273. Pay, Leave, and Power: The Power Convo Pt. 1 - Maria Choi
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This Episode is part of our Pay. Leave + Power Week on the Podcast. Explore the Full Series
Overview
Meet Maria. This CEO and Founder is passionate about uniting technology, philanthropy and social good to solve critical issues. She’s unapologetically talking to us about the negative impact that power dynamics have on major gifts, paid leave, cultures and benefits while sharing a reimagined strategy to shift philanthropic power dynamics. You know we’re here for this 🙌
💡Learn
Why helping nonprofit leaders build sustainable organizations increases access to education, workforce, & economic potential of women and people of color.
How power dynamics impact paid leave policies, pay, and our own mindsets about time off and well-being
How to build sustainable infrastructures leading to deeper mission impact
Today’s Guest
Maria Choi, Founder + CEO, Raise for Good
“I hope that building a community of like minded individuals will help other nonprofits feel less alone. And I hope we can bring in a sprinkling of new ideas and new ways of working to make this work more sustainable, while really playing that call to action and partnering with funders to ease these burdens in the way that they do the grant making work.”
Episode Transcript
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Episode highlights
Maria’s story and journey to where she is today (2:00)
Shift in power dynamics Maria is seeing because leaders of color are often in the driver's seat of social and economic change, yet they're entirely underestimated and underfunded. (3:00)
Trust based philanthropy and trust based partnerships (4:30)
Holistic inequitable lending practices in the sector (6:50)
Changing our mindset around major gift funding and foundation funding (8:00)
How Maria doesn’t see the walls in the philanthropy space (13:00)
Raise For Good’s founding story and their core scope of work (16:00)
Moving towards sustainability within our organizations (19:00)
The narrative surrounding overhead within our sector and how it is holding us back (20:00)
How Maria advises people to not just weather but thrive in the midst of challenging times and seasons within their growing organizations (26:00)
Maria’s advice to leaders looking to build more equity within their organizations - where do we start? (29:00)
A powerful moment of philanthropy in Maria’s life (33:00)
Maria’s One Good Thing: Change can be joyful. (35:00)
powerful quotes
“My mom was supported by an NGO during the Korean War. And so she really instilled giving back and volunteering in our family at a very young age.” -Maria
“I think we know that philanthropies, you know, birthed from periods of extreme wealth in our country and a lot of the problematic systems that exist, it's a product of that system.” -Maria
“I live and work in San Francisco. I work with tons of tech companies pre and post IPO. They're raising hundreds of millions in venture funding, they believe in the leader and their vision, they get decades, sometimes a runway to prove out their model before some of them are not even profitable. And so there's a huge disconnect in the expectations for nonprofit leaders versus how we look at it on the other side of the coin.” -Maria
“That's why we work with nonprofits, foundations, and companies, because it's really building those bridges to lift, you know, all the boats. And we need to see the for profit sector investing more and women and leaders of color, and we're seeing that momentum being built right now. And it's really exciting to see. And then we need to see that trickle down to the philanthropic sector.” -Maria
“I can understand what a very early stage, nonprofit leader of color is experiencing as a first time founder, and be able to apply my direct experience to help coach them to build their agency to create a sustainable organization.” -Maria
“If you're a funder and you're giving away hundreds of millions of dollars, why are you doing what you're doing? You actually want to transform communities, I hope, and so really putting the impact as the North Star front and center. I think we kind of forget that as philanthropy professionals. There's a lot of work to do, but really always bringing it back to the impact.” -Maria
“We're gonna challenge you to really look at how you're doing the work you're doing.” -Maria
“The current way of, one year investments with a lot of hoops that you have to jump through, is that really the best return on investment for you, for your legacy or the impact you want to create?” -Maria
“I love to kind of put it back on funders and in a respectful way, and kind of challenge the how, and the way that they're operating to achieve that impact.” -Maria
“I do believe that when you build that agency you can neutralize those power dynamics.” -Maria
“We teach our clients both how to navigate existing systems and power dynamics that exist, for example, when you're asking for funds, and we want to teach them how to build their own earned revenue, or sustainable revenue models, so they're not completely dependent on philanthropy.” -Maria
“When I look at the core foundational elements of what's going to make a sustainable organization, to us that model is strategy, storytelling and scale, which is a nice way of saying operations. That foundation is so critical. “ -Maria
“We are burdened as nonprofit leaders to be able to do it all. And again, the systems that have been created have perpetuated the massive burnout in the nonprofit sector.” -Maria
“There's a lot of messaging that we as leaders have to unpack, and I still struggle with that as Raise for good is a bootstrap small business.” -Maria
“I'm excited to see the shift in the sector again. We all have to work together. And I don't want it to be siloed or polarized. And I do think we're making progress.” -Maria
“I hope that building a community of like minded individuals will help other nonprofits feel less alone. And I hope we can bring in a sprinkling of new ideas and new ways of working to make this work more sustainable, while really playing that call to action and partnering with funders, to ease these burdens in the way that they do the grant making work.” -Maria
“My hope, for starters, is that funders will do their part.” -Maria
“Change can be joyful.” -Maria
“It's great to work with people who are like you, but I also encourage everyone to work with many people who are not like you. Again, I think there's some shared element that we can find as humans together.” -Maria
“I just hope that we can continue building authentic relationships because I think that's how we're gonna make progress.” -Maria
connect with Maria
connect with raise for good
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