August 19, 2025 • 52 mins
Nonprofits are essential, but are they getting what they need to succeed? And what happens when philanthropy clings to old habits while democracy teeters?
In this episode, Eric sits down with writer, humorist, and nonprofit truth-teller Vu Le, creator of Nonprofit AF. With his trademark mix of sharp wit and blunt honesty, Vu pulls no punches on everything from “crappy funding practices” to the SkyMall-style whims of foundations, to the urgent need for philanthropy to get serious in defending democracy and the most vulnerable communities.
It’s not all fire and brimstone—Vu reminds us why joy itself is resistance, shares what keeps him hopeful (spoiler: snakes and the 3.5% rule), and even previews the joke-turned-fan-demanded one-man show you never knew you needed.
If you’ve ever wondered how nonprofits can thrive in spite of their funding structures this conversation is just what you’ve been waiting for.
💡 Vu’s new book Reimagining Nonprofits and Philanthropy comes out October 14, and Nonprofit AF returns to Substack on August 19.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Eric (00:00):
Welcome to, let's Hear It.
Let's Hear.
It is a podcast for and about thefield of foundation and nonprofit
communications produced by its twoco-hosts, Eric Brown and Kirk Brown.
No relation,
Kirk (00:12):
who well said Eric.
And I'm Kirk.
Eric (00:14):
And I'm Eric.
The podcast is sponsored bythe College Futures Foundation.
Which envisions a California wherepost-secondary education advances
equity and unlocks upward mobilitynow and for generations to come to
learn more, visit college futures.org.
You can
Kirk (00:29):
find, let's hear it on
Eric (00:30):
any podcast subscription platform.
You can find us onlineat, let's hear@cast.com.
You can find us on LinkedIn
Kirk (00:38):
and
Eric (00:38):
yes,
Kirk (00:39):
even on Instagram.
And if you like the show, please,please, please rate us on Apple Podcasts
so that more people can find us.
Eric (00:47):
Let's get onto the show.
Kirk (00:52):
It's wonderful seeing you today, Mr. Brown.
Eric (00:54):
Well, it's wonderful to be seen, Mr. Brown.
Kirk (00:56):
I wanna introduce a word, a key word that's very relevant to
the conversation that we're aboutto listen to, which was terrific.
Once again, by the way, thankyou for doing this for all of us.
Ah, plain spoken.
Plain spoken.
That's two words.
Okay?
No, it's not.
It's a compound word, isn't it?
Isn't it?
One word.
Oh, okay.
This is one of the most plain spoken,brilliantly, so guests that we've ever
(01:16):
had, and let's hear, and I, I cannotwait to dig into this discussion.
There's some pitching, there'ssome placement, there's some
product highlighting I wantto do before we get into the
conversation on behalf of our guest.
But set this up becausethis was really excellent.
It's timely, it's important, it'snecessary, but the plain spoken
conversation that's about to happenhere is it's good for us all.
(01:37):
I think it's good for all of our souls.
Eric (01:39):
Oh, good.
'cause, you know, our souls are needed.
Uh, I,
Kirk (01:43):
yes they do.
Eric (01:44):
I interviewed Vle, who is the.
Brains behind nonprofit AF and whowas a former nonprofit executive
director and is bringing all of thefun and games that came with that.
Mm-hmm.
To bear against philanthropyand not against, but in
favor of better philanthropy.
And he vu is.
(02:07):
I had wanted to interview him for along time and I, I realized that it
was going to be exciting, an excitingrollercoaster ride, and Vu did not
Kirk (02:14):
disappoint.
So, VU is plainspoken, VU is super funny.
Vu is also an outstanding rider, soof course everybody should go to v's.
Blog, nonprofit af.
But I wanna pitch acouple of things for Vu.
So First, VU has a bookcoming out on October 14th.
It's called ReimaginingNonprofits and Philanthropy.
(02:34):
Unlocking the full potentialof a vital and complex sector
that comes out on October 14th.
And you can order your copynow, and I think you should.
So that's coming out on October 14th.
And then also, VU has been on a littlebit of sabbatical off the blog, and
he's gonna be coming back on August19th with his next blog posting.
He's actually moving his whole thing overto Substack, it looks like from WordPress.
(02:55):
So I just wanna do those twocouple of quick shout outs, but
vu and then of course you're gonnahear about a. Maybe a A what?
A one man show that Vu maybe could.
Yeah.
Right.
World.
And I wanna say right up front,please vu, share that with us.
Give it to us.
But Eric, this was terrific.
Vu.
Thank you for coming on the podcast.
I, I think we should listen to,to you guys talk and then there
(03:16):
is a lot to unpack from this.
When we come back, you may be right.
Okay.
Well this is Vle joiningus on, let's hear it.
Let's listen and we'll come back.
Eric (03:28):
Welcome to, let's Hear It.
My guest today is somebody I'vebeen wanting to have on this
show for a really long time.
It is none other than vle.
You are an activist and Iconoclast.
A muckraker, a nonprofit Ask Kicker,and you're the founder of Nonprofit
af, which is what it sounds like.
(03:48):
Vle, thank you so much forcoming on to let's hear it.
Vu (03:52):
Hey Eric.
Thanks for having me.
Nonprofit AF, by the way, standsfor Nonprofit and Fearless.
Eric (03:59):
Of course it does.
Thanks so much for coming on.
I've been watching you and I heard you.
You came to ComNet, the CommunicationNetwork Conference, and I've been
reading your work for a really long time.
Can we just talk a little bit abouthow you got to this place, sitting
here talking with me, and reallytrying to, I think, hold philanthropy
(04:20):
on nonprofits feet to the fire.
Vu (04:22):
Yeah, I was actually pre-med.
I was supposed to be a doctor.
Oh, yeah.
And, and then I decided I didn'twanna do that anymore, so I got a,
I dropped out of that pre-med pathand got a master's in social work.
Yeah.
Which you can imagine nearlygot me disowned by my parents.
Eric (04:40):
Why
Vu (04:42):
they're, they were hoping at least one of their kids would
become something meaningful.
And social work apparently is not themost, oh, in our community, it's not
the most respected profession, whichis too bad 'cause it's, it is awesome.
I really like the path that I tookand yeah, I got my master in social
work and then joined this AmeriCorpsprogram 'cause no one would hire me
(05:03):
'cause I didn't have enough experience.
So I became an AmeriCorps member fortwo years and then became an executive
director of a nonprofit in the third year.
Eric (05:12):
And what was that like?
So you go from AmeriCorps tobeing an executive director.
Vu (05:17):
Yeah, these Amer programs can be really great here.
So this path to leadership.
There you go.
Yeah.
So I, it was definitely veryshocking and I think it wasn't
just because I was brilliant.
It was also because one, no one reallywants to be an executive director, and
two is the organization that I was placedat did not have a very good reputation.
So definitely no one wantedto be in that position.
(05:40):
And I thought, you know what,I'm just, I'm gonna, I'm gonna
turn this organization around.
And I stuck around and I think I did,
Eric (05:47):
but, and so my guess I'm, we haven't talked about this yet, but
my guess is that being a nonprofitexecutive director of a nonprofit
was like really easy to fundraise.
The, your funders were likereally easy to work with.
Everything was reallysmooth as silk, right?
Yeah, that was,
Vu (06:03):
it was, it's so easy, you know, you only work 20 hours a week.
Money just come pouring in.
Funders call you up all the time.
You know, we wanna give you money.
And you're like, no, get in line
Eric (06:15):
and we wanna give you general support.
We wanna give it.
For many years there, there
Vu (06:19):
were no night terrors caused by cash flow issues.
There were no screaming into thevoid that I did every night or so.
Eric (06:26):
And you didn't have to fill out all sorts of crazy reports.
Vu (06:30):
It was just easier.
It was very easy.
It was so easy.
It did not age me 20 yearsat all during those years.
Right.
During those three years, that was an ed.
Eric (06:40):
Okay.
So you come out of thatand then what happened?
Vu (06:45):
The organization went pretty well.
I was there, it was rough thefirst few years and then it got
better and I started writing.
So this one of, one of the funders tomy organization asked me to write a
blog post from a grantee's perspective.
So I thought, okay, you can'treally turn down a funder.
So I was, all right, fine, I'llwrite this blog post for free.
(07:06):
Fine.
And it caught on and peopleliked the fact that I was using,
I was like, you know what?
I think there's too muchacademic stuff already.
Mm-hmm.
So I'm gonna use a more lighthearted tone.
So the blog posts I wrote were prettysilly in comparison, and I think
people really just needed to laugh.
There's a lot of humor in our sector.
We have to laugh at ourselves.
Eric (07:27):
There.
Oh, by the way, there was a show,I think it was about 10 or 15
years ago, called The Foundation,and it was, did you see it?
You gotta go back and find it onYouTube or something like that.
It was the hilariousversion of, not hilarious.
It's like the foundationexecutive is a spy.
He's like a James Bond guy, andhe's really dashing in handsome.
Totally ridiculous.
(07:49):
It was inadvertently funny.
Vu (07:52):
That's hilarious.
I think we definitelyneed more shows about,
Eric (07:55):
wait, about dashing James Bond Foundation executives.
Vu (08:01):
So, yeah, some
Eric (08:01):
of them can be very dashing.
Oh, when you have
Vu (08:03):
that much money to give away, your attractiveness increases 27%
Eric (08:08):
instantly.
My old boss at the Hewlett Foundation, thepresident of the foundation, he had this
little plaque on his desk that said, withmoney in your pocket, you're handsome,
you're funny, and you sing well too.
Vu (08:20):
Exactly.
Eric (08:22):
At least he had a perspective on this.
Yeah.
So you are, you're funny and you'retrying to, it sounds to me you're, you
are applying critiques to, especiallyto philanthropy, but nonprofits as
well, using humor and other waysto try and get a very important
message across, which is what?
Vu (08:41):
One is that the sector is really important, right?
I really, I criticize nonprofitphilanthropy because I really
do believe in our sector.
I believe that we make change every day.
We make a difference in the world.
Some of the most importantadvances in civil rights and
everything have been because.
In great part because of all thesenonprofits and all these leaders
(09:01):
who worked to advance these things.
So our sector, I think of it aslike air, like the metaphor we use
is that our sector is like air,whereas other sectors are like food.
People can see food, they cansee their iPhones, they can see
movies they can, or the work thatwe do is oftentimes invisible.
People don't really think aboutit until they really need it.
They don't think about like foodpantries until they may have lost their
(09:24):
job and their savings are dwindling.
They don't think about senior centersuntil their parents start aging
or they themselves start aging.
And so people don't think aboutnonprofits and they take us for granted.
And that leads to a lot of stuffthat can be very challenging for us.
But the other thing is I feellike we need to acknowledge that
the existence of our sector.
(09:46):
The existence of nonprofit philanthropyis an indication that something
is not right with the world.
We should not have this many nonprofits.
We should not have that manyfoundations in the first place, right?
If the world were perfect, oursector would be a lot smaller.
Eric (10:00):
This is a common critique of philanthropy, is that it shouldn't
exist, is that we live in a culturethat requires us to backfill and reverse
engineer and try and improve thingsthat should be better than they are now.
Uh, the, I don't know.
What do you do with all that?
Given that we have this phenomenallyimperfect sector, what do you
think philanthropy can actually do?
Vu (10:23):
When we talk about philanthropy, I think it's really important to
distinguish the difference betweenprogressive leaning philanthropy
and conservative philanthropy.
Conservative philanthropyhas been extremely effective.
It has been, and it's beenresponsible and great part to
what we are seeing right now.
Conservative philanthropists havebeen investing in things like the
Heritage Foundation in the FederalistSociety of the Cato Institute, like
(10:47):
Turn Point USA, and other conservativeinstitutions and movements and leaders.
It's responsible for supportingall of these conservative pundits
and voices that we keep hearing onthe radio and on TV and on social
media, and on YouTube and all over.
So they've been extremely effective.
They have been able to get SupremeCourt justices onto the Supreme
(11:07):
Court and shape the judiciary thatway they buy politicians and so on.
In the meanwhile, progressivephilanthropists, progressive leaning
ones have just been so tentativeand risk averse and funds one year
at a time and are mired in toxicintellectualizing, and that's why
we have not been very effective.
