William Jackson Harper: “Are you Earthseed? Do you believe? Belief will not save you. Only actions, guided and shaped, by belief and knowledge, will save you. Belief initiates and guides action – or it does nothing.” – Octavia Butler.
Jennifer Ching: This is a period that’s showing us that didactic, bombastic strategies are never a way for us to be in true, authentic relationships with each other.
Risa Sarachan: Jennifer Ching, North Star Fund Executive Director.
Jenn: …that our common humanity has to be based on humility and invitations that are rooted in love and in deep respect. But what I think this means for so many of us is how do we connect with each other? How do we connect towards living a life of a different sort of purpose? And how do we define a purpose that really builds the lives of others?
Our Mission: We are a social justice fund that supports grassroots organizing led by communities of color building power in New York City and the Hudson Valley. We organize people across race and class to give to these movements. Our Vision: we envision a world in which resources and power are equitably shared, and a future where everyone can live with dignity and thrive.
An audio montage of protests related to housing justice, incarceration, and low-wage worker organizing in different settings and multiple languages.
Risa Sarachan: A GUIDE TO FREEDOM: A NORTH STAR FUND PODCAST
Maureen Sebastian: Episode Five: Are you Earthseed?
Jillian White: My name is Jillian White and I am the donor organizer at North Star Fund. And the basic description of what donor organizing is, it’s bringing people into the movement long-term through fundraising and through donating.
Risa: You’re a third-generation New Yorker, right?
Jillian: I am a third-generation New Yorker. But, you know, it’s a little contested because I did move away as a young person. Sometimes New Yorkers are very particular about what counts as being a full-fledged New Yorker.
Maureen: We’re going to edit it. So, you are a full-fledged New Yorker.
Risa: Full-fledged New Yorker, Jillian White, and all of the people we spoke with creating this podcast, have given us a lot of insight into actions we can take to help support North Star Fund.
Risa: Maureen? (Pause)
Risa: Maureen?
Maureen: Risa!
Risa: Where were you?
Maureen: Sleeping!
Risa: Oh, I’m proud of you.
Maureen: Thank you. And, you know, I’m coming to realize that I’m pretty hard on myself when it comes to entering the social justice movement.
Risa: Yeah, I didn’t want to say it.
Maureen: Yeah. You know, I feel like Luke Skywalker when he’s training with Yoda and he’s told to go into the Dagobah cave and starts to see what is real and what is false and ultimately, what he fears. You know, and learning and unlearning from all of these North Star Fund social justice jedis I’m walking out of my own cave to see what is real.
Risa: I literally have no idea what you just said.
Maureen: To put it another way, civil rights hero Fannie Lou Hamer’s words keep coming back to me. “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”
So let’s get free.
Kofo Anifalaje: Become a donor, become a donor, become a donor.
Maureen: Kofo Anifalaje, Development Director at North Star Fund.
Kofo: Become a donor to North Star Fund or become a donor directly to some of our grantee groups.
We are close to the ground. We’re close to on-the-ground organizers in New York City and the Hudson Valley. We know the groups that are doing the work.
We know the coalitions that are doing the work in a way that most individuals and most who are outside of the philanthropic world–which is even more outside of the social justice world–we know the groups that most individuals don’t know. And one thing that I know often hinders people from making donations and supporting especially grassroots groups is: “I don’t know if they’ll use the money right.” Making a gift to an organization, to a fund like North Star Fund, an intermediary, helps to avoid all of that work for individuals. The other point about that, around the fact that we pool money, is your money just goes further. If you make a fifty-dollar gift to North Star Fund or an intermediary like us, that’s pooled with, let’s say, ten thousand other, you know, fifty-dollar gifts. And that makes the amount that we can give and grants, that amplifies it just so much more.
Elz Cuya Jones: So I wrote a check, I use the hashtag and I’m all good.
Maureen: Deputy Director Elz Cuya Jones.
Elz: And we know that it requires the whole person to really be in relationship with us and with grantees and with the organizers to really understand what is necessary, and to stay in the work. So, sometimes writing a check allows them to not think about it for a year until the time comes that they are asked for another gift. But we want partnership and we want your passion and desire to amplify what is needed and to relay that message on to your folks who we don’t have access to.
Risa: I feel nervous talking specifics about social justice with friends and family because I don’t want to mess up. It all still feels like I have a lot to learn, but North Star Fund seems like the place to expand our education. It’s just harder now with the pandemic.
