When Community-Centric Fundraising launched in July, we had no concept of what our hub would look like in December 2020. We had no idea we would be so fortunate to have the opportunity to work with such passionate, and intelligent folx — and we didn’t fully understand the kind of talent that exists in our sector.
Here’s an anthology of everything that was published in 2020, organized by theme (and in order of date they were first published).
As I reflect on the last three years of successes and failures in actualizing a practice centered around community-centric fundraising, I identified some key activities that helped me get started. I hope they help you introduce this movement to your work.
Fundraiser, tell me, have you smiled today? With so much to accomplish in the final few weeks of the year, I am willing to bet your self-care has gone out the window. For those of us who may feel battered and bruised due to the repeated blows 2020 dealt, the pressure of year-end fundraising can take our exhaustion and stress to new heights. We have volunteers to thank, dollars to raise, and donations to process.
I might as well start this essay about Christian foundations with a confession: I am pretty darn uncomfortable working as a fundraiser at religiously-affiliated nonprofit.
For most of my 20+-year career in nonprofits, I have been a violence-prevention educator, mostly for a private, rural, feminist organization. I spent years facilitating groups and trainings about the dynamics of domestic violence and intersectional oppression in order to prevent interpersonal harm and public bullying.
If you’re hoping for a brighter 2021, we need to have an honest talk about your diversity plan. Spoiler alert — it’s not going as well as you think.
I’m telling you this as a prospect researcher, the person whose professional goal is to make fundraising folx confront reality. Diversity plans are hard, and they should be. But we’re making them impossible.
Have you ever felt disconnected from your board? Maybe over that fall campaign planning? Or the end of year appeals? Or general COVID fundraising practices?
I think we all know the answer already. Yet, as a consultant, sometimes I eagerly await to work for those Nonprofits that have a balanced alignment with their Board. For most of my clients this year, there’s been such a need to deliberately use available research tools to bridge the gap between staff and the board.
By letting go of the belief that I am not valuable to my communities unless I extract every ounce of myself for others’ benefit, I have let go of the compulsion to push myself to the point of physical and psychological collapse. This month, I’ve been watching the sunrise. From my east-facing window, I’ve observed vibrant red and orange fan out from the horizon, lighting clouds from below. I’ve never been an early riser. But something has shifted in me in the past few years.
Writing has always been my saving grace. I grew up an introverted only child, and sometimes, I could only communicate through my writing.
My love of writing grew over the years, especially when I went full-force into zine creation in highschool. I loved the fact that I could create, print and distribute my own words, without dilution, to the masses. It became my form of therapy, to salve the scars left behind from very real pre-existing generational trauma to also new trauma.
How would you feel if I told you that Jeff Bezos got his groceries for free from a food bank?
If he did, it would probably shock and anger you, right? These feelings come up because we as a society assume that nonprofits exist to support those who are unable to access the services they need, and in our country, one of the biggest barriers to access is wealth.
A group of BIPOC* fundraisers and nonprofit professionals began a collaboration to build a movement for racial and economic justice, sharing dreams of a world beyond capitalism and the nonprofit industrial complex. To gauge perceptions of nonprofit fundraising, this group distributed a survey in May 2019. Intended to highlight the thoughts and experiences of fundraisers and presented through a series of infographics, here are some findings from over 2,000 fundraisers and nonprofit professionals surveyed.
In this season finale, Michelle talks with Anna Rebecca Lopez and Vu Le about how the traditional ways that data has been collected and used can be harmful – causing misrepresentation, oppression and erasure. Anna Rebecca shares her personal journey with deep academic cred as a data nerd and disruptor and the three talk about what questions we must ask to truly center our communities.
I have been working to raise funds for nonprofits for almost twelve years. The majority of that time has been spent raising money for public schools in New Orleans, Louisiana. I’ve bounced around to several organizations over the years, never spending more than three years at any one place because I couldn’t put up with staying longer than that.