Author: Vu Le

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post on how no funder deserves their own unique snowflake financial or outcomes report from grantees, and that they should just accept nonprofits’ annual report and comprehensive financial statements. A colleague pointed out that these burdensome and nonsensical requirements are a result of many funders having a “Main Character Syndrome” (MCS).

MCS, according to my quick consultation with fellow cool young people, is basically where someone thinks they are the main character in the universe, and that everyone else is just a support character in their fascinating and enthralling story. And they act like it. This phenomenon helps to explain many things that happen in our sector, such as the egotistical executive director who needs to take credit for everything. Or the board member/donor who demands to be treated like royalty and who gets offended at the slightest injury to their image or sensibilities.

In funders Main Character Syndrome may explain a lot of the challenges we’ve been dealing with. For instance, if you DON’T need to feel like the special main protagonist, then why not just accept a grant application that has already been written? Why does it need to conform to your whims? “Please answer this same question that you answer all the time in other grant applications, but for us, because we are as unique and beautiful and rare as the ghost orchid, you must use fewer than 500 characters.”

Over the years we’ve been talking about a common grant application. Several places have tried to implement it, and it has mostly failed. In one case, the funders could not agree to a common set of questions. In another case, the funders agreed to the common application, with the caveat that each funder could also require multiple additional unique attachments, which rendered the whole exercise pointless.

Here, I’ve created a special tool for funders. I’m calling it the Main Character Role Actualization in Philanthropy (MCRAP) checklist. It’s like the MCAT, which is the test people take on their journey to becoming in a doctor in the US, but instead of measuring people’s preparedness to go to medical school to be a physician and heal people, the MCRAP measures foundations’ egotistical nature and proclivities for wasting nonprofits’ time and preventing them from doing their work.

If your foundation scores high on the MCRAP, it’s not entirely your fault. The field has conditioned you to be this way. Because of the power imbalance between funders and nonprofits, you are constantly treated like the main character—who is always smarter, more charismatic, more talented, and 27% more attractive than support characters. Why wouldn’t you act like the main character when everyone else is acting like you are?

Also, because of that same power dynamics, nonprofit colleagues are seldom honest with you. Which means you rarely get feedback on how your main-character tendencies are annoying and harmful. Think of powerful people who are surrounded by yes-people. Like a billionaire who buys a successful social media company, who is orbited by staff and advisors too terrified to tell him that renaming the social media platform to sound like a porn site is a bad idea. In similar veins, nonprofits are too terrified to tell you that many, or most, of your foundation’s practices, as well as funders’ collective shenanigans in general (such as “strategic philanthropy”), are silly if not toxic.

Of course, not all funders are like this. There are great funder allies and who are just as frustrated as nonprofit leaders are by all of these time-wasting and toxic philanthropic practices. Thank you for working on the inside to change things.

Still, Main Character Syndrome among funders is definitely an issue that is preventing nonprofits, as well as funders, from being as effective as they can be. I hope funders will start to be more aware of it, be honest with themselves about how it manifests, solicit feedback from their grantees about how they can be better partners, and act to minimize the need to be the main character in the epic ongoing saga of equity and justice.

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Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and this year it will probably be even more surreal than usual. Normally, we see the plethora of politicians and people who would have opposed everything MLK stood for, now quoting and praising him. This year, be on the lookout for MLK quotes from people and organizations who have remained silent on Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, including the massacre of over 10,000 Palestinian children. If this is you, lean on MLK’s courage and use this day to break your silence.

The rest of us, however, are also not off the hook. I see the same quotes being used, the ones that are positive and hopeful, that won’t cause any offense. Those words are important, but don’t forget all the other things Dr. King said that we often conveniently ignore, including “The evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and the evils of racism”

And “Why is equality so assiduously avoided? Why does white America delude itself, and how does it rationalize the evil it retains?”

The quote I often think about is the one on white moderation. He warned that the biggest threats to justice are not the overt racists who wear hood and burn crosses, but the “white moderate,” the seemingly nice people who profess to have the same goals, but who always prioritize civility, respectability, and a type of “peace” that doesn’t call for justice.

