During the two months since my last blog entry a lot has happened: I got married in Minneapolis, I arranged for a sub-letter for our New York apartment, I moved into a new apartment across the Hudson, and I took a two-week honeymoon in Italy!

All this travel kept me from blogging, but it presented more than a month of daily opportunities to communicate with people outside of my usual comfort zone, none more outside it than Italians. They speak a language I’ve rarely heard in person, they don’t hide their passions, and they nap in the middle of the afternoon, even at work!

This experience reinforced some of my ideas about communication and gave them a new relevance: communicating across cultures requires more than just language. Here are three insights:

A picture (or a sculpture) is worth more than words

Nowhere in the world is there better artwork than in Italy. Most art on display in Rome or Florence, unfortunately, doesn’t have much in the way of descriptive text, whether you speak Italian or English. Then again, how much descriptive text do you need?

I didn’t need a guidebook to tell me Michelangelo’s Pieta in St. Peter’s Cathedral communicated a mother’s divine grief over her crucified son. Climbing the duomo of the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence told me (in a very physical way) how high and hard Renaissance artists and architects strived towards the spiritual.

Most communications, whether from philanthropies or nonprofits, don’t effectively use visuals, apart from how words appear on a printed page (this is true, even of my blog). But think of how much more effective philanthropies and nonprofits would be if they could find and use the right pictures to communicate messages across cultural lines. In fact, maybe we should use words only as a complement to pictures and graphics (and not the other way around).

Communicating emotions can be just as effective as using words

I wasn’t surprised to see how much Italians use their hands, arms, and facial expressions to emphasize what they’re saying. We all know this from Scorcese films and TV sit-coms. But emotion is an even bigger part of communicating with Italians (or anyone else) when you don’t speak the language.

People point at and mimic the things they’re talking about. They smile or they frown or they simply walk and gesture for you to follow. Without speaking a word, I could understand most, if not all, of what people wanted to say to me.

Everything you communicate, even if only through words, has an emotional component. So often, we’re trying to remove emotions from communications, as if we’re dispassionate observers. But, really, we need to embrace the emotions of what we’re saying. This is what grabs our audience and delivers the impact of what we want to say.

Limit assumptions about your audience; ask questions and anticipate

My wife and I stayed at a delightful bed and breakfast in a quiet local neighborhood in Florence on the borders of the Boboli Gardens. The little old lady who ran it hardly spoke a word of English. But communication wasn’t much of a problem (see 1 and 2 above). Assumptions were.

Because we’d paid online through Expedia, we never brought up the issue of the bill; we’d assumed she was like American hotel managers and knew how online reservations worked. But on the last day, when a taxi was arriving to take us to the train station, she came running out of the house pleading with us to pay.

We spent the last 20 minutes of our time in Florence showing her our receipt and struggling to preserve the camaraderie that we’d enjoyed all week. Had we been more unassuming, we would’ve anticipated her uncertainties (and her likely unfamiliarity) with online payments and mentioned the bill the afternoon before, when there was a guest present who spoke both Italian and English.

Fortunately, between the taxi driver and a call to another B&B manager, we were able to interpret our exchanges and resolve the issue.

But just because we’re charmed with, and even kind to, someone from another culture, we shouldn’t mistake this for understanding. We need to ask questions so we can anticipate communication breakdowns before they harm our relationships.

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Although these three insights aren’t earth shattering, they’re essential to communicating with people from other cultures, and when you think about it, even within our own culture. Yes, words are important. But there’s so much more to communication than words. Our work as communicators has to reach beyond words. There’s nothing like traveling as a reminder.

(Originally printed in Trista Harris’s blog about philanthropy: New Voices of Philanthropy)

Lost amidst the hubbub about Arizona’s recent legislation to crack down on illegal immigration, is the simple fact that most baby boomers, approximately one-third of America’s labor force, will reach the retirement age of 65 during the next two decades.

Leave aside, for a moment, the arguments about the legitimacy of being a legal citizen and human rights. Our country isn’t producing enough new workers to replace those who retire: according to the US Census Bureau there are about 77 million baby boomers and only 46 million people in generation X and generation Y.

