Author: Vu Le

One of the comments I often receive online and in-person after my various baby-animal-picture-punctuated rants is, “Vu, I agree with all the stuff you’re saying, but it seems you’re preaching to the choir. Shouldn’t you dress better and yell at the people in power who are not in this room?”

I can understand the frustration. Many of the issues I point out—grantmaking shenanigans, the archaic focus on overhead, the need for better tax policies, the ridiculousness of infinity scarves, etc.—are things many of us have been ranting about for decades. To hear someone bring them up again can invoke feelings of exasperation over how little progress we’ve made in many of these areas affecting our work.

However, I am not sure we’re actually a choir. I don’t know much about music, and I have the singing voice of a blender trying to puree a handful of fidget spinners, but I think choirs overall has members who show up at the same time, sing songs that are agreed upon in advance, know who is singing which parts, and start and finish each song at the same time before starting another one. I am not sure that accurately describes any audience I’ve spoken to.

If anything, it reveals how far away from being a choir we have been as a sector. Take the overhead issue for example. Most of us should be in agreement by now that general operating funds should be the default, and that funders who still provide restricted funds exist in the past and should all be given a codpiece to wear on their clown outfits because they still insist on living in the Middle Ages, when average life expectancy was 27 and there was no wifi.

And yet, many nonprofit organizations still say things on their website or at their fundraising events like “95 cents of every dollar you donate go directly toward benefitting the families we’re serving.” WTF. I thought we had collectively agreed this was a bad thing to say and we’d all cut it out. (Seriously, cut it out).

If we were truly operating like a choir, I’d love to see the following:

We all work to advance voting and voting rights: Over the past few years, literally hundreds of bills have been passed to suppressed voting, disproportionately affecting marginalized people. And except for a few really awesome organizations, our sector response has been “meh…” Thank you to the 20% of orgs in our sector that are working to protect and advance voting rights and register people to vote. But this number should be 100%. One hundred percent of nonprofits should be working to advance voting!

We are in-sync and on-message about taxes: We should all agree that the way our sector is operating is not tenable and we should all be working to change the tax code so that wealthy individuals and corporations are paying their fair share of taxes. And then we’d work together to ensure our government is representative and effective and that our taxes are used to fund education, housing, etc., and not just war.

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Read full article here.

Hi everyone, if you’re available on April 10^th at 12:30-1:30 Eastern Time,  please attend this free public webinar on the Fearless Fund lawsuit and its potential implications for nonprofits and foundations. Get details and RSVP.

Today, please grab your favorite beverages and snacks and get ready for a rant. Recently, a fundraising expert posted a post on LinkedIn, written in the the perspective of a jaded, exasperated donor, chastising nonprofits for how they treat donors. Excerpt from this post:

“Why are you so incurious about me, about where I came from, what forces shaped me and what differences I seek to make? Why, when you do respond, is in with forms and templates. Why do I feel you’re just checking boxes? Gift receipt: check. Thank you (now AI generated): check. Annual report: check. Why do you assume that is all I want? […] I am philanthropy. I am weary of knocking on non-responsive, hollow or narrowly creaked open doors. I have resolved to knock on fewer, to be more careful where I lay my tokens, to put more stipulations on my giving and to be more explicit about your accountabilities to me.”

He did end with a poetic flourish: “I have become what you taught me to be.”

Other colleagues in the thread tended to agree. One, for example, wrote: “The best advice I have received as a new ED of a young nonprofit is to never take funders for granted. Put in the time to follow up with a call or write a personal note of gratitude, sharing the stories that were made possible through their generosity. If you truly believe in the mission, you have gratitude for those that make the work possible.”

All right, let’s dive into this. For decades now, the fundraising experts of our sector have rallied around this philosophy of appeasing to donors, ensuring they feel seen and valued and even “loved.” Despite the progress of movements like Community-Centric Fundraising, it is still a very persistent philosophy. It manifests itself in various ways, from workshops on how to “engage” donors better, to donors feeling upset because they ONLY received a form letter instead of a handwritten note, to the various development pundits wagging their fingers at the inept, thoughtless nonprofit leaders who fail to put their donors on pedestals and wash their feet.

