CommunityCentricFundraising, Author at CCF

Ways whiteness shows up in CCF to the detriment of everyone (including white folks), part 3: Retribution for speaking out in support of Palestine

Dec 18, 2023 | Essays, The Hub

By Chris Talbot, nonprofit laborer and born activist

The worst way that whiteness is showing up in our movement and elsewhere in the sector, from my purview, is and always has been white folks retaliating against People of the Global Majority speaking truth to power. Most recently, it’s shown up as retribution for speaking out in support of Palestine.

(Read Part 1: “Do something about her,” and Part 2: “Stop using that word.”)

Before I launch into part three, I want to share what I mean when I say “in community” because it occurs to me some folks may not know what I mean. When I say “in community,” I don’t mean “in a community” (aka a group of people in close proximity or with a singular characteristic in common – in this case, folks who fundraise), and am continually missing an article like auto-correct keeps suggesting.

Being in community requires stepping outside of or unlearning the Western indoctrination of individualism. It takes a praxis of community care and requires intentionality most of us don’t experience in our day-to-day life, at work, and most definitely not in our virtual interactions because intentionality and radical care require white-supremacist, colonial, Western, capitalist, competitive individualism to be decolonized and dismantled.

As bell hooks wrote in Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope, “To build community requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination.”

For CCF members to be in true community with one another in this movement, we must collectively agree to leave our competitiveness, domination, and collusion – as well as self-chastizing ways, like shame and embarrassment – at the door. And we must be open to hearing, without judgment, the perspectives of others and steward those sharings and each other with care.

This is pretty much the opposite of what’s been happening in online interactions and in our collective organizations when it comes to People of the Global Majority speaking out against the genocide in Palestine.

Retribution for speaking out in support of Palestine

The worst way that whiteness is showing up in our movement and elsewhere in the sector, from my purview, is and always has been white folks retaliating against People of the Global Majority speaking truth to power. Most recently, it’s shown up as retribution for speaking out in support of Palestine.

These white folks are the same ones that, for the past three-plus years (at least), used their ignorance on racial and world issues as a shield from accountability. They are now telling folks that their advocacy for Palestinians and against Zionist violence is antisemitic, and in some cases, using their out-sized power to publicly berate, censure, demote, and fire them.

In the CCF community, this showed up as a white woman I’ll call Kimber (not her real name) emailing me to tell me she wouldn’t be supporting CCF – a global community centering BIPOC fundraisers and nonprofit workers – because she believed one member of color’s shared (balanced and community-based) perspective was “offensive.”

(Because I’m nosy, and she mentioned this member’s “failure to respond to the commentary that followed,” I visited the post she referenced to read her “commentary.” As you’ve probably guessed, the “commentary” she provided was not something one would respond to; it was just unfounded accusations. It should also be noted that a lot of the other “commentary” was also a dumpster fire, and everyone who participated should investigate how they showed up at that moment and if that’s what being in community looks like for them.)

UPDATE: After the second part of this series of essays came out, Kimber emailed me, performing the typical white woman playbook that members of the Global Majority are all too familiar with:

Step 1: Thank you for speaking up. I’m still learning. In this case, I appreciated it and continue to struggle to hear voices and views that stretch me.

Step 2: I hope that wasn’t me you were speaking about. Here are paragraphs of why it couldn’t be. In this case, [Two paragraphs of how she couldn’t believe this Kimber lady.] I recognize I may be completely off base and, in fact, not the Kimber you’re talking about. But I did want to reach out in case I am. That’s a horrific comment attributed to ‘Kimber.’

Step 3: Our measured response (if we choose to make one). I responded to Kimber that I was glad she found my article helpful and that she was looking closer and doing her work, and invited her to follow the advice in the article and discuss her journey and feelings with white colleagues who were farther in their justice and equity work (rather than email me). I then explained what I meant by what I wrote and how emailing me and calling me in to answer for a misreading of what I wrote diverted from harm caused.

Step 4: How dare you! You have a lot to learn, actually. Immediately, Kimber’s tone changed, and Kimber began to lecture me and accuse me of being dishonest. Honesty is not a technicality. Perhaps you could do some further learning on that.

This is the white woman’s playbook when confronted with behavior that is holding back the community and putting additional (and wholly unnecessary) labor on People of the Global Majority working toward liberation. It’s tiring, but more importantly, it’s diverting. And it’s the exact work y’all need to be doing with each other and not taking our time with.

Back to the original essay:

Withholding wealth and unnecessary messages have been the lightest of the retributions enacted against people taking a stand against this genocide that I’ve seen. So, in that way, CCF has been relatively safe for people to speak their minds (the bar is in the ground and halfway to the earth’s core, though, so let’s not pat ourselves on the back just yet).

What I haven’t seen many white members of the CCF community do is explicitly state their support for people – especially Palestinians and Jewish folks – speaking truth to power, their intent to hold space for people who are hurting right now, or their commitment to protect or support the People of the Global Majority who have been experiencing retribution in their day jobs and lives. People like me. Here’s my story:

At one of my workplaces, I received an anonymous email requesting that my organization condemn Hamas. I drafted a measured statement to share with the team and asked for edits and thoughts. The statement included how our hearts go out to everyone lost during Hamas’s attack, the families who are mourning, and those who were traumatized by the attack, including Israelis and folks in the Jewish diaspora who may see themselves as the target of this violence.

