By popular demand, Christina Shimizu is back as a guest for Part 2 of The Racist Roots of Nonprofits & Philanthropy, LIVE at the Washington Nonprofits conference! “How on Earth can we solve the issues our communities face if we can't first acknowledge that there is a problem?” On this, the last episode of Season 2, Michelle and Christina go deeper with the recent history of how some of our ethos in philanthropy came to be, why philanthropy is built on deep injustices and a little about community centric fundraising. Remember...if we don’t examine how these things came to be, we can never hope to reimagine them, improve them or do better, to benefit the communities we are trying to serve.
PLEASE listen to Part 1, which is S1:E7 which also has really great content! Part 2 is a continuation and includes great citations…here are some links...(and sign up for our mailing list for future updates):
References:
"But whether the law be benign or not, we must say of it, as we say of the change in the conditions of men to which we have referred: It is here; we cannot evade it; no substitutes for it have been found; and while the law may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department. We accept and welcome therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial in the hands of a few, and the law of competition between these as being not only beneficial, but essential for the future progress of the race."
Okay and here is the old school definition for philanthropy in the same context:
"It is a law, as certain as any of the others named, that men possessed of this peculiar talent for affair, under the free play of economic forces, must, of necessity, soon be in receipt of more revenue than can be judiciously expended upon themselves; and this law is as beneficial for the race as the others."
References from the Q&A:
Need to know:
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Christina Shimizu:
I think that we need to, as organizations, actually have deeper conversations about our growth and how we grow, and to partner more deeply in community with one another, and then to build power, collective power, so that we can approach philanthropy with demands, with deep transformative demands.
[SOUND OF MANY CHEERS FROM A LIVE AUDIENCE]
Michelle Shireen Muri:
Thanks, y'all. Hello to everybody here and welcome to The Ethical Rainmaker, a podcast aimed at helping us find and understand the tools that are meant to help us step in to our power where we've got it, and step out of the way if we need to. I'm your host, Michelle Shireen Muri. Today, we are recording live from the Washington State Nonprofit Conference, which has almost 1,000 people in attendance today. Congratulations.
I'm going to set just a little bit of context for those of you joining us for the first time. The Ethical Rainmaker is nearing the end of its second season with over 28,000 downloads and growing by thousands of downloads every week. It's amazing. The podcast can be found on all major platforms, and is growing a pretty global base. This podcast is regularly featured on communitycentricfundraising.org, and you can find ample show notes about today's episode because we're going to drop a lot of names. You'll find notes to everything, links to everything in the show notes at theethicalrainmaker.com.
Because today on this episode we're in a physical location, we're in Seattle, I want to begin by recognizing indigenous peoples across the world, their knowledge, their cultural practices, and ways of being that have stewarded our Earth since time and memorial. We're recording here today from Seattle, which is the ancestral and unceded land of the Duwamish tribe, who we support in their current struggle for federal recognition.
I myself am the daughter of Iranian immigrants who fled their home during the revolution. The separation and displacement of my family onto this stolen land is directly tied to US imperialism. My recognition of the Duwamish and indigenous peoples across the globe, including my Palestinian siblings, comes with a commitment to support tribal sovereignty, land rights, and ending US imperialism all over the world.
My guest today is back by popular demand, Christina Shimizu is a friend, colleague, and collaborator with a dedication and passion around expanding community participation and creating lasting social change. You know if you've listened to part of The Racist Roots of Nonprofits and Philanthropy that she is a natural educator. She's organized towards improving Asian-American and Pacific representation and democracy. She's done a lot of work with Seattle-based organizations like the Wing Luke Museum, Asian Pacific Americans for Civic Empowerment Votes, Chinatown International District Coalition, and she's been working with the Decriminalize Seattle Movement, which won larger cuts from the Seattle Police budget than any other US city. She's been working with the Afro-Socialist Defund Seattle Police Campaign to encourage divestment from the police foundation, and now, she's at Puget Sound Sage. All these activities speak to her passion for justice and organizing.
She believes in building a deep democracy and a just transition towards a living economy, and I am so excited to have her on for part two of The Racist Roots of Nonprofits and Philanthropy. Welcome, Chrissy.
Christina Shimizu:
Hi, everyone. Good morning. My name is Chrissy. She/her pronouns. I love The Real Housewives every franchise, and today, I'm going to be talking to you about Marxism. Did you all sign up for that?
Michelle Shireen Muri:
So, I think we need to build a little bit of context here for people who are joining us for the first time. Chrissy and I are both co-founders of something called Community-Centric Fundraising, and I'm just going to talk briefly about that before we move on deeper into our conversation just for a little context.
Since 2017, there've been a small group of fundraisers of color that started meeting regularly to discuss and develop ideas around a way of fundraising that would not be grounded in perpetuating the very injustices that we have hoped to end. This group recognize that the current practices that we have in fundraising in nonprofits prevent important conversations about raise and equity and privilege, and proliferate the White Savior Complex, reinforcing transactional relationships with everybody involved. We've adopted and expanded on 10 philosophical principles by which fundraising could instead be grounded in racial and economic justice centering the community.
In July 2020, a huge thing happened. This small group of people based in Seattle used this intention to launch a content hub that would become a global resource. Communitycentricfundraising.org was created in order to provide a space for nonprofit folks, to reconcile the current realities of our capitalist systems based on White supremacy and how power exists within philanthropic engagement, and undermines the good work that we are all trying to do in this world.
