Category: Opinion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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