Category: Opinion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This post may ruffle some of you, especially if you’re a fragile white dude, so before I begin, I want to let you know that some of my best friends are white dudes. (Ben, Chris, Kevin, I miss you all; let’s find a time to hang out; I’ll download some Creedence Clearwater Revival and Johnny Cash we can listen to.) I say that as a joke, but it’s also true. There are amazing white dudes in our sector and in society doing critical work making the world better. Still, we need to have a talk.

Over the past several years, I’ve been bringing up all sorts of issues with our sector, like the fact that 90% of philanthropic dollars go to white-led orgs, how inequitable it is for nonprofits to ask their own staff to donate, and why we need to always use the Oxford Comma. I’m very appreciative of colleagues who take time to read and consider, even if they don’t agree with the stuff I say. I get plenty of pushback, which is fine. Our sector can often be too nice; we do need to be a little more assertive.

All that said, lately the responses from white dudes when their buttons are pushed when inequity is called out have been so predictable as to be boring. Not just on this blog, but everywhere. I love a good debate, but so many responses from white dudes are nowhere in the realm of validity or originality. They are pedestrian! Jejune! (And I do not use “jejune” lightly).

I am listing some common ones I encounter and also providing some counterarguments to save you time when you run into similar responses; maybe just forward them this link and the number(s) that pertains to them (“Chad, please see Number 2 and 6”). But also, if you’re a white guy, use this list to check yourself when you are about to push back on something that a person who is not a white dude says regarding inequitable things that need to change.

1. “Instead of just complaining, what solutions do you propose?” White dudes love calling out what they perceive to be the lack of solutions. However, people who have been most affected by systemic injustice have been proposing solutions. We do it all the time. But when you have privilege, it often prevents you from being able to even perceive, much less comprehend, solutions that might challenge that privilege. I call this “Solutions Privilege;” read up on it.
2. “Prove it! What data/evidence do you have?” There is so much data that’s out there regarding every point we bring up, and a simple google search would bring it up. For instance, someone demanded I “prove” to him that there’s a racial element to wealth and wealth hoarding. The Whiteness of Wealth by Dorothy A. Brown is an entire book with data about how wealth has been concentrated in white communities through racist policies. What these “prove it” people want is not data, but for us to do the labor it takes to distill that data down to digestible bits that they can then dismiss, and no amount of data would actually change their mind.
3. “People would listen better if you were nicer.” Over the past few weeks, I’ve been accused of sounding angry several times. A white dude recommended I be nicer because it’ll be easier for people to take things in when they’re gently talked to. Yeah, no. Marginalized and racialized people have been nice for decades; it often doesn’t work. If someone has the energy and patience to help people with power and privilege walk down the path toward equity, that’s great. But those of us who are angry have every right to be, and the focusing on civility and respectability makes you the kind of white moderate that Dr. King warned us was the biggest barrier to justice.
4. “The system is what it is; you just need to develop skills!” “Grants are not inequitable; you just suck at grantwriting!” “There’s nothing wrong with saying ‘100% of your donations go to programming’; you need to work on your org’s marketing!” “Women just need to learn to negotiate salaries better.” Why change unjust systems when you can just blame the people who are most harmed by them? But the reality is that the people most harmed by these systems actually have the best skills in navigating them. Like poor people are amazing at financial management; they have to be in order to survive. Marginalized people have plenty of skills; that’s not the problem.
5. “People have a right to do whatever they want; if you don’t like it, don’t engage.” If you’re a white dude, you often have the privilege to leave or not engage when you don’t like something, because either way, it doesn’t affect you as much; this is not true for everyone. I talk a lot about philanthropy, and I frequently encounter this assertion that foundations and donors can do whatever they want with their money, why is it any of my business. Sorry, it’s not their money if they’ve been building the wealth off the backs of workers from marginalized communities, avoiding paying taxes, and hoarding money that could be used democratically, which disproportionately affects us.
6. “The free market…supply and demand…Keynesian economics…” White guys love sounding smart by mentioning various terminologies and concepts, as if women or people of color have never heard of them. Dudes, we know them; a lot of our work is to undo the harm that many of these philosophies and concepts, which have often been unleashed on the world by white men, have caused.
7. “Why are you bullying [white people, foundations, corporations, donors, other people with power]?” I got accused of being a bully for launching #CrappyFundingPractices, a hashtag on Twitter where I publically call out foundations for harmful or annoying practices like not funding staff salaries or requiring budgets to be done using the funder’s own template. I do not have the financial, legal, or political power of the average foundation or corporation so I am not sure how I can bully them. Calling out people and institutions who do have these powers is necessary for change, and those who have more privilege, especially white men, should be doing it more often.
8. “Not all [white dudes, tech bros, donors, foundations, etc.]”: This is a classic! Whole articles have been written about this response. There are hashtags like #NotAllMen to poke fun of it. And we still see it all the time. “I’m a white man, and I grew up poor, so there’s no such thing as racism,” etc. The inability to separate specific individual cases from systemic patterns is alarming and irritating. If you read this list and you’re like “But…but not all white dudes do these things…” then you have totally missed the point. Find a white friend who gets it to explain it to you.
9. “You’re the one bringing race into this; you’re the racist.” White people who call people of color racist whenever we bring up inequity, are exhausting. Their ignorance is draining. Most of us know by now that institutional power is an essential element of racism, so no, a person of color can’t be racist against a white person, because we don’t have collective institutional power. You would know this if you were up to date with your homework before you engage in the conversation. Until you catch up, stay silent; do not pollute the discourse with your willful ignorance.
10. “I see that you’re not interested in a dialogue.” Fragile white dudes seem to think that people owe them intellectual debates at any given time, and when marginalized people refuse to comply, they deploy this sad-puppy response. A dude who has little experience in nonprofit and philanthropy messaged me on Twitter to tell me how disappointed he is that I won’t engage with him on his pushback to my assertion that philanthropy is rife with inequity. Sorry, I and others do not have time or interest to teach you stuff for free.

