Secrets can either burden us or set us free. The best advice I’ve received has come from fellow social entrepreneurs. Often in secret, my peers have whispered wisdom that has left me lifted and lightened.
Over the past twenty years, I have faced the highs and lows of building and growing an organization, Integrate Health, committed to scaling lifesaving primary healthcare across francophone West Africa. Along the way, I’ve learned powerful lessons that I now find myself sharing with others. Why not make these secrets, which have been so transformative for me, available to all?
Long before Integrate Health started receiving significant grant funding, I would read the articles written by various funders and try to follow their advice. Following each rejection meeting during my early days of fundraising, I would write down the funder questions I was unable to answer and make sure to have a solution ready before my next pitch meeting. Once I started to land a few funders, I would respond to their hardest questions with the line, “I’m not sure, can you help me figure that out?” That line works! It led to everything from a work session on how to build a cashflow tool with one funder, to lots of edits on my pitch deck from another funder, to eventually candid and treasured advice from women funders on how to “put my boss pants on” and lean into my role as a woman CEO.
I am grateful for funders’ advice, and I will continue to seek it out. However, the truly life-saving advice, the words I needed to hear when I was burnt out, discouraged, and ready to throw in the towel, those secrets have consistently come from other social entrepreneurs. This advice is coveted. Here are the three most invaluable secrets that have shaped my journey and continue to guide me today.
The Advice
You’ve got spiritual swagger.
Early in my fundraising career, I had the privilege to learn from a phenomenal leader, Ivan Hageman, Head and Co-Founder of The East Harlem School. Ivan generously loaned our organization office space in his gorgeous school building. One day, I was headed to meet with a potential new funder and Ivan asked how I was feeling.
“Nervous,” I admitted.
“You should not be nervous,” Ivan counseled.
My skepticism was visible in my full body quaking.
“All right,” he offered, “think of it this way.”
Ivan proceeded to walk me through a series of simple questions. “Have you lived in the places where you work?”
“Yes,” I responded.
“Has this guy?”
“No.”
“Have you seen the impact of your services on people’s lives?”
“Yes,” I responded.
“Has this guy?”
“No.”
“Have you seen people die from having to go without access to healthcare?”
“Yes,” I responded.
“Has this guy?”
“No.”
“So there you go,” Ivan concluded, as if it were obvious, “you’ve got Spiritual Swagger.”
I laughed out loud, having never considered myself to be someone who could have swagger. Ivan went on to explain how I should harness this knowledge of what I know needs to happen and help show this person how he can have the most impact with his funding. It sounded so simple when he put it that way. I was still nervous, but I left his office with a new energy in my step and a grin on my face. I felt a little glow from the inside out. While I did not know anything about finance, I did know everything about our organization and the impact we were having. That knowledge helped me to see myself as his equal.
Every day since then, I have tried to use that spiritual swagger to swing the power dynamics closer to equal. Sure, the funders have the money, but you, the entrepreneur, you own your experience, your insights, and your knowledge. These provide the channel through which you can guide the money to impact. The funders need you as much as you need them, even though it does not always feel that way. Remembering that you are an expert in your field—your lived knowledge and experience make you equal to any donor—helps level the playing field.
Not all advice is created equal
I was standing in the Amtrak terminal in Union Station in Washington, DC, likely coming from or heading into funder meetings, although I can’t remember. What I do remember is feeling utterly confused. I had gotten a grant application back from a potential funder with so many edits and suggestions, my mind wasn’t just swirling, it was going in full circles like a dog chasing its tail. I pulled out my phone and called a trusted fellow social entrepreneur, Lisha McCormick, now CEO of Last Mile Health. She was so calm on the other end of the line as she listened to my exasperated unraveling.
“Well, what do you want to do?” Lisha asked me.
I paused. At first I did not understand the implication of such a simple question. Lisha went on to explain that I should view each red mark as a suggestion, not an ultimatum. Then, the suggestions I did not find useful, I should just ignore! This advice was revolutionary and liberating. As a type-A perfectionist, I would not have come to the conclusion to ignore feedback on my own. Yet it made so much sense. How could I possibly do what everyone else was suggesting all the time? I still remember that sense of freedom her words provided. I go back to it often.
