CommunityCentricFundraising, Author at CCF

To the young, the less young, and the still-here fundraiser

Jan 26, 2026 | Essays, The Hub

By Sadé Dozan, a philanthropic advisor, culturist, and movement ecosystem architect

The field often mistakes how much harm fundraisers can absorb for how good they are at relationship-building. We praise the ability to absorb discomfort, translate harm, and stay pleasant under pressure, and call it ‘professionalism.’

You don’t need me to tell you this work is heavy.

Sometimes we feel it in our bodies before we can even name it.

If you’re like me, you’ve felt it in the way your shoulders tense before certain meetings. In the pause before you answer a question that really isn’t a question. In the careful calibration of your tone—be warm, but not needy; be confident, but not threatening; grateful but not indebted. You’ve learned that fundraising is rarely just about money. It’s about translation. About people. About holding multiple truths at once and deciding which ones are safe to say out loud.

If you’re newer to the field, you may still think this weight means you’re doing something wrong—that one day it will get easier if you just learn the right framework, or find the right mentor, or say the right thing in the right order… And, if you’ve been here longer, you know the truth is more complex. The work doesn’t necessarily lighten. You just get clearer about what you’re willing—and no longer willing—to carry. And sometimes, when we grow more powerful in ourselves, the work transforms into something not just to endure, but an invitation of an entirely new way of being.

Fundraising sits at a strange nexus. We are often asked to be relational in systems that reward transaction. We are told to be authentic while constantly managing perception. We are expected to build trust while operating within power dynamics that make trust fragile by default.

And overtime, it can begin to feel like the work is less about moving resources, and more about managing comfort—ours, but mostly, everyone else’s.

Guess what?

It’s not because you’re doing it wrong. It’s because the systems we work within were never truly designed to hold the full humanity of the people doing this work.

The field often mistakes how much harm fundraisers can absorb for how good they are at relationship-building. We praise the ability to absorb discomfort, translate harm, and stay pleasant under pressure, and call it ‘professionalism.’

And still, here you are.

What keeps us here, has never just been about skill. I promise you it hasn’t been about the perfect pitch deck, or more dynamic theory of change, or the CRM that finally makes sense (though, may we all find that one day). What has kept us here is something older, quieter, deeper.

Every breath you take is a reverberated exhale of those who came before you.

The air in your lungs has been here longer than any institution you work for. Longer than philanthropy as we know it. Longer than the languages we use to describe impact and outcomes. You are quite literally breathing in survival.

I often focus on breath. When I’m in a particularly stressful donor meeting, before I go on a stage, before I have a hard conversation… I breathe in. And I share that with you, in the turn of this year, as we face more fires only weeks in. Take breaths. The air that surrounds you is full of legacy.

You are breathing in people who figured out how to live—and sometimes thrive—under conditions far more brutal than a donor meeting or a funding cycle that has fallen a part.

I do not say this to disintegrate the reality of the weight we hold now, but simply to underline to you: breath itself has always been the work. Beings breathing life into what did not yet exist. A lineage of people who managed to inhale and exhale long enough to pass the torch to you.

So breathe. Long enough to imagine. Long enough to build. Long enough to pass something forward.

You are not alone in this work. I’m here. And so are the footprints of people who learned how to keep breathing when the future had no language yet, who built toward freedom before it had form, who made room for worlds they would never fully see. They carried dreams on their shoulders without guarantees. Weight they chose to hold, and they moved anyway.

And now, here you are.

What will you choose to carry?

We tend to think of fundraising as a particularly modern profession, shaped by contemporary tools and trends. But resource mobilization is ancient. It is one of the oldest practices born from mutual aid, from collective survival, from the understanding that no one truly makes it alone. Our communities have always known how to pool, protect, and move what they need to live.

What we sometimes forget, and what I invite us to remember, is that this work has never been about certainty. It has always been about breath and belief. About building something not yet fully defined. About sometimes carrying others towards a future that does not yet have words.

You are a continuum.

What you are doing now is continuity of lineage… even when the language feels sterile, even when the systems feel extractive, even when the work feels at times disconnected from the values that bring you here.

If this moment feels like winter…and after this year we’ve had, and the preview of what currently may be, I agree—remember that winter has never been the end. Even the harshest winter breaks for spring. Not because it wants to, but because it must.

Survival is cyclical.

