Nonprofit AF

Ask Vu: Love, Dating, and Romance Advice for Nonprofit Professionals, part 2

Posted on February 10, 2025February 10, 2025 by Vu

[Image description: Two swans in the water, embracing. Image by Moonzigg on Pixabay]

Hi everyone. Valentine’s Day (aka Single Awareness Day) is coming up this week, which means romance may be on many people’s minds. In this week’s post, I am giving advice to colleagues on their dating and relationship dilemmas. I don’t know anything about this stuff, but I’m sure it’s exactly like nonprofit and philanthropy. Make sure you check out Part 1.

Dear Vu: I’ve been involved with someone for a few months now, but it’s clear we’re not compatible. I’ve been hinting to them that I’m going to focus more time on my work and family, but they keep sending texts and calling and inviting me to hang out all the time. What should I do? Definitely Over, Not Engaging

Dear DONE: In trying to spare their feelings, you have not been clear in your communications. It is much kinder in the long run to be direct and honest, so schedule a one-on-one meeting with this person with a witness present. Let them know that your state is a romantic at-will state and that you are terminating the relationship without cause. Offer an emotional severance package. Depending on how long they were with you, this could be a few weeks or months of communication and exchanging funny memes by text. Ask if they would be amenable to an exit interview. Before you do all this though, inform the rest of your partners so they are in the loop. I hope that helps. Good luck.

Funders, stop bringing spreadsheets to knife fights!

Posted on February 4, 2025February 4, 2025 by Vu

[Image description: A hand holding a serrated knife, seeming ready for a fight. Image by Paul Volostnov on Unsplash]

A few weeks ago, which now feels like an eternity ago, Inside Philanthropy gave me the award for Philanthropy Critic of the Year, saying “Through his blog Nonprofit AF, he’s long advanced a critique of funders that is irreverent, hard hitting[,] and often cuttingly funny.” It’s nice to be recognized for my ramblings, even if IP didn’t even use the Oxford Comma in the recognition, which is rather hurtful.

Among the other awardees are two that stood out to me:

Highest Return on Investment: Donating to the Heritage Foundation: “We’ve long argued that public policy grantmaking offers the greatest leverage for funders. Exhibit A is Heritage’s long record of outsized influence, which is set to hit a new peak in a second Trump administration with Project 2025 or its equivalent.”

No Kidding Award: The Generosity Commission: “Debuted with much fanfare in 2021, the blue-ribbon commission set out to study the decline in ‘everyday’ donors and found that, well, yes, small-donor giving is down. There’s more in the commission’s hefty report, but was it worth all the rigamarole?”

While it irks me that the Heritage Foundation gets lauded and platformed, there is no denying how horrifyingly effective this funder has been. What we are seeing now with the destruction of democracy and the rise of fascism can be greatly attributed to the work of the Heritage Foundation and aligned right-wing funders. And it will only get worse, as we will find out when Project 2025, which we failed to stop, gets implemented in full and erodes our rights over the coming years, if not weeks.

Amidst cruelty and chaos, a world that’s on her way

Posted on January 28, 2025January 28, 2025 by Vu

[Image description: Fingers holding a copper ring shaped like an ouroboros, a snake devouring its own tail. Image by Coppertist Wu on Unsplash]

Happy New Year, everyone. This week, starting January 29^th, marks the beginning of the Lunar New Year. This is the year of the Wood Snake. Here’s a great visual guide on what that means and what your fortune for 2025 will be, according to your own zodiac sign.

Since it is the Year of the Wood Snake, I think about the significance of this animal. The snake is often associated with evil, cunning trickery, and ruthlessness: hypnotizing people, envenomating them, persuading the naive into…eating fruit, and so on.

But in some cultures, they can be symbols of good fortune, fertility, transformation, and renewal. The Egyptian icon the ouroboros, for example, depicts a snake eating its own tail, symbolizing the eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth. Snakes often shed their skin, leaving them behind.

I’m thinking about all this because like most of you, I’ve aged an entire year since last week, thanks to the breathtaking onslaught of racism, transphobia, ignorance, and general cruelty coming from those who are now in charge, led by an adjudicated rapist and conman, flanked by Nazis.

“Raise the chainsaw” and other tips to inject more masculine energy into nonprofit and philanthropy!

Posted on January 20, 2025January 21, 2025 by Vu

[Profile of a rooster with bright red comb and wattle (the fleshy part that dangles under its beak is called a wattle. Don’t say you never learn anything useful from this site!), his beak open. A majestic, masculine bird. Image by Leuchtpunkt on pixabay]

Recently, Mark Zuckerberg said that “feminine energy” has been “neutering” companies, and what they need is more masculine energy! He is on to something; society’s focus on woke/feminine values like “equity” and “respect” and “personal hygiene” have turned us all soft and ineffective. Luckily, there has been a recent general resurgence of manliness, seen for example in alpha bros cutting short their long eyelashes because manly men do not have heart-stoppingly dreamy come-hither looks.

With all that in mind, I’ve come up with a list of things we can implement to make our sector more masculine:

Nonprofit and philanthropy and our white moderate tendency to obey tyranny in advance

Posted on January 14, 2025January 14, 2025 by Vu

[Image description: A statue of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., where he appears emerging out of a block of marble or concrete, his arms folded, one hand holding a rolled up stack of paper. Image by Laura Nyhuis on Pixabay]

Next week, because the universe has a perverse sense of humor, we have MLK Jr. Day on the same day as the Inauguration. One of the brightest lights for equity and justice sharing the same day with one of the most effective catalysts for hate, racism, misogyny, and injustice that Humanity has ever produced. It feels sickly appropriate, as these opposing forces have been fighting one another for decades, with the stakes now higher than ever.

The side of equity and justice, though, has taken a huge hit recently. Meta (which runs Facebook), for example, has capitulated, now relaxing their rules against hateful content. So now it’s a free-for-all for people to harass transgender people, women, immigrants, and other vulnerable people. Zuckerberg has also said companies need more “masculine energy,” which I think means having employees of all genders wear fake mustaches and interrupt one another more often to talk about stuff they only have a little knowledge about but a lot of confidence in.

Meanwhile, I hear about the rise of MEI, which stands for Merit, Excellence, and Intelligence. It is a counterresponse to DEI. Instead of focusing on “woke garbage” like equity and inclusion, with MEI we just focus on whoever does the best job, never mind stuff like systemic racism and bias, those things “don’t exist.” Be on the lookout for more MEI language from right-wing pundits, politicians, and CEOs. Thankfully, we have some companies, notably Costco, whose board refused to cave in to pressure from the right to dismantle their DEI program.