By Michelle Shireen Muri, Freedom Conspiracy Principal and CCF co-chair
Episode Summary
“A lot of us, white women, are coming to our work with some deep martyrdom as the motivator. And this equation of ‘my worth is dependent on how helpful I am…’ well, helping is just the sunny-side of control.” With white women as the primary demographic of the nonprofit workforce, this episode begins addressing white women in their role as gatekeepers. In this episode, Fleur Larsen, a DEI consultant and a white woman, talks with Michelle to answer questions like: Why are there so many white DEI consultants making money off of racism? What does gatekeeping look like? How do you know you are gatekeeping and what should you do when you are called out? How do you call out a gatekeeper? Our attached bonus episode covers the elements of her life and history that have shaped her work.
About the Ethical Rainmaker podcast
In the United States alone, philanthropy is a $427 million dollar industry, of which 68% comes from individual donors. Yet the practices, theories, and foundation of modern philanthropy and fundraising often ignore the ways in which the industry perpetuates harm.
The Ethical Rainmaker, hosted by Michelle Shireen Muri, is a podcast that hosts authentic conversations grappling with the questions that we don’t often ask in the nonprofit world. Join us as we explore some of the practices that undermine our missions and navigate the way forward with today’s resisters, reimaginers, and the re-creators of the third sector. It’s time to think differently.
Our first episode features Vu Le, co-chair of the newly launched Community Centric Fundraising movement and writer of the popular blog Nonprofit AF. In this episode, we talk about how the nine principles of community-centric fundraising came to be and the movement it launched.
Michelle Shireen Muri
Michelle Shireen Muri (she/her) is the co-chair for Community-Centric Fundraising and the host of the new podcast, The Ethical Rainmaker, launching July 29. She is the founder of Freedom Conspiracy, a small collective of fundraising consultants focused on bringing values-aligned practices to clients in the nonprofit and philanthropy spaces. She can be reached at @freedomconspiracy on Instagram.
Love the new podcast
Wanted to share two Orgs I’m a huge fan of, both challenging how fundraising philanthropy are done.
IPaintMyMind https://www.ipaintmymind.org/
RSF Social Finance- rethinking community investment -https://rsfsocialfinance.org/
Thanks for this insightful discussion. Thank you also for mentioning generational and patriarchy issues within nonprofits. I sure wish you’d go deeper into both since both are a pressing issue for those of us in nonprofit. While most older folks will eventually retire (although many move to boards and enforce the problems), the patriarchal system is far from being resolved. I’d love to hear you dig into that more so that we younger folks can work together to solve these problems and help each other heal.
Really appreciate the thoughtful conversation and its relevance to my work
Oppression is all about exclusion. It constantly surprises me that the people doing the oppressing and excluding “don’t know” they are doing it. 🧐🧐🧐
You seem to miss the fact that poverty is not selective. YES – structurally and systemically, poverty is real for non-white people at about 2:1. However, there are sill so many people of all races that are poor, Why distinguish?
A really insightful and relevant take on this issue (even 4 years after its publication). I saw first-hand how this problem can manifest and cause harm to subordinates who report to white women who have had to overcome marginalization in a patriarchial nonprofit system. Rather than be a force for positive change, the directors I encountered were outspokenly hostile towards anyone who they perceived as a threat to their hard-won authority and engaged in openly anti-male dialogue, referring to previous executives but aimed at new, much more progressive-minded male colleagues and direct reports.