GV in December: see you in 2025

Dec 13

I hope this newsletter finds you fed, hydrated, and rested, and that you have some things to look forward to!

I'm listening to: Jamila Woods' Water Made Us. It's a love letter to love - romantic love, friendship love, self love, community love ... it's holding me in a way that feels warm, silly, and whole. Her album before this one, LEGACY! LEGACY! is also so. good. It's in part an homage to many Black Artists and leaders, including poet Nikki Giovanni (RIP - Track 3 on the album).

I'm reading: Ace: What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen. This feels helpful as I continue to unpack my ideas and socialization around gender, sexuality, and bodies ... especially my own!

I’m still working my way through the Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, which outlines Project 2025. I'm also starting to get a better lay of the land through Project Esther—another political strategy from the Heritage Foundation that outlines a plan to dismantle civil society organizations through accusations of antisemitism. (already in process via HR 9495, I learned about this through Diaspora Alliance, an organization that works to strengthen the values of multiracial, pluralistic democracy by confronting antisemitism and its instrumentalization.)

UPDATES & LEARNING

RISK & AVOIDING "OBEYING IN ADVANCE"

Some funders are doing the opposite of what many of us think is the correct* response: some are closing up shop, some are freezing their funds, and some organizations are changing their language to be less "woke." This certainly isn't all funders, but it's enough that many movement organizations are scrambling for resources and strategy shifts more than they were before.

This is a distressing trend—AND many folks are doing great work to protect civil society and to encourage funders to get louder, not quieter, in their support of grantees that may be threatened by the incoming administration. Just a couple of these folks are:

Solidaire Network nurtures relationships between social movements and donor members to create regenerative systems rooted in love and justice. One of their funds, the Janisha R. Gabriel Movement Protection Fund (MPF), is especially relevant to this conversation. From their website: "MPF moves resources rapidly and securely to protect frontline organizers facing immediate security threats, while investing in longer-term safety infrastructure. MPF protects frontline movement organizers from state repression, vigilante violence, digital attacks and institutional backlash as a result of their organizing work."
RISE Together Fund is a fund initiative from Proteus Fund that "works alongside impacted communities to advance their civil rights, fight for full inclusion, and promote their contributions to democracy, culture, and society.

I'm curious about how other folks in philanthropy are thinking about risk and their resources. If we focus on philanthropy's survival more than we focus on civil society as a whole, where will that get us? I don't have a ton of answers, and I'm interested to see what the next six months feel like as we start to understand what's "real" about these political strategies we're reading about. Who else have y'all seen mobilizing—rather than restricting—their resources (not just money, but platforms, power, networks)?

*like any of us know what the ultimate, correct responses are ... I certainly don't! I'm not arguing for a one-size-fits all solution, and I've never held serious fiduciary duties at a foundation, so it's easy for me to say things like "HEY MOBILIZE YOUR RESOURCES. THIS IS A RAINY DAY, AND DOES YOUR ENDOWMENT REALLY NEED TO EXIST IN PERPETUITY?!" but today is not the day for this conversation. What I'm saying is: I'm not an expert, but I do have opinions.

PROCESSING & TAKING ACTION IN COMMUNITY

I'm so grateful for community and friendship. So many people in this wacky field of work are compassionate, brilliant, and fun.

Next week I've got the opportunity sit with some of these compassionate and brilliant folks to untangle some of the themes I and others are pulling out of the Heritage Foundation's strategies through an event here in NYC on Monday, December 16. MERLTech's December Technology Salon is an off-the-record discussion exploring How Will Big Tech Influence the 2025 Administration? I think the event is already at capacity, but if you'd like to get on the waitlist, you can RSVP via MERLTech's website.

The last Technology Salon was so generative and (surprisingly) hopeful. Linda Raftree, MERLTech's founder and all-around lovely human being, wrote this summary of the group's discussion of the question, "Can we safely use AI to conduct research on Gender Based Violence (GBV) and Violence against Children (VAC)?"

I'm grateful for forward motion that isn't driven by urgency or perfection, but by connection, curiosity, and practicality.

SEE YOU IN 2025?

I'm getting ready to go into reflection and planning mode, and I'm feeling mostly excited about next year! I'm building out my conference calendar and here's what's in my plan:

NTEN's Nonprofit Technology Conference (April)
Good Tech Fest (April/May)
Exponent Philanthropy Annual Conference (November)
What else? What events + convenings do y'all find most valuable?

I've also got some capacity for consulting, coaching, facilitation, and speaking - if you'd like to explore working together in 2025, let's chat!

HEALTH UPDATE FOLLOW-UP

In my last newsletter I shared some health news, and I've felt so supported and seen by so many folks! It's wild how many other folks with uteruses also have PCOS and/or PMDD. I'm happy to report that I'm feeling—for the most part—good, which is itself a wild thing to process.

Always happy to talk to other folks who experience this stuff, and to compare notes - knowing that all of our bodies are different and have different needs. (That said, supplementing Inositol has been a game-changer for me! Wow!)

QUESTION

How are you thinking about your resources in this moment, whether you're a funder or not? Are you in scarcity/bring up the drawbridge mode? Are you in give-money-to-your-neighbors-for-groceries mode? Somewhere in between? Reply here, send me a DM, or reach out to genevieve@gv-advisory.com

ABOUT GV

Guided by collaboration, humanity, and joy, GV Advisory helps social impact organizations embrace data and cultivate a learning culture. This work enables organizations to evolve into entities that operate based on evidence and relationship to community.

Genevieve Smith

Genevieve Smith (they/she) is the Founder of GV Advisory, where they work as a Consultant and Strategic Advisor to social impact organizations looking to get in right relationship with data and organizational learning. Genevieve is known for bringing empathy, joy, and humanity to work that can not only feel lifeless and robotic, but has real potential to cause harm to communities and social justice movements.

In early 2019, after five years of working inside of organizations in the social sector, Genevieve founded GV Advisory to work across issue areas to support practitioners to not only design for their data and learning more effectively, but to do so in ways that align with organizational values, missions, and principles of equity & justice. Since then, Genevieve has supported organizations across focus areas (immigration justice, education reform, reproductive justice, health equity, international development, and trust-based philanthropy) to develop community-centric and values-aligned data and learning practices.

The ever-growing lineage of Genevieve's work includes Black feminist thought (bell hooks, the Combahee River Collective, adrienne maree brown (especially Emergent Strategy & Holding Change)), Crass (the band), time spent playing music on sidewalks and makeshift stages across the United States, histories of the archive(s) (Michel-Rolph Trulliot, Lorgia Garcia Peña), and colleagues who have become dear friends and co-conspirators.

Genevieve's favorite description of what can happen when we commit to this work together comes from a past client: "we wrote a love letter to the work and to the communities that sustain it." Genevieve loves how enlightening this work can be - we can gain clarity together while we build new ways to think, dream, and work.

When they're not working, you can find Genevieve playing music and laughing with their friends, loving on their people, bicycling around NYC, and cuddling with their cat, dog, and husband.

Genevieve wants to live in a world where we're all free - where no-one needs to rely on nonprofits and philanthropy to get what they need. But they do - so let's get to work.

https://gv-advisory.com