Category: nonprofit field

10 things to do for the Lunar New Year to bring luck to your nonprofit

Posted on by Vu

tetNote: This post was written in 2014. For this year, the Lunar New Year starts on Thursday, 2/8/16, ushering in the Year of the Fire Monkey. Everything else still applies though.

Lunar New Year is coming up, and those of you who still keep referring to it as “Chinese New Year,” you lose three cultural competency points. That’s like saying “American Christmas” or “Mexican Fourth of July,” all right? We all know that Christmas and Fourth of July are celebrated everywhere.

In Vietnamese culture, we call the Lunar New Year “Tet,” and it is the biggest and best and most festive period in the year ever. The weeks leading up to it are magical, as if everyone in the country just got a general operating grant. People are all busy preparing by decorating with plum and apricot blossoms and making traditional foods like sticky rice cakes and candied coconut, and there is a wonderful energy in the air and the kids are excited and the adults are happy and a few uncles get drunk and fall of their motorcycles while carrying plum or apricot branches home while teenagers point and laugh. Sigh…I miss my childhood…

But Tet is also symbolic, representing a new beginning and a clean slate. So while everyone is high on life during this time, there is a serious side as well. In order to have a great new beginning, people spend considerable time and effort to take care of all the unfinished crap. This goes for individuals, families, and businesses. And of course, this goes for us in the nonprofit field.

So, to start the Year of the Horse off right, we have to take care of stuff that is symbolically weighing us down. I’ve listed some things below. You don’t have to do all of them, but the more you can take care of, the more luck and good fortune you (and your organization) will have in the New Year. Whatever you do, do it BEFORE midnight on 1/31 (Friday morning):

  1. Clean your desk—Cleaning is a huge part of Tet preparation, and families will spend days cleaning their houses till everything is spotless. You probably have all sorts of crap on your desk and in your drawers, random receipts, what the hell is that, some sort of Powerpoint slide printout from six years ago on the 40 Developmental Assets or something? Store or get rid of it all!
  2. Clean your car—If you’re like me, you have tons of junk you collect from various meetings, all accumulating in the backseat of your car. Then there are probably half-drunk bottles of water that you take from those same meetings. And energy bar wrappers and other snack wrappers. If your car looks like a hoarder’s car, now is the time to clean it.
  3. Decorate your office: Traditionally, people decorate with flowers and things that are red and gold/yellow, which are lucky colors. You don’tfruit-951792_960_720need to go overboard with the decorating. Look at your office plants. If they are dead, get rid of them. Buy a yellow potted flower like mums or a lucky bamboo. Both symbolize renewal and good fortune. Most Vietnamese homes will also have a tray with a whole bunch of different fruit (at least five types) to symbolize bountifulness, so think about doing that. Even if it doesn’t bring good luck, we nonprofit staff can all use more fiber.
  4. Pay off your debts—This is a huge part of preparing for Tet. You do not want to start the year owing money to people. It is very bad luck. So, if there are any outstanding bills, pay them now. If you personally owe a coworker even five bucks because he spotted you some cash for coffee or whatever, pay him. If your staff have any reimbursement requests in, cut them their checks.
  5. Collect on debts—Collecting on debts can be unpleasant, so it is best to do it before the New Year starts. Plus, people are more anxious to pay off their debts during this time, so it is easier to do. If you have invoiced for reimbursement-based grants or whatever and it’s taking a long time, start being more assertive. Call up government funders and say, “If you don’t send reimbursement checks before 2/8, you’re being culturally insensitive.” This also goes for overdue pledged donations.
  6. Apologize to people—You want to start Tet off with a clean slate, so make a list of all the people you’ve slighted, for example people you’ve accidentally stood up this year, staff who spent their own money to buy supplies whom you didn’t reimburse for several months, hipsters you made fun of during a keynote speech, interns whom you ordered to get you a vegan soy caramel Macchiato at Starbucks while forgetting that it’s their birthday, etc. Call or email them to apologize.
  7. Forgive people—You don’t want to start the new year with bitterness in your heart. So, whatever hatred or disdain you have for people who have wronged you, such as your boss or coworker or board member, now is the time to take care of it and/or let all that go. Forgive as much as you can, and act on it with conviction by treating everyone nicely. Even the hipsters with their skinny jeans and weather-inappropriate scarves. If you find it hard to let go of these negative feelings, just remember that there will be plenty more bitterness and grudges for you to develop and harbor in the coming year.
  8. Get a haircut: If you don’t really need a haircut, then don’t worry too much about this. If you are thinking of getting one, do it now before the new year starts. Getting your hair cut before Tet symbolizes shedding off of bad luck or whatever negative energies attached themselves to you this year. During the first three days of Tet, your hair now symbolizes good luck, so you can’t get a haircut during these three days.
  9. Thank people: During Tet, families take time to visit the graves of ancestors, where they clean the tombstones and light incense to remember where they came from, and to ask the ancestors for a multi-year general operating grant. It is a time for reflection and appreciation, so call or send a note to thank your key funders, donors, volunteers, board members, and other awesome people. Especially thank any people who were historically critical to the organization, such as founders.
  10. Request Monday, 2/8 off. I’m very serious. Very few people work during the first day of Tet. This is the happiest day of the year and everyone spends it with family and friends. If you have to work, try to do only tasks that you enjoy. The belief is that whatever you do and feel on the first day of Tet is what you’ll experience the rest of the year. So if you are stressed and overworked or resisting the urge to strangle that one annoying committee member who always speaks out of turn while saying stupid irrelevant things, that’s your fate for a whole year.