Where will the new workers come from? It’s immigration, or else a miraculous breakthrough in robotics engineering.

In 2008, the first of the baby boomers hit the age of 62, which is significant because it’s the age that the average worker retires. Although baby boomers will likely work longer than predicted because of extended life expectancies and over-extended retirement plans, health conditions and the effects of old age will prevent many from working full-time into their 70s and force others to retire much earlier.

By 2020, if not sooner, we’ll be competing with countries in Western Europe, Japan, and elsewhere in the world to attract immigrants. If we’re unsuccessful, much could change for the worse for our economies and in our lives:

• Of course, annual increases in social security, Medicaid, Medicare, and insurance payouts are already steep, and they will steepen even more sharply in the coming years.
• Home values may once again decline because many Baby Boomers will need to sell or downsize to cover their retirement expenses.
• For the same reason, savings rates are also likely to shrink because Baby Boomers will be cashing out their stocks and IRAs and won’t be earning enough new income to continue their current rate of savings.
• Accordingly, interest rates would need to rise to encourage more savings. This could trigger a return of runaway inflation.
• Taxes are also likely to rise to pay for the needs of an aging population. This could also trigger more inflation.
• Employers will need to pay higher salaries as they compete for a dwindling supply of workers, especially for services that cater to seniors, like health care. The added inflationary pressure will likely cause the price of goods and services to rise.

Sound farfetched?

Not at all, according to forecasts from leading political scientists and economists, such as those printed in recent books from George Friedman and Jacques Attali, and from national and state demographers, such as Minnesota State Demographer Tom Gillaspy. In fact, the above scenario might be an understatement. Some observers expect a return to the stagflation that crippled the economy in the late 70s and early 80s, but for a more extended period of time.

One effective response that political scientists, economists, and demographers all agree on is to attract more, more, and more immigrant labor.

Immigrants can provide the specialized skills we need to replace retiring engineers and researchers, executives and managers. They can fill vacant positions for doctors, nurses, and aides in health care facilities and nursing homes. They can also provide the manual labor needed to harvest the fields and operate factories.

Like it or not, within the next 10 years we’ll not only be begging immigrants, legal and possibly illegal, to stay, we’ll be begging them to live here and help us keep the country’s economy afloat.

If we keep passing laws like Arizona’s, what kind message will this send?

Could it add up to a record of hostility that causes workers we need from India, from Eastern Europe, from Latin America, and from elsewhere to ignore the call to help us prop up our economy when it begins to sag beneath the sheer number of retiring Baby Boomers a few years from now?

(This blog entry was orig­i­nally posted on New Voices of Phil­an­thropy, Trista Harris’s blog on next gen­er­a­tion philanthropy.)

This might seem to be a loaded question if you’re a supporter of racial and social justice causes. Of course communities of color should participate. Beyond this, you might even say it’s ironic to have a public discussion about race that includes experts and not invite one from a community of color that’s been most affected by the privilege or discrimination being discussed.

But apparently not all progressives see it this way, as I found out during a recent incident.

I’d come across an e-mail announcement from a radio talk show host saying he was devoting his next show to a panel discussion of white privilege. One of the experts on the panel had written a paper that I’d admired and wanted to read again. Through an e-mail link I (thankfully) found the paper, but then noticed that three of the experts on the panel were white. The other was from the South Asian community.

As far as I could tell, all of the experts were credible knowledge sources for the panel topic. All of them deserved to be there. I was glad to see that someone from the South Asian community was represented. But I wondered why the panel didn’t also include an expert from a community of color that’s been most affected by white privilege, such as the black, Latino, or American Indian communities. After all, doesn’t white privilege result, at least in part, from a lack of diversity and inclusion; and isn’t it perpetuated when people aren’t intentional about including diverse points of view?

I wrote a very short e-mail to the host saying that I think he does good work, but asking whether he didn’t notice the irony about the panel. It was really just an observation that I assumed he’d overlooked or hadn’t noticed. Although I don’t know the host, he has a reputation for being progressive.

There are plenty of panel discussions about white privilege or race, and the makeup of this one wasn’t much of an issue in and of itself. But his response was. He fired back with an incendiary e-mail saying he was “pissed off” that discussions about race in this country were “necessarily the province of people of color and no others.” More disturbing, he said that “white racism is a white problem, not a black one [emphasis mine]. Or don’t you get this?”

His response is disturbing on a number of levels. I won’t detail all of them here, but I want to address one:

Personally, I find erroneous, and even offensive, the notion that white racism isn’t a black problem. Blacks are seven times more likely to go to prison in their lifetime than whites and three-four times as likely to be unemployed or impoverished. White racism is surely their problem. It’s a problem for Latinos and American Indians, as well as for Southeast Asians, South Asians, and all communities, whether they’re of color or not.

I’m disturbed that his response perpetuates notions of white privilege and race I’ve seen elsewhere. So often, when communities of color ask why their representatives aren’t at the table, those at the table exaggerate the request into an angry demand to exclude whites or to be otherwise unworkable. This has been true, even of progressives.

I’m not accusing the host or others who act as he did of being racists. For all I know, this is an isolated incident and he hopefully doesn’t generally act this way. I think the discomfort that accompanies the process of change and making intentional choices seems threatening. I would like him and others to embrace this change.

Because, if we want to diminish white privilege and racism, don’t we need to share power and invite previously excluded communities to participate and lend their insight as much as we can?

A husband and wife sit on a blanket together in a grassy, tree-lined field. Just as the husband grasps the cool neck of the bottle of wine they plan to share, a shout for help rings out from the distance. He dashes in the direction of the call, heading towards an unexpected kind of disaster:

 The encounter that would unhinge us was minutes away, its enormity disguised from us not only by the barrier of time but by the colossus in the center of the field, which drew us in with the power of a terrible ratio that set fabulous magnitude against the puny human distress at its base.

This is from the opening of the oddly, if quite aptly titled novel Enduring Love from Booker-winning writer Ian McEwan. It’s one of the most compelling openings I’ve ever read, and its effectiveness lies in McEwan’s masterful use of foreshadowing.

The narrator describes these events looking backwards in time, from the aftermath of the chain of tragedies that ensues. The description is enriched by his regret, by his subsequent awareness of how the encounter would change him, by the exactitude of the departure from his seemingly happy existence with his wife, and by how even the small details, such as the coolness of the wine bottle, stand out in sharp contrast in his memories. This opening grabs you by the lapels and keeps you turning pages wanting more.

But why should fiction writing have a monopoly over compelling openings? Why don’t we see more of these in nonprofit profiles or foundation case studies and briefs?

Too often we’ve trudged through openings laden with jargon and the weight of BIG ideas. Sometimes it feels as though we as a field and as writers in the field limit ourselves to writing that sounds official enough to prevent any thesis advisor from sending it back for further edits. Meanwhile, after failing to penetrate the first paragraph, our audience sticks our glossy annual report or case statement beneath overhyped credit card offers and letters from Aunt Bertha at the bottom of their mail heap.

Using foreshadowing helps any writing, especially communication materials, in two big ways. First, it plays off readers’ expectations. They want to know why the picnic didn’t turn out as planned, and not only that, but became something horrible when it ought to have been fun and peaceful. Second, it creates a story with details that inform readers of what the characters want and feel (and create a corresponding desire for readers to want them to get it). These characters seem like real people having a moment as memorable for the sensations of the blanket and the blades of grass as for the doom these sensations would precede. Readers feel for them and are eager to learn what happens next.

Think of this when you’re writing a needs statement or describing how grantees turned a situation around.

It’s not the 4,000 starving kids who need food, but the disappointment Jane will feel as she returns home from school and pictures a roasted chicken for dinner, when she’ll actually get nothing. Readers understand Jane and want her to get food or are interested in finding out how your organization helped her get it. They also respect your organization for observing Jane’s life with the informed precision of a narrative.

It’s much easier to read, compelling, and personal.

(This blog entry was originally posted on New Voices of Philanthropy, Trista Harris’s blog on next generation philanthropy.)

