The category is...realness

As Covid-19 continues its march around the world, this week has felt a bit unreal. What’s not been unreal is some human beings’ desire to find some “others” to blame. Viruses don’t discriminate, but people sure do, and many of us are thinking about the parallels with HIV/AIDS. Let’s all do what we can to support each other through this.

There’s been much talk about remote working in recent days. As someone who works from home much of the time, social distancing is something I quite often do all day anyway. And having worked in international or dispersed organisations, I’m quite used to conducting meetings over the phone or by video conferencing. As a naturally sociable person I get much of my creativity from other people so the thing that I find difficult about remote working is the solitude. I counter that by putting regular coffees and catch ups with other people into my diary. If you’re feeling a bit isolated or worried or even just bored, I’m in the market for phone chats and distractions!

Weekly round up

I’m not much of a royalist but I have to confess to feeling sad seeing the pictures of Harry and Meghan’s last official engagements, chased out of this country by racist bullying and misogyny. But I couldn’t help smiling at these pictures of them looking so happy together. I’m sure they’ll be better off raising their family far away from the horrors of our tabloids.

I was invited back up to Dudley South for an International Women’s Day event. I talked about language that is usually associated with men (leader, politician, entrepreneur) and how important it is for women to claim our own versions of these words for ourselves. I still remember being told I’d been unsuccessful at a job interview because I wasn’t the “right” kind of leader they were looking for. I’ll leave you to guess what was the type of leader they were looking for.

I’ve been working a lot on inclusivity and culture change over recent months. These issues are the heart of many of the recent problems in the charity sector. I’ll be exploring this further (coronavirus, notwithstanding) at a session at the Institute of Fundraising Convention later in the year.

Imagine having enough money to reinvent a town!

The End Violence Against Women coalition published an excellent piece on how arguments for women’s equality can be exploited for racist purposes and we have to be vigilant. I learned a lot from reading it. “White feminists need to catch up on spotting this manipulation of feminist values, naming it and calling it out. There is no room for a narrow feminism which thinks it’s working on gender inequality alone” You can read the whole article by Sarah Green and Huda Jawad here.

I was really proud that, Fundraising Chat, the Facebook group for charity fundraisers that Lesley Pinder and I launched nearly five years ago reached its 12,000th member this week. We get such kind feedback about how useful people find it for sharing and discussing issues - from those starting their careers to old hands, from solo fundraisers to members of huge teams.

I almost forgot all about sharing this very kind feature about me from Charity Times. If you want to know more about the person behind this newsletter, then it’s (pretty much!) all there.

Learning points

The Metro has been running an excellent series of articles on racism on its web site. Well worth reading them all but I thought this one, Can White People Experience Racism? was particularly worth a read to understand the difference between racially motivated prejudice (which white people can experience and is obviously isn’t good) and racism (which is a system of oppression which we can’t experience).

What am I listening to?

This podcast from the New Economics Foundation is a good explanation of why GDP is such an inadequate measure for national success, and why we should consider measuring wellbeing instead.

What am I watching?

I’m enjoying the TV adaptation of Noughts and Crosses based on the YA novel series by Malorie Blackman. I used to be a bit snooty about YA when Harry Potter first emerged but I got over myself.

Against the general dystopian backdrop, Spring is still springing. My brilliant gardener friend, Charlotte Harris, wrote about wanting to see more women in gardening and here’s some Bellis Perennis from my garden THAT I GREW FROM SEED 🌞

Take care x