Nonprofit AF

Exploring the fun and frustrations of nonprofit work

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Being a nonprofit with balls, part 2

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balls 1Two weeks ago I had lunch with Luke, whom you may recall from “Being a Nonprofit with Balls.” Luke had come to VFA a couple of months ago asking us to rally 15 to 20 community members for a focus group. I had just woken up from my daily ED power nap and was kind of groggy and in no mood to be accommodating, so we got into a fistfight. Of course, this the nonprofit field in Seattle, so by “fistfight” I mean that we threw big concepts, hoping to wound each other with phrases like “authentic engagement” and “equity.” I told him that we small ethnic nonprofits are overwhelmed with similar requests from well-meaning organizations who are trying to be “inclusive” and that we just didn’t have staff capacity to do it and that he should go back to advocate for more equitable funding if he really wanted to authentically engage the communities of color.

We decided to have lunch, and I was looking forward to it. While I thought Luke’s approach was ineffective, I appreciated his refreshing directness. He arrived on time at my favorite restaurant. Since he was technically my elder, I poured him tea.

“So, how did you get to where you are?” I asked. He told me of his journey and of his philosophy on life, which is basically that if you serve others selflessly, the Universe will reward you.

“I moved up here, didn’t have a job. I was at this event, and I met Ted, who is a millionaire. He told me about this thing he’s trying to do to improve education, so I said that sounds great, how can I help? And he gave me a job.”

“That’s great,” I said, wishing that I knew more millionaires so I could be selfless around them.

“Listen,” he said, “that thing with asking you to put together a focus group, that was garbage.”

“It’s OK,” I said, “we get asked all the time. We know people mean well.”

“It’s just, how do we get the communities to the table? We keep inviting them.”

For the past several months, I’ve been on this bent about community engagement and funding equity, especially around education. After talking to Luke, I realize that he’s a nice guy, but his approach is very indicative of the standard approach to community engagement, which has gone nowhere. People wonder, Why are the communities of color refusing to join our table? We’ve invited them countless times. Don’t they want to work with us? We’ve prepared place settings for them and everything!

The reality is that whoever hosts the table has the majority of the power. They can shift people’s seats around, kick them out, refuse to share the recipe for coconut cornbread, or whatever. It is challenging to have authentic engagement when people feel like guests at a table and not a co-host. “Inviting” people to the table is not enough, since this is symptomatic of not engaging people at square one, when the table was being created in the first place.

“Community engagement must begin at square one,” I said. “Too often efforts get to square three or four, usually well-supported by funding at each step of the way, before people stop to realize, ‘Hold on, we’re not doing a good job reaching underrepresented communities.’ They scramble and backtrack, but it may be too late, since funding usually has been allocated without these communities in mind. So then we get asked to participate without being provided resources.”

“Another thing,” I said, “the people most impacted need to lead the effort. This is especially true with an issue like education, where the ‘achievement gap’ is basically kids of color. If this is the civil rights issue of our time, then the people most impacted need to be in the front leading. Allies and supporters are critically important. This work cannot be successful without then, especially since they have the relationships with funders. But they must be on the side or behind supporting the people most affected by inequity. Too often we see well-meaning people coming into the neighborhood saying ‘Hey, we know what works best for you. Come join and support our efforts!’”

“Also, people think that presence equals engagement. I’ve been to numerous ‘community input’ events that are fully attended by diverse communities. VFA has rallied our community members to these events. They have interpreters and UN-style headsets, and the room looks beautiful and inspiring, and no doubt pictures of the event will be posted everywhere afterward as proof of how effective the outreach and engagement was. Many of our community members leave going ‘Huh?’ Then they don’t see any results and feel that their time was wasted, and VFA loses credibility with them for inviting them. They may not understand all the concepts presented, but they know enough to feel shafted and tokenized. Presence is only one-half of engagement.”

“Here, try this vegan lemongrass chicken,’” I said, taking a break from my lecture, which I realized had been welling up for the past few years. “Having names on a list does not indicate engagement,” I continued, “VFA and other ethnic nonprofits get asked to join various coalitions and efforts. Because we are so busy doing direct service, we sometimes say ‘Yeah, go ahead, sign us up and use our name. We’ll drop by occasionally.’ This is a horribly destructive practice, as it stymies responsibility on our part to actively lead in the effort, and it reinforces the system of funding inequity and poor engagement. Funders looking at this list of ‘members’ may not be aware of how actively engaged they actually are. Heck, some organizations on the list may no longer even exist.”

