← What the Fundraising
What the Fundraising
262: Beyond Inclusion: Creating Safety, Power & Space to Lead with Sarah Ali
00:30:28
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Foreign.
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This episode is brought to you by our friends at Zefy. I have been excited to learn about Zefy and what a game changer it has been for so many organizations. Plus, the platform is 100% free. They even cover credit card and transaction fees. You can set up donations, sell tickets, and manage your donors all in one place. And it only takes 15 minutes to get started. Start fundraising today at Mallory.com Zephie that's MalloryErickson.com Z E F F Y.
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We're in this moment in the sector where there's like a disappearance of entry level jobs. We're seeing entry level jobs disappear as people start to automate that work. And something that people in entry level positions bring is a freshness and an ability to play that's not bogged down by years of being kicked around by the sector or years of trying to prove I am, you know, who I am despite what I look like or whatever or of need to be harder than this person so that you can prove to me that you're valuable and you bring good things.
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Hey, my name is Mallory and I'm obsessed with helping leaders in the nonprofit space raise money and run their organizations differently. What the Fundraising is a space for real and raw conversations to both challenge and inspire you. Not too long ago I was in your shoes, uncomfortable with fundraising and unsure of my place in this sector. It wasn't until I started to listen to other experts outside of the fundraising space that I was able to shift my mindset and ultimately shift the way I show up as a leader. This podcast is my way of blending professional and personal development so we, as a collective inside the nonprofit sector can feel good about the work we are doing. Join me every week as I interview some of the brightest minds in the personal and professional development space to help you fundamentally change the way you lead and fundraise. I hope you enjoy this episode, so let's dive in.
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Welcome everyone. I am so excited to be here today with Sarah Ali Sarah. This feels so long overdue. I'm so thrilled you're here with me on what the fundraising. Let's start with you just telling everybody a little bit about you and then and then we'll get into it.
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Thank you for having me. I have been following this podcast for a long time. I love what you're doing here and I'm excited to be a contributor today. A little bit about me I have been in the nonprofit sector for over 10 years and throughout that history I have helped organizations build and scale revenue engines. Whether that is on the annual giving side with a specific function around digital first and kind of adapting our historical methods of giving to a rapidly changing economic and technological environment to other more traditional ends of fundraising. Whether that's like institutional giving and playing a bit in the funder space, recognizing that oftentimes organizations and diverse communities aren't sitting at the funder table so they're not able to steward these massive amounts of capital. And so I now run a full service agency based in Toronto but global team called Sarah Lee Philanthropy. We are a 12 person team and we work with a number of enterprise like non denominational clients. So you're like typical, you know, your World Wildlife foundations or funds, your you know, mental health associations et cetera and then also medium sized Muslim organizations looking to get to that next 100 million in revenue and start to see themselves an enterprise shop.
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Wow. I didn't realize it was such a big team. I'm so thrilled to hear that. I think the work you're doing is so incredibly important and one of the things you and I have connected a lot over the years on a number of different Topics, primarily on LinkedIn but the you had posted recently about your your hijab and your identity and the role that that plays in the space you maybe take up or have question taking up at certain moments in your in your career it sounds like and something that really inspired me about the post or there was this line in this, the post that really, really stood out to me when you said we don't need inclusion, we need safety, we need power, we need space to lead without shrinking. And I will link the actual post in the in the podcast show notes but I just sat with that a lot and, and wanted to have a conversation about it because I think what you're saying is so important on so many different fronts. So can you just talk to us a little bit about your story there and sort of what inspired you, you know, putting that out there that day and the kind of call to action, maybe both for you mentioned folks who feel like their identity has been perhaps like weaponized but then also like what's the role for like white leaders like me and women? Like what's the call to action? How can we be do better there too?
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Thank you for having me again and for bringing giving this topic some airtime. I think it's something that more and more we as a sector are concerned about is what is the human experience and the lived experience of people either in leadership or starting their journeys in the sector and how do the ways in which what's going on in the news or what's going on in the world or what might even be going on in our own smaller, localized communities affect how we interact not just as, you know, maybe leaders or practitioners in the space, but also how do we work with donors and how do we understand donors, how do we understand communities? What prompted me to speak kind of more openly about my experience as a hijabi woman, as a hijabi fundraiser and as someone who is doing my best to create space for others is a kind of regular, everyday experience of any diverse practitioner or any diverse leader. Whether that diversity is as a woman, whether that diversity is as someone who's visibly of a different religion, whether that's black women and black fundraisers. And I think that's like a regular experience of seeing other people treated differently and not necessarily being able to put words to or a name to what that experience is. And maybe feeling like almost like this sense of like imposter syndrome, like maybe I have to divorce myself from my identity to be as seen as good as. So that I can, I don't know, land a big gift. I can be seen as useful or valuable to the board. Board C suite relationships can be. And my experience, particularly as a hijabi woman, is in this post, 9, 11, I don't know, 26 years in the war on terror, like an experience of a global genocide. You know, many things that are happening at the same that I have noticed preconfigure a person's understanding of who you are before you even open your mouth. And it's so funny, you know, I've gotten into calls with senior leadership with the second I come on screen, I can see people's faces change, you know, oh, great some, you know, and I look younger than I am, you know, think my mother has good skin, you know what I mean? She's kept held it down for us. But, you know, oh, here's this, like, young kid who's coming to tell me what they think I don't know about the world and. Or here is visibly Muslim woman who can't possibly understand what a climate change organization does or can't possibly understand what an other faith organization does. And my experience led me one point to feel like, well, this doesn't define me. What I mean, I am as a person separate from my hijab, or I am as a person separate from my practice of faith, or I am as a person separate from my womanhood. And I actually think that that like divorcing of oneself from one's Work. And one's, you know, credibility is dangerous because it buys right back into that, you know, sense that, okay, who you are and what your identity has no role to play or your lived experience has no role to play in your ability to lead or your ability to fundraise. And so the story that I started that post out with is I went to a doctor's appointment and I could hear the doctor and the woman before me having a great time, you know, in the, through the waiting room. And I came in and the demeanor shifted completely. And maybe, I don't know, I was wearing all black that day and maybe it had some perception. You know, I'm sure we all remember during the first invasion of Afghanistan, the whole narrative around burqa and this and that, and let's save the Muslim women, we must invade in order to save them and blah, blah, blah. Maybe it was that, maybe it was something else. I don't know what it was, but it made me feel upset. It made me feel like, well, this doesn't define me. I'm different than this. I'm something else. And as I drove away, I came to the realization, I was like, no, no, this 100% defines me being a visibly Muslim woman in a global trend of Islamophobia. 100% defines me being a Muslim woman. Where, you know, a year and a half ago, the National Council of Canadian Muslims, it reported a 1,300% increase in Islamophobic attacks in 20 in the last quarter of 2023. That 100% defines me. I don't even, I don't even go on transit anymore, Mallory. Like, I don't take the ttc, which is the Toronto based transit anymore because my mom has told me it's not safe. And she sent me a million articles. Oh, this woman had her hijab taken off and this woman almost got pushed in front of the train. And you're just trying to get to work, like just drive. And so when we look at who makes up our sector, who makes up the changing face of wealth and capital, I work a lot with Islamic philanthropy instruments because Islamic finance assets are set to triple in the next three years, while the rest of the global economy is in decline. And we're in the biggest global wealth transfer in human history. And guess what? A vast majority of those folks are what we might term new money, who have come up in North America or in Europe and have accumulated a lot of capital and are new to strategic philanthropy and looking for instruments to give. If we don't critically interpret how we feel about our own selves, about how we relate to each other and how we perceive the changing face of wealth and philanthropy in the world. We cannot consider us to be ourselves, to be good fundraisers, and we can't consider ourselves to be driven by the values that brought all of us here. Do you know a Sigmali? Do you know a single fundraiser who does this because they want money? No, man. Like, it's right. Like, tell me, tell me. Like, you know what I mean? Like, we all came here because social good is the name of the game. And so to live those values and to live authentically and to lead authentically, which is, as we know, what inspires teams, what inspires donors, what turns a mission from, I don't know, a lengthy 16 paragraph document written by a board into something that tells a story, that inspires a transformational gift. It requires us to do that. Authenticity, connecting with who we are, just who we are, and to hold that and say, that's my superpower. And that's okay. That was a lot. Mallory, thank you for letting me. Bring me here.
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Oh, my gosh, I'm so with you. And no, it's so. No, it wasn't. You're so articulate. I was sitting here just being like, oh, my gosh, like, everybody, please bring Sarah in to be your speaker. I'm just, I'm in full, like, taking it in mode. But there's so much about what you're saying that is, I'm 100% with you. And there's this complicated, I don't know, like, component that keeps coming up for me around. And maybe this is like my fear as a white woman, like, creating, pushing an identity, like a core identity onto somebody where it's a piece of their identity and sort of oversimplifying what defines them based on what I can see and not wanting to do that, while also really honoring however much space they want that identity to take up. And I think, like, what you're making me think about is this is just such a fluid conversation, right? Like, probably every person who wears a hijab feels differently about this. And I love you sharing your story because it creates space for other people who align there to share their story or maybe even who don't to think or to grapple with their own relationship to it, which I think is so important. And I, I just want to like, invite audience members because, or, and like listeners to recognize that, like, sometimes this type of exploration as a team, as an individual is uncomfortable. And that's okay because I think, like, this feels now that I've had these conversations so many times, both publicly, but. But privately, I feel much more comfortable than I once did. But I still have those, like, real internal, like, stomach clenching moments of, like, am I gonna say this wrong? Is this gonna come out, like, you know, is this an inappropriate question?
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Right? Like, all those things.
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And I think what you're saying is so beautiful because on the one hand, when you were first, I was like, gosh, I never, like, and I'm a little bit embarrassed to say this out loud, but, like, I never really thought about the fact that because of your hijab, you could be in a conversation about environmentalism and be questioned about whether or not that's a priority of yours. Like, it's like, kind of mind boggling to me that, like, there would be this, like, because of this, you can't also be this or care about this. And so it's really like opening my mind to that experience. So there's like, that truth, but then also the truth that you expressed around wanting this to feel is central to your identity. And, like, how do we hold both of those things?
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I love that. And like, I think it's so funny because as fundraisers, like, we're storytellers, right? At the end of the day, like, so much of what we do. If emotions are the fundamental motivator of people to act and stories are the base code of human existence, how we have historically, over time, learned to convey information, whether it's, I don't know, a predator is nearby, or your grandmother once, I don't know, like, built sewing. You know, she invented sewing. You know what I mean? We think of the earliest conversations that must have been had. You know, I'm reminded of Chimamanda Adichie's like, foundational TED Talk, which is the danger of a single story. And as fundraisers and storytellers, so much of what we do with, like, boards and leadership is trying to translate the concrete, everyday work of an organization's lifeblood into a story that will move people to act. And if there's no such thing as a single story, if we're all multifaceted, all holding a million stories within us. I wear hijab and pray five times a day, but also, I don't know, like to hang out with my friends at Yemeni coffee shop, sometimes late in the night, and it bothers my mother, you know what I mean? Like, you know, maybe all of these things can be true. And also maybe it's in us to define what are all the stories we hold. And in that building the confidence to be able to inquire about and understand the stories that other people hold. And it sets, like, so foundational to even, like, major gifts. Fundraising. Right? You're trying to figure out what's the story of that person and what's the story that will help them build transformational impact that meets their philanthropic or funding interests. It's the same with leaders. It's the same with organizational change. Is the same with, I don't know, a digital campaign that's being run on all the channels. You're trying to figure out what's the story. And so I think, like, like, so, for example, so I have a woman on my team. She's brilliant. She's got 15 years in the space. She's the CFR. She's a master's in philanthropy and nonprofit leadership, and she's a Caribbean woman. She's a black woman. She's based in Ottawa. And one of the things that I really noticed about her is that she's, like, reticent around AI. And I hope, Marcia, it's okay that I'm sharing this. I