By Allison Celosia and Priscilla Hsu
“Why are fundraisers in electoral and advocacy spaces doing the same old nonprofit-y donor-centric scarcity mindset sense of urgency nonsense? Aren’t politicians and community organizers supposed to challenge and transform the status quo?”
Since fundraising is almost entirely built on relationships, what can we learn about relationship building from “How to Build a Sex Room”? And what would it look like to apply these lessons to fundraising?
Michelle sits with Rickesh Lakhani and discusses what it takes to build a beautiful workplace culture.
Michelle sits with Rachel D’Souza Siebert and Henry Ramos to discuss where CCF is at today… and why it’s making itself at home because it’s here to stay.
“Many fundraisers recognize that current fundraising practices and philosophies are harmful and founded on white saviorism but are unsure how to dismantle oppressive practices. I hope to shed some light on how we have approached CCF.”
By Monique Curry-Mims and Valerie Johnson
In The Role of the Donor, Monique and Valerie sit down to discuss the role of a donor or funder in this movement.
A question that often comes up in our in our sector is: “Should fundraising be ‘neutral?’” Meaning, should fundraising and fundraisers stay out of political discourse? Should we avoid contentious causes and stances? Should we simply raise money and let other leaders in the sector deal with the challenging and polarizing conversations?
After all, the way in which the nonprofit sector has been built legally prohibits most organizations from directly or indirectly participating in political campaigns for candidates. And many foundations actively discourage political involvement, lobbying, and advocacy.
But this in no way means that our work and our movements must remain neutral. Everything we do and every choice we make is political.
We’re closing out our second year of posting content to the Community-Centric Fundraising content hub. We feel incredibly lucky and honored to have worked with so many talented and passionate folks this year to expand our collective knowledge.
Here’s an anthology of everything that was published in 2021, organized by theme (and in order of date they were first published).
Earlier this month at CCF’s latest BIPOC Town Hall, CCF Seattle organizers announced that we are working to transition leadership to a global council, which will continue to guide the Community-Centric Fundraising movement.
We want to take this space to explain key decisions we’ve made and how we are envisioning what this rapidly-evolving movement might look like moving forward.
It’s been about nine months since Community-Centric Fundraising launched, (though the seed of CCF was planted several years before that, from conversations that many of us in the sector were having about our frustrations with the way that we fundraise.) We’ve been thrilled beyond our wildest dreams by all y’all’s responses to CCF. It’s been so resonant and incredible to connect with and learn from so many others who have experienced the same frustrations and challenges we were personally experiencing, and to see, hear, and feel how many people across the globe are committed to changing the sector for the better.