In honor of AAPI Heritage month, I’m replaying some of my favorite episodes from AAPI leaders. This episode with North Star Fund’s Jennifer Ching is a personal fave. Enjoy!
Join me and Northstar Fund’s Executive Director Jennifer Ching to discuss decolonizing philanthropy. In this hugely important conversation, Jen shares how the work of the Northstar Fund is actively working towards dismantling white supremacy and power and centering the work and decision-making of BIPOC activists. By recasting our own relationship and assumptions about money, we can engage in becoming resource mobilizers, not “fundraisers.” We also touch on the nonprofit and philanthropic industrial complex that is predicated on power, control and lack of transparency. What does it mean to be a community-led, community-centered philanthropist? How can we meet this moment at the intersection of race, power, money and action in our own lives and as leaders of organizations? This is a thought-provoking and high-octane conversation with one of my faves!
For more about NorthStar Fund: https://northstarfund.org/
For more about Decolonizing Wealth: https://www.decolonizingwealth.com/
Episode Transcript
RHEA WONG 00:07
Welcome to Nonprofit Lowdown. I’m your host, Rhea Wong. Hey, everyone!. Welcome to another edition of Nonprofit Lowdown. So happy to be here on the sweltering July day. Today, my guest is my friend Jennifer Ching, the Executive Director of the Northstar Fund. We’re going to talk today about decolonizing wealth and philanthropy.
RHEA WONG 00:27
But an interesting fun fact, Jennifer and I have one very interesting thing in common, one in particular, which is that we both do stand-up comedy, Asian women who do stand-up comedy. I guess we all want to be Ali Wong now. I don’t know. Welcome, Jennifer! Tell me a little bit about yourself, your stand-up comedy, and you’re a physician at the Northstar Fund.
JENNIFER CHING 00:44
Big difference. Okay, I strived to be your level of actual identification for stand-up comedy, but I was basically forced by my colleagues to do an initial stand-up comedy routine since, in their words, it appears like all I do all the time is make awkward jokes in every conversation. I did my first routine at the end of last year in an event that we had to support organizing in New York City with a number of just far better experienced and to learn from comedians. And since then, it has been an interesting experience to think about and reflect on what is comedic performance and particularly at this time.
RHEA WONG 01:27
Yeah, so interesting fun fact about that, and we’re not going to talk about stand-up comedy. But number one, once this whole COVID thing is over, you and I are going to do a stand-up set, open mic. And number two, I’ve tried doing open mic via Zoom, and it is the saddest experience in the world because nobody laughs and it’s not clear if people don’t laugh because they’re not funny, or if it’s because everyone’s unmuted, but in either case, it’s totally soul-crushing.
JENNIFER CHING 01:50
So I thought we installed on this webinar, a laugh track so that we can have it just playing in the background.
RHEA WONG 01:55
I need that validation in my life, especially since I haven’t seen people in a really long time, to me and my daughter, and my husband. Tell me a little bit about yourself and being the Executive Director of the Northstar Fund.
JENNIFER CHING 02:08
Sure! My name is Jen Ching. My pronouns are she and her. I have been at the Northstar Fund for a little over three years. But I think more relevant to this conversation. And this is my first job in philanthropy and Northstar Fund, which I’ll describe in a little bit is not even standard practice philanthropy. But I’ve really been on all different sides of working within the nonprofit public and private sectors.
JENNIFER CHING 02:33
And so, in my life, I have asked for money, I have begged for money, I have demanded money. I have transferred money and thought a lot about my relationship as a nonprofit leader, a manager, an executive director, a fundraiser, and a resource mobilizer about all of the ways in which my discomfort with that role has emerged and has been a part of strengthening who I am, and also a part of really deepening why I so believe in dismantling the systems that we operate within.
JENNIFER CHING 03:02
So just really, really quick background. I was born and raised in Jersey, went off to college, and had a deep and broad political awakening, largely through my introduction to a community organizing program for youth in Boston’s Chinatown. I really gave me a frame to put my own family’s immigration in history and labor and health experiences into a context. So I was trained very young, very fortunately, as an organizer. I came up through both union organizing and immigrant worker-centered organizing in Boston here in Chinatown. I then came in my early 20s to the recognition that like, I don’t know how to pay off my college debt.
JENNIFER CHING 03:38
I don’t know how to create a life for myself. So I did what a lot of people do. I went to law school. And after law school, I then returned to New Jersey and work for several years supporting immigrant worker organizing at an impact litigation and community-based organizations. And then at that time, I came to the realization I don’t know how to pay off my law school debt, and my college that is actually aggregating because of this thing called interest. And so I then went into the private sector, just shortly after 9/11 had happened.
JENNIFER CHING 04:05
And I had been working in the intersection between immigrants’ rights and national security. And so I then worked both in the private sector, but also was fortunate to be able to litigate extensively around national security issues that emerged after 9/11, including for many years, representing individuals who were held in Guantanamo, and directly accused of terrorism. I mentioned that to say my trajectory, this all of this really influenced my trajectory and thinking about what organizing and law, are the tools available to doing good.