We focus on nonprofits and especially in fundraising and had time to develop more equitable solutions. At our launch, more than 2,800 people from all over the world showed up. They attended. Our mailing list went from nonexistent to 10,000 people in the first couple of weeks. In a couple of months, we were having more than 18,000 unique visitors attend the site and check out the fresh content.
A Slack channel has been built based on requests, and we've been building communities. There are over 3,000 people now involved. You can sign in today as well. There are 76 city-based groups around the world, and they're talking 24/7 on that platform. So, both myself and Christina Shimizu are co-founders of Community-Centric Fundraising, and we have been so thrilled to see these resources take off.
So, that's a little bit of context, and now, we're going to dive in to the best part, which is this part two of The Racist Roots of Nonprofits and Philanthropy. It is one of our most popular episodes. The Ethical Rainmaker team is getting emails from all over the world about this episode, and recently, we've been hearing more from college classrooms, both law school classrooms, master's classrooms, nonprofit certificates, that The Ethical Rainmaker, but especially this episode and a couple of others are now being used as curriculum. So, we are so happy that Washington Nonprofits has brought us here today to have part two of The Racist Roots of Nonprofits and Philanthropy.
So, Chrissy, the number one comment we're receiving about this episode and people who are listening to it is that we really don't know the history of nonprofits and philanthropy. So, there's a lot of gratitude for this education that you've been providing us and context you've been providing us.
Today, I know we're going to revisit some of that history, but I think we also should address one of the biggest overarching questions that's been asked, which is, can change happen and how do we make it happen in our sector?
Christina Shimizu:
Whew! What a question to start with. I promise you I think we have about 40 minutes, and I will jump in to the theory, but first, I think we should start by just talking about our own personal transformation, how we grow to know ourselves as how we change the world. So, how did that change happen for you, Michelle? What woke you up and what politicized you?
Michelle Shireen Muri:
Well, I think as I described in the intro, my family is an immigrant family. We did not come to the US by choice. So, I don't think there was a beginning. I think it happened in the womb. I think that growing up knowing that my mom and my family had been torn apart and separated, fractured, never to be reunited again has been absolutely heartbreaking and completely fundamental. So, there was never a moment because it was the moment that I was born, I guess.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
Also, growing up, I grew up in a family that was culturally Muslim, and we grew up in a fundamentally Christian town. I got bullied for that and for other things, hate mail on my locker, et cetera. So, I would say politicization for me happened pretty early in Bothell, Washington. It's probably a different place now, but since then, I really found language to describe what was happening and understand my own journey when I started at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project. I've had a lot of amazing teachers through my life that have influenced my learning and my politics. It's been an amazing journey.
Christina Shimizu:
What brought you to your first nonprofit job?
Michelle Shireen Muri:
It was little an accident. I should tell that story some time. I won't do it today, but I was literally in a car accident that landed me with some time on my hands, a little bit of time on my hands while I was healing. I was inspired by a friend who basically hooked me up with a volunteer gig at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, and that's the first time where I saw people working in solidarity across cultures, across educational backgrounds and across economic privilege backgrounds to all work together towards one goal, and to see people stand up for immigrant rights when I had never seen it in the town that I grew up in. I mean, we had friends. We had allies, et cetera, but I had never seen it in that type of solidarity, and it really made a huge impact and definitely shaped my career. How about you?
Christina Shimizu:
Yeah. I love us just beginning and grounding this conversation in what brought us here today. Each of us comes here with a story, and everyone has their own individual story about what brought them into their work, about what shaped them, about the teachers in their lives, and to name those people, to know those people I think is a really important place to start. When we think about change and when we think about how to go about change, I think it's really just to remember who we are, reconnect with who we are.
I have a similar story, Michelle. I grew up in a biracial, multiracial home. For me, seeking out a language to understand the feelings that I felt my whole life of injustice and confusion I think was where I began on this path, and I always thought that it was something that I would read out of a book or find through a teacher or through higher education or through theory, and that's not always true. It wasn't even until later in my life that someone really connected doing anti-racism work to not just theory that's written in a book, but to knowing how it's manifested in my family and in my history.
There's a difference between knowing something versus having it fully integrated into your being. For instance, you might know something in your head, but then it takes a really long time to connect it to your heart and your behavior, and then you have those aha moments where you're like, "Oh, that's the thing that I'm doing right now," and making those connections every day I think is really so healing and to me, change is a process of healing, and it's a process of coming to know ourselves more deeply.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
Word. Is there anyone in particular that influenced your journey?
Christina Shimizu:
Oh, there's tons of people, yeah. I mean, I really want to shout out the book The Revolution Will Not Be Funded and all of its authors. I want to shout out Justice Funders and Grassroots Institute for Fundraising Training, GIFT, as being really foundational, I think, in the creation of CCF. I want to shout out the Social Justice Fund, obviously, local Mijo Lee was someone I look up to, and Simone has been a teacher of mine. My partner Dae (Dae Shik Kim Jr.) has been a teacher of mine, my community, my grandparents, my elders. So, I want to bring them into the room this morning and thank them.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
Thank you. What was your first, out of curiosity, what was your first nonprofit job? You know my story.
