Nonprofit Burnout: Why Fundraisers of Color Are Leaving with Marisa DeSalles
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Tired of the same old fundraising that just doesn't reflect your community? Wish you could break free from the stuffy, traditional approaches and find ways to authentically connect with your donors?
In this episode, we ditch “best practices” and dove headfirst into fundraising in the queer community with Madeline Taylor, Development Manager at Out On Screen. Madeline, a passionate community builder and champion for equity, shares the strategic thinking behind their approach and how to channel the vibrant energy of your community into impactful fundraising. Out On Screen throws fundraising events true to them - drag shows, burlesque, 20-minute land acknowledgements, storytelling, and more.
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Key Episode Highlights:
The "Black Excellence" trap: The constant pressure to outperform white counterparts as a means of survival isn't sustainable. It's harmful. We need to embrace "mastery" over unattainable perfection.
Harms of donor influence: Institutions are caving to donors driven by whitelash, eroding trust and harming their service users. Fundraisers of colour are often caught in the crossfire.
Self-care isn't optional: Unpacking trauma is vital – if we don't tend to ourselves, we can't adequately serve our communities. Self-care is a form of activism.
Community is power: It's hard fighting alone. Building a network of peers and allies is crucial, especially finding powerful champions within your organization who will advocate for you.
Setting sustainable goals: When fundraising is tough, the answer ISN'T just to push harder. We need realistic targets and expectations so fundraisers aren't set up to fail.
Don’t forget to become a supporter of our show!
Watch this episode on Youtube: https://youtu.be/Nw4LPpPOtS4
Links and Resources:
“12 Years a Fly in the Milk”: https://communitycentricfundraising.org/2020/07/11/12-years-a-fly-in-the-milk/
Collecting Courage: https://www.collectingcourage.org/
Dean Article - https://archive.is/lYjUU
Giving Black Conference - https://www.givingblack.ca/copy-of-giving-black-conference-2023
Connect with Marissa DeSalles on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marisa-desalles/
Learn more about Good Tilth Consulting: https://www.goodtilthconsulting.com/
Connect with Maria on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mariario/
Support the show: https://www.buzzsprout.com/208666/supporters/new
Transcript:
00:00:00 Marissa: Keep your eye out for those potential champions, and don't be afraid to ask them for that kind of support. And then conversely, folks that have been in the game for a little while and find ourselves in rooms of power, open up your heart and a little piece of your calendar to take on folks in that capacity, because for me personally, just mentoring. I have a few people that I just randomly mentor, not even all from the nonprofit sector, but that relationship of like passing it forward, keeping it going, grounds me and reminds me why I do what I do.
00:00:46 Maria: Hi, friends. Ever wondered how you could turn your big ideas into results? I'm Maria Rio, your go-to guide for helping small nonprofits have real world impacts. Together, let's reimagine a better sector, tackle systemic issues, and yes, raise some serious cash. Welcome back to The Small Nonprofit, the podcast where your passion meets action.
00:01:18 Maria: Hi friends, welcome back to the Small Nonprofit Podcast. If you're new here, we post weekly episodes in all things nonprofit, and we invite guests from Canada and the States to talk about their different experiences in our sector. Today I have Marissa, who is an awesome friend and someone who is really, really great at supporting people in the sector. So I would love her to introduce herself and tell you all about what she does all the way from Sacramento. Hello, Marisa.
00:01:50 Marissa: Hey Maria, it's always good to see you. Such a fun opportunity to chat with you and catch up. To introduce myself, I am lifelong, pretty much California native. I currently live in Sacramento. And when the pandemic hit, I was working with a local nonprofit, doing all of their one person department for all the fundraising and marketing and all the stuff, right? And they laid off all the staff and I was at home and trying to figure out what to do with myself when two things happened that really drastically altered my life.
