Nonprofit Build Up® Podcast

In this week’s episode of Nonprofit Build Up, we share part one of a two part episode, “Build Up, Inc.’s Black-led Fiscal Sponsorship” where Nic speaks with Amanda Nasinyama, Director of Strategic Initiatives, and Ajani Husbands, Vice President of Strategic Planning and Senior Counsel, of Build Up Companies, working with Build Up, Inc. a member organization that is a public charity and operates as a fiscal sponsor and capacity builder.

In this episode, Nic, Amanda, and Ajani discuss Build Up, Inc.’s work, the impetus for the organization’s creation, and the fiscally sponsored projects it serves. They also explore what sets BUI’s mission apart, as they focus on providing capacity building support to brave women and Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC)-led organizations, networks, and collectives.

Listen to Part One:

Listen to Part Two:

Amanda Nasinyama, Director of Strategic Initiatives for Build Up, Inc., is a social justice advocate who is passionate about promoting and protecting the rights of vulnerable and marginalized people and communities. Amanda received her undergraduate Law degree (LLB) from Makerere University in Uganda and her Master’s Law degree (LLM) from the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. She is a Penn Law LLM Rule of Law and Human Rights Fellow.

Amanda began her career as a Resettlement Intern at the UN Refugee Agency in Uganda. She later joined HIAS Refugee Trust of Kenya as a Resettlement Officer, interviewing refugees and drafting applications for them to be resettled to a third country. Amanda has worked with UN Women’s East and Southern Africa Regional Office, managing governance, peace, security, and humanitarian projects and provided technical support to 13 UN Women’s country offices within the region to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Amanda later joined the UN Department of Peace Operations at the UN Headquarters in New York. She worked on protecting civilians in UN peacekeeping operations by developing policy and guidance, coordinating with various stakeholders, including member states, and providing backstopping support to UN peacekeeping missions.

Currently, as the Director of Strategic Initiatives, Amanda manages and leads strategy, work, and operations within Build Up, Inc. (BUI). She is responsible for designing and implementing policies, exploring thought authority and leadership opportunities throughout the sector, and expanding BUI’s role within the nonprofit sector and fiscal sponsorship in particular.

When she’s not working, Amanda loves spending time with her family and friends and going on road trips with her partner. She enjoys dancing, listening to music, watching films and television, and writing.

Ajani Husbands, Vice President of Strategic Planning and Senior Counsel of Build Up Companies, is passionate about finding innovative solutions to complex problems. Ajani received his B.A. in International Relations and minor in African/African-American Studies from Stanford University, his M.A. in International Development from American University, and his J.D. from NYU School of Law. He is a Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Fellow and a Root-Tilden-Kern Scholar.

Ajani began his career as a U.S. diplomat, where he served in Eritrea, Haiti, Pakistan, and South Sudan, liaising with a wide range of local organizations, artists, activists, and business owners to support foreign policy objectives. After a decade of service, Ajani obtained his law degree, and transitioned to working as a transactional attorney at major law firms, where he advised public companies, private equity firms, and financial institutions on an array of capital market transactions. He also maintained an active pro bono practice representing asylum seekers and providing transactional legal support to nonprofits.

Ajani currently lives in Botswana with his wife and two sons. During the day (in Botswana) he runs both a rum company in South Africa and a Botswana-based nonprofit focused on connecting African startups with financing and other resources. He also enjoys photography, reading africanfuturism, and watching nature shows and PBS Kids with his sons.

Read the podcast transcription below:

Episode 99 – Part 1:

[INTRO]

[00:00:08] NIC CAMPBELL: You’re listening to the Nonprofit Build Up podcast, and I’m your host, Nic Campbell. I want to support movements that can interrupt cycles of injustice and inequity, and shift power towards vulnerable and marginalized communities. I’ve spent years working in and with nonprofits and philanthropies, and I know how important infrastructure is to outcomes. On this show, we’ll talk about how to build capacity to transform the way you and your organization work.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:00:39] NIC CAMPBELL: Ajani, Amanda, I would love to welcome you to the Nonprofit Build Up podcast. I’m so excited for our conversation today. To get us started, I’d love to hear a little bit more about each of you, your professional journeys. I know we’re talking today about Build Up, Inc., so I’d love to hear about how you’re describing Build Up, Inc. and the work that you all are doing. 

[00:01:07] AJANI HUSBANDS: Thank you so much, Nic. It is a pleasure to be here today. Thank you. I guess I can begin. My name is Ajani Husbands. Of course, as you know, Nic, I serve as the Vice President for Strategic Planning and Senior Counsel at Build Up Companies, particularly with focus on Build Up, Inc. 