think it's a good story, and I think one of the many good things that we can pull from each other's experiences and our product team, who's building AI agents for clients and building, like, prompt libraries and things to. To give to clients to do their work better, she's been like, marcia, why haven't you run this through AI mc? Marcia Klein has, you know, not. It didn't say anything. She just said, oh, yeah, I don't know. I didn't have time. You know, we'll get it done when you get it done. And then later in conversation, it turned out that when she was doing her MPNL as the only black woman in the program, she was accused of using ChatGPT for writing her thesis. And I can tell you Marcia handwrites, whether it's typing or handwrites every piece of comm she puts out there, and every word she writes is dripping with gold because she gets fundraising, she gets people. And she's been in the space for a long time. Like, she raised, like, 1.6 million last quarter for, like, one client. You know what I mean? So she's like, she's in it to win it. But something about the need to adopt AI into her workflow brought up a trauma, an experience of being accused. And so, because our team focuses so heavily on how do we become safe for each other and with each other in a globally distributed remote team, with people on every continent, how do we do that? And so much of that is figuring out the safety required to release the story. And so through comfortable conversations of being like, Marshall, like, what do you need from us to make this easier for you? You know, not that everybody needs to use AI for everything, and there's ethical pieces and this and that, but just as a use case of how do we. And no part of me is going to be like, marcia, as a black woman, how have you experienced AI? And you're like, you know, it's like, that's so weird. That's weird. You know what I mean? But that's my own feeling of how to. In that question you asked, which is, okay, as white leadership or white white folks in the sector, how do we deal with this? And I think it's about finding our own stories and building the safety for others in the way we communicate with them, that their stories just come up because exactly what you said. Every woman who wears hijab and the million of billions of Muslims around the world are going to be different. And so that the stories of the people is where we will find the golden nugget that allows us to connect authentically, to lead with presence, and to build and shape presence for each other. That was a long answer, I hope, for listening.
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Oh, yes, I'm all in. Yeah. I mean, there's this. There's this, like, through line here that is just so important. You know, it's interesting, like, as a lot of my work has been focused, as you know, I think on like, stress, like looking at stress in our body and what causes stress and then chronic stress and ultimately burnout and how it's about a lot more than just work, work and. Or overwork. And I talk about in the book, I'm very clear in the book that there is an intersectional analysis and a trauma analysis that needs to be done on top of what I did on the book. That is not my training and my orientation and not something I felt like I should touch. But in the book, I talk about these five components of fundraising that have been scientifically proven to increase stress and chronic stress and ultimately burnout and pressure is in there, and rejection is in there, and power dynamics is in there, and isolation is in there. And there's this piece that's coming up for me here around as our stress increases. The other thing I talk about a lot in the book is as our stress increases, we become more binary in our thinking. We become more tunnel vision. Good, bad, whatever. And in that way, we oversimplify our brain naturally tries to reduce complexity, right? It's like, no longer can I have nuance. And so I feel like in our sector, with as we are watching this, like, stress and burnout, this crisis rise, we're also watching people's capacity to have these more nuanced. I mean, I don't even like saying uncomfortable. Makes it sound like they're bad, but it's really just like this nuance, like living in the gray, having a conversation about how identity is complex, opening up a curious question to somebody around why they're resistant to something without deciding it's either this or that. But just being openly curious. All of those things require a level of regulation that we just are like emotional nervous system regulation that we are just not seeing in the space at the moment. And I know before we clicked record, you were talking a little bit too, around, like, the kind of burnout, the way that burnout or stress impacts people differently based on identity. So how do you think about, like, as you all are supporting fundraising teams and fundraisers, like, creating spaces and it sounds like really on your team too, that are open and curious and safe and supportive.