I also wrote about the collective punishment and human rights violations enacted in retaliation. I said our hearts go out to everyone lost, the families who are mourning, those who have lived a life of trauma while trapped in the Gaza Strip, all the Palestinians still under attack, as well as the folks in the Arab, Jewish, Black, Latine, and Indigenous diasporas who may be traumatized and see their own peoples’ struggles for freedom in the violence being enacted against the Palestinian people.

I went on to say that at this organization, we had staff who are both Jewish and Indigenous, who are descendants of survivors of violent genocide, and that we believed that “never again” means never again for anyone. The letter went on to talk about how communication and rhetoric mattered and how the language of the Defense Minister of Israel was troubling for folks who had survived attempted genocide, and that we were calling for a ceasefire, among other things.

This did not go over well.

A white Jewish coworker started bastardizing the equity language I had taught the group, weaponizing it to paint me as an oppressor and to call into question my equity knowledge and my ability to teach justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) principles.

I took complete responsibility for the way in which I presented the letter and the harm it caused, recognizing that coming to the group with a draft rather than starting with if people had the capacity to discuss the atrocities we were witnessing or if they needed support at the moment, and that drafting a response together would have been more appropriate. I explained how I understood that it needled trauma and caused pain. I explained what I learned and how I would do things differently in the future to ensure that I wouldn’t cause the same harm again. Basically, I modeled how to take true accountability.

I chose to share how his reaction and the silence of the other white people were also harmful to me.

This also did not go over well.

He accused me of not tending to the harm and instead centering myself. I asked him how he would like the harm I caused to be tended beyond the accountability I took. He said that he wanted to hear me say that I was wrong in supporting Palestine, calling what was happening a genocide, and other things within the letter he disagreed with. I carefully and gently explained that I took accountability for the harm I caused while bringing the draft to the team, but I would not walk back the contents.

This also did not go over well.

This was met with increasing agitation, which devolved into him accusing me of lacking empathy and trying to get the rest of the team (who remained silent during all this) to doubt my ability and competency as an equity leader, all while misusing equity words. Sometimes, after years of educating white folks in JEDI, we only end up arming people with privilege with tools to further oppress. And that’s something I don’t know how to solve.

At a later meeting, the team decided to discuss whether to make a statement, and he said the quiet part out loud: If we made a statement like the one I wrote, he and people like him might be hurt. If we made a statement he would make, People of the Global Majority (including myself and a co-worker) would be hurt. I added that if we didn’t make a statement at all, People of the Global Majority would endure the pain of the genocide and our tax dollars paying for it without support – which would also be harmful.

His conclusion was, naturally, we shouldn’t say anything at all. And the rest of the white team agreed over the protestations of the two of us from the Global Majority. (When I brought the harm in this up during a meeting, I was gaslit and shut down by him immediately.)

The end result of all of these meetings is that we won’t be making a statement. I will also need to step away from my role as the chairperson of the JEDI Committee. I will no longer lead the continuing education of the organization – a position I picked up because this organization so harmed me in the past that I felt I had to do the extra work and emotional labor for my own well-being.

Whiteness is feeling comfortable and entitled to cause People of the Global Majority harm because white hurt needs to be ameliorated immediately, and BIPOC hurt is a given. Whiteness is standing “neutral” or saying “it’s too complicated to get involved” in situations of injustice, oppression, and in the face of genocide. Whiteness is not investigating or considering the immense pain caused by knowing doing your job right now, which you do to bring net good into this world, also means funding this genocide through your taxes. Whiteness is expecting Palestinians, anti-Zionist Jews, and other People of the Global Majority to continue to show up in these spaces as if it were “business as usual.” And truly, whiteness is expecting Zionist Jews, who are also hurting, to show up rather than tending to their own traumas.

Whiteness isn’t interested in accountability and repair. Whiteness isn’t interested in tending to harms, psychological safety for the entire group, or being truly in community. Whiteness is interested in maintaining deference, comfort, and power at the expense of others.

Whiteness is disparaging folks after siphoning and extracting expertise and emotional labor and weaponizing and bastardizing equity terms they provided you. Whiteness is staying silent while all of this happens, effectively enabling this violence.

A lot of white folks either don’t want to speak up or don’t have enough discernment to tell who is their equity and justice thought leaders doing what they’ve always done – affirming and advocating for the rights and lives of targeted people – and who is using the (very real, not to be minimized) trauma from horrific moments in their history to silence these equity thought leaders.

How does this type of whiteness harm white people?

The better question is, how doesn’t this whiteness harm white people?

Bastardizing and weaponizing equity language keep us perpetually languishing in white-supremacist, colonial, Western, capitalist, competitive individualism and mars the tools available to decolonize ourselves from it.

Retribution and passively or actively allowing retaliation against people speaking truth to power destroys the psychological safety needed to make transformational change – no matter what that change may be. It renders your nonprofits and their missions useless because the best you can do under those conditions is stem the worst, not imagine and actualize a better world.

All of these actions and responses destroy community.

How to restore what whiteness has done

I honestly haven’t a clue how to restore what was done in the place of work I shared. I no longer feel safe, and I do fear further retribution. It got to the point where I was experiencing physiological symptoms of continuous stress (again).

What I didn’t share with the team was that the violent reaction and unchallenged statement of pro-Zionist language as fact caused an immediate sympathetic nervous response in my body – it happened every time I received an email, a text, or had to join a call where the people involved were present.

It reminded me that when it comes to the right to simply exist, it is assumed for white people and needs to be earned by the rest of us. It also reminded me of every moment I’ve gone from helpful “pet” to dangerous “threat” at every white-led organization I’ve ever worked at. And how quickly punitive measures soon follow.

In the most recent meetings, I was able to avoid having the physiological symptoms by mentally and emotionally preparing myself with affirmations, one of which has heavy fuck you energy but is necessary for me to enter the space. It’s not conducive to building meaningful community, never mind repair. I don’t know how you can heal from that place while still immersed in it. I’m not sure it’s possible.

(I have agreed to the team’s recommendation to contract a mediator to help restore psychological safety, but I don’t anticipate it having long-lasting results. Not when one privileged team member can derail our learning, progress, and all work because they have that power, and no one will pause or disrupt his outbursts and attacks and ask for intentionality and community care. If you have a solution for restoring things when they’ve gotten to that point, please do share.)

Before it gets to that point, white folks can learn how to emotionally regulate. I don’t mean this in the white supremacist sense of the word – masking or suppressing emotion. I mean it in the community-building sense of the word – investigating the source of the anger or anxiety; discussing the feelings with a community member you trust to help you work through it; leaning in with curiosity and willingness to discuss harms with the purpose of repair in mind; not requiring BIPOC coworkers to assuage your pain while ignoring or denying their own; and not weaponizing your dysregulation.

Those who have lived a life with lesser power already have this skill set because it means temporarily subduing your immediate, automated response for the greater community. When you’ve grown up with power and obeisance as the default, it’s a skill you must learn. But you can learn it; I hope you see you need to.

Speaking of power, it’s essential in these discussions to recognize where the power lies. Is it with the unarmed populace of Palestine, or is it with the fourth largest military in the world that has subjugated the people of Palestine for 75 years and is currently carpet bombing Gaza, the internment camp they relegated Palestinians to? Is it with the colonial superpower with the ability to unilaterally veto a ceasefire, or is it with the People of the Global Majority whose votes regarding a ceasefire are nullified? Is it with the people allowed to dysregulate and weaponize their feelings in a meeting, or is it with people who experience tirades, censures, demotions, and firings for simply speaking up? Is it with an occupational force one of the world’s superpowers funds at a rate of $3.8 billion annually and is considering adding $14.3 billion, or is it with the people who are begging for water, food, and medical supplies and having that humanitarian aid blown up or blocked by that same occupying force? Is it with People of the Global Majority being arrested for protesting in the streets, or with the ideology that mostly white representatives are protecting by declaring any protest in opposition to it to be antisemitism?

Regardless of whether you still trust and believe the BIPOC individuals who gave y’all continual education in equity for the last three-plus years, these power differentials are blatant and need to be examined. Oppression requires institutional power to work. And noticing power differentials helps you not misappropriate the harm you experience as oppression.

White folks can also learn how to disrupt harm as it’s happening rather than allow people with privilege to continually shut down, disparage, and fire People of the Global Majority. There are countless teachings on how to call out and call in. You just need to care enough about the community and the well-being of its members to learn and utilize them.

My spirit is here in this movement to soar, not labor under the boot of whiteness – where I’ve spent the first 22 years of my nonprofit career and where I’m trying to escape right now.

People of the Global Majority: know that I am with you, I am here for you, and if you ever want to speak up and speak out, I’m here to listen and support you. Despite everything I’ve experienced, I do believe that we can and will build a better world together.

White folks: If you’re still with me after post three, I’m going to need you to call in and bring your people along. I need you to do this outside the lens of whiteness and bring people in with compassion and grace. After 41 years of continuously laboring for all the white folks in my life, I’m too tired to do it for privileged folks who claim to be values-aligned but are consistently weaponizing their dysregulation towards me while I emotionally regulate to make space for them.

We need someone to bring them into true community. Let that person be you.

Chris Talbot

Chris Talbot (they/them) is a queer, trans nonbinary, mixed-race artist, activist, and nonprofit employee. When they aren’t working the day job, they spend their free time editing art and literature magazines, writing and illustrating educomics to help folks affirm their nonbinary pals, creating a graphic novel to describe what it’s like to be nonbinary in a gender binary world, cuddling their cat, and quad skating in the park.

You can find Chris at talbot-heindl.com, on LinkedIn, Instagram, Bluesky, and Twitter — and tip them on Venmo or PayPal or join as a patron on their Patreon

Ways whiteness shows up in CCF to the detriment of everyone (including white folks), part 2: “Stop using that word.”

Dec 11, 2023 | Essays, The Hub

By Chris Talbot, nonprofit laborer and born activist

UPDATE: An earlier version of this essay read, “There was also an email from a white woman, Kimber (not her real name), stating that she would not be financially supporting CCF because a BIPOC member of our collective movement made a statement supporting Palestinians’ right to live, which she found offensive.” This line was interpreted as Kimber didn’t believe Palestinians had a right to live rather than Kimber was offended at the statement made, which was, in whole, about Palestinians’ right to live and actions we can take to stop the genocide. Chris regrets the phrasing they used, which led to this interpretation. The whiteness Kimber exhibited in the original email and in the two she sent today will be covered further in part 3, which is about how whiteness has shown up as retribution for speaking out in support of Palestine.

White cisgender women especially, but white folks of all persuasions, have flooded the CCF channels where BIPOC folks are having fruitful and honest conversations, derailing them and re-enacting the worst bits of whiteness, at times making the spaces feel like a glorified replica of every white-led organization I’ve had the displeasure of navigating.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote the first part of this three-part series dissecting recent examples of whiteness infiltrating the CCF movement and making some moments as toxic as your standard white-led nonprofit consistently is, destroying the spirit of what CCF could and should be. (Read Part 1: “Do something about her.”)

Since then, I’ve received a response from Emmy (not her real name) that made it abundantly clear that she hadn’t read what I wrote, much less truly sat with the questions I posed. She just wanted to define the CCF movement in a way that is antithetical to our values and the recent statement made by the (BIPOC-led) Global Council’s Communications Committee and instead mirrors the oppressive white “professionalism” we’ve been forced into.

I also received a series of comments (which have since been dirty deleted) on our Instagram post about the first essay, declaring I lacked intellect and demanding that I refrain from describing differences in power and interactions based on race. There was also an email from a white woman, Kimber (not her real name), stating that she would not be financially supporting CCF because a BIPOC member of our collective movement made a statement supporting Palestinians, which she found offensive.

These are just three more concrete examples of whiteness trying to penalize BIPOC-led efforts and voices attempting to bring community care back into the nonprofit industrial complex to protect white comfort.

*Sigh.* It’s tiring AF.

White cisgender women especially, but white folks of all persuasions, have flooded the CCF channels where BIPOC folks are having fruitful and honest conversations, derailing them and re-enacting the worst bits of whiteness, at times making the spaces feel like a glorified replica of every white-led organization I’ve had the displeasure of navigating.

It’s a disheartening thing to see happening to CCF — a movement that first opened my eyes to the fact that what I had experienced in the nonprofit industrial complex was abuse, and a movement that gives me life with how much potential it has to transform the sector and more importantly, the world.

“Stop using that word.”

CCF is a movement made by BIPOC folks, for BIPOC folks, in which white folks are allowed in as fellow accomplices. But as the editor of The Hub and the person who manages our social media, the DMs, emails, and comments we receive from white folks on a pretty regular basis would make you think that the movement centered around their comfort.

I often get demands to edit our BIPOC creators’ words and truths for the sake of white comfort. (I can just imagine the nonsense coming my way after this goes live on the site.)

Kimber’s email was an attempt to prompt me to apologize for another BIPOC individual’s (completely balanced and appropriate) words to sing for the CCF movement’s supper and place distance between our movement and this BIPOC thought leader. Why else send me an email like that? She could have simply ignored the ask and not donated.

Whiteness demands that white folks feel 100% comfortable all the time, which is antithetical to this movement or any push for social, environmental, or economic justice. But that doesn’t stop white folks from expecting and commanding it.

One such email came in from someone I’m going to call Bethy. She took umbrage with a word choice from one piece and immediately came to our DMs to demand I change it. In the exchange, she whitesplained what the word meant — putting her own spin on it. And she continually demanded I change it, no matter how I responded. I told her the actual meaning and why it was apt in the essay and asked her to sit with why it bothered her.

“I’d also encourage you to sit with why you felt it appropriate to message an editor of color to lecture them about the meaning of a word and demand they edit a writer of color while leveraging your education level. I’d invite you to examine if that behavior was the way you would like this movement to look and feel and if you believe it embodies the principles and values this movement is built on.”

Bethy responded with condescension, telling me she’d like to meet with me to further whitesplain (my word, not hers) nonprofit event planning — something I have done in every nonprofit job I’ve had for the last 22 years. “In the meantime, I wish you all the best in your activism.”

Whiteness showed up here in a myriad of ways. Demands for deference for her preferences, demands for my time so she could “educate” me, and an inability to recognize two people of color’s expertise, all to uphold the status quo, not support the movement.

Another white woman I’ll call Addy emailed me complaining about a creator’s title and branding, claiming it was “meme-ifying nonprofit work” which “cheapens our labor.” She accused me of moving The Hub away from “principle-based content” for clicks. As part of her takedown of me as the editor and the author’s decisions (who is a woman of color and well-known in the movement), she also decided to disparage another BIPOC thought leader in our network who happens to be a friend, mentor, and someone I admire greatly.

I immediately reminded Addy that the movement was begun by and led by BIPOC since its inception. And the two people she had disparaged were dear members of our community and invaluable leaders of color in the movement. I reminded her that while some of the content may not appeal to her specifically, I’m not in the business of changing how our BIPOC members show up — not for white comfort or any other reason — nor to be a gatekeeper of content. My job as the editor, editing with equity in mind, is to offer guidance and coaching to help creators put out the incredible work they create and maximize its visibility.

When Addy continued to demand I change our BIPOC creatives’ words to her preferences, I asked her to sit with why the title bothered her so much when she knew the content was impeccable. I asked her to sit with why she felt the need to demand that I edit the words of BIPOC thought leaders, and why she believed it was her place to police me as an editor. There was no response.

How does this type of whiteness harm white people?

I think if you asked any BIPOC nonprofit laborer the most common request or demand their white colleagues have made to them since 2020, it would be, “I don’t know enough. I need you to educate me.”

