To make the social profit sector more equitable, inclusive, and effective, an optimistic vision from a committed leader is necessary. Tanya Rumble, executive director of the Toronto Metropolitan University, takes her social profit leadership approach to the next level to make this dream a reality. She joins Douglas Nelson to share how she promotes inclusive fundraising practices and restorative philanthropy to foster collective community-centered action. Tanya also talks about the importance of constantly revamping your gift acceptance policies to avoid fishy donations and dismantle outdated fundraising practices once and for all.
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Listen to the podcast here
The Future Of Social Profit Leadership With Tanya Rumble, Executive Director, Toronto Metropolitan University
We’re joined by Tanya Hannah Rumble, Executive Director of the Faculty of Arts and Yellowhead Institute at Toronto Metropolitan University and Cofounder of Recast Philanthropy. Tanya is a fundraising executive with over fifteen years of experience who has led high-performing teams raising millions of dollars for some of Canada’s most respected charities, including the Heart and Stroke Foundation, the Canadian Cancer Society, and McMaster University.
In addition to her current role, Tanya is recognized as a thought leader in our sector. She’s one of those people who have wanted to get on the show for a long time. When she finally came on to do the recording, she said, “What took you so long?” We found each other, we made this great episode. She writes, she researches and facilitates conversations on equity, reconciliation and power in philanthropy, helping to advance more inclusive and accountable practices in our larger social profit landscape.
In this episode, she shares her optimistic vision for a more equitable and inclusive and effective social profit sector. She connects her own journey as a fundraiser to the larger social profit world in a compelling and insightful way. I encourage everyone reading to check out Recast Philanthropy to know more about the great work that she and her colleagues there are doing to improve our sector and to bring us to a better day. Please enjoy this conversation with Tanya Rumble.
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Welcome to the show, Tanya.
Thanks for having me.
Tanya Rumble, Co-Founder Of Recast Philanthropy
Tanya, I am a big fan of the work that you do, the way you talk about our sector and you talk about a better future for our sector. I’m really thrilled to have you on the show. You are the Founder of Recast Philanthropy. As we get started, tell our readers a little bit about Recast and how you came to bring that into the world.
Sure. Recast Philanthropy was co-founded of my colleague Nicole McVan, who’s the VP of Philanthropy and Marketing United Way, Greater Toronto area. We felt that there was this need. We were in the pandemic having these really spirited conversations, the two of us, around power and privilege and how it shows up in fundraising and the practice of philanthropy.
We did a session for a large fundraising conference online during the pandemic. We were expecting like a modest audience, but we realized that there were a lot of people that were galvanized by the topic and what we were offering to the conversation. From there, we built a community of practice where we met about monthly with hundreds and thousands of fundraisers have participated in our community of practice over the last few years, talking about everything from having difficult conversations with donors to how do you avoid saviorism in mass marketing and communications to gift acceptance policies and practices to restorative philanthropy, what is it and everything in between.
It’s really been an audience of fundraisers at all experience levels, all positionality across North America and even folks from around the world. From there, we built a small consultancy that supports fundraising organizations and grant making organizations to deepen their journeys and knowledge around how equity and justice as values show up in the practice of fundraising, the practice of philanthropy and how to do that from everything from board governance to talent recruitment and retention to strategy development to fundraising practices.
It’s been a real labor of love. Recast Philanthropy continues to offer communities of practice for anyone that’s interested in the topics that we offer them about everything from metrics and AI and how that’s showing up in our sector to restorative approaches to philanthropy. It continues to be a place that really buoys me and gives me a lot of excitement and hope and optimism about the future of our sector. I think that there really is a collective of people that in their corners of the world and their corners of fundraising, in their corners of their organization are advancing some really important change.
It’s a good place to come to feel a sense of community. I used to go to a lot of in-person events, but the pandemic was a transition point I think for many of us and for events in general. Certainly, in that period of time, I also became a parent. My familial care responsibilities curtailed my ability to be out at networking events in the evening. I think having community is really important. I think in our sector, it can feel like really isolating vulnerable work. There’s an intimacy to fundraising, especially in major gifts fundraising.
