Good morning, good day depending on wherever you're joining us from. We are so excited to have you here for part three of our ally ship series. Today, we are joined by the ethical Rainmaker herself, Miss Michelle, Mary, my boo. All right, so we rooted are the organization that is leading us through this charge. And we always want to start by asking the question Who exactly is rooted, and we like to let it be known that we indeed lead with our values. So what does that mean? Throughout our work? internally, externally, we hold the following values. And we always display them as a way of keeping ourselves accountable, but also letting others know that this is the type of work and culture that you're going to be dealing with when you work with rooted first and foremost anti racism, equitable access to opportunities and resources, partnership through listening and building trust. We believe in community led breakthroughs, fearless curiosity, and most importantly, health and healing. So right now, as we are about to get started, we invite you to drop your name, organization and pronouns into the chat. Where are you coming from? And we're speaking about land acknowledgement. If you are unaware of the land that you inhabit, there is a link that we will drop into the chat and you can click on that and find out exactly where you are residing. Next, we invite you to share with us what brings you here today, what are you hoping to gain? Finally, most importantly, if there are any accessibility needs that you would like to share for example, if the chat is not accessible to you, or you have other type of accommodation that requires for us to be made aware of so that you can truly enjoy this experience? We invite you to turn on your mic now and let us know.
All right, most importantly, if at any time during the session, the chat becomes inaccessible, just drop us a note or turn on your mic and let us know and then we will course correct.
Next slide.
All right, so your co facilitators for today. I am co Magadan. rootage, director of community engagement and fundraising. And to my right is routed unofficial intern art doodle who will be joining us, hopefully keep him engaged. But if not, it's okay. He's used to these zooms. Now I'm going to pass it over. Oh, I'm sorry. For my visually impaired brethren. I am a dark skinned chocolate woman with brown and black hair wearing a white shirt. And I'll pass it over to Val.
Hi All My name is Valerie Neumark. My pronouns are she they I'm the Director of Strategy and education at rooted. I am a red haired person with black rimmed glasses and wearing a black shirt similar to my illustration on screen if you're able to see. And I am located in the San Francisco East Bay on to Kenya alone a land and I will pass it to Michelle Hey y'all,
welcome. It's so good to be here with you. I'm excited for today's session. So Michelle Shreem, Uri she her pronouns. I have long brown hair. I'm wearing cat eyeglasses that are black and red. I've got a black shirt on. And I don't know right now my skin color is probably like some kind of like, golden light latte. So yeah, I'm excited to be here today with you. Usually I hail from the Salish coastlands in Washington state in the United States. Right now I'm hailing from the Catalonia region of Spain, where I find myself quite unexpectedly recently, which is great. And yeah.
Thrilled to be with you.
Awesome. All right. Everyone is pretty much aware but we just want to quickly go over zoom etiquette. Be aware of your camera angle. Stay fully clothed, but remember, no dry cleaning is necessary. Remember to use your name organization and include your pronouns. If unless you're speaking, we invite you to please keep your mic turned off. And as always, if the chat is unaccessible to you, remember to let us know. And thank you so much to everyone who was already beginning to drop their information into the chat. We are so excited that you chose to be with us this morning. All right, community agreements allow us to create a space of belonging. First and foremost, we invite you to approach with curiosity. Be open to new ways of doing and thinking. Sit with discomfort, expect and accept non closure. Engaging, be present as much as you possibly can practice mindful listening, we know that there's so much happening and everyone has something going on as we're continuing to work from home. So as best you can try to be present and in this space, raise your virtual hand to share your thoughts and try not to multitask as you are in this session. Be aware of power dynamics, consider the space use Zoom and be willing to share space. We invite you to speak from your experience, assume best intent and acknowledge the impact of your words on others accepts restraints as they are presented. ideate Yes, and for my Type A's embrace being messy, put aside perfectionism just for this little bit of time. Next rule we refer to as Vegas, Sesame Street, what shared here stays here, what's learned here leaves hear, be willing to slow down notice and name what is coming up in the room. Show up as your full self and live your truth. We want the authentic you during this session. Most importantly, take care of yourself and have a good time. If there are any other agreements that you feel like we should include, as we continue on in subsequent sessions. Feel free to drop those into the chat. And we will continue on with those. I believe that with that, I am turning it over
to the Queen.
Ah, oh, I love my new title. Thank you. Yeah, it was great to be here with you today. Again, my name is Michelle shimmy Neary, I am a host of a podcast that's gained popularity since July 2020, called the ethical Rainmaker. I am one of the cofounders of community centric fundraising, the content hub, the Slack community, etc. I am a nonprofit fundraising consultant with freedom conspiracy, I partner with a lot of different people to create solutions for small to large organizations. I have clients like the doulas down the street, and also the ACLU national offices. So really wide practice, and almost all of my work is through, well, all of my work is through a lens of community centrism and what that might mean. So thank you for joining us today for this session. I am a survivor of COVID. And I bet at least half of this room is if not most, so you know, like, if you survive COVID You know that like taking care of yourself and making sure to like you know, hydrate when you need to, like just take care of your needs, we will stay present with one another, I will ask that when we're in breakout sessions, that you be on camera, if you can be so that you can really like look in the eye as much as possible, the people who you're processing this information with, otherwise, you can be off camera or on either suits me. So our agenda for today is that we're just going to do a little check in with one another, we're going to talk a little bit about why we're here I'm going to give you a little survey to tell me where this group is at in terms of knowledge around CCF that way I can customize our content. And later we're going to dive into a principle. And I'm basically going to show us one way like the the first part of the session is going to be about the racist roots of nonprofits and philanthropy. It's going to be about you know, CCF principles, we're going to do some group discussion after we check in with one another in small groups. And then the second half of this workshop with one another way to spend most of our time in group work with one another groups of three. So just know that even though I'm talking a lot at the beginning, I'll talk almost not at all near the end. So hang in there. And as of always, for me, like, if you ever have feedback about this, or some way you think this could go better, please tell me because I would say, maybe public speaking and this type of workshop is at least 40% of the work that I'm doing right now. And I'm always looking for the ways that we can best consume information without it being overwhelming. And I find that that's like, that's the major challenge when we're thinking about how to be the best allies, you know, the theme of this, these sessions, how to be the best allies that we can be in these spaces, and how to do good work authentically and honestly. So, that's a little bit about where we're going to be today. A little bit of about why I think we're here is that we're part of a larger movement. The movement has been going on it, you know, gets smaller, it gets bigger, there's more awareness, there's less awareness. And every, you know, space where nonprofits and philanthropy exists. But I feel like right now we're in a phase or even a trend, sadly, where we're really considering, you know, applying a lens of justice, and greater awareness around justice and what that really means by questioning and developing an analysis around our fundraising practices, but also run our programming, and our nonprofits existence as a whole. I am going to move into sharing my screen, it's gonna be a little sloppy, I'm not gonna lie. Because I usually have two screens that I'm switching between and today, I only have the one and so you're gonna have sneak peeks of my desktop, etc. Please forgive me for if it's jarring at all. But we're going to do this together.
When that moment okay, here we are.
So I talked a little bit about our agenda, and now is the time that we're going to break out to just connect with one another. So if you can use your phone to check out this QR code, like give everyone a moment. And we're going to break out into groups of three for just a few minutes to connect with one another about how you're doing. So as the blob tree shows up for you, you can take a look and decide which blob are you today? Why are you feeling that way? And you can just close or divulge or as much or as little as you want with the folks who you're going to be in the breakout room with. So which blob are you today is the question. And we'll break out in just a minute.
I hope you had a great time and your groups connecting with the blogs and talking about where you're at, it really is my favorite way to get to know people and to connect with friends even. You know, sometimes we're the one that's like swinging from the rope. But sometimes we're unsure about taking the next step. Sometimes we're on top of the tree, feeling glorious, however you are welcome back to the space. So happy to have you. The next thing we're gonna do is just take a quick survey, if you can go to mentee.com and put in this code or use a QR code. And just quickly vote. It's a one question survey about how familiar with how familiar you are with community centric fundraising, and no pressure. Also, it's anonymous. If you don't know anything about it, that's fine. If you've been studying hard, that's fine, but just pick one other responses, and then I'll be showing you the responses later and catering our content to your knowledge.
As you do that,
I'm going to talk a little bit about the racist roots of nonprofits and philanthropy. I want you to know that this is a lot like I'm about to make a lot of statements and they can bring up feelings and that's okay. And if you want to know more, there are a lot of resources available, I will create a folder that can be shared with you that can be sent to you after this presentation. It will include things like episodes of the podcast, where Christina Shimizu and I talk about the racist roots of nonprofits and philanthropy in detail. There's a lot more to that than we cover. So there are places like you know, Justice funders that have created a timeline of how insidious the practices of philanthropy have been in the United States. And I just a disclaimer, the content the the viewpoint, the perspective is that of mice, myself or the community centric fundraising movement, like as it is currently in the US and Canada. Some of the things that we say, generally apply most things that we say generally apply anyway. But I just want to be specific that this is going to be centered around like the practices and how they normally go in in the US and Canada. So just a disclaimer. So here we are. One of the things that we must question again, our purpose and being with one another today is, is part of a greater movement to really have an analysis of some kind, about the roots of nonprofits and philanthropy, and what is public good. So I think one of the most critical statements that we can analyze and build an analysis and build a knowledge base around is the fact that philanthropy is a political and an economic system. It perpetuates wealth accumulation, it perpetuates financial control, and the consolidation of power among the elite in the name of public good, for example, any number of foundations whether a family foundation or not, you know, like, like any number of foundations, but let's take the Family Foundation, for example, folks put in, you know, extreme amounts of wealth into a foundation, you can use that foundation money to pay every one of your family members, you can use that foundation money to build a board of directors that are simply your friends, you know, and your personal community. The foundation is, doesn't have a lot of accountability structures. For example, same thing with donor advised funds, I can go into detail on that another time. But all of this idea when we first joined the nonprofit sector, or if we work in philanthropy, and we're part of these systems, we usually do it because we are dedicated and interested in serving the public good. But what is the public good? And how is it happening? When we develop an analysis around, you know, the influence that that philanthropy has in the political sphere, or the way that power is afforded? Like the money is hoarded? It's really important to, it's really important to recognize this, as we're looking at the work that we're doing when we're trying to serve community, how are we implicating? How are we implicated in this system? Along with that comes wealth accumulation, and really thinking about that, again, I normally live in Seattle, even though I'm just south of Barcelona today. And in Seattle, we have Amazon, for example. But what does Amazon doing, they are using a lot of extractive practices in present day, right environmental extractive practices, extractive labor, there's a lot of political issues that are happening in Seattle, like whether it's something social, like housing, and the quickness by which housing has disappeared in our very wealthy, suddenly wealthy city,
or whether it's the way that Amazon is influencing global political structures and policies. So wealth accumulation happens in so many ways, but it's usually in the United States and Canada, and to be honest, and in 99% of situations anywhere, is a it's usually violent wealth accumulation has a history of stolen labor, especially in the United States, and some other countries, from the enslavement of African people, it's so important to recognize that I can't emphasize it enough. We have a violent history of colonization, indigenous genocide and lands death. These are things that some foundations sometimes are willing to almost name, but we, as people who care about furthering the true public good, must be able to name these things. Edgar Villa Nueva, in his book decolonizing, wealth, talks a lot about the RJ Reynolds company, and their history of land theft of enslavement of indigenous genocide, of indigenous enslavement and enslavement of African folks in the building of their wealth through tobacco. Right. And that foundation still exists today. It's on a plantation, you know, based in a mansion on a plant old plantation like what is that? So we're not having these conversations, we're not calling it out. And if we want to, if we want to apply what it looks like to be truly community centered, and think about justice, we have to name these things, right. wealth accumulation, again, continues to this day through exploitation of land and labor, like I was describing about Amazon, the company, and especially at the health and vitality of people of color. And we often are refusing to name that the folks who gift us money when we're in the nonprofit scene, are complicit in oppression. And again, the most important takeaway from me is that the ways in which wealth are accumulated are always extractive almost always extractive almost always specifically anti black and white supremacist. And that leads us to think about well, okay, if it's all if it's all rooted in white supremacy and anti blackness, like, I thought I was in a system you know, That was serving the public good. So who do these systems