So professionally, I started as a US diplomat, which I served in that role for almost a decade. I served in Eritrea, Haiti, Pakistan, and then South Sudan primarily as a public diplomacy officer. So in that role, I spent a lot of time working with local nonprofits. So when I say local, I mean the nonprofits based within those countries, as well as with different activists and grassroots organizers and just sort of that whole sector in general. I really got a good feel for being exposed to what the nonprofit world is like, and it felt really good working alongside people who were very focused on doing positive things

From there, I went to law school because I had a vague notion that I wanted to be a lawyer. I knew that I wanted to be a lawyer, and I knew that sort of I wanted to combine law with the nonprofit world. I didn’t quite know exactly how, but I knew that I wanted to be involved sort of on the back end of things, so working with nonprofits on the way that they receive funding and the way that they do contracts and the way that they operate. I wanted to be in a position where they would be able to do the things that they do more efficiently, and I would be able to provide that kind of support. 

From law school, after I graduated, I worked for a few different law firms primarily doing corporate work of different kinds, capital markets, and that sort of thing. From there, I left and actually started my own nonprofit, Blacklight Africa, where we worked to connect African-based startups with funding and other resources. The idea there was still to sort of work on the back end of things, trying to find solutions and connect founders and organizations with available resources. 

While I was doing that, I sort of literally just kind of found my way to Build Up Companies. I was looking and read the description of the organization, and it was really everything I had been looking for for so many years. So I applied and here I am. 

[00:03:48] NIC CAMPBELL: Thanks so much, Ajani. I love that because it just – to me, you know, we always get that question of tell us how you got here, and it’s usually a journey that hasn’t been pre-planned. But it’s been very intentional and deliberate, right? So that’s what I’m hearing you describe, and so I just love how it like eventually gets you to Build Up, Inc. So thank you for sharing that. 

Amanda, do you want to share your professional journey? Then we can turn it to what Build Up, Inc. is all about. 

[00:04:18] AMANDA NASINYAMA: Yes. Sure, Nic. So my name is Amanda Nasinyama, and I am the Director of Strategic Initiatives at Build Up, Inc. I am from Uganda, and I went to law school in Uganda, where I got my undergraduate law degree. I then pursued an LLM at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. I have always been passionate about social justice, and so I began my career as a resettlement intern at the UN Refugee Agency in Uganda, where I work primarily on resettlement cases for refugees. 

I have worked with the UN Women’s Eastern Southern Africa Regional Office, where I managed governance, peace, security, and humanitarian projects, and provided technical support to 13 UN women country officers within the region in order to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment. After UN Women, I joined the UN Department of Peace Operations at the UN headquarters here in New York, where I worked on protecting civilians in UN peacekeeping operations. I primarily developed policies and guidance, coordinated with various stakeholders, including UN member states, and provided backstopping support to UN peacekeeping missions. 

Currently, as the Director of Strategic Initiatives, I manage and lead the strategy work and operations within Build Up, Inc. I am responsible for designing and implementing policies, exploring thought authority and leadership opportunities throughout the sector. I am supporting us to expand BUI’s role within a nonprofit sector and within fiscal sponsorship in particular. 

But what really excited me about Build Up, Inc. is primarily its focus on BIPOC and women-led projects, the focus on supporting marginalized groups. We’re doing this not just in the United States, but we are a global organization with a focus on developing countries, as well as the Caribbean. I think that with my UN background and [inaudible 00:06:29] international development, I really wanted to contribute to Build Up, Inc.’s mission which I found to be really brave, really visionary, really innovative. So that’s just a little bit about me. 

[00:06:43] NIC CAMPBELL: Thanks so much, Amanda. So I think very similar to Ajani’s journey, what I’m hearing you share in your journey and what’s come across to me is your ability to connect communities to needed resources. It sounds like that’s exactly what you’re continuing to do within Build Up, Inc. So thank you for sharing that. 

When you think about Build Up, Inc., if I am brand new to the Build Up Companies, I’m brand new to Build Up, Inc., I might even be brand new to fiscal sponsorship, how do you describe the work that you’re doing at Build Up, Inc.? What makes you different, and what’s your methodology? What’s your approach? That’s for either Ajani or Amanda.

[00:07:25] AJANI HUSBANDS: All right. I’ll try to start. Then as always, Amanda is going to just expand on it and make it greater. So if you’re brand new to this, the question we get a lot is what is fiscal sponsorship because it’s a pretty unique concept. So we explain to people that fiscal sponsorship is basically Build Up, Inc. has the 501(c)(3) status, and we work with individuals and organizations and movements that are doing very important things. For a variety of reasons, they might not have their own 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. We provide that for them, so they become like one of our projects. 

