Nonprofit AF

Exploring the fun and frustrations of nonprofit work

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Stop saying that 80% of nonprofit funding comes from individual donors. It’s misleading.

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[Image description: A grey striped cap, lying on red velvet, wearing a tiny red and golden crown, covered in Canadian dollar bills of different denominations. They are wearing a necklace with a gold dollar sign pendant. They are looking to the left, surrounded by an aural of feline regality. Image by Allange on Pixabay]

Hi everyone. Quick reminder: Please get flu shots for you and your family, if you are able to. Hospitals and healthcare workers are overwhelmed by COVID, so in addition to getting your COVID shots, get your flu shot. And then buy yourself a new house plant or some chocolate as a reward.

Every time I criticize foundations, someone steps in with “well, 80% of philanthropic dollars come from individual donors.” Usually it is a well-meaning statement, designed to give hope to those of us who are frustrated with foundations and their various archaic and ridiculous practices. And taken as a whole, it may be true. This report, for example, shows that in 2019, 69% of giving comes from individuals, 10% from bequests, 17% from foundations, and 5% from corporations.

If 17% of our revenues come from foundations and 5% from corporations, why should we spend so much time and energy bashing our heads against the walls, screaming in anguish at the foundations and corporations that require quarterly reports, make us use their own budget templates, or, worst of all, force us to remove Oxford Commas to stay within character limits? If they account for only a fraction of total philanthropic dollars, maybe we’re wasting time trying to get foundations and corporations to change and should focus more time rallying individual donors?

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DAFs: What They Are, Which Misguided Orgs Oppose Mild Legislations on Them, and Why You Should Care

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[Image description: An adorable black-footed ferret, standing upright in the snow, looking at the camera. They have a cream-colored coat, brown legs with black feet, small round ears, and dark, liquid eyes that steal your heart. No, this ferret has nothing to do with DAFs. Image by Rohan Chang on Unsplash.]

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.”

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10 shows about nonprofit and philanthropy that would be way better than “The Activist”

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[Image description: A white long-haired puppy facing away from the camera, staring at a TV monitor in the distance. Image by sq lim on unsplash.com]

By now you’ve probably heard about the new show to debut on CBS called “The Activist,” in which six activists compete for funding and attention for their causes, success measured by social media engagement and the input of celebrity mentors Usher, Priyanka Chopra, and Julianne Hough.

Of course, everyone is rightly up in arms. There are so many things wrong with this concept. Forcing activists to compete against one another in a Hunger Games for the crumbs thrown out by the wealthy. Measuring success through social media engagement. Having celebrities who know little to nothing about these issues judging activists with years of experience. And doing it all as entertainment:

“Maria, your TikTok video about rising poverty and deaths in the Global South caused by climate change was informative, but garnered the lowest number of likes. One viewer commented: ‘The video made me sad. I wanted to see something more fun and hopeful, with maybe some dancing while gesturing at statistics.’ Unfortunately, we have to eliminate you from the competition. But you won’t leave empty-handed. One of our sponsors has generously decided to donate 500 pairs of shoes to your organization to give to villagers fleeing their flood-ravaged homes!”

#CancelTheActivist is the hashtag someone started. Let’s get mobilizing.

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Vaccine Mandates are Legal and Effective. It’s Time for Nonprofits and Foundations to Implement Them.

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[Image description: A patient lying in an inclined hospital bed, their wrist hooked up to various tubes. Hospital beds are running out. Image by Parentingupstream on Pixabay.]

Back in June, as COVID numbers decreased, like many of you I was excited about the prospect of getting back to some semblance of life before the pandemic. Since then, the significantly more contagious Delta variant surged, making up over 80% of all COVID cases. Now, ICU units are filled up, people are dying at high numbers, more children are getting infected, oxygen is running low, and death rates for non-COVID reasons are increasing due to shortage of healthcare workers and hospital beds. As children get back into school, it’s likely the numbers will worsen even further. It will be a brutal fall and winter.

All of this is scary, and if you’re overwhelmed, you’re not alone. I watched as my kids, eight and five, masked, line up and walk into their classrooms behind their masked teachers. I try not to recall news stories of schools shutting down for quarantine their first week, and children fighting for their lives in ICUs.

When situations are serious and overwhelming, we need to figure out what we can control and take actions. This is what we in this sector do around myriad societal issues. One thing we can and must do now is implement vaccine mandates at our workplaces. And we need to do it immediately.

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What does it look like to radically reinvent leadership?

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[Image description: A small figure of a mountaineer, standing on a peak, holding a stick and carrying a backpack, surveying the snow-covered land. The sky is a clear hazy purple. Image by Noel Bauza on Pixabay]

A couple of years ago, I stepped down from my position as executive director of RVC, a capacity building and leadership organization serving communities of color in Seattle. I helped found it after realizing that leaders of color are not being supported in our sector, organizations led by communities of color continue being screwed over by funding and other dynamics, and that even the stuff designed to help them—like capacity building—is often useless, if not harmful. RVC went from a budget of $180,000 to over 3M, Managing Director Ananda Valenzuela became Interim ED, and I left to tend to other things, stopping by the office occasionally to get free snacks and merch (a lifetime perk of being a founder).

After a couple of years of learning amidst the pandemic, RVC announced its new leadership structure. It is exciting and will probably blow some minds. Instead of the traditional path of finding someone to replace me as ED, and heck, instead of even a co-ED structure like Ananda and I were engaged in (with me being the external leader and Ananda the internal leader), RVC decided to have FOUR CO-EXECUTIVE-DIRECTORS–Chris Rhodes, Anbar Mahar Sheikh, JoJo Gaon, and Roshni Sampath! Each director will take charge of a specific area of executive leadership duties, while also engaged in the critical work they had been doing before.

If you shook your head in disbelief at such a structure, no one will blame you. A few years ago, I was talking to a colleague about co-directorships, and he winced a bit. “Co-directorships tend to fail,” he said, “there’s role confusion, interpersonal dynamics, weird board issues, and so on.” He was talking about co-directorships of two people. What he said may be true, especially in the past when the idea was novel, but we now have lots of examples and case studies of successful orgs embracing this model, including CompassPoint, Building Movement Project, and of course, RVC. The chance to explore even further, to shake things up even more, should be encouraged and supported. How else will our sector grow and evolve?

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