We Could Be Doing Good Better

Originally posted on May 16, 2023 on a former blog site.

A Note to the reader

Over the last six years I have attended more than ten nonprofit focused conferences, and none left me with the impact or feeling that the Gates Foundation Greater Giving Summit did this year. The Greater Giving Summit is an intimate, invite-only event hosted every other year by the Gates Foundation. It started in 2017 to discuss trends within philanthropy and where it needs to go. The summit has under 200 attendees and the majority of the attendees are from platforms, research institutions, and those with a unique perspective on philanthropy.

Due to the intimate and vulnerable nature of the event you might notice I am erring on the side of reverence towards open, difficult conversations by sharing complex topics in a way that may seem vague at times. Nearly every session over the course of the two days was emotional, vulnerable, and pushed us to introspection – rarely was there a dry eye. Unlike larger conventions, this summit focused on a single shared track as a larger group, with only two sessions broken out into smaller concentrated conversations.

Before I dive into my learnings and feelings from this gathering I want to share with you the lens from which I think about philanthropy and “doing good”. 

I started my journey into the nonprofit or “doing good” world by accident. In 2015, I was in my final year of college and a friend suggested that when I play video games I should stream on Twitch. While I’ve been on the internet since before I went to kindergarten, I rarely found myself in online gaming circles, so I had never heard of Twitch. Shortly after discovering Twitch, I found myself in several online gaming groups focused on “doing good”. One group that stood out to me was a group of gamers dedicated to creating a safe space for military veterans to enjoy gaming with civilians who understood how veterans could be and they raised money for nonprofit organizations through Twitch. At this time the broader understanding of gaming, creators, and nonprofit fundraising wasn’t widely known, but it had been slowly gaining ground since before Twitch. After joining this gaming group, “doing good” through gaming became my special interest, and to this day remains my special interest. After college, I taught second grade for a year before being recruited by Andrew Reyes-Schroeder to Twitch. I was at Twitch from June 2017 to January 2022, and since April 2015 when I started getting into online gaming communities I have helped nonprofits around the world raise over $310 million (though I would never consider myself a fundraiser), launched some of Twitch’s first diversity programming, and personally grew immensely. While I may no longer be at Twitch, my passion for the power that video games and creators have in shaping culture and “doing good” has never been stronger. In short, my passion and experience has me bridging two very different industries to (do my best to) fuel change within the world. 

Table of Contents

• Defining & Measuring Success for Nonprofits

  • Ratios

  • Fiscal Sponsors

  • Proximate Organizations

• What is philanthropy?

• Inequity in philanthropy

• The future of Philanthropy

• Conclusion

This year’s overarching theme for the Greater Giving Summit seemed to heavily focus on equity and challenging the way we think about the systems that exist within the philanthropic space from defining what success means to requiring a tax status to be able to do good. There was even a delegation of individuals representing Chinese companies such as Tencent Foundation, BiliBili, AliPay, YeePay Charity, and Byte Dance — this was exciting because much of the philanthropic industry is exported from the United States, so being able to connect to chat about the different types of giving in another culture was valuable.

How we define and measure success of nonprofits is harmful, especially to those most in need of access to funding.

This is a topic that I am incredibly passionate about because systems of oppression are so deeply rooted that recognizing them is near impossible. Communities have been doing philanthropic work and organizing for years without the bureaucratic language and rigid systems we use today. There are a lot of different points that could be covered but I’m going to try and keep it to these three: ratios, fiscal sponsors, and proximate organizations. 

This might be the hardest theme to empathize with, and I can understand why. For a very long time, we have been told that nonprofits spending more than 15% on “overhead” is bad, but the truth is it’s a made up standard that has no basis in fact that a nonprofit that spends less than 15% on overhead is more effective or efficient.

Ratios

At some point in time organizations like Charity Navigator and Guidestar (now Candid) gained traction as the arbiters of deciding what makes an efficient and effective nonprofit. The solution these organizations came up with was to separate things like “administrative costs” from “program costs,” and declare nonprofits with the “right” ratio on their tax forms were better than others. Yet this approach makes a bold, awkward statement that paying for talent, infrastructure, and resources isn’t part of the cost of the program. Nonprofits have responded in turn by limiting headcount, paying low salaries, and relying on those who care more than others to get work done (both employees & volunteers). 

In an era of “getting the bag” and “knowing your worth,” how can we expect our best and brightest minds to do some of the most challenging, exhausting work solving the myriad of problems in the world when we refuse to pay a living wage, much less a competitive salary? I know, personally, that I would not sacrifice my family’s economic stability to work for a nonprofit. 

A very common “whataboutism” is pointing to a handful of Executive Directors or CEOs at nonprofits that make a very good salary; but those EDs/CEOs are managing nonprofits that are handling hundreds of millions of dollars and leading strategy for very large organizations. A 2021 report from the Economic Research Institute (ERI) found that the average annual CEO pay in most nonprofit industries was between $100,000 and $200,000 in 2018.

Nearly every person I know who works at a for-profit company feels like they are asked to do more with less every year, or do more with the same amount of resources. Now imagine you’re working at a nonprofit and your CEO makes $165,000 which means you are obviously making much less than that and asked to tackle some of the hardest problems for people while struggling yourself to pay your bills. And then to top it all off you’re unable to secure new resources or technology to help enable you to do your job more effectively. 

“Nonprofits that spend more on information technology, facilities, equipment, staff training, program development, and fundraising tend to be more successful than those that skimp on these “overhead expenses.” But many donors are reluctant to support groups that spend heavily on those priorities because they associate high overhead costs with wasted money and bad management.” - The Chronicle of Philanthropy 

“We found that when arts nonprofits devoted 35% of their budget to overhead, they fared best in terms of attendance. Attendance declined, by contrast, for organizations that spent extremely low and high amounts of their budget on overhead. Groups that spent far too little saw their attendance decline by 9%. Attendance for arts groups that spent way too much on overhead fell by 30%.” - The Conversation

Fiscal Sponsors

There is an overwhelming lack of funding for organizations that are founded by people of color and when you combine this with the approach of rating nonprofit success based on ratios many organizations would be rated poorly. This is where fiscal sponsors come into play. A fiscal sponsor is a nonprofit organization that provides fiduciary oversight, financial management, and other administrative services to help build the capacity of charitable projects. 

This sounds like a good resource for short-term or proximate organizations, but by and large the majority of organizations that are fiscally sponsored are founded by people of color. Now, your first reaction might be to say that these organizations must not be good at what they say they want to do– and if it was — check your bias. Black founders of nonprofits, especially Black women have been openly calling out the way their organizations are scrutinized by grant issuing foundations for years. One example shared during the summit highlighted a foundation in Atlanta, Georgia (for context, the speaker called it “the Black Mecca” in America) had managed to not issue a single grant to a Black founded organization. 

During the racial reckoning of 2020, I came across an issue with onboarding organizations to StreamLabs Charity and Tiltify so that Twitch creators and game developers could mobilize and support. These organizations were not only busy on the front lines of the movement they had to spend time convincing their fiscal sponsors to sign-up for Tiltify so that the people who wanted to fundraise for them could. There were two issues with this: neither StreamLabs Charity or Tiltify were designed with fiscal sponsors in mind. Why was this an issue for these organizations? A fiscal sponsor only has one EIN (tax number) to the often 100+ organizations they support and fundraising platforms are designed, so there is one cause account per EIN. To my knowledge and understanding, this is a persistent issue with both fundraising platforms in the gaming + creator space. 

This is an issue for nonprofit rating organizations where only the organization with the EIN is rated — so if you’re a donor looking to support a fiscally sponsored organization you likely won’t even be able to find it because it isn’t its own organization.

You might think that a simple solution is that all of these organizations should file for their own EIN, but the idea of rating organizations based on their ratios is so ingrained within our minds when it comes to nonprofits that it would do more harm than good as long as these rating organizations exist or spend the time + money to re-educate everyone. 

In the games industry, the IGDA Foundation has acted as a fiscal sponsor for demographic focused groups… notably Latinx in Gaming started as a sub-organization under the IGDA Foundation. 

Proximate Organizations

This term is new to me and I admit that I have historically engaged in commentary that might have harmed proximate organizations. Proximate organizations are on-the-ground, front line organizations that are often spun up in a moment of need but do not desire to become a long standing legacy organization. Due to both the idea that we should only give to “tax registered” organizations and ratings organizations, these movements and proximate organizations are harmed. One thing that comes to the forefront of my mind (and this was a discussion point) is how people will be flexible and mobilize in a time of crisis* but more rigid in other times. 

