By: Maria Rio, the Director of Development and Communications at The Stop Community Food Centre

Many fundraisers recognize that current fundraising practices and philosophies are harmful and founded on white saviorism but are unsure how to dismantle oppressive practices. I hope to shed some light on how we have approached CCF.

About two years ago, I was sitting in an AFP Congress session hearing white women talk about how they would approach a donor who had said a racist remark. Maybe they had a bad day, maybe it would jeopardize the gift, it would be too hard to say something. As a racialized woman, I felt unsafe and unseen, something I have felt many times before in philanthropy.

I have been fundraising for over a decade now, with my passion for it growing from my personal use of charitable services and supports. I lived in a World Vision refugee shelter, skipped school to access food banks, got help from a children’s hospital with obtaining my citizenship through a 12-year process, went to church drop-in meal programs, and received Christmas gifts from total strangers. I personally know the deep, widespread impact our work can have. We undeniably change the course of people’s lives. 

As a woman, a racialized person, an immigrant, and a member of the LGBTQ2S+ community, I work diligently every day to ensure that I can make a meaningful difference in the lives of these and other often underrepresented groups. 

That is why when I discovered Community-Centric Fundraising, I was excited to have the language and tools to implement my values into my work and to remove white fragility and supremacy. Of course, as our non-profits operate within — and often contribute to — a problematic system, there are many limitations fundraisers must navigate.

At my organization, we have worked the past year and a half to audit our fundraising methods and move towards a less problematic approach. My team has navigated the transition from donor-centric to community-centric fundraising, and we have learned about the real-life concerns and rewards of applying the theory in a medium-sized community organization.

Many fundraisers recognize that current fundraising practices and philosophies are harmful and founded on white saviorism but are unsure how to dismantle oppressive practices. I hope to shed some light on how we have approached CCF.

Here are some examples of approaches from our journey implementing CCF:

Reimagining Engagement

There were many factors we considered when reimagining engagement of our various stakeholders: how we tell the stories of our community members, how we discuss how non-profits and donors often uphold inequity, how we recognize contributions, when we partner with other organizations, and how we support the greater mission.

• We removed transactional recognition for donors. We removed online donor walls, did not list donors in our reports, and did not provide public recognition for supporters unless we had a significant partnership where the donor has supported us for many years. We also started sending personalized thank you videos to many donors twice a year, irrespective of their gift date and giving capacity.
• Revamped how we steward volunteers. We sent volunteers the same stewardship pieces we sent to donors who gave money. We listed our volunteers in our annual report to acknowledge their contribution to our organization.
• Moved away from signature donor-centric events. The pandemic was a great opportunity to completely overhaul our fundraising strategy. Pre-pandemic, our organization raised 25% of revenue through signature events like galas: events that were not designed with our service users in mind and perpetuated the divide between our donors and community members. We took the opportunity to pause events and ask our supporters to make up the revenue gap, which led to a 55% increase in revenue in a Q4 year-over-year comparison. We are now in the process of re-imagining what our events could look like when designed to be accessible to all.
• Built the right partnerships. We are a well-liked brand in the community, and many people reach out to us wanting to help. Individuals may offer things we turn away as they do not offer the dignity we provide in our programming, such as 50 singular mismatched socks, meal replacement shakes, or access to free gardening spaces where community members had to look and act a certain way.
• Stopped initiatives that didn’t align with CCF, even when they were successful. A year and a half ago, we signed onto a program to help donors with estate planning, a program that taught donors how to minimize their estate tax and instead give those funds to our organization. As we audited our fundraising and changed our approaches, these sessions stood out to us as being the outlier. Although our donors loved them, we decided to step away from this initiative and find a more CCF-aligned approach to planned giving, which we are now exploring.

Centering the community

Too often the community is last to be included in a conversation about services, communications, or public policy priorities. We deeply understand the importance of getting the insight of our service users when providing dignified programming, advocacy, and storytelling.

• Metrics-informed public policy decision making. We surveyed 200 service users on their top public policy priorities to determine which were most important for our organization to tackle. Low social assistance rates, unaffordable housing, and free dental care were ranked highly. We used this information to advocate publicly, connect with organizations addressing these issues, and send letters to our representatives.
• Piloted our first community fund. Using the public policy priorities identified by our community, we engaged two donors to give $25,000 each – $25,000 would go to our organization and $25,000 to another organization that addressed the public policy needs of our community, no restrictions. The recipient of the community fund was voted on by community members.
• Offered skill sharing and prioritized the collective mission. Over the past year, we have developed resources internally and shared them with like-minded organizations: voting guides, social media best practices, CCF skill-sharing sessions, advocacy ideas, etc.
• Had difficult conversations with donors. We discuss in-depth with our major donors the origins of their wealth, anti-racism and anti-oppression, systemic barriers, the importance of paying taxes, wealth hoarding, white supremacy, power dynamics, and more. Each fundraiser is empowered to end a relationship with a problematic donor and push back on any problematic notions they may have.

Overall, we have had many wins implementing CCF, although we recognize there is still a long way to go. Our next step is to do a CCF audit of our fundraising, communications, and stewardship using the CCF Aligned Action List.

The bottom line

Although there have been challenges, the rewards outweigh the difficulties. Working in a way that aligns with my personal values and the personal values of my team has been a huge weight off my shoulders. I can feel confident that our organization is doing its best to reduce harm while encouraging philanthropy and collective action.

I am sure many of you are wondering, like I was a few years ago, how does moving away from donor-centric fundraising affect the bottom line? Well, we have had significant successes, with this year being our strongest fundraising year yet. We have collaborated with partners, raised the number of gifts and dollars, solidified our first million-dollar gift, and are $400k above YTD of where we were last fiscal year.

However, it is not always a smooth journey. We’ve had to reckon with the origins of wealth in a capitalist system and our role in maintaining or enabling inequality. We have also had various challenges such as educating and getting buy-in from the board, identifying ways to make planned giving more community-centric, and grappling with the fact that although we work hard to ensure our actions are based in equity, our organization does not operate in a bubble. We’ve had to walk away from donations because they did not align with our values, and we are still unsure how the move from events to individual giving will affect our revenue five years from now. 

Although there have been challenges, the rewards outweigh the difficulties. Working in a way that aligns with my personal values and the personal values of my team has been a huge weight off my shoulders. I can feel confident that our organization is doing its best to reduce harm while encouraging philanthropy and collective action. Having these conversations with our donors has also been amazing and has helped us turn transactional supporters into partners and allies.

With the impact fundraisers have every day in the lives of their organization’s service users, it is imperative that we move towards CCF as a more just and equitable way to tell stories with dignity, engage our audiences, and push for systemic change.