Eric (11:28):
It's interesting.
I have a theory hypothesis that welost the election because of jargon,
and which is that the aggressiveworld talks in these mystical ways
that a lot of folks don't understandand therefore say, Hey, look, I
don't feel like I'm a part of that.
And it makes it really easy to pointa finger at those folks as being
elitist out of touch, talking downto us and all that other stuff.
(11:50):
And that one of the things that wecan do is just say what we mean.
What do you think of that?
Vu (11:57):
I agree with you, but the problem is that we don't
actually agree on what we mean.
Ah.
We need to acknowledge, for example, thata lot of the people who are in power,
a lot of the politicians, politicalleaders and so on, like they actually
don't want the system to change.
Eric (12:10):
Yeah.
Vu (12:10):
Because what we mean is we need to tax billionaires.
That's easy to understand.
Okay, stop allowing billionairesto avoid paying taxes and then get
to do whatever the hell they want.
That's very easy to understand.
But if they themselves don't actuallybelieve that, like they don't, like,
we have so many philanthropistswho still believe in capitalism.
They will proudly declare themselvesto be capitalists and you know, and
(12:35):
they don't want to tax billionaires,they don't think billionaires
should be taxed out of existencelike many of us on the ground do.
So it doesn't, the messaging won'tcome if we are not, we're not in
agreement about what they are.
When the people in power, theybasically want things to stay the same.
Eric (12:50):
That's another critique of philanthropy, which is it was created
out of this capitalist system in which alot of people, a relatively few people,
but now more, are making astonishingamounts of money and that they're
giving a little bit of it back as a wayto either purchase indulgences, feel
better about themselves or whatever.
And that's, some folks genuinely dowanna make a difference, but that
(13:11):
philanthropy is like a really lousy wayto redistribute wealth versus taxation.
And.
Things like that.
And then how do you square this seemingcontradiction of taking the money from
the, that's skimmed off the top from largephilanthropy to try and do your best as
an executive director of an organizationin which you're trying to meet payroll.
(13:31):
It's complicated, isn't it?
Vu (13:34):
Yeah, it's complicated, but I'm not so sure it's necessarily needs to be
more complicated because that's one thingthat liberals do is we complicate things
and we say things are complicated whenthey're really not all that complicated.
I agree with you.
It is like the rich people,they wanna stay rich.
Philanthropy has been built on AndrewCarnegie's philosophy of the gospel
of wealth, where it's okay to get asmuch money as you want and as you can,
(13:59):
and then give out some of that to buylibraries or whatever that you care about.
And so over decades, like that's whathas been happening and for many of
us on the, in the field, we're like,okay, that is a system that we need to
change, and the meanwhile, communitiesand people are still being hurt.
So we need to do what we can.
There's a lot of mindset we need to shift.
(14:19):
Like one of the biggest mindsetsI think about is like this idea
that this is other people's money.
I feel like for a long time people arelike, oh, this is the foundation's money.
Or this is like this major donor'smoney and we're lucky when they
give us any amount of money at all.
For a long time that has, we'veinternalized these messages and
that has been very terrible becausethen we're like deferential.
(14:40):
We become grateful instead ofwhat we should be, which is angry.
Angry that this wealth has been hoarded.
Angry that wealth individuals pay less.
Of a percentage of their totalwealth in taxes every year.
Angry that their wealth has beenbuilt through an equitable means like
slavery and stolen indigenous landand worker exploitation and destroying
(15:01):
our environment and stuff, right?
And to, of course, tax avoidance, right?
We should be a lot more angry than wehave been while we're getting all this
funding instead of being what we've beentrained to be, which is to be grateful.
Eric (15:12):
So what's next you've talked about crappy funding practices.
You've got run the LinkedIn.
Page on that, which is really interesting,but that it seems like there's some sort
of, there's a more fundamental challengeright now, especially now, and you wrote
a piece the other day, I think it wascalled Dear Fund, is Your Endowments
will be worthless in a fascist state,which gets to the point of, all right.
(15:34):
Let's understand that we're not changingthe system of philanthropy today, but
that there are a lot of philanthropistsout there who could make a difference,
particularly now in this political climatethat is precarious to be really generous.
Vu (15:48):
Yeah.
Okay.
Let's talk about crappy funding practices.
Okay.
Which is when I started callingout foundations by name and now
it's become a movement led by somereally brilliant volunteers who
are anonymous because of the powerdynamics, but someone can report.
A funder who does a really crappytime wasting thing, such as
requiring a quarterly report, right?
(16:09):
No one should require a quarterly report.
There was one funder who req, who requiredsomething that needed to be no notarized.
Notarized for $5,000 or something.
It was so ridiculous, right?
So we need to call out.
We need to just start being sonice in the sector, and we tend to
beat around the bush and not name.
Things by name sometimes.
(16:29):
And I think it's just gotten so badnow that we actually do need to call
out funders by name when they dothings that are harmful because we
just do not have time for that anymore.
And then going back to what you saidabout Yeah, what is happening right
now in the world right now is that weare quickly advancing towards fascism.
Like democracy is being dismantledright now by the right wing, right
(16:51):
by Trump, by the Republicans.
They're doing.
Horrifyingly scary things,unconstitutional things such as
disappearing people without dueprocess, such as arresting judges
who give orders that they don't like.
This is very scary thingsthat are happening.
That is like people whostudy fascism are saying it.
(17:11):
This is we way on that trajectory.
We need to be able to turn around.
But in order to do that, we needfunders and nonprofits and everyone
to start being all hands on deck.
And right now I'm not seeing that sort of.
Urgency among many of thefunders in our sector.
Eric (17:31):
Alright, on that incredibly happy note, we're gonna take a very short
break and we're gonna come back and diginto what philanthropy should be doing.
So we'll be right back with vle.
You are listening to Let's HearIt, a podcast about foundation and
nonprofit communications hostedby Eric Brown and Kirk Brown.
If you're enjoying this episode,you may just be a rule breaker.
Check out season two of BreakFake Rules with Glen Gall.
(17:53):
CEO of the Stubs Key Foundation ashe chats with inspiring leaders in
philanthropy, government media, andmore about breaking the fake rules
that don't work so that we can build afuture that does new episodes of break.
Fake rules, drop monthly.
Check them out whereveryou get your podcasts.
And now back to the show.
And we are back with vle.
(18:14):
You are the founder of nonprofit af.
You are a, the instigator of crappyfunding practices and you have been vocal
right now about how philanthropy needs toact and it needs to act really forcefully.
And I'm also seeing it.
Maybe you're seeing it now, but if not,I'd love to know your thoughts on this.
Folks are starting to call on philanthropyand the nonprofit world to be a lot more.
(18:38):
Full throated.
A lot more aggressive to spend moremoney to really dig in right now, because
if not now, when, can you just talka little bit about what you're seeing
and where you think maybe some signs ofhope are and areas where we absolutely,
positively have to pay more attention?
Vu (18:56):
Yeah, it is been, it is been a long time.
I feel like we need to have someacknowledgement that funders reluctance
to fund things over the past severaldecades, progressive leaning funders
again, right, who've always stuck tothis 5% payout rule where they only give
out 5% of their endowments every year.
And I remember just decades ago goingto them and saying, Hey, can you give
(19:18):
more money for like voter engagement?
And they're like, oh no, thatdoesn't align with our priorities.
No that's not in our strategic plan.
And so they just continue doing whateverit is based on their whims and interests
and the flavor of the year or whatever.
And that's patchwork approach toit is the complete opposite to
what conservatives have been doing.
(19:39):
They were very targeted towardscertain things such as building
institution, creating an armyof intellectual warriors on pot.
Casts and everywhere shaping thejudiciary, buying, getting politicians
right-wing, politicians, elected, and thencontrolling the media and the messaging.
Through Fox and Podcasts and every,everything, they were very strategic.
(20:01):
Meanwhile we over here, we becamelike the Sky Mall catalog of the
causes for funders and rich people tochoose from, like a hobby of theirs.
Like this time like, oh,I wanna buy this program.
And the next year they go,oh, this is a great program.
I'm gonna buy this.
That's what they've been doing.
I don't know how much acknowledgementright now that funders are
saying, wow, that has beenreally, that has been a mistake.
(20:23):
What I've been seeing is thatsome funders are like, oh, we
need to give out more money.
So some of them havebeen increasing from 5%.
To 6%.
There are some foundations thatare increasing to 10%, one a
few to like 14, 15% and so on.
Some are spending down and and et cetera.
So that is good.
That's good.
They've started signing letters,pushing back, but a lot of them have
(20:47):
been complying in advance with fascismby getting rid of DEI by, so I'm
hoping that eventually they'll turnaround and be like, no, we're gonna
support DEI and start fighting back.
Signs of hope in our communities.
There are some great organizations in oursector that are doing incredible work.
Uh, I think about the NationalCouncil of Nonprofits, for example,
and Democracy Forward and others whohave been suing that administration.
(21:10):
When there, there was that pausein federal funding, immediately
they took action, legal action andgot an injunction to stop that.
I think that saved so manyorganizations and people and
they're still continuing to fight.
So there are.
Incredible people doing reallyamazing work in the sector.
Right now
Eric (21:26):
you say you didn't go into medicine, but you're actually practicing
some proctology at the moment.
Vu (21:34):
I guess you can put it that way.
I don't want to, Eric, like, do youwanna kick ass and stuff all the time?
That's not fun.
I wanna, I wanna be ableto just, I don't know.
I think many of us are so tiredbecause like the stuff I've been
saying is not things that are uniqueand original because I'm so smart.
It's things that people have beensaying long before I even came along.
(21:57):
You know, especially like marginalizedpeople, women of color and trans
people have been saying these thingswith such a long time and I'm just
like one of the voices there who camealong and tried to add to it because
these things have been set for sucha long time and keep getting ignored,
and this is the result that we see.
This is what happens when we don't listento the voices of the communities that
(22:18):
are most affected by systemic injusticeis that we see this now in the rise of
fascism and the destruction of democracy.
Eric (22:26):
One of the comments, really interesting comments is
that it's, how do I put this?
That , when you don't have strongdefenses for people who need them, it
is a way to chip away at democracy.
So the attacks on trans people,for example, is a way to chip away
at democracy because these attacksthen obtain, they take hold, and
then you continue to advance.
The tools that you used.
(22:47):
And so you start with people who are themost vulnerable and you move to people who
are slightly less vulnerable and so on.
And so for a funder who cares aboutdemocracy, let's just say ensuring
that people who have, who have thehardest time defending themselves
in these areas that they have, thestrength that they need to be able to
win is how you defend your democracy.
Not just it, obviously voting isimportant, but it's not just that.
(23:11):
It's about ensuring that theseorganizations are strong.
Vu (23:15):
Absolutely.
This is, all of this that we'reseeing are not new strategies that
the right wing has been using.
Like the attacks on trans peoplehas been out of the playbook of
literally Hitler, who as soon as the1933, when he took over, I think it
was that year or the following year,is like the first thing that he did
(23:36):
was start rounding up trans people.
Gay men and sent them to concentrationgay men destroying like that.
The Institute for Sexual Studiesthere, that was like helping to
advocate for transgender people andL-G-B-T-Q-I-A people and so on, and
that was the first thing that they did.
And they knew like this is, you attackthe most vulnerable people and if
(23:59):
people don't defend them, you moveon to the next vulnerable people.
And that's how you get people to bedeferential and to put their head
down so that they don't get attacked.
And so we've been seeing this andwe've been seeing it being replicated
and it's been very disappointing.
Like I see it in, I don't know, evenpeople who are supposed to be getting it.
The New York Times, for example.
(24:19):
I don't know, like they have writtensome things that have just been
very terrible and anti-trans, andthey're supposed to be on the more
liberal and progressive side here.
It's been very disappointing.
Eric (24:34):
Yeah, the things are quite difficult right now.
Are there areas for hope that yousee, apart from you try to keep your
good humor in the face of all this?
Where do you see the greatopportunities coming?
Vu (24:47):
One is I try to remind myself that these things do come in waves, right?
They are not unprecedented.
And that means that, that we have hope.
And also in some ways what we'reseeing is like this, like last gasp
of white supremacy and patriarchy.
As people start clinging to it.