00:02:34 Marissa: One was George Floyd's murder and two was the launch of the Community-Centric Fundraising movement. And so those things happened really short time of each other. And they turned into a catalyst that together define really a lot of what I do for work. So I'm now facilitating a cohort of BIPOC, you know, Black Indigenous People of Color, folks who do fundraising locally here in the Sacramento region. And I have 80 organizations, 80 folks at organizations that are supporting each other and coming together for networking and encouragement and strategies and a little bit of, you know, complaining just about the things that we go through and the hurdles that we face in hopes that we can kind of laugh our way through and find solutions together.
00:03:40 Maria: That seems very healthy and I like it. How long have you been running the cohort for?
00:03:48 Marissa: Well, this is our… we're coming up on the end of our first full year. So we started as a pilot program supported by my local community foundation. And the demand was so great that we expanded it into two different kind of groups. And some of it is focused on strategy and tactics and really concrete stuff. And some of it is higher level strategy, really trying to envision different futures and that sort of stuff. And so it's growing and we just got the applications actually for our next round of folks that I'm really excited to meet and learn from and facilitate learning for another group of folks that are in the fight and are in the trenches and neck deep in trying to solve some of these problems on a daily basis that fundraisers and marketers and folks involved in promoting nonprofits and our work all face.
00:04:56 Marissa: And statistically, we folks of color have it harder than our friends who are living in white bodies. Right. And so the cohort's part of the cohort's plan is to just try to address some of those. I don't want to say deficiencies because I haven't found any deficiencies in this group, which is part of why the work is so complicated. Right. They don't lack for skills. They don't lack for expertise. There's a million training programs out there. And how to raise money and how to tell stories. But time after time our folks are just raising less.
00:05:32 Marissa: So really trying to explore what's at the bottom of that, we spend a lot of time in sharing stories with each other. And I don't mean like mission pitches, I mean personal stories, because that's where the resonating really happens. People realize, oh, it's not just me whose boss is gaslighting them and ignoring their contributions and promoting another member of the staff who lives a little differently or looks a little differently or speaks a little differently, right?
00:06:06 Marissa: Oh, it's not just me who got a performance review, you know, an improvement plan for only raising $1.7 million despite not having the tools to, like, that sense of, oh, my gosh, I'm not alone. And that feeling of relief and being able to express that in a safe, closed space is everything to the folks that are in it. And it's really probably the greatest privilege I've ever had to be able to facilitate something like that.
00:06:44 Maria: It sounds like a lot of the people that maybe you've worked with in the cohort have experienced some form of kind of like policing at their organizations. Can you tell us a little bit about that and also are these people who are in positions of power? Like are they EDs or is it mostly people who are not senior leadership? What does that look like?
00:07:08 Marissa: Yeah, it's a good question. In fact, I was actually surprised by the diversity of the applicants. We made it kind of wide, you know, we just said self-identified fundraisers of color, right? And so many of them are EDs. Some of them are one person org EDs. Some of them are brand new folks at a large, well-resourced, white-led organization, and they're one of a very few people of color, right? Some of them are folks who have founded five different nonprofits and, you know, raised millions and millions in federal money over their careers.
00:07:48 Marissa: So they really run the gamut, and then that makes it all the more surprising, the commonality of their experience. Right? Some of them, they're in every sector, higher ed, health care, human services, animal ecology, all of it, all of it. It doesn't matter. The experiences are the same and it's distressing in one way to me personally. I feel it. But it's also super empowering to be able to convene folks and realize that there is that commonality and find some strength, just because, you know, fundraising, it can be a super isolating job anyway, right?
00:08:34 Marissa: And doing it in a body of color is an extra invisible burden that every one of these people are carrying, right? So you know, you talked about policing, right? The tone policing, the appearance policing, the tone of voice, you know, how people react when you ask a question in a meeting versus how they ask when somebody else asks a question, right? All these things that are sometimes difficult to even pinpoint in the moment until you hear someone else's experience and think, oh, it's the same thing that happened to me. I too feared for my physical safety when I went to meet with a rural major donor living in this body, right? Like it's deep and it's international.
00:09:30 Marissa: I went to a conference lately, recently put on by Nneka Allen and it was probably half folks in Canada and the other half mostly folks in the US, but there was no difference, absolutely no difference in the experience. Some folks were C-suite level, some folks were just beginning their careers. Same experiences. It's really astonishing, honestly.
