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Andie Byrd Advising

fund + organizational development for social + racial justice

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senior advisor to nonprofits

fundraising, communications + strategy grounded in social + racial justice

Onwards...

$90 million raised

25+ years of experience

Onwards...

personal + professional blog

usually mixed with humor

Onwards...
vintage Burger King polyester uniform
September 23, 2018October 21, 2024Racial and social justice

Have it your way

Summer of 1986. It’s hot and humid already at 6am as I’m on my way to start my shift at the 24-hour Burger King on the Mass Turnpike near my house. I’m walking fast and sweating in my too-big polyester uniform, desperately hoping none of the kids from school happen to see me because both […]

September 16, 2018October 21, 2024Racial and social justice, Reading list

The Racecar Report

What I just learned about race here in my car while listening to The Half Has Never Been Told by Edward Baptist: slave-grown cotton in Massachusetts and the truth about zombies.

September 15, 2018October 21, 2024Racial and social justice

THIS. IS. NOT. HISTORY.

This. Is. Not. History. Most people running our country and policing our streets were either growing up when this happened, or were brought up by people who lived through this. This moment – which itself was not unique or isolated and was a product of the centuries that came before it – formed the moment […]

book cover of The Half Has Never Been Told
September 12, 2018October 21, 2024Racial and social justice, Reading list

The Half Has Never Been Told

Absolutely chilling. As in I’m literally shivering while I listen to this audiobook methodically examine the historical truths of how enslavement powered the economic and geographic expansion of our country. Gasps just from today’s drive: 1. Yeah sure we all learned “the invention of the cotton gin revolutionized cotton production.” But did any of us […]

September 9, 2018October 21, 2024Racial and social justice

Hysterical? It’s not even funny

When you call someone “hysterical” for protesting, say, Brett Kavanaugh‘s Supreme Court nomination or unfair umpires or workplace sexual harassment: There is a reason this is a gendered insult and it’s not just because oh, we traditionally associate over-emotionalism with women. “Hysterical” comes from the Greek “hustera” which literally means “womb.” Do I think people […]

August 18, 2018October 21, 2024Racial and social justice, Reading list

This is not a story to pass on

Still feeling the echoes of finishing Toni Morrison’s Beloved this week. And the echoes of having been so wrong about how it would end. (Semi-spoiler ahead if you haven’t read it – and if you haven’t YOU SHOULD.) I listened to it slowly as an audiobook, read by Toni Morrison herself. Caught up in a […]

The Harvard College emblem: a shield with the word "VERITAS" on it
August 11, 2018October 21, 2024Racial and social justice

Truth.

I want to thank the troll who gave me an epiphany in an argument about affirmative action last weekend. Nah, not the one he was trying for, about how much fairer it would be to have a “purely meritocratic” system for college admissions. But in thinking about who gets in despite not really having shown […]

August 2, 2018October 21, 2024Management philosophy

It’s summertime summertime sum sum summertime

Summer Picnic team retreat! Borrowed our office’s fake trees for dressing up conference stages, draped the tables and chairs in “wood,” and loaded up the side table with fruit, cold cuts, potato chips, pies, and old-fashioned sodas. Everyone got a dollar-store flower pen and notebook re-covered in woodgrain shelf paper. Plus plastic bugs on the […]

July 28, 2018October 21, 2024Racial and social justice, Reading list

Was blind but now I see

This is my copy of Gone with the Wind. I remember writing a book report on it in sixth grade, so I must have gotten it when I was at most ten years old. As you can see, I literally read it to tatters as a kid. Honestly, that’s partly because of my OCD-related pulling […]

July 10, 2018October 21, 2024Personal philosophy, Racial and social justice

Living in the past

Time is doubling back on itself oddly in this place that echoes deeply for me, in this moment that echoes deeply for our country. Every summer of my childhood, the top floor of the middle cottage was ours for 2 glorious weeks. It was time out of the world, with no phone or TV or […]

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