You are cyclical.

I am glad you are here.

Sadé Dozan

Sadé Dozan (she/her) is a philanthropic advisor, culturist, and movement ecosystem architect whose work sits at the intersection of wealth, care, culture, and power. She serves as Vice President of Advancement at Borealis Philanthropy, leading organization-wide fundraising and communications strategy during a period of profound sector transition. She is also the Founder of Melanate., a movement infrastructure initiative cultivating leadership, narrative power, and resource fluency among Black women and gender-expansive people working in wealth and philanthropy.

You can find her on LinkedIn, she’d love to connect with you.

You can learn about her legacy project—Melanate!

When responsibility is individual rather than systemic: CCF’s unfinished work

Jan 20, 2026 | Essays, The Hub

By Maria Rio, Fractional Fundraiser + CEO of Further Together Fundraising

If CCF stops at perfecting individual ethics while systemic harm continues untouched, we’ve accomplished what the recycling movement did before governments intervened: we’ve made people feel better about participating in a fundamentally unjust system.

Community-Centric Fundraising has fundamentally shifted how thousands of fundraisers think about donor-centricity, storytelling, and power dynamics. We’ve learned to question sob stories, challenge scarcity narratives, and push back against treating donors like saviors.

This is critical work, but it’s incomplete.

CCF as a movement feels focused intensely on ethical behavior at the individual level: how you write appeals, how you steward donors, how you tell stories. But prioritizing individual ethics without meaningfully confronting systemic barriers mirrors the same failures we see across public health, environmental policy, and consumer protection.

When institutions with power avoid accountability by framing harm as personal choice, real change remains impossible.

The Individual Responsibility Trap

The dominant narrative across countless social issues sounds the same: “If individuals just made better choices, the problem would go away.”

Smokers should quit.
Consumers should recycle.
People should eat healthier.
Donors should give better.

When we fixate on individual behavior rather than overarching regulation, we guarantee that harm continues; we just get better at blaming the people with the least power for outcomes they don’t control.

How Systemic Change Actually Works

The tobacco industry spent decades insisting smoking was an individual choice. They argued they weren’t responsible for what consumers decided to do with their products.

Then governments intervened—not by shaming smokers harder, but by exposing the industry’s deliberate deception, mandating warning labels, restricting advertising, removing smoking from TV, and pursuing litigation. The responsibility shifted from individuals to producers, and smoking rates plummeted. Not through shame. Through systemic intervention.

Compare this to gun violence in the United States. The dominant argument “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” downloads all responsibility onto individuals after the harm occurs. Violence gets framed as a result of an individual’s mental health issues, rather than a public health crisis requiring regulation. But what does this lead to? Massive societal harm continues while manufacturers and distributors face minimal accountability. Guns remain protected despite overwhelming population-level data because we refuse to treat this as the systemic issue it is.

Or consider food quality. In North America, weak regulation allows widespread use of additives, excessive sugars, and ultra-processing. Responsibility gets framed as “personal diet choices.” In Europe, stronger regulation bans harmful substances before widespread damage occurs. The outcome? North America has some of the highest obesity rates globally, while Europe doesn’t, despite similar consumer behavior. The difference isn’t willpower. It’s regulation.

When systemic change actually happens, power holders:

Expose hidden costs. People adapted to recycling when governments communicated the true cost of landfills and created incentives. In Ontario, my home province, we can dispose of recycling for free. However, excessive garbage bags require payment for tags, making garbage costly and recycling free. Behaviour shifted not because individuals became more virtuous or aware of environmental harms, but because the system made different behavior logical.
Counter powerful narratives. Tobacco companies claimed consumers preferred their products and bore sole responsibility for outcomes. Governments exposed long-term harm, secondhand exposure, and deliberate manipulation, removing the industry’s plausible deniability.
Protect people without agency. Secondhand smoke regulations weren’t about smokers’ choices. They were about protecting bystanders who never consented to harm. This reframed the debate entirely.
Shift accountability upward. Once governments proved individuals would adapt to new systems, corporations lost their excuse that “consumers prefer it this way.” Responsibility moved where it belonged: to the institutions creating the conditions for harm.

The sequence is consistent: reveal true cost, enable or incentivize individual compliance, prove adaptation is possible, then regulate institutions.

Individual ethics matter, but only systemic intervention actually changes outcomes.