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I mean, I think, like, I like design thinking a lot, and it's something I've had the opportunity to work on with senior leadership teams. I had the opportunity to learn D school methodology and use it from 2018 to 2019 is when I used to like the most. Like, I was doing supporting design sprint to participants through the Mobilization Lab, which was incubated out of Greenpeace International. And what I noticed is that so much of, like, the design thinking practice feels like play. You know what I mean? It just feels like play. It's fun. Like, there's like, the LEGO exercise where everybody has to be silent and, you know, figure out which row does this and that. And you see people who are, like, in their 70s and 80s and have clearly been doing the same thing for many years in a leadership capacity, leading at the senior level of INGOs. Become like kids again. And I mean, like, I think it goes back to that experience of the ability to play together means that you then be safe. So, like, I will do, you know, check in exercises with teams, and they'll be like, oh, I'm gonna grade another check in exercise. Like, I do this extra called emotional weather, which is like, describe the day like the. The weather that reflects your current emotional experience. So if you're having a great day, you might be like, oh, my God, it's so sunny and the sky is blue and this and that if you're having a terrible day, you might be like a tornado just hit. A tornado just hit and there's. The roofs are gone and FEMA has not responded and we don't know if they're coming, you know what I mean? But even that allows us to share our emotional lived experience of a day or of a life or of a, of, I don't know, a racist encounter or God knows what in a way that is playful. And they say that the opposite of trauma is play. And you read about it, the trauma is stored in the body. So I mean, if more space is given to play and less to stressful meetings about not hitting target, my sense is not only will we hit target, we'll also feel better overall and we will not burn out. So we're in this moment in the sector where there's like a disappearance of entry level jobs. We're seeing entry level jobs disappear as people start to automate that work. And something that people in entry level positions bring is a freshness and an ability to play that's not bogged down by years of being kicked around by the sector, years of trying to prove I am, you know, who I am, despite what I look like or whatever, or of needing to be harder than the this person so that you can prove to me that you're valuable and you bring good things. And so I think there has to be concerted effort to continue to train people into the sector, continue to bring young people, whether they're young in their career in the sector or young physically into the space, because they allow us to put play. And they bring curiosity and they bring questions that are just so open and straight that we all can become curious again.
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Yes. I mean, it's so funny hearing you say this because earlier today I was on a podcast and the person at the end asked, what's my other passion outside of work? And I was talking about my kids, now 6 year old and an almost 2 year old. And I was saying that having young kids has really reinvigorated my play muscle and that it has just been getting to be goofy and silly. I'm like the weirdest, you know, like, I'm always on the floor with my kids. I'm like, all the photos of me as a mom are just like none of the cute things and all of the, like me being climbed all over and just like really, I've really embraced like joy and fun and play with them. And it's been, yes, they love it, but I love it. And so I just love what you're talking about, because I think you're right. Like, we think often about kind of we, like, dig in, we make hard things harder a lot of the time, and we don't, you know, sit, play, softness. Like, all of these things that maybe feel, you know, they aren't our natural, like, fight flight strategy around stress. And so that reminder of, like, where can we have a little levity and lightness and. And play, I think that's just such good advice. Oh, my gosh. There's so much here. I so appreciate just your openness to sharing vulnerably and, like, even just opening this conversation. I think for a lot of people to think differently about how they show up, no matter, like, what their intersectional identity looks like, that there's a role that we all play that's super important around getting more curious, creating more safety, and allowing everybody to be their most true selves. I. Sometimes when people say things to me, and I feel like I see this and feel this in you, which is why I feel comfortable kind of saying this. Whenever people will say, like, oh, like, you're amazing or something like that, I'm like, I'm not amazing, actually. I'm just unleashed. Like, what you get to see is, like, a full expression of a human. And you are this way, too. And I believe everybody has that. And it's really just like, how do we remove the blocks and barriers and the systemic inequities and the trauma and the. All the unsafe things that don't allow for that expression? And I just want that so badly for everybody.
