Vu Le isn’t afraid to say what’s on his mind. For the last decade, the writer, speaker, and “unemployed rabble-rouser” has been busy exploring the fun and frustration of nonprofit work through his popular blog, Nonprofit AF. Vu cut his teeth as a nonprofit Executive Director and now uses his understanding of the nonprofit ecosystem to offer sharp commentary with a healthy dose of humor. In this episode, Vu and Gali dig into the awesomeness of nonprofit work and discuss how we can revolutionize the sector to create more opportunities for progress.
Vu Le isn’t afraid to say what’s on his mind. For the last decade, the writer, speaker, and “unemployed rabble-rouser” has been busy exploring the fun and frustration of nonprofit work through his popular blog, Nonprofit AF. Vu cut his teeth as a nonprofit Executive Director and now uses his understanding of the nonprofit ecosystem to offer sharp commentary with a healthy dose of humor. In this episode, Vu and Gali dig into the awesomeness of nonprofit work and discuss how we can revolutionize the sector to create more opportunities for progress.
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[00:00:00] Gali Cooks: Hi, I'm Gali Cooks and you're listening to Just Leading, where we're thinking differently about leadership within and beyond the Jewish world. In each episode, we're talking to people who are leading through the complex challenges of today to understand how we can build a better future.
[00:00:19] Vu Le: We can be both serious and also humorous at the same time. The work that we do is serious. We really shouldn't be taking ourselves seriously.
[00:00:26] Gali Cooks: Vu Le is the voice behind Nonprofit AF, where he blends sharp insights and indescribable humor to push the nonprofit sector forward. Vu sheds light on topics like equity, fundraising, staff dynamics, leadership, self care, and just about everything in between.
I've been an admirer and fan of Vu's for many years because he exhibits the kind of fearlessness that every leader today needs to embody. Let's hear more from Vu.
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[00:00:59] Gali Cooks: Vu Le, thank you so much for joining us. This is really a treat and I'm very excited to speak with you about all things nonprofit and leadership.
[00:01:06] Vu Le: Thank you for having me.
[00:01:08] Gali Cooks: So you're best known for your writing; the brilliant, insightful and funny blog, Nonprofit AF. And for many years, you wrote the blog while also serving as the Executive Director of RVC. And some of our listeners may be familiar with you, your writings, and your distinctive voice. But I'm curious about how you would describe your professional and leadership journeys.
[00:01:34] Vu Le: I think I reached a space where I'm just now a rabble-rouser, I just like flipping tables over burning stuff down. And it's been really fun. My journey started with, let me see, I got my Master's in social work and a degree in psychology, then I couldn't find a job. So I went into this AmeriCorps program. So I was an AmeriCorps member for two years. And then for some reason, became an executive director immediately after that, because no one wanted to be the ED of this one organization called the Vietnamese Friendship Association. It was quite an interesting journey. And there, I spent about nine years and learned a whole bunch of stuff about the systems and, and what's working and what's not. And then I founded Rainier Valley Corps or RVC now.
[00:02:19] Gali Cooks: Wow. I'm wondering how the blog got its beginnings. It seems like it's like a decade or so old?
[00:02:27] Vu Le: This is the 10th year.
[00:02:29] Gali Cooks: Mazel tov. That's, that's quite...
[00:02:30] Vu Le: Thank you.
[00:02:31] Gali Cooks: ...quite a milestone. Why did you start the blog? How did that come to be?
[00:02:36] Vu Le: It was a foundation that asked me to write from a grantee's perspective and because of the power dynamics in our sector... this is a really great foundation. Great funder. But I couldn't really say no, I couldn't be like, "sorry, I just don't have time for you, one of our biggest funders in the sector, in the work." So I said, yeah, I'll go ahead and write, even though I was a little bit bitter about it; having to do more work, but then I realized it was a really great thing.
And I'm really grateful that they asked me to write, because from that it spun off into the blog. It forced me to recognize that we don't have a lot of writing that's not very serious in the sector. Everything that we read is very academic and extremely serious. So I wanted to do something a little bit different.
[00:03:19] Gali Cooks: I was going to ask you about that tone, because your tone is so distinctive. It's funny, it's surreal. It's satirical. I love also just like the photos that you choose for some of your things, which are like, "I'm going to talk about general operating support, but I'm going to show a picture of a bunny," you know, like that. So, so that was on purpose. Like how did you develop that tone?
[00:03:39] Vu Le: Yeah. Well, everything is so serious. Our work is very serious and I just, I didn't want to be in that space. I feel like we can be both serious and also humorous at the same time. The work that we do is serious, but we really shouldn't be taking ourselves seriously.
