#therevolutionwillnotbefunded

I want this sent out to every Chairman, Board  and CEO of every foundation. We believe in you just as we believe in ourselves for the know-how and passion and resources needed. I can't wait to wake up in a world where after some amazing work and breakthroughs we have come to a place of SEEING each other and working together. Sawubona.

We know we perpetuate this villain-izing of your character by continuously believing that you aren't out here to support us, and that you are perpetuating a system that is unfair on purpose to keep us down. No, I believe you are just protecting yourself, you're really the ones on defence and we are the offence. I know that if we forgive you for your ignorance and fear and you forgive us for ours, we can come into awareness that we are all one in the same.  I am We.

I refuse to think social enterprise is the answer to the nonprofit industrial complex, that's a shift but isn't  the evolution. The evolution must continue to a human level then to a spirit level for all living things. That's it. Point, blank, period. I am so bothered the strategies that I keep hearing from people in this sector. "Well, we've gotta be like them, think like them! Gain power by gaining our own revenue like for-profit businesses! Then we can support our own!" Fuck that. It isn't about "supporting our own!" It's about balancing shit out! Wealthy people need a whole lot that we have to offer. I feel a real stubbornness about adopting their strategies that are created and sustained out of selfishness, trying to maintain their power over us. I am too impatient for the infiltration we need to do to adopt their strategies. The change for the world I'm talking about is beyond capitalism. It's about the Spirit! We don't even realize we are organisms of nature yet! So many people still believe we are separate from the Earth and that is an object, it's a dead thing. How can we even address environmental issues if we see it as separate from us and already dead?! We can't protect life of Earth if we deem it dead already. 

As Maya Angelou says about Tupac Shakur, "do you know how important you are"?  We have to be saying this to each other, the 1% to us, us to the 1% - regardless of how much money and privilege you have you HAVE to know this. To my people, you cannot continue saying that those with privilege don't need to be reminded of the power and influence they have. The power and influence they have is futile, fragile and superficial. You cannot walk around saying they do not deserve your praise or your recognition of their spirit and fears. That's YOUR entitlement at play. Each and every single person that reads this and walks this Earth deserves to know how important they are. Except we reserve these words for very few people in our lives. How are we supposed to move forward collectively if we cannot even SEE each other's souls? Nor grant the very same love we want to others that we want ourselves? 

Compassion won't come towards you until you show compassion to others. 

If you don't know about Ubuntu or the phrase Sawubona, please look them up. These are philosophies by which I have chosen to strive to live by and ancient cultures have lived by for centuries. 

I worked tirelessly for the last couple of years to build a network of youth leaders as well as an additional ring surrounding them of mentors supporting the core collaborative. I have worked to ensure the core collaborative sees each other, supports each other and has each other's backs and lifts each other up. Now it is a time where it seems that I have to ask those who traditionally do not mingle with our people, to ask for support and to communicate our impact and our work in a way that they will understand and be soulfully invested in. I am feeling tired and overwhelmed, like. But I know I must come back deeper into mySelf, to my spirit’s truth and use the powers that I find there to move forward.

Everyone warned me about getting jaded by the sector years ago. How many times do we have to repeat this cycle of burnt out changemakers?

But if you really cared about social change, you would do something about the after you've read this. As an insightful and experienced colleague of mine said, "The philanthropic sector isn't caught up to what's needed in the community and our society." And she's right. We know what's going down, what's needed, what's not happening that should be and what trends are happening. You have to be open to hearing our insight. We can be your advisors, again, if you really do care about social change.

You're playing with people's livelihoods, vital community relationships and mental health. People are feeding their children and housing themselves with your grant funding. People are helping to uplift, protect and save peoples lives with your money. You have to allow yourself to see the pain that sparks and lasts for yearrrsss because of the decision to pull funding from a project/program/organization. Do you know what it's like to tell your youth, clients, community that you serve that you can't help them anymore because next month you won't have funding and now you have to go protect yourself and find a different job to feed yourself? Do you know what happens to that young person or client that now has to find a different outlet, a different safe space, a different mentor, a different pass time to deal with pain, and anger and while figuring out how to live a whole new lifestyle? 

My Journey

I came into a community and collaborative that was arguably dying, dead or just in transition. It was on hiatus. This community of youth organizers, activists and leaders were exhausted, bitter, jaded, overwhelmed, disassociated and talented, gifted, passionate and revolutionary all at the same time. I came into this community with the task to rebuild the collaborative. I had practically no previous experience with this particular type of work. But I didn't have nearly as much support as I wanted, I didn't have as much advisors as I wanted, I didn't have a community to ask questions to or act as my soundboard. They were too busy, overworked, overwhelmed, hurt, offended, or defensive. 3 Years later, I see why. This sector, and this work isn't feeding us at all. My bitterness and resentment to this entire community development scene in my City emerged and I had to get over it to move the network forward. To rebuild from scratch, find new youth member organizations, find new advisors, find an entirely new generation of youth organizers to support each other in the collaborative and rewrite policies, strategies, grants and a credo to re-brand and re-birth this network. I am very proud of the work I've been able to do and what I've accomplished over the last 3 years, with little support from folks. I don't blame anyone here. Mostly, I blame the system for the bitterness and reluctancy to support anything new in this sector and I also blame myself for not reaching out for help as much as I could have. (That’s my own personal issue of difficulty reaching out for help). I also acknowledge the roses in the concrete who have been there for me and have helped me build this thing. I see you. You've wiped my tears when I thought I couldn't do this anymore and I wanted to give up. You told me I was making tremendous change in peoples' lives (whether it was true or not) and it made me feel valued. You told me I was changing YOUR life, and that always gave me more fire and fuel to keep going. You helped me write grants, tweet about us, talked to people about us, connected us with people, organizations, etc., acted as my soundboard and just heard me out. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I went through a spiritual evolution from martyrdom, particularly while volunteering fulltime for 8 months, to knowing that this work is empowering me and as I empower me, I empower the network. But I also knew that my drive was much more than martyrdom. I knew I had a duty, and I didn't want to abandon it. I also knew that if I kept at it, and the stars and the energies aligned at the right serendipitous moments because of the positive energy I invested in the collaborative, that the network could continue to grow bigger, deeper and wider. I have no idea what the future holds for this organization, for this city, for society, or the philanthropic sector. But I do ask this one thing:

Remember your humanity. Social change is about HUMANS after all. But it seems our entire society, and all sectors have forgotten that humans are part of nature and we've forgotten our nature. 

The crazy part about this whole thing is that I'm one of hundreds of thousands of people that work in this sector and cry at their desk, have so much fury and anger at the red tape and oppression that prevents us from uplifting our communities. I'm not going to get into the nonprofit industrial complex deeply here but I want you to know how much pain is caused because of your funding systems. I don't believe oppression is consciously intentional to keep particular people down, I believe it's a protective act to keep yourselves afloat. To the wealthy, you're more important as a human being to this Earth than to be worried about how much money you made compared to your competitor last quarter, or how many homes you own around the world, or how many cars you have. You are not exercising the brilliant gifts you have to offer to transform our world.

I don't have much else to say, there's probably more but this would then become an entire book. 

- 

p.s.: and to the people in this sector who keep "winning" in the nonprofit game, and keep receiving grants cuz you have become buddy buddy with your funders, where's your voice in advocating for this stuff? u trying to stay silent cuz you get to sleep in the master’s house now? do not succumb to the game of fighting for scraps. i know you are taking care of you and your own, but think further out, deeper, wider.

Additional reading:

"The Revolution Will Not Be Funded"

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One of my favourite poems about compassion: