Shifting the Power to the People You Exist For with Vic Hancock Fell

Hi everyone, support for this show is brought to you by our friends at Blumirang. Blumirang offers donor management and online fundraising software that helps small to medium nonprofits like First Tea of Greater Akron, a nonprofit that empowers kids and teens through the game of golf. And after just one year with Blumirang, they doubled their unique donors, improved donor stewardship, and raised more funds. Now to listen to the full interview with First Tea of Greater Akron, visit blumirang.com slash non-profit dash nation, blumirang.com slash non-profit dash nation, or click the link in the show notes. Thanks and let's get to the show. Hello and welcome to Nonprofit Nation. I'm your host Julia Campbell and I'm going to sit down with nonprofit industry experts, fundraisers, marketers, and everyone in between to get real and discuss what it takes to build that movement that you've been dreaming of. I created the Nonprofit Nation podcast to share practical wisdom and strategies to help you confidently find your voice, definitively grow your audience, and effectively build your movement. If you're a nonprofit newbie or an experienced professional who's looking to get more visibility, reach more people, and create even more impact than you're in the right place. Let's get started. Hi everyone. Welcome to Nonprofit Nation. I'm very excited to be here with you today. As you may know, I am your host Julia Campbell and today we're talking about the concept of shifting the power, shifting the power to the people that you exist for and why this is so important for us as socially-purpose organizations, especially those working in global solidarity. So my guest today is Vic Hancock-Fell and she's the founder and director of Fair Development, a social enterprise founded in 2016. She'll tell you her story, but when she was working in house as a small charity leader, she was also doing her masters in NGO management. I've actually heard this from several of my clients and several of my students and colleagues. The master's program was focused on large organizations and running a massive organization, which really ignited some frustration that there wasn't enough support for smaller organizations. I know a lot of my audience, they are the smaller organizations, so they can completely relate to that. So Vic has almost 15 years experience working within the small charity sector in the UK and internationally and is passionate about working with small charities and shifting the power and global solidarity work. I love it. So Vic, welcome to the podcast. Thank you very much for having me. It's good to be here. Yes. Okay. And where are you based? So I'm currently sitting in my basement in Sheffield, England. It's raining and very dark and miserable. It's usually like a nice dry place to live, but it has been raining all day here. So yeah, I'm kind of a slap bang in the middle of England. How did you get into this work? And what are you working on now? I got into this work kind of as a kid accidentally. So my mum was involved as a volunteer with a charity that was working in partnership with the community in Kenya. And I would go along on trips that she would do to go and do work with this community. She was a teacher and so she was working with this community in a local organization on kind of local education projects. And so first time I went was when I was 11 and I just went along with her to Kenya. And so I was just exposed to that, I guess, from being quite young. And then I started to volunteer for that organization as I got older. I would do little bake sales and little fundraisers. And then as I got older and went to do my undergraduate degree, I became a bit more interested in sort of supporting the mechanisms of running the organization. And then it wasn't really until I was in my early 20s that I realized that I could actually work in the voluntary sector. And this wasn't just something that I had to do as a volunteer. And I've reflected on this quite a few times before that it really did not occur to me at all as a young person growing up. That a job in the nonprofit sector was something that I could aspire to. I really saw it as something that you did as a volunteer. And I think that was just down to my exposure to kind of professional nonprofit work. When I was a young person in school, it never occurred to me that that's something I could do. So I eventually got into doing paid work in the nonprofit sector. And it was kind of around that time where I entered into the sector as a member of staff that I decided to go back and do my masters in NGO management. Because I felt like I had some good instincts about what I should be doing. But I didn't do a related kind of undergraduate degree. And so I really didn't feel as if I had any kind of credentials to kind of back me up, I suppose. So I did that. And then that was great. As you say, it really did kind of kick off this frustration in me of the lack of support available for smaller organizations in particular. And really doing that course was what really kind of saw me focus very specifically on the small charity sector and the small NGO sector. So that's kind of how I got started in more recent years. Sort of worked in kind of senior roles in small international development charities in