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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Today I had the privilege of joining a panel of philanthropy leaders on “Sustainability: Insights from the Experts.” We were invited to share our thoughts on sustainable fundraising with a roomful of small and medium-sized nonprofit grantees of a large national organization. The national org invited us to their annual convening because of course they aren’t […]
I’ll be honest. This is the first year I have really *cared* about Juneteenth, which celebrates the end of “legal” enslavement of people in America as Union troops arrived to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas… two years after its signing, but better late than never, huh? Last June, like every year since I first […]
I’ve been back from the #2018GEO conference for days but I’m still unpacking all the inspiration and desperation that so many funders and organizers poured forth from their personal experience of the inequity and injustice that haunt our country, our communities, and our sector. I’ll be working on this for years, but let me start by sharing […]
Swept away at yesterday’s #2018GEO sessions by inspired speakers holding up a mirror to philanthropy’s responsibilities and practices around equity and racial justice. I couldn’t post and feel at same time, so here’s a roundup of a few well-aimed arrows I managed to jot down that hit me the hardest in the heart: “Your CEO should be […]
Homemade scones, mismatched cups and broken clocks from Goodwill, plastic roses and foofy pens from dollar store, stacks and stacks of my beloved childhood books… and a packed agenda which my brilliant staff co-led to successful completion. Another happy and productive quarterly themed retreat!
I am where I need to be today, apparently. Just received the gift of these words from Tara Houska of the Ojibwe Tribe, reflecting back to me why I’ve recently been immersing myself in the historical and contemporary reality of racism in the US: “Because you cannot transition to justice without first knowing the truth […]
Dammit, I did it again. I completely missed the point. Heart was open, eyes were closed. Want to see if you do better than I did? So there I am, visiting LURN with some of my Southern California Leadership Network Leadership LA cohort on Friday. Merced, who is one of their clients, comes in to talk about the successful […]