The Ethical Rainmaker

We are so pleased to connect with Vivien Trinh and Nathan Harris of the Oregon Food Bank, where they are changing the way our sector works, by developing practices that center love!

• Vivien Trinh is the Community Philanthropy Associate Director of Operations at the Oregon Food Bank. With 11 years of philanthropy experience, her career has taken her through the many aspects of philanthropy including direct mail, digital fundraising, donor relations, database management and prospect development at non-profits of all sizes. As the daughter of refugees, she is deeply committed to building inclusive communities that honor the dignity of each individual. You can reach out to Vivien at [email protected].
  
• Nathan Harris is the Director of Community Philanthropy at Oregon Food Bank. He has nearly two decades in philanthropic development, working at the intersection of love and generosity to realize transformational change. Before coming to Oregon Food Bank in 2019, Nathan served as chief development officer at Freedom for All Americans, an organization dedicated to securing nationwide LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections by 2025. He previously served as director of leadership gifts and Centennial Campaign at ACLU of Northern California and was the Director of Advancement at Transgender Law Center. You can reach Nathan at [email protected].

References and Notes:

• Learn more about the Oregon Food Bank and follow them on socials: Facebook, Insta, Twitter, LinkedIn and donate here! OFB has a budget of $34M, with 200 staff, 63k annual donors, and 40k annual volunteers.
• OFB Community Philanthropy: Theory of Change, Strategic Priorities, Key Hallmarks of Love, Staff Bill of Rights
• bell hooks defines love as “the extension of one’s spiritual growth 'the will to extend one's self for the the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth.”
• Focusing on Fundraising Goals is Harmful, Let’s Measure Love Instead by Vivien Trinh
• How to Measure a Year. What about Love? On the OFB website
• “Seasons of Love” from Rent!
• Risk: We talked about risk and Nathan names that “risk”in changing the practices and tools of doing the work, is to be questioned. That one perspective is the fear of change or fear of something different. Vivien invites us to think about risk, as defined by who might be harmed by our practices and tools...and to center the healing of those folx.

Process:
Here are some of the processes and practices OFB discussed within this episode...

• Vivien and a few folks started an Equity in Fundraising work group within their department to casually explore community-centric ideas. They later created a “Love” working group as well.
• When Nathan came on 2 years ago, they began to focus their work towards building new practices
• Vivien mentions that unpacking “love” as a word through introspection and team conversation, was the kernel that helped them move forward in designing the “how” of measuring love. They focused on how love might inform their values and how it could change what philanthropy could mean.
• OFB celebrates Shiree Teng, who they partnered with in the design of the staff self-assessment. The creation of the tool was influenced by her brown paper, “ Measuring Love on the Journey for Justice. (we didn't talk about this on the pod)
• Performance Metrics:
  One tool they developed is a staff self-assessment, with the purpose of the assessment focused on reflecting on a staff person’s individual work over the past 6 month period.
  Their assessment asks questions like: Do I feel like my work as a relationship manager or a gift entry specialist is values-aligned with myself in this moment? Do I feel like I am making meaningful change in the world? Am I having hard conversations with donors? Am I bringing them along a political journey?
  In their database, OFB has the ability to code ...

If our goal is to be in community and work with or help others, we must first work within ourselves - taking on the healing process to not recreate the patterns that have oppressed us. Healer, facilitator, and npo executive Victoria Santos describes her journey through personal trauma and burnout through community organizing and her holistic healing journey. We dropped a lot of references, so here are links for some of the content we mentioned in the show (and sign up for our mailing list to get ahold of episodes early and learn more about these topics):

• Michelle talks with Victoria Santos a deep healer, community organizer, facilitator, coach and npo leader
• Victoria is the Co-Director of Young Women Empowered, cultivating the power of diverse young women and is a Co-Founder of BIPOC Executive Directors of Washington State
• While she has practiced many modalities of healing, she studied grief rituals with Sibonfu Somé for 10 years, a Burkinabe author and teacher (her wiki, her site)
• We talked about the Science of NonDuality Conference, where Victoria interviewed Llama Rod Owens, Zhenevere Sophia Dao, Brenda Salgado, Kaira Jewel Lingo, Angela Hennessy - spiritual teachers focused on healing in very deep, committed ways.
• We mentioned Commonweal and its gathering that takes place annually in Bolinas, California
• “The quality of the intervention is directly related to the capacity of the intervener.” Otto Schumer
• Orland Bishop is a spiritual teacher and Los Angeles social activist Victoria collaborates with. She described his much used phrase “Sawubona” as translating into the larger question of “who do I need to be so that you could be yourself?”
• Victoria and Orland are working towards building a spiritual center near Los Angeles (There are many places to find Orland online, including here.)
• Gratitude to Tres Leches (and here) for letting us use their song “No Llores" throughout this episode!
• Join the CCF Slack Channel and #theethicalrainmaker to have a conversation!

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if you have the flow, subscribing to it on your fav pod player, rating us (esp on iTunes...yeah, I know) and honestly...share it out to friends and colleagues. Write us any time at [email protected] or visit us at theethicalrainmaker.com.