What This Means for Fundraising

Our sector mirrors these challenges. We’ve placed ethics on individual fundraisers, while structural causes of harm remain largely untouched:

Donor-Advised Funds concentrate wealth and delay community benefit, but we frame this as “donor preference.”
Tax policy incentivizes wealth hoarding, but we treat this as unfortunate but inevitable.
Northern wealth extraction creates the conditions requiring Southern “development,” but we focus on better donor conversations rather than confronting global inequity through lobbying or regulatory change.

The communities harmed by these systems have no agency in how philanthropy operates. They bear the consequences of decisions made by people with structural power, mediated by nonprofits that depend on those same power holders for survival.

Just like recycling, food quality, and tobacco, people choose what is subsidized, normalized, and marketed as responsible. Philanthropic behavior follows the structure policy creates. “Donor preference” is manufactured by tax incentives, regulatory frameworks, and dominant narratives that treat charity as superior to redistribution.

CCF Cannot Stop at Individual Ethics

Community-Centric Fundraising has made us better fundraisers. We tell stories with more dignity. We challenge donor supremacy in our daily practice. We refuse to perpetuate harm through our communications.

This both matters immensely and is not enough.

If CCF stops at perfecting individual ethics while systemic harm continues untouched, we’ve accomplished what the recycling movement did before governments intervened: we’ve made people feel better about participating in a fundamentally unjust system.

Real change requires moving from ethics to power. That means:

Collective advocacy such as fundraisers lobbying for policy changes that reduce wealth concentration, increase mandatory payout rates, and eliminate donor control mechanisms that delay community benefit.
Structural reform like challenging the regulatory frameworks that make charity tax-advantaged while direct cash transfers aren’t and questioning why perpetual endowments receive preferential treatment when community needs are immediate.
Accountability for institutions, starting with naming which foundations, which wealth managers, which policymakers benefit from systems that download responsibility onto communities and individual fundraisers.

We cannot shame our way to justice any more than we could shame our way to lower smoking rates. We cannot individual-ethics our way out of systems designed to concentrate power and extract wealth.

The Question CCF Must Answer

What if we demonstrated—clearly, publicly, with data—the true cost of relying on charity instead of robust public systems? The true cost of chronic nonprofit underfunding? The true cost of downloading responsibility for societal wellbeing onto communities and the people who serve them?

Then the “individual choice” argument collapses the same way it did for tobacco.

CCF has taught us to see the water we’re swimming in. Now we need to change the water itself. That requires moving beyond what individual fundraisers can do differently and confronting what institutional power must be forced to do differently.

The sector has spent decades perfecting how to ask nicely, how to build relationships, how to demonstrate impact to satisfy donor preferences, all while the conditions creating the need for charity intensify.

The question isn’t whether individual ethics matter. They do. The question is whether CCF, and the people who follow the principles of the movement, are ready to meet the moment. To move past individual ethics to power shifting. To name institutions. To demand regulation. To shift accountability upward to where it belongs.

Because if we don’t, we’re just teaching people to recycle while corporations keep polluting. We’re shaming smokers while tobacco companies lobby hard to write policy. We’re downloading responsibility onto individuals who never had the power to change systems in the first place.

And nothing fundamental to our collective liberation changes at all.

Maria Rio

Maria Rio is the founder and CEO of Further Together, a fundraising consulting firm dedicated to driving systemic change through Community-Centric Fundraising. A refugee who arrived in Canada at an early age, Maria uses her lived experience to help justice-driven nonprofits double their fundraising revenue while centering community voices. She serves on the Board of Living Wage Canada and hosts The Small Nonprofit podcast.

A personal reflection on the US Refugee Admissions Program

Jan 12, 2026 | Essays, The Hub

By Abigail Oduol, a Community Centric Fundraiser

Bureaucracy has faces. A long time ago, in a past life it seems, it wore mine. I was a refugee resettlement officer on the continent of Africa, straddling nonprofit immigration work and public service.

At the time of writing, refugees are in the news cycle. The current administration has just banned and seriously restricted travel for almost 50% of African countries, including the top countries for refugees. There has also been a targeted denaturalization effort at Somali families across Minnesota and the US. And just like following the fall of the racist apartheid government in South Africa, the US government has once again adopted a policy of admitting white South African applicants for resettlement to the US.

