Alyssa: Welcome to Funding the Future, the stories behind the missions. Today I'm excited to be joined by the CEO of Buddy Up Australia, Craig Heslop. Craig is passionate about supporting defence and frontline service people through improved physical health, social connection and wellbeing. He himself has experience in frontline services as an ex-sergeant in the New Zealand Police and has quite a unique and varied career, including founding a successful health and fitness company in the Middle East. Welcome to the podcast, Craig.
Craig: Thank you very much for having me. I believe we're tuning in from Aotearoa, New Zealand. So I'm working with Australians. So I just wanted to acknowledge the local people of our land up here in Auckland, and as well our ANZACs both past and present and the work that we do to acknowledge their work.
Alyssa: Yeah, thanks Craig. And I'm joining from Ngai Tahu lands also in Aotearoa, but in Otautahi Christchurch. And yeah, pay respects to elders past and present, honouring their enduring connection to the land. So yeah, could you get us started with a quick snapshot of Buddy Up Australia, Craig?
Craig: Yeah, absolutely. The premise, I suppose the vision of Buddy Up Australia is to ensure that defence first responders and their families are thriving. It's a very nuanced industry to be in where a lot of the general public don't quite understand the experiences that cohort of people have. So our mission is basically to strengthen the physical health, wellbeing, social connectedness of that population. And we're working quite high upstream. So we're not a response organisation. Anyone's welcome to join us from that cohort, but we are working solely in that prevention space to keep people well through service.
Alyssa: Yeah, no, I mean, that's so important. And I'd imagine you'd be working with such a varied group because you've got the whole gamut of first line responders that includes ambulance people, police. Yeah, the full gamut.
Craig: Yeah, absolutely. The three big ones that everyone sort of would associate, so your police, fire, and paramedics. But they all have their own individual challenges. And again, they're seeing things day on day that most normal humans would not. It would be a pretty tough day at the office for the average person to experience the things that they do. So it's important that we ensure that they're well through service. And then the Australian Defence Force is obviously made up of our Army, Navy and Air Force. So they are welcome, but also just as importantly their family members. If anyone listening has experience of a service person within their family, they certainly go on the journey with them too. So it's important that we welcome them to all of our Buddy Up events.
Alyssa: Yeah, that's a really good point. And what inspires you most about working at Buddy Up?
Craig: I suppose, selfishly, you've alluded to my love of health and fitness and a love of policing in the first response world. So it was combining those two. Probably a more logical answer would be — globally there's challenges within the service space of this stormtrooper mentality. You get service men or women to do the work and then they go out and then there's a new one, and it's just a one in one out sort of thing. But it costs a lot of money and you have to go through quite an extensive selection process to recruit people, whether it's the first response or the military world. So I'm very passionate about people performing well within their role, but also looking after them to ensure that they can provide the best service possible. At the end of the day, they're all in the service industry. And if we look after them, then our community, our country is safer as well.
Alyssa: Yeah. And so does that include current service personnel or everyone who's left the service?
Craig: So we've really dialed back and my passion is about getting in there as early as possible. So just to explain — we offer hundreds of events to thousands of members across Australia and they're based on physical health. So we know that these are protective factors. The fitter, the stronger you are, the more robust you are to meet the demands of service life. Events are based on social connections, so it may be a whole cohort would go to a local sporting game, go out on a day adventure, go for a hike. So it's keeping that cohort together and connected in a positive space. And then the last piece is we are offering more and more decompression events. Let's just use the police officer as an example. You've been to three domestics, you've come across some interesting individuals, high stress, high complexity. You've seen some things that will stick in the memory for a little while. And that's just an eight hour shift. It's important that we offer these events where people can go to and proactively decompress. Gone are the days where alcohol fixed your tough shift. We're offering things like sauna, ice baths, ocean swims, yoga, breathing, all these different nuanced ways that are enabling people to regulate hormones and stay within that thriving space.
Alyssa: Yeah, well, that's so needed. I read an article a while back around the likelihood of paramedics to face violence in their jobs. It's something I feel I would have completely overlooked. I would think they're coming to help you, they'd be the last person that would expect to be assaulted, but apparently it's quite high.
Craig: And it's very — I was always very protective of our brothers and sisters who are working in the space, the fireys. And you're often coming across humanity at its worst. I don't believe there's many people out there who are innately evil, shall we say. But when you're in those situations, trauma is generally high. People are beyond a space of emotion that most of us can comprehend. So it's important again that we do look after those people. Like you say, research recently out of Australia, rates of suicide amongst paramedics is higher than the average population. And that's obviously been reflected in the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide, which was released last year, which we can talk a little bit about later.
