We talk a lot about the importance of taking your donor to the scene so that the need feels real and personal to them. But there’s a risk of exploiting the very communities you serve if their stories are not told in an honoring way.
Some non-profits paint themselves as the heroes, when really, the people they serve deserve the credit for and ownership of their stories. Particularly in communities where the population served may be mostly Black or Latinx, while the non-profit staff members are white, it can feel like another instance of “white saviorism” which has done a lot of damage in these communities.
So how do you share stories of transformation from your community, without suggesting a savior mentality?
To help us unpack this topic, we’ve invited a special guest, Aliguma Young. Aliguma is the founding CEO of The Super Fundraiser. With almost 20 years in fundraising, Aliguma has raised over $200,000,000 for non-profit organizations, nationally and internationally. She launched The Super Fundraiser to support non-profit organizations in developing equity-led fundraising that empowers communities and drives real change.
We hope this episode will inspire you to start a conversation about your own organization’s relationship to the community it serves.
Show Highlights: In this episode, you’ll learn about…
- The concept of “white saviorism,” what it looks like when non-profit organizations or staff members have a savior mentality, and how this is harmful to the communities served
- How to promote equity as part of your organizational mission
- How to involve members of the community in creating a solution
Veritus Group is passionate about partnering with you and your organization throughout your fundraising journey. We believe that the key to transformative fundraising is a disciplined system and structure, trusted accountability, persistence, and a bit of fun. We specialize in mid-level fundraising, major gifts, and planned giving, helping our clients to develop compelling donor offers and to focus on strategic leadership and organizational development. You can learn more about how we can partner with you at www.VeritusGroup.com.
Additional Resources:
- [Podcast] Supporting Black and Brown Colleagues in the Non-Profit Sector
- [Blog] Why Every Non-Profit Leader Needs to Join in the Journey for Racial Justice
- [Podcast] The Confidence to Have Tough Conversations
Read the Full Transcript of This Podcast Episode Here:
Jeff Schreifels
At Veritus, we talk a lot about transporting your donor to the scene, so that the need becomes real to them, and they’re inspired to help achieve your mission. At the same time, we want to take care of that you’re not promoting a savior mentality. When you’re sharing emotional and personal stories from the community you serve, the savior mentality or white saviorism shows up in some donors and organizations who take a very sanctimonious view of their role to “save” people. And this thinking is a huge disservice to the communities they serve. So how do you talk about the need without suggesting a savior mentality? This is the topic of today’s episode. And we’re inviting a special guest, Aliguma Young, to help us understand how we can address white saviorism in the non-profit space.
Recorded
Welcome to the Nothing But Major Gifts podcast from Veritus Group featuring Richard Perry and Jeff Schreifels. Twice a month, we bring you the latest and best thinking about major gift fundraising so you can develop authentic relationships with your major donors. Here are your hosts, Richard and Jeff.
Jeff Schreifels
Welcome to the podcast today. I’m Jeff Schreifels. And I’ve invited Karen Kendrick, our Senior Director of Learning, to co-host a very special episode with me today. And if you’ve been following Veritus Group for a while, then you know how important we think talking about the need is. That’s because you have to clearly communicate the problem you’re working to solve to your donors. And if you only share the solution, that donor won’t have the opportunity to be a part of addressing the need, and won’t feel like they’re making a difference.
Jeff Schreifels
Sharing the need can be done in partnership with those we serve, so that the telling of their story is healing and empowering. But many times it isn’t done that way and we can come from a savior mentality, which is demeaning and causes harm. In our efforts to raise funds to help our community, we inadvertently hurt those we want to support. So to help us understand what this is and how it impacts our fundraising efforts, and how to address it, we’ve asked Aliguma Young to join us as our special guest. So welcome to both of you.
Karen Kendrick
Thank you, Jeff. It’s great to be here. Aliguma, we’re just thrilled to have this conversation with you.
Aliguma Young
I am so excited to be here. This is so fun. And I’m so excited that we get to have this conversation.
Jeff Schreifels
So Aliguma I know we’ve had the opportunity to get to know you over the last couple of years. But I’d love for you to share more about yourself and your work with our guests.
