Flashbacks

In the last 48 hours I have been in multiple meetings, conversations, text threads, Facebook groups that all are starting to realize one thing: we are all about to lose a lot of money. Galas and conferences are begin cancelled. Programming is getting pulled. Clients are stopping work indefinitely. Fundraising campaigns are being put on hold. Endowments are crashing with the stock market. One client I spoke to said they learned their insurance policy doesn’t cover losses from bacterial or viral infections. No one - not one person - knows what to do and how to make up for these losses, no matter how short-term they may end up being.

Marisa FalconMarch 12, 2020coronavirus, COVID-19, philanthropy, fundraising

Misogyny & How It Affects Nonprofit Salaries

I’ve been reading Winners Take All, the thought-provoking, occasionally maddening book by Anand Giridharadas about how the solutions to income inequality/racism/sexism/all the other -isms, have become dictated by wealthy people who earned their inordinate amount of money by building businesses that are deeply entrenched in all the systems that subvert the people that the wealthy people have now decided to help. I have a lot of thoughts about this book but for now I’m going to focus on one throwaway line about how, instead of fighting to change systems that reduce systemic oppression of people, people argue that people in the nonprofit world should be paid better to retain/attract well educated and/or experienced leaders.

Marisa FalconMay 28, 2019nonprofits, nonprofit management, philanthropy, fundraising, wealth gap, sexism, racism

How Financial Transparency Could Revolutionize Giving

I went to a workshop about the new accounting laws for nonprofits (I’m very fun at parties). The instructor informed us that according to the new standards, organizations are now going to have to list not only their total assets but the restrictions on those funds so that at the bottom there’s a total of what is actually left for general operating.

In his discussion of this, the instructor kept saying - this is a huge deal. You’re not going to want to do it; your Board isn’t going to want to do it. It’s going to make your finances look bad. Funders are going to panic. This is huge (and this is bad).

Which is all true. But maybe it’s about time people realized just how bad it is.

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