Us and Them: What it Really Means to Belong

The lecture that started it all.


The Converstaion Amplified

  • “Us and Them: What It Really Means to Belong” ∼ No Place for Racism in Fundraising Reshare

    “If knowledge is power then understanding is liberation.” Manulani Aluli Meyer Artists—especially writers and activists—have long before productively recognized the need to carve out spaces to give voice to injustices and to offer alternative paradigms for being. Yet, the voices of racially oppressed people are often unheard, as they struggle to get published, rendering their…

  • “Us and Them: What It Really Means to Belong” Reshare

    I first came across Nneka Allen, CFRE, COC, PCC‘s name when I picked up a copy of Collecting Courage. Reading the first-person narratives shared by accomplished Black fundraisers and equity, racial, and social justice advocates, and viscerally feeling their joy, pain, freedom, and love in their words helped provide me visibility into the systemic oppression inherent…

  • “Us Them: What it Really Means to Belong” Reshare

    If we want to see change we need to be part of the change – even when it’s hard to do. I have met some pretty amazing people throughout my career that have left lasting impressions on me, but no one quite like my dear friend Nneka Allen, CFRE, COC, PCC Nneka and I met while…

  • “Us and Them: What It Really Means to Belong” – Reshare

    The pull of ‘whiteness’ is real. Being brown in rooms full of white folks and not showing up the way you want or need to out of self-preservation or fear. Feeling like you’re at an ongoing disadvantage and have to make up for it by giving up a piece of yourself. The sense that any…

  • “Us and Them: What It Really Means to Belong” – Reshare

    “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you” – Maya Angelou In Us and Them: What It Really Means to Belong, Nneka Allen, CFRE, COC, PCC shares her truth about an experience of anti-Black racism in the charitable sector. Nneka, your brave words and testimony, your fearless activism and love for…

  • “Us and Them: What it Really Means to Belong” Reshare

    In reading Us and Them: What it Really Means to Belong, a story shared by my sister-friend Nneka Allen, CFRE, COC, PCC about confronting Anti-Black Racism in the charitable sector, the following verse from my contribution to Collecting Courage seems apply to the situation she encountered: ‘tis Pain & HurtBreak A reckoning well overdue…now’s the time for heeding advice.Truth…