NPHH Values

Guiding Values of Nonprofit Happy Hour (NPHH) Facebook Group

Nonprofit Happy Hour is an international peer support group for nonprofit professionals, a place for us amazing, talented, smart, and ridiculously good-looking nonprofit unicorns to ask questions, share important information and jokes, and provide and receive advice on nonprofit challenges. We adhere to these values:

Equity

• We welcome everyone of any race, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, religion, country of origin, country of residence, language skills, neurodiversity, chronic mental and/or physical illness, and age/generations.
• We will be discussing race, equity, disability, and other issues of social justice on this forum from time to time. Some of this may be uncomfortable, but we encourage each other to learn and grow through dialogue
• We create space for voices that are often less heard to be heard, including checking in with those who tend to be quieter, and asking more dominant voices to step back and do more listening. That means sometimes we ask white colleagues and male colleagues to just listen instead of talking or providing counter-arguments on some posts
• We acknowledge that not everyone is at the same point on the continuum regarding the understanding of race, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, immigration, and other areas.
• We acknowledge that we all make mistakes as human beings especially around issues of race, disability, equity, intersectionality, and other critical concepts. We embrace and use our mistakes to encourage one another to learn and grow.
• We encourage everyone who is unfamiliar with these concepts to read, reflect, and learn, and we support one another in doing this by providing feedback and resources [link to resources to be inserted here later]
• We have thoughtful, constructive dialog, but prioritize the respect for the humanity of colleagues from marginalized communities over the learning and comfort of colleagues who belong to communities of privilege.

Community

• We acknowledge and celebrate the fact that we all belong to the nonprofit community, a multi-national community of amazing and diverse and wonderful people working to make the world better.
• We support and encourage one another through sharing advice, feedback, templates, and hilarious memes and jokes.
• We respect that sometimes colleagues just want to vent or seek emotional support, not advice.
• We give each other the benefit of the doubt, since this is the internet, and it is really easy to misinterpret words, tones, and meanings
• We are patient, understanding, and courteous with one another, especially to new members of this group, or colleagues new to the sector, who may not be familiar with our group’s and the sector’s norms and values yet
• We are a peer support group, and we respect our members’ wishes not to be studied, observed, or solicited for the sake of academic, political, commercial, or other reasons
• While we may vent about our challenges, we do not demean, belittle, or malign the nonprofit sector as a whole or the professionals who work in it.

Respect

• We understand that people have various political viewpoints and we will be civil and collegial in our disagreements and debates
• We debate and critique policies and ideas. We do not call anyone names or attack anyone’s character or motivations. This includes avoiding character attacks on politicians and political parties we may disagree with.
• We do not engage in rumors, gossip, or hearsay. When possible, we  cite our sources and add context to the advice and perspectives we provide on posts.
• We may give feedback regarding one another’s work, but do not attack one another’s organizations
• We acknowledge that conflict is inevitable, often even helpful, and we strive to address it with a spirit of learning and growth
• We do not perpetuate stereotypes, for example bashing millennials or boomers

Joy

• We have a good sense of humor and find joy in nonprofit work and in one another
• We jokingly call each other “unicorns” because we nonprofit professionals are awesome and expected to pull off miracles with limited resources. See this post and this post that may have started the trend of calling nonprofit people “unicorns.”
• We post memes and jokes that bring joy and humor to the work, and do not post stuff that demeans anyone. 
• We understand being busy and having so many demands, but we do not glorify being overworked or abandoning all boundaries. We encourage people to have wonderful lives while working in nonprofit because gosh-darnit, we deserve the life we dream of for others.
• As this group is called “Happy Hour,” we joke about drinking from time to time, but we understand the seriousness of alcohol addiction and do not endorse or glorify drinking as a coping mechanism. 

Confidentiality

• We keep things said here confidential, but understand that this is an internet community of over 34,000 members, and there are no guarantees.
• We have a group of volunteer “Anonymators” listed in the group description who can post questions on anyone’s behalf who wishes to remain anonymous.
• We ask for permission before quoting anyone, even anonymously, on blogs or articles published outside this group.