Nonprofit AF

Amidst the rise of fascism, we need to stop catering to donors’ passions and preferences

Posted on March 24, 2025March 25, 2025 by Vu

[Image description: A happy-looking fluffy, kind of light pink poodle. Image by petfoto on Pixabay]

Hi everyone, happy Spring in the Northern Hemisphere. This post may be short and incoherent, because I’m supposed to be wrapping up the manuscript of my book and sending it to my editor at Wiley. Due to the collapse of democracy and the rise of fascism, it must be changed a bit, including the title, which right now stands at “Burn It All Down and Rise from the Ashes: A Guide for Transforming the Nonprofit and Philanthropy Sector into a Badass Phoenix of Equity and Justice!” But I’m sure the publisher will demand a more boring and “marketable” title.

A few weeks ago, as the federal government launched the first phase of its war on DEI and on the nonprofit sector, I was on LinkedIn perusing the comments while eating a container of Ben and Jerry’s “Cherry Garcia” non-dairy ice cream, when one of those annoying AI questions popped up, where apparently, I was one of the experts invited to answer a question. The question was “You’re seeking to engage new major donors. How can you tailor your fundraising strategy to their preferences?”

72 answers were given by various fundraising experts, most of them advising nonprofits to cater to donors by doing things like:

“personalize outreach with stories and opportunities to align with their passions,”
“research their philanthropic interests and past giving patterns” so you can adjust your interactions, and
“invite them to private events or behind-the-scenes tours to show how your cause aligns with their values.”

Only one person pushed back against the idea that nonprofits should “tailor” their strategies for donors or funders.

Script for Lord of the Rings, if it were set in nonprofit and philanthropy

Posted on March 17, 2025March 18, 2025 by Vu

[Image description: A house built from a hill, with a round door, covered in plants, including a tree growing out of it. There’s a sign on the fence that says “No admittance except on party business.” This is a scene from Hobbiton, a set built for the Lord of the Rings movies. Image by Thandy Yung on Unsplash]

Hey everyone, hope you’re hanging in there. I’ve been watching my favorite movies as a break from the horrors of the real world. Some are very inspiring. Lord of the Rings, for example, has lots of parallels to our world, including an all-consuming evil and band of heroes trying to save the world. Which, of course, makes me think about what if LOTR were set in our sector. Below is the sample script. Let me know what you think.

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SCENE 1: RIVENDELL

GANDALF: Despite our best efforts, Sauron has awoken. We have never faced such a threat. As we speak, his forces of foul orcs and Uruk-hai march across all of Middle Earth, laying waste to the land, bringing terror and destruction, especially to the most vulnerable.

ELROND: We must form a fellowship and journey to cast this Ring of Capitalism into Mt. Doom while the rest prepare for war. That’s the only way to defeat Sauron and his evil.

BOROMIR: One does not simply end capitalism. Even with the finest warriors in the land, the odds do not favor us.

FRODO: Still, we cannot stand still and watch the people we care about get slaughtered. You have my organizing skills.

ARAGORN: And you have my advocacy expertise.

LEGOLAS: You have my grantwriting skills.

GIMLI: And you have my logic model.

ELROND: Excellent. Then let us—

SAM: What about you, Mister Elrond sir? You have all the gold and mithril. Will you contribute them to the fight?

ELROND: We have been giving out 5% of our gold every year for you all to fight evil. If we give out more to fight Sauron, we will deplete our cache and then what happens when Sauron is defeated, where’s the funding to rebuild?

SAM: But Mister Elrond, we won’t be able to defeat Sauron if we don’t have enough resources. He’s burning everything to the ground. There won’t be anything to rebuild!

LEGOLAS: He does have a point…Maybe we should increase the gold we give out, from 5% each year to—

ELROND (raises up one hand): We elves do not meddle in the affairs of the lesser beings of Middle Earth. We watch from a distance, giving out 5% of our riches, and then we go to the West to the Undying Lands, the Land of Perpetuity, where as usual none of this really affects us.

Thanks, Foundations, but 6% or Even 10% Payout is Not Enough

Posted on March 4, 2025March 4, 2025 by Vu

[Image description: Black and white photograph of six police officers in riot gear–shields and helmets–standing in a row, barricading the street and sidewalk. Image by StockSnap on Pixabay]

Hi everyone, I hope you’re doing OK during this time of Fascist Extremist Assholes Reign (FEAR). If you’re free this week, March 4 to 6, please join me at the virtual Nonprofit Marketing Summit: Evolve, which is FREE. My session will be on March 5^th at 11am Pacific Time, and is called “Nonprofits, Bans, and Burnout: Surviving in 2025 Without Losing Our Collective Minds (or Tax-Exempt Status).” Please register here, attend, and say comforting things in the chat in case I break down weeping into a stuffed unicorn.

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Last week, the MacArthur Foundation received a lot of praise for committing to increase its payout rate for at least the next two years from the legal minimum of 5% to 6%, which will add to the foundation’s total giving by about $150M. Here’s an article on it (Content warning, the article immediately displays a picture of Agent Orange, Russia’s most valuable puppet, in case you are trying to regulate your stress level). Here’s a piece from MacArthur’s president, John Palfrey, encouraging other foundations to do the same:

“We are inviting other philanthropies to join us: set it at six. We hope others in a position to do so will consider voluntarily raising their baseline payout rate to 6 percent, from the 5 percent as mandated by law, for the coming two years, at a minimum […] Philanthropies are well positioned to respond during periods of crisis. Many stepped up during COVID-19 and put out more funds when the social sector needed it. Today is a time when severe budget shortages again call for an infusion of additional capital.”

Script for The Matrix, if it were set in nonprofit and philanthropy

Posted on January 6, 2025January 8, 2025 by Vu

[Image description: A hand, pointing straight at the camera, while concentric circles of ones and zeroes in green text, as well as a curtain of green codes, appear in the foreground and background. Image by geralt on Pixabay]

Welcome back to work, everyone. I hope your holiday break was restful. I was able to hang out with my kids, and when they were asleep, binge-watched all the episodes of Shogun; it was glorious! But now we’re back to the grind, and it is cold and miserable. Sometimes, I think the people who believe we exist in a computer simulation may be on to something, and I find myself looking around, trying to break the fourth wall, hoping whoever is running this simulation would just give us all a reprieve from all this. Maybe they could simulate a world where the forces of good win for once.

Anyway, I’m reminded of the movie The Matrix, where the main character, played by Keanu Reeves, realizes he’s been living in a simulation, trapped along with other humans by sentient machines that are using humans as batteries while creating a fake reality to subdue them and keep them from rebelling. Of course, that makes me think about our sector, and what it would be like if The Matrix were set in nonprofit and philanthropy:

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

Posted on October 7, 2024October 9, 2024 by Vu

[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!