546. How It’s Built: Operational Magic That Puts Your Values to Work - Dorothy Chang

Meet Dorothy. Her mission is to activate everyone’s capacity to become a more powerful version of themselves—in the workplace and beyond. She helps teams and leaders design the organizational tools, systems, and processes they need to put their values into practice. In this episode of "How It's Built," Dorothy shares how those of us in the social impact sector can create conditions intentionally designed for people to do their best work. Tune in for pro tips on operationalizing values in your work🛠️

💡Learn

• The Impact + Case for Putting Your Values to Work in Your Operations
• The Importance of Participatory, Community-Driven Processes
• Pro Tips + Lessons Learned

Today’s Guest
Dorothy Chang, Business Operations Consultant

For more information + episode details visit: weareforgood.com/episode/546.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 3:05

Hi friends, welcome back to how it's Built, a series where we explore the intricate and often overlooked elements that go into crafting impactful change brought to you by our friends at Allegiance Group and Pursuant.

Speaker 2: 3:17

Yes, they're fueling nonprofit missions with innovative solutions in digital ads, websites, technology analytics, direct mail and even digital fundraising too. If you need a partner in amplifying your brand, expanding your reach and fostering that unwavering donor loyalty.

Speaker 1: 3:44

Visit teamallegiancecom and be more for the causes that improve our world.

Speaker 2: 3:47

We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.

Speaker 1: 3:56

So welcome to the good community. We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropists, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.

Speaker 2: 4:07

So let's get started. Hey Bea, I know you're so excited, like me.

Speaker 1: 4:12

I am so excited. I am excited for myself, I am excited for the community because, before I introduce our guest today who, by the way, is absolutely phenomenal, we are obsessed with her work, we are obsessed with her clean design, we are obsessed with the way she approaches it we got to talk about. Sometimes a pitch comes in and the topic just knocks us out of our chair and we are basically running to say, will you please come on the podcast, and that was our absolute experience with Dorothy Chang. So it's my great joy to introduce you all to Dorothy, who's this incredible Bay Area based consultant who helps teams and leaders design the organizational tools, the systems and the processes they need to put their values into practice. Y'all you're not. You know this isn't a new concept from us. We started our entire podcast Friday series breaking down our values and talking about how they're integral to your content, to your work, and I love that Dorothy's coming in and is going to teach us how to operationalize them. She's been informed by over a decade of experience in nonprofit and philanthropic operations and strategy, and she is this invisible force behind some of Silicon Valley's greatest hits and social impact, from designing participatory grant-making practices for foundations like Casual, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, to launching international leadership programs for companies like Amazon and Stanford University. Her work's been featured in Philanthropy News Digest and by the National Association of Asian American Professionals, and she has this belief and I want to read this quote because it really stuck with me that people do their best work when their surrounding conditions are intentionally designed for them to do so. So if you are someone who wants to get activated around your capacity to become a more powerful version of yourselves in the workplace and beyond, you are going to love this conversation.

Speaker 1: 6:07

Dorothy, welcome to the we Are For Good podcast. We are so glad that you are here. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1: 6:13

I am delighted to be in conversation and in community with both of you, so we're going to have some fun Well we value values so much and we really love to watch how they play out and, as marketers disguised as fundraisers, we know how to loop them into just about everything. But the fact that you're coming in here to school us on how to operationalize and systematize this is really just so exciting. But before we get into it, we want to get to know you as a human, and I have already said when we were off camera that I absolutely love the about me story that you put on your website, and I wonder if you would kind of just take us back to little Dorothy, like tell us about growing up and tell us what led you into this work and this passion that you have.

Speaker 3: 6:58

Yeah, of course. Thank you for inviting little Dorothy with her. You know bowl haircut and her bowl haircut too. We all you know every child.

Speaker 3: 7:08

Yeah, it was the 80s, because I do think that that's where the story really starts for so many of us. So I've always been acutely aware of the outweighed influence money has on a person's life. I was born into a low-income family of immigrants. My mother was undocumented, she mostly worked as a nanny and a home daycare provider, and she was also the full-time caretaker for my father, who had a stroke when I was seven and so he had pretty severe mental and physical impairments and never worked.

Speaker 3: 7:42

But my mom being, you know, the smart, powerful woman that she is, lied about our home address so that I could go to a great school in a suburban, you know, predominantly white, affluent neighborhood and Absolutely Like. I think school was really the first big institutional relationship that I had, and it was a relationship of compromise. It was just really clear to me how different my experience of education was compared to my more wealthy peers. I remember, like um, in elementary school I had to stand in a totally separate lunch line Cause I was on the federal free lunch meals program. Oh, dorothy.