Our sector—nonprofit and philanthropy—needs to constantly reflect on this concept of white moderation because we are arguably the single most salient embodiment of it. Many of us still equivocate around issues like police violence. Our fundraising and philanthropic practices allow for the conscience-laundering of systemic injustice, including horrendous wealth hoarding. Many funders and nonprofit leaders actively work against addressing the root causes of inequity, like the foundations prohibiting their grantees from engaging in advocacy work. And so on. Here are 21 signs you and your org may be the white moderate.

However, it’s been over 60 years since Dr. King wrote those words about white moderates in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Things evolve, including how white moderation manifests. Sure, many things that MLK listed as examples of white moderation—calling for unity and civility, prioritizing pragmatism, asking people to wait until the “right time,” etc.—are still very much present.

But I’ve been seeing other ways white moderation is showing up in our sector and our world. I’m going to reflect on three of those ways below (while also working on . Please keep in mind that these concepts are not in themselves bad; most or all are good. It’s only when they are used as excuses to not take other actions that would advance justice, or they are weaponized against those who are taking those actions, that they become a tool of white moderation.

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Hi everyone, this is the last post of 2023. I’ll be back on January 2^nd. Normally, I end the year with a lighter article, maybe something humorous. But humor has been hard to come by with everything taking place all around us. The genocide of Palestinians. The US’s veto of a ceasefire. The horrors happening to civilians in Sudan, Congo, Tigray, and other parts of the world. The attacks on reproductive rights. The rise in violence against trans people. The continuation of mass shootings. The surge in fascism across the globe. We’ve had a horrible year after a series of horrible years, and 2024, with the election in the US, doesn’t look like it will bring much relief.

To be honest, I am very tired and on edge. I’m drained, feeling a combination of helplessness at being unable to do much to stop the injustice and suffering I see everywhere, and the frustration of having to battle strangers, colleagues, and even friends and family who seem completely unaware of the nightmares taking place, or worse, justify them.

For me, this was also a year marked by the death of a close friend, whose suicide was due in part to the helplessness she felt at the state of the world. On some days, I wake up in the middle of the night. I look at my kids peacefully sleeping and I think of children similar in age to mine who are buried under rubble.

I was thinking about how hopeless things have been, when a colleague sent me this reel on Instagram. Here activist @jlcreator talks about what they learned from an elder about the difference between hope and trust. The elder advised them to rely less on hope, and instead ground the work in trust. Specifically, trusting in the people who are dedicated to doing the right things, who are committed to undoing systems of injustice.

I know we’ve always said that hope is a discipline, something we must be intentional about. I still believe in that; I’m not giving up on hope. But I appreciate this idea of trusting in those who are steadfast in the face of injustice. The last two months in particular I have witnessed the courage of so many. Journalists, healthcare workers, humanitarian aid workers. Those who risk their safety and livelihoods to speak up against injustice. While there has been an unbearable amount of pain and suffering in the world, there have also been extraordinary instances of strength, bravery, and integrity.

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Hi everyone. This is my fourth blog post on the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza. Before I go further, yes I condemn Hamas’s atrocities committed on October 7^th against Israeli civilians. And I also condemn antisemitism, a serious issue that has been on the rise all over the world.

And I condemn the war crimes and terrorism against Palestinian civilians that Israel has been committing since then, and for the past 75 years. As you read this, the number of Palestinian civilians that the Israeli government has massacred approaches 16,000 since October, including nearly 8,000 children. The death toll of Israel’s slaughter of Palestinian civilians this year has surpassed the Nakba of 1948. It will get worse, as Israel ramps up its aggression against southern Gaza, where it had previously told civilians to evacuate to. There is no place for Palestinian civilians to go to be safe. And as winter approaches, there will be more famine and starvation. The death toll will rise even higher.