the UK. And then very recently this year decided to make quite an intentional exit from that sector. And so as you said, I started Fair Development, which is a sort of social enterprise consulting and training organization for small charities. Started that in 2016, have been doing it alongside those day jobs at small INGOs, made that intentional exit from the INGO sector in the summer this year. And now I'm doing Fair Development as my main work. So I do consulting myself on organizational strategy, organizational development. I love problem solving and troubleshooting and crisis management. And then I've got a collective of 50 fantastic associate consultants who do everything from fundraising to charity finance impact assessment, program design. The goal is to be kind of a one-stop shop for smaller organizations to be able to come and get affordable and accessible and appropriate consultancy for their small organizations. And I'm living it. I kind of pinch myself every day that I'm getting to make a living from something that I really love. I do too. A lot of my clients are very small. And certainly in my online courses, a lot of my students come from very small organizations. And I agree with the research, the conferences, a lot of the consulting, it's mostly focused on having resources and having a full marketing department and having a team of 300 and having the ability and the network to really raise a lot of funds and also having the experience. You know, a lot of small nonprofits have started just out of passion, really grassroots. And you know, not a lot of MBAs are necessarily running small nonprofits and not in a bad way. It's just, it's really not the sector that people tend to gravitate to, you know, when they do get their masters in marketing or masters in business. But I love that you started a social enterprise. And I want to tell the audience just sort of how I found out about you. I was reading the fundraising everywhere blog, which is one of my absolute favorites. I absolutely love fundraising everywhere. And your essay, the title is why I'm leaving my job in international development. I really resonated with me because I served in the US Peace Corps, which is an international development program run out of the State Department that places mostly younger, mostly white, mostly privileged students or ex students in developing countries. And I was in Senegal, in West Africa, and working on public health campaigns there. And you said that looking back on your work in Kenya, you were, quote, peak white savior. So can you tell me about this and like your journey to come to this conclusion? Because that's a very brave statement. Yeah, of course, I really wanted to out myself for a while before I actually kind of published that blog. But as I said, like the first time I went to Kenya was when I was 11, I continued to visit Kenya through my work until my, you know, recently, last few years. And just in the last few years in particular, I've just learned a lot, I think about troublesome power dynamics in the sector, about my own whiteness and how that plays into my work in this sector. You know, I've learned from lots of great people, lots of great organizations and movements and just really started as supposed to like hold the mirror up in front of myself and kind of think more about why I'm in this space and the power that I am kind of taking up in the place that I'm taking up in that space. And I started to reflect back on some of my early kind of experiences in Kenya and some of the things that I did. I mean, you know, an example is I've got photo albums photos full of pictures with me, you know, crouching down next to a Kenyan child wearing scruffy clothing. And I'm, you know, I just horrified now to look back at those pictures. But you know, they happened and I think a lot of us have them. And I did, you know, even the way that I felt and thought about people and communities. Obviously, I was 11 years old at the time. And so, you know, of course, I've got a different perspective now. But even into my sort of early twenties, I think I was still approaching it from a position of saviurism, you know, this idea of like, I need to come in and do something about this. And I really just started to get uncomfortable with that and then reflect on that. I got to the point, yeah, where I just felt like, you know, we're talking about shifting the power to our partner organization, where I was working, worked for this fantastic small ING, called Raising Futures Kenya. We were having conversations as a team about how as an organization, we could shift the power to our partner organization, which we made some really good strides in. And it was kind of written into the strategy before I left. And I just got to the point where I'd done so much thinking and learning about kind of white privilege and white saviurism and the power dynamics at play in the global solidarity sector. I just kind of couldn't reconcile it with my own involvement in that sector anymore. And I still work with clients who are international development charities through fair development. But I tried to bring an angle of that sort of shifting the power to all of those clients. And with many of them, that seed has already been planted and they're kind of on that journey. And with some of them, it might be that I plant that seed and