Author: Vu Le

Hi everyone, if you follow my ramblings for the past few years, you know that I point out various flaws in our sector. We have a lot of them, from our ridiculous traditional board structure, to the various time-wasting shenanigans of foundations, to the way we’ve been conditioned to appeal to the ego of rich mostly white donors, to how poorly paid many people are, to our propensity to intellectualize and not take action, to our crappy hiring practices, and to our office equipment that is held together with duct tape and bungee cords. And there’s plenty of other things we need to point out and improve on.

However, although it is not always apparent, I really genuinely love our sector. And I criticize it because I see our potential and I am optimistic that we can change and improve. It’s a lot like visiting your relatives and they just point out your appearance and all the stuff you’re doing wrong, but you know that it’s because they believe in you. When mine are like “You’re getting old, why don’t you find a real job or open a business like your cousins, and also you should try putting this eucalyptus oil on your face for your horrible acne,” I know they say all that stuff because they care.

Which is why it’s annoying when I or others point out the weaknesses in our sector, and the responses from colleagues (both from nonprofit as well as from other sectors) go along the lines of “See, nonprofits are toxic as hell” or “there’s something about nonprofit management that’s just so dysfunctional” or “that’s why I left the sector to go into for-profits.” It’s expected when it’s people who don’t have any experience working in nonprofit looking down on and bizsplaining to us. But it hurts a bit when it’s us saying these things about ourselves.  

The nonprofit sector, with everything we need to fix about it, is not any more dysfunctional than other sectors. Every sector sucks in both common as well as unique ways:

Corporations: The vast majority of businesses fail with a few years, and 46% of those failures are due to incompetence. Many that succeed do it through exploiting workers, avoiding taxes, and destroying the environment. The reason so many nonprofits exist is because of how much of the world has been screwed up by so many corporations. And a major reason so many of our philosophies and practices are so dysfunctional is because we adapt stuff from the corporate world. Right now there are endless stories of people quitting terrible bosses and companies because they’re treated like crap.

Government: Designed to be run by white men, and this hasn’t changed much. Many colleagues who leave nonprofit to go work for the city or county talk about the great pay and benefits. But they lament the inefficiency and endless bureaucracy: “Please fill out these 18 forms so you can get a box of staples for your cubicle.” Plus, they have to respond to the changing tides of politics and the capricious whims of various elected officials, many of whom are incompetent or vindictive or both.    

Academia: I follow some academics on Twitter and the stories they tell are all chilling. Ph. D students being overworked and having severe mental health challenges. The rampant racism and sexism. Narcissistic advisors power tripping. A Squid Game around research and publications. Adjunct faculty being paid so poorly they are literally unable to afford food.

Media: Here’s a long list of things that need improving in the media. Tons of racism and sexism there too. It’s very white- and men-dominated, just like every other sector. Journalists are underpaid and overworked. And now many media companies are focused on getting clicks and making profit, which has led to sensationalism, both-siding, and misinformation, with terrible consequences.   

Read the full article.

Hi everyone, I had to go to the emergency room for severe pain in my right side, and found out I likely have kidney stones and it may take weeks for it to resolve. I’m on some pain medications. So this post may be slightly cranky and possibly filled with grammatical and spelling errors. Drink lots of water and cut back on sodium. Kidney stones are not fun; 3 out of 5 stars, would not recommend.

A while ago, I wrote about the Rule of One-Thirds when it comes to boards: One-third of boards are helpful, one-third are useless, and one-third are actually destructive to their missions. Of the two-thirds of boards that are useless or destructive, a lot of it can be blamed on the fact that the default board model we’ve been using is archaic and makes little sense. Let’s take a group of well-meaning people who see one percent of the work, who often have little to no nonprofit experience, and who many times don’t reflect the community being served, and give them vast power over the organization. (And while we’re at it, let’s have them conduct business through Robert’s Rules, a set of rules formalized literally 145 years ago, in 1876).

While our sector works to explore new governance models, we need to address other issues with boards, namely that many board members, and specifically board chairs, have warped perceptions of their importance, combined with delusions of wisdom. Board members’ egos can be one of the most aggravating things about working in this field. It is probably one of the biggest drivers of EDs/CEOs quitting their jobs to pursue a career in real estate.

