Category: Funder Relations

Are you or your org guilty of Trickle-Down Community Engagement?

Posted on by Vu

plants-906447_640pdIn Seattle, if you’re a person of color and you walk down a dark alley late at night and you feel like you’re being followed, it’s probably someone trying to do some community engagement: “Psst…hey buddy—Go Hawks!—you want to attend a summit? It’s about economic inequity. We need your voice.” “Daddy, I’m scared!” “Stay calm, Timmy; don’t look him in the eye.” “Come on, help a guy out! Here, you each get some compostable sticky dots to vote on our top three priorities! You can vote on different priorities, or, if you like, you put more than one dot on—” “Run, Timmy!”

This is why you should never take your kid down a dark alley in Seattle.

A while ago I was talking to a friend (another Executive Director, since all my regular friends have abandoned me because I make jokes about compostable sticky dots), and he said, “Have you noticed that everyone is getting paid to engage us communities of color except us communities of color?”

Sigh. Yes, I have noticed. I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and have come up with a term to describe it: Trickle-Down Community Engagement (TDCE). This is when we bypass the people who are most affected by issues, engage and fund larger organizations to tackle these issues, and hope that miraculously the people most affected will help out in the effort, usually for free. Continue reading “Are you or your org guilty of Trickle-Down Community Engagement?”

Yo mama is a double-dipper: Funders’ micromanaging of nonprofits must stop

Posted on by Vu

yo-mama-so-u1m9g5In the nonprofit sector, there are few things as grave as “double-dipping.” DD is a no-good, very bad thing. In fact, I imagine if we had a nonprofit trash-talking contest, it would go like this:

Nonprofiteer 1: #yononprofitmama so inconsiderate, she attends a meeting and doesn’t sign in.

Audience: Oh! Burn!

Nonprofiteer 2: Oh yeah? Well, #yononprofitmama so inexperienced in finance, she doesn’t know the difference between a fiscal year and a calendar year.

Audience: Oh no! You didn’t just say that about his mother!

Nonprofiteer 1: #yononprofitmama so unethical, she asked a funder or donor to pay for something that is already paid for by another funder or donor, thus, she is therefore double-dipping.

Audience: (Stunned silence) Continue reading “Yo mama is a double-dipper: Funders’ micromanaging of nonprofits must stop”

Ten resolutions for the nonprofit sector for 2015

Posted on by Vu

australia-699228_640pdEvery New Year, many of us make resolutions to do things to improve ourselves. Of course, many of us skip doing this, because we are perfect. In fact, in some cultures, beer bellies and love handles are considered attractive, so if people have issues with them, then they’re obviously culturally incompetent and should attend a workshop.

As 2015 starts, it is important for us not to just make resolutions for ourselves, but also for our organizations, and for our field. We, as individuals and as a sector, are constantly busy doing stuff that we often don’t take enough time to gaze into the distance and think strategically. As I write this, I recall some profound words from one of my mentors when we were having lunch a while ago: “I always choose the curried chicken.” Wait, no, that’s not it. She said, “Are you spending enough time on the balcony versus the dance floor?” We are always dancing. We nonprofit professionals need to get on the balcony more often.

So let’s start 2015 off right and make it the most awesome year ever! With the help of the NWB Facebook community, I’m recapping a list of resolutions that I am hoping all of us will seriously adopt sector-wide: Continue reading “Ten resolutions for the nonprofit sector for 2015”

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

Posted on by Vu

fish-959636_640pdA 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.

Continue reading “Can we all just admit there is no such thing as nonprofit sustainability?”

The Equity of Risk and Failure

Posted on by Vu

equityHi everyone. It’s Thanksgiving this week, and I usually spend a post listing things for which I am thankful—a meaningful job, awesome colleagues, loving family, The Walking Dead, etc.—but something has been weighing on my mind. Equity. It’s like coconut water; everyone’s drinking it lately (See “Is Equity the new coconut water?”). Diversity, inclusion, and cultural competency meanwhile are like hummus: you can’t attend a meeting without at least one clear plastic container of it.

The problem with Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

Here’s the thing: The people of color that I’ve been talking to are getting kind of sick of these terms. We love them, but the dissonance between their usage and actual practice is like getting poked in the eye on a daily basis. Case in point, at panel I was on recently a colleague of color told me that someone contacted her, saying, “Can you help us spread the word about this new job position? We want to diversify our pool of candidates.”

My friend said, “I wanted to ask, Are you trying to just diversify your POOL of candidate, or ACTUAL hires?” We both sighed; thankfully, the wine was plentiful that evening. Continue reading “The Equity of Risk and Failure”