start that journey. So I haven't completely turned my back on the global community in that sense. But I have very intentionally removed myself from being from having any position of power in that space. I came across this amazing article recently, actually, on LinkedIn. And I just want to share a little quote from it. White women comprise 80% of the workforce in the international development sector. And while you may be well meaning and altruistic in your reasons for working in this sector, institutionalized white supremacy and your mere presence as a white woman make you complicit in the systematic oppression of black and brown people that you feel led to serve in the global south. I think that this is an important discussion to have. And we've been having these discussions in the United States, of course, but it just sort of got into the mainstream with, of course, the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and many others and the Black Lives Matter movement. So I think we've been having, we've been trying to have these discussions here. But a lot of what you're saying really resonates with me, especially as a white woman working in nonprofits, having worked in development. Was there a pushback from your colleagues for even bringing these things up? And like, what advice do you have for other people, even myself? I'm asking kind of for myself, what advice do you have to continually have these conversations despite people being uncomfortable? Yeah, I think it is really uncomfortable. And what has helped me to navigate it is to acknowledge that everybody is at a different point in their journey on their self reflection, I guess, and learning. So I brought this up to my organization, probably a few years after I initially started having those feelings of discomfort. And so I'd already done a lot of kind of looking internally and reflecting and processing. I'd already had that knee-jerk reaction of defensiveness and then got over that. And so when I was bringing it to new people, I was very aware that they were likely to have that knee-jerk defensive reaction straight away, because this was the starting point for them. You know, I was coming to them a few years in on this journey. I was bringing it to them and it's the first time they've ever thought about this and doesn't feel good to be told that you're a white savior. So I think definitely just being aware of where people are on their journey and kind of going slow. I mean, I'm kind of of the opinion that we shouldn't make it comfortable for people. I'm not too bothered about trying to make sure that people feel comfortable, because I think the whole point is I kind of want to make you feel uncomfortable enough to realize that you need to do something different. But that is my personal approach. And I appreciate that when you're trying to bring people on a journey with you, you do have to do it in a way that is going to have the outcome that you want, which in some cases might mean going a little bit more gently. So yeah, I think just kind of allowing people the time to process and reflect what you're saying and not trying to rush it and just looking at where everybody is on their journey and kind of accepting that. And I did get some most of the time people were kind of like, yes, obviously this makes so much sense. Let's do this in total agreement. And then you get generational differences, you get kind of people's own individual, like cultural differences that create different responses for different people. So there was a little bit of pushback. I guess from older colleagues, I think it's be fair to say that it was older colleagues that felt a little bit more anxious about doing this, but not so much the doing of it. I think everybody was in agreement that we should be shifting the power and localizing our work, where the hesitation came in was when I was suggesting that we would be very vocal about doing this and not just do it behind the scenes, but kind of do it and acknowledge our power imbalance and then kind of advocate for others to do it. That's where the pushback came actually, not in actually shifting the power, but in saying upfront, I'm a recovering white saviour and now we're going to be doing this and kind of come on the journey with us. I think people felt like that was a bit too far and there was discomfort in taking that approach. I think it all starts with the discomfort and that's so important that you recognized and you couldn't name it at the time necessarily, but you just knew something was wrong, something was off, something didn't feel right. I think that's such an important place for people to start. Another great quote around privilege is from Brené Brown, who's one of my favourite speakers and authors, but she says, and I'm not quoting her directly, but she says the definition of privilege is being able to avoid tough conversations because your life doesn't depend on it and that doing nothing to address inequality is actually supporting inequality. I think it's just so brave and important that everyone that's working on the shift, the power movement, you mentioned the organization, No White Saviors, charity so white, a lot of my listeners might be familiar with, and you mentioned two podcasts, Disrupt Development and Rethinking Development. Tell me more about the shift, the power movement, how can we get