In the third episode of the Working Title podcast, host Amina Mohamed delves into the phenomenon of contract cycling. In a conversation with Abdifatah Hussein, co-founder of Hidaayah House, they explore the realities of shifting between non-profit and private-sector roles to balance passion and financial stability.
“Good vibes don’t pay the bills.”
In this episode, Mohamed references popular TikTok personality Nicole Daniels, known for her character “Nonprofit Nicole,” and other social media content creators who all highlight the uncomfortable truths of non-profit workplaces. She also examines the systemic issues revealed by the closure of Pollen, a media arts non-profit, and the resignation of its executive director, Ruby Oluoch.
This is the third podcast episode from Amina Mohamed, one of five writing/podcast fellows working with The Philanthropist Journal. The fellowship is focused on the future of work and working and was made possible through funding and support from the Workforce Funder Collaborative.
Related links
- Learn more about Abdifatah Hussein
- Learn more about Hidaayah House and follow them @hidaayahhouse on Instagram
- Nicole Daniels (aka Nonprofit Nicole) @nicoleolived on TikTok
- Lisa Beasely (aka Corporate Erin) @lisabevolving on TikTok
- Andrew (aka Mengmengduck) – salary negotiation @mengmengduck on TikTok
- Pollen
- Ruby Oluoch’s “The Last Word” on Pollen
- National Council of Nonprofits survey
- Imagine Canada – Diversity Is Our Strength: Improving Working Conditions in Canadian Nonprofits
- Imagine Canada – Canada’s nonprofit sector in numbers
- @Critical Healing Moment on YouTube – “Narcissism, Neoliberalism & the NPIC: What Makes Work ‘Meaningful?’”
- @ Liz Walker Coaching on YouTube – “Working at a Nonprofit AND STILL Feeling UNFULFILLED: HERE’S WHY!”
- @KELGORE on YouTube – “The Problem with Nonprofits”
Transcript
Amina Mohamed: Hello, and welcome to Working Title, a podcast by The Philanthropist Journal. I’m your host, Amina Mohamed, and today we are going to be talking about salaries, career fulfilment, and something I’ve started to call “contract cycling.”
AM: Now, for those of us who have ever been employed anywhere ever, it is likely that at some point in your career, you’ve had a moment like this:
Andrew (aka Mengmengduck): “I would like a salary increase.”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because I’ve been hard at work.”
“I have to run this by HR.”
“That’s what you said last time.”
AM: You know how it goes. You walk into your manager or director’s office and you’ve hyped yourself up, you’re about to ask for a modest wage increase, and, you know, the situation might be that maybe you just are underpaid or that your responsibilities have heightened – whatever it is, this is your moment to advocate for yourself. So you write the speech, you practise, you deliver it, and ideally, the situation will go one of two ways. Either you’ll get what you want or you’ll have a conversation where you’ll be able to return to this concept, maybe a little bit down the line. But sometimes it might sound a little bit more like this:
Nicole Daniels (aka Nonprofit Nicole): “Nicole! I’m just having my lunch. So what’s going on?”
“Oh, okay, one of those conversations. Let me first just say I can see you look a little nervous. I know what this conversation can feel like. I’ve had to ask for raises, and that’s how I got to where I am today. I also want to acknowledge as a white woman, there is a layer I’m never gonna understand.”
“Let me let you in on a little secret: the budget is super tight. And this quarter, we’re not able to do raises. There might be a small holiday bonus, and definitely a lot of goodies as a big holiday ‘thank-you.’ Sure, well, raises just aren’t the same in non-profits, and I’m not saying you should just be grateful for whatever you get, but we can’t kind of do the same, giving our kind of money, because we don’t have a ton of money. Like, let’s all go work for Google and get those big salaries.”
“But you know what, I’m gonna look into it. It’s just tough. And I don’t want you to take this the wrong way: I guess given our relationship – I’m not going to say that it hurts, but I won’t say it feels great to be asked. I know that it’s coming from a place of wanting to stand up for yourself. But I just want to put it out there.”
