self-care – Nonprofit AF

It’s OK to feel like crap right now

Posted on July 20, 2020July 20, 2020 by Vu

[Image description: A person, wearing a face mask, sitting on a bench, next to a large window. It looks like they may be on a train.The window overlooks some buildings and mountains in the distance. Image by wphoto on Pixabay.com]

Hi everyone, before I get into this week’s topic, thank you to the 2,700+ colleagues who attended last week’s Community-Centric Fundraising launch event, “Let’s Make Fundraising Less Racist!” The excitement was so much that we crashed several websites. If you missed it, here’s the recording. And check out the CCF website, communitycentricfundraising.org. Meanwhile, this week on 7/24 at 12:30pm Pacific Time we have another free event, Data Says: What BIPOC Fundraisers Have Known for Years, where evaluator and CCF leadership team member Anna Rebecca Lopez will present the results of the Fundraising Perception Survey, which over 2,000 people took. See you there.

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I was looking at my list of topics to write about, and honestly, this week I’m just really tired. I know many of you are too. It has been a horrible year. And now Congressman John Lewis just died, another light gone when the night seems interminable and our democracy so tenuous. I don’t know how much more we can all handle. At the beginning of the pandemic, I wrote “Things are not normal. It’s OK to not be OK.” I did not anticipate, though, how much worse it would get for the world, for our sector, for all of us.

Things are not normal. It’s OK to not be OK.

Posted on March 23, 2020March 23, 2020 by Vu

[Image description: A cute light-brown bulldog, lying on the ground, facing the camera, looking sad. This bulldog is all of us right now. Pixabay.com]

Hi everyone. It has been a long couple of weeks. I don’t think many of us have experienced anything like this before. We’ve weathered awful things as a society, but this is something else, a threat not just to our physical health, but our livelihoods, our way of being, our groundedness, and our optimism for the future. It even threatens the one thing we could always count on during these challenging times: Our proximity to one another and our sense of community.

I have been trying to breathe and remain calm, not add to the chaos, and be helpful where I can. But it’s been tricky. Schools here in Seattle have been out. The days blend into one another as my partner and I try to figure out how to homeschool our six-and-four-year-olds. Or at least keep them occupied enough that they don’t burn the house down. They seem to be fine at this moment, but I know that as this progresses, it will hit them that things are not normal, that everything is out of balance.

We need to stop joking about the sad state of retirement security in nonprofit. It’s no longer funny.

Posted on November 4, 2019November 4, 2019 by Vu

[Image description: An exhausted cat sleeping with their head on a wooden platform. They are white with some gray hair on their head, and pink ears. Their eyes are closed. I wonder if they’re dreaming. Do cats dream? Excuse me while I spend the next hour googling whether research has been done regarding whether and which animals dream. Pixabay.com]

A couple of weeks ago, I asked the NAF Facebook community, “What are creative ways you are thinking of in terms of retirement? Me, collecting kitchen gadgets in hope that these cherry pitter and pickle grabber etc., will appreciate in value!” The comments that came back were hilarious, because this is a group of brilliant, witty, and extremely good-looking folks. Here are a few:

“I intend to die in whatever museum I’m working in, and have my corpse be mistaken for part of the exhibit program. Until a century later, when an intern is cleaning they figure out that I’m that curator who disappeared. It’s the price of fame.”
“Dumpster dive former board members homes.”
“Relying on my love of the outdoors, because I’ll be living in a tent. When I’m ready to die, it’ll be with honor- just wandering into the forest and letting the coyotes eat me.”
“I plan on selling black market pies at the train station. Not kidding. I make excellent pie.”
“Work until I die – in debt”
“Commune / small house community with all of the other women I know who gave their best years to the cause and never got enough in salary or retirement benefits to be able to “plan” for retirement.”
“I feel like Pokémon will still being a thing in like 40 years, so hopefully I can sell the cards that I hoarded in 1999 to help make the student loan payments I’ll have until I die.”
“I’ve thought about dying at my desk”
“Counting on society to totally collapse before then, so currency and debt will be meaningless.”
“I plan on dying on the phone line, most likely in the middle of an ask.”
“My retirement plan is climate change and/or the total collapse of late stage capitalism.”
“I will die in my broken office chair.”

Vacation tips for nonprofit professionals who suck at vacationing

Posted on July 15, 2019July 15, 2019 by Vu

[Image description: A reddish daiquiry-like drink with a straw, standing on a beach in front of beautiful tourquoise water under a blue sky. Who would leave it there? How impractical is this? This is a great way for it to be knocked over, or for sand to be blown into it. Also, I hope that straw is compostable. OMG, this is the type of stuff I think about while I’m on vacation. Pixabay.com]

Hi everyone, I am still in Vietnam. This was supposed to be a vacation, but I realize that I suck at vacationing. So I went on to the NAF Facebook community, made up of witty and attractive people, to ask for tips. The community did not disappoint! Over 500 comments came in within hours. I’ve highlighted a few below, in no particular order. If you are terrible at relaxing and recharging on vacation, perhaps some of these tips may help. Or not! Thank you to the colleagues who provided them, some while they were on vacation. With so many comments, it was hard to pick and choose, and many good comments were left out. Please check out the NAF FB page for the full thread (and add your own #NonprofitVacationTips on Twitter)

If you’re feeling hopeless of late, remember that your work matters and you do too

Posted on April 22, 2019April 23, 2019 by Vu

[Image description: A grayish raccoon with white eyebrows, peeking out from a log or wooden beam or something. They look serious, with dark, piercing eyes that peer into one’s soul. Kind of cute though. Look at that one little paw! Pixabay.com]

Hi everyone, the last few weeks have been rough. I was glad to end it with the #NonprofitHaiku contest to bring some levity and humor. A colleague on Twitter, though, pointed out the seriousness of all the challenges we face beneath the lightheartedness:

“It’s a cute joke that there are raccoons in our supply closet. It’s hilarious. […] The conditions we work in, the demoralizing chaos and the barriers to success is literally killing people.”