Aliguma Young
Absolutely. So as the first thing, I love letting people know how to say my name, it’s Ali-guma. And the way that I help people to pronounce it correctly, is think of Muhammad Ali, then “guma.” So, Aliguma. I am a first generation Ugandan American who grew up in the Midwest, went to college in the northeast, I attended Tufts University for my undergrad, and the Miller College of Business for my MBA in finance. But the things that are most dear to me, that really made me who I am and really drives my work are the fact that I am a mompreneur. I have three amazing kids. And I started my company The Super Fundraiser and a company Aliguma Speaks, because I saw that in my almost 20 years of fundraising, that there was a lack of opportunity for people to get access to information on how to fundraise through an equity lens. And so my work has been dedicated to creating more equity in the world through leadership support, and really coaching organizations in how to do equity-led fundraising, that empowers communities and actually drives change and raises lots of money.
Aliguma Young
In my career, I’ve raised over $200 million for non-profits nationally, and internationally. And through that work, I’ve seen pretty much everything. And so that’s what I use in my work in my practice as a consultant, in my work as an advocate in the world, as a human and also as a mom every day to make sure that my kids are living in a more equitable world, and that they themselves feel like they can be instruments of change. And so that’s what I love to do is inspire people to figure out how they can be a part of making change.
Karen Kendrick
Awesome. And thank you so much for the Muhammad Ali reference, I’ve been calling you “Allie-guma” all this time, so thank you, that really helps me to say that more correctly. So, so excited to have this conversation with you today. And I know that you’re going to come with a lot of how-tos and solutions, and I really appreciate that. But to get started, let’s define you know, what does it mean by the savior mentality? Or what we also hear, white saviorism, what are we talking about here?
Aliguma Young
Yeah, it’s great question. So when we’re talking about a savior mentality, what that means is, when you see something is wrong, and you say, hey, look, I have resources, I can come in and save the day, I can make it happen. And a great example of that to make it kind of real, if you will. Imagine, for a moment that you are out somewhere, and you have a bunch of items in your hand, and it starts to rain. And in that moment, the one thing you need most is an umbrella, and someone walks by you, bumps into you, you knock everything down, and then they pick it up and move it into a building for you. And they’re so happy because they saved the day. However, the thing that you needed was to get the items into your vehicle, because you’d already traveled quite a distance to get there. The savior mentality is when you don’t ask any questions. You don’t make any inquiries, you don’t assess the situation by asking the person who appears to be in need, especially if that person has asked for help.
Aliguma Young
When someone screams for help, the first thing that you always do is say, Okay, what’s going on? How can I help? There’s a show that’s on TV right now. I love it. It’s New Amsterdam. And I’m not going to do a commercial for it. But because I can’t even think of what channel it’s on. But the lead character is a doctor who’s a chief of a hospital. He’s in charge of this major community hospital. And his thing is, whenever someone comes to me, his first question is how can I help? White saviorism, any type of saviorism is when you come into a situation, a community, an individual’s life, and you say, I’m going to help you with all the things that I have and all the resources I have. And you don’t ask any questions, and you don’t engage that person or community in the creation of a solution.
Jeff Schreifels
Yes, I love that. So why do you, I mean, what why are we even asking this question? What is the actual problem here?
Aliguma Young
Cool. Yes. So why are we asking this question? Since the summer of 2020, organizations globally have been having this conversation of, hey, racism exists, it’s real. There are real challenges impacting communities. And it starts with racism most often. But it’s across all sorts of isms that exist in our society: sexism, ageism, ableism. Across every ism, there are communities that are challenged. And there’s organizations and individuals who want and have been supportive, and offering services, but also not seeing change. So we’ve been pouring millions and billions, honestly of dollars into various causes, and not really seeing transformation and communities.
Aliguma Young
And as we sat back in 2020, and started asking questions around race, about what’s going wrong, for the first time, the microphone was turned on for those communities, and those communities were continuing to say the same message that’s been said for generations. But it was the first time that there was actually a platform and that platform message was consistently, you’re not listening, you’re not hearing, and you’re not actually helping. And as organizations have been hearing that repeatedly, from their staff from the communities they serve, and from their leadership in various ways, it’s causing a reckoning, if you will. But the challenge with any revelation in a society that, hey, we’re doing it wrong, is that there’s a lot of confusion about what to do next.
