Lucy Stein: Clear is Kind, Assume Positive Intent | Work 20XX Ep 64

Lucy Stein: Clear is Kind, Assume Positive Intent | Work 20XX with Jeff Frick Ep 64 from Running Remote  
English Transcript
© Copyright 2026 Menlo Creek Media, llc. 

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[COLD OPEN]
‍In three, two, one.
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Jeff Frick, Host:
Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here, coming to you from Austin, Texas. Work 20XX is on the road. We're back at Running Remote for our second year, because this is a place where although the conversations are initially focused on people running distributed teams actually most of the lessons are very applicable whether you're running a distributed team or a hybrid team where everybody's back in the office. Well, what we want to find out is how do you do it better? And we're really excited to have in our next guest she's Lucy Stein, the VP of People at Givebutter. Lucy, great to see you.

Lucy Stein, Guest:
Thank you.

Jeff Frick, Host:
Yeah. Thanks so much. Good to meet you.

Lucy Stein, Guest:
Absolutely.

Jeff Frick, Host:
So for people that aren't familiar with Givebutter give us the 101.

Lucy Stein, Guest:
Yeah, yeah Givebutter is a fundraising, CRM, marketing platform for nonprofits. So we work with mostly small to medium size some startup nonprofits to help them fundraise, be changemakers manage their donor data send emails, text messages, do events and auctions, all kinds of things. So we try to be their their home for nonprofits.

Jeff Frick, Host:
So the nonprofits are your customers

Lucy Stein, Guest:
Correct

Jeff Frick, Host:
and then they use your platform to raise money.

Lucy Stein, Guest:
Yes, correct and we are free for nonprofits to use. We have a tipping model and then we have a platform fee as well, if nonprofits choose to not use tipping.

Jeff Frick, Host:
And you just said that you guys just passed a giant milestone in terms of

Lucy Stein, Guest:
Yeah

Jeff Frick, Host:
donations raised through the platform.

Lucy Stein, Guest:
Yeah, $10 billion in donations through the platform. Some of those online, some of those offline. In ten years; it's our ten-year anniversary.

Jeff Frick, Host:
Congratulations!

Lucy Stein, Guest:
So

Jeff Frick, Host:
Ten, Ten.

Lucy Stein, Guest:
That's got to feel amazing to see

Jeff Frick, Host:
Yeah

Lucy Stein, Guest:
that much good being done through your platform

Jeff Frick, Host:
It’s really cool.

Lucy Stein, Guest:
Yeah.

Jeff Frick, Host:
It’s really cool. So you were there at pretty much at the beginning. I think I've read in my notes you were there when there was like ten people

Lucy Stein, Guest:
Yep, employee number 7

Jeff Frick, Host:
Now there’s 200.

Lucy Stein, Guest:
Yep

Jeff Frick, Host:
You got to build the culture from the ground up, so

Lucy Stein, Guest:
Yeah

Jeff Frick, Host:
given a kind of a blank slate. What was your philosophy?

Lucy Stein, Guest:
Yeah

Jeff Frick, Host:
What did you what was your goal?

Lucy Stein, Guest:
I mean, I credit a lot of the culture building and philosophy, to our CEO and our CTO. This was their first gig. This is their first company they’ve founded And they had a lot of radical ideas if you will when we first started one of them being bringing people on pretty early I came from an executive recruiting background. I'd never done HR before, but executive recruiting is very high touch. It is really personal, it is fast paced, it is high stakes. And I brought a lot of that philosophy into the hiring at Givebutter and when you start out at a company that small you're doing anything you can to get talent pipeline, to get candidates interested, to get candidates to take you seriously. And, you know, one of the first things we really ironed out and needed to work on was having a handbook. Our CEO very much believed that having a handbook having it easily digestible not full of legal jargon, was critical. And then as I realized if you have a handbook you have to fill it with things, right? So, you know, we have basic benefits. But our CEO wanted to talk about a philosophy on meetings and what it meant to be remote, and how you showed up at work when you were remote. Do we have cameras on? What is it? What does diversity mean at Givebutter? And then that kind of spiraled. We realized pretty quickly and pretty early on that we wanted values, and we wanted them really codified throughout our entire employee experience. And so, Yeah I credit a lot of it to our CEO and our CTO, and I was there to help with a lot of the execution

Jeff Frick, Host:
Awesome. I gotta ask, did you use any of the GitLab stuff for your playbook?