Alyssa: Yeah, such a valuable organisation and great that you're doing hands on programs. Could you walk us through — you've given us a good overview — but if you've got an example that best demonstrates the impact of your programs for participants.
Craig: Yeah, absolutely. I suppose just to dial back a little bit, service organisations are not only good at teaching you how to be a police officer or how to be a soldier. But there's also other aspects of your life where you will judge yourself or how you perform. The service world is no different, but there's a strong emphasis on just being the service person. So when I put my police uniform on, it almost becomes a little bit of your identity. But how are you performing in other areas of your life? So we've put together these thrive principles to enable service people to enjoy a long successful career without experiencing as much of the residual impacts. So how are you performing in your health? How are you performing as a family member, as a partner, as a mother, as a father, and so forth? Looking at the person as the person rather than just the service operator. So to give you an example, we've just started a program called the Thriven Service Leadership Camp and we'll be deploying that to 50 Queensland Police officers later this month. So I'll be going over there and we've got Dan Cooper who has his PhD working with tactical athletes and a very extensive career himself in the SAS. Tom Cossack is one of our ambassadors who's an ex-Olympian and now a financial advisor. Jody Allen who's a former Air Force and now a clinical nutritionist. So bringing these people in for this work with Queensland Police — and I just want to acknowledge Queensland Police have been fantastic in inviting us in and reinvesting within their own people. We're going to be delivering a workshop that gives these officers the knowledge to empower themselves. Sometimes it can be this relationship of what can you give me, but we're actually giving these people the skills, the knowledge to be successful both in and outside of the uniform. And that's something that I'm very passionate about, because these people put their lives on the line every single day so it's important that we give them the best possible opportunity to thrive throughout their career and beyond.
Alyssa: No, I really like that. That's similar in — I have a social work background. And a few of the theories are around person in environment. And I guess that's not so much for a service person, but I do think looking at the whole systems around a person and what's their home life, when they go home do they have a safe place to decompress? That makes a lot of sense. Sounds like a very comprehensive program.
Craig: And one of the things that I personally can allude to which should be a standard operating procedure for all police officers is you come home from a job and you've been to a firearms incident or several and then you've got your son who at the time maybe he was six or seven, he doesn't want a police officer, he wants dad. You've just come from a situation where it's a critical incident. It's super super high. So your body is just full of hormones, it's a fight or flight situation. And you've managed to overcome that but you're still on a super high and now you open the door, hopefully you've taken your boots off, and now you've got to be dad. How do you go about that transition from being a police officer to being a dad or being a husband? It's not an easy one and we're often not given the tools to transition from one space to another. So again, that's something that we're offering for our service people throughout Australia.
Alyssa: That's really cool. And I guess have there been any turning points in the history of your organisation? Any major challenges or roadblocks? When did Buddy Up start?
Craig: So 2018 it started and special acknowledgement to Megan Davidson who's our founder. Australian Defence Force herself, very successful career. She could see that a lot of her mates out of the military were struggling. Their identity was entrenched in their uniform and there wasn't much — there's a lot of clinical avenues for people, I use the term when the wheels are falling off the bicycle, when things are starting to get a little bit challenging post service life. But there wasn't much at that time in terms of a lived experience model where people understood the same population that they associated with. One of the values of Buddy Up is mateship and just those sorts of things you take for granted a little bit when you are in the military or the first response world. It's a very nuanced space, as I mentioned, and you will see and hear and experience things that no normal human should do. That often brings you closer together. When you leave that space, you're now in an environment where nobody understands you. You've almost become obsolete, you feel at times, to the civilian or the private sector. So Megs was visionary in that space to create a community of people that felt welcomed regardless of where they'd come from. As long as they'd served one day then they were welcome to the Buddy Up family and it's continued to grow since then.
Alyssa: That's really cool. Do you think the journey has always been a linear one, or in terms of setting up programs, was it slow and steady? When did you come into the organisation?