There seems to be (at least performatively) a desire to know and do better. But how are we ever going to get there if whiteness derails any and all conversations because a word or phrase made a white person uncomfortable?

Let’s look at a more blatant example from one of my workplaces: I’m the Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) Chairperson at one of the places I work, and I curated a tailored training on nonviolent, intentional communication because we had a couple of incidents and I thought it the next best step after being asked to “educate” on the subject.

A white member of my committee derailed the entire meeting, where discussing any last-minute changes to the training was just one agenda item, to discuss the phrase “perfectionism is a white supremacy culture characteristic,” which was hyperlinked to Tema Okun’s generally accepted list.

There was hemming and hawing about the phrase, concern for BIPOC individuals seeing the phrase and feeling left out (yes, really, even after the two BIPOC people on the Zoom call said this was definitely a non-issue), etc. The entire hour was spent on her discomfort with that phrase (I need facilitator training so I can interrupt that white nonsense, stat!). Despite the efforts of the rest of the committee — one BIPOC individual tried to ask her to do some internal investigation as to why the phrase bothered her, and a white member asked her to look beyond the words and to the intention behind it — nothing worked because this white woman wasn’t interested in moving beyond it. She wanted it changed. And she wanted it changed now!

White folks recognize that they can’t be in meaningful community without learning and doing better to build inclusive and equitable spaces. Still, they get in their own and each other’s way with the learning, with the building, and by competing with or separating from each other. They derail a conversation that is happening or could be had over one or two words and won’t move beyond it to the intention behind it because the objective is deference, not community.

And that’s at the most benign level. Other times, they use their discomfort to police or call for “the police” in whatever form it takes to penalize people for words and phrases that are uncomfortable for them to hear.

No matter how it’s done, it ends the same: we never get beyond talking Remedial Race Relations 101; too much BIPOC transformational energy is spent continually trying to educate someone who, at their core, doesn’t respect or trust our expertise or lived experiences (“I guess I disagree with the DEI experts, then” was an actual phrase used by this white member of the JEDI Committee); and there remains a massive rift between the BIPOC thought leaders and change-makers and the white folks who won’t let us proceed toward transformational change.

How to restore what whiteness has done

White folks: before you email, DM, make a comment, or otherwise order a BIPOC person to separate from another BIPOC person for your comfort, like white folks often do to each other, ask yourself why you are doing that. Work to build your emotional regulation muscles, learn to differentiate between discomfort and true harm (in brief: discomfort is a temporary feeling that can be unpleasant and is often needed to signify growth is necessary; harm is long-term or ongoing pain — like racism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, Islamophobia, antisemitism, etc — that a specific incident can trigger), and talk to your fellow white folks about your discomfort and really listen to their feedback.

Suppose you are continually experiencing discomfort with a word, phrase, or topic. In that case, it’s your responsibility to grow that edge or seek outside help (self-help books and articles, support groups, counseling, therapy, etc.) to help you grow that edge and examine that discomfort.

It is not your BIPOC colleagues’ responsibility to make sure you never read a word, phrase, or topic that causes you discomfort. And some of y’all don’t listen to us anyway. This is why you continually email, DM, make comments, and otherwise make me responsible for the discomfort you experience with the words of BIPOC individuals speaking truth to power and order me to remove the word, phrase, or topic from your and everyone else’s view – including those who found the word, phrase, or topic to be a huge part of their learning or cathartic to see named explicitly.

To white folks observing: interject. Do the labor that otherwise falls to the BIPOC person being ordered to silence other BIPOC folks for white folks’ comfort. But, again, as I said in the last essay, do so outside the lens of whiteness. Bring people in with compassion and grace, not condescension, superiority, or power. You have less labor to do in these spaces than BIPOC folks do.

As Dana James, a member of our Global Council, said during a one-on-one, “Privilege is the responsibility to not center your own emotions knowing you have the capacity to absorb more, and doing so for the collective.” Please do so for the collective.

Chris Talbot

You can find Chris at talbot-heindl.com, on LinkedIn, Instagram, Bluesky, and Twitter — and tip them on Venmo or PayPal or join as a patron on their Patreon

Meeting our missions by moving from Power Hoarding to Power Sharing

Dec 4, 2023 | Essays, The Hub

By Kristin Cheung, arts administrator, executive director, and co-founder of Future Arts Network

One way organizations can grow their audience base (and equity in the field) is to share their power and connect with smaller groups such as unincorporated groups, collectives, and grassroots groups.

For the first 15 years I’ve spent working in arts nonprofits, I’ve worked with different types of leaders, and now that I’m in a leadership position myself, I want to use this position of power to be part of systems change work. In the past two years as an Executive Director, I’ve worked to build an organization with transparency and clear communication, and one that strives to be equitable.

To build an equitable organization, we must first face the reality that there are many traits in a traditional nonprofit work environment that are actually characteristics of white supremacy culture. Characteristics like: Perfectionism, Sense of Urgency, Quantity over Quality, Either/Or Thinking, Power Hoarding, and Individualism.

For this article, I want to expand on how I worked to combat Power Hoarding by sharing my non-profit’s charity status and institutional power to support smaller grassroots groups and collectives.