involved? The shift, the power movement started, I think, kind of informally, like 2016-ish. It was a hashtag initially, so it started as a hashtag and then it became a bit more of a formal movement and it's now kind of organised by a group of people and there is kind of, I can't remember what they refer to it as, but there's like some things that you should be doing, you know, these are some sort of principles if you like, that if you're working to shift the power within your kind of organizations, that these are some things that you should be looking to do. And so anyone can Google shift the power and you'll find, I think it's just shiftthepower.org, I'll have a look afterwards and make sure you've got the right link for anyone who's listening. But it's an official movement, I guess, that you can join in on and start to be a part of these conversations in how do we start to do this, like how do we publicly commit to doing this? I have to say, I got into the shift, the power stuff and started to try and be involved in some of these conversations and start to be kind of feeling like I was part of this movement. And I think it's really important that there is kind of some convening of this sort of thing. But I also think that we can get to sort of caught up in being a part of the movement and what exactly it should look like. And I felt it first, I'm not in the right rooms, having the right discussions, you know, I'm not in, I'm not sort of doing this with the right people or not doing it the right way. But when I started to go to these meetings about, you know, how do we localize power? How do we do this? And there was, you know, various academics and various kind of people from organizations. I just sort of became a bit disillusioned, not with the shift, the power movement, but just with the whole approach to this. And as you alluded to before, it's not like this is a new conversation. This has been happening, you know, we've been talking about this in the sector for a long time. And I started to go to these, you know, discussion groups and sessions about localizing. And I was like, we're just talking again. We're just talking, we're not acting. And also, you know, the vast majority of the people in these rooms are white people working in global North, international NGOs. And again, I'm sort of coming out of them thinking. So we've just had another conversation there about in theory how to do some of this stuff. But it was just a group of us as white people then having that conversation and so I kind of became a bit cynical, I guess, about those kind of bigger, more convened movements. And then just instead went internally within my organization, started speaking to colleagues, both in the UK and Kenya, about how we would do it and what it looked like for us. And then we just did it. And you just did it. And it's in, you know, like you say in the blog, you know, you say, I'm not saying we've done this perfectly. We're still learning every day. But the point is you did some things. Can you tell me about some of the things that you did? Yeah, definitely. So when I left, kind of this, what was written into the strategy was basically two themes of like power shifting. One was shifting the power at kind of thinking and decision-making level. So the goal was, I mean, for the first time ever, there's 20 year old organization, for the first time ever, just before I left our partner organization in Kenya, separate registered NGO had their own strategic plan and theory of change for the first time ever in that 20 year partnership. And so that kind of autonomy of decision-making and autonomy of what do we want to do as an organization? That was a big focus of the shift was enabling decision-making and program implementation and management and kind of room for innovation, management of budgets and all of that. We wanted all of that to be on our partner side where historically, there'd probably been a bit too heavy handed management from the UK kind of saying, this is what we want you to monitor. These are the programs that we would like you to implement. We tried to shift that so that the leadership of decision-making was coming from the Kenya partner. And of course, we were aligned in what we were doing, but it wasn't kind of a donor and recipient relationship. It was like, we were being led by what our partners were telling us they wanted. So that was part of the shift was decision-making, thinking, planning. And then the other big part of the shift, which we realize is much more like a long game, I think, is the money. How do we shift the money from us as the UK organization to our Kenyan NGO directly? And the way that obviously it works, kind of for most organizations with an implementation partner in another country, is that we in the UK do fund raising. The money typically comes into our bank account for the UK charity and we then distribute it to our partner NGO. And I've had some horrifying conversations with funders as to why that is. We need to know where the money's going. We need to know that it's not going to be spent on dodgy stuff. And I sort of think, just be aware of what you're saying here. What gives you any kind of what gives you the feeling that we are any more trustworthy as an organization than a Kenyan NGO? And I think we all know the answer to that. And so the power of the money, I