There are other responses (11. “Devil’s advocate,” 12. “all things being equal,” 13. “white men actually have it bad too,” 14. “freedom of speech/first amendment,” 15. “#NotJustWhiteDudes” 16. “Oh, so you can criticize white people, but we can’t do it back,” 17. “wow you really hate white people,” etc.) but I’ll stop here for now.

To the white dudes reading this and seething in front of their computers or phone, chill out. I didn’t call you a bad person. Your reflexive first responses are just predictable, boring, exhausting, and thoroughly debunked. You’re in denial, and it’s holding back progress. If we’re going to have thoughtful, productive dialogs that will move our collective work forward, our conversations can’t be stuck at this basic level.

Last week, I was on Clubhouse in a conversation called “If Nonprofits Were Brutally Honest with Funders” (with colleagues Dr. Rahsaan Harris, Kris Putnam-Walkerly, and Julie Morris). After my remarks about power dynamics, the injustices upon which much of philanthropy is based, and how so little funding goes to organizations led by marginalized communities, listeners were invited to join in. The first person said something about how people of color should learn to “pitch” better so that funders and donors could understand their ideas. (Another person said being nice and getting people to empathize and bringing them ice cream to eat and puppies to snuggle with would work better in soliciting funding than my “angry complaints,” but that’s for another post).

The idea of “pitching” is not new. We have been trained to do “elevator pitches” that are supposed to be pithy yet moving, sincere yet polished, inspiring yet grounded, all in 20 seconds. We pitch to donors, funders, politicians, partner orgs, volunteers. Grants, meanwhile, are basically just long pitches. We do a lot of pitching.

The most extreme manifestation of this idea of “pitching” are the “Shark Tank”-style funding opportunities where leaders go on stage to give short presentations about their organizations’ work to a live audience, after which, depending on how they do and how the “judges” and people watching their presentations react, they could walk away with one of several small grant prizes.

Like many philosophies and practices in our sector that we’ve accepted as normal, pitch-based funding opportunities can seem fine, fun, and helpful. Often, participants get mentorship and training on public speaking and obtain some experience. A colleague who participated in one of these competitions told me she got to know other participants and it was not at all competitive; people supported one another and everyone had a great time. These competitions can be done with a spirit of camaraderie and public awareness and not the cutthroat events they could potentially become. Plus, they are certainly more interesting for everyone than the traditional, tedious grantmaking process.

However, just because something CAN be done well doesn’t mean it SHOULD be done at all. After attending many of these pitch events, talking to folks who have gone through them, and weighing the pros and cons, I think they are more harmful than helpful to our sector and we should phase them out completely. Here are several reasons why:

They entrench existing power dynamics between funders/donors and nonprofits: Why is it always nonprofits that are pitching to funders and donors? Why is it never the other way around? Simple: Because one party has money, and in our society that means they by default get to call the shots. But is this what we want to reinforce? Why should people who have money have so much power, and the people who are actually doing the work of running programs and services have to jump through hoops? How can we become equal partners in this work if we keep reinforcing the asymmetric power differentials that are already pervasive everywhere else?