*time of crisis as decided by the donor or people in power

In the games industry this might look like supporting unionization and struggling to financially support the organizations (think back to the beginning of the Activision-Blizzard unionization efforts).

I do want to acknowledge that nonprofits as we see them today were largely considered hobby work by the wealthy, usually women, and so there may have been a time when this approach made sense, but my educated assumption is that is likely still harmed the communities who needed the most support and centered those with power and privilege. 

A final thought on this topic: a comment from the CEO of Candid stood out to me: “technology when left to its own devices will amplify existing capacity and biases.” It begs the question: who is responsible for educating donors and helping to reshape the narrative?

What is philanthropy?

Admittedly, this question could be theme number one, but I believe that we define “philanthropy” through the lens of how “doing good” can be judged through the current bureaucratic system. The reality is that most of us have a far away idea of what philanthropy is, and what makes a philanthropist. Oxford Dictionary defines philanthropist as a person who seeks to promote the welfare of others, especially by the generous donation of money to good causes. The definition of philanthropist immediately tells us that it must be somebody with extraordinary means. We’ll come back to this, but ask yourself: would you consider yourself a philanthropist?

During the keynote “Expanding Generosity — Power, Imagination, and Community,” Desiree Adaway guides us through a journey of “what generosity is and where it comes from”. Something she said stood out, “We learn who to look up to and by that we learn who to look down upon” and who is deserving enough to receive our generosity. 

We’ve all assumed things about other people, “if only that person had taken my advice,” “they’re lazy/mentally ill/an addict and that’s why they’re homeless.” Even in conversations regarding the crisis around the number of people unhoused in the United States many resort to the same type of statement: Most are mentally-ill or an addict that has declined the help of those who care. This assertion relieves the speaker and the systems they participate in of responsibility. In the United States the idea of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps or rugged individualism reigns supreme — if only that person had worked hard they’d have had a different outcome for their lives. 

The argument against a universal basic income is rooted in two things: (1) what if somebody undeserving receives support, and (2) I worked hard to get where I am today. Why should I support those that didn’t? 

Language is always changing, but the etymology of the words we use can give us an understanding of the biases passed down through the generations from times we think have long since passed and have no impact today. For example, the modern English word “generosity” is derived from the Latin word generōsus, which means “of noble birth,” which itself was passed down to English through the Old French word genereux. 

Now thinking back to the definition and undertones of who is a philanthropist combined with the history of the word generous, I can’t help but sit in this revelation, more aware of my own movements within the philanthropic sector. I would be lying if a version of my younger self didn’t subscribe to some of the very things I push against today. 

We have all been trained to think of philanthropy or charitable effort through our religious centers or through government ordained organizations and their effectiveness judged by a system that lacks the ability to make nuanced declarations, yet we listen and align ourselves with these declarations as if they are the eternal truth. 

One private conversation I had was around the rise of Effective Altruism, and in the end the consensus was that so many people are afraid of doing the wrong thing that the idea of a coded algorithm or super computer could decide the best course of action to solve the world’s toughest problems is a relief. It’s a vulnerable place to be — working on the toughest problems touching people’s lives. Yet still less vulnerable than being on the receiving end of those solutions… it would seem that one of our most basic human functions* would drive us to a place where we would feel less responsible for the outcome of our proposed solutions. 

*Avoiding discomfort

When I think back to the theme: “what is philanthropy?” and the discussions that were held over the two days I find myself feeling somewhat helpless. We’ve constructed a complex and intertangled society where the fear to pull even on one thread has us believing that everything would crumble around us with the wrong tug. 

I’ve come to believe that the most effective ways to support others are the ways that don’t make us feel good. They leave us wanting, dissatisfied, and with few stories to tell others. 

In today’s hyper-surveilled and commodified world, I worry about future generations trending towards only helping others for views… I know that there will always be communities of people who come together to help each other and we will likely never hear about them. In part, that’s why it is easy to worry about a trend of “doing good for views”.

So, “what is philanthropy?” In my mind, philanthropy is the act of an individual or community stepping in to provide necessary support of an individual or community with no expectation of a thank you, no restriction of the support, and the commitment to the privacy of those they supported. But perhaps that definition isn’t expansive enough– because it’s helping your neighbor get groceries during the pandemic, it’s keeping a lookout for each other, it’s risking your privilege to stand up for others, it’s building houses, stocking shelves at the food bank, and it’s financially giving to charities, movements, and the leaders of those movements. 

