Fundraising

“I’m Dreaming of a Green Christmas” and other nonprofit holiday songs

Posted on December 21, 2015 by Vu

Hi everyone, happy holidays. I hope that you are taking it easy these next couple of weeks. This week, instead of reading serious articles about our sector, I learned about the dark origins of Christmas carols. Apparently, back in the olden days, carolers were drunk hooligans who went door-to-door demanding to be let in and served your best food and booze, and could get rowdy and belligerent if you turn them away.

So of course, that inspired me to re-write some of our holiday songs. Why don’t you learn them, and then we can try old-school caroling as a novel fundraising technique. Suggest other #nonprofitholidaysongs in the comment section and on Twitter.Continue reading →

Hey, you want nonprofits to act more like businesses? Then treat us like businesses

Posted on December 14, 2015 by Vu

A couple of months ago I was at a conference, and during lunch the keynote speaker got up and paced the stage and mentioned several times about how we nonprofits need to be more like for-profits. Despite the two drinks I had had that morning—stop judging; it was a Saturday—I found myself getting more and more irritated. This happens over and over. Seriously, if I hear one more person blather on and on about how we primitive, inept do-gooders should learn from our sophisticated siblings from the business sector and get into earned-income and blah blah, I’m going to roll my eyes so hard that they will pop out of my head, and then I will have to find them to put them back in my eye sockets but I won’t be able to see so I will have to feel around on the floor to find them while freaked-out passers-by scream all around me.

Our nonprofit sector has an identity issue, and I think we should resolve this if we are going to reach our potential. Are we nonprofits businesses, or are we something else entirely? I’ve talked to lots of nonprofit leaders who are proud of their work and who say, “Nonprofit businesses are businesses! But instead of making money for our stockholders, we create dividends in benefits to the community!”

But lately, I’ve started wondering if perpetuating this philosophy is actually harming us. Ideally, yes, we are businesses, and we should be accorded the same level of respect. But the frustrating reality is that we are judged as businesses without given the rights and resources to fully operate as businesses. If funders and donors and society want us to be like businesses, then fine, but we also need the following: Continue reading →

“Raise Fees 50%” and other nonprofit scary stories for Halloween

Posted on October 26, 2015 by Vu

Hi everyone, Halloween is coming up this week. It’s one of my favorite holidays, along with Wombat Day, which is October 22nd (mark that on your calendar), so thank you to readers who sent in an entry to NWB’s Second Annual Scary Nonprofit Story contest. I asked/threatened two colleagues (Rachel Schachter of Temple Beth Am and Liahann Bannerman of United Way of King County) to review them with me, and we all had a great time. We judged the stories based on three elements: Humor, Creativity, and Scariness. It was difficult selecting the three winners, since the judges all had different definitions of what is scary in the nonprofit sector. If you didn’t “win,” please don’t be discouraged; the rankings are arbitrary, and we may have chugged a lot of pumpkin-spice-flavored ale while reading entries (and by “we,” I may just mean “I.”)

Here are the stories. Do not read them by yourself in the darkness.Continue reading →

Waiting for the dough: How fear and other existential forces affect the nonprofit sector

Posted on October 19, 2015 by Vu

Hi everyone, the Seahawks lost again, so I chugged two bottles of Ace blackberry pear cider (I don’t really follow football; I just needed a reason to chug some pear cider). Being tipsy makes me philosophical and rambly, so I am not sure how much sense this post is going to make.

At a conference panel I was on a few weeks ago, I brought up the Nonprofit Hunger Games and how the survival mentality has been affecting all of us in the sector. A woman raised her hand and said, “I see what you’re saying, but I’m afraid that if I share information about funders and donors with other nonprofits, I might lose funding.”

It made me realize a couple of things. First, “Nonprofit Hunger Games” would make a great movie:

Katniss: Peeta! What happened to you?!

Peeta: Theory…Theory of Change Swamp…it was brutal…Katniss…you have to win the final grant for District 12…

Katniss: Stop talking, save your strength.

Peeta: It’s better this way. Eventually we’d have to…(cough)…kill each other anyway in the Storytelling round…

Katniss: Here…a sponsor sent in some food…Have some hummus, Peeta…Continue reading →

Is your organization or foundation unknowingly setting Capacity Traps?

Posted on September 28, 2015 by Vu

Happy Fall, everyone. Time for pumpkin spice in everything. And butternut squash, which I have never gained a liking for. It’s in or on all sorts of stuff: ravioli, pizza, bread, ice cream. I just don’t get butternut squash!

Anyway, today’s topic. My organization, Rainier Valley Corps, develops the capacity of communities-of-color-led nonprofits by sending in leaders of color whom we train to work full-time at these organizations. Through our work so far, we have been learning some important lessons, many through failures, which I want to share on NWB from time to time.

A huge lesson we have learned, for example, is the importance of providing fair compensation for organizations of color to be involved in research and planning. For some wacky reason, many of us in the field are OK with budgeting for consultants, and then kind of expecting organizations of color to do work for free or little funding, a serious problem I wrote about in “Are you or your org guilty of Trickle-Down Community Engagement?”Continue reading →