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Welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

It's Wednesday, October 29th.

I'm Leta Obertacz, senior vice president of philanthropy at the Cleveland Foundation and a proud member of the City Club Board of directors.

I'm pleased to introduce today's forum, which is part of the City Club's Authors in Conversation series, as well as the Eugene H. Free time lecture presented in partnership with our friends at the center for Community Solutions.

As 113 year old Free Speech Forum, the City Club is no stranger to speakers saying the quiet part out loud.

In fact, it is encouraged the culture of raw honesty, combined with civil and civic dialog, has created some of the most memorable moments in City Club history.

Today, we are keeping with this tradition and what it is a privilege it is to hear from Vu Le, the writer of the globally popular popular and viral blog nonprofit as You.

I can't say the word.

Luis, wildly known for his irreverent sense of humor, no B.S.

approach, and yes, his love of unicorns.

In the audience today, we have many magical unicorns.

Lou has uniquely mastered the use of his satirical approach that calls out the common and quiet frustrations of nonprofit professionals.

While reading his work, you can simultaneously feel attacked and validated.

If you know you know.

But that is what makes Vu's work.

A breath of fresh air and required reading for anyone who wants to keep the status quo.

In his latest book, Reimagining Nonprofits and Philanthropy.

Lou.

Legos, where many dare not.

It's a guide for nonprofit leaders, professionals, and donors seeking to completely reimagine the way nonprofits make impact.

Each chapter dives into a specific area of work fundraising, board management, hiring.

For example, it analyzes the challenges for each and provides concrete solutions for change.

And is it?

In addition to his title of author and blogger.

Lula is the former executive director of RVC, a nonprofit in Seattle that promotes social justice by supporting leaders of color strengthening organizations led by communities of color, and fostering collaboration amongst diverse communities.

Moderating the conversation is my friend Emily Campbell, president and CEO of the center for Community Solutions, a nonpartisan, nonprofit policy and research think tank focused on health, social and economic conditions.

A reminder for our livestream audience.

If you have a question during the Q&A portion of the forum, you're welcome to join us.

In this conversation, text her questions to (330)541-5794, and the City Club staff will try to work it into the program now.

Members and friends of the City Club of Cleveland, please join me in welcoming Lula and Emily Campbell.

Emily.

Well, good afternoon and thank you to so many of you being here.

I think this might be the hottest ticket in Cleveland this afternoon, because I was getting texts from people this morning asking if I could get them a seat and want to say hello.

We understand that there are some watch parties in the Mahoning Valley and across Greater Cleveland, tuning in on our live stream.

So thank you for being here.

And as a reminder to those watching live, please feel welcome to text your questions.

And then they'll be incorporated in the second part of the program.

But we're delighted that you have come to Cleveland at this moment when there are so many pressures facing nonprofits and philanthropy, and it feels like a time where we need to do some things different and have some change.

You've been a writer for a long time with your very successful blog.

Why a book and why now?

Thank you Emily.

Thank you so much, the city of Cleveland, for inviting me.

I just thought I'd bring a little bit of West Coast glamor to you.

All right.

Now.

All right.

With the jeans and the t shirt.

Also, someone gave me a ticket to a copy of my own book.

So totally silent.

So thank you.

I can finally get a copy of it.

So, Thank you.

It's just really great to see you all here.

So y y a book right now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I've been writing this blog.

Nonprofit, which stands for Nonprofit and Fearless Leader.

Right.

Oh, so for a long time now, I've written over 600 blog posts, and that's overwhelming for a lot of people.

So I thought I would just organize it into a nice little thing you just read, right?

And I'll but also it's because after like years of doing this work for, you know, for a long time, I see that our sector is full of brilliant people.

We're just like brilliant, amazing people.

I think there are.

And one of the chapters, the first one called, a love letter to nonprofit and Philanthropy.

I'm talking about how our sectors like air, whereas other sectors are like food and people.

They see food, they appreciate food, they take pictures of food and call themselves foodies.

But the work that most people do in this work here is like air.

And no one appreciates air until they really need it, because it's oftentimes invisible and that's what you do every single day.

You allow our communities to breathe.

And I just really want to solidify that, in a book.

But also it's because, you know, you don't just you don't get taken seriously, when you have a blog called nonprofit AF.

So I had to write a book with a very boring title and a very plain serious cover.

Yes, with a serious cover.

Serious.

But I had to fight to get this paint swatch up.

I don't even know what it stand for.

It's just like, can we just ask something to make it exciting?

Yeah.

So anyways, I wanted to be taken seriously.

Now, everyone, Successful author.

Yes.

So one of the things that you've written about on the blog and you write about in the book are the Nine Horsemen of the nonprofit and sounds of philanthropic ineffectiveness.

One of my least favorite.

I was going to say favorite, but it's least favorite, because I feel seen is, toxic intellectual ism.

It hits home as a leader of a nonprofit, nonpartisan policy and research center think tank.

You write about how we can't white paper our way out of problems, and that summit's lead to white papers and theories of change and sticky dots that lead to more summits and more white papers and more theories of change and more sticky dots.