Speaker 3: 8:21

Oh kids would be like, oh, I'm going to swim practice or soccer practice. And I'm like, yeah, I'm going home to like cook and help my dad with a sponge bath. And I like I remember in high school we had we took our exams in like this big gymnasium, the entire grade, and the proctors announced over the PA system like Dorothy Chang, please come to the front of the room and receive your fee waiver. And so like gosh, oh, my gosh, and of class-based exclusion than growing up poor in a place where wealth is pretty widespread and considered normal.

Speaker 3: 9:12

So I think just spending these early years experiencing that degree of cognitive dissonance and just like constant isolation, it changes the way you look at things and for me specifically, I became really, really good at figuring out the invisible, unspoken rules of the game and the invisible setup of the game, whether that game is college admissions or like how to get service at a restaurant or, you know, the game of getting a promotion at work. And what started as a desire to know these rules so that I could play the game well and fit in with my peers grew into this calling to know the rules so that I could change them, this calling to know the rules so that I could change them. So I think, career-wise I naturally gravitated towards justice and service-oriented positions. I got my start in the nonprofit space and really through a series of accidents and applying for jobs that I didn't even understand the scope of the role for that tracks with nonprofit.

Speaker 3: 10:06

Yeah, I found myself in Silicon Valley, which is home of the billionaires, as an early employee of a philanthropic organization and I think in this particular geography of extreme innovation and extreme disruption, I was really able to connect with some amazing mentors and partners who saw the value in being able to see invisible things. So it kind of just brings us together today, running my own consultancy and working really deeply with select teams and leaders to support them in building both personal but also organizational capacity to be more authentic, to be more inclusive and to work for more, more stories and more life. Lucky them, by the way.

Speaker 2: 10:45

Dorothy yeah, I'm like Dorothy. Thank you for taking us there. I mean, I just want to acknowledge your vulnerability and bringing us into your story because it it um, not only illuminates, just like how I think you show up today and I think some of the things that we read about you on your website that just jive so deeply with us about you know you're wanting to activate people's capacity to become a more powerful version of themselves. That's your mission. Like how beautiful of a mission is that? But it also jives with what we try to talk about on the podcast. That like the small things are our mission and our values and practice. And like how we show up, like are we perpetuating more harm through the small things of having the kid walk to the front of the room? In those things too.

Speaker 2: 11:24

So I think your story just like illuminates that and kind of connects the dots and it's perfect table setting for today's conversation. So thank you for that. We're talking about values. We're talking about what kind of comes alive operationally, what kind of operational magic can come to life when we put our values to work. So I'm excited for you to break this down for us. But, as we think about that, what does the impact look like when someone does center their values in that way, in a vibrant way? What's the impact? That people can see the magic that comes about as a result.

Speaker 3: 11:53

Yeah, I really love that question and the articulation of it.

Speaker 3: 11:56

I'll put it this way and it might sound a little alarming at first, and I know it's going to sound a little alarming, but I'm going to say it anyway I think that winning matters.

Speaker 3: 12:05

I think that winning matters, especially when winning in this work, means that you know a child will feel safe today, or that this planet is going to be livable for all of our plants and animals and humans, or that a community is going to feel represented by a leader who looks like them and who understands their needs.

Speaker 3: 12:23

But I think how we win matters even more, even more. And so when our social justice practice burns people out, or when we have to use manipulation or guilt or shame to influence donors or influence employees, when we're making decisions based out of fear or behind closed doors, the way we are achieving our mission and the way we are getting to those wins diminishes the integrity of our movement and, at the same time, like so many of our operating structures whether it's like a policy or a workflow or a template or our CRM so many of those operating structures incentivize the wrong behaviors and the wrong priorities. So a lot of us think of values as like our reason for doing things. I want to challenge that and say actually our values are not the why, they're the how.

Speaker 1: 13:11

That was so impactful and so succinct in and of itself, and I think what you're saying is grounding us back into why we are in this work. Let's all do a collective raise of hands. How many of us were kids that said I want to change the world? I would bet most of us raised our hand and were that kid when we were growing up, and I think we just think too much about our why being our elevator speech. But the reason that we're here is so much deeper than that and I love that you are just going deep into it and you've got this framework that I am truly have my notebook out. We will be taking notes alongside all of our listeners because we want to know how this plays out Like. Walk us through this playbook that you have. Because we want organizations, we want people to know how to implement values into their work. Where do they start and what are those key steps to unlocking this operational magic, as you call it? And please just give us the one, two, three so I can track with you.