Over the past several weeks, I’ve been fielding messages sent to me by email and through various social media platforms. A lot are supportive (thank you). Some are angry. I am trying to remember that everyone is hurting, and that the comments calling me a Nazi or antisemitic or a supporter of terrorism or a condoner of the murders of babies, etc., come from a place of deep-rooted trauma. Many colleagues may not have been alive during the Holocaust, but it still affects them. Just like even though I was born after the Vietnam war, with its own horrifying massacres of civilians, it’s still in the collective memory of my community, and I have visceral reactions seeing horrific and heartbreaking images and videos of toddlers shaking from bomb blasts, parents writing children’s names on their bodies so they could be identified if they died, other parents weeping over their already dead children, a man hugging his mother, begging her to wake up, among so many others.

More than a few comments were along the lines of “I follow you to read about nonprofit and philanthropy, not to hear about your thoughts on this conflict.” These comments are disappointing. I have always loved our sector because, theoretically, more so than other sectors, we fight for a just and equitable world. No matter what our missions are, this is the one that unites us all. We can argue about how we go about it, what strategies we use, etc., but we should agree that the fundamental reason we exist is to make the world better.

And I am not sure that we, as a sector, are living up to that purpose in this moment. Too many people and too many organizations are still too silent. Or worse, chastising or punishing the people who are speaking out in defense of Palestinian lives. Meanwhile, I received word from a colleague working on relief efforts in Gaza that not enough resources are coming in from foundations:  

“Grassroots donors are pouring in, but the philanthropy community is basically absent. With very few exceptions, major funders are absent. The foundations sitting on billions are doing mostly nothing. Those that are doing something are making gifts of a few hundred thousand at best. Not nothing, but also nowhere near what they’re capable of. [Regarding] Funders 4 Ceasefire: what seemed like a noble effort at first is apparently a feel-good statement with no actual money behind the words. Only a small handful of foundation signers (out of ~150) seem to be funding anything remotely related to Palestine or related advocacy.”

If this is a test, our sector as a whole is failing. We are failing to apply all the DEI lessons we’ve been learning regarding power, privilege, oppression, equity, and justice. We continue to intellectualize, equivocate, and engage in both-siding while a genocide happens on our watch, funded by our tax dollars. It has been surreal to be in discussion with people in our sector who genuinely cannot answer with a simple “no” when asked “is it ever ok to murder 16,000 civilians, half of whom are children?”

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Hi everyone, before we get started, a few cool things to check out: First, my friend the amazing Kishshana Palmer, has a virtual workshop series geared towards nonprofit leaders. It starts next week. Check it out.

Second, the Institute for Policy Studies released a new report on the shenanigans of billionaires. Please read it, get angry, flip over the nearest table, and then contact Congress to demand they do something about it.  

Finally, past and present funding professionals, please fill out the First Draft Funders Survey with your opinions on philanthropy and how it can improve.

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As Thanksgiving is this week, I start to think about our society’s and our sector’s weird dynamics around gratitude. We’ve been trained to be thankful, to have an “attitude of gratitude,” to keep a gratitude journal, etc. This is mostly great. When everything feels overwhelming and out of control, gratitude can often be extremely grounding.

However, we don’t talk enough about the negative sides of gratitude. Specifically, there are ingrained notions of who is expected to be grateful to whom, and it is grossly lopsided, and we’ve been conditioned to just accept it. I’m going to call it the Asymmetric Requirement of Gratitude (ARG! I mentioned it briefly earlier here). Here are a few ways that it manifests:

• Service workers are expected to be grateful to customers, but rarely are customers expected to be grateful to cashiers or restaurants servers. That’s why we have expressions like “the customer is always right” (which is ridiculous. A lot of customers are assholes).
• Job candidates are expected to be grateful to potential employers. This is why employers can make job applicants go through inane hiring processes, with interminable rounds of interviews, and unpaid bespoke assignments. And yet employers still expect applicants to write post-interview thank-you notes and sometimes punish them for not doing so.
• Employees are expected to grateful to employers. After job candidates are hired, the ARG changes to staff being required to be grateful to their employers for giving them a job and providing them with pay to support their family.
• Nonprofit staff are expected to be grateful to donors: We are trained to be constantly appreciative of people who give us money to do the work. Cue the thank-you notes, the donor walls, the effusive phone calls, the naming rights, the wine and cheese, the plaques, the workshops on how to thank donors better.
• Nonprofits are expected to be grateful to funders: As with donors, nonprofits are expected to be thankful for grants, and for any small measure of kindness funders bestow upon them. It manifests in the catering to funders’ whims, no matter how tedious or nonsensical.