Yes, I know there are tons of nonprofits and nonprofit leaders who suck. Those who fail to follow-through on acknowledgements, who aren’t transparent in their information, who aren’t very communicative, who even have disdain for donors. There was even one nonprofit leader who punched a donor in the face and screamed “Pay more taxes!” (But I apologized, and now we’re friends.)

But amidst all this, we haven’t taken time to acknowledge that traditional fundraising philosophies and practices have started warping people’s perspective of nonprofit work and turned it basically into retail. Instead of us as a community trying to work together to solve entrenched issues like homelessness, poverty, racism, child abuse, climate change, etc., we’ve all become like retail shops. Like we’re all a bunch of gyms competing for members, and those of us with the best customer service get more clients and money, and customers who are disgruntled can leave angry reviews warning others to stay away.

Decades of this pervasive “nonprofit as retail shops competing for customers” philosophy have caused significant damage to our work. It’s dulled our sense of urgency. It’s shifted our priorities from solving challenges and sunsetting, into self-preservation and a continuation of the inequities we’re proclaiming to fight. We need to recenter our perspective because we’ve strayed way too far.

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Read full article here.

Hi everyone, before we get into today’s blog post, a couple of things. If you’re free this Thursday March 28^th at 11am Pacific Time, join me and Nonprofit VOTE for Rally the Sector: Nonprofits and Election 2024. We’ll be talking about nonprofits and the role we play in getting people to vote. It’ll be fun! Register here. It’s free, and automated captions will be available.

Also, please let me know that you got (or didn’t get) email notification of this blog post. It’s been weeks of tech issues, with no one getting notifications for two months, and I hope it’s finally resolved now.

This week, we have more Greek myths if they were set in nonprofit and philanthropy. Make sure to read Part 1 and Part 2.

Jason and the Golden Fleas

Jason was an Executive Director of a nonprofit who, of course, needed funding for his organization’s work. He was told he needed to go on a long and arduous quest to find the Golden Fleas, which are small grants that are burdensome and time-wasting, like a grant for 10,000 drachmas that required an LOI and full proposal with bespoke budget. Across many long years, he collected a handful of these Golden Fleas. They sustained his organization’s work (barely), but they were unpredictable and each usually died after a year, forcing Jason to search for other Golden Fleas forever, the end.   

Medusa

Medusa was a nonprofit leader who spent years running various organizations. One day, she realized that while programs and services were vital, they were not enough to address the systemic issues that caused these programs and services to be needed in the first place. She believed her organization, and the entire sector, needed to do more advocacy work. So she set out to meet with funders, hoping to convince them to fund systems change.  

And a horrifying thing happened. Everyone she met with froze, as if they had been turned to stone. Funders who had been friendly before now became cold and unreadable. They averted their eyes and ran away screaming; the ones who weren’t fast enough when Medusa approached mumbled about legalities and general counsels and mission drift and not having enough funding in the budget. Despondent, Medusa retreated to her lair. Few visited her. Eventually she became a real estate agent.

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Read full article here.

Hi everyone, it’s my birthday this week (March 12). If you’d like to help me celebrate, please donate to organizations such as the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, and continue advocating for a permanent ceasefire, a restoration of UNRWA funding, and a free Palestine.

Meanwhile, if you’re free on March 28^th at 11am Pacific Time, join me and Nonprofit VOTE for Rally the Sector: Nonprofits and Election 2024. We’ll be talking about nonprofits and the role we play in getting people to vote. It’ll be fun! Register here. It’s free, and automated captions will be available.

A while ago, I mentioned that if we’re going to solve some of these deeply entrenched problems in our society, nonprofits will need to focus on moving the levers of power. These levers include 1. electing more progressive women of color into office 2. changing the tax code so rich people and corporations pay their fair share, 3. reversing Citizens United and making other efforts to reduce the influence of corporations on politics, 4. changing the narratives and conversations people are having so they’re not so easily manipulated by misinformation, fear, and bigotry.

And 5. protecting and advancing voting and voting rights. This year is a particularly vital election year in the US (and, unfortunately, what happens in the US affects the entire world). It’s time nonprofits and foundations fully embrace our role in voter engagement and civic participation and increase tenfold our involvement in these activities.

I know there’s been a lot of confusion and trepidation out there regarding doing this type of work. For decades, nonprofits have been told they shouldn’t engage in politics, and many funders have not helped by advancing the idea that nonprofits should avoid advocacy, lobbying, and other “political” activities. We’ve also as a sector bought into this idea of “mission creep” where anything not directly related to an org’s main mission means they’re straying from the mission, which we’ve internalized is a very bad thing to do.