Speaker 3: 15:21

I wish I could. I mean, I think I'm 15 years into this work and I'm also still looking for the playbook and I've, like, purchased everything out there. My shelves suffer greatly. Same, I think.

Speaker 3: 15:33

When people talk about organizational change or systems change, we're quick to characterize things as broken. Right, recruiting is so broken, like we can't find any black engineers. Or like women just aren't applying for these senior roles. Or we say, like management is so broken, nobody's talking to each other, nobody's communicating, or even on, or even on a large scale, the criminal justice system, the healthcare system, it's so broken. But I would actually argue that our systems aren't broken at all. They're working exactly as they were designed to.

Speaker 3: 16:02

If you think about the human resources function that we have today, it has its origins in breaking up labor unions and reducing worker power. It's a function whose primary purpose is employee compliance and risk mitigation. Or when we think about business practices that we say are like best practice or industry standard, a lot of these were developed during a time when our economic model was supported by slave labor, and so I think claiming that our systems are broken is like one ahistorical and two to some degree inappropriately absolves us of the daily choices we make to perpetuate those systems and keep them in place. Creativity and innovation.

Speaker 3: 16:49

I know you all do too, because this redesign of operating systems is is actually just a reclaiming of agency. And that's super scary but also super empowering, because you get to simultaneously say this inherited system Isn't my fault. I can have compassion for myself and the other people caught in this power dynamic and at the same time I have the ability and maybe even an obligation to change this. So when I think about the playbook, I think so many ingredients have to be right. The design team has to be right, the scope of the work, making sure we're going through a complete design cycle and solving a real problem with the people closest to the problem.

Speaker 2: 17:30

I mean, there's so many jumping off points that I think you're teeing up the conversations that we want to have in this community and specifically with Impact Up. That's on the calendar that's coming up soon. It's like we can keep talking about all the stuff that's wrong, but at some point, how do we move into? Okay, what can we control? And I guess that would be my question to you is like there's a lot of folks that are current leaders and organizations listening today, but there's also people who aspire to be leaders. You know, at their organization Everyone's a leader, but I'm you know I'm talking positionally in a leadership role. Where does someone start with this? You know, how do you start into this work of reclaiming your agency and starting to make some shifts? What would you say to that?

Speaker 3: 18:13

I think there's a lot of magic in who we get to call a designer and who gets to be part of the design team.

Speaker 3: 18:16

Our field really loves to say those closest to the problems are closest to the solution, and so in many instances, whether I'm directly engaged as an operations designer, or if I'm training a team or an organization to build their design capacity and facilitating them through the design process, I'm always trying to figure out how participatory a project can be. I think participation is a spectrum In some cases. Candidly, John, it's not safe for some people from historically speaking up. It just isn't, and we don't want to blame them or shame them for that. And so maybe what that looks like is that they are advisors and consultants being compensated at the same level that we would compensate any other you know big four, consultant or academic. In other cases, we do have safe collaborative relationships and people from historically excluded backgrounds are co-designing right alongside allies and leaders. So we're using sticky notes, we're using dot voting, we're using stack ranked votes to build consensus and land on shared decisions. So I'm happy to share a concrete example if you think that'll work.

Speaker 1: 19:25

Yeah, let's hear it.

Speaker 3: 19:26

Maybe I'll pick one from a corporate partner, because I think we forget that these big companies that set trends and employ billions of people, those are social impact companies because they impact society. But there was a project I was working on with a big, big tech company to improve its onboarding program, and so there's a lot of clunkiness because no one had really bothered to zoom out and look at the whole onboarding program as a cohesive experience. They had really only cared about their one single part, and so, rather than keep the project to the one HR leader, I was able to build a project team that included an engineering director who was going to do the bulk of the hiring that year. The customer service manager who oversaw our contract workforce, which we know traditionally gets paid less, has fewer benefits than salaried employees. I was able to engage a junior engineer on the IT team, and then I also brought together five recent hires who were first-generation professionals, people of color, non-traditional, educated and junior level employees. So these are the people who are most likely to get lost in the cracks or fall through the cracks in onboarding, and so I put them together.

Speaker 3: 20:38

We went through several rounds of deep, qualitative interviews, deep auditing. We wrote up research notes, we prototyped and mocked up solutions and pitched them to one another and the result was just far more durable, viable solutions than I think would have been possible if we had outsourced the work to only the people who had the positional leadership and the positional authority to work on new hire onboarding. There was an 80% reduction in inefficiencies because we cut through some of the work and we were able to. I don't know, there was like fun little things that happened. I think a member of the team you know wanted to change out the welcome kit swag and so we were able to replace the swag vendor with a second chance employer who hires formerly incarcerated people, and it was just a way to line up value and put dollars to it.