Jenn: For forty years, North Star Fund has been a community where we’ve held regular events bringing people together. We really want New Yorkers to meet each other and to talk about these issues and to learn about grassroots organizing and to feel this deep connection. COVID is a particularly cruel era because, you know, we’re only able to connect online, but we nonetheless are continuing to hold our events online. And it’s actually been really beautiful to see so many people coming out and participating in our webinars and in our online meetings who want to, as I said, learn more, but also want to meet folks that they wouldn’t ordinarily meet in the course of their lives and certainly aren’t meeting while we’re at home, you know, in our various COVID isolations.
Maureen: Yes. One of the many ways North Star Fund has shown up for its community during the pandemic is creating and disseminating educational content on their website. In fact, they have an entire “North Star Fund, Explained” series of webinars, demystifying and unraveling the intricate workings of their organization.
Risa: I’ve literally watched every one and they are so informative and weirdly, even though it’s on Zoom, incredibly moving. One of the webinars, “Giving Circles, Explained” displays the ways a group of committed people could come together to put their resources into values in which they believe, while building community. A space where you have a group to keep you accountable, while providing a supportive, collaborative place to do this work. And also, a place to have honest and vulnerable discussions about, well, money.
Ogonnaya Newman: Many aspects of the world that we live in today were supported through, I think, informal and formal philanthropy. One of the jokes that I say is that, like, my ancestors worked very hard for me to have soft hands. And so, I say that because, like, I think that was like I am the product of giving circles. I am the product of giving circles between, like my family, my grandparents.
Maureen: Ogonnaya Newman, a member of Black Feminist Susu, a giving circle of about 12 to 15 members who, as she describes, basically put their money into a Venmo account and collectively decide to fund Black feminist leaders and organizations in the US and globally.
Ogonnaya Newman: So, I think the thing that has really been really striking to me in that I feel, I feel like every day, is that, in the same ways that we think about many of the sometimes bad things that we’re experiencing, which are the byproduct of philanthropic support, there are also many, I think, good things that I definitely experience because of that type of support. And I think, you know, the power of it is not just the dollars that ended up moving, I think, through these Giving Circles, but the knowledge, I think, like all of the cultural organizing that shifts because of these types of circles. The folks at North Star and this is like a commercial for North Star. But like, when I was kind of thinking through some of my strategies, the folks at North Star, specifically Kofo, because she was my Giving Project mentor, helped me think about what my actual philanthropic personal philosophy is and then how that applied to the different places where I may have been giving – like thinking about all the different layers of, your thought around your own, giving layers of your commitment.
And then I think you also have the layers of well, what makes the most sense based on how much money I have?
Maureen: Ogonnaya definitely has that North Star Fund glow, that deep understanding of how her purpose and practices align. So, it’s no surprise that she was a past participant of North Star Fund’s Giving Project.
Jillian: The Giving Project is a form of community or collective giving.
Maureen: Jillian White again.
Jillian: We run a six-month program where about twenty to twenty-five people will come together for six months, and they’ll receive training on what is race? What is class? What is Racial Capitalism? We’ll train them on organizing, we’ll put them in relationship with some of our grantees. They’ll learn directly from them around what is organizing, what’s happening on the ground, what are we looking at for the future? The success of the Giving Project really is that we’re not just turning people into donors, people who give one time. We’re turning them into donor organizers. So, people who have the skills and experience needed to continually mobilize other people and bring more and more people into the movement, through fundraising and through giving. And so, we also know that the movement is made up of so many different parts and that we all can’t play the same role. But giving is giving. And being a donor is a really good introduction to the movement.
Risa: The 2019 Giving Project cohort raised over $260,000. And that money came from more than 650 donors, made up of friends and family. It’s an impressive dollar amount, but also an impressive amount of people who are now a part of the social justice movement North Star Fund stands behind.
Maureen: And even after the 2019 cohort’s time at the Giving Project officially ended, as the uprisings around George Floyd’s death were increasing over the summer, they self-organized and raised money for the Let Us Breathe Fund, putting a lot of effort in making their donors monthly sustainers, because -.
Jillian: It says that organizations can count on them.
