Nonprofit AF

Exploring the fun and frustrations of nonprofit work

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A bootcamp for clueless businesspeople who want to involve themselves in nonprofit!

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[Image description: About a dozen people, mostly adults, sitting around a roaring campfire in the dark, surrounded by the silhouettes of trees. One person is holding a guitar. A couple of people are holding books or notebooks. Image by Laura_O on Pixabay]

Hi everyone. Today, a colleague sent me this text: “There’s a CEO of a family foundation who is adamantly against giving unrestricted funding. Do you have a blog post in particular you think would be good for me to send him? He’s a middle-aged white man who has never worked for a nonprofit in his life.” I sent over a couple of posts, including The ethical argument for general operating funds and “How the focus on overhead disenfranchises communities of color and fans the flames of injustice.” There’s lots written on this topic.

Heck, there’s been tons of stuff written about all sorts of topics. But we continue to see colleagues from the for-profit sector come into this sector as donors, funders, volunteers, and board members and have no clue about how things are yet are still adamant they know what’s best for the nonprofits they’re supporting. Worse, like the clueless CEO dude above, they often hold a lot of power.

So, what we need may be fewer articles and webinars, and instead, a week-long immersive overnight boot camp designed to help prepare our friends from other sectors so they can viscerally understand what it’s like for nonprofit professionals. And luckily, because I procrastinated on working on my book today, I already planned out a sample schedule for this boot camp!

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Beyond the snowflake report: A case against financial and outcomes accounting tailored to individual donors and funders

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[Image description: A closeup of a beautiful and intricate snowflake, clear in color, perching on some ice crystals. Image by Aaron Burden on Unsplash]

For decades, our sector has had this refrain: “Donors and funders deserve transparency. They have a right to know how nonprofits spend their donations and the outcomes they achieved.” Many of us agree with this, including me. Yes, nonprofits should be transparent. They need to report their revenues, expenses, program activities, and the results of their work. And most nonprofits do, as required by law. In the US nonprofits are legally required to file 990 tax forms each year. Most orgs release annual reports. Throughout the year they also let people know what they’ve been up to, using newsletters and other forms of communication.

The challenge is that for some reason the above level of transparency is not enough, and we’ve all convinced ourselves that not only do donors and funders deserve to know specifically how the dollars they contributed were spent and what outcomes could be personally attributed to them, but also that this somehow makes sense.

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Foundations, please get over the urban myth of “tipping”

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Hi everyone, before we get started, it’s been five years since Unicorns Unite: How Nonprofits and Foundations Can Build EPIC Partnerships, a book I wrote with co-authors Jessamyn Shams-Lau and Jane Leu, was released. Here’s a free webinar taking place on February 14th at 10am PT to discuss what we’ve learned since then. Auto-captions will be enabled. Also, please use promo code UNI50 here to get 50% off your copy of the book.  

Today, we talk about an issue that many of us probably had no idea existed, but one that is very annoying to those affected, and it perpetuates inequity. The concept of “tipping.” This is basically the idea that if a foundation gives a nonprofit “too much” funding, it would “tip” that nonprofit into becoming a foundation itself, which would then open a hole in the fabric of spacetime and an ancient evil would breach our dimension to rain chaos and destruction and there would be fire and brimstone and terrible wifi.

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Inflation is killing nonprofits. Funders, you need to supplement your grants immediately.

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[Image a green frog with an inflated vocal sac, standing on a leaf. Image by David Cole on Unsplash]

Hi everyone. We are rapidly approaching the summer, which means it’s time for the annual Party to Enhance Equity in Philanthropy (PEEP), a series of events across the sector where funders and nonprofit folks get together, virtually or in-person (ideally outdoors), to break down the weird power dynamics we have, and just learn to see one another as human beings. It should be fun and informal, and usually taking place on the week of Summer Solstice (June 21st this year). If you are planning to host an event, please fill out this form by June 10th so I can help spread the word.

While we are on the topic of the relationship between funders and nonprofit leaders, we need to talk about inflation, how it’s been affecting nonprofits, and what we need from funders. It’s really bad, the highest inflation rate in 40 years, and will likely stay bad or even get worse for a while. There are people more knowledgeable than I am who have written about this topic. This article (“Nonprofits and Foundations Need to Be Prepared for the Effects of Inflation on Services, Operations, and Endowments”), brings up several good points:

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9 crappy paradoxes that shape nonprofit and philanthropy

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[Image description: A golden retriever puppy, lying on the ground, their paws on the sides of their faces, looking sad and adorable. Image by birgl on pixabay.com]

Hi everyone, quick announcement: Please put August 10th at 12:00pm Pacific Time on your calendar for Community-Centric Fundraising’s first town hall meeting. Sign up here and we’ll send you the zoom link. Until then, the (CCF) Hub is designed to provide alternatives to our default white-centric fundraising narratives. It features about three new thought-provoking pieces of content each week, including “How prospect research can help nonprofits become less racist and more inclusive,” “What I Learned from Losing Two Jobs in the Fight for Racial Equity,” “‘You want a director of what now?!’ When orgs that are hiring are too lazy to know what they want,” and the first episode of the Ethical Rainmaker podcast, where CCF Co-Chair Michelle Muri and I talk about fundraising and equity. Check it out!

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I’ve been spending a lot of time flossing while thinking of how to categorize the challenges in our sector (What, like your quarantine activities are so much more interesting). Many of the stuff we deal with falls under the category of “well-meaning people inadvertently making nonprofits’ jobs harder.” Here are a nine. I’m going to call them paradoxes, though some of these are not paradoxes exactly, but are more like dilemmas, conundrums, or shenanigans. I’ve written about a few of them, but they keep coming up and remain a problem, so it’s good for us to review and have common language to push back. If we want our sector to succeed, we need to be aware of these paradoxes and control for them.

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