They’re inequitable, rewarding the organizations that can play the game best: Grant applications are usually inequitable because the organizations that can write the “best” proposals usually win, and they tend to be mainstream, white-led orgs. Pitch-based competitions have the same challenges: Those who win tend to be the best presenters, the most charismatic, and the ones with the missions that most tug at heart-strings. Participants from marginalized backgrounds, who may not be as fluent in English as others, or who may not have as much presentation skills, or whose missions are harder to explain or get people to care about, are often left behind. Also, who can participate as judges and audience members? Mostly well-off white people and others of privilege.

They perpetuate competitiveness among different interrelated missions: Sure, when done thoughtfully, they can be friendly competitions. But they are competitions nonetheless. There is already so much jostling in our sector for resources: grants, donations, media coverage, even talent. We need to do a much better job understanding that all our missions are interrelated and we should be supporting one another. Funders complain about nonprofits not collaborating enough, especially to work on systemic issues, and yet every day they force nonprofits to compete with one another through their funding processes, including these pitch competitions, which my colleague Mari Kim likens to Squid Game, but less interesting.

They turn the work of equity and justice into spectacles: A major reason so many of us were upset at the proposed show on CBS called “The Activist” is that it reduces critical causes into entertainment. These pitch-based competitions are basically just smaller, local versions of that show. There are already enough ingrained expectations in our sector that we manipulate our messaging to make our work emotionally resonant and easily digestible to people with money. We shouldn’t have to also simultaneously develop skills to entertain them too, as that only conditions people to pay attention to stuff that rouses their interests, not what would most be needed to build a just and equitable world (that stuff tends to be less entertaining).

They reinforce ignorance among the public: Oftentimes, the people “judging” the competitions as well as those in attendance may have never worked at nonprofits addressing these causes or had any first-hand experience in these issues at all. And yet they get the microphone and ask ridiculous questions or make comments that further the public’s misperceptions of nonprofits. One colleague told me she failed to get funding because one “judge,” a dude from the tech sector, asked how her mission was going to be self-sustaining (Most nonprofits will never be self-sustaining and it is a delusion to think they will ever be). Questions on sustainability, overhead, scaling, etc. betray a complete lack of understanding of how nonprofits actually run and reinforce harmful misinformation, making nonprofits’ work even more difficult.

They are time-consuming and distracting: These competitions require significant investment in time and energy. Meeting with mentors, practicing, rehearsals, etc. This competition hosted by Morgan Stanley for funding to address children’s mental health, for example, requires participants to attend six weeks of trainings on pitching and other stuff. The people working hard to ensure children have mental health support do not need training on public speaking or making pitches or whatever. They need money! That’s something we need funders and donors to understand: Stop wasting our time on nonsensical stuff and making us jump through flaming hoops for your entertainment or edification and just provide money.

They are insulting and patronizing: As one colleague put it regarding a competition in her community: “nonprofit staff are forced to perform for self-described ‘sharks,’ who regularly insult and belittle staff for failing to be sufficiently entrepreneurial. Be prepared to dance, monkey, dance.” If it’s not overtly insulting, it’s often patronizing. “If nonprofits develop their speaking and pitching skills, they can approach other funders; you know, teach someone to fish, etc.” This is a condescending attitude that is too prevalent among funders and donors. Do not create ridiculous and inequitable processes and think you’re doing nonprofits a favor by helping them develop skills in navigating the ridiculousness and inequity.

For these and other reasons, I’d like for us to move away from pitch-based competitions altogether. Let’s phase them out completely. I know there are counter-arguments we can make, but almost any and every benefit of pitch-based competitions (getting to know other nonprofits, exposing the public to important causes, developing presentation skills) can be done in other, better ways.

Let’s be more thoughtful and fund in more equitable ways. The whole concept of “pitching” is problematic and it goes way beyond these competitions. As colleague Yvonne Moore of Moore Philanthropy said during that Clubhouse discussion, and I paraphrase: “We [communities of color and other marginalized communities] are really good at pitches. People just don’t hear us.”

Hi everyone. Donor-Advised Funds (DAFs) is not the most riveting of topics, I will admit. Sometimes, when I have insomnia, I read about DAFs, and that usually does the trick, especially when combined with some melatonin. However, they are rapidly growing as a vehicle for charitable giving, have almost no regulations whatsoever, and are rife with inequity. So we all need to care about them.