Christina Shimizu:
So, it's really funny. When I was young, too, I was like, "Oh, yeah. I want to do something that will help the world." To me, that meant working at a nonprofit. It didn't mean anything else, right? So, I was like, "Okay. I'm going to find roots in my community and work at a nonprofit," and I was able to get into my dream job at Solid Ground. That's a housing and human services nonprofit in Seattle, and I was going to be able to do some direct service work that I was really excited about that lost its funding right before it started.
Christina Shimizu:
Then one of my first mentors, Leah she brought me in to development and said, "There's this position opening. I'm going to mentor you and teach you along the way." So, that's how I got hooked into development, and I was actually really excited to have a development position because I think program staff are oftentimes disconnected from where the funding comes from for their work. At that time, I had no idea, and I knew that being in a development seat would help me understand those public-private relationships, the relationships with donors and the funding streams that I just hadn't connected yet, and it has. It really has informed my understanding of the nonprofit industrial complex.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
Thank you. You're listening to a live recording of The Ethical Rainmaker. I'm Michelle Shireen Muri. I'm in conversation with Christina Shimizu at the Washington State Nonprofit Conference in May 2021. Today, we're diving in to part two of The Racist Roots of Nonprofits and Philanthropy. If you haven't heard our first conversation from season one, make sure you give that a listen, too, because it provides a lot of context.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
So, let's visit some of the things that we discussed in our last podcast. Can nonprofits and philanthropy outgrow its racist roots?
Christina Shimizu:
Whew! Well, first, I want to note that when we're talking about a culture of care versus philanthropy as a political and economic system birthed from colonialism and evolved through capitalism, we're talking about two very different things with two different origin stories. Community care has been practiced since time and memorial by indigenous peoples, and some of the most incredible examples of networks of care have been created by Black queer and trans sex workers.
Christina Shimizu:
The modality that we exist within currently is one that is White-dominant, it's colonial, and it's neoliberal, and it starts in 1889. So, now, I'm going to really set up the framework and this part is just a bit more dense, but in 1889, that's about 130 years from the beginning of the industrial revolution, and only 24 year after Juneteenth when news reached Galveston, Texas that slavery had ended. The colonization of America is still happening and it's spreading West. In fact, Washington State, the state that we're in right now doesn't become a state until November 11th 1889.
Christina Shimizu:
Also in that year, Andrew Carnegie publishes an essay in the North American Review called The Gospel of Wealth. Carnegie is an American industrialist who made his money from steel. The Gospel of Wealth is credited as the theoretical and moral framework for inspiring philanthropy for rich people to invest in social good. Okay?
Christina Shimizu:
I read The Gospel of Wealth. I actually did, and it's on the Carnegie website right now. You could go to their webpage and you can read it for free, and you can see how it's still framed and contextualized, right? So, it's set up as this idea of good, but what really is happening in fact? Is it really that good?
Christina Shimizu:
During the 1870s and 1880s, the rise in power of organized labor through labor unions and mutual aid networks were threatening to the industrialists. People were asking for worker protections like healthy working conditions, limit to the workday, and workers were fighting for healthcare. We're still fighting for healthcare, right? At that time, healthcare was provided through strong mutual aid networks organized by neighbors and labor groups, not through companies or socialized with the government.
Christina Shimizu:
There were riots and railroad strikes in 1887 and 1886. There was a bombing at Chicago's Haymarket during the fight for the 10-hour workday. I just want y'all to hold that in your hearts, okay? There was a bombing at Chicago's Haymarket during the fight for the 10-hour workday. This was in 1886.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
From what? From what to 10 hours?
Christina Shimizu:
I feel like there were no labor standards at that point. Honestly, the Fair Labor Standard Act didn't even get passed until 1938, I think. Don't quote me on that. We'll put it in the show notes. Yeah, 1938. I think I'm right.
Christina Shimizu:
So, calling class struggle was the main motive for the creation of philanthropy, okay? I'm going to say it again for the people on the back. Calling class struggle was the main motive for the creation of philanthropy. It was to disorganize socialism and labor power. Essentially, we'll make these concessions to stop the uprisings, but it's just enough to pacify the streets, so that we could return to the status quo.
Christina Shimizu:
So, philanthropy, in my opinion, did not come from hopes and dreams of social good. In fact, Carnegie was a cynical dude. He acknowledges that capitalism creates inequality. Let's look at The Gospel of Wealth and if it's okay, I'm going to read a passage really quickly. This is Carnegie, okay? He says, "The price which society pays for the law of competition, like the price it pays for cheap comforts and luxuries is also great, but the advantage of this law are also greater still, for it is to this law that we owe our wonderful material development, which brings improved conditions in its train."
Christina Shimizu:
He says, "But whether the law be benign or not, we must say of it, as we say of the change in the conditions of men to which we have referred: It is here; we cannot evade it; no substitutes for it have been found; and while the law may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department. We accept and welcome therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial in the hands of a few, and the law of competition between these as being not only beneficial, but essential for the future progress of the race."
Whew! I just feel like that is so deeply cynical. Honestly, a little shockingly honest and self-aware on Carnegie's behalf, he was just straight up like, "Let's just be clear about the true function of capitalism that exploitation and inequality are the price we pay for cheap comforts and luxuries."
So, there it is, right? I'll just read one more excerpt to really drive the point home. Carnegie says, "It is a law, as certain as any of the others named, that men possessed of this peculiar talent for affair, under the free play of economic forces, must, of necessity, soon be in receipt of more revenue than can be judiciously expended upon themselves; and this law is as beneficial for the race as the others."
