Nonprofit Build Up® Podcast

In this week’s episode of the Nonprofit Build Up, “The Nonprofit Sector, Reimagined”, Nic speaks with Vu Le, Founder of the Nonprofit AF blog, which focuses on nonprofit hot topics for nonprofit leaders. Tune in to this episode to hear Nic and Vu speak candidly about the philanthropic sector, including fundraising power dynamics, philanthropic trends, and rethinking the way the nonprofit sector shows up when working to support historically marginalized communities.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Resources:

• “Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life” by Alice Wong
• “The Whiteness of Wealth” by Dorothy A. Brown

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About Vu Le

Vu Le (“voo lay”) writes the blog NonprofitAF.com. He is the former executive director of RV, a nonprofit in Seattle that promotes social justice by supporting leaders of color, strengthening organizations led by communities of color, and fostering collaboration between diverse communities. Vu is a founding board member of Community-Centric Fundraising, a movement that aims to ground fundraising practices in racial equity and social justice. Vu was born in Vietnam. He and his family came to the US when Vu was eight. He spent several years in Seattle, attending elementary and middle school, before moving to Memphis, Tennessee for high school and St. Louis for college and graduate school. He has a BA in Psychology and a Master in Social work. He is a vegan, a father of two kids (ages eight and five), and a staunch defender of the Oxford Comma.

Read the podcast transcription below:

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:08] Nic Campbell: You’re listening to the Nonprofit Build Up Podcast. 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]

[0:00:39] Nic Campbell: Hi, Vu. I’m so excited to have you on the Nonprofit Build Up. I’m looking forward to our conversation today.

[0:00:45] Vu Le: Hi, Nic. Thank you so much for having me.

[0:00:48] Nic Campbell: Of course. To get us started, I’d love to hear a little bit more about you and your professional journey.

[0:00:54] Vu Le: Yeah. I’ve got a degree in psychology and social work. I got into this AmeriCorps program that sent me to a non-profit. Yeah, and then I spent the next 13 years running nonprofits, and eventually I wrote a blog and called Nonprofit AF. Now, I just rabble rouse. I just go and cause trouble.

[0:01:17] Nic Campbell: I love that. Can you talk a little bit more about Nonprofit AF? What made you started, and what kinds of topics do you focus on? Then I’m going to get into some of the rabble rousing.

[0:01:27] Vu Le: Yeah. Nonprofit AF started about 12 years ago when a funder asked me to write a blog post from a grantee’s perspective. It’s really hard to turn down a funder, right? Because of the power dynamics and things. It’s a great funder, but it was still hard to say no. I said yes. I decided to just write from a humorous perspective, because we don’t have enough humor in our sector. It’s oftentimes very academic. I decided to put a humorous lens on it, and then it just caught on and eventually, spun off into its own blog. I write about everything, a lot about fundraising, a lot about philanthropy, something just about self-care. Yeah, whatever is on my mind, really.

[0:02:10] Nic Campbell: When you think about the audience for Nonprofit AF, who do you have in mind? Who are you writing for?

[0:02:16] Vu Le: Mostly, nonprofit leaders in the sector. I define leaders as basically, everyone who works in the nonprofit sector. Yeah, people from all over with different types of positions, executive directors, program, frontline staff, but also, a lot of funders and volunteers and donors as well.

[0:02:33] Nic Campbell: When you talk about this rabble rousing, how is it showing up in your blog and what kinds of things are you getting into?

[0:02:41] Vu Le: Well, right now, I’ve been really big into fundraising and really, changing the way that we do fundraising, because I think a lot of it is very toxic and harmful. We don’t really talk enough about it, right? We have this fundraising philosophy that is really based on ensuring that donors feel like heroes, and make them feel all special and all this stuff. I don’t think that’s good enough anymore. I think we need to have some honest conversations with our donors about where their wealth came from.