Boards are groups of volunteers who give a lot of time, money, and skills to nonprofits, and should be appreciated. But like funders, you wield enormous power in our sector, which means no one is telling you the truth, and the truth is that many of you are causing a ton of damage. So, if you are a board member, and especially if you are a board chair or will assume this position, please check your egos and remind yourselves of these things:

1.You, the board, and other board members are not the boss of the ED/CEO: Boards have an important role in maintaining legal compliance and ethical standards at their orgs. Over time, that has led many board members to somehow think they’re basically the supervisors of the ED/CEO. It is ingrained in all of us, and EDs/CEOs will think along this line too. I myself have introduced a board member at an event and joked “this is one of my bosses.” Yes, the board can hire and fire the ED/CEO in the traditional model, but that does not mean they are the supervisors of the latter. This is not a perfect analogy by any means, but I liken boards and staff to legislative and executive branches branches of the US government, respectively. Just because the legislative branch can impeach and remove the president, that does not mean that Congress members and senators are the “bosses” of the president and their staff. So stop thinking and acting like you’re the boss. And everyone, stop joking about it.  

2.You are almost guaranteed to know less than the staff on just about everything: Because of power dynamics, staff often hold back their opinions, and over time you start to think you know more than the staff on a variety of things. You don’t. This is not a question of your intelligence. Staff spend significantly more time on the organization’s work, because that’s what they’re paid to do, so of course they will know more than you. So when you have a conversation about anything related to the organization and its work—finances, fundraising, staff compensation, capacity building, strategic planning, etc.—and you find yourself disagreeing with the team, remind yourself that you have a fraction of the information and experience that the staff has.

…

Read full article

The job market is shifting. People are leaving their jobs everywhere and in great numbers. Employers are scrambling to hire people. More unions are forming. And yet, so many organizations and companies still continue to engage in crappy, inequitable hiring practices as if it were still the 1960s and everyone could smoke and drink whiskey during a team meeting.

On Twitter, someone wrote “So apparently job candidates’ sending a thank you note isn’t a thing anymore? Candidates, pro tip: send a thank you note.” It got several thousand comments and quote tweets saying requiring the follow-up thank-you note is an archaic, ridiculous practice. A colleague (@chanthropology) called it “Victorian performances of white middle class professionalism.” And I agree. It is an unwritten rule steeped in power asymmetry, and it sucks. If employers don’t send job candidates thank-you notes, why should job candidates be expected to do so?

No more post-interview thank-you notes. Employers, stop expecting it, stop favoring job candidates who do it and punishing those who don’t. All job candidates everywhere, you are hereby excused from ever having to write another thank-you email or card ever again! Go! Be free! Reclaim your time! Write a sea shanty! Learn about scrimshaw! Binge all twelve episodes of animated series Vox Machina; it is excellent!

While we put the final nail in the post-interview-thank-you-note coffin, here are some other practices we need to stop doing, and a few we need to adopt:

1.Stop asking for work outside candidates’ portfolios: I saw a job posting that required each job candidate to give one recommendation to improve the company’s website. No. That’s gross. You haven’t hired them, so don’t ask job candidates to do work for free. Don’t ask for bespoke presentations, communications plans, fundraising appeal letters, etc. Not unless you will pay them consulting rates to do it.

2.Stop requiring formal education for every position: As I wrote here, it is inequitable to require a Bachelor’s or other formal college degree for most positions. And yet tons of organizations still do it. Unless it’s a specialized position (legal, accounting, counseling, etc.), knock it off.  

3.Stop asking “creative” interview questions: What is your astrology sign? If you were an ice cream flavor, which one would you be? How many gummy bears would fit in this interview room? Don’t ask inane questions and think you’re being clever. You’re not. You’re annoying job candidates while also leaving behind people from different cultural and economic backgrounds.

4.Stop ghosting people after they spent hours or months on your process: One of the biggest complaints from job candidates is going through hours of a job process and then never hearing from the employer again. Have the courtesy to notify everyone who took time to engage with you.

Read the full article here

Hi everyone, this post will likely generate some vigorous discussions, but before we launch into it, I have an exciting announcement. Community-Centric Fundraising (CCF) is seeking to form a Global Council to lead the movement. I and other founding council members will step aside and play a supporting role, because it’s important for the movement to have leadership that is diverse in geography and lived experience. Details and application here. Don’t worry, the founding council members are not going anywhere; we will each get a cloak to mark us as elders, and we’ll be around, providing moral support and, when appropriate, snacks.

As today is Valentine’s Day, a lot of us will be pondering the age-old question famously asked by philosopher Haddaway: “What is love?” to which he added as a corollary, “Baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, no more.”