You’re really connecting with people on a deep, often personal level, sometimes a really vulnerable level. In that vulnerability, we know harm can come, especially with the power dynamics that exist within fundraising and philanthropy. I think community is important. We strive to be one of many places where people can find community. I also then strive to cultivate that in my online community that I have on LinkedIn and just in the relationships that I intentionally spend time sowing those relationships and tending to those relationships because that’s really the core where this work started and where I hope it will continue.
Finding Better Ways To Implement Change
One of the things I really appreciate about the work that you do and the message you share and what you advocate for change in our sector is really that principle that there must be a better way like, “What we do as a sector, what we do as a profession has value and there must be a better way.” You’ve been on a journey over the last few years to find that better way. What needs to change?
I want to just name, and I think it’s really important to share my positionality around this in that I deeply love and care for our profession and deeply love the sector that I get to work in, the charitable social impact philanthropic sector. Whatever you call it. It’s important to me. I’m deeply critical of this work because it’s what I’m committed to and I’m deeply critical because I know that it can be better.
This is the place where I’ve decided to core my energies. This is my career, this is my profession. This is what I’ve chosen to spend a large part of my waking hours doing. I think that it’s important that I center optimism and hope because I think that there can be corners of this online space that could feel really destructive or negative.
I think that criticism without hope and criticism without solution and impact focus can be really demoralizing. I really try and bring that optimism to the conversations that I curate or facilitate and I’m a part of. There’s a lot that we can do better in our sector. Some of the things that I’m preoccupied with is certainly this idea around evolving some of our policies and practices.
Social Profit Leadership: Criticism without hope, solution, and focus can be really demoralizing.
As you know, completed my research on gift acceptance policies and practices as part of my Master’s in Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership at Carleton with two colleagues. We were intensely interested in this idea of how gift acceptance policies, which are not usually something that is very sexy, certainly not. It doesn’t get a lot of airtime at our professional conferences in the sector, but is one of the only tools that we have as charitable organizations to ensure our values are represented and can be upheld in the context of accepting gifts.
Absent thoughtful gift acceptance policy and related procedures, I think many organizations can find themselves in the wrong kinds of relationships. If we take a step back and we think about the gift acceptance policy and our practices surrounding that as this way to reflect our values, and I think we need to think also about all the other mechanisms that help support a healthy ecosystem for fundraising.
The kind of KPIs that fundraisers are accountable to relationships and accountability to community. A lot of that actually does show up in the gift acceptance policy and practices. When you ask a fundraiser like, “What is in your gift acceptance policy for your charity?” Many don’t know. It’s not a tool that we are usually that versant in. I will admit it myself, I think the first few years in my professional career, I’m certain I never even looked at our gift acceptance policy at for my organization.
That’s not to say that someone wasn’t thinking about those mechanisms when I was papering gifts and they were reviewing them, but it’s the tool that has a lot of power and potential for influence. It’s not something that as professional fundraisers that we usually spend a lot of time on. We might expect our colleagues in advancement services or fundraising operations to be the ones to hold that. At the end of the day, it’s something that I think we all need to be thinking about.
There’s been enormous shifts in our sector. If we think about the renaming and de-naming of spaces and even institutions, if we think about the Sackler family name being removed off of the places in the Guggenheim Museum in New York that they donated to. If we think about student protests on university campuses around the world and in response to universities’ investment policies and endowment policies and the agitation and advocacy around de-investments in certain areas and not accepting gifts from certain extractive industries.
If we think about the fact that the university that I work at was renamed in response to calls from the indigenous community around truth and reconciliation, we can see that this is becoming more ubiquitous. As part of our research sub would said something really poignant to me, absent ability to predict the future, we need to be cautious about putting names of any person on any building or asset.
The reality is, if you judge someone’s actions outside of the contemporaneous moment in which they acted, it’s hard to know if their actions will hold up against future values in our society as we are changing so much. We need to think about these things when we’re accepting money. I think we need to think about how that gets reflected in our practices that incentive structures for fundraisers, community agency and voice in our processes and how much accountability we have to the community that we are supposed to serve. Those are some of the things I’m preoccupied about, along with a whole host of other things.
On the naming policy and donations, acceptance policies, I have a very vivid memory very early in my career going to a conference in the United States. All I knew about the fundraising policy of the University of British Columbia at that time was that we didn’t take money from tobacco companies. That was the person presenting at the conference talking about naming was from Duke University. My question was, “In the Canadian context, we don’t take money from cigarettes.” Another Canadian that was there said, “We don’t take firearms.” The person from Duke said, “Our university was founded by people who sold most of their armaments to the South in the Civil War and was big. All of the rest of the money came from tobacco, so we don’t have that policy.”
As someone very new to the sector at the time, it blew my mind that there was this optionality that existed in the world. Through our work at The Discovery Group, we see a lot of organizations really struggling to be thoughtful and responsive to the realities of an emerging awareness of some of these historical wrongs and not wanting to make the appropriate adjustments and not knowing what that’s going to look like 50 years from now, looking back, as you touched on.
Why A Good Policy Is Only As Good As Its Awareness
There are two places that I want to ask for advice. If you’re the head of a fundraising program of a medium to large size organization, not necessarily in post-secondary, and you’re reading to this and you’re like, “I don’t think I’ve even looked at our gift acceptance policy,” where should those leaders start in understanding first what is at their organization and how it applies to their work?
I think that they should be thinking about the process by which all staff that have a role in fundraising, and that includes in different contexts, administrative and program staff. In an advancement context, it would include administrative and research staff or faculty members in a healthcare situation that would include clinicians and hospital and healthcare leadership.
Anyone that is involved in fundraising in any way, there should be a process for ensuring that everyone’s aware of the gift acceptance policies and related procedures and practices. I think that’s number one, thinking about that onboarding process. Two is a retention cycle around that process that involves a whole host of constituents. If you think about who is served by and touches fundraising activities within your context, within your community that you serve and are a part of, thinking about what agency and what consultative processes you will have and ensuring when you update that policy and procedures on a regular cadence, that I would suggest 3 to 5 years is an appropriate timeline.
Probably closer to 5, I think 3 years. We may be making shifts and changes that are too knee jerk and five years is probably the tail end of when we need to make sure that these things are up to date. I think we need to think about how we involve all constituents, not just the fundraisers, not just the advancement staff, not just the legal and policy folks in that process. It’s really important is situating community voice in there.
As I said many times in many forums, the purpose of a charitable organization, the reason charities have charitable status is not so that they can issue tax receipts. It’s because they are accountable to delivering public good. Of course, for the policy wonks that are reading, the Pemsel case sets out the four reasons that apply for charitable purposes in Canada. I won’t get into that, but that is the reason that charities exist. Not for the purposes of fundraising, but for the purposes of delivering public good.
When you think about what public good your organization is delivering, who are the end beneficiaries of that good? Whoa are the end beneficiaries of funds that you raise and making sure that they have voice and they have input into these processes? To your point, perhaps there will be some industries and sectors which would feel like we wouldn’t want to take money from. Unless you have the conversation, it’s really hard to predict how community may react to different sources of funds.
I think on the other side of the equation, a good policy is only as good as its awareness. You want to have awareness amongst those people that are out there raising funds and potentially accepting gifts. You equally want to socialize that policy and the values that are contained in that policy with the people that are making gifts. I would say that if you were to ask major donors that are giving to any charities in this country, “Have you reviewed the gift acceptance policies for your five favorite charitable organizations that you’ve given to,” I would say that the vast majority would say no.
A good policy is only as good as its awareness. Share on XThat is the tool that charities have in the rare and challenging circumstances when they need to say no to a gift. If you haven’t codified your values appropriately in that policy, you will have a very difficult and potentially litigious situation on your hands, again, rare in trying to explain why someone who wants to give you money is being told that they can’t give you money.
Staying Away From Crime-Related Proceeds
If I could jump in on that, there’s two things you said is really important to underline, which is the values of the organization first need to be understood by those making and approving and implementing that policy. They need to be embedded in that gift acceptance policy. Very important. What I see happening in organizations often is people say, “We want to make sure that there’s not a reputational risk if this is some big drug dealer.” That’s usually the example people use.
I always push back on that because you’re probably not going to get to that point with somebody who’s obviously or likely a criminal. That’s not the issue we’re solving for here that because it’s much more nuanced. One of the things I found to be really helpful with organizations is to start the conversation with who will we say yes to?
Start with what we’ll say yes to. It anchors them in some abundance, gives them some confidence and it’s a long list. You can get a long of types of people, categories, areas of the economy that, “Yes, we will, etc. How about this?” They can develop a confidence and a courage to say no in that exercise if you anchor in yes. If you answer in no, everybody’s really tense. If you start at tense, it’s harder for those values to come to the fore. I’m interested on your thoughts on that.
Of course, organizations need to ensure that they are not receiving gifts that are the proceeds of crime. We have strong anti-fraud legislation.
Nobody gets a gold star for avoiding taking money from proceeds of crime. That’s a basic standard.
The questions I often ask colleagues and partners that I’m working with is, “If you received an online gift, an unsolicited gift from someone who had was convicted of a crime, how would you handle it, like an unsolicited gift that they’ve made through your annual fund donation form?” Do you even have any due diligence processes where you are looking at reactive gifts at a small level to see who’s made those gifts?
That’s like if you want to get worried about risk management and you’re taking a risk mitigation approach, I want you to think about that. I want you to think about gifts that you’ve accepted in support of particular communities or demographics that your organization serves, and to what extent those gifts and the source of funds from those gifts were ever vetted by anyone that holds those identities or a group of people, ideally. We can’t tokenize one person in the organization to say, “Would we take this money?”
I think those are some good tests for an organization to see how much they are living these values. If their values are around risk mitigation, we want it to be an organization that’s beyond reproach and know that we’ve taken good money in support of our mission, then how are you managing those kinds of risks that I’ve just outlined? If you are an organization that takes that viewpoint of like, “We’re going to look at only risks that have been adjudicated by some other body or mechanism.” It’s not about reputational risk. It’s about real risks. Only someone that’s convicted of a crime versus someone that has been accused of something. I think we have to start to parse those things apart.
Why we say our research was called Follow the Money is because how far back do you follow it? Do you look at the labor practices of the corporations that you are taking money from around the world, not just in Canada, but what are their labor practices and their human rights reputation in the various parts of the world in which they may operate?
When you think about an individual and you accept stocks or securities from them, are those stocks or securities from industries or corporations that you have previously demonized either outright in your gift acceptance policy or through policy positions or statements that your institution has made otherwise? Is helping that donor divest themselves from those investments actually like a good thing for your institution? Have you thought about the historical legacy of colonization that many families who are in a position to be philanthropic in this country have built their wealth through the benefits of colonization?
The fact that they were founding settlers in the community that your charity operates is seen as a good thing in terms of their making reparations or is there negative feelings associated with that legacy amongst the community that is most impacted by that? Those are some of the things we need to think about. We can follow that money far back, but at the end of the day, your values need to guide where you draw those lines and that will be defensible because you will inevitably be called on your values and be and you should be willing to defend them and willing to say no to certain money if it’s misaligned.
Social Profit Leadership: You must know where to draw your lines when gathering donations. You will have to defend them, so be willing to say no if the money is not aligned with your mission.
Those are really challenging conversations. If they happen at all, they often happen below the level of awareness of fundraising professionals and many boards as well. “Are we compliant,” Is the question around their gift acceptance policy. What you have been talking about for a number of years now s that doesn’t count as the standard or = that’s the superficial standard and that there’s a lot more.
How To Maintain Neutrality In Fundraising
I want to move slightly away from gift acceptance policies for a second. You referenced community a few times in the conversation so far and how organizations can anchor in community. I’m really interested in your perspective on how organizations make sense of their community and how that shows up in the work of fundraisers.
I think that it probably doesn’t show up enough as, or as much as I would like to think it could. I think that most of my professional career in fundraising and I felt really disparate and disconnected from the end beneficiaries for whom I was raising funds ultimately. Their voice was often not centered in proposals or strategies. We knew who we were serving, but I don’t think that we really like reflected that humanity in the policies and strategies and tactics that we lived out each and every day.
I think the organizations that have real clarity about who they serve, who they are, where they’re situated, and their positionality as an organization tend to have a good understanding of their community. I think when I ask organizations, “Who’s part of your community?” The one thing that’s often missing is really volunteers and staff. I think we think so external about donors and partners beneficiaries, but we often forget our staff.
I think as global conflicts and divisiveness and populism rises around the world and in North America and certainly here in Canada, I think one of the things that many charities grapple with is calls to action on the part of their staff and volunteers to be responsive to global events and tragedies and really reflecting the humanity and the experiences of those that enliven their organizations.
I think most and many charities are paralyzed out of action. They’re not able to determine when and where to weigh in and on what or why. I often just say like, “Who do you serve and who is your community?” If we forget our staff and the people that enliven our mission each and every day, we’ve missed a critical part of the equation.
If an organization forgets about its staff who enliven its mission each day, it misses a critical part of its work. Share on XI don’t think organization should be weighing in on everything or anything. They should be really responsive to what is deeply impacting their community and they should be clear on who that community is and they need to be responsive. Ignoring what’s happening in a community, whether it’s here or abroad, and not actually having a statement, comes from this falsehood that we must be neutral in charity. I think that’s something I really pushed back against because there is no such thing as neutrality.
Where does neutrality show up?
I think neutrality definitely shows up in how do we respond to like global events and tragedy. Certainly, it shows up in the context of fundraising and not wanting to upset donors or call them in or call them out when they’ve said something harmful. Even when they haven’t said something harmful, when they have simply shared a point of view that is contrary to our logic model, our theory of change around our mission because everyone comes with their lived experiences and often as fundraisers, we ask lots of open-ended questions in the context of major gifts to. Learn more about someone’s point of view and what they know and what they’re interested in.
When someone shares a perspective that is opinion, but it’s presented as fact and gospel, for example, it may be around the causes of poverty or climate or whatever it might be, whatever your charity is focused on, when we choose not to engage, it’s often from this idea of like, “We want to be neutral because we don’t want to offend. We want all perspectives and ideas to have a voice in our organization. It’s okay for other people to not share our worldview.”
I agree. It is absolutely okay and healthy for there to be dissent, multiple points of view. Inherently charity is the opposite of neutral. You have made a statement and said, we exist to solve this issue. That in and itself is the opposite of neutral. It’s being very clear about our point of view and the problem that we want to solve and how we go about solving it. The reality is, of the 86,000-plus charities in this country, there’s going to be at least one other to the charity that you work for that has an almost identical mission.
What sets us apart is our values and our theory of change, our logic model for our solutions. When we don’t call people out, even on that, I think we haven’t stood up for this idea that like, it’s okay not to be neutral and that our existence in and of itself is the opposite of neutral. I think that is something that many organizations struggle with because then when it comes down to a global event, they’re scared about weighing in, but they’ve forgotten that they already do have a point of view it doesn’t mean you have to have a point of view on everything, but they’ve forgotten that they have a point of view in general.
When we’re working with organizations, whether it’s refining their purpose statement, or whether it’s a strategic plan or preparing for a campaign, one of the questions that we often are digging for is, “What is your point of view? What is your perspective,” organizations that don’t offer one aren’t successful. I think there is a values-based rationale for sharing your perspective and not being neutral as you described.