Speaker 1: 21:27

I mean you're yes, I feel like you're disrupting the entire process from top to bottom, bottom up. And you know we have a value. We have a value we are for good called disrupt, adapt, grow, repeat. And it's like how do we, how do we think of ourselves? Almost as engineers or, as to your point, as designers, as people who are always looking at the work differently? Point as designers, as people who are always looking at the work differently. And if we get comfortable and we sort of rest in our laurels and we use that phrase that is so triggering to many of us this is the way it's always been done then that is rife for disruption. I love that example and I also just love the community that you built in that and the varied stories. I just think when we take this top-down approach, we are not getting the authentic story of experience in there, of connection and so love that you have broken down the designer piece. Is there another piece that people can kind of or a role that another person can get into, besides the design piece?

Speaker 3: 22:30

That's really interesting. I think a piece that you know or a role that I've enjoyed playing is being the facilitator and the holder of that space. Again, under the right conditions, I believe people will make the more inclusive choice. I think when the incentives are in place, when psychological safety is present, when we have the opportunities to speak our truth but also witness the truth of others, the opportunities to speak our truth but also witness the truth of others we move towards brilliance. And being a facilitator means watching people's expertise and surfacing people's expertise and making those connections without being overly responsible for the outcome.

Speaker 3: 23:04

And I think the thing that's really fun when you are a convener or a holder of space is that the outcome is shared such that even if the project doesn't succeed, even if it doesn't reach the bar that we wanted to, it's okay because it's our mistake that we made together. It doesn't put the blame on anyone's shoulder. I think a lot of times when we think about leadership, we say like, oh gosh, it's really hard to be a manager. Or like I don't envy the director because they assume so much risk, and you're like, yeah, they have big salaries because they're being compensated to assume that risk and it's partially made up. Right. If it were a more participatory team decision, then that risk would be ours to share and would just be a lot more democratic and inclusive way of experiencing work together.

Speaker 2: 23:51

I mean, okay, you've walked us through designer this facilitator role. What are the steps to take to, like, understanding the right problem, like help us understand how to, even you know, get to the right questions to ask, cause I think that's half the battle, right.

Speaker 3: 24:04

Definitely. I think knowing what problem you're trying to solve for is like 80% of the work and then articulating it in a way that's actionable. So I personally really enjoyed utilizing methods and frameworks that come from a variety of fields, whether it's change management or design or community organizing, movement building. But if I had to boil it down using language that I'm most comfortable with, I think there's three big chunks of work.

Speaker 3: 24:33

The first, to John's great point here, is understanding the problem space and defining the problem.

Speaker 3: 24:39

So is this a real problem that the community has said needs solving, or did we just like assume and make up that it is a problem that needs solving? Can we articulate this problem in a way that feels true and specific for the people experiencing it? Or are we framing it in a way that feels true and specific for the people experiencing it? Or are we framing it in a way that actually blames the victim or perpetuates a harmful stereotype? And then I think, coming back to that problem over and over and over again and saying, hey, at this altitude it creates anxiety and nobody is bought in on solving it. And at this altitude, at this grain size, it's so concrete that people don't want to innovate against it. It feels too dead simple. So where's that thought of creative tension and productive tension? So we've understood the problem, we've defined and articulated and framed up the problem, and then I think the second, which is probably the most fun, is just generating a ton of ideas. They all see the sticky notes.

Speaker 3: 25:35

John's favorite part yes.

Speaker 2: 25:38

I love the ideas. Can I just stay in idea phase forever, forever, no says the activator.

Speaker 3: 25:45

No, you may not, but I think it's like teeing up creative problem solving in a way that's not just like what's the most effective solution, what's the go-to solution, what's the cheapest, most cost-effective solution, and asking a different set of questions, saying what would we try if we weren't afraid? Or what would you ask for if you believed you would get it without question.

Speaker 2: 26:08

I'm telling you we don't have the answers to these questions.

Speaker 3: 26:11

It throws us off the autopilot.

Speaker 2: 26:13

I love these so much. Keep going.

Speaker 3: 26:15

Yeah, so we've generated a ton of ideas and this, I think, is the most important part, it's prioritizing the ideas and actually piloting them. So a lot of design loops in our industry in particular, in our sector in particular. We love a strategic plan. We think a strategic plan is so sexy and like we love being we brag about it.

Speaker 1: 26:36

We brag about the fact that it sits on the dusty shelf collecting dust mites.