…

Yes, we have been “operating in an upside-down or inside-out fashion for far too long.” But it is not what the author of this book thinks. Chief among the problems with the way we’ve been trained to center donors’ emotions and comfort is the fact that most donors are white, and so much wealth has been built on white supremacy and inequity, and we have an entire field trained to tell mostly white people that they are heroes who should be coddled and “loved.” And over time, rich, mostly white people start expecting and now demanding to be treated this way. How do we mitigate white supremacy when we keep perpetuating it through our every day practices?

It can be difficult to grasp just how problematic this is, so let me put it this way…

read the complete article

Hi everyone. Welcome to 2022! I know the heaviness of this week presses down on us like a weighed blanket filled with mayonnaise and glass shards (This is my first post in a while; the analogies may be a little rough). The holiday break, if you had one, was not long enough, and a lot of it was probably spent arguing with family members and standing in line waiting for covid tests. Those sweet few days of lying snuggled up on the couch watching Ted Lasso or the Wheel of Time or our favorite cheesy movies seem but a distant memory, like the brief romantic flings of our youth, when we too were radiant with joy and Doritos.

Now we have to get back to dealing with emails. So many emails. And to-do lists. Endless. And relentless meetings. Meanwhile, we are still in a worsening pandemic. And the CDC, sponsored by Delta Airlines, basically says that if you have covid, gargle with some warm salt water and get back to capitalism. We’re going to have to put on a brave face and refrain from answering “What are your new year’s resolutions?” with “to make it to March without strangling at least three people in this virtual meeting.”

If you feel like crap, you are not alone. If you look like crap, you’re also not alone; seriously, I am so grateful for Zoom’s “touch up my appearance” feature. If you want to just take a nap or scream or cry or some combination of that, everyone will understand. If you decide to quit your job, leave your hometown, open a chocolate shop in a charming but religiously rigid small French town, and fall in love with a river pirate, you do that, because self-care is important. This week is rough. Life has been rough.

But guess what, we made it past 2021! And for that, we should celebrate. 2022 is a new year! To put it into perspective, this is the last year any of us will ever see a year with three of the same numbers. The next time would be 2111, and we will all be long dead, or else our minds will have been transferred into robotic bodies, and we’ll be living on Mars, ruled by the hologram of Elon Musk.

2021 did a number on us. We started off so hopeful, and ended up bruised and beaten down. It’s hard to trust a new year again. But 2022 will be amazing! According to some light googling I did, the number 2 symbolizes harmony and balance. So this year will be all about that. Our sector will find balance between action and intellectualizing. We will flip some tables over! We will lift up the voices of those who haven’t been heard! We will piss off more of the right people!

We are also going to get more rest. We will set realistic expectations and be OK not meeting some of them. We will take ourselves less seriously and find joy and humor in our work, because, as bell hooks said, “We cannot have a meaningful revolution without humor.” We will spend more time on our creative hobbies, hanging out with people we love, and doing other things we enjoy. Some of us will take regular showers and use deodorant again. I see all of that and more for us in 2022.

2022 will be awesome because our field is awesome. In the dumpster fire that was last year, we still did incredible things. Our sector has always been creative and resourceful even during the Before Times, but the last couple of years, we have done some of our best work amidst some of the greatest challenges.

And our field is awesome because it’s made up of sexy, brilliant ass-kickers like you. Hardworking people who continue to fight for a better world. Brilliant, talented people who ram their shoulders daily against the arc, bending it toward justice. Caring people whose existence makes the world kinder and more peaceful. Attractive, good-looking folks. That’s you. Did I also mention charismatic, stylish, and yet profoundly modest?

Today, you may feel and look like a poked bear and dread doing anything productive. Some of you are probably reading this from your toasty bed and wishing you could stay there. Take a deep breath. Take it slow. Give yourself time to adjust. Cry if you need to. Our work, as meaningful as it is, is not easy, and sometimes, on days like today, there’s no shame in admitting you don’t really want to do it, that you would rather switch houses with someone abroad for two weeks so that you can live in their quaint English cottage and fall in love with their sibling.  

But also make a little bit of space to kindle some hope, some optimism, some excitement for the days and months to come. For many of us, every day from now until mid-June brings more and more sunlight. The temperature will warm up; the crocuses and cherry blossoms will bloom; the morel mushrooms will appear. And even though we fear it will, the pandemic will not last forever. We will be able to see one another again.