The traditional thinking that leads to Power Hoarding

The traditional thinking for many long-term institutions is that power is limited, with only so much to go around. Many institutions and their leaders feel threatened if others suggest changes or criticisms. Many institutions have leaders who hold and control much of the information within the organization without sharing it widely – this builds an environment with a lack of transparency and distrust in the organization.

Instead of power hoarding, we should seek to “power share” across the aspects of organizations.

First, we must understand there is power and privilege involved in holding non-profit and charitable status. With these designations, you can access funding, resources, and, for some people, credibility.

Under the status quo, these institutions keep their power status by applying for funding to hire staff, and the staff grows the budget, program, and audience numbers. But overall, the organization does not share their resources or knowledge of them widely, except for the annual general meeting where they’re legally required to share their financial statements and “impact reporting” to the community.

Meeting our mission through Power Sharing

One way organizations can grow their audience base (and equity in the field) is to share their power and connect with smaller groups such as unincorporated groups, collectives, and grassroots groups. These larger institutions should be able to develop meaningful partnerships with these groups and use their charitable status to apply for more funding with the smaller groups and connect them with more resources such as funding, staffing, meeting rooms, donors, and so on.

Here in Canada, institutional funders are slowly shifting to allow these nonprofits to support smaller groups. I work in Vancouver and the City of Vancouver’s Cultural Services Department has opened up funding so non-profit organizations can sponsor applications for collectives or individuals. This means a larger institution can sponsor a smaller grassroots group (that does not have non-profit status) and apply for funding.

The City of Vancouver has several arts and culture grants and one of them is the “Communities and Artists Shifting Culture (CASC) Grant,” this grant has the option to support “sponsored application for individual artist or collective.” From the granting application guide, “Groups and individuals from equity-deserving communities that are not incorporated as registered non-profits, co-ops, or charities may submit an application via a sponsor organization that is a registered non-profit society, co-op, charity or First Nations Band council. The sponsor organization must have a mandate to serve the same equity-deserving community(ies) as the group or individual.”

In the past few years, the CASC grant has had an increased number of successful sponsored applications. In April 2022, sponsored applications were 12% of successful applications, and in 2023, sponsored applications were 25% of the successful applications. More smaller groups are applying for grants through registered non-profit societies that serve the same equity-deserving communities!

Another path of sharing power is through changes at the Canadian federal government level. Senators are creating paths to shift the way charities and non-charities are able to have more meaningful collaborations.

In March 2021, Independent Senator Ratna Omidvar said, “The Income Tax Act is perpetuating systemic racism and colonialism in Canada in how it deals with charitable organizations.” She has since raised the issue, made reports, and introduced a new private member’s bill to help change the system. The overall goal is to build a more equitable system for all groups – including marginalized communities – who rely on charitable donations.

In November 2021, Senator Ratna Omidvar introduced Bill S-216, “The Effective and Accountable Charities Act,” which will amend the Income Tax Act to enable charities to establish equal partnerships with non-charities, empowering the voices of BIPOC organizations and ensuring accountability and transparency. Overall, the bill aims “to eliminate the deeply-rooted and historic paternalism that many see embedded in the current rules about how charities can operate.” The bill still needs to be passed by both Chambers and will take a few years to receive royal assent. But overall this is a positive step in the right direction to empower the voices of BIPOC organizations while ensuring accountability and transparency.

In my work, running a non-profit charitable arts organization, I have worked with several grassroots community groups and collectives and in the past 12 months sponsoring their applications and we’ve been successful in receiving over $110,000. I also use my knowledge as a grant writer to mentor and support other individuals and artist’s grant applications. In the past few years they’ve been successful in receiving over $229,000 in funding. By using our positions of powers, we can share power and knowledge to support the wider community beyond our own.

Kristin Cheung

Kristin Cheung | 冮雪莉 (she/her) is an executive director, arts administrator, and cofounder of Future Arts Network. She is currently residing on the traditional territories of the Semiahmoo, Katzie, Kwikwetlem, Kwantlen, Qayqayt, and Tsawwassen First Nations.

She is passionate about working with and supporting the work of underrepresented communities and has co-founded Future Arts Network, a free community mentorship program for young women of colour and marginalized genders in the arts. This intersectional feminist program aims to build a future with strong, diverse women in leadership positions, reflective of the current cultural landscape. Kristin has a Masters in Arts Administration & Cultural Policy from Goldsmiths University of London. She can be reached at @cheung_kristin on X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram. To send her a tip for this essay, PayPal her at @kristincheung.

Ways whiteness shows up in CCF to the detriment of everyone (including white folks), part 1: “Do something about her.”

Nov 27, 2023 | Essays, The Hub

By Chris Talbot, nonprofit laborer and born activist

While it’s not your fault that you were conditioned to act this way, it’s your responsibility to heal from it so we – the People of the Global Majority – can focus on transformational change.

Last month, I had the opportunity to virtually meet Regina Jackson during a Next 100 Colorado Conversation with Our Elders session. Regina is one-half of the team behind Race2Dinner, the documentary Deconstructing Karen, and the book White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How to Do Better.

Before listening to Regina’s experiences, I would have classified myself in the category of a mixed-race, Indigenous person of color who doubted myself so much that I often held my tongue when experiencing harmful whiteness in the spaces I navigate, including – or more accurately, specifically – in Community-Centric Fundraising.

