How can white fundraisers best ally with their BIPOC colleagues?

The Fundraising Talent Podcast

I’m always grateful when guests like Becky allow me to integrate their thinking and are likewise confident enough to integrate mine. Today, Becky and I wrestled with how we as white fundraisers can be allies with our black, brown and indigenous colleagues. To begin with, I suspect that what triggers most of our hesitancy is making our way through conversations of this sort without putting our foot in our mouth, saying something we might regret, or implying that we’re completely naive and out of touch. My inclination is always to jump in with both feet, to be receptive to feedback, and to be able to admit quickly when you’ve made a mistake.

Becky fully recognizes that she has resources available to her that would benefit her BIPOC colleagues in meaningful and significant ways. In partnership with our colleagues at CCF, she has begun writing some thought-provoking pieces that reveal some of the inherent tension that many of us feel in these discussions. I suspect that conversations of the sort that Becky and I shared will increasingly becoming the norm - conversations in which white Americans put themselves out there; share their experiences as allies; discuss what did and didn’t work, what they learned from their experience, and how one can get better in these roles.

Rebecca has worn many hats in the nonprofit sector: co-artistic director/co-founder of a theatre company, stewardship/event planner for a private school, program developer for a refugee resettlement org, and director of development/chief recycler for a youth arts org. Becky lives in Connecticut with her complicated and beautiful blended family. She is passionate about bees, ranked choice voting, and the NYTimes Spelling Bee.

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