Office Culture

A Call to Inaction: Nonprofits, Give Your Staff a Break

Posted on December 4, 2017 by Vu

[Image description: A pair of feet in grey plaid slippers, next to a mug of probably hot chocolate with steam rising out of it, a remote control, a pad of white paper, and a phone that’s on. In the background, a fire is active in a red brick fireplace. Image obtained from Pixabay.com]

Hi everyone. Once a while, I do a call to action. For example, if you haven’t written a review of a foundation on Grant Advisor lately, or encourage your grantees to do so, please do it! Grant Advisor is like a Yelp for foundations, and everyone who writes a review gets a basket of gluten-free mini muffins*! (*By gluten-free mini muffins, I mean the joy of advancing our sector by increasing transparency and decreasing power imbalance).

This time, though, I am making a call to inaction. I am giving my team and myself the entire week of Christmas off. If your organization can do it, I strongly recommend you to do that as well (or some alternatives to that, as discussed below). Here are several reasons why:Continue reading →

Your crappy chair is not a badge of honor

Posted on October 23, 2017 by Vu

[Image description: A rolling black, high-backed office chair. Its seat is ripped in three places, with a large tear about eight inches long on one side. This was a chair in Vu’s office. Image taken by Vu. Because he was procrastinating from writing a grant proposal.]

[Hi everyone, before we begin today’s post, if you are in the US and have not written a review of a foundation or two on Grantadvisor.org, please take a minute to do so. It’s like a Yelp for foundations, but all the reviews are anonymous! And every new reviewer gets a puppy*! *This may not be true]

This week, I went to Fort McMurray, Canada, to speak at events put on by FuseSocial and Capacity Canada. Fort McMurray is rebuilding after a devastating wildfire swept through and forced the town to evacuate. It was inspiring to feel the palpable sense of community and resilience from the warm-hearted people there, some of whom made a special whiskey from a bunch of barley that got smoked during the fire. As the old Canadian proverb goes, “When Life smokes your barley, you make whiskey, eh?”

During my keynote, which focused on the future of the sector and which heavily referenced Star Trek and included the trademark pictures of baby animals, I mentioned how we all need to get over the Scarcity and Martyrdom complex. “Half of you are sitting on crappy chairs that you got from a bank that moved or something,” I said, and people laughed and nodded.

The crappy chair is a hilarious trope in our sector. Everyone seems to have some sort of crappy chair story. There’s my ED friend whose chair was so bad her board had to force her to buy a new chair. At my own organization there was a chair with multiple holes in it; I took this picture of it and posted it on NAF’s Facebook page, which got sympathetic comments like, “My chair was missing a wheel for a full year. I just told people trying to balance was strengthening my core.” Someone wrote, “I am Spartacus!”

But one person wrote “Obviously you work for cheapskates. Everybody deserves to be at least comfortable in their workplace. This is degrading.” To which l replied, “Well, considering that I am the boss, you may just be right [crying face].”Continue reading →

Why we need to end the culture of “Cultural Fit”

Posted on July 30, 2017 by Vu

[Image description: A whole bunch of greenish yellow figs, with one black fig. Image obtained from pixabay.com]

A few weeks ago, the Building Movement Project released this critical report, Race to Lead: Confronting the Nonprofit Racial Leadership Gap, which has profound implications for our sector. If you haven’t read it, I highly suggest you do. It debunks some crappy and destructive myths about leadership and diversity in our sector. Like the one about people of color not wanting to be in leadership positions—WRONG! We actually want it MORE! Or the one about the assumption that POCs just don’t have the same level of qualifications as our white colleagues—WRONG! POCs are just as qualified as our white colleagues, it not more so! Or the myth that vegans don’t have enough energy to be effective leaders—WRONG! Vegans make excellent leaders due to our natural ability to empathize!Continue reading →

23 quotes by famous people if they had worked in nonprofit

Posted on July 17, 2017 by Vu

[Image description: A grey-scale drawing of Muhammad Ali’s face. He is looking to his left. Image obtained from Pixabay.com]

Hi everyone. I was on vacation this week, so did not have the mental energy to write a serious post. So here are quotes by famous people if they had worked in nonprofit. Check out the previous installments and write yours in the comment section.Continue reading →

19 tips for making your job posting so amazing, unicorns will weep tears of joy

Posted on May 8, 2017 by Vu

[Image description: A black-and-white image of a unicorn looking at a butterfly. It looks like a cutout from black paper. The unicorn has flowing manes, is standing on the ground with grass and flowers and a tree, and is looking to our left. There is a crescent moon on the upper right corner of the image. Image obtained from Pixabay.com]

We need to talk about a serious problem that’s been ignored for a long time. No, not the lack of gel pens given out by vendors during conferences (Seriously, vendors, get better pens! Ballpoint is so cliché!) I’m talking about job postings—they suck. They have sucked for a long time. I bet when aliens dig up remnants of the human race, they’ll encounter our job postings and go, “……” which is alien telepathic language for “these documents suck; no wonder their civilization collapsed.”

We’ve been using the same format, the same tired language, and the same archaic requirements. We need to do better. Unemployment is down, meaning there is more competition for talent. Plus, while we talk about bringing diversity and inclusion, so many of our job posting practices—probably passed down from the 1900s, when…Eli Whitney invented the, uh, printing press with…moveable plates (I didn’t do so well in History)—are thoughtless, helping to exclude many diverse candidates.Continue reading →