What’s the point?

philanthropy unfiltered turns 1 today, and I’m reminded of why I started this platform.

Lately, I’ve felt so exhausted that it’s hard to feel connected to anything, including the work I care about most. I can’t seem to shake this cloud over my head that’s made everything feel heavy. And that heaviness has been exacerbated given the current state of our communities, our nation, the world. Everything that’s been happening with ICE and the mass deportations, the dismantling of decades of civil rights progress, the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, the continued genocide of Palestinians. And that’s just the big stuff.

To add, we are in a moment when the sectors that are supposed to hold the line for the most vulnerable communities are, in many cases, choosing to maintain their proximity to power and wealth rather than actually stand with the communities they claim to serve.

It all just puts me in a mood where I’m constantly wondering, what’s the point? What’s the point of any of this? Of me writing, trying to make small changes in a world that feels unchangeable.

I’ve been pondering these questions a lot, especially now. A year ago today, I launched philanthropy unfiltered and published my first post, It’s Not “Just Business.”

In November 2024, I was laid off. I was told it was “just business,” minimized to a line item on an Excel spreadsheet. And I just…sobbed. What followed was ten months of applying, interviewing, completing unpaid hiring exercises, and waiting, waiting, and more waiting. I hit rock bottom mentally, emotionally, and financially in a way you can’t fully understand unless you’ve been through it yourself.

But sometimes you have to fall apart to fall into place.

I eventually stopped waiting and returned to my roots: writing. Inspired by the layoff and a decade of observing nonprofits and philanthropic organizations talk about justice while acting counter to its principles, I started philanthropy unfiltered. This newsletter explores the nonprofit industrial complex, how it undermines liberation, and the gaps between what these institutions claim and how they actually operate.

What surprised me was the overwhelming response and support I’ve already received for my work, with many people reaching out to me (publicly and privately) about similar experiences they’ve had but never had the space to discuss.

These isolated experiences form a bigger pattern. And the people living them have largely felt like they couldn’t confront these issues without risking their reputation or their ability to pay their bills. Those buried truths are part of how the nonprofit industrial complex sustains itself.

At the time I launched, I had nothing to lose because I had already lost everything. So, I chose to write and be a voice for those who had been gaslit into thinking the problem was them, not the systems they worked in. I kept writing through job rejections, financial stress, and moments of doubt, wondering if confronting these sectors was costing me opportunities. And it probably did. What I write about isn’t a “safe” career move, but staying silent didn’t protect me from being laid off either. Neither did “playing the game.”

I decided to do things my way.

A year later, philanthropy unfiltered has grown to over 4,500 subscribers. I’ve been featured on several podcasts, have been a contributing writer on multiple platforms, have been featured in Inside Philanthropy, and was selected as the 2025 Artivist Writers’ Resident for Social Art and Culture to complete a book of essays. I’ve been told that this is “hands down the most important work I’ve ever read exposing the nonprofit industrial complex.” I accepted a role as public relations manager at a nonprofit in California without silencing my voice or compromising my values, and relocated to Los Angeles.

None of this was visible to me twelve months ago.

But what moves me the most is knowing that people who were afraid to name what they’d been through have found some courage in this space to speak up and foster conversations about how nonprofits, philanthropy, and the approach to social justice work within these systems can be improved. That matters more to me than any other accolade or subscriber number.

So, what’s the point?

The point is that the most vulnerable communities deserve more than institutions that fold the moment it costs something to stand firm. The point is that people like me need to keep being radically honest when everything around us incentivizes complicity.

This work is more urgent now than when I started. Now is not the time to dial things down. These times demand more audacity to operate in our full power.

It has been a hard year. Genuinely, deeply hard. But I know now that I wouldn’t be where I am, or heading where I’m heading, if the ground hadn’t cracked open beneath me when it did.

The nonprofit industrial complex has survived this long on our silence. That ends here on my little corner of the internet, where honesty isn’t a liability. The truth gets to take up as much space as it needs.

Perhaps, that’s the whole point of it all.

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