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Episode 47: Creating Meaning Out of Loss with Matt and Haley Phillips
159 Plays6 years ago
How do you recover from a terrible loss? And how do you honor the life of the person you lost? And most importantly, how do you create meaning out of heartbreak?
The Uncommon Life is about every aspect of life, the good times and the challenging times. That’s what makes this episode so meaningful for us. We talk with Matt and Haley Phillips, who are the parents of two beautiful children who they got to bring home from the hospital after giving birth – and one who did not come home with them.
Through their experience with their son Fletcher, you’ll find out how they came to understand grief in a way they had not experienced before. They wanted to honor Fletcher’s life and also help people who are going through similar circumstances.
We talk about the financial burdens of a hospital visit for childbirth, even when the child does not return home with you. We talk about what it means to start a charitable foundation from scratch. Hint: it’s not easy!
Matt and Haley Phillips started The Fletcher Foundation after the loss of their son through stillbirth. The Fletcher Foundation is for families who find themselves in a similar season of life, wondering how to cope with the financial and emotional burdens of such a loss.
There is a sacred pain in losing a child, and the Fletcher Foundation is about walking beside families who are going through that pain.
https://thefletcherfoundation.net/
what you will learn in this episode:- The financial impact of miscarriage and stillbirth
- How to find support after a miscarriage or stillbirth
- What it’s like to build a non-profit from scratch
- How to be kind to yourself and to loved ones when tragedy strikes
- The challenge of raising money for a tragedy that doesn’t get talked about
- How to set up tax-exempt status for your charitable organization
- How to be there for people who are experiencing griefCreating meaning out of loss
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Transcript
Exploring the Uncommon Life
00:00:02
Speaker
Everyone dreams about living an uncommon life, but how we define that dream is very different for each of us. And for most, it's a lifelong pursuit. Welcome to the Uncommon Life Project podcast.
Welcome to the Uncommon Life Project
00:00:15
Speaker
We're going to introduce you to people who are living that life or enjoying the journey to get there. We're going to also give you some tools, tricks, and tips for starting or accelerating your own efforts to live an uncommon life.
00:00:27
Speaker
a life worth celebrating and savoring. Please welcome your hosts, Brian Dewhurst and Philip Ramsey.
00:00:35
Speaker
Hello and welcome everybody to another episode of the Uncommon Life Project where I'm your host, Philip Ramsey. And I am Brian Dewhurst. Thanks again for tuning in. We got a really fun episode for you as we always do. Thanks for the amazing feedback that we're getting and also thank you for rating it like we've always asked. Do we have a fun review to read today? We do. We do. Absolutely do. And we're still going to 100. So if we're not at 100, you haven't rated it. By Christmas. We got to get it done. It's got to get done. We got to get it done.
00:01:02
Speaker
So I think before we even do this, because we have a fun review to read, to try to inspire you to try to beat this, because we have some really good reviews, I wanted to just walk through what we do and how we do it.
Personal Passions Over Profit
00:01:13
Speaker
That's been some feedback that we've gotten from some listeners of like, you got to start kind of talking through what you do and how we do it. And my newest thing is like, I feel like we're life giving financial advisors, which means we take people from where they're at and try to get to the heart of what is
00:01:29
Speaker
What makes them tick? What gets them passionate or enthusiastic? And then we just double down because our biggest thing is you're your best asset. How we get there is obviously with money, but we don't really care about your money the first time we meet with you. We really want to know what gets you excited and what moves you forward. That's what Brian and I do.
00:01:47
Speaker
We do your traditional stuff, but we do it in an untraditional way. Hence the uncommon wealth partners. So let's go back to the review unless you want to add anything. No, I thought that was a great synopsis of what we do. Meet people where they're at. Elevator Speech 101, which I don't like and I don't know anyway. OK, here's the review. It actually is amazing. It says I absolutely love this podcast. I can't get enough of Philip.
00:02:11
Speaker
And the title of that is Wow. And it's from my wife. So there it is. There's our review. I know, Aaron, I'm not upset about that.
00:02:21
Speaker
So, all right, well, let's introduce our
Introducing Matt and Haley Phillips
00:02:23
Speaker
guest. It is Matt and Haley Phillips with the Fletcher Foundation. And what I think is so powerful about this story is one, their passion and enthusiasm for this cause. And then the drive that Matt had to bring this thing off the ground from ground zero, having no experience in the past. But Matt and Haley, if you know them, they are rock stars through and through. And the foundation is something that was passionate to them through some unfortunate events.
00:02:50
Speaker
And how do they impact others through it? So welcome to the show, Matt and Haley. Thank you very much for having us. Absolutely. And Haley, you're here too.
00:02:59
Speaker
Yes, I am. We're so excited. So Duo Cat, what would you quadruple? This is a quad cast. Quad cast, everyone. I knew Brian would have the word. And we really do value the ones that we get to have the husband and wife because this is a joint effort and both have to sacrifice to get this thing up and going. So let's just give us a baseline of what the Fletcher Foundation is.
00:03:23
Speaker
So two years ago yesterday, today is October 21st.