serve? Right? foundations were created as a tax shelter as ways to preserve power nonprofits in the United States were first created by white women who didn't have the right to vote. They didn't have the ability to own land, usually, or at least own businesses. So what were they going to do? They're going to channel their brains and their energy and their networks, and to try to do good for a community but whose community usually they're usually not all communities, right? So nonprofits were in the United States were created by well meaning white women that were usually the wives of robber barons and didn't have other rights. And that is how we built the system in this country. Nonprofits, you know, again, systems who serve who nonprofits end up taking on services that governments should provide, for example, I mentioned I'm in Europe, there is so so many, there's so much social support here and the EU countries, for anyone needing anything. I'm not saying it's perfect, I am saying that it's pretty incredible, right. And so their nonprofit systems look completely different, and are not at all like ours, who are taking on services that the government should provide. And many nonprofits can become a soft arm of the state. What I mean by that is that, for example, in Seattle, we had a young black mother, I think of too, and she was pregnant with her third or her name was Charlene Lyles. She was staying and nonprofit housing for folks who were trying to gain economic stability. Charlene had a history at the at the housing of, you know, having maybe some mental health issues, the police had been called multiple times in the past for noise violations by nonprofit staff. Well, the last time nonprofit stuff called the police, Charlene allows ended up dead as did her unborn child, this is the kind of anti blackness This is the kind of racism that we're talking about. This is what I mean, when we say that nonprofits can often be a soft arm of the state, that was a nonprofit structure. It was an institution that was supposed to serve community. But, you know, the folks who worked within that program weren't truly serving their community, if they're calling the police, and every time to bring in violence, you know, to community who they are meaning to serve. That is, you know, that might have some instability. So systems that serve who and at what cost.
I know that's heavy. And I'm going to stop right there for a moment, because there isn't an easy way to talk about it, right. But you're here today. And we're here together today to talk about what's truly happening in foundations and nonprofits, how we might be complicit in furthering some of the damage that is caused by our structures. And I just thought I would give us a few minutes to either write in the chat, or just, you know, share with us maybe some other thoughts that you're having about how else nonprofits and philanthropy are complicit
causing harm are examples that you'd like to share you've been thinking about? Yes,
all right, Cindy, I see an NGO committed to climate action, among other things that invest in fossil fuels all the time. I worked at an immigrant rights organization. And we didn't know that our retirement once we built a retirement plan, right, like small little meager one was being invested in like private immigration detention systems, right. So there's like the unknowing. And then there's like the intentional knowing, I got a call from an Oakland Museum once who was upset with the 10 principles, because they were wondering what they're supposed to do about all that fossil fuel money that's funding their art, you know, and what is their obligation to our communities, when so many of their exhibits are about saving the environment? I see sia that adjectives will be used to describe the communities we serve. They're sometimes less than flattering. That's right. Absolutely. In fact, most of the time, it feels like that to me. Nancy, it often just feels like an overwhelming tangle it does, right. And we will talk about that in a little while. In fact, the second half of the work that we do together is going to be starting to untangle because it's easy to it's easy to get bogged down in the powerlessness like that I can that I can feel for example, it's easy to feel fear of making a mistake. It's easy to feel overwhelmed by how messed up our systems are and if we freeze and do nothing, then nothing is done. I see Sam, it seems like many nonprofits have also started started operating like for profit companies. That's right. That's right. And in fact, it's been couraged in many spaces, right? I know that in the Silicon Valley. If you want some of that tech money to come your way and actually in Seattle to, you better be able to talk about, you know, your triple X bottom line actually, I just did just released up I just released a podcast with with Bob Osborne, and we're talking about how false like this 10x mentality is, and what like social impact investing really is and how it's not a real thing. Sarah, I think a lot about nonprofit sustainability and often asked my clients, if all of the material needs of the community you support were met right now, what would you do? And it's quite revealing. Yeah, that'd be interesting to hear more about Marcus gatekeeping, making org site for minimal resources. And you know, what, like, the worst part of making them sort of making them fight for minimal resources, but there aren't minimal resources, like, again, using Seattle or the Silicon Valley, there are so many New York, you know, whatever, there's so many places that have such extreme amounts of wealth. And then we're fighting over tiny pockets of money. Why? Because well, forwarding is happening. And those resources aren't being shared. They aren't being circulated. And yeah, and then the gatekeeping power ego trip, or, you know, you see this, I'm watching the crown right now. I've never been to England, and I think I'm probably gonna hit it before I come back to the US. And I'm like, I need to know a little bit more. You just watch the royal family do it over and over again, like all kinds of gatekeeping without having any knowledge base or being connected to the community whatsoever. Making org spectrum available resources. Sia is all many good money. Coca Cola really wants to sponsor youth rally? Yeah, they do. Yeah, they do. And they've got some addiction to sell too. With too. Right.
Anjali, having
a lot of feelings about nonprofits from the exploitation of its BiPAC employees, to operating like a business and not having a commitment to finding permanent solutions where, ie working with other community partners. That's right, we isolate so much, we isolate so much. And yeah, we we love to exploit our staff. And you know, what's unique about that? Well, what I think is unique about the nonprofit space, is that when you're when you're putting yourself in a for profit space, you know why? Because that's the next promotion that's coming. You know, that's the next, you know, whatever, whatever, like way you're trying to level up and you know, that it's tied to money. It's obvious there in the nonprofit sector. It's like, we're just pouring our hearts out. And everybody cares about the cause. But that's also what allows the nonprofit sector to take advantage of its employees. Right, like, because we have so much love and empathy and solidarity.