Aliguma Young
And so the last two years, what I’ve seen is that people have been having the conversation, but have no idea what to do about it. And the reason is, is because when people think about fundraising, and when they talk about major gift fundraising in particular, and it’s almost like there’s this dichotomy between major gift fundraising and annual giving appeals. And there’s the same belief that says, the only way people are going to give is if you pull on hearts and minds, right. And if you change minds, and you convince their hearts, their hearts will lead them to invest, invest in a deep way. I believe that there’s only an element of that, that is true. And the reason that I believe that is because I honestly believe that we are all intrinsically self-centered, we are focused on our own legacies, our own desires, and our own passions. And because of that, yes, we are led by our hearts and minds. But it’s not necessarily the heart and mind of the organization that leads us to make transformational gifts, and investments. It’s our own hearts and minds for the causes that we care deeply about, right. And what you win with as a fundraiser is when you’re able to connect the dots between your organization’s mission and that individuals mission. And when you connect those dots, that’s when you win, that’s when you win big.
Aliguma Young
And what happens is that when people hear those stories of the $100 million dollar investment, and they did it, because their heart was for children who had overcome dyslexia, right? No, it wasn’t just that there was something that inspired them to look at that topic, to look at that concern. And that something, that origin story, if you will, is always either a personal experience, ie they themselves experienced it, or someone close to them experienced it, or a learned experience. And that’s the place in that learned experience placed is when things tend to fall apart. When we’re talking about this idea of how do we convert our knowledge of a learned experience in a way that inspires giving and gets people excited about an issue?
Karen Kendrick
Yeah, so there’s so much to unpack here Aliguma, I just yeah, you just shared, I want to run back just for a second to your story at the beginning where the person is in the rain, right? So I think about so the saviorism, in my mind, when I’m thinking about, I might work with an organization, let’s say, working with folks in poverty, I come in with what I think are the solutions, I’m doing all these things, we’re not seeing true change in that community. And then most likely, I’m blaming the folks we’re serving for not changing. And in the meantime, I’ve never even asked them to be a part of the solution that actually would people who are actually experiencing it to be a part of that solution. So that’s so fascinating. And here, I have just moved their stuff into the building, and not really taken it down the road. I love that analogy that really helps because I know, I know there’s this reactive I’m going to bring that I can I have my resources and judgments right about the gifts and talents and abilities of folks that I’m serving or working with. So that’s a really helpful way to break that down and make that more real. I really appreciate that analogy.
Aliguma Young
And what you’re asking is an excellent question. And I want to kind of take that like a step further of there’s another question behind the question that I just heard Karen, which was awesome, because the first question and the first place where things break down is in the assessment of the problem. And so when we start talking about how we apply an equity lens to our work, it starts with how we assess a problem. Like what questions do we even start with asking? For me, as a Black woman, I’m naturally, and especially as a first generation Black woman who grew up in a household with a parent who did not speak English as their first language. However, she was a university professor, and so had an excellent command, obviously, of the English language. That said, it gave me from a very early age, a consciousness about the fact that being in America doesn’t mean that you speak English fluently. That fluent that understanding and that perspective, makes me significantly more cognizant of language divergence in an audience. So while yes, I have lived in the South for years, I have I know I sound country, especially the more relaxed I am, the more excited I get, the faster I talk. And so I have to make a conscious effort to make sure that I’m checking for understanding, that I’m not leaving long chunks of information. That’s a perspective that I have, from my personal experience, that allows me to operate in my public speaking through an equity lens.
Aliguma Young
What does that mean, when we’re talking about assessing a need or a problem? That means starting with what I like to call it is the WHO CARES tree. And some people, I tell them, you know, look, it’s gonna hurt your feelings, but that’s okay. Because I’d rather we hurt our feelings together in a room, and then heal together and come up with great solutions together. So in the WHO CARES tree? What we do is we start the question. And we first started with, okay, we see this problem. Hmm, I see this problem, where I’m using the rain analogy. Someone’s in the rain, and they’re getting wet, and they’re carrying a lot of things. If I look at that situation, then my first assessment is going to be the most obvious one. We don’t want to ever be wet and uncomfortable. So they need to get dry. So the first thing that needs the first problem that has to be solved is that person has to get dry. And also, they just dropped a lot of things. So we got to pick everything up. So you’re assessing what you think the problem is? The first thing is, who cares? If that stuff is on the ground? Who cares? The person who dropped it? Okay, well, why is that important to them? Why are those items important to them that they were caring? So many of them? I don’t know? Well, who cares? Well, they care, because obviously, they were willing to risk drenched, to carry it. As you continue to do that, as you keep asking the question, there comes a point where you have to ask the person, you just have to, if that’s your orientation, you’re never going to get it wrong. Because from the beginning, you’re going to be at a minimum starting from what that person perceives their biggest problem to be. Now, the next thing that you’re going to do when you’re assessing a problem, is you have to assess how the person got into that situation in the first place. You have to make sure in that analysis of how did we get here, that you’re looking at it objectively, and not through any judgments of choices that we make. Then what I enjoy doing with that person is to say, now, with what you know, now, would you do anything different in those choices?
Aliguma Young
Because oftentimes, through that person’s experience, they’ll be able to think of something that you would never be able to think of, because you don’t have their experience and through their memories, through their experiences, through their culture, through their ways of adapting. They can find a way that will actually be not only a solution for that moment. But it will be a solution that you can then offer to others who may take that same path or try to do that same thing. Now you’re going to start to see fewer and fewer people walking around in the rain with a bunch of things around them, because they can’t carry it alone.
Karen Kendrick
So, my question coming to mind for me right now Aliguma is, so as an organization, how am I sitting down and listening, and truly asking and diving into those questions and using my most bountiful resource, which are the people that are impacted the most, but then I’m sitting here as a fundraiser. So I may not be in that position in the program position. So as a fundraiser, what’s important for me to understand and hear about what you’re sharing and apply to what I’m doing?
Aliguma Young
It begins with step one of assessing where you are, and how you’re telling the story of your community that you serve. And that assessment begins with first kind of really asking yourself, am I trading trauma for dollars? Or am I giving voice to a community?
Karen Kendrick
Oh, say that again, wow.
Aliguma Young
Am I trading trauma for dollars, or am I giving voice to a community? So let’s unpack that a little bit. Because I know that’s a hot button for people, because they’ll say, wait, but if I don’t tell the story of what someone went through, how can I tell the story of why we need this investment? Right? So let’s make it real real. There’s a organization that I worked with that supported communities with breaking cycles of poverty, through employment. That’s how they talked about the work that they did. As we began working together, the first thing that came up was the challenge that they were experiencing between their program team and the fundraising team. And the challenges that they were experiencing, were what I see across many, many organizations, where were the board of the organization, the leadership of the organization, and the fundraising team was all white. The staff of the organization and the community being served was predominantly Black, Latina, Latino, and Latinx.
Aliguma Young
As a result, every time there was a gala, every time there was a story, it told the story of how Mary had six kids and she couldn’t couldn’t get a job. And oh, but once she met us, she was able to get a job. And now her and her kids are finally able to be okay. And be happy. Please give us more. Yeah. Okay. So that doesn’t sound awful as a story, it doesn’t make you cringe when you hear it until you hear from Mary. So what does Mary say? Mary says, hey, you know, she tells the program, team member, when she sees the new website, and she sees her story on the website. She calls the team member and she says, Hey, Lakeisha I really appreciate you telling my story. But it’s been really embarrassing, because people have been talking about me at my job because they didn’t know that I was homeless. They didn’t know that that was my story. And I didn’t tell people that I was in recovery. And I’m not ashamed of it. But it’s just it’s my story. And I don’t like to share it.
Jeff Schreifels
So you’re saying the organization didn’t ask for her permission to use that story?
Aliguma Young
Yes, because they asked permission to use her story, but they didn’t interrogate how, and what parts of her story, right?