It helps an organization plan for the future. And it’s a huge sign of trust. And it’s a statement that you’ll be with a group, you’ll be with an organization through the ups and downs, because it’s not all wins. And in the harder moments and in the leaner times, when public attention sort of shifts away, it’s a statement that you’ll be there. This year, we’ve committed in advance to putting this money into Let Us Breathe, so we know that the 2020 Giving Project is going to raise money for Black-led organizing in New York City and the Hudson Valley. So, early into the spring when the uprisings happened, it was really a moment where we’re like, okay, we’re on track. We’re living into these values. We’re actually doing the work.
And the uprisings are confirming for us that this is a timely decision and that it’s what our city and it’s what the Hudson Valley needs, like, right now.
Risa: The Giving Project’s decisions of where to invest their funds, remind us of the generations-long struggle toward emancipation that Black communities have been a part of and continue to be a part of now.
Kesi Foster: I think we look at the history of this country, Black-led organizing led, you know, our first transformation towards abolition.
Risa: Kesi Foster, organizer, Board Member and Co-Chair of the Community Funding Committee.
Kesi: We’re talking about the abolition of chattel slavery. I think that fight in that struggle for true emancipation in some ways is still going on today. And so, it will have to be Black-led organizing that is going to continue that struggle, pick up that mantle towards abolition, and lead us towards a new vision, towards abolition in what is now the 21st Century.
Maureen: What are other ways that we can, as Kesi describes, pick up that mantle towards abolition?
Margie Fine: North Star is very good at if you want to be involved in social justice, [they] can help you get hooked up with a really good organization and find the thing that you can do. I often, when I do fundraising, I tell people, think about three things: how much can the person give? But ask nicely and respectfully. Who else do they know? And how do you want to be involved? How do you want to be involved really matters because they don’t want to treat people like a checkbook. Remember checkbooks? Or a Venmo account? No, I want them to be their full selves to be able to come and bring their full self to the work that they do, and their way of being involved in social justice.
Maureen: That is so well said. And I do remember checkbooks, I think I have one somewhere.
Risa: I still have a checkbook. (Laughter)
Margie: I still use a checkbook. It’s hard to put Venmo in a Bat Mitzvah envelope. Ok? A check works much better.
Risa: So, let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Let’s talk about money.
Margie: I think sometimes, we have to remember that everybody is a human being. And that we’re not asking you to take the phonebook, remember phonebooks? Or some version of a phonebook and just cold call people. The people that you’re going to make a connection with that I like is relational fundraising. You have some reason to believe that they have money to give, that they care about the work that you’re doing, and you have access to that person. Secondly, research tells us that people like making donations, that it makes them feel good. They like to be able to make a donation. And yet, people hold on to the negative messages about money more than the positive. For example, fill in this sentence: money is the root of…? Almost everybody can say, root of all evil. But you know what? St. Paul never said that. What he said was, “the love of money is the root of all evil.” Ok, so let’s not love money. Let’s be in right relationship with money.
Another one that a lot of people seem to have is, oh, I was taught never to beg. To not think about fundraising as begging, but inviting people into a way that they can use the skills that they have to give towards this work. Just like if they had a beautiful singing voice, you wouldn’t think twice about asking them to sing at your gala, at your party, at your event. Why would we think twice about helping people use their gifts of money to help make the change in the world that we want to see accomplished?
Maureen: It’s very easy to say, yes, I want to help. I want to be part of this. I’m going to gather my people and ask them for money. But how do we get that training if we weren’t able to be part of the Giving Project?
Margie: I often tell people, when you go to ask somebody for a donation and you’ve had the conversation and you say, want to turn now to the email that I sent you? Can we talk about the donation? Watch for the head nod. State it very clearly. Last year, you gave $5,000, thank you so much. That was great. This year, I’m asking you for $7,500. This is why. Tell them why. Can I count on you? When you say can I count on you, you must stop, breathe, don’t talk again and think of yourself as a gymnast. I want you to flip off that horse and land it. I want you to stick that landing, which means you don’t talk again till the donor talks and says yes. Or says, I think so, I have to talk to my partner. You don’t hear a no, that’s not a no. This is not sex. It’s not that kind of no. This is a no where the person is still thinking themselves into making this donation, and you want to help them get there, if they didn’t say immediately yes.
Risa: Ok, so money isn’t all bad and the people who have it aren’t either. What about those people? What about people with a lot of money who want to invest in social justice but don’t want to cede all their power?
Kofo: You know, a Donor-Advised Fund is just another giving vehicle.
Risa: Kofo Anifalaje, again.