Yeah. Sam? Yes. A constant
growth mindset of capitalism. That's right. Yeah. Marcus back, folks. Right. Yeah. 100% Thank you. That's good sharing. That's great sharing. So in the next, we're gonna I'm going to talk a little bit more. And thank you for thank you for bringing that critical. i That's exactly what I'm talking about. Like, we can talk about RJ Reynolds and that foundation and how it's literally still on a plantation. And how awful that is, you know, and how nobody, I mean, Edgar started talking about it in this book, he has great examples. If you haven't read decolonizing wealth yet. Please do. It's amazing for anybody. Also, he was my first client as a consultant, which was an absolute honor to work with him right before that book came out and during that first year, and just to watch the way that folks reacted to this information as if it was brand new, right. And so often, we aren't even though, you know, we so often in the nonprofit sector, no matter how well meaning we are, we aren't actually bringing a lot of analysis because there's like, you know, people who need help, our waiting room might be full. If we're a direct service service organization, like there's so much to be done, the list is endless. And what time has there been too rapid to realize that we need to build on analysis, I know that, for me, every time I'm mentioning some criticism, it's often because I have been there and done the wrong thing. I did immigrant rights work for the first 10 years of my nonprofit career. And my family is an immigrant families. So coming from that community and also yeah, there's, there's, there's, there's so much that we do
that does not serve our communities.
So I'm gonna talk I'm gonna touch a little bit on what is community centric fundraising, but actually, I bet this is a great time to look at our Mentimeter let me find that for us. I'm going to share the result with you on the screen.
okay and that will let you know exactly where we want to be. Okay, cool.
All right, I'm gonna share my screen for a moment. So the question was, what is your familiarity with CCF? And most people have skimmed second mode, but by a longshot right and then second is I don't really know. And third is I've been learning hard, and that's fine. That's gonna, I've got about 15 minutes before we take a break. So I'm gonna go into a little bit more detail about what is community centric fundraising.
Yeah. And here we go. So what is community centric
fundraising. First of all, community centric fundraising is a movement, it is a set of principles. It is a content hub. It is a Slack channel. And it's not new. But this iteration of it, this interest in it. And this moment in time, where we've created, you know, a group of us from Seattle, create, you know, got together decided to do some research, we learned that in the nonprofit sector in the US and Canada has who mostly filled out the survey, no matter how we slice and dice the research, you know, by disaggregating, the disaggregating the data, by organizing it in different ways, we still saw that about 80% of people in the nonprofit space. believe that what we do in the nonprofit fundraising space promotes white savior ism, and that we want to do it differently. And majority of those people again, regardless of background, age, position, race, you know, gender identity, sexual identity, everybody wants to change. Everyone that took the survey wants to change how things are done. So there was a group of us based in Seattle, about eight a core group, we decided to focus and created out of that research a content hub idea, we raised the money for it. And in July 2020, we launched this content hub that has fresh articles and podcasts that come out weekly, which is pretty amazing. The Slack channel we built now has over 5000 people, there are 100, place based groups. For example, in Austin, Texas, there's a group who met on the Slack channel, and now they have regular meetings, where they do, where they help one another, get through community centric fundraising and what it means for their individual organizations. So there are a dedicated group that continually meets all of these groups have, you know, there's, there's any topic you want to talk about at any hour of the day, there are people from all over the world on the Slack channel. And again, 100 place based groups we're always hearing from, you know, like Brazil or Australia, like do you know anyone else that's an in Australia, so it's growing really quickly. And it's a movement again, it has like community centrism can happen, right? Less likely in an individualistic society less likely in a capitalistic society. But But here in this iteration, when I'm talking about community centric practices, and fundraising, I'm talking about the the newest iteration, where we launched this website in July 2020. I launched the podcast, the ethical Rainmaker in July 2020. And it really took off like wildfire. And again, it centers around 10 principles that I'm about to cover, the point of which is to acknowledge harm and develop an analysis around the way we do things and why, and centering racial justice and equity. And I'm gonna go briefly through the 10 principles. But what's also true is that the community centric fundraising website, actually, they'll do that with you. Let's do that these slides are fine. But if you want to see yeah, here we go. 10 principles, I think my internet connection is good enough to show you in this way. For those of you based in Oakland, like rooted Fabiana Rodriguez, let us use this beautiful image for our site. So here we are community centric fundraising. This is the content hub, you can find all kinds of information on it here. But the one I use the most is the 10 principles and the 10 principles, of which I think, by the way, there should be 11 and I'll explain that. But there are principles like this, that fundraising must be grounded in race equity and social justice. Right that the conversations I'm not going to read every word, don't worry. But the The conversations around fundraising need to move beyond diversification of donors, this idea that, that more just fundraising looks like recruiting more people of color to be donors is ultimately kind of extractive itself. So we're not talking about diversification of donors. We're talking about, you know, what would it look like to ground ourselves and race equity and social justice principle to that individual organizational missions are not as important as a collective community. And that's what someone was pointing to in the notes, that, that we can we are forced to compete with one another than nonprofits are generous with and mutually supportive of one another. Again, these all have dropped down that have, you know, examples, or have ideas that we wanted to share. For example, you know, yeah, being able to partner with nonprofits, other nonprofits,
for all who engage in strengthening the community are equally valued, whether their volunteer staff donor or board member, can you imagine what it would look like, if we actually follow this principle, we have spent so much time uplifting donors even though donors are often not always but so often people who do not actually come from the community being served, who may not actually understand the issues may dictate the and the solutions that they would like us to use with the money that they want to give us. And we've put them on a pedestal, where their power is far far outranks the community themselves, or the volunteers, the staff, etc. We've also put board members in this position, sometimes depending on the organization, so what if everybody was equally valued, it shouldn't be radical, but thinking about implementing it can be principle five time is valued equally as money, again, shouldn't be radical, so often isn't in other places. But when we're in, when we're in an individualistic society, we're often in capitalistic society, excuse me, as well, we must think about what it would look like to appreciate people who contribute their time or their stories, or their experience, or their wisdom, you know, or connections. But you know, and who are who are people who have just as much just as much to say, and may not say it with the cash donation that they're making, again, so that'd be revolutionary. But I don't know a lot who are doing that. Later today. In a little while, after our break, we're going to focus on this principle. And the reason why is because it seems to be the most challenging. So just taking a look today, and really having having some conversations with one another about it, is what we're going to do, we treat donors as partners. And this means that we're transparent, and occasionally have difficult conversations.