On the first day of Tet [2/8/2016], you and your house and organization are infused with a dose of good luck, provided you followed some of thelion-dance-653735_960_720above steps. Don’t do anything that would symbolize getting rid of this good luck. For example, don’t get a haircut, don’t take out the trash, don’t do laundry. If you are staying home, you can probably skip showering as well. And for the love of general operating grants, try to brush aside stressful things and remain happy.

Good luck, and may the Year of the Fire Monkey bring you good health, peace of mind, stability, and a general operating grant or two.

(Note: By reading this blog post all the way through, you have earned 10 Cultural Competency Points and are on your way to becoming a Cultural Competency Unicorn. See list of CC points as well as titles you can earn.)

Distancing language, what it is, and why you must crush it

Posted on by Vu

Meeting-of-the-BoredLast week was rough, as we received not one, not two, but…ok, two grant rejection notices (so sweet and thoughtful of people to wait until after the holiday break to send rejection letters). Whenever I get stressed, my face breaks out, which causes me stress, thus perpetuating a vicious pattern that I call the Pizza Face Cycle. During these times, to avoid scaring small children or potential donors, I usually hole myself in my cubicle, away from the world, listening to 90’s Hip-Hop, coming out every once a while to feed on ramen while avoiding the gaze of cruel or indifferent passersby.

And that’s what happened last week after getting the grant notices. Unfortunately, I couldn’t avoid several meetings and thus had to bring my face, like a minor Jackson Pollock painting, out in public. It was during one of these meetings that I noticed the nuances of the words we use during meetings. Specifically, how people unconsciously use inclusive or distancing language and how it affects the rest of the group.

Simply put, inclusive language indicates that you consider yourself a part of a team (e.g, “We need to revise our mission statement to include unicorns”) while distancing language indicates that you see yourself not a part of the organization or effort (“You need to revise your mission statement to include unicorns.”) This may seem trivial, you guys, but it is not:

  • New board members will use distancing language when they first join the board. As they identify more and more with the organization, they should start using inclusive language pretty much all the time.
  • If you do a good job at your programs, the clients should see it as THEIR programs, and they will use inclusive language when talking about these programs.
  • Consultants for short-term projects will use distancing language. The longer they are with a project, the more likely they will lapse into inclusive language.
  • Donors and volunteers who are especially invested in the organization will sometimes unconsciously lapse into inclusive language. This is a great sign. I was inviting one of our donors to our holiday party. “We should have beer at the party,” she said. “We totally should!” I said.

Distancing language can be a symptom of a greater problem. For instance, if after a year serving on the board, one of your board member says something like, “So when is your annual dinner this year?” something is not right.