JENNIFER CHING 04:36
And how are those tools actually differently applied in the domestic setting, in the local setting, and in the international setting? When I left law firm practice, I knew that I wanted to go back to a more local setting. I wanted to be in a more grassroots space. And so for about 10 years, I ran first a Legal Policy Center that supported grassroots work and then a legal services program in Queens that provided direct services. So I’m the daughter of a social worker.
JENNIFER CHING 05:03
So I’ve been on sort of the social services and the human services side on the contract side and on the sort of government-supported side of this work. I’ve also been on the sort of the left and in different sets of settings, and have seen common threads throughout about how organizations are managed, and how leaders are challenged. And all of the different ways in which, especially being a woman of color, all the different ways in which I was complicit in participatory in but also in opposition to these systems.
JENNIFER CHING 05:32
So I chose to leave the law a few years ago when Trump was elected, because I had sort of just done a little bit of looking within and thinking about whether or not I wanted to be a lawyer fighting the system that I knew would exist in the Trump administration, or if I wanted to be attached to a different sort of fight. And so I left and came to Northstar Fund committing myself sort of for this near future to really directly support the leadership of communities of color locally, building power expressly around systems change.
RHEA WONG 06:05
That is a lot. You have been a warrior since day one. So tell me a little bit specifically about the work that you’re doing at the Northstar Fund.
JENNIFER CHING 06:12
Sure. For folks who aren’t familiar with Northstar Fund, we’re not a usual foundation. I know when people think of a foundation, they think of a board of trustees, maybe a family that owns the money. And you think of staff and program officers and program directors and you think of people who are saying like, dude, we’re really excited about this issue when we think we should do this, we’re going to open up this RFP. Now we invite you and then all of us on the other side scramble and say, oh, you think green chickens should be provided services by a bunch of green chickens for $5,000? Yes, we’ll apply.
JENNIFER CHING 06:43
And we’ll serve green chickens. Northstar Fund is actually an organization that was started about 40 years ago by individuals who were coming into inherited wealth, but who really wanted to disrupt what they saw as the real core challenges of family and private philanthropy, and community foundations as well. So they created a model where really, it’s two things. One is we support exclusively emerging grassroots work that’s led by communities who are most directly impacted by whatever challenges they’re seeking to address.
JENNIFER CHING 07:18
And the second is the specific seeding of decision-making power. So the vast majority of the money that we mobilize and bring in is utilized by our volunteer community funding committees, and the volunteers are themselves, community organizers, with long and deep histories within the communities in which they work. And these community funding committees, one in New York City, one in the Hudson Valley, and one that oversees, which is our black organizing fund that supports work around structural racism and police reform.
JENNIFER CHING 07:48
These three committees meet and actually set the strategies for who we fund, how we fund, etc. And so as a result of our accountability, both two movements and two issues I would say we are known for and we practice a few things. The first is that we are often the first and have always been the first to formally fund emerging institutions. So there’s really no major grassroots-led or grasstops, or policy campaign that’s happened in New York City over the past few decades that we didn’t support in some ways when it was at a sort of a Genesis period when people were coming together either within the neighborhood, coalitions, etc.
JENNIFER CHING 08:29
So we’re not afraid to take on challenging visionary topics that private funders issue. The second is that we just deeply believe in sort of the subject of our conversation today, although I don’t know that we would have said decolonizing philanthropy in much of the history of our organization, we deeply believe in community sovereignty and community control of resources, and that the role of our philanthropic purpose is to move people to relinquish the control of the money that they have.
JENNIFER CHING 09:00
That is extractive and earned in ways that have damaged and just perpetuate a system of oppression to move and organize people to see interests as aligned through the lens of money in the money system. So our work is grant-making and supporting organizers and building the capacity of organizations. But our work is also to organize people across race and class around this common purpose, and around our common reset of a vision of a different way for us to relate to the money system.
RHEA WONG 09:33
All right, there’s so much here. I don’t even really know where to begin. But one thing I’ve really been thinking about with this notion of decolonizing philanthropy is how related it is to white supremacy and white supremacy culture. And so I guess I’m wondering if you could speak a little bit about it. I know that you’ve talked about there’s an education piece that you do would be philanthropists who have the resources as well as people who are deploying it. So I’m wondering, can you speak a little bit to the personal education and change that you work on with people, and then how those people affect systems?
JENNIFER CHING 10:06
Sure!. First of all, I want to give deference and credit to Edgar Villanueva, whose book “Decolonizing Wealth,” came out last year. I think it has done a lot to popularize this question around decolonizing wealth, wealth systems, and then, therefore, decolonizing philanthropy. And in general, I think when we are using these words, it’s very popular right now. I think to attach decolonize to something and then people are like, oh! When using this word, I really want to be clear about certain things.