A lot of wealth came in this country came from slavery and stolen indigenous land and tax avoidance and worker exploitation and environmental degradation. We don’t really bring that up to our donors, because we’re afraid that it’s going to freak them out. Now, there’s a movement that I’ve been involved with called community-centric fundraising that is pushing for these conversations to happen.

Also, really about ending the hunger games. I think a lot of us are very frustrated with this constant competition that we all do in the sector, where we’re just competing to see who can get the most money for our organization. Screw everyone else in the sector. Screw other mission, when we really should be working as an ecosystem, because all of our missions are interrelated.

[0:03:52] Nic Campbell: I completely hear you and agree about the hunger games type of mentality. When you talk about us all working as part of an ecosystem, also, really agreed. A question that comes up for me around that is, how do you promote that kind of ecosystem when we know that the funders may not necessarily be fully bought into the fact that that ecosystem exists, or the way we’re seeing that ecosystem existing? It feels like you might be working with the nonprofits on the one hand, who acknowledges ecosystem. Even then, there’s still this competition amongst them that’s being fueled by the funding and the way that’s working. Just curious of how you are approaching those conversations, both with funders and with nonprofits to get that buy-in into this ecosystem approach to stop that hunger game mentality?

[0:04:48] Vu Le: Yeah. Well, I think the first thing is really just get people to see a new vision for a sector. The vision that we’ve had has been very based on the hunger games. You are rewarded for getting as much money as possible. I think a lot of people just can’t imagine a different reality, or the way we do fundraising.

Talking to a lot of fundraisers and telling them, “Hey, this is actually possible. Here’s examples of that.” I bring up examples, for example, of organizations in Seattle that at the beginning of the pandemic, they gave up funding. They declined funding. A funder came and gave them $50,000 unrestricted grants that they didn’t even apply for. This is a really great funder who just said, “Here’s some money. We know that you’re suffering because of the pandemic.” A bunch of these nonprofits actually said, “We appreciate this, but we want to decline, because we know our partner organizations can really use this money more.”

Oftentimes, the smaller organizations tend to be black-led, indigenous-led, Latinx-led, etc. That reality, that imagination is something we need to cultivate, right? Regarding philanthropy, I think that we also need to get philanthropist foundations to have a different vision for our world. They’ve been so focused on really terrible, ridiculous things. Cares account, grant proposals and stuff. Logic models, theories of change, and they ask a really, a bunch of nonsensical questions like, how are you going to sustain this program when this grant would give you under? Who cares? All right? Always the answer is, we’re going to get fundraising.

We’re just wasting our time answering these really main questions now, when the reality is that we should be focusing on getting together to work on these issues, the systemic issues that are going on. For example, the attacks on abortion rights and voting rights and things, right? I would love for funders to actually just put away all their just ridiculous innate focuses and start working on these much bigger issues that threaten all of us.

[0:06:55] Nic Campbell: When you’re calling out a lot of these routine questions that you’re seeing from funders, what do you say to the argument that these questions are really getting at sustainability, right? This question about theory of change, like what are you proposing as a nonprofit and what is your idea to change, or transform outcomes for the community that you’re serving? What’s your response that the argument actually is, this is about sustainability?

[0:07:24] Vu Le: Sustainability is not a thing, all right? That I don’t believe in this concept of sustainability. I think it’s been a very destructive, toxic belief. We exist because of the failures of governments and capitalism. Really, the only way to sustain the services is if people pay their fair share of taxes and government takes care of its people. Until that happens, nonprofits will not be sustainable. We’re just always going to scramble for funding.

Sustainability is not a thing. It is a red herring for us to start to believe that it actually is. As long as there’s injustice and as long as the government is not taking care of its people, the nonprofits will exist. The only way we’re going to get funding is if people contribute and funders give money. I think it is just a ridiculous concept like, “How are you going to sustain this program?” Why should we be the one sustaining this? We’ve got work to do. I always like to tell funders, “If you care about this work and you want it to be sustainable, then you sustain it. That’s your job as funders, to sustain it.” Stop asking ridiculous questions like this. Right.