The Gospel of Wealth, the original framework of philanthropy is built upon an excuse for the accumulation of wealth and that it is beneficial to all even though it creates poverty. Let's just sit with that and ask ourselves how much has changed.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
So, just to rewind a little bit, Chrissy, is the big idea that philanthropy is set up to crack down unorganized labors, can we unpack that a little bit more, and is it inherently racist?
Christina Shimizu:
I mean, yes, we can unpack that a little bit more. Let's look at how philanthropy just exists because of income inequality, right? Because I think people could say, "Oh, was it really to crack down organized labor?" Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. In this instance, I just want to call in to the room impact versus intent. I think it's really fair to say, honestly, from all the Op-Eds that were published and all the research that has been done. That is for a whole separate podcast in and of itself. Yes, the intent was to disorganize labor, but regardless, that's the impact, and it happens because wealth can be accumulated so extremely unevenly through dispossession and exploitation.
Christina Shimizu:
I think coming from Seattle, the home of Amazon, let's look at Jeff Bezos. He has $189.7 billion as of this morning, billion dollars as Ru-Paul would say. How do we even conceive of that? Okay.
Christina Shimizu:
So, the Berkeley students, bless them, actually created a model for us to help us understand what a billion dollars is and they said that if you're able to save $100 per day, it would take 27,397 years to reach one billion. In other words, if you had one descendant per generation save $100 every day and each of you lived 90 years, it would take 304 generations of your descendants to save up a billion dollars, and Jeff Bezos has $189.7 billion. Why does a person need that much money? How on Earth have we come to a point where we've passively accept this?
Michelle Shireen Muri:
A few weeks ago, I interviewed Teddy Schleifer of Vox's Recode, and part of it is he's been hosting rooms on whether it's even ethical to be a billionaire, right? So, another question for another time and a really significant one for our sector, especially as we learn that the face of philanthropy is changing the face of foundations is changing in that foundations as we know them are actually going to really shrink compared to the number of multi-billionaires that are going to be engaged in philanthropy any day now and in our future. So, I think we're seeing that we're going to see the way that all of this works is going to completely change. This math that you're talking about is really important for us to understand.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
So, let's talk a little bit about this wealth and equity and the role that income inequality plays in all of this, how it's created.
Christina Shimizu:
Yeah. So, you asked if the roots of philanthropy are racist, and I would say that the roots of wealth accumulation are, of course, racist. They come through dispossession of land and genocide. They come through the enslavement of African peoples. Where does Jeff Bezos' wealth come from? How has the systems of colonization evolved into systems of capital and financialization? How are these systems basically evolutions in one of the same like Jim Crow and 13th Amendment and the criminal punishment system. It's all an evolution of the same.
Christina Shimizu:
So, looking at Jeff Bezos, Amazon has pickers in their distribution centers who are timed to fulfill orders and are penalized if they don't fulfill them fast enough, regardless of injury or their own health, right? So, we have this one end of the extreme and on the other end is Jeff Bezos with his billions of dollars.
Christina Shimizu:
Then speaking of Teddy and that great episode of The Ethical Rainmaker that you had with him, where he talks about MacKenzie Bezos and how MacKenzie wanted to empty the bank. She donated $4 billion last year in 2020, which was the most anyone has ever donated ever, but she ended the year with more money than she started because her money is tied up in the market. The market is tied to extractive practices, which it perpetuates because that is just the nature of how our economy is structured.
Christina Shimizu:
Foundations are a piece of that structure connected to tax codes, IRS rules, investment practices and cultural practices that are all set up to grow the corpus of wealth for already wealthy people. Honestly, once you have wealth, it's easier to grow your wealth and never forget that it comes from the exploitation of our most precious resources, our peoples, our lands, our air, our waters, and everything living on this planet.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
It's easy to forget that, especially in conversation about ... In that conversation with Teddy, it's like, "Well, what is she going to do?" The rich got richer, but we have to remember that it's because that wealth is invested in extractive economies, built off the backs of many, many people, and built off of extractive practices, for example, you can relate. My family's displacement and separation and shattering of our family structure directly to US greed and need for oil. So, super important for us to understand who we're playing with when we're playing in these arenas and what is actually happening, what the impact of that is.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
So, I want to move us into vision. What does an alternative look like?
Christina Shimizu:
When I envision justice and a truly healthy future, I don't envision every family having a donor-advised fund. Do you?
Michelle Shireen Muri:
No. No, it's terrible. What's happening right now with donor-advised funds, I believe, is truly terrible. It's practically a crime.
Christina Shimizu:
I mean, to me, it just symbolizes more inequality and unevenness. Even community foundations, for example, to reference another incredible conversation you had on your podcast with Heather Infantry.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
Heather is such a badass. She's amazing.
Christina Shimizu:
She's so dope. Heather, if you're out there, I have a friend crush on you. She was on the episode Disrupting Your Community Foundation.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
That's right.
Christina Shimizu:
She talked about how her community foundation in Atlanta, basically, had to give .. You don't wanted to respond to COVID. During the time of disproportionate health outcomes in Black and Pacifica communities, specifically, they created a rapid response fund and spent out $500,000 but not a single dollar went to a Black-led org, not one.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
Not one, not one dollar.