And from talking to maybe colleagues who work in like morgues or for example, or like very serious professions, and they're like, we have to have a sense of humor because otherwise this work will just take a toll on you and you lose yourself and you can't find the, like the joy and the humor in it. And I love our sector. I think there's like tons of brilliant, amazing people here. Oftentimes because of the serious nature of our work, we lose part of ourselves. We lose the joy, the humor, the creativity that we have on occasion. I hear from a lot of people who are like, "I used to draw and did community theater, and now I just don't have time or energy to do any of that."
And I find that to be sad. I didn't want to lose it. And I'm like, you know what? I like being funny and I'm going to try to infuse that in when I can.
[00:04:39] Gali Cooks: I remember at one point, Monday mornings, I would get your blog and then like Seth Godin, just like the consistency of your churning out different things and it wasn't like you were phoning it in either. It was really inspiring. Just, yeah, the discipline of it.
[00:04:55] Vu Le: Thanks Gali. I really am phoning it in most of the time. People are like, "you must be so organized." No. Each blog post is written five hours before it's published on Sunday night.
[00:05:07] Gali Cooks: Oh my God. That deadline is a great forcing function. Isn't it?
[00:05:11] Vu Le: It's like going to the gym. You just gotta do consistently. Right? You can't wait for inspiration to strike. You just, you just gotta do it... not that I know I've never been to a gym, so I have no idea.
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[00:05:34] Gali Cooks: You have a talent for not only consistently bringing up insights that are almost like intuitive and innate to those of us who work in the nonprofit sector, but give voice to it, and then all of a sudden you see it and you're like, "oh my God, that's right." There was a post, I think literally beginning of March that you wrote about board members: "Please check your egos at the door."
[00:05:55] Vu Le: Yeah.
[00:05:56] Gali Cooks: Now that blog post was forwarded to me by no fewer than a handful of board members that we work with and that are also like specifically the target audience for what you're talking about. I think they're part of the one-third that actually add value, but they heard you in ways that were incredibly powerful and it was just fearless. I'm wondering where does that fearlessness come from?
[00:06:22] Vu Le: I think a lot of it is just from practice. Right? I remember being more fearful earlier in my career because there's a lot of fear in our sector. We fear offending donors. We fear offending board members. We fear getting fired, we fear community members getting mad at us. We fear making mistakes around equity, diversity, and inclusion. There's just so much fear. And I realized though that if we're all in fear about these things, more of us need to maybe go out there and just say it so that other people are given the permission to just say, "Hey, you're right. That this is not how it should be."
I feel like in a way I'm very lucky because people will respond usually pretty positively to me, even if they don't agree. They're like, "you know what? I appreciate that you brought this up." But the reality is that most of the things I'm saying are things that have been brought up in the past by other leaders, especially women of color for example, who may get punished for saying the same things that I now get applauded for saying. So I feel like those of us who have the privilege, we need to go out there and actually say these hard things and take the brunt of it.
[00:07:27] Gali Cooks: Yeah. And what do you attribute your ability to being heard? Is it the fact that you're a man? Is it the fact that you have this platform?
[00:07:33] Vu Le: Yes. All of it. I think definitely all of it. I think definitely gender, male privilege has a lot to do with it. I think that I can get away with it because again, with the humor, and the baby animals and so on. So...
[00:07:46] Gali Cooks: The hummus, the veganism, all of it.
[00:07:48] Vu Le: And also, yes, the platform, when we start building out a platform and having a voice, it starts to reinforce itself a bit. And I think over 10 years, people start to take things a little bit more seriously. So I feel like I have that sort of privilege also.
[00:08:03] Gali Cooks: Yeah. There is a track record. There's a body of work. So in, in thinking about your journey, I think it was right before the pandemic that you left RVC is that right?
[00:08:13] Vu Le: Yes right before the pandemic. I have a terrible issue with timing. I love our sector. Right. I also love being an ED, but let's be honest, I feel like being an ED is like being a parent of a toddler. I guess you can relate to. You love it, but you're exhausted all the time by it. You love to see your organization grow and do awesome things and just make the world better. And at the same time you're just tired constantly. Like everything that you have to deal with, you're not sleeping. Personal hygiene goes out the window and also it's a leadership organization. So I thought after about seven years being a leader, you start thinking, maybe we need to step aside so that other leaders can take over.
And I think it was the right timing for me personally, but also for the organization, because we have brilliant leaders who took over for me. And my exit allows them to explore some really cool structure where instead of finding someone to replace me, they actually split my position and then became four executive directors, co-executive directors. Each took on 25% of the ED job while still doing 75% of their regular job.
[00:09:27] Gali Cooks: Wow.
[00:09:27] Vu Le: People are like, "you all are ridiculous. This would never work." Well so far it's working. And even if it doesn't, I feel like it's amazing that we can try things out. We keep talking about innovation in the sector. If we're going to embrace innovation, we're going to be okay with trying [censored] out and be, and maybe it doesn't work out.