AM: One of my absolute favourite parts of this audio – which, I mean, the first time I heard it, I physically shuddered – but it’s the fact that the character is eating an apple the entire time in this incredibly dismissive and casual way that you only see at charities and non-profits. It’s such a perfect rendition of such an uncomfortable, but extremely common, experience that many people have. So that audio came from TikTok, or Nicole Daniels, who’s really well known for her character “Non-Profit Nicole.” And if you haven’t heard of her yet, you might be more familiar with her corporate counterpart, “Corporate Erin.”
Lisa Beasely (aka Corporate Erin): “Oh, okay, so it’s been a while. We’re gonna go ahead and get started with TikTok. Thank you so much for hopping in. We do have a stocked agenda, so I’m just going to kind of dive right in. Okay, so a lot of you know me for taking over social media for Lisa Beasley. But a lot of you, I’m finding, are kind of here for my expertise as a manager for the managerial logistics or management-making management. So for now, for the purposes of this conversation, we’re just going to kind of cache that, we’re going to put that in the parking lot, and we’re going to focus on social media managers, social media marketers, and digital comms teams, okay?”
AM: Now both characters, Erin and Nicole, highlight the really wacky culture of work that we’ve all become accustomed to; Erin in the private sector and Nicole in non-profits. Non-Profit Nicole, though, has gone viral several times over the past year, thanks to her really unique and extremely uncomfortable dramatizations of the unspoken reality of some non-profit workspaces. Specifically, the ones where equity language and speeches about working towards the grand mission, where the moral righteousness of working in service of the community is positioned as a reward that is somehow more important than a literal livable wage. Now, I’ve worked in the sector on and off since the very beginning of my career, and though I’m here because I love the work and I believe in the work, I am intimately familiar with what it’s like to work for and with someone who sounds exactly like Nicole. In my own career, I’ve worked for local community-service-oriented organizations, national civil-liberties organizations, charities, and cultural organizations. And my rationale is probably similar to everyone else. It was to focus on work that could sustain my livelihood, but also, you know, makes a positive difference in my community. And I can’t deny that there’s something really life-affirming about working with people who want to change the world.
It really is. And yet, I cannot work in non-profit 100% of the time, I simply can’t. Because though I believe in the work, when I inevitably – and I really mean it when I say inevitably – get burnt out or tired of the low pay, I transition into the private sector, where the work, though driven by profit, is well paid. So it’s like an exchange, right? I spend time doing soulless corporate work, and I can afford to save, and I can afford to get by, and I can afford to feel a little bit more comfortable. And when that contract ends, I return to non-profit, where I’m personally fulfilled by my role. I’ve also, in other situations, found myself working in non-profit while holding other jobs on the side. And this has always been due to insufficient salaries, but it is fundamentally unsustainable.
So I’ve been in this dance for a decade. But in that time, I’ve noticed that I’m not alone. Because my friends and my colleagues, my teammates, my acquaintances, are following a really similar pattern. I kind of think of it like a bee dance, you know? I feel like we’re all communicating through action. And the dance looks like this: non-profit work to government work – and government work is similar, but it’s more stable – back to non-profit, back to the private sector, back to non-profit, or, obviously, working at a non-profit with side hustles. But again, unsustainable. And this is not unique to me. It’s not unique to my circle, but it’s representative of wider labour trends that are pretty typical of the non-profit environment.
Now in my research, I spoke to over a dozen people about this on-again, off-again, cycle of non-profit employment. And first of all, everyone was absolutely giddy to talk to me about how sick and tired they were of either being paid nothing or fearing burnout as a byproduct of the work. But what was most interesting to me is that folks mostly wanted to remain anonymous, because there is an ongoing fear in non-profit and charity work, and in many other sectors as well, that talking about the difficulties of your job is somehow demonstrating a lack of gratitude for what you have. But I’ve always believed that you can hold two thoughts at the same time.
For the sake of this episode, I have dubbed this cycle that I’m describing “contract cycling,” which is just moving through various opportunities motivated by different factors, but ultimately seeking a balance between the moral and personal satisfaction that comes with non-profit work while also being able to afford that BuzzFeed, proverbial, “avocado toast lifestyle,” you know?