Origin of the Fletcher Foundation
00:03:28
Speaker
We delivered our son Fletcher's stillbirth at 20 weeks. He was born without a heartbeat. It's by far something you can't prepare for is the hardest thing we ever went through. Fast forward to a couple months, we started to get our hospital bills in the mail. Got a bill for $5,500 and we were fortunate enough to be able to have money to pay the bill.
00:03:49
Speaker
But it really dawned on me that it's such a bummer that you got to pay a hospital bill for a baby that you could never take home. You always hear people in the workplace complaining about the cost of having a baby and how it's so expensive. They don't want to have babies because it's so expensive. And I thought that we could do something more with it. And that's where the idea of the Fletcher Foundation kicked off. I wanted to start a nonprofit where we would pay families bills after they lose their baby to miscarriage or stillbirth.
00:04:18
Speaker
Yeah, and a lot of people I think have a misconception that they don't get billed for that, which is so wrong. I mean, it's just it's a false assumption. And the cool thing I think about you too, many things, but you did have Hudson before this, like you have a son. And that let's talk through the bill of that, because I think that's really interesting.
00:04:40
Speaker
Yeah, so when we had our first child, very easy pregnancy. Perfect. We just did not expect to have any bumps in the road with our second pregnancy.
00:04:52
Speaker
Fast forward to that delivery, Fletcher, our son that we didn't get to bring home, cost almost twice as much as our living son, which was a little crazy to me because Fletcher was a natural delivery. There was a lot of things medically that we didn't need with Fletcher because he was already passed away. So to have a higher bill for this child that we didn't bring home versus same hospital almost just a year earlier was really shocking to us.
00:05:22
Speaker
Absolutely, that's like the extra kick like the salt in the wound because obviously you're coping with loss and then you get this bill and So so I think Matt let's talk about the book that we read because Matt and I we go to the same church So I think that needs to be kind on the forefront and we were going through a book and through that book Do you remember that book what it was called?
Inspiration from Intentional Living
00:05:44
Speaker
Yeah, John Maxwell. I forget the title. It was intentional living. Yep. Yep. And through that, Matt was like, the whole premise of the book is like, do something that you're passionate about. Don't just sit on the sidelines, but actually do something. And that was when Matt was like, I want to do something for Fletcher. And I want to help families that have gone through the same experience that we have and help them financially for that bill that comes in the mail.
Challenges of Starting a Nonprofit
00:06:10
Speaker
that there's just nothing you can do about it. And we want to be there to help. And so that's exactly what you did. So one, kudos for doing something because it is impacting others. And and it's a cool opportunity for a nonprofit to be able to contribute to something for other people who have gone through that. And they would know how impactful that is. So kudos for one doing that.
00:06:32
Speaker
And then also, kudos, I think this is a great and this is the uncommon twist that I think you did this from ground zero. You had nobody helping you. You're just like the guy who just replaces breaks because that's just what you do and figures it out. And so you really did that from ground zero. You took this and you ran with it. So walk us through like when you were reading that book, kind of your thought process through this of, hey, I want to do this.
00:07:00
Speaker
Yeah, that book definitely gave me a lot of inspiration, really made me think about what was going on, my experience, how that made me feel. Kind of got the wheels turning on what I want to do with his life, because we knew we wanted to do something what I had no idea. We're sitting at the dinner table, had the idea, let's start a nonprofit, had no idea what went into that. I thought it would just be starting a Facebook page, raising some money, paying some bills as simple as that.
00:07:30
Speaker
Not quite. News flash, it's not that simple. So had to figure out what we had to do. We live in Iowa, figured out how we had to register with the Secretary of State as a nonprofit. We had no idea what we were doing. So we used a third party online software that kind of helped us set that up, paid them a small fee.
00:07:50
Speaker
We thought we were done, didn't realize that we still weren't federally tax exempt and any money we raised, we had to pay taxes on. So we had to find out how to get that done, which was a little bit more work just through some Googling, some YouTube videos. There's there's guides out there for anything. I tell people that kind of like changing your brake pads.
00:08:10
Speaker
and figured out how to get federally tax exempt, then we needed to realize how are we going to build this from zero to however big we want to get it.
00:08:22
Speaker
Thought it would be easy is definitely a cause Haley and I believed and I thought money would be pouring in. It wasn't didn't know you needed to have a board of directors. I thought it would just be something Haley and I could run part time here or there. It wasn't had somebody such a blessing create our website for us.
00:08:42
Speaker
But I didn't know how to do a website. I didn't realize that there would be ongoing things that we'd continue to have to do. So I had to learn how to do some basic website stuff. And what's your website? TheFletcherFoundation.net. Okay. So there's definitely a lot of small things that I never imagined I'd have to learn. But somebody has to do it. And we're small, we don't have a ton of money pouring in. So we can't pay all these third parties to do everything.
00:09:07
Speaker
Yeah, that's the biggest part. Let's go back.
Support During Grieving
00:09:10
Speaker
So at what point, like, let's go through that whole emotional thing between you two and like, one, maybe you can speak to other families that are going through this, but how did you heal? How is your marriage in that time? I feel like I'm kind of going this conversation. Sorry, Brian. Brian has a whole bunch of questions.