It is also extremely contagious, and if left untreated will infect an entire group. I was on a committee made up of people from several organizations. We were brainstorming ideas about outreach. “I have an idea,” said one person, “you should make a list of all the organizations in the area and then call them individually.” “Great idea,” said another person, “you should also visit the community centers.” “Yeah, face-to-face is really critical for relationship building,” another person chimed in, “you’ll get better results that way.” It was a surreal meeting.

And that’s why you should be on the lookout for distancing language, and when appropriate you must crush it like an overcooked lentil! Here are some ways to do that:

  • Counter with inclusive language. If you use “we” often enough, especially after every instance of distancing language, it will likely stick in people’s minds.
  • Counter with your own distancing language. If you are the lead of a committee, people may direct all their ideas and feedback at you, unconsciously implying that you are going to do all the work. Use distancing language back at them might shock them out of it. E.g., “I completely agree. You should visit the community centers!”
  • Gently call it out. Say something like, “Hi everyone, I notice that we’ve been using ‘you’ a lot. This is a collaborative effort, and all of us are on the team, so let’s try to use ‘we’ more often?” It is helpful to pair this speech with inclusive body language, opening your arms wide and sweeping them toward yourself to emphasize “we.”
  • Follow up individually with people whom you notice use distancing language often and ask for their thoughts on the project. Chances are, they are not yet fully committed, and their language reflects that. The more you communicate with them, the more invested they’ll feel.
  • Be more direct. After several gentle reminders, I just correct people on the spot: “You should have a graphic design student work on the logo—” “We, John, WE should have a graphic design student work on the logo. Don’t make me have to remind you again…”

Once you start paying attention to this, it can be very helpful. Just a quick word of caution, though. At one of the meetings this week, the finance committee, we were discussing VFA’s financial management system. “You should revise your charts of accounts,” said one of the members of the committee, “and you should start developing a dashboard of financial health for the organization.” I knew from experience that I had to put a stop to the distancing language before it went too far. “Whoa, whoa, what’s with the distancing language, lady?!” I said, “You’re a part of this organization, aren’t you? What’s with all the ‘you should do this’ and ‘you should do that’ here, huh?!”

Apparently, that is not how you’re supposed to talk to a board member, especially a very dedicated one who had given months of notice in advance that she may be taking hiatus from the board to focus on taking care of other important things, so I would like to apologize.

10 psychological principles I learned from getting conned out of money

Posted on by Vu

shell gameHappy new year, everyone. I just came back from visiting in-laws in Louisiana, in a little town called Greensburg, which is so small that the local newspaper’s front page headline read “Man arrested after bar fight.” I probably could have made the headline too, something like “Seattle man tries to recycle, gets laughed at by locals, faints from lack of vegan nourishment.”

There was not much to do in Greensburg, so we took a day trip to New Orleans, which was two hours away. We were walking down Bourbon Street, which is a magical lane filled with food and drinks and strip clubs, when a lady from a balcony called to us. I looked up. She was holding some beads. “You gotta do something to get these,” she said, winking. So I did what anyone who wanted cheap plastic beads would do. I lifted up my shirt and flashed her.

All right, I didn’t do that, since no one wants to see eight vegan ribs, except a 60 or 70 people on Craigslist. We blew her some kisses, and she tossed down the beads, which I wore proudly while I drank my 20-ounce Hurricane adult beverage, sauntering down the sidewalk.

On the way back, we stopped for gas. It was New Year Day, and there were barely any people around. I saw one of those carnival game stations with giant stuffed toys hanging all around. It was the only one there. It looked empty, sad, the stuffed bears and alligators staring into the cold air with vacant, empty expressions, the kind that we see on EDs when they get grant rejection notices. It was here, at this game station, that I got conned out of money. It still haunts me till now. At night and on long drives I think back at what happened, wondering what I could have done differently.

Upon reflecting back, I realized that this gas station game booth was a very sophisticated machine, designed to swindle people out of their hard-earned cash. They deployed psychological principles proven to work on people, even smart, sexy people who direct nonprofits. Since there is no way I’m getting my money back, I might as well use this opportunity to learn something, so I am going to dissect the psychological tricks they used and how they could be applied to our nonprofit work. I know, I know, we’re not con artists and it’s crass to compare our work to this little con game, but I lost money and I must make some sense of it.