So later on in this episode, we’re going to hear from the non-profit founder and community leader Abdifatah Hussein, who’s the cofounder of Hidaayah House, which is a non-profit that’s based in Toronto, and he’s going to talk to us about some of his experiences in the industry and what pushed him not only to work in non-profit, both at the beginning and in different parts of his career, but to move forward and found a whole organization of his own.
Right before that, let’s do some context setting, because I really want to set the scene. I want to explore some common sentiments around non-profits, specifically about how there are a few people who really view non-profit spaces to be a kind of for-profit, but with donors instead of shareholders, environment. So I want to look at that conversation a little bit, take a peek at a few studies that describe some industry pain points, and then we’re going to move on with our interview.
Nonprofit Nicole: “Nicole! Hey, girlfriend, come on in. So I hear that congratulations are in order because you’ve got a second – a third job! That’s wonderful. I’m so glad we were able to be a reference for you. So what’s going on?”
“I personally don’t actually see it as a problem that so many folks in our little family have to work second or third jobs. That actually shows – not to toot my own horn, but – our flexibility with scheduling. Well – and I don’t think, I really don’t think that raises or consistent scheduling, I don’t know what you mean by that, but that, that would really change things. I think that might be a bit misguided, if I may, on your part. And that’s okay, because you’re, you’re still kind of new to some of this, this work stuff.”
AM: So this work stuff has been covered extensively online by content creators across platforms, and Non-Profit Nicole is only the beginning. And so I decided to look at YouTube because a lot of micro trends that begin on TikTok or discourse that starts on TikTok gets expanded exponentially on YouTube. So I searched up the term “working for a non-profit” just to kind of see what people were saying and what the larger think pieces were about, and I came across two really distinct topics. One, overwhelmingly, how non-profits were bad for workers and second, curiously, and maybe this is capitalism at work, how to start your own.
@ Liz Walker Coaching: “The ugly truth about non-profits is that they’re basically for-profits in sheep’s clothing, like a tax-exempt sheep’s clothing. And if you’re thinking working for a non-profit is supposed to be your fast track to fulfilment, like how I thought it was, it just does not work that way. Unfortunately, if you’re finding that working for a non-profit is becoming more and more unbearable, then honestly, it’s because it’s really no different than any other soul-crushing nine-to-five, to be perfectly honest. And that’s why I decided to go the social entrepreneurship route. In fact, this channel is all about giving practical strategies, guidance, and sharing knowledge to help you become a financially free and independent social entrepreneur. I have worked my entire life in non-profits, and I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that the main difference between dealing with problems working for a for-profit versus working for a non-profit is that at a non-profit, you’ll get paid way less money to deal with those problems. Let’s dive in.”
AM: Now, these videos are often titled things like “I Quit My Job in the Pandemic,” “The Pitfalls of the Non-Profit Industry,” or things like, you know, “Working at a Non-Profit and Still Feeling Unfulfilled? Here’s Why.” And the thumbnail will have something that reads “Non-profit think twice,” with a million exclamation points. But these videos are profiling extremely common experiences. And most importantly, they’re very popular video styles, which is to say that there are many kinds of videos in this variety. And for the creators who are talking about being employed at non-profits, the content is almost always couched in a warning that communicates something to the effect of “We knew working in service is your dream, or we know working in services is your dream, but prepare for tight deadlines and no money and an eternal grant cycle.”
What’s also interesting is that the comment section is full of people who are agreeing – it’s kind of like a really interesting non-profit congregation. But it also means that this is really niche content that is made by people in non-profit for either folks in non-profit or folks who want to be a non-profit for others. Like in the clip you just heard, the experience has actually pushed them to venture into the world of entrepreneurship; either starting their own non-profits or transitioning into high-price-tag community-oriented non-profit-informed consultants. They turn into consultants – which, no hit on consultants, I mean, “Been there, done that, got the free T-shirt.” But it’s a move that prioritizes income over impact. And so to me, it’s a part of that contract cycle. It’s basically independent private-sector work. Now, the overwhelming response as to why folks feel this way is due to a combination of bureaucracy and what one creator has called the “non-profit industrial complex.”
