Nonprofit AF

20 simple things you can do to help end the Nonprofit Hunger Games

Posted on April 7, 2019April 7, 2019 by Vu

[Image description: Two tiny adorable little baby pigs. They are pink with black/gray splotches. One seems to be leaning their happy little head on the back of the other one. They are outside, standing on the ground with some hay strewn about. Aww. These piglets are so sweet. I want one for the office. Pixabay.com]

Hi everyone, a couple of things before we get started. First of all, April is National Poetry Month, and to celebrate, Unicorns Unite (a book I co-authored on funding dynamics) is having a #NonprofitHaiku contest on Twitter. Tweet out a haiku by 4/12, tag it with #NonprofitHaiku, and by 4/15 I and the Unicorns Unite team will select five winners based on random and arbitrary criteria that we’ll make up later. Feel free to write as many haikus as you like. The winners will get a copy of Unicorns Unite. Possibly chocolate. Maybe a piglet*

Second, we had a blast with last week’s April Fool’s joke about “Fundr,” a fake app to match foundations and nonprofits. GrantAdvisor.org, however, is real. It’s a website to provide foundations with anonymous, honest feedback. The more reviews you write, the more helpful the site is, so every time you apply to a foundation (whether you get the grant or not), please take five minutes to provide a review. It helps the entire sector.

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Speaking of helping the entire sector, we need to end the Nonprofit Hunger Games and do a better job not just working on our individual organization’s survival, but on the effectiveness of our field as a whole. Our missions are interrelated, so it is silly to constantly be in cutthroat competition with one another. While we work on the systemic factors that perpetuate the Games, here are some other few simple things we can all do right away to help one another, which will better our entire sector and community:

So you don’t think race, equity, diversity, and inclusion are relevant to your mission

Posted on March 25, 2019March 25, 2019 by Vu

[Image description: An brown/gray owl with extra large orange eyes and black pupils, looking adorably surprised. Image from Pixabay.com]

Hi everyone, this post may be a little shorter than usual, due to a few few full-blown tantrums from my little ones over the course of the day. One involved a potty training accident that required a thorough hose-down in the bathtub. I am slightly frazzled and not very lucid.

A few months ago, I was talking at a conference about what race, equity, diversity, and inclusion look like in every day practices. “These concepts have been like coconut water,” I said, “everyone’s drinking them after hot yoga. But how are we actually changing our hiring, communications, board governance, evaluation, fundraising, and other areas?”

After my presentation, a colleague raised her hand. “My organization does not focus on social justice,” she said, “We address cancer, which does not discriminate; it affects every one of all races. How are these concepts applicable to my organization?”

I was glad she asked that question, because I am sure others feel the same way. Another time, a different colleague wrote, “while measures of injustice, inequity[,] and racial oppression might be appropriate outcomes for your nonprofit—ours is reduction in hunger. Which might lead to all those other things but really—we care about feeding kids.”

“Does this board member spark joy?” How to tidy your organization using the KonMari method

Posted on March 17, 2019March 18, 2019 by Vu

[Image description: Two little white mice with grey ears peeking their heads out of a round hole carved in a brown log. The one on the left is cute with their wittle ears and pink nose and whiskers. The one on the right…probably has a great personality. Pixabay.com]

Have you noticed how we in this sector tend to hoard stuff? There are several reasons for this. First, we are trained to be thrappy, which is a combination of “thrifty” and “scrappy,” to keep our “overhead” low. Second, because we are empathetic, even to inanimate objects, and just the thought of these poor gala program booklets and rickety chairs being abandoned makes us sad. And third, because we’re busy making the world better and stuff, OK?

Recently, my colleague April Nishimura, RVC’s awesome Director of Capacity Building, got hyped on Marie Kondo’s tidying method. She made me clean out my box of crap, which I had not done for four years. It was therapeutic. I found a forgotten bar of Theo-brand dark chocolate that had been gnawed on by what looked like rats (or possibly a volunteer with very small incisors).

Inspired by this experience, I decided to learn the KonMari method by watching Kondo’s show on Netflix. After four episodes, I was able to grasp the basics, which are grounded in the question of whether something “sparks joy.” If it doesn’t, thank it for its service, and then let it go. These methods can be applied to our organizations. So here are some lessons, directly taken from or inspired by Marie Kondo, in case you and your team are thinking of tidying up your org using the KonMari method:

People of color, we need to address our own anti-Blackness and how we may be perpetuating injustice

Posted on March 4, 2019March 4, 2019 by Vu

[Image description: A fence on the beach with colorful posts in alternating blue, green, yellow, and red, connected by a single rope at the top of each post. The fence is overlooking a greyish-blue ocean. Pixabay.com]

Hi everyone, this post is going to be serious. I know that Black History was last month, but I am hoping that by running this in March, it serves as a small reminder that we need to have these conversations throughout the year. This post today will talk about how we people of color can consciously and unconsciously perpetuate the injustice we are hoping to address, and how we need to examine our privileges and biases, especially our anti-Blackness.

Honestly, I’ve been a little hesitant to write on this topic. Normally I talk about communities of color and the challenges we face navigating a white-dominant culture. I am hesitant to point out dynamics among communities of color, and I know other leaders of color are too, because oftentimes, people in power look at these types of conversations as a sign of weakness and use them to rationalize things like withholding funding: “If these people can’t even get along with one another, how can we invest in them?” (I’ll address this in a future post tentatively called “The Racism of Expecting Communities of Color to Just Get Along.”)

Can we stop assuming that people with corporate or academic backgrounds can run nonprofits and foundations better than nonprofit folks?

Posted on February 25, 2019August 11, 2022 by Vu

[Image description: A white sheep sticking their head out of a wire fence. They have an annoyed expression. This is basically what I look like when thinking about how many people who have little to no experience working in nonprofit but who still have significant power on nonprofits. Pixabay.comm]

Recently I learned that a colleague of mine didn’t get a job leading a major organization. It was confusing, since all signs had seemed to indicate she was a good fit. After weeks wondering, she got a you-didn’t-hear-this-from-me from one of the hiring team members that the board had decided to go with someone with a corporate background. Someone who had no experience working in nonprofit was now going to lead a large and influential one, over my colleague who had years of relevant experience.

This happens frequently in our sector among the largest and most influential organizations. Foundations are especially guilty of this. According to this report from CEP that looks at the leadership of the largest 100 foundations in the US:

“Experience as a grantee, if you exclude colleges and universities …. isn’t much valued by foundation boards when they’re searching for a CEO. In 2012 we identified just 14 foundation CEOs with immediate previous experience at an operating nonprofit that wasn’t a college or university. Today, that number is even lower — just 10.”