You’re meeting somebody for coffee at a neighborhood cafe.

How much do you hustle to get there on time… or even early?

That depends on who you’re meeting, probably.

Right?

Say you’re meeting a close friend. You’re likely fairly relaxed and not too worried about what time you actually arrive.

Say you’re meeting someone who needs something from you. You are doing them a favor by meeting with them and spending the time with them. You are likely to be even more relaxed… because what would it matter if they had to wait a bit? You are going out of your way to be there for them at all, right?

Now, say you have requested the meeting of someone else, and you are the one who needs something. Say you are meeting a wealthy person who you’d like to ask to support the organization you work for. If you were running late in this scenario… how stressed would you be? I’m guessing pretty stressed. Yes?

These different scenarios demonstrate interpersonal power dynamics.

Who holds power. Who doesn’t.

Who has more. Who has less.

Who bends over backward for who…

Who carries the stress of a situation…

Who doesn’t carry as much stress — if any.

Nature has so much to teach us.

I read the book of nature for lessons regularly.

And here’s one of the most powerful things I’ve learned from the Earth as it is: softness is ultimately stronger than hardness.

Think about when there’s a strong wind.

The trees and plants that can sway — bending with flexibility and give — usually survive much longer than those that are hard and cannot/will not give. The latter are blown over or broken much more easily.

Soft is stronger than hard.

The Community-Centric Fundraising of today is what the Donor-Centric Fundraising of yesterday was — a sea change that will completely change how fundraising happens, what is accepted as best practice, what the “experts” do.

And here is why it’s the evolution of what was — or, in other words, a transformed model that corrects for the problems, weak spots, risks, harms created by the older version: Community-Centric Fundraising is a more honest and equitable and just and healing and loving version of the Donor-Centric Fundraising we’ve been doing for decades now.

The weaknesses and harmfulness of that older version demanded that evolution happen — and happen it did.

We all know about the white hoods. The glowing torches. The genocides. The swastikas. The fascism. These explicit and in-our-face forms of White Supremacy are so obvious that anyone can see them.

Yet, over the years, I’ve come to see how much White Supremacy has evolved to operate in much more nuanced ways.

I got into fundraising like many do. Out of necessity. Almost as an after-thought. Through the back-door.

I had gone to graduate school for my Master’s in Social Work. I had made that decision because I realized how much I wanted to work in the community, with people.

My undergraduate degree had been in English (shout-out to my fellow English Majors! I know there are many of us in this field of work), and I had actually gotten a job in publishing (the ultimate “get” for an English Major).

I loved writing for work.

I still got to work with people, of course, as most jobs do.

But I wasn’t doing anything that really mattered.

Honesty can be dangerous.

Honesty hurts.

Honesty is uncomfortable.

I’m willing to guess that these are some of the lessons you have learned about honesty over your lifetime. Many were likely learned when you were growing up and seriously lacking in power. Yet, many were likely learned in your adulthood too — when you had much more power… but weren’t aware of how much power you had.

Part of the problem here is that we’ve taken flawed lessons from our past into our present, so we keep re-enforcing them… rather than seeing more clearly, learning new ways of being, and creating new realities, ones more informed by wisdom.

Even though it may not feel like it, you do have the power to change our shared reality. And there is a new kind of freedom waiting for you, for all of us, if you do.

When I first started talking about my vision for this space, and the work I wanted to do in the world, I would internally roll my eyes at myself.

Can you believe it?

But I knew exactly what was going on.

Misogyny.

Patriarchy.

Capitalism.

In essence, a well-soaked-in internalization of these forces that dominate the world we live in today. The world all around us. The way we’ve learned “things are.”

What are we doing, here?

Where are we even going?

And how?

Isn’t this the field that is supposed to be focused on a love for humanity (the literal root meaning of the word “philanthropy”), on making this world a better place, on achieving noble missions?

How can any of these very worthy goals be possible if this is the way we’re going about the work — stomping all over the humans, and their very human needs, in the process?

We let anxiety get the best of us.

Like the energy of anxiety almost always flows, we spin and spin and spin… and SO much energy gets scattered and wasted.

What happens if we, instead, consciously choose to ground ourselves? To take a deep breath, close our eyes, and sink our roots deeply into the whole reason we are raising/moving funds in the first place? To open our hearts to the love and care we have for our community… and our fellow humans?

And to see our purpose as cultivating and growing that love and care among our fellow humans?

I’m done thinking of systems change as “out there” and not “in here.”

People are people.

Humans are always — always — gonna human.

And “systems” in our human societies are human-dependent. They are created by them in the first place, and they would not exist at all without them. Humans are the very substance of these systems.

And humans are always going to be their human selves, no matter what a law or DEI training or HR policy says.

To truly change how systems are, we must go deeper.

We must reach into the roots of who we are.