Principle 1: Hook them in with something free. “Here, honey, maybe you can win a toy for the baby,” said a lady who hovered around the parking lot. She handed me a card that said “1 free play, no obligation.” Free, I thought, I love free! That was how it started. Application to nonprofit work: Figure out something free that could pull in potential board members or donors or volunteers. Tickets to events, for example. I am tempted to go around with cards saying, “Help 1 low-income kid for free, no obligation.”

Principle 2: Humanize yourself. I walked to the station, where a twenty-something blond kid popped up from napping. “Hey, I’m Bobby,” he said, setting up the game, “what’s your name?…Vu? That’s a cool name. What do you do, Vu?…Work for a nonprofit? That’s noble, man, helping people.” Application to nonprofit work: In our rush to get people to donate money and stuff, we sometimes pass over getting to know them. Especially during the beginning of relationship building, slow down, ask about their kids, tell them how and why you got into the field, tell them about that rash that’s been bothering you, etc. People are much more likely to invest in your organization if they see you as a human being. A human being with a weird rash.

Principle 3: Make sure the objective is obvious and attainable. “The game is simple,” said Bobby, presenting a small board with a hundred holes in it, each hole marked with a number from 1 to 5, “you scatter these 10 balls, see which holes they land in, then add up the numbers.” The sums correspond with squares on a chart, most squares having numbers, some positive, some negative. “The goal is to reach 100 points, and you can win one of these prizes, or $100, up to you.” I rolled, he added up the numbers, and I got 15 points. Application to nonprofit work: Make sure stakeholders know clearly from the beginning what your organization’s mission and goals are, and make sure the goals are measurable and sane.

Principle 4: Start with low stakes, then ramp up. “That was free,” he said, “the next roll will cost you a dollar.” I paid a dollar and rolled again. I got 50 points for a total of 65 points!! Application to nonprofit work: Hook in potential volunteers, donors, and board members with something simple and low-stake, such as helping out with a small one-time project or buying a “Men of [your organization] Calendar” or something. (What, you don’t do an annual calendar? You should. It works for firefighters).

Principle 5: Provide frequent rewards, small and large. “Let’s see,” said Bobby, counting up the balls I just rolled, “that’s 25, and that corresponds to 15 points as well as a 2-for-1 on the point chart.” I looked puzzled. “That means you have a total of 80 points, AND I give you back double what you bet,” he said, “so here’s 2 dollars!” 2 dollars, I thought, I’m rich, rich! Application to nonprofit work: Provide stakeholders with rewards for their efforts, such as newsletters or mailings detailing successes your organization has achieved thanks to their help.

Principle 6: Provide a sense of safety. Since I had made a net profit of 1 dollar, I wanted to continue playing. I rolled, and the numbers added up to 28. “You got 28!” said Bobby, “That is the insurance number! That means from now on, your points can’t be taken away if you ever land on a negative square on the point chart.” Application to nonprofit work: Make sure you have director and officer insurance to cover your board members, and an umbrella insurance policy to cover volunteers and everyone else.

Principle 7: Get them close to the goal. I had gotten up to 80 points. So close! Soooo close! Only 20 points away! It would have been foolish to quit! “OK,” said Bobby, “but the following rolls are now 5 dollars each.” (See Principle 4 about ramping up the stakes). Only $5 more for a chance to win $100! I didn’t realize it, but I was addicted. Application to nonprofit work: We use this principle all the time, such as during annual dinners where we say “We are only $5,000 from meeting our goal of raising $100,000.” People like to achieve goals, so make sure you keep everyone updated of your organizations’ measurable goals, especially at the end, when things are down to the wire, e.g., “We have 93 bone marrow donors registered out of our goal of 100! We just need 7 more!”

Principle 8: Play nonchalant. With the last roll, I got 5 point, for a total of 85. So close. I knew I was in dangerous territory. Stop right now, my brain was telling me, this is obviously a con…but wait, what if it isn’t? What if I am just lucky? I could earn a hundred bucks today! That’s a lot of vegan dark chocolate with at least 70% cocoa mass…“I think I’m done,” I said, reason winning out. Bobby wasn’t fazed. “Suit yourself,” he said, “but I don’t know why you would quit with a score like that, plus insurance.” I sighed, then handed him another $5. Application to nonprofit work: Sometimes we get way too eager and thus overwhelm people. For instance, one time we were doing a Saturday morning program tour with 4 potential donors, and we had 3 board members there along with 4 staff. I think being outnumbered like that freaked out the potential donors. It’s a great program, we should have just let it speak for itself.