JENNIFER CHING 10:31
One is that we are all deep within a process of decolonizing implies a number of steps of which I think probably everyone who’s joining this conversation is somewhere in that process. No one has completed or succeeded, right? It is both about the recognition of the systems around us and the system, as you say, we have white supremacy, which is the overarching violence under which we make decisions that on the face may appear to be intended to be helpful and positive. But have undercurrents of harm and violence and acted histories of violence behind what we’re doing.
JENNIFER CHING 11:09
In addition to recognizing, of course, then it’s about dismantling these systems. And then it’s about finding a use for money and resources that is about healing, repairing, and a different vision for a future that is, in our perspective, one that’s oriented around self-determination, community control, community sovereignty, and leadership in particular of black indigenous and people of color communities. That’s a lot of words. It’s a lot of jargon, right? And one of the things that I once heard Edgar say that I really appreciated that I think is actually, he noted it as a Lakota tribe principle.
JENNIFER CHING 11:44
But I actually think as soon as he said it, I was like, wait, this is actually a Chinese principle. It’s actually a Korean principle. It’s the principle being and I’m paraphrasing that all suffering is mutual, but also all thriving is mutual. Right? And I think that is our work. It is to organize folks across race and class and gender and all identities to recognize that is suffering is mutual, and that are thriving, and the project to move us to thrive must also be mutual. And mutually held means accountable, means actionable, and means practical.
JENNIFER CHING 12:19
And so when I think about what this means within our role for philanthropy, I think one of the first things that we try to recognize and that we try to practice that Northstar Fund is that philanthropy is not the practice of the wealthy, right? Churches, faith communities, community centers, YMCA, or United Way, people give and if anything, this pandemic has shown that low-income communities are the first to give and the first to survive, and the first to care for each other.
JENNIFER CHING 12:51
The history of mutual aid is the history of survival economies in communities of color, and so are philanthropists we all give, and we all give in a colonial mindset. We all give with discomfort around the power and the ownership of our money. And so is this also a collective project amongst all of us to think about what it means to decolonize our own approaches to wealth and our own approaches to giving? So at Northstar Fund, we do this through programs that work directly with people to construct different understandings of how philanthropy has worked within the system of racialized capitalism. And then we also just do it more broadly in the sector of philanthropy itself. And we work with funders and staff and philanthropists and trustees to also try and change behaviors.
RHEA WONG 13:42
It’s interesting. Just before we hopped on this call, I was on a call with someone who consults with high-net-worth individuals and foundations. And she was saying that one of the mistakes that she says a lot is that people are really coming from the scarcity mindset, which to me, coming from the nonprofit side. I’m like, what do you mean? Your foundation or your high net worth individual, how can you have a scarcity mindset, Do you have all the money? So I guess I’m wondering, could you speak a little bit about how the scarcity mindset reinforces systems of oppression and racism?
JENNIFER CHING 14:14
Sure! The conversations of scarcity versus abundance, I think need to be separated in some ways from the concept of how much you’re actually talking about, right? So abundance is not just something that I throw out to say the large endowed foundations or where you and I were talking about MacKenzie Scott, Jeff Bezos, or others. Yes! Certainly, there are people who have which there’s abundance.
JENNIFER CHING 14:37
But the concept of thinking about abundance goes back to something I was just saying earlier, which is the incredible amount of wealth that communities of color, low-income communities that are actually held, generated, created, and is the basis of a successful and thriving society, right? Again, the pandemic is showing that the world relies on the mass of the economy and of workers that the economy is now so separated from the sort of those of us who consume at home and those who just traffic in the sort of abstractness of the stock market, right? We’re just seeing that fissure in a lifetime right now.
JENNIFER CHING 15:15
But at the core scarcity and abundance is also about personal practice and personal practice in understanding how power appears in our thinking. It appears on the side of people who give money because the mind frame is always if I give to here, then I don’t have to give to here. Or if I give to you, then I am somehow losing what I had, as opposed to this gift being about mutual thriving. The thriving that we build together is actually a gift to me, right? So it’s about that. And it’s also practice on the other side of the table from those of us who asked. it’s about us saying, yes!
JENNIFER CHING 15:57
I can do this work for pennies on the dollar. Yes, I can make this work. Please, I’m sure this organization costs so much. So we’ll come in at half their grant requests, and I’m sure, therefore, we’ll get this project or we’ll get this. It’s about all of us refusing to actually talk about the actual value of our labor, of our work, of our vision, and of our intention of what we’ve created of our victories. It’s about us, therefore, devaluing the cost of what it will actually take to dismantle and create a truly different and equitable system.
RHEA WONG 16:30
Yeah! You are speaking my language. I mean, so much of the work that I do with nonprofits is helping them to understand the value that they bring to the table. And I think, when you come in with the scarcity mindset, and believe that your work is not actually worth anything and that you don’t have resources, it puts you in an automatically inferior position relative to somebody that you might ask for money.
RHEA WONG 16:54
And instead, what would it look like if the relationship was about neutrally combining and achieving something together? But it’s hard. It’s very hard-wired into our own narratives about money in the way that we were raised and the way that we grew up in this society.