00:09:28
Speaker
So let's start with that. So I think the first thing that we have gotten asked is how did your workplaces respond? So I think that was really pivotal in part of our healing. So because I had delivered Fletcher, my workplace was so gracious to grant me six weeks of maternity leave, which was a sweet, sweet blessing. And it just happened to hit over. I was working in retail in the time. And it hit over Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Christmas.
00:09:57
Speaker
Which honestly can be very stressful just in and of itself and not in that job absolutely and not just like What is it called? Facing aisles like you aren't just cashiering. Yeah store. You were a manager. Yeah, so I ran a retail store so it it's it's a lot of work and so I had had you know, I was already on bed rest before that and
00:10:22
Speaker
So I had been out of it for quite a while. So to jump back in in the fourth quarter is kind of makes your head turn while you're grieving, while you're taking care of a one year old, kind of just like pulling, like battling through life. So I did get six weeks off, which was fantastic. My workplace, they brought us meals. They came and sat with my kid and played with my kid. They reached out all the time. They sent flowers. So I think that was really critical to have that time. I don't think a lot of people get that after
00:10:51
Speaker
a miscarriage or still birth. It is just like you would have to work through having a newborn. Now you have to work through not having a newborn and you know going through a delivery still very physical. So there's part of that healing that I just physically needed and then also likewise Matt his work they did give paternity leave. So we were able to spend some of those six weeks together which was nice to be able to disconnect from
00:11:19
Speaker
our jobs and just focus on us and our one year old, what does life look after this? For us, it was a fast forward. I ended up leaving my job to stay home. And I think it was kind of part of that time where I said, are we ready for this? No, we're going to do it anyways and figure it out. So I think it just helped create that perspective of like,
00:11:42
Speaker
Life is short. What do we do with this? What matters? Where are we investing? And so I think that pushed us to just make love each other well. And we got great advice that just said be kind to yourself and be kind to each other. And I think we did that really well during that time, which set us up to grieve together, but differently. Yeah. And just make smart decisions for our family. For sure. Let's talk about the differences in grieving. I'd like to hear from Matt's perspective on this.
00:12:13
Speaker
Growing up, my family never really talked about emotions. So I'm not a greever. I don't talk about emotions. That just is how I deal with it. Been married four years now. That's something Haley has been working on with me to try to get me to open up more and talk through things more. But I'm definitely not the emotional or the greever, especially right away. It takes me a long time to process things.
Different Grieving Experiences
00:12:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:38
Speaker
I remember right after it happened, remember exactly where I was, we were upstairs. I was calling my benefits line to see when I could go back to work or see when I had to go back to work. They said, Oh, you get this week off. I got off the phone, like, Haley, you know, I think it'd just be easier for me if I went back to work tomorrow.
00:12:55
Speaker
Because to me, yes, it was a loss. Yes, it heart broke me. I didn't think that I didn't think it through how important it would be for my wife, Haley, to be there with her supporting her through it. I don't know if I grieved much that week, but I feel like it was definitely important to be there for her to support her.
00:13:17
Speaker
It's definitely different on a man than it is a woman, especially with a miscarriage or stillbirth. And I think it's really important to support your partner, even if you're not ready to grieve through that. Mm hmm. Good point. All right, Brian, I know you got a lot of questions, so I'll just I'll shut up. Yeah. Well, no, I mean, I'm so excited to have you guys on the show. I've obviously heard about your story for a while. And, you know, as you grow up, I think you transition from like high school college to being an adult. This happens more than people, I think,
00:13:45
Speaker
I guess more than I thought. And the more, you know, as I get older and more families we run into that this happens, I never thought about the financial impact of like, oh, you still got to pay for that. And so I just am cheering for you guys and want this to be, you know, catapult for the foundation. And I just thank you for for telling your story.
00:14:06
Speaker
There's a lot of different, you know, we talk about businesses and starting a business, there's lots of different ways to, you know, set up your corporation. What led you to kind of like the 501c3 route versus, you know, like a private foundation, if you could talk about that. Which 501c3 is a nonprofit. Nonprofit, right. Yep.
00:14:22
Speaker
So again, having no idea what I was doing, that is the only thing I knew of and that is what made sense. From what I knew of nonprofits, I didn't want it to be revenue generating, paying people at the top, having people work below.
00:14:38
Speaker
I didn't want that model. I wanted people to know that the money that's coming in, especially at this point, while we're small, all that money is going back out towards the little expenses we have and then those families. Sure. We never had any interest. It was never a conversation that we wanted to be for profit, try to make money off the topic. It was just never about that. Yeah.
00:14:59
Speaker
How many families have you impacted today? We've had, I want to say six applicants, a couple of them after we asked for a little bit more information, said they didn't have a bill, didn't have a revised bill after insurance, but we've gotten four checks out for families that have gone through miscarriages or stillbirths. Some of them multiple miscarriages or multiple stillbirths. Four. That's amazing.
