Embodied Leadership in Donor Organizing
Embodied Leadership in Donor Organizing
gs is a commitment to resourcing our work in ways that align with gs values, politics, and strategy. This includes deepening class consciousness and integrating a practice of resourcing/fundraising across our leadership. To move toward embodiment of our commitment, gs students, teachers, practitioners, partners, donors, funders, and friends are invited to practice embodied donor organizing.
About this Course
Embodied donor organizing is an opportunity to build power by resourcing work we care about. As we ask for donations, we aim to build more trust, authenticity, and mutual dignity with people we care about. We do this by revealing ourselves, what we care about, and our commitment to gs and social and environmental justice movements. We practice making requests, in the face of potentially receiving a ‘no.’ We practice doing this work within the many contradictions of capitalism and white supremacy. We practice toward having a sustainable community network, in which we resource our own communities and organizations, encourage equitable redistribution of wealth, and build cross-class community power.
EL in Donor Organizing builds on teachings from movement organizations that have integrated fundraising and organizing for generations, and on learnings from our own practice over the past several years. In these political times, embodied donor organizing is particularly important as one way we can invite more people into movements.
We invite participants to practice with us!
EL in Donor Organizing is an experimental program that has included a cross-class, multi-racial team of gs community members who come together to learn about and engage in embodied donor organizing to resource gs in ways that are aligned with gs’ organizational values, politics, and strategy.
In EL in Donor Organizing, we turn-and-face class. Our class system, capitalism, and white supremacy shape how we show up to fundraising. Those systems foster isolation, dehumanization, and re-traumatization. In transformative fundraising, we aim to embody something different—interdependence, mutual dignity, authenticity, increased trust, etc. Together, we learn about ourselves (our conditioned tendencies, our resilience, etc) as individuals and as cross-class group. We heal and transform shame, learn how to navigate the many contradictions in this work, and develop new embodied skills including fundraising planning and donor asks.
In EL in Donor Organizing, we practice new ways of relating to money and asking our people to join us in resourcing work we care about. We can truly connect with someone, learn what they care about in these times, share why gs matters to us, and be transparent about class. Then, if it’s a good fit we can ask them to contribute, allowing for yes/no/maybe as excellent responses! As a collective, we learn how to resource ourselves and what we care about in centered ways.
Participation in this program has offered the opportunity to raise funds for gs, and if desired, for another movement organization (a gs movement partner or otherwise) as well. Funds raised for gs have supported gs to grow sustainably, offer programs that are accessible to communities on the frontlines of our movements, and make a transformative and precise contribution to social and environmental justice movements.
Is This Course for Me?
EL in Donor Organizing participants are:
- Majority people of color.
- Approximately: ⅓ working class or poor; ⅓ middle class; and ⅓ owning class. To find out more about what we mean by this, check out this guide about class categories.
- Current or potential leadership in gs. This includes gs students, teachers, practitioners, students, board, strategy team, donors, funders.
- Prerequisite: Applicants must have already taken a minimum of 6 days of gs programming (this can include gs courses, BOLD programs, or gs movement partner programs) .
- Participants do not need to have any prior experience with fundraising. If you do, that’s great! But if you don’t, that’s great too. Participants just need to be committed to learning, practicing, and fundraising for/with gs — even if you also feel trepidation and/or nausea about it! (in somatic speak: you need to be ready to feel your feelings, center, turn, face, enter, extend and blend)!
- Aware of systems of power and oppression; aligned with gs values, vision and strategy; and committed to bringing somatics to social and environmental justice movements– seeing gs as an organization that is one part of the bigger project of moving toward wholeness in this very broken world.
Embodied Leadership in Donor Organizing is not being held at this time.
Thank you for your interest and for all the ways you support generative somatics!
Please consider making a donation to us for the sake of making our programs accessible to innovative movement leaders, to poor and working class communities, and to communities of color. All donations go a long way for us and no amount is too small to have an impact.
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