think, was the thing that we also wrote into the strategy, but that we felt was a much more long-term goal. So we did move our program-related reserves to the Kenyan bank account. So we sort of agreed that doesn't make sense for us as the UK organization to hold any of the financial reserves that relate to the program, because it's going to be the partner organization who is delivering the program. So they should have the financial reserves relating to that work. Made budgets more flexible in so much as the partner organizations had more decision-making power about how money was spent within budgets. So they weren't having to sort of come to ask for approval for spending on certain things. Like we made sure that that was kind of decision-making powers held with partners. And then we had kind of, I suppose, unrestricted pots of funding to be spent on things that, well, whatever they wanted, basically, that they didn't have to kind of check in with- I love that. They didn't have to jump through 10 million hoops. Yeah, exactly. And I think we kind of recognized that as much as we could try and do this internally, there was also a major piece of work externally with funders and the sort of donating public to do a bit of educating around why can't you give this grant directly to our implementation partner. And if there are some barriers to that in terms of due diligence or international bank transfer fees or whatever it might be, let's just think about what those barriers really are and whether actually we can quite easily remove those. And so we did start to have conversations with funders who said, yes, we're happy to give this grant directly to your implementation partner, because we were really an intermediary. We were doing nothing other than applying for the funding. It was then going to be our partner organization who implemented the work, who monitored the work, who reported back on the work. And so we tried to encourage donors and funders to give it directly to them. The final thing was to start supporting our Kenyan colleagues to then be able to start asking for the funding as well, to remove us from that equation so that they don't have to rely on a Western partner organization to fund raise. Now, these are all incredible suggestions. I do love the theme of, let's stop talking, let's start doing. And then you learn along the way what works and what doesn't work. And I know that you founded a Facebook group, the Small International Development Charities Network. Is this the kind of conversation you're having in this group? Who should be joining this Facebook group and what will they learn? And I will link to it everyone. I will link to it in the show notes. So yeah, I started that in about the same sort of time that I started Fair Development in 2016, because I was basically a sole member of staff in a small charity, a small international development charity. I'd gone on this master's course, all of my peers on that course, or most of them at least, were from Amnesty Oxfam Action Aid. And I was kind of looking around the room for some peers that really felt like my peers in the small charity sector. And I just felt like I couldn't really see any. And I was thinking, where are these people? And I'd started to meet a few people at training events that were for small charities, not specifically for small international charities, but you'd go on a training event where it was fundraising strategy for small charities. And there'd be me and maybe one other person who was from an international charity and you'd sort of clock eyes across the room when you mentioned the work that you did. And so I started meeting people and just felt like we needed to have a way to be connected and stay connected. So I started this Facebook group and invited those people that had met and it sort of just gradually grown since then. So I've got sort of over 2,000 members now. And really it's a place to come to kind of meet other people who understand the context that you're working in, to share resources. There's a shared resource drive linked to a Google drive where people are very generous in putting in templates and policy examples and example funding applications and so on. And it's about, I suppose, like friendship and collaboration and learning. And we talk about good stuff that happens. And we talk about the bad stuff that happens in the frustrations that we have. And we do have conversations about this sort of thing about, you know, what should our place be as international development organizations? I mean, I'm not in one anymore, I suppose, but I still kind of convene this group. And we are having these conversations. And when I wrote that blog and I posted it in that group of so many people respond, I was nervous because I thought, yes, this may seem to be. It gets set it off. Is this implying that I think all these people are terrible people because they're still working in the international development sector? And I've had conversations with quite a few people who'd kind of alluded to feeling this way. And I thought I bet loads of people are feeling this way. And yeah, I posted it in the group and loads of people responded to say, this resonates for me too. And you know, I'm on this journey. And so yeah, it's in terms of who should join, you know, if you're involved in a small development charity in some way, and