Category: Opinion

Hey everyone, before we begin, here’s a cute and short video about foundations and their investments, which is a topic I’ll likely rant about later (after “Ask Vu: Love, Dating, Romance, and Relationship Advice for Nonprofit Professionals, Part 2,” which tens of people have been asking for. Here’s part 1).

I usually don’t write much about fundraising events. There’s been a general agreement that auctions, luncheons, golf tournaments, and their ilk are soul-crushingly awful and would make good deterrents for crimes: “You have been found guilty of armed robbery. I sentence you to be the event planner of four consecutive fundraising galas!”

As our colleague Paul Nazareth commented on Twitter: “The dislike I have for what was just weak fundraising strategy of charity galas; the garish glee of dress up, worshipping of wealth and culture of white supremacy, is evolving into disgust.”  

I am not on the hate-all-events bandwagon. Marginalized-communities-led groups often rely on them for a significant part of their revenues, and when done well, they can do a lot to bring people together and build community. Here, in no particular order, are a few ways we can make these events more aligned with equity and with principles of Community-Centric Fundraising:

Reconsider your ticket prices: Some galas are $100 or $150 or more per ticket, plus the expectation that you donate on top of that. This leaves out a vast majority of people. Comp tickets are nice, but they often make people feel like they snuck into some place they don’t really belong. Think about lowering your ticket prices.

Mix up your seating arrangement: Good seats are usually reserved for major donors and sponsors, with the top tiers going towards those who contributed the most financially. This just reinforces the message that the more money you have, the more special and important you are. That’s silly. Mix up your attendees. Seat clients at the front. Or randomize it.

Treat volunteers thoughtfully: While donors of money are worshipped, donors of time are treated like an afterthought. “After you finish setting up all the centerpieces, feel free to scavenge through the dumpster for your dinner, since we reserve the gourmet food for guests.” OK, I exaggerate a bit, and volunteer food (usually pizza) is not bad. But if we’re going to be community-centered, then volunteers are an essential part of the community, and should be treated accordingly.

Make the event accessible: Ensure spaces can accommodate guests and speakers who use wheelchairs. Make the event hybrid. Have captions and ASL interpreters. Ensure all your videos have captions and images have alt text. Have every speaker use the microphone. I was at an event when a speaker decided to skip the microphone; I was at a table near the stage and could only catch half of what she said.

Welcome kids: Children are an important part of our community, but from the looks of most fundraising events, kids might as well be nonexistent. This is weird, considering so many events are about making the world better for future generations. If we mean to do that, then let’s make more fundraising events children-inclusive. Have activities geared toward kids. Invite kid poets and artists to perform. Hire professional childcare providers.

Nix the VIP pre-event: This is once again another way of reinforcing the idea that people with more money are more special and therefore deserve upgraded experiences. If you’re going to have a pre-event, think about making it community-centric. For example, have an opportunity for donors, volunteers, clients, and staff to mingle and get to know one another and learn about the programs.

Lighten up on the dress code: The more formal the dress code is, the more exclusive it is. Many people can’t afford the fancy clothes, but even if they could, it doesn’t mean they would feel comfortable at events where everyone is dressed that way. I mean, just because I have a monocle and a diamond-tipped cane, doesn’t mean that I don’t feel like a fraud at your fancy ball.

Highlight partner organizations: Chances are, your org relies on other nonprofit organizations’ work, since all missions are interrelated. Your event provides a great way to publicly acknowledge these partners and bring attention to their missions. The community will only benefit from nonprofits being generous with one another.

Skip the tiered sponsorship levels: Yet one more way we perpetuate the idea that people and corporations should be treated based on how much they contribute financially. The sponsors at the “higher” levels get more marketing, better seats, more recognition, etc. Let’s move away from this. Here’s a great article on this topic from our colleague Phuong Pham.  

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Read full article here.

Hi everyone, this post will be more personal and serious than usual. Content warning: I will be talking about suicide, trauma, and grief. Please take care of yourself, and skip this post if you need to.

Over the past two months I have been struggling with the suicide death of a friend. She was a nonprofit professional and social justice activist. She was 30 and had been battling depression and anxiety and suicidal ideation for most of her life. A traumatic childhood led her to cutting ties with her family at a young age and being homeless for several years. Despite various challenges, she got a master’s degree, became an educator, and dedicated years of her life to advancing social justice through her nonprofit and community work, affecting the lives of many people, especially the numerous kids she taught and mentored.