Christina Shimizu:
I mean, that is appalling, but after doing some digging, she discovered that there were many years that the foundations get Black-led orgs and rounds of funding, and that this deep under investment has been going on forever. I mean, last year, the New York Times reported that Black-led orgs received 45% less revenue than White-led orgs, and 91% less unrestricted assets. That piece, the unrestricted assets, really gets to me because philanthropy is complicit in such deep paternalism and policing of the Black community and how they spend money toward their own liberation. 91% less unrestricted funds.
So, there's something within this business model that is broken that I want to point out, and in Seattle, we have a local community foundation that is rather big and they have amazing staff working at heart and doing good work, but their fund is 10% foundation-directed grants and 90% donor-directed funds. That means that their revenue model is built on the basis of operating donor-advised funds. These fees go towards their overhead, their salaries, their ability to do their work.
I mean, this might seem obvious because they're running a business, but when you crack open the foundations annual report and glance at their website, it's not obvious. It's not. It's showcasing their community initiatives, but the DAFs are driving the revenue. They're really unregulated because it's difficult to implement regulations to those DAFs without potentially losing those customers to private wealth management firms.
So, the people not connected to community have the most power over communities. Again, that same mathematical pragmatism that Carnegie has kicks in when it comes pleasing donors and moving donors along and making concessions.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
That's right.
Christina Shimizu:
If the foundation loses DAF holders, what will happen to the good work that the DAF holders enabled the foundation to do? Is the foundation better than the private wealth management firm? These are honest complex questions. I think that they are real, but what I'm hoping us to just get out of this conversation is to recognize that it's a broken model.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
That's right. Thank you.
Christina Shimizu:
How on Earth can we solve the issues our communities face if we can't first acknowledge that there is a problem?
Michelle Shireen Muri:
That's right. Right? That's what Community-Centric Fundraising is about, and that's also what this podcast is about. The bodies of work that we're working through and together and at this conference that we're at right now live, these are the conversations that we need to be having, that we've been avoiding having because we are afraid of what might happen if a donor gets upset, if a foundation gets mad at us. We're shying away from these really important conversations that actually uncover and keep alive the actual dotted line between an extractive practice that has a real impact and the huge amounts of money that are made and then how it's spent out.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
This is a live recording of The Ethical Rainmaker at the Washington State Nonprofits Conference. Shout out to Washington Nonprofits for sponsoring this episode. We're talking with with Christina Shimizu about the problematic foundation of nonprofits and philanthropy. Find links to resources about this topic and learn more about Christina in our show notes at theethicalrainmaker.com.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
So, one of the biggest questions that's come up when folks are reconciling history, when ... You read The Revolution Will Not Be Funded or you might dive deeper into history, you might discover that the foundations that you're playing with have and are continuing to have deep roots, deeply problematic practices, right? So, when folks are reconciling history and they're reconciling what's happening, what do we do now?
Christina Shimizu:
Yeah. So, taking just one tiny step back, I want to acknowledge that I come from an Asian household, and we want wealth. My dad has worked his ass off for 74 years and counting trying to build wealth for me so that he can leave me with generational wealth.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
Both of my parents grew up without much money, and it was definitely a focus, too. It was a focus in our family, too, because survival was important and they didn't want to ever see us go through the same things. Yeah, huge focus.
Christina Shimizu:
I'm saying that because I don't want to be a purist and I don't want to be a reductionist because these questions are hard especially for people of color who just want to be able to afford rest, want to be able to afford time with their family. All I'm saying is that the system of racialized capitalism forces us to make these awful concessions of either the environment or pitying ourselves against other communities of color in order for us to get ahead. When you step in to this system, you're stepping on top of someone else.
Christina Shimizu:
So, what I want as a foundation of this work that we're doing is actually something that is part of truth and reconciliation. Can we just name these dynamics as a starting point because there's so much fear around talking about capitalism because it seems too big to fail or too much to take on?
Christina Shimizu:
Carnegie referred to capitalism as a law, as though it is a force of God or of nature that is as true as gravity and can't be stopped. Rand and Milton Freeman and Neil, other people do this all the time, right? Ursula K. Le Guin, I'm going to call Ursula into the room, very dope sci-fi author, she said, "We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable, but then so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words." Speak it into being.
Christina Shimizu:
I honestly just think let's just name where we are right now. Let's just name where we are as a beginning, as a jumping off point, and just be able to say that these problems exist and not hide them in our mission statements like, "I'm sorry, but our foundations are not increasing access and equity. They are not. They're a political and economic tool that perpetuates wealth and equality and disproportionate wealth accumulation."
Michelle Shireen Muri:
Thank you. Thank you for that. I want to make sure that you've talked a little bit about philanthropy and you just mentioned foundations. I'd love for you to just touch briefly on what it also can look like for nonprofits to be complicit.
Christina Shimizu:
Yes. Okay. I also want to leave on a high note because part of the just transition framework is that it's got to be soulful. It's got to be joyful. We got to have hope. There are ways of being in community with each other that are profoundly beautiful and healing. It's like, "How do we just open up those ways of being?" Along the way, recognize the ways that we are doing harm and recognizing that harm reduction is important, it's an important step along the way, but it's not liberation.
