Pictured above: Captain Charles Abner and Niaz Dorry share a smile beneath a live oak draped in Spanish moss during this year’s SAFSF gathering in Savannah, Georgia. Photo courtesy of Niaz Dorry.

After returning from this year’s Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems Funders (SAFSF) gathering, NAMA Coordinating Director Niaz Dorry reflects on the fundraising lesson that changed everything.

Back in 2011, I had an epiphany around fundraising.

I was confiding in my old friend and former colleague Mark Brune about how I loved my job, but the fundraising part was kicking my butt. He said that all I had to do was think about fundraising as organizing.

To say the light bulb went off for me would be an understatement. It’s more like the light bulb went off and then exploded over my head with the sparkles of light falling all around me. 

As an organizer, I needed to hear that. From then on, my view of fundraising and talking with funders shifted completely. I began to think of funders as a community, and it was my job to organize this community. And it had to start in a similar way as I would approach any other community organizing assignment. With that lens, people in the funding world became folks I wanted to get to know in a similar way as anyone I’ve gotten to know in a fishing community or, in my past work, in a community fighting a toxic waste incinerator.

My desire to want to say just the right thing to get their attention was replaced with a desire to want to know them for who they are: What’s happening in their lives? Why do they do what they do? What do they do to stay sane and keep hope alive? What is their favorite food? How’s their family? How has their ancestral history shaped their decisions and their chosen path? The list goes on. 

I wasn’t engaged in a conversation with them to get money; I was engaged in a conversation so I could get to know THEM. If at some point the conversation steered us toward funding, great, but the pressure was removed and therefore the conversations became more genuine, truthful, and human.

I suddenly found myself actually enjoying conversations with folks whose positionality would make me nervous just a mere few months earlier.

Each year, these relationships have become stronger. Where I once attended funder gatherings only to hole up in my room because I didn’t know how to genuinely mingle with “people with money,” I now find myself looking forward to being in such spaces and engaging in every activity and conversation with a sense of joy.

This year’s Sustainable Agriculture and Food System Funders (SAFSF) gathering was no exception. I realized I was going to be among friends. Over several days, we learned together in workshops, visited local food systems leaders, shared meals, and talked and listened to each other. So many conversations were about life, the state of the world, and how we can collectively be more human with one another. 

Where once leaving a space like SAFSF would leave me emotionally exhausted, I left this year emotionally charged and refueled. And I am already looking forward to the next time I get to hang out with this community that I’ve enjoyed organizing with for the past decade-plus.

With appreciation,
Niaz Dorry