Children are expected to be grateful to their parents for bringing them into the world. Nonprofit staff are expected to be grateful to elected officials who show up at events. Conference organizers are expected to be grateful to speakers. Etc. There is ARG everywhere.

Now, again, I’m not against gratitude. Gratitude is great. What I don’t like is the asymmetry. Why should a job candidate be expected to write thank-you notes to potential employers, when the latter have no expectations to reciprocate? When’s the last time a place you applied to for a job wrote you a nice note after you interviewed with them? Sure, job candidates depend on employers to have employment. But one can easily argue that most companies and organizations would immediately shut down if they didn’t have the staff they need.

The same goes for nonprofits and foundations. I hear things like nonprofits being grateful that a funder gave them feedback on why their grant applications weren’t accepted. “They were so nice to tell us how we could improve.” That sounds very generous, until you realize how one-sided that is, and how this is a symptom of the asymmetry of gratitude. Sure, nonprofits depend on funders for support, but funders can’t get much done without nonprofits doing the work. If the gratitude were mutual, both parties would be thankful to be getting feedback from the other. But rarely do funders solicit feedback from grant applicants about their processes.

With individual donors, we’ve really bought into this narrative that donors are magnanimous, and we should always be thankful for them. We’ve beaten into our heads phrases like “we couldn’t have done this without you.” Yeah, we probably couldn’t do a lot of our work without donors’ support, but at the same time, donors also can’t do a lot of what they want to do without nonprofits (They’d probably just end up paying more taxes, which many of us would argue would be a better system).

The asymmetry in gratitude is not just annoying. I think for our sector, it is detrimental to our work, for several reasons:

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Hi everyone. Over the past few weeks I’ve been getting messages regarding my two posts on Israel and Gaza. Most of them have been kind and encouraging. Some have been thoughtful in their disagreement. And some have not been so thoughtful, such as the colleague who called me a Nazi because I support a ceasefire and an end to the genocide and ethnic cleansing that Israel is committing against Palestinians in Gaza.

I have lost many followers and some work because of my stance, but it doesn’t matter. What I and others calling for a ceasefire have been experiencing cannot compare to the profound pain and suffering Palestinians are experiencing right now and have been for over 75 years of Israeli occupation.

I also want to acknowledge that many of us are affected by trauma, including intergenerational traumas from horrific injustices in history. What our parents and grandparents endured lingers in our souls. Everyone is understandably on edge, and the horrific atrocities committed by Hamas against Israeli civilians on October 7^th and the horrific atrocities being committed by Israel against Palestinians in retaliation deeply affect us.

Still, I am saddened and frustrated that after so many years of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, Belonging, and Justice (DEI, or JEDI, or whatever) trainings, after so many workshops and summits and white papers and online discussions, many of us have forgotten the key lessons we learned and desperately need to apply to what is happening now. I’d like to go through them, mainly as a reminder to myself, and also in hopes that they may be helpful to you as you navigate the current injustice:

1.We must have an analysis of the power dynamics: We learned that racism requires a combination of prejudice plus systemic power. This is why most of us can see why concepts like “reverse racism, racism against white people” are ridiculous, because Black, Indigenous, Latine, and AANHPI people do not have systemic power that white people do in the US. In the case of Israel and Palestine, these are not two equal forces moving against each other. Israel is vastly more powerful (the fourth most powerful military on earth) and backed and financed by some of the most powerful forces (especially the US) while Palestine has weakened infrastructure, no military, and significantly less support. To treat this as a battle between equals misses the vital analysis that is necessary for us to fully understand the context.

2.We must use the active voice when calling out injustice: This is a lesson we all should have learned because of the works of leaders like k. kennedy Whiters of (un)Redact The Facts. Instead of saying “a Black man dies in traffic stop incident with police,” we must say, “police officer kills a Black man during routine traffic stop.” This active voice helps with accountability. What is happening now is not “over 11,000 people, including over 4,000 children, have died in in Gaza.” Let’s be clear: “Israel, backed by the US and other western powers, has killed over 11,000 Palestinians, including over 4,000 children, in Gaza.”

3.We must not “both-sides” inequity and injustice: People saying there are multiple sides, and that when we speak up for Palestinians’ rights, we are only presenting one “side.” There are no “sides” to genocide. The horrific atrocities Hamas committed against Israeli civilians do not justify the genocide that Israel is committing against Palestinians now nor the occupation and oppression it has committed over decades.

4.We must use precise terms and concepts and not euphemisms: I know some of you do not agree with the usage of the word “genocide.” But that is precisely what is happening, according to human rights experts and according to many Jewish leaders, including many survivors of the Holocaust. To refuse to name it is to deny that it is happening. It is not simply a “conflict.” It is genocide, it is ethnic cleansing, and if we aim to stop it, we must not be in denial about that. As a reminder, for a long time, and even occasionally now, many people in our sector could not say words like “white supremacy” or “anti-Blackness” or even “race.” But we cannot address systemic injustice when we refuse to name things as they are.

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Over the past several years, I’ve noticed a marked increase in organizations listing the salary range (or just salary number) on their job postings. There are a few who still don’t, but since job postings are usually public, they often get swift feedback. There have also been more laws passed to ensure transparency and to stop the gross and unethical practice of basing candidates’ salary offer on their salary history. Overall, we’re doing much better on this front and should celebrate! Soy vanilla ice cream topped with Luxardo cherries and truffle salt for everyone! (You may have a different way to celebrate).

Now we must turn our attention to a horrible, no-good, very bad hiring practice that many of us, even the ones who disclose salary on job postings, are still perpetuating: Asking job candidates to do unpaid work as part of the hiring process. I’ve mentioned it briefly earlier—it’s the first item on this list of “Crappy hiring practices that need to die, and some awesome ones we need to adopt”—but it’s gotten so bad that it needs to be called out on its own. Here are some ways it manifests:

• Requiring job candidates to create a fundraising, evaluation, or communications plan specifically tailored to your organization.
• Making candidates write you a sample end-of-year appeal letter based on your org’s mission
• Having candidates analyze your organization’s current website and provide suggestions for improvement.
• Demanding candidates create and deliver a presentation about how they would approach some topic relevant to the job.
• Requiring candidates to write and then act out a pitch to a potential major donor
• Asking candidates to create a detailed work plan for how they would do their job if they were hired.
• Having candidates to show up and “volunteer” at your program to see how they do.

There are tons more examples. My friend and colleague Irene Nexica, an equity-minded recruiting and hiring expert, wrote “I received an assignment as the second round for something that they described would take 3 to 4 hours (already too much to ask), and actually took me more like 16. The assignment was basically designing the first 30 days of the job for this new role.” (Irene was also forced to endure SIX rounds of interviews, proving that this organization is completely incompetent and no one should ever work there).

The practice of asking candidates for unpaid labor is awful and anyone who does it needs to stop immediately. Here are several reasons why it’s bad:  

It is inequitable. Many of these assignments take hours of researching, planning, thinking, drafting, reviewing, etc. You’re asking job candidates to spend time that they may not have, when they could be doing other things that would actually earn them money. This is not just annoying, it’s also inequitable when you consider that many job candidates aren’t currently employed, and many are people of color, disabled people, women, older adults, neurodivergent, etc. Every unpaid hour you require job candidates to engage in special assignments as part of your hiring process is another hour of your organization furthering inequity.

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Hi everyone. As you can guess from the title, this blog post will be serious and likely anger some people.

