Decolonizing Fundraising at Home and Abroad
Chapter Leadership Brief 7.25.25
by Amethyst A. Rodriguez
Institutional Giving Officer, Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts
“Charity is writing a check for a cause you care about. Justice asks more of us. It means investing your money, time, knowledge, and relationships to challenge — and change — the very systems that make charity necessary.”
I wrote those words while working on my Ph.D. dissertation, which examines how leaders of color in philanthropy push — or struggle to push — the sector toward justice. As a person who has experience on both sides of the table, as a fundraiser and a fund giver, and now a researcher, I see clearly how storytelling in fundraising doesn’t just describe the world. It shapes it.
Fundraising is never neutral. It can either uphold systems of inequity or help reimagine them. Yet too often, nonprofit campaigns rely on stories that comfort donors while flattening the experiences of the communities they claim to serve. These stories reduce people to victims and cast donors as heroes. They strip away complexity, erase context, and preserve power imbalances. They don’t just reflect bias—they reproduce it. Roseanne Mirabella (2024) argues that fundraising often operates within colonial logics that prioritize donor satisfaction over community agency. Fundraisers face real pressure to meet revenue goals, but that pressure can drown out their power to shape narratives that inspire donors to see the world differently and invest in justice, not charity.
In their recent chapter “Decolonizing Fundraising Narratives in International Nongovernmental Organizations,” scholars Abhishek Bhati and Angela Eikenberry argue that many NGOs still use colonial-era tropes. They show how campaigns lean on images of poor children and women of color to trigger pity, while keeping donors — often white and Western — in a role of rescuer. These narratives resemble 19th-century colonial propaganda more than justice-oriented storytelling.
But these patterns don’t stop at international borders. They show up here at home — in the U.S. — in local food bank appeals, education initiatives, criminal justice reform work, and community arts programming. I know because I’ve worked across these areas. I’ve seen how easily our sector defaults to stories that sell suffering rather than build solidarity.
From Congo (DRC) to Central Florida and Beyond…
I began my career far from the philanthropic institutions where I now work. At 18, I moved to East Africa with a one-way ticket, a camera, and a deep desire to serve. I eventually settled in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, where I spent more than a decade co-leading a grassroots nonprofit focused on education, child protection, and community-led development.
We built schools, organized trauma recovery groups, started small businesses, and invested in local leadership. But I quickly realized our biggest challenge wasn’t infrastructure, war or poverty. It was perception. International partners pressured us to frame our work through a deficit. Funders wanted transformation stories but rarely asked about history, power, or systems. We spent too much time translating the community’s truth into language that donors would accept.
That experience shaped me. It taught me to question the role of fundraising not just as a financial strategy, but as a narrative practice. It taught me to ask: Who controls the story? Whose voice do we center? What do we erase to make a story “donor-friendly”?
When I returned to the U.S., I brought those questions with me. I now serve as institutional giving officer for the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts in Orlando. I lead institutional fundraising efforts for our arts education, community engagement, and wellness programs.
I also lead proposals for initiatives like our veterans’ wellness program, which includes drum circles, improv comedy, choir, and spoken word — all grounded in arts-based healing. I approached this project with the same principle I learned in Congo: tell the whole story. We frame veterans not as broken or dependent, but as resilient leaders stepping into healing and creative expression. That narrative honors dignity and inspires donors.
Fundraising Is Not Neutral
Many fundraisers still believe that emotional stories drive giving, and they do. But emotional storytelling doesn’t need to dehumanize. We don’t need to rely on images of starving children or single mothers crying to motivate generosity. When we do that, we train donors to expect pity and performance instead of justice and partnership.
Studies back this up. Bhati’s research (2020) found that people with higher implicit skin-tone bias gave smaller donations — even after controlling for income, education, religion and political identity. Stereotypical images didn’t inspire greater generosity. They reinforced racial bias and stunted long-term investment.
When I lead a fundraising strategy, I don’t start with problems. I start with people — their brilliance, their history, and their vision. I position funders not as saviors, but as partners walking alongside. This shift matters. It changes how donors relate to the work. It moves them from transaction to transformation. It stops asking for charity and starts asking for solidarity.
From Charity-Based to Rights-Based
Bhati and Eikenberry challenge fundraisers to move from a charity-based to a right-based model. In the charity model, fundraisers highlight need, evoke pity, and reinforce dependency. In the rights-based model we highlight equity, evoke dignity and invest in collective power [1] [2]
Rights-based fundraising does more than tell a better story. It disrupts harmful narratives and educates donors about systemic injustice. It focuses on root causes, not symptoms. It invites donors into a relationship, not saviorhood.
I carry this approach into my doctoral research at Binghamton University, where I study how leaders of color navigate power inside foundations. My work interrogates how people like me — a Puerto Rican woman raised in a working-class home — can shift philanthropic culture not just by leading, but by telling the truth.
We don’t decolonize philanthropy with buzzwords. We do it by shifting power, redistributing resources, and changing who gets to narrate the work.
What Fundraisers Can Do Now
You don’t need a Ph.D. to start decolonizing your fundraising. You just need courage and clarity. Here are five steps I recommend:
- Audit your materials. Count how many times you show people of color in passive roles. How many images lack context? Which stories position donors as heroes?
- Co-create stories. Don’t just ask for a quote or a photo. Build long-term relationships. Let people tell their stories in their own voice. Pay them for their time and emotional labor.
- Focus on systems. Move beyond “we gave her a scholarship” or “he escaped violence.” Ask why the school lacked resources in the first place. Point to policy. Frame your work within a broader ecosystem.
- Diversify your team. Build fundraising departments that reflect the communities you serve. Invest in black, brown, and indigenous fundraisers. Make sure they don’t just execute appeals — let them shape them.
- Practice narrative humility. You don’t speak for the voiceless. People have voices. Your job is to listen, amplify, and step aside when needed.
Decolonizing fundraising means embracing discomfort. It means risking some donor pushback in order to tell the truth. It means remembering that every image, every paragraph, and every pitch teaches donors how to see the world — and who matters within it.
Decolonizing fundraising means embracing discomfort. It means risking some donor pushback in order to tell the truth. It means remembering that every image, every paragraph, and every pitch teaches donors how to see the world — and who matters within it.
The Power of Fundraisers
Fundraisers hold immense power. We decide how stories travel. We decide who appears worthy of investment. We stand at the intersection of money and meaning.
Let’s use that power with intention. Let’s tell stories that don’t just raise funds — let’s tell stories that build a more just, truthful, and liberated world.
Amethyst A. Rodriguez serves as institutional giving officer for the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts and is a Ph.D. candidate in Community Research and Action at Binghamton University. She has raised more than $10 million for nonprofits across the globe and lives in New York with her husband and son.
References:
Bhati, A. (2020). Does implicit color bias reduce giving? Learnings from fundraising survey using Implicit Association Test (IAT). VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 32(2), 340–350. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-020-00277-8
Mirabella, Roseanne M. "Decolonizing Fundraising." In The Handbook of Critical Philanthropy, Volume 2, edited by Toby Ford and Paloma Raggo, 2024, pp. 229–246