At our January Integrity Body meeting, there were two topics of discussion. The first was an overview of our accomplishments for 2024, and discussion of the work ahead in 2025. The second was a discussion of the authoritarian future we are facing in the United States, as well as in other democracies around the world. You can watch the full discussion at this post.
Many thanks to John Epps for documenting this conversation.
2024, 2025, and Beyond
Hildy had shared with all attendees a summary of our accomplishments for 2024. She also reviewed our upcoming work in 2025. Discussion of both 2024 and 2025 followed, starting with the question, “What is standing out to you from our work?”
The following are thoughts from the group, about 2024, and about what’s next in 2025.
- The organization accomplished amazing amount of work in 2024 with extremely limited resources and small staff. Great to see a list of the opportunities for 2025.
- Creating the Future’s goal is to leave a library of resources in perpetuity. The first step in that is to document all the demonstration projects we have done to date. This year will therefore be dedicated to documenting all those case studies, from which the library can then be built.
- Appreciating the approach of interviewing now, to capture the information not only from when it was implemented (historical data) but also to be able to add the perspective of how the work was implemented and how well it worked.
- The systematic way the summary was presented provides the opportunity to prioritize the work and to understand how we have come so far on limited formal resources. It also shows the need for multiplying our resources with new sources of support and additional like-minded partners at this point to continue with the work.
- There has been a great deal of time and resources invested in the work so far, almost all of which has been via shared resources vs. cash. None of that investment shows up in the budget and financial reports, which is actually typical of organizations like ours.
- Hildy has gathered a fundraising team, all of whom feel that what we are trying to do at Creating the Future is fundable. Our approach will be to give it a go, to learn from the experience, and to see that as another experiment to learn and grow from – and to share with our community.
- The question of measuring our impact. Mark noted that evaluation is more qualitative than quantitative and that it often includes anecdotal stories.
- Hildy responded that the board has discussed the question of measuring Creating the Future’s success, and the decision was to avoid trying to metricize something that cannot be metricized. A big part of documenting what we learned from our work is intended to address this question. We will be able to tell you how many people attended a class, but we are not able to tell you what they did with the training. We have stories from many members of the team, and we can share those stories but there are many other stories that we do not know and never will. We will measure our success when people we have never met are asking the Catalytic Thinking questions of other people we have never met. We are therefore reframing this question by creating a large number of case studies rather than giving in to the demand that we measure what is not measurable. The goal of the work is that we will help others to create a loving humane planet.
- One of the insights on measurement that has come up from Hildy’s writing is the recognition that what is easy to measure is what is on the minus one side of the scale – the problems. What is on the plus one side of the scale is love, humanity, and equity and those things are impossible to measure.
- Justin noted that in many purpose-driven organizations their purpose is co-opted by this demand to metricize their work. Too often he has seen organization backing off from reporting the work they are doing because it was difficult to report using metrics. The best evaluators of the work we do are the people who see changes in their lives and their communities not the funders. This is how we lose so much from aspirational change makers because the work goes from being inspirational to being transactional.
Do Not Obey in Advance
In this book, On Tyranny, historian Timothy Snyder’s first rule is “Do not obey in advance.” Here is an excerpt:
Do not obey in advance.
Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.
Brain science tells us that the brain struggles with the concept of “not.” If we say, “Do not think of an elephant,” we wind up thinking of an elephant. What, then, does “Do not obey in advance” mean for changemakers? We applied Catlaytic Thinking to explore that.
- Hildy emphasized that in many ways what makes this so difficult is that we know what is wrong, but we do not know what is right and what it takes to get there. Hildy also pointed out that after COVID we wanted to go forward but we often found ourselves going back to the way things were because we could not recognize that we had an alternative to go to. We knew what we did not want but we did not know how to achieve what we wanted. This comes back to the fact that our brains can’t “not.”
- Recently Congress was considering a bill that was supposed to address terrorism. That bill authorized the unelected Secretary of the Treasury to unilaterally withdraw the nonprofit status of a nonprofit organization without any due process. This bill has been referred to as the “non-profit killer” bill and many organizations were warned that it might be used to attack the many nonprofits that were viewed as unfriendly to the current administration.
- Vu sees this as an attempt to silence opposition, but this may mean that we need to look at the systems we have and make changes that may make us less vulnerable. If there was no tax exemption this power to take it away would be powerless.
- This strategy is already being discussed in other venues and is worth coming back to at another time. What is most important is that we make sure that we can continue to support our communities.
Who Will be Impacted – What Are the Threats If Organizations Do Not Obey in Advance
- Chantene recounted some of her previous work as an attorney for the Department of Homeland Security, where she worked on terrorism and terroristic behavior. She noted that often the easiest road to ruin for an organization was the charge of “material support” for a terrorist organization. If an organization had provided even one dollar’s worth of aid to someone deemed a terrorist they were subject to being implicated. This allegation could even include posting moral support in a blog for a suspect organization.
- Often the people most affected by these charges are not the ones at the top of the organization but rather the day-to-day workers and the people they served.
- Employees, donors, and funders may also be impacted.
- The entire community may be impacted depending on the work that the organization was doing.
- For other nonprofit organizations there might be a chilling effect on that community.
- An enormous impact on volunteers.
- Karl recounted a similar law in the UK a few years ago, where boards and trustees were impacted. Because many boards are already risk averse, even if the law doesn’t go into effect there is still a chilling effect.