There’s a number of advantages there for those individuals and movements and organizations. One is that it allows them to focus more fully on the work that they do, while we at Build Up, Inc. handle a lot of the administrative and background work and contractual work and so forth. Two, it’s an arrangement that allows them to grow at their own pace. Because, again, whereas there are certain reporting requirements and other requirements involved in creating a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization, and that requires certain resources, you can instead dedicate those resources to managing and growing your organization at a sustainable pace. 

Three, it connects you to a wider network. I think that goes into what makes Build Up, Inc. unique in terms of capacity-building. So one thing that we try to do is make sure that our organizations, our sponsored projects are able to connect with each other and are also able to gain resources. So that ties into our capacity-building program. I’m going to pass this portion off to Amanda to explain. 

[00:09:24] AMANDA NASINYAMA: Sure. Thanks, Ajani. So Build Up, Inc. is unique in what we do because, one, we not only provide fiscal sponsorship services to BIPOC and women-led projects. Our main goal is to make sure that these projects are receiving the capacity-building services that they need to scale. We provide i-monthly workshops to our projects. This could be on various topics that we have identified based off of the interviews we’ve had with them with our monthly strategy calls. 

These workshops so far this year in 2023 have focused on nonprofit governance. We’ve had a workshop on lobbying. We’ve had another on fundraising. So these are very key items or key issues that a lot of the projects that we’re working with are very interested in. We also provide an in-house library of resources, where we have gathered lots of information that is relevant to a lot of our projects. We provide them as well with monthly strategy calls, where we talk about what’s going on in their projects. We’re able to provide guidance during these calls. We’re able to get feedback about our services and address any challenges that might be coming up. 

We do weekly office hours. So each project gets at least 30 minutes a week to meet with us to discuss any urgent issues, seek our guidance. We want to make sure that the projects are fully supported and that we’re listening to them. We also want to make sure that – I think those are our major services, Ajani. But please let me know if I’ve missed out on any of them. 

[00:11:06] AJANI HUSBANDS: Amanda, I think you hit on all the major points there. The only one I’m going to add is we also have various partnerships with the different services and products. So for example, our sponsor projects get significantly reduced discounts to certain tech products through TechSoup. We are signed up with Resilia, the Resilia platform. So our projects are able to enjoy a lot of the resources there. 

I think one of the main things is as we continue to build our resources out, whether it’s the library, whether it’s the workshops, we are constantly working to stay in touch with our projects and figure out what is it that they are looking for so that we can create it. I think that’s very important not only because we’re so new, but also because we want to make sure that we are relational in the work that we do and that we are providing an actual added value that is of use rather than what we think to be an added value. 

[00:12:05] NIC CAMPBELL: I really am impressed with all of the services and support that you’re describing because when I think about fiscal sponsorship, I think about those critical pieces of financial support, grant support sometimes, depending on the fiscal sponsor, maybe some legal support. But I really like this approach of this comprehensive capacity-building support. I mean, you’re describing weekly office hours and trainings and calls, basically time and support that you’re providing to the projects that are coming on board. So I just really appreciate the model. 

I want to just hear a little bit more about the focus of the kinds of projects that you sponsor. When you think about the project that’s walking in the door, and you’re thinking, yes, this project aligns with Build Up, Inc.’s vision and mission, how did you form that focus? Do you see that changing at all? How do you see that lining up with the kinds of comprehensive support and capacity-building that you’re providing?

[00:13:09] AMANDA NASINYAMA: That’s a great question, Nic. Ajani already mentioned this, but our focus is on BIPOC and women-led organizations and individuals that are working with marginalized communities. The reason why we are focused on mainly these organizations is that we know that BIPOC individuals and communities play a large role in driving social change, and they’re addressing issues like climate change, systemic racism, and economic inequality. 

There’s a lot of systemic barriers that BIPOC leaders face. Research has shown that leaders of color on average have smaller budgets to work with. They’re more likely to report they lack access to and face challenges to securing financial support from various sources of funding, unlike white leaders. Additionally, only a small percentage of the $450 billion in philanthropic capital given yearly in the United States supports efforts led by people of color. 

There’s also disparity in unrestricted funding, which we all know often represents a proxy of trust from philanthropic organizations. It’s another reflection of the systemic inequalities within the philanthropic landscape. For example, in 2021, only 41% of white-led nonprofits received 50% or more of unrestricted funds, compared to 26% of BIPOC-led organizations. 