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
Oh my gosh, yes we did. Yes. GitLab. There are a couple of others. There's something called the Manager's Toolkit that was built on Notion. That was really cool. We really adopted a lot of that early on. GitLab helped a lot especially when I was like man, what does it mean to have, like, a name, whatever compliant policy? Like, we were really learning as we were going. So GitLab helped a lot a lot of open source handbooks. And it’s why our handbook is now open source too. It's right on our careers page. We send it to all of our candidates. We're really intentional about that. So thanks GitLab.

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
I love it. I just love the open source ethos.

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
Yeah

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
I think that's such a cool part of the tech community that I don't know that everyone appreciates how much of open source

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
Yeah

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
ethos there is and the sharing of great information and Darren [Murph] and the team that put that thing together it’s, is amazing. And for those that don't know, it's a playbook that basically outlines the way you guys do business as a company, right?

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
Yeah. The way we show up, the way we communicate whether you should put something in a Slack, or put it in an email, or put it in wherever.

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
So that's awesome.

‍Lucy Stein, Guest: Yeah

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
Some of the philosophies that you pulled out Radical transparency

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
Yes

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
and no assholes, which is one of my favorites.

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
Yeah.

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
Host: And wired for fun.

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
Ooo yeah.

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
Wonder if you could share

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
Yeah

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
why those things are important to you, and then how do you execute them and make sure everybody else is not only is not only reading it, but actually living it?

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
I mean, I'll start with the first one. So, radical transparency. As an HR leader I loved that our CEO championed "clear is kind," and we've taken that to like the nth degree so we do an all hands every week. You know I heard Nick [Francis] talk earlier Nick from Help Scout, talk earlier about a company that is I don’t know, couple hundred employees and they still do an all hands every week. I think that's so important. And in that all hands our finance team shares how we're tracking towards our revenue goals. I think that is so, so important. It builds trust and it helps reinforce trust in leadership which is so important. No assholes. I, you know, I've heard that this is a spicy take take that some companies have, that it can sometimes like, breed this world where like where, like, people can be very direct and say Well, we say no assholes. I think it's really about what you put into this. You know, in a remote company where everything leans to Slack and there was a lot of talk early on about, like let's be async, you know, cut meetings. Having ‘no assholes’ was so important because so much is lost in written communication that you don't get IRL [in real life]. And we've really had to enforce like positive intentions, assume positive intent. And I think, you know, I'll just I'll call them out again. Nick said it too If he even recognizes and this is so tricky at butter if they recognize an ounce of emotion coming through a Slack message like, jump on a huddle jump on a conversation, have that conversation IRL. But yeah, assume positive intent is big for us.

Jeff Frick, Host:
I think that's hard for a lot of people. And it shouldn't be, right? It’s like

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
Yeah

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
nobody wants to do a bad job.

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
No

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
And if they're making a mistake it's not because they wanted to make a mistake or something, you know they just

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
Yeah

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
they had an execution error or whatever.

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
Yeah And we're all moving so fast. And sometimes you're typing on your phone and you might fire off a Slack message and not realize the way it lands on the other side. And so I think it's just really important to keep it keep reminding people that sometimes we're busy, and and sometimes that short message didn't really mean what you thought it might mean. You're sitting at your laptop and have time to digest it. So, and yeah, wired for fun. Givebutter is full of puns. You know, we really aim to make fundraising fun. I think, you know early on we’ve you know, there was a debate of like do people take us seriously? Do nonprofits who are so serious about their work take Givebutter seriously? And I’m like, nonprofits want to have fun like, they want giving to be fun and approachable and accessible. And I think Givebutter does that. We also just released a mascot.

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
You have a new mascot?

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
It’s really cool. A new mascot

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
What's the new mascot?

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
It's Mr. Butter.

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
Mr. Butter

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
He’s, yes, he's very fun. He knows all about giving. He shows up at our events, and you can check him out on our Instagram too.

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
What’s he shaped like, what kind of butter?

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
What form of butter?

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
A butter slice, butter slice

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
He has a butter slice for a head and all of our teammates we call butter slices.

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
Okay, awesome. So, pretty fun when you can build the culture from the from the ground up. But you guys had an integration with another company.

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
Yeah

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
We Are For Good’?

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
Yes.