“Finally,” I said, “direct service organizations have tremendous potential for advocacy. After all, they work directly with families and know their needs and can mobilize them to change policies and practices. But we are not funded to do that stuff.”

This was a lot of information to take in. We paused for a while to eat our food. “So what can I do to help?” he asked. I thought about it for a second. For the past year and a half I’ve been involved with the Southeast Seattle Education Coalition (SESEC), which is mobilizing the communities of color and allies to work together to improve education in Southeast Seattle. This is one of the few efforts actually led by the local communities of color to address the achievement gap. We are tired of being “invited” to the table. We must be a table. Trouble is, communities of color are not as connected to funders and decision makers, so we’ve been struggling with funding.

“Introduce me to your millionaire friend Ted,” I said, “I want to talk to him about SESEC.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said. We continued our conversation until the bill came. “I’ll pay,” I said, but Luke insisted on getting it. I could have fought for the bill, or at least to pay for my share, but I knew he felt some guilt, and this was his way of appeasing. I let him pay. I guess it’s my way of being selfless.

Last week, Luke emailed me saying he had talked to Ted and that Ted was willing to meet with me. I followed up to schedule a meeting. I am going to meet with a millionaire. Will keep you updated. [Read Part 3]

We need more shows about nonprofit work

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Like most executive directors, I come home exhausted from hours of telling staff what to do and taking credit for their work. To de-stress, I’ve started watching ridiculous amounts of television. And I started noticing something. There are plenty of shows about lawyers, doctors, detectives, cooks, servants, zombies, etc., most of them featuring attractive actors who spend endless episodes in frivolous romantic triangles with one another (except the zombies).

Unfortunately, not one of these shows is about nonprofit directors. What kind of example does that set for our kids? Do show producers think we are boring? Do they not realize how incredibly exciting our work is? In either case, I am going to write to David E. Kelley with an idea for a show, called “ED,” featuring a group of Executive Directors of several nonprofits. The show will explore their struggles helping to improve the world while balancing family and other obligations. It will chronicle the hard choices they have to make; the triumphs and challenges; and the friendships they develop, usually through happy hours. There are tons of exciting stuff to mine from the nonprofit world.

Pilot episode: A meeting room at the Coalition for Excellence (CFE). Tension so thick you could carve a statue out of it. Maria, the ED, prepares to present a cashflow report. Things do not look good, and she knows it. Meanwhile, at another nonprofit, Think of the Children (TOTC), Troy is furiously typing. He cries out in pain, cursing his email-induced carpal tunnel syndrome. But this grant is due tomorrow, and it’s a general operating grant! At another nonprofit, Unicycles for Guns (UFG), Vinh, a particularly dashing Asian ED, has a flashback. He is sitting in front of his parents at dinner. He tells them he is pursuing a Master’s in Social Work. They are silent, the sound of their chopsticks clinking on porcelain bowls mournful and ominous. He snaps back to the meeting he’s having with his Development/Human-Resources/Finance-Director/Janitor, Loan. She is tired of having multiple responsibilities and wants to a clearer work plan.

Episode 2: Maria’s board has voted to apply for a line of credit. This is a small victory, short-term. They did not seem to understand that fundraising efforts will need to increase. Staff morale, meanwhile, is down. She calls her Program Director, Arlene, into her office to plan a teambuilding retreat with no funding. At UFG, Vinh’s back hurts from endless hours of meetings. He holds in his hand a grant letter. He is afraid to open it; it could be a rejection. He decides to get it over with, when his phone rings. It’s Troy from TOTC; he got the grant he wrote and is calling, ecstatic, to invite Vinh to happy hour. Vinh looks at the letter in his own hand. “While we had many qualified applicants…” He retraces steps in his mind. Did he talk too much during the site visit? He felt like a failure, imagining all the kids now who couldn’t trade their guns for unicycles.

Episode 3: The Coalition for Excellence wildly succeeds at its annual dinner, and Maria has a good night’s sleep for the first time without Ambien. At TOTC, Troy welcomes an influential board member that he had been pursuing for months, Louis, whom he does not know had a relationship with Maria. He also does not know that Louis has loyalties to Think of the Children’s competitor, Care for the Children (CFTC)! The smart and inexplicably sexy Vinh, meanwhile, finds a coupon for 20% off reams of copy paper. He rushes to Office Depot. Little does he know that at that moment Loan is plotting with the board Treasurer to get Vinh fired.

In the season finale, viewers are left with cliff-hangers: Will Maria get together with Louis? Will Louis destroy Troy’s organization?! Can Arlene find a pro-bono facilitator for the team-building retreat??! Will Vinh be able to carry a ten-ream box of copy paper with his bad back and carpal tunnel???!

