How Citizens Can Get Big Things Done with Donna Hais

How do citizens turn frustration into outcomes, without picking a party or burning bridges? Joel Grenz and Sean Wood sit down with Donna Hais, longtime community leader, business executive, and chair of the Fair Care Alliance, to unpack how advocacy really works inside complex municipal, provincial, and federal systems. Recorded in Nanaimo, just steps from the regional hospital at the centre of Fair Care’s work, the conversation uses healthcare as a case study to explore something bigger: how communities organize, how governments actually hear messages, and why meaningful change only happens when voices are aligned across institutions. Hais draws on years of experience spanning chambers of commerce, port governance, hospital foundations, and grassroots advocacy to explain why isolated pressure fails, how to build credibility across political cycles, and what it takes to speak the language of government without becoming partisan. The discussion moves from relationship-building and message discipline to media strategy, professional risk, and why persistence, not outrage, moves billion-dollar decisions. 🎧 Listen in for: Why advocacy fails when it happens in isolation How grassroots organizations build one message across many institutions What it means to “speak government” without losing community values Why non-partisan advocacy lasts longer than election cycles The role of media, lobbying, and public pressure in sustaining momentum 👉 Subscribe, rate, and review on your favourite podcast platform. Find all our episodes at nonpartisanhacks.com and drop us a line.