[0:08:30] Nic Campbell: I really like that question of why should we be the ones to sustain it? I think it does change the way you step into this conversation, right? When you say, “The onus is not on us. Actually, it’s on you under to do that.” I appreciate that. When you started talking about looking at fundraising differently by having the conversation about, where does your wealth come from, right? We know the origins of a lot of wealth that these foundations are holding, and so, having the real conversations about that. Can you talk a little bit more about, one, how do you bring those conversations up? What does that look like? Just given how we’ve been set up with this power dynamic that it currently exists. What is the purpose behind having that conversation?

[0:09:17] Vu Le: Well, I think the purpose is we do not have time to waste with a lot of funders’ lack of focus and distraction from the real issues here. Also, it’s very delusional, some of their philosophies. Like, “Well, yeah. We’ll just give you money. You should be grateful for anything that we give you.” When again, the reality is so much of wealth has been built on inequitable means. If these funders really care about justice, then they would do things differently. They won’t force nonprofits to apply for funding that wasn’t really these foundations to begin with in the first place. They would start thinking about reparation. They would start thinking about returning stolen indigenous land. They would start thinking about giving more to black-led organizations. These are things that funders should be doing.

How do we get these conversations? They’re already going. We have great leaders, like Edgar Villanueva with Decolonizing Wealth. We have Anand Giridharadas with Winners Take All. There’s lots of leaders who are actually pushing these conversations to the forefront. The funders who aren’t into these conversations, they are being left behind. They need to catch up.

[0:10:31] Nic Campbell: Yeah. No, agreed. I think when you’re talking about where that wealth comes from, to your point, it does make that funder think a bit clearer about how should we then show up to remedy the harm that has been caused. Thinking about different ways to equitably work and refocus. I appreciate that. I know we’ve been talking about fundraising, but if you look at the nonprofit sector as a whole and you look at the things that you have been seeing and the trends that are happening, what do you wish that nonprofits would do more of? What do you wish that they would do less of?

[0:11:14] Vu Le: I want us to stop apologizing. I want us to own our power. I want us to be a lot more assertive. I want us to mobilize. I want us to really organize people. We’ve lost that. We’ve been forced into the survival mode, where we just spend so much of our time justifying our work. I mean, the entire exercise in grant writing is justifying our work, and responding to the whims of various people, foundations, and so on. We don’t have time or energy for that anymore.

Instead of just putting up with it and saying, “This is the only system that we have,” I want us to get more aggressive and just say, “We don’t have time for this anymore.” I don’t know. Honestly, I think about what happened in Montgomery with the brawl, right? I mean, it was great to see people defending this black security guard who was just doing his job and these white supremacists attacked him. People just grabbed a folding chair. I want us to grab more folding chairs. I think that’s what we’ve been doing, right? I want us to stop being so nice and civil and asking so nicely.

We have these philosophies that we internalize. We think, “Oh, this is other people’s money.” Again, it’s not their money. It was built on an equitable means. Or people think, if there’s only so much money to go around and we should just be thankful for whatever, $5,000, $10,000 grants that we get. No, there’s one and a half trillion dollars just sitting in foundation endowments and donor advice funds, just sitting there while democracy is burning and voting rights and abortion rights are being destroyed, transgender people are getting attacked, police violence continues. I want us to just really own our power and get in there and stop apologizing for our work.

[0:13:05] Nic Campbell: When we’re working with nonprofit organizations, we always say out here at Build Up that we want to only work with organizations that are brave. I think everything you’re describing is the fundamentals of bravery. Not apologizing, owning your power and showing up in a way that’s not saying you’re justifying what you have been doing, but saying, this is what we are doing and it has a lot of value and worth.

A follow-up question to that, Vu, is I agree with all of that, but I also recognize the space in which we are operating and which we currently exist. If I’m a grassroots organization and I hear this and I’m thinking, “Okay, I’ve got a grant proposal coming up, or I’ve got a conversation coming up,” how do I show up when I am a grassroots organization, I don’t have a ton of funding, and I don’t want the funders to say no, or to walk away from me? How do you prepare me as a leader of that organization for those conversations?