Craig: I've been with Buddy Up since about 18 months now and I've loved it. I suppose the biggest change that I've brought to Buddy Up is ensuring that we do work within this prevention space or working upstream. There's roughly, I'm informed, around 5,000 ex-service organisations throughout Australia. So there's quite a lot of organisations doing a similar role and as I've mentioned a lot of that is in the response space. I'm quite passionate about moving away from this broken veteran or burnt out cop narrative that we kind of like to push all the time, because if that soldier's got to that stage or that firefighter's got to that space of just complete burnout — it's not something that's happened like that. It's been a long journey to get there. So again, I wanted to work up the river and see what we could do to ensure that people weren't getting there. As I mentioned before, the 2024 Royal Commission into Defence and Veterans Suicide, one of the big acknowledgements was working in the prevention space. We were sort of given a bit of a shout out in that one in terms of the work that we're doing there, and that's something I really wanted to double down on. The first day that your husband or your son or your parents join the service world, I'd like to be in there working alongside them.
Alyssa: Moving into the fundraising and funding space, what's the hardest part about raising funds for Buddy Up?
Craig: So I look at fundraising, I suppose, from a little bit more of a business mindset rather than this hand-to-mouth sort of situation that we currently have. Just to explain that theory — I love the work that you guys are doing, because writing grants can be a full time job. And it's quite a laborious job, particularly for people who are not professionals within that space. So you've really increased the efficiency of doing that process, which can be quite laborious. The biggest challenge for me again is these timelines that we work with, one or two years. Again, you get funding to do X, Y or Z, you do X, Y or Z. But in two or three years time, you're back to square one again. And it's not a sustainable business model. So yeah, diversifying your funds, I think, is the biggest long-term challenge. The successful charities that are here for the long run are the ones who have been quite purposeful in diversifying their income, investing in spaces outside of operations to ensure that they've got a good foundation to continue serving people in the long run.
Alyssa: No, 100%. I think that's a big problem a lot of charities face is finding those diversified revenue streams. Do you find if you're applying for grants or things, do funders understand the mission easily? Are they receptive? Or is that a bit mixed?
Craig: Yeah, mean, as horrendous as the findings were from the Royal Commission, it's highlighted the need for what we do. So veterans within Australia have a much higher rate of suicide, and defence I should add, to the average population. So the Royal Commission has come up with a whole host of findings, recommendations — off the top of my head I think it was 122 — which said there's a need here to address the root cause of how people get into suicidal behaviour or suicide itself. So if anything that has really highlighted the important work, or mahi as we say in New Zealand. My big concern, speaking with a lot of defence people, because I didn't know the space before joining Buddy Up Australia — currently, people know how important it is, but I just hope that we don't move to something else and then this community who've given everything for their country or their community are then moved on due to whether that be political change or a difference in appetite for something else. So that's the biggest concern that I do have. Currently things are positive, but I just don't want this group of people to be forgotten at some stage.
Alyssa: Yeah, that's a good point. Funding does tend to come in waves. Mental health was sort of the flavour of the month and then it cycles through. It would be cool off the wake of the Royal Commission to see more funding opportunities arising, but I'd imagine you don't want to lose that momentum either.
Craig: That's right. Amongst those other cohorts, we work very closely with suicide prevention in Australia and men and people who identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander are also higher risk than the average population. So there's no reason why we can't be adaptable and look at those sub-cohorts as well and support them too. You've got to think sort of outside of the convention of just looking for the typical funding streams and see what else is out there and what other good work we can do within that community. As an example, we've got some support to do some work in Victoria at the moment and that's again focusing on the families. It's almost forgetting the service person because a lot of people who are associated to a service person don't get a manual as to how to support or interact, what changes are going to happen. I remember at the New Zealand Police College many moons ago, a chap by the name of Ian Saunders gave a talk and he basically said, well, your family members are about to change forever. And it's a talk that I'll never forget because there was a lot of eyes like overcoat buttons in the crowd, realising this person's going to be entering a job which I didn't quite realise what pressures were on that individual. So it's important that we look beyond just the bread and butter of service grants, I think.
Alyssa: True. Do you guys get funding from major donors or is it more project based?
