Onramps to
Philanthropic Equity

Language and imagery used in all communications, including fundraising efforts, must demonstrate respect for the humanity and dignity of those served. This means avoiding reductive or exploitative portrayals, centering the voices and expertise of the communities themselves, and using person‑centered language and images that reflect their agency, complexity, and lived experiences. Every message reinforces trust and partnership rather than guilt, pity, or a savior narrative.

Stories are honored as belonging to the person(s) who gifted their testimony and safeguarded through ethical storytelling practices. This means obtaining informed consent, accurately representing their experiences, avoiding exaggeration or manipulation for emotional impact, and ensuring that the way stories are shared respects both their privacy and their agency. Storytelling amplifies voices instead of exploiting them, and prioritizes trust, dignity, and partnership over fundraising objectives alone.

Economic justice is prioritized by compensating individuals who are willing to share their lived experiences, insights, and engagement or volunteer for a nonprofit’s mission or cause for the purpose of fundraising or marketing. This means valuing their time, expertise, and labor fairly, ensuring payment is timely and transparent, and recognizing that storytelling and participation are contributions with tangible worth. Compensation reinforces dignity, equity, and mutual respect, rather than treating lived experience and volunteer time as a free resource for institutional benefit.

Prospect research carefully aligns nonprofit missions to donors’ stated funding priorities and disqualifies opportunities that would require a nonprofit to compromise its programs or ethos. This means assessing potential gifts not just for size or visibility, but for their fit with the nonprofit’s mission, ethical standards, and long-term impact. Fundraising decisions prioritize integrity and alignment over short-term gain, ensuring that donor partnerships strengthen rather than distort the organization’s purpose.

Opportunities for nonprofit collaboration are curated, facilitated, nurtured, and protected by fundraisers to both increase community impact and unlock new funding partnerships. This means approaching collaborations with intentionality, ensuring alignment of missions and values, building trust among partners, and safeguarding relationships so that collective efforts benefit communities rather than individual organizations or donors alone. Fundraisers act as stewards, creating partnerships that are equitable, sustainable, and mission-driven.

Donors are cultivated, solicited, and stewarded as valued partners, not saviors. Their voices hold equal value to experienced staff, dedicated board members, and community advocates and champions with lived experience. Fundraising relationships are built on mutual respect, transparency, and collaboration - ensuring that donors support, rather than control, the mission and that decision-making centers the people and communities the organization serves.

Extractive processes created by donors that impede fundraising effectiveness - onerous reporting requirements, complicated applications with low awards, unrealistic gift stipulations, withholding trust while demanding proof - are challenged and called in. Fundraisers advocate for equitable practices that respect organizational capacity, reduce unnecessary administrative burden, and enable nonprofits to focus on mission and impact rather than meeting donor-imposed obstacles. Donor processes are partnership-oriented, transparent, and designed to strengthen, rather than hinder, the work of the organization. Strong relationships ensure fundraisers, nonprofits, and donors all hold each other accountable.

The delay or hoarding of capital by donors is identified, analyzed, published, and challenged through legislative action and grassroots organizing. Fundraisers and nonprofit leaders work to ensure that philanthropic resources flow in a timely, equitable, and transparent manner, prioritizing the needs of communities over donor convenience or legacy. This approach promotes accountability, systemic change, and the ethical deployment of resources for maximum social impact.

Fundraiser physical, psychological, and reputational safety is centered in all interactions where there is a power imbalance - primarily with donors, board members, and executive leaders. This means establishing clear boundaries, providing staff with the training and support needed to navigate challenging conversations, and creating organizational policies that protect staff from coercion, harassment, or pressure to compromise their ethics or well-being. Organizational relationships and power dynamics must never supersede the safety, dignity, or professional integrity of fundraising staff.

A culture that maximizes fundraising, impact, and mission is one that confronts the root causes of turnover and burnout - insufficient resources, unrealistic expectations, poor management, inadequate tools, and limited opportunities for learning or growth - and builds policies that protect and empower its people. This includes investing in professional development, ensuring workloads are sustainable, fostering inclusive leadership, and creating systems that prioritize the well-being and retention of the people who make the mission possible. By addressing these systemic challenges, the organization strengthens both its internal capacity and its ability to serve communities effectively.