Bureaucracy has faces. A long time ago, in a past life it seems, it wore mine. I was a refugee resettlement officer on the continent of Africa, straddling nonprofit immigration work and public service.

Most days I’d sit in the office and do some sort of administrative work related to refugee processing. I’d look at spreadsheets and put numbers into them. I didn’t smoke, but I’d take smoke breaks to go outside and feel the air on my skin. I was a cog in the process that’s required for someone to come to America as a refugee.

There are common threads in their stories. They have all fled their country because of a durable threat of violence against them and their family because of protected characteristics such as gender, sexuality, political affiliation, ethnic group, or religion. They’ve fled, sometimes to other villages first, and finally to another country that won’t let them stay permanently. Some countries require that refugees live in camps.

Where I worked, only some types of refugees were allowed to live in cities. The United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) reviewed all the refugees, prioritizing groups that camp life was unsafe for. After that, refugees were assigned and ranked based on profiles of who was accepted into countries’ programs in the past. According to the USCIS website, this is the structure, but functionally, the relationship with UNHCR as of now is even more complex and unclear.

Less than 2% of all refugees were approved to participate in the United States Refugee Admission Program. And they don’t get to choose where they go. They may have family members in Italy or Canada or Sweden, but may be chosen instead for the US program. Saying no to the US refugee resettlement program may mean that they don’t get resettled at all.

Here are the true stories of people I interviewed:

A Muslim man secretly converted to Christianity after having a dream. But he lived in a country where religious conversion is illegal. He told his wife on their wedding day that he was not actually a Muslim. He is now fleeing family members and local authorities trying to kill him.
A gay man was being hunted down by each village he moved to because of expressing his sexuality or people guessing his sexuality. Being gay is illegal in his country.
An albino person was running for their life because of their body parts being valued for local witchcraft. If they return, they’ll be killed and the country they are currently in won’t let them stay.
In Sudan, fertile land is being taken away from Darfuris by the government and given to non-Black citizens, enforced by deputized forces on horseback called janjawed.
I met a variety of former journalists, radio personalities, and educated elites who spoke out against their government’s actions. Regardless of the different countries they came from, their governments responded similarly: punishment for them and their family that included torture and imprisonment.
I interviewed children who chased a butterfly across the border and were shot at when they tried to go home because border crossings were illegal in their country.
I spoke with people who experienced unspeakable state-sponsored violence because of the language they spoke. Some of the situations were so violent and intense that the interpreters broke down mid-story, with one having to leave the room and take the rest of the day off.

There were so many violent stories. Although I love action movies and thrillers, I couldn’t watch either for years without a panic attack. Gunshot sounds in songs triggered me, too. My colleagues and I experienced secondary trauma. Sometimes the stories we heard were all we could think about, all we could see.

Once I interviewed refugees and collected a lot of biographical and demographic information, they had another interview with the US State Department. Then, if approved, they faced a series of other security checks and verifications before they could come to the US. It could take as short as a month or as long as many years. Any life change that should have been celebratory like getting married, having children, or becoming a legal adult could reset a refugee’s case entirely.

Someone who had lived in a refugee camp their entire life met someone and got married. They had to navigate case bureaucracy with a number of repercussions for interviews, security clearances, and travel. Someone’s child turned 18, and now they had to have their own persecution claim about horrific events their parents didn’t want to discuss with them.

As I did this work, I often felt conflicted. Some things that people experienced outside the US could happen or did happen in some form here. And that was the hardest part of my job as a Black American interviewing and recording the stories of mostly Black people from across the continent of Africa. It was: telling them that the things they were trying to escape were also present where they were trying to go.

A gay Black man I interviewed asked for a white caseworker, believing that I would not do as good of a job in his case. (Anti-Blackness is a global project.) I had to tell him that if he gets to the US, whiteness will not protect him.

A group of Dafuri refugees said to me, “at least there’s no janjawed [northern Sudanese militia] to target us based on our skin color in America,” and I had to tell them the truth about being Black in America.

Was I taking some of these people out of the frying pan and into the fire? I think that for some people, yes. Their best lives would not have been in the refugee camp or in America, but in another country that would recognize their full humanity and allow them to be with their family and flourish. I hoped that over time, more countries would follow Tanzania’s example and allow refugees to assimilate into their society.