Can you talk to us a little bit about toxic intellectual ism in the sector in particular, and what we need to do differently, or what we need to think about differently?

Yeah, we love thinking here in the sector, right?

And we do.

And we've convince ourselves that if we just have more meetings and do more research and more summit and stuff, that we're actually making progress on many of these challenges.

Now, this is not to say that this is not important.

It absolutely is.

We do need or researchers we need.

We need to be planful in the work we do.

But the pendulum has swung way too far towards that.

And I always joke that if you're in Seattle and you're walking down a dark alley at night and you feel like someone is following you, it's probably someone trying to invite you to a summit or listen to.

It's like, hey buddy, come to this summit on equity.

We've got some sticky dots for you.

You know, you can put all your dots in different priorities, or you can put them all in one priorities or whatever.

And I don't know, like, it's it's not working.

I kind of like in us too.

We're like.

We're like the Avengers, you know, you all see Marvel's The Avengers, right?

Or just The Cool People was filmed here, right?

But in in the in The Avengers, there's this there's this super villain called Thanos who's just out there trying to wipe out half the universe, who he's actually succeeded in, in his plans.

Right.

And all these superheroes have to assemble to fight and to undo the damage he has caused.

And I can imagine that we're like that.

We're like the superheroes.

But if if if Marvel the Avengers were like our sector right now, you would have, I don't know, like, Captain Marvel saying, you know what?

We need to fight that knows we should, spent two years doing this, forming a think tank to write a white paper to study who's who's going most likely to be, to be affected by Thanos.

And then two years later, they released a white paper.

So guess what, everyone.

It's people of color and women of color and disabled people and trans people who have been most affected.

And everyone's like, oh my gosh, that's amazing.

Let's have a summit on this white paper.

Right.

Meanwhile, you know, like Iron Man's like, you know what I'm going to do?

I'm going to give out 5% of my money to fight Thanos, because I'm saving 95% of my endowment to fight future thanos's.

And then, of course, there's Doctor Strange, who's like, you know what?

Can we not say that we're fighting Thanos, right?

Like, can we just meet Danos in the middle?

Like, can we okay, this is this is can this is this is our sector right now.

And we use toxic intellectualizing as a way to make us feel like we're actually doing something.

When I think it can be very dangerous because it we become complacent when we think that we're actually doing good work.

So what's another of the Nine Horsemen that that you like to share about or talk about?

I think we have to acknowledge, white moderation.

Right.

This is probably one of the biggest things that we have to address.

Doctor King, from his letter from Birmingham Jail, wrote that, you know, the biggest threats, to justice are not like the overt racists out there marching and burning classes.

It's like the white moderate who are very nice people who stand on the side and say, I believe in your vision, but can you be nicer about it?

Can you wait for your time?

Can you be more practical?

Can you not cuss so much on stage at the city club or whatever?

You know, like.

And this is I was talking about fascism on a webinar just a few weeks ago, and someone was like, do I really like your you know, what you said?

But like, did you have to use the F-word all the time?

It's like the only F-word we need to worry about right now.

Is fascism right?

But our sector has become one giant white, moderate sector.

That's what I mean.

A very nice people who believe that if we just continue addressing the symptoms of injustice and being nice and hope that other people will eventually realize things and be nice to, and that has not been working, I think we have to have some different strategies here.

We need to reimagine what's possible and do things differently.

Yeah.

So let's talk about one way to reimagine.

And one of the things that you, spend some time in the book writing about are the lessons that progressive movements can learn from conservative movements and seeing the wild success of conservative movements in our country.

What are some of those things, or what are some of those lessons that we need to borrow and start right now, working on, to think about changing the tide of where some things are heading in this country?

Absolutely.

Well, there's several different things, with philanthropists, with, funders, for example, conservative funders fund ten, 20 years at a time.

Right.

On the left side, we are lucky.

We fall to the ground, kissing the ground in gratitude.

We get a three year grant right?

Whereas they get 20 years at a time.

So they're able to plan and and dream and work 20 years at a time.

I'm not saying this, you know, this is from the Sally Covington report that came out like 30 years ago, where she studied the differences between progressive and conservative funders.

And they fund for decades at a time.

They also engage in politics.

They will fund political candidates.

They will fund political campaigns.

They also they protect and they lift up cultural warriors.

That's why we can all name like 20 or so conservative right wing pundits out there.

And who do we have on the left?

We have some brilliant people, but they don't get $10 million at a time like Charlie Kirk was, you know, was was getting like, who are our cultural warriors?

They are burning out because funders refuse to fund them.

On the left.

We only think of our leaders as batteries to power organization was on the right.

They think of leaders as the as, you know, the vanguards of all the movements of ideas.

And that's how.

So if cultural warriors, they fund institutions, where is our heritage foundation?

Where's our equivalent of the Heritage Foundation?

Where's our equivalent of the Cato Institute, where we don't have those, you know, the Federalist Society, the you know, like the Heritage Foundation, they have been responsible for having all of these right wing Supreme Court justices, you know, to the point they've been so effective.

