By josh martinez and Sarah Benner-Kenagy
One of the biggest stressors in the world of social services is money. Who has it? Who needs it? What does the person who has it want in return for giving it to the person who doesn’t? On a person-to-person level, most people don’t attach strings to the dollar they give to someone on the street (and if you do, please stop!). But on a funder-to-organization level, we have strings a-plenty! Why is that? What if there was another way?
Try as I might to focus on my day job two days after the mass shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs, I can’t. I can only think about what I want my cisgender heterosexual friends, family, and coworkers to know about what it’s like to live in my skin…
In a world where tech money wants us to quantify our work, what is truly meaningful and how do we change? Michelle talks with Marcia about Equitable Evaluation Framework and how our practices are so wrong and how to do better.
One of the core values of the Community-Centric Fundraising movement is that of Courage. We must challenge the way things are done and take bold action if we want to see the change that is needed to create equitable fundraising practices. For this reason, we support efforts which advocates for safe and healthy environments for fundraisers to do good work.
I thought it was just a problem I was experiencing: white women gatekeepers in justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) work. But, I was attending The Adaway Group’s Whiteness at Work Training (I highly recommend this training for folks working at predominantly white institutions!) when Desiree and Jessica began talking about it explicitly.
“I am grateful I spent 10 days this year in silent meditation, a privilege that many nonprofit workers are not granted due to supremacy work cultures. During this time I came to four profound, professionally enhancing insights as it relates to my nonprofit work.”
Michelle and Anu, author of Oprah-loved book Beyond Guilt Trips, build analysis through a lens of travel ethics and what it means to truly move forward.
“Fundraisers have so much power to push forward equitable practices at the organizations we represent. You can commit to using that influence to encourage your nonprofit and partners to push for systemic change.”
I want to talk about impostor syndrome, that little hater we all know who has grown too comfortable living in our bodies. It’s the voice that tells the story of our failure, over and over again. Really, it’s a wound we have to heal.
Community-Centric Fundraising (CCF) is a movement founded by fundraising professionals — but its success will not be realized if we do not cast a wider net to others impacted by the ineffective and inequitable realities of the nonprofit sector.
On days including and between Indigenous People’s Day and Native American Heritage Day, I feel like I run a gauntlet of aggressions, micro and macro, from white-led environmental nonprofits, white people in environmental nonprofits, and sometimes even from my kinfolk who aren’t transparent when trying to get white peoples’ money to continue their good works in their nonprofits.
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?”