Nonprofit AF

Exploring the fun and frustrations of nonprofit work

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The 50-Minute-Meeting Revolution and the End of Back-to-Back Meetings!

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[Image description: Two tiny little birds, perched on the rim of a terra cotta bowl that’s filled with some sort of liquid, hopefully water. The birds are bluish and yellowish. They are facing each other, and the one on the right has their beak opened, seeming to be communicating something. Image by aitoff on Pixabay]

Hi everyone. Confession: I don’t hate most meetings. I mean, if you think about it, in our sector meetings often mean we get to spend time with usually awesome people to brainstorm ideas on how to make the world better. This is something our ancestors, who likely worked long hours doing manual labor, probably dreamed about for us: “One day, our descendants will be paid to sit, eat tiny oranges that are easy to peel, and talk while others write stuff on the walls.”

However, it seems lately that meetings have been out of control. The pandemic, which should have slowed us down, somehow increased the numbers of meetings we each have. It’s so easy and acceptable now to have virtual meetings. Not having to drive, find parking, shower, and brush one’s teeth means many people end up with more frequent back-to-back meetings. I’ve had days when I’ve had 5 or more. One colleague I know said she had 12 in one day!

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No, social enterprise and earned revenues will not solve nonprofits’ funding problems

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Hi everyone, for those who missed the Unicorns Unite’s 5-year virtual reunion event on Valentine’s Day, the other co-authors and I are doing an encore for folks in other countries on April 18th to discuss what we’ve learned since we published the book five years ago. It’ll be midnight for me, but that’s also when I do my best work! Register here and see you then! (Folks in the US who don’t mind staying up at midnight or 3am, feel free to join too!)

A couple of weeks back, I met a great new colleague. I knew we would get along because we wore the same brand of outdoor gear, which I will not mention here until the multi-million-dollar sponsorship deal goes through. We were having a sparkling conversation when my new friend started an impassionate speech about how nonprofits should focus more on earned revenues. I watched in horror, mouth stuffed with a blue-raspberry-flavored Jolly Rancher, as my colleague, a funder, continued on about how earned income would allow orgs to have more control and not be as beholden to the whims of funders and donors.

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10 Signs You Might Have Fundraiser Stockholm Syndrome

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Hi everyone, before we get started, here’s a conversation on Donor-Advised Funds (DAFs) taking place on April 21 at 10am PT. It’s free, and auto-captions will be enabled.

Some of you may remember #DAFHobbyGate, where many, many fundraising colleagues got very upset because on an earlier webinar I mentioned that “philanthropy has often become a hobby for the rich and it really shouldn’t be.” Dozens of indignant people told stories of the wonderful donors they encountered who would die before they thought of their charitable work as a hobby. Others called me pretentious, self-righteous, and ignorant. A few demanded I apologize for my thoughtless and insensitive words (which I did, very sincerely).

Here’s the thing, though: Not a single donor indicated they were offended. Or certainly no one expressed they got offended in their role as a donor, as I suspect all of us in the sector are also donors. The folks who were bothered expressed their rage as fundraisers, wealth advisors, and fundraising thought-leaders.

In an earlier post (“White development colleagues, we need to talk about fundraiser fragility”) I mentioned Fundraiser Stockholm Syndrome, this primal urge among fundraisers to protect donors from any and all criticisms and discomfort, as if donors were perfect beings immune to committing any wrongdoings, or fragile baby birds who cannot fend for themselves. It is preventing us from having deep, necessary conversations that would advance our field.

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The Ethics and Opportunities of Artificial Intelligence in the Nonprofit Sector

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Hi everyone, and happy Spring if you are in the Northern Hemisphere. Last week, I moderated a conversation on Artificial Intelligence and how it might affect our sector. On the panel were Beth Kanter and Allison Fine, co-authors of The Smart Nonprofit, and Philip Deng, creator of Grantable, an AI-supported grantwriting platform. Here is the full video if you’d like to see it. Below are a few points I took away from the conversation with these experts. Those of you who are more knowledgeable in this area, please feel free to add your thoughts in the comment section or correct anything I got wrong (By the way, ChatGPT came up with the title of this blog post).

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We need to talk about the relentless machine that is higher-education fundraising

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Every month or so, I get an appeal letter from my alma mater, Washington University in St. Louis (Go Bears!), usually with a promise of some socks or a keychain if I contribute any amount. I love Wash U. It was some of the best and most formative years of my life. It was there that I discovered the power of activism. I was vegan, and the campus had little more than salads, so I started mobilizing the other plant-eaters. We marched on the administration. Many of us fainted on the way because we didn’t have much energy, and our fake-leather shoes disintegrated. It was the longest 50 yard of our lives. But at the end, we were triumphant, and we feasted upon soy nuggets and quinoa bowls with pride. I will always be grateful for what I learned at Wash U, the friends I made, the experiences I had, and the doors that being an alum has opened for me.

But I’m not donating. Wash U is one of the most well-endowed higher education institutions in the US, with over 15 billions in reserve.

In general, the sheer scope and scale of higher education fundraising departments would make the vast majority of nonprofits’ development work pale in comparison. At a large university, we could be talking about a team of hundreds of people raising hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

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