Author: Vu Le

Hi everyone, before we get started, here’s a conversation on Donor-Advised Funds (DAFs) taking place on April 21 at 10am PT. It’s free, and auto-captions will be enabled.

Some of you may remember #DAFHobbyGate, where many, many fundraising colleagues got very upset because on an earlier webinar I mentioned that “philanthropy has often become a hobby for the rich and it really shouldn’t be.” Dozens of indignant people told stories of the wonderful donors they encountered who would die before they thought of their charitable work as a hobby. Others called me pretentious, self-righteous, and ignorant. A few demanded I apologize for my thoughtless and insensitive words (which I did, very sincerely).

Here’s the thing, though: Not a single donor indicated they were offended. Or certainly no one expressed they got offended in their role as a donor, as I suspect all of us in the sector are also donors. The folks who were bothered expressed their rage as fundraisers, wealth advisors, and fundraising thought-leaders.

In an earlier post (“White development colleagues, we need to talk about fundraiser fragility”) I mentioned Fundraiser Stockholm Syndrome, this primal urge among fundraisers to protect donors from any and all criticisms and discomfort, as if donors were perfect beings immune to committing any wrongdoings, or fragile baby birds who cannot fend for themselves. It is preventing us from having deep, necessary conversations that would advance our field.

But Fundraiser Stockholm Syndrome may be hard to recognize. So here are some signs you may be afflicted by it, because the first step to solving a problem it to be aware that you have one:

1.You believe donors are somehow superior to everyone else: During #DAFHobbyGate, one colleague waxed rapturously about donors, including these words: “[Donors] share our foibles and failings, yet, through philanthropy, discover the ‘angels of their better nature.’ They are the best of us; they make us all better.” Many chimed in to express agreement. Yikes! Only a few people—namely Lizzo, Malala Yousafzai, Dolly Parton, and Keanu Reeves—deserve this level of fawning adoration.

2.You feel a visceral response whenever donors are disparaged in any way: Whenever you see donors being talked about negatively in any way, your heart races, your face gets flushed, and your hackles are raised, even though I’m not sure anyone actually knows what a hackle is. (OK, I just googled it: hackles are the hairs on the neck or back of an animal, which are raised when the animal is in danger or something, to make them seem bigger and more dangerous.)

3.You often interject with “it’s their money,” especially combined with “hard-earned”: You are indignant that anyone dares to say something negative about how people spend “their” money, something they earned through “their” own hard work. You don’t think about, or refuse to acknowledge in any meaningful way, the fact that significant wealth has been built through inequitable means like slavery; genocide of Indigenous peoples and theft of Native land; tax avoidance; worker exploitation; and environmental degradation.

4.Words like “wealth hoarding” “taxes” “white supremacy” “slavery” “stolen Indigenous land” etc., push your buttons: Words like these threaten the image of donors and philanthropy as benevolent or neutral, and so every time you hear them, you go immediately into fight or flight, like a mama bear getting ready to protect her delicate donor bear cubs from predators called “truth.”

5.You feel the need to attack anyone who leverages even mild criticisms of donors or philanthropy: Mild criticisms (“philanthropy has often become a hobby for rich people”) are a slippery slope. They could lead to more serious criticisms (“philanthropy is a system many wealthy people who are mostly white use to justify the further hoarding of wealth and the consolidation of power”). So you have the urge to put anyone in place who brings these things up.

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Every month or so, I get an appeal letter from my alma mater, Washington University in St. Louis (Go Bears!), usually with a promise of some socks or a keychain if I contribute any amount. I love Wash U. It was some of the best and most formative years of my life. It was there that I discovered the power of activism. I was vegan, and the campus had little more than salads, so I started mobilizing the other plant-eaters. We marched on the administration. Many of us fainted on the way because we didn’t have much energy, and our fake-leather shoes disintegrated. It was the longest 50 yard of our lives. But at the end, we were triumphant, and we feasted upon soy nuggets and quinoa bowls with pride. I will always be grateful for what I learned at Wash U, the friends I made, the experiences I had, and the doors that being an alum has opened for me.

But I’m not donating. Wash U is one of the most well-endowed higher education institutions in the US, with over 15 billions in reserve.

In general, the sheer scope and scale of higher education fundraising departments would make the vast majority of nonprofits’ development work pale in comparison. At a large university, we could be talking about a team of hundreds of people raising hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

Higher ed institutions, especially elite ones, are so effective at pulling in money that they’re like supermassive stars whose gravity saps resources that could be used for more pressing purposes, while simultaneously reinforcing terrible philosophies and exacerbating societal challenges. How fundraising is done at these institutions, just like how it’s done at hospitals and other large nonprofits, affects the entire sector.