Until then, try to remember that your actions, no matter how seemingly minor, create ripples wider than you may ever see or know. Yes, you may be one person, but never underestimate your impact, especially when you work in unison with others in our wonderful, imperfect sector. As the great Betty White once said:

“Snow always inspires such awe in me. Just consider one tiny snowflake alone, so delicate, so fragile, so ethereal. And yet, let a billion of them come together through the majestic force of nature, they can screw up a whole city.”

Happy New Year! It’s going to be a good one!

Hi everyone, happy December. I do a lot of speaking, and a question I get asked often is “If you could go back in time to earlier in your career, what would you tell your younger self?” This is when you know that you are getting old, when people ask you this question. It is a badge of hard-earned wisdom. So, here, in no particular order, are a few things I would tell myself, gathered from experience and failures in the field, and from working with much smarter people: 

1. Have the audacity of ambition, even if people doubt you or laugh at you: The scope of injustice and inequity is so large, so our ambition must be large enough to address it. Dream big. Be unapologetic. Especially if you come from marginalized communities and have been told you should settle for crumbs. Don’t. Go ahead and add a zero or two to your grant requests. 
2. There is a major difference between doing things right and doing the right thing: Peter Drucker said, “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” The former is about processes, filling out the right forms, following the laws, etc. Doing the right things is often harder and sometimes goes against established laws and rules, but this is often where we find our humanity.
3. It’s OK to acknowledge that you suck at some stuff: Because of the ineffective way nonprofits are resourced, we’ve had to “wear many hats” and do everything. It’s good to develop skills and improve on things you’re weak at, and it’s also good to acknowledge some things just don’t come naturally to you, and that’s OK. Being aware of your strengths and limitations allows you to find colleagues whose skills complement your own.
4. Many things society considers weaknesses are often strengths: On the other hand, society has a bias toward certain people and qualities. For example, extroverts and organized people. But some of the best leaders are introverts. And if you’re “chaotically creative” like I am, you might feel terrible, but that there are plenty of research that shows that those who are messy, forgetful, etc., are often very creative and are able to come up with solutions others may not think of.  
5. Many “best practices” are inequitable and we need to reexamine them: In the beginning of my career, I accepted many things I was taught as sacred and immutable: Board governance structures, fundraising tactics, hiring practices, Robert’s Rules of Order, etc. But many “best” practices are only best for those with the most privilege in our society and often reinforce inequity. Do not accept any “best practice” as gospel; stop and ask who determined that it’s best and whom does it most benefit.
6. Self-sacrifices are not always noble; they often harm others: For years I thought I was doing my organizations a favor by taking salaries way below the average when I was the ED. I was harming other colleagues through depressing wages and setting bad precedents. Advocate for equitable pay and benefits, paid family leave, retirement matching, etc., including for yourself if you have formal leadership roles. Take vacation time and mental health days. Being stressed and underpaid is not a badge of honor.
7. It is worse to give people false hope than to give them no hope: It some of the toughest times, such as during leadership transitions or cashflow issues, I had the urge to say things would be OK. Sometimes things are not OK. Sometimes things are terrible, and it’s gaslighting to say otherwise. Respect people enough to be honest with them.
8. Things are rarely binary; they are often interdependent: Polarity management theory has been really helpful to me, and I wish I had learned it earlier. Things that seem contradictory often co-exist and are interdependent, especially in a field as complex as ours. This can be applied to many areas, from interpersonal dynamics such as colleagues not getting along, to systemic issues.  
9. Be aware of power dynamics and how you yourself wield power: Each of us holds some degree of power, and it’s important to constantly check and, if needed, mitigate the effect it has on others. Formal power, such as a position you hold, is more salient, but there is also power that comes with being white, male, educated, non-disabled, cisgender, heteronormative, higher-income, English speakers, neuro-typical, etc. No matter how nice and humble you are, there are always power dynamics to watch for.
10. You cannot do this work well and not piss people off; just make sure it’s the right people. If you do the right things, such as challenging unjust systems, you will likely make people angry, especially people who are focused on “doing things right.” This is a sign that you are making progress, and if no one is ever mad at you, that’s a sign that maybe you’re not. Just make sure the people who are pissed off are people who tend to hold privilege and power in society.
11. Do not let your mission get in the way of your vision: Organizations have missions and visions, and so do individuals. Our visions tend to involve making the world a better, more just, more inclusive place. Our missions are about how we go about doing that: raising funds, growing our team, running programs, etc. But it’s easy for orgs and individuals to be so consumed by the mission that they forget about the vision, and end up further away from their original vision.
12. Keep serving people the Brussels sprouts of equity: Research shows that it takes 5 to 10 exposures to a new food before a toddler may develop a taste for it. The work of creating an equitable and just world feels a lot like feeding vegetables to picky toddlers. You may get frustrated and think that your efforts are futile when your board or supervisors or teammates reject your ideas, but the reality may just be that you delivered the necessary third or fourth exposure, and it may be up to other people to pick up the spoon.
13. Resting, recharging, and finding joy and humor in the work are vital to the work: The work we do is often difficult, heartbreaking, and draining. It is also amazing, exciting, and meaningful. To do it well, we must rest and recharge and find moments of joy and humor. And we need to let go of the guilt we feel when we do these things.
14. The time you have with the people you love is shorter than you realize: Children grow up quickly. Parents and siblings age just as fast. And people die suddenly, even the people we love. If I could go back in time and could only tell myself one thing, I would say, “Spend more time with Mom; don’t say no when she invites you on her afternoon walks or to run errands with her.” In my last few memories of my mother, we walked around our neighborhood, and she told me she wanted to see “Million Dollar Baby.” We never got to see it; she died a few months later. The work will always be there; the people we care most about may not.