Craig: Yeah, so majority of the funding comes from the Department of Health and they're very proactive in the space of seeing the needle moving in the wrong direction for several cohorts throughout Australia, veterans being one of them. So Buddy Up in 2023 I believe was one of the organisations that they decided to support and we're incredibly grateful for that. We get support from other agencies as well, DVA and other trusts. There was even a grant recently in Queensland from the Queensland government to address loneliness. And it sounds a little bit out the gate, but there's plenty of service people who leave that career and literally hand over all the things that people have given them huge amounts of respect for, for many years. And now when they hand that over, what have they got? A lot of their identity has been entrenched in that uniform, what they do to serve. And everybody loves a firefighter or a naval officer. It brings lots of mana, as we say in New Zealand. And now what have you got? Even working with the Queensland government, they've been very proactive in seeing that there's a space there to address loneliness. I do recall the Surgeon General in the United States last year saying that loneliness was likely going to be one of the leading causes of death in the long run. So we're reliant on tech, we're not often as close to family as we used to be, and the amount of time that we spend with families and friends is diminishing year on year. So loneliness is a very relevant problem that service people will face, particularly post their career.
Alyssa: Yeah, an incredibly important area to address. I'd imagine also with social media, there'd be cool gains for your organisation, but also probably complications with mixed media or people being targeted. Especially if there's vulnerable people leaving the military, being targeted by extreme groups. That could be quite scary.
Craig: Yeah, and Buddy Up, again acknowledging the work that Megs did — completely politically and religiously neutral. So we don't have an opinion on that one. Doesn't matter who's in government. Defence and first responders and their families will always need a place that understands them and is there to support them and help them thrive. She is very positive in that space. You're right, the world of social media is a funny one. And AI, I think we're going to talk about that probably a little bit later. But there's a lot of positives to it and it's an incredibly powerful space to be. But we have a whole bunch of thrive principles at Buddy Up Australia and one is called Master of Technology. If you jump on buddyupaustralia.org, you can see them quite easily there. Basically all that means is that you have these tools at your discretion, but they're not running your life. They're not negatively impacting your mental or your physical or your social health. In New Zealand, we have the term hoora, which is the overall health. And if you're not careful with tech, it can become overbearing and you lose control over that space. I think it's important, particularly for a cohort of people who've been very dogmatic, they've fallen in line, they're told what to do, and now you've got this smorgasbord of tech in front of you and there's a lot of power to do harm with that.
Alyssa: Do you find — I think you mentioned 5,000 members feeding in to your organisation? Is there a lot of — or 5,000 ESOs?
Craig: So we're around 5,000 members. There's around 5,000 ex-service organisations. They're charities that have been founded by people within that space. So lots of them out there and all doing so with great intent, but the market for that has almost become somewhat saturated because there's a lot of people doubling up and doing the same type of work. So that was what I meant by the 5,000 ESOs. Ultimately, you're supportive of all of them, especially if they're doing a fantastic job, but you're still competing for the same dollar to support your people.
Alyssa: Yeah, that's really tough. Is there pressure to expand the organisation with so much need? And if so, how do you balance that — making sure the organisation stays stable, you've got your volunteer base, you don't break any chains when you're expanding?
Craig: One of the things that I did quite early on as the CEO at Buddy Up Australia was actually to remove some locations. I'd rather support the needs of 5,000 service people A-star and do a really, really good job rather than having 50,000 and being spread too thin. I actually removed some locations and I just wanted us to get our policies squared away, get our processes in order, make sure that we were in a better financial position. And then once we've got that readied, then we can start growing. A lot of the challenges with grant writing — a lot of it's based on what you're going to do, or how you're going to do it. But there's often a bit of a missing piece in terms of what's the impact that you're going to have. So I've designed this Buddy Up approach and it's just a group of principles that every experience that you have as an event with what we do is this quality control piece. One is evidence led. For a long time in New Zealand, we did a drug program at schools, and then when we actually tested it, we realised that it wasn't quite as effective as we thought it was. So it's important that whatever we're delivering to our members is wrapped in evidence — whether that's protective factors away from the negative space of service life, building resilience, ensuring tactical readiness, but also longevity of their career. Strengths based — this group of people are generally a pretty tough group of human beings. It's not a normal person that goes towards the gunfight. So a lot of our events are based in a strengths based approach. Member positioned — we want to listen, especially to our younger operators. What do they actually want to do? My opinion doesn't matter. I'm an old fart now, I'm 40. I want these guys to be telling me what they want to do. Prevention orientated, as I mentioned before. And then the last piece is professionally delivered — this group of people like things on time, they like consistency, they like things squared away. So delivering a service to them each and every time that meets the Buddy Up approach.
Alyssa: I really appreciate your point around sometimes you need to cut back, scale back in order to achieve that stability and then you can grow again. Growth at all costs is definitely not worth it. So if you guys were offered a million dollars in untethered funds tomorrow, what would you do with it?
