“The stand I took against leadership who tokenized me…”

It was the moment Maria became painfully aware: her identity and lived experiences were just notes on a grant application and a diversity brag on a website. Hear how she believes nonprofit professionals can take immediate action to promote equality within their organizations.

Learn about Further Together's approach to community-centric fundraising 👉 https://www.gofurthertogether.ca/

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Hi everyone, welcome back to the Nonprofit Diaries, where we share the stories that don't make the newsletter. I'm your host, Kimberly Bottom. I have such a treat for you guys this week. Our guest is a firecracker in human form. With over a decade of nonprofit and fundraising experience, she has taken copious notes about the culture of philanthropy, and she is not shy about sharing those takeaways. You may have heard me say previously that audacity is my word for 2026. She has it in spades. She is fierce and kind. She is unafraid to say what needs to be said. She is compassionate and challenges others to level up their compassion. And the reason all of this works for her is because she is unapologetically real. She is the founder and CEO of Further Together, which is a fundraising firm that helps bold, justice-driven nonprofits and executive directors grow and diversify their fundraising revenue. She's also a fellow podcaster. She hosts the popular small nonprofit podcast, which shares actionable steps to raise funds and lead with courage. Welcome, my friend Maria Rio. Thank you for being here, Maria.

SPEAKER_02 1:14

That was the nicest intro ever.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

Oh my gosh, it's all true. I had to like cut it down. It was like a page, and I'm like, okay, we gotta get to the cover. Thank you. Absolutely. I'm so, so glad you're here. So, first and foremost, tell us about Further Together because I want to make sure that everybody uh listening today understands what you do.

SPEAKER_02 1:33

Yeah, so Further Together is my fundraising firm. It's been around for three years, and basically it's the only fractional fundraising firm in Canada that specializes in community-centric fundraising. So I really like to live, I really like to bring my lived experience as a service user who has used food banks, who stayed in a World Vision Refugee shelter to my fundraising work. I think that that's something that is really missing in nonprofit and in leadership positions, that lived experience. And that's my way of doing it in fundraising because I believe that fundraising can be a tool for justice. So we work with really amazing leaders who are serving people directly and making that change and who are not afraid to innovate and say the quiet part out loud. So to have those tough conversations with donors that turn them into really beautiful partnerships rather than just transactional relationships.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

I just love that approach for all of you listening. If you aren't already following Maria on LinkedIn, please go do so because it's going to make your day. So uh speaking of your lived experiences, Maria, we're setting the stage for your diary entry. You've learned through some less than positive experiences what should and shouldn't be happening in the philanthropy and the fundraising sector. So today we're gonna talk about an experience that you went through where you felt tokenized by the people who were supposed to be supporting you and supposed to be your, you know, your employer and uh your support system. So uh set the story for us. Uh, you don't have to, you know, mention any names if you if you don't want to, but tell us a little bit about where you were and what you were doing.

SPEAKER_02 3:08

So happy to. So I've been a consultant for three years now, but before I was an in-house fundraiser. So this was in 2018, 2019, around that time, where I was working at this organization that does all human rights stuff, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. The executive director at the time was someone who is a white man, kind of failing upwards. Um, he has had a really prolific career, but he was kind of like blacklisted from his industry and then moved into nonprofit to become the executive director. Uh, but when we worked together, it was pretty interesting because I came into this organization thinking, oh, if an organization gets it, it's gonna be this one. You know, if they don't understand social justice, racial justice, economic justice, like then there's literally no hope. Um, and they didn't.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

Oh no. Oh my gosh. So when was the first time you realized that they didn't?

SPEAKER_02 4:06

Okay, the first time that I really realized it was about two months into my role. One of the lawyers had, as part of their programmatic role, uh issued a letter in support of the Toronto Library, the Toronto Public Library, um, because they had not canceled the venue for this uh turf to give a speech at. So trans uh exclusionary radical feminists. So trans-hating feminists, basically. Uh and we wrote a letter of support for the library saying free speech is good and it should be maintained. But this was my problem at that organization was freedoms and rights often collide with each other. So sometimes you have the freedom of speech, but also it infringes on discrimination, for example. Right. And when that happened, the organization often chose the white version of what that was. Like freedom of speech, definitely that versus hate speech, right? Like you could have made the case either direction based on which right you were gonna pull from, but they would usually pick the white one. So me just having this conversation with the lawyer and seeing that it had already been posted out there, and you know, I'm the person that's managing the communications and the fundraising. I'm expected to sell this to people. And it's completely not in alignment with my values. So I was sick to my stomach. I ended up writing a really long note on my phone because I was worried about how I was gonna tell my executive director. I'm like, hello, executive director. I'm sorry that I had to kind of read this off my phone because also there's like an age gap, a power gap, like, you know, like a whole bunch of things happening here. Like he's a white man, I'm a racialized immigrant lady, right? Um, so there's a whole bunch of things happening here, but I have my Google notes and I'm like, okay, so I'm gonna read it straight from my phone because this is not very comfortable for me. And you know, he was like, okay, yeah, no problem. So I'm like, look, like this kind of rhetoric is harmful. Like people literally kill themselves because they don't feel belonging, because they feel excluded, because of the things that this person is saying at the library. And we, as an organization that stands for people's rights, shouldn't be standing for, you know, the rights of people to say hateful things. Right. Like it is a right that we believe in, but we could have also written a letter in support of them canceling that because we believe in equality as well. And actually, it was like one-fourth of our programming was based on equality. So, what is the issue here? And his answer was Are you alive to the fact that you've been here for two months?