Grief does a number on you, and grief when someone dies of suicide brings different feelings of guilt and regret. I run through various scenarios of what I could have said and done. Maybe if I hadn’t stayed up so late the previous night, I wouldn’t have slept through the last time she tried to call me. Maybe if I had invited her over for Christmas, she wouldn’t have spent it alone, and things might have been different. Until recently, I sometimes woke up, and unable to sleep, scanned through our text threads. Some of the messages were happy: trading vegan recipes, discussing TV shows. Others involved us arguing over various things. The later ones were of me begging her to get professional help. She had bought a gun, and I and her other friends couldn’t convince her to get rid of it. The last text she sent me was “I’m sorry. Goodbye.”

My friend was just the latest person in our field who died by suicide. In Seattle, the loss of a brilliant and beloved activist of color at the beginning of the pandemic sent waves of shock and sadness. Last month, a friend told me of yet another person who ended her life. On Twitter, a respected activist I follow spoke openly about dealing with suicidal ideation. The mental health challenges, lack of support and resources for, and suicide death of those who seek to advance social justice, to create a better world, is something that affects us all.

We don’t want to talk about suicide, but we need to. Suicide rates have overall increased 40% over the past two decades. And like everything else, it is worse for people of marginalized identities. According to this article, “Among individuals between the ages of 25 and 44 years, the suicide rate rose by 5% overall and by nearly 34% for American Indians or Alaska Natives from 2018 to 2021. It rose by more than 19% among Hispanic persons in that age group, by approximately 23% among Black people and by nearly 21% among multiracial individuals.”

According to a report released by The Trevor Project, about half of trans and non-binary youth consider suicide. And disabled people are at significantly higher risk of suicide than non-disabled people. People who are poor, as well as older adults also face increase risk of suicide.

I don’t think it is surprising that the suicide rates are disproportionally high among people of color, trans people, nonbinary people, disabled people, low-income people, and older adults. The barrage of hatred and injustice we’ve seen, especially over the past few years, has been relentless. There has been so little shelter, so few places where marginalized people can just safely exist.

Suicide among nonprofit professionals and social justice activists, needs to be recognized as an issue. Many of us entered this line of work because we have dealt with trauma in our own lives. We have seen and felt firsthand the effects of injustice, and it drove many of us into the field. Our traumas make us more empathetic and often more effective. As my friend said, “For me, it’s always come down to feeling like this world wasn’t designed for me—socially, physically, structurally, systemically. As such, I’ve long been obsessed with how to structurally solve loneliness, hopelessness, despair, and other difficult, pervasive feelings.”

But this empathy and drive can also be too much, as we are constantly retraumatized by seeing others being beaten down by unjust systems as we do the work each day. And we often feel helpless, that our efforts often do not make that big a difference, that the tide is often too strong for us to abide, that the arc of justice is too long for us to bend in our lifetimes. It is deeply demoralizing.

Over the past few years, I have also been seeing leaders demoralized by the very people and systems who are supposed to be allies and partners in our work. Funders who continue burdensome and ineffective practices. Donors who care more about their “legacy” and whether they receive the appropriate amount of gratitude and hero-worship. Board members and supervisors more concerned about their power and authority than in creating a better world. And an entire sector that prioritizes playing nice with the very forces that have been successful in making the world less just and equitable.

People in our sector are exhausted and on the breaking point. I know many of you are. We must talk about suicide and do something about it because I am afraid the rates among people in our profession will only increase if we continue to neglect it. We will continue to lose people. We will continue to lose their vision and voice. Their joy and humor and strength.

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Read full article here.

Hi everyone. Before we get started with today’s post, next week, to kick off AANHPI heritage month, I’ll be on a virtual conversation with colleague Jennifer Li Dotson on May 3^rd at 12pm PT. It’s free, with automatic captions. I hope to see you there.

I am still reeling from this op-ed published a few days ago. A time of relentless attacks on our communities and on democracy itself requires our leaders to take bold stances, not engage in the white moderation and both-siding that has led to the rise of antivaxxers, climate change deniers, flat-earthers, and people who think Love Actually is a good movie. (I said what I said!)