Principle 9: Distract and confuse. On that cold January day, holding my little 9-month old baby at the empty gas station, I reached into my pocket for another $5…I had gotten a negative 15 points, but thanks to the insurance card, I didn’t lose any. I was so close. Only 15 more points. Only 15 more points. I played until the horror set in, and I finally looked Bobby in the eye and said, “I’m done for sure this time.” But by then, it was too late.

Now, days later, thinking back on it, I realized that I never added up the balls’ values myself. I scattered them, but it was always Bobby who added them up. I never double checked his math. He counted fast, and I was too trusting. I am sure he manipulated me using the numbers, making me think I was lucky. Application to nonprofit work: There is none. We must never distract and confuse people. We must always be transparent with our supporters and community.

It was a bitter, painful lesson, this experience. It feels awful to think that you are a sucker. It haunts me till now. And now I realize there is a terrible Principle 10: Exploit people’s compassion. I only came to the booth because it was New Year’s Day, and I felt bad for that family, probably not making much money at all. We shouldn’t apply this principle to nonprofit work either.

So I got conned. It feels awful, but I have learned some great lessons, and life goes on. You might be wondering how much money I lost in total. It was $10. Yeah, 10 dollars, which may not seem like a lot of money, but remember, I work for a nonprofit.

10 Nonprofit New Year’s Resolutions…for Other People

Posted on by Vu

skinny jeansHi everyone. I am in Alabama visiting in-laws for the holidays. It looks like the nonprofit funding landscape: dry, barren, everything withered, a few ravens squawking on brittle, gnarled branches.

Every year, I make a list of resolutions. Not for me, though, since I will invariably fail at all of them. So I make a list of resolutions for other people to improve themselves. It’s very therapeutic, and way more fun than making resolutions for yourself. Try it.

Nonprofit with Balls’s 2014 New Year’s Resolutions (for Other People)

People who use “literally” wrong. Seriously, you guys. It has become a pandemic scourge on society. On TV some woman said something like, “After I got my bearings, I was literally the eye of the tiger.” That makes no fricken sense! In 2014, you will learn to use literally right, or just avoid talking to me.

Staff who leave dishes unwashed. They are gross, and you fill them up with water so that the food doesn’t get stuck, which is great but then you don’t wash them in time, so the standing water becomes rancid and starts breeding mosquitoes or hipsters. In 2014, you will wash your dishes as soon as you are done using them. Unless you’re the ED, in which case, you can leave them for as long as you want.

Staff who leave food in containers in the fridge for months or years. After a while, the food start developing molds, and if left a while, the molds start evolving and becoming advanced civilizations capable of space travel. Then they go colonize other foods. Eat your food, or take it home right away.

People who use other people’s research/presentations without permission or without crediting the original source. This lackadaisical attitude in nonprofits’ use of data and research must stop, all right? We produce all sorts of awesome reports and presentations, taking hours to gather information. If you’re going to use it, ask first, or at the very least give credit to whomever you got this data from. Otherwise, my friend Director Mona will punch you in the neck.

People who have terrible paper formatting skills. In 2014, you will be more conscientious of how you format your handouts. Here are the worst offenders: PowerPoint handouts where there is one presentation slide per handout page. No one wants a 30-page package with with 9 words in 48-point font on each page! Condense your handout to 4 or even 6 slides per page, and use both sides! Also, the “dangling sentence,” knock that off. That’s when you have just one sentence on the last page of a handout. You are wasting an entire page because of one sentence! In 2014, preview before you print, and reduce your font size or margins so you don’t continue wasting paper. Or I will punch you in the neck.

Program officers and contract monitors who don’t respond to emails or phone calls. I know everyone is busy and overwhelmed with emails. But when people are emailing you three or four times, respond to them! Even if to say, “Sorry, I have no interest in your project about a nonprofit musical.” We are used to rejections, so that’s fine. But the radio silence is aggravating. In 2014, you will respond faster, even if it’s unfavorable. You are missing out on this awesome musical I’m working on.