(25:07):
So I don't know, this year islike the year of the snake, and I
think about that symbolism a lot.
Like we think of snakes as beingreally evil and talking people into
eating forbidden fruit or whatever.
But they're also a symbol of renewal and,and rebirth because they shed their skin.
And I feel like maybe in some waysthis is our society shedding the skins
(25:28):
of white supremacy and capitalismand patriarchy and waking up to how
unfair the system is and what weneed to do to radically change it.
So that's one thing that gives me somehope is clinging onto that belief here.
If we can survive this, I think itmay be, it may lead to some like
really good things in society.
But the other thing is likepeople are still fighting.
(25:49):
Like every single day.
I see resistance everywhere.
On the internet, on, on tv, in, in thecommunity, there's neighbors are just
doing all sorts of creative things.
I know there are neighbors who are,who have a spare room that they're now
thinking of creating like some sortof space in case a trans community
member might need it in order toescape prosecution or whatever.
(26:11):
I know there's people who are doingincredible stuff and I was just
reading about this research from aresearcher named Erica Chen with,
who was talking about this 3% rule.
Or threshold where if you can get 3.5%of the population, the total population
to start rising up consistently, thenyou have a significant chance to actually
(26:33):
overturn the, like the situation hereand in the US, 3.5% is about 11 million
people, so that's almost twice thepopulation of New York City, which
is a significant amount of people.
But just a few weeks ago wehad, I think half the number of
people were out there marching.
And protests and so on.
Right?
(26:53):
And if we can just keep being consistent.
And this uprising, mass uprising,I think we have a pretty strong
chance of turning things around.
Eric (27:03):
So the left has been criticized for not being able to appeal to a
sufficient number of folks in thiscountry, and that's why a lot of folks
went over to Trump, that they saw that,that they were being told that their
lives would be better as a result.
But, and it's because that we haven't comeup with an, an inclusive understanding way
to communicate across traditional barriersis do you think that that's a fair.
(27:26):
Critique, and if so,what is there to be done?
Or are we always gonna be tryingfor 50% plus one in this country?
Vu (27:36):
I think if the left would actually just embrace being left, that's the key.
We look at the loss of theHarris campaign, for example.
They didn't really embrace the left.
They were supporting genocide.
They were supporting thegenocide of Palestinians.
And then we had likecampaigning with Dick Cheney.
We were talking about havingthe most lethal army in the
(27:58):
world and stuff like that.
Well, yeah.
What, how, why would that attractany progressive Then we look at
progressive candidates like actualtruly progressive candidates like
Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tle, and aOC for Bernie Sanders, et cetera.
Like they win election becausethey're like, we're going, we're
Andy Beshear and like the peoplewho fully embrace progressivism.
(28:21):
Instead of waffling around,like people don't like waffles.
Hmm.
So the left just needs to stop waffling.
We're going to be left and be left.
Talk about taxing the rich.
Talk about universal Medicare.
Talk about stop supporting genocide.
Like these are things we need to do.
So it's not that we have, again, we'renot, we have a messaging problem.
It's that we can't evenagree to be left here.
(28:43):
And the people in power, theylove being in the middle.
They're just hedging their bets tosee who will win so that they can
still get rich off of whichever sidewins here instead of being like full
throw in their full throated, intheir support, uh, progressive values.
I think that's why we lost.
Eric (29:03):
So what's next?
What's next for you?
F.
Vu (29:07):
I, I was talking about this one man show.
Oh
Eric (29:11):
yeah.
I meant to ask you about that.
That was, yeah.
Tell me about your one man show.
Vu (29:16):
On April Fool's Day, I put out this joke.
I'm doing this tour of my one man show,and it was called Please Send Money.
Like the joy and agony ofnonprofit and philanthropy.
It was gonna be four hours long, and itwas pretty silly, including the 17 minute
segment where I pretend to emerge fromthe womb covered in strawberry preserve.
And pennies represent the nine months thatit takes to apply for a grant and get it.
(29:43):
It was ridiculous, but peoplereally responded to it.
They're like, when are youcoming to Houston and Hawaii?
And I had to tell themthis was actually a joke.
I'm not going anywhere.
Okay.
I'm just trying not tobe deported right now.
Yeah.
So, I don't know.
I'm just gonna continue fighting.
I'm gonna try to add humor where I can.
'cause I feel like thepeople really need it.
(30:03):
I'm trying to remind people to takecare of themselves and to find joy
where they can, because Joy is alsoresistance, trying to build community
and yeah, I'm just gonna, I don't know.
I feel like maybe right now my rolecontinues to be to point out all the
inconsistencies and to kick ass whereI need to and to also to affirm all
(30:23):
the good things that are happeningin our sector because there are a lot
of good things and a lot of reallygood people in our sector right now,
and we need to always remember that.
Eric (30:33):
We need VLAs in the field.
Absolutely.
Telling the truth, reminding peoplehow they can improve, helping us
remember where we are coming from,where we came from, where we're going.
I really appreciate your work.
I really appreciate you taking timeto, to speak with us and to keep up.
Keep up the good.
Keep up the good stuff, man.
Vu (30:54):
Thank you, Eric.
I appreciate you.
Hang in there.
All right.
We got through this
Kirk (31:00):
and we're back.
So.
So what a gig.
So are you telling me that Vle is able,V is able to pay his bills and run his
life running his blog nonprofit af.
Eric (31:13):
I don't know.
Maybe.
Wow.
Maybe I, it's a very, we, I didn'task him how he makes his money.
That's rude.
Come on.
It's, this is the backgroundof all these conversations.
Do you make, do you pay your billshosting a podcast, Kirk, by any chance?
Kirk (31:28):
I certainly do not actually.
Its my volunteer contribution, oneof many that I make to the world.
Yeah.
Eric (31:36):
Yeah.
I, I don't, I don't actually, youknow, like I said, I didn't I didn't
ask for, I usually don't ask theguests for financial disclosures.
Is that right?
Isn't, it's not like that, youknow, have to get their credit
report in order to be a guest.
Kirk (31:48):
So this is one of those conversations where, and again, Boo's
got a book coming out on October 14th,please order it, and then he'll be back
on his blog post on the 19th of August.
It's such a great site and it's sofunny and so timely and so engaging.
I loved how he set it up though.
He was like, I got invited bya foundation to write something
and so I just went for it.
(32:08):
Whole am did it for free.
I did it with some humor,which we need in our sector.
And I appreciated you,dripping your elements of humor
throughout this conversation.
Eric (32:17):
Elements of humor,
Kirk (32:19):
I, I
Eric (32:19):
only have
Kirk (32:19):
elements.
His capacity just to put it out thereand put it in such a plain terms.
It was.
Oh man, it just, it just feltlike, you know, he talked about
the nonprofit sector's, air.
This felt like oxygen, necessary oxygen inthe room as we do this really necessary.
Soul searching about what is the momentwe're in, what are the consequences,
what are the costs, but also whatdo we need to do going forward?
Eric (32:40):
Yeah.
And speaking of rooms, there's an elephantin the room and I it's an elephant that
I've been thinking about for a reallylong time since we had this conversation.
'cause V talks about genocide.
Mm-hmm.
And I have dear friends who havediffering opinions on what's going on.
And I feel like not waitinginto the middle of that.
I feel like it at the same time.
(33:02):
I don't know.
It's been, I've been thinking aboutit a lot and I thought about, oh,
well what if you just don't airthe show and then you're gonna
have to deal with controversy?
Mm-hmm.
But that's, that's not cool.
That's.
And when, what if you, edit aroundlike, no, you can't do that anyway.
So the elephant is in the room.
It's there.
I'm not gonna talk about the specificsaround genocide but I just have to
(33:24):
acknowledge that it's there and, and ifpeople are angry or people are excited
don't come to me to talk about it.
And maybe that makes me a coward.
But I, I don't think so.
I think that there's just so muchsuffering that's happening that I.
I am not qualified to talk about it.
(33:45):
I don't know.
What do you think about that, Kirk?
Kirk (33:48):
Yeah.
Right.
Well, can I, can I actually, I, I wantto take your, I want a yes and this, and
I wanna wade into this further and thenwe'll just, this will be the, this will
be the last podcast we ever produced.
'cause this is gonna be so contentious.
I don't know.
We'll see.
Isn't it fair to say that v's providingus pers a perspective on this fundamental.
Challenge we encounter if we wantto, if we wanna put something as
(34:09):
audacious as the left, across theleft or as progressive across the
progressive, or whatever category youwant descriptor, you wanna provide it.
But this, this diversity of opinion,this robust, aggressive, at times
diversity of opinion that shows uparound, around all of us that think
about how to make the world a betterplace the way we think about it.
I was hearing you talk about v's.
(34:29):
Critique of philanthropy, foundations,nonprofits, to the left, like, like just
leaning into what it means to be whateverthis, this, this movement could be.
That was the thing that struck me.
I was like, it feels like there's,there's almost a missing critique
in here for all of us, which is.
The incentives are mismatched.
I think like you and I have hadconversations about our opposition
and, and what's under what, whatreally is at the root, what's the
(34:52):
real heart of what's at stake inthe, in this contest of perspectives.
And, and from my, from where I sit, I feellike one thing that's really challenging
to work through with all this is.
Our opposition is actually oddly, verydeeply aligned in a very core way.
And I think in a weird way, partof the left is like this flowering
(35:12):
of perspectives and so yeah.
So the fact that there'sdifferences of, of opinion Yeah.
And even dramatic ones,
Eric (35:17):
that's part of the deal that we're having to sort through.
I I, I take your point.
I take your point.
And, and again, I, I lovethe work that FU is doing.
I think he's doing anamazing job of shining light.
On our field, and yeah, he is partof the left, and he is a, a full
throated, deeply compassionateand deeply passionate person.
(35:40):
And so I, so anyway, I, I don't, Ifeel like I'm trying to parse this
conversation, but I don't want to,let's just talk about what we talked
about and we'll get on with it, and thenpeople can like us or not, or we get,
maybe we'll get the cards and letters.
Kirk (35:54):
We'll talk about weighty things.
So let's talk aboutcrappy funding practices.
So how about that?
Right.
Calling foundation stuff by name.
So how would it have felt to be sittingin the communications desk and even
anonymously, you know, via LinkedInbeing called out by name because somebody
says, Hey, wait a minute, foundationXI don't like what you're doing here.
What do you think?
What do you think about that?
Eric (36:14):
Well, I mean, he's right, foundations.
Many, many foundations are, are,shouldn't be doing what they're doing.
And by the way, Glen Gallesis about to come out with a,
a book on this very topic.
I don't wanna give any of it away, butif you've read any of Glen's work, you'll
know that he is highly, highly exercisedabout crappy foundation practices.
(36:39):
And, and he's right.
And Vu is a really wonderful.
Other voice in this because foundationsput their grantees through the tortures
of the damned to give them tiny bitsof money that cost the grantee tons
of time and effort in order to get it.
And then they're meantto be grateful for it.
And if you really wanna get thingsdone, that as a funder, if you
(37:00):
actually really wanna get thingsdone as a funder, don't do that.
Mm-hmm.
But he talked about like foundationsas like a Sky Mall catalog.
Yeah.
Of, of whims.
Like, Ooh, I think I'll buy myselfa little bit of these, you know?
Headphones or, you know,
Kirk (37:16):
yeah.
Eric (37:16):
Whatever it is.
And so those practices must be ended.
They must simply be ended.
They're not fair.
They don't help.
They're not gonna make change.
It's just the egos of the fundersand their employees frankly
to that allows that to happen.
And they have so much power andthe grantees have to, either they
(37:37):
take the money and nod silently or.
V. They talk about it and theyhold, shine a light on this stuff.
But I, I think the underlyingpoint is that if you actually wanna
make change, then don't do that.
If you don't care aboutmaking change mm-hmm.
I don't know.
Do whatever the hell you want.
Kirk (37:58):
It's funny, I mean, I, I, I'm like, many of us have been, you know,
party to quarterly reports, biannualreports, like I, I've received massive,
uh, support from foundations and who,and then had 12 months to spend it all.
And I'm like, you know, it's gonna takeme six months just to hire the team that
it's gonna take to implement on this work.
I mean, so anybody who's workedin this kind of professional
(38:21):
philanthropic world, we all knowthat there's a whole deal here.
And, and it's, it's also, there's, it's.
Every foundation is a, isa, is an entity of one.
Like they're all unique into each other.
Like you, you know, it's but at the sametime, you know, I, I've started having
this own, my own conversation about this.
Do we actually need to sort of reassessour assessments in a way, like, if I'm
an organization that's entirely dependenton foundation funding and so therefore
(38:43):
I'm being put through the ringer forall this stuff, maybe actually that's
really the issue that I need to address.
Eric (38:49):
Maybe.
Maybe, although, you know,depending on what it is you do,
where are you gonna get the money?
Yeah, yeah.
Clearly federal funding is not happening.
Right?
Right.
Uh, major donors can sometimes maybefind, you, find yourself, your angel donor
who just gives you the money and, anddoesn't require you to kiss their ass.
(39:11):
But the fact is that the model forthe social sector in our country.
It doesn't work.
And, we shouldn't need to have, I, I thinkwe've mentioned this in the conversation,
we shouldn't need to have as manynonprofit organizations that, that we do.
Right.
Kirk (39:29):
It should just work better.
Eric (39:30):
And, and, uh, again, I don't wanna give away too much of Glen's book 'cause
I got a chance to review it in advance.
Thank you, Glen.
It's amazing that the idea ofphilanthropy is that once you make,
once you get your tax deduction,it's not your money anymore.
So it's not like, you know, if Iwrite a hundred dollars check to the
ACL U, I'm not calling them up andsay, oh, by the way, I would like
(39:50):
you to use my money in this way.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
You, you need to put a, a plaque onthe urinal in the ac like you, it's,
it's for individual donors like this,you write the check, it's general
support, and then you, you frankly don'thave much control and you shouldn't
'cause it's not your money anymore.
And in philanthropy, these foundationsand philanthropists have amazing
(40:12):
amount of control after they'vealready taken their tax deduction.
And that's, you know,the, it's the tax system.
It's, it's how we.
Backfill the things that aren'tbeing properly done by governments
or communities or peopleworking together or whatever.
Mm-hmm.
And it's, it's just acrappy, crappy system.
Kirk (40:31):
Yeah.
Well, it's funny, you know, in thatconversation about you know, what
we're seeing just the manifestationsof this many, many decades of work
that let's just call it the oppositionhas been doing to create the context
that we're currently seeing play out.
Across the country.
Um, you know, there's, it feels likethere's two conversations happening here.
So one is the strategy of what has beendone and what needs to be done, you know,
(40:53):
so this notion of creating institutions,creating intellectual warriors, getting
politicians elected, having a, being very,you know, tightly aligned on message.
That's a whole kind of strategyof what needs to happen.
And, and I think about the leftas it were trying to come together
around a strategy like that.
I'm like, good luck, you know?
Good, good luck convening the meeting.
(41:14):
Good luck getting everybody to come do it.
But then the second piece isthe how do you pay for it part?
And, and, and so there's the, these twothings happening in this conversation
because partly the conversation is, hey,up your payouts, you know, get to 5%,
6%, 10%, 15 of so we was talking about,but if there's not a coherent strategy
that all that money is gonna be droppedinto to try to drive progress forward.
(41:38):
I wonder about the payoutconversation, right?
It's like, don't you haveto have both in a sense?
Eric (41:43):
Well, you can't, you can't legislate a strategy, into the tax code, you know,
because the idea is that anything thatserves a public good is tax deductible.
Uh, and if you're and the left can'tlegislate the left, whatever the
hell that's supposed to mean, right?
And we've alreadydemonstrated that the left is.
Kirk (42:04):
Very diverse.
Very diverse.
Eric (42:07):
Like no.
Yeah.
Like no one's calling the conventionof the left saying like, here's
the message of the day, here's howwe're going to beat the opposition.
That's just not how it works.
And I, I've said this 500 timeson this show, which is that
being hopeful and progressivein that you want to progress is.
Inherently, you're at a disadvantagefrom the people who want to tear down.
(42:32):
'cause it's way easier to, you know,the demo in your bathroom takes an
hour, it takes a day, and buildingthe damn thing back takes six months.
You know, it's like, this is just how.
How this is the, the nature of change,and all I can say is that you have
to hope for some set of ideas thatthat obtain in people's consciousness
(42:53):
and that they create the gravity,the heat, and the light that.
People can move together with.
And sometimes that takes singleleaders who just step out there and
take a chance and people follow them.
And sometimes it takes movements andsometimes those movements are supported
by philanthropy and got That's good.
And sometimes those movements just, justcome out of a sense of the zeitgeist about
(43:17):
what people are feeling and experiencing.
And unfortunately right nowwhat we're seeing is a movement
that is very d destructive.
And it's very, very defensiveand it is angry and brutal and
limiting and stultifying and a lotof folks, you know, it's very, very
hard to to, to push through that.
And I just had another friend todaytell me he was leaving the country.
Kirk (43:41):
Oh, wow.
And so, you know,
Eric (43:43):
trying to generate hope among, you know, in this kind of experience.
Is very challenging and trying to winon that and bring a, a very, as you say,
diverse set of folks together in somelevel of concert is really challenging.
And that's just where we are today.
(44:05):
And so if you are a philanthropistand you do wanna somehow support those
movements, you know, throw the money andget the hell out of the way and hope.
That money's gonna get used as wellas it possibly can, that people
do not have to spend their timecoming up with cockamamie, the, you
know, theories of change and boxesand arrows and things like that.
Kirk (44:30):
Yeah, I mean, so the message to philanthropy being it's not about
the money in your bank account isthe money in the field, and it's
the efficacy and the speed withwhich you can get into the field.
That's really what matters and the,and the relationships you foster
to, to help push that stuff forward.
And I, and I think that's exactlyright, but I think that, this is
the fundamental challenge here.
I think this notion that if it's,if it's progressive and it's public,
it warrants support and that's true.
(44:52):
And so we need to provide more support.
But I'm still stuck at this notionof like that tear down, right?
It's that tear down in service to what?
It's that build up in service to what?
In this diversity of our movement,we build up for so many things.
Now you're, and I love that conceptof the Sky Mall catalog for social
change, but that's in fact what it is.
And in fact, our own podcast reflectsit because we've had all sorts of
(45:15):
conversations from all these great peopleacross all these different domains.
And guess what?
They all matter.
They're all important.
Yes.
And yes, they're all in service to, wewould say like this better, more socially
oriented, more just world in some way.
Do they individually add up?
You know, do they create the scaffoldingof change to, jumping back to your
earlier question so that you can actuallylegislate ourselves out of existence
(45:39):
because you can reorganize the wholesystem to actually, work more effectively.
So you don't even need this wholepublic sector, you know, set
this whole public service sector.
I think that's where there's alittle bit of a mismatch here,
because I think all of our little.
You know, silver BBS of hope andaspiration, they may not be adding up
to being enough to match this, thisthe monstrosity of what's kind of
(46:00):
being that's been constructed, let'ssay it, it's not even being built.
It's been built and yeah, guess what?
It's, it's, it's, it'sdoing its work right now.
Eric (46:07):
Yeah.
And, and, not to belabor the point,let's just say, but again, VU
was talking to philanthropy abouthow to do what it possibly can.
To allow those kinds of things that youjust talked about to happen, which is to
allow, yes, there, there will be no hymnalthat everyone has to sing from, but.
(46:29):
If organizations begin to worktogether and they have the freedom
to make decisions and they have theopportunity to take risks and do all
that other stuff, then maybe, maybe,maybe we might get something done here.
But under the current circumstancesand the way we do it, it's really hard.
I mean, nonprofit organizations thatsucceed do it in spite, often in spite
of their funding, not because of it.
Kirk (46:51):
So to that point.
Vu is a plain spoken truthteller and he's very good at it.
He's compelling, he's funny,he's an outstanding writer.
And by the way, he has a book coming outon October 14th, reimagining nonprofits
and philanthropy unlocking the fullpotential of vital and complex exer.
So please buy his book.
So he's a truth tell.
(47:14):
This is put your chips atthe center of the table.
How much does our sectoractually value that truth?
Yeah.
What do you think about that?
And, and every foundation we'veever talked to has said We value
assessment, we value learning.
We wanna, we wanna take risksand learn from our failures
as much as our successes.
How much do you think our sectoractually values this kind of aggressive
(47:37):
soul searching, true telling?
What do you think about that?
Uh,
Eric (47:41):
I think it depends.
I think not nearly enoughis the, is the real answer.
And people wanna say, well, what is my,what is my philanthropic dollar buying me?
And the answer is, you don't always know.
And you have to be able to not know,and half of the time, the thing that
you wanna buy, you don't actuallyend up wanting because there's some
(48:02):
better thing to buy that you wouldnever have thought of if you had
constrained your grantees in the, withyour own sense set of narrow thinking.
And if I sound.
Uh, if I sound cynical, Kirk, it'sonly because I deeply love this field
that has, right, that has nurturedme for so long, and I want it to
be really good, and I think it can.
(48:24):
But I mean, we saw a lot offoundations fighting the the payout,
you know, the, there was talkingCongress about increasing payout
and foundations were fighting that,and that's just not a good look.
Kirk (48:37):
Well get, I'm gonna give you a first person example of what this looks like.
I'll keep it anonymous and I'm doingthis at the end here, so you can cut
it if it's not gonna make the cut.
Okay.
Eric (48:46):
I just cut that.
I love it.
But that's so true.
So I'm seriously, the storythat you just told that I cut,
we're not gonna say what it is.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But, but, but, but ifyou'd like to summarize.
Your message so that I can save youfrom, from yourself goes, go ahead.
(49:12):
But
Kirk (49:12):
my message is it could take eight years to try to get to go when it
should take one or two conversations.
Well, that's what I message.
Well, here's the other thing,
Eric (49:20):
and I've seen, I've seen a number of foundations that I, that I really,
I, I respect a whole lot and they give.
Long term general operatingsupport, minimal reporting.
They build relationships with theirgrantees, so it's not like they're
just writing the check and ducking.
They're learning about what they needand they're providing the grantees
(49:41):
with what they need and they sendthem on their way and they, and
they encourage 'em to do good work.
And if they make a mistake theydon't penalize 'em for it, and they
don't require them to do crazy.
Stuff.
Yeah.
And if you really care about a field,if you're a funder and you really
care about a field, you find thoseorganizations and you make sure they
have everything they possibly need tosucceed, and you get out of the way.
(50:04):
Mm-hmm.
And that's, yeah, that'show you win at stuff.
And you know that, sothat's my take on that.
And, and you, and you go fastas you possibly can and as
long as you possibly can.
So it's not like you, you.
Throw a ton of money at him and two yearslater he's like, eh, I changed my mind.
I'm gonna buy this other thingfrom the Sky Mall catalog.
(50:25):
He, he can't do that either.
You, you have to givethis stuff time to, yeah.
To to work.
And so I think those are the Yeah, thoseare, it feels to me like those are the
key messages that VU is getting at inhis own, you know, special of Ular.
Funny, cynical, pointed way.
And, and he's, uh, you know, he's right.
(50:48):
He's really right.
And he's, he does it in a way thatmakes it entertaining, which is cool.
'cause otherwise he's just me.
I mean, you know, you got this skullhere on the, on the podcast, you
know, someone just walked their doglike, oh my God, Fido with this dude.
So, I don't know.
Kirk (51:04):
Well, and just think about the potential for success here if VU actually
succeeds in reducing the administrativecosts of all these transactions.
That will unleash billions ofadditional dollars into the field
because that's actually how much Yep.
All this stuff costs.
So Vu, thank you so much for yourwork, for being the plain spoken
truth telling visionary that you are.
Eric, thank you for bringingV on for the podcast.
(51:25):
That was awesome.
Order v's.
New book.
It's coming out on October 14th,reimagining nonprofits and philanthropy.
And I also check out the nonprofitAF blog, which we'll be back
to as of August eight 19th.
Eric, that was awesome.
Vu.
Thank you for joining us.
Very generous, once again.
Another great contribution for us.
I'd.
Okay.
We'll see you next time.
(51:45):
I can't believe you.
Cut that.
Come on.
Okay everybody.
That's it for this episode.
Please let us know if you have anythoughts about what you heard today
or people we should have on this show,and that definitely includes yourself
and we'd like to thank John Ali.
The Tuneful and inspiringcomposer of our theme music,
Eric (52:04):
our sponsor,
Kirk (52:05):
the Lumina Foundation, and please check out Lumina's terrific podcast,
today's students tomorrow's talent, andyou can find that@luminafoundation.org.
We
Eric (52:14):
certainly thank today's guest, and of course, all of you,
Kirk (52:17):
and most importantly, thank you, Mr. Brown.
Eric (52:21):
Oh, no, no, no, no.
Thank you, Mr. Brown.
Kirk (52:23):
Okay, everybody, till next time.
Welcome to, let's Hear It.
Let's Hear.
It is a podcast for and about thefield of foundation and nonprofit
communications produced by its twoco-hosts, Eric Brown and Kirk Brown.
No relation,
Kirk (00:12):
who well said Eric.
And I'm Kirk.
Eric (00:14):
And I'm Eric.
The podcast is sponsored bythe College Futures Foundation.
Which envisions a California wherepost-secondary education advances
equity and unlocks upward mobilitynow and for generations to come to
learn more, visit college futures.org.
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Kirk (00:29):
find, let's hear it on
Eric (00:30):
any podcast subscription platform.
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Eric (00:38):
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Eric (00:47):
Let's get onto the show.
Kirk (00:52):
It's wonderful seeing you today, Mr. Brown.
Eric (00:54):
Well, it's wonderful to be seen, Mr. Brown.
Kirk (00:56):
I wanna introduce a word, a key word that's very relevant to
the conversation that we're aboutto listen to, which was terrific.
Once again, by the way, thankyou for doing this for all of us.
Ah, plain spoken.
Plain spoken.
That's two words.
Okay?
No, it's not.
It's a compound word, isn't it?
Isn't it?
One word.
Oh, okay.
This is one of the most plain spoken,brilliantly, so guests that we've ever
(01:16):
had, and let's hear, and I, I cannotwait to dig into this discussion.
There's some pitching, there'ssome placement, there's some
product highlighting I wantto do before we get into the
conversation on behalf of our guest.
But set this up becausethis was really excellent.
It's timely, it's important, it'snecessary, but the plain spoken
conversation that's about to happenhere is it's good for us all.
(01:37):
I think it's good for all of our souls.
Eric (01:39):
Oh, good.
'cause, you know, our souls are needed.
Uh, I,
Kirk (01:43):
yes they do.
Eric (01:44):
I interviewed Vle, who is the.
Brains behind nonprofit AF and whowas a former nonprofit executive
director and is bringing all of thefun and games that came with that.
Mm-hmm.
To bear against philanthropyand not against, but in
favor of better philanthropy.
And he vu is.
(02:07):
I had wanted to interview him for along time and I, I realized that it
was going to be exciting, an excitingrollercoaster ride, and Vu did not
Kirk (02:14):
disappoint.
So, VU is plainspoken, VU is super funny.
Vu is also an outstanding rider, soof course everybody should go to v's.
Blog, nonprofit af.
But I wanna pitch acouple of things for Vu.
So First, VU has a bookcoming out on October 14th.
It's called ReimaginingNonprofits and Philanthropy.
(02:34):
Unlocking the full potentialof a vital and complex sector
that comes out on October 14th.
And you can order your copynow, and I think you should.
So that's coming out on October 14th.
And then also, VU has been on a littlebit of sabbatical off the blog, and
he's gonna be coming back on August19th with his next blog posting.
He's actually moving his whole thing overto Substack, it looks like from WordPress.
(02:55):
So I just wanna do those twocouple of quick shout outs, but
vu and then of course you're gonnahear about a. Maybe a A what?
A one man show that Vu maybe could.
Yeah.
Right.
World.
And I wanna say right up front,please vu, share that with us.
Give it to us.
But Eric, this was terrific.
Vu.
Thank you for coming on the podcast.
I, I think we should listen to,to you guys talk and then there
(03:16):
is a lot to unpack from this.
When we come back, you may be right.
Okay.
Well this is Vle joiningus on, let's hear it.
Let's listen and we'll come back.
Eric (03:28):
Welcome to, let's Hear It.
My guest today is somebody I'vebeen wanting to have on this
show for a really long time.
It is none other than vle.
You are an activist and Iconoclast.
A muckraker, a nonprofit Ask Kicker,and you're the founder of Nonprofit
af, which is what it sounds like.
(03:48):
Vle, thank you so much forcoming on to let's hear it.
Vu (03:52):
Hey Eric.
Thanks for having me.
Nonprofit AF, by the way, standsfor Nonprofit and Fearless.
Eric (03:59):
Of course it does.
Thanks so much for coming on.
I've been watching you and I heard you.
You came to ComNet, the CommunicationNetwork Conference, and I've been
reading your work for a really long time.
Can we just talk a little bit abouthow you got to this place, sitting
here talking with me, and reallytrying to, I think, hold philanthropy
(04:20):
on nonprofits feet to the fire.
Vu (04:22):
Yeah, I was actually pre-med.
I was supposed to be a doctor.
Oh, yeah.
And, and then I decided I didn'twanna do that anymore, so I got a,
I dropped out of that pre-med pathand got a master's in social work.
Yeah.
Which you can imagine nearlygot me disowned by my parents.
Eric (04:40):
Why
Vu (04:42):
they're, they were hoping at least one of their kids would
become something meaningful.
And social work apparently is not themost, oh, in our community, it's not
the most respected profession, whichis too bad 'cause it's, it is awesome.
I really like the path that I tookand yeah, I got my master in social
work and then joined this AmeriCorpsprogram 'cause no one would hire me
(05:03):
'cause I didn't have enough experience.
So I became an AmeriCorps member fortwo years and then became an executive
director of a nonprofit in the third year.
Eric (05:12):
And what was that like?
So you go from AmeriCorps tobeing an executive director.
Vu (05:17):
Yeah, these Amer programs can be really great here.
So this path to leadership.
There you go.
Yeah.
So I, it was definitely veryshocking and I think it wasn't
just because I was brilliant.
It was also because one, no one reallywants to be an executive director, and
two is the organization that I was placedat did not have a very good reputation.
So definitely no one wantedto be in that position.
(05:40):
And I thought, you know what,I'm just, I'm gonna, I'm gonna
turn this organization around.
And I stuck around and I think I did,
Eric (05:47):
but, and so my guess I'm, we haven't talked about this yet, but
my guess is that being a nonprofitexecutive director of a nonprofit
was like really easy to fundraise.
The, your funders were likereally easy to work with.
Everything was reallysmooth as silk, right?
Yeah, that was,
Vu (06:03):
it was, it's so easy, you know, you only work 20 hours a week.
Money just come pouring in.
Funders call you up all the time.
You know, we wanna give you money.
And you're like, no, get in line
Eric (06:15):
and we wanna give you general support.
We wanna give it.
For many years there, there
Vu (06:19):
were no night terrors caused by cash flow issues.
There were no screaming into thevoid that I did every night or so.
Eric (06:26):
And you didn't have to fill out all sorts of crazy reports.
Vu (06:30):
It was just easier.
It was very easy.
It was so easy.
It did not age me 20 yearsat all during those years.
Right.
During those three years, that was an ed.
Eric (06:40):
Okay.
So you come out of thatand then what happened?
Vu (06:45):
The organization went pretty well.
I was there, it was rough thefirst few years and then it got
better and I started writing.
So this one of, one of the funders tomy organization asked me to write a
blog post from a grantee's perspective.
So I thought, okay, you can'treally turn down a funder.
So I was, all right, fine, I'llwrite this blog post for free.
(07:06):
Fine.
And it caught on and peopleliked the fact that I was using,
I was like, you know what?
I think there's too muchacademic stuff already.
Mm-hmm.
So I'm gonna use a more lighthearted tone.
So the blog posts I wrote were prettysilly in comparison, and I think
people really just needed to laugh.
There's a lot of humor in our sector.
We have to laugh at ourselves.
Eric (07:27):
There.
Oh, by the way, there was a show,I think it was about 10 or 15
years ago, called The Foundation,and it was, did you see it?
You gotta go back and find it onYouTube or something like that.
It was the hilariousversion of, not hilarious.
It's like the foundationexecutive is a spy.
He's like a James Bond guy, andhe's really dashing in handsome.
Totally ridiculous.
(07:49):
It was inadvertently funny.
Vu (07:52):
That's hilarious.
I think we definitelyneed more shows about,
Eric (07:55):
wait, about dashing James Bond Foundation executives.
Vu (08:01):
So, yeah, some
Eric (08:01):
of them can be very dashing.
Oh, when you have
Vu (08:03):
that much money to give away, your attractiveness increases 27%
Eric (08:08):
instantly.
My old boss at the Hewlett Foundation, thepresident of the foundation, he had this
little plaque on his desk that said, withmoney in your pocket, you're handsome,
you're funny, and you sing well too.
Vu (08:20):
Exactly.
Eric (08:22):
At least he had a perspective on this.
Yeah.
So you are, you're funny and you'retrying to, it sounds to me you're, you
are applying critiques to, especiallyto philanthropy, but nonprofits as
well, using humor and other waysto try and get a very important
message across, which is what?
Vu (08:41):
One is that the sector is really important, right?
I really, I criticize nonprofitphilanthropy because I really
do believe in our sector.
I believe that we make change every day.
We make a difference in the world.
Some of the most importantadvances in civil rights and
everything have been because.
In great part because of all thesenonprofits and all these leaders
(09:01):
who worked to advance these things.
So our sector, I think of it aslike air, like the metaphor we use
is that our sector is like air,whereas other sectors are like food.
People can see food, they cansee their iPhones, they can see
movies they can, or the work thatwe do is oftentimes invisible.
People don't really think aboutit until they really need it.
They don't think about like foodpantries until they may have lost their
(09:24):
job and their savings are dwindling.
They don't think about senior centersuntil their parents start aging
or they themselves start aging.
And so people don't think aboutnonprofits and they take us for granted.
And that leads to a lot of stuffthat can be very challenging for us.
But the other thing is I feellike we need to acknowledge that
the existence of our sector.
(09:46):
The existence of nonprofit philanthropyis an indication that something
is not right with the world.
We should not have this many nonprofits.
We should not have that manyfoundations in the first place, right?
If the world were perfect, oursector would be a lot smaller.
Eric (10:00):
This is a common critique of philanthropy, is that it shouldn't
exist, is that we live in a culturethat requires us to backfill and reverse
engineer and try and improve thingsthat should be better than they are now.
Uh, the, I don't know.
What do you do with all that?
Given that we have this phenomenallyimperfect sector, what do you
think philanthropy can actually do?
Vu (10:23):
When we talk about philanthropy, I think it's really important to
distinguish the difference betweenprogressive leaning philanthropy
and conservative philanthropy.
Conservative philanthropyhas been extremely effective.
It has been, and it's beenresponsible and great part to
what we are seeing right now.
Conservative philanthropists havebeen investing in things like the
Heritage Foundation in the FederalistSociety of the Cato Institute, like
(10:47):
Turn Point USA, and other conservativeinstitutions and movements and leaders.
It's responsible for supportingall of these conservative pundits
and voices that we keep hearing onthe radio and on TV and on social
media, and on YouTube and all over.
So they've been extremely effective.
They have been able to get SupremeCourt justices onto the Supreme
(11:07):
Court and shape the judiciary thatway they buy politicians and so on.
In the meanwhile, progressivephilanthropists, progressive leaning
ones have just been so tentativeand risk averse and funds one year
at a time and are mired in toxicintellectualizing, and that's why
we have not been very effective.
Eric (11:28):
It's interesting.
I have a theory hypothesis that welost the election because of jargon,
and which is that the aggressiveworld talks in these mystical ways
that a lot of folks don't understandand therefore say, Hey, look, I
don't feel like I'm a part of that.
And it makes it really easy to pointa finger at those folks as being
elitist out of touch, talking downto us and all that other stuff.
(11:50):
And that one of the things that wecan do is just say what we mean.
What do you think of that?
Vu (11:57):
I agree with you, but the problem is that we don't
actually agree on what we mean.
Ah.
We need to acknowledge, for example, thata lot of the people who are in power,
a lot of the politicians, politicalleaders and so on, like they actually
don't want the system to change.