00:09:58 Maria: For me personally, I find it super difficult to kind of constantly have those emotionally charged conversations because people are obviously being harmed at the workplaces. Is there a way that you feel? Is it easier for you to manage that, to provide support to other people? How do you make sure that your mental health and sanctity is respected when you're listening to all these like very harmful stories?
00:10:27 Marissa: It's a great question. And I had to intentionally include that in my curriculum plan when I was designing this program, because it is, it's hard work. It's very, very difficult. If you're doing it correctly, people are expressing themselves really freely. And I've heard some things that later I kind of almost wish I hadn't, right? But I do really mindfully take steps to resource myself in ways that are personal, that are spiritual, that are physical. And I build also that reminder for self-care into our gatherings, because I think that a lot of our training programs and whatnot are missing some of the point, right? We are whole people. We are whole, complicated, amazing people.
00:11:25 Marissa: And you can take a million classes on how to tell stories better, but if you're not beginning with acknowledging the harm and the trauma of one's own story and being able to tell that honestly, you can't ever get to a point of authenticity in your storytelling without addressing all of those sorts of things behind it. Because I was right, none of us are in this for to become Jeff Bezos, where none of us are getting rich off of doing this work. We're doing it because we resonate with the mission. We're doing it because we love the cause, because we care about our communities, right?
00:12:08 Marissa: And all of that brings all that complicated stuff. And so I think addressing that is really important. So I'll bring up Nneka Allen again, because her book is one of the most important resources that I turn to again and again. If you forgive me, there's four or five authors, and so I'll just say Nneka et al. And the book is not a training manual, it's poetry and art and music, right? And that's what feeds my soul. And so I have to really intentionally include that as a practice, which is probably the number one thing I recommend to anybody that's doing this work in these bodies, in these lived experiences. You have to mindfully resource your soul. Not just your mind, not just your heart, but you've got to pour back into your soul cup or none of this work means anything.
00:13:09 Maria: Thanks for sharing. I feel like a lot of conversations around self-care and harm that's cost you by nonprofits are usually left unsaid. So I thought it was really important to kind of talk about that before we jumped into the trends that maybe your cohort has seen or you've seen when it comes to fundraisers of color and the challenges that they're bumping up against.
00:13:31 Marissa: The most appalling and concerning trend that is consuming me right now is the harm being done to Black folks in higher education, particularly. And I'm thinking, you know, immediately of Dr. Claudine Gay at Harvard, Nikole Hannah-Jones in the 1619 project I was recently reading an article about from a dean who was attempting to bring Nikole in to speak at her university and the process, the extremely harmful on all parts process that ensued. And I'm connecting that with something that Mide said in that conference. He was on the panel. And I'm not going to try and pronounce his last name because I'll blurt it, but he'll forgive me.
00:14:35 Marissa: But one of the things that he brought up and has really been in my mind ever since is the concept of Black excellence and the harm that that idea has done to our people. I keep coming back to that because I come from a family that really values Black excellence. And my parents were beneficiaries of affirmative action in the '60s and '70s. And they succeeded by assimilation and proximity to whiteness, even to, I mean, listen, Marisa isn't exactly a stereotypically Black name, right? So they wanted me to be able to get a job. They wanted somebody to look at my resume. And to them, that meant, you know, proximity to whiteness.
00:15:36 Marissa: And having been born and lived most of my life in California, I've met a lot of other folks who have whose families have made a similar journey, right? They immigrated to California from the South during, you know, the great migration, chasing jobs, chasing opportunity, chasing freedom, right? During reconstruction, the jobs were in California and in Boston or Chicago or New York. And some folks came out West here and made new lives for themselves.
00:16:10 Marissa: And so, you know, I have all these contemporaries, Black women named, you know, Brittany and Marisa and Tiffany, right? Who, you know what I mean? And I didn't realize until I got older that, like, we're a whole meme now. Like, you know, the suburban Black girl or whatever, right? Who can super easily code switch because it was baked into our very being. There's a way that you speak at home and a way that you speak at school. And don't you dare say, you know, a bad word like ain't right or anything like that or be get caught being too Black, essentially.
00:16:56 Marissa: And I just am reflecting now on the legacy of that idea that if you are educated enough. If you straighten your hair, if you speak articulately enough, you too can succeed in spite of everything in front of you. You just have to work harder. You just have to hustle more. You got to be 10 times as good all the time. Well, a couple generations in, that's exhausting, like cellular level exhausting. Trying to be excellent all the time is exhausting and it's not sustainable. And it's literally killing us, you know?
00:17:44 Marissa: And I'm forgetting, I'm so bad with names. I'm forgetting the name of the professor that we lost just recently to suicide after being bullied and harassed at her higher ed institution. That was just a couple of weeks ago. And that's what's something that's really troubling me right now. I have a youngster in college, sophomore in college, and I feel conflicted about, you know, encouraging him to like, yeah, do well in school, kid, it'll be great for you. You got to get that degree. You got to buckle down even though it's hard. You got to get through.
00:18:23 Marissa: And I'm thinking to myself in the back of my head, like, for what? For what am I encouraging him to try for excellence if it's going to kill him eventually. And so going back to my day in the conference, what he was saying is rather than reaching for Black excellence, we should reach for Black mastery. And I really, I thought about that word, which is problematic for some obvious reasons. But what he was saying is we don't have to try to be 10 times better than everybody else anymore. We just have to be good at what we do. We just have to own what we do and be okay with what we do and not trying to do it at the level of, you know, a thousand percent all the time.
00:19:14 Marissa: Because you know what? They aren't doing that, right? They aren't doing that. They're not pushing themselves like that. They're achieving great heights with absolute mediocrity and overconfidence. So why can't we be, you know, mediocre and overly confident and get the job done? If Chad and Jimothy can get away with it, I think it's time for us to start trying it, right? Because we can't. We can't run ourselves of it.
00:19:47 Maria: And I think that's like deeply rooted in, you know, trauma, like survival and perfectionism and fitting in like it's all because of trauma and all the harms have come from previous maybe organizations or workplaces bosses colleagues friends and how to avoid those harms is by fitting in as much as possible with white culture or white beliefs so yeah when you talk about like even if you straighten your hair and work the hardest and you know, show up every day, like, what is that really for? And I guess it's just for capitalism or for this belief that if you do your best, you're not going to be harmed, which is a false belief anyway.
00:20:42 Marissa: Right, right. You're already being harmed. You know, you're already a part of a system that doesn't actively doesn't care about you. And I have friends who are just so highly educated and incredibly competent, and they're discouraged. They're tired. They're tired of code switching and masking and trying to conform and trying to assimilate and trying to attain proximity to power. And once you get up there, once you get in power, listen, we say you can be the president of Harvard, okay? And still not have the power to survive a snippety donor who decides suddenly that you don't fit with their agenda for giving. Like that terrifies me, you know what I mean? I think especially what's going on in higher ed, allowing donors to run roughshod over organizations because they chose to contribute. I think that the donor revolt is, I guess, what they're calling is revolting. It's exacerbating the problems that we already face as fundraisers trying to walk these delicate lines of what donors want and how to feed their egos and give them the appropriate amount of social clout that they desire while raising, just trying to get enough money to keep all the employees employed and the light bill paid.
00:22:29 Marissa: And it's demoralizing enough without feeling like even after you've worked so hard to get that gift and that commitment, you're still their puppet. You're not just you, you're a whole organization and anybody involved with you is still their puppet and that you are serving them and not the community in your mission. It makes me literally nauseous.
00:22:57 Maria: I was talking today to a Black ED and it's like, if we position ourselves as a Black led organization, which they are, do they fall into a trap of maybe not being funded because they're Black led? So having these conversations and me thinking like, well, yes, by default, because we live in a horrible world. But also the fact that you have to be thinking that way is so harmful because it's a community led organization or community that still needs to be thinking about on top of all the pressures of running an organization, like how am I going to be perceived just because of my skin color?