We all need to adopt a new mindset. It is NOT mission drift to do voter engagement. EVERY single nonprofit out there, no matter what its mission is, should be participating in voter engagement. This is because every issue we care about—from homelessness, to education, to the environment, to poverty, to the arts, to animal welfare, etc.—is related to the inequitable systems we’re forced to endure. And we can change these systems by ensuring our government at every level reflect its people and their will. And we do that by helping people vote and participate in democracy.

Nonprofits can and do play a significant role, and we need to embrace it. According to the Nonprofit Power report from Nonprofit VOTE:

“voters who were engaged by nonprofits about voting were much more likely to cast a ballot than comparable voters – 10 percentage points more likely (56% vs 46%). The turnout boost was even higher among historically underrepresented groups. Younger voters (18 to 24) engaged by nonprofits were 14 percentage points more likely to vote than comparable young voters. People of color engaged by nonprofits were 12 percentage points more likely to vote. Low-income voters also saw double-digit boosts in turnout. These findings provide a compelling case for more nonprofits to engage the communities they serve in voting and elections.”

And there is wide public support of nonprofits doing voter engagement work. According to a survey conducted by Independent Sector, seven in ten voters say they support the idea of nonprofits engaging in voter support services, such as voter registration, reminding people of election days, and providing transportation for voting purposes.

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Read full article here.

Hi everyone, I’m still working on fixing the email notification system, since it has been sending out notices of new posts to only 12 or so people each week. Thanks for your patience. Before we get started on this week’s topic, please join me at the Nonprofit Marketing Summit, which is going on this week March 5 to 7. I’ll be on a panel with Stephen Gyllenhaal (producer of the documentary Uncharitable) and nonprofit leader Dorri McWhorter on March 6 at 2pm PT to discuss overhauling the nonprofit sector. The summit is FREE. Register here. Auto-captions will be available.

This week, for all 12 colleagues who got notices of this post, we talk about the idea of legacy. This is a word we use a lot in our work, especially in fundraising. For instance, talking to donors about what kind of legacy they want to leave. And last year, I got into trouble because someone asked what was wrong with a wealthy person hoarding wealth away in order to create a “legacy of philanthropy” for their offspring to engage in, and I called it gross. Because it’s gross. (Lots of people were offended. I had to write an apology).

Like with many other concepts in our sector, it’s time to examine our definition and ideas around “legacy” and how we engage donors around it. Currently, the way most of us think of legacy is very narrow: It’s basically what people will leave behind when they die, and how other people will remember them. It is one of the tools we fundraisers use, and it can lead to donations. For instance, someone donating a large sum and getting a building named after them, a legacy that will last long after they’re gone.

But let’s be more thoughtful. Whether we like it or not, how we engage with donors changes the way they think about things as well as how they behave. And generations of reinforcement around the concept of legacy has solidified this framework in people’s minds, which can make it difficult as our sector shifts towards more of a justice-centered approach of doing this work, vs. the charity lens. If we’re going to make the world more just, then we need to think of legacy differently, and encourage our donors to do so as well.

A few months ago, I gave a keynote targeted towards donors. The talk was called “Justice as Legacy: Community-Centric Fundraising and the Evolution of Philanthropy.” It was a no-BS conversation with donors and nonprofits about all the changes happening in our sector and world. Riffing on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, I developed the Vu’s Hierarchy of Legacy. Here it is below, in reverse order, from most common/ego-driven to most rare/enlightened in terms of how people think of their legacy:

Ego Level. Your legacy is the continuation of your ego. You are seen as a hero. You get plaques. Your name and picture appear on donor walls. You get glowing newspaper articles written about you. Your names appear on buildings.

Ego-Extended Level. Your legacy is the above, but it’s also extended to your family and those close to you. For example you start a family foundation or Donor-Advised Fund so your kids and grandkids participate in philanthropy after you’re gone. Your legacy is your family’s name being associated with doing good.

Neo Level. Legacy is the improvement of the community, but still within the framework of existing inequitable systems, especially capitalism. You are remembered for helping hungry kids, building homeless shelters, etc., but you are not remembered for challenging the systems that create hunger, homelessness, etc. Your legacy is a world that is slightly better, but much inequity and injustice still remains.

