Organization Operations is Community Care
Hi all,
First of all, deep breath. We are all feeling the intensity and chaos of the moment, but we are still a community. We are still in community. We are still here for each other, and we are still taking care of each other.
While the political transitions have been lawless, violent, and destructive, the transitions at Apiary for Practical Support are all about aligning our values with our practices, embodying transparency, collaboration, and trust. One of the most exciting ways that we are leaning into our own transition is that our entire organization, from programs to fundraising and communications to admin, is now offering technical assistance to our community.
As many of you know, the “back of the house” in non-profits is often overlooked in lieu of programs, deliverables, and services, causing short-term burnout issues and long-term sustainability issues. We’ve decided to highlight our Operations TA first because we want to showcase how important it is to us that our community is supported in building strong, people-centered operations.
This month, we’re doing a deep dive into operations with Kymberlie Quong-Charles, our Operations and Finance Lead, the first of many conversations with our team that we’ll bring to you going forward.
What is your overall approach to “operations” work?
I feel strongly about operations but I hate that word. I hate that word, in part, because I feel like it is both reductive and so broad that it’s almost meaningless to most people. It is imbued with a lot of assumptions and ideas that are disconnected from a relational aspect of an organization. I like to say that I consider myself a doula of a lot of things. I am, in fact, trained as a birth doula and an abortion doula, but I see the ethos of doula in so many things. I see it everywhere and that’s how I try to approach “operations.”
There should be a philosophy of operations, I have my own. I see myself as the organizational doula. The role of the birth doula is to provide emotional/physical support to the birthing person and the people they elect to be in the room. It’s not directive—it’s collaborative and it’s also knowing when there’s a time to provide education versus knowing when there’s a time to say “there are three paths here, how can I help you through one of them?” or simply to ask a yes or no question. I try to embody that approach when I’m functioning with my operations hat on, at Apiary or anywhere At the end of the day, my job is to make sure that everybody else’s job is painless, full of ease, and bonus if it can be enjoyable. I want my teammates to be able to make grounded and informed decisions that feel good to them.
What should funders understand about operations?
We do have to invest in developing people as “operations professionals”, especially at this critical moment. Being relational, being in community with our teammates and partners , sets the groundwork for community care within our organizations, and it’s more important than ever.
What’s happening right now, particularly to non-profits, is intended to break us and sow division. We really have to embody that when we disagree with somebody that we’re doing this work with, even if it’s a fundamental disagreement, they are not actually the enemy. When our organizations are under threat, having strong, secure operations, having really good practices around things like data and security, and people policies help shield us. Strong operations and prepared operations leaders is how we future proof ourselves for whatever is thrown at us, be it a global pandemic or violent, repressive reforms. There are lots of ways that having thoughtful, values-aligned operations shield and cushion us from the storm that we’re going through.
How can we build people-centered operations?
An organization is strengthened when operations are transparent, when we know the why of decisions about internal systems. We’re even stronger when we get to contribute to the decision-making around that system. We’re building systems that are inherently more responsive, accommodating and collaborative, which helps us meet our values. The culture of work that we (in the U.S.) live in socializes us to believe that operations is not a creative thing