00:23:40 Marissa: And I'm sure you've heard about the case here with the fearless fund that's now going to the very soon going to our Supreme Court. And this was a group of Black women entrepreneurs who wanted to fund Black women entrepreneurs, and they're being sued because it's discriminatory, that argued the plaintiffs, that they would only give to Black women who are starting their own business. The disintegration of affirmative action and pretty soon after that, equal rights in general is happening, is happening so quickly in the last couple of years and a lot of it's going into the judicial system and these folks are there for life and a lot of folks were appointed under super, super hardline conservative guidelines, right?
00:24:43 Marissa: And so it's very distressing that people are worried about, you know, whether to support DEI initiatives or on the chopping block, right? DEI is like, you know, some folks favorite boogie man. Oh no, it's the DEI. They're coming to, you know, whatever, right? So it is. And when George Floyd happened, and we all watched the response of the nonprofit sector. I knew at the time, okay, there's going to be a backlash, right? There's always a back. The pendulum is going to swing. And it is, right? We're seeing that now. It doesn't feel fantastic. But it's there. It's looming.
00:25:36 Marissa: But I'm encouraged by local things, the people that I speak with. You know, granted, I live in a liberal state and in the capital of that state where there's a lot of folks with very community minded and public service minded folks. But we're hopeful. We're pushing forward. You know, there's a lot of trust based philanthropy happening on the West coast. That's really exciting, exciting to watch a few years in, you know, people, I noticed that one thing that's common is the difficulty of measuring this work. And I have very much experienced that myself. It's sticky, it's tricky, it's complicated, that pulls a lot of different strings and it's hard to quantify.
00:26:22 Marissa: How do you measure somebody's faith in their ability to fundraise? I mean, like, or how do you measure the progress we've made against, you know, dismantling systemic racism? Well, we haven't made any visible obvious progress. Okay, we fixed it, it's done. We don't necessarily have that power, but do we have a few dozen folks that feel less isolated and a little bit more joyful in the work that maybe have a well of a reserve that they can pull on spiritually, mentally, when times do get tough, you know, hopefully.
00:27:12 Maria: Yeah, I get what you're saying about it's hard to measure. I think because like capitalism and racism are so intrinsically linked. It's really hard to say like we've made progress on racism and making sure that things are more equal. When it comes to bringing these conversations outside of people who understand the topic because they have lived experience or whatever reason.
00:27:38 Maria: How do you find that people are able to successfully do it? Do that? Like for myself, I find it really difficult to talk to people who don't understand. I just don't have that facilitator-ness in me when it comes to being exceptionally patient or using metaphors or anything like that. So I'm just wondering on your thoughts when it comes to bringing people along who don't have that lived experience, how do you explain things to them?
00:28:07 Marissa: It is. You notice my sigh, it's exhausting, right? It's, you know, the events of the last four years or so have made it so difficult to begin conversations like that. Finding commonality in people with which you find yourself really diametrically opposed on some things is super challenging. It really takes willingness on both sides, and often the willingness isn't even there to begin it. And it's twice the workload as it should be.
00:28:49 Maria: Are there any skills or tools or improvements that people in your cohort have been able to implement to kind of make their lives a little easier?
00:29:02 Maria: Yeah. It's largely about getting connected and resourcing oneself. Again, it's super easy for the nonprofit world is kind of isolating. Being a fundraiser in an org is even more isolating. And so the antidote for that is connection, right? And so that's probably one of my biggest goals is just connecting people, not only for the mental support, but we all have different resources. And I may not even know that you have, you know, 34,000 square foot meeting space that I just happen to need next month if we're not connected.
00:29:46 Marissa: And so, you know, now I don't have to go out and rent a $2,000 meeting hall. And you're like, just come to my backyard. I've got it here for free. We're buddies. It's all good. Oh, well, wait a minute. We've been hosting our annual event at this Pricey Event Center. Maybe we could just come have it at your place. It's a little more humble, but it's cozy. Our people would like it, right? And so those collaborations can start to be boring. They don't, they're never boring in like, oh, there's a grant from the county for an empty million dollars, and you're all going to be sat in a room and sort of fisticuffs to the death to determine who's going to get it, right?