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
So now you've got a different culture that you've got to blend into your culture. How did that happen and how is that different when you're trying to change a culture versus build a culture?

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
Yeah, that was a lot of fun and I do have to say ‘We Are For Good’ is a small team, they were three employees when we brought them on so it was a fun integration. It was a really good integration. They've been partners and friends and part of our community for a really long time. So really, you know, the first box that we checked was like are they going to integrate well with our culture? And, like, a hundred times over. And I think there is a really strong narrative in the nonprofit community right now especially given some of the macroeconomic events we’ve seen what’s happening in California with the AGs there trust is so important in a team culture, but also with our customers and with nonprofits. They want to trust the platform that they're using with their funds and they want to trust that we're treating their donors well. And ‘We Are For Good’ was our connection another one of our connections to the community that just felt so right at the time. And it just it married perfectly that they they love emojis. They love being in our Slack channels. So it's been a ton of fun to integrate them and a learning experience for all of us.

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
Right. I just want to double down that that all the money that you guys because you talk about trust both trust within your clients who are the nonprofits, but also trust that they have in you that you're going to take care of

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
Yeah

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
of the people giving them money.

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
Yeah

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
So that's got to be a super important relationship and a super important bar. And as you said, all the money that goes into your platform for the nonprofit, goes to the nonprofit, right?

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
Yes. Correct.

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
That's awesome. What do you think of the show here? You've been here for a couple of days. Just came off your panel. What are you feeling on the vibe here of Running Remote?

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
Good. I love it. I love the conversations around being remote right now and I And I just did a panel on running a remote team in an AI world. And when I first got that topic I was like, wow, this is you know, in my head I was like, this is kind of a stretch. And then I was like no, this is so, so important right now. I think there's a convergence of remote went through a couple of iterations. And right now with AI, with a lot of the change management we're navigating, finding moments of connection is so important, so conferences like this are really important, but also sharing ideas of how we build connections within our team is just even more important now.

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
Right. And how's the AI message resonating with you? Because we've

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
Yeah

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
we've talked to I think it was Brian Elliott was the one who really codified it for me, that, you know, the same behaviors and management practices that make managing distributed teams work are the same kind of management behaviors and philosophies that make AI adoption work

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
Yeah

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
in terms of risk taking, and being supportive, and group learning and sharing

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
Yeah

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
and trying and failing sometimes

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
Yeah

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
but it’s really those same type of characteristics, because today, for a lot of companies trying to increase their AI adoption within their workforce is their number one priority so they can

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
Yeah

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
just speed up that efficiency.

Lucy Stein, Guest:
Yeah. I think it's a really cool moment for us to all kind of get caught flat-footed and realize hey, we're all learning this new thing together. And it's created a lot of really cool opportunities for leaders at our company to kind of humble themselves go and talk to AI champions in the in their company that are doing really cool things and say Hey, I want to learn from you. And so that's been really great. I talked about how especially in a remote world like, it is even more important for a manager to PR for their teams. And what a great opportunity when you've got direct reports on your teams that are vibe coding chatbots, and all this really sophisticated stuff what a great moment for you to champion their work and just build confidence in that direct report. I think it's cyclical and AI is this really new cool tool that we're all trying to figure out how to embrace and yeah, it's great moments for show and tell

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
Awesome. Well, Lucy, thanks for

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
Yeah

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
for taking a minute out of

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
Of course

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
your busy day to stop by. And congratulations.

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
Yeah

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
$10 billion. That's a significant impact

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
Huge

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
on the world, on a lot of organizations.

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
It’s a lot of money for change makers. And we really love that.

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
Yeah It's got to make you feel great.

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
Yeah. It does.

‍Jeff Frick, Host:
All righty.

‍Lucy Stein, Guest:
Thanks, Jeff.

Jeff Frick, Host:
Thank you. She's Lucy, I'm Jeff. We're Work 20XX. We're at Running Remote in Austin. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Catch you next time. Take care. Bye bye.

‍[COLD CLOSE / OPEN MIC]

[applause]

Cool
Awesome.
Cool. 
It's easy. 
Easy. 
Easy peasy.

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‍Lucy Stein: Clear is Kind, Assume Positive Intent | Work 20XX with Jeff Frick Ep 64 from Running Remote  
English Transcript
© Copyright 2026 Menlo Creek Media, llc.