Which is why it has been heartening to see some higher education development professionals having conversations about how to fundraise differently. As fundraising in our sector evolves, spurred on by movements like Community-Centric Fundraising, philosophies and practices long held by the biggest players need to adapt as well. If you are a fundraiser working within higher education, I hope you will consider these things:

1.Stop reinforcing money as the primary goal of fundraising: Higher ed institutions often have annual fundraising goals in the hundreds of millions, sums that are unfathomable for many of us. Large elite institutions like Harvard use their name and reputation to become massive fundraising machines. And yet many universities still struggle with lack of diversity among staff, gender wage and leadership disparities, horrific poverty wages for adjunct staff, worsening mental health of students, and other problems. What is the point of raising hundreds of millions of dollars if these funds don’t necessarily correlate with making things better and more equitable? How fundraising is being done, how the money is being invested and deployed, and whom it is affecting, is just as vital, if not more vital, than the total amount being raised.

2.Mitigate fundraising practices that are reinforcing white patriarchal norms: The fundraising practices you use have ripples and consequences. For instance, major donors often enjoy perks such as the gross practice of legacy enrollment, further perpetuating the cycle of wealth and power being concentrated within white families. Another practice, one that happens more frequently at higher education institutions than anywhere else, is the naming of buildings after major donors. But donors of the size that would warrant their name on a building are mostly white men. And given the history of racial, gender, and other forms of inequity in the US that is tied to wealth in this country, do we really want more veneration of wealthy white men?

3.Understand the impact you have on other orgs in the ecosystem: Wealthy alums will leave millions of dollars to their elite alma maters, and we fundraisers (and society in general) encourage and celebrate these donations without much thought or analysis about who else might be affected. Community colleges, for example, are absolutely vital, and yet do not receive nearly the same level of support in public funds or private donations. Donors would have so much more impact if they donated money to community colleges instead of to their already wealthy alma maters, but that is not how higher ed fundraisers (or any fundraisers) have been trained to fundraise. We must think beyond our own organization/institution’s individual well-being and start considering what is best for the community.

4.Get out of the idea that higher education institutions are neutral: There is the idea that colleges and universities are simply politically neutral places, and thus fundraising is also neutral. But some of the worst people on earth actually come from some of the most prestigious schools. Their pedigrees are used to gain power, which they then use to undermine democracy and roll back human rights. Fundraisers at these institutions must understand the role they play. Without thoughtful analysis, you may be unwittingly helping to strengthen inequity and injustice. 

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Hi everyone. If you’ve been following this blog, you know that I try to call out crappy or nonsensical things in our sector. (Those of you still using double spaces after periods, I will hunt you down!) And every time I do, there’s usually some pushback, such as detailed in the recent #DAFGate. I don’t mind it, and in fact, I like it, because as a sector, we need to be a lot more assertive about our needs and to be able to argue and defend our points of view. (Plus, I failed at being a lawyer, so I like arguing with people to make up for it.)

However, there is always a line of pushback that is predictable and tiresome, and it’s summed up with “well, that’s the rules and we need to follow it.” For example, last week I posted about the nonsense of delusional funders requiring an accounting for what their specific grant pays for, forcing nonprofits to play a pointless and time-wasting game of Financial Sudoku. Like a funder or donor giving $5,000 and needing to know whether that money paid for pencils or insurance or whatever. It’s as if I hired a plumber to fix my leaking sink, paid them $500, and then demanded to know what they spent that $500 on (“And no more than $50 of the money I paid you to fix the sink had better gone to paying your rent, Eddie, because that’s overhead!”)

Amidst the sea of agreement, one colleague wrote “Hardly anyone here has a clue about GAAP, I gather?” Now, I’m not going to judge someone based on a single comment on social media, and I’m not going to address the accuracy of whether Generally Accepted Accounting Principles require organizations to break down which funder is paying for which portion of which line item, because it’s not relevant.

What concerns me is that this line of thinking is so prevalent in our sector: The idea that doing things the “right” way, which means following the rules no matter how nonsensical and ridiculous, is somehow more important than actually solving the issues we set out to solve.

I’ve mentioned in the past the difference between “doing things right” and “doing the right thing.” Discussions on the importance of this difference has been going on for years, usually in business or management contexts. Peter Drucker said “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”

We in this sector need to have a much better understanding of it, as I consider it one of the most important principles guiding our work, and so many folks in our sector are confused or have not done much reflection on it.