Christina Shimizu:
We shouldn't stop there, and I think that's where all nonprofits can begin to recognize how they perpetuate unhealthy dynamics because the end goal should be something much bigger than our individual missions, and the social organization that we exist within today. So, let's just not let us limit our own thinking and our own dreaming, and our own visioning by getting tired. Let's care for one another. At the root of this, this is all about people, and love of people, and when you start to find yourself getting frustrated or hating everyone around you, I think that that's when it's time to reset, take a break, get some perspective, get rooted into the spirituality of this. It's about love.
Christina Shimizu:
I just want to say that this piece about beginning in relationship with one another is so huge and connecting with yourself first, and that this work takes time and it takes trust. Like Adrienne Maree Brown said, "It moves at the speed of trust," and when we dig into the actual complexities our communities, our networks will fall apart unless we trust and have genuine relationships with each other outside of work. So, are we investing in that?
Christina Shimizu:
Another aspect of that, too, is recognizing the people who are unpaid fighting for their liberation every day. Really, that's where I define activism. I don't define activism happening in nonprofits because nonprofits are institutionalized. Nonprofits are part of the institution and are limited by the institution. So, the work that we do in our nonprofit is harm reduction, but it's not activism. I think recognizing that, too, and recognizing where we focus our relationships, are we investing all of our money in relationship building with our donors, but not in trust building and relationship building with people on the grassroots?
Christina Shimizu:
When they ask us to sign on to defund the police, are we apprehensive about doing that? What is holding us back from doing that? This is something that I think that is for another podcast, but movement capture and nonprofit coaptation, taking what is born in the streets and then sanitizing it or discrediting it or just co-opting it and watering it down, and doing that same thing that Carnegie did just like giving people enough to pacify them to return to the status quo without digging in to even an acknowledgement that what we're feeding people into is broken.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
That's so powerful. Thank you, Chrissy. I know that for everybody listening there are so many things that we wanted to fit in to this episode with so many topics that we hope to jump into in the future. I would really say my personal reaction is I have seen a lot of different nonprofits start taking the time to slow down, start talking more deeply with each other, and part of those conversations, aside from healing and rest, also really need to be about how your nonprofit is complicit in these systems. One concept we didn't get to that I hope that we'll get to very soon is how nonprofits can act as a soft arm of the state.
Christina Shimizu:
Can I just tell a story about that, Michelle?
Michelle Shireen Muri:
That's one of my favorite topics because you taught me about that concept personally.
Christina Shimizu:
Give me one minute. Can I have one minute?
Michelle Shireen Muri:
Get it.
Christina Shimizu:
Okay. So, let me take us back a minute, okay? Just about meeting our own discomfort with curiosity. This is perfect. So, I was talking about defunding the police and people not being open to that and nonprofits. If something comes up that makes you scoff, like a person talking about abolishing capitalism or abolishing police, ask yourself where that discomfort is coming from and follow yourself down the road and stay open and don't close off. I had so many conversations with some of my closest, most beloved elders, who did not think defunding the police was possible a year ago. They thought that defund police was a horrible slogan.
Christina Shimizu:
I don't know why, but people really got fixated on the slogan. It's going to turn people off. Turn who off? People couldn't say Black Lives Matter five years ago. Defund the police or abolish our racist carceral system, why is this so important? Well, it's important because why are police showing up to wellness checks with guns? This is important because Charleena Lyles, a Black mother was shot multiple times in front of her children by the police who had responded to her home to wellness check calls many times. She was living in a nonprofit housing, and this nonprofit did not have a system in place around not calling the cops.
Christina Shimizu:
So, to me, this is tied to defunding the police and funding housing healthcare, drug user healthcare, childcare, nutritious food in our communities, equitable development, clean transportation, the ability to stay close to our families and support systems and not to be displaced, but to also not feed folks into a broken system where the nonprofit is just as harmful. The nonprofit perpetuates just as much harm, and examples of that harm are retraumatizing people during intakes, not having don't call the cops rules, not having gender affirming policies in your organization, separating families, that sort of thing. So, I think nonprofit perpetuate harm all the time because we're systems built by people.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
So, just to revisit, again, Charleena Lyles was six months pregnant and the connection to nonprofits is, what? Her murder is connected to nonprofits, how?
Christina Shimizu:
She was living in a nonprofit-operated housing at the time.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
Without policies that would actually protect the people who they were meant to serve. You can go and read the records and it happens all over the place, right? Nonprofits are complicit. We're complicit in separating families. We're complicit. I just get so, so irate whenever I'm listening to somebody talk about human trafficking because there are so many ways we're problematic when we're trying to provide services to folks struggling with domestic violence situations or sexual assault cases.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
There's so many ways that we as nonprofits are trying to help and can be so problematic and so complicit in creating actually more damage. I'm seeing in the chat flow that it's endless, and it is endless. There are so many ways in which we're complicit that we really don't take a look at.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
When you see something, if you don't live in a neighborhood where police violence is obvious, and then you hear about somebody being murdered, you're like, "Okay. Yeah, that's that over there. It doesn't have anything to do with me," but we're working in a sector that is often participating in those systems. For example, in this case, the nonprofit gave that call, may have given that call, regularly had police over. All their folks may have had mental health issues, et cetera, but what is the purpose of that nonprofit is ultimately to protect and shelter people. Yet, one of their folks was murdered in that housing, right? We have to make these connections and understand our very roles and really take a look at how all of that goes down.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
Well, I know that our team is here today. Isaac Kaplan-Woolner, Kasmira Hall, and Rachelle Pierce, and I believe that Isaac is going to throw out some questions for you.
Isaac Kaplan-Woolner:
Thanks, Michelle. We've got a lot of great questions. One asks from the chat, "How do we shift our organizations to build community support versus chase wealthy White donors, wealthy White major donors for big checks?" So, just looking for some practical tips there.
Christina Shimizu:
Yeah. I think that it's important, too, to recognize that we are in a transition, and capitalism and money is how we eat. It's a conundrum, but I think that we need to, as organizations, actually have deeper conversations about our growth and how we grow, and if it's the right time to grow and knowing who else is in our ecosystem doing this work, and to partner more deeply in community with one another, and make sure that nonprofit themselves aren't hoarding resources, and then to build power, collective power, so that we can approach philanthropy with demands, with deep transformative demands about even just changing the smallest things around funding stipulations and who is visible in the funding landscape and who is not, who is deemed worthy of receiving their first grant and who is not.
Christina Shimizu:
That to me is the place where we start. It's just assessing the landscape and building social pressure because philanthropists are people, too. Philanthropists, they're working within the same system trying to, many are to, I truly believe, be along this just transition path as well.
Christina Shimizu:
So, work with those groups that are willing to create forms of social pressure as well to be able to do deeper relationship building and accountability work and community. Build out participatory budgeting systems with your community.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
Word.
Christina Shimizu:
Build out participatory research projects with your community. Find ways for the community, not the donors and not the government funders who are going to stipulate what your program should be. Support the community in doing that and finding ways of doing that, and find funders who are willing and down to fund that for you. Then I think that's one way where you just take a step into this transition together.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
I would add, take a look at the 10 principles of Community-Centric Fundraising. I think that provides, especially on the content hub that we created, that really provides some nuance, just a little bit of nuance that you can go through and take a look at what kinds of conversations can you have.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
Also, there's a great book called Unicorns Unite. That was written by three authors including our Seattle's Vu Le. Yeah. Really, that book predates the CCF situation that we have been building, but does talk about what kinds of relationships you could have with your funders if you wanted to.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
I myself was really lucky to have one of the biggest gift that I ever raised as a fundraiser was one of the largest gift in the immigrant rights movement. That was from a relationship. That was authentic and real and built over time with lots of trust. With those donors, we could have talked about absolutely anything. I know that that's rare, but creating that openness and creating new norms, I think, culture moves faster than anything else, and we're seeing it, even in just this pandemic. The logistical situation of, "No, we really are, just everybody is going to work from home now." If you have a job where you can do that, we're all just going to ... You can make really swift transitions quickly if everyone is on the same page.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
So, yeah, I love that question. What's another question we can answer, Isaac?
Isaac Kaplan-Woolner:
All right. Mary Bigba Lewis asks, "What are ways your nonprofit is addressing racist roots?" We've had a number of other questions asking about examples of good work you've seen in organizations addressing racism and racist roots.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
I love that. Go ahead, Chrissy. I'd love to chime in, but please.
Christina Shimizu:
Okay. I have two answers to this. First, I want to start by saying that I am so deeply sorry for bringing Charleena's name into our conversation before for setting up that I was going to tell that story because it's really hard, and how she was murdered is really hard to hold. Along that line, I think that it's really scary to admit when you mess up and when you've potentially harmed someone. I think that harm happens all the time in our communities, and learning how to address harm, learning how to take accountability, learning how to apologize are all things that I am still learning how to do, and learning how to do as a friend, as a sister, as a partner, and also someone who works in a nonprofit and in a position of power and leadership.
Christina Shimizu:
I think that nonprofits don't know how to apologize. A lot of people don't. I interned at city hall and someone wrote in, because they were upset about ... I was in high school. They're upset about the book mobile not coming to their neighborhood. I was like, "Oh." I was writing the email response to the constituents, and I was like, "Can we apologize?"
Christina Shimizu:
The person that was in the office with me was like, "No. You never say you're sorry. Saying your sorry admits that you did something wrong."
Christina Shimizu:
I was like, "What?" I see that in leadership. I see that replicated in the obfuscation of leaders talking around things. Just say you're sorry.
Christina Shimizu:
Then the other thing that I would say is adopt a just transition framework if you can and really-
Michelle Shireen Muri:
Can you say what that means, though? I don't think we have enough context on that.
Christina Shimizu:
Yeah, we don't, and we don't have enough text. So, we'll drop those links in the chat, but movement generation and many others like the Alaska Native movement have been building out these frameworks with climate, justice activists for years. It's the idea of moving away from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy, and what it will take for us to get there.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
There we go.
Christina Shimizu:
I think in that, inherent in that is being committed to Black liberation and indigenous sovereignty at its root, and when nonprofits make big statements about what they are committed to and their DEI statements like, "If that is not defined, if that is not built into a work plan, if that is not in some way action-oriented." It doesn't have to be White culture action-oriented. It can be like let's take some time to understand the history of these relationships, the history of this land, the history of who lives here, who has steward this thing, who's still here. What is the political and cultural ties in our community that we are connected to? Let's start asking ourselves these questions and how we lean in to conflict and how we lean in to politics. I think that that is one way that we can get real. I don't know if that was very concise. I apologize.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
I think that was great. I would say that one of the things that I see as a consultant within organizations is that there's the good intention is there, the willingness is there, the recognition is there. Maybe folks have done deep work with themselves, et cetera, but you know what's not? What's often missing is accountability structure like, "Okay. So, you have a DEI statement or you have some framework that you're going to try to follow, but who is accountable and how?"
