EPISODE 8: TERESA YOUNGER
MARY MORTEN: Hi, everyone, and welcome back to “Gathering Ground,” where with each new episode, a special guest and I explore what it means to survive and thrive in the nonprofit landscape. I'm Mary Morten, president of Morten Group, LLC.
Morten Group is a national consulting firm that operates in Chicago and works with clients from coast to coast and everywhere in between. Our work is in primary areas of organizational development, research, executive placements, diversity, racial equity, and inclusion.
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Today we are very, very excited to welcome to “Gathering Ground” the CEO of Ms. Foundation for Women, Teresa Younger.
Teresa is a thought leader, a strategist, an advocate, an activist, and I’m just going to go off-script and say that because I’ve had a chance to work with her, she also has a wicked sense of humor. (Laughs.) She’s passionate. She’s committed in ways that I’m sure people don’t even realize and is just an extraordinary person to know. And I’m so happy to welcome Teresa to “Gathering Ground.”
Hey, Teresa!
TERESA YOUNGER: Hey, Mary. How are you? Thank you for that wonderful introduction.
MM: Oh, I am wonderful and I’m so excited to have this opportunity to have a conversation with you about things that I just would love to talk to you about and I think other people will be interested in as well.
So you are, I know – we’re going to get into all of this, but I always start with asking people to give us a little bit of their history. And when I was looking over your bio, which I have read numerous times – I’ll just say here at the outset, full disclosure: Morten Group just completed the VP of advancement search for the Ms. Foundation, and we’ll talk about that a little bit later. But we’ve had a chance to work together. And I noticed, though, that you started in your college career in North Dakota. How did you get to North Dakota?
TY: So, it wasn’t just my college career. My father was in the Air Force.
MM: Ah, yes.
TY: I oftentimes say I’m an Air Force brat that knew more about farming than feminism.
MM: OK! (Laughs.)
TY: (Laughs.) So when I was 11, my father and our family moved to North Dakota, and to this day, my parents still live there.
MM: Wow. And what part of North Dakota?
TY: Minot, North Dakota.
MM: OK.
TY: Yeah. So that’s where I grew up. That’s where I went to middle school and to high school and where my parents still live.
MM: So tell us a little bit about how you got to the Ms. Foundation, Teresa.
TY: So it’s been kind of a – what I call a road of left turns, which are, like, a little risky and not quite what people would be doing in order to get all the way to the East Coast from North Dakota, but I quit college when I was in my third year of college after serving as student body vice president. [I was] burned out. And I moved to Connecticut, in which case I, you know, was a nanny for two years for a family and realized that I really have a great love for children and was able to volunteer at an inner city youth center and really appreciated experience that children were having that I was not familiar with, because I grew up in a very rural area, in many ways. And so I went to Connecticut and I nannied for two years. When I finished nannying, I decided to go back to school and get my degree. So I left college. I went back to the University of North Dakota. Got a degree. Came back to the East Coast and started a children’s residential camp, which is still running today. It’s called Project Morry – at the time, it was called Morry’s Camp – to address summer learning loss for children living in urban environments. And that program [I ran it] for five years and then ended up going [to the] ACLU and became the CEO of the ACLU of Connecticut. And that literally was based on an ad in the newspaper. I ended up in Connecticut the first time based on a sign in the library. So, you know, sometimes it’s really obvious where you should go.
So I answered the ad in the newspaper; ended up getting hired as a non-attorney to the ACLU of Connecticut at the time, so that I could do juvenile justice and reproductive rights work, and then 9/11 happened and I had a reintroduction to what it was like to run an ACLU, to understand our constitutional rights, to be part of what it meant to build movement and share a narrative within a predominantly white community, which was Connecticut, with the AAPI community, Asian-American Pacific Islander community, and then was loving that, was recruited to the national ACLU office in New York City and helped start offices all over the state and all over the country. And then somebody called me, a good friend, and she said, i f you ever want to come back to Connecticut, the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women, which was a state government legislative branch, was looking for an executive director, and I could come in and do policy work and organize within the state again and really re-acclimate myself to politics in the state. And so I left the ACLU and ran the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women for eight years. I got to work on and pass legislation, organize a women’s caucus, work on a variety of issues that were really close to my heart and that were having an impact on people’s lives.
And then the Ms. Foundation position opened, and I always say it’s the toughest job and greatest job I ever knew existed. I didn’t know there were roles in philanthropy like this. And so five years ago they offered, I said yes, and I came into this experience to be the second black CEO of the Ms. Foundation in its 45-year history, and the first black CEO in 35 years. So I was really coming in into a space that had not seen a woman – a black woman as the CEO, at a time when the organization was going through some challenge, to step in and really start moving the direction of the organization and rebuilding.
MM: Well, thanks so much, Teresa, for that overview. It seems as though everything you were doing was really preparing you to come to the Ms. Foundation, in many ways.
TY: It was. You know, one of the things I didn’t mention was that I actually grew up a Girl Scout.
MM: Oh, well! Say no more. (Laughs.)
TY: Yeah. I bleed green right down to the core. I served as a council chair and have served on the national board. So part of my — the core of who I am, I honestly believe, was somebody who believed in fairness and making the world a better place. And so, given that as my — as the basic values for where I started, it makes sense that I am doing work around social justice and gender equity, at the intersection of race and gender on a national level.
MM: It makes complete sense. I regret to say that I didn’t get past the Brownie stage, but, you know, I have some other — (laughter) — other traits. That’s a whole ’nother story. (Laughs.)
TY: We’ll get into that later. (Laughs.)
MM: Exactly. Exactly.
Well, that’s wonderful. That really gives, I think, our listeners a context for the work that you’re doing now.
Now, at the Ms. Foundation, an organization that I certainly have been familiar with for many, many years — I spent about 10 years working in women’s philanthropy specifically and with the Women’s Funding Network, which is the international association of women’s funds.
TY: Right.
MM: And I know you’re just coming back from their conference, which we’ll talk about.
Tell us about the current state, if you will, of the union for the Ms. Foundation. You launched a very interesting, provocative, passionate strategic plan a couple of years ago, and that’s now being implemented. What’s on tap for the Ms. Foundation?
TY: So I think — I oftentimes say, if you haven’t seen us lately, then you don’t know who we are. So under the new strategic plan, we are about centering women and girls of color as a point of inclusion. And so that really is a re-positioning of how we look at the work that we’re doing. And we’re building on the legacy of the foundation, which is to make grants to grassroots organizations throughout the country. We’re actually taking a more directed approach to that and pushing philanthropy in a broader way, to take a look at what that means, to really fund women and girls of color and to trust us to know that we have the solutions to help and heal our community. And so we’ve stepped forward in really aggressively stepping up on that. So we’re doing the things that we should do in the strategic plan. We are clear about where we want to go. We’ve identified the middle of the country and the South as a place where we want to emphasize lifting up women and women and girls of color, and the U.S. territories in those areas. And we are going to continue to make grants to grassroots organizations. But more importantly, we want to build the field, so we’re doing a lot of capacity building in that work.
What is not just the leadership that’s sitting there, but what are the second- and third-tier leaderships that need to be built up and stabilized, and how can we support that? The majority of our grantee partners — 75 percent of our grantee partners are women-of-color-led organizations who have less than five people working in the organization, who are doing policy work around safety, health, and economic justice. We call that our SHE initiatives. So grant-making and capacity building are two key pillars to the work that we’re doing, and then we take a step over and we say it’s not just about how you affect your community, but how do you change the policies within your community? You choose how you need to use the money. We’re not looking for your bright and shiny ideas. We trust you to be able to run the organization. And we can get into that and I’ll —
MM: Oh, my goodness. You said — yes, you said a lot there and many of the things that we’re working on with different groups across the country. It’s so important, though, in terms of providing dollars for general operating, that I was so happy to hear you say that. It is something that, while it’s changing, I feel — and you, of course, are much closer to this than I am — that it still seems to be more the exception than the rule that foundations are giving general operating money. Is that your perception as well?
TY: I do. I think that many organizations, foundations are still giving project-related (grants ?), and they’re doing it also for the short term. You know, we didn’t get to an oppressive, sexist, racist, homophobic, xenophobic society overnight, and we won’t make the change happen overnight. So we actually need to invest in the stability of an organization and over the long haul. So we still are seeing, in my perspective, far too many organizations making project grants for one year. That does not provide stability to an organization or allow for a really solid leader to envision past tomorrow, if all they can think about is the here and now. And so, what we encourage philanthropy to do is to make multiyear grants as often as possible, be up front and trust your grantee partners to be able to know what your intentions are, and to give them general operating support, because, you know, what we know is — and we see this continuously — is people will then invest in the project but not in the people. And you can’t have the projects without the leadership of the people. And so, you know, that for us is so key. And we can’t burn out people. So we need to pay them effectively. We need to give them benefits. We need to ensure that they have time off. We need to look at the nonprofit sector for what it is, which is an extremely large institutional entity within our country that actually is an economic motivator, and we need to respect those that are the professionals in that field. And so that’s really critical for us is, you know, is really this idea that not every executive director or their staff may have all of the skills. How do we get them to have the skills? Because they are incredibly passionate, and we need to support more than just an aspect of the vision but the impact that we’re trying to have.