However, progressive-leaning philanthropy has always been like this. Months ago I was having lunch with a colleague who works at a prominent national foundation. We were lamenting how risk-averse progressive-leaning funders are, how board trustees and CEOs are hesitant to take bold actions.

“It’s also the GCs,” said my colleague, “the General Counsels. They have a lot of power and often prevent foundations from doing anything even remotely risky.”

At that moment, I realized we have barely paid any attention to GCs and the role they play in the sector, including in stifling progress. It’s kind of like a murder mystery where at the end, you find out that it was the barely acknowledged background character who was pulling the strings all along: “That’s right! ‘Twas I who poisoned the Mayor’s daily green smoothie! Me, the Assistant Director of Archives, who only had two lines of dialogue in Act 1! This will teach you to not decrease funding from the Archives department again!”

For those who are not familiar, a General Counsel at a foundation is a legal professional who provides legal advice and guidance. They review contracts, communications, strategies, intellectual property stuff, etc. Their job is to help ensure compliance with existing laws and to reduce risk for the foundation, especially mitigate the possibility of the foundation getting sued or its status revoked by the IRS.

That is all vital and important work, and I can only imagine how difficult it is, especially in this sociopolitical environment. But it seems over time many GCs (at progressive-leaning foundations) and their avoidance of risks and liabilities often prevent courageous strategies and actions. Another funder colleague told me how the GC at their foundation revised an RFP and associated communications to remove words like “race” and “Black,” when the grant itself was created to address racial disparity and lack of funding going to Black-led organizations. This was in order to avoid being sued for “reverse discrimination.” Yikes.

There are other ways GCs’ risk-aversion, amplified or directed by boards’ and CEOs’, can manifests. They could prevent a foundation from engaging in advocacy or lobbying, and forbid nonprofit themselves from doing these things. They could stop the foundation from funding vital organizations and issues because they may be “controversial.” They could put the kibosh on a foundation increasing its annual payout rate (the percentage the foundation spends of its endowment) beyond the legal minimum, which is currently 5%. They could shut down the foundation’s plans to take bold public stands that would advance equity, for instance supporting trans rights or abortion rights.

We haven’t focused much on General Counsels, but clearly they have significant impact on the entire field, and we need to pay more attention to this crucial but often invisible role. A GC who is aligned with the mission and who is thoroughly versed in the law can balance out trustees and CEOs’ risk aversion and help a foundation significantly to advance equity.

On the other hand, a GC who is mainly focused on reducing liabilities will amplify trustees’ and CEOs’ equal tendency to avoid risk. This risk-aversion may spread through the rest of the foundation, toward other foundations, and to nonprofits, creating an entire sector that is terrified to take meaningful actions for fear of legal liabilities. How can we advance equity in that state of mind?

Here are some potential solutions to unlock GCs potential to help advance equity:

Recruit and retain general counsels who have lived experience and come from marginalized communities: While I couldn’t find much information on the demographics of GCs at foundations in terms of race, the legal profession in general is very white (81% in 2022 in the US), so we can assume the majority of GCs at foundations are white. Hiring GCs who come from marginalized communities and who’ve experienced racism, homelessness, poverty, etc., may help to increase urgency to solve these issues.  

Hire GCs who are aligned with the mission and who have a track record of taking bold risks: All GCs who come on the team, just like everyone else, should be aligned with the foundation’s mission, vision, and values. Find the ones who talk about using the law to advance the mission and vision, and not just complying with it. Hire the GCs who have experience working with organizations and foundations that have taken courageous actions to advance equity.

Provide professional development opportunities for general counsel beyond just legal stuff: In attending over a hundred conferences now I have yet to meet a single general counsel from a foundation. This seems to be the pattern, that the people with the most power at foundations (board trustees, GCs, CEOs) are rarely on the ground, yet they are the ones making pivotal decisions despite missing some critical conversations and debates the rest of the field is having about equity and justice.

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Read full article here.

Hi everyone, I’ve been busy filing taxes, so apologies for the lateness and ineloquence of this post (Also, I’m not sure why it won’t let me put captions under the image, but it’s an image of the ground with several rolled up dollar bills popping up out of it).