Speaker 3: 26:42

We're so proud of it. It's the thing that we put all our like, you know, comms and assets and graphic design. But unless you're implementing the plan and seeing where it wins and where it doesn't, it's just a plan. And so, after generating all these beautiful solutions, narrowing down and saying how do I make this testable, how do I put something tangible and concrete in the world so that people can react to it? I think is a really, really powerful, often missed part of kind of this designing values, aligned operations, and in that pilot test, just saying, hey, what do you think the designer or the creator of this system cares about?

Speaker 3: 27:24

So, you get the answer based on all these little hidden messages that get signaled when your hiring process looks this way or when your fundraising gala feels a certain way.

Speaker 1: 27:37

And I just have to piggyback on that and say just because you think you might know the answer doesn't mean that is the answer. And I love that you talked about pilots, because that's been a really hot word for us this season too, and it's like the other term for it is like just try some stuff. Y'all Like truly just get out there and try something different. So okay, we've defined the problem, we've come up with the solution, we're testing the solution. Is that it, or is there one more? Lather, rinse, repeat, disrupt, adapt, grow, repeat. Let's do it.

Speaker 3: 28:13

Absolutely, Because as you test the solution, you're getting more and more feedback nonverbal feedback, verbal feedback, feedback from people that you didn't know were even going to run up against the system or against this process, and it changes potentially how you think about the problem and what solutions you can generate against it.

Speaker 3: 28:30

So I think it's this never-ending cycle and at the same time, being able to have it be very discreet and tight allows people to say my journey with this problem is done, I'm so ready to hand the baton over. I think a lot of times when we do systems change work, or when we do design work, it feels like you now have to maintain the solution forever or you are always on the hook. It feels like you now have to maintain the solution forever or you are always on the hook and it's you know. It keeps us shackled to bodies of work that no longer serve us and that we can no longer serve, with the best of us. So being able to just call it a cycle, a continuous cycle that people can flow into and flow out of, I think feels special and codifying those learnings and passing them on.

Speaker 2: 29:11

Yeah, what a process. And I got to ask you because you're such a big thinker and you've worked with organizations that are thinking really big about how their influence and how their values could really shift the world toward more good what is the reflection process look like, I mean, as you run these kind of tests and what, what do you spend time on and how do you sit with data? Cause I think that's a piece that we miss. I know I miss it and trying to harness weird for good. It's like we we really sit down and really like say what's this data telling us, what is the, these kind of anecdotal pieces really telling us and what does that change in us?

Speaker 3: 29:42

Yeah, I love that. There's an approach that I really like, and it's two sides of one coin, and the first is just to be curious and nonjudgmental and just be like that's an interesting piece of feedback, even though it's critical and is a little ouchy. That's a really interesting piece of feedback. I'm curious about it. And then, on the other side of the coin, being completely unimpressed, just being like, oh, I'm not going to lose myself in this. I'm experiencing the feedback, I'm experiencing the data, but it is not my whole identity, it's not me.

Speaker 3: 30:10

I won't internalize it to be a personal failure, especially when we're receiving critical feedback about the way our systems might have caused harm or sent the wrong message about whether or not we care about equity or inclusion or fun. I also think there's something really valuable and I'd love for both of you to riff on this too what does it look like to learn together? Absolutely, you need those times where you're with the data and you're just, you know, sweating over it, and there's something really cool about being able to visualize information and say what do you see in this picture? What shape is it taking for you, what's the texture that it's taking for you, and where do you see a pattern that I don't see, and so inviting people to analyze it with you, like what more becomes possible.

Speaker 1: 30:53

And so in inviting people to analyze it with you, like what?

Speaker 1: 30:55

more becomes possible. Okay, I do want to riff on that because we were having this conversation and realization of, like we need to come together and literally just talk about what we are seeing building under the iceberg all the time, because the things I'm seeing from my purview are not the same things that Julia is seeing from her purview of being head of media. And I think what I love so much about this community that is gathering here is it's not just John and Becky, Julia and Abby figuring out how to interpret and pilot this community. We're piloting it with the community, and so constantly pitching that question back out of what? What are you saying? How do you want to build it? Who do you want on the podcast? Who should we bring in for this conversation is creating something that, yeah, I have to say like there's been times we've gone down one path and we're like, whoops, that was the wrong path. So, okay, we learned, we're going to come back and we're going to try something different.

Speaker 1: 31:56

But I do think all of us bring something unique to this life, to this world, to this work. I just recently found out I had ADHD and I'm like, oh man, that answers one so many questions about the way that I am oh man, like that answers one so many questions about the way that I am but also it's given me this crazy intuition and emotional superpower to see things that I know other people don't see. And John also has this ability like in systems, because he is such a design thinker and such a visionary. He sees things at the 10,000 foot level that maybe I only see on the ground level. So, anyway, that was just a practical example, and I'm telling you that it is literally giving me life to work in that way, rather than to pull that dusty playbook of strategic planning off of the shelf that someone created for us who is not even in our organization and working for us. So, John, what about you?

Speaker 2: 32:50

Thank you for the buried compliments in there. I mean, that's kind of awkward, but thank you for the kindness. Okay, just like how it all is connecting in my head. Is that top of the show? We're talking about values? It's threaded in. We run these plays to like build, you know, solutions and whatnot.

Speaker 2: 33:06

And I'm like, for us, our values, community is everything. It's one of our core values, and when it's not like a cute phrase, for us, our values community is everything. It's one of our core values, and when it's not like a cute phrase for us, it's like we actually believe it. You know, and if we don't allow people to speak into what they're seeing, we're not living that value. You know what I'm saying? Like, I mean to say we value community, but yet I'm going to make all the decisions as a white guy in an Airstream on a family road trip. I have no perspective of what our actual community across the entire country and world is, and so I think it just makes it more beautiful and allows us to live it out and have to deal with that the results of living it out, which is harder and maybe a little messier, but it's also more beautiful and more pointed toward the thing we're trying to solve for.

Speaker 3: 33:50

That makes sense if I landed that at all more pointed toward the thing we're trying to solve, for that makes sense, if I landed that at all. I mean, I think the cool thing you're both speaking to is this idea of, like, everybody gets to be right. Yeah, that's so rare because in our world we're so used to there being a right answer or a wrong answer, or a right person and the wrong person, or the right plan or the wrong plan and the wrong person, or the right plan or the wrong plan. And when it is community-oriented data gathering, data analysis, everybody gets to be right. Everyone's interpretation is valid. It's just a question of which one are we going to run with for now, for today.

Speaker 1: 34:25

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 34:26

Yeah, that's it so beautiful.

Speaker 1: 34:28

Okay, I'm loving this conversation so much. I love the way you integrated our thoughts into it. You are such a dang good facilitator, and designer. There's a reason you're so good at this, I wonder if you have like a case study of, maybe, an organization that you've worked with and how you've been able to lead them through this process and what it's unlocked for them.

Speaker 3: 34:52

Ooh, yes, so maybe I'll share about a philanthropy I worked with, and this was a couple of years ago, and they were really interested in integrating racial equity into the portfolio. That was. One of their core values was equity and inclusion. And so the team was like we know what we're going to do. We're just going to fund nonprofits led by people of color. That's the plan. I was like okay, not surprising, amazing, let's definitely do that. And then no money moved right, like nothing was happening. And so I saw this opportunity to integrate racial equity and inclusion into the how of their funding portfolio. So he did a big audit of their grantmaking workflow and basically boiled it down to every single point of interaction that a funder would have or a program officer would have with a grantee and every decision point that the funder or the program officer was making behind closed doors and saying like if we pulled these apart, what messages would we be sending to the field?

Speaker 3: 35:56

For example, the application itself to receive funding had like 15 mandatory questions. It was a big word document. There were questions about like what's your budget board member biographies, you know the standard boilerplate grant application. And so we just tried on and I said, like what do you wish you were asked If a funder were to fund you because of your strong commitment to racial equity? What are the questions you would invite and what would you want to have a conversation about? So we just started swapping out some of these questions and it went from like what's the background of your board member to how does your senior leadership team reflect your commitment to racial justice? Tiny little tweaks.

Speaker 3: 36:37

There were other things, like some of the you know nonprofits were saying these, these long applications are tricky for us. We're older, we're not as tech literate. So I was like, okay, you call me and I'm going to type your application for you or we'll get you know interpretation, transcription, translation on board, we'll pay for it, we'll outsource it so we can remove barriers for those nonprofit leaders and grant writers who might be, you know, immigrants or who might have lower levels of literacy or who just communicate differently. And then, on the internal end, I built together a budget dashboard that tracked dollars in real time and disaggregated that funding data based on race. And so these choices allowed the funder to one, send a much stronger signal of what they were looking for and what they cared about to the field.

Speaker 3: 37:26

Two, change the relationship that these nonprofit professionals had with their program officer and made certain things okay to say. And three, it changed what was informing the funding decision and the funding amount. And so something that was really cool that we saw after I think it was just a six-month pilot that funder, that team, was able to spend 99% of its funds in its portfolio, compared to a sister portfolio, multiple other portfolios that were spending about 64 to 70% of their funds. You just didn't know that money wasn't going where they wanted it to go. So that's just kind of a small example of how the tiniest little tweaks beam out a very different story and create a different experience of belonging and of access.