00:15:21
Speaker
What's been kind of the biggest challenge so far? I mean, I get we heard kind of just setting everything up, but you're set up now. What's what's kind of the biggest challenge? The biggest challenge is identifying how big we want it to grow and coming up with a plan to get there.
00:15:41
Speaker
I mean, there's huge nonprofits out there. You think of the Red Cross, United Way. I don't think the Fletcher Foundation will ever be that big. Those are just huge nonprofits. But how do we scale it to be bigger so we can impact more families, have more outreach? That's hard figuring that out if you've never done it before. Sure. Obviously with the for-profit business,
00:16:04
Speaker
How do you get more sales? How do you get more leads? It's a very straightforward thing. For a nonprofit, it's a little bit different. We need to think about kind of two prong, how do we get more money in? And then how can we get that money out to better serve people?
00:16:20
Speaker
Cause it's kind of the chicken or the egg a little bit. Like do you bring in writing or do you find families in need? Right. And then use that as a tool to get more money. Right. Yeah. Right. So what's your process or what's your thought or strategy to get more families to know about Fletcher foundation for when they go into, for when they, when they're maybe in this crisis?
00:16:43
Speaker
Right. So I think having gone through this, we realized there's not a lot of support in the space. So when we delivered our son, we kind of got a breathing packet. And to be honest, I don't remember anything that was in that breathing packet. It was only months later than I'm like, you're fogging, looking through this like, oh, yeah, we we did have resources and we didn't know it or we got a list of
00:17:08
Speaker
two resources,
Social Stigma Around Miscarriage Grief
00:17:09
Speaker
like, right. So I think we just kind of found there is a lack of knowledge around it. Part of it is just the stigma of it's.
00:17:18
Speaker
It feels good to give money to something you can see. Um, so people like, you know, Oh, I can get behind, um, kids for cancer. I can see them, you know, I can kind of see it or St. Jude or, you know, I can see them like, Oh, they're actually going to get their child through adoption, whatever that looks like. This is something you don't see. Like it's a, it's private. We keep that really private with our clients. Like not everybody is ready to share their story, what they've been through.
00:17:46
Speaker
And so that that's hard for us. So how do we get to those people? Because it's not something people talk about, even in our society now, like it's not people. Well, just with social media, it's not like you want to, hey, look at me. Right. And it's not until you kind of share your story that people are like, oh, I also had a miscarriage on it. What? I've known you for years. So I think that's kind of something like unless you're talking about it, people aren't like coming out of the woodwork.
00:18:13
Speaker
Also, people kind of grieving don't know what they need. So they're not like out looking for resources because they don't even know really what to look for. So I think some of the things we've done locally is some of the best resources we got, whether it's a list of support groups or
00:18:29
Speaker
kind of services to honor babies that you've lost was connecting through our funeral home. So we've actually found that funeral homes provide a lot of resources around financial support, emotional support. So we've connected with local funeral homes because once they're in the hospital, they're meeting with the funeral home, whatever that looks like for a cremation or a burial, and they're also giving them information. And that person is able to sit down
00:18:57
Speaker
a little bit separate from the event itself in the hospital. And they're like talking, talking them through things. So we've been able to connect with a few funeral homes as well as we are in prevent packets in local hospitals. And then we'll be in a couple of metro counseling centers. So people that are kind of trying to get them in all ways. So at the event, at the birth, wherever they're medically taken care of,
00:19:24
Speaker
at the funeral home, if that's a step that they have to take, and then fast forward counseling. I would think those would be probably three places that they're already going, that we can be, if we get them at all three, that would be our ideal way to reach our clients.
00:19:45
Speaker
And does the Fletcher Foundation also help with like funeral costs or is it just hospital bills? Just hospital bills. So there are a ton of different nonprofits out there. A handful of them have to do with miscarriage and stillbirth. I know there are some out there that will deal specifically with the funeral costs.
00:20:04
Speaker
But we wanted to do one thing and do it well, so we wanted to do hospital bills from delivery or from the miscarriage. Sure. So let's walk through the process. Like, let's say there's a family out there that's in need and then got this hospital bill. What's the process for them to apply with the Fletcher Foundation?
00:20:20
Speaker
So they go to our website, click on a tab, fill out some very basic information. It goes to myself and Haley. We review it, see if there's any additional questions we have, any additional information we need. At that point, once we get all the information, we review it as a board, we review how much money we have, how big of a dent we can put in that bill.
00:20:42
Speaker
send a check out, let them know the checks on the way, all of the billing, all the checks that go out, we do send right to the hospital billing centers or billing agencies so they don't have to deal with that at all. Sure. It's a very straightforward process. We don't ask for a blood sample or hair sample, anything crazy. We just want to help pay these people's bills. Yeah. I have a process in place to do that for sure.
