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You're listening to the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
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In today's episode, I'm sharing a few early thoughts about the recent election.
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So stay tuned.
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If you want to have real and powerful influence over the money and policy decisions that impact your organization and the people you serve, then you're in the right place.
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I'm Kath Patrick and I've helped dozens of progressive nonprofit leaders take their organizations to new and higher levels of impact and success by building powerful influence with the decision makers that matter.
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It is possible to get a critical mass of the money and policy decision makers in your world to be as invested in your success as you are.
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To have them seeking you out as an equal partner.
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And to have them Bringing opportunities and resources to you.
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This podcast will help you do just that.
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Welcome to the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
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Hey there folks.
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Welcome to the Nonprofit Power podcast.
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I'm your host, Kath Patrick.
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I'm so glad you're here for today's episode.
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This is a really tough time for all of us.
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And I wanted to share a few early thoughts, even as we don't have complete answers on all of the election results.
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But we have some very important information and it's not good.
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Many of us, including me, thought this election was going to turn out a lot better than it did.
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And given the results, we have a lot of challenges facing us in the next couple of years at the very least.
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So there's going to be a lot to say in the days and weeks to come and a lot of thinking and strategizing to do in that time.
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But right now for these few days, as we process what we know so far and hope for at least a positive outcome in the House, yet we still don't know those results.
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In these few days, I wanted to share some thoughts about what I believe is most important for us to focus on.
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And to just share with you what's on my heart about this.
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We're all in this together.
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And we're going to find our way forward together.
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We have an extraordinary amount of work in front of us.
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And we all know that.
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But I think there are going to be some things that are different about that hard work that we haven't quite had to deal with before.
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But before we get to any of that we have the very present reality that many of us are grieving.
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And I want to underscore the importance of self care in this time.
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Whatever that looks like for you and for your team.
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But this is a deeply felt loss.
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And many, many of us in the progressive community are absolutely grieving.
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We will move through that grief.
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And when we do, we'll be ready to take action and roll up our sleeves and get to work.
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But grief deserves its room.
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And we have to give it that space for our own health.
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For our physical health and our emotional health.
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And so I just want to share how important it is that we be gentle with ourselves, and gentle with each other in this time.
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One of the things that I've noticed about myself and about others around me is that our ability to focus is not great right now.
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People are really distracted.
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There's a lot going on in our heads.
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It's just a tremendous amount to process.
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And there's a lot of fear quite honestly.
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Fear and worry about what's to come and what this will mean.
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So I want to acknowledge that.
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And say all the feelings we're feeling are real and legitimate, and need time to work their way through.
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And so rest as needed.
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I've found in the last couple of days that it's actually been helpful for me to have some work things that required my attention and that I had to focus on and take care of.
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But that were not directly related to election stuff.
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Just ongoing things in my work that required I be present and fully focused.
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And those were actually a lovely respite in a sense, because it allowed me to bring my full focus and positive energy to something that I really care about.
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Working with clients, working with colleagues who I value and respect.
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And if you're a person who tends to deal with upset by throwing themselves into their work, then that's your coping strategy.
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But just be aware that whatever feelings you're feeling, need room.
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And it is not healthy for us to just shove them aside and say, I don't have time for that.
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I have to this, I have to that.
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I have all these demands.
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Yes, of course, we all have things that we have to attend to no matter what.
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But make space for yourself.
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Be gentle with yourself and create time for rest and acknowledge that your team needs this as well.
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People are feeling pretty fragile right now.
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And our bandwidth is lower.
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Our capacity to tolerate difficult stuff is lower.
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People's nerves are pretty raw.
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And so just a reminder to us all, to be gentle with ourselves and with one another.
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And to bring an extra measure of caring and kindness to our work and to the people in our lives.
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The other thing is it's really okay right now to go out of your way to surround yourself with people who are like-minded.
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And who understand what you're experiencing and who are going through similar emotions.
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To the extent that you can.
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Sometimes you can't avoid exposure to folks who do not understand what we're going through.
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But to the extent that is possible, give yourself that gift as well.
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And this is all important because we want to stay healthy physically, emotionally.
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Because we still have people we have to serve.
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And they need us more than ever now.
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And we also now are going to be facing an extra level of work that is about dealing with the new threat environment that we're about to enter.
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And I'm going to talk about that a little bit and what we're beginning to understand about it.
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But before I do that, one of the things that I think is going to be critical for all of us.
