I should have said something.
You ever have that moment of watching something play out, your blood boiling, but can’t seem to make yourself move? The words feel like tar in your thoat, unable to escape. The rage sets in like an old friend, making a home in the burning cavern of your chest.
I recently attended the Community Centric Fundraising (CCF) Family Reunion and the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) annual conference (known oddly as ICON) in San Diego. Two very different events, all within four days. So of course I’m still recovering from them.
It was the last day of the AFP ICON conference. I went to a session centered on networking for fundraisers who are in what we call “small shops.” Which really means you have a small team – or just one person- at your organization dedicated to fundraising. Why we call them shops like we are mechanics at a car dealership, I will never know.
There, a new Executive Director of a small museum was sharing how she is navigating fundraising for the first time and was unsure of where to even begin since they hadn’t previously kept a donor list or database. Several people at my table practically frothed at the mouth to tell her that she should buy mail lists in wealthy zipcodes and send letters to everyone there introducing her organization and asking for support.
I should have said something.
What the hell is a mailing list?
For those of you lucky enough to not know what any of that last sentence meant, I apologize for the explanation I am about to give so you can suffer with me. Mail marketing lists can be purchased from data farming businesses that compile lists from publically available data that you can then send mail to. Often fundraisers focus on attributes like if you own a home, what job you have, and the average income of the zipcode you live in. The hope is often that with just one mass mailing, you can hit the jackpot with a few new wealthy donors responding to your letter. In fundraising spaces, this tactic is often proselytized as the easiest, fastest way for the wealthy to bless our organizations with their beautiful dollars.
Being silent in the face of oppression is a learned skill.
Sitting there, I could hear my dad’s voice in my head. Don’t make a scene.
As a young Arab American kid, my dad taught me quickly that showing anger and being loud in public were two things I shouldn’t do. Which was funny, since he often had a short fuse. But I learned to do as he said, not as he did I suppose. So in this moment, I bit my tongue. I listened as people talked about turning transactional giving into transformational giving, all while still uplifting the need to seek out and pursue wealthy donors before all else.
After the session ended, I connected with others and offered my contact information without mentioning the anger simmering in my gut. I went to lunch, ate a quinoa salad, and laid in the grass with others talking about community-centric fundraising. Sitting there, I wondered if that new Executive Director, who scribbled down the advice offered to her frantically as if she didn’t want to miss a single thing, would go on see fundraising as it was peddled to her in that session.
I should have said something.
Don’t worry, my ego is only so big and I don’t believe that me not saying something is the one thing that kept her from some transformational justice journey in fundraising. But I do wonder at my complacency and silence in that moment. I wonder why I didn’t say, “Purchasing donor lists for only wealthy neigborhoods means your are ignoring a lot of people who probably come to your museum every day. We’re literally always talking about how we are too reliant on wealthy donors across the board, so why the fuck should you only focus on them?”
The focus on wealthy donors is killing nonprofits.
Nonprofits keep going back to only focusing on wealthy donors, and ignoring other donors. Charitable gift amounts continue to rise, but the total number of donors is falling – fast. This means as a sector, we are more reliant than ever on the wealth and generosity of the upper class. (Rasheeda Childress has a great article in the Chronical of Philanthropy about this.)
And listen, I don’t have all the answers.
But I know that it sure as hell isn’t going to be continuing to beg for scraps from wealthy donors who – according to new research from Lilly Family School of Philanthropy – are likely to decrease donations now that new tax laws reduce how much they can claim as deductions. It’ll be centering our communities, being transparent about what we’re doing as nonprofits, and challenging the systems that got us here in the first place.
That doesn’t mean there’s no room for wealthy folks in the conversation, but we need to stop centering them in all our donor outreach efforts. We need to be open to hard conversations, like the reality that no one gets wealthy in America without it being built on a foundation of exploitation of labor, resources, etc. That gifts from wealthy donors aren’t gifts to be pleaded for, but reparations to be expected.
For more on reflections on philanthropy and how messed up it is, check out our collaborative article with Communities Rise, Capacity builders on how philanthropy needs to change.
