I started two new things this summer: Community Changemakers School and Legends from the Nonprofit Crypt.
Community Changemakers School is an online learning space for nonprofit staff, volunteers, and board members who want to make a meaningful impact in their communities. Individual membership costs $15/month or $145/year and includes access to a library of on demand classes, with a new class added each month, a community space to ask question and share resources, and monthly Q&A with me.
Legends from the Nonprofit Crypt is a podcast about the horrors of working in the nonprofit sector. Each short story is inspired by the real-life absurdities of doing good in a broken system, and there is always poetic justice for the protagonist.
What have you been up to this summer? Let me know!
Jessica Aviva, Ph.D.
Editor and Publisher
Inside This Issue
Have you ever felt like the most important parts of you—the softest, brightest, most alive parts—have been buried beneath layers of other people’s expectations, unhealed trauma, endless responsibilities, and the pressure to choose the “right” path forward?
Your hopes. Your dreams. The silly, creative, or just-for-fun things you loved as a child. They’re still in there somewhere, but buried so deep it feels like you need a shovel, a map, and maybe even a team of archeologists to find them. What once came naturally now feels out of reach, hidden beneath years of survival, striving, and self-sacrifice...
Resources for Changemakers
There are several open access periodicals with new issues that you might enjoy reading including The Feminist from Feminists in Kenya, Peace Prospects from Peace Leadership Collaborative, and the fifth edition of Earth Charter Magazine.
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I always learn something interesting, useful, thought provoking from Bayo Akomolafe. His Aspen Global Leadership Network discussion about Embracing the Unknown is no exception.
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The International Journalists' Network has video guidance about reporting through a decolonize feminist lens.
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The Polarization Detox Challenge from Builders offers daily practices for four weeks.
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Toward an Ethics of Activism: A Community Investigation of Humility, Grace, and Compassion in Movements for Justice, edited by Frances Lee, "explores gentler ways of being together, attending to internal conflict, and living a sustainable life of activism."
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COFEM has developed a Feminist Research Assessment Tool.
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The Liberatory Leadership Framework from Leadership Learning Community offers helpful ways to think about and practice leadership.
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Several new titles have been added to the virtual shelves at the Fruition Coalition Bookshop. We earn a commission for books sold at the bookshop which helps to sustain our work.
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Visit the bookshop and explore books for community leaders including:
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Enemy Feminisms: TERFs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses against Liberation by Sophie Lewis
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Relationally by David Jay
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The Silver Women: How Black Women's Labor Made the Panama Canal by Joan Flores-Villalobos
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Organizing at the Margins: The Symbolic Politics of Labor in South Korea and the United States by Jennifer Jihye Chun
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Feminism for the Americas: The Making of an International Human Rights Movement by Katherine M. Marino
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What it Takes to Heal: How Transforming Ourselves Can Change the World by Prentis Hemphill
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The Power of Bridging: How to Build a World Where We All Belong by john a. powell
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Milestones in Feminist Performance edited by Tiina Rosenberg, Fawzia Afzal-Khan, and Sandra D'Urso
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Why Would Feminists Trust the Police? A Tangled History of Resistance and Complicity by Leah Cowan
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The Trauma of Caste: A Dalit Feminist Meditation on Survivorship, Healing, and Abolition by Thenmozhi Soundararajan
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We Are Each Other's Liberation: Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities edited by Rachel Kuo, Jaimee A. Swift, and Td Tso
Gatherings
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October 15 to 18, 2025​
International Leadership Association Conference
Prague, Czechia
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April 27 to 30, 2026
Narrm (Melbourne), Australia​
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If you’ve ever worked for a nonprofit organization, you’ve probably been told—directly or indirectly—to avoid fluff.
Don’t waste limited resources.
Don’t indulge in pleasure when so many people are suffering.
Don’t use too many descriptive words or imaginative ideas when talking about the work you do.
The message is clear: focus on the essentials, stay serious, and strip away anything that might be seen as frivolous.
But here’s the problem: these “rules” are not guiderails. They are closed doors. They don’t help us do better work—they stifle creativity, shut down joy, and reinforce a culture of scarcity that keeps us running on fumes, minimizing our potential community impact...
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Research
The Othering & Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley has updated their Racial Disparities Dashboard. Data shows that Black Americans are more than 3.3 times more likely to be killed by police and that the median family wealth of White households is 7.8 times higher than that of Black households, among other findings.
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A study from Catalyst and the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging shows that there are four types of risks to reducing DEIB initiatives: talent, financial, legal, and reputational.
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New Local and The Rayne Trust partnered to create Where People Meet: How We Celebrate, Sustain and Reimagine Community Centres. The report identifies the strengths of community centers, the challenges facing them, a vision for what they could make possible if used to their potential, and a roadmap to realize that vision.
For decades, the default response to, “how are you doing?”—especially for women in the nonprofit sector in the United States—has been a single word: busy.
Busy has become a badge of honor—a shorthand for productivity, commitment, and worthiness. It signals that we are doing enough, giving enough, that we are enough. But underneath that badge lies a heavy weight: exhaustion, resentment, and sometimes even despair. Women, in particular, have long been expected to sacrifice ourselves—freely offering our unpaid or underpaid labor to make life easier for others, no matter the toll on our physical, emotional, and spiritual health.
But what if we flipped the script?...
Have you ever felt burned out, disillusioned, and yearning for a deeper, more soulful way to lead and live? Me too.
When life feels overwhelming—when we become disconnected from what matters most, from our sense of purpose, from each other, and from the earth—leadership can begin to feel like just another obligation. Another set of boxes to check. Another performance to maintain.
Feminist leadership offers a different path. It is not about striving or proving; it is about healing and flourishing. It invites us to soften, to reconnect, and to lead from a place of wholeness. It is a portal into possibility...
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