JENNIFER CHING 17:10
It’s completely hardwired in and I want to be clear that everything that I’m saying today is the journey that I have been on to decolonize and build my own strength and muscle in this area. I have practiced all of the bad behaviors that I’m speaking to. And I’m super fortunate that my entry into philanthropy is not in a space that engages in a number of these practices.
JENNIFER CHING 17:33
But I’ve been a witness to and been, in some ways a victim to a lot of the sort of philanthropic control of money, whether it’s highly restrictive grants, or unknowing if it’s multi-year, or all of the reporting and the apps and everything that the dogs and the ponies and the pigs and all that we tried out. Along the way, as I’ve been on this journey, I have tried to implement different practices in highly restrictive settings. And so one of the big questions for you to ask yourself is, what is the power that I have to actually do something differently?
JENNIFER CHING 18:07
And why aren’t I willing to experiment or take that risk? What do I actually have to lose, and what is actually being lost in mass as a result of my refusal to engage in this potential risk? And those risks are relational, professional, financial, and leadership, but we’re certainly in a time this summer where I think we can all comfortably say to each other, that transformation is not only possible, but it is essential in order for us to actually survive.
RHEA WONG 18:40
Okay, so I’m just gonna get down to the nuts and bolts of things is because I’m a tactical person. So who gives the Northstar Fund? Because I think some of what you’re messaging is really different than what we’ve heard from traditional philanthropists who have traditional foundations. And I’m just wondering, like, who is attracted to this message, and who is really turned off by the message?
JENNIFER CHING 19:02
Sure! So the Northstar Gund giving community which is really a sisterhood of social justice funds around the country, meaning we’re all funds that are sort of place-based and support grassroots work, where we are and raise the money to move to that work. And there are funds throughout the country. And I’m happy to share with folks that folks are wondering where there’s one local to them. Our donors are as diverse as you can imagine. We have folks who give us $5 a year, and we have folks in institutions that give 500,000. It’s a gamut.
JENNIFER CHING 19:33
And I think the question of like, who’s attracted to and I don’t know who’s not attracted. I mean, I can make some guesses, right? But I think of course, there are many people who are deeply uncomfortable with two things. They’re deeply uncomfortable with giving money to an institution that centers the divestment of power as part of its process. And by uncomfortable, it can also mean unfamiliar. It doesn’t mean initially just no, and then of course, deeply uncomfortable with the centering of grassroots leadership from black Indigenous and people of color communities.
JENNIFER CHING 20:03
And I think both of those things, by the way, we are experiencing a sea change and understanding and nuance and questions over the past three years, starting with the administration for years, and then the current spring summer. Many, many, many, many people will come through our doors. We have people who have received an inheritance from their grandparents and want to just spend it all down recognize the sort of done work and thought about how the money is routed either in a history of slave ownership or other deeply systemic challenges.
JENNIFER CHING 20:33
And so they want to spend it down. We have people who just say, I’ll give you $20 a month. This is my role in supporting grassroots work that’s closer to me. And we have folks who also give to us out of experimentation and curiosity, the lawyers like I always give to the ACLU. And I always believe in impact, I believe in policy, and I want to see the legislative wins, but then they understand and they see what’s happening on the streets. And they know that.
JENNIFER CHING 20:58
The legislative wins are actually the top and the end or the middle, in some cases have very, very long hard fought campaigns in years. And actually, we received quite a bit of support from folks that work in human and social services, who say to us, it’s really my clients who should be leading. I’m like this against the dam. And what I really want to do is do my part to just remove the dam in general.
RHEA WONG 21:24
What I really like about that, too, is that you don’t have to have millions in the bank to be a philanthropist, right? So I often think that we equate your net worth with your value as a human, especially in the US capitalist system. But then instead, what could it look like if folks like you, and I could give $5 and be a philanthropist and see some impact? So I got questions coming in fast and furious, Jacqueline!
JACQUELINE 21:54
Thank you for being here today and for just sharing your insight. A lot of the work that I do is in the art world and working with artists to help them not be dependent on nonprofits forever and ever and ever. And one of the things I see is, a lot of what you’re discussing is this what do they call it the nonprofit industrial complex or whatever, it’s just like, they want people to be dependent. They never reached the mission.
JACQUELINE 22:17
And so I want to know, where are you seeing some good synergy between artists and people in the philanthropic world who are really saying like, no, the goal is for you as an artist to be to find commercial success? Are you seeing that anywhere in particular? Or, are you seeing it in other places where there are people who are really trying to make sure people can get to a place of completing their mission? And who’s doing it really, really well?
JENNIFER CHING 22:40
Yeah! That’s a great question. And I’m going to first say, I’m not a arts funder. In our program, we fund activism in support of art activists in certain situations. But we sit outside what I think is you say not only the nonprofit industrial complex, but probably the cultural institutional industrial complex. So one thing that I will say, though, is that there are organizations that, Jacqueline, are you in New York?
JACQUELINE 23;06
I’m in Pittsburgh, but I’m connected deeply to New York. New York is one of the places that I call home.
