GV in July

Written By Genevieve Smith

happy middle-of-July! I hope you and your families and neighbors are staying cool and finding time to do things that nourish you. Here are some updates, learnings, and a question.

GV ON UNTAPPED PHILANTHROPY

I got to hang out with Kerrin and Tim on Untapped Philanthropy, and it was so fun! Check out the latest episode, What Does it Mean to Align Data with Community Values? We chat about:

  • rethinking how we collect and manage data in the social sector

  • slowing down in the face of manufactured urgency

  • navigating change by caring for each other and building conflict practices

…and a bunch of wacky stuff in between! I’d love to hear about what does or doesn’t resonate with you and your organizations.

LEARNING

July has been an introspective month so far. As an independent consultant, I tend to learn about the Work and the Business on different timelines. I feel so strong in the Work, and less strong in the Business (read: business development and lead generation, revisiting pricing structures at reasonable intervals, social media strategy, etc.)

Throughout my career, I’ve heard “I have no idea what you do for work, but I know that you’re excited about it” a lot. Words and phrases like ‘value proposition,’ ‘business development,’ and ‘brand identity’ have always made me feel itchy. My reaction is usually, “Surely everything else on my to-do list (as well as everything not on my to-do list) comes before those things.”

BUT, at the end of June, I got to spend some time with a dear friend and colleague workshopping and brainstorming about collaboration, our work in general, and what we want out of our careers. At one point, we named that what we do for a living is what we want to be doing for a living. How wild! How fortunate! And something clicked: the Business deserves the same attention and care that I give to the Work.

I found Melisa Liberman’s work (through a simple Google search, who knew it could be that easy) and worked through her book and toolkits - a sort of self-paced intensive - and came out of the other side with a working value proposition and so much more clarity about GV’s services (GV provides two core services, not eighteen and a half), why the way I deliver those services is valuable, and how to talk about the organizations and people with whom I work.

Woof! It only took five and a half years (for which, gladly, I’m not beating myself up) - and I’m excited to see how it evolves.

QUESTION

Whether you’re at an organization or independent, How do you balance a continuous self- and work-improvement practice (“I need to keep learning and growing and changing”) with allowing things to run as they are (“I won’t change this process or fidget with this messaging for X amount of time”)? How do you embrace “good enough”? …or, do you embrace “good enough”?

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
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