Eric (12:10):
Yeah.
Vu (12:10):
Because what we mean is we need to tax billionaires.
That's easy to understand.
Okay, stop allowing billionairesto avoid paying taxes and then get
to do whatever the hell they want.
That's very easy to understand.
But if they themselves don't actuallybelieve that, like they don't, like,
we have so many philanthropistswho still believe in capitalism.
They will proudly declare themselvesto be capitalists and you know, and
(12:35):
they don't want to tax billionaires,they don't think billionaires
should be taxed out of existencelike many of us on the ground do.
So it doesn't, the messaging won'tcome if we are not, we're not in
agreement about what they are.
When the people in power, theybasically want things to stay the same.
Eric (12:50):
That's another critique of philanthropy, which is it was created
out of this capitalist system in which alot of people, a relatively few people,
but now more, are making astonishingamounts of money and that they're
giving a little bit of it back as a wayto either purchase indulgences, feel
better about themselves or whatever.
And that's, some folks genuinely dowanna make a difference, but that
(13:11):
philanthropy is like a really lousy wayto redistribute wealth versus taxation.
And.
Things like that.
And then how do you square this seemingcontradiction of taking the money from
the, that's skimmed off the top from largephilanthropy to try and do your best as
an executive director of an organizationin which you're trying to meet payroll.
(13:31):
It's complicated, isn't it?
Vu (13:34):
Yeah, it's complicated, but I'm not so sure it's necessarily needs to be
more complicated because that's one thingthat liberals do is we complicate things
and we say things are complicated whenthey're really not all that complicated.
I agree with you.
It is like the rich people,they wanna stay rich.
Philanthropy has been built on AndrewCarnegie's philosophy of the gospel
of wealth, where it's okay to get asmuch money as you want and as you can,
(13:59):
and then give out some of that to buylibraries or whatever that you care about.
And so over decades, like that's whathas been happening and for many of
us on the, in the field, we're like,okay, that is a system that we need to
change, and the meanwhile, communitiesand people are still being hurt.
So we need to do what we can.
There's a lot of mindset we need to shift.
(14:19):
Like one of the biggest mindsetsI think about is like this idea
that this is other people's money.
I feel like for a long time people arelike, oh, this is the foundation's money.
Or this is like this major donor'smoney and we're lucky when they
give us any amount of money at all.
For a long time that has, we'veinternalized these messages and
that has been very terrible becausethen we're like deferential.
(14:40):
We become grateful instead ofwhat we should be, which is angry.
Angry that this wealth has been hoarded.
Angry that wealth individuals pay less.
Of a percentage of their totalwealth in taxes every year.
Angry that their wealth has beenbuilt through an equitable means like
slavery and stolen indigenous landand worker exploitation and destroying
(15:01):
our environment and stuff, right?
And to, of course, tax avoidance, right?
We should be a lot more angry than wehave been while we're getting all this
funding instead of being what we've beentrained to be, which is to be grateful.
Eric (15:12):
So what's next you've talked about crappy funding practices.
You've got run the LinkedIn.
Page on that, which is really interesting,but that it seems like there's some sort
of, there's a more fundamental challengeright now, especially now, and you wrote
a piece the other day, I think it wascalled Dear Fund, is Your Endowments
will be worthless in a fascist state,which gets to the point of, all right.
(15:34):
Let's understand that we're not changingthe system of philanthropy today, but
that there are a lot of philanthropistsout there who could make a difference,
particularly now in this political climatethat is precarious to be really generous.
Vu (15:48):
Yeah.
Okay.
Let's talk about crappy funding practices.
Okay.
Which is when I started callingout foundations by name and now
it's become a movement led by somereally brilliant volunteers who
are anonymous because of the powerdynamics, but someone can report.
A funder who does a really crappytime wasting thing, such as
requiring a quarterly report, right?
(16:09):
No one should require a quarterly report.
There was one funder who req, who requiredsomething that needed to be no notarized.
Notarized for $5,000 or something.
It was so ridiculous, right?
So we need to call out.
We need to just start being sonice in the sector, and we tend to
beat around the bush and not name.
Things by name sometimes.
(16:29):
And I think it's just gotten so badnow that we actually do need to call
out funders by name when they dothings that are harmful because we
just do not have time for that anymore.
And then going back to what you saidabout Yeah, what is happening right
now in the world right now is that weare quickly advancing towards fascism.
Like democracy is being dismantledright now by the right wing, right
(16:51):
by Trump, by the Republicans.
They're doing.
Horrifyingly scary things,unconstitutional things such as
disappearing people without dueprocess, such as arresting judges
who give orders that they don't like.
This is very scary thingsthat are happening.
That is like people whostudy fascism are saying it.
(17:11):
This is we way on that trajectory.
We need to be able to turn around.
But in order to do that, we needfunders and nonprofits and everyone
to start being all hands on deck.
And right now I'm not seeing that sort of.
Urgency among many of thefunders in our sector.
Eric (17:31):
Alright, on that incredibly happy note, we're gonna take a very short
break and we're gonna come back and diginto what philanthropy should be doing.
So we'll be right back with vle.
You are listening to Let's HearIt, a podcast about foundation and
nonprofit communications hostedby Eric Brown and Kirk Brown.
If you're enjoying this episode,you may just be a rule breaker.
Check out season two of BreakFake Rules with Glen Gall.
(17:53):
CEO of the Stubs Key Foundation ashe chats with inspiring leaders in
philanthropy, government media, andmore about breaking the fake rules
that don't work so that we can build afuture that does new episodes of break.
Fake rules, drop monthly.
Check them out whereveryou get your podcasts.
And now back to the show.
And we are back with vle.
(18:14):
You are the founder of nonprofit af.
You are a, the instigator of crappyfunding practices and you have been vocal
right now about how philanthropy needs toact and it needs to act really forcefully.
And I'm also seeing it.
Maybe you're seeing it now, but if not,I'd love to know your thoughts on this.
Folks are starting to call on philanthropyand the nonprofit world to be a lot more.
(18:38):
Full throated.
A lot more aggressive to spend moremoney to really dig in right now, because
if not now, when, can you just talka little bit about what you're seeing
and where you think maybe some signs ofhope are and areas where we absolutely,
positively have to pay more attention?
Vu (18:56):
Yeah, it is been, it is been a long time.
I feel like we need to have someacknowledgement that funders reluctance
to fund things over the past severaldecades, progressive leaning funders
again, right, who've always stuck tothis 5% payout rule where they only give
out 5% of their endowments every year.
And I remember just decades ago goingto them and saying, Hey, can you give
(19:18):
more money for like voter engagement?
And they're like, oh no, thatdoesn't align with our priorities.
No that's not in our strategic plan.
And so they just continue doing whateverit is based on their whims and interests
and the flavor of the year or whatever.
And that's patchwork approach toit is the complete opposite to
what conservatives have been doing.
(19:39):
They were very targeted towardscertain things such as building
institution, creating an armyof intellectual warriors on pot.
Casts and everywhere shaping thejudiciary, buying, getting politicians
right-wing, politicians, elected, and thencontrolling the media and the messaging.
Through Fox and Podcasts and every,everything, they were very strategic.
(20:01):
Meanwhile we over here, we becamelike the Sky Mall catalog of the
causes for funders and rich people tochoose from, like a hobby of theirs.
Like this time like, oh,I wanna buy this program.
And the next year they go,oh, this is a great program.
I'm gonna buy this.
That's what they've been doing.
I don't know how much acknowledgementright now that funders are
saying, wow, that has beenreally, that has been a mistake.
(20:23):
What I've been seeing is thatsome funders are like, oh, we
need to give out more money.
So some of them havebeen increasing from 5%.
To 6%.
There are some foundations thatare increasing to 10%, one a
few to like 14, 15% and so on.
Some are spending down and and et cetera.
So that is good.
That's good.
They've started signing letters,pushing back, but a lot of them have
(20:47):
been complying in advance with fascismby getting rid of DEI by, so I'm
hoping that eventually they'll turnaround and be like, no, we're gonna
support DEI and start fighting back.
Signs of hope in our communities.
There are some great organizations in oursector that are doing incredible work.
Uh, I think about the NationalCouncil of Nonprofits, for example,
and Democracy Forward and others whohave been suing that administration.
(21:10):
When there, there was that pausein federal funding, immediately
they took action, legal action andgot an injunction to stop that.
I think that saved so manyorganizations and people and
they're still continuing to fight.
So there are.
Incredible people doing reallyamazing work in the sector.
Right now
Eric (21:26):
you say you didn't go into medicine, but you're actually practicing
some proctology at the moment.
Vu (21:34):
I guess you can put it that way.
I don't want to, Eric, like, do youwanna kick ass and stuff all the time?
That's not fun.
I wanna, I wanna be ableto just, I don't know.
I think many of us are so tiredbecause like the stuff I've been
saying is not things that are uniqueand original because I'm so smart.
It's things that people have beensaying long before I even came along.
(21:57):
You know, especially like marginalizedpeople, women of color and trans
people have been saying these thingswith such a long time and I'm just
like one of the voices there who camealong and tried to add to it because
these things have been set for sucha long time and keep getting ignored,
and this is the result that we see.
This is what happens when we don't listento the voices of the communities that
(22:18):
are most affected by systemic injusticeis that we see this now in the rise of
fascism and the destruction of democracy.
Eric (22:26):
One of the comments, really interesting comments is
that it's, how do I put this?
That , when you don't have strongdefenses for people who need them, it
is a way to chip away at democracy.
So the attacks on trans people,for example, is a way to chip away
at democracy because these attacksthen obtain, they take hold, and
then you continue to advance.
The tools that you used.
(22:47):
And so you start with people who are themost vulnerable and you move to people who
are slightly less vulnerable and so on.
And so for a funder who cares aboutdemocracy, let's just say ensuring
that people who have, who have thehardest time defending themselves
in these areas that they have, thestrength that they need to be able to
win is how you defend your democracy.
Not just it, obviously voting isimportant, but it's not just that.
(23:11):
It's about ensuring that theseorganizations are strong.
Vu (23:15):
Absolutely.
This is, all of this that we'reseeing are not new strategies that
the right wing has been using.
Like the attacks on trans peoplehas been out of the playbook of
literally Hitler, who as soon as the1933, when he took over, I think it
was that year or the following year,is like the first thing that he did
(23:36):
was start rounding up trans people.
Gay men and sent them to concentrationgay men destroying like that.
The Institute for Sexual Studiesthere, that was like helping to
advocate for transgender people andL-G-B-T-Q-I-A people and so on, and
that was the first thing that they did.
And they knew like this is, you attackthe most vulnerable people and if
(23:59):
people don't defend them, you moveon to the next vulnerable people.
And that's how you get people to bedeferential and to put their head
down so that they don't get attacked.
And so we've been seeing this andwe've been seeing it being replicated
and it's been very disappointing.
Like I see it in, I don't know, evenpeople who are supposed to be getting it.
The New York Times, for example.
(24:19):
I don't know, like they have writtensome things that have just been
very terrible and anti-trans, andthey're supposed to be on the more
liberal and progressive side here.
It's been very disappointing.
Eric (24:34):
Yeah, the things are quite difficult right now.
Are there areas for hope that yousee, apart from you try to keep your
good humor in the face of all this?
Where do you see the greatopportunities coming?
Vu (24:47):
One is I try to remind myself that these things do come in waves, right?
They are not unprecedented.
And that means that, that we have hope.
And also in some ways what we'reseeing is like this, like last gasp
of white supremacy and patriarchy.
As people start clinging to it.
(25:07):
So I don't know, this year islike the year of the snake, and I
think about that symbolism a lot.
Like we think of snakes as beingreally evil and talking people into
eating forbidden fruit or whatever.
But they're also a symbol of renewal and,and rebirth because they shed their skin.
And I feel like maybe in some waysthis is our society shedding the skins
(25:28):
of white supremacy and capitalismand patriarchy and waking up to how
unfair the system is and what weneed to do to radically change it.
So that's one thing that gives me somehope is clinging onto that belief here.
If we can survive this, I think itmay be, it may lead to some like
really good things in society.
But the other thing is likepeople are still fighting.
(25:49):
Like every single day.