Last week, six influential philanthropic leaders released this joint statement about protecting pluralism and diverse perspectives in philanthropy. This letter has generated a lot of strong feelings among my colleagues. As half of these six co-authors are leaders I know and respect, I am offering my thoughts here, in line with the third principle proposed in the article, which is “When we challenge another’s views or activities, we focus on substantive arguments and invite response.” Thank you for creating this opportunity for dialog, and for accepting my perspective in the constructive spirit in which it is offered.

This letter is the philanthropic equivalent of “all lives matter.” In this case, its premise is that all philanthropy is equally valid and good: “philanthropy provides the greatest value when donors enable and encourage pluralism by supporting and investing in a wide and diverse range of values, missions, and interests.”

The problem is that philanthropy is not some sort of sport or brand of ice cream, where it doesn’t matter if you root for the Patriots or the Seahawks, or if you choose mint chocolate chip or rocky road. Philanthropy’s actions often mean life or death.

So no, not all philanthropy is good. There are donors and foundations that fund anti-trans hate groups, ones that back white supremacist movements, ones that support efforts to suppress votes, and ones that work to ban abortions and cause pain and death to millions of people. These donors and foundations cannot and should never be equally respected as donors and funders who are working to advance trans people’s rights and humanity, protect voting rights and access, fight white supremacy, and restore the rights to abortions.

To insist that all philanthropic values, missions, and activities are equally valid is at best naïve and at worst harmful to people and communities.

To support its erroneous premise, the article glosses over history, if not downright distorts it. “The history of philanthropy is a history of using private capital to supplement, not replace other approaches to investing in and supporting a prosperous and just society.”

Philanthropy’s roots are stained with inequity and injustice. So much wealth in this country has been built on a legacy of slavery, stolen Indigenous land, worker exploitation, environmental degradation, and tax avoidance. It is a history of white people and white-led corporations creating the very injustices that they then get lauded for giving fractions of the wealth they hoarded to solve.

And yes, it is a history of using private capital to replace other approaches to investing in and supporting a prosperous and just society. It is a history of wealthy people refusing to pay their fair of taxes and instead squirreling that money away into family foundations (and now also Donor-Advised Funds) to spend on their pet projects at their whims and leisure.

The authors assert that “philanthropy as a whole makes its greatest contribution to democracy when all foundations and donors engage in the unfettered pursuit of their own mission, interests, and prerogatives.”

The lack of acknowledgement of the problematic history of philanthropy is amplified by the lack of acknowledgement of racial and other dynamics. Philanthropy has always been the realm of wealthy white people. Most donors are white. Most foundation trustees are white. Most foundation CEO’s and staff are white. How can philanthropy contribute to democracy when it itself is so undemocratic? Nothing that is controlled almost entirely by wealthy white people should ever be “unfettered.”

The authors go on to suggest five key principles to protect philanthropic “pluralism.” I’ll respond to each of them here:

1. We recognize and affirm the right and prerogative of foundations and philanthropists to take programmatic or public stances in accordance with their best judgment. And while it is appropriate for any donor to question or challenge another’s views, we should not question the underlying legitimacy of any foundation or philanthropist holding a particular view.

Again, your “best judgment” is still from the perspective of wealthy, extremely privileged white elites whose wealth have often been accumulated through inequitable means. This has caused all sorts of problems for years, exacerbating the issues we nonprofits are trying to solve. The existence of philanthropy itself is an indication of the proliferation of injustice, so we absolutely must question the underlying legitimacy of all foundations or philanthropists holding any sort of view at all, but in particular those who use their power and resources to advance inequity.

As our colleague Cathy García says, “Not only should we question the legitimacy of foundations or philanthropists whose views include neutrality in the face of white supremacy, we should interrogate why we want to hold on to the conditions that make egregious wealth inequality possible. There’s never been a MORE urgent time to question. Our people’s livelihoods and survival are not up for debate. Punto.”

2. We behave as if the foundations and individual donors who take stances with which we disagree are also committed to the betterment of society. We assume that those involved in philanthropy have the best intentions, even if they take a different approach.

Really? Those foundations and donors using funds to advance hate groups, suppress votes among people of color, prevent work to reverse climate change, roll back rights for anyone who is not a rich white dude, these foundations and donors are committed to the betterment of society? They have the best intentions? Have we not had endless conversations about how intentions do not matter as much as impact? The intentions of rich mostly white people in power do not matter; it is the impact of their actions that has led to endless suffering for marginalized people and communities for hundreds of years, and if philanthropy has any self-awareness, it would work to rectify this.

