***Vu’s new book, Reimagining Nonprofits and Philanthropy: Unlocking the Full Potential of a Vital and Complex Sector, comes out October 14th. Pre-order your copy***
Hi everyone, I’m on a plane heading to Tokyo. It’s been several hours and I’m tired and grumpy and hallucinating a little, which might affect the tone of this piece. Last week, I had a speaking engagement in Canada. While I was there, the president of the US abruptly left the G7 summit. Apparently to start World War 3 until his boss, Putin, told him to back off.
Before my speech, I was making conversation with a colleague at my table, who brought up a problem she sees with our sector: The term “nonprofit.” This is a common discussion we have from time to time over the years. Why define our sector by something that it’s “not”? It’s so confusing and leads to people thinking things like nonprofits can’t generate income.
Let’s talk about Turning Point USA, an organization founded by right-wing pundit Charlie Kirk. Its mission is to advance conservative politics across college and university campuses, radicalizing students to be more and more right-wing. It’s been so effective that it’s now also working to brainwash high school students.
I bring this up because I can’t imagine the leaders of Turning Point USA, which is also a nonprofit, giving a rat’s ass what this sector calls itself. TPUSA has been raising money. A lot of money. In 2019, its revenues were $28.9 million, and in 2021 it was $55.8 million.
Nonprofits advancing white nationalism and white supremacy don’t care that they’re called nonprofits; they don’t spend any time debating the name of the sector. Their 501c3 status is just that, a formality, a tool they use to advance their (horrifying) agendas.
This is one of the reasons why conservative movements and organizations have been so successful. They don’t waste time or energy on discussions that don’t ultimately serve their goals. If progressive leaders, organizations, and movements want to be as effective, then we need to stop being distracted by rehashed conversations and arguments and just accept some brutally honest answers and move on. Here are some of them:
1.“How do we improve grant processes?”: Every nonprofit should just have one application package, and every funder should get over themselves and just accept it instead of expecting their own snowflake grant application.
2.“Should nonprofits be more like businesses?” Capitalism causes many, if not all, of the problems we’re trying to address, and most for-profits fail within a few years anyway. So no, let’s stop emulating for-profits.
3.“Maybe more nonprofits should engage in social enterprises or turn into B-Corps?”: Progressive movements and leaders need funding the way Turning Point USA and other conservative nonprofits are funded (with millions of dependable dollars), and it won’t come from forming social enterprises or B-Corps.
4.“Should funders increase payout rates now, or exist in perpetuity in order to address problems in the future?” Increase your payout now. Seriously, we’re on the verge of World War 3, and even if that doesn’t happen, fascism is spreading like wildfire across the world. If you’re even thinking about perpetuity at this moment, you’re in a bubble of privilege-scented delusion.
5.“Is Impact Investing the future of philanthropy?” It’s still capitalism-based philanthropy but with better branding, and it can distract people from the root causes of the problems these impact investments are trying to address.
6.“How do we tell better stories to engage donors?” We don’t. Donors need to grow the hell up and stop expecting to be fed palatable narratives about injustice before they’re motivated to do something about it. Fundraisers need to help donors evolve their thinking instead of constantly conforming to their preferences and whims.
7.“How do we attract young people to the sector?” Young people are exhausted from being underpaid and ignored. Pay them more and listen to their ideas, and some of us older people need to step down from leadership to create space. Do those things instead of having conversations about it.
8.“How can we funders help nonprofits be more resilient during these difficult times?” Increase your payout rates, fund nonprofits more, make your grants unrestricted, and commit to 10 or 20 years of support. The end. Move on.
9.“Do keep funding the same organizations, or fund more organizations but with smaller grants?” How about funders stop hoarding funds so you can support organizations doing vital work with 20-year grants, the way conservative funders have been doing? Stop thinking you have way less money, when 1.5Trillion dollars are just sitting there while the world burns.
10.“What do we do to diversify boards?” Most boards are archaic, dysfunctional, and white as hell. Why would people from marginalized communities want to join. Boards need to change their structures and practices to be less white and corporate, and boards need to get rid of the white moderate deadwood board members.
11.“What are the right metrics and outcomes we need to measure?” While the left spends years formulating theories of change, logic models, KPIs, and so on, right-wing leaders and movements just make shit up and go on the offensive, learning and revising their theories as they go. And we see who’s been more effective.
12.“How can we be more innovative as a sector?” You know what would be innovative? If we stop focusing on being “innovative” and start focusing on what works. And what works is what the right-wing has been doing for decades.
13.“How do we funders listen to our grantees more?” We’re sick and tired of your listening tours. Just implement the ideas we gave you decades ago. Increase your payout rates. Give multi-year general operating funds. Fund advocacy and organizing. Fund political work. Stop “listening” and start doing!
14.”How do we diversify our revenues?”/”How do we help our grantees diversify their revenues?” Again, do conservatives funders worry about whether their grantees are relying too much on too few sources? Probably not to the same patronizing degree that progressive-leaning funders do. They just care about their effectiveness, and fund them whatever it takes, and ask other funders to join in.
15.“But seriously, Vu, I just don’t like that we call our sector ‘nonprofit.’ It’s so limiting!” Fine, call it community benefits sector, or for-impact sector, or social sector, or Ross (Dress for Less) And Hummus (RAH) sector, I don’t care. Just decide quickly so you can focus on fighting fascism and injustice.
As loathe as I am to keep bringing up how effective the right-wing has been, we can’t ignore that they have been running circles around the left, and a major reason is because many on the progressive side keep having the same pointless conversations and ignoring the obvious answers. It’s like one group of people is bent on setting fires to every house in the neighborhood, and the group that wants to put a stop to it is huddled in a corner, still engaged in a 30-year-long debate on whether it should call itself the “Bucket Brigade” or the “NonArson League” and whether it should stick to using 5% of its reserve of water or maybe increase it a little.
Enough is enough. Let’s get over these red herring conversations and focus on what matters, which is to whatever it takes to put out the fire of fascism before it consumes us all.
Let me know in the comments what other pointless discussions we need to stop having.
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