Fundraising Leadership ™

Executive Coaching, Professional Development, Training, and Career Advancement for Nonprofit Leaders in the United States, Canada, and Europe.

The End Game to Creating a Culture of Belonging on Nonprofit Boards

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A colourful sign that reads You belong          “I don’t want to play with them. They’re mean.”

 (My five-year-old son about seven years ago when playing on the playground)

I remembered my son’s declaration last week while facilitating a board retreat in Alabama. A Black male board member sat in his seat fidgeting and looking extremely uncomfortable while I and my white counterpart, Dr. Renee Rubin Ross (The Ross Collective) facilitated a conversation about the racial tension their board was experiencing. About one third of their board had been visibly absent for most of our training over the course of three months. Those missing in action were white men. Only two out of eight were participating. 

We had created a safe and brave space and had all heard the agreements for the conversation and meeting. Stan’s (not his real name), apparent discomfort drew attention to him. He was invited to speak. At first, he seemed reluctant but then he blurted out “I don’t want to work with white people and try to convince them to get along with me.” The room grew eerily silent. We all sat looking at him and at one another. Stan continued, “I can be at work or making strides in my own community where I know I belong and can make change.” [Read more…]

Vulnerability in Uncertain Times

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In this new year, I’ve been thinking about vulnerability as a strength. About the vital role it plays in emotional intelligence and good leadership. 

My Grandma passed away just before Christmas from COVID. She meant a great deal to me and may have had the single most impact on who I became as a person. I spent many hours at her home when I was young. We read Dr. Seuss books. We sang Burl Ives songs together and worked on puzzles. She bought me mini loaf pans and taught me to make bread. From her, I learned how to plant, harvest, and put up food.

Grandma was strong, smart, tenacious, kind, diligent, committed, thoughtful, and deeply caring. She was also afraid to be vulnerable much of her life. She could be hard, unbending. She always needed to be in control to feel safe. She taught me these things, too. [Read more…]

Great Leadership Means Less Doing, More Being

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[This post is an excerpt from the book Leading Beyond Change by Michael K Sahota and Audree Tara Sahota]

Many leaders hold the false belief that all we have to do to create success is to learn the right model, concept, skill, or technique. The basic premise is that we are fine and that new information or training will help create the success and impact that we want.

In this mindset, we see people (including ourselves) as black boxes where we don’t need to concern ourselves with what is inside the box. We can create success by focusing on the boundary of the box: the actions or doing. 

When we examine the ways of business-as-usual, they are almost entirely about external measurable actions and behaviors. The whole of the human experience is relegated to the rational, logical, and measurable.

The trap of traditional organizations and leadership is to focus on the external aspects of action and doing. It’s rather a waste of time since we are trying to fix the external effects rather than the inner causes. For example, the surface-level external problem of responding angrily to an email is ultimately caused by the internal challenges with emotional regulation and conditioned behavior patterns. Addressing challenges at the surface level will only lead to temporary superficial change. [Read more…]

Beyond Perception: Unmasking Wholeness in Diversity

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What is it that defines our innate humanity? 

Growing up with what many would consider severe Cerebral Palsy, great emphasis and attention was placed on my speech, or more precisely, how to make my speech understandable to others. 

This was a perspective taken by many of my doctors, therapists, teachers, and even parents. But nothing catalyzed this purview on life more than an admonishment by my first martial arts teacher after earning my black belt in Budo Taijustu.

“You must be clear and understandable to others if you want to be successful in this world,” he insisted.

As a college student in my early twenties, I had already spent years in pursuit of transforming my voice from what others often perceived a spastic set of disharmonic tones into a cohesive, crisp, and “normalized” pattern of speech. 

It was as if my manifestation of language was somehow incorrect and, simultaneously, it was my sole responsibility to transform it into a format that was understandable to others. Only years later did I realize that my persistent effort toward striving to fit in was ultimately the same effort that not only minimized my humanity but undermined my natural capacity to support others in their own learning. [Read more…]

Bringing Indigenous Protocols to Your Organization

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Birds flying against a blue and orange sky

Have you asked yourself what reconciliation means to you? What does it mean to your organization? Your family? For many, reconciliation has a deeply personal meaning, borne from our own history and knowledge.

I am a professional fundraiser and, in the fall of 2021, I opened a virtual fundraising school called The New School of Fundraising. It was very important to me to consider how my school could participate in the reconciliation movement that is happening within Canada but my drive for that came from a deeply personal connection.  

My Grandmother attended residential school from the age of three until she was eighteen. She did not leave at all during that time. I once read an excerpt from an interview where she spoke about watching the birds outside and wishing that she had wings so that she could fly away. The only thing is that even if she had wings, she had nowhere to fly to, nowhere to go.  She spoke very little of those years and our family always respected her privacy and wishes.

As a result of the extended time that my Grandmother spent in residential school my family had absolutely no connection to our culture, everything had been lost. It has taken me a long time to realize and fully appreciate what has been lost to myself and my family. I have spoken a lot about my own journey of “finding my way home” and as such, created a workshop for the school, titled Indigenous Protocols for Fundraisers, that would help myself and others on the journey. [Read more…]

2021 Year-End Thoughts and Musings: What Just Happened?

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Brought to you by the Fundraising Leadership Team  

Photo collage of the Fundraising Leadership team members

Margaret: Can We Stop Talking About “The New Normal”, And Try Instead To “Live in Liminal”?