This advice came back to me recently as I sat with an early-stage entrepreneur. He was working with a funder who was pushing him to tighten his messaging. The result was a punchy tagline. I asked my friend what was bothering him about the new messaging.
“It misses all the context,” he shared with frustration. “I could never use this language with our beneficiaries or our in-country partners.”
I nodded. These feelings were intimately familiar to me. “So don’t,” was my response. “If this tight, pithy mission statement will help unlock funding from a particular funder, then let it live in their grant documents. That does not mean you have to put it on your website,” I offered with a chuckle.
I could see the release of my friend’s tightly clenched jaw. He looked at me with so much gratitude in his eyes. “You have no idea what a relief it is to hear this.”
As social entrepreneurs, especially at an early stage, we are nearly constantly inundated with advice. Everything is potential feedback that can be used to inform change and growth. This is exciting, but it can also become overwhelming. You will feel pressure to please everyone—whether they be funders, colleagues, or stakeholders. But staying true to your mission means embracing the freedom to ignore advice that doesn’t serve your goals. Giving yourself permission to ignore the advice that does not serve you will help you become a better leader.
Always be willing to walk away
I remember one of my first foundation prospects. I had convinced myself that he was our best hope, as he was one of the few funders already funding in the country where we worked. Our first meeting went south very quickly. Not only did he show very little interest in our work, he proceeded to make some extremely inappropriate comments about my physical appearance.
Specifically, he walked me over to a group of fellow funders. After introducing me to the group of men, as we stood shoulder to shoulder in a circle, he remarked, “Maybe we should fund her, she’s better looking than …” and named a well-known male entrepreneur doing comparable work, whom they were all already funding.
I walked out of that meeting as quickly as possible. However, I saw him again at a conference a few months later. By then he was funding a few more of our peer organizations, and I thought I should try to pitch him again. Once again, his inappropriate behavior continued, but we really needed the funding. This was a rare case where the expression “life or death” did in fact apply. With additional funding, we would be able to purchase medications to save more patients’ lives. I was torn.
I turned to my peers. Nearly every woman I spoke with told me it was not worth it. They each worked for male-led organizations and advised that this funder could not work with a female leader. I was disheartened, but I took their advice. At the time, given the size of our budget and the enormity of our needs, this was a painful decision to make.
This was an extreme example, but I see similar scenarios play out all the time in a myriad of ways. There are many reasons why a funder and an organization might not be a fit. It could be timing, communication styles, geography, issues areas. Sometimes the reason for the poor fit is not clear at all, but the bottom line is that there is always another prospect out there.
Despite your service to your organization or mission, you should never endure mistreatment in exchange for grant funds. You cannot compromise your integrity or self-worth. This is hard to do when patients are dying, but it is necessary. Walking away can send a powerful message of self-respect. The more leaders push back, the more power we will have to change how we are treated.
The power dynamics are real—but so is solidarity
Some of the best funders I have worked with are keenly self-aware. They go to great lengths to acknowledge their relative power. They offer encouraging words such as “You’re doing the hard work,” or “You are providing us a service,” or “We could not have the impact we want to achieve without you.” This is true, and more funders should say these words more often. But these words do not change the fact that they have something you need: funding. As social entrepreneurs, you carry the knowledge of what that money could do. You hold the expectations of your team and beneficiaries, often your own community members or country (wo)men. You live with, and likely often lay awake at night wrestling with, the knowledge that if you fail (as a fundraiser), it is others who will suffer. Funders can try to empathize, but they don’t feel this, they don’t live it, and it doesn’t keep them up at night.
The only remedy I have found for this chronic condition is solidarity. This is the most important gift that I can offer to other leaders, and it should not be a secret. Believe in yourself and know you are not alone. If you forget sometimes, reread this article, or better yet, have a fellow social entrepreneur on call who can remind you. It might feel at times as if this work is a competition for limited resources, like more funding for one organization means less for another. I can assure you, this is simply not true. Come together, lean on one another, and continue to develop and share invaluable advice. Let me know when you do, so I can add it to this list. At the end of the day, we are all part of the same epic quest, to move resources from where they are to where they need to be. That is too hard to do alone and too important to keep secret.