After meeting with her and hearing her talk about our power as People of the Global Majority and our responsibility to disrupt, I’ve been a bit more outspoken. “Don’t be afraid to have hard conversations,” she shared. “The worst thing that can happen is you get your feelings hurt, and fuck that.”

As I started to show up differently, I started to name things I saw happening and invite folks in to consider how they showed up.

This hasn’t been taken very well.

I know whiteness leads white folks to separate themselves from each other, declaring themselves “one of the good ones” when concrete examples aren’t provided, so I want to give recent examples of whiteness infiltrating the movement.

(I’m sharing this with the hope that white folks who do things akin to the examples I’m listing – and honestly, this essay could be a full-length book, so understand these incidents are stand-ins for thousands I’ve experienced or witnessed – truly examine them for similarities in their behavior. I ask white folks to really sit with these examples and meditate on how to change your impulses and behavior from whiteness in the future. While it’s not your fault that you were conditioned to act this way, it’s your responsibility to heal from it so we – the People of the Global Majority – can focus on transformational change. And the good news is you don’t have to heal separately; you can heal together, and that can be part of the healing!)

“Do something about her.”

We’ve all seen it happen in the forums for nonprofit work. A white person, especially a white woman, will goad, needle, or mock someone who’s clearly going through something and who has less emotional tolerance in the moment. They’ll pick at and diminish the person while staying on the “right” side of the listed “rules” of the space until the person they’re goading reacts.

Then, without fail, the white person will call for a moderator or another person of authority without consideration of the emotional load everyone carries. It’s basically a call for police without calling the actual police.

After all, they’re a white person who has experienced discomfort. It’s everyone’s responsibility to come to their rescue.

Other white people witnessing these things in real-time will usually either stay silent or pile on the person who reacted with terms like “unprofessional,” “inappropriate,” “violent” without consideration of the context of the encounter. They collectively pretend the white women provoking bears no responsibility. But they absolutely do.

Whiteness teaches white women since birth that this is their power – manipulate into bad behavior and then rally everyone to protect them.

When the People of the Global Majority have to spend time moderating and mitigating this white nonsense, they have less time and energy to build and move the movement forward. Who wants to stick around long-term when your transformative energies are being used to quell white nonsense? I don’t have endless energy for that.

This recent moment drained me in particular: A follower on CCF’s Instagram DMed me and asked if I would share her request for mutual aid for her and her children, who were trying to escape an abusive situation. I directed her to Slack and encouraged her to post in the “random” channel to see if she could get some help from our community. She initially DMed folks because she was unfamiliar with the platform, but once I explained it to her, it didn’t happen again.

Immediately, whiteness began to act as the de facto police to stop her – a Black woman trying to find much-needed help for her family. There were some gentle call-ins suggesting it might be an inappropriate ask, and then Emmy (not her real name), a white woman, tagged our entire moderator team to “do something” about her.

Let’s pretend that asking for mutual aid wasn’t directly within what we’re doing here. What harm is an ask for mutual aid doing in the random channel of our Slack? It’s sitting there innocuous AF. But Emmy tagged the women of color thought leaders who act as our moderators to “do something” about her.

I want folks to sit with the violence of that demand. “Do something” about a Black woman trying to escape abuse with her daughters, asking for mutual aid. Emmy was calling for the “police” (in a space that intentionally doesn’t have any).

Whiteness called a white woman mildly annoyed about a Black woman asking for mutual aid to demand other women of color police her.

As a mixed-race, nonbinary person of color who has been unhoused three times and had to escape an abusive situation once, this hit me at my core.

But this is not uncommon in whiteness. We see white people calling the actual and figurative police on Black people all the time. In our carceral system, Black people are disproportionately represented, and racial injustice is rampant. More than half of death row exonerees are Black, not just because Black people are blamed for crimes they didn’t commit (they are seven times more likely to be wrongfully convicted of murder than innocent white people) but also because they are overrepresented on death row.

Outside of our carceral system, we see kids of color, and especially Black kids, who are disproportionately disciplined in school, and Black kids are 3.5 times more likely than their white classmates to be suspended or expelled. Workers of color, even in the nonprofit sector, are under more scrutiny than their white counterparts, meaning their mistakes (that everyone makes) are quickly caught, they receive worse performance reviews, lower wages, and more punitive whiteness bearing down on them. It shows up in online forums like Nonprofit Happy Hour, and now it’s also showing up in Community-Centric Fundraising.

How does this type of whiteness harm white people?

Community can’t thrive with white supremacy and whiteness acting out. When we act out of whiteness and white supremacy, we act individually. When we lean into asking for the “police,” whichever form that may take – especially after goading someone into acting out – how are we going to form meaningful community that holds space for one another?

Most of the time, when I see the goading I previously mentioned, it’s white-on-white violence. Because you do this to each other mercilessly. That’s because whiteness calls on y’all to outdo each other. It pits you against each other. Rather than coming in community like a lot of People of the Global Majority do, you are in constant competition with each other.

What about demanding the “police” on BIPOC members of the community? Every Person of the Global Majority in that forum saw that too. And saw it for what it was.

I’ve been with my spouse, who is white, as he lamented the distrust he received from members of the BIPOC community before they knew him. “I get it, but it sucks,” he says. We’ve had the discussion about what Dr. Darlene Hall calls “healthy cultural paranoia,” – which is a response of mistrust towards white society and a defense against potential acts of racism and discrimination – so he truly does get it. But yes, it sucks. It sucks harder to have to be culturally paranoid of the white folks we navigate space with because we just never know when that shoe will drop.

