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Personal update & last bread order for 2025

Good morning bread friends,

I have an update for you today that I’m hoping you’ll take a few minutes to read.

Before we get to that… quick reminder that today is the last bake for 2025. If you want to order bread or english muffins for the end of the year, place your order now for pickup this Saturday. If you’re hoping to save it for a holiday meal, from personal experience I can tell you these last brilliantly in the freezer.

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Personal update.

Last Friday, I was unexpectedly let go from my day job. That’s a tough sentence to type. It’s a big slice of humble pie to eat.

The only other time I lost a job was when I was 25. In that case, I was warned months in advance that it was a possibility, and given a clear explanation as to why. It’s wild to think back 15 years and only now realize how much I valued that act of honesty and care.

I was sharing my news with a friend (someone whose career has also been in technology sales) the other day. He tried to cheer me up with the reminder that the average tenure in a role like ours is only 18 months… so perhaps I should feel proud of lasting almost 3 years in this company. That’s probably a healthy viewpoint to internalize.

As I write this, I’m working on not taking it personally. But as you know… health insurance in this country comes from an employer… so it’s hard to figure out how to categorize something that impacts our family so personally.

Anyway... why share all this with you all? Well there are three main reasons.

1. Because my lovely wife reminded me that the people who read this newsletter care about me, and it’s good to share what’s going on in life with people who care about you.

2. Because I’m open to suggestions if you want to point me in the direction of possible next opportunities (*more on this in the P.S. of this email)

3. Because I want to update you on what this means for Bread & Justice 👀

To be clear: Bread & Justice isn’t going anywhere.

If anything, this gives me a bit more time to lean into baking. I’ll also examine some of the systems and processes that make the bakery’s operations work smoothly. But this transition does affect how the economics of this little micro-bakery need to work.

As you know, Bread & Justice is a philanthropic enterprise that donates 100% of its profits to social justice nonprofits. Even if you were new here, you’d likely know that, since I mention it in almost every weekly email.

What you might not know is that back in 2021, I wrote a short manifesto about how this model works, why it matters to me, and how we define things like “profit”.

You can read that here. 👈

I’ve long followed the approach modeled by Newman’s Own, whose foundation coined the term “philanthropic enterprise.” Their definition is simple and clear:

In the simplest terms, when we say 100% of profits, we mean what’s left over (aka surplus, balance, difference) after normal business expenses are deducted from all the income we derive from sales from our food and beverage business. That income comes from two sources, direct sales of our products and royalties paid by both the Company and third parties we license to sell our products.

Like all businesses (commercial or nonprofit), there are normal business expenses required to operate Newman’s Own, such as employee compensation and benefits, travel, cost of goods, transportation, warehousing, marketing and advertising, supplies, occupancy costs, taxes, etc.

To date, I’ve been able to donate my time each week, which helped keep our expenses low. Without any income, I’m not in a position to do that for now.

Last week, I shared a video about the 4 steps for how to make philanthropic enterprises work. Step 1 was to be a profitable business. I’m choosing to see this shift as a moment that forces me into figuring out what it’d take for Bread & Justice to be profitable without volunteer labor.

Digging into that will help me start to envision in earnest what it might take for this to grow into something truly sustainable. Until now, I haven’t been forced to think about that particular constraint. So I’m choosing to see it as a legitimate bright spot.

This week will be the last bake for the year and the last bake where I’m donating my time for a little while. But I’m still super excited to donate our profits this month to Community Immigration Law Center. They’re doing serious justice work by providing free and low-cost legal representation to detained non-citizens who are navigating removal proceedings.

Cheers,
Mo

P.S. *In anticipation of the question, “What sort of work are you looking for next?” - let me try to answer that to the best of my ability after just ~5 days of thinking about what that might be.

I do my best work helping mission-driven organizations build on early momentum and turn it into something sustainable. Most of my expertise is in early-stage tech sales. In practice, that’s meant taking complex products, figuring out how to explain them simply, and building the first real sales motion to move the company from ad-hoc founder-led wins to repeatable & scalable revenue.

Alongside that, my experience in local politics and nonprofit board leadership has shaped how I work in stakeholder-heavy environments that depend on collaboration, trust, and clear judgment. I find that I’m energized by imagining what an organization could become and then helping bring that future forward. At this moment, I’m especially interested in operator roles - likely in sales, growth, strategy, or something similar. Or perhaps there is something unexpected that this hard restart will allow me to explore.

Other than being committed to staying in Madison, I feel open about the type of org that I might work in (startup, nonprofit, state government, or university) as long as the mission is real and I can understand the opportunity to help important work move forward.

P.P.S This is a final note from Melissa… I want to offer a word of encouragement as we approach the time of year-end giving. Take a moment to think about or find a local nonprofit that speaks to your heart. And if you don’t typically donate to a nonprofit at the end of the year… consider it this year. Separate from Bread & Justice, Mo and I have a tradition of sitting around the kitchen table one night in December and lobbying each other about which organizations our family may want to give to again, and which new ones we’d like to add to the list. We’ve had to come to terms with the fact that we’re not in a position to do that now, which is disappointing. But I’m reminded that is the point of community: we are in it together. Even though we cannot donate this year, I recognize that no one person or family is supporting these nonprofits: it’s always a group project. There are SO many organizations doing good work: art centers, community gardens, local theater, homeless shelters… the list goes on. Please tell us stories about the nonprofits you choose to donate to and what they mean to you! Most of all, thanks for being people that have hearts for building community. In a weary world that tells us otherwise, let’s keep up the worthwhile task of seeing the humanity in each other and loving one another.