The Leonard, you know, Leonard, Leo just got like $1.6 billion from a billionaire to to make even more conservative to to get all the all the courts across every single level to be right wing.

They got like, who among us, you know, where, where, where is our billionaires giving billions of dollars to shape the court system to be progressive?

We do not have that.

They also control the media, right?

They have Fox News.

They put out five times more content than progressives.

Like if I had billions of dollars right now, I would buy a Fox News.

I would buy up Sinclair Network.

I would this would like would solve a lot of the problems here.

We don't have that.

The onion tried to buy up Infowars and then, you know that was brilliant.

We should have support it.

Like if I had a lot of money, I would have supported that campaign to buy up Infowars.

But we refused to do that.

So we have to engage in politics.

We have to fund a cultural war.

We have to build institutions.

We have to control the narratives.

That's kind of what we have to do.

But also, I think in many ways we've lost our imagination.

We've been so focused on just like responding to the fires, instead of figuring out like, what is the society we're trying to build together here?

I start thinking about the Overton Window.

Some of you may know this, but Overton Window is basically the window.

The range of ideas that the public will accept at any given time.

A while ago, like marriage equality was not in this window, but the window has moved now, so that now marriage equality is just very, you know, like most people would accept marriage equality, right?

I hope, whereas in the past it wasn't and conservative movements have been really good at moving this window towards some really scary, terrifying ideas like incarcerating, you know, like like institutionalizing trans people.

I mean, they are killing homeless people.

They have moved this window towards that.

Meanwhile, we're still on the on the defensive.

We need to move this window by becoming unapologetically progressive in our values.

You know?

And by that I mean things like $35 minimum wage, right?

If we just all fight for $35 minimum wage, then $15 not gonna seem so threatening, right?

If we start saying we're going to ban cars in every major city and have free public transportation, that's robust, that's going to scare some people.

But then maybe when we start having a little bit of more public transportation, they would seem reasonable if we if we start fighting to give rivers and for is their own right, human rights, the way that we have given corporations, the way Citizens United is giving corporations, why not a river?

Why not a forest?

We start shifting towards like these very be unapologetic in this society that we're trying, that we're thinking, you know, like we should not be controversial to say that we want universal health care for everyone.

That is the least like controversial thing ever.

And yet we're still defensive about that.

Like, come on.

There's a lot.

Well, your shirt says disruption is essential.

So that's why that's why we're here today.

So, you know, thinking about about some of that, I know I am in a lot of us in this room.

We're tired.

It's been a rough year.

And some of the things that you've talked about, the backlash against even things that are very reasonable, I'm thinking specifically of some of our efforts to include everyone or recognize that there should be diversity of thought.

The Dei movement, some of the anti-trans movements, have been real challenges, and that feels extra difficult in 2025 to, move even further.

But can you talk a little bit about some of the backlash we're seeing, and how do we keep going when we're facing those things?

Yeah, it has been it has been challenging.

I feel like in some ways, because people are so traumatized and stressed out and constantly dealing with fires all the time, that sometimes we forget who our targets should be.

You know, we start attacking one another all the time.

I get attacked all the time.

I get tons of hate mail and messages, about stuff.

And sometimes it's it's it's hurtful when it's people who are.

We are lying on most things.

And I'm a human being.

I make mistakes, too.

You know, I almost switched to Substack, and the people got mad at me.

They were like, how dare you switch to Substack?

How do you even think about switching to Substack?

IT platforms, Nazis and all this stuff.

And I was like, I had no idea.

I was busy watching Derry Girls to keep myself right.

I was like, you know, I, I'm very stressed out.

And Derry Girls is what I watch over and over again.

Okay, watch Derry Girls.

I know it was really great.

Okay, so there's only so much we're not going to be perfect.

So again we need to focus on when we're on the same side.

Let's give one another grace here right.

And save our ire for other people.

At the same time, I do want to caution us regarding like the diversity of thought thing, because sometimes that is a way to like for people to platform way to horrible ideas and to give platforms is some just awful.

I mean, I think there's some disagreements we can have, right?

But there's certain things that we just do not argue about.

Like, I don't want to be on stage arguing with someone about the humanity of trans people, right.

That should never even be something we discuss.

I was talking to a colleague, a black woman, who told me that she was invited to a debate about whether racism is real.

And I don't think we should be entertaining these types of conversations.

Right.

Racism is real.

There's no comment that we can have debates about how do we actually address it.

Right?

This is what like the both citing of City of Things has been awful and why we have so many problems that we have, like with the climate change.

But you, you bring on someone to talk about climate change, you bring someone a climate change denier.

That's not diversity of thought.

That's just platforming ignorance.

Here.

So we also need to be thoughtful about that too.

What was your question?

I hope you answered it.

I'm sure there's an answer in there somewhere.

How do we keep going?

I don't know, how do you keep going?

Right.

Yeah, I don't know.

I know talking to you.

Look, I think we have to keep going because, Malcolm in the middle is mine.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a that's a great show.

And Bryan Cranston is just so brilliant.

How do we keep going?

I mean, I think this is something we have all been thinking about and over the past few few years, I just feel like that arc of the moral universe, right?

We we we are supposed to have faith that it bends towards justice.

It's been like a concave arc.

Now it's going reverse.

It's like, that's what it's been feeling like.

And so I know how stressed out everyone has been, but I do want, I do want to remind us all and to remind myself that I think in many ways, what we're seeing right now is because what we have been doing has been working.

What we've been doing, fighting for a just and equitable world has been working.

And that's why the people who are against it have been so strong, you know, to push back against it.

Right?

I mean, this, that and people every single day are resisting every day.

We see it in Portland driving, you know, like we see it in Chicago and Portland, New York.

Everyone is out there pushing back, resisting, driving out ice, supporting one another in Portland, heretics coffee.

It's like this little small town coffee shop just decided we're just going to we're going to feed it.

We're going to give you breakfast if you if you lost your Snap benefits.

And we're just going to keep doing this until we run out of business.

And which is which is where our money was just going to close.

And, you know, like it was so moving to see communities, doing that for one another.

And guess what?

In a few days they raised $86,000.

They were getting tiny amounts of money from even from other countries.

All right.

So I think fascism wants us to feel like we're alone, that there is no community, that we're all just in our own little bubble.

But that's not true.

There's tons of community out there.

Like it's not fascism is not going to destroy our community because we are way stronger than than fascists.

I people are supporting one another.

They are.

I know things are scary with the snap cuts being out there, you know, but people are supporting one another.

This mutual aid groups are forming, people are resisting, they're fighting back.

And we don't see in the news because, you know, the news now is is being controlled by a lot of right wing forces.

We don't see all the amazing thing that's happening in Nepal.

You know, in Malaysia right now, they're holding just thousands of people are out there protesting.

So people are fighting and building community, and we're going to outlast everything that's going on right now.

So let's.

Thinking about community and the community that we're sitting in today here in Cleveland.

This is a legacy city.

It is an old money city.

We are home to the the original community foundation in the country, the Cleveland Foundation, you know, have settlement houses going back to the 1800s that are continuing to operate here today.

And I would say one of the challenges that we face here in philanthropy and nonprofit in Cleveland is the idea of nostalgia and looking to recreate a world that never actually existed, and not being able to look at what's right in front of our faces.

Can you talk a little bit about movements and change and changes and thinking and kind of letting go, letting go of the past or of what isn't working and moving forward in the work?

And what would you say to Cleveland as a legacy city that still the second poorest large city in the country, year after year?

Nostalgia, I agree.

We were talking about the horsemen of nonprofit, nonprofit and traffic ineffectiveness.

And you you mentioned like maybe like maybe that's the 10th one.

That's the 10th one.

Nostalgia can be really dangerous, right?

I mean, this is what's been driving the MAGA movement, right?

Make America Great again, right?

Right.

Because they have this nostalgic is not nostalgia for a time.

You know, that in many ways was really awful for a lot of or for a lot of people.

Right.

They want to move back to that.

Now.

Yeah.

I mean, over here, we still have that.

We have legacy organizations.

We have and we have a lot of stuff that just traditions that we passed down because they're comforting, you know?

And I'm not talking about theoretical.

I'm talking like like like, I don't know, like Robert's Rules.

Who's Robert?

Why are we still using his rules?

Right.

Like, who is this man?

This is like Henry Martin.

Robert.

He was a US Army officer.

Robert is what I do because I had to make his job.

I had to research this guy because it's like, why is why are we using Robert's will Henry Martin, Robert, this dude who in like 1876 or something took the US Congress parliamentary procedure and then wrote it into a book.

So this is literally 145 years ago, and we're still using this.

You know, we have a lot of like, nostalgia.

We have a lot of things that we passed down that we don't need to.

There is no legal requirement.

Robert's rules, like Taco Tuesday.

Okay.

It's like it's a suggestion.

You can have tacos on Wednesday.

You can have teriyaki on Tuesday.

That's fine.

That's still literate.

But like so many things, we this we have to get out of the nostalgia because the nostalgia breeds this sort of sense of tradition, the sense of we've always done it this way.

Right.

And think about like how we do fundraising, for example.

I can't stand the way we do fundraising.

This, this idea that we need to put this a whole chapter is one of my favorite chapter.

But like we put, you know, we've been trained to put funders and donors in the center on a pedestal, and we've been trained to make them feel like heroes and saviors, and we've been trained to be like, you need to use the word you 50 times in every appeal letter.

You did this because of you.

Our community is stronger, you know, and I kind of like in this too, I don't know, like husband centered marriages.

Right?

Like I've been a husband before.

I would love it every single time I did the dishes or something.

Like my partner writes me a handwritten thanking you.

Do you view you did it because you wash the dishes?

Today our family is stronger.

Our community is better because of you.

Please come to this exclusive wine and cheese event for amazing husbands like you.

Hey, I would love that and I'd be more likely to do the dishes.

But is that a good marriage?

No, that's not a partnership, right?

And it's preventing some deeper conversations from happening.

Like about the origin of wealth, where a lot of wealth in this country comes from slavery, stole indigenous land, worker exploitation, environmental degradation, and tax avoidance.

And we don't talk to what's happened.

Preach it when we don't talk to our donors and our funders about this.

And I think in many ways, we're underestimating many of our donors and funders who are in some ways way ahead of us.

Like I was, talking I was I was writing about this, this Erice, in Austria, I think, who got like several, you know, million or 100 million something million dollars.

And she decided, like, why should I have this money?

I didn't do anything except be born.

Why am I getting $100 million?

And she decided to use this money to actually change, to help change the tax code so that people don't get this much money in the first place.

And then the rest of the money she's actually allocating to the public to determine what to do with that.

Right.

We need to start thinking and reimagining this and talking to our donors.

They're examples of that in the book where, like, there's one of my, one of my friends who attended a, giving circle where she was asked to examine where a family's wealth comes from.

And she discovered that it came from stolen indigenous land.

And she decided right then, after some conflict, some, you know, so thinking about it, that when she gets her inheritance, she's going to give 100% of this back to the native community.

Like, this is justice.

This is what fundraising should, should look like for us.

Right?

But, you know, we haven't been doing that because we've been trained a certain way, because of nostalgia, because of tradition.

And we need to move across.

We need to change and do things differently, not just with fundraising, but with boards, with advocacy, with everything that we've been doing.

So we're going to turn to audience questions in just a moment.

But one sort of final thing while I still have the microphone, what brings you hope these days?

I mean, this sounds really corny, but I feel like you all bring me hope.

You know, I, Yeah.

I mean, like, this work is so difficult.

It is so difficult.

I watched the show chopped, you know, and the show chopped is like a bunch of all these candidate.

All these contestants are given baskets of random as ingredients, okay?

And they have to make meals out of them.

So here's like, here's a trout and some marshmallows.

Make dessert, you know, whatever.

And they manage to do that.

And it reminds me of our sector is like, you know, here's a computer that's 12 years old and $5,000 you can only spend on paperclips.

On Tuesday, and 500 people who hate you on the internet for no reason go.

And homelessness.

Yeah.

And yet you've managed to go and do things right that are.

That's so amazing every single day.

You know, you're like the air that allows our communities to breathe.

I mentioned.

And again, no one appreciates air because they don't see it.

They don't see your work, the work that you do every single day.

And it takes a toll.

I think that it we don't talk about the toll that it takes.

We don't talk about like, how many of us don't have good health insurance or how many of us can't retire, or, you know, we've been I don't the Beanie Babies are not going to come out now.

I don't know.

Right.

What are we going to do Matthew I don't know, exotic Marigold Hotel some some, like the sacrifices that this work takes.

We don't talk about it, but you do it every single day.

And I feel like, you know, I'm just so grateful.

Also, because my family arrived to the United States and, you know, it was a while ago we landed in Philadelphia, and we we lost, like, our sense of community.

And we do not know if we ever see our families again.

It was all these nonprofits that stepped in and helped me and my family.

You know, they they brought us food and they brought us warm clothing that we didn't have.

But I think the most important thing that they did was they restored a sense of hope and community to us that we never thought we would ever feel again.

That's what you do every single day for people, and the work that you do is not seen.

You know, I like, I don't know any of these organizations that helped my family when we arrived.

I can't go back to Philly and thank them because I have no idea who they are.

Or I would tell them that because of what they did for for me and my family inspired me to go and get my master's in social work so I could pay it forward.

Like I'm one of these ripples that people create.

You create ripples every single day.

You may never see.

So that's what gives me hope, is that there are people like you out in the world who continue to do this work despite relentless, unyielding barriers all the time.

You continue to do this work.

Thank you.

Thank.

Well, we are about to start.

Audience Q&A.

I could keep going, but we'll let other people ask to us for our live stream audience, including our watch parties across the region.

I'm Emily Campbell, CEO for the center for Community Solutions and moderator of today's conversation.

We are joined by Voula, founder of the blog nonprofit APH and author of Reimagining Nonprofits and Philanthropy Unlocking the Full Potential of a Vital and Complex Sector.

That is a serious title friend, right?

It's not that serious book.

It is a serious book.

But there's it was originally like, just sit down, but yeah, right.

And so to a different audience.

Yeah.

We welcome questions from everyone City Club members, guests and those joining the live stream at City club.org.

If you'd like to text a question, please text it to (330)541-5794 and City Club staff will try to work it into the program.

A reminder to keep your questions short, to the point and ending with a question mark, so that we can get to as many questions as possible.

May we have the first question, please?

Absolutely.

So we have a text question to start.

We're a small nonprofit working to rebuild capacity after a major funding loss.

How can we stay focused on real community impacts when funders and partners value short term, flashy metrics over slow, meaningful progress?

Oh, yeah.

I think we need to organize a bit here.