3. When we challenge another’s views or activities, we focus on substantive arguments and invite response. While disagreements may be profound — even fundamental — we believe that public debates should rely on reason and open conversation. We discourage practices such as personal or ad hominem attacks because we regard them as unhelpful to productively advancing knowledge within a pluralistic society.

I think most of us agree with this principle in theory. But people and communities most affected by systemic injustice are exhausted. We’re tired of our humanity and ability to exist being debated like some sort of academic exercise. We’re tired of the prioritizing of civility and comfort of the privileged over our safety and wellbeing. And we’re tired of this “bothsiding” that philanthropy often does, this belief that no matter how heinous, atrocious, and dehumanizing a perspective is, it should be respected for the sake of “diversity of perspectives.”

Read the full article here.

Hi everyone. Confession: I don’t hate most meetings. I mean, if you think about it, in our sector meetings often mean we get to spend time with usually awesome people to brainstorm ideas on how to make the world better. This is something our ancestors, who likely worked long hours doing manual labor, probably dreamed about for us: “One day, our descendants will be paid to sit, eat tiny oranges that are easy to peel, and talk while others write stuff on the walls.”

However, it seems lately that meetings have been out of control. The pandemic, which should have slowed us down, somehow increased the numbers of meetings we each have. It’s so easy and acceptable now to have virtual meetings. Not having to drive, find parking, shower, and brush one’s teeth means many people end up with more frequent back-to-back meetings. I’ve had days when I’ve had 5 or more. One colleague I know said she had 12 in one day!

A while ago I wrote “12 New Rules for Virtual Meetings, Since We’re Still In a Pandemic” which included “Rule 2: All one-hour meetings will now default to be 50 minutes. The therapists got the right idea. Having 50-minute meetings prevents the stress of back-to-back meetings without breaks and will give us all time to run to the bathroom, grab a snack, take a rapid test, or stare out the window and shake our fists at the sky in futile resentment.”

And now there’s research to back this up. Thanks to colleagues on LinkedIn like Beth Kanter, you may have seen this recent study done by Microsoft that shows having back-to-back meetings is bad for our brain, creativity, productivity, etc. Going from one meeting right into the next places a lot of stress on our noggins. There’s evidence that having breaks allows our brains to reset, focus, and engage.

Of course, this study just confirms what most of us already knew. The problem is how do we change habits that have been ingrained in us over hundreds of years? Capitalism culture has us equating having tons of meetings with being productive and effective. And also the reverse: That having breaks and doing “nothing” is “lazy” and “bad” and “Vu, it’s been 37 minutes; can you get back to facilitating this workshop on ‘The Golden Girls as Leadership Styles’ that we paid you a lot of money to do?” (Such a Sophia thing to say!)

Anyway, all of us need to start unlearning ingrained stuff and shift our habits. Especially supervisors and others who have formal power at organizations, you have a particular responsibility to create change. Here are some things I encourage us all to do:

Discuss the above article with your team: Have people read the above article in advance and then add it to your next team meeting agenda. Here are some questions you can use in your discussion: “Which of the study findings surprised you the most?” “Which solutions do you think we should implement?” “OK, did anyone read this article at all?” “I am very disappointed in us…”

Do a quick org-wide and individual “meetings audits”: Run through all the standing meetings that you have. See if some of them are even necessary. Maybe a few can be less frequent. Or shorter. Or can just be an email thread or Slack discussion. Then ask each person to do a personal meetings audit by scanning through their calendars and seeing how frequently they have back-to-back meetings. Look at the person who has the most back-to-back meetings. Look at them! Those haunted eyes! Is that what you want to look like?!

Agree to turn all 1-hour meetings into 50-minute meetings: Get everyone to indicate that all one-hour meetings, virtual and in-person, if they need to happen at all, will now be 50-minutes. Get an artistic staff member to design a manifesto on a piece of easel paper, and then have everyone draw outlines of their hands, write their names in their hand outlines, and decorate the outlines to serve as signatures. I saw my kids’ preschool do this for their classroom rules, and I don’t see why it wouldn’t work for adults.

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Read full article here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Read full article here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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