“Color-blind” people. Listen, you guys, it’s 2014. Being color-blind went out of style along with Vanilla Ice and parachute pants. Maybe it’ll come back later, who knows, which is why I still keep my parachute pants in storage just in case. Until then, saying you don’t see colors just makes people look at you funny, like you just showed up in a bunny costume to a non-costume party. The thing now is to see colors and to appreciate diversity and stuff.

People who contact our agency asking for help. Every week we get random people who call asking for help on varying sort of non-mission-related stuff. We got one guy once who called requesting help with a business he’s trying to start in Vietnam. And there was one dude who thought we were a dating service. Read the website, and stop asking us for help. We’re trying to help people!

People who automatically add my name and email to their newsletter mailing list. I get hundreds of emails each week, literally. 25% of those are from other organizations automatically adding me to their mailing list without my permission. Then I feel bad unsubscribing. So now I just don’t give out business cards any more. I don’t know what the solution is, since all of us are trying to build our base, and in some ways, I kind of envy how efficient other orgs are about adding people to their database. In 2014, maybe you should keep doing that, but leave me out of it?

Finally, people who wear skinny jeans to nonprofit meetings and functions. Please knock it off. You may think it’s stylish, but you look ridiculous, and there are very serious health problems such as constricted blood flow and pinched nerves that you might want to look into. But mainly, nonprofit events are a space for people to think about making the world better. We should not be forced to spend mental energy gazing at your skinny legs and wondering how you got into your pants. On that note, in 2014 also stop wearing scarves when it’s not cold. There is no room for style in the nonprofit world. We gave that up when we entered the field.

All right, there’s more stuff, but I’m hungry, so I am going to try to find some vegan food in Alabama. What other resolutions can you think of for other people? Write it in the comment section.

An immigrant kid’s reflections on community

Posted on by Vu

Christmas_Town_by_PhilipstraubAround this time of the year, as I drive by the houses lit up with holiday lights, I think about Mr. Farnon and his family. It was about this time during the year when my family and I first arrived to the US, to Philadelphia. This was after a half-year stint at a refugee camps in the Philippines, where the adults were talking so much about how awful the communists in Vietnam were that I slept with a stick under my pillow to fend off any communists who tried to attack us at night. They were sneaky like that, those communists.

Life in Philly was wonderful, and by wonderful, I mean difficult. None of us spoke much English, and everything was new and strange. I remember going grocery shopping and being amazed by the aisles, how clean they were, and how there was not a single chicken running around, tracking mud everywhere and weaving between cheerful women who were hacking away at fish or bamboo shoots on giant tables under the pale glow of dirty and worn blue tarp.

School was pretty rough too. I was eight. Each morning I woke up dreading the day. I would watch Care Bears and The Thundercats, getting sadder and sadder as the shows reached their conclusions and I would have to leave my mother and walk in the freezing cold to the bus stop to be taken to a place where I didn’t understand anything. My mother gave me two quarters one day. At recess a group of children asked if I wanted to go buy some snacks. “How much do you have?” they asked, or at least that’s what I thought they were saying. I pulled out the quarters. “50 cents?” they laughed, “that’s all you have?” I remember feeling the shame of having only two quarters and wishing desperately that my mother had given me a whole dollar. A whole dollar would have solved all my problems.

I was anxious to get home each day, because everything was overwhelming at school, with the tests and the homework that I didn’t understand, and the kids who had stickers to show off and I had none. But it was also because I wanted to open the fridge and see if my water had turned into ice. In Vietnam, only very rich people had refrigerators, small ones, so the fact that we had a giant one in our house was astounding. Ice was a treat you could only get when your dad takes you out to a café. I left water in various bowls, hoping to make some ice, and came home disappointed to find only a thin layer had formed on the surface.

A couple of months after we arrived, it got very cold, and at night some of the houses lit up with colorful lights. We had never seen so many lights before. They made the cold, empty streets seem so much more inviting. My two brothers and I were walking around the block when we found a string of lights someone left in a trash pile on the curb. We dragged it home, taped it to the wall, and plugged it in. Magically, most of the bulbs lit up, and it was the most beautiful thing we had ever seen. They were our very own colorful lights, and we kids, aged 12, 8, and 5, would spend hours staring at them.

