Nonprofit AF

Dear Funders: Your Endowments Will Be Worthless in a Fascist State

Posted on February 18, 2025February 18, 2025 by Vu

[Image description: Books in flames. Image by Movidagrafica on Pixabay]

Hi everyone, this post will be disorganized and will possibly piss off some people. The kids didn’t have school today, so I spent time hanging out with them and didn’t have much time to work on this. The proverb about parenting and how “the days are long but the years are short” is terrifyingly accurate. It feels like yesterday I was bathing them in the bathroom sink; and now they are sassy as hell:

“Daddy, tell us stories about how poor you were as a kid, like about how you got one salted plum each week as a treat because your parents couldn’t afford candy!”

“Yes, and about how you didn’t have real toys and had to make tiny boats out of banana leaves!”

With the horror happening all around us all the time, I find comfort in my kids. Children are a good reminder of why we do this work, and why we can’t give up, even when the tides seem insurmountable, as they often feel right now. I love their imagination, which is filled with hope and optimism, balanced by occasions when relatively minor events can suddenly become catastrophic, like the time my then-three-year-old thought the world was ending because he left behind a cool stick he found when we visited a park. (I went back to get it later).

Ask Vu: Love, Dating, and Romance Advice for Nonprofit Professionals, part 2

Posted on February 10, 2025February 10, 2025 by Vu

[Image description: Two swans in the water, embracing. Image by Moonzigg on Pixabay]

Hi everyone. Valentine’s Day (aka Single Awareness Day) is coming up this week, which means romance may be on many people’s minds. In this week’s post, I am giving advice to colleagues on their dating and relationship dilemmas. I don’t know anything about this stuff, but I’m sure it’s exactly like nonprofit and philanthropy. Make sure you check out Part 1.

Dear Vu: I’ve been involved with someone for a few months now, but it’s clear we’re not compatible. I’ve been hinting to them that I’m going to focus more time on my work and family, but they keep sending texts and calling and inviting me to hang out all the time. What should I do? Definitely Over, Not Engaging

Dear DONE: In trying to spare their feelings, you have not been clear in your communications. It is much kinder in the long run to be direct and honest, so schedule a one-on-one meeting with this person with a witness present. Let them know that your state is a romantic at-will state and that you are terminating the relationship without cause. Offer an emotional severance package. Depending on how long they were with you, this could be a few weeks or months of communication and exchanging funny memes by text. Ask if they would be amenable to an exit interview. Before you do all this though, inform the rest of your partners so they are in the loop. I hope that helps. Good luck.

Funders, stop bringing spreadsheets to knife fights!

Posted on February 4, 2025February 4, 2025 by Vu

[Image description: A hand holding a serrated knife, seeming ready for a fight. Image by Paul Volostnov on Unsplash]

A few weeks ago, which now feels like an eternity ago, Inside Philanthropy gave me the award for Philanthropy Critic of the Year, saying “Through his blog Nonprofit AF, he’s long advanced a critique of funders that is irreverent, hard hitting[,] and often cuttingly funny.” It’s nice to be recognized for my ramblings, even if IP didn’t even use the Oxford Comma in the recognition, which is rather hurtful.

Among the other awardees are two that stood out to me:

Highest Return on Investment: Donating to the Heritage Foundation: “We’ve long argued that public policy grantmaking offers the greatest leverage for funders. Exhibit A is Heritage’s long record of outsized influence, which is set to hit a new peak in a second Trump administration with Project 2025 or its equivalent.”

No Kidding Award: The Generosity Commission: “Debuted with much fanfare in 2021, the blue-ribbon commission set out to study the decline in ‘everyday’ donors and found that, well, yes, small-donor giving is down. There’s more in the commission’s hefty report, but was it worth all the rigamarole?”

While it irks me that the Heritage Foundation gets lauded and platformed, there is no denying how horrifyingly effective this funder has been. What we are seeing now with the destruction of democracy and the rise of fascism can be greatly attributed to the work of the Heritage Foundation and aligned right-wing funders. And it will only get worse, as we will find out when Project 2025, which we failed to stop, gets implemented in full and erodes our rights over the coming years, if not weeks.

Amidst cruelty and chaos, a world that’s on her way

Posted on January 28, 2025January 28, 2025 by Vu

[Image description: Fingers holding a copper ring shaped like an ouroboros, a snake devouring its own tail. Image by Coppertist Wu on Unsplash]

Happy New Year, everyone. This week, starting January 29^th, marks the beginning of the Lunar New Year. This is the year of the Wood Snake. Here’s a great visual guide on what that means and what your fortune for 2025 will be, according to your own zodiac sign.

Since it is the Year of the Wood Snake, I think about the significance of this animal. The snake is often associated with evil, cunning trickery, and ruthlessness: hypnotizing people, envenomating them, persuading the naive into…eating fruit, and so on.

But in some cultures, they can be symbols of good fortune, fertility, transformation, and renewal. The Egyptian icon the ouroboros, for example, depicts a snake eating its own tail, symbolizing the eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth. Snakes often shed their skin, leaving them behind.

I’m thinking about all this because like most of you, I’ve aged an entire year since last week, thanks to the breathtaking onslaught of racism, transphobia, ignorance, and general cruelty coming from those who are now in charge, led by an adjudicated rapist and conman, flanked by Nazis.

“Raise the chainsaw” and other tips to inject more masculine energy into nonprofit and philanthropy!

Posted on January 20, 2025January 21, 2025 by Vu

[Profile of a rooster with bright red comb and wattle (the fleshy part that dangles under its beak is called a wattle. Don’t say you never learn anything useful from this site!), his beak open. A majestic, masculine bird. Image by Leuchtpunkt on pixabay]

Recently, Mark Zuckerberg said that “feminine energy” has been “neutering” companies, and what they need is more masculine energy! He is on to something; society’s focus on woke/feminine values like “equity” and “respect” and “personal hygiene” have turned us all soft and ineffective. Luckily, there has been a recent general resurgence of manliness, seen for example in alpha bros cutting short their long eyelashes because manly men do not have heart-stoppingly dreamy come-hither looks.

With all that in mind, I’ve come up with a list of things we can implement to make our sector more masculine: