B.O.S.S aka Build [your own] Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency — is it time to leave your toxic nonprofit:
the importance of prioritizing yourself and starting your own initiative as a Black person or person with a marginalized identity.
✓ Do you work in nonprofit and identify as Black or as a part of a marginalized identity?
✓ If you are one of only a few people with a marginalized identity in your place of work and/or are one of the only Black people, do you feel tokenized or exploited? Are you asked to promote or educate about Diversity Equity Inclusion and Accessibility?
✓Do you find yourself cornered by white + non Black people who do not want to be “the bad guys” and treat being a “Black Indigenous Person Of Color” as a secret society or club?
✓Do white colleagues, who are self proclaimed activists and BIPOCs laden with self hate try to explicitly bond with you over being oppressed?
✓Have some of your biggest disappointments come from fellow collegueges with marginalized identities?
Let’s talk about your professional development + environment:
🔲 Are you working harder than most of your coworkers but receiving unbalanced reciprocation i.e. less or not enough public, professional and monetary appreciation?
🔲Are you challenged and trusted in the workplace with new and difficult tasks?
🔲Do you feel anxious when you make a mistake or like you will be judged versus being given the benefit of the doubt?
🔲Have you been at your organization longer than 3 years without a genuine promotion and the ability to have a stake in major decisions?
🔲Are you micromanaged and/or consistently asked to do work outside of your job description?
🔲Are you more than 6 years into your career and making less than 40k? (research average earnings for your job title, experience and area)
🔲 Have you asked to see your organizations budget or asked for more details and received vague feedback?
🔲Do you receive new job responsibilities without a professional title to build your career and match your newly assigned tasks?
🔲Does leadership fail to demonstrate that they value the long term quality of your life?
🔲Are you aware of gaslighting (manipulation)/racialized gaslighting? If so, have you experienced it in your workplace?
If you answered “yes” to any of these, you may be selling yourself short — it may be time to leave your nonprofit.
Nonprofits attract intrinsically motivated staff to uphold their idealistic mission statements, but often their organizational management, daily practices and documented outcomes leave a lot to be desired. People assume toxic workplaces are solely due to white cis men whom perpetuate white supremacy.
Others mention the hosts of well intentioned white women who religiously cap the bar for social innovation in order to sustain the longevity of their mediocre careers.
However, many of us fail to recognize how our own people, loosely identified as “Black Indigenous People of Color, ‘’ contribute to the oppression of ourselves, the communities we serve, and our own people. You may have told yourself, “Well, at least I am working directly with my community and it brings me joy…” as a way to rationalize your job in a toxic work environment— you are not alone but you have to:
Follow your instinct: Racism that cannot be seen is largely based upon personal instinct. Assimilating into toxic work cultures are meant to make you doubt personal instinct — resist the urge to project self doubt on your perception, aka racially gaslighting yourself.
I have worked at a myriad of nonprofits, good, bad and inbetween. At one nonprofit I felt I was not receiving equal respect within the first week of my employment. I felt pulled to serve the community whilst sensing instinctual resistance in knowing that my livelihood, professional growth and personal support was completely in the hands of nice, prejudiced white and non Black POC. There were several times I needed support in my former workplace — and each and every time my former anti-racist, “George Floyd never again!” activists coworkers, non-Black POCs included, failed to advocate. Worst, based on personal experience and conversations with other nonprofit professionals, white and BIPOC women have been at the root of maintaining and protecting oppressive nonprofit work behaviors.
Black, Indigenous, and People of Color + Self Hate: In majority white non profits you may face BIPOC who have been raised to heavily assimilate and conform to white environments. Some of these BIPOCs will have unhealthy relationships with their identity, not think highly of themselves and conjointly carry prejudice against Black people and/or themselves. They do not value your humanity because they barely value their own.
No matter what they say, the amount of apologies they give or the number of performative actions they complete: you will learn their true intentions when you hold them accountable, become competition, assert yourself or exhibit non-complicit behavior.
If you do not address this reality within yourself and your environment, you will replicate these self serving + self hate habits and oppress yourself, the community and your people.
B.O.S.S, Build Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency and start your own endeavor:
If you have a calling to work on a particular issue, I recommend you start doing what you feel called to do in whatever capacity you can today, and if you desire to grow that endeavor into a nonprofit or social entrepreneurship — go for it! Remember, a nonprofit does not need to be a giant entity — quality over quantity can go a long way in the nonprofit and community development sector. Quality builds the foundation to receive larger grants to do high quality and quantity work in the future. By focusing on quality you will also build a solid portfolio of work to demonstrate the potential impact of your programming ideas on a larger scale.
Quit the job, resign, get fired, go part time or simply sit and start to make a plan that gives you hope + joy: do what you need to do to begin to change your trajectory!
Life is waiting for you. Give yourself permission to make money, handpick who you want to work with on your purpose, and start your own initiative with like minds. In doing this you are setting yourself up to be less dependent on detached donors, faulty non profit organizationS and bureaucratic environments to give you purpose + a paycheck that will have you making less than 50k after a decade or more of hard work — and have you believing that’s what you deserve.
Real family, being a BIPOC is not a Club, nor is it a narrative of oppression and victimization: if you know, you know.
We work in honor of ourselves, our ancestors, those who raised us, and serve others as a part of tradition, not with an inflated sense of purpose.
Surround yourself with people who treat you as the unique, driven professional you are. Stop watering mediocre fellowships and growing relationships that are grounded in ego driven self interests and emotional manipulation — go blossom, be a BOSS aka Build [your own] Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency!