Now, here,
we must This includes right, so many more examples, or ideas that are actually here in this drop down. And again, we created this two years ago, and it needs an update. But we must respectfully and firmly push back when donors do or see things that may be detrimental to our work or to the community we're serving. For example, one way in which I often made a mistake that I now see as a mistake, is that when I was doing fundraising, direct fundraising work for a Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, which is now the largest immigrant rights, civil legal aid organization in the nation, even though they just serve Washington State. I was there I was there for 10 years, I was there development director for most of that. And I had a lot of conversations with major donors with my IDI or with other staff members were the donor would say some crazy business, they would say some ridiculous stuff. And we didn't say anything back. Because sometimes we argued, usually it wasn't me arguing. And, and the thing is, because what's going to be most useful to your clients and your community? Do you let them get away with saying something crazy? And just take the money and go? Is that what's best for your community? Or is it best for your community, if you call them on whatever crazy thing is being said or done, and you have an educational possibly transformational experience with your donor. So this was one example. Again, this is about fundraising. But none of this has to be about fundraising, these principles can be applied to any part of the work that we do. So we're going to spend more time in this space for principle number six and a little while. Seven is that we foster a sense of belonging and not othering aid is that we promote the understanding that everyone personally benefits from engaging in the work of social justice, that it's not just charity and compassion, I think Whoo, lay in his blog, nonprofit A F talks about like, yeah, he has some ridiculous example of like, if we're all ducks, and we're like, congratulating ourselves on donating food to the other dog, we're all just ducks, right? Like, we all benefit from engaging in strengthening our community, we're not just, you know, looking down from the hilltop. It from a position of being higher than others. If we really think about it, and really develop an analysis, we can see that every time. Every time that we engage in the work of social justice, it's not charity. It's not just charity. Everyone benefits from that. Principle nine is that we see the work of social justice as holistic and transformative, hard to do, but not so hard that people aren't doing it. Oregon Food Bank is doing an amazing job of educating their donors in the state of Oregon, based out of Portland, you can learn more about that. They have articles out about it on their own website, they have written an article called How do you measure love on the community centric fundraising, Content Hub? And I interviewed them for one of my podcast episodes, but you know, how do we see the work of social justice and specifically, they talked about fundraising as transfer as transformational. And 10 is that we recognize that healing and liberation requires a commitment to economic justice. And what that means is, again, like developing an analysis, it's kind of like the environmental justice example that came up earlier, and environmental justice organization is taking money from fossil fuel companies like, where is our analysis, you know, around like the justice and that there isn't justice in that you'll see a variety of opinions about this point. In many places, for example, one of my co founders for the community centric fundraising Content Hub, Billy is, uh, you know, is a man who believes that, like, we should take any money, don't care where it comes from whatever is gonna help benefit my community, right. And then we have others who are like, Don't ever take that dirty money, like, make really careful decisions about who you want to align yourself with, you know, and talk about it openly and transparently. And then you have when I was doing work with Edgar, we had some offers from folks who were not really well aligned. He's a he's a queer, indigenous man from North Carolina, the Lumbee Tribe. Shout out to North Carolina, who I know is also on this call.
But Edgar, you know, we talked about like, do you take Wells Fargo money when Wells Fargo was, was protecting the pipeline at Standing Rock? And was definitely not in relationship and positive relationship with indigenous communities? So what do you do in a situation like that, where they want to pay you to do great work, and they want to put their name on it? You know, in Edgar's case, he developed an analysis that I'll stop sharing and address case he developed an analysis that if it was possible to help that organization, move the needle on the way they're that they're thinking, then it's a maybe like, let me talk to you and see if you're open to learning about the ways in which you're complicit and harming communities and see if you're open to making changes. But if you're not going to be open to making changes, and I don't want your money, and I don't want you to put your logo on my shit, right. So that's, that was a decision that Edgar made when we were working together. And there are so many decisions that we we can make we have the power to make, but we have to talk about them first.
So
yeah, that's those are the 10 principles. And I think, you know, we're going to take a break. Now, when we come back, we're just going to spend a few minutes with one another, thinking about, you know, what would it look like if we did things differently? What What would it look like if we were utilizing those 10 principles. So let's take a five minute break. And I'm going to holler at you from the laptop that you are not going to mute so that you can hear my voice call you back. But we're just going to take five minutes now for a little break, and then we're going to come back and I'll be right here. If you want to chat with me. I'm just setting a timer now.
Welcome back. Welcome back.