00:21:08
Speaker
That's awesome. That's
Fundraising Challenges for Nonprofits
00:21:10
Speaker
really cool. I mean, to make it as painless as possible, I think is definitely wise on that. How have you been going about now raising the money? And I, you know, it's interesting in our business, we asked for money a lot, I guess. We don't really look at it that way. But at the end of the day, I think
00:21:27
Speaker
that is a big part of what we do and so it's awkward to talk about money and so i want to give you the platform to kind of ask for money and not you know i think it's weird and i i don't think you feel that way but i want you to feel like there are people listening and i do believe you know things happen for a reason and so how can people invest or uh you know donate
00:21:49
Speaker
Yeah. So to kind of answer the first half of the question, fundraising is hard to do. It's very hard to get someone's money towards a cause when you're not physically able to give them something. You know, if you're in sales and let's say you sell lawnmowers, it's really easy to say. It's really easy exchange. Give me $250 here's a lawnmower, $250 here's a lawnmower.
00:22:10
Speaker
People are just giving us money and trusting that we're going to care for that money the way they entrust us with it. So starting out, we started just soliciting fundraising through Facebook, set up a Facebook page. If you post a month, we'd say, hey, go to our website, set up a one-timer recurring donation. Your funds will be used towards the families that have gone through the miscarriage or stillbirth.
00:22:36
Speaker
I've realized now that we've been doing this for a year, year and a half that friends and families are only going to go so far. So now we're starting to look at grants, corporate sponsorship, those kinds of things, because those are the places that are going to have a lot more money that they can help you with. Sure.
00:22:51
Speaker
And like some something kind of cool. I think casinos are someplace where people don't ever think and they have to give a lot of money out. And so to get some application in there, I think that's just sometimes it's nice if you are in charge of a nonprofit and you're kind of the same boat. Where do you even go? Like casinos is not a bad place to to go because they're handing out money. They have to. Yeah, it seems like every big company
00:23:16
Speaker
has a private foundation, tons of families that either inherited a lot of money or just have a lot of money through whatever means, they may have a private foundation. They're out there. The kind of leads to another skill that I need to learn haven't yet is grant writing. So there's people out there that will charge $50, $100 an hour to write a grant for you and it might take them 20 hours. We don't have that kind of money. So how are we going to apply for these grants? How are we going to find these grants when
00:23:45
Speaker
myself or no one on our team has done it. But as far as donating goes, you just go to our website, the Fletcher Foundation dot net, there's a big button that says make a donation. But on the topic of fundraising, it's it's hard. It's it's a hard concept to give me your money, but I'm not giving you anything right away. Yeah, sure.
00:24:03
Speaker
I also think something that has helped us a lot, not in the sense of big dollars, but people like to physically do things. So we do bring our clients through their first year of loss, their first Mother's Day, Christmas.
00:24:19
Speaker
their baby's due date and birthday. And so kind of coming alongside us to say, you know, we send books or poems or mementos, things, you know, shipping. When people say, hey, I want to cover the shipping to send people the, you know, their welcome, kind of they get a welcome box from us with a book and a letter and a memento for their baby. Like when somebody says like, hey, I'm going to pay
00:24:45
Speaker
for the shipping of those boxes this year, that is, that's giving us money. Like when somebody says I'm going to buy all of the books for, you know, the next three clients, like that's giving us money. Those are costs that we have that not cost that we have, but that's a resource that we give out. So it is a cost to the foundation. So I think even in terms of people think I don't have hundreds to give, um, there are things to do and commitments to be made that are still,
00:25:12
Speaker
Help us to be profitable. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's a good point. And if you do give you get a deduction Because you are a true nonprofit. Yes. Yep, and that's big For a lot of people. Yeah Instead of just doing a Facebook post and then just sending me money like you're not getting a deduction on that one. Yep exactly
00:25:35
Speaker
Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. No deductions. So you donate, you get a receipt, bring it to your tax person at the end of the year. They'll make sure you get your get your deduction for it. Absolutely. What would be, you know, what's coming? I think this is going to air close to the end of the year. It's October. What what would be, you know, meaningful to like if this happened by year end, it would be like overwhelming or overwhelming in a good way. You know, what's that kind of like? Seventeen million dollars.
00:26:04
Speaker
I was going to say 16 million. You're close. I think, you know, Philip said it's the chicken or the egg. Definitely two prong. We need more people to apply that have gone through miscarriage or stillbirth. And then we need the funds to help them know if we had a big grant or significant donor base and we were getting
00:26:27
Speaker
you know, $10,000 donations, $5,000 donations, or let's say even $5,000 a month, and we raised $50,000 over the course of a year, we'd be able to help out pay more of these people's bills. And then we'd also be able to reinvest that towards marketing so we can find people to help them. Sure. Very cool. Would you say you would you would value reoccurring payments or one time donations more?
Importance of Recurring Donations
00:26:54
Speaker
reoccurring, definitely. It's good to be able to count on that money. Absolutely. So if someone's going to donate, let's say $100 one time, I feel like the better gift would be, you know, cut that in half, smaller one time hit to you. But if you can afford $50 a month, and we can count on that $50 for however long you want to commit to, or definitely, yeah, we know how much money we have a month, we can better manage our expenses, better plan for it. So definitely reoccurring.
00:27:24
Speaker
So what's the biggest takeaway as you started through this whole nonprofit starting from scratch to where it is currently? What do you think the biggest takeaway is for somebody out there, a listener that might be in the same boat as you like, this sounds really neat. And I will say that I've, uh, I've challenged Matt to write kind of an ebook on how to start a nonprofit from ground zero with no help except YouTube and your closest friends.