A colleague reminded me of all the white saviorism built into the system at every stage, from hand-picking who receives help, and then making that help “conditional, revocable and political.” The system as it existed centered the limited benevolence of the US and other countries at every turn, and refugee self-actualization didn’t even exist as a philosophical exercise.

All of this to say the program wasn’t perfect. And now, it’s gone.

On January 20, 2025, the administration signed executive orders banning refugee resettlement and freezing foreign aid. It was abruptly operationalized on January 22, when 10,000 refugee’s flights were canceled and 120,000 people’s cases were put in limbo. The current administration has its priorities, and the refugees I worked with have not been among them.

When looking at what is happening across the United States, it can be hard to remember that there are people that we don’t see and that you may never get to meet who are also nonprofit workers.

Within the US context, many fundraisers that I know supported this work through applying for grants and securing individual gift funds to improve the day-to-day experiences of refugees still living in camps. They mobilized churches, communities, and individual gift donors to greet refugees at the airport, donated beds and TVs, taught new refugees how to pass their driver’s test, and donated money to ease the pains of resettlement in a foreign land.

For the many fundraisers and refugee workers, the federal freezes and funding cuts meant an abrupt end to something challenging and meaningful that they’d dedicated their lives to.

I mourn for the people who had to start all over again and not in a new country, for the people whose hope for the future was snatched away, and for the peoples whose lives are in danger in their current location. I also see a way forward in completely rebuilding a program that has been razed to the ground. It’s hard to know how to feel.

Abigail Oduol

Abigail Oduol’s (she/hers) surname is not Irish or Pennsylvania Dutch. It’s Kenyan. Abigail is the CCF Movement Coordinator and is a member of too many committees. She invests time thinking about how popular culture informs fundraising and how people connect to each other. Follow Abigail on LinkedIn.

The staying kind: Storytelling as a tool for reconnection and repair

Jan 5, 2026 | Essays, The Hub

By nae vallejo, access designer and experiential archivist

I have watched stories that were sacred to someone become a branding tool for someone else. We deserve a different relationship to story, one that moves us toward repair instead of extraction.

I have always believed that story is a form of returning.

Not only returning to ourselves – though the slow gathering of pieces we were not sure still belonged to us is part of it – but returning to each other. Returning to communities we have drifted from, or been pushed out of. Returning to relationships that carry both tenderness and harm. Story has always been one of the few places I could land without needing to shrink myself or translate my survival for someone else’s comfort.

Storytelling has been the one practice I could rely on when institutions failed, when care was conditional, when rooms asked me to be grateful just for being allowed inside. Story was where I placed the things I could not carry alone: confusion, grief, anger, hope, imagination, fragments of memory that felt too heavy or too bright to name out loud.

But in nonprofit and fundraising spaces, I have seen storytelling used in ways that pull us away from one another.

I have seen it trimmed into a “narrative asset,” polished beyond recognition, flattened into messaging that serves a budget line before it serves a community. I have watched stories that were sacred to someone become a branding tool for someone else.

We deserve a different relationship to story, one that moves us toward repair instead of extraction.

Story as Relationship, Not Resource

For me, storytelling begins with relationship. It begins with the kind of trust you build slowly, without forcing timelines or outcomes. It begins in the space between people, the part that is quiet, tender, and often uncomfortable, because truth-telling asks us to be seen.

Nonprofit culture often pushes story into a different shape: a product. Something to package, optimize, measure, or leverage. A story becomes proof of impact, or a hook for a fundraising campaign, or a way to demonstrate “reach.” These tactics might keep dollars flowing, but they interrupt the deeper work of listening. They strip away the complexity of real lives and replace it with narratives that secure institutional comfort.

When organizations treat story as a resource rather than a relationship, they harm the very communities they claim to serve. A story lifted out of context can reinforce stereotypes. A story shared without care can reopen wounds. A story twisted to fit a grant proposal can prevent the teller from being fully human.

Community-centric fundraising invites us to move differently, to build relationships first, and let story arise from that ground, not the other way around.

Repair Requires Honesty, Not Performance

In my work, I have sat with people whose stories were mishandled by nonprofits, twisted into marketing language, used without consent, or shared before the teller was ready. I have also sat inside organizations trying desperately to demonstrate transparency through storytelling alone, without the relational groundwork that makes those efforts real.