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In not only getting through this immediate period and in the months ahead, but also doing more than just getting through, actually finding our way to powerful and positive action that will make a difference.
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And one of the things that's going to be absolutely critical in that process is vision.
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Vision is going to be more important now than ever before.
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We will all need to be deeply grounded in our positive vision for what we want the world to look like.
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And specifically what you want the world to look like for the people you serve.
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Because it's what pulls us forward.
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When things are bad and ugly, and there are a lot of threats coming at us at once.
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It is very easy to get stuck in reactive mode.
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And to just feel like, okay, there's a threat over there.
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There's a threat over there.
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We've got to respond.
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And all you have bandwidth for is that, and then you don't see out beyond it.
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And that's dangerous territory.
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One of the very important functions of vision is that it allows us, it calls upon us, to look out beyond what's immediately in front of our face.
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And to stay grounded in that larger vision for where we're trying to go.
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And because of the nature of what is likely to be the threat environment.
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There will be threats not only to the people we serve, but there will also be threats to our organization's ability to exist.
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There may very well be attacks on the government infrastructure that supports the work that we do.
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For any of us who have government funding of any kind, there could be real threats there.
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So while we want to be aware and alert, we don't want to be trapped in reactive mode because that limits our options.
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It causes us to think more narrowly.
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And it causes us to become smaller.
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And to hide.
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And we need exactly the opposite in a threatening environment, especially because we are responsible to the people we serve.
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And we have an opportunity to not only serve them, but also advocate on their behalf to help protect against the policies that would deeply harm them.
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We have an obligation to do that.
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And if we're in a defensive crouch, we can't.
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We can only do that when we're able to stand up fully in our power and say, All right then.
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We have an important role here and we must fill it.
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Vision is essential to that.
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It gives us focus, it gives us strength.
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It gives us the desire to move toward that visionary future.
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And it's going to be a very important thing for all of us to have in the next couple of years.
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Without question, there is heavy work ahead.
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And the specific nature of that heavy work is not yet clear.
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It will reveal itself over time.
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You know, unfortunately, the playbook that Donald Trump ran on was Project 2025.
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And that is a vast array of policy proposals that would be deeply damaging to many of the people we serve.
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And deeply damaging to the idea that government funding should support any of this work.
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There's far more threatening stuff and One could do an entire series of podcast episodes just on what's in there.
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That's not helpful at this time.
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What I think is helpful is for us to simply acknowledge right now that we will have two levels of work that we will need to step up to in the coming weeks and months and years.
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And that is not only maintaining the highest quality services and advocating on behalf of the people we serve.
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It's also going to be protecting the resources and protecting the infrastructure that supports that.
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And joining in coalition with the many, many other organizations that are going to be doing similar work.
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The very important thing to remember in this process is that we are most certainly not alone.
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There are hundreds of advocacy groups that stand ready to tackle this work.
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And we want to tap into that and align ourselves with them.
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And support them even as they support us.
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But that's in the future.
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For now, I think what's important for us to do is take care of ourselves.
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Make sure that our team is taking care of themselves.
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And that we're being kind and gentle with one another.
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And that we are grounding ourselves deeply in vision.
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And if you and your team haven't revisited vision in a while, or even if you have.
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It would be a very positive and inspiring thing to do in the next couple of weeks.
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Give people a minute.
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Cause we all need a minute with just the deep emotionality of, what we've experienced.
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So give folks a few days to get out of the worst of the emotional pain.
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But then let's rally and start to take a look at what is our vision.
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What is our vision for the way we want life to be for the people we serve?
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What are we aiming for?
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What does it look like when they are fully thriving and our community is fully thriving?
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And ground yourself in that vision.
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Because that's what will carry us forward.
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Through all of the difficult work that lies ahead.
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Coming into this healthy.
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Coming into this having taken care of our physical and emotional health.
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And continuing to do so.
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This is not a one-time deal.
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It's not just the next couple of days where we need to take care of ourselves.
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This needs to become part of our organizational culture and part of how people operate in the group.
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And that should be modeled by the leaders.
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There is no martyrdom prize.
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Martyrdom only leads to burnout and we can't afford that.
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We can't afford to have any of us burn out.
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So we got to take care of each other.
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We've got to take care of ourselves and take care of one another.
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And then ground ourselves in vision so that we can be prepared to fully stand in our power and take the action that's going to be needed.
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To make sure that we continue to move toward that vision and we don't let anything get in the way.
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Thanks for listening and I'll see you in the next episode.
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Right here on the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