The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears is a novel that I recently had the pleasure of reading by first-time author Dinaw Mengestu, an Ethiopian American. I’m a communications consultant and writer for philanthropy and nonprofits, and I’m also a creative writer. His novel drew my attention to how I often compartmentalize the two forms of communication when, really, one often complements the other. Compelling stories can personalize the broad-based change that social justice work seeks to create.

Like Mengestu, the book’s protagonist, Sepha Stephanos, is an Ethiopian immigrant. But Stephanos is older, in his late 30s, and runs his own small convenience store in a poverty-stricken area of D.C. that is beginning to gentrify. His earnings are too little for him to entertain any dreams grander than to keep making his rent payments. Although he emigrated from Ethiopia half a lifetime ago, his only friends are two immigrants from other countries in Africa.

But hope arrives in the smoldering passion he develops for a white woman and her biracial child who move into one of the neighborhood’s refurbished homes. As his relationship with them evolves over the course of an autumn and a holiday season, he confronts his discarded ambitions for college and a professional life and for love, whether from the family he misses back in Addis Ababa or from girlfriends his sense of dislocation has prevented him from meeting.

Sepha’s hope is bittersweet, as is Mengestu’s sensitive observation of his life. How gently Sepha regards the street people and hookers who frequent his store and loiter in Logan Circle outside it. How casually he speaks with his friends about the dictators who have made living in Africa too risky. Sepha is numb from loss but warm to the everyday beauty of America that exists even in the clogged streets outside his store and the buses he rides through them.

The novel’s title is a quote from Dante’s Inferno in reference to the vision of heaven that Dante sees as he exits the circles of hell. In the words of one of Sepha’s friends, “…no one can understand that line like an African because that is what we lived through. Hell everyday with only glimpses of heaven in between.”

The metaphor, however, applies more to the particular experience of African immigrants in America than their relief from the troubles of their home continent. The challenges of cultural transition force many of them into limbo, seemingly, to be perpetual witnesses to the American Dream but to take part in it only marginally as observers. They feel estranged from the people and the lifestyle they left behind and disconnected to most Americans and our way of life, one that often finds them marginalized for reasons beyond their language or background but the stigmas of a past in a Third World nation, poverty, and skin tone.

Good storytelling, especially from a vantage point as compassionate as Mengestu’s, is worth a stack of socio-economic statistics towards communicating the plight of African immigrants and the need for socially creative responses.

While volunteers, friends, old classmates, and potential donors are hanging out on blogs, Facebook, and Twitter, foundations and nonprofits are almost nowhere to be found.

Corporations and businesses, on the other hand, are starting to get the hang of social media. And social media isn’t even the best platform for them; it’s a much better platform for philanthropy and nonprofits.

Here are three reasons why:

1. Social media is about building relationships.
Foundations and nonprofits thrive from providing access and information to their constituents and grantees and donors and volunteers. We’re all aware of the benefits of galas and community briefings. These kind of events help people feel like they’re part of an organization’s mission. They feel closer. Wouldn’t it be great to have an event every day?

 This is what social media offers. Hundreds, even thousands, of an organization’s closest allies can take part in a personal conversation with the staff, the board, other donors, and each other in real time. It’s where people can learn about the small details that complement an organization’s bigger moves. This is often the difference between feeling like an outsider or an insider.

2. Social media is incredibly inexpensive.
How much does it cost to create a Facebook or a Twitter profile? Nothing. How much does it cost to create a blog? Nothing, if you imbed a profile from a free site, like Blogger, or less than a $100/year, if you pay for a blogging platform.

Organizations often complain that blogging or using Facebook or Twitter occupies a lot of staff time, and this escalates the costs. But relative to what? If organizations prioritize posting and commenting on social media, the effort isn’t necessarily very time consuming.

How much time do organizations spend creating advertisements, newsletters, brochures, and case statements? Weeks, months, and sometimes years. The informality of social media allows organizations to bypass the extensive back-and-forth editing and screening that often bloats the time required for other communications. And, with a schedule, posting and commenting on social media can be done like clockwork.