Karen Kendrick
Or where to use her story and how.
Aliguma Young
Exactly. And that is a perspective of trading trauma for dollars. Yeah. Because that’s what that is, you’re taking someone’s trauma, and you’re saying, we need to hear it. And we need to tell it, because that’s the only way to change hearts and minds. To see this as a real problem. This is the only way to connect people to the fact that this is a real problem. But that is often and the reason that we often start with talking about white saviorism in that is because most often when your experience is removed, and you don’t have the cultural perspectives and understandings, it can be really challenging to see a situation as a problem, that it may not be.
Aliguma Young
So one great example of that is multi-generational homes, in many cultures, multi-generational homes are considered a value and an asset, it’s not considered a burden, it’s not considered a problem. And so for families to live with grandparents, aunts, uncles, all in one home, and for children to grow up in an environment where they don’t only see their parent, as their only caregiver can be perceived as, oh, that child doesn’t have an attachment to their parent, when in reality, that child has an attachment to a whole community. And if you don’t understand that, and you only do conversations with the parent, in a teacher parent conference, conference, especially if that parent is we were talking about before of language divergence, if that parent doesn’t speak English as a first language, and there’s an aunt or uncle or grandparent who would be better suited to be a part of that conversation. Why not included that full community in the conversation? And why not ask that child? Who else do you think should be a part of this conversation? You could ask any six-year-old who they like, and they’re gonna tell you, who in your family tells you, who in your family is really smart, they’re gonna tell you, and they’re never gonna be wrong, because kids are honest. And they’re clear about where their love support and wisdom comes from. We hold on to that, as adults, we never lose that. What happens is life makes us uncomfortable with our internal compass. And sometimes we need help to kind of hear what we already know. That’s what asset-based language, that’s what empowerment is about. It’s about saying, Hey, you have the information, you know exactly what you need to get to where you want to get. I’m here not to solve your problem, but to support you in coming up with a solution that’s going to work for you.
Aliguma Young
That’s what empowerment is. When we think about our work, our greatest impact is when we empower communities. That’s how we win. So to go back to this organization, as we work together, and they started doing listening and conversations across the development team and the program team, and started really hearing what was being said, they changed the way they told their stories. And instead of talking about the story of how much trauma a person experienced, before they came to the program, they focused on the resiliency, and the strategies that that person employed in order to successfully leverage all the resources of the organization. So they were telling a story of triumph. And they were telling the hero story, rather than telling the victim story, because in every story, there’s a victim and there’s a survivor. And when you’re trading trauma for dollars, you’re telling the story of the victim. But when you’re empowering communities, and you’re giving voice, you’re telling the story of the survivor, and so as a fundraiser it is our job to fundraise through an equity lens and tell the story of survivors to inspire people to invest in creating more survivors, not to prevent more victims.
Karen Kendrick
Wow, that’s powerful. It makes me think Aliguma about a long time ago, I took this assessment it was around class, right, differences in class. And if you happen to be living on minimum wage, for example, and all the resourcefulness and things you knew how to do and make happen, and I would not have survived a week, you know, and it was like, it was so eye-opening for me like, wow, Karen, folks really work hard and are resourceful and have so much that they’re accomplishing. So that really helps me think about the story of resourcefulness because it requires so much to to overcome a lot of obstacles in our lives, right, all of us have different kinds of obstacles. And that is a different story.
Aliguma Young
Yeah, because one of the, I love the word, the word that you’re using, their resourcefulness. Early in my career as a fundraiser, that was my favorite word to put on a resume. Because, in my mind, I said, Hey, if I can take myself to one of the top universities in the world with a tuition that was probably my mother’s salary at the time as a university professor, and survive it, get through it without any of the advantages and any of the resources, there’s absolutely nothing I cannot do or achieve. And that’s how I was able to raise $70 million as a team of me at the National Center for civil and human rights in two years. Because I understood that there’s literally nothing I can’t do, if I have the right relationships. And fundraising is foundational on relationships. And as a fundraiser, if you’re I love the question you asked, well, what if you don’t have access to the community you’re serving? If as a fundraiser, you are representing the voice of a community, and you don’t have any relationships with anyone in that community? Yeah, you’re doing it wrong.