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Read full article here.

This week, we talk about fashion in nonprofit and philanthropy. As a sartorial icon and expert on style, I must say, we need to step up our game. That includes bringing back the codpiece, which has a fascinating history. Basically, according to several minutes of research, the codpiece was invented as a practical solution for preserving people’s modesty as well as to protect armored knights’ nether regions. It then became very fashionable, with Henry the VIII wearing these flamboyant accessories. For a while, you couldn’t step outside without seeing people wearing codpieces, including ones with intricate designs and possibly hidden compartments for keys and maybe a dram of arsenic.

After a while, like many fashion trends such as hoop skirts and giant wigs and bell bottoms, the wearing of codpieces was ridiculed, and the people wearing them were driven into the woods, where they lived a life of shame and contemplation for their horrendous fashion choices. And now, hundreds of years later, no one wears them except maybe at Renaissance fairs and possibly, I imagine, at gyms (I’ve never been to a gym, so I don’t know what people wear there).  Read more: What is a codpiece, and should everyone at your organization wear one?

Why am I talking about codpieces? First, because “codpiece” is fun to say, and one can’t have too much knowledge about medieval fashion. But more importantly, the codpiece serves as a great metaphor for our sector and its many practices that were once prominent and even practical, but now should be reconsidered because they are archaic, plain silly, or harmful to our work. Here are a few of them, and if you or your organization or foundation still do any of these things, you might as well have all your board and staff wear codpieces as part of your formal work attire, because you already look ridiculous:

1.Asking the sustainability question: “How will you sustain this program when this grant we give you ends?” I thought this question had been phased out completely because it’s so nonsensical, but apparently not. Last week, the Crappy Funding Practices (CFP) team had to call out a foundation for asking it on their grant application. Funders, if you’re still asking this question, you are as silly as an inebriated goose and should wear a codpiece. For everyone else, if you ever encounter this question, report it to CFP, and then just copy and paste one of these standardized responses I’ve come up with (Seriously, several colleagues have copied and pasted one of the more serious responses, and received funding!)

2.Not disclosing salary range on your job posting: We’ve made tremendous gain in this area, and I hardly ever see a job posting that doesn’t have salary information on it. This is an amazing accomplishment we achieved by speaking up and giving feedback to organizations over the years, so go us! But it does make it more glaring on the occasion when we do see a job listing without the salary. It’s jolting to see a nonprofit or foundation, especially if it professes to believe in equity, to still be engaged in this very backward practice. If you still don’t disclose the salary info in your job postings, everyone at your org should wear a codpiece. And if you also ask for job candidates’ salary history, wear a large powdered wig each because you are acting extra goofy and clueless.

3.Having unpaid internships: Unpaid internships are inequitable, for many reasons. These include punishing people from marginalized backgrounds, rewarding people who are privileged such as having their family support them so they can work for free, harming the career of the unpaid interns, and helping perpetuate the underpaying of nonprofit professionals. They were common in the past, but now they’ve been tapering off, thank goodness. But I just last week encountered an org that was offering them. If you’re still offering unpaid internships, make plans to convert them into paid ones. And immediately pay your interns, including back pay for all the work they’ve already done. Otherwise, wear a codpiece.

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Read full article here.

Hi everyone. I just found out, thanks to messages from several of you, that email notices of new blog posts have been sent out to very few people since the beginning of January. I had just assumed the sudden sharp decrease in traffic was because a lot of people hated me. But now, I know it’s because a lot of people hated me AND because of tech issues. Thank you for your patience while the problem is being resolved. In the meantime, there’s a new blog post every Tuesday, so please create a recurring appointment on your calendar called “latest NonprofitAF masterpiece drops.”

This week, we talk about a few philosophies and terminologies related to donors. As a field that is dependent on the largesse (and sometimes smallgesse and mediumgesse) of donors, we’ve developed our own mental models and language around them. As our practices advance and evolve, thanks to movements like Community-Centric Fundraising, we need to examine what still works and what needs to be changed or phased out completely.Read more: 8 donor-related philosophies and terminologies we need to change or abolish

Think about the “donor pyramid,” for example. Remember when we couldn’t go to a fundraising conference without hearing some mention of the Pyramid? Now we hardly hear about it at all, probably because there’s general agreement that it sucks. Which is too bad, because it always conjured for me a cheerleader-like pyramid composed of donors, standing on one another’s shoulders, maybe holding pom-poms, forming a human triangle, which was a fun image to have.

Below, in no particular order, are a few other things I think we need to reconsider. As usual, this is just my opinion, though some of it may be blasphemous and cause some of you to be very vexed. Please feel free to disagree and add to the discussion.

1.Donor intent: The wishes of donors is something we’ve been trained to hold sacred. But there are some serious issues around it. In general, usually donors have less expertise in addressing the problems they’re donating to nonprofits to address, so it makes little sense that we prioritize their intent so highly. And donors who are now in the Great Country Club in the Sky, I’m sure many of them were lovely people, but why should they be allowed to control things from beyond the grave, especially as their intents don’t evolve with the times and the needs of the community and thus often becomes more and more irrelevant and possibly nonsensical? “This fund is only to be used to help children escape the life of chimney sweeping by training them to be cobblers.”

2.Donor engagement: It can be great when donors are fully engaged with nonprofits and are present and helpful. But “donor engagement” has often been warped into this philosophy that donors deserve to be entertained and to receive meaning in exchange for their donations, with terrible consequences, such as donors being involved in things they have no expertise on. The more we train donors to think they deserve to be involved, the more they expect it. How much time should we spend “engaging” donors when there are so many issues that need nonprofits’ attention. As a donor myself, I would rather the nonprofits I donate to focus their attention on meeting their missions than to show me a good time.

3.Donor as hero: Maybe because it “works” to bring in money when we lavish praise on donors and center them in the narrative in the fight against injustice. But it’s problematic for many reasons, including allowing donors and everyone to gloss over the inequitable origin of a lot of wealth (slavery, stolen Indigenous land, worker exploitation, environmental degradation, tax avoidance, colonization, imperialism, etc.). It also reinforces this individualistic savior mindset when what we need to address injustice is a collective, communal way of thinking. So, let’s stop saying we should treat donors like heroes. In fact, let’s just stop it with the hero narrative altogether. Contributing to making the world better does not make anyone a “hero;” it’s the baseline for being a decent human being and community member.   

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Read full article here.

Over the past few months, people and organizations who have been public in supporting a permanent ceasefire and an end to Israel’s US-funded genocide of Palestinians have been experiencing consequences. I know colleagues who have faced harassment and intimidation at work for wearing a keffiyeh. Others whose organizations have been losing funding from existing funders because they put out a statement calling for a ceasefire. A colleague told me a donor who had committed to hosting a fundraising event pulled out last minute because one of the org’s founders and board members have been vocal in condemning Israel’s genocidal actions. I’ve lost a few thousand followers, had keynote invitations rescinded, and have had to deal with online harassment since my post on October 17^th.

None of this, of course, is going to stop us. The things we face are nowhere near the horrors Palestinians are experiencing right now, and we all need to be even more forceful in speaking up. Israel is now carpet-bombing Rafah, where Palestinians civilians had been ordered to evacuate to. All of us in the US are funding it, as our elected officials get ready to approve sending more than $17B dollars to Israel to continue its genocide of Palestinians. It should horrify all of us in this sector that we could solve homelessness and have universal healthcare and education, but instead, our tax dollars are being used to massacre children and civilians in Palestine every day.

All of this backlash has been highlighting a serious weakness in our sector, and that is the lack of support and protection from funders for progressive leaders and organizations who speak up against injustice. Not just on this genocide and during this time, but across a range of issues and for decades. This has been the default pattern: The right-wing will rally around their leaders, knowing their figureheads are their most important assets. Just look at all the support generated for Kyle Rittenhouse, who murdered two people who were protesting racial injustice. He received a ton of money for his legal defense, got invited to Mar-a-Lago, and gets booked for speaking engagements. He’ll likely get a book deal, possibly be invited to be a contributor on various new channels.

Meanwhile liberal-and-progressive-leaning funders will back away, leaving defenseless those who take risks in standing up for justice and equity. A few years ago, for instance, some colleagues told me one of their board members said something that offended a right-wing pundit with a large national platform. This pundit went on their air and blasted the board member and the organization. For weeks, the board and staff were getting violent messages, including death threats. When they approached their funders asking for help, the funders did nothing, terrified that they would be in the crosshairs too. The lack of support makes it harder for people and orgs to speak up, which makes us all less effective in effecting change.