I hope that was helpful. Though, to be honest, if I really could invent a time machine, I’d probably just tell myself to invest in some carbon-neutral cryptocurrency, become a multi-millionaire, and then retire early, somewhere secluded but with access to wifi for streaming episodes of “Bob’s Burgers.”

Remember that couple that did a gender reveal party earlier this year and ended up starting a wildfire that lasted two months and burned down 22,000 acres? Gender reveals are ridiculous, corny, and harmful. I don’t think aliens are going to give us advanced technology as long as we keep doing inane things like this.

But what does this have to do with anything? We’ll get there. A long time ago, before Omicron, before Delta, before the original variant, I met with a foundation program officer for coffee. “We’re in a process to figure out our strategic funding priorities this year,” they said, “what are your thoughts on this?” I took a long sip of my hot cocoa, trying to figure out how to sound diplomatic. But I have no poker face and probably looked like this cat.

The idea that funders and donors should be “strategic” in what and how they fund has been deeply ingrained into our sector. And it seems to make sense. I mean, we wouldn’t want foundations to just willy-nilly throw spaghetti at the wall, hoping that something might work, right? To be strategic is to be smart, to have a plan and a path and a clear rationale in order to avoid perceptions of incompetence, arbitrary whims, or favoritism.

Unfortunately, like many other widely accepted philosophies in our sector, “strategic philanthropy” has done significant harm to the sector. So much so, that the people who unleashed this concept on the field have written apologies, like this one “Why I Regret Pushing Strategic Philanthropy”:

“I did not properly anticipate the potential side effects of this concept, and some of them are nasty indeed […] a major challenge for strategic philanthropy is that it can create delusions of omniscience in many program officers. Instead of reviewing grant proposals, querying experts, synthesizing ideas, and respecting those with years in the field, many program directors and officers become auteurs: They begin to see themselves as the origin of intelligence as well as the arbiters of money.”

In the article, author Hal Harvey points out several examples of the toxic ways foundations’ being “strategic” has derailed nonprofits’ work. Funders who used to give out general operating funds now becoming restrictive and prescriptive. Funders forcing nonprofits to change their strategies, often with unsurprisingly terrible results. How can it be a good idea to let funders and donors drive strategies and priorities? As Harvey says, “Program officers simply do not have the experience, the relationships, or the close contact with subjects that grantees do.”

“Strategic philanthropy” is pervasive and manifests in myriad ways. Foundations determining priorities—“this year, we’re focused on early learning and youth development, we are no longer focused on mental health or climate change”—and asking nonprofits to explain in grant proposals how they “align” with these strategies. Funders creating some sort of model for capacity building or leadership that they inflict on nonprofits and ignore (or are completely unable to register) any feedback that that model is completely useless if not detrimental. One time, at a conference, I heard from a tech-based philanthropist who was enamored with the idea of an app to solve homelessness.

Like gender reveal parties, the concept of strategic philanthropy persists despite its own originators’ speaking out against it. It has taken on a life of its own. It has become so widely accepted now that many of the most down-to-earth, equity-focused funders, donors, and even nonprofit leaders I know simply accept it as par for the course. They cannot imagine a different reality, a reality where people and institutions with wealth DO NOT determine priorities or strategies, but instead follow the lead of the people and communities most affected by systemic injustice. And thus, we are at risk of more wildfires from gender reveal parties, and our sector continues being harmed by funders’ insistence on being “strategic.”

