Recently, I have been doing training on money mindset and the mindset of abundance for fundraisers. In the course of these trainings, I have been challenged by participants to discuss the historical wealth and racial inequities based on patriarchal and white supremacist exploitation.
In other words, how can we have an abundant mindset about money when the reason we have a scarcity mindset is based on historical trauma and policies designed to keep money and power out of the hands of BIPOC?
Whew. Just a little light dinner convo.
First, a caveat: I’m no DEI expert and I’m very much on this journey myself. I don’t have all the answers and I will make mistakes, but here’s what I’ve got so far.
I’d like to employ the term learned from my improv friends, “Yes and…”
Yes, some people have tremendous generational wealth because of enslaved people, stolen land and exploited natural resources AND we as fundraisers can engage in educational and respectful dialogue to help further our understanding of our interdependence and mutual survival.
Yes, some donors expect to be catered to and treated with deference AND we can choose to engage them as partners in the work, not as our moneyed overlords. And, we can choose to turn down money from people who make us feel bad because abundance tells us that there are more than enough people and resources out there who want to engage as partners.
Yes, you may believe that wealthy people’s gains “don’t belong to them” AND recognize that when you approach fundraising from a transactional and extractive mindset, you are upholding a toxic capitalist system that seeks to take, rather than to engage as community partners.
Yes, institutional racism and white supremacist policies have kept wealth out of the hands of Black and other communities of color AND we can recognize the tremendous opportunities and incredible wealth that are available to us in 2021.
In the end, I would love to live in a world where everybody had what they needed to thrive and that we could do so without exploiting people, the land or other resources. I would love to live in a world of perfect harmony where we have reckoned with and healed the trauma of our collective history. I believe that we’re starting to move towards that world, but we’re not there yet.
In between the way things were and the way that we want them to be, there is a messy middle which is our present.
All we can do is inch our way forward towards justice. There will be missteps. There will be mistakes.
And, as fundraisers, what greater act of resistance can there be than to get resources to people and organizations that are working towards a more just world?
