Category: Opinion

Hi everyone, real quick before we focus on this week’s topic, for the past few months, Crappy Funding Practices has been calling out the eye-popping shenanigans we’ve encountered. Such as the funder that requires grantees to submit a notarized report every 60 days! (Hats off to you, Garneau-Nicon Family Foundation; that’s a breathtakingly new level of insipidness). Here’s a great article on the movement by our colleague Dawn Wolfe. The LinkedIn following is now at over 12,000 and growing rapidly; join in on the fun.

However, all of this takes work! Behind these posts on LinkedIn are teams of volunteers spending hours communicating with folks who nominate funders, vetting submissions, crafting the call-outs, engaging with social media, developing list of resources, planning meetings and organizing, etc. It’s a lot of work and right now all volunteer-run. We need more people involved. So, if you’re interested in helping out, please join a special meeting we’re hosting on May 14^th at 10am Pacific Time, where we’ll update you on what’s been going on, and present the different options for you to plug into. Register here. See you then!

This week, I want us to revisit power dynamics, because it seems like many of us continue to forget it exists, as well as forget the lessons we may have learned in the past regarding it. I think overall, most people understand power dynamics. We understand, for instance, that a donor who gives a lot of money wields a lot of power, which they could use to lord over a nonprofit and shape its work. Or that an Executive Director or CEO has hierarchical power that makes it hard for staff to provide feedback or pushback against their ideas.

But power dynamics are everywhere, and we don’t always acknowledge and account for it, which is why we still have so many ridiculous practices in our sector. And also why so many of us are exhausted arguing with people about stuff that should be obvious by now.

A couple of examples come to mind. First, going back to CFP, a colleague took issue with the movement, posting, “I’m trying to understand how Crappy Funding Practice is effective for publicly shaming foundations, rather than having adult conversations with them about the issues.” A few people agreed. The rest of us sigh and point out that because of power imbalance between funders and grantseekers, these “adult conversations” often cannot take place, or are not effective even if they do happen. People cannot be honest when there is the possibility of their being punished for telling funders their grant processes are destructive, archaic, and nonsensical.

Second example, our field’s continuation with the practice of nonprofits asking their staff to donate back to the org, insisting on a wacky and nonsensical “100% employee-giving” rate. I find this type of fundraising gross and unethical. And yet, many colleagues in our field still passionately defend it, an argument being “it’s optional, staff can always say no; no one is forcing them to donate.” This and other arguments neglect the inherent power dynamics that exist in this situation that makes this icky practice coercive and not optional at all, even if stated otherwise.

So, let’s remind ourselves to be more aware of power dynamics.

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Read full article here.

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.