So we come to this work with the data, and we also look at Build Up, Inc. We’re very aware of the intersectionality of women and girls of color. So we know that only 0.5% of philanthropic funding goes to women and girls of color. We also know that only one percent of funding goes to women and girls of color issues, even though one in every five people in the United States is a woman of color. 

So with this data and just with the fact of who we are, our mission and our values, we want to make sure that we are supporting BIPOC and women-led organizations. We want to support them in getting access to these resources. So by providing them with capacity-building services, we’re able to address some of the challenges that they may have, right? 

We are able to help them with fundraising services or knowledge, or help them to access experts who are going to support them to grow their organizations. We’re able to support their leadership development. We’re able to be a thought partner with them. That way, they have that support. We’re connecting them with various experts within the industry. The goal is to make sure that they’ll be able to scale based off of their access to all the resources that they’re receiving. 

Secondly, again, I mentioned this earlier. We’re not only focused on the United States, right? We’re a global organization, and we know that US foundations support international efforts to improve health, address climate change, expand and access to education. They want to ensure human rights, and they also engage in other global priorities. So US foundations have often relied on intermediaries to disburse funds or get funding where it’s needed. So at Build Up, Inc., we want to make sure that globally we’re serving as a partner to organizations that are based elsewhere, particularly in Africa, Latin America, as well as in the Caribbean. We want to help projects access US funding. That way, they’re able to support the marginalized and vulnerable communities that they work with. 

That’s how we came to focus on these communities. We do have criteria for fiscal sponsorship at Build Up, Inc. So when a project does come to us, we look at how brave they are, and I can go into more of that a little bit later. But we look at how brave they are. We want to know that they’re supporting marginalized communities. We want to know that they have inclusive leadership, right? 

We also look at the fact that they are charitable. So you need to be doing work that is charitable, that is serving marginalized communities, helping to make their lives better. We look at the product community feed. So is this something that the community needs? Is this something that is actually informed by the community versus you coming in and imposing something that you think is right for these communities and maybe the organizations that you’re working with?

Lastly, we want projects that are seeking that capacity-building services. They want to grow. They want to scale. They’re committed to the work that they’re doing. So when you come to Build Up, Inc., this is what you’re getting, work that is informed by data. But it’s also informed by the passion and belief and our belief in the mission that we do have. I will also hand it over to Ajani to add to this. 

[00:18:11] AJANI HUSBANDS: Oh, Amanda. You knocked it out the park with that one. The only thing I’m going to add to that is that because of all those stats and figures that Amanda cited and because of the reality of the situation that Amanda explained, when we are looking at the projects that we might sponsor, fiscally sponsor, I think unlike a lot of other fiscal sponsors, we don’t have a budgetary minimum that these projects have to meet. That idea is rooted in everything Amanda was saying about how difficult it is for women-led or BIPOC-led projects to just even receive funding. 

So if you think about you are a community leader and you’ve been working on a project, you’ve been working on an endeavor, you’re working already hard enough as it is just to try and make the thing happen. Then on top of that, you’re trying to raise funds, raise resources. As Amanda pointed out, the deck is stacked against you very much so. On top of that, you need to be a 501(c)(3) to have access to most of these funds anyway. 

There’s a lot that makes it very difficult for very dedicated people to be able to obtain the funding that they need. So when they come to us, the last thing that we look at is their budget. The first thing we look at is what are you doing. How is the community receiving it? Is it brave? All those things. Then we look at, okay, this organization, this movement, this person, they are fantastic. They are doing all the things that we love to see individuals and organizations do. 

Now, where are they at budgetary-wise? So if they have what we call a zero budget, which basically means that they’ve either just been self-funding this project themselves, or they’ve not yet raised any money for the organizations, then we don’t let that stop us from bringing them on as a sponsored project. We work out an arrangement in which they are able to come on board, and we’re able to serve as their fiscal sponsor and as their capacity-builder. 

[00:20:09] NIC CAMPBELL: I think that this – I don’t know. The way that you all described it, again, I used this word earlier, but it’s just so deliberate. I love the use of data to inform decision-making, and I also love the passion that’s behind the work, right?

[OUTRO]

[00:20:25] NIC CAMPBELL: Thank you for listening to this episode of Nonprofit Build Up. To access the show notes, additional resources, and information on how you can work with us, please visit our website at buildupadvisory.com. We invite you to listen again next week, as we share another episode about scaling impact by building infrastructure and capacity in the nonprofit sector. Keep building bravely. 

[END]