To put it simply, doing things right is about following rules, policies, procedures, and norms. Whereas doing the right things is about aligning with our values and moral compass. When the two philosophies align, there’s no issue. But when they clash, we often are forced to choose. For example, an afterschool program has rules prohibiting staff from driving kids home for any reason, due to liabilities, but because of a sudden snowstorm and power failure the program closes early and a neglected kid may have to walk five miles home in the dark if the staff don’t give them a ride home. Should the staff drive the kid home, or should they let the kid walk home in the storm? (Assume they already tried other things, like calling the kid’s emergency contacts, etc.)

As another example, a foundation has a deadline for a grant proposal. A small, marginalized-community-led organization writes in asking for an extension because they are short-staffed and have been supporting the community through a tragic event. Should the foundation follow the established protocols and deny this organization’s request to turn in their application late because it may not be fair for organizations that turned in their proposals on time, or else make an exception after considering the context that this organization is working under?  

Many of the arguments and conflicts we have are because some folks are aligned with doing the right thing, and others are aligned with doing things right, though sometimes it is hard to discern which one is which. In the cases above, I would say driving the kid home is doing the right thing, as well as making the exception for the organization so they could submit a proposal after the due date. Refusing to drive the kid home and refusing to make a grant deadline exception would be doing things right, as it is about following rules and protocols.

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Hi everyone, before we get started, I have exciting news: It took over a year and tons of dark chocolate, but I’ve compiled a bunch of Nonprofit AF ramblings into a book “Unicorns on Fire: A Collection of Nonprofit AF Blog Posts Finally Edited for Spelling and Grammar, Volume 1” which you can order on Barnes and Nobles. All revenues generated from sales from now until the end of June will be donated toward relief efforts for the devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria.

This book makes a great present for birthdays, wedding anniversaries, as an ominous warning sign for funders or board members you don’t like, or as bathroom reading material for your household. Special thanks to editor Norea Hoeft for putting up with my shenanigans, Stacy Nguyen for designing the cover, Kishshana Palmer for penning the foreword, and all of you for inspiring me to write over the past 11 years.

Now, onto today’s topic. In this line of work, I have met lots of amazing funders. Shoutout to all the brilliant philanthropy professionals who are working hard and often without much fanfare to change the ridiculous systems that make fund seeking so painful and ineffective.

On the other hand, many foundations have a condescending belief that they know what’s best for nonprofits, and that they are like a mentor to these poor misguided organizations. A sort of “benevolent paternalism.” It leads to some terrible funding practices that we need to do away with. This is not a comprehensive list:

1.Requiring funds to be matched by other sources: “We’ll give you money, but you must match it by raising money from other sources.” This practice has been so ingrained that we don’t stop to question it; some of us even start to think it’s a good thing, like funders are in with us on a used-car sales tactic: “We have a funder willing to fund this project, but only if we match it. Can you help us get this matching grant?” sounds like “My manager says we can’t go any lower on this 1993 Honda Accord, but I can probably convince her to take off another $500 if you’re willing to sign today.” Gross. Let’s stop playing games and just provide the funds needed for critical work to get done. Stop requiring matching funds.

2.Having a challenging application process to teach nonprofits: One time I encountered a grant for $5,000 that required a six-page narrative, bespoke budget, logic model, workplan, and six or so other attachments. When I asked why this grant was so complicated, the program officer told me it’s because the grant review committee wanted to help nonprofits develop grantwriting skills, so they made their process complex and time-consuming on purpose. This is a bizarre and self-fulfilling loop: Let’s create a burdensome process to teach nonprofits skills to deal with burdensome processes. No one needs you to teach them anything, and it’s not your job (which is to provide funding). If you want to be helpful, just accept grant proposals that have already been written.

3.Requiring board approval and board signatures: Some foundations require a board officer’s signature on applications. On one occasion I had to drive an hour in Seattle traffic to get my board president’s signature because he didn’t have the tech skills to do an electronic signature. When I asked the program officer why this was necessary, the response was that the foundation just wanted board members to be in the loop before they provided funding (of 10K). We are grown-ass adults here. Nonprofit staff don’t need approval from their board as if they were kids needing their parents’ permission to go on school field trips. And here’s a secret: Because of how ineffective or destructive many boards are, sometimes boards are kept out of the loop intentionally; that’s how a lot of good work gets done!