[00:09:43] Gali Cooks: Yeah. A hundred percent.
[00:09:45] Vu Le: We don't really think about this. And I feel like so many philosophies that we have are in parallel, right? This belief that nonprofits are somehow parasites and free loaders. And we need to, at some point like grow up and move out of our parents' basement sort of deal. Instead of us like being actual partners. It's insulting because we are responding to like the gaps left behind by government and by capitalism we're like cleaning up society's messes and society is like, "how are you going to pay for this broom?"
[00:10:15] Gali Cooks: There was a real realization that, that when looking at the nonprofit sector, we are the third largest employer within the economy, we are very much to your point, like fill in the gaps. And in many ways, like move into the types of things that enrich society. We just have this inferiority complex in the non-profit sector that is very frustrating. It's very frustrating. And that you obviously speak about.
[00:10:41] Vu Le: I, I feel like we have to just own our awesomeness. We attract really nice people to the sector and because of that, we become very deferential and we don't push back on some of the, just the inanity or the ridiculousness in the sector. And we internalize a whole bunch of philosophies that I feel like leaders really need to understand and like unlearn. You know, for example, in philanthropy, like we have this philosophy of, oh, this is other people's money. We should be grateful. This sort of like attitude of gratitude philosophy has ingrained into us. Actually, so much wealth in this country has been built on like slavery, stolen indigenous land, worker exploitation environmental degradation, and tax avoidance. So it's really not other people's money if they benefit from these inequities. If they built their wealth on these inequities. And so the idea that there's only so much money to go around, you know, and resources are limited. It's not limited. It's people are hoarding. There's like trillions of dollars just sitting in endowments right now while leaders are like trying to figure out how to like survive. I'm not so sure if being a really good survivor is like, means that you're a good leader.
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[00:11:57] Gali Cooks: Have you seen any movement in a positive direction in that regard, that scarcity kind of competitive mindset?
[00:12:04] Vu Le: Fundraising, how we run our mission, et cetera, is all about surviving and getting as much money for our own organization as possible and screw everyone else. We don't say that out loud, but that's what the case is. So we become very mission-driven right. Like we don't think about what does this do to the entire sector? What does this mean for other people in the sector? And that hasn't been working because our missions are interrelated, right? Early learning is related to youth development, is related to housing and mental health and the environment and, and arts and everything.
So for us to think that we're all these individual silos competing for resources, even things like talent, we still have this philosophy of like, we need to get the best talent we need to compete for talent. And so on. And I want us to like, get out of this sort of mindset. there, there are things happening that are really cool.
Like the Community Centric Fundraising movement, which I've been involved with, communitycentricfundraising.org. It's about grounding the work in racial and economic justice. And I see cool things happening, like nonprofits literally turning down funding you know that they would have secure, like over here, a foundation sent $50,000 grants to a bunch of nonprofits in the beginning of the pandemic with no strings attached, no reports, no applications whatsoever.
It was really amazing and very generous of that foundation. And I talked to the foundation and they said that several organizations turned down the funding. They said, "You know what, we're doing okay. We really appreciate this, but we're doing okay. And our partner organizations, especially those that are Black led, indigenous led, et cetera. They're not doing as well. Would you mind giving them the share of the money instead?"
Mindblowing, right? Blasphemous.
[00:13:47] Gali Cooks: Wow.
[00:13:50] Vu Le: But that's how it should be. So I'm seeing more and more examples of this. I'm seeing on our one day of giving, for example, nonprofits would send out an email blast to their existing donors and saying "This year, would you mind donating to these five partner organizations of ours? They're great." That's amazing.
[00:14:06] Gali Cooks: That's literally like an alternative universe, like thats...
[00:14:09] Vu Le: And it shouldn't be, right?
[00:14:11] Gali Cooks: That's right. That's right. How, how have you seen this potentially change over time? Because you've been doing this for 10 years. You've obviously been a lifer in the sector. Thank God. And I'm wondering how you've seen this topic, you know, change over time?
[00:14:27] Vu Le: I feel like we've been doing a lot of toxic intellectualizing in the sector. We do. We just love this. This is a hallmark of our sector, which is we love reading white papers and making logic models and putting sticky dots on walls and having summits and discussions and think that we're actually accomplishing something.
So I feel like people are reaching the point where now, where we're just like getting really angry and irritated by the conversations. What we need to be doing right now, instead of all of the stuff we've been like, just talking intellectualizing, we should be focusing on things that would actually affect every single issue.