Last month, I celebrated the American Thanksgiving with my two sons and one of their friends. Since the end of my marriage two years ago, I have been deeply resistant to holidays. Ours is a family that loved and valued traditions – and I couldn’t quite let go of the tradition of the four of us all being at the table. So, for the past two years, we’ve found a way to combine forces.

This has had the positive effect of no one needing to have a major holiday without our sons. However, as anyone who’s ever had a relationship end also knows, it’s had many tick marks in the “negative” column, too.  My kids have reported – with accuracy – that it has felt tense and awkward. One of my sons even said it felt like there was something decaying in the room – the decomposing space of a marriage that hadn’t been allowed to burn fully to ash so that something new might (or might not) be possible.

This year, my ex-husband wisely said: let’s not. And he resourced himself with other family members, and I got to spend the day cooking and enjoying a meal of gratitude with my grown sons.

And I realized, the morning after Thanksgiving, as I finished putting away the wine glasses and reflected on a great night, what I had been missing out on by holding onto the comfort and familiar of what’s now the old. We had a lovely night, in which I got treated to my sons’ culinary talents and adventure (deep fried turkey!), as well as a way we danced together during cooking and cleaning that was as delightful as it was oddly unexpected. This is a new way my family looked this year, and even though it is likely to change without notice, I loved it. And I have taken years to be open to this delightful new version. [Read more…]

Adults, STOP telling kids what to do!

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On October 18, 2018 I received the most frightening email of my professional leadership coaching career.

Maybe I should back up a little… 

Just one month before receiving the aforementioned email, I led my first Executive Function Coach training for the Los Angeles Unified School District. Knowing that Executive Function, which involves planning, prioritizing, impulse control, and other high-level forms of cognition, is a key predictor of life success, for the past 12 years the Edge Foundation has gone into school districts around the country, training adults to coach young people to maximize their personal and professional potential. The 12-hour experiential training is made up of parents, teachers, staff and volunteers who are committed to improving the lives of young people who struggle with various conditions ranging from ADHD, Advance Childhood Experiences (ACES), various learning disabilities and issues of displacement from stable housing/food insecurities to name a few. As a result of this training, these staff/volunteers then coach at least one student every week, for 20 minutes. [Read more…]

What Happened When I Cracked My Rose-Tinted Glasses

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Close up of a blue eyeSometimes seeing the person that is actually standing in front of me – rather than the person I wish were there – feels like standing in the rain with a painting I spent my whole life perfecting, watching all the colors run down my legs and into the street.

It is an experience of grief.

Many of us could use some exercise around reconciliation of humans, even though it can be excruciating. Sometimes the reconciliation can be required for a spouse or a parent – or even a child.  Sometimes, it is articulating that a job you’ve longed for isn’t sustainable, isn’t as described, or is tainted by a boss who feels ogre-like.

Many of us, especially in the nonprofit and fundraising worlds, have some Pleaser saboteur in us. By definition, we have deep reservoirs of hope and idealism. We have it in our DNA, some of us, to see people as good, to look for their shiny and their silver linings. And many of us don’t like rocking the boat, so we make excuses or silently endure the parts of others that are jagged or mean. [Read more…]

Mythbusting: The Secret to Successful Grant Writing

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A stone bust of ZuesMyth: a traditional story from early history explaining nature typically involving supernatural beings or events. 

One myth you have probably heard is about the ancient Greek myth of Zeus hurling thunderbolts from on high at Mount Olympus because he was unhappy. And when you hear thunder crashing, it’s just Zeus and his thunderbolts.

Grant seeking can feel as mysterious and magical as Zeus—like funders are sitting on high, randomly awarding grants to those who are lucky enough to be in their path. Many grantmaking organizations still operate without transparency in their review and awards processes—an old-fashioned approach that is now changing, thankfully.

Without access to the inner workings of foundation and other granting agencies, decades of speculation from nonprofit leaders, board members, staffers, and the general public led to some false assumptions about grants. In other words, myths begat more myths.

There are a few significant myths we’d like to “bust” for you today. Understanding what is true about grants will improve your skills as a grant seeker or leader of a resource development team. Here are five of the most common myths about grants with the reality and a reality check behind each. [Read more…]

Choosing a Stand Over a Position

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compass

Having an agreed understanding of what a word means – a distinction – enables us to have different conversations, which can enable us to achieve better results. For example, back in 2019 relatively few people knew what a Zoom call was. Today, millions of us share that distinction.

One distinction I have found particularly helpful is the difference between a position and a stand.

A position is against something – a negative reaction to something we don’t agree with. We hear about this a lot these days in politics, in the news, and especially on social media. That’s largely because it’s relatively easy to say what we don’t agree with, to object to an idea or another person’s view. We can find ourselves triggered when we hear or read a comment we particularly don’t like. We experience a feeling that comes from somewhere deep inside, which seems to rise up from the stomach. But the very existence of a position depends on its counter-position. In other words, take that counter-position away and our position can no longer survive. [Read more…]