MM: Well, that is a breath of fresh air, I’ll just say, and I hope that message is being communicated at places like the Council on Foundations — (laughter) — which, I’ll have to say, the first time I went to the Council on Foundations after walking out of a Women’s Funding Network conference, I thought, “Did I take a wrong turn? What happened?” Because it was such — (laughter) — a marked difference — right? — coming out of the Women’s Funding Network and all kinds of women, different races, backgrounds, and walking into just the sea of white faces, and pretty much a sea of white male faces and understanding —
TY: And the numbers are not much better. We actually, at the Ms. Foundation, because we have decided we want to align where we can have the greatest level of impact, have realigned our affinity group so that we are aligned with those groups that actually need a gender analysis, so if it’s a group like the Native Americans in Philanthropy or Hispanics in Philanthropy or, you know, the Association of Black Foundation Executives, that we are bringing a gendered lens to it. And then there are spaces in which we bring a race lens to it, and then there are some spaces where we sit at the intersection of both of those, which doesn’t happen in many organizations, but at the Ms. Foundation, that is critical to our work. We don’t get to just say we’re one thing or the other. We bring our full selves and our full amount of work into trying to influence and impact philanthropy, which is actually one of our pillars, which is philanthropic (advocacy ?).
MM: Which — it’s so important for foundations to do that because funders listen to other funders.
TY: Yes.
MM: And that’s a critical role — critical role — for certainly the women’s funding community overall to play, since it came to be because of the lack of funding that women’s and girls’ programming, you know, programs were receiving many years ago. That needle has been moved, but not as much as I think we would have liked in this amount of time.
TY: Yeah. What we do know is that 5 to 7 percent of all philanthropic dollars are going to women and girls in the United States. That’s what we know. That number’s been pretty stagnant. It has not grown significantly; in fact, it may have decreased somewhat. In a recent study, we asked — not the Ms. Foundation but another study actually asked the question, how many women’s funds are moving dollars to women and girls of color? And that number was 11 percent of women’s funds are actually funding women and girls of color. So we don’t know what that number actually is, and so the Ms. Foundation is now embarked on a study to determine how many philanthropic dollars overall are going to women and girls of color. And we believe that to be less than 2 percent.
MM: So I just want to make sure I understand what you’re saying. Did you just say that 11 to 12 percent of funding from women’s funding organizations is going to women and girls of color?
TY: Correct.
MM: In 2019. Unbelievable.
TY: In 2019, when it has been black women and women of color who have been moving the needle and saving this country in so many ways. We’re seeing such little investment. And I know people go, well, it’s got to be more investment than it was yesterday. But in all actuality, we’re not having real conversations about what real investment looks like.
MM: While you have made the entrée — not the entrée but now you have really pushed women and girls forward in a very explicit manner, that was always part of the work. It is not as though this was — you’re introducing something that was completely new, but you’re being very explicit and direct about it now.
TY: Yes.
MM: And my understanding from — and I’ve worked with women’s funds for, you know, 10, 15 years, is that that is how we were doing the funding overall across all communities. But that is not the case.
TY: Well, I think if we’re really going to be explicit about it, the majority of donors to women’s funds, except in the Chicago area, quite honestly, are white women. Quite honestly. I mean, let’s be brutally honest. They are uncomfortable with being explicit about moving their dollars to women and girls of color, so let’s just move them to girls. And we find this in so many circumstances. We’re going to move money to youth and then we’re going to do my brother’s keeper, and then most of those dollars are going to men of color, boys of color. We’re not looking at real, creative-solution changes, and so when you ask the specific question, where are your funding dollars going, then we are seeing, in the latest report — literally this report was just put out — that it was 11 percent who actually said our dollars are going to women and girls of color.
And in all actuality, we make assumptions about women’s funds throughout this country. And what I would say is not all women’s funds are moving money for women and girls in this country. And to be explicit, they will say things like, “Well, we need to have an impact on our community.” “We don’t have the statistical data that tells us that we can do it.” “Those groups are not set up in a nonprofit that allows us to give them money.” And one of the things that we’re doing at the Ms. Foundation — (inaudible) — encouraging foundations to do is to stop letting the structure be the dictator for your dollars and really look at what the rules are and figure out how you can support organizations and women and girls of color in ways that they need it direct. So if that means that you need to fund them outside a 501(c)(3), then you need to figure out how to do that. And you can. The tax code actually gives you room to do that. Right? If you need to fund them in a multiyear way, then you should. Right? You do not have to have a 12-page written report from an organization that’s small and in a community, when you can pick up the phone and establish a true and deep relationship and hear what challenges are going on. And when you build relationship with your grantee partners, you actually then build the ability to answer and be responsive to what they need and to, like, formulate an alternative for what’s going on in the community.
MM: Teresa, I’m curious: How often do you have a chance to make the case, if you will, with the kind of information that you just shared with all of us? How often are you either called upon, or is there an opening, an entrée, if you will, to make sure that people understand that this is really what’s happening? I mean, I think there’s another layer of the idea, as you know, that I think continues to exist in terms of who’s actually giving money. And again, it’s not completely untrue, but certainly here in Chicago, we know it has changed in terms of donors to an organization like the Ms. Foundation or the Chicago Foundation for Women here in Chicago, are the stereotypical “ladies who lunch.” Right? And I put that in quotes. That has changed, but to your point, that is most likely still the base of some major support. And I’m wondering when you have an opportunity to make this case in front of those kinds of people.
TY: Yeah, I have made it — there are few women of color, there are few black women leading public, national, activist foundations. Very few. And so I have taken it upon myself to make that something that I do as often as possible. I spend about 70 percent of my time on the road giving speeches, raising dollars for the foundation, and so the data is really important. And you know, I oftentimes say, I have to speak my own truth, which is what I know. Right? And what I know is I was raised in North Dakota in a predominantly white community, who saw a conversation around what made them feel better, but people see women of color as risqué. Right? We don’t know who they are, or we don’t trust what they’re doing, or we don’t know what they’re doing. And I like to call that out. I like to, you know, really, what is it that we’re willing to do and that we’re saying? And it means that trust actually has to be established. So I try as often as possible. I speak probably four to five times a month throughout this country in various different places. So from Utah to Idaho to Chicago to Florida to California, I am out talking with groups. Sometimes they’re small because it’s around consciousness-raising and having them really challenge themselves, and sometimes it’s large and really kind of challenging how we think about — (inaudible). I oftentimes say that language is critical to the conversation.
That’s why I say, when we talk about centering women and girls of color at the Ms. Foundation, it is a point of inclusion, not exclusion, because women and girls of color have not been included. Oftentimes, when we close our eyes and think about who women are in this country, they are not envisioning I as a black and indigenous woman holding space. They actually aren’t. The majority of people are thinking of a white woman with blonde hair, blue eyes or brown hair and brown eyes, but they are not visualizing a brown-skinned woman.
MM: And I think that’s such an important point, that it’s really a point of inclusion. It is the same context, if you will, for Black Lives Matter. It is about calling it out and identifying it, not because it means we don’t care about anyone else — (laughs) — we don’t care about the police, or we don’t care about any other group of people, but we have to call it out because it is so often — we are so often excluded. And so if we don’t call it out, that will continue, and so I think that’s a really good point.
And you talk about talking all over the country, speaking to groups all over the country. I want to make sure that our listeners know, for those of you in Chicago, Teresa will be here in Chicago — she will be hosted by the Chicago African Americans in Philanthropy, which is an organization really dedicated to expanding and encouraging African-American philanthropy in our communities, and she will be here on October 17th at the Chase Auditorium in downtown Chicago. You can go to CAAIP — C-A-A-I-P — dot org for information. This is a talk you will not want to miss, and I certainly will be there, as well.
So, as we continue on, Teresa, let’s talk a little about how you see the evolution of women’s funds as they relate to more, I would say, generic or general community foundations and just the distinction, because there are many times, depending on the group, that I’ll use the term women’s funds, and at other times, it’s really important for me to say a community foundation or public foundation, because people still are — they’re not quite sure what a women’s fund is or maybe they’ve never even heard of one. The one that most groups have heard of is the Ms. Foundation.
TY: Yeah. I hope so.
MM: (Laughs.)
TY: No, I mean, we — what I found when I started at the foundation — there were many people who did not know who the Ms. Foundation was. And, you know, many activists did, but many people didn’t. And the idea of creating a foundation specifically and intentionally for and by women as a point of centering a conversation and moving — strategically moving dollars into community is what we were trying to do, because people give money to people they know. And so it was — at the time the Ms. Foundation was started back in 1973, it was men who had money because they could have jobs, and they could have savings accounts, and they could buy houses. Right? Women were not seen in those spaces. So as consciousness-raising started across the country, Gloria Steinem and Marlo Thomas and Letty Pogrebin and Pat Carbine, you know, really said, like, we should be determining what happens with dollars. Women had been so uncomfortable for so long with dollars and money, it was really this abstract piece. Like, they had started — we are the sister organization of Ms. Magazine, and we are not affiliated anymore, but I always say we were sisters raised by the same mothers in different houses. So Ms. Magazine is about amplifying and giving women a platform to tell the story and share narrative. And the Ms. Foundation is about lifting that up, driving dollars, informing the field, and having impact, and measuring impact at the end of the day.