JENNIFER CHING 23:11
I think about spaces like the laundromat project, I think about spaces that are black-led, people-of-color-led that are, as you say, changing the relationship between artists and the capital that is essential for artists to survive. There’s a side conversation that I think a lot of us who are in the work of nonprofit stuff find probably very distasteful. And that is the question people are always asking us just how do you make your work sustainable? If I give you three years’ grants, I want to know at the end of that. You’ve somehow made it sustainable.
JENNIFER CHING 23:41
And my answer was always like, how am I supposed to make it sustainable? I’m not selling widgets and widgets, right? Like, I’m gonna make it sustainable cuz I gotta find someone else to fund it. Right? So it’s actually unsustainable. By the mere definition of you creating and controlling the way in which I received the money and how I spend it, it is unsustainable. So there are models that I think are emerging in this time around what community ownership and community practice can look like when it comes to resources, right?
JENNIFER CHING 24:08
So I’m thinking about the long history of rooted in sort of community development financial institutions, but as they begin to become more expressed towards how do we actually create spaces of ownership for artists and cultural workers that is free from either heavily restrictive and extractive philanthropy, patron models, etc. And I see those projects linked to spaces like land trusts, which in New York are less about actually purchasing land but about purchasing buildings or spaces, and creating sometimes problematically perhaps wealth perpetuity models to allow to fund and hold those spaces.
JENNIFER CHING 24:45
But I think the flip side of that is thinking outside of just what are the alternatives to the institutions that we know, like the typical museum or other space. Flipping that I think is the need, I think within the arts community to actually change the relationship to money that the arts community is, in some ways, the leader is leading the rest of advocacy and the nonprofit community into the framework of decolonization but also is still the one that is most heavily dependent on the board that is the millionaire billionaire, billionaire, on the dependency of corporate sponsorships, etc.
JENNIFER CHING 25:24
So there’s a space where I think both sides of that work have to happen and are complementary. And we should actually be in deeper partnership with each other. As we send out these messages. The mass mobilizations of this time, of course, have some roots in the decolonizing this place unfunded movement in New York City, which was an arts-focused movement at its core. And I think that is such an instructive thing for us to remember that arts and culture and narrative change are an essential part of our ability to even begin to decolonize a project in the first place.
JACQUELINE 25:59
Thank you so much.
RHEA WONG 26:00
So when we’re going to have is, as folks that are working in the nonprofit sector, our relationship to foundations and wealthy individuals feels very much in this colonized framework, let’s say and I guess I’m wondering, Jennifer, if you could speak a little bit about what can folks in the nonprofit sector do to even engage in these conversations with traditional funders? I feel like in the last couple of months, there’s been a lot of like, oh, wait, what? Racism is a thing?
RHEA WONG 26:29
Oh, like white supremacy is a thing? Whereas those of us working in the trenches and in the field have really been seeing this for a lot. We’ve known this for a long, long time. And so how do we even start to move that conversation at the same time that we do feel this dependency on like this foundation, who’s going to give me money in order for me to do the work?
JENNIFER CHING 26:50
I think it’s such a multi-level process. I would say you have to know yourself, know your story, and know your path. And you also have to know your frame, know your analysis, and then you have to know your work, and sort of combine all three ways into being unapologetic, but clear, gracious, and thankful, like gratitude. Yeah, sure! It’s a practice Being grateful is not necessarily a colonized practice, right? Being grateful, but being certain, and implementing, I think into a transactional and likely extractional relationship, your dignity and your self-determination.
JENNIFER CHING 27:33
These are very challenging things. I grew up with some financial insecurity and in a fairly class-diverse family. And so my deepest hardest memories are about asking for money, and/or about disclosing not having money. And so then to be now in the profession where I have to center this, as part of my daily work is possibly something I should deal with in therapy. But it is also about knowing what has enabled me to be able to move forward and be successful as a resource mobilizer or whatnot at whatever terms.
JENNIFER CHING 28:07
It’s because of knowing my frame, knowing my analysis, and then practicing, practicing, practicing, and moving with a deliberate speed around it. All of these things, I know they sound abstract, but what I’m saying and suggesting is that you actually ask yourself these questions in the course of your work. When you’re presented with an RFP, when you think about who or what you’re applying for, and when you have an opportunity to speak with your donor, you actually ask yourself these questions and you actually frame for yourself. What are some of the things that you feel must be said that are hard for you, and try to practice?
JENNIFER CHING 28:41
Actually, we have a community of practice around this work. But we have actually a six-month cohort every year called The GivingPproject, where we bring people together across different backgrounds. And essentially just with the invitation to come to learn about how philanthropy is rooted in racialized capitalism. Come learn about sort of what grassroots fundraising looks like and learn and lean into your own power to raise money from your networks and your community.
JENNIFER CHING 29:07
And then practice the work that you’ll support the grassroots advocacy community of Northstar Fund. Every year, I’ve been astounded by the 20-odd people who come through this program. Everyone comes in saying I’m scared to fundraise. I don’t want to fundraise. I don’t want to come to the fundraising session. I don’t want to come to talk to you individually about my fundraising, right?