00:27:53
Speaker
So I've challenged that and hopefully that'll get done and we'll put that on our website. And if it happens, then we'll make sure that we do that. We put that on our eBooks because I think that's really valuable. And the work that you've done is not only inspiring for me, but I know a lot more people. So what's the biggest takeaway back to my question that you've had going through this process? I would say the biggest takeaway is you need to know why you're doing it. You need to have passion for it.
00:28:19
Speaker
You know, I work full time right now. I'm going to school full time at the end of the day. The last thing I want to do is anything after I put my kids to bed. I want to sit down, eat some dinner and go to sleep because I'm exhausted after the day. So you need to have that passion. You need to know why you're doing it. You need to know that.
00:28:38
Speaker
I'm tired, I'm exhausted, but there are people out there that went through exactly what we went through and they can't afford their bill. They're behind on their bill. And I need to make sure that the nonprofit is in a position to help them. So if you don't have passion for what you're doing, you don't know why you want to do it. You don't know.
00:28:56
Speaker
You need to know that there are going to be long days, especially if you're not going to be able to go full time in it right away. You're not going to have the money to do that. That you're going to have that fire in you to sustain the hard work because it's a lot of hard work.
Roles Within Their Nonprofit
00:29:08
Speaker
What's both of your roles in the day to day of the Fletcher Foundation?
00:29:12
Speaker
So I handle all the communication with clients. So like Matt said, when we get kind of the auto email from their application, I will be the person from then on that contacts them. Pretty much about anything other than if we have a lot of questions about their bill, kind of direct that to Matt. We like to kind of keep that separate. Just insurance is tricky. Sometimes people have a hard time getting
00:29:39
Speaker
the bill that they need from insurance what we need to send to them. So Matt will usually handle the bill if it's a situation where we have to ask a lot of questions about their insurance. Other than that I handle all of the communication with the clients and then also kind of coordinate between people donating
00:29:58
Speaker
our resources on the emotional track that we take that client on in the first 12 months. Whatever that calendar is, I just will be in charge of getting all of those resources together to send in a timely manner for our clients. Then I also reach out to Metro locations about meeting with them, getting our information,
00:30:22
Speaker
Um, in a bereavement packet or a counseling center. So I'm always reaching out to just spread locally what we're doing. Um, cause I think that's where we have the most traction to gain right now.
00:30:35
Speaker
Uh, I oversee a lot of things. I wear many hats, so I do all the technical stuff. So I do all the website, uh, uploading blogs, uh, make sure our search engine optimization is good. Uh, I lead the fundraising. I oversee the Facebook. We do have somebody that does our, uh, Facebook posts for us. She's a huge blessing, but I oversee that, uh, just to make sure we have certain amount of posts per week or whatever that looks like.
00:31:04
Speaker
I help run the board meetings. We have board meetings once a quarter. So I make sure we're on track to have those. I do our taxes. Pretty much everything. I need everything else. Yeah, pretty much center field.
00:31:17
Speaker
Yeah. And just for full disclosure, so Philip is on the board of the Fletcher Foundation. So if you heard him say hour, that's why. Yep. And I've also written a blog from like, my wife and I have been fortunate enough not to actually deal with this, but a lot of our friends have and
00:31:35
Speaker
man the community around you at that point when something doesn't go according to plan is huge so i want you guys to be able to speak to the community that was with you shoulder to shoulder in that and currently and how instrumental that is for you guys
00:31:50
Speaker
Yeah, I think it was a very different perspective from my side versus Matt's side. And I'll let him share that. But I think I am fortunate to have a family who they knew throughout my whole pregnancy was really rough. And when I started having or went into labor with Fletcher, they just drove down. My family is really good about like, we're just going to be there. It might be days, might be whatever. We're just going to be there.
00:32:19
Speaker
So thankfully they were there when Fletcher was born, so they got to hold him. That was really a pivotal moment, I think, for my parents and something I will treasure for a long, I mean, for the rest of my life.
00:32:32
Speaker
And so I did have my parents support, but, you know, the next day, one of my closest friends from Kansas City has just said, Hey, I'm coming to be with you for a couple of days. So I think it was I didn't have to ask for people to help me. I think it's very natural and
00:32:49
Speaker
like a female perspective, like they're just going to be there. You know, my small group from church came over, they sat on my carpet, you know, we had coffee, we had cake, we just hung out and talked for hours. I think that's just something that was not as natural to women and may not have been, maybe isn't for men. So I'll talk about that a little bit. But I think even ongoing, those friends are still checking in. And I think that's
00:33:16
Speaker
Importance because great as a process something that you'll live with, you know, kind of for the rest of your life and there's different triggers that every different season of life so I think that to have those friends that continue to follow up is Pivotal and to feel like I matter what I went through mattered my struggle isn't in vain or alone so
00:33:38
Speaker
Yeah, it was great to see all of Hailey's people show up and be there for her. I had a very different experience after this. I don't know if it's just the way that guys deal with tough things or what it was, but I would say that the period after we lost Fletcher was by far the loneliest I've ever been in my entire life.