There isn’t a limit to what philanthropy is or who a philanthropist — though, I would remind you that how you help matters, and so does where the money being donated originated. 

Inequity in philanthropy

Thinking back to my conversation with the individual of Effective Altruism; the “why” behind our over emphasis on charity rating systems; and the etymology of generosity it is no surprise in the incredible inequities within the philanthropic sector and what organizations are funded. 

At this point, we’ve discussed that many organizations founded by people of color end up going the route of a fiscal sponsor due to the systemic issues with rating organizations and how we judge their success.

Would it shock you to know that in 2021, one year after the murder of George Floyd, only 6% of funding in the United States went to organizations addressing racial equity and only 1% went to racial justice? 

Or that only 2% of funding in the United States went to organizations specifically focused on women’s issues or health? I’ll admit this one did shock me, but as it turns out many broader organizations raise funds and fold women’s related matters into their list of things they’re addressing. 

An example that comes to mind is the number of Twitch creators fundraising for American Cancer Society during October instead of an organization solely focused on breast cancer. And yes, men do get breast cancer, and the American Cancer Society does fund breast cancer research, but in my opinion the support given to ACS over breast cancer focused organizations showcases our bias in preferring funding organizations directly not focused on women. 

What’s worse is 0.5% of funding in the United States went to organizations founded by women of color.

Large institutions are likely to receive funding over the organizations on the frontlines or to the people who look like those the organization is hoping to help. 

On the second day of the summit, a woman speaker shared her experience where she was asked to see budget plans and additional documentation to receive a donation from a group of high networth individuals — whereas none of her white male industry colleagues had been asked the same questions.

In my experience, which isn’t unique, many people give to what will make them feel the best… sick children, animal shelters, or an organization related to a personal experience. We’re human, we're built to avoid discomfort and seek out pleasure. It’s much more pleasant to discuss helping children live longer than it is to face the injustices within our society. These “less attractive” causes are the ones most in need of your support and recognition. 

Another attendee and I discussed the tragic epidemic of human trafficking and how this issue rarely sees media attention and the support needed to address this horrific industry.

Aside from compassion fatigue, many of us rationalize away our compassion for different reasons and those harmed by this practice are those who have always been harmed by our privilege to disengage. 

Often inequity is a direct result of those (people & systems) in power, as part of the keynote on generosity we reviewed different ways people and systems can hold power: 

wealth

violence

numbers

state action (or structural power)

social norms

ability to disengage (or make decisions)

time

One solution to unpacking and changing our behaviors is to deeply examine for ourselves how we grade a nonprofit; think about what is philanthropy to us; and who is deserving of our compassion. 

Note: I did not cover the biases against high networth individuals of color because this is an area I need to better understand. What I did learn during the summit is that many people, including the people with similar backgrounds to high networth individuals of color, often overlook them — either because they might not be “that successful” or an internal bias that “they wouldn’t give anyways”. 

The future of Philanthropy: Gen Z, influencers, and video games

While I have your attention, I’d like to dive into potentially my favorite topic ,the future of philanthropy. On the second day of the summit, I (by accident) ended up leading the lunch discussion with a little over 20 people on the topic of reaching Gen Z. The conversation quickly turned to the discussion of the responsibility of older generations and the state of the world today. This might have been one of the hardest discussions I participated in the entire summit. There is a clear desire by all generations to connect but there is a clear struggle for everybody. 

At the end of the discussion, we concluded that Gen Z’s philanthropy is different, and agreed that older generations– especially those from historically marginalized groups– paved the way for the generations of today; but that while the broader issues each generation faced are similar, they are vastly different in the context and technology of today. 

Honestly, I didn’t leave feeling satisfied with how we addressed “how do we (philanthropic institutions) reach Gen Z”. There isn’t a single right answer, but pulling from that discussion and my personal experiences reaching future generations will look a lot less performative. 

I saw a TikTok about the loss of performative social actions with each generation in-part because etiquette school is no longer a standard part of society. As an example, the “performance” of offering something to drink and the other party being expected to decline before accepting — we’re losing that. 