JENNIFER CHING 29:27
And every year this group gets through it together, working with each other, practicing off of each other, and this past year, Kelly’s group raised over $260,000, in just a few months from over 600 people. So it just speaks to the wealth that we are just walking around with and taking for granted every day and how transformative we can be if we make it a collective practice.
RHEA WONG 29:51
So I do have a question for you as a fundraiser and as an executive director, obviously, a big part of my job was fundraising to make sure that we could pay for the work that we do. did, and especially near the tail end of my tenure, I received a lot of pushback, usually from my younger staff members about the money that we received, right? And there seemed to be like this kind of ideological purity about why would we take money from Goldman Sachs.
RHEA WONG 30:18
And my first response really is like, well, in the US, what money is actually clean? It’s all dirty money. And my response was, what more revolutionary thing could we do than to take this money and do some social good with it? So I’m guessing curious, how would you approach that conversation? Because at the end of the day, I can be ideologically pure and safe, and I won’t take money from people that I perceive as being extractive and racist, and so on and so forth. But then can I fund the work?
JENNIFER CHING 30:54
This is, I think, a really key question that leaders across nonprofits right now. if you haven’t had these conversations, I think you really need to step into this space and talk about it. And I think, first of all, I want to say, I learned a lot from the questions that my staff asked me about money and how money came in. I came into being an executive director, thinking that as long as I just brought the money in, and kept people’s jobs, and kept our mission going and flowing, that’s really my work.
JENNIFER CHING 31:24
But over the years actually working with people who have elevated, really core questions about the source of money, the practice of money, and what we were doing, and how we were talking about our work, from whom we were choosing to fundraise. These actually all really helped me reframe and rethink a number of core questions. So the first step that I think is really important for folks who are leaders within their organizations and leaders are at all levels.
JENNIFER CHING 31:53
Are you talking about it? Is their transparency? What is that actual knowledge about how the organization mobilizes resources? A lot of times, I think, you know when I was a staff attorney, I didn’t know where the money went. I was like that there are problems on that side of the office that I only walked down to when they need me to tell them about a client’s really amazing story or something. But I think baking collective understanding about what organizations need to do and how they have framed survival in the past, is essential to then make a collective agenda for the future. I think it’s just really important for us to have these conversations.
JENNIFER CHING 32:29
And I don’t know that I judge either way how an organization lands, I just think you need to have this conversation. It needs to be in the context of an organization actively dismantling, likely proliferating racist and white supremacist cultural practices, right? Because organizations where there are disruptions about money, but disruption itself is usually more a reflection of white supremacist, cultural and management practices within the organization itself.
JENNIFER CHING 32:54
And it’s also about like, where are our failures within our institution that we also need to address in order to rebuild and reframe a culture that centers on equity that then allows us and gives us the vocabulary to have these complicated conversations? So all of these things have to happen at the same time. And I think if an organization decides. We’re not going to take Sackler’s family money or the board of an institution that doesn’t take money from financial institutions. The clarity, the analysis, and the frame are essential to kind of then understand then what where do we move.
JENNIFER CHING 33:27
Now at Northstar Fund, I would say, we deeply understand. But we also because we are in an active working relationship with people about their money, as you say like all money is bad and tainted. And so my joke often is, well, you can consider us money launderers because we are there not to erase the history, but in fact to actually amplify it, and to therefore allow that violence not to dictate but to create the causal chain to change how that money will be used in the system going forward.
RHEA WONG 33;59
Yeah, that’s very helpful. Thank you. Hi!
(WOMAN 1) 34:04
Hi, nice to meet you. This has really been so amazing to hear. I am sitting in a philanthropic seat sort of for the first time in my life after being on the practitioner side for 20 years and starting right before COVID. And I’m just trying to make sense of it all. And I’m sitting in a place that’s not I’d say actively necessarily tackling these issues head on. And just thinking a lot about for those of us who are sitting in places that aren’t ready to tackle this head-on.
(WOMAN 1) 34:35
Funder seeks what are the small steps that we can start to take with leadership to bring these questions to the forefront. And I guess I’m also sort of balancing that. I feel like when I sat in the EDC and I was sort of like, do I work with my board or do I just sort of move forward and without I’m certainly going to try to work with the leadership of the foundation or just sort of do what I can for my seat to make sure that we’re reaching folks who might not traditionally be reached as grantees. And if I do, what are the first steps to take? You know what I mean?
JENNIFER CHING 35:09
Yes! That is such a great question. And I actually think it’s analogous to so many situations, even if people aren’t in philanthropy, right? And the question that I distill from yours is when I move into a new setting, and I also amassed a different set of power and a different set of gatekeeping skills, but I still don’t necessarily have the power to influence the sort of trajectory of the institution overall, like, where’s my starting point? What do I do?