So now we begin part two. So to review what just happened in the first hour, we introduced ourselves to one another. I covered some of the like statements around and thoughts and analysis we might have about how All foundations why foundations were created and how they were created. Again, you can find more information. Justice funders has a great timeline I can link to afterwards. Also, I've done two episodes about the racist roots of nonprofits and philanthropy with Christina Shimizu. You can find the ethical Rainmaker podcast on any platform and look for just the racist roots. There's a lot there to analyze. If you look at the Carnegie family, you know, or again, you know, Edgar wrote a whole book criticizing the philanthropic philanthropic sector. And, you know, one area that we're not going into at this very moment in this presentation is reparations repair, like how, what does Reppert What do reparations look like, in this sector, when so much of that foundation money was made off of the backs of primarily African enslaved people. And again, like indigenous genocide, there is an organization in Minneapolis, Minnesota, who, you know, built an analysis, they have a huge indigenous community, they both did analysis, one foundation built an analysis about where their money came from, they knew that it was railroad related. And when they did some digging, they realized that the railroad in order to build a railroad to go out west, they definitely use enslaved labor, and they destroyed the environment. And they, they murdered a lot of indigenous people to get that land to get the you know, to force the right to, to build a railroad to the West Coast. All of that to say that they now invest a significant portion of their funding in the both in the environment, but also specifically to indigenous organizations, in recognition that, though, you know, the people who were murdered might have been murdered 100 years ago, the impact and the disappearances of those, those communities stays with us and affects our communities. Right, that's foundation money that I'm talking about. And again, like Foundation, a lot of the foundation money, almost all of it 99.999% was made from extractive practices. And the conversations about reparations are not alive and well in this sector. And if we're talking about public good and justice, it, then it becomes part of our responsibility to have those conversations. So that's a little bit about what we talked about, talked about community centric fundraising, talked about the 10 principles of community centric fundraising, again, not really specifically about fundraising definitely just about centering community in the work that we do, including programs. And that's we're gonna go into some exercises around how we take a look and build an analysis about our own practices, and then how we build solutions. So we don't get stuck in that frozen space of fear and shame. There's just so much shame that we can have, you know, whether we did the thing or didn't do the thing. You know, there's there's so much that can get in our way, when we're trying to build analysis and trying to work towards justice. And so some of the facilitation modules that we're going to use today, the two that we're going to use, one is called conversation Cafe, which we're about to take part in. And the other is called 15%. solutions. These are liberating structures, that's what they're called liberating structures. There's a website of, of like, 30 different modalities that you can use to spark conversations with your colleagues, or with any group of people you're trying to work through difficult issues with. So part of this work that we're doing together is so that you can also learn these facilitation models and use them wherever. Yeah, so here's a question that I'd like like to start with for us. And that is, I'm going to share my screen again.
What principle are you most
drawn to? Or what would be possible for our future? If we were to follow any of these principles? Really? Or were all of them? How would we feel? So I encourage you to just like, think about those principles, you don't have to really remember the number or whatever just what resonated with you. What are you drawn to what what idea are you most drawn to? And what do you think it will look like if our future for our future if we were to follow one of these principles, and I invite you again, you can use the chat if you do, I'm going to read them out loud. But I'm also cool with popcorn, I think you can go ahead and jump in and share. We like to hear each other's voices. Right. So go right ahead. We'll just spend a few minutes in
this space. Number eight and coming up for Stacey. Number nine for Sara. Activating and relevant she Have
Fendi, the idea of treating donors as partners, not saviors Yeah, lose some and gain others. That's right. That's actually the primary fear of most of the clients that I have, who are toying with the idea of thinking about falling more community centered practices, like where they get stuck is exactly that, like the fact that they might lose some, but usually not, you know, not fully embracing that you will, you will gain a lot of others, a lot of folks don't want to be treated like ATM machines.
Emily is sharing understanding that everyone personally benefits from Social Justice.
can ask a question, please.
Going back to this idea of Oh, I'm so scared of losing donors. I mean, maybe you're getting to this, and I'm sorry, if I'm jumping the gun, but go ahead. And like the bank robber Willie Sutton said, that's why he robbed banks, because that's where the money was. So, you know, it's a big ship.
And, you know, where,
how do you talk to people, like, you know, where are they going to get the money they need? Right? If they say?
Yes, I would question I apologize. But
no, and that's the thing. No, it's alright. And I'm gonna, I'm glad you asked. And I think it depends on the organization and what's good, right? Like, for example, at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, like, I didn't have an analysis at all. And so my default was, yeah, just take the money. Don't say anything. Because whatever, like, we need it, we have clients like rolling out the door for miles, like, we just need money. So I don't really care about the racist trash, you said, I'm just gonna go ahead and take care, right? My analysis now might be different. Because do we really want you know, folks who are saying racist trash, like to be part of our community, and, and, you know, to be able to, you know, reap the benefits of being associated with a really awesome organization? When they're, you know, when they haven't really, you know, is there a learning opportunity for them to evolve? Is that our job? Do we want to make it our job, etc. So, I think, I think the fear exists, the fear exists, because we are afraid that when we speak, and again, that's why we're going to focus on principle six, we're afraid that if we speak up, the other person will just shut us out. But that may not be the case, right? So we're often not going to lose the donors that we think we're going to lose, just by having honest conversations and getting better at practicing what an honest conversation looks like. Or, you know, you said this thing I could have what I could have done, if I could go back would be to, you know, definitely talk about talk to my donors about the racist thing they said, about our clients, or about a particular community, and talk to them about it and see if there's, again, using like, anchors, you know, gauge, is there a way to bring greater understanding and transformation? Or do we say thank you, no, thank you to that money and find other people who are more aligned. Because when you say, goodbye, when you close the door, another one opens, and we just forget that, especially if we take a stand around a particular topic, you know, like talking about genocide, that's happening in Palestine is not popular in the United States. Nobody wants to talk about it. There are a lot of foundations who are who if you as a nonprofit, are going to take a stand and talk about Palestine, they will not give you funding. But does that mean that you don't talk about Palestine? You know, so it's like, what is what what do you want to wear? Do you want to put a stake in the ground? And what does it mean for your community? And usually, it should be the community deciding, in the case of Northwestern rights project, we had a we had an issue taking government money, and we had to debate it as a staff and folks with the pros said, yes, we'll take that money, even though the Patriot Act has just started, and now all of our staff members have to be documented. You know, and that's gonna that's going to constrain us in a certain way, and we don't believe in the Patriot Act. We don't believe we should have to prove X y&z In order to receive this funding. Right there and the government is are the folks who are participating in this type of incarceration that we don't believe in and then there was another group who said, We cannot take this government money. They do. They do so much to build these systems so that other people, people may capitalize make money off of it. We shouldn't take the money in the end. We talked To the community members, more or less in the community was like, I don't care. What I want is, you know, to have an attorney, so do whatever you need to to make it happen. But just like I need help prioritize that. So I think you know, it's not a binary it's not, you know, it's very gray. Because it's so individual to your organization and what you believe in what your values are what you stand
for.