@KELGORE: “We all love non-profits, right? After all, they do the most good. Then why is the title of this video ‘Why I Strongly Dislike Non-Profits’? Well, it’s because they’re the worst. That’s why. Look, I’m not here to make a video about those 501(c)(3) organizations that pay their executives $800,000 a year plus bonuses, nor am I talking about the kind of discriminatory behaviour many tax-exempt religious organizations display. No, I’m talking about the root of the problem, from which all of those other problems stem: at the root of the non-profit industry is the reality of all our society’s many deficiencies. I do not like the non-profit industrial complex.”
AM: So the rationale that’s offered is similar across the board, across all the videos that I’ve seen, and it concerns the funding cycle of non-profits that makes meaningful work difficult. And the really slow bureaucratic nature affirms that it makes community work a slog. So basically, people who want to move fast and support the community, start initiatives, and just get work done are bogged down by the many processes in place to get ideas into action. One creator described the personal guilt and concern that she felt when she considered leaving a non-profit job that just didn’t feel like a good fit anymore.
@Critical Healing Moment: “Back to the job itself. Eventually, it began to feel like I was the only one with the skills and experiences that was suited to do this job. And, you know, I believe that I had done a good and ethical thing by taking these skills, which I could have used for a capitalist for-profit company, and putting them into this non-profit space where I was, like, helping people and contributing to the community. Even when I felt like I wasn’t being fairly compensated, I still felt like I couldn’t leave the job because the program would fail without me. Because we were constantly struggling for resources, and we had, like, bad infrastructure. And if I left, all information would leave with me and it would be a disservice to the community if I quit.”
AM: I was really happy when I came across this creator’s video because I find her feelings to be so, so relatable. Stepping away from any role at an organization that has any kind of community impact is difficult. But if we’re being really honest, the complexity of running a team or a mission with minimal resources puts so much strain on team members. I feel like I relate to her because I’ve also been made to feel personally responsible for deliverables in a way that was somehow tied to my own morals and values. As though I had a moral imperative to do as much with as little as possible, and a professional responsibility to do it well. And that’s just a lot to take on.
But this is a feeling that isn’t only on employees; leadership can feel it too. Recently, in April of 2024, Pollen, a media-arts non-profit that was based in Minneapolis, closed down. And in their recently published sunset letter, they note that their team and their board had been exploring several avenues to rebuild after almost closing their doors in July. However, it just wasn’t feasible to receive enough funding to continue operations with the staff that they would need for their work.
Months earlier, their past executive director, Ruby Oluoch, stepped down from her role, citing her disappointment with a misalignment between Pollen’s proclaimed power-shifting ethos, its espoused values of care, transparency, racial justice, and the experiences that she had while leading as the executive director. She also wrote a letter published on Pollen’s own website, to talk about the experiences and the constraints that she felt as a young Black woman in a position of leadership at a non-profit. Her thoughts echo so many of those that you heard in those previous YouTube clips. So I just want to read a little bit of what she said: “Before I made my own decision to resign, I sought guidance on the challenges I was facing for my executive director peers and more experienced non-profit leaders. The problems were so commonplace, I found that many people could finish my sentences as I explained the issues: operating with scant resources and limited time while facing constant resistance, a lack of trust, and little faith were norms of the job. My experience was not only common, but also normalized, even as this reality proved costly for many leaders’ health and well-being. So many of us encountered a profound lack of institutional imagination for what it could look like for us to thrive in leadership. As a result, our struggle and eventual departures have been made to appear inevitable. In a recent report published by the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, sharing insights of BIPOC leaders navigating leadership transitions, one participant said this: ‘My experience has been so tremendously difficult that I would not in good faith recommend it for the health of a BIPOC woman.’”
Reading Ruby’s letter really made me reflect not just on the content creators that we’ve heard in today’s episode, but also on the many, many conversations that I’ve had with colleagues, with teammates, with my directors in the past, about the difficulties of this work. And how it didn’t really matter who I spoke to. If it was a volunteer at a non-profit or if it was a director of a major program, many of them talked about the exact same things that Ruby, Pollen, and many of these content creators have highlighted as major issues.