Last week, I read this article, “Racial Justice Programs Under Fire: Foundations Are Running Scared When They Should Double Down,” by colleagues Lori Villarosa, Ben Francisco Maulbeck, and Gihan Perera. The article notes that after the Supreme Court took down affirmative action, it emboldened the right wing to expand their scope, targeting DEI efforts in general, such as suing Fearless Fund, a venture capital firm focused on supporting Black businesswomen. And instead of standing firm in alignment with their values, many funders start waffling and backsliding, asking their grantees to tone down language, placing harsher limitations on advocacy, pausing their internal DEI work, etc.  

Progressive-leaning funders’ general aversion to anything that’s “political” or controversial or deemed risky, combined with their fear of supporting the leaders, organizations, and movements that are willing to put themselves on the line, is a significant contributor to why the far right has been gaining so much ground in recent years. With democracy on its dying breath and multiple genocides to stop, we need progressive-leaning funders to get out of their self-protectionistic, risk-averse, cover-your-ass mentality and be on the front lines with the people and organizations that are tackling injustice head on. And if you’re not going to be on the front lines, then at least support the people and orgs that are. Here are a few things funders can do:

Keep using an equity lens in funding: As Cora Daniels says in the article “A Post-Affirmative Action World Demands More — Not Less — Funding for Black Leaders,” “What if instead of cowering in the face of the affirmative-action ruling, philanthropy doubled down on its support of leaders of color?” That would be great. Funders, please increase your payout rate and send more money to organizations led by marginalized communities. Continue funding them, and when possible increase support, especially when they’re targeted by right-wing conservatives, as they’ll have their attention divided and won’t be able to fundraise like normal

Fund individual progressive leaders: Many progressive-leaning funders are fine with funding organizations and fiscally sponsored movements but run screaming when faced with the prospect of funding individual leaders. Take some notes from conservative funders and invest in individuals too, especially the ones putting themselves at risk to fight for justice. They don’t have the same level of protection as leaders who work within organizations. If you don’t know how to fund individuals, seek help from your peers who have been doing it.

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Read full article here.

Hi everyone. Before we start this week’s topic, check out Memphis Music Initiative’s latest hilarious and catchy music video, “I Hope Like Hell We Get This Grant.”

Crappy Funding Practices (CFP) has been building momentum. Join in the fun on LinkedIn! This is the movement where we call out foundations publicly and by name who engage in practices that waste nonprofits’ time and energy when there are so many societal issues to tackle. Making a grantee write a quarterly report for a $2500 grant? We’re calling you out. Telling grant applicants they can’t spend more than 10% on overhead? We’re calling you out. Making grant applicants use your budget format, which is in Word? We’re calling you out.

Declaring a grant application deadline but then saying you’re only going to review the first 100 submissions? We’re calling you out and likely also bestowing upon you a Ghost Orchid Award for Rare but Super Crappy Funding Practices, which will come with press releases and probably an award ceremony where your team will be invited to dress up in evening formal wear and explain how you came up with such a clueless and heinous decision.

We can only call out stuff we know of, so if you would like to anonymously report a crappy funding practice (including if you work at a foundation and want to report on your workplace), please fill out this form. And to balance things out, we’ll also be highlighting the wonderful foundations that engage in Awesome Funding Practices, so please nominate those too. And apologies, there is a long list of submissions, and the team is trying to call out one or three funders a week at this point, so that each has enough time in the shameful spotlight; thank you for your patience.

This week’s blog post, however, is aimed less at the funders who engage in ineffective and infuriating funding practices and more at the colleagues who read these call-outs and feel the need to defend the status quo. Over the past few days, as the CFP team begins its work in earnest, we called out two foundations, which you can see on the CFP LinkedIn page. While many colleagues responded with righteous anger at the audacity of these funders, there are a few who step in and spout the same boring, predictable responses that’s been used for decades to defend funders’ and donors’ shenanigans.