So the idea that you would actually look at what capitalism is presenting and challenge it for how you add a feminist lens to it — how do women think differently than men? How might we move dollars differently than men are, and how do we want to do that? How do we give a safe spot for women to come together and make decisions about those things, to challenge each other’s thinking without being shut down? And so, you know, that’s what women’s funds are about. They’re educational tools for women to come together to share, experience a narrative, to make determinations about where their money could or should go, and to create learning variables for that. And what we have seen, over 45 years now, since the Ms. Foundation began, so there are now over a hundred — I think there are over 204 women’s foundations internationally and within the United States, and we are about educating each other and challenging each other and challenging philanthropy even broader.
MM: So you recently, I think in the last several days, returned from the annual conference for the Women’s Funding Network.
TY: Yes.
MM: I believe it was in San Francisco? Was it?
TY: Yes, it was. Yes, it was.
MM: And I think Leadership for a Changing World was the title for this year. What kinds of things did you learn or note about this year’s conference that may have been different than conferences in the past?
TY: So a couple of things that I noticed. One: I think the diversity was higher than I’ve ever seen it, in terms of also executive leadership within women’s foundations throughout the country, in places that I didn’t anticipate, like Arizona — right? — potential leadership changes in Minnesota. So, you know, those were some really key things that I think were excellent. We also had some really solid speakers that talked about how do we build a more inclusive environment, including men in the conversation? When we look at gender equity, what does that look like? And what have we as a society more broadly — how have we instituted masculinity and toxic masculinity in the assumptions that we make as a society?
The last bit that I found really most interesting was a panel discussion that I was involved in in some of what we heard was around how are we funding girls of color? How do we do that? How do we give away control and trust that the next generation of young people actually have — so that they actually have some room to grow and challenge and determine what the world might look like for them and how we might want to support their leadership as they move forward.
MM: Excellent. I’ve missed going and it makes me really want to reconnect, because many of the — I feel like I grew up in women’s funding community, and when I was in New York in May, when I was attending the Gloria Awards — which is a really fun time. I just want to tell folks: If you’re in New York — or make it a destination, as I did — the Gloria Awards, which usually happens the first week of May, I believe.
TY: Yeah. It’s May 6th.
MM: (Laughs.) OK. A really fun time. What I noticed was you absolutely were, I would say, tipping your hat, if you will, to the founders. Absolutely. They were involved. They were on stage. But there was an overwhelming number of young and younger women in that room that, I have to say, I was blown away by. And that doesn’t happen overnight and you really have to work at it. So how have you really started to fill the pipeline with younger women and younger women of color, in particular?
TY: Yeah. You know, I’m glad that you were there. I’m glad you were there to share in it. It’s really an amazing experience, the Gloria Awards. They’re super fun and we have an after-party where everybody goes dancing. And we do get to celebrate the past, and we get to lean into the future. And I think one of the things that I did when I started at the foundation was I did a listening tour, and I traveled 56,000 miles across the United States and asked the question, Do you consider yourself a feminist? And do you know the Ms. Foundation? And in every group that I sat with — and sometimes they were groups of six, eight people, and sometimes they were groups of 20, but they were never bigger than 20 people. And we got to engage in conversation about, one, what did they think feminism was, and what did they think it wasn’t, and how did they see themselves in this movement-building as an activist foundation? That, in and of itself, we heard from people that said things like, “I don’t believe in women’s issues.” And so I thought to myself, wait, what are we talking about when we say that? So we tested it, and so I no longer talk to “women’s issues.” I talk about the issues that affect the lives of women in their community, because when we talk about “women’s issues,” people instantly thought that we were talking about abortion, child care, or pay equity. And that limited the conversation. So when I asked them, “Well, what are we talking about” — so we said, “What if we were talking about the issues that affect the lives of women and their communities?” All the sudden, education and transportation and health care on a broader — and the environment. We got to see a broader reality of the lives of women and their communities.
When we talked about feminism, instead of buying into a gender binary, we said this was the social, political, and economic equality of all genders, which means you get to show up in your fullest self. So one of the things that we did at the foundation when I got here was created inclusive language. I had young women who said to me — and young men, actually — who said to me: “Every time you say families, you make an assumption that my family structure was healthy and that I am controlled by my reproduction. And when you say community, you actually allow me to define what my family looked like for myself.” And so all of the sudden, I needed to reassess the language that I was using, so it said to people, come in. So every time I wanted to talk about inclusion, I needed to — I mean, gender binaries are made up. This idea, this facade about men and women, is actually made up. And you know, the facade about race is made up. It is what has been given to us. So how do we start re-analyzing the data? How do we actually listen to the wisdom that so many people have to give to us? And so the room and the changes at the Ms. Foundation are really because I have taken time to listen, I have taken time to question my own assumptions, and I challenge us all to continue to do that and to not step into space to create division.
So I didn’t come to the Ms. Foundation with a Ph.D. in Feminist Studies or Women’s Studies. I actually came to the Ms. Foundation with a bachelor’s degree in recreation, because I wanted to make the world a better place. And so if you come in and you trust that people are coming in with their heart and their knowledge that they bring, and not make assumptions, then you actually get to real relationships with people. And what I said was bring your friends, bring your community. Come to us. Help us put forth the vision that we want to see. And we have our vision written on the wall.
“We believe in a safe and just world where power and possibility are not limited by race, gender, class, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, or disability. We believe that equity and inclusion are the cornerstone of a true democracy, in which the worth and dignity of every person is valued.”
So if that is the vision that you were searching for, you have to break it apart. Right? What does a safe and just world look like? For whom? By whom? You know, we call out that we are talking about inclusion from all these different angles and we say it in a very true and straightforward way, which means we don’t assume a space; we make a space. So I’m sure you saw it at our gala. Right? The signer is on the — is right in front of the room and highlighted on a screen. Every video has a caption. Right? We make no assumptions about who is there. We try to create space for as many people, and they can come in as they see fit.
So we also look at — the way I see it, we also look at this idea that we needed to grant worth and dignity to every person. You have to assume that is in the front line of what we are striving to do, and we as an organization spend a lot of time insuring that we trust the best intentions of those who come in — (inaudible).
MM: Well, you know, I remember seeing those words being displayed in the office. And let me just say, for those of you who have not had a chance to visit the Ms. Foundation office, you’ve heard Teresa talk, and that is just the tip of the iceberg of the energy and the passion that you really feel when you walk in the office. I walked in that office and I thought, you know, I’ve always said that I never really wanted to go and work in another office, but I wouldn’t mind working in this office.
TY: (Laughs.)
MM: The people were fabulous. The energy was incredible and a very welcoming atmosphere.
The words with regard to inclusion, though, I think I want to underscore, particularly with respect to physical ability, disabilities, because I think, certainly for work that we do at Morten Group as we do our diversity, racial equity, and inclusion work around the country, we’ve done our own work because we think it’s an area that we are not as strong as we could be on with regard to the disability community. And so I appreciate that, you know, where the signer was placed at the event, where the ramp was. This is not an afterthought. This is not some place you have to come in behind.
Do you remember, years ago, when we would do the CFW luncheon, and if we had someone who was in a wheelchair, we had to bring them through the kitchen. That was the only way we could get them in the grand ballroom, which is, of course, absurd. And so I really appreciate that.
When we were doing group agreements, a couple years ago, for an HIV and AIDS convening, and we gave the group agreement of step — what is it? Step forward, step back.
TY: Step forward, step back.
MM: And so a woman, very nicely at the break — and she could have just raised her hand and, you know, did it out loud, but she walked up to us and she said, “You know, I work in the disability community and you might want to consider saying ‘make space, take space.’” And I thought, how on earth did we miss that? How on earth did we miss that? And it happens a lot.
TY: All the time.
MM: And so it’s certainly — it’s such a privilege to do this kind of work, because you are, in many cases, checking yourself on a regular basis. And when we go into a workshop, we always tell folks that, you know, we’re on this journey with you; it’s just that we get to do it and to be in this in many more ways than you do, but we all have to continuously learn, continuously check ourselves.
TY: Yes. Thank you for saying that, because I think one of the spaces you have to be open in is that language is changing every day, and so because language is changing every day, you have to be willing to step into it and step out of it, move and to make space to determine what you’re going to do, and you can’t offended by it. Right? You actually have to be engaged in it. But I always say, at least give us a chance to reassess where we are coming from. But we at the foundation believe that language is everything. Our values are centered around what that looks like. Right? So integrity, trust and respect, interconnectedness, and social justice: Those are our core values for the work that we do. And we were really intentional about calling those out, because those are the ones we want to remind the world about, and then we really step into, what does that mean? Right? Those most impacted, building out community, developing into relationship, taking it one step further, assuming where expertise lies. Right? So sometimes people say, well, you are at the foundation so you must have the answer. And that’s actually not how we do the work at the foundation. We actually go to our grantee partners and have conversations; they help inform our convening; they help inform the language that we use; they help us step forward and they push us to do the work. And so we have relationships with them. We are connected with them. We are in a trust and respectful relationship with them.