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Hi everyone, a couple of things before we get started. On March 14^th, 9:30am Pacific Time, I’ll be moderating a conversation on Artificial Intelligence and what it means for our sector, in partnership with Beth Kanter, Allison Fine, and Philip Deng. It’s free. There will be automatic captions. Register here.

Also, this week, on Valentine’s Day at 10am PT, I’ll be having a 5-year reunion with the co-authors of Unicorns Unite: How Nonprofits and Foundations Can Build EPIC Partnerships, to discuss what we learned. Also free and will have captions. Hope to see you there.

Speaking of Valentine’s Day, for the past few years we’ve been having lots of fun on Twitter with the hashtag #NonprofitPickupLines. As Twitter is becoming less and less stable, I thought we should capture some of the contributions for posterity. If you have a crush in the sector and don’t know how to make your move, give these lines a try:

1. “Hey there, do you look this good year round? ‘Cause you’ve got annual appeal.” MA Nonprofit Network (@MA_NonprofitNet)
2. “I think we’re a perfect match (up to $25,000).”—Adam Stewart (@RAdamStewart)
3. “Did you forget to file your form 990? Cause you got FINE written all over you.”—Margaret Waldock (@MargaretWaldock)
4. “My, what a large endowment you have.” –Marc Pitman (@marcapitman)
5. “Want to Netflix and review the budget?”—Blayr (@BlayrAustin)
6. “Girl, are you a DM fundraising pack? Because you’ve got some seriously tangible asks and a strong call to action.”—Ben Stephens (@Stephens_Ben)
7. “I’ll show you my indirect costs if you show me yours.”—Linda Czipo (@LindaCzipo)
8. “Want to see my matching gift?”—Dave Tinker (@davethecfre)
9. “Are you a recurring donor? ‘Cause you’ve been running through my mind every month.”—Dawn Stever (@DawnAM03)

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Hi everyone, before we get started, it’s Black History Month, so let’s all remind ourselves that only about 2% of philanthropic dollars go to Black-led organizations. Funders, release all the statements of support you want, but increase funding and donations to Black organizations, movements, and individual leaders. Have more grants like the Washington Women’s Foundation’s Rest and Repair Awards, which provides $100,000 grants each to individual Black women leaders. The rest of us, meanwhile, should be donating to Black-led orgs, supporting Black-owned businesses, and calling our representatives and writing op-eds to protest the banning of AP African American Studies, among other actions.

Handwritten thank-you notes (HWTYN) have been a contentious topic in our sector of late. Some people think they are an absolute necessity for proper etiquette and relationship-building, while others believe they are an outdated relic of ancient times, like denim jackets and fair elections. Even Dr. Glaucomflecken weighed in. I have written about the cultural and equity implications of thank-you notes, so I won’t rehash.

But given that society is changing rapidly, we need some new rules. So forget everything you’ve been taught about thank you-notes, and instead follow these guidelines, which are in no particular order because I am not that organized:

1. In general, at least in the US, it’s good to express gratitude, so try to do it from time to time. This is an excellent way to demonstrate that you are a human being, which will be increasingly vital as Artificial Intelligence takes over our world.
2. Texts, emails, phone calls, videos, voicemail, or verbal expressions by themselves are sufficient demonstrations of gratitude: We must stop this elitist notion that writing, and especially handwriting, is somehow the morally superior form of communication. I mean, have you met most writers?
3. Job candidates (or applicants to any program or position) are no longer obligated to write post-interview thank-you notes: Are employers writing handwritten thank-you notes to job applicants? No? Then why the hell should candidates?
4. Instead of expecting job candidates to write HWTYN and punishing them for not, employers should compensate for candidates’ time spent in multiple rounds of interviews when the company was going to promote Brayden anyway.
5. Always consider the equity implications of HWTYN: People may not have the time or resources to sit down and compose heartfelt letters when they’re working multiple jobs trying to survive. Need I remind you eggs are now $800 per dozen.
6. It is, and this is vital, “stationery” not “stationary.” Yes, it is confusing because stationery is usually stationary. Unless your house is haunted.
7. Let’s make sure we’re thoughtful about accessibility: Blind people or people with low-vision, for example, may have challenges reading or writing HWTYN. They may prefer a phone call or email that can be read by a text reader.
8. Donors or funders of nonprofits are not owed a handwritten thank-you note unless they write one too: Beyond an acknowledgement for tax purposes, no donor is owed a handwritten thank-you note UNLESS they also write one to thank the nonprofit for all the work it’s doing.