So, to save us all time, I’m going to list some of the common ones I’ve gotten over the years, below; most I’ve paraphrased, but some are direct quotes. That way, when we encounter these comments in the future, we can just copy and paste our replies, or just paste in the URL to this blog post and type “See number 4” or “See numbers 3, 6, and 8” or whatever:  

1. ”It’s not my money. It’s not your money. It’s the funder/donor’s money! So they get to do what they want with it.” If you’re spouting this, you need to have a better analysis of equity and wealth. A lot of wealth, at least in the US, comes from some combination of inequitable means, including slavery, stolen Indigenous land, worker exploitation, environmental degradation, and tax avoidance. Sometimes, it may be indirectly, like someone inherited money from a relative who worked for a company that exploited workers and retired through stock options. The point is, if someone’s wealth is accumulated through inequitable means, then it’s NOT their money. Please read The Whiteness of Wealth and other works on this topic before you continue spewing this nonsense.

2. “What, you expect funders to give out money without doing their due diligence like a bunch of wild animals?!” Due diligence is great, but it can be done without all the time-wasting nonsense that many funders inflict upon nonprofits. For instance, as I’ve said many times now, no funder needs their own unique snowflake grant proposal. Funders can literally just accept grant proposal packages that nonprofits have already prepared for other funders. It’s all the same information. There, the funders fulfilled their due diligence, but it’s just not in a time-consuming snowflake format catered to their whims. No funder needs a snowflake financial or programmatic reports either; they can just accept annual reports and general financial reports. Stop using “due diligence” as an excuse to perpetuate annoying and harmful practices.  

3. ”But what you’re complaining about is standard practice! Most or all foundations require this! What’s the issue?” The fact that a crappy practice has become so common that it is the standard IS the issue! “That’s the way it’s always done” has been used throughout history to keep ineffective and inequitable systems in place, such as health insurance being tied to employment in the US. (And also very annoying ones such as the embarrassing gaps in the toilet stalls in public restrooms in the US). Sure, many funders over the years have engaged in so many insipid practices that these practices are taken as standard, or even “best,” practices. But that does not make them OK. We need to stop thinking something is OK because it’s common.

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Read full article here.

Hi everyone, before we get to today’s topic, if you’re free next Tuesday, February 13^th, at 10am Pacific, please join me and the ED of Future of Good, Anouk Bertner, for “Cutting through the BS so we can actually prioritize workplace wellbeing.” It’s free; captioning available. Register here.

This week, Saturday specifically, marks the beginning of the Lunar New Year, ushering in the Year of the Dragon, widely considered the most powerful of all the Chinese Zodiac animals. Dragons are apparently smart, creative, persistent, visionary, and talented. Which is why some people—don’t ask who—would consider me a Dragon, instead of my actual sign…the chicken, known for occasionally crossing roads.

The Dragon is, above all, strong and courageous, and thus Dragon years are fortuitous for bold, risky endeavors. What does this mean for us? As much as I love our sector, we are not always known for courageous actions and risk-taking. In fact, we’re probably one of the most risk-averse fields. Who can blame us, though? Decades of being told what we can and can’t do (“here’s my grant/donation of $12, don’t use it to pay staff wages”), and existing in a constant state of financial uncertainty (“maybe I’ll renew my $12 next year, maybe not”) and severe consequences for even actions that align with the sector’s expressed values (“your org publicly supports ending the murder of children in Palestine? We’re no longer giving you $12″) would lead anyone to play it safe.

But with everything going on in the world, we can’t continue that way. The lunar new year provides us a fresh start. Time to channel some Dragon energy. For this year, let’s:

Be visionary: The Dragon is the only mythical animal in the Chinese zodiac, and the only one that truly flies. Let’s renew and reawaken our vision for what the world could look like and our sector’s role in actualizing that vision. We can save our default pragmatism, realism, and incrementalism for another year. This year, let’s go all in on audacious dreams that people keep trying to tear down. I mean dreams like a society with minimal police presence, more just and equitable laws and policies, reparation, equity in wealth, fewer nonprofits and foundations because we won’t be as needed, and a free Palestine.

Be ambitious: Remember the old saying, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars”? That saying makes no sense. The moon is much closer to Earth, and stars are much farther away. Do people not consider physics and astronomy when they come up with sayings? Anyway, the point is, we’ve been conditioned to think very small: In budgets, in grant requests, in number of people served, etc. In the year of the Dragon, have the audacity of ambition. Our grand visions for a better world can only be achieved if we have similarly grand ambitions. Increase your budget. Add a zero or two to your grant requests. Ask for what you need to solve a problem and not just scramble take care of its symptoms.

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Read full article here.