Yeah, we need to organize like we have lost the ability to organize.

I think something Jen Matsuoka from a nonprofit said that really stuck with me is that we've been so professionalized now that we're able to write a theory of change, a logic model, a white paper, and we've lost the ability to get like 50 people to a town hall meeting.

Right.

Which is how we get change to to happen.

We have to start organizing in Seattle, like 180 directors got together and wrote an open letter to our funders and, and said, look, our communities are really hurting because of Covid.

You need to give up.

You need to double the amount of money you're giving out immediately.

And it you know, it needs to be multiyear, general operating dollars, like, oh my God, yes.

And you see your general operating dollars.

It's an acronym.

That's one of my proudest accomplishment is that acronym.

And we and the letter asked these funders to sign this plan, saying that they were going to do that.

And you know what?

Several of the funders did do that.

They signed the pledge, and they did double the amount of money that they're giving out.

Like, we have to we have to organize better.

But in order for us to do that, we have to get out of this mindset.

Many we have so many mindsets.

We have the mindset, for example, that there's only so much money to go around that is wrong.

There's like $1.6 trillion sitting in foundation endowments and donor advised funds.

Right now, what are people saving for?

We're saving for a rainy day when there's a monsoon.

Right now, there's a hurricane in our community right now.

What are you saving for?

Like, so all the funders that are out there who are still squirreling money away, hoarding money in their endowments, why you're endowments would mean nothing if we become a totalitarian state here, right?

We need to fight this with everything that we have here.

So.

And the rest of us, we need to be angrier.

We can't just just be like, okay, yeah.

And and believe things when, when people say stuff like, there's only so much money to go around, no call out the bullshit for what it is.

Next question.

Hello.

Our next question is a test question.

As nonprofit leaders, we are not supposed to be political.

How can we fight the fascism while being that that fight?

Who said we shouldn't be political?

We need to get out of that mindset.

The right has been very political, and they have set up organizations, nonprofit organizations that are very political.

We have vehicles for us to be political, where 51C fours and PACs and stuff, we just refuse to fund them.

Funders refuse to fund them.

That's why if I want C, fours on the left have been struggling.

So no get out this mindset that we cannot be political 51C3 should not be endorsing political candidates.

Absolutely yes.

But right now we've reached a point where we think anything that the right doesn't like means we're being political, right?

If we start fighting for abortion rights, that's political.

It is not political to fight for abortion rights.

We start fighting for voting rights.

That's political.

No it's not.

Every single nonprofit should be involved in voting rights like this is.

So let's be very clear about what is political and what is not.

Another thing that is actually political, including endorsing political candidates.

We need to do more of that to write in.

I'm on the board of, Progressive Lines of Washington, and we have a program called the first Miles club, where we raise money and then give out small amounts of money to political candidates, progressive political candidates who are running the first race, who are people of color and willing to give out, like ten, $20,000 or so to each blue candidate of the I think 40 or something.

Candidates like 19 of them got elected only takes like $20,000.

And some of them are like, oh my gosh, $20,000.

This is amazing.

We actually get so much done with door knocking and signs and all of this stuff.

And the budget for this program is only like $450,000 a year.

We should be in the millions by now.

Every community should be having programs like this.

With these, we should be supporting political candidates on the on the left, which is supporting especially progressive women of color to be running in every single race and to win them.

That's how we turn things around.

Our next question, please.

Hi.

I once saw you speak.

I've seen you speak a couple of times to a group of grant makers, and I have been on the grant makers side and on the grant seeker side.

And one of the things that struck me, and I've quoted you a million times, and I'd love for the audience to hear, this analogy or an analogy, that you have like it, which was you described a foundation that would, give you water, but now a hose and the need for, looks like you remember.

But, just if you could talk to I think everybody would appreciate hearing about that sense you have of general operating and comprehensive hands hence of giving.

Thank you.

Yes.

The metaphor is like all of you all are probably are like in this sector like firefighters trying to put out the fires of injustice.

But can you imagine a firefighter when they're rushing to the fires.

They're being they're being stopped every 3 or 4 steps by someone asking, I want to make sure the money I'm giving you to put out the fire is being spent on the water and not the hose.

What is your hose to water ratio?

And all of us have been trained to be like, oh no, no no, no, don't worry.

We found someone else to pay for the hose.

You only pay for the water.

We spent no more than 15% on the hose, right?

We're not.

Don't worry about that.

No, our response should be there is a fire.

You need to get the hell out of my way, okay?

We don't have time for this.

This is why we keep losing here is because we keep paying attention to really inane questions and stuff about this.

With everything that's been going on, and with all the research around how effective multi-year general operating funds are, any funder that is still giving restricted funds, you are basically the climate change denier, anti-vaxxers of our sector.

All funding should be multiyear general operating dollars.

My God.

There's a lot more writing about fires fires in the book as well.

And who's setting the fires and some of those things.

All right, next question.

We have another test question.

It says vu, you discussed the strengths, the strength of the conservatives with supporting their causes with a ton of money.