Over the past few days, as lifesaving food, water, energy, and internet are cut off for people in Gaza, the Israeli government has already massacred over 8,000 people, half of them children. Israel has trapped thousands under rubble with its bombs, plans to kill more civilians, and is displacing a million Palestinians from one end of an open-air prison to another.

We must call it for what it is: ethnic cleansing and genocide, committed by the Israeli government against Palestinians in Gaza.

Many of us are reading the news in horror. “Israel has the right to defend itself” has morphed into a justification for the murder of children, the elderly, disabled people, and other civilians in Gaza who are collectively punished for the horrific actions Hamas inflicted on Israeli civilians. And those of us in the US, our tax dollars are funding Israel to do this. We are funding genocide.

I know this can be overwhelming, and it’s easier to turn away. But our sector, nonprofit and philanthropy, has the mission to fight injustice and to create an equitable world. And in this moment, we need to act. As individuals, as organizations, and as a sector. Here are few things you can do, which I’ve synthesized from a few places, such as this website:

Contact your elected officials: In the US, you can go to this usa.gov/elected-officials, enter your address, and it will give you a list of who all your elected officials are, as well as their contact information. Call, email, and message them on social media and ask them to demand a ceasefire and to stop using our tax dollars to arm Israel with weapons to commit horrific atrocities against Palestinian civilians.  

Learn more about the issue: I know it is a complex issue with hundreds (correction: thousands) of years of history. We all need to learn more. I appreciate Jewish Voice for Peace. Here’s a 7-minute video they created that explains the recent history in simple terms. Watch “The Present,” a 24-minute Oscar-nominated film about life in the West Bank. “Born in Gaza,” also on Netflix, is a 70-minute film following the lives of ten Palestinian children.

Donate to emergency response in Gaza: With food, water, power, and internet being cut off, Palestinians are desperate need of support. Here are a few places you can donate to.

Follow and lift up Palestinian voices: As pro-Palestinian voices are being censored and punished, with people being fired and events canceled, it’s vital we provide support. Here are a few leaders to follow. On Twitter, Retweet for Gaza (@silencedvoices4) provides valuable information and perspectives from Palestinian residents and journalists.

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Hi everyone. This blog post will upset some of my colleagues and likely lose me a few followers, and possibly even some friends. I understand. But having a platform comes with the responsibility of using it to speak up against injustice.

I know the past several days have weighed heavily on everyone’s mind as we learned of the horrifying atrocities committed by Hamas. The already high level of antisemitism has increased over the years, culminating in last week’s violence and brutality against Israeli civilians, including children and the elderly. The horror is too much for many of us to fully comprehend. There are still hostages being held and people still suffering. As a society and as a sector we must condemn the terror and cruelty committed by Hamas.

And as vocally we must condemn the Israeli government’s response, which has been to launch a second Nakba, a horrific level of death and destruction, on Palestine and its people. 2.3 million Palestinians live in Gaza. Half of them are children. Cutting off food, water, and energy, and ordering civilians to evacuate Northern Gaza while raining death on families fleeing for their lives and vowing to do more—this is genocide; this is ethnic cleansing. We must be firm in condemning these war crimes, especially as the US government is openly supporting the Israeli government and its violence and inhumanity against Palestinian civilians, including children, who are not Hamas.

I don’t want to center myself and my feelings in this moment, as we who are in safe and privileged positions often tend to do. But reading the news and seeing the images of pain and death, I think about what my family and community endured in the war forced upon us in Vietnam. Whole villages were obliterated. My mother told me how she carried her two youngest siblings, small children at the time, each in a basket at both ends of a shoulder pole, as they ran to dodge bombs falling all around them, weaving between broken and lifeless bodies of other villagers. They were trying to get to another family’s house, which they thought would be safer. They were delayed on the road, and when they arrived, the house and everyone in it had been blown up by bombs.

The fact that these and other scenarios are happening right now and have been continually happening over decades and decades to Palestinians, is heartbreaking and horrifying.

I am glad to see more people and organizations in our sector speaking against the killing and terrorizing of innocent people, whether they are Israeli or Palestinian. But this is not enough. We must also take a stance in support of a free Palestine. There can be no end to these cycles of violence, no lasting peace, until Israel ends its occupation of Palestinian territories. As Joanna Ware, Rabbi Becky Silverstein, and an anonymous colleague write in this thoughtful essay,

“In the same way that more funders — though still not enough — have upped their focus on the root causes of racial injustice, we must also view this moment through the lens of root causes. We cannot avoid naming and addressing the root cause of this violence: decades of oppression and Occupation. Millions of Palestinians live under Israeli control without human rights and dignity. This cannot continue. It does not need to be like this. There is no military solution in Israel/Palestine. The only stable solution is a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians.”

We must be more vocal in support of ending this occupation by the Israeli government, as it is unjust and illegal as deemed by the United Nations.

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Hi everyone. It is October, which means my favorite holiday is coming up: Halloween, a time when children can dress up in costume and go door-to-door for free food, while adults dress up as sexy versions of healthcare workers and politicians.

And of course, it’s also a time to give ourselves a good scare. In our sector, there’s plenty of terrifying things: Restricted funding, 360 evaluations, lack of retirement savings, and creepy colleagues who tip-toe behind you in darkened hallways and whisper, “Would you consider joining the gala planning committee?” I’ll tell you a story about one of the scariest things that happen though. Make sure all the lights are on and you’re not by yourself:

“There once was a foundation. Like other foundations, it provided funding each year and supported many vital causes.

One cold and chilly Autumn day, the nonprofits it funded received a mass email: ‘To be more thoughtful and effective in our approach of working with our grantees to solve entrenched problems like poverty and hunger, the Foundation has decided to take the next 12 months off to determine our priorities and strategies. During this time, no funding will be allocated. Thank you for your patience.’

They say if you listen carefully, even to this day, you can still hear the sighs of hundreds of nonprofit leaders, and the mournful exasperation of the community members who faced lost and reduced services.”

I thought this was a practice that ended years ago, but last week I was at a conference and met a colleague who told me of a local funder who took or is taking a year off to create their strategic plan. Some funders I’ve known of in the past have taken 18 months or two years off for this.

A lot of strategic planning in general is a flawed, useless, or even destructive process that often entrenches us in incrementalism. As Hildy Gottlieb says, “We wanted to get to Paris. Instead, we’ve done a six-month study of our driveway, and made plans to get to the supermarket.” Taking months or years off to do that is silly.

So, funders, we need to have a talk. Because of power dynamics, your grantees can’t be completely honest with you to your face, but this practice of taking significant time off to determine your strategies and priorities is not only extremely aggravating, it’s also steeped in privilege and is harmful to not only the nonprofits that rely on you for funding, but to the people who rely on the nonprofits.*

Let’s talk about aggravation: Funding in our sector is already unpredictable, never sufficient, and highly restricted. The ridiculous hoops many funders force nonprofit leaders to jump through on a daily basis, with the snowflake grant applications and bespoke budgets and reports, cause endless stress on nonprofit leaders, leaving our faces gaunt and haunted, to the point that the majority of us don’t need costumes to look like ghosts and zombies this Halloween. When a funder removes themselves from the chess board, we then have to reassess our own strategies, come up with new ones, and scramble to fill in holes in the budget. All of this takes time and energy away from what nonprofits should be spending most of their time doing: Providing critical services.

Let’s talk about privilege. Most foundations have the privilege of not worrying about funding, whereas nonprofits don’t have that luxury. Most foundations already have money, so they don’t have to worry that if they shut down for a year, their entire operation will collapse. Foundation staff, who on the whole are compensated more than their colleagues at nonprofits, don’t have to worry about their livelihoods when the foundations take a long break to brainstorm and plan. All of this makes this practice of shutting down for a year or two an extremely privileged and out-of-touch one. It’s like that Edgar Allan Poe story where a bunch of nobles wall themselves off in a castle and throw a masquerade ball while the Plague rages outside. Except these nobles have white papers and La Croix.

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