JENNIFER CHING 35:36
First of all, I think, particularly in the philanthropic setting, but across nonprofits right now, there is the most elevated moment of reckoning and recognition ongoing right now, right? If you are working in a setting that has not questioned its commitment, and purpose around equity, around anti-black racism, then there needs to be an introduction, and someone has to be the first to introduce these hard questions.
JENNIFER CHING 36:05
So part of it is for all of us to put on our organizer hats, look around our relationships within our institution, and think about who do we have. Who are our allies? Who do we want to listen to? Who should we cede power to for those of us who have power? Who should be leading these conversations? Who are effective messengers, and supporters? So some of it is just about sort of power mapping our understanding of our workplace, and creating a practice plan around that.
JENNIFER CHING 36:28
For those of us who have out-facing roles, and therefore we have that ability to at least improve the experiences of those who engage with us whether it’s grantees in your case, or other constituencies.? Yes, of course, I think that’s absolutely essential. So many times practitioners move into philanthropy, it makes sense. We are the subject matter expertise. You will be seen as someone who’s been in the hot seat and therefore more humane, but we bring in all of the sort of let’s say traumatic learn terrible behaviors, and then we just reinforced them because we don’t really know what else to do.
JENNIFER CHING 37:03
So sometimes the practitioners who went to philanthropy are the worst, because they just end up kind of recreating and in some ways, solidifying those circles of ineffective and damaging behavior. So some of it is about then disrupting. What do you know of yourself? What would you have wanted to do? Write it down. What would you have wanted to see? I would have wanted to see multi year, general operating, automatic renewals, no very, very little reporting requirements,
JENNIFER CHING 37:21
I would have wanted to have open and honest conversations about challenges that I was having, additional resources for disruptions like transitions, etc. All those things are often within the control of a program officer or portfolio manager or whatnot. So there’s a way to kind of lead sometimes with practicing values. And then there’s a way to lead kind of with ideology and theory.
JENNIFER CHING 37:49
And there’s a way to lead with sort of accountability and urgency because of the times and all three, I think right now are in play, and really sit in tandem with each other, and different people and different seats of power within an organization are going to be responsive to different strategies. But all of those strategies, I think have to be employed right now.
RHEA WONG 38:10
Thanks! Does that answer your question?
(WOMAN 1) 38:13
Yeah! I’m sitting in an odd seat as a fellow and not a program officer. So yeah, not a direct influencer. But that’s okay. Either certainly, a way to think about bringing a lot of what you’re speaking about in, so it’s definitely made me think…
JENNIFER CHING 38:26
I would also say there are all different ways in which we have direct influence tonight. Thank you so much for sharing your role and fellows are brought in because they are deemed to be sort of the intellectual, like the Vanguard leaders on a subject or a topic or a practice. So I also feel like and fellows have, maybe you have more flexibility because your goal is one strength across.
JENNIFER CHING 38:47
So there are also different ways in which you are the perfect person to introduce perhaps themes or practices or shifts or needs because you are looking/ You are the bridge between the institution and the outside world that the institution is trying to influence or gain a footing in or have its own expertise developed in.
(WOMAN 1) 39:04
Yeah! That’s true. And I might come back to you for like, some specific and I get ready to take them. So thank you. I really appreciate it.
RHEA WONG 39:11
I have a question coming in.
(WOMAN 2) 39:12
Hi, everyone! i am sort of thinking about board relationships and how to sort of manage a board through these conversations, particularly just on the sort of individual giving piece. And I guess the sort of balance of recognizing people’s contribution, but also sort of pushing on what it all means and how it all fits together and how we may be perpetuating systems that we’re actually trying to dismantle.
(WOMAN 2) 39:36
And particularly I think one thing I’ve struggled to figure out how to talk about is do centering supporter the funder versus sort of centering students and focusing on the strength of a sort of asset base and strength-based approach to our students and our communities, while still acknowledging the sort of individual contributors need for sort of emotional connection to the whole thing. Does that make any sense?
JENNIFER CHING 40;02
Absolutely! So I do think right now and I know I’ve said this a number of times in the call, but I do urge leaders. So raise your hand, if you are a nonprofit leader, where the staff and your constituencies, your stakeholders, your not your boards, and not your donors. But where you have had for over the past few years, you’ve been doing building anti-racism work, you’ve been talking about equity, you’ve been thinking and examining all of your processes, you’ve been doing that kind of as a workaround the board and the given kind of like, you’ve been in the middle, right?
JENNIFER CHING 40:30
Like kind of just trying to. I imagine that’s a number of us, right? Where the sort of board is the last for it to fall and the challenges of how, as a leader, you can lead your board into these conversations. Now, I think is truly the time, because there’s just so much visibility around the questions that people have about what is happening, and why is it happening. And how am I implicated in it? That there’s a way I think, for us to approach these questions from a space of self-growth, organizational growth, organizational relevance, and leadership relevance, that I think resonates more now than perhaps it has before.