Each generation has demanded more straightforward answers, communicated differently, and prioritized different aspects of the social contract. Millennials (like myself) grew up with the internet, but not the internet we see today — not the one where we were scared of screwing up and having it posted to Twitter to have it go viral on Instagram or TikTok. 

In addition to Gen Z seeking a less performative social contract, they are more aware than any generation before about the atrocities of the world and the impending doom that is climate change if we do nothing. 

Humans grapple with the big unknown by seeking control over what they can and pushing for change where they can… I believe Gen Z feels both more empowered to drive change, and are more fearful of what happens if they don’t (plus the extreme commodification of our lives AKA late stage capitalism).

There was a discussion about cancel culture and the pressures in the workplace managing younger generations who are quick to call out injustices (perceived or real)… nearly everybody in the room could agree that nobody felt like there was much space, if any, to make a mistake. 

One person shared an article with the group about losing progressive momentum due to the in-fighting within the groups looking to push forward change. You can read it on The Intercept (heads up– it is a long read). [After this was published, another individual on LinkedIn shared Building Resilient Organizations.]

We’re often told that “things just are the way they are,” and we can’t change them as if there is some invisible force pushing things along– and maybe before the ability to mobilize at the speed we are today, there was. But today’s younger generations are hyper aware of the systems, how they were built, and realize that people built them — that’s why I believe Gen Z has less tolerance for platitudes about the way the world is or how “there are no bad guys, just people trying to make it through life.”

Gen Z, in a lot of ways, is taking philanthropy into their own hands. They are mobilizing protests faster, challenging politicians to raise millions of dollars for the issues they care about, and they are refusing to sit down and shut up. 

Organizations looking to reach younger audiences will have to challenge the way they communicate — one look at 99% of all nonprofit social channels, and it’s not hard to see why they aren’t cutting through the noise.

Only one speaker mentioned influencers during the whole summit, and it was brought up as a passing comment in a larger discussion about storytelling. I hope that those I spoke with in regards to working with influencers to tell bigger, more authentic stories, raise funds, or incorporate as cause ambassadors did not mistake my passion for the power influencers and a federated storytelling approach for lack of appreciation of how far philanthropy has come. 

Nonprofits and long term institutions have long developed and controlled very manicured brand images, and now they’re grappling with how to communicate to younger audiences.

The average donor age is over 65

It’s not that younger people are not philanthropic, don’t volunteer, or don’t care; but that organizations do not represent their values honestly. 

Take a moment and check out Olivia Julianna, the trans TikTok-A-Thon or Hasan Piker.

Over the eight years I’ve advised nonprofits on working with influencers (gaming influencers specifically) I have repeated the same talking points:

• No, you can’t ask a fundraiser to go through training before fundraising. Often I connect it back to birthday fundraisers on Facebook— not a single nonprofit reviews people’s timelines before allowing them to fundraise. 

• No, your standard corporate talking points do not speak to this audience.

• No, playing video games does not cause violence but yes, online gaming has become a recruiting ground for groups including extremist groups.  

• No, gaming isn’t just for children… globally 3.7 billion people play video games. 

• Influencers and gaming specific influencers all prefer, require even, that they build a direct relationship with the organization they’re supporting. 

  • This ties back to a point said in our Gen Z discussion: people want to be included as partners not talked at or extracted from.

Pragmatically speaking, examining the video game industry is necessary for the future of philanthropy; no other industry drives culture the way video games do. Video games have the power to change how people (not just kids) see themselves and others. 
Video games can teach empathy, creatively expose people to serious issues without the serious pressure, and connect people from around the world. 

In a future article, I’ll dive a little deeper into the power of influencers and video games. 

Conclusion

I didn’t cover everything the summit touched on but I hope that I conveyed the spirit of the summit and the vulnerability that we all committed to over the two days. If you’ve stuck with me to the end, thank you for your time and consideration. I’ll leave you with the same question to you that was posed to those that attended. 

Who would you be if you had: 

• Universal health care

• Universal sick-leave benefits

• Universal childcare and elder care

• Universal parental leave

• Thriving wage not just living wage

• Universal basic income

• National housing programs

• Federally funded higher education

• Expansion of workers rights

• Expanded environmental protections

• Excellent public transit

I can’t say for sure who I’d be or what I’d do, but I know that I’d be a lot less worried about it.