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Hi everyone, before we get started, it’s been five years since Unicorns Unite: How Nonprofits and Foundations Can Build EPIC Partnerships, a book I wrote with co-authors Jessamyn Shams-Lau and Jane Leu, was released. Here’s a free webinar taking place on February 14^th at 10am PT to discuss what we’ve learned since then. Auto-captions will be enabled. Also, please use promo code UNI50 here to get 50% off your copy of the book.  

Today, we talk about an issue that many of us probably had no idea existed, but one that is very annoying to those affected, and it perpetuates inequity. The concept of “tipping.” This is basically the idea that if a foundation gives a nonprofit “too much” funding, it would “tip” that nonprofit into becoming a foundation itself, which would then open a hole in the fabric of spacetime and an ancient evil would breach our dimension to rain chaos and destruction and there would be fire and brimstone and terrible wifi.

It seems to have a weird pull on many funders, who sometimes use it as an excuse to limit how much money they give to nonprofits. When I was an ED, I had multiple foundation program officers telling me they could only give my org up to a certain amount, because they didn’t want to accidentally “tip” my org. I thought this problem had gone away, but here’s a recent email I got from a nonprofit leader:

“There is a very large private foundation in our area that has used tipping as a reason why they want to focus only on granting to large organizations because they want to give out only large grants and don’t want to ‘tip’ the smaller non-profits in our area to private foundations. They made clear that they would be focusing only on large organizations that have ‘capacity,’ and they were shifting away from smaller orgs because of this tipping concern. Beyond the very intense frustration that the least-resourced organizations are not going to be eligible for their funds, it has also just added a lot of confusion for folks. I have been in several conversations lately where people have mentioned tipping concerns now where I had not been hearing this as a concern prior.”

Foundations who still believe “tipping” is an issue, we need to have a serious talk. Not much is written about it, but one of the few articles on it is this short piece by a lawyer calling it a non-issue:

“This is a piece of urban legend with a little basis in reality, but it is not true […] To qualify as a public charity as a matter of right, an organization which is not a church, school, or hospital (or related entity) must receive at least one third of its support from qualified public sources. It is possible to qualify with as little as 10% public support. […] The IRS has lessened the requirements for foundation scrutiny of this issue, and it is almost never a realistic a problem today.”

There you go, foundation colleagues, that was from an actual lawyer, and not just from me, a guy whose score on the Law School Admission Test was so low that he ended up in nonprofit management, to the shame of his entire village. Tipping is not a real problem. It cannot hurt you. Your fear of it, however, is hurting the nonprofits you claim to care about. Here are several things for you to consider:

The risk of “tipping” is so low that it’s nonexistent: Sure, there may be some obscure law related to tipping. No one cares. There are all sorts of ridiculous laws that no one bothers to enforce, such as this one in Arizona making it illegal to have your donkey sleep in a bathtub. “Tipping” is one of these laws. Talk to your colleagues and see if any of them have heard of a single instance where a nonprofit lost its status because some foundation gave it 50% or 75% or 100% of its annual budget. I’m sure if you comb your network hard enough, you’ll find something. But the chances of tipping are as low as a nonprofit board chair being struck by lightning (not that it stops some staff from daydreaming). Ask yourself if that tiny potential chance is worth the certain challenges you’re causing to nonprofits who need funding to do important work.

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Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Those of us who are in nonprofit, philanthropy, and other fields focused on making the world better rely on his words as a beacon for our work. Which is why this week we will be inundated with MLK quotes.

Before we quote him, though, let’s do some serious reflections about Dr. King and what he said and what he stood for. Otherwise, we run the risk of choosing the least controversial quotes, the ones that don’t make us uncomfortable or force us to confront our privileges or change the way we do things. Then we feel good about ourselves and continue perpetuating the injustice he fought against.

Below are a few of his quotes that are less seen, less examined, or more often conveniently ignored by leaders, by the general public, and even by those of us committed to doing the work of advancing justice. Thank you to journalists and writers who compiled MLK’s more radial quotes (here, here, here, and here). I am interpreting what they mean for those of us in nonprofit and philanthropy, and how they should guide our work. These are just my interpretations, so please feel free to disagree, and to add other quotes that you think are relevant for our sector:

“The evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and the evils of racism […] The fact is that capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of Black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor—both Black and white, both here and abroad.”

“Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience, and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level. That’s the way the system works. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we are going to have to change the system.”