But, if we are to create a just and equitable world, we must operate differently. To do that, those with wealth and power—donors, foundation staff, foundation board trustees, etc.—must understand and accept these honest truths that are probably going to hurt some feelings:

Unless you have recent lived experience with poverty, racism, etc., you and your foundation/family are the LEAST knowledgeable people in our entire sector. You have plenty of knowledge in whatever areas made you successful, but little if any of it translates to the work of addressing inequity. Your position as the CEO, board trustee, or staff of a foundation does not in any way give you an instant boost in knowledge, and your assumption that it does has been really destructive to our field, because your positional power means that other people have no choice but to waste time and energy following your uninformed strategies.

Your grantees have been lying to you. A lot. Because you have money and we need it, so we say stuff that you want to hear and refraining from saying things we think might hurt your feelings and jeopardize our funding from you. The power dynamics are such that no matter how open you are in soliciting feedback, and no matter how great your relationships with grantees or potential grantees are, it’s challenging for nonprofits to ever really be completely honest. So when we say that “innovative” model/priority/strategy your foundation is implementing is great, that’s usually not completely true. Or even a little true.

Your grantees often don’t care about your strategies, or your models, or your toolkits. In fact, sometimes the things you’re proposing are horrible and we go to happy hour or text one another late at night to trash talk your ideas. Unless you’ve had lived experience or have spent significant time doing the painful work of listening to communities, most of your ideas are based on your own ego and self-reinforcing biases, and they generate cycles of delusion and self-indulgence where you keep pumping money to make them work while avoiding or ignoring community input.

Your privilege and need to be special have warped your perceptions of reality: There are racial and gender elements to this problem. The people with the most privilege and power in philanthropy are white, especially white men, who come from Western, individualistic society where being unique and special is highly desired. You are conditioned to think of yourselves as leaders, and leaders are supposed to carve their own path and generate unique solutions, etc. Why just listen and follow the lead of the people who are most affected by injustice, when you and your foundation can be “strategic” and be perceived as smart and special? This thinking has screwed nonprofits and harmed communities.

The idea that funders or donors should be “strategic” in their philanthropy should die. Foundations need to stop asking on grant applications how nonprofits can “align” with their priorities. The vast majority of funders and donors should not be setting any strategies or priorities at all. It makes no sense that the people with the most money and privilege but the LEAST knowledge and proximity to the issues should be setting priorities or advancing strategies that nonprofits should follow.

Of course, like with everything, there are exceptions. There are funders and donors whose strategies, priorities, and recommendations are great, usually because they closely align with and take lead from community, are grounded in equity, and they have staff and board members who have lived experience with injustice. But have an honest reflection about whether you are one of these exceptions, or whether you just think you are.

If we are to build a just and inclusive world, those with wealth and power must mitigate their need to appear smart and special, acknowledge that they don’t have the moral authority to set priorities, accept that their role is to ensure that the people and communities most affected by systemic injustice have the resources and autonomy to lead, give Multi-Year General Operating Dollars (MYGOD), and otherwise get out of the way.

And while we’re at it, let’s all agree to stop having or attending gender reveal parties, deal?

I always joke that when I start writing and producing Nonprofit The Musical, one of the characters would be a consulting robot. It’s a robot that is a consultant, and it repeats exactly what the staff says, but the board actually listens to it! If you’re a consultant, you might be offended by that joke. But let’s be honest, this is one of the reasons we hire consultants, and effective consultants recognize that this is a necessary role they play.

This is because we have a rampant belief in our sector that people from outside our organization/community/geographic area are somehow more knowledgeable and effective than the people in it. I am calling it the Outsider Efficacy Bias (OEB), unless there’s a better name for it. Here are some ways it manifests:

• Board members insisting on hiring an external candidate to be the ED instead of promoting a qualified person within the organization
• EDs/CEOs doing the same thing, hiring a staff from outside, often neglecting internal candidates
• Foundations hiring people from academia or the corporate world, who have no experience in nonprofit, to be the CEO
• Organizations hiring consultants from outside the geographic area instead of contracting with local consultants who live and work there
• Organizations hiring local consultants instead of just listening to their staff
• Conferences booking national and international speakers instead of working with local speakers

All of us have probably experienced this phenomenon in some form. For instance, when I’m in other places, people appreciate my opinions (for the most part). In Seattle people are like “Meh, it’s just Vu. I saw him at Costco. He was crying in the pasta section. What does he know about nonprofit and philanthropy anyway?” [In my defense, they finally stocked my favorite vegan raviolis]. Even my own board and staff were like “We should bring in someone who can give us advice about how to write blogs and articles better.”