Speaker 1: 38:15

Okay.

Speaker 2: 38:16

We like you so much we like you so much this is I'm literally thinking.

Speaker 1: 38:20

This is organizational magic, this is literal magic and it's not like you're waving a wand and it's happening. You're asking bigger questions and you're looking at data and the work differently, and it's not threatening, it's empowering, and I just want to take your cheeks and say you are such a precious treasure to this sector and I can totally see how this would change so much, and to me that's the joy in it is it's not just helping that foundation evolve and better serve its grantees, it's better serving the needs that the community is experiencing right now. It's helping them achieve the values and the mission in new and different ways. It's about flexing data and and story. I mean, I'm geeked out, john. I literally would want to go and tell that story like to the press and to the media to the community.

Speaker 1: 39:20

That would be so exciting.

Speaker 2: 39:22

Cause I just think it honors the good intention too, you know, because it's it's. It's not saying that it was the wrong thing to do, it was a beautiful intention, it's just it needed that next step of like. Okay, let's get into the cogs of this. This is a call to action for all of us. So I got to ask you for a pro tip because you're like dropping these left and right I mean people listening, our community listening. What's a lesson learned that you would drop as a pro tip regarding all these case studies and beautiful kind of work that you've done?

Speaker 3: 39:49

Yeah, I think two things I think.

Speaker 3: 39:52

The first is that it's not as hard as we think. It is right. I think our mental model of doing justice work is that it's really hard. There's a lot of resource constraint. It takes a lot of time to co-design. It takes a lot of energy to co-design. Put in a different one. I'm going to take out the efficiency brick and put in an equity one and just gently trick people into being more equitable and more inclusive, making the expression of your values just dead easy. That makes it feel like magic, even though at the end of the day, it's really just super smart, intentional engineering.

Speaker 3: 40:35

The second thing that I would have to say is related to mindset, cause I know both of you really noodle on this a lot, which I love. I have this hypothesis. I'm curious if it holds true for you too. But I think for a lot of us are like political awakening comes from a big negative emotion or negative experience. Right Like we.

Speaker 3: 40:56

We realize something is unfair or we get hurt or we witness somebody being hurt, and so we're super sad and we're super mad, and because misery loves company, we go out and we find other people who will be mad and sad with us and that's community organizing. But then that righteous anger can like only keep you going for so long, right. Eventually you discover that anger and sadness is not a sustainable force that inspires change. And you start looking around at the people who have been in this work for 40, 50 years and you realize that they've evolved beyond the bad and the mad and the sad and they're joyful and there's gratitude in the work and gratitude and joy in how they show up for the community.

Speaker 3: 41:34

So when I'm building operating systems for partners, a lot of times there's this tone of like billionaires are the worst, they shouldn't exist, so let's trick them, let's pull one over on them, let's make sure they cut the check and get out of the way, let's make sure they feel badly about our situation. But as much as there's truth in that and validity in that, I think in its highest, best form, we don't do this work because we hate our oppressor. We do it because we love them. And because we love them, we get to hold them accountable. So I think a willingness to be seen, a willingness to see others in all their contradictions, in all their imperfections, in all their power and brilliance, I think that's both a requirement for the work, but also the gift that the work gives us back.

Speaker 1: 42:20

I hereby nominate Dorothy Chang to be the head of all social impact for the world, forever.

Speaker 2: 42:27

John let's get you on a ticket somewhere. I mean, seriously, what a beautiful, it's, so galvanizing to the thing we see. We believe that it's not just what we're against, it's what we're for and like how can we collectively? That's the kind of momentum. It's not just cynical, it's like actually hopeful and like that's the world we want to live in. People call us ridiculous idealist, but I'm sorry, this is just the reality of the situation I'm happy to to, and I know you'll come right along with us.

Speaker 2: 42:57

And I got to ask you about story, my friend, because all of our conversations we we bring it back to that moment of hope, a moment of joy, moment of generosity. We ask for a moment of philanthropy that is like stuck with you and your journey. Would you take us back to something like that?