[0:14:08] Vu Le: Absolutely. I do want to acknowledge, there are lots of barriers to our work. I have been a nonprofit leader for a while. I know what it’s like to have cash flow issues. I know what it’s like when funding doesn’t come through and you might have to lay off staff and you just don’t have time, or the energy to do additional work that you’re not paid for, because a lot of funders don’t want to fund advocacy and organizing work.

At the same time, I think we have to acknowledge that this is extremely necessary and we have to have a better vision. We need to dream bigger for our communities. This survivalism has forced us to think incrementally. It’s forced us to think smaller. I want us to have the audacity of ambition.

I always tell this story about Juicero. Juicero was a Wi-Fi-connected juicing machine that was $700. You buy these proprietary packets of cut-up food and vegetables and you put it into for $8 each and you put it into this machine and it squeezes out one glass of juice, and this was going to revolutionize the juicing industry. It came from Silicon Valley. Bloomberg did an investigation, where they discovered that you can just squeeze the juices, the packets by hand and get the same amount of juice, basically. They wrote about this and the company went bankrupt.

Before it did, they were boasting that they had a 125 million dollars in venture capital. That they had 50 full-time engineers working to design this Wi-Fi connected juicing machine. We hear about this and we get just frustrated, because just imagine what any of us in the nonprofit sector could do with a 125 million dollars. Instead, we’re scrambling. We’re like, “Can we please get $10,000 to end homelessness?” This is the scale. I wanted to have the vision of like a Juicero.

Maybe we fail that we may need to. We have to try and dream big and fail big and stuff, because chances are, our work is just way more important than a Wi-Fi-connected juicing machine. Like all these leaders who are dealing with these challenges, then yeah, I understand. At the same time, I want everyone to dream bigger. Add a zero or two to your grant applications, to your budget. Do that and accept that not everything will work out. But we all need to dream bigger. Our communities need us too.

[0:16:30] Nic Campbell: I like that. Just add that zero. Because I do see, we talk a lot about funders and their funding practices, and I’ll turn to that in just a second. Working with both funders, as well as organizations that are fund raising, some of the conservative approaches that we’ve seen, really come from the nonprofits themselves. It’s also about conditioning and what they’ve been exposed to. It’s this cycle that I really like that approach of just think bigger and take that risk.

If we’re talking about funding, I’d love to flip it and think about funders. When you think about what you’re seeing in the sector, again, and we’ve talked about what nonprofits could be doing more of and less of, what comes up for you for funders?

[0:17:16] Vu Le: When it comes to funders, I think we need to differentiate between progressive leaning funders and conservative leaning funders. There is a major difference between the two of them. Conservative funders, they are very open in their funding tactics and strategies. They generally give multi-year general operating funds. When we say multi-year, I don’t mean two or three years, like the way that we think is a multi-year fund. They give two or three decades at a time.

There has been lots of studies on this. They invest in these strategies that are broad. They don’t care about these minor things. They don’t care how you spend that money. They trust in their partners. As long as you’re aligned in values, here’s 5 million dollars a year for the next 30 years. Go and do what you need to do. That’s not the case for progressive leaning, it’s the complete opposite.

I always joke that if MOK were here and he applied for a grant, the response he would get from a lot of progressive leaning organizations would be like, “Yeah, we like your dream. That’s really great. But is it scalable? What’s your logic model? Do you have any research to back this up the stream of yours? What are the metrics and outcomes of your dream?” Then, “Well, we can’t fund you a 100% of what you ask for. We’ll give you 10%. It’s going to take us 12 months to decide on whether this align with our priorities. I’m so sorry. We just don’t fund marches this year, because it doesn’t align with our priorities.” That’s what funding is like.

Then we wonder why progressive movements have been falling behind. Horrendous laws are being passed, laws and policies that are just destructive to our communities are being passed. It’s because we’re spending all this time, this toxic intellectualizing and thinking that we’re really smart, when we’re like, “Logic models. That must mean we’re very smart and strategic.” When the other side is like, “Here’s 5 million dollars a year for 25 years. Go. Go and get as many right-wing judges on every single bench as possible, and spend five times more on indoctrinating youth on conservative values.” Because that’s what conservatives do. They spend a lot more money on universities to ensure that younger people have these values. This is, we’re behind.

[0:19:40] Nic Campbell: Why do you think that is? Why do you think that approach differs so much between the two types of funders?

[0:19:47] Vu Le: I think for conservative leaning funders, it’s aligned with their values, right? For progressive leaning funders, there’s a dissonance. If we’re actually effective in implementing many of the plans that progressive leaders want, then it causes an existential threat to progressive philanthropy. Many of these foundations would not exist, because we would eliminate billionaires. We would have people, like wealthy people paying their fair share of taxes, so that philanthropy is not such a major force determining things in our society anymore. That existential threat and the lack of reconnaissance and recognition of it means that we don’t really address it. We can’t really fully effectively address it.

[0:20:32] Nic Campbell: When you were talking that through, intermediaries came up for me, because we were talking about funders, we’re talking about nonprofits. I wonder if you can – I’d love to get your thoughts on the role that intermediaries play, because I think on the one hand, intermediaries to be such powerful organizations. They can really serve as capacity builders and holds for so many grassroots and community-centric and lead projects. It can also be this trust builder in many ways. That’s the potential.

I wonder what you’re seeing actually being played out with the intermediaries in this space and how funders are working with intermediaries. Are they living up to all of those expectations that we have for intermediary organizations? Where are we seeing some of the pullbacks? Because as you started to describe the different strategies for each of those types of funders, intermediaries and the role that they play in all of this really just came to the surface for me.

[0:21:36] Vu Le: Yeah, absolutely. I worked for an intermediary. I founded one. It was to bring more leaders of color into the nonprofit sector and support organizations led by communities of color, and ensuring that they develop their capacity. I do think there is a major role for intermediaries, if they are being thoughtful and they’re aligned with equity, especially when it comes to marginalized communities, communities of color led organizations, and so on. These intermediaries are vital, because they are scrambling for resources. The demands for their services is just so high, that oftentimes they can’t and probably, they shouldn’t be doing things like accounting and stuff, when they can just have an intermediary do these things.

There’s lots of things intermediaries can do. The challenge is that there are certain intermediaries who don’t have that equity alignment and lens. They can be disruptive, because what happens is that they can absorb a lot of funding without realizing how much they’re taking without actually distributing to their communities. We see this in movements in the past, like Collective Impact, where in Seattle, for example, we have these major intermediary backbone organizations who became this board-like entity from the Star Trek, where they just started annexing everyone and resistance is futile.

Remember, getting a phone call in the bathroom from one of the funders who was like, “Vu, you need to align with these intermediaries work more, okay? Don’t tell anyone that I called you. Just go and revise your [inaudible 0:23:07]. We did not talk.” Yeah, intermediaries can be wonderful, and they can also be destructive, depending on their values alignment.

[0:23:17] Nic Campbell: I appreciate you sharing that. I think that I’ve seen a lot of what you’re describing play out in the international context in particular, when you’re having funders step into spaces where they may not know the conditions, or the context in which they’re operating, which is another conversation for another day. Intermediaries really playing that critical pivotal role. The question then becomes, which intermediaries are selected? Why are they being selected? Then the roles they then play with the communities that they’re working with. I appreciate you sharing all of that.

I know we’ve been talking about fundraising and what we’ve been seeing in the sector. One of the questions that I love to ask guests on the podcast is about infrastructure, and the way that you are seeing infrastructure being built up within nonprofits, the way that you’re seeing funders looking at infrastructure, or thinking about infrastructure and investing in a nonprofit’s infrastructure and growth, and the importance that you’re thinking about when you think about infrastructure and an organization that’s not in crisis, but prioritizing infrastructure as well.