you want to connect with peers, and you want to share learning, and you want to share kind of the highs and the lows, and also, you want to kind of have maybe start this conversation or continue this conversation of the shift of power work, then it's definitely a safe space to do that. And it really is a very safe and like supportive community. It is probably mostly UK charities, I guess, but we do have like great representation there from our partner organizations who contribute to conversations as well. Okay, the Small International Development Charity Network. Yes, it's not the most catchy name. I didn't really anticipate... It's S-I-D-C-N. Yes, I didn't really anticipate it would turn into anything significant when I set it up, but maybe it's Jew and Rebrand at some point. It's amazing what happens when you connect people, and when you connect people so specifically. So it's not just a group for all nonprofits, it's a very specific people that have really identified challenges and struggles and wins, and they want to network with each other, but they want to learn. I think that's really the power of a good Facebook group. So I encourage people to check that out. Where can people find you? Tell me all about where they can get in touch with you, your organization, and where do you spend your time online where people can follow along. Well, I think I've accidentally created a personal brand of being like angry charity lady on Twitter. So I often say that to people is... That's kind of accidentally happened, but I am quite active on Twitter, and my... Yeah, my at on there is just my name, so Vic Hancock fell. I use LinkedIn as well, but I found that being vocal about things that dis-satisfy me in our sector has led to a lot of great connections with other people who feel equally dissatisfied and want to kind of make things better, and happily it has led to being able to now do this work through fair development. People seem to like that as an approach, so I am going to just try to continue to be authentic and brave and keep kind of saying when I don't like the look of something. But yeah, on Twitter, on LinkedIn, the Facebook group, I'm still active in that, and I still kind of admin and moderate that. So if people want to join that Facebook group, you can also find me there. Fantastic. What's next for you? Oh, I don't know. I think I'm really... Since I decided to sort of exit development work in any kind of in-house role, I'm doing consultancy still with international development charities, but I'm really getting interested in my local civil society kind of sector around me and Sheffield, and I always felt really drawn to international development as a sector, and now that I don't feel that quite as much, I am starting to look around me a bit more at home and where I live around Sheffield and just thinking like, how can I be involved in what's happening around here? And I'm still really passionate about having a equitable world, and I'm still really passionate about the problems that exist, and the reason why sort of global development work is a sector. So I'm kind of working out, I suppose, for myself, how can I still be involved in that in a way that feels like it's kind of the powers in the right place? And so I guess for me, that might look like sort of making donations directly to local organizations or providing pro bono consultancy support or connecting people with other people who can help them in their region. I'm trying to build up a wider network of local consultants, so Fed development is still predominantly white consultants based in the UK, and we do have a growing group of local consultants doing things like impact evaluation work, and so I really want to develop that further so that when a charity comes and they say we want to do an impact assessment and it's in Uganda that I can connect them with a Ugandan consultant who's working in impact assessment. So yeah, I think that's kind of what's next is just working out how I can continue to contribute to global solidarity without taking up too much power in that space, and also just like learning more about my local sort of city in the sector in the UK and around Sheffield in particular. But to be honest with all of this, I've never really had any kind of great plan, I've just been kind of following it around and it's working so far and so my plan I guess is to continue following it and just see where it goes. Well, we'll have to have you on again and get an update. Thanks so much. Thanks for being on the podcast. Thanks for being a voice in the sector and just thanks for raising these issues and having these important conversations. So thanks a lot, Vic. Well, hey there. I wanted to say thank you for tuning into my show and for listening all the way to the end. If you really enjoyed today's conversation, make sure to subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast app and you'll get new episodes downloaded as soon as they come out. I would love if you left me a rating or a review because this tells other people that my podcast is worth listening to and then me and my guests can reach even more earbuds and create even more impact. So that's pretty much it. I'll be back soon with a brand new episode, but until then, you can find me on Instagram at Julia Campbell77. Keep changing the world, you non-profit unicorn. you . .