By Community-Centric Fundraising Global Council Communications Committee
On March 1, 2023, Rakhi became our first Community Centric Fundraising ancestor. It was an unexpected transition, and there was much left unsaid. What does it mean to grasp fruitlessly at the closure we so profoundly yearn for? With the end of the year as a marker to ponder love and loss, the passage of time, and our ancestors, we hope to bring closure to this year and those moments by honoring Rakhi.
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.
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.
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.
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.
As a person with multiple invisible disabilities, I’m sick of explaining the spoon theory. When you have service for 200 in your pocket, you’re probably not going to understand those who have to wait for their three spoons that are stuck in a rinse cycle.
Requiring a college degree narrows a hiring pool to those who have access to a college education and can lend to a homogenous candidate pool, which will be reflected in the staff makeup. An organization pursuing equity can look beyond bureaucratic requirements and checkboxes to value a wide array of lived experiences.
The basis of our work, our motivations, is rooted in a desire for change. We seek to create a world that is more equitable and just, but more often than not, we miss the mark. The truth is that the non-profit sector has as long of a history of harm as it does of good.
In a world where “doing good” has become a marketable commodity, an ESG metric, or an acceptable defense against valid criticism, nonprofit leaders must take time to reflect on the role we play in the Nonprofit Industrial Complex (NPIC).
What do you do if it seems like your funder or prospective partner is inherently opposed to your approach to meeting your mission?
Among the most egregious practices that cause nonprofit organizations to fail the equity test is a reliance on unpaid labor. What’s even more concerning is that this is most common among professional development organizations.
Those of us who work closely with nonprofit boards or serve on boards know that a high percentage of boards are not working. And the challenges in terms of the stresses that boards are experiencing (racial injustice, inequities, workplace burnout, uncertainty in the larger economic environment) have increased over the past few years.