Michelle Shireen Muri:
So often, nonprofits are leaning on their staff and not the leadership like it's supposed to trickle out, and we are not figuring out as nonprofits how to actually have those conversations.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
Another place that I have seen it a lot in the last year, y'all, and we've got to talk about this. This will be some other episode down the road, but when we have boards of directors who are getting in the way of what the whole rest of the organization believes, but the board isn't values aligned, a huge problem. Who's responsible, whose accountable, et cetera, right?
Michelle Shireen Muri:
So, I think we need to take a look at that work as well. Who are we choosing to partner with? Why are we choosing to partner with them? What is actually going to create change? What are our accountability structures looking like? Because I think for so many well-meaning organizations and individuals, that piece is completely missing, and that's how we want to move forward.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
I think we might have time for one more conversation. Isaac?
Isaac Kaplan-Woolner:
Yeah. So, someone in the chat says, "I've been thinking a lot about Edgar Villanueva's discussion of rejecting versus reforming philanthropy and how there's need for people doing both of that work. Can you all share musings of where you fall into those approaches and how you got there with words of inspiration for others around this?"
Christina Shimizu:
I don't understand the question. Was the question do we want to reform philanthropy or throw it away?
Isaac Kaplan-Woolner:
That's my understanding. Maybe, Michelle, you have some context around Edgar Villanueva's discussion of rejecting versus reforming philanthropy.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
I mean, as was mentioned, I worked with Edgar for about a year and a half. He was actually my first client, he and the Decolonizing Wealth Project, when I became a consultant, which was an amazing, amazing journey. We had a lot of these conversations, though, around what is possible, right? What is possible, rejecting versus reforming? I think that each of us can fall on a different place on the spectrum depending on what is best for our communities, right?
Michelle Shireen Muri:
When we look at, for example, when we're looking at Community-Centric Fundraising, there are 10 principles, and they're philosophical principles. What we believe, a group of us who were people of color, fundraising and fundraising adjacent, I guess, what that is is actually not a solution, right? It is not rejection. It is rejecting some of the practices we see. It is creating ways to do things better.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
It's acknowledging that the foundation of nonprofits and philanthropy are deeply rooted in White supremacy, and it still doesn't give, nor does The Revolution Will Not Be Funded, still doesn't give away to completely turn it over and reject everything because we're living in a capitalist society and there isn't a clear framework in those areas for us to transition to or enough momentum.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
I think, Chrissy, you probably have a much deeper political analysis of that, but, yeah. I'm always looking at this question myself.
Christina Shimizu:
Yeah. I guess I would just add to that that the spirit of philanthropy as it evolved, not Carnegie's necessarily, but the culture of care and of care work and investing in our community and loving one another and caring for one another. I think that that's beautiful, and that spirit will always grow and evolve and hopefully deepen over time. It has been a practice, as I said, since time and memorial with indigenous peoples that, honestly, all of us should spend more time, all of us who are non-Native learning and understanding. I think that there's a difference between how care manifests itself culturally in communities, and how philanthropy manifests itself as a political and economic system.
Christina Shimizu:
I do not think that philanthropy as a political and economic system has a future because I don't think that we're going to be able to survive under capitalism for very much longer unless we change our structures. So, I think that that's how I would answer that. I'm okay. We're going to have to reform philanthropy as we walk in the just transition, but let's start thinking about something much bigger. It's all just a BandAid, ultimately, until we're able to truly build an alternative together, and that takes time.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
Word. Chrissy, thank you so much for your passion and for your dedication, for doing all of the research that you do and choosing to teach, and being so active in our communities. Thank you for sharing your analysis with us today.
Christina Shimizu:
Thanks for having me. Thank you for your grace and thank you for being my community and holding me as I learn with you.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
That's the thing. What matters is that we're trying, right? I'm always more conservative than I want to be, and I have to learn better all the time. We teach each other, and that's really important.
Christina Shimizu:
Yeah. That's the heart and soul of abolition, by the way. Just messing up, being accountable, being held by community, not being thrown away as we learn.
Michelle Shireen Muri:
That's it for The Ethical Rainmaker. Closing out season two with a special live episode. I'm your host, Michelle Shireen Muri. You can find show notes and transcripts of this and every episode at theethicalrainmaker.com.
This episode was sponsored by Washington Nonprofits to which we give our thanks. We're usually a self-funded project. So, if you enjoy this podcast, and you'd like to inspire us to continue this beautiful series through your financial contribution, we'll take it on Patreon. We now have 43 Patrons, including our newest friends, Erin, Chris, Katelyn, Sarah, Elisa, Elena, and Maria. Thanks, y'all.
Please do pass on the word about this pod to people you think might love it, your coworkers, friends, collaborators. Subscribe to our podcast and our mailing list to get the best of everything that we have to offer and, of course, you can also find us on socials, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. We have more incredible episodes on their way coming up in season three.
The Ethical Rainmaker is produced in Seattle, Washington by Kasmira Hall and Isaac Kaplan-Woolner, with socials by Rochelle Pierce. I'm your executive producer. Our awesome theme song is I'm Gold by Trick Candles. You can find the Trick Candles on Bandcamp.
We are so looking forward to continuing these amazing conversations. So, see you in season three.
