When your organization’s fundraising tactics undermine your mission – as dehumanizing your own people does – your fundraiser efforts can only be judged a failure. No matter how much money you raise.
Creativity & Leadership
My Speech to the Graduates, or What I Wish I’d Known As a 5 Year-Old Crip
Ingrid Tischer on the day of her kindergarten graduation in Greece, New York, circa 1970. She is wearing a rainbow vest and skirt sewn by her mom. Note the clutching of the diploma and school-bestowed book-bag, and anxious expression — all indicate a future in literary fiction writing and nonprofit fundraising.
If the grand success of the 20th century was the rise of disability as an accepted political identity, we intend for the 21st century to be the time when disability is recognized as the constant but hidden variable in nearly all formulas for global human rights.
Including disability as a given factor in most people’s lives is essential to successfully advancing the human rights of people in minority communities; survivors of violence in the home, the school, and the street, and/or conflict zones, and as veterans; immigrant and refugees held in detention, incarcerated people, people coerced into institutionalization; people who live with chronic and catastrophic illness; neuro-diverse people; people who are young and old; male, female, and everywhere on the gender spectrum.
While disability has been understood as “different and divided” I believe it can come to be seen as “unique and united.”
As you sit sweating under an increasingly sweltering sun this day, feeling the inevitable effects of a wasteful attitude toward natural resources, you may not be thinking of another type of catastrophic loss caused by another type of massive denial. I speak of almost no one’s favorite topic: Disability.
How denying disability’s central role in just about every human life relegates significant chunks of our lives — and worse still, people-sized chunks — to the rubbish heap. It may be that “disabled” doesn’t feel like a word that fits who you are. Fine. Have you ever felt vulnerable? Think of “vulnerable” as a gateway word to a chronic case of disability-speak.
Working While Disabled: All About M.O.I. Versus the T.E.A.M. Access Approach
Dear Respironics Bi-Pap S/T,
I’m feeling like such a loser because I can’t get hired for even one job and all I’m suddenly hearing about is this big push for disabled people to get employed. And then there are disabled people like this guy who act like it’s just my attitude that’s the problem.
Signed,
Feeling like an Uninspired, Unmotivated Kid with a Disability
Dear FUUKD,
First, take a deep (assisted) breath. Now let’s get your head right: Go watch the late (god, I hate writing that) Stella Young’s epic take-down of inspiration porn.
Sure, you’re going to hear that all landing a job, or whatever, really takes for a disabled person is to adopt the All About M.O.I. approach. That narrative certainly has the charm of simplicity, plus it comforts you by giving you all the control. Meaning: If you’re not yet working, for example, it’s just that you’re not trying hard enough to:
Motivate yourself
Overcomerate your disability
Inspirate all who meet you with your “What, me disabled?” attitude
But there’s a more accurate name for this narrative: Magical thinking.
“As a Respironics Bi-Pap S/T, I support you venting because you have to manage your pressures and everyone’s settings are different. Venting, moreover, leads to bitching and bitching can lead to some very interesting shifts in what you think personal responsibility can accomplish versus what takes political action.”
Letters to a Young Fundraiser: #GivingTuesday Ennui
My Dear Friend,
Thank you for your letter. Your deep and loving trust in my counsel truly makes it possible for me to do the work that I do. I can do no more than thank you. I cannot comment on the style of your year-end fundraising campaign; I cannot take on the role of critic. This is best left to your board, your director, your program staff, Facebook posters, Twitter trolls, and, of course, the otherwise kindly fellow who, upon receipt of your latest missive, alerts you to the missing serial comma in the final paragraph. It is almost always so among our kind and I will speak no more of it. You have made the inexpressible expressed in your ask and to the inexhaustible yearning — How much must I give? — you have said, Any amount that is meaningful to you. And you put this in the PS, as well. You can do no more.
But to continue, year after year, as I have, when the phrases once fresh to a yearling fundraiser, ring as predictably as the morning alarm. Having said these things at the outset, I now dare tell you only this: It’s only going to get worse for you. You wrote to me because you feel the heavy, herding step of #GivingTuesday. You feel an unintended consequence of so much caring that has been calendared months in advance, when each of our individual concerns, housed in the apparatus of our organizations, presented through The Individual Story, a chorus line of concern where your own shapely leg kicks out, but that draws attention more to its whole than some of its parts.
The only cure for this ennui is authenticity and this, my dear, dear friend is difficult to define. You must at times wait for The Angel to speak to you. Go inside. When you know why you must fundraise — it is who you are, it’s October and your year-end numbers are going to tank if you don’t get it in gear — you find your cause and write. And rewrite and show it early in the process to someone who will have to approve it anyway, and start over and then when you need for it to be done, you’ll redo it for the digital version. And #GivingTuesday.
With my sincerest devotion and respect,
IT
PS If you have an inexhaustible yearning to give, this is a very shapely organization that kicks a lot of ass.
From Recipes for Inclusive Education, Chapter 6, “Braises and Roasts”
Far from protesting, many an Infirm Child’s eyes shine with an Inner Light at mention of this most noble purpose their otherwise wasted bodies can serve. There are Disabled Children not as wholly selfish as their Disabled brethren who would demand survival, even education and employment, at the expense of their Normal brothers. But good it is to look upon the Infirm Child going cheerfully to the cook-pot to feed the strength of the Normal Child whose rude health is testament to his good character and his Creator’s Pleasure in him.
UPDATE: (Salem Village, Massachussetts Bay Colony, January 18, 1617,) Goody DeVos, beloved of GOD as evidenced by her billions, testifying before Congress about the importance of parents being able to choose their disabled children’s schools without mentioning either that: 1) some parents would choose such things as a ducking stool to see if their child’s disability is a “real” one; or 2) choosing that charter dame school the next colony over means they lose their due process rights if the charter school beats their kid for not being able to read his horn book or whatever. Photo courtefy of Salon.
Nature and her master THE LORD have blessed the Educator with ease in beginning any recipe for inclusion, ‘Step One of How to Cook a Disabled Child: Catch a disabled child.’ Truly, the Infirm Child’s emfeeblement makes him an ideal choice for the inexperienced Educator new to his twin masters Efficiency and Economy.
When you have your specimen, consider your various cooking options as well as how many Normal Children you have to feed. Is the Infirm Child plump and well-larded? If this be the case, wrap the lad’s loin with the finest bacon and roast in a hot oven, a dish fit to serve at term’s end to celebrate the holiday.
Tales From the Crip 