Story cannot replace accountability.
Story cannot substitute for repair.
Story cannot be an apology on behalf of someone who is not accountable. Honest stories can support repair, but they cannot carry that work alone.

When communities have been harmed, when access was denied, when leadership broke trust, when disabled people were sidelined or tokenized, the first step is not branding. The first step is not crafting a message. The first step is slowing down enough to tell the truth:

We caused harm.
We did not listen.
We did not follow through.
We are trying to do better, and here is how.

Repair begins when leaders stop speaking about community and start speaking with community, creating space for multiple stories to coexist without competing for legitimacy. It is not polished. It is not pretty. It is not something you can script.

But it is real. And real is what people remember.

Tenderness as a Condition for Belonging

When I talk about “the staying kind,” I’m talking about the tenderness that lets us remain connected even when things get hard. Staying kind is not the same as staying quiet. It is not passive. It is not about swallowing harm for the comfort of others.

Staying kind is a practice of presence, a return to humanity in moments when institutions might prefer efficiency or control. It is what lets us sit with discomfort without rushing toward the nearest explanation, solution, or spin. It is what helps us ask:

What does belonging look like if we do not force a single story to carry all of us?

Tenderness is a form of access. Tenderness is a form of leadership. Tenderness is what keeps the door open when mistrust has settled in. And in fundraising spaces, tenderness can shift a narrative from transactional to relational, from extractive to restorative.

When community members feel tenderness in the room, we feel safe enough to tell the truth. Not a curated, institutional version of the truth, but the truth we live every day.

And when truth enters the room, repair becomes possible.

Story as a Tool for Reconnection

Real storytelling does not just transmit information. It nourishes connection. It helps people see themselves in someone else’s experience without requiring sameness or erasing difference. It creates a space where multiple truths can be side by side.

I have seen story repair relationships between community members and organizations after years of mistrust, not because the story was “useful,” but because it was held with integrity. I have seen story deepen belonging for people who thought they had no place left to return to. I have seen story help fundraisers rethink their practices, shifting away from narratives that center donors and toward narratives that center community.

When we hold story as relational practice, it asks something of us: slow down, listen deeply, and be accountable for the ways we show up. It asks organizations to move at a human pace, not a grant cycle pace. It asks fundraisers to choose accuracy over appeal, truth over aesthetics, care over urgency.

And it asks all of us to remember that storytelling is not an endpoint. Storytelling is an invitation to reconnect, to repair, to recommit.

Toward a Culture of Staying

If I return to story again and again, it is because story has returned me to myself, gently, repeatedly, unexpectedly. Story has helped me survive isolation, institutional betrayal, disability burnout, and the kind of grief that rearranges everything you thought you knew.

Story helped me stay.
Stay present.
Stay honest.
Stay connected.
Stay kind.

And in community-centered fundraising, “the staying kind” is how we build long-term relationships rooted in equity, not extraction. It is how we honor the people we claim to uplift. It is how we hold each other through the work of transforming systems that were never built for us.

Story is not a strategy.
Story is not a tool.
Story is a relationship worth tending, with patience, courage, and care.

If we follow that truth, repair becomes possible. And not just repair, but the kind of belonging that lasts, the kind that holds, the kind that welcomes us back when we are ready to return.

nae vallejo

nae vallejo (they/he) is a Black, Caddo, Mexican, queer, trans, disabled experiential archivist and access designer. their work moves through memory, rememory, and care, exploring how survivors leave trace across body, land, and story. as the founder of naeborhood projects, nae creates art that weaves disability justice, sensory attunement, and community connection into everyday practices of survival and tenderness. a hard of hearing, neurodivergent service dog guardian and lifelong educator, he centers interdependence, ritual, and storytelling as tools for collective care. follow their offerings on Instagram @naeborhoodprojects and support their labor via Venmo @nae-vallejo or Paypal @naevallejo.

Laid off? More like liberated and empowered!

Dec 15, 2025 | Essays, The Hub

By Carlos García León, anti-capitalist, joy seeker, and nap lover

We talk about community so much at CCF, but it was still so heartwarming to know how many of my friends and family I was able to lean on after being laid off… It is in this time that you find out just how much your support network is willing to do to be in your presence and support you. Cherish that.

Layoffs are becoming more common. According to CCN on November 6, “Layoff announcements surpassed more than a million in [the] first 10 months of this year, an increase of 65% compared to the same period last year.”