It seems though that some colleagues are still confused by DAFs and what the problem is and so don’t want to tune in to this conversation. I’m going to explain it simply for those not familiar, so that you don’t fall asleep; apologies to colleagues who are more knowledgeable in this area than I am.

Imagine that you made millions of dollars selling naturally fermented pickle products. After buying yourself a yacht, you think “Huh, I should probably donate some money to charity. That will help people and also prevent me from paying so much in taxes, win-win.”

So you decide you will donate $1,500,000. But you don’t know very much about philanthropy, being a pickle tycoon and all. Luckily, there are organizations that can help you. “Hey, open a Donor-Advised Funds with us and put your $1.5M there,” says your local community foundation, “we’ll take a percentage of that as administrative fees and will help you find the most amazing nonprofits to give to!” You open a DAF of $1.5M. You get a tax break that year, yay! Things are going great so far!

But you’re still not sure which causes to give to. And there is no law that says you have to give out any of the money you put into a Donor-Advised Fund EVER. 10 years pass, and each year you give out a little bit of money because the community foundation encourages you to. You decide to dribble out a bit of that 1.5M each year to the private school your kids attend. You still pay the management fee to the foundation, but that’s OK since your original amount is actually growing because it’s being invested. Maybe, one day, you’ll find an amazing cause that resonates with you. Until then, your growing 1.5M is safely in the DAF; you can keep adding to it every year and reducing your tax burden each time.

Meanwhile, it turns out that you came from a wealthy family, which is how you were able to have the capital to start the pickle business in the first place. Your family has a private foundation. It’s been run by your sister Dilly, who gets a nice salary for managing it. It has an endowment of 100M, so by law it has to spend at least $5M out each year to meet the 5% payout rate in the US. But this year, for whatever reasons, it was only able to spend out 4M, including Dilly’s and other staff salary, along with other expenses the foundation incurs, such as the retreat where Kenny Loggins was hired to perform his classics (Yes, under current laws, Kenny Loggins’s performance fee can count toward the 5% payout rate, since it was for a foundation-related function). Dilly calls you up, freaking out for failing to meet the 5% legally required payout. “Chill, Dill,” you tell her, “it may seem jarring, but you’re not in a pickle; just park 1M in a DAF, and you’re good!”

While you and your family are trying to be philanthropic though, some mean, cranky people decided to spoil everyone’s fun. They are pushing something called the Accelerate Charitable Efforts (ACE) Act. This law would affect a few things, namely:

1. If you put money into a DAF this year, you can take a tax break this year, but you have to give it out to nonprofits within the next 15 years; or you can wait up to 50 years, but you can’t take a tax break until you actually give the money out. (If you start a DAF at a qualified community foundation, this proposed new policy won’t even apply to you unless your DAF is at least 1M.)

2. Private foundations can no longer count the money they park into DAFs as part of their 5% legally required payout rate. So that 1M you advised Dilly to put into a DAF would actually NOT be countable toward the 5%. She would have to find some other way to spend the 1M, hopefully by actually giving it out to nonprofits.

3. Family members’ salaries and travel expenses can no longer count toward that 5% payout rate. A family foundation can still hire a cousin or niece or whoever and pay them whatever it wants, it just can’t count it as part of that 5%. So the salary Dilly gets each year can’t count toward the 5%.

OK, I hope that helps paint a picture and makes it more concrete for colleagues who are not familiar with DAFs and private foundation payout rates, because right now a battle is brewing regarding the ACE Act, which is surprising and frustrating, considering how completely mild and common-sense it is. Seriously, if I were in charge, I would force DAFs to be spent out within 5 years; require foundations to double their payout rate; ensure that the only money foundations can count toward that rate is the money they give out (not what they spend on salary and operations); make it illegal for foundations to hire their own family members; and a whole bunch of other related stuff, like changing the tax code so that people don’t have that much money to hoard into DAFs in the first place.

So yes, even with this no-brainer set of policies, there is opposition. The organizations against it are coming up with all sorts of spurious arguments, which our colleague Al Cantor rips apart here. Arguments like DAF actually encourage people to give out more money, or have higher payout rates than foundation, or democratize philanthropy. They really don’t. Says Al, “Look at the Michigan report. Last year was the definitive rainy day for America. Not only did 35 percent of DAFs distribute nothing at all, but 57 percent of Michigan DAFs distributed less than 5 percent.”

A colleague told me he was in a meeting with a Senate staffer who was commenting on the level of opposition to this very moderate ACE Act he was encountering on the Hill from the philanthropic establishment and right-wing orgs. “It’s disgusting the lengths they’re going to defend spending nothing,” says the staff.