Craig: It's not a sexy answer, but I would invest it and grow it to 10 million. That would be my answer. Just due to the fact that you spend that million dollars and that's great, you could do some work, but imagine what you could do with 10 million bucks. So that would be my answer. It would be put aside there for the future growth. Buddy Up here for the next 100 years.
Alyssa: The sustainability piece is really important. I think in writing this question, I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but quite a few orgs have said similar — either growing the funds or that it's not necessarily the most exciting thing but it probably makes the most sense for the organisation. So you mentioned barriers — what are the biggest barriers to achieving your mission? You mentioned there's a lot of orgs popping up in the space. Are there other barriers?
Craig: The timelines, working to one to two years in terms of funding is always going to be the challenge. So I'm quite open about diversifying through sponsorship, individual donations, business to business offering — like we're doing with Queensland Police, where we're offering a good service. More importantly, we're just dealing with one organisation being Queensland Police but they've brought 50 of their officers to us. So within one day, we can positively impact a lot more people. The challenge there is with a lot of these organisations — what we term getting inside the wire — building these relationships. Sometimes if you don't approach them in the right way, there's this level of trust that needs to be built. But once you've got that, it's great. You've just got to be very patient and careful in terms of how you do that, because they're probably getting pestered all the time by similar charities. So we've got to make sure that we do a fantastic job in building those relationships.
Alyssa: Relationship building is one of those frustrating things, isn't it? You have to put a lot of time aside for it, but it can pay in dividends if you're successful. And going back into the AI question — I'm keen to know what role you see AI playing in the future of your work, and whether you think it will be for the better or the worse.
Craig: I'm split on this one. From an entrepreneur perspective, I see fantastic opportunities — more efficiency, more effectiveness, generates ideas, can enable me to serve more service people and to a higher standard. So no brainer on that one. But humans are a collective species. We're diurnal and we are tribal. And I worry sometimes. I see my son going to school and he's been briefed many times on the need not to be looking at your phone while you're crossing the road. And I see a thousand kids walk into school looking like Quasimodo, eyes down by their feet. And I just worry sometimes the world is happening so quickly now. There's this big science experiment going off and unfortunately it's the next generation who are the guinea pigs for it. That concerns me quite a lot that we're not testing these things before we take them to market. So that's the first piece, but back to our Master of Technology — if we can do it in the right way then it's a fantastic tool for power. We will never ever not need to have face to face. The importance of meeting somebody, having good, strong, wide, deep social connections with family and friends. So the AI space is wonderful and the work that you guys do is certainly helping a charity like Buddy Up Australia, but that comes with a big caveat that we need to be in control over that tech.
Alyssa: Drawing attention to the fact that it's not just a tool being used in profitable companies or not-for-profit areas. It's also used by kids. It's used universally. So it's a big responsibility. More positively, what gives you hope about the future of impact driven work for not-for-profits?
Craig: It's a world that I'd had limited space to work with. Prior to this, I was working in a resilience to organised crime project with the New Zealand Police. And that was my first experience of working with charities. I really love the fact that when people ask what you do for work, it's a very easy sell. It makes it easy to get up every day. The team that we've got at Buddy Up are fantastic. We've built a team of individuals that are all aligned and they're all very passionate about what they do. I think the refinement in terms of aligning the charity hearts with the business smarts and ensuring that it may be a charity by registration, but we need to run it like a successful business. Someone mentioned to me the other day that Sanitarium — they're both in New Zealand and Australia, they make our Weet-Bix and Up and Go amongst a few other things — are actually a charity. So when you're having your breakfast cereal, you're inadvertently supporting that charity, but you don't know. And I think that to me is a fantastic model where finances will never be an issue for that charity as long as the business side is run well. So I think that's something that I'm slowly bringing to Buddy Up — just refining that model to ensure that we measure our impacts, we're sustainable, we're accountable to our people, and we just run a really good tight ship.
Alyssa: That's a really good point. There's definitely a lot to be learned from the business world and vice versa. If you could give grantmakers one piece of advice about how to make the funding process easier for orgs like Buddy Up, what would it be?