The hardest part about being in a new world was the community we lost. All my friends were gone, along with my teachers and neighbors and aunts and uncles and cousins. The women who sold fish and vegetables at the market were my mother’s friends, and now she didn’t have anyone to talk to. Our new neighbors would wave to us once a while when they saw us, but otherwise we were in our house, trying to make ice or plugging and unplugging our awesome one string of Christmas lights.

Around this time, a family “adopted” us. Mr. Farnon and his wife and daughters, probably through a program organized by their church or a nonprofit, came to visit us, bringing food and pots and pans and other useful things. Mr. Farnon was in his 50’s, and he and his family were the bridge to our fascinating new world. One day they came to pick us up, dressed up all nice. They took us to a restaurant that served these giant, flat cakes covered with sliced meat and vegetables and some gooey melted rubber-like substance. This was our first pizza, and it was difficult to swallow, but we knew Mr. Farnon was proud to show us this aspect of American culture, so we tried to eat as much as we could and to be appreciative. We couldn’t finish, though, since the gooey cheese was much too rich, and Mr. Farnon insisted we take the leftovers home.

After pizza, the Farnons took us to see the Nutcracker. I grew up in a little mountain village surrounded by red earth and pine trees, where kids make boats from banana leaves and float them down the rivulets that appeared after  the monsoon rains. The music and costumes and colors and grandeur of the Nutcracker were so foreign, so spectacular, so I promptly fell asleep.

It was a strange and unforgettable evening, with the pizza and the ballet, but we were anxious to get home. Mr. Farnon escorted us inside, where he placed the leftover pizzas in the fridge. “What is this?” he asked me, pointing at my different containers filled with water. “I make ice,” I said. He laughed. He opened the freezer, which was above my head so I never paid much attention to it. “You need to put the water in here,” he said, and that changed my world. I got even more anxious to get home each day, and sometimes I couldn’t sleep, so excited and happy I was that I could now make actual ice.

After six months in Philly, we moved to Seattle. During those months, Mr. Farnon continued to visit regularly, always thoughtful and trying to help us in whatever ways he can, connecting with us through simple words and pantomimes. They brought us warm clothing, which we would need when we encountered our very first snow in life. Vietnam is a tropical country, and most people will never see snow in their lifetime. Like being able to come to America, snow is something they only see in movies and something to dream about.

After we left, my father would continue to write to Mr. Farnon in his broken English, updating him on our journey across the US. At Dad’s insistence years later, I wrote to him to thank him for all the help he gave our family, and to tell him that we kids were doing fine, that we were in college. I told him I liked pizza now, and that I thought of him and his family each time I have a slice, or whenever I fall asleep at the ballet. After a few years of communications with my father, Mr. Farnon stopped writing. We never knew why.

Each year around this time, I remember our first few months in the US, how new and overwhelming and wonderful and scary everything was. And I remember the kindness Mr. Farnon and his family provided us. This kindness was one of the things that spurred me to go into nonprofit work. It made me realize the importance of community, and how building community is one of the most critical services we provide our clients.

This sense of community is something we don’t talk about often. It is too fluffy to be an actual outcome that anyone would fund. We talk about how many kids we help to graduate, or how many hot meals we provide, or how many jobs or affordable homes we help people find. But we nonprofits should be proud that we also provide community and a sense of belonging. Our clients come to our programs to get help with their homework or food for their family or whatever other services we offer. But they also come because if we do a good job, we help them feel that they are part of a community that cares about them. For those who have lost their community like my family and I did when the War forced us to leave our homeland, it is like we are water floating around, and community is a container to hold us so that we can gain strength and become solid in a beautiful but at-first cold new world. This service of building and strengthening community, as nebulous and difficult to measure as it is, cannot be undervalued. It is one of the most critical and noble things we do nonprofits do.

I recently googled Mr. Farnon and found his obituary. He died 5 years ago. As I drive around and see all the lights on the houses, I think of him and take a moment to be grateful for all that he and his family did for us. They brought us food and clothing and helped my parents find work and exposed us to new foods and cultural experiences. But most importantly, they made us realize that just because we left our community behind in Vietnam, it does not mean that we can’t have an equally caring one here.