And so I started to wonder, how do these things happen? So I looked at two different areas. First and foremost, the National Council of Nonprofits, which is an American organization, because in 2023, they conducted a national survey about the nature of non-profit work. And according to them, the non-profit jobs that are most commonly unfulfilled are those that interact with the public the most. So almost three out of four respondents reported vacancies in their program and service delivery positions, and two out of five reported vacant entry-level positions. And so I became really curious about why that was. And what I learned is that almost three out of four respondents said that salary competition affects their ability to recruit and retain employees, followed by budget constraints and insufficient funds. And I feel like this speaks a little bit to what Pollen published in their own sunset note, and that little joke that I made earlier about that proverbial “avocado toast lifestyle,” which is to say that, unfortunately, whether it is for a major or minor non-profit, or an individual, good vibes don’t pay the bills.
Now, additional causes for non-profit workforce shortages were identified as stress and burnout and challenges caused by government grants and contracts. And this really struck me, you know, because I’ve had so many different conversations with friends and with colleagues where I have said the exact same thing about stress and burnout. If anybody asked me, I don’t think I would ever recommend this nature of work to anyone because acute burnout, which is something so far beyond exhaustion, is something that I’ve already experienced twice in my career, and every woman I have ever met has experienced at least once. And what do we know about burnout, is that it takes a long time to get there, and a really, really long time to recover.
Now to bring things back up north, according to some stats that were released by Imagine Canada in 2021 – so a little bit removed from this episode, but I think still relevant – one in 10 Canadian workers, so around 2.4 million people, are employed at a non-profit. Seventy-seven percent of whom are women. Now burnout, exhaustion, unfair wages, invisible emotional labour – these are all common experiences that already disproportionately affect women and BIPOC communities and all folks who are at the margins. And it’s also not lost on me that the majority of content creators who are penning letters and making videos and writing posts about the difficulties of non-profit labor, including the folks that you’ve heard in today’s episode, are mostly women.
And that’s not all: in another report published by Imagine Canada in 2022 – and this one is called Diversity Our Strength: Improving Working Conditions at Canadian Nonprofits – they note that not only do women make up a large chunk of the non-profit workforce, but that almost half of the sector workers are immigrants, nearly a third are racialized, and that half of all jobs held by immigrant women, and almost a third of jobs held by Indigenous and racialized women, are in the non-profit sector. And yet, the average annual salary for those who are working in community non-profits is around $38,000, which is compared to an average of $57,000 in the economy overall. And this is despite the fact that this sector is more highly educated than other parts of the economy. Our industry is about supporting and uplifting our communities. But we can’t do that. At least we can’t do that job well if our own community – our colleagues, our friends, and our teammates in the work – are not afforded the support systems and the wages that they need to help them live well.
Let’s turn now to our chat with Abdifatah Hussein. He’s a community leader and co-founder of Hidaayah House, which is a GTA-based community organization. Their tagline is “If we don’t love and support each other, who will?” and they’ve operated by that tagline since their inception. Abdifatah is a really interesting guy. You’ll hear more from him in our next episode, but I wanted to start today’s conversation specifically around Hidaayah House itself.
AM: I want to ask you a little bit about Hidaayah House.
Abdifatah Hussein: For sure.
AM: So, it’s a really wonderful initiative. I heard about it from my brothers before, you know, I came across it myself, which is a sign that the community is aware, you know? Because they’re, they’re a lot younger than me, and they heard about it through their friends. And it became a trusted source before a lot of, I would say traditional, you know, or larger organizations, became something that’s on their radar. I’m wondering if you could talk to us a little bit about what it was like to kind of put Hidaayah House together. You did mention at the beginning that you guys are essentially like a team or a collective, that are working, essentially, to fill as far as I understand it – and please correct me if I’m wrong – a lot of community gaps. Where people are looking for resources, you try and connect them to those resources in the best way possible. That’s a lot. That’s a huge initiative. And so could you talk to me about the structure of Hidaayah House and your team and how you kind of keep this really large boat afloat?
AH: Yeah, it’s interesting, I don’t really ever talk about this, so I’m going to do my best to be fully present while I do this, and have fun with it. So I appreciate you creating this space, Amina. But, um, it started off – genuinely, and as frankly as possible – it started off with a lot of people passing away. There was an incredible number of good friends of ours, family members, that had passed away from gun violence. And I remember, I initially spoke about the fact that there were no community spaces we knew of. It’s interesting, because even when we started doing that journey of trying to find out what service/community spaces exist, whenever there was – there’s only a few of them – but conversations even about gun violence at that time, we didn’t relate at all. Like, we didn’t understand why they were speaking on it in the ways that they were, because they were focused on healing and they were focused on prevention of gun violence, but there was nobody in the space who was even a potential perpetrator, if that makes sense. And I hate that word, perpetrator. I sound like such a cop, right? But somebody who could potentially cause violence, you know? Which made no sense to me, because everyone that we knew who was affected by gun violence from across the city, not even just in Scarborough, they were in a very angry place. They were, like, the only way to save myself from, like, ever dying and being victimized myself and having my power taken away from me and potentially my life, is by committing violence, right? And it’s a cycle that we understood very deeply, growing up where we grew up. And our main concern at the time was, we don’t want anyone else to pass away. We want to stop that cycle of violence. And we want to talk to the people who want to do these things to other people on all of our behalfs, and tell them this: there has to be another way. And us ourselves – and I’m speaking as honestly as I can – we were trying to find other ways because we didn’t know what else existed. It’s either you die and your family grieves you and your community grieves you, or you fight to survive. And potentially that’s the end of the day, right?
So we will go to these spaces and nothing made sense. Nothing at all was adding up. There was no representation of specifically anybody who was even thinking of interrupting the cycles of violence. Everything was from the outside looking in. And that’s not to say that they weren’t doing incredible work. These are people who were very much focused on the healing of family members and sisters and mothers, and those who are deeply impacted by these traumatic events, right? But again, our main focus at the time was, the thing that was the most important thing to us, how do we stop other people from joining those sort of cycles and how do we stop ourselves?
And eventually, like I was saying, I became a “Detective Gadget,” sneaking into spaces and doing different things. I even started going to random community events and spaces. It was just me and one of my other friends at the time, Ibrahim, but we were really generally trying to figure out, like, how do we even structure ourselves? Where do we even start? And our first start was just hosting space wherever we could, and just having the most informal conversations you could imagine, you know? Like, establishments that no one would ever think to host the community events in, and the people who would come were the people who we knew, and which were the people who were, you know, grieving as well. And it was very personal at first. They weren’t vaguely talking about violence. We were specifically talking about the people who had passed away and how are we feeling about it. And we had zero knowledge on trauma-informed practices, we had no idea how to facilitate conversations with people who were literally yelling in a room, no microphone, just 30 people all talking about how much we’re grieving and our journeys towards our faith and what grounds us and stuff like that.
So as we slowly became a bit of a larger group, and people that we loved as well, and our friends were slowly coming on board with us, we decided that, okay, we have to learn more. Like that was always our driving force was that after every event, we look around your room, like, damn, I just started – I’m just crying on stage, yelling? That’s not really informing anybody of anything. How do we learn what it, what is mental health? We slowly started joining different projects. We would get qualifications for Suicide Assist and things of that nature.
It’s interesting, like, this is the natural journey in community, especially when you’re just free-forming like this. So organically, the more you do work in our community, the more people come to you with things that are outside of your lived experience, that are outside of your specific even focus, right? So we focused on gun violence, and then slowly people started to come to us to speak about their drug addiction issues, which were – we may not understand how to support you with that at all. But we can understand why it’s important after he shared with us. We’re gonna go get trained on that, right? And then next thing was Suicide Assist, and et cetera, et cetera. And then largely now, now we’re a group of men who are doing this sort of work. We’re completely ignorant to what women are going through in our community, right? And we’re like, where is this representation? And this is only because we were allowing ourselves to be critiqued always. That was the one I could say more than anything was our strongest point as a team was that community would come to us out of love and tell us, like, “We love that, but we wish you could do this more.” And we’re able to pivot at every time. We have an incredible group of young women who are now also trained in peer support, and things of that nature.
And every step of that journey, we slowly just expanded into – just opening up a crisis line. How do we become more accessible? How do we take all those Google Docs that we’ve stolen from everywhere, with all these resources, and make it more accessible for people? You know? And yeah, that also meant, like, how do we make that information more easily digestible for folks, whether it’s hosting events on Clubhouse, which was a thing during the pandemic, Zoom events virtually. And it’s slowly connecting with people all across the world, who now consult with us, speak with us, and we’re still learning to this day.
So there’s an event we had just a few days ago in regards to grief and understanding and processing trauma. And this was so interesting, because it was such a reflection of, like, the first event we’ve ever done. But we’re trained now, we’ve learned how to tackle this not perfectly, but a lot better than before. And so many people benefited from it. We learned the science of, like, how do you get people more comfortable so that they themselves want to speak about stuff they’ve never spoken about? Right? About their loved ones dying, so people are giving us their most vulnerable moments. And they trust us with it. So how do we make the most of that time together with them. Then we pass around a mic in our town halls that we always do. And everybody was sharing. We had a licensed therapist there with us, who was also Somali Muslim, and it was beautiful.
So we’re still growing, we’re still learning. But again, now we’re at a place where I think we’ve reached a threshold of how much can we do with no funding. Only now, I’m telling you, that after everything we’ve ever gone through, only now we, like, I think we could do a lot more if we had money. Which just goes to show how deeply ingrained that is even within us doing this work for this long, right? But I will say more than anything, more than the money, and more than even having money for more resources, building a trusting community was and always will be the most important thing any community provider can do. It is such a fragile thing that can be lost so easily. And nobody’s exempt from being questioned, honestly, they are with people, right? So it’s shown its fruits. And we’re happy that we can serve our community. So yeah.
AM: I love that. I mean, one of the things that strikes me so much about the work that you do is that you are a non-profit organization that has – or let me just put it this way: you’re a community organization that has achieved a level of legitimacy, that I don’t even think that city-sanctioned or government-sanctioned organizations, or organizations that have relationships within larger and bigger networks, have, specifically because of the trust that you’ve built with the community. And I think you mentioned that at the beginning, people come to you first. Like, they figure out what else is available later. But I think what’s also important about that is that I don’t think they care about the other things that are available until after they speak to you. And until after you can communicate that an additional organization might be a trusted source. And I think that really cannot be overstated enough how difficult that work is. Because what I find – and I’m curious now for, like, how you have organized the kind of work amongst yourselves as well – because what I find is that with a lot of other organizations that might be in the same kind of social workspace that you’re in, it’s very rare that you’ll encounter very many people in an organization. You’ll meet the folks who consider themselves front-faced or hired to do community work or front-facing work, and then there’ll be a contingent of those people as well, or their colleagues who are just administrative, you know – they just do grants, they just do other things. So you don’t actually get to know the whole organizations. But with Hidaayah House, what I find really unique about, what I can see at least from your structure, is that you can access almost anyone anytime. It’s, from the outside looking in, very flat. And I’m curious for you how you did that and if that kind of flat structure is an accurate reflection of what’s on the inside?