If that’s not compelling television, I don’t know what is. I’m going to develop a more detailed script for the pilot episode. Maybe I should add a zombie or two. If they don’t like “ED,” I also thought of another show, one from the perspectives of spouses of Executive Directors and what they go through. It’ll be called “Living with ED.”

Site visits: uncomfortable, yet terrifying

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officeThis week, VFA had a site visit. Whenever we apply for a grant, the second-best outcome is a site visit (the best outcome would be a funder saying, “We’re funding you, and in fact, doubling your request and sending the kids in your after-school program a laptop and a bunny each!”)

I always get excited about site visits. We write these grants telling people about how cool our programs are, but to have funders actually come down and visit is affirming. And terrifying. It’s a weird contradiction, like it’s your birthday—yay!—but you’re also getting a colonoscopy.

Before the visit, we try to prep as much as we can. Making a good impression is important. This includes tidying up the place and putting away our fold-out cot, which staff use for naps during particularly long days, or just weekdays. I also gather up all the papers on my desk and shove them into the overhead bin.

The staff’s personal appearance is also taken into consideration. “What kind of site visit is this?” one of them asked, “how should we dress?” The more funding is at stake, the better we dress. Less than $10,000, we dress a little better than normal, but are still generally shabby. At $10,000 to $19,000, we wear button-down shirts and tuck them into our jeans. $20,000 to $49,000, we wear slacks and a nice shirt, maybe a tie. $50,000 or over, I might require some of the staff to get Botox.

“$80,000,” I responded. “Ooh,” they said, “you better get a haircut.” A year ago, an hour from a visit with a major foundation, I checked myself in the mirror. Normally I look like a movie star, an Asian Steve Buscemi if you will, but this time I had a greenish complexion overshadowed by cowlicks so unruly, they were really goatlicks. Quickly I ran downstairs to a barber shop and got a trim. I made it to our program on time but was horrified to see that my face, neck, and shoulders were covered with bits of hair. “Quick, grab some tape,” I said, and for the next ten minutes, two staff used masking tape to remove offending pieces of hair. We got that grant, but the staff have never let me live that down.

On the day of this recent site visit, I was at a Leadership Tomorrow training. “Tidy up office, prepare slideshow,” I texted James, our Director of Youth and Community Engagement, who would be managing the project if we received this grant. This was only an office visit, not a program visit. Program visits have special challenges. We want our funders to see our programs in their natural state, so we don’t prep our students too much, except to tell them that a few people might be visiting and that if they don’t behave, Justin Bieber will stop singing forever.

When these visits go well, everyone leaves with a good feeling. The staff feel affirmed; the funders feel warm and fuzzy. Once in a while, though, they coincide with a crappy day, when kids have low energy, or some staff are absent, or the ED is hungover. Funders are usually pretty understanding and sympathetic when that happens, but I haven’t yet seen a bad site visit that has resulted in a grant or even a second-chance visit. It’s a horrible feeling watching a group of funders leave after an uninspiring tour. It’s like when you’re a kid and you’re practicing for hours at a yo-yo trick and it’s awesome and you’re excited to show your older brother, but then the trick doesn’t go right, and he tousles your hair and says “That was a nice try, Vu, I’m sure you’ll get it eventually,” and you’re mad at yourself because you already got it, dozens of time, so then you hide his car keys under the couch cushions.

Office visits are challenging in that funders don’t have the visceral experience of our programs, a chance to meet our kids and stare into their big, liquid eyes brimming with hope and potential. So we create a slideshow to give them an impression. Two hours before the site visit, I texted James to “make sure only cute kids w big eyes are in slideshow.”

On my way back, I got a text from James. “They are here thirty mins early! They in conf room relaxing!” Crap, I thought, I don’t have time to clean up my desk! The previous evening, I had eaten some Morningstar vegan barbecue ribs and left the plate out on the desk. The office had been cleaned, so my cubicle would be the only messy area. They’re going to think I’m disorganized and sloppy! How could they invest in an organization when the ED can’t even clean up his mess after eating vegan BBQ ribs?!

I arrived at the office with twenty minutes to spare, but somehow felt late and anxious. I ran up the stairs and burst into the conference room to greet the four visitors. This was $80,000 on the line and I was blinded by their radiance. Program officers are on average 27% more attractive than civilians, and like Galadriel the Elven Queen from Lord of the Rings when she nearly held the One Ring of Power, they can be both beautiful and terrible to behold.