- Much like physics, there might also be positive effects from these threats in that organizations may choose to find new ways to organize that make them less vulnerable and that these changes may benefit their work in unexpected ways. People may choose to say, “We are good, these are bad people, and we are not going to change anything because we are right.”
- State and local agencies might also be impacted by these threats and changes.
- Marketing, media, and communications people will be severely stressed by trying to determine what messaging is safe and appropriate.
- Consultants are already counseling organizations to scale back their advocacy efforts “in advance of” such regulation.
- Kim noted that these changes go beyond the borders of the US and are already be impacting things in Canada.
- There may also be security and financial impacts on countries that may be considered safe or not safe.
- Universities, and especially public universities can be severely impacted by something faculty or students may say or do.
- An online participant noted that humans are changing the world and that some of that change feels unmanageable. Creating the Future may be one source of tools to help us manage the change.
What Would It Take for Those Who Are Affected To Lead the Approaches That We Take
- Hildy noted that nonprofits are organized as individual organizations, and that while there has been movement work that brings the people affected together, the predominant way we operate is as individual organizations.
- Angie noted that in academic circles there has been discussion about what these policies may mean and what the impact would be. There are many assumptions about how policies about DEI or curriculum might be affected but many of these assumptions may be driven by fear, because we do not actually know the facts. It may therefore be beneficial to have legal and other support available to you if you are trying to know what to do next.
- Chantene agreed that legal support is essential. We have had similar threats in the past. We can learn from the history of previous efforts to destabilize and disrupt parties that were trying to work together and from the efforts to mischaracterize movements in negative ways. Education in this history is essential as those who are impacted plan to proceed.
- Kim noted that competition for resources and funding often keeps us from working together. Change is beginning but it is moving forward very slowly. Boards are already starting to fret about the risk that is so prominent that it is stopping them from moving forward.
- Amy informed us that NTEN is also discussing enabling support for larger community action that requires the ability to organize without a trace. It is important to protect community leaders and members by ensuring they can quickly remove records that may be used against them. NTEN is examining what may be in our technology systems that may not be good for us.
- Hildy pointed out that one of the things that we may be afraid of is how we will be perceived by all the people on that list. What would it take for all those people to know what is coming and to be able to be able to figure out what needs to be done?
- Dimitri reminded us that we cannot appease bullies and that many of the people who support this harmful work are bullies. We often yield our position incrementally – “If we just give up this or if we just give up that maybe they will stop.” But they are bullies and will not be appeased.
What will it take for the people who are affected by this – not the nonprofit organizations, but the people themselves – to lead this change? What do they need to have? What do they need to know? What do they need to believe?
- This belief must move them personally enough to be able to empathize and take action to help someone else when something does not challenge them directly. Helping people to see that there may be an incremental erosion of their own rights in the future may help them act.
- There is a need for people to truly see how nonprofits really affect each one of our day-to-day lives before we can ask them to appreciate what it will cost to lose them.
- John felt this conversation was triggering his growing up where he saw an organization in his community exterminated as a terrorist threat (The Black Panther Party) by these tactics. This action is by people who are more than bullies, they are terrorists themselves, and they will not stop without a fight. This is really a battle between good and evil and an ongoing battle. It is not a threat it is a reality and the fight for freedom is very real. People need to choose what side they are on, there is no middle ground. Part of what we need to do is recognize as responsible citizens that we need to fight to the end.
- This is why it is so important that all people respond to this situation and not just nonprofits. People will be asking in the face of this horrible situation – What do I do? Without action, what follows is: And then they came for me!
- Amy explained the paradox of tolerance is that we cannot tolerate intolerance. What does it look like to resist that contradiction?
- According to Wikipedia, “The paradox of tolerance is a philosophical concept suggesting that if a society extends tolerance to those who are intolerant, it risks enabling the eventual dominance of intolerance, thereby undermining the very principle of tolerance.”
- There is a culture of “nice” in the nonprofit world. It seems important to consider going beyond this board to have conversations with all those people who are affected. Creating the Future may need to be a convener where all these voices come together to go beyond “Obeying in Advance” to look at initiative-taking ideas. What does “standing our ground look like” “Do we know what our ground is?” “What are our values?” “What are some actions that we can take?”
- Karl reminded us that what is happening in the US is not unusual, it is happening in many other places as well. We need to better understand why people vote for people like this. We need to be able to listen to and speak with people who do not always agree with us to ensure we hear all sides and not just our perspectives. Karl introduced the idea of “Field Building” as a more comprehensive approach to moving forward by building the capability of individual organizations to work better together. This is a crisis; we mustn’t waste it.
- This is the beginning of the conversation and we are at a crisis point. What if nothing existed, what would we build?
Reflections
- Chantene – This is the beginning of the conversation, and this work will take courage. So many people have so much going on in their lives that it is difficult for them to get involved. We need to work with other nonprofits to facilitate ways they can get involved.
- Dimitri – it is important to let our network know what we are doing and to get them engaged in this as a community movement. This is a universal need.
- Hildy – This is not just about nonprofit organizations. Are we part of the community or are we separate entities, who have to “go out to the community?”
- Angie – We need to look at many of the things we assume in the nonprofit that are contradictory to who and what we say we are.
- Don (online) Instead of like-minded people, we need to be like-hearted people.
- There needs to be a new narrative and a new vision about being human that are shared globally.
- Our Mantra: If not us who, if not now when!
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