*Updated 11.13.20

While many awful DEI practices exist, Fleur has built a reputation of accountability and showing up! So many great assets are mentioned in this episode:

• Michelle talks with Fleur Larsen, a facilitator and DEI consultant with a great rep
• Fleur’s next workshop is Power With Not Power Over for white women, starting Sept 10
• She is one of the founders of Skate Like a Girl (est. 2000) and comes from the therapy, education and nonprofit spaces

References:

• Definition of Gatekeepers: Those who speak for, describe, translate, interpret, count and determine institutional access for people of color - in the process of systemic oppression. Gatekeepers are typically accountable to their bosses in institutions rather than the communities that they serve, and usually help maintain rather than change the system. They contribute to depriving oppressed people access to the institutions that control their lives. Source: People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond
• Definition of Liberated Gatekeeping: Using power and privilege, access, opportunity to break down gates; Awareness of systems, policies, people that may be gates; Realization we are ALL gatekeepers (we can be liberating or oppressive); Using gatekeeping to check other’s privilege. Source: Monica Dennis and Rachael Ibrahim and Move to End Violence Initiative.
• adrienne marie brown and Emergent Strategy - learn more about emergent strategy!
• WOAH she does 60% of the work for 40% of the pay when she works with BIPOC folx. Did you hear that? Just wanted to point it out.
• We mentioned Lola’s Ink, a new podcast by Jenna Hanchard which also features a great story from Jenna and guest Jodi-Ann Burey => In A World Full of Karens Be An Elizabeth...check it out!
• Fleur talked about The Crown Act, created in 2019 to ensure protection against discrimination based on race-based hairstyles by extending statutory protection to hair texture and styles like braids, locs, twists, and knots in the workplace and public schools. Yes, this is still happening.
• Fleur mentions Resmaa Menakem, therapist and author of books like My Grandmother’s Hands
• The Power of a Fundraiser: is an article I wrote, that was referenced...
• Fleur gives props to Aparna Rae, Ligaya Domingo, Jodi-Ann Burey, Regent Brown, Tami Farber and Michelle Gislason
• Gratitude to Falon Sierra for letting us use her new song “Sprained Ankles" throughout this episode - its so good right?

This is a brand new podcast and we could use all the help we can get! The best way to support us is by subscribing on your fav pod player, rating us (esp on iTunes...yeah, I know) and honestly...share it out to friends and colleagues. The purpose is Write us any time at [email protected] or visit us at theethicalrainmaker.com.

Soma Snakeoil and Stacey Dee are founders of The Sidewalk Project, bringing compassion instead of judgment to people living on the streets. “When systems fall down, people stand up!”

• The Sidewalk Project
• Soma Snakeoil, also called Goddess Soma, is an activist, a mediation facilitator, a visionary artist, a playright, a professional dominatrix...
• Stacee Dee’s band Bad Cop / Bad Cop (wiki, spotify)

Thank you so much to Stacy and Soma for sharing your deeply personal stories and for the work you do!!

The Ethical Rainmaker is a podcast, hosted by Michelle Shireen Muri, that explores the world of inequity in nonprofits and philanthropy, including where we should step into our power or step out of the way! It is my desire and effort to bring zero-cost information, case studies, and inspiration to everyone in the third sector — especially those who want to do better on this journey.

Follow the Ethical Rainmaker on Instagram, Twitter, listen wherever podcasts are found, and consider supporting the Ethical Rainmaker through Patreon!

While many awful nonprofit practices exist, Andy and Tom are doing their work as responsible white men in our sector, to unpack what is really happening in nonprofits and philanthropy and use their platforms for good - so that we can all do better. So many great assets mentioned in this episode, here are links for content and definitions mentioned in the show:

• Michelle talks with the gentlemen of Fixing Fundraising podcast in the UK, Andy King and Tom DeFraine
• Hear their interview with Michelle and Vu Le, about Community Centric Fundraising!
• LinkedIn for Tom and Andy

References then Definitions:

• Here is the article by Baroness Stowell, Chair of The Charity Commission, titled: “If you want to improve lives through charity, leave political fights out of it” (posted on the conservative site, The Daily Mail)
• (And here is an article by my colleague Cami Aurioles title “Nonprofits Can’t Engage In Political Advocacy At All, You Say? Wrong. We Can And We Must” as posted on CommunityCentricFundraising.org)
• London’s 2021 NYE Drone/Fireworks display was really amazing. This link is from BBC.
• Saddiq Khan, Mayor of London, took a lot of shit for allowing “political” content into the NYE celebration, there are dozens of videos and articles about it.
• Captain Tom (Moore) and his recognition that the NHS (National Health Service) wasn’t resourced well enough during this pandemic, as well as his instigation of a mega fundraising campaign (1.5 million individual donations totaling over $32.79M Pounds ($45.47M Dollars), was one of the topics we touched on. Captain Tom, at 100 years old, passed away from COVID-19 related illness on February 2nd, 2021. May he rest in peace.
• National Health Service Charities Together (NHS Charities Together)
• Andy recommends listening to the Do More Good podcast, and specifically, Episode 62 with Ellie Orton and NHS Charities Together
• The Royals: Prince Andrew’s fall from grace, Prince Williams is the patron for Centrepoint, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle moved to Hollywood and started this pod we haven’t listened to yet...
• Andy refers to this article “Having a royal patron doesn’t pay for charities” (open in incognito mode for easy access)
• As a side, Tom mentions that Tea came from India, but he probably meant that a lot of tea has been imported to the UK from India from the late 1800s on. Deeper history = England’s involvement in tea actually originated in China. Check out this riveting quick history. I promise it's worth it. You might learn that the East India Company intentionally got Chinese addicted to Opium in order to get tea for a price they could afford, which was the colonization of India. The story involves mass murder/war and slavery. Fucked up. And the reason why certain tea-growing regions (like Assam) are some of the economically and socially devastated places in the world. Sarah Rose’s has a brilliant book about it, called For All The Tea In China. It's okay. The way I grew up I thought tea was Iranian. #themoreyouknow

Definitions:

• The Charity Commision as defined by Andy: “...it's’ the gov’t body that checks that charities are doing with their money what they’re meant to be doing. They check that there’s no fraud, they check that there’s no corruption, and they check that everything is operating as it should. In principle, that’s a brilliant b...