Speaker 3: 43:11

Yes, so I'm recalling this interaction at I think it was a convening or a summit of some sort, and it was an interaction that I wasn't part of. I was witnessing it between people that I don't know. I was just being like nosy and curious, but it stayed in my psyche for some time. And it was a younger woman of color who had a literal seat at a round table and she was fidgeting with her table tent. She looked so uncomfortable, she was really nervous. You could just tell from her body language that she felt nervous. And at one point she turned to someone that I think was her mentor or maybe a boss, and she said she felt like she didn't deserve to be there. And her mentor got angry with her and kind of scolded her a little bit, very warmly but firmly, and said I've already paid for your seat at this table. And I just knew in my gut my spidey senses were tingling. I knew she didn't mean I have paid for your attendance or your registration fee.

Speaker 3: 44:10

And I think about the organizers and the change makers who have come before us and have suffered to cultivate the amazing opportunities and also like the complex, interesting challenges that we, as this generation's change makers, get to grapple with today, like that is an incredible gift that they've given us, and so maybe we don't deserve a seat at the table, maybe we are out of our element, but like, so what? Someone, many someones, have already paid for us to be here, and by not accepting that gift of that opportunity, we invisibilize their philanthropy. So when I think about my one moment that has really stayed with me, I think about that and I think about all the people who loved me before. They knew who I was and paid for my seat at the table.

Speaker 1: 44:56

I'm just getting a little weepy right now because, one, I think the way that you're reframing power, I think the way you're reframing almost prejudice and I'm saying that like our own prejudices, that we have our own guesses, that we think we know how someone's going to behave, that we think we know what someone is thinking. And it's this call to humanity, this call to knowing your worth and your value. And I just have to say, dorothy, the reason it's making me so emotional is because I don't know what your mother looks like, but I'm picturing her at the beginning of this story and of your journey. And when you talk about the giants on whose shoulders we all stand, there are so many in the sector, but for you, I'm picturing your mother and I want to know her name. What is her name?

Speaker 3: 45:56

Her name is Sweat Fong Chow.

Speaker 1: 45:59

Sweat Fong Chow, what you have done to raise this beautiful human into the world, who is giving ripples and ripples of impact, of love, of growth, and what a giant of a human being. Thank you for sharing that story. Thank you for bringing just a renewed sense of optics and the way that we should look at these things. I just think this is such a strong how it's built, where you come for the playbook, but you get so much more about what we can unlock if we just think differently. So I want to ask you about your one good thing, a piece of advice, a life hack, something to leave with the community today. What would be your one good thing you'd offer up to the community? Who's listening?

Speaker 3: 46:48

I have so many good things that I'd like to offer and then steal from the community, but maybe I'll share an invitation. I think that the stars align far more often than we think, and when the stakes of social justice work feel so high, it's super understandable that we get frustrated or resentful because our proposal didn't get approved or our project wasn't resourced adequately, or the thing that we like pointed out six months ago is only just now starting to become a visible issue. There are some interactions that just aren't going to be teachable moments, and today does not have to be the revolution, and that's okay, because good ideas are resilient and so the opportunity to make change will always come around. So my invitation is for people to try and try again and look for when the stars align.

Speaker 2: 47:35

My gosh, I'm also hearing an invitation to rest. You know like it doesn't have to all be done. Yeah, please write a book. Can we please be your hype squad?

Speaker 1: 47:43

when that comes out, get a TED Talk like get a podcast. We'll do a road show together. I don't know. We will come and sit front row and be your hype team for sure, because you have got some amazing nuggets that you're throwing down.

Speaker 2: 47:55

Yeah, dorothy, connect the dots for everyone listening today. How can people connect with you, follow you? Where do you hang out online? And they got to go check out your beautiful website.

Speaker 1: 48:07

Your designer friend is endorsing the beauty of your website right now. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 48:09

That's high praise. It doesn't come often, um yeah, so I think my website is probably the easiest place to find ways to contact me. It's dyychengcom. You can also find me on LinkedIn, but I'm like really bad at the social media thing.

Speaker 2: 48:24

So I might not be as fast as much.

Speaker 3: 48:26

Yeah, hit me up at my website via email. Hello at dyychengcom, I'm here for all the virtual coffees.

Speaker 2: 48:33

Oh my gosh, what an invitation.

Speaker 1: 48:35

Clearly, you are someone who is brilliant at the human to human work and I just want to say to the community and we don't often like too often just shout out endorsements but if anything is resonating with you in this conversation today, if you have thought we need that, we need to reevaluate that, please go hire Dorothy Like. This is the kind of work we want to see in the sector. This is the brave new world that we want to build. Hire Dorothy, she is going to walk you through it with care, with conviction and obviously a lot of compassion too. So, dorothy, it is just a joy to know you. Julie said you were going to knock our socks off and she was not kidding, so please come back.

Speaker 3: 49:21

Thank you so much. This has been incredible and heartwarming.