How do we mobilize the progressive movement to gain the same long term power that we have, that the conservatives have built?

Yeah, sometimes I get asked like very it seems like you're preaching to the choir, you know, in some ways that's true.

But really, we're not a very good choir.

Okay.

I think the choir is like they sing the same song at the same time, right?

And they know their parts and all this stuff.

No, we are a very disorganized choir because we're not seeing we're on message here.

So, I mean, we're talking about, like, multi-use European dollars in general operating funds.

I still see some of your on your, on your website saying stuff like 95% of every cent you give us go to programs, direct services or whatever, you know, like that is not you're not part of the choir.

Like what?

What is what song are you singing?

So we need to do a much better job getting our messages together and our strategies together.

But we've been so we've been like train.

We've had this learned helplessness here.

We had this learned helplessness and of just the way things are.

And we start thinking about how do we make things slightly less crappy than before versus like how do we reimagine things and do things completely differently?

Here's an example.

I was, I was at another event and someone was like vu every year around this time around the holidays, the local newspaper publishers, a list of the ten nonprofits with the highest overhead rate as overhead rate, as a way to publicly shame these nonprofits.

And we're so afraid that we're going to end up on this list.

Like, what do we do?

And everyone was like, well, you know, you should think about maybe using Excel to like, allocate more funding to programing.

And then after like several minutes of this, someone actually stops and says, can you all just get together and write an op ed to this newspaper and saying how shitty that is, that's not helpful.

Fight back.

So the choir has not been fighting back.

The choir has not been singing the right song here.

So how do we actually move people like we need to get our like our thinking out of the sort of like the nostalgia of the way things have always been.

And we need to be okay with some burning, some bridges we're going to be okay with, like losing some funders and some donors who are not aligned.

We need to be okay with organizing and yeah, and acting differently.

Now, you quote in the book, May the bridges we burn light the way.

Next question.

I can still remember the first time I was at a donor gala working in this, and I didn't understand how play settings worked because I didn't grow up that way and I always think about the way that we make it possible for emerging professionals, for those of us who have grown up trying to solve the problems, to belong in the space, because it's tricky when you're dealing with philanthropy and wealth.

So, you know, can you just speak to those of us in the room or those of us listening who are emerging, young, rising professionals in this space and in the sector?

Yeah, I really appreciate the emerging leaders.

I used to be one of the all.

Then I got invited to be an elder on a podcast.

When you arrive.

Oh, right.

Exactly.

We want to capture your wisdom, the wisdom of our elders, before you all pass away.

I don't, look, I think I can only imagine how.

I mean, how frustrating it can be to be a young leader in the space.

And dealing with the traditions and the nostalgia and everything, and fighting against the currents, you know, of people who are sticking there, refusing to retire.

Sometimes the founders, and it's hard when you try to make change and you just face this wall all the time.

It's frustrating.

But I would say one is like, we really need you, right?

And for you to really understand your power and the and the fresh perspective you bring, we really need to because, you know, like, you have not been entrenched in a lot of this propaganda and a lot of these terrible habits that have been passed down from generation to generation.

So it's it's yeah, it's an uphill battle, but it's really important.

Other thing is for you to keep going.

I kind of like in, in the book to, like feeding toddlers vegetables, you know, like they hate it.

And it take.

But science says it tastes like 8 to 12 exposures for a toddler to like a new vegetable or a new type of food or.

All right.

And I tested this out by feeding brussel sprouts to my kids over and over and over again in different permutations of it.

And now they love brussel sprouts, deep fried.

But none of us army glaze.

A lot of our work, a lot of the work of young people.

You are trying to feed the brussel sprouts of equity to toddlers in power.

And you have to try different ways and different permutations of the way you cook the message.

And maybe sometimes you're tired, you just want to pass the spoon to someone else.

And maybe.

But the work that you're doing is the very important.

But you may think I didn't make any change, but no, you provide the fifth helping to this person who may need that I know is exhausting, but oftentimes that's that's how change happens.

And sometimes you just you got to be okay with like, okay, you know, I tried my best to feed the Brussel sprouts and it's not working.

And you go and you do something else.

Right.

But you need we need you in the sector.

And please keep going.

You have more power than you probably think.

More power influence.

And you think, thank you.

Next question.

Thank you, Emily, and food for coming.

So we operate in the nonprofit world, in a capitalist society.

And, the venture capital community will invest millions of dollars and expect a return on maybe 5%.

Yet funders in the nonprofit world are expecting to fund successes.

They want to be assured that they're funding a successful operation.

How can we get the funding community to think more like venture capitalists and be willing to invest in new ideas that may fail, even though they're trying to make a difference?

Yeah.

First of all, we all need to restore imagination and the audacity of ambition here.

We've lost it because we've been forced to survival mode for so long that we've lost our our ability to imagine and to be ambitious.

I talk about like, Usoro who's heard of G zero.

Yes.

Usoro came from Silicon Valley.

It was a Wi-Fi connected juicing machine.

Now, think about this.

A Wi-Fi connected using machine you bought.

