Nonprofit AF

Exploring the fun and frustrations of nonprofit work

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Thanks, Foundations, but 6% or Even 10% Payout is Not Enough

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[Image description: Black and white photograph of six police officers in riot gear–shields and helmets–standing in a row, barricading the street and sidewalk. Image by StockSnap on Pixabay]

Hi everyone, I hope you’re doing OK during this time of Fascist Extremist Assholes Reign (FEAR). If you’re free this week, March 4 to 6, please join me at the virtual Nonprofit Marketing Summit: Evolve, which is FREE. My session will be on March 5th at 11am Pacific Time, and is called “Nonprofits, Bans, and Burnout: Surviving in 2025 Without Losing Our Collective Minds (or Tax-Exempt Status).” Please register here, attend, and say comforting things in the chat in case I break down weeping into a stuffed unicorn.

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Last week, the MacArthur Foundation received a lot of praise for committing to increase its payout rate for at least the next two years from the legal minimum of 5% to 6%, which will add to the foundation’s total giving by about $150M. Here’s an article on it (Content warning, the article immediately displays a picture of Agent Orange, Russia’s most valuable puppet, in case you are trying to regulate your stress level). Here’s a piece from MacArthur’s president, John Palfrey, encouraging other foundations to do the same:

“We are inviting other philanthropies to join us: set it at six. We hope others in a position to do so will consider voluntarily raising their baseline payout rate to 6 percent, from the 5 percent as mandated by law, for the coming two years, at a minimum […] Philanthropies are well positioned to respond during periods of crisis. Many stepped up during COVID-19 and put out more funds when the social sector needed it. Today is a time when severe budget shortages again call for an infusion of additional capital.”

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Script for The Matrix, if it were set in nonprofit and philanthropy

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[Image description: A hand, pointing straight at the camera, while concentric circles of ones and zeroes in green text, as well as a curtain of green codes, appear in the foreground and background. Image by geralt on Pixabay]

Welcome back to work, everyone. I hope your holiday break was restful. I was able to hang out with my kids, and when they were asleep, binge-watched all the episodes of Shogun; it was glorious! But now we’re back to the grind, and it is cold and miserable. Sometimes, I think the people who believe we exist in a computer simulation may be on to something, and I find myself looking around, trying to break the fourth wall, hoping whoever is running this simulation would just give us all a reprieve from all this. Maybe they could simulate a world where the forces of good win for once.

Anyway, I’m reminded of the movie The Matrix, where the main character, played by Keanu Reeves, realizes he’s been living in a simulation, trapped along with other humans by sentient machines that are using humans as batteries while creating a fake reality to subdue them and keep them from rebelling. Of course, that makes me think about our sector, and what it would be like if The Matrix were set in nonprofit and philanthropy:

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A bootcamp for clueless businesspeople who want to involve themselves in nonprofit!

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[Image description: About a dozen people, mostly adults, sitting around a roaring campfire in the dark, surrounded by the silhouettes of trees. One person is holding a guitar. A couple of people are holding books or notebooks. Image by Laura_O on Pixabay]

Hi everyone. Today, a colleague sent me this text: “There’s a CEO of a family foundation who is adamantly against giving unrestricted funding. Do you have a blog post in particular you think would be good for me to send him? He’s a middle-aged white man who has never worked for a nonprofit in his life.” I sent over a couple of posts, including The ethical argument for general operating funds and “How the focus on overhead disenfranchises communities of color and fans the flames of injustice.” There’s lots written on this topic.

Heck, there’s been tons of stuff written about all sorts of topics. But we continue to see colleagues from the for-profit sector come into this sector as donors, funders, volunteers, and board members and have no clue about how things are yet are still adamant they know what’s best for the nonprofits they’re supporting. Worse, like the clueless CEO dude above, they often hold a lot of power.

So, what we need may be fewer articles and webinars, and instead, a week-long immersive overnight boot camp designed to help prepare our friends from other sectors so they can viscerally understand what it’s like for nonprofit professionals. And luckily, because I procrastinated on working on my book today, I already planned out a sample schedule for this boot camp!

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Stressed about funding? Here’s a “Supportive Funder ASMR” video!

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A while ago, I learned about ASMR, which stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. You can read about it in the link above, but basically it’s audio and videos designed to give you positive, tingly feelings. There are videos where people pretend to shampoo your hair; others where they’re eating various foods and you can hear the crunching sounds their mouths make. Very interesting stuff, look it up.

Anyway, we need more positive, tingly feelings. Nonprofit work can be so stressful, especially when it comes to funding and fundraising. Luckily, we have amazing program officers who are supportive and encouraging. However, not everyone is fortunate to have those program officers in their lives, or if they do, those funders aren’t always available. So I made an ASMR video featuring a supportive funder. Listen to it when you’re stressed out about funding. For best effect, listen to it on a loop while wearing head phones and eating some dark chocolate in a supply closet.

[Also, I’m new to embedding videos on this blog. Let me know if there are any glitches like you can access them on your phone or something]

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Husband-centered marriages, and the gender dynamics around fundraising

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[Image description: An open dishwasher, filled with clean white dishes and shiny silverware. Image by jhenning on Pixabay]

Hi everyone, if you’re free on June 27th at 10am Pacific Time, please join me and Common Future’s Co-CEO Jennifer Njuguna in a conversation where we discuss our sector’s propensity for fear and risk-aversion, especially in light the pushback against DEI, and what we need to do about it. It’s free, and auto-captions will be enabled. Register here.

A few months ago, I posted a short video on Instagram that talked about our conditioning to be excessively thankful to donors, comparing it to a ridiculous concept I made up called “Husband-Centered Marriage” where every time a husband does the dishes or something that contributes to the family, he gets a handwritten thank-you note: “You did it! Because you loaded the dishwasher, our family is stronger. Our community is better because of you!”

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