Craig: The biggest one — this is quite an extreme change and I don't foresee it happening in my lifetime — but a lot of these grants are a hand-to-mouth existence. I'd like to see some grants out there for future sustainability. Rather than a six to 12 month "we pay you X and you deliver Y" — here's a grant for X amount, but in 10 years time, we want to see that you're completely self-sufficient. I'd like to see that as a long-term structural change. I'm not confident that it will happen. A more realistic answer is just driving the question of what are you going to achieve, what are your impact metrics. I think we get a little bit focused on what we're doing and there's many ways to skin the cat, but what's the actual impact? I'm paying you this much — and again, if someone was investing in us as a private business, they'd want to know exactly what they're getting in return. I think sometimes we're a little bit loose on the qualitative and quantitative metrics in terms of the impact of the funding. So I'd like to see a little bit more approach to a good return on investment, and I think that will only encourage more people to invest in the charity space.
Alyssa: That's a fair point. There are interestingly a lot of funders where the long-term goal is sustainability. A lot will ask a question around sustainability, but they perhaps won't front up enough cash for you to get there. That's sometimes the frustration for charities — you're asked when your funding stops, what are you going to do? How are you going to sustain the program? But then you look at how much you're being funded. This might be a grant for $15,000 and you think, well, I can't unfortunately change the world with that much money. So there is a bit of a disconnect.
Craig: Yeah, you're right. And I think that's a structural change that will have to happen. It's great that there's a lot of people doing great work, but if there's 5,000 out there and they're all getting a smaller amount then they're all still going to be competing within that market. I don't know what the solution to that one is but I just know that in 100 years time if it continues just how we are we're still going to have people who are working in short term time frames. It's never an easy place as a CEO for you to be thinking about your staff's security for work as well. You want to ensure that it's not just the people that you're serving, it's the people doing the great work for Buddy Up as well. We want to ensure that they are stable.
Alyssa: For sure. That is such a tough thing for not-for-profits. It can change on a dime depending on the government of the day. With COVID things changed a lot. It does put people under a lot of pressure. So I think that pretty much closes that. I've just got a quick rapid fire, three questions to conclude. Can you give me one word to describe grant writing?
Craig: I'll give you a few but I would give the term ineffective. Currently it's — you can put a lot of time into the process and you've got zero guarantees that it's going to pay off. So again, just kudos to the work that you guys are doing to address that problem of being overly laborious and making it a lot more efficient process. So thank you.
Alyssa: I appreciate that. It's definitely frustrating that there's no guarantees at the end of the day. But the more we can do to streamline the process for orgs, the better. What's the most underrated skill in not-for-profit work?
Craig: I think currently — as I've only been immersed in this space within 18 months — we brought on a chap by the name of Mike Virchel who has been running our policy and research space and that's been a game changer for us because it's just steadied the ship and ensured that we know what our impacts are. Why do you wake up every single day, what are you trying to change or improve. Very keen on testing the peripheral and changing things and researching. It doesn't matter if we get it wrong. I did some work with the evidence-based policing centre during my career with the New Zealand Police and it's not about getting it right, it's just about testing it. I think that's something that we need to be collectively as charity leaders a little braver in. Do we know what the metrics are? And that's not just gross numbers, that's actually getting feedback. You only need to get in an Uber and within 10 seconds you've given them some pretty robust data. That customer service piece needs to be dialed in a little bit. So that would be the skill I would push — make sure that you're always testing and always challenging the boundaries.
Alyssa: That's a great point. And who is your not-for-profit hero? Could be an individual or an organisation.
Craig: There's a few, but I'll go back to that Sanitarium point. Marmite, Weet-Bix, Up and Go, to name a few. I mean, I don't know why you'd eat Marmite anyway, but every time you purchase those products — I believe it's Seventh Day Adventist Church, I'm not 100% sure, but I believe that's who the registered organisation is behind it. I just think that is an operation that is slick, it runs well. I imagine most people don't even know it's a charity. That's how well they run their operations. Can you imagine how much good you can do when you're talking their profit margins? So that would be my answer.
Alyssa: Yeah, cool. I like those three unique options. Well, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate you taking the time out to join us. It's been great learning from your experience.
Craig: I appreciate your time and the good work that you're doing. It's very rare to see entrepreneurs and new business ideas that actually do some great work. So keep up your efforts and I'm sure you'll be very successful with what you're doing.
Alyssa: I appreciate that. Thank you. And I'll just close out by saying the podcast is powered by GrantDrafter, helping organisations like Buddy Up to draft their next grant in five minutes or less. If you haven't already, check out the GrantDrafter website at grantdrafter.com. And for those listening, we hope you're feeling inspired to get out there and maximise your impact.