In our recent CharityVillage Connects podcast episode, Should Money Talk? Inequities in Funding and Influence in the Nonprofit Sector, we interviewed several nonprofit leaders from across the country about the inequities that continue within the nonprofit sector, including in terms of which organizations get access to the bulk of the funding and opportunity to influence policy decisions.
As part of this podcast episode, we spoke with Liban Abokor, CEO of Reimagine LABS and co-founder of the Foundation for Black Communities, which was established as Canada’s first philanthropic foundation dedicated to investing in Black communities. Here is a short but thought-provoking excerpt from Liban’s interview – we hope you enjoy it!
We asked Liban for his opinion on whether larger, often white-led organizations, are getting the bulk of the opportunities to connect with government officials and policymakers.
Liban Abokor: Look, I say this with deep respect, especially as many of the folks, many of my friends and peers, are the ones leading the work within these umbrella organizations and networks, but they know it’s not working. They know the way that we’re doing things doesn’t work. And it’s certainly not their fault entirely. You can set all the right objectives, but if the tactics that are deemed acceptable aren’t suited for the urgency of the moment, the result is inertia.
In other words, I think that there’s this sense that we can wait, we can understand, we can study, we can look, have a longer view of things, when that’s not the case. You know, the saying is, you can wait, you could say, for a rainy day, but if you look outside and it’s pouring, we should bring out the umbrella. Right? And so I think that we can do more and we can do [it] faster and we can be more demanding of our folks in the public policy sector.
And frankly, I’m seeing more and more communities do that better. Most recently, we were in Ottawa, a group of Black-led organizations, and doing direct lobbying and policy advocacy for issues that matter to us, including sustaining some investments we saw in 2021 and 2022 to support Black communities. So I think there’s also a responsibility on our side to say, you know, no one’s closing the door on us. We’ve got to figure out a way to ensure that we’re also at the table, that our voices are being heard. And I think we’re not only learning how to do that now, but we’re becoming pretty successful at it.
Liban also talked about the level of diversity within sector umbrella groups and government working groups.
Liban Abokor: I think everyone recognizes that there isn’t enough diversity. I mean, that’s why at the very last minute, folks reach out to us [with], “Hey, we’re doing such and such a thing, could you be a part of it?” So I think we know that there isn’t enough diversity. I think that there’s too much politeness. There’s too much deference to the pace that tolerates human suffering in ways that should alarm us. We’ve become detached, frankly, as a sector, reducing people to data points and treating crises like academic exercises. I think that is another problem. So again, I say that we need a renewed sense of urgency. Advocacy should be redefined to center those who’ve historically been sidelined, not as an afterthought, but as like a fundamental design principle in the way that we approach it. That’s my non-answer to your question. If I were more direct, I would say, I think we could do a better job of who’s leading these organizations and who’s supporting them and the way that they’re getting their information.
But also I think we need to do a better job of speaking about the impact we have. You just spoke about us [the nonprofit sector] being 9% of the GDP. How many jobs do we create? How big is our procurement expenditure? How are we reducing some of the key metrics or KPIs that governments care about? How are we doing that right now as policies are being designed at the federal level? Those are the kinds of things I think we need to become better at. And I see some positive signs, I really do. But I also know that the organizations we have are often not well funded. Our business models require people to pay membership fees as a part of the size of their endowments or assets. And I think that also creates some, frankly, outsize influence for some groups who do get the funding and others who don’t. And so I think that there’s a recalibration that needs to exist and say, just because you provide a bigger chunk to the network, it doesn’t mean that your voice or your interests are greater than those who offer slightly less.
We asked Liban about how we, as a sector, can ensure that small organizations get a seat at the table and access to funding.
Liban Abokor: Let’s start with language. Let’s not call them small. Let’s call them what they are. They’re unfunded. Their size is directly correlated with the lack of resources that they have. But if you look at the issues that they’re dealing with, the populations that they’re serving, those are exactly the ones that our sectors say that they care about. And more importantly, that the government says they care about. Like the language of our governments recently have been the middle class, right? That’s the big middle. And that’s exactly where these unfunded organizations often live. I think we need to reimagine the language that we’re using.
