Hi everyone, I spent all day frolicking under some cherry blossom trees while it was sunny in Seattle, and then going to a nursery to buy some cherry blossom trees, and then contacting the City to initiate the process to get the permit to plant them in front of my house. Planting ornamental trees is an optimistic gesture, and a declaration of defiance and resistance.
But all that to say, I didn’t spend much time on this blog post, so if you were hoping for something that’s “profound” or “makes sense” or “is edited” this week, please temper your expectations.
A while ago, maybe like 15 years, I had a meeting with this one corporate sponsor who, over lunch, told me that his company didn’t like paying for overhead, so I shouldn’t put staff wages or other indirect costs in the grant application to his company. I was so annoyed that I stuffed my face with mango salad to avoid berating this man for his company’s ignorant and toxic stance on overhead.
I went on this blog and complained about how funders and donors expect nonprofit professionals to be like elves or unicorns, magical beings who can operate with few resources. We don’t need pay, or decent chairs, or healthcare, we’re sparkling unicorns!
Anyway, that kind of took off, and for the next several years, the unicorn became kind of an unofficial mascot for the sector. I co-wrote a book called Unicorns Unite: How Nonprofits and Foundations Can Build EPIC Partnerships. I’d get random unicorn-themed gifts, including the stuffed unicorn mascot of Squatty Potty. At a few keynotes, colleagues would wear light-up unicorn horns.
The unicorn is great. Majestic. Magical. Pure of heart. It reflects a lot of our sector and people in it. What’s not to like.
However, there are downsides to this symbol. Unicorns are not real; they exist only in fantasies. And being “pure of heart” and “magical” means funders, donors, and the public have unrealistic expectations on the sector all the time. For example, there’s the pervasive idea that nonprofit professionals shouldn’t be paid well; after all, we should be helping people out of the goodness of our hearts. And there’s also the sector’s propensity for being nice and deferential and conflict-avoidant, even to people and entities who are assholes, the way a sweet and gentle pony would behave.
Well, it may be time to say goodbye to the unicorn and adopt a different symbol. I am nominating the platypus. Think about it, the platypus is the perfect representation for nonprofits and what we need to be right now:
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