SPEAKER_00 6:55

I'm sorry, what was the wait first of all, what did you say to that?

SPEAKER_02 7:07

I'm pretty hard to scare, honestly. Yeah. Um, and that's because of my lived experience. Like, yeah, I came here as a refugee. Yeah. I've given up my whole culture, my family, my language, my traditions to be safe. And you are making this unsafe for me. Yep. And I don't care about you as much as I care about all of that. So don't think that you're gonna have a bigger impact on me, you know?

SPEAKER_01 7:35

Yeah, exactly. Uh so how did that conversation end then? I'm assuming he did not see things your way.

SPEAKER_02 7:42

I don't think he saw things my way, but I think he definitely heard me, which I definitely appreciated. Yeah. Because not that he changed the position that we took publicly, but he walked away from the conversation as he's leaving my office. He's like, Well, I guess, I guess because we have, you know, you, this uh Mexican refugee, queer woman, you know, we're writing that in grant applications as part of our team to talk about our diversity and on the website and stuff, right? So I think we should, you know, listen to your opinion sometimes, kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

Because your situation benefits my bottom line. I'm going to take advantage of you, is what that means.

SPEAKER_02 8:22

Yeah. And that was just, you know, the first time that it was very obvious at that organization that this is not really what I want to be doing.

SPEAKER_01 8:31

Oh, what a disappointment to believe so firmly in the mission of an organization, only to find that bad leadership is making it the opposite of what it should be.

SPEAKER_02 8:41

And unfortunately, like he's an executive director that is one of many, right? Like, I know that I'm kind of like, he sucks, whatever, but there's so many people like that who just don't have the lived experience, haven't taken the time to like understand issues that haven't personally affected them. Like, I remember telling him, like, hey, BIPOC people, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then he's like, what is BIPOC? Like, stop using acronyms. And it's like, if you don't even know that, as the head of this organization, why would I expect someone who's running a food bank or a homeless shelter or a reading program to understand any of these things when you literally live and breathe them, not in a physical sense, because you're not a racialization, but in a work sense, like it is something that you look at every single day and you still don't know enough to do the basics.

SPEAKER_01 9:35

I'm sorry, first of all, that you had to go through that experience because the fact that you had to read from a note to talk to your leadership is indicative of a problem as a sector, right? Like that we we aren't comfortable enough to say that, you know, I know what I'm doing and I and I want to share this with you, but I'm scared to do it. So thank you for the bravery of first of all doing that and then sharing that. And then I would say for people listening to this podcast that have been in a situation where they do feel misaligned with either the mission or the leadership or something like this has happened to them. I mean, we don't want to step away. Sometimes that's the answer. Do you have a suggestion, right, for maybe like engaging with leadership in a way that can let them see their own gaps and work towards a solution? Obviously, if they don't want to hear you, maybe it is time to step away. But like, what would you recommend now as a consultant for leadership of starting that conversation in a productive way?

SPEAKER_02 10:31

I think it can be quite difficult if people refuse to be brought along.

SPEAKER_01 10:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:35

But sometimes you can bring them along if you're talking about the systemic issues from the perspective of your service users. So, like people experiencing racism at our service user base, like, what do you know about that? Right. And then slowly doing some education if they have none. But ideally, uh, you don't wait to bring people along. You start taking action immediately because a lot of people think um I have to get board permission to do community-centric fundraising, or I have to, you know, like do my redo my entire fundraising strategy for it to work. And that's not the case. You can start doing fundraising in an ethical manner immediately. So you could say, hey, instead of using like deficit-based language, I might, I'm going to use asset-based language. Instead of showing a picture of someone crying or at their worst, I'm going to show a dignified picture of them that I would like of myself. So there's things that you could do right away to start baking equity into the model that's you don't even need to explain to other people because you're the person most responsible for it.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:46

So I think with everybody's role, because you might not be in fundraising, you might be in a different role, there are little things like that that you could start implementing that start building up to those larger conversations.

SPEAKER_01 11:57

I really appreciate your perspective always, Maria. Like I said, I wait for your for your LinkedIn content uh like a fangirl. But I I just I'm so glad that you're here today telling the real side of the story and telling how you grew from it and what you've learned because that's all we can do with situations like this is understand that it sucks in the moment and then make something out of it moving forward. And the fact that you're now sharing it is gonna help other people either navigate this or maybe hopefully avoid it altogether, right?

SPEAKER_02 12:25

So it's it's hard because at the time, like obviously it's painful and hurtful when you go through the situation, but I know it's systemic, like it's not that ED, it's not that bored, it's like the sector as a whole. We're not doing good enough when it comes to educating our EDs or educating our boards on the lived experience of our service users. We're not making it a requirement to have lived experience on leadership, which is a huge issue as well. So there's a lot of challenges here. Um, and I know it's definitely easy to like dunk on boards and be like losers, you know, but they are trying to help. They are, and we're just not giving them the tools that they need to be successful.

SPEAKER_01 13:06

And us doing this today is one small step in that right direction, which is just saying something, right? So the more people that do say something is when change happens. So that's we're here for, you know, our own collective realism and the the sigh of relief we can all take together. But it really also is just elevating the voice that needs to be heard. And I'm so thankful that you did that here today. So thank you for coming on the podcast. And for everybody out there listening, this is your reminder to hydrate and practice self-care. And then also, if you want to be on the podcast to share your own diary entry, there's a link in the description that you can fill out a form. We would love to have you. And uh a little tease here. I think that we might just have Maria back for another podcast because she has another really great story that I'm excited to share. So stay tuned for that. Uh, all right, guys, thanks for coming. We'll see you all next time.