JENNIFER CHING 41:11
And I am someone who has been engaged in trying to bring equity work and anti-racism work into nonprofits for a very long time and had been both yelled at and yelled at by people. It’s we’re in a long history, and this is one of those I think, moments, this sort of blowing separating of the curtain from the window where I think if you don’t seize it, will pass. So my main recommendation, of course, is that you’ve got to get people together to talk.
JENNIFER CHING 41:37
You’ve got to get people together and talk in a responsible way, meaning the organization needs to do work to determine what is the frame. What is the analysis? And how will we support people, and which includes financial resources, and then includes asking the board to support the financially this process. And there are many, many, many different approaches practiced by many different sorts of consultancies and collectives and collaboratives.
JENNIFER CHING 42:00
But it’s essential to craft a strategy that integrates the leadership and stakeholders, including donors into understanding because all of this is dependent on a radical transparency. Because if it continues to happen as a sort of like, oh, we’re just cleaning up in the house. There’s no accountability, and then the sort of worst practices will actually just become renamed and just move over and be practiced under a different rubric. So if you’re really trying to change and shift culture, it can’t be done without all of that.
RHEA WONG 42:32
Yeah! Dismantling is messy. And it takes a lot of time and effort. And I mean, it took 400-plus years to assemble it. It’s going to take some time to dismantle. I have a question coming in.
(WOMAN 3) 42:46
Rhea and Jenn, thank you. So I actually was in the nonprofit sphere in Raleigh, North Carolina. And something that really kind of concerned me is just the traditional grant-making and traditional grant application process. The number of times I would be writing grants, but then be in rooms that were not representative of either folks of color, or it was just predominantly white folks.
(WOMAN 3) 43:12
It’s not a bad thing. But it’s difficult to talk about what the nonprofit causes if there’s like a whole kind of barrier as to explaining what your cause might be. So my question is, how do you address the issue of who gets funding and just the traditional methods of grant applications? Is that something that needs to be changed our kind of reevaluate as to who’s in the room, who’s looking at these applications, and what evaluation methods are being examined?
JENNIFER CHING 43:42
Thank you so much for sharing your experience. I don’t know if you’re still in the Carolinas. But there is a new grassroots fund that is centering the decision-making processes of communities of color in the Carolinas, I think it’s called the Cypress fund. So it just might be a model to look to if you’re still in the geographic region. But to your more direct question, all of these things, I think, are essential. You’re absolutely right that part of the reason why philanthropy has been able to enact the sort of violence that it has is because for so long, it’s just been a closed-door enterprise.
JENNIFER CHING 44:16
And as philanthropic institutions like the rest of the world, diversify amongst its ranks, it’s telling about who controls what, and who rises where. We see all of the same societal challenges to moving from diversity to meaningful equity within philanthropy, right? So it doesn’t matter how many people you see on the website who are of color. The question is really still who is holding the power and who holds the power over whom.
JENNIFER CHING 44:41
So all of those challenges are still alive. But there are many philanthropic spaces and networks that are devoted to both amplifying and building the leadership of people of color within philanthropy and then also amplifying and building the frame and understanding for philanthropy to do its work differently. So there are a number of different professional organizations that I’m happy to send them. But there are also collective and learning spaces. And all of those institutions and networks are building their own movement within the sector.
JENNIFER CHING 45:15
And building that movement as informed by grantees and by advocates and by the constituents themselves. And so some of them are very formal, kind of like spaces like neighborhood funders group. Some of them are more about individuals themselves. And some of them are about actually expanding political education, just funders come to mind or spaces like Northstar Fund where we are really trying to root an understanding of philanthropy and different sorts of practices.
RHEA WONG 45:46
Thanks so much. So we are unfortunately right at the time. So tell us a little bit about where folks might be able to find more information about this if they want to read up on that or connect with you or connect with Northstar Fund.
JENNIFER CHING 45:57
Yeah! Please, follow us on social and Northstar Fund. Yes, you can find us online. Our resources are online. A lot of our community resources are all there as well. We love to be in relationships with people in the nonprofit world to support this. There are lots of spaces where you can learn about practical strategies around what funders are doing to change their work. There’s a national network called trust-based philanthropy that is an opt-in kind of foundation and family philanthropy space where people are learning about this work.
JENNIFER CHING 46:24
Some of the institutions that I just mentioned. Shoot me an email, I’m happy to send you resources that I know. The flip side of decolonizing philanthropy is for us to decolonize fundraising. We all have a lot of the one-liner ways that we want to change things. But I think his project and allies and supporters and all of us, what we’re actually trying to do is attach very, very practical shifts to this. And as I said, that first shift is actually for us to have our own reckoning, and then to begin to develop what that shifted message feels like and then going out there into the world.
RHEA WONG 47:04
That’s awesome. Thanks, Jenn. And I’ll make sure to get those resources for you posted in the podcast. Thank you, again, so much for all of this. There’s a lot to think about. And of course, so generous that you’re offering to connect with folks offline. So thanks so much.
JENNIFER CHING 47:18
Thank you so much for all you do.
RHEA WONG 47:19
Thank you, everyone. Have a great week. Bye!
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