Kofo: Well, I like to suggest that people think of it as a giving savings account where, if you have a big or sizable, you know, tranche of money, that you want to use for philanthropic purposes, you can set that money in a DAF, and you are able to do grant making throughout the country for issues or toward areas that are close or important to you.
There’s a lot of controversy around DAFs, and that’s primarily because, like much of philanthropy, Donor-Advised Funds have been used as a tool for wealthy people to hoard and maintain their wealth. And so, what you often see is that fairly wealthy people will move the money, you know, take the tax deduction and they won’t actually grant the money out to organizations or issues that could benefit from the money.
Risa: Ok, I know I’m new to all of this, but that seems bad.
Maureen: I know. There are currently over $120 billion in Donor-Advised Funds just sitting there. But Kofo assured me that North Star Fund makes it explicit to their Donor-Advised partners, their organization is all about moving that money to make change and to make an impact. So, if there’s no movement in their account for 36 months, the money goes straight to North Star Fund and North Star Fund gives that money away.
Risa: But what about hate-funding in philanthropy? A report from the Southern Poverty Law Center describes DAFs as being used to anonymize and fund hate groups as tax-exempt organizations.
Kofo: North Star Fund has partnered with Amalgamated Foundation in the administration of our Donor-Advised Program.
Amalgamated Foundation started a campaign called, “Hate is Not Charitable.” Part of the “Hate is Not Charitable” campaign lens that any and every Donor-Advised Fund Grant that goes through us, is screened, to ensure that the groups are not on these hate group lists.
Maureen: Is there a hate group for hate groups?
Risa: Even if there was, you wouldn’t be able to give them money through a DAF at North Star Fund.
Maureen: I’m definitely not in the DAF category, so it is important to understand that there’s room for everyone in the North Star Fund community, no matter your financial situation, and that every donation, no matter the size, will have an impact. Because at North Star Fund, unlike other philanthropies, power isn’t tied to the size of a person’s donation. Power is held by the people on the ground, affecting real systems change.
Margie: So, I don’t mind if people are new to doing this work. I think we need a big tent.
Risa: Margie again.
Margie: I invite everybody to come in. Systemic racism is where we really want to make the deepest changes, understanding what kinds of things are going on in Latinx communities, in South Asian communities, among Muslim communities, among Jewish communities. All of us working together in this, really makes the difference. And I always want to have people who are White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant to also feel they’ve got a home at North Star, even as we are spending time lifting up African-American voices really, really front and center. Everybody has a role here, if you believe in the values and support the work that is going on.
Jillian: This can all be overwhelming.
Maureen: Jillian White.
Jillian: There are so many places that you could be putting your money, and so, building a practice of reflection, determining what is appropriate for you, what’s going to work for you to build a long- term relationship with organizations. It’s just a really good exercise for people to do, it’s a really good muscle for people to build. It’s not just about blind faith. It’s actually about becoming more critical in our thinking.
Maureen: That’s it. I’m applying to the 2021 Giving Project.
Risa: We can do lots of things before that: become a donor, watch the “North Star Fund, Explained” webinars, start a giving circle with friends.
Maureen: And continue our training with these North Star Fund jedis to keep honing into what our beliefs are, into what our individual truths are, and how to use our talents to turn those things into action.
Risa: I think I’m finally getting there, Maureen. Have you figured out yours yet?
Maureen: Honey, I can barely figure out what to cook for dinner.
Risa: Well, we better figure it out because we’ve only got one episode left.
Maureen: No pressure.
Thank you so much for listening. If you’d like to hear more about North Star Fund and the incredible work they do, please go to www.NorthStarFund.org. We’d like to give a special thanks to Jennifer Ching, Kathleen Pequeño and Angbeen Saleem for their guidance and support in creating this podcast. And to all our interviewees: Jillian White, Adrienne Wong, Kesi Foster, Margie Fine, Catherine Eusebio, Gabriela Quintanilla, Kofo Anifalaje and Elz Cuya Jones. For additional audio, we’d like to thank Ogonnaya Newman, Walter Hergt, and To Release Aging People in Prison Campaign, Damayan, Adhikaar, Right to Counsel, Worker Justice for NYC, and Public News Service. For lending his immense talent (and dulcet tones) a huge thanks to William Jackson Harper. We’d also like to thank our magician of an audio technician/editor/sound mixer Dan Crowley.
The North Star Fund Podcast was created by Maureen Sebastian and Risa Sarachan and produced by Maureen Sebastian and North Star Fund.