It’s not always bad to bring in an outsider. It can be a necessary and effective approach. Sometimes, the organization does not have the expertise internally. On other occasions, having a new voice deliver the same message can jolt people into seeing things in a new light. Or, because of existing dynamics, an external presence can be a helpful and needed element, as that person is not yet caught up in those dynamics; for example, an outside mediator to help address conflict.

However, we need to get a handle on OEB, because it can be harmful, for several reasons:

It causes anger and resentment: Having your opinions ignored and then an external person coming in and get praised for saying the same thing, or losing a promotion to a person outside the org, these things are annoying and hurtful. Over the long run, it’s probably causing us to lose a lot of good people. A colleague said, “I was a consultant in my mid-twenties who told these older men what to do. And they listened to me. If I was staff, they wouldn’t have. I decided never to be a staff.”

It costs time and money: External consultant or staff often need coaching and context and time before they can do their jobs, whereas a local person already has that information, along with the connections and relationships that would make them effective immediately. Also, external folks are usually more costly. However, this then becomes a reason why internal staff get asked to do additional work for free, such as staff of color now having to run DEI trainings.

It can be counterproductive: There are lots of examples of when bringing in external people backfires. For instance, organizations that refuse to promote qualified internal candidates and instead hire someone from outside, and that person turns out to be a nightmare. Or, as I’ve written here, foundations that hire corporate or academic leaders who have no nonprofit background to be the CEO, and they turn out to be horrible.

It is often inequitable: Internal staff are not equally ignored due to OEB; it is more likely women of color and professionals of other marginalized backgrounds that tend to get ignored more frequently. This is because Outsider Efficacy Bias intersects with White Efficacy Bias and Male Efficacy Bias. Ironically, although people of marginalized identities are seen as outsiders, they are often not perceived as the kind of outsider that deserve the respect and positive bias.

With all the above in mind, the next time you plan to hire a consultant, trainer, speaker, staff member, etc., ask these questions:

• Can local experts and leaders provide better knowledge and understand context better? Do we need a fresh perspective, or can it be provided by our own people?
• Have staff and other internal colleagues been giving the same feedback and advice that we’ve been neglecting and now we’re asking an external person to come in to provide?
• Are we ignoring internal voices from women, leaders of color, and other marginalized people?
• If we’re using people from our own organization, are we compensating them for the extra work, or are we being askholes by making them do additional work for free?
• If we’re hiring people from our own local community, are we paying them as much as we would pay a person from outside the community?
• Are we dismissing the expertise of our local leaders because we saw them one time with unkempt hair, wearing pajama bottoms while cradling a box of vegan raviolis at a wholesale grocery store?

Again, sometimes it’s helpful to bring in an external person or partner. We just need to be thoughtful. Let’s get a handle on this, all right? Meanwhile, if you’re hitting your head against a wall saying things that are ignored because you’re an internal person, I’m sorry. You may have to bring in a friend to pretend to be a consultant, and you can have an earpiece for them to listen to your words and repeat what you’re saying. Or you can quit the sector, become independently wealthy, and come back as a major donor, in which case you’ll be treated like a divine entity and ultimate external expert.

Me, I am going to change my hair and adopt a new accent. Cor blimey, that’ll be a good way for people in Seattle to take me seriously, innit!

Hi everyone. Happy November. Quick reminder to vote in your local elections. And to get your flu shot if you can and haven’t. 

Last week, I talked with a fundraising colleague from a large, well-established organization that has grown significantly over the past several years. He had some questions and concerns about the Community-Centric Fundraising (CCF) movement. “I’m afraid that if we do CCF, we’ll have less revenues and people may lose their jobs.” As the movement grows, this is a dilemma that’s on a lot of people’s minds. And this is a constant argument against CCF, that it doesn’t “work” to bring in funding the way traditional fundraising practices have been proven to. Although I can point to evidence that CCF-aligned practices do bring in funding, I think it is crucial that all of us in this sector, but especially fundraisers, reexamine our fundamental belief that fundraising is primarily about raising money. 

Some of you are probably shaking your head in bewilderment, as perplexed as this cat above. After all, the point of fundraising seems so obvious. The objective is right there in the word itself: raise funds. We determine if a fundraising campaign is successful by whether it meets its target amount. And we assess fundraisers’ performances on how much they can bring in each year. Sure, we can have other indicators, like how many new donors we gain, how many existing donors we retain, etc., but ultimately, it comes down to how much money we can raise. What is there to talk about? I mean, do we argue that basket-weaving is really not about weaving baskets, or soap-making is not really about making soap?

For a long time, this philosophy has governed fundraising. It has been ingrained in fundraisers, and by osmosis in everyone else. It allows us to do a lot of good. However, it has also led to a lot of harm to our sector. In the pursuit of this primary goal of raising funds, we put up with really terrible donor behaviors. We charity-wash wealthy people’s tax avoidance. We conscience-launder for corporations. We use practices that appeal to donors but hurt the entire sector, like minimizing the importance of operating expenses. We train mostly white people and white institutions with money to believe that because they have money, they automatically have a say in which societal issues should get addressed and in what manner.

But there’s another problem that we don’t talk much about: This belief that the primary goal of fundraising is to raise funds, over decades, has weakened our collective imagination and made us forget the primary purpose of our sector. Take a minute to imagine the perfect world, the kind of society you would like to see and exist in. What does it look like? What does it feel like? How would we fundraise in that world? Does it look like what we’re doing now? Would fundraising even be necessary?

Many of us got into this work because we want to do what we can to realize a just and equitable community. Our organizations all have vision statements. But over time, we forget these visions. We get caught up in missions and short-term goals. We become entrenched in survivalism and self-preservation. We no longer remember that the purpose of fundraising, like the purpose of everything else in our sector, is to actualize this bold and ambitious dream of what the world could be.

Raising funds, and running programs, doing evaluation, conducting research, implementing operations, etc. are important, but they are tasks and tools that we use to advance equity and justice. If we value a tool more than what we’re using the tool to build together, then we’ve lost our way. The ultimate goal of our work is to protect the environment, not make donors happy; to further civil rights, not grow our organizations; to end poverty, not maintain our jobs.

With time and pervasive conditioning, we’ve disconnected fundraising from its original purpose. If we are to achieve our missions in a way that aligns with our values and visions, then the primary goal of fundraising can’t be to just raise money.

Imagine a university that raises millions of dollars every year. One year, it raised 500M. The following year, it raised 400M. But here’s some context: the university did some painful analysis and realized it was not living up to its values. It was raising a lot of money, but its professors were mostly white; wealthy parents were bribing to get their legacy kids admitted; students of color were unhappy with the curriculum and their experiences; donors were saying racist things and still getting buildings named after them because they gave a ton of money. In the second year, the university decided to focus more on equity, including prioritizing recruiting more faculty of color and supporting students of color, having more public conversations about systemic racism, and ending legacy admissions. Because of these and other equity-aligned changes, several major donors stopped giving, but students and faculty are happier. Which fundraising year do you think was more successful?

Over the course of the pandemic, I’ve seen remarkable examples of fundraising being done in ways that would be considered blasphemous to how we’ve been trained to fundraise. Larger nonprofits declining funding so that other organizations, especially small grassroots organizations, can receive those funds instead. Orgs inviting donors to difficult discussions about race, wealth, and other uncomfortable subjects. Organizations pushing back on donors when they are out of line. Development colleagues openly pondering the ethics of their orgs accepting more donations when they’ve experienced a significant increase in funding beyond what they could use in the next year or two, when other orgs with equally vital (but maybe less heart-string-tugging) missions are on the verge of closing.

Going back to the conversation with my colleague at the beginning of this post. The organization he worked at had grown in size and had hired several new staff. It does good work. But what is the point of raising tons of money and growing as an organization if through our fundraising practices we are perpetuating the very inequities and injustices we are raising money to fight?

I know it is not as simple as I make it out to be. We have to think about many complexities in our work. But we need to have some different conversations, and that’s only possible if we challenge the fundamental and widely-accepted notion that’s been beaten into all of us that fundraising is primarily about raising money. That is a limiting, imagination-less perspective, and rather insulting to development professionals.

Let’s free ourselves of the idea that fundraising and fundraisers’ most important contribution is to bring in as much money as possible so that other people in our sector can help advance a better world. It’s time to reorient ourselves and embrace a more expansive role for fundraising and fundraisers, one where fundraising is a vehicle for change, and thus fundraisers too are agents of equity and justice