00:30:30 Marissa: Our grant process does not encourage collaboration, even when it says specifically that it encourages collaboration, because it doesn't create the space for the collaboration. It doesn't convene the people and say, okay, we're going to have a meeting where we're not here. You're not here to ask us questions about how to apply for our grant. You're here to talk to each other for four hours and figure out where you can collaborate so that we can give this group this, this grant to a pile of people who are all committed to working together. And we've made the space for them to do that. I made us, that doesn't exist. So we kind of have to go out and make it for ourselves.
00:31:15 Maria: Yeah, the power of community is often overlooked, but I think working together is such a privilege and also such a great way to share resources and make sure that you're all working towards the same thing as well.
00:31:29 Marissa: Well, it's all the same community, right? I mean, especially if you're dealing with local, original folks, right? It's all one community, whether you're working to save the trees, you know, adopt the puppies, get the youth after school programs that keep them out of trouble, whether whatever you're doing, you're doing it for the community. And we're all part of that. Like we all benefit from that, right? And that's one of my other little favorite side benefits I really like in working with lots of different nonprofits and getting them to get together is like they become each other's clients and stuff like so.
00:32:29 Marissa: You know, I work with a theater organization and I discover, hey, they have a youth program and I got a kiddo who needs another extracurricular and now we're in the great program and life is happy. And those cross communications, really like a big mycelial network, that's the stuff that holds us together.
00:37:28 Maria: I love all this. Is there anything else that you want to share with our audience today about, you know, some of the challenges that racialized fundraisers are facing or things that they could try to kind of ease that pressure?
00:32:43 Marissa: You know, I have found that folks can have success by finding a champion in their org, you know, assuming you're in an org large enough that there's more than just you and one other person. But if you can find an internal champion, you know, that person that mentions your name in a room of opportunity and has some agency and power just within the org and even within the greater community. If you can get your hands on one of those folks and really cultivate that relationship over time, that can really be a game changer. And it's tough. It's not a super, super easy thing to do because most folks who are in positions of power and have that affinity to want to help somebody are probably mentoring a gang of folks already.
00:33:36 Marissa: But if you can, if you can identify somebody and really explicitly ask them to be in community with you in that way, to include you in the meetings that maybe other people don't think you have a stake in, but that one's like, no, no, no. No, I want, even if they don't contribute, I want their ears there. It's important to me, right? That kind of person can end up being someone that, you know, 10 years later, you know, whole different capacity and a different organ, a different city or whatever ends up being the person that, that makes something pivotal happen for you.
00:34:15 Marissa: So that would be my one advice, especially for folks that are kind of early in their careers and really trying to get a foothold, keep your eye out for those potential champions. And don't be afraid to ask them for that kind of support. And then conversely, us, you know, folks that have been in the game for a little while and find ourselves in rooms of power, open up your heart and a little piece of your calendar to take on folks in that capacity, because for me personally, just mentoring, I have a few people that I just randomly mentor, not even all from the nonprofit sector. But that relationship of passing it forward, keeping it going, grounds me and reminds me why I do what I do. So I highly recommend it on both sides. If you can be a mentor and if you can't get yourself one.
00:33:36 Maria: Love that. Marisa, thank you so much for joining me today. Where can people find you if they wanna hear more about what you're doing?
00:35:23 Marissa: Yeah, I am most active on LinkedIn and I also spend a lot of time on TikTok if you are interested in reading snarky comments on funny videos on your… get also.
00:35:40 Maria: We'll link your LinkedIn in the show notes.
00:35:43 Marissa: No, it's great to talk with you Maria. I really appreciate you, including me.
00:35:46 Maria: Yes, awesome. Well, thank you so much again for joining us. And thank you to everyone for listening to this episode of The Small Nonprofit. As always, you can see our lovely faces on YouTube. Bye for now.
00:36:01 Maria: Thank you for listening to another episode of The Small Nonprofit. If you want to continue the conversation, feel free to connect with our guests directly or find me on LinkedIn. Let's keep moving money to mission and prioritizing our well-being. Bye for now.