I see resistance everywhere.
On the internet, on, on tv, in, in thecommunity, there's neighbors are just
doing all sorts of creative things.
I know there are neighbors who are,who have a spare room that they're now
thinking of creating like some sortof space in case a trans community
member might need it in order toescape prosecution or whatever.
(26:11):
I know there's people who are doingincredible stuff and I was just
reading about this research from aresearcher named Erica Chen with,
who was talking about this 3% rule.
Or threshold where if you can get 3.5%of the population, the total population
to start rising up consistently, thenyou have a significant chance to actually
(26:33):
overturn the, like the situation hereand in the US, 3.5% is about 11 million
people, so that's almost twice thepopulation of New York City, which
is a significant amount of people.
But just a few weeks ago wehad, I think half the number of
people were out there marching.
And protests and so on.
Right?
(26:53):
And if we can just keep being consistent.
And this uprising, mass uprising,I think we have a pretty strong
chance of turning things around.
Eric (27:03):
So the left has been criticized for not being able to appeal to a
sufficient number of folks in thiscountry, and that's why a lot of folks
went over to Trump, that they saw that,that they were being told that their
lives would be better as a result.
But, and it's because that we haven't comeup with an, an inclusive understanding way
to communicate across traditional barriersis do you think that that's a fair.
(27:26):
Critique, and if so,what is there to be done?
Or are we always gonna be tryingfor 50% plus one in this country?
Vu (27:36):
I think if the left would actually just embrace being left, that's the key.
We look at the loss of theHarris campaign, for example.
They didn't really embrace the left.
They were supporting genocide.
They were supporting thegenocide of Palestinians.
And then we had likecampaigning with Dick Cheney.
We were talking about havingthe most lethal army in the
(27:58):
world and stuff like that.
Well, yeah.
What, how, why would that attractany progressive Then we look at
progressive candidates like actualtruly progressive candidates like
Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tle, and aOC for Bernie Sanders, et cetera.
Like they win election becausethey're like, we're going, we're
Andy Beshear and like the peoplewho fully embrace progressivism.
(28:21):
Instead of waffling around,like people don't like waffles.
Hmm.
So the left just needs to stop waffling.
We're going to be left and be left.
Talk about taxing the rich.
Talk about universal Medicare.
Talk about stop supporting genocide.
Like these are things we need to do.
So it's not that we have, again, we'renot, we have a messaging problem.
It's that we can't evenagree to be left here.
(28:43):
And the people in power, theylove being in the middle.
They're just hedging their bets tosee who will win so that they can
still get rich off of whichever sidewins here instead of being like full
throw in their full throated, intheir support, uh, progressive values.
I think that's why we lost.
Eric (29:03):
So what's next?
What's next for you?
F.
Vu (29:07):
I, I was talking about this one man show.
Oh
Eric (29:11):
yeah.
I meant to ask you about that.
That was, yeah.
Tell me about your one man show.
Vu (29:16):
On April Fool's Day, I put out this joke.
I'm doing this tour of my one man show,and it was called Please Send Money.
Like the joy and agony ofnonprofit and philanthropy.
It was gonna be four hours long, and itwas pretty silly, including the 17 minute
segment where I pretend to emerge fromthe womb covered in strawberry preserve.
And pennies represent the nine months thatit takes to apply for a grant and get it.
(29:43):
It was ridiculous, but peoplereally responded to it.
They're like, when are youcoming to Houston and Hawaii?
And I had to tell themthis was actually a joke.
I'm not going anywhere.
Okay.
I'm just trying not tobe deported right now.
Yeah.
So, I don't know.
I'm just gonna continue fighting.
I'm gonna try to add humor where I can.
'cause I feel like thepeople really need it.
(30:03):
I'm trying to remind people to takecare of themselves and to find joy
where they can, because Joy is alsoresistance, trying to build community
and yeah, I'm just gonna, I don't know.
I feel like maybe right now my rolecontinues to be to point out all the
inconsistencies and to kick ass whereI need to and to also to affirm all
(30:23):
the good things that are happeningin our sector because there are a lot
of good things and a lot of reallygood people in our sector right now,
and we need to always remember that.
Eric (30:33):
We need VLAs in the field.
Absolutely.
Telling the truth, reminding peoplehow they can improve, helping us
remember where we are coming from,where we came from, where we're going.
I really appreciate your work.
I really appreciate you taking timeto, to speak with us and to keep up.
Keep up the good.
Keep up the good stuff, man.
Vu (30:54):
Thank you, Eric.
I appreciate you.
Hang in there.
All right.
We got through this
Kirk (31:00):
and we're back.
So.
So what a gig.
So are you telling me that Vle is able,V is able to pay his bills and run his
life running his blog nonprofit af.
Eric (31:13):
I don't know.
Maybe.
Wow.
Maybe I, it's a very, we, I didn'task him how he makes his money.
That's rude.
Come on.
It's, this is the backgroundof all these conversations.
Do you make, do you pay your billshosting a podcast, Kirk, by any chance?
Kirk (31:28):
I certainly do not actually.
Its my volunteer contribution, oneof many that I make to the world.
Yeah.
Eric (31:36):
Yeah.
I, I don't, I don't actually, youknow, like I said, I didn't I didn't
ask for, I usually don't ask theguests for financial disclosures.
Is that right?
Isn't, it's not like that, youknow, have to get their credit
report in order to be a guest.
Kirk (31:48):
So this is one of those conversations where, and again, Boo's
got a book coming out on October 14th,please order it, and then he'll be back
on his blog post on the 19th of August.
It's such a great site and it's sofunny and so timely and so engaging.
I loved how he set it up though.
He was like, I got invited bya foundation to write something
and so I just went for it.
(32:08):
Whole am did it for free.
I did it with some humor,which we need in our sector.
And I appreciated you,dripping your elements of humor
throughout this conversation.
Eric (32:17):
Elements of humor,
Kirk (32:19):
I, I
Eric (32:19):
only have
Kirk (32:19):
elements.
His capacity just to put it out thereand put it in such a plain terms.
It was.
Oh man, it just, it just feltlike, you know, he talked about
the nonprofit sector's, air.
This felt like oxygen, necessary oxygen inthe room as we do this really necessary.
Soul searching about what is the momentwe're in, what are the consequences,
what are the costs, but also whatdo we need to do going forward?
Eric (32:40):
Yeah.
And speaking of rooms, there's an elephantin the room and I it's an elephant that
I've been thinking about for a reallylong time since we had this conversation.
'cause V talks about genocide.
Mm-hmm.
And I have dear friends who havediffering opinions on what's going on.
And I feel like not waitinginto the middle of that.
I feel like it at the same time.
(33:02):
I don't know.
It's been, I've been thinking aboutit a lot and I thought about, oh,
well what if you just don't airthe show and then you're gonna
have to deal with controversy?
Mm-hmm.
But that's, that's not cool.
That's.
And when, what if you, edit aroundlike, no, you can't do that anyway.
So the elephant is in the room.
It's there.
I'm not gonna talk about the specificsaround genocide but I just have to
(33:24):
acknowledge that it's there and, and ifpeople are angry or people are excited
don't come to me to talk about it.
And maybe that makes me a coward.
But I, I don't think so.
I think that there's just so muchsuffering that's happening that I.
I am not qualified to talk about it.
(33:45):
I don't know.
What do you think about that, Kirk?
Kirk (33:48):
Yeah.
Right.
Well, can I, can I actually, I, I wantto take your, I want a yes and this, and
I wanna wade into this further and thenwe'll just, this will be the, this will
be the last podcast we ever produced.
'cause this is gonna be so contentious.
I don't know.
We'll see.
Isn't it fair to say that v's providingus pers a perspective on this fundamental.
Challenge we encounter if we wantto, if we wanna put something as
(34:09):
audacious as the left, across theleft or as progressive across the
progressive, or whatever category youwant descriptor, you wanna provide it.
But this, this diversity of opinion,this robust, aggressive, at times
diversity of opinion that shows uparound, around all of us that think
about how to make the world a betterplace the way we think about it.
I was hearing you talk about v's.
(34:29):
Critique of philanthropy, foundations,nonprofits, to the left, like, like just
leaning into what it means to be whateverthis, this, this movement could be.
That was the thing that struck me.
I was like, it feels like there's,there's almost a missing critique
in here for all of us, which is.
The incentives are mismatched.
I think like you and I have hadconversations about our opposition
and, and what's under what, whatreally is at the root, what's the
(34:52):
real heart of what's at stake inthe, in this contest of perspectives.
And, and from my, from where I sit, I feellike one thing that's really challenging
to work through with all this is.
Our opposition is actually oddly, verydeeply aligned in a very core way.
And I think in a weird way, partof the left is like this flowering
(35:12):
of perspectives and so yeah.
So the fact that there'sdifferences of, of opinion Yeah.
And even dramatic ones,
Eric (35:17):
that's part of the deal that we're having to sort through.
I I, I take your point.
I take your point.
And, and again, I, I lovethe work that FU is doing.
I think he's doing anamazing job of shining light.
On our field, and yeah, he is partof the left, and he is a, a full
throated, deeply compassionateand deeply passionate person.
(35:40):
And so I, so anyway, I, I don't, Ifeel like I'm trying to parse this
conversation, but I don't want to,let's just talk about what we talked
about and we'll get on with it, and thenpeople can like us or not, or we get,
maybe we'll get the cards and letters.
Kirk (35:54):
We'll talk about weighty things.
So let's talk aboutcrappy funding practices.
So how about that?
Right.
Calling foundation stuff by name.
So how would it have felt to be sittingin the communications desk and even
anonymously, you know, via LinkedInbeing called out by name because somebody
says, Hey, wait a minute, foundationXI don't like what you're doing here.
What do you think?
What do you think about that?
Eric (36:14):
Well, I mean, he's right, foundations.
Many, many foundations are, are,shouldn't be doing what they're doing.
And by the way, Glen Gallesis about to come out with a,
a book on this very topic.
I don't wanna give any of it away, butif you've read any of Glen's work, you'll
know that he is highly, highly exercisedabout crappy foundation practices.
(36:39):
And, and he's right.
And Vu is a really wonderful.
Other voice in this because foundationsput their grantees through the tortures
of the damned to give them tiny bitsof money that cost the grantee tons
of time and effort in order to get it.
And then they're meantto be grateful for it.
And if you really wanna get thingsdone, that as a funder, if you
(37:00):
actually really wanna get thingsdone as a funder, don't do that.
Mm-hmm.
But he talked about like foundationsas like a Sky Mall catalog.
Yeah.
Of, of whims.
Like, Ooh, I think I'll buy myselfa little bit of these, you know?
Headphones or, you know,
Kirk (37:16):
yeah.
Eric (37:16):
Whatever it is.
And so those practices must be ended.
They must simply be ended.
They're not fair.
They don't help.
They're not gonna make change.
It's just the egos of the fundersand their employees frankly
to that allows that to happen.
And they have so much power andthe grantees have to, either they
(37:37):
take the money and nod silently or.
V. They talk about it and theyhold, shine a light on this stuff.
But I, I think the underlyingpoint is that if you actually wanna
make change, then don't do that.
If you don't care aboutmaking change mm-hmm.
I don't know.
Do whatever the hell you want.
Kirk (37:58):
It's funny, I mean, I, I, I'm like, many of us have been, you know,
party to quarterly reports, biannualreports, like I, I've received massive,
uh, support from foundations and who,and then had 12 months to spend it all.
And I'm like, you know, it's gonna takeme six months just to hire the team that
it's gonna take to implement on this work.
I mean, so anybody who's workedin this kind of professional
(38:21):
philanthropic world, we all knowthat there's a whole deal here.
And, and it's, it's also, there's, it's.
Every foundation is a, isa, is an entity of one.
Like they're all unique into each other.
Like you, you know, it's but at the sametime, you know, I, I've started having
this own, my own conversation about this.
Do we actually need to sort of reassessour assessments in a way, like, if I'm
an organization that's entirely dependenton foundation funding and so therefore
(38:43):
I'm being put through the ringer forall this stuff, maybe actually that's
really the issue that I need to address.
Eric (38:49):
Maybe.
Maybe, although, you know,depending on what it is you do,
where are you gonna get the money?
Yeah, yeah.
Clearly federal funding is not happening.
