Nonprofit AF

Exploring the fun and frustrations of nonprofit work

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7 game-changing things nonprofits can learn from for-profits

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[Image description: A grey koalas peeking out from behind a tree trunk, staring directly at the camera. This koalas has nothing to do with this post. Or does it. Guess you better read the rest of the post to find out. Image from Pixabay.com. By the way, koalas look cute and cuddly, but I hear they’re kind of vicious. They’d not unlike some board members, ha!]
A while ago, I read about Juicero, a wifi-connected juicing machine. It was originally $700, and you had to subscribe to these proprietary packets of cut-up fruit and veggies for $7 each. You put a packet into the machine and turn it on—with an app on your phone, I guess—and it squeezes out one glass of refreshing juice! It was, at the time, the apex of human achievement. Alas, this tale of innovation and disruption did not have a happy ending. Bloomberg did an investigation and found out that you can squeeze the packets by hand and get the same amount of juice. They wrote a story about it, and the price for the Juicero dropped to $400 before the company tanked completely, and now people have to squeeze juice using non-wi-fied juicers, like common peasants.  

Why the heck am I telling you this? Simple: I keep encountering people who say that nonprofits should act more like for-profits. You probably do too. And of course, many of us bristle at the bizsplaining and the condescension. There are many blog posts out there, and many of them are incredibly insulting and make you want to roll your eyes: “Make sure you have what people in the business sector call a ‘bizz-nezz puh-lan.’ It lays out these things called ‘go-als.’ Businesses also do what is known as ‘ac-count-ing’ ”Continue reading →

Brett Kavanaugh, and why we must stop intellectualizing and take more actions

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[Image description: Brown-tinted picture of about a dozen round light bulbs lying on a flat surface. One bulb in the center is light up, others are dark. Image from Pixabay.com]
Hi everyone. A quick announcement before this week’s post. My colleague and occasional drinking buddy Joan Garry has a free workshop being released starting next week that I strongly encourage you to check out. This series of videos covers strategies for running a successful nonprofit – stuff like how to build a great board, how to increase donations, how to inspire volunteers, etc. The workshop is helpful for new as well as experienced leaders. At the end of the workshop, Joan will introduce the Nonprofit Leadership Lab. I’ve been lurking in the Lab for a while and can vouch that it’s a great resource and support community at an affordable monthly rate. I never promote things like this, and in full disclosure, Joan is giving me a cut for any new members I end up sending her way, which will help defray the costs of running NonprofitAF. But I would not endorse anything that I don’t believe in. I have seen how useful the Lab is for its members. So sign up to check out the videos. They’re free and helpful even if you decide not to join the Lab.

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I am in a crappy mood, so my apologies in advance for the tone of this post. I am distraught and disheartened over the Supreme Court, and I know many of you are too. I want to provide some encouraging words, but I don’t really have any at the moment. This is horrible, and no amount of “we-are-in-this-together-and-remember-that-the-arc-bends-towards-justice-and-rainbows-and-unicorns” bromides is going to be enough this time.Continue reading →

The game of nonprofit is flawed. Learn to play it so you can change it. 

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[Image description: A raccoon, grayish brown, peeking over a thick tree branch, staring directly at the camera with its piercing dark eyes. Image from Pixabay.com]
Every once a while, an up-and-coming nonprofit professional would ask me, “What advice would you give us folks who are just starting in the sector?” This is how you know that you yourself are no longer an up-and-coming nonprofit professional. I am trying to embrace my status as one of the grizzled old-timers with the battle scars:

“When I entered the sector years ago, we had to walk five miles—in the snow!—to deliver a grant proposal. Back then, paperclips weren’t invented, and funders wanted the attachments to be clipped just right. We had to make paperclips out of pine needles. But, there were only eight pine trees west of the Mississippi, and they were fiercely guarded by vicious raccoons. I can still see their beady eyes, glowing red like those sticky dots people used to vote with during community meetings. Of course, back then, the sticky dots weren’t just something you bought at the store. They were gum drops we had to slice by hand. Problem with using those gum drop slices though was that they attracted the raccoons. We spent as much time battling raccoons as we spent running programs.”Continue reading →

Hey people with privilege, you need to be OK with making mistakes and being called out

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[Image description: A little grey kitten with black stripes and big, soulful eyes, lying down surrounded by some small green leaves. This kitten has nothing to do with this blog post. Or does it. Image obtained from Pixabay, which is actually a pretty awesome website where you can get all sorts of cool creative commons pictures for free.]
Hi everyone, before we begin this week’s post, a quick announcement: If you’re in Seattle, the community-centric fundraising summit originally scheduled for September 27th has been postponed until likely Spring 2019 so we can incorporate the lessons gained from the amazing pre-summit gathering of fundraisers of color last month where we discussed the intersection of fundraising and social justice. If you want to be kept informed as the team plans the summit, please fill out this quick form. Meanwhile, we are finalizing the “Fundraising Perception Survey,” which will be released soon, and would love your participation when it’s live.

Last week, I wrote a blog post called “Hey progressives, can we stop using the tools of social justice to tear one another down?” The post resonated with many people, and I received lots of positive feedback from colleagues who felt seen and heard. However, there were also some disconcerting reactions as well. A few people from the opposite end of the political spectrum were gleeful—“Ha ha, the libs are attacking one another! Get the popcorn!”—which is to be expected.

More alarming were a few colleagues who dismissed the nuance and basically used the article to rationalize their fragility—“See, y’all were just meanies when you said I was centering myself as a white person! Stop using the term mansplaining!”—or stereotype whole groups of people—“POCs are always piling on white folks!”Continue reading →

20 ways majority-white nonprofits can build authentic partnerships with organizations led by communities of color

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[Image description: A tiny, very yellow, and extremely fluffy duckling sitting on the ground. It is seriously very fluffy, like it just went down one of those plastic slides and charged itself up into a little yellow ball of static electricity. What does this duckling have to do with this post? Nothing. I was searching for a more relevant picture but ended up distracted by pictures of ducklings. From pixabay.com]
Hi everyone, before we begin today’s topic, please take time to fill out this new survey, which seeks to identify ideas and practices for investing in intersectional racial equity in the nonprofit workforce. It’s part of a larger initiative from our friends at Fund the People. They’ve partnered with the Center for Urban and Racial Equity to help funders and nonprofits “lower barriers and increase support for diverse people to gain entry to nonprofit work, sustain ourselves and advance in nonprofit careers, and ascend to management and leadership.” In particular, they are currently seeking more responses from people of color.

Since they used the Oxford Comma, I think we should help them out. Thanks for taking the survey today. It’s due September 7th.

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Despite the pervasiveness of the Nonprofit Hunger Games, we nonprofits are way more effective when we work together. However, partnerships can be challenging when there are clearly differences in culture, resources, and power. As someone who works with a lot of leaders and communities of color, I often get asked by thoughtful colleagues who work at majority-white nonprofits how they can support and work with organizations that are led by communities of color without causing inconvenience, or annoyance, or actual harm to those communities.

So here is some general advice, divided into four categories. This list is not comprehensive; please feel free to add to it in the comments. Special thanks to my friend Allison Carney, who also gifted the sector with the term Bizsplaining, for pushing me to write about this and for adding her thoughts. (Also, although this post is focused on partnership with communities-of-color-led nonprofits, it also applies to partnerships with organizations led by marginalized communities, such as communities of disabilities, as our colleague Julie Reiskin points out in the comment section). Continue reading →