Loneliness in Grieving
00:33:59
Speaker
I felt like I was alone, felt like nobody cared, and I knew they cared.
00:34:04
Speaker
So it's not a lack of them caring. It's just the way that they showed it throughout that time. Nothing to do with Haley. We were each other's best support. We were there for each other. At least I would say so. It was very lonely. I think guys just don't know what to say, so they just don't say anything.
00:34:25
Speaker
You know, I have a friend every time I see him, he always asks me, how's Fletcher? How are you doing with Fletcher? And I appreciate it. I appreciate him checking up on me. And it makes it feel like his life is valid, that it was important. It wasn't just a bad month or a bad experience. You guys had that. He is our son. Yeah, he is our son. We don't have him. But he is still our baby boy that we just didn't get to bring home. Mm hmm.
00:34:51
Speaker
And for the record, Matt and I didn't know each other when they were going through this. So I just want to make sure I'm not getting myself out of it. Kind of. Yeah. So I do want to just voice both of you like it is not in vain, whether or not the Fletcher Foundation was up or not. But I still think that the Fletcher Foundation is another instrumental point of that, that it was not in vain and the families that you're helping through this.
00:35:16
Speaker
is instrumental. And so what you're doing is, man, it's great, because a lot of times people have a great idea, but they never act on it. So what does the future hold for the Fletcher Foundation? What do you want it to look like? In, let's say, five years out. Well, let's just say, you know, by Christmas, because you're getting 16 million. I'd settle for 15 million. Okay, it's going down. The longer this goes, the less mill.
00:35:44
Speaker
you know, hopefully by Christmas, we have a couple more applicants, we do have money to help people throughout the rest of the year. You know, our average amount that we are giving families is right around $1,000. Just based on our financial picture, that's what we can afford to give to make sure we have money back in case we do get more applicants. So we definitely want to
00:36:04
Speaker
help those families out. Hopefully our fundraising picks up a little bit, some more recurring donations or we can start finding some companies to give us a yearly gift or at least a significant one-time gift so we can start reaching more people and kind of just investing back in ourselves to
00:36:21
Speaker
pay more bills or reach out to people that have gone through the tragedy. Yep. We want to be marketing. Yep, exactly. We want to be in more hospitals. So when somebody does go through that loss, they have that Fletcher Foundation card that they're just going to scan over right away because they're not in the right mind to read everything. But they know four months down the road when that hospital bill shows up. Hey, I remember reading about the Fletcher Foundation. Let me check them out. Maybe they can help out with this. Yeah.
00:36:47
Speaker
We want to be on more resources pages. So there's many different websites. You type in miscarriage resources that'll come up. We want to be listed on as many of those as possible. So if they go to their site, they know that we're a resource that they can reach out to. And honestly, just making sure it's a big bigger name. So I mean, it's obviously something that some people have to plan for, unfortunately, and some people have no idea. And so just to make sure that people know the Fletcher Foundation, what it stands for, what it's there for. And so if one of their friends
00:37:17
Speaker
Does go through that they can have in the back of their mind I know it's probably not the time right now But at some point I think I'm gonna tell you know so-and-so about the Fletcher Foundation and have them help right right 25 I mean 25% of people go through miscarriage or stillbirth I mean everyone knows somebody that has gone through it. You probably just don't know that they did mm-hmm, so it's a good thing to
00:37:40
Speaker
know about. It's important to check on the people that have gone through it, whether it was last week or a couple of years ago, ask them how they're doing with their baby they lost. They do want to be asked that question. Definitely gauge from there how far they want to talk about it. But people
00:37:58
Speaker
do want to know that that life did matter. Yeah, so today's a pretty significant day for you two. It's two years. Yeah, two years ago yesterday, October 20th. My question is, how are you doing? Real talk. Yeah.
Missing Memories with Fletcher
00:38:11
Speaker
I feel like we're doing well. I feel like the more time that goes on, the more we miss him. Definitely seeing Hudson, our three-year-old, grow up. Fletcher would be one year behind him.
00:38:26
Speaker
So when I'm out mowing the lawn with Hudson, sometimes I break down and think, wow, I wish he was out here with me too, or when we're playing. Those are the times that you definitely miss him the most. You miss those memories or the memories that should have happened and you'll just never have. But I feel like we're doing good. We rest in our faith, we're Christians, so we believe that one day we'll be with him again and we can hold him and be with him.
00:38:54
Speaker
But I would say we're not day to day crying, grieving in that way. It's just more missing the memories that you're never going to have. Sure. Hailey, you know, you have to answer that. Yeah. I think grief looks different in different seasons of life. Um, this, so this past weekend, we had a crazy weekend.