MM: Well, I think part of that is because you have come to the understanding that the grantees are actually the experts — what a concept! — that they’re doing the work every day. You’re funding them to do the work, so there has to be trust there, and let’s rely on their expertise. Let’s lift up the work that they’re doing in a way that is going to — to your point about multiyear funding: That is music to my ears. I mean, I was talking about that at conferences many years ago, and I know we are still trying to get funders to understand why that makes sense and why that doesn’t take anything away from you, and in fact, it helps an organization really get to the business at hand.
One of the things I do is work with development directors, and trying to get organizations to understand that when you’re hiring someone, it takes that person a good year to go through the entire sort of routine of the organization to learn it —
TY: Absolutely.
MM: — to learn the donors — right? — to learn who your funders are, so that you will then be most effective. But you’re not going to walk in knowing that. You have to get to know the routine and the rhythms of the organization. And so this idea that we — we know, certainly, as anyone who’s every worked in a foundation: Easily, if you know the funder, it might be six months from beginning of the conversation to the time you get a grant. It could be longer, depending on when you start talking to them. So why do we think that a staff person is going to be able to come in and immediately turn, you know — just immediately start to raise all kinds of, you know, amounts of money when they are just getting in the door? Which is why we see this mass exodus of development staff. We all know that fundraising is, you know, is built on relationships, and it is no different, whether you’re talking to an institutional funder or an individual donor.
So I love all of that, and of course, we don’t have time to talk about any of those pieces as much as I’d like.
TY: (Laughs.)
MM: I want to make sure that we get to some questions from the audience. It’s a very important part of our show. And I also want to ask you this one last question about the Ms. Foundation: If there was one thing, or maybe even a couple things, that you would want people to know about the Ms. Foundation in 2019, what would it be?
TY: That we are here and that we are moving forward with a vision of dreaming into the possibility of what the world can hold, for all women, and that when we center women and girls of color, we are actually hoping for a world that — (inaudible) — of all individuals in our society, and that we actually have to start with those most marginalized to make that happen. And so we are a public foundation. We are raising the money that we give away. And so we have to stop thinking of ourselves and society as a point of scarcity and actually look at it as a point — right? — of plenty, as a point of inclusive bounty. And so what I say is, think of how you can do it in the way that we do it, which is building collective power, which is your dollar plus my dollar equals two dollars. And so give two dollars over there and give two dollars over here, and when you give to the Ms. Foundation, you have the privilege and the honor of effecting grants that go out throughout this country into communities that see very few dollars, and to leadership that nobody often knows about, but we are able to be a grant-maker to first organizations, and we are able to watch them grow.
MM: I love it. Thank you so much. We have been speaking with Teresa Younger. Teresa is the CEO of the Ms. Foundation for Women. They’re based in New York, but, of course, they fund all over the country, and they’re the oldest women’s foundation in the world.
And we’re going to take a brief break and we’re going to come back with one of our favorite pieces of our program: questions from the audience. We’ll be right back. This is Mary Morten, and you’re listening to “Gathering Ground.”
Hi, everyone. Thanks so much for joining me on “Gathering Ground.” We want to hear from you. If you have any questions about your work in nonprofits or any of the topics that we’ve covered here on “Gathering Ground,” send them on in. Send them to mary@gatheringgroundpodcast.com. That’s mary@gatheringgroundpodcast — all one word — dot com. We look forward to hearing from you.
Hi, everyone. Welcome back to “Gathering Ground.” And now, questions from our listeners.
So, Teresa, we’re going to expect you to weigh in on these, OK?
TY: OK.
MM: All right. So this is a question from Grace, and Grace says: “Last week in my office, I said something that I later found out some person of color” — “some people of color could or possibly did find offensive. I don’t think it’s something that requires a whole mediated conversation, but then again, I also didn’t know what I said was problematic to begin with. I want to make amends but fear that it might be too late. What should I do?”
TY: Oh, wow!
MM: (Laughs.) Yeah.
TY: You know, first off, take a step back. This is not about you. If [someone] has expressed a concern, then it actually means it’s not too late. What it means is they want be engaged in a conversation to make it better for everybody. So guess what. Swallow a little bit of pride. Figure out what it was. Understand what that looked like and go in without judgment, but go in with the assumption that you all want to be in the work space and you want to work together towards the mission of whatever the company or organization is looking for. And so what I oftentimes say is, it is not about you; it is about we. And how you get to “we” is understanding that “me” is not at the center of that. And so if you don’t know what it was, you need to ask. And even if you don’t think it needs to be a mediated conversation, the realities of positional power, the realities of power in and of itself means that somebody needs to be safe enough to be able to communicate so that they can be brave enough to be able to enter into a conversation.