So much of our work of fighting injustice ironically reinforces it because we fail to understand and refuse to acknowledge that inequity and injustice stem significantly from capitalism. Charity and philanthropy prop up capitalism by allowing society to pave over the fact that significant wealth has been built on capitalism-driven forms of injustice including slavery, imperialism, colonization, stolen Indigenous land, genocide, worker exploitation, and environmental degradation.

We need to acknowledge that capitalism is one of the root causes of the inequity we’re all trying to fight. And we need to stop legitimizing capitalism through our habit of charity- and philanthropy-washing its harmful practices. For example, we must stop praising corporations for “donating” money to nonprofits and instead work to ensure they make reparations, stop exploiting their workers, and pay their fair share of taxes.

“Why is equality so assiduously avoided? Why does white America delude itself, and how does it rationalize the evil it retains? The majority of white Americans consider themselves committed to justice for the Negro. They believe that American society is essentially hospitable to fair play and to steady growth toward a middle-class Utopia embodying racial harmony. But unfortunately this is a fantasy of self-deception and comfortable vanity.”

Nonprofit and philanthropy are predominantly white, and where there is the highest level of power we find the highest concentration of whiteness. Which is why foundation CEOs and foundation boards of trustees are almost entirely white. White people, at whatever level of power, must constantly fight this delusion Dr. King talks of, which is the delusion that meritocracy exists and that the world is essentially fair and just.

In our sector it manifests in white foundation leaders choosing whom to fund based on who can write the best grant proposal and code-switch the most effectively, not on which communities are most affected by systemic injustice and have the greatest needs. It manifests in white donors and looking down on organizations led by communities of color because they can’t play the game like sending personalized thank-you notes as fast as white-led orgs.

To do our work effectively, white allies must get out of the delusion that the world is fundamentally fair and that a “level playing field” currently exists. It does not, and it never will if we continue to buy into this illusion of meritocracy that has seduced many people in our profession.

“Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.”

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Read full article.https://nonprofitaf.com/2023/01/7-often-ignored-mlk-quotes-to-ground-our-work-of-fighting-for-equity-and-justice/#more-8155

Hi everyone! I hope the new year is treating you well. Since it is a brand new year, I thought I would use my Pisces power to predict what’s in store for our sector over the coming months. As everyone knows, we Pisces are attuned to the vibrations of the universe and are often blessed with clairvoyance. (We are also known to be kind, caring, sensitive, artistic, humble, and good-looking in unconventional ways.)

Here are the predictions, based on the alignments of the stars, planets, and a proprietary divination method that I like to call “surfing the internet and then guessing.” Please read with a critical eye and consult with your doctor, lawyer, or astrologer before acting on any of these predictions below:

1.Artificial Intelligence will bring hope and fear to many: AI will be on the forefront of many minds. It is exciting! It is terrifying! It is coming! Will it allow us to quickly take care of pointless and time-consuming tasks such as writing grant proposals? Will we see a spike in creepy, unsettling images on websites and donor solicitation letters, creepier and more unsettling than just the usual white savior surrounded by kids of color? Is this the beginning of a tech Renaissance…or possibly the beginning of a Matrix-style robotic revolution that we will probably need to work into our theory of change and then fundraise to resist later? Be on the lookout for more of these discussions.

2.Donor-Advised Funds will reach a boiling point: Battle lines have been drawn the past few years on DAFs, with smart, sensible people calling out the inequity and grossness of an unregulated wealth-and-power-hoarding mechanism, while status-quo-protecting proponents of DAF going “nuh-uh!” Most people, unfortunately, care as much about DAFs as they do about the mating habits of the banana slug. Until this year! As DAFs continue to grow like an unchecked mold on the leftover lasagna of equity, more people will get involved and take sides, pushing for policies at the organizational as well as state and federal level.

3.Nonprofit unions will form in greater number: The sector’s collective exhaustion of poverty wages, pathetic benefits, crappy chairs, and nonexistent retirement savings reaches a crescendo. More and more nonprofit staff begin to explore forming unions. Tensions increase as reasonable demands clash with nonprofit funding challenges. New union structures form, including models where staff and management across different organizations work in concert to push funders to significantly increase funding across the sector.  

4.Rise in four-day work weeks: With the growing number of unions and the strengthened voices of progressive new leaders calling for mitigations of Capitalism’s toxic productivity culture, comes changes in how we work. A major such change will be the four-day workweek being adopted by more organizations. With longer weekends and less stress and burnout, nonprofit leaders start reverse-aging and looking their age, and getting more energy and general zest for life. There will be an increase in injuries from skydiving, bungee-jumping, and Argentine tango.

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