Jeff Schreifels
I agree. Yes, we’re doing it wrong.
Aliguma Young
Yeah, that’s your step one, before you get to reading, you know how to be an anti-racist, before you get to watching 13th (Ava DuVernay’s film on Netflix, which I highly recommend to every single human, that’s the one plug I’ll probably do today). Before you do those things, you have to ask that question. What am I doing? And it’s not about saying, oh, but I have a. And I say that now, and this was something that was so on my mind to talk about today. Because it is an assumption that is made. And it’s an assumption that I appreciate where it comes from, however, I want to speak on it. And that assumption is that having an identity means that you have also an equal level of high cultural competency. And the reason I want to highlight that in a moment, is because it is on all of us to interrogate our own unconscious bias all the time. And the only way we can do that is by not assuming that an identity means we have a cultural competency.
Aliguma Young
And what I mean by that, really specifically, is that as a fundraiser early in my career, I too kind of had the oh yeah, if I don’t show the pictures of these kids who are being served by our services, and at the time I was in Washington, DC, working with survivors of domestic violence. And my first grant was destroyed, that I wrote, my feelings were very deeply hurt, because I fashioned myself to be quite the writer at that time and quite the brilliant salesperson and so I said, How in the world could there be this much? This many “track changes,” if you will. And I think we’ve all been there fundraisers in our careers, and so what the thing that she tore to shreds, was the way in which I was talking about the women and children that we serve. And the way I talked about them was all the things that had happened to them all the pain that they’ve experienced. And I talked about the cycle of abuse. And I talked about how hard it is to leave an abusive marriage or family and all these things. And she sat me down, and she looked me in the eye and she said, okay, we’ll How do you think that little girl would feel? If this is what she saw 20 years from now, about how you were talking about her? If this is the picture, that she saw that you use that, why would you want that for them? They look like us. And she was a Black woman. And the reason that that was so powerful to me is because at that point, I had already dedicated my life, to supporting the wellness of Black children. And the thought that that could happen, the thought of how that felt, it reminded me of my own personal experience. As a six year old, I was bused to school in St. Louis, they had a program called the desegregation program. Because in the 70s, the St. Louis public schools were not fully desegregated, and through various protests and things, this program was established, where if you took a test, and you were deemed smart enough, and quote, unquote, in my mind, “safe enough”, if you will, you are allowed to attend these schools.
Aliguma Young
The only children in the schools who identified as Black were a part of this program, all of the other children were white and predominantly affluent. And in that experience, growing up in that school, I was referred to as the de-seg kid. So I grew up with that kind of, in my mind, I’m a de-seg kid. And the only reason I’m here is because I’m smart. And I understood because every day I went home to a community of children, and I saw what their lives were like. And I can see now where those those lives have gone to. And the drastic contrast between their experiences and trajectories and possibilities. And mine, because of that one program that I was labeled. And I felt a way about it for years and years. And I remember talking to someone in recent years, and we’re adults now. And saying, you know, hey, do you remember when we were the de-seg kids, and she didn’t remember that. And she was one of our white classmates. From her perspective, that was not even a thing. She didn’t even remember that as a concept or as a program or anything. But it was a pivotal experience in my life. That’s what it means.
Aliguma Young
When we talk about, you don’t know what someone is bringing into a conversation, or what traumas are impacting them. Because for some people, they can go through that and come out of it and say, You know what, I was so much stronger for it. I didn’t even need help. So I don’t think people need help. In fact, I don’t even really think racism exists. I think you can overcome it with enough money and enough merit. Yeah, that’s, there’s nothing wrong with that perspective. Because it’s your perspective, the challenge is when it bleeds into your work. And so if we as individuals do not interrogate our own unconscious bias, whether we work through it or not, whether we’ve healed it or not, we have to know we’ve all had traumas, we’ve all had experiences that have shaped who we are, how we think, and how we work and how we relate to people. And if we don’t put up protections for ourselves, and if we don’t do the right interrogations of the system, them’s the people and the policies that we’re putting in place, and we don’t do those things through an equity lens, then we’re going to continue to see communities not changing. And we’re going to continue to see the same problems again and again. Yeah.