MM: I love it. And I particularly love really lifting up that it’s not about you, which is so often — you know, as we’re facilitating and mediating conversations around race and equity, I think people pretty consistently forget that it is not about them, and particularly white folks when they’re talking to people of color about many of these instances. And so, yes, it is not about you, Grace, and so I hope that’s helpful.
We’re going to move on.
TY: (Laughs.)
MM: This is from Josefina. “I’m feeling very overwhelmed at work but don’t feel like I have the supervisory support to say anything about it. My supervisor is just as swamped as I am, if not more so. Any advice?”
TY: So I think one of the things that I oftentimes try to remember is empathy in a situation. So you may be overwhelmed, but at the end of the day, we are not supposed to be doing this work alone. What I would do is take a step back and reassess, what are the key priorities that only you can do? How do you do just one thing every day that helps us get towards the goal that we’re striving for? I appreciate in many ways that you believe your supervisor has too much on her plate, too, or his plate, too, to be helpful, but then that’s the conversation you need to have. It was Audrey Lorde that said self-care is an act of warfare. If we want to do the work and have the impact, then we actually have to be here for another day, which means we have to say no sometimes. And yes, every ounce of the work that we’re doing is critical, and I understand that, but if you cannot care for yourself, then you will not be able to do the work that needs to get done. So take a deep breath. Figure out what it is that you can do and do one thing every day. And guess what. It will be there tomorrow. But if you can cross off some of those things in a very responsive and responsible way, then you’re going to be able to do this.
MM: I love that. And I, for whatever reason, really need to physically cross something off a list. I put lots of things on my computer, my laptop, and on my phone, but I just love being able to cross something off of — (laughs) — a piece of paper. There’s something very gratifying about that. (Laughs.)
TY: Oh, Mary, I will make a to-do list that says “get up, take shower, brush teeth,” so that I can cross that off the list. I am telling you. I know the feeling. (Laughs.)
MM: (Laughs.) Small wins. Small wins every day. That’s exactly right.
OK, and our last question here is from Steven. “How would you deal” — oh, this is a foundation question. OK! “How would you deal with a program manager at your foundation whose portfolio includes LGBTQ folks, women, and people of color groups? This person is having some trouble separating personal beliefs from professional responsibility. Nothing has happened yet, but it has been brought to my attention that there have been some questionable posts on their social media in response to recent news.”
Mmm. Mm-hmm.
TY: Mmm. Wow!
MM: Yeah. (Laughs.)
TY: Wow, that’s quite interesting.
You know, one of the things that I think is really important is that we engage all the time, not just at an annual review —
MM: Right.
TY: — (inaudible) — what our values are and what are beliefs are as an institution, and to make sure that everybody understands what those are.
If you think this is a problem, Steven, and you’re the supervisor, you must engage the conversation. You have an obligation to those groups that that program officer is supposed to be helping to advocate for and move money toward. And so it may be uncomfortable for you, but that is the role that we play. We have to be willing to sit in some places of being uncomfortable in order to do this work. So it is incumbent, I think, upon the supervisor to engage in those conversations. And while I would love to say that his Facebook page is a separate entity, if he is working for your institution, your foundation, remember that everybody is reflective of the values that you’re putting forward, and if he’s not, or that person’s not really living into that, then you need to make some decisions and you need to call them on it, because sometimes people don’t fully appreciate that they are being seen.
MM: I love it. Great responses. Thank you so much! We could do this all day, but we won’t. (Laughter.) But thank you so much.
We have been speaking with Teresa Younger, who is the CEO for the Ms. Foundation for Women. You’ve been listening to “Gathering Ground.” And don’t forget that Teresa Younger will be in Chicago on October 17th. She will be hosted by Chicago African Americans in Philanthropy, and she will be downtown, downtown Chicago, at the Chase Auditorium, about 5:30 in the evening. You can go to CAAIP.org for ticket information. We would love to see you there. I will be there.
Teresa, thank you so much for joining us on another episode of “Gathering Ground.”
TY: Thank you, Mary. It’s wonderful to see you.
MM: And we’ll see you in Chicago.
TY: Absolutely.
MM: We are so pleased to let you know that you can now find “Gathering Ground” on iTunes, in addition to SoundCloud, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and Radio Public, and at gatheringgroundpodcast.com.