ED Life

Can we all just admit there is no such thing as nonprofit sustainability?

Posted on December 8, 2014 by Vu

A few weeks ago I called up a program officer of a foundation to discuss my organization’s amazing idea to bring more immigrant and refugee leaders into the nonprofit field. “That’s a great idea,” said the program officer, “but what’s your sustainability plan? We don’t tend to support projects unless we know they will be financially independent in the future.”

“Well,” I said, “I have a great plan for that. Have you heard of teeth tattoo? No? You will! Dental adornment is going to be the latest thing, believe you me. Think about it: the Seahawks logo on your incisors! We will open a teeth tattoo parlor, and it will generate literally billions of dollars, enough to fund the project forever. But we need seed money. So how about 50K from you all?”

All right, I didn’t say that. I waffled something that sounded intelligent—“We are building up our base of individual donors, establishing relationships with local businesses, and using the Synergistic Paradigm Action Matrix in order to find the nexus between our strategies and adaptive advantage”—like a good grantseeker is trained to do. We talked some more. Then I hung up and unwrapped a bar of dark chocolate and ate it, both me and the chocolate 72% bitter.

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Dear business community, stop thinking you are better than us nonprofit folks

Posted on November 10, 2014 by Vu

My friends from the business community. I love you guys. Without you, the world wouldn’t have smart phones. And 70% dark chocolate. And airplanes. And a bunch of medicines and technology that save lives. And clothing. And running water inside our houses. And these giant flat-panel TVs that display all my favorite shows from Netflix. And kitchen gadgets like the Veggetti; it slices zucchinis and carrots into long strands and is really fun to use, despite the slightly dirty sounding name. Ooh, and restaurants serving organic kale salads with little toasted pumpkin seeds. Businesses are awesome, and I am genuinely grateful what you all do for the world. We nonprofits love you all. So I want to make sure you know this letter is from a place of appreciation and fraternity.

But seriously, many of you need to check your superiority complex. It’s annoying as hell.

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Scary nonprofit ghost stories: The Honey Badger’s Paw

Posted on October 13, 2014 by Vu

Halloween is coming up, arguably one of the best holidays ever. There is so much that I love about Halloween. The decorations. The smell of apple cider and pumpkin spices. The license to stuff our faces with candy. The fake body parts carved out of homemade seitan, dyed to look bloody, which we then go around eating all night as part of our zombie costume. (What, like you’ve never eaten a bloody fake hand stump that you made out of wheat gluten, cornstarch, and red dye).

However, Halloween has gotten less scary and more…sexy. So I say we bring back the tradition of telling scary stories. Gather your coworkers into your conference room, turn out the light, turn on a candle app, and prepare to be chilled by the tale of the “The Honey Badger’s Paw”:Continue reading →

The joys and burdens of being an ED of color

Posted on September 2, 2014 by Vu

Last week I flew to Los Angeles to talk to a group of 12 or so Asian/Pacific Islander EDs who are in a leadership program of which I am an alum. This cohort was a group of all women. I was a bit nervous, looking at the leaders seated in a circle. First of all, there were some EDs who have had way more experience than I do. And second of all, people in LA are hella stylish, and in comparison, I looked like I was dressed by a few smarter-than-average bonobos.

The EDs came from all over the US and work in many different areas—art, cancer awareness, education, etc. They had the archetypal look of the Executive Director: Radiant good looks surrounded by an aura of power stymied by baggy eyes, greying hair, and the slouched shoulders of stress and exhaustion.

It’s rough being an ED, but being an ED of color has an additional set of stress:Continue reading →

The Frustration with Innovation: Bright Shiny Object Syndrome and its effect on the nonprofit sector

Posted on August 18, 2014 by Vu

One of the great things about our sector is how innovative it is. There are smart, talented, socially-conscious people—nonprofit staff, funders, researchers, boards, donors, volunteers. We come up with amazing ideas all the time. In the past few years we’ve had 40 Developmental Assets, and 21^st Century Skills. We’ve had evidence-based practice and practice-based evidence. We have strategic planning, then strategic thinking. We have Collective Impact and Youth Program Quality Initiative. We have STEM. We have online learning. Some trends, like the importance of parental engagement in students’ academic performance, die and then resurface. I call them “Zombie Trends.” Now the latest trend is “We need to send more nonprofit staff to Hawaii so they can relax and recharge!”

All right, fine, that last one may not be an actual trend, though maybe it should be.

Lately, however, I’ve been encountering among my peers more and more frustration with funders’ seeming obsession with innovation. An ED friend called it the Bright Shiny Object Syndrome (BSOS), this apparent inclination to drop everything and zoom in on the newest, sexiest concept to support, with sometimes negative consequences. The focus on early learning, for example, while important, has affected funding for youth programs, and the shift to collective impact has not always been positive (see “Collective Impact: Resistance is futile“).Continue reading →