Jeff Schreifels
Wow. Okay. So I want to go back to your, the story you were telling so, because I mean, just to be honest, every I mean, most of us in the fundraising world have grown up talking about trauma stories, not because we wanted to exploit people, but because it worked, right. And we got a lot of money from it. Not understanding the damage we were doing, using the trauma stories, and we still use them. I want to know, what does the resilient story sound like? And what did it do, how did it change when you did that with that organization that had, you know, built their gallows around these trauma stories, and now changed to the resilience story. What happened?
Aliguma Young
Yes. Love it. So to bring it around, the first thing that they did, is they stopped talking about the cycle of poverty. And they started talking about economic mobility. And in changing the conversation to economic mobility, it aligned it with the conversation that’s happening globally, about what does it take to thrive as a human? What do you need? What resources do you need? So now you’ve instantly kind of shifted the problem you’re talking about. Because now you’re changing the conversation from cycles of poverty, which talks about choices and decisions. And you’re talking now about systems, because now you’re talking about economic mobility. And now you’re talking about barriers to mobility, because mobility is about movement. Right? So now, cycles is about change. Mobility is about movement. Right? Yeah. So if we start focusing on movement, and mobility, what stops movement barriers? So now we can focus on the barriers to change.
Aliguma Young
Yeah. Okay. Well, what happened when Mary or when Mary first first came up against the barrier? Well, what was the first barrier, her first barrier was childcare. Her first barrier to employment and economic mobility was childcare. So what did they do? They were able to provide childcare vouchers so that Mary, could place her children in childcare while she was looking for employment. Yeah. Awesome. So the story we’re going to tell is about how she went through the interview process. And she was able to do that because of the childcare she was provided. Now, we’re not talking about the fact that she has four children. We’re talking about the fact that she overcame her barrier. And now she’s moving forward. Mobility. Yeah. So even if that’s all that’s happened to Mary, now, I’m excited. Yeah. Because now I know, oh, well, what else can Mary do? Because she just overcame a barrier, right? I’m excited for her story. I want to be a part of that story. My heart and my mind is now invested. That’s how you shift it. And that’s what we did.
Aliguma Young
So what changed was for the gala, they invited Mary to the conversation, and they let her tell that story. And it was amazing. Yeah. People on the team. Were excited, because for the first time, the staff was celebrated at the gala. The gala was not about the donors getting steak and the programs they have having to volunteer and quote unquote “serve” all the wealthy white people who came. Yeah. Which is how it’s structured if we’re really honest about what events are, and why event culture perpetuates a lot of feelings of oppression for staff members and organizations. But in this moment, when Mary told her story, she told her story of how Lakeisha helped her to get the vouchers, and not only helped her to get the vouchers, but took her around to 20 different childcare centers until they found the right one, and helped her to ask the right questions so she would feel safe while her kids were at the daycare so that she could focus on moving forward. Yeah. And imagine how lucky she felt in that moment, being recognized and celebrated for all the hours and all the drive and she was doing and believing that it was possible. Because the reality is, is that for every one, Mary, there’s four Susan, Jane, and Alicia’s who don’t make it. Yeah, who don’t follow through, who don’t successfully overcome the barrier. But that doesn’t mean that you stop trying, that doesn’t mean that you stopped doing the work. And that doesn’t mean the work is not valuable.
Aliguma Young
When you’re able to tell that story of barriers that you can tell the story of oh, wow, what kept Susan and Alicia and Jane from really being able to move forward when we gave her the vouchers? Right, right. Oh, wow, we realized that for Jane, she was carrying a lot of shame and guilt about being a single mom. And she didn’t want people to really know that. Yeah. And so she didn’t really want to put her daughter in daycare. She wanted to keep her baby home with her. Because she was scared and nervous about if her daughter would be safe. Well, hmm, we might have to think of something else that how would that work? What should we do, then? Ooh, let’s have some conversations with maybe some other organizations, maybe we should get her some mental health services, hey, donor, we’ve discovered that we’ve been having trouble with having the kind of impact we want to have. And here’s one of the things that we think might help some of our members of our community. And we know that you have some resources, you might be able to help us use to test some of our theories, so that we can continue to innovate our programs to have more and more impact. That’s a case for support that does not say people in the program have failed, but says we may not have gotten all the way to the cure, or to the cause of the problem, rather, so that we can have an effective here.