Right?
Right.
Uh, major donors can sometimes maybefind, you, find yourself, your angel donor
who just gives you the money and, anddoesn't require you to kiss their ass.
(39:11):
But the fact is that the model forthe social sector in our country.
It doesn't work.
And, we shouldn't need to have, I, I thinkwe've mentioned this in the conversation,
we shouldn't need to have as manynonprofit organizations that, that we do.
Right.
Kirk (39:29):
It should just work better.
Eric (39:30):
And, and, uh, again, I don't wanna give away too much of Glen's book 'cause
I got a chance to review it in advance.
Thank you, Glen.
It's amazing that the idea ofphilanthropy is that once you make,
once you get your tax deduction,it's not your money anymore.
So it's not like, you know, if Iwrite a hundred dollars check to the
ACL U, I'm not calling them up andsay, oh, by the way, I would like
(39:50):
you to use my money in this way.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
You, you need to put a, a plaque onthe urinal in the ac like you, it's,
it's for individual donors like this,you write the check, it's general
support, and then you, you frankly don'thave much control and you shouldn't
'cause it's not your money anymore.
And in philanthropy, these foundationsand philanthropists have amazing
(40:12):
amount of control after they'vealready taken their tax deduction.
And that's, you know,the, it's the tax system.
It's, it's how we.
Backfill the things that aren'tbeing properly done by governments
or communities or peopleworking together or whatever.
Mm-hmm.
And it's, it's just acrappy, crappy system.
Kirk (40:31):
Yeah.
Well, it's funny, you know, in thatconversation about you know, what
we're seeing just the manifestationsof this many, many decades of work
that let's just call it the oppositionhas been doing to create the context
that we're currently seeing play out.
Across the country.
Um, you know, there's, it feels likethere's two conversations happening here.
So one is the strategy of what has beendone and what needs to be done, you know,
(40:53):
so this notion of creating institutions,creating intellectual warriors, getting
politicians elected, having a, being very,you know, tightly aligned on message.
That's a whole kind of strategyof what needs to happen.
And, and I think about the leftas it were trying to come together
around a strategy like that.
I'm like, good luck, you know?
Good, good luck convening the meeting.
(41:14):
Good luck getting everybody to come do it.
But then the second piece isthe how do you pay for it part?
And, and, and so there's the, these twothings happening in this conversation
because partly the conversation is, hey,up your payouts, you know, get to 5%,
6%, 10%, 15 of so we was talking about,but if there's not a coherent strategy
that all that money is gonna be droppedinto to try to drive progress forward.
(41:38):
I wonder about the payoutconversation, right?
It's like, don't you haveto have both in a sense?
Eric (41:43):
Well, you can't, you can't legislate a strategy, into the tax code, you know,
because the idea is that anything thatserves a public good is tax deductible.
Uh, and if you're and the left can'tlegislate the left, whatever the
hell that's supposed to mean, right?
And we've alreadydemonstrated that the left is.
Kirk (42:04):
Very diverse.
Very diverse.
Eric (42:07):
Like no.
Yeah.
Like no one's calling the conventionof the left saying like, here's
the message of the day, here's howwe're going to beat the opposition.
That's just not how it works.
And I, I've said this 500 timeson this show, which is that
being hopeful and progressivein that you want to progress is.
Inherently, you're at a disadvantagefrom the people who want to tear down.
(42:32):
'cause it's way easier to, you know,the demo in your bathroom takes an
hour, it takes a day, and buildingthe damn thing back takes six months.
You know, it's like, this is just how.
How this is the, the nature of change,and all I can say is that you have
to hope for some set of ideas thatthat obtain in people's consciousness
(42:53):
and that they create the gravity,the heat, and the light that.
People can move together with.
And sometimes that takes singleleaders who just step out there and
take a chance and people follow them.
And sometimes it takes movements andsometimes those movements are supported
by philanthropy and got That's good.
And sometimes those movements just, justcome out of a sense of the zeitgeist about
(43:17):
what people are feeling and experiencing.
And unfortunately right nowwhat we're seeing is a movement
that is very d destructive.
And it's very, very defensiveand it is angry and brutal and
limiting and stultifying and a lotof folks, you know, it's very, very
hard to to, to push through that.
And I just had another friend todaytell me he was leaving the country.
Kirk (43:41):
Oh, wow.
And so, you know,
Eric (43:43):
trying to generate hope among, you know, in this kind of experience.
Is very challenging and trying to winon that and bring a, a very, as you say,
diverse set of folks together in somelevel of concert is really challenging.
And that's just where we are today.
(44:05):
And so if you are a philanthropistand you do wanna somehow support those
movements, you know, throw the money andget the hell out of the way and hope.
That money's gonna get used as wellas it possibly can, that people
do not have to spend their timecoming up with cockamamie, the, you
know, theories of change and boxesand arrows and things like that.
Kirk (44:30):
Yeah, I mean, so the message to philanthropy being it's not about
the money in your bank account isthe money in the field, and it's
the efficacy and the speed withwhich you can get into the field.
That's really what matters and the,and the relationships you foster
to, to help push that stuff forward.
And I, and I think that's exactlyright, but I think that, this is
the fundamental challenge here.
I think this notion that if it's,if it's progressive and it's public,
it warrants support and that's true.
(44:52):
And so we need to provide more support.
But I'm still stuck at this notionof like that tear down, right?
It's that tear down in service to what?
It's that build up in service to what?
In this diversity of our movement,we build up for so many things.
Now you're, and I love that conceptof the Sky Mall catalog for social
change, but that's in fact what it is.
And in fact, our own podcast reflectsit because we've had all sorts of
(45:15):
conversations from all these great peopleacross all these different domains.
And guess what?
They all matter.
They're all important.
Yes.
And yes, they're all in service to, wewould say like this better, more socially
oriented, more just world in some way.
Do they individually add up?
You know, do they create the scaffoldingof change to, jumping back to your
earlier question so that you can actuallylegislate ourselves out of existence
(45:39):
because you can reorganize the wholesystem to actually, work more effectively.
So you don't even need this wholepublic sector, you know, set
this whole public service sector.
I think that's where there's alittle bit of a mismatch here,
because I think all of our little.
You know, silver BBS of hope andaspiration, they may not be adding up
to being enough to match this, thisthe monstrosity of what's kind of
(46:00):
being that's been constructed, let'ssay it, it's not even being built.
It's been built and yeah, guess what?
It's, it's, it's, it'sdoing its work right now.
Eric (46:07):
Yeah.
And, and, not to belabor the point,let's just say, but again, VU
was talking to philanthropy abouthow to do what it possibly can.
To allow those kinds of things that youjust talked about to happen, which is to
allow, yes, there, there will be no hymnalthat everyone has to sing from, but.
(46:29):
If organizations begin to worktogether and they have the freedom
to make decisions and they have theopportunity to take risks and do all
that other stuff, then maybe, maybe,maybe we might get something done here.
But under the current circumstancesand the way we do it, it's really hard.
I mean, nonprofit organizations thatsucceed do it in spite, often in spite
of their funding, not because of it.
Kirk (46:51):
So to that point.
Vu is a plain spoken truthteller and he's very good at it.
He's compelling, he's funny,he's an outstanding writer.
And by the way, he has a book coming outon October 14th, reimagining nonprofits
and philanthropy unlocking the fullpotential of vital and complex exer.
So please buy his book.
So he's a truth tell.
(47:14):
This is put your chips atthe center of the table.
How much does our sectoractually value that truth?
Yeah.
What do you think about that?
And, and every foundation we'veever talked to has said We value
assessment, we value learning.
We wanna, we wanna take risksand learn from our failures
as much as our successes.
How much do you think our sectoractually values this kind of aggressive
(47:37):
soul searching, true telling?
What do you think about that?
Uh,
Eric (47:41):
I think it depends.
I think not nearly enoughis the, is the real answer.
And people wanna say, well, what is my,what is my philanthropic dollar buying me?
And the answer is, you don't always know.
And you have to be able to not know,and half of the time, the thing that
you wanna buy, you don't actuallyend up wanting because there's some
(48:02):
better thing to buy that you wouldnever have thought of if you had
constrained your grantees in the, withyour own sense set of narrow thinking.
And if I sound.
Uh, if I sound cynical, Kirk, it'sonly because I deeply love this field
that has, right, that has nurturedme for so long, and I want it to
be really good, and I think it can.
(48:24):
But I mean, we saw a lot offoundations fighting the the payout,
you know, the, there was talkingCongress about increasing payout
and foundations were fighting that,and that's just not a good look.
Kirk (48:37):
Well get, I'm gonna give you a first person example of what this looks like.
I'll keep it anonymous and I'm doingthis at the end here, so you can cut
it if it's not gonna make the cut.
Okay.
Eric (48:46):
I just cut that.
I love it.
But that's so true.
So I'm seriously, the storythat you just told that I cut,
we're not gonna say what it is.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But, but, but, but ifyou'd like to summarize.
Your message so that I can save youfrom, from yourself goes, go ahead.
(49:12):
But
Kirk (49:12):
my message is it could take eight years to try to get to go when it
should take one or two conversations.
Well, that's what I message.
Well, here's the other thing,
Eric (49:20):
and I've seen, I've seen a number of foundations that I, that I really,
I, I respect a whole lot and they give.
Long term general operatingsupport, minimal reporting.
They build relationships with theirgrantees, so it's not like they're
just writing the check and ducking.
They're learning about what they needand they're providing the grantees
(49:41):
with what they need and they sendthem on their way and they, and
they encourage 'em to do good work.
And if they make a mistake theydon't penalize 'em for it, and they
don't require them to do crazy.
Stuff.
Yeah.
And if you really care about a field,if you're a funder and you really
care about a field, you find thoseorganizations and you make sure they
have everything they possibly need tosucceed, and you get out of the way.
(50:04):
Mm-hmm.
And that's, yeah, that'show you win at stuff.
And you know that, sothat's my take on that.
And, and you, and you go fastas you possibly can and as
long as you possibly can.
So it's not like you, you.
Throw a ton of money at him and two yearslater he's like, eh, I changed my mind.
I'm gonna buy this other thingfrom the Sky Mall catalog.
(50:25):
He, he can't do that either.
You, you have to givethis stuff time to, yeah.
To to work.
And so I think those are the Yeah, thoseare, it feels to me like those are the
key messages that VU is getting at inhis own, you know, special of Ular.
Funny, cynical, pointed way.
And, and he's, uh, you know, he's right.
(50:48):
He's really right.
And he's, he does it in a way thatmakes it entertaining, which is cool.
'cause otherwise he's just me.
I mean, you know, you got this skullhere on the, on the podcast, you
know, someone just walked their doglike, oh my God, Fido with this dude.
So, I don't know.
Kirk (51:04):
Well, and just think about the potential for success here if VU actually
succeeds in reducing the administrativecosts of all these transactions.
That will unleash billions ofadditional dollars into the field
because that's actually how much Yep.
All this stuff costs.
So Vu, thank you so much for yourwork, for being the plain spoken
truth telling visionary that you are.
Eric, thank you for bringingV on for the podcast.
(51:25):
That was awesome.
Order v's.
New book.
It's coming out on October 14th,reimagining nonprofits and philanthropy.
And I also check out the nonprofitAF blog, which we'll be back
to as of August eight 19th.
Eric, that was awesome.
Vu.
Thank you for joining us.
Very generous, once again.
Another great contribution for us.
I'd.
Okay.
We'll see you next time.
(51:45):
I can't believe you.
Cut that.
Come on.
Okay everybody.
That's it for this episode.
Please let us know if you have anythoughts about what you heard today
or people we should have on this show,and that definitely includes yourself
and we'd like to thank John Ali.
The Tuneful and inspiringcomposer of our theme music,
Eric (52:04):
our sponsor,
Kirk (52:05):
the Lumina Foundation, and please check out Lumina's terrific podcast,
today's students tomorrow's talent, andyou can find that@luminafoundation.org.
We
Eric (52:14):
certainly thank today's guest, and of course, all of you,
Kirk (52:17):
and most importantly, thank you, Mr. Brown.
Eric (52:21):
Oh, no, no, no, no.
Thank you, Mr. Brown.
Kirk (52:23):
Okay, everybody, till next time.
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