“I’m so sorry for being…early,” I said, breathless. They cracked up. Maybe they’re just humans, too, after all.

Reflections for Thanksgiving

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thanksgivingLast week I received a severe drubbing from a program officer for unintentionally breaching protocols with her foundation while seeking funding for the Southeast Seattle Education Coalition (SESEC), which I chair. I’ll explain the whole thing later in my book “Unicorns, Equity, and General Operating Funds: Quest of the Nonprofit Warriors.” (It’s a working title). Suffice to say, I apologized profusely and left the lunch meeting feeling very much like crap.

On the way back to the office, I walked by Panha, an elderly Cambodian woman who sells fish and vegetables on the sidewalk. Seven days a week she is out under a makeshift tarp awning, sitting on a short stool, her eyes framed by crows’ feet and greying hair. “Yellow mushrooms yet?” I asked. She shook her head. “Not yet!” For the past several weeks I have been waiting for the chanterelle mushrooms that Panha’s friend harvests for her to sell. Despite the heavy rain, still no signs of them. “You buy leaf?” she asked. Panha speaks broken English and does not know the vocabulary for many of the vegetables laid out in front of her. All the greens—kale, collards, bok choy—are “leaf” to her. She pointed at some greens that I did not recognize. “What can I do with them?” I asked, knowing what the answer will be, since she does not have vocabulary like sautee, braise, steam, etc.

“Make soup!” she said, and we both cracked up. It has become an inside joke between us.

In my cubicle, I composed a short email reiterating my apologies to the program officer, then started working on some grants that were due, thinking of how nice it would be to have four solid days off for Thanksgiving. I was still feeling pretty crappy.

Then I thought about Panha sitting out there in the rain and cold, like my mother may have once sat long ago, selling her wares at the market, which we transported for miles on her bicycle. It made me realize what an ingrate I was being. I started thinking about the things for which I am thankful. They range from small things (wine, The Walking Dead), to big things, like friends and family and good health and shelter. I am thankful for all these blessings.

But I am also very thankful for my work. In all the daily craziness, I forget sometimes how lucky I am to be able to wake up each day and be engaged in meaningful work. Three decades ago I was a kid growing up in a small mountain village in Vietnam. The War had recently ended and my parents would struggle to feed us. In my fractured memories of that time are images of our wood-burning stove, the dirt floor, the smell of pine and red earth, and the monsoon rain that battered our rusty, leaking tin roof.

It was luck, or Fate, or maybe Karma, that brought us to the US. Sometimes I wonder what my life would be like if we had not made it here. I was a frail and timid little kid. I did not know anything of the War or what it did to our family. Now I realize that my father’s role as a soldier on the losing side of this War would ensure that none of us kids would be able to make it into college. We would end up repairing bicycles or farming a tiny plot of land or, if we were lucky and clever enough to navigate the network of corrupt officials, maybe opening a small business. All noble occupations, and we might have even been happy.

But I like the work that I am doing now. I don’t think many people in the world get to do what they find fulfilling. This work, strengthening a nonprofit, advancing a community, is challenging and often crazy driving. We face obstacles constantly. There are days when I get bad news from a funder, or an elder lectures me for an hour on what I did wrong, or our cashflow is awful because a reimbursement-based grant payment is delayed and we might not be able to make payroll.

But there are also days like this Saturday, when I dropped by our SES program to find 80 kids experiencing Thanksgiving for the first time in their life. It was also moving to see two VFA board members there, serving these kids their inaugural portion of turkey. Later in the same day, at a different location, our Youth Jobs Initiative program brought in guest speakers with different occupations to inspire a different set of our bright kids who face so many barriers.

The work is constantly challenging, oftentimes aggravating, and infinitely rewarding. I get to meet and collaborate with awesome, dedicated people all the time. I have the best and most amazing team in the world. And my actions, perhaps in just a small way, may be helping to make a difference in the world, to make it better. For the chance to do that, I am very thankful.

I took a break from grantwriting and ran downstairs to get Panha some Vietnamese coffee. She loves Vietnamese coffee, steaming hot, with condensed milk. The rain still fell, and she was huddled under her blue tarp awning when I approached her. “Oh, thank you, honey,” she said, her eyes lighting up when I handed her the coffee. I asked her how business was going. “Not good,” she said, “raining, raining too much. Nobody buy.” The winter would be worse for Panha. But she is always in good spirit. “You buy pumpkin?” she said, gesturing at some green squash. What can I do with it, I asked.

“Make soup!” she said, and we laughed, and I went back to my office.