We need to be thinking about, is it bad that the universities, hospitals and arts foundations or institutions are getting lots of funding, I don’t think we need to say that that’s wrong. I think we should continue to invest in those areas. And I think we need to take the challenge to fund even more to these other groups. We can do both. We don’t have to do one or the other. The disbursement quota is not a limit. It’s a guidance. It’s the floor, not the ceiling. We can find those other groups now if we wanted to.
So I think the conversation needs to be, are we more concerned with the preservation of our organizations and assets? Or are we more concerned with addressing the issues of the moment in the right way at the right time? That’s the issue, that’s the question that we’re going to be faced with in this incredibly unpredictable and volatile future that we’re all hurling towards. And I think the best of us, are going to say, we can do more. And that doesn’t mean that we have to take anything away from others in order to do so.
Finally, we wanted to know Liban’s thoughts on whether it’s time for an overhaul of the nonprofit sector and how it works, including with funders and government.
Liban Abokor: The timing of your question is so uncanny. I just returned from a week at the TED conference, which you’re all familiar with…the common thread was, we’re now capturing the full breadth of human knowledge and accelerating our ability to test solutions and avoid repeating the failures of the past, you know?
That means you have to always constantly reimagine the way you do things in order to not repeat the failures of the past. And it introduces a kind of complexity where it’s hard to predict what happens in the next two to three years, know, let alone the next decade, because I don’t think anyone was able to predict COVID a couple of years ago. No one was able to predict the advancement of artificial intelligence. And I don’t think anyone was able to predict that Canada would have to defend its sovereignty against its nearest ally, right? So I think the next couple of years are difficult, but there are some things that make us consider where we might be and then to ask, do we have the right system to take care of us there?
I’ll put a question to you, or maybe I’ll put it to you this way. Artificial intelligence is making it easier so that many businesses reduce their demand on labor. Are you familiar with this? There are a number of thinkers that are talking about a world where we’re facing structural unemployment. Where ideas like universal benefits are not just a nice to have, but they might actually become a necessity. In such a volatile world, our sector has to become the stabilizing force. It has to be a cushion that reinforces safety, cohesion, and trust, right? We’ll need to fund in more coherent and collaborative ways because as government funding or income generated by income taxes, as that decreases, the ability for them to deliver services also decreases. So our sector is going to become more relied upon.
That means that the approach that we fund, 12, 24-month, one-time, non-discretionary giving, is no longer going to fit. We’re going to have to think about a whole new way of giving that is sustainable, that is funding deeply, strategically, and at the scale that matches the problem that we have. And right now, we don’t do any of that. We don’t fund strategically, we don’t fund deeply as a sector, and we don’t fund to meet the issue of the day. So I think that’s how we’re going to have to change in light of a future. While, as unpredictable as it is, there are some patterns that make us believe that we’re probably not going to have the social economic realities that we have today. And so we’re going to have to find a new system that calibrates itself towards that.
I think, you you heard me talk about safety and trust, but it’s cohesion that I think we’re probably going to have to invest the most in. What does it mean to be Canadian? It means to be a neighbor. It means to be there for one another. It means to stand up for those who have had their rights trampled upon, right? It means to be kind and generous and supportive. That’s why we have universal health care. That’s why we have universal public education. That’s why we have universal supports right now for pharmaceutical care and others like we’re building.
Canada was always a nation of people there to support one another in moments of need. We have to ensure that our sector reinforces that character, that identity, that feature of our Canadian-ness. At a moment where fear is at the tip of everyone’s tongue, where uncertainty is at the forefront of our minds, our sector has to play a role where we are telling Canadians we have retained the safety net.
We can’t solve all problems, but we’re certainly going to ensure that Canadians remember that we’re there for one another. And I think that that requirement is going to become even more real over the near-term future and the long-term. And so can we solve homelessness? Probably not. Can we make it easier? Sure. Can we solve food insecurity? Probably not. Can we make sure that less people are going hungry? Yes. But the one thing that we absolutely can do is we can reinforce our identity, that we were there for one another in moments of need. And the sector has to ensure that it doesn’t pick and choose who it’s there for. It has to be there for all Canadians.
Want to hear more from Liban Abokor? Listen to his full interview in the video below.
Listen to Liban Abokor and other sector experts discuss the inequities embedded in the nonprofit sector in our podcast episode. Click here to listen.
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