Karen Kendrick
And that’s a totally different conversation we typically have that really helps break it down. And just to close it out, what happened with their event and all the raising of money, Aliguma?
Aliguma Young
Yes, so they raised more than they had ever raised. But most, most, most, most importantly, when I had the opportunity to be a part of an organization-wide conversation around race and equity, the way that the comment section exploded with compliments, accolades, and affirmations about how much better the event felt and was for the program team, the participants, the board members, the staff. That was the true win, because they shifted their culture. Not in a matter of years, not even in a matter of months, but literally in a matter of weeks.
Karen Kendrick
Wow. I just think about how much more authentic and like I’m in this together with my fellow humans than our typical approach that must have felt so different for them and so positive.
Aliguma Young
Yes. And that’s what having an anti-racist culture of philanthropy is. It’s creating a space where it’s truly equitable, where it’s truly that everyone in that space is empowered to tell their story and to call people in to creating solutions to the problems that we’re facing as a society.
Karen Kendrick
Cool. I have some notes here to summarize everything. Jeff, do you want me to do that? Or you want to do?
Jeff Schreifels
Yeah why don’t you just summarize? And wow, it’s been powerful. Yeah.
Karen Kendrick
So these are some things I wrote down to help me, Aliguma. And so first of all, as a fundraiser, do I have a relationship with whoever we’re working with? If I don’t have a relationship of any kind, how do I go about developing that? And then, and then investigating and unpacking? You know, what do I understand about the systems and structures, the barriers, what do I see about the history of the population and really spend some time learning and then unpacking my own biases, so those don’t get in my way.
Karen Kendrick
And then, you know, at Veritus we talk about building relationship with program and working together to help understand what each other to and built in gathering those stories. So in those, there’s opportunities for me in those store in that opportunity of developing friendships and a team effort to have these conversations right about gathering stories of resilience, and really understanding and listening and are we doing that as an organization? And then when I am telling the stories, be asking myself, how am I portraying who I’m sharing about? And do I have permission? I mean, the one woman your earlier story, maybe she would have been fine with him sharing her story with donors. She just didn’t want it on the website. So you know, have I asked all the questions about how and where and if and how I’m telling the story? Is this really honoring to you? So those are some things I put down. Jeff, I don’t know what else you have for your takeaway?
Jeff Schreifels
Well, I mean, what I really loved was the whole thing of talking about what are the barriers, you had the whole idea of moving forward, rather than talking about the, you know, the trauma around it, but rather about what do we need to do to move forward? And what are the barriers that keep us from moving forward and inviting everyone, the organization, the people being served, and the donors to solve that problem. That to me is that’s, that’s a whole way of a different way to look at this in a way that’s honoring of everyone. And I think that that was the that was the big aha, for me, Aliguma. And it’s been an incredible conversation with you and listening to your story here. And this has been so valuable. And I just really thank you for sharing your wisdom with us today. And I hope it’s been insightful and valuable for all of you as well. And before we have to leave today, I just want to make sure that Aliguma, you can share with us how people can get in touch with you and learn more about what you’re doing. Because this is life changing work here.
Aliguma Young
Absolutely. Yes. Yes. Yes. So I am Aliguma, The Super Fundraiser. So you can find me at www.thesuperfundraiser.com as well as on Instagram, AligumaSpeaks.
Jeff Schreifels
Awesome. Well, thank you for joining us today. And thanks for all of you who are listening. We really appreciate your partnership and your openness to learning. And we’ll see you next time.
Recorded
Thank you for joining us for the Nothing But Major Gifts podcast from Veritus Group. Richard and Jeff also write an ongoing blog that you can subscribe to for free at VeritusGroup.com. Please join us again next time.