We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jason Johnston. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jason below.

Jason, appreciate you joining us today. Risking taking is a huge part of most people’s story but too often society overlooks those risks and only focuses on where you are today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – it could be a big risk or a small one – but walk us through the backstory.

Back in 2009 (26 years old) I had gotten to a place in my life that I had done all of things I was told were good or needed to do as an adult and found being an adult wasn’t as exciting as I told it would be. I had an adult job, I was debit free, about to be engaged and surround with lots of great friends but found a void in my life to do more. I wasn’t content with what I was told was successful, I needed to do more with my life and help others as much as possible. I believe we need to give back as much or more than we’ve been given, learned or earned. Life is better when we do together and doing life together means sometimes you’re first and other times you’re last, but we do it together.

So in 2010 myself and friend Jason Barton decided to do more with life and start a non profit called BOGG (Because Of God’s Grace). We had a simple mission to love and feed people. We didn’t know all the details, we didn’t have much money, but we had an idea, faith and passion to help our community with what we had. Over the first 18 months we were volunteers in our own organization using all funds to love and feed people in Dayton, Ohio. 12.5 years later, we are still loving and feeding people and have given away over 12 million pounds of food away for free and have played a small part in lots of community stories.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

For me it’s always been about people. So I ask myself what can you do/offer the world each day. How can you do something that isn’t being done or support something that is. When we started BOGG one in Dayton, Ohio was doing mobile food pantries. Everything was come us and we will give you what we have. To me that was ok and good, but not what was best for people who needed food. So BOGG went mobile and brought food into communities and homes and got to know people. Most people are the realist versions of themselves when they are in their communities and we wanted to help and get real with people. It allowed them to not have create appointments or worry about transportation.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I think people want crazy, strange and something to an option about, but I also think people want to see love in action. Simple, truthful, hopeful and straight forward goodness without BS! So BOGG keeps it simple. We post what we do in locations local people can visit and help in. We give out groceries to 120 families we share that. We don’t break down numbers of families members or volunteers and say we helped 400 people tonight just to sound bigger than we are. We don’t say look at these people, they need us and we saved them. That’s just gross and so many organization feel the need to exploit the people they help just to get more likes. Keep it real and people will be attracted to your story and they will join in.

Have you ever had to pivot?

When BOGG started we did everything anyone asked. Paint the park fence, yep! Giveaway clothing, yep! Give away food at every location anyone asks for help, yep! They asked, we said yep! Yep, yep, yep! It didn’t take long before yep turned into short term burnout and stress. After a year of saying yep, we pivoted to only doing mobile food events. You need food, yep! You want us to fix your toilet, nope! We found our lane and have stayed in it since.

Contact Info:

• Website: thebogg.org
• Instagram: @boggministries
• Facebook: @boggministries
• Linkedin: Jason Johnston
• Twitter: @boggministires
• Youtube: BOGG – Love People, Feed People

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