[0:24:33] Vu Le: I think the concept of infrastructure capacity is something we need to reimagine. We have these philosophies that I don’t think have been serving as well. One of the philosophies is like, teach an organization to fish. Let’s teach them financial fishing. Let’s ensure that their HR fishing systems are strong, and so on. The reality is that, why does that make any sense? A lot of organizations, a lot of people are not. They don’t fish. They shouldn’t be fishing. They’re carpenters. Let them build houses.

What we’ve been having is a whole bunch of people whining about people not developing fishing skills and then complaining about the lack of houses being built. A lot of funders need to understand that. If an organization doesn’t want to build this infrastructure, if it just wants to be a fiscally sponsored organization, for example, that’s perfectly legit. In fact, it might actually be more effective for that organization to just go under the umbrella of a fiscal sponsor, so that they can actually focus on what it’s really good at, which could be community organizing, etc.

This is the reason why I founded my last organization, RVC, Rainier Valley Corps. It was because many of these leaders, especially leaders of color, were telling me like, “I’m spending all of my time just filing with receipts and QuickBooks and evaluation and grant writing and this is exhausting and I just can’t do it all.” RVC created this alliance of organizations, a bunch of organizations got together, went under RVC’s fiscal sponsorship and then RVC handled all the finances, HR, taxes, hired a grant writer to help grant writes for these organizations. Not teach them how to write grants. That could happen if they really want to learn, but sometimes it’s just to write grants for them. We need to be okay with giving people a fish if they’re a carpenter and let them do carpentry work.

[0:26:21] Nic Campbell: Agreed. Agreed. I like that, we’re thinking about infrastructure as part of all of this, and it’s just that, how do we invest in it and make sure that the organization has it and can continue to build its own internal capacity. Vu, I could continue talking to you for a very long time about all of these topics within the sector and this conversation has been really powerful and I think the key that I’m taking away is just about reframing and rethinking the way we have stepped into this space and the way that we’re working. One of the questions that I would love to close this out with is what artists, or book do you think we should be paying attention to at this point?

[0:27:06] Vu Le: I just read Alice Wong’s Year of the Tiger and An Activist’s Life, and she’s a disability activist and hilarious in her writing and her memoirs. I think disability is something we definitely need to do a much better job talking about in our sector, in nonprofit philanthropy and everywhere. I’d probably need to read more fun books. The Whiteness of Wealth by Dorothy A. Brown, talks about the inequities of wealth and where it came from and why it’s so white. These are things we need to do just a much better job acknowledging in our sector, like the historic roots of inequity and wealth disparity and philanthropy. We have to acknowledge the problematic roots of these things. Otherwise, I think it’s going to be very challenging for us to solve these issues and change these systems.

On the other hand, I am also a big fan of just relaxing and watching just random stuff. I will watch Dairy Girls again. I need to catch up on this. It’s in queue. It’s now on Netflix.

[0:28:14] Nic Campbell: Yes. Yes. I’ve seen that. And Abbott Elementary.

[0:28:20] Vu Le: Excellent.

[0:28:21] Nic Campbell: That is on my list. That is on my list. Thanks so much for these recommendations, Vu. We will share them in the show notes, so that people can assess them as well. Thank you, again, so much for your time and for your thoughtfulness throughout this conversation. Like I said, what’s really coming through for me from our talk today is rethinking and reframing. I really like when you said, we need to rethink sustainability, and what are we really talking about when we talk about sustainability, and then just this idea of dreaming big and also, failing big and I think part of that is then, thinking about how we hold failure and what’s that container that we’re providing for all of these organizations that are doing the hard work and failing big as well?

Then obviously, at the core of all this, just fundraising. Rethinking and having different conversations around fundraising, particularly that conversation about wealth and where it comes from. I really appreciate just everything that you have shared with us and thank you again for your time.

[0:29:25] Vu Le: Thank you so much, Nic.

[OUTRO]

[0:29:28] 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 buildupcompanies.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]