In the nonprofit sector alone, in accordance with the Chronicle of Philanthropy Nonprofit Layoff Tracker, at least 10,000 full-time nonprofit jobs were cut between January 20 and March 31, 2025. This amounts to an average of 140 jobs lost per day over a 70-day span.

A lot of it is mainly stemming from cost-cutting, the usage and implantation of AI (the bane of my existence, or as the kids say, my opp), and lack of government funding. If you have been laid off in the past, or know someone who has, you know it is a rough time. However, as a second time winner of organizations’ layoffs, there are also blessings that come after.

I do believe that layoffs are an organization’s last resort due to financial circumstances, changing leadership, and desperate measures. While there are ways to do layoffs that are not as harmful and more human-centered and caring (see Vanessa’s article here), the experience itself leaves you feeling like the rug got pulled from under your feet and without a support system. The organization and its people you worked for, made memories with, spent so much of your time with, and raised money to make an impact in your community are now letting you go, as if you didn’t matter. It’s unsettling.

Here are some tips to make sure you are prepared for it.

1. Get the termination paperwork and take the time to read it. You do not have to sign it there and then.

Whether the layoff came out of nowhere or not, do not feel pressure to read the document or sign anything right there. Generally, there should be some time to look over the paperwork and understand what you are signing.

2. Ask for severance and in the worst case, fight for it.

Nonprofits are generally not required to give severances when doing layoffs. There may be a policy in place in your organization, so make sure to check your contract, offer letter, or the employee handbook. (Added tip here: advocate for a severance policy in place when you land in your next job.) However, as it is not a legal requirement, nonprofits may opt not to give a severance after just removing you from your living income. It should come as no surprise to your leadership that you, a person who asks for money for a living, asks for money for yourself due to leadership deciding to lay you off.

Most likely, the initial severance will be low. Unless it is written in the contract–and even if it is–you can ask for more. As fundraisers, this should not be trouble for you. If they tell you “no,” remind them of the work you did to raise funds. Those funds are currently paying the salaries of the ones laying you off, and know that leadership, whose salary is usually more than the general staff, should have money for you. If my immigrant father and mother who raised two kids in the States below the poverty line can survive with that income, your boss can survive for a few months with less money so that they can give that to you.

What has worked for me is understanding that the severance agreement is also the employer protecting themselves from legal risk and future lawsuits. Use this to your advantage. Remind yourself that as a fundraiser your powers are in storytelling and networking, and now as a laid off person, you have the time and the will to use those powers to tell your story to your network of how you are being treated. The organization is doing layoffs because of x reason, and they may not be able to handle dealing with x reason and the truth of your experience with them.

3. Apply for unemployment as soon as you can

You will need to check your state laws, but applying for unemployment is important and relatively easy. The government often needs your identification information, your employment history, and most likely any proof of your termination. It varies across the US, but the unemployment amount is determined by how much you were making prior to being laid off and usually lasts around 26 weeks.

It often takes 1 – 3 weeks to receive your first unemployment check–which is after the certification week. Ask questions about it during the application process, including how much you will receive and when you would receive your payments. The paperwork that the government sends you should document all of that. Follow instructions on the paperwork to certify your unemployment throughout the duration of your unemployment.

4. Find your support network and the things that bring you joy

Now that you have some income secured, take the time to process what happened. You have lots of time now. Go hang with your favorite people that you never see because of work and work events. Travel as cheaply as you can to visit your friends and family (and hopefully they can host you so you don’t spend money on lodging) to do a proper catch up.

Get involved in some arts and crafts at home and invite others. Join your local community’s walking, running, or sports club to stay active. Binge-watch the shows you’ve been queueing on your streaming sites.

My favorite activity is dancing and if you ever get to see me at any dance floor I am vibing to the music, dancing, sweating, knowing that it takes community to create a dance floor moment. I have found much liberation on the dance floor, because nothing says resistance to the evils of the world than finding and experiencing joy when they want you to be anything but joyful.

We talk about community so much at CCF, but it was still so heartwarming to know how many of my friends and family I was able to lean on after being laid off. A mentor would offer to buy me lunch and catch up; a colleague in the field would introduce me to someone who had a position open; friends would buy a drink or a ticket to a show to spend some time together, or make a homemade meal and have me over. It is in this time that you find out just how much your support network is willing to do to be in your presence and support you. Cherish that.