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Me, too. Me, too. I came into this space because I was like, there's something special about connecting a donor to the joy of giving. There's something very special here. I got my start in law school, and there's no joy there. I'll tell you, there's no joy in law school. It's not a happy place. And I was like, I can't do that. This. There's no way I'm going to be a lawyer for the rest of my life. And I finished, but I. I ended up in the opportunity to work in Face to Face fundraising. Like, Face to Face monthly donor acquisition and meeting people at the doors and being like, oh, my God, like, everybody in this neighborhood is really lovely, and everybody in this neighborhood wants to give $100 a month to, I don't know, the McMaster Children's Hospital or whatever. Like, this is crazy. Like, not crazy, but this is incredible. And it changed me. And so I think, like, if I were to Leave the audience with anything about this kind of question of identity and comfort and safety and how do we build a better place for us all to play and work in? It's connect yourself to the joy and then let that hold joy with others because you'll find the story, you'll find the safety, you'll find the comfort, and your work will feel like play again. You'll be reminded as to why you came here as opposed to coming out of a difficult board meeting and be like, they don't get anything. Why are they late? You know what I mean? Everybody's been there. Everybody's been there.
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Oh my gosh. Okay, I'm gonna leave us with that because that was a perfect, perfect wrap up. Tell people where they can go to connect with you, follow along, work with you. All the things.
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Absolutely. I am Most active on LinkedIn, so if you search Sarah Ali Philanthropy, you'll find me. And you'll probably find a bunch of my team members who are very avidly and activ, you know, contributing to the space in their own specializations. We are in the midst of redoing our website, so I won't direct you there until it's ready. But we do love to work with organizations who are really willing to take that step. Willing to scale, willing to build, you know, systems, processes and engines of revenue, but also of human growth into their organizations. And I welcome anyone who is interested in getting in touch.
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Thank you so much for joining me today for sharing and just for the way that you show up in this space and the work that you support. I'm so grateful.
- [28:12]
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Thank you, Mallory. I love your podcast. I love what you do. It's an honestly, just a genuine pleasure and an honor to share space with you today. Thank you.
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Yeah. I hope today's episode inspired or challenged you to think differently. For additional takeaways, tips, show notes and more about our amazing guest and sponsors, head on over to Mallorykson.com podcast and if you didn't know, hosting this podcast isn't the only thing I do every day. I coach, guide and help fundraisers and leaders just like you inside of my program, the Power Partners Formula Collective. Inside the program, I share my methods, tools and experience that have helped me fundraise millions of dollars and feel good about myself in the process. To learn more about how I can help you, visit MalloryErickson.com PowerPartners Last but not least, if you enjoyed this episode, I'd love to encourage you to share it with a friend you know would benefit or leave a review. I'M so grateful for all of you and the good hard work you're doing to make our world a better place. I can't wait to see you in the next episode.
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Episode.
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The question I've been asked the most in the last five years is how do you always know what to say to a donor? And the truth is because I've navigated donor conversations thousands of times. Unfortunately I had to learn what to say the hard way. Live with a donor in high stakes conversations. It was uncomfortable, messy, defeating and definitely led me to burnout. I want better for fundraisers which is why I built Practivated, the first AI powered donor conversation simulator built just for fundraisers. With real time feedback, customizable scenarios and coaching from your AI guide Coach Tivi, you can practice donor conversations in a safe, judgment free space. I want to help you build confidence, reduce stress and strengthen donor relationships all at the same time. Are you interested? Book your demo with me Mallory erickson today@practivated.com demo.