Advertise on podcast: The Ethical Rainmaker

Cancel culture. Disbanded groups. Severed ties. Intent vs Impact. Most of us are shit at dealing with problematic behavior - our own or others! Whether in our nonprofits, our neighborhood groups, activist communities or families - our unresolved conflicts cause damage, chaos and separation - in times where we need unity, repair and one-ness to best serve our communities. Enter Kevin Baker whose mission is to make sure people can bring their authentic cultural selves to the workplace, creating healthier, more open workspaces that better serve humans. Kevin and I talk about how most of us really need therapy, what it means to take a relationship-first approach to workplace conflict, and why we need to ditch our desire for quick fixes and allow ample time for repair work. Follow the Ethical Rainmaker on Instagram, Twitter, listen wherever podcasts are found, and consider supporting the Ethical Rainmaker through Patreon!

Medical violence. Stigmatization. Criminalization. These are just a portion of the harms we, as nonprofits, cause the people we are supposed to serve. That’s why Soma Snakeoil and Stacey Dee created The Sidewalk Project, an organization that advocates for the dignity and rights of people living on the streets. Everyone deserves to be treated with respect, have their needs met, and receive medical care, but our unhoused neighbors are often denied even the most basic compassion and dignity. Learn about some of the s****y practices we perpetuate and how we can instead empower communities that have been systematically harmed and erased. Follow the Ethical Rainmaker on Instagram, Twitter, listen wherever podcasts are found, and consider supporting the Ethical Rainmaker through Patreon!

Are you slowly killing yourself or your joy through over-working? Toxic productivity may be a buzz phrase currently, but it’s also becoming the norm — and it can ruin your life! In this episode, Marina Martinez-Bateman and I talk about Work with a capital W — whether it’s laboring for labor unions, the carrots of accolades, work culture, and the bedtime story moment that changed everything for Marina.

Honesty. We crave it and we don’t get enough of it! In this episode, award winning poet, hip hop artist and teacher Matthew Cuban Hernandez of Street Poets Inc. (LA) talks with Michelle about honesty in our interpersonal relationships and in our organizations, rites of passage, structural racism and ageism in working with young people and…giving work away!

International comedienne, performance artist, actress and elected official Kristina Wong, talks about the subversive game, the performance of her lifetime (elected office) and her journey as an accidental sweatshop overlord through her latest mutual aid project and book The Auntie Sewing Squad. Based in LA, California learn about the connection between art, organizing and radical politics.

When community-centric fundraising launched their content hub and 10 principles, thousands of organizations and people took note - and many took action. Lea Whitehurst-Gibson and Bekah Kendrick of Virginia Community Voice talk about how they built and delivered their Courageous Fundraising Principles and how they center community in their work based in Richmond, Virginia, the former capital of the Confederacy. Learn about strategy and tactics in this story!

TV celeb and James Beard Award-winning chef, Tomme Beevas talks about how the lynching of George Floyd - less than two miles from his restaurant, played out in the creation of Pimento Relief Services, a truly community-centered organization in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Learn about liberation in action through this inspiring story!

How can love be a metric and what does it look like to measure that instead of fundraising goals? The Oregon food bank surprised many folks in the nonprofit community when they revealed a new concept, measuring love instead of fundraising. In this episode, Nathan Harris and Vivien Trinh of the Oregon Food Bank, describe the thinking and process around how they changed the practices of the Oregon Food Bank to center love!

Phillip Chavira talks about why Capitalism is trash, how money is a tool for and against the movement and where we have power to make decisions that center our communities and our values.

Controversial. Polarizing. Divisive. Liz LeClair has gained a reputation for her famous call outs of both sexual assault and racism within the nonprofit world. In S3:E1, Michelle interviews this writer, fundraiser and badass who talks about calling out white fundraisers for their racism, taking responsibility for being part of the problem, and her experience speaking out about sexual harassment in the fundraising space, including cofounding the National Day of Conversation in Canada. “Every generation you either change and evolve or you become irrelevant.” You are going to love this episode.

By popular demand, Christina Shimizu is back as a guest for Part 2 of The Racist Roots of Nonprofits & Philanthropy, LIVE at the Washington Nonprofits conference! “How on Earth can we solve the issues our communities face if we can't first acknowledge that there is a problem?” On this, the last episode of Season 2, Michelle and Christina go deeper with the recent history of how some of our ethos in philanthropy came to be, why philanthropy is built on deep injustices and a little about community centric fundraising. Remember...if we don’t examine how these things came to be, we can never hope to reimagine them, improve them or do better, to benefit the communities we are trying to serve.

In this episode, Michelle speaks with Kishshana Palmer, the Let’s Take This Offline podcast, The Rooted Collaborative and Kishshana + Co about living well to lead well, performative alllyship, authenticity, financial fortitude and her new podcast! Please join us for this rich conversation!