5. Enjoy some of the time off

I am often talking about taking naps in the middle of the day. I am adamant that more people deserve more rest. Now, you have the time to do it. For a brief moment, you no longer are giving 40+ hours of your week to work. Catch up on your deserved rest.

In your work, I am assuming you did a lot for the communities you were making an impact for, but you weren’t resting because there is always work to be done. Now, you have time. You deserve that nap and an extra hour of sleep.

6. Detach your work from your worth

This is hard to do in such a capitalistic world. Repeat after me: “I am so much more than a fundraiser.” Say it again. Find a mirror, look yourself in the eye, and say those words again.

It is easy to forget who you are outside of your title when that’s all people know you as.

Before you were your title, you were your name. It’s time to find out who you are all over again. Capitalism makes us believe that we are only worth something if we are working, but that’s just not true. You are worth something simply because you exist. You can make an impact without being attached to an organization. You have the skills, and if you have learned anything from CCF, you know that our value should not be attached to our net worth.

My mother had so many jobs while being in the States, but she put the most effort in being a mother–a job in its own right, but one that doesn’t come with health insurance or a 403(b) match. My mom is worth her weight in gold and then some, but even when she didn’t have a job, she was worthy of being.

7. Take your time with the search

While I do firmly believe that philanthropy should work to end itself, and that in the future there won’t be a need for fundraisers to raise money, for we have finally solved the social issues that nonprofits began for anyway, we are not quite there. This means that fundraisers are very much needed.

The job market is certainly not great, but it does not mean that you should jump at the first offer you get. What helped me was telling myself that it is not a matter of if I get a job, but when I get a job.

Find out how long you can go on with unemployment payments, savings, and any side gigs you may have, before you truly need a full-time gig. Apply for positions for organizations whose work you really believe in, that will pay you just as much if not more than your last position for your skills, experience, and expertise. They may not appear right after being unemployed, but they will come.

Being a community-centric fundraiser is for every organization, but not every organization is ready for a community-centric fundraiser. However, the ones who are will fight for you, too. Make sure that when, not if, you land again on your feet, you land at a better place than before.

It is my wish that you, my dear reader, will never experience being laid off and that you will never need these tips. However, if you do, or know someone that has or will in the near future, save, pass along, and use these tips.

I felt so lucky and grateful that there was community that kept me together during both of my layoff eras–which I call Funemployment and Funemployment 2: Electric Boogaloo. Other people deserve to know that being laid off can be empowering and liberating, even when it is a dark moment.

Briefly, I wanted to note that I brought up my parents’ and my own upbringing throughout this essay because during the lowest part of my process, recalling the struggles of my ancestors helped me ground myself that things are not as bad as they could be. That even if they were, people have survived worse things and even then they were able to make it through.

Lastly, because you read this, thank you for being in community with CCF. My gratitude extends to you–a person I may not know nor never will–because you took the time to be in community with my experience and thoughts. The mission that CCF has continues, whether I am employed or not, and I’m glad to be fulfilling that mission with you.

Carlos García León

Carlos García León (he/they; el/elle) is a queer, non-binary, Latine, Mexican-Statesian, and cute little revolutionist. They were born in Atlixco, Puebla, Mexico, and reside in the stolen land of the Peoria, Potawatomi, Kickapoo, and Kaskaskia tribes, also known as Chicago, Illinois. Their work is driven by a fight for cultural equity, decolonizing the arts, and social justice. As such, Carlos describes themselves as an anti-capitalist, community-centric, theoretical fundraiser.

Carlos has spoken at multiple conferences introducing the concept of Community-Centric Fundraising and building a more gender-inclusive workplace to hundreds of attendees. Carlos holds a B.M. in Bassoon Performance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a M.A. in Arts Administration and an MBA from the University of Cincinnati. They enjoy their leisure time by hanging with friends, resisting capitalism by taking naps, dancing to Latin, disco, and house music, and exploring new Chicago food spots. They can be reached via email or on Instagram, Twitter, and other social media platforms @cgarcia_leon. You can tip them for their work via Venmo @cgarcia_leon or via PayPal using their email. Carlos would be eternally grateful for any tips during their Funemployment 2: Electric Boogaloo era.