Here they are, the organizations in our sector that are opposing the ACE Act:

Council on Foundations (COF): The new strategic direction the Council is touting is all about how “awake” they are, seeking to build trust, relationships, equity, etc. So how about instead of blocking efforts like the ACE Act, they follow the lead of WA BIPOC ED Coalition, whose number one call is to double payout to 10%? Or Give Blck, which supports the initiative on which the ACE Act is based?

National Philanthropic Trust (NPT): NPT has been using all sorts of misleading and distorted information in defense of DAFs, as this article by Dan Petegorsky documents. “The ACE Act would actually mandate a minimum requirement that is far, far below the payout levels NPT says DAFs already meet. So why is NPT so defensive about it? Because even as NPT uses concocted payout rates to argue that money is readily flowing out to charity, their own figures show that, on average, 76 percent of DAF funds in fact remain warehoused.”

Philanthropy Roundtable (PR): Philanthropy Roundtable is a conservative organization vocally disdainful of Critical Race Theory and loudly proclaims that racial justice is irrelevant to philanthropy. It is no surprise that they would be opposed to anything that damper rich people’s ability to hoard money and spend it on what pet causes tickle their fancy.

United Way Worldwide. Why would a major charity oppose initiatives that would move more money to nonprofits? Probably the fear of alienating big donors. Sad, considering the important role United Way has played in our sector.

Community Foundation Public Awareness Initiative (CFPAI): I love community foundations, they do a lot of good work, but the ones who oppose this ACT sadden me. You are often more fervent opposers of DAF regulations than even for-profit DAF-holding institutions like Fidelity. Please remember that you represent the community, not just wealthy donors who might be annoyed that if this Act passes, they’ll only have FIFTEEN YEARS to spend out money they warehouse through you after taking a tax break.

While we have this unholy alliance above that wants to protect the inequitable status quo, I am glad and grateful for the leaders who are taking a stand IN SUPPORT OF ACE, including:

State nonprofit associations, such as CalNonprofits and Minnesota Council of Nonprofits: It is not easy publicly supporting legislation that might incur the wrath of philanthropy when you depend on philanthropy to continue your work. Here’s CalNonprofits’s letter supporting the ACE Act and reminding us that “nationwide more than $1 trillion sits in private foundations and $140 billion in DAFs, rather than being used to support working charities.” Here’s MCN: “It is critical we acknowledge the current system is broken, and it is predominately white, wealthy donors benefiting from the lack of regulation.”

Lots of foundations: While a whole bunch of foundations are misguided, many others are taking a stance in support of ACE. Here’s a coalition supporting the ACE Act, including Ford, Hewlett, Kellogg, and Kresge. Rural community foundations are also on board. Here’s Telluride Foundation in Colorado and Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky reminding everyone of the importance of “today’s dollars being used to confront today’s challenges.”

Global Citizen!: Yes, they’ve gotten a lot of flak for the fiasco that is The Activist. At the same time, cofounder Michael Sheldrick wrote this important piece, As Endowments Rise And Billionaires Gain Wealth, The World’s Poor See Little Relief. “Leaders in philanthropy should respond to the urgency of this moment by paying out more — not less — to fuel an equitable global recovery and committing to reforms that ensure inequality and wealth disparities are not allowed to continue unchecked indefinitely. To do so, they need to critically examine the use of DAFs, urge their peers to give more and to give more quickly, and ultimately begin a conversation to question the idea of perpetual philanthropy.”

Bill Schambra, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute: Bill and I don’t always agree on things, but we are in agreement that philanthropy needs to stop fighting these very mild reforms. In this NYT article, How Long Should It Take to Give Away Millions?, he says “DAFs are an enormous whirlpool sucking that money away from charities into accounts that are institutionally inclined to be reluctant to disburse money.” I can’t agree more.

The ACE Act, even with its common-sense proposals, will struggle to become law. Philanthropy has managed to derail every single effort to impose even the lightest of regulations. I am disappointed at those opposing the bill, and I hope they change their minds.

Because this is a test for philanthropy, to see if it could regulate itself, to see if it could change after decades being entrenched in its archaic and destructive practices. It is a test to see which national organizations and leaders will defend the status quo that allows rich, mostly white people to continue hoarding money while leaders of color continue begging and screaming for change as the walls of inequity close in on Black and brown, disabled, and other marginalized communities during one of the worst health and economic crises of our lifetimes. If philanthropy is looking for a chance to demonstrate that it is willing to change—as Kenny Loggins would say, this is it.