For example, I would like all of us to focus on the voting engagement and voting rights. All of us, no matter what our mission is. But there's like literally 500 bills or more being passed right now to suppress voting. We should be focused on voting rights, electing more women of color into office and changing the tax code so that rich people are paying their fair share of taxes instead of us like conscience laundering for like the lack of taxes and the wealth hoarding that's been happening in the sector. So I think that the conversation about equity, diversity and inclusion has to evolve. It can't just be about like these things that we do to make ourselves feel better, that we're not offending people. And I still see a lot of that.
[00:15:42] Gali Cooks: Yeah. Have you seen any bright spots?
[00:15:45] Vu Le: Yeah. I feel like there's tons, unfortunately, these organizations are the least financially supported usually. For example, you think about like all the organizations in Georgia, Stacey Abrams' organizations, all of, especially the women of color, Black women, Latina, indigenous women and Asian women who were fighting for voting rights, mobilizing people during the last election, that's incredible.
I think one funder actually paid the fees for all of these prisoners so that they could vote. That's incredible. And I think they allowed like 30,000 people to be able to vote. That's what we should be doing now. We want to like advance equity. And so there are amazing people and we just need to fund them.
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[00:16:33] Gali Cooks: The change that is going to happen is going to bring loss to folks who currently have a lot of power. And yeah, wondering your thoughts about that.
[00:16:41] Vu Le: We don't talk enough about loss. We don't talk enough about grief, but all of us are in are in this period of grief. We have this just pervasive aura. And we haven't been grieving about COVID. We have lost nearly a million people. There's barely any national recognition of it. We haven't grieved the loss of like our way of life, our relationships to one another, or idea of everything. All of us are in this period of grief. And those of us who have the opportunities and the privilege to be in positions of power right now, we kind of have an obligation to provide spaces for people to process all these, all the grief.
But the other thing is like, being able to let people know that this is not the end things, right? In some ways, when you are ending one thing, there's some amazing stuff that happens later. There are really magical and we are so afraid of what we lose, that we don't think about what we can actually gain when we let go and accept this grief and allow ourselves to be open to new possibilities.
So the leaders who are thinking about, "Okay, we have to retire now to get new leaders, younger leaders come in." Yeah, there is that grief. It is completely valid, but once your grieving is over, I hope that you consider the amazing role that you can play in the sector as mentors, as friends, that's a way more fun role than what you may be doing.
[00:18:08] Gali Cooks: Totally.
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[00:18:09] Gali Cooks: Just one more question that is really selfish, honestly, cause I'm looking for ideas. How do you replenish yourself? Where do you draw strength from?
[00:18:24] Vu Le: Yeah, that's an entire conversation, Gali to have, right? We're also pressed right now. We are still in this figurative winter where, with COVID with just everything that's been going on, all of us having our own personal crises that we're dealing with in terms of health, taking care of our family members, parents of young kids, like you, like not being able to get them vaccinated. And so constantly worrying about that. All of this stuff. The conversation around self care needs to change. I'm a big fan of Beth Kanter and Aliza Sherman's book, Happy, Healthy Nonprofit, where they talk about moving away from this sort of like self care as an individualistic thing, right? And towards this collective idea of what do we need to do to take care of one another?
And some of those things might be very radical, right? We need to start thinking about like a four day work week. We have to think about more PTO. We've got to think about maybe even shorter work hours, we need to think about better compensation and paid family leave. Like if those things are not taken care of it doesn't matter how many yoga sessions or green smoothies you take. It's not going to work. We're just delaying the inevitable. So now is an opportunity for us to really re-examine the effects of capitalism, because it has been really toxic. And even though we in the nonprofit sector were formed to address all the failures and the negative effects of capitalism, we still are enamored with it. We are still internalizing all of the philosophies of capitalism and that has to change.
[00:19:57] Gali Cooks: Yeah, absolutely. Well Vu, I'm a huge fan, truly. I think you're doing an amazing job of keeping our, our nonprofit sector honest. It's just incredibly important and I appreciate your voice, your vision and your time.
[00:20:11] Vu Le: Thank you so much Gali, I had a great time.
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[00:20:15] Gali Cooks: If you don't already follow Vu's work and you should check out nonprofitaf.com. Our goal on Just Leading is to think differently about leadership. Next week, I'll be passing the mic back to Ilana Kaufman. She'll be speaking with Jordan Daniels.
[00:20:30] Jordan Daniels: I never want to stop shifting. I never wants to stop changing because I know that to change people and to change the things I meant to change this world, I have to change myself alongside with that. And that is like so much of my leadership.
[00:20:42] Gali Cooks: Just Leading supported by the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation. It's produced by Wonder Media Network and Anna McClain. For more information about the organizations we work for, check out the Jews Of Color Initiative at jewsofcolorinitiative.org, the SRE Network at srenetwork.org and Leading Edge at leadingedge.org.