It takes an hour to post a blog. Posting entries three times per week takes three hours. Posts and responses to comments on Facebook, Twitter, and other forums can be limited to an hour per day: 20 minutes at the beginning, again at noon, and again at the end of the day. Spreading the duties among staff members, and even trusted volunteers, can really reduce the workload for any one person. Even if one person is responsible for all duties, they total only 10 hours per week (three hours for blog posts, seven hours for other posts and comments): 1/4 FTE. This isn’t a huge commitment.

3. Social media allows organizations to listen and have a two-way conversation.
If I had a dime for every time I heard foundations wish they could hear more from the communities they serve, I could literally start my own foundation. Social media allows organizations to listen to their constituents in two ways. First and most obviously, constituents can read and comment on blog, Facebook, and Twitter posts. The back-and-forth communication can go on and on.

Less obviously, but just as important, organizations can also search Facebook and Twitter for anything anyone says about them, and in real time. This permits organizations to “listen in” on the conversations others are having about them. An organization can identify the speaker and directly answer their questions and concerns, quickly. Talk about responsiveness!

Organizations don’t lose control of their message by becoming involved in two-way interactions through social media. Instead, they become more responsive and authentic, which actually provides more power, not less.

The time is ripe for philanthropy and nonprofits to overcome their hesitation and get more involved with social media. And the only thing to lose is the uncomfortable feeling of standing on the sidelines and hesitating.

Co-donation and cause-related marketing were big in 2009 and may become bigger in 2010, according to expert marketing analysts at the consumer trends firm trendwatching.com. It’s all part of the hot trend that trendwatching.com dubs Generation G (for generosity): consumers are switching their buying habits and brand loyalties to support companies that “do good” and demonstrate a motivation beyond greed and profit.

Co-donation combines consumption with philanthropy. When consumers buy a product or engage in other product-related activities (such as visiting a website and voting on charitable ideas), corporations will donate money, products, or in-kind gifts to charities, which are either preselected or chosen by consumers. Cause-related marketing is the act of promoting a product or brand through the charitable cause(s) its maker or promoter supports.

For instance, this year Pepsi is directing the $20 million it normally spends on ads during the Super Bowl into its Pepsi Refresh program instead. The program asks website visitors to nominate and vote for charities that deserve a grant award. Pepsi will select thousands of these charities to receive awards that range from $5,000 to $250,000. 

“Philanthropists in Corporate Suits,” a recent article from Marketing Week posted on the trendwatching.com website, says Pepsi’s initiative is one of the more high-profile of a wave of initiatives that pair consumer preference and corporate cash to make donations to charity.

This trend raises a variety of possibilities for philanthropy and nonprofits:

• Is this trend just a passing whim of corporations, as likely to fill a nonprofit’s coffers this year as it is to leave them empty next year?
• How much new money will nonprofits receive from these efforts?
• in addition to cash, will corporate initiatives also steer a number of new donors or constituents to nonprofits, representing new potential long-term donors that nonprofits might gain?
• What level of control do nonprofits have over the messages that support corporate initiatives? Could these messages be contrary to a nonprofit’s mission, or perhaps reinforce the mission and spread it to a broader audience?
• How informed are these initiatives? Do they represent the thoughtful deliberation of professional grantmakers, or might they become suboptimal investments that don’t yield much impact relative to their size?

The article details at least one example, however, that seems to show reason for optimism. Since 2006, Pampers has teamed with Unicef to address maternal and neonatal tetanus. For every pack of Pampers consumers buy, Pampers donates a dose of vaccine.

This is promising for at least three reasons:

1. Both organizations shared the same objective before teaming up. Pampers and Unicef had independently developed a mission to help babies develop healthily.
2. The initiative involves collaboration. Pampers approached Unicef well in advance of the initiative, and they spent time discussing partnership opportunities before settling on tetanus as a major issue they both cared about and could successfully address.
3. And, they’ve committed to the long-term. Since 2006, they’ve vaccinated 45 million mothers and their babies. They’ve been so succesful that they’ve expanded their goal to completely ELIMINATE tetanus by 2012.

The initiative certainly demonstrates that co-donations and cause-related marketing can result in successful philanthropy. However, whether this is the exception or the rule is far from certain.

