Giving Compass' Take:

• Vu Le, the former Executive Director of Rainier Valley Corps, explores common challenges and frustrations of the nonprofit sector and lovingly lampoons philanthropy for its shortcomings.

• How can donors encourage more diversity in nonprofit staff? What will it take for the nonprofit sector to pivot toward prioritizing diversity and inclusion? 

• Learn why nonprofit board diversity is lacking.

Vu Le is the former Executive Director of Rainier Valley Corps, a non-profit organization in Seattle that promotes social justice by developing leaders of color, strengthens organizations led by communities of color, and fosters collaboration between diverse communities. We caught up with him on the sidelines of the Skoll World Forum to hear more about his work and how funders can be better partners to grantee organizations. See more of Vu’s thoughts in this video and the excerpts below.

Rainier Valley Corps is trying to address two issues. One is the lack of leaders of colors in the non-profit sector and also the fact that organizations led by communities of color really struggle with funding and getting support for their operations and their programs even though they do incredible work.

The original challenge for the Rainier Valley Corps was looking to address the fact that we don’t have enough people of color in the nonprofit sector. We have amazing leaders but often they’re not at the highest level of leadership in. I think that only 18 percent of nonprofit professionals are people of color and yet a huge majority of people we serve are people of color. That dissonance is something we have to address.

Read the full article about elevating leaders of color in non-profits by Vu Le at Skoll.