I also think that it conveniently lines up with what’s going to make you more effective in your theory of change and in your logic model is to have that perspective, own that perspective, and reinforce that perspective in conversations and in marketing and in specific one-on-one conversations. Withs owners, the least interesting question or statement you can make to another human being is, I can be who you want me to be.
I think too often, in our sector and in our particularly our work, you and I grew up, it’s major gift fundraisers. We don’t want to offend or because we want to reflect the glory of the people that we’re working with or cultivating. We give organizations and fundraisers give over a lot of their professional power and the professional standing and their perspective and sometimes even their values of their organization in saying, “We can be whoever you want us to be.”
It doesn’t work. You’re not going to raise a lot of money doing that. You’re not going to be effective. It puts you in a bad position as a professional. It can compromise your organization. It actually doesn’t do any favors to the donor either. It’s a perfect trifecta of misery and poor outcome. The clearer organizations are, and the clearer their teams are on that perspective, the view, the values that they have on the issues they serve and the communities they support, the more effective they’re going to be at fundraising and the better those jobs are going to be, the better protected their staff are going to be in those conversations with donors.
I think also then it leads to less friction where people feel like they don’t understand how the values of their organization are expressed. I think there is a different generation of fundraisers that expect different things from their employer. It’s a little bit different than when I was growing up in fundraising and I appreciate the internal agitation and holding to account that the next generation is probably more versant at than me. Certainly, as a child of immigrants, that was really indoctrinated in a belief around in a rigid belief around professionalism at all costs. Sometimes I lost my own voice in that.
I really respect those that are more vocal than I. I think also it’s important that we not conflate our personal values with our organization’s values. We need to have integrity as professionals and integrity to our profession, to our personhood. When we understand our organization’s values, we’re able to do that more effectively. We’re able to navigate more effectively. I agree with you that I think organizations that have that clarity tend to be the most effective fundraising shops.
Organizations with a clear mission tend to be the most effective in fundraising. They know how to unlock new opportunities rather than limit them. Share on XIt actually unlocks new opportunities rather than limits opportunities because I think that when people really see how you are you, how you authentically, sincerely show up consistently across platforms, across situations, across externalities, that signals an opportunity for alignment with their own values. I think that’s where we do the best work as fundraisers, to unlock that potential rather than trying to be palatable to everyone. It is just not possible.
Knowing How To Learn – As Well As Unlearn
Through your work and throughout this conversation, you’ve talked a lot about the changes that are happening and the imperatives for change that are happening in our sector. One of the things that we talk about on the show, we’ve had a number of guests on to talk about it, I think our sector sometimes we can identify a lot of the problems. There are a lot of organizations and a lot of leaders who are doing really positive things to move in the right direction.
The role of this show, the role of all of us in the sector should be to highlight those instances where it’s working. It’s not that it’s solved, we fixed the issue, but we’re moving in the right direction rather than focusing on all the work to do. It’s celebrating and strengthening ourselves for the work to come based on what has worked to date. I’m really curious because I know with the conversations you have, you’ve probably seen more examples of progress than anyone else in the sector, probably in the country. Where is it working? Where are we making positive progress?
I think there’s a lot of interesting movements around the profession of fundraising and our accountabilities to community. I think community-centric fundraising is an interesting model. It’s both a set of principles but also of movement. Movements like that are really interesting to give people practical reference guides and frameworks for how to do this work in sustainable ways within the context of being a fundraiser.
There are lots of bright spots. There are many organizations that are leading the way. There’s many indigenous organizations that I look to for their wisdom and clarity in this work. I would say the work that I’ve had the opportunity to do with the Yellowhead Institute has taught me so much about restorative philanthropy and restorative approaches to philanthropy and building wise relational practices. That’s been a hard one for me because I always thought of myself as a relationship builder, but I’ve been so liberated by this idea of bringing wise relational practices to my work as a fundraiser, but not being obligated to relationships without that goes back to values, without that shared values and even figuring out what those are.
That’s where we find ourselves vulnerable and potentially in harm’s way is when we feel obligated ina relationship without really understanding the person across from us, the partner, the funder across from us. I do think the work that I’ve done with Yellowhead has really taught me how to bring wise relational practices to fundraising and this idea of needing to have a relationship. Relationships are grown over a very long period of time and as fundraisers, we need to remember that.
Another bright spot is seeing a slightly less turnover in our profession. It’s still pretty high. Mentorship programs that I see across CAGP, Philanthropic Foundations of Canada, Imagine Canada and other places where people are getting professional mentorship from peers in the sector are really interesting. One of the boards that I’m on, Find Help, went through a process called reimagining governance with the Ontario Nonprofit Network. It was really illuminating to think about this idea of shared governance. That’s a really interesting model, to start thinking about shared governance in the context of fundraising, in the context of working in the community.
There are a lot of bright spots. I’m really excited. Hamilton Community Foundation and their CEO Rudi Wallace is doing some really interesting things to really center their values, both in their grant making but in their voice in the way that they’re communicating unabashedly to their donors and to their community. That’s really exciting and heartwarming. Honestly, for me, there is actually endless bright spots. I’m currently teaching in the fundraising certificate program here at Toronto Metropolitan University. Seeing the perspectives of emerging professionals and those who are just about to enter the fundraising sector is really enlivening and interesting for me. I’m learning so much.
That is our challenge for everyone in the sector and frankly, anyone who wants to future-proof themselves in any career. As much to be able to learn as to unlearn. That’s what I feel excited about. When I see people who are actively documenting their own unlearning and the things that they’ve had to dismantle amongst themselves and that they’ve picked up along the way and openly sharing both their failings and their wisdom and insights that they’ve gotten from those experiences, that’s where I generate a lot of hope and optimism.
Social Profit Leadership: Anyone who wants to future-proof themselves must know how to learn and unlearn.
If we can dismantle that at an individual level, that there’s so much opportunity for system-wide change in our profession to make it a healthier place, a place of more optimism, a much more abundance, less cutthroat, less entirely KPI focused around number of meetings, numbers of dollars, but more about the quality of relationships, the values alignment that we are facilitating as professional fundraisers.
Seeing that the people understand more the value of fundraising, that happened in the pandemic and continues to happen, that’s also great because I do think our sector generates so much to our GDP, to our economy, to our communities, and it’s become better understood and there’s just endless possibility for more understanding and demonstrating the value of fundraising outside of our own sector.
Collective Wisdom In Philanthropy And Professional Fundraising
I’m sure you probably can hear as I can or imagine as I can the round of applause you got for that answer from people who are reading. My favorite question to ask at the end of all of these conversations is what are you looking forward to? You gave us a lot to look forward to in your last answer, but what is the one thing that you, Tanya, are most looking forward to as, as you look ahead to your work in the sector?
I’m just hopeful about the people. Sometimes, I can feel really bogged down and feel isolated, but I feel so hopeful about the diversity of perspectives that are joining our profession. It is a profession that brings a lot of different varied backgrounds to the table. With all that collective wisdom, I really feel excited about how we can have more moonshots for trillion-dollar, billion-dollar gifts across Canada and North America and around the world in support of the big intractable challenges of our time.
Philanthropy and fundraising are going to be so catalytic and instrumental in addressing things like climate, poverty alleviation. There are some major challenges ahead of us around the world, and I am excited to see the role that philanthropy and professional fundraising can play in catalyzing forward some really incredible solutions. That’s what I’m hoping for.
I join you in that. I’ll look forward to that too. That’s a great aspiration and something to watch for. Tanya, thank you so much for taking the time to be on the show. I have so enjoyed our conversation and I so appreciate what you bring to the conversation around the current practice and the future practice in our social profit sector. Thank you very much.
Thank you. It’s been a pleasure and I look forward to learning more from the show.