The relationship might not have been long term if the vaccinations or the delivery of them hadn’t worked. Unicef and the mothers and their children might have been left without financial support or vaccinations in 2007. And, many corporations haven’t been, and aren’t likely to be, as deliberate about empowering their nonprofit partners or having missions and goals that truly reinforce each other.

Critics say co-donation and cause-related marketing initiatives potentially obscure the voices of other causes that might actually be deserving of greater support (e.g., while tetanus is eliminated, AIDS and cancer continue to kill). They also say that these initiatives distort consumers’ charitable motives, in essence rewarding market-oriented behavior that has no link to the charity it’s supporting and the potentially negative impact of markets on society.

While I agree with the critics’ arguments, I believe the possibilities are too great for philanthropy to take the high ground and discourage these initiatives. A charity’s message could really gain impact by partnering with a like-minded corporation that shares its goals and is truly willing team up for the long term. More study is needed to determine whether this occurs often, or whether partnerships like that between Pampers and Unicef are anomalies.

I’m very curious about the results and would welcome others’ opinions and would love to be notified of any existing studies of this.

Over the years, a number of foundations and nonprofits have asked me to help them make better connections with their target audience. But to do so, organizations often need to overcome their greatest fear: giving up control.

Think of it. A communications plan is a big investment. Organizations devote plenty of time, energy, and salaried positions to constructing their brand. It’s a carefully cultivated image. It might change, depending on whether the audience consists of donors, lawyers, community activists, communities of color, or program officers. But whatever that image is, audiences ought to think of it when thinking of the organization. At least under a traditional paradigm.

But to build stronger connections, communication needs to be interactive. Organizations need to listen and to respond as much as they show and tell. If you’re in full control, you’re lecturing.

I’d understood this concept but hadn’t really taken it to heart until the last several years, as social media and the web became major communication channels. Audiences can quickly respond to blog or forum postings, or communicate instantly on Facebook and Twitter.

This has seemed to clamp the lips of foundations and nonprofits, oddly. Some have embraced the new technology, but many have only approached it on tip toes, venturing perhaps to add a feedback element buried deep within their site or to launch the occasionally updated blog.

But social media and the web are the best things that could ever happen to foundations and nonprofits. The platforms are relationship based, meaning audiences can go to a site and interact with an organization and keep on going back again and again. It’s almost like having cocktails or dinner parties with audiences 24/7. It might take a while to get up to speed on the new technology, but the effort is much less than all these cocktails and parties would require (and speaking as a former development officer, I should know!).

The real reason why foundations and nonprofits haven’t embraced social media and the web–beyond the costs and the time required to adopt the new technology–is that they’re afraid of losing control. All that time spent on putting together the glossy photos with the cute captions or the finely tuned case statement seems to be wasted if audiences can say whatever they want. They could suddenly reframe the conversation or steer it into areas where organizations have to be on the defensive.

Yes, this could happen and probably will. But the conversations are heading in whatever direction audiences want them to head anyway, except the interactions are often happening through platforms where foundations and nonprofits aren’t present.

Giving up control and interacting with audiences, particularly through social media and the web, allows access to these conversations and an opportunity to include an organization’s point of view. The opportunity wouldn’t happen otherwise.

And, really, most of the time audiences are looking to have a positive experience. For instance, conversations during a fundraiser or a community event aren’t usually defensive. In fact, they’re usually reinforcing and build stronger relationships.

What social media and the web have taught us is that relationship building can happen outside the context of in-person interactions, in foundations’ and nonprofits’ other communications, as long as the format is interactive and organizations are willing to give up control.

Since the election of Barack Obama as the first black American president, a number of public commentators have declared that a “post-racial America” has now arrived. However, almost every indicator of social and economic well-being says otherwise.

From alarming disparities in academic achievement to inequalities in employment, wealth, and housing, the statistics describe an America of racial inequity. Social and economic disparities have essentially remained stagnant since the mid-1970s. In many cases, disparities have gotten worse.

This blog entry is the first in an occasional series of entries that explores some of these disparities, their causes, and potential solutions. This entry looks at disparities in the state and federal prison system. It’s a great place to start because the disparities are so stark.

