Small Nonprofit: Fundraising Tips, Leadership Strategies, and Community-Centric Solutions
Jun 9, 2026 · 33 min · 13 segments
Send us Fan Mail You've been told that keeping donors happy is how you protect your revenue. What if that's actually the thing bleeding your…
No entities detected.
I was in a session, online of course, as we all were, when we were put into a breakout room to discuss a specific scenario.
The question was, "What would you do if a donor made a racist remark?" All of our cameras were on.
It would be too hard to say something." As a racialized woman, I felt unsafe and unseen, and I thought, "We are watching people get murdered live on video in the States and in other parts of the world.
The world is literally on the brink of war, and we're spending critical conference sessions talking about how to maintain white comfort when a donor says racist things?" The Black fundraiser in our group turned off her camera after hearing what the white fundraisers were thinking.
If we're talking about keeping donors comfortable, keeping the status quo even at this critical time, and the people with lived experience in the room don't feel safe speaking up, it really makes me think about why I'm doing the work and if there are ways to do it better.
Now, I will share my personal why with you soon, but if you're unfamiliar with this concept, your why is your reason for being here.
It's the answer to why did you become a fundraiser? What drove you to this work? What change do you want to see in the world? I invite you to reflect on when was the last time that you thought about your why.
Some of us might be thinking about it for the first time today, or it might have been a long time since.
Sometimes the day-to-day busyness gets to us, and we forget, why are we even doing this? So here's what I want you to ask yourself right now.
Why did you become a fundraiser? What is your why? So how many of you know your why? And how many of you have been in a situation where you knew something was wrong, something a donor said or something your organization was doing, but you stayed quiet because you were afraid of what would happen if you spoke up? That's not personal failure.
That's a system working to keep you compliant, keep you grateful, and keep you from challenging power, to keep you focused on the day to day instead of your why.
Now, how many of you have heard of the nonprofit industrial complex? Let me explain what it means.
But we're funded by governments, wealthy donors, and corporations who benefit from those problems existing, or at least from the status quo remaining exactly how it is.
So we end up in a weird position where we can't bite the hand that feeds us, even when that hand is part of the problem.
I was in a session, online of course, as we all were, when we were put into a breakout room to discuss a specific scenario.
The question was, "What would you do if a donor made a racist remark?" All of our cameras were on.
It would be too hard to say something." As a racialized woman, I felt unsafe and unseen, and I thought, "We are watching people get murdered live on video in the States and in other parts of the world.
The world is literally on the brink of war, and we're spending critical conference sessions talking about how to maintain white comfort when a donor says racist things?" The Black fundraiser in our group turned off her camera after hearing what the white fundraisers were thinking.
If we're talking about keeping donors comfortable, keeping the status quo even at this critical time, and the people with lived experience in the room don't feel safe speaking up, it really makes me think about why I'm doing the work and if there are ways to do it better.
Now, I will share my personal why with you soon, but if you're unfamiliar with this concept, your why is your reason for being here.
It's the answer to why did you become a fundraiser? What drove you to this work? What change do you want to see in the world? I invite you to reflect on when was the last time that you thought about your why.
Some of us might be thinking about it for the first time today, or it might have been a long time since.
Sometimes the day-to-day busyness gets to us, and we forget, why are we even doing this? So here's what I want you to ask yourself right now.
Why did you become a fundraiser? What is your why? So how many of you know your why? And how many of you have been in a situation where you knew something was wrong, something a donor said or something your organization was doing, but you stayed quiet because you were afraid of what would happen if you spoke up? That's not personal failure.
That's a system working to keep you compliant, keep you grateful, and keep you from challenging power, to keep you focused on the day to day instead of your why.
Now, how many of you have heard of the nonprofit industrial complex? Let me explain what it means.
But we're funded by governments, wealthy donors, and corporations who benefit from those problems existing, or at least from the status quo remaining exactly how it is.
So we end up in a weird position where we can't bite the hand that feeds us, even when that hand is part of the problem.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.