It was $700.

You buy these proprietary packets of cut off food, vegetables.

You subscribe to it for $7 each.

And you place this packets into this machine, and it squeezes that one glass of juice for $7.

It was supposed to disrupt the juicing industry.

Bloomberg did an investigation where they took the package and squeeze them by hand and got almost the same amount of juice, but faster.

So they wrote about this and just sterile went bankrupt.

But before they did, they were boasting that they had $125 million in venture capital.

They had 50 full time engineers working to design this wi fi connected juicing machine.

Right.

So this is a great lesson for us because while they're doing that, some of you were like, can we please get $4,000 to end poverty?

Yes, we'll give you $1,000 this year.

Yes.

But you only spent on paperclips on Tuesdays.

Yes.

We'll write you a handwritten.

Thank you.

No.

Here you go.

We need to restore the sense of audacity here.

Right?

We cannot ask our for the funders when we ourselves are so just complacent and deferential and thinking that, yeah, it's too much.

We ask for $50,000.

No, it's not all right.

I want everyone here to think like do zero.

I want you to add like a 0 or 2 to your asked now, okay?

Because chances are your work is more important than is Wi-Fi connected using machines whenever you doubt yourself.

Think about you, Sarah.

Have the audacity of a Wi-Fi connected using machine, right?

If that's the only thing you take from this conversation has the audacity of a Wi-Fi connected using machines.

And that's where to start.

Now, once we have that framework, then I think we can start pushing our funders to think this way too.

Because until we ourselves believe that, I don't know how we're going to get other people to believe that.

Right.

And then we need to organize.

We need to organize.

And I think in many ways, funders have we've been we lie to our funders a lot.

We've been trained to lie to funders and donors.

They're like, how is everything going?

I think it's good.

You know, we had some transition and staff move on like, no, what you're saying is, oh my God, everything is on fire.

Like we have like one month of cash flow, you know, like we are not honest with our funders and donors.

We need to be honest.

We actually have this conversation.

We have meaningful conversation with our donors and saying, look, we really need to be a partner here.

What we're doing now is really vital.

I think about the arts organizations right now who have always been like, oh my gosh, you know, everything is so, so urgent.

Like, do we people need the arts?

Yes, we need the arts to fight fascism.

Okay.

So everyone who's doing important work, the food pantries, you are vital right now because of snap cuts and everything.

Those of you on the arts, you are just as important because you are saving people from like fascism.

Because this is what we need.

We need the imaginations of artists to to imagine a better world.

That's why fascists hate arts and the arts.

And, you know, so your work is really vital.

So when you go to a funder, don't just say, oh yeah, we're applying for $5,000, you know, to support these three artists and no whatever.

No, we're asking for $5 million to fight fascism.

It's.

Okay, so we have another text question.

There is a sea of change of leadership in Cleveland right now.

What advice do you have for emerging nonprofit leaders?

And we just have that question now.

We're a little now we're like, got a little gray.

Yeah.

We're not yet elders.

Yeah.

And there's something about leading from the middle here that people have.

I don't know, I think I think sometimes again, we become white moderates as, as we as we move on and as we move up, we become more and more protective.

One of the horsemen is like South preservation here.

And then we all have to acknowledge in many ways that our livelihoods depend on the existence of inequity so that we can get paid to fight it.

Okay, so for those of us who are, you know, who are emerging leaders, who are, you know, who are doing this work, it's really important to protect ourselves from, like, becoming the things that we we fought against when we were, you know, younger in our careers here.

I'll say our.

I was meeting with a state legislator who said, why do you want me to do this?

It'll just put some of your partners out of business.

If we feed people or whatever it was.

I said, great.

Sounds great.

Please do put us out of business.

Can't wait to see you do it.

Thank you to Vu Le and Emily Campbell for joining us today at the City Club.

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Today's forum is part of the City Club's Authors and Conversation series, presented in partnership with Cuyahoga Arts and Culture and Cuyahoga County Public Library.

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Today's forum is the Eugene H. Free time lecture presented with the center for Community Solutions in memory of Eugene.

Free time, free Time was a prominent Cleveland attorney who, together with his wife Nina, was active in a number of Cleveland charitable organizations.

He saw the center for Community Solutions as having a key role as a planner and community convener.

This lecture fund was established by his family and friends to extend humanitarian influence into the future.

The City Club would like to welcome guests at the tables hosted by the center for Community Solutions, the Chas and Chuck Fowler Family Foundation, the Cleveland Foundation, Cuyahoga County Human Services Chamber, Friends of Anita Cook Giving Insight Grants Plus Near West Theater, Ohio Guide, Stone Positive Education Program, and the Wayne Foundation.

Coming up this Friday, October 31st, the City Club will host its 2025 annual meeting.

Thompson, Hines and our very own Robin Winter Smyers will lead a conversation with biographer David Greenberg on the life of Congressman John Lewis.

Thank you once again to Julie and Emily Campbell, and to our friends and members of the City Club.

I'm Lee to over task this forward.

This forum is now adjourned.

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