According to a report on prisoners in the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ (BJS) 2008 Bulletin, which presents the most recent statistics available, over 562,000 black males were serving sentences in prisons under state or federal jurisdictions as of 12–31-08. That’s 85,000 more black male inmates than white male inmates.

The disparities are even clearer when you examine incarceration rates, as reported in the same bulletin. More than 3,161 black males of every 100,000 in the general US population are in prison, compared to 487 white males per 100,000. In other words, if you’re a black male, you’re more than six and a half times more likely to be incarcerated than if you’re a white male. The incarceration rate of  Hispanic males is almost four times that of white males.

Furthermore, a BJS report published earlier this decade observed that if you’re a black male, the likelihood you’ll go to prison sometime during your lifetime is a whopping 32.2 percent! That’s a one in three chance of losing your freedom, your right to vote, and your future job prospects sometime during your life. For Hispanic males, the likelihood is one in six. But for white males, the likelihood drops to 1 in 17.

Even if we were to grant that no racial bias exists in arrests and prosecution (which would be extremely hard to believe), the disparity alone speaks of a divided criminal justice landscape. White men have little reason to fear the law relative to black men or Hispanic men.

Apart from outright discrimination, various justice policies have led to these disparities. Drug policy offers a revealing example.

For instance, drug policy mandates stiffer sentencing guidelines for offenses involving crack cocaine as opposed to powder cocaine. This policy has led to an imprisonment rate for drug offenses by black males that is up to ten times that of whites (as reported in “The Vortex”, a Justice Policy Institute Report, quoting 2002 BJS statistics).

Why? Blacks tend to buy and sell crack cocaine while whites buy and sell powder cocaine. But the rates at which whites and blacks buy and sell cocaine has been, and remains, virtually the same (as also reported in “The Vortex”).  The policy decision has, in effect, targeted blacks for incarceration.

Other drug policy decisions that produce disparities, and are overtly discriminatory, include racial profiling and prosecutorial misconduct. The disparities produced by these policies clearly rebut any reliable notion that we live in a post-racial America, at least with regard to criminal justice.

This is not to say that imprisoned men of color have done nothing wrong. But let’s at least shape a criminal justice system that treats them the same as white men, offering the same opportunities for fair treatment and for rehabilitation.

I hope that a post-racial America will someday be possible. But we need to take lots of action.

For instance, “One Voice, One Vote,” a report published for the NAACP by Community Policy Research Training Institute and Frontline Solutions, identified a number of discriminatory policy practices and what can be done to combat them. Some of the recommendations regarding drug policy include:

• Repeal sentencing guidelines that distinguish crack cocaine from powder cocaine
• Sentence non-violent drug offenders to community service and drug treatment programs
• Require law enforcement agencies to record racial information for arrests and traffic stops
• Pass stricter safeguards against abuse of the informant system

Taking actions such as these would be a good start, but we need to do more than this to address the inequities in the criminal justice system and in many areas of our lives. I hope to explore a number of these areas and identify some potential solutions in upcoming entries.

Welcome to my blog!

As a complement to my consulting work, I’ll be blogging about topics related to communications, philanthropy, nonprofits, and racial and social justice issues. I’ll also take on some topics related to fundraising and development and, occasionally, other issue areas outside of racial and social justice, such as the arts or education.

Paul Bachleitner at the 2009 US Open

You’ll find categories named for each these topics under the categories listing on the blog page or by checking out the submenus beneath “Paul’s Blog” in the navigation menu. Each entry will have at least one topic category.

Each entry will also consist of one of the following writing types: how-to articles, knowledge-based/informational articles, interviews, commentary, or stories/reporting (which will quite often dovetail with stories I’ve researched through my consulting projects or through my ongoing assignment as the managing editor of the Marginalized Males Funders Group (MMFG) e-newsletter.

So, each entry will have at least two categories: a topic category (possibly more than one) and a type category.

My hope is that this will generate some useful information for readers and allow for some interactive discussion about topics in the independent sector to which I’ve devoted the last 10 years of my career. It also should give you some insight into me, my skills, my work, and what I might be able to do for you—whether you’re a potential client, colleague, or just an interested party.

I invite your comments, questions, and opinions (both vague or heartfelt).

Thank you.