I'm seeing sharing in the comments. I see. You know, Emily, you also said that it feels foundational that everyone personally benefits from Social Justice. Yeah. And then social justice as holistic and transparent, transformative versus transactional. Bera number eight, promoting the understanding that I've been personally benefits on Julian number three, that they nonprofits be generous and mutually supportive of one another. All of them, Nancy, I love that especially six through 10. Same fear, I get the fear. Katherine treating donors like partners. Yep, we're gonna we're about to focus on that. Let them see that that's actually more effective. Exactly. My run number two, the idea of supporting movements and not nonprofits. That's right.
And what would we
what would be possible is that we wouldn't be stuck in fear about wasting social capital. That's right. From approaching donors or potential donors, we'd be offering them opportunities to right wrongs to live more ethically, more beneficially. Stacy, we have an opportunity to bring better language and values through working with our donors. I love this. Everybody is pitching me here, Kayla two and three thinking about building coalition sharing resources and how we can get so much further write what's possible. It's so true, y'all. Thank you for reflecting and thank you for sharing. I love that. There is so much to think about in this space. And and one of the things that we're so often missing is visioning. Like what it could look like we're really thinking about like, what, what am I most drawn to? And how do I how can I maybe start there, so that I'm not trying to do everything all at once, because it's so hard to do. So the rest of our time is gonna be spent in small group conversations. And we're going to focus on principle six, which is treating donors as partners. And here's how it's gonna go conversation Cafe is a modality, where I'm going to ask you to take, let's say, two minutes to write about what in this principle, do you personally or you, as at your team at your nonprofit do that's not super values aligned with being transparent and occasionally, having difficult conversations with donors or treating them as partners, if you're not a fundraiser, or you don't want to focus on fundraising, you can focus on programs, this is totally flexible, right. So we're going to spend a couple of minutes here, then I'm going to break you out into groups of three. And you're each going to spend two minutes sharing out what you wrote or what you want to talk about, then we're going to do another exercise, or we're going to continue talking to one another. So I'm just gonna say maybe we break out into groups now. Take two minutes
to write
and then you're going to, then in groups of three, each person is going to take two minutes to share what you've written about. So just maybe assign a time or have some one time I'm going to write for two minutes and really think about it. And then that same person another person can time every person going so that there's like equity and the way that we're spending time with one another. So with that we're going to take about 10 minutes here and I will broadcast messages to to let you to remind you of how it's supposed to go etcetera.
Yeah, we can break out now.
All right, welcome back. We have a couple there we go. A few more groups that are joining us okay, I think that's
everyone. So here's what we're going
to do next. We are going to again, thanks for letting me show you my desktop. We're going to engage in another facilitation. So that's the that's the conversation Cafe facilitation, right like solo right? I've done sessions that are like four hours long where you're doing like 20 minutes of writing, what would it look like if we took a lot more time in this space, you know, inside about each principle, right now I have a pilot program going with for affiliates of the ACLU, where we're doing like a year long conversation, series of workshops, you know, it's with like three person dev teams across the United States. And then people are able to meet each other, they're meeting in between sessions to discuss. So what would it look like if we took these facilitation modules and like expanded the amount of time we spend, we did it with our own teams or like create it, you know, there's just there are so many things that we can think about. This is just like a little, you know, sliver of what we can do is a conversation cafe, thinking about something on one's own, coming back to a group and sharing what you've been thinking about, you know, talking about it as a group, there are other facilitations that work well, for that, too, that take you take a long period of time, we just did like the shortest version. So that you can see how that can work, and what it looks like. Now we're gonna move into 15% solutions, which is answering the questions, the same format, we're going to do solo writing, then we're going to take turns talking to one another about what our thoughts are, and then we're going to discuss as a group, this is called 15% solutions, because it often doesn't always change doesn't always have to happen in small increments, they can happen in major ways. You know, like, watch out all of us when I know this is a tired analogy, but watch how all of us went to zoom immediately, during the pandemic, when so many organizations, we're not gonna let anybody work from home, you know, or online, or like video calls. But we can make quick changes, we can make swift changes if we need or want to. But in so many cases, when we're feeling overwhelmed, it's, it's, it can be helpful to just pick something and just move to help move the dial a little bit. So here we're going to generate some solutions. So without any more authority than you have now, or the resources, more resources, and you have now, what are some small steps you can take to generate positive change in your work, you can address what you've just been talking about, you don't have to. And then where do you have the discretion and freedom to act? We all have so much more power than we think we do. I think you know, especially in the nonprofit sector, but really like in a fear based culture, and some fear based cultures like the United States feminist culture, like we keep thinking like, and we're told, or we receive messaging, and we think we don't have power to make any changes, or, you know, we need to be in some other position, but we have a lot of power. So think about who listens to you, who you can influence what kind of conversations can be had? Where do you have the discretion and freedom to act? And then what obstacles might be in the way? And what support do you need. So we're just going to dive right into this exercise 15% solutions you're going to break out again, you're going to take two minutes to generate some ideas about what you can do without any additional resources or authority. And then you're going to share with one another in the same fashion, taking two minutes each. We're going to be with each other for about 10 minutes like this, and then we're going to come back and do a little debrief as a group. So there you are,
and we'll break out again. No, so fast, you can stop recording. Welcome back. Okay, with these
last 10 minutes that we have together, the last five are going to be used for a survey for rooted.
But this next five, I have two questions for you.
I think the first is, you know, doing these exercises, again, like that, that's 15% solutions, facilitation module that you can use, when you're trying to just make the next incremental step forward to generating change. It's one of the many models you can use to get out of overwhelm the space of overwhelm, and into a space of, you know, action. And that's really where so many of us struggle because we want to do good work. And when we think about the darker side, the shadow side of all of this are like the foundations of some of the work that we do. It's really hard not to feel shame, overwhelmed, fear, anger. I mean, some people leave the sector and you can do that too. A lot of sectors are dark, though. So if you're staying in it, you know, what's the what's the change you can make? And so my question to you, so that's 15% solutions. My question to you questions to you are one, like, what are you taking away from today? Like, what struck you? What are you committing to so whatever you want to answer like, what do you what are you feeling right now? How I'm about about this work, you know, what seems possible? And then, you know, what do you think is the next step for a sector? What are you seeing? Like, you know, and that can be anything, it can be positive, it can be negative, it can be speculation, I'm not asking you for, like, you know, a white paper. But yeah, and I'd love to hear other folks voices, you can definitely write in the chat, but you know, you must be sick of my voice by now.
I'd love to hear somebody share. All right.
I, as a facilitator, I'm so happy to sit in silence, but as a participant, I know what it feels like to me. Um, so I think one of the things I'm going to take from this is really one of the questions from that last breakout about without any more authority or resources, because I think a lot of that, what if maybe we could get us caught up in conversations like this is like, yeah, we would love to do that. But, and I think framing the question in with those, like restrictions, was really productive for me. So that's definitely something I'm gonna take.
Awesome, thank you.
I am really loving the whole, how can we build more of a sense of belonging, instead of othering? And I'm thinking just even internally, where we have staff who are on the front lines and other staff who are a little bit more siloed? And then the board who's very siloed. So how can we just think of each other, as we really are all on the same team here and, and then also, just the different communities that we work with are very disparate. One was a very privileged community and one is not, and several are not. And as we work with the, with the communities that are not how do we educate ourselves better on how to how to create that sense of belonging and treat everybody as partners? Yeah, we're not we're not we're we're all trying to make allies of each other. And who's appropriate to keep at the table. Thank you.
Thank you, thank you for sharing that. What are you taking with you?
Where do you think the sector is heading?
I think for me, like I really loved CCF that the principles and so I want to dig a little bit deeper into that and see like how I can use some of those principles around like organizational development and culture. And to kind of continue deepening that process. So that we're not perpetuating, like, practices of harm unintentionally.
Thank you. That's right.
I, at least from our point of view, speaking, like from our small, small nonprofits point of view, it seems like the two things that that are sort of very intertwined are leading a lot of capacity building lots of capacity building around how to have these conversations around how to implement them on like, every level, but then also meeting at the at the sector level, for there to be more trust and more, more donors willing to invest in that capacity building. Because that's what's really holding us back is that we don't have we're like, but we have no funding.
Yeah, I hear that we have made a habit of lifelong having allowing funding restrictions, you know, said that there's not general operating
capacity building instead of just trusting that the topic area that we want to invest in or the nonprofit that we want to invest in, we'll just use that money in the best way they see fit for the community. Anyone else want to share what you're taking away with? Oh, I see Stacy's saying my takeaways about inviting folks are the conversations that needed to be had not alienating them with judgment and personal agendas, building understanding through authentic dialogue and engagement. Yeah, thank you, Stacy.
One thing that I'm thinking about and leaving her with is thinking about how I can better educate our donors on the complexities of our issues, and not leaning into like, traditional, traditional fundraising language of like senses of urgency and, like centering the donor and that their donation is, is what's the gateway into changing someone's life and how to be really honest. And doing that in a way where I'm still captivating their their attention and maybe keeping it into like one page appeal. Or maybe breaking those those traditional fundraising rules a little bit and sending out a larger appeal for making room for including someone's full story.
Oh, I love that. The full story,
not just the like three sentence, clip, that simplifies stuff and helps push us into binaries. And yeah.
Thank you, Kayla. Asked me all
Well, I'm here for it. Anytime you want to talk about it, I'm here, you can reach out to me, I know that Val is creating a resource. I have a resource folder to share with you that includes a slide deck and also articles that you can read podcasts, you can listen to timelines that are helpful, etc. Send me things if you have things that you think belong in this presentation that aren't here. And yeah, I look forward to any conversation you want to have. Just get in touch. And I'll hand it over to Valencia.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Michelle, we are elated and just reeling from all of this good information. On the slide right now bow, you can take it away resources and tools, we always want to make sure that we create a space and share with you the things that are helping us as we continue on on our own personal journeys. All of this will be available on the slide after the presentation. I think I'd like Val all your script would go
ahead. No, no, that's it. I just shared the the presentation doc into the chat as well. And we'll of course be following up with an email with all of this to come. Our upcoming events, we have two left for the year. These are the final two for routed this year, before we start planning for 2023. So we have our nonprofit technology summit that's coming next Thursday, it'll be a great place to ideate to learn about some new tools to share solutions, all that kind of good stuff with our nonprofit community. And then the following are two Wednesdays after that, we'll have our final roundtable about campaign planning knowledge and project management with routed verio and Marcus in K. Harris, our director of projects. So if you want to sign up for any of those events, please do we'd love to have you. Both of them are free. So you know, just come as you are. And then the last piece here is please fill out our survey, we really need your input your perspectives, to understand how to you know make all of these sessions that much better as we keep going in this work together. And here's our final slide. I'll just copy everyone's contact but you should also have it on the participant list, which is in the resource folder.
But here
if you have questions, there you go with that we We are complete and thank you all.