AH: Yeah, I think of it like flat mat, like last weekend, in terms of management, but it’s one of those things where everyone in the group so far, and I think it even goes to show, like, how we joined into this sort of work. Our only qualification that we’ve ever had for Hidaayah House was if someone genuinely just loves helping people, I think that’s all there ever was. The willingness to learn, what they specialize in, is something that changes all the time. And we have meetings all the time where – like, we just had a meeting an hour ago, right? Where, and I know that he is going to hear this later, and I want to make sure we include this clip because they’re gonna hate me for this. But all of us do the same work, just differently and when we can, right? There’s gonna be months at a time where – and no one’s exempt from this, and even in terms of leadership, I’m just so happy to be the person, and I mean this in the most humblest way ever, I just talk the most. Like this, just chatty chatty. That’s all I ever do. In meetings, in public events, I just so happen – that’s a skill set of mine. And then we have other people whose skill sets are incredible, like designing work. And then we have other people that whenever we are learning about something, and I keep bringing up that point of education, all of us have a genuine interest in knowing how to do that too. Right? So it’s, like, if I’m facilitating something and it went really well, I’m gonna tell the group, like, yo, this is really dope and I want you all to facilitate this next time. And now everybody, and there’s been so many times people are like scared to, like, facilitate or host. There’s someone in our team, the first time they were hosting an event, they literally ran away in five minutes. They just bolted out the door, and I told him, “That was a great learning experience, we’re going to try again next time.” And I swear they are leading and host right now, they host the majority of events, things that I don’t even know about, right?
So it’s one of those things where we learn and we grow and communicate with each other. But, um, and this is gonna go contrast to like everything I was saying earlier, but there is a genuine benefit, and doing the sort of work with people, with no financial incentive, there is a beauty in it. Because nobody can look at me and the team and think to themselves, like, that mindset that comes with classes that’s ingrained in us of, like, “Oh, he gets paid more, so he shouldn’t be doing the work that I’m doing.” And I’m not looking at anyone on the team, like, “You get paid so little, like, don’t think about doing admin work right now. You don’t have to write grants, just help us facilitate here and there.” Everyone is doing everything with no money in their pocket. Hopefully, that’s gonna change. Definitely that needs to evolve, and figure out ways to make sure everyone gets paid equal. But you know, there is funding opportunities. And it’s one of those things where, like, “Okay, we got to put on a workshop, do you want to do it? Okay, then you’re gonna get paid to do it.” And that’s really about it, right?
So everyone takes the lead in different projects. If somebody has an idea for something, and they’re like, “Yo, community came to me, and they brought this up,” all of us will make sure it happens. Like, all of us will make sure that we pitch in and figure out, like, how do we make this a reality? Everybody has different ideas. Just everyone has different specializations. But most importantly, we check with each other all the time. There’s a number of people in the group chat that are, like, “I just don’t want to do this anymore.” I have to ask questions like “Do you mean Hidaayah House or the project you’re working on?” And they’ll say Hidaayah House, and like, it’s love, we host them a party sometimes, you know? And there’s been generations of members of Hidaayah House that came and left. But every single one of them, we’re all family, every single time. There’s people who used to be in Hidaayah House that now mentor the people that are in Hidaayah House; there’s people that still come to our events, and they were one of the founding members. So yeah, there’s not a lot of pressure when everything’s done out of love.
AM: I love so much about what you’re saying. But most importantly, I think what we tell ourselves and what we’re told when we’re younger, and what we all aspire to, is that if you don’t like something, you can just fix it; you don’t like something, it can always be changed – exactly what you’re saying right now. But you embody that: you snuck your way into some non-profits, you saw some community work happening, you said, “No, I don’t really like the structure,” and you created something that’s a lot more organic and a lot more reflective of the people that you want to serve. And as I mentioned at the top, the byproduct of that is that you have so much community trust and buy-in, you have the most priceless assets, and you have nowhere to go but up. And so I really appreciate the work that you’ve done, the impact of Hidaayah House, and the time that you took out today to talk to me about your career trajectory, and also your optimism for the sector. I appreciate so much of that.
AH: Not broken yet.
AM: And hopefully never.
AH: Hopefully never, but thank you for your time – really appreciate it, Amina. I think we’ve got to make a lot of room for like reflection itself, you know, because a lot of these are thoughts that I think often, I speak rarely, and I ever barely, I almost never get fully fleshed out because we’re just kind of in the work, right?
AM: Thank you again to Abdifatah for chatting with me about Hidaayah House. I really enjoyed our conversation, and it is so energizing and fun to be able to speak to community leaders who are changing our sector for the better, one project at a time. So as I mentioned at the top, you can hear Abdifatah in our next episode, which is an extended interview with him. And until then, thank you so much for listening.
