Friends. I am turning 40 this summer. I am milleniOLD. An elder millennial. Some might say a geriatric millennial — which is just rude, y’all. I still feel young, despite listening to chats that my children — both born after 2010 and currently categorized as Gen Alpha —— have songs and trends and technology that I’m completely clueless about.
Sometime in the last decade, I went from being one of the youngest people in the room to one of the oldest. I did not realize this shift had occurred until recently, when I was on a Zoom with a client. During an icebreaker, we all had the chance to share one of our favorite teenage/coming-of-age movies.
For a long time in past jobs, early in my career, a bad day meant needing to go back to college career fairs. There, after trying to deliver a just-decent elevator pitch to the few companies who could sponsor international students, I’d always stumble upon two groups I hoped to avoid…
Honesty. We crave it and we don’t get enough of it! In this episode, award winning poet, hip hop artist and teacher Matthew Cuban Hernandez of Street Poets Inc. (LA) talks with Michelle about honesty in our interpersonal relationships and in our organizations, rites of passage, structural racism and ageism in working with young people and…giving work away! 
This summer, we’re planning to transition leadership of Community-Centric Fundraising (CCF) from its co-founders to a CCF Global Council, and we sincerely hope that you will consider applying for this. There are more details about what it all entails, but first, here’s backstory for those of you who like context!
I made the choice to tender my resignation in the fall of 2021, but not for the reasons you may think. 
I dread job searches. I look forward to them about as much as buying pants online or trying to find the person at a corporate bank who can override the system software to correct an ownership error in an old organizational account. I know that I’m not alone about this.
For over twenty years, I have been part of a spiritual program that has a useful axiom: “expectations are premeditated resentments.” Most of the time, I know better than to have any expectations but sometimes, I forget. When I was getting ready to birth my first and only child, for example, I expected to have a natural childbirth. I had a plan, midwives, candles, the whole thing. The birth turned out to be long and complicated and, in the end, anything but natural. I spent several years working through my resentments and the parts of that experience I was responsible for, the largest of which were my expectations. 
“Financially, [working at a nonprofit] can’t work for a lot of people. And in fact, with a nonprofit our size — boy, you almost have to be in a committed relationship with somebody else with an income, because you’re not — it’s hard to support yourself on what we can pay people, in Denver.”