This type of whiteness causes “healthy cultural paranoia” in BIPOC members of your community and keeps white folks isolated. It keeps us from making meaningful change together.

How to restore what whiteness has done

If you’re with me and you’re white, I’m going to need you to call in and bring your people along. But I’m going to need you to do this outside of the lens of whiteness.

Part of this was my fault for not anticipating how whiteness in the group would show up before encouraging this person to post. But I need white folks in the movement to investigate why they are here in the first place.

Are we here to make a difference in our sector and to support each other with care and compassion to envision and build transformational change? Or are we here merely to find resources to do our day jobs a little differently, making incremental and ultimately insignificant changes? Are we here to hold space for asks of all kinds and to hold each other as we all navigate the complex ills of the nonprofit industrial complex and capitalism in general? Or are we here to create hierarchies, bring whiteness to the forefront, compete with each other, and demand the “police” whenever someone does something we don’t like?

Because this is a movement, not an organization, we all must ask ourselves these questions. Hopefully, the collective answer is that we’re here to make transformational change. Hopefully, that means we will act in ways that embody that.

Once you’ve decided, check out the Community-Centric Fundraising Community Update, and in particular, the “Our values and how we embody them while interacting on Slack,” and truly commit to them.

If you’re with me and you’re white, I’m going to need you to call in and bring your people along.

But I’m going to need you to do this outside of the lens of whiteness. Whiteness doesn’t know how to be in true community and competes rather than supports. Bring people in with compassion and grace, not condescension, superiority, and power. There are no exceptional white people; y’all should be encouraging and helping each other through your unlearning. Start there.

Don’t hold back because you’re afraid of not saying something perfectly. As Regina shared during her talk, “When we’re talking about difficult subjects, there is no wrong thing to say.” Spend the time necessary to really guide your people along in a way that upholds community, not whiteness.

This is how we restore what was lost and begin to rebuild trust in the space.

Chris Talbot

You can find Chris at talbot-heindl.com, on LinkedIn, Instagram, Bluesky, and Twitter — and tip them on Venmo or PayPal or join as a patron on their Patreon

The Absurd Hierarchy of Culture

Nov 20, 2023 | Multimedia, The Hub

By Monica Fernandez, a visual artist and art administrator

The Absurd Hierarchy of Culture is meant to consider ideas of value within the context of the human experience and the profound contradictions and arbitrary value systems embedded in the arts.

Artist Statement

Interested in the tension between truth and memory, observation and perception, Monica’s work investigates the inner chatter of inherited untruths and the archaic social beliefs she was born into. Her work, approached as forms of documentation through drawings and mixed media, is a pragmatic attempt at recognizing the fallacies of how we live to instead uphold the reverence and awe in each of us.

As an artist, immigrant, and POC, I have been deeply entrenched in the nonprofit arts world that preaches inclusivity and diversity as essential ingredients in our work. My experience has shown me it’s a field jam-packed with contradictions low brow art vs brow art, fine art vs craft, museums vs community centers, MFA’s vs self-taught artists. These contradictions assign value to the creative expression of people by using a set of arbitrary rules, establishing which artists are valuable enough to collect, whose work is esteemed enough to preserve, and what form of creative expression is good enough to consider art at all. The arts have the power to hold and represent what words cannot, and they absolutely have the force humanity needs to heal and find resolve. However, until we question how our art spaces operate, the peering head of white supremacy and donor-centric culture that emerges will continue to exclude POC, and LGTBQ+ communities, further stigmatize people with disabilities, and silence the lived experiences of people living untraditional, unorthodox lives.

The Absurd Hierarchy of Culture is meant to consider ideas of value within the context of the human experience and the profound contradictions and arbitrary value systems embedded in the arts. When the spaces responsible for holding the artifacts and self-expression of communities assert exclusivity, who is left out? Who is invited in? And who decides? If artists are only worthy when they’ve claimed a particular space, what are the implications for artists who don’t? When we honor the life experience of people, regardless of class, education, race, ability, or socio-economic realities, we uplift a belief that all human expression is valuable and deserves to be championed as part of who we are as a broader community.

An art piece that shows a graph of what is considered refined and unrefined or high brow vs low brown when it comes to art

Monica Fernandez

Monica (she, her, ella) is a visual artist and arts administrator. She has dedicated the last 15 years to helping artists and arts organizations build a solid infrastructure to boldly assert their massive contributions to society. Her work has shaped exhibitions, arts education programs, access and inclusion initiatives, community-building efforts, and professional development programs. Monica earned an undergraduate degree in Studio Art from California State University, Long Beach, and a Masters in Arts Management from Claremont Graduate University.

Motivated by the idea of building a more supportive arts field, Monica formed Arts Plotter – a management service firm for organizations and creatives seeking specialized support so they can focus on the work only they can do. Her clients include artists, non-profit organizations, municipalities, and creative entrepreneurs whose work centers around equity, racial, and economic justice.

When she’s not working, Monica spends her time listening to one too many podcasts, drawing to think, and looking for things to take apart, only to rebuild them as something new. Monica is from Lima, Perú, and lives in Claremont, California, occupied territory of the Serrano and Tongva peoples.