00:39:12
Speaker
I'm just a lot, a lot of things planned. And now we have an almost one year old and a three year old. And so I don't have a lot of time to myself. And so I just took time earlier last week because I didn't want to feel rushed to my grief. So at this point, I've learned what I need. And so I think I just plan for
00:39:34
Speaker
plan for that. Um, you can't always, but I knew just with his birthday, I would feel that anyways. So just being able to take that time. And then, you know, our families, our parents joined us yesterday and we did a balloon release and had cupcakes. And that is something that we just love to do. Um, it's good. And I think, you know, I was saying to someone yesterday, they're like, Oh, how, you know, how's today for you? Like, how are you doing? And,
00:40:01
Speaker
We are doing well, but I think it's because we
00:40:05
Speaker
don't, it's a very fluid conversation with us. Um, we talk about it with our son all the time. In fact, if we say, Oh, you know, so, and so they went to be with Jesus and our son automatically knows like, Oh, they're with, they're with Fletcher and Jesus in heaven. Um, so it's just something that we've been very transparent about with our son. Um, that you have a brother and that's helped. I think our grieving too, is this just a very fluid conversation.
00:40:33
Speaker
That way when we do have these anniversaries, we don't feel like this is our one day to grieve. This is our one. There's a lot of pressure to feel really sad or there's a lot of pressure to make everybody be there. It's just this is his birthday and we're going to celebrate it because we're so thankful for just the gift that life is and to even have Fletcher for the 20 weeks we did. You know, I'm not the author of life, but I'm thankful for it and whatever whatever is planned for us. But I think
00:41:02
Speaker
something that we've just done is make his life very fluid in our life, which has helped us to grieve in a really healthy way. Yeah, I think that's a really good strategy and point for other families who might have a someone like a child who's living. How do you communicate that? How do you communicate? And I think that's a really good strategy. How has it been real talk like this is an emotional topic and then to throw basically kind of like a business on top of it.
00:41:30
Speaker
is got to be challenging. And then to do it together has got to be like triple challenging. Correct. It is. I think it's good. I'm not on the board and I'm not allowed to be. So I would say I'm really glad that I'm not. Why? You know, you got to answer why. I think it's best for me to stay on the emotional side of it and not on the financial side of it. I think
00:41:55
Speaker
You know, we never went in this to say like, oh, we're going to make jobs of money, but there's fundraising to be done and there's bills to be paid and there's things to do. And I want all of those things. And but it's just good for me not to be involved in that because I never want to feel like, oh, my loss is a gaint like that doesn't feel great. Yeah.
00:42:13
Speaker
That's not our goal. But I know from being Fletcher's mom, I can't separate that. So it's good that I deal with the families and on the emotional side of it. I know how I'm wired of a hard time separating those two. So I think that's good because like working with spouses is hard no matter what and then added like a loss of a child and then added all these things. So we get better every day.
00:42:41
Speaker
get better every day, but it's good that I have a lane to stay in and that's good for me. Yeah, it's good. And the reason she can't be on the board is there's conflict of interest policies. So she can't be on the board because of that. So I'm on the board. She can't be on the board. But it's definitely good to have separation of what we do. I would never be able to work with you directly. Like at my full time job, if you're in the cubicle next to me, I would not want to deal with you when I got home.
00:43:10
Speaker
I can only do about eight hours a day of you teasing. I know. But similar to Fletcher Foundation, Haley has something she does during the day. I have something I do during the day and then at night when we're working on it, it's nice to be able to separate what we're working on so we don't drive each other nuts. Crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Man, I feel like this is jam packed. I can't wait for this ebook that you're going to write for everybody.
00:43:35
Speaker
create a non-profit without any experience, just passion and why. So thank you for being on the show. How do our listeners, I just want to be very clear, one, how to donate, how to get contact with you and like give them your contact information. Sure. So the Fletcherfoundation.net right at the top, you'll see a button that says donate now. Click that button. Please consider setting up a recurring or
00:44:00
Speaker
at least a one-time donation. Every little bit helps. All that money is going towards the families that have gone through miscarriage or stillbirth. We want to help more families. As far as reaching out to us, our emails are Matt at the Fletcher foundation.net and Haley at the Fletcher foundation.net. Remember the H-A-L-E-Y. And Fletcher is F-L-E-T-C-H-E-R. Correct. Perfect. Remember the Fletcher foundation. Yeah.
00:44:25
Speaker
Yeah, I just want to encourage you guys, keep going. I know this isn't, you know, roses and sunshine every day. And running a business with Philip, we have our moments too. And it's just, I'm glad you have each other and just keep going. And we can't wait to see what God has in store for you guys over the next year and two years and five years. And so I also like to encourage our listeners too, if
00:44:49
Speaker
you know, this tugs on a heart string of yours, you know, please donate. Or if you know a family member that has gone through this, you know, I think it's hard for probably almost any family not to know a family member or somebody that you would just reach out and share these resources with them. And so, yeah, thank you so much today, guys. This is incredible. Yeah. Thank you very much for having us. Yes. Thank you guys so much for having us.
00:45:12
Speaker
You've been listening to the Uncommon Life Project. I've been your host, Philip Ramsey. And I'm Brian Dewhurst. We're signing off for now, but until the next, go be uncommon. Thanks. That's all for this episode of the Uncommon Life Project, brought to you by Uncommon Wealth Partners. Be sure to visit uncommonwealth.com to learn more about our services. Don't miss an episode as we introduce you to inspiring people who are actively pursuing an uncommon life.