know, the 200,000 children and, and all of that, but like, your stories are so deeply personal around each and every child. And if you're able to lean into the, not just the relationships that you have with the schools, but also with to the relationships that these children have with their teachers and coaches. And I just,
What I'm hearing, I'm a little bit, you know, at a lack of words because I'm just so in awe of this, but I am hearing how you're empowering not just, you know, the children and resuming and, you know, kind of providing more dignity and support for them, but also you're empowering all of these other secondary players in this child's life that then go on and hopefully help another child. I just, think that the ripple effect, I guess that's the word that I'm looking for of what you are putting out there is
It is just truly profound.
Tom Cottar (37:37)
Well, thank you. Yeah, there's a huge ripple effect, right? Yeah.
Leya Simmons (37:38)
I, yeah.
So then when you were expanding as you're growing, what both became easier and what became harder?
Tom Cottar (37:50)
⁓ Gosh, what a loaded question. How much time do you have? There's, easier, it became easier to find students to enlist in the program because word of mouth travels, right? Social media ⁓ is the bane and the boon of my existence. It's all the things. ⁓ And so word of mouth, social media, teachers begin to talk to each other and share with each other. ⁓
Leya Simmons (37:54)
I know,
Tom Cottar (38:18)
Especially teachers, teachers were huge in that. The average teacher in Texas spends about $750 out of their own pocket to feed kids in their classrooms. So, you know, they thought, ⁓ I'll get some relief. I'll get some help. And that was a great thing. ⁓ You know, there's some definitely things that became harder. Anytime you scale something. Right. What's that? Spike Lee, no money, no problems like there's just right. There's just.
Leya Simmons (38:36)
Yeah.
Or
sorry.
Tom Cottar (38:48)
You know, funding, when things go to scale, takes money and funding is always on the front of our minds. Like we have to, we have to fund this. My experience has been that really big, big donors, these big whales work with really big, big whale of organizations, right? So for someone like us, who's essentially a small business, ⁓
Leya Simmons (38:57)
Absolutely.
Usually.
Tom Cottar (39:19)
Our job was to partner with mom and pops, small to mid-sized businesses, anything that COVID taught us, it was to diversify and to be flexible. So we have this kind of membership, monthly membership donation thing, right? That kind of helps fill in the gaps. And so the great thing about that, that's not a bad thing at all because the beautiful thing about that is those
those size donors I have discovered in the heart of that is that there's easier access. I can call them, I can text them, I can meet them for lunch, can develop more of a relationship with them than just, hey, here's our impact report, here's a link where you can donate to next year's budget. That's great. ⁓ But again, there's humanity in me.
picking up the phone and calling someone and saying, we have a real need. We have an issue that we didn't plan for. We have a family that has this situation. And so that's kind of become a know, walking through.
Leya Simmons (40:20)
Yeah.
Interesting. So you've really leaned
into that relational aspect with that mid-tier donor level for that.
Tom Cottar (40:37)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's been huge.
Yeah.
Leya Simmons (40:40)
That's really,
that's very cool. That's actually was my next question, but you've really answered it, which was, you know, when, when resources, even energy ⁓ are limited, right? How do you, you know, continue? How does this keep going? And that's, sounds like it's your networking and your, ⁓ all of the relationships that you've built. So is there anything else that you would say that, really fuels things when things feel constricted?
Tom Cottar (41:04)
Alright.
You know, there's you think about, we probably think the same way. You think about resources, you think about energy, you think about clarity. Resources is kind of one lane. You think about the energy. ⁓ There is a I'm sure you've run across this. There's there seems to be two mindsets in the nonprofit space. One is kind of a scarcity mindset. One's an abundance mindset. Right. We talk about those kinds of things. ⁓
Leya Simmons (41:32)
I'm going to present.
Tom Cottar (41:36)
I was super, super naive when I started this that everybody in the nonprofit space, we were all gonna hold hands and sing Kumbaya and we would get it and we would all like just love and puppies and unicorns. And that's all it was. But it's a business and a lot of people feel like you're chasing, I'm chasing the same dollar bill that you're chasing. And so there's the business side, the competition side of that. ⁓
Leya Simmons (41:45)
Just if they would get it and then they would just hand you money. Yep, yep, been there, yeah.
Yeah.
Tom Cottar (42:06)
And there's always politics and all those kinds of things that can play into it. But the truth is there are two ways to have the tallest building in town. And one of those ways is to knock down the other buildings. The second way is just show up to work and build your building. Right. ⁓ And so kind of scrapping your way through it, you kind of begin to realize that I just need to keep my eyes on my own paper.
Right? I needed to show up, keep hold of my integrity, my faith, my mission, the thing I'm called to do. Kids need not just food, but they need coats and shoes and hygiene and their mom needs help with their electric bill and all those kinds of things. So we use this term called mission creep, right? It kind of becomes a junk drawer where we're just going to put all this stuff in there.
⁓ but scrapping your way through it has really taught me I need to keep my eyes on my own paper. I need to keep my eyes on our mission, our lane, our thing, and support other nonprofits as best that I can. Maybe that's a resource, maybe that's a connection. Maybe that's a link to better unite. Like, I don't know what those things are, but, but we all are working together to make the world best for everyone.
Leya Simmons (43:20)
I'm listening. Yeah.
Tom Cottar (43:33)
And that's kind what it boils down to, right?
Leya Simmons (43:34)
Absolutely. That
is such a wonderful point. And I do think that there ends up, unfortunately, becoming competition among nonprofits for dollars a lot of the time. But there is so much value in the collaboration amongst them. And so that's just this very beautifully worded, Tom. So OK, final question for you. What
in your, just off the top of your head. What have the kids, the families, the school partners, what has been the most impactful thing that they've taught you over the years?
Tom Cottar (44:11)
Oh gosh. Okay, I'll tell you this. We had a, one of our partners is a company in town called Dutch Bros. I'm a coffee junkie and they are, fabulous. We had, see, there you go. We had this group, corporate group come and do a volunteer event and they packed bags and I tell people it's like,
If you ever come to our warehouse, is like Beyonce and Costco had a baby and we're throwing a party. It's just the music is going, we're all having fun. We go through this whole evening of their volunteer thing and then we're doing Q &A at the end. ⁓ This young girl, they're all millennials, which everybody kind of, you know, bags on millennials, they're this and they're this. These are the most amazing 20-somethings I've ever come across. ⁓
And this young girl in the back raises her hand to ask a question. So I point at her and she what she says is she said, I just want you to know that I relied on these bags all four years of high school. And when I got this job and they said they were coming here to volunteer, I wanted to come because I wanted to give back. And I get really emotional because that taught me.
Just keep going. What's that Dory in Finding Nemo? Just keep swimming. You never know the ripple effect you were talking about. You never know the ripple effect that you're going to have. You never know the impact, the imprint you're going to make into someone's life. ⁓ And that girl with that little story has taught me
Just keep your eyes on your own paper. Just do what God and the universe is asking you to do. Just keep moving. So yeah.
Leya Simmons (46:15)
Keep going. I'm
feeling very emotional myself. That is an incredible story, Tom. I said that was the last question, but I did want to give you an opportunity, which I try and always give to guests. If there's one thing that everybody listening today takes from your story, from your experience, is there a one thing that you would want them to take?
Tom Cottar (46:38)
⁓ well, yeah. I will say this. ⁓ Something I believe is.
You were talking about purpose earlier, purpose and passion and all those kinds of things. think our purpose, your purpose is to do what is to bring forth what's been put in you to do. Because if you will bring forth what's in you already, then that thing that's in you can save you. And I think that if you don't bring forth what's in you, then the thing that's in you can wreck you. Like once you, once you,
Leya Simmons (46:51)
⁓
⁓
Tom Cottar (47:17)
bring that out and once you lean into those gifts and you just go, okay, I'm just gonna lean into it and do it. It can be life changing, whether it's a nonprofit, whether it's raising a family, whatever it is. Yeah, I think that's where purpose comes from is doing what's in you to do and not be afraid of that.
Leya Simmons (47:40)
That is such an incredible sentiment. I feel like I should end all webinars right there on that note. ⁓ This, Tom, was everything that I was hoping it would be, honestly. Thank you so much for all that you do.
Tom Cottar (47:53)
Thank you.
Leya Simmons (47:56)
all that you do through Backpack Friends and through lifting up not just children, but schools, teachers, and other nonprofits around you. I just can't say as somebody that lives in your community that is directly impacted, let me just say thank you.
Tom Cottar (48:13)
Well, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for what you do and for supporting us. Doing all the things that I know are on your shoulders. It means a lot.
Leya Simmons (48:23)
⁓ that's just, what a wonderful way to end. Tom, again, you know.
And also, let me add that sharing your story and sharing the vulnerability, to use Brene Brown's terms, of not knowing what you were doing and talking about that openly in our world of bravado, I find very refreshing and I truly appreciate that as well. If today's conversation resonated with you, I do hope that you will share it with somebody else that, like Tom said, just might need to hear it today.
⁓ Again, I'm just so grateful to you. If you have other questions and if you would like to talk to Tom, he has given us permission to give out his email address. It's right here, Cotter. Okay, Tom Cotter, C-O-T-T-A-R. TomCotter at gmail.com. It's backpackfriends.com. Am I right with that, Tom, as well?
Tom Cottar (49:12)
Yeah.
Leya Simmons (49:23)
That's right. Okay. For anybody called to make a donation, I do hope that you will go check out what they're doing. It's such important work and it's an incredible model for other places. If that's something that does not exist already in your community, Tom, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. If you would like to join us next week, we will be talking about cultivating generosity, nurturing a culture of philanthropy for nonprofit success. I'm going to be joined by my friend, Laura Huitera. She's a CFRE consultant with Gale.
Tom Cottar (49:37)
nice.
Leya Simmons (49:53)
and Associates out of Fort Worth. She's brilliant. She's super fun and wonderful. We work together with the Giving Institute and Giving USA. ⁓ And she does a lot of work around data relative to generosity in our time. So that is going to be an amazing webinar scan there to register. It's on March 31st, next Tuesday, always at 1.30 p.m. Central. And let's see what's next here.
If you don't know what Better Unite is, Tom has graciously mentioned it a few times and Better Unite and Backpack Friends have been together from the very jump for both of us, which is just a wonderful thing. But if you'd like to take a look at more of what Better Unite is and what Tom is using to facilitate fundraising events, all of the things, please scan that QR code. Or if you're listening, please email support at betterunite.com. ⁓
And then of course, if you've got other questions, jump in. Tom, thank you so much for today. just can't thank you enough for all that you do. Absolutely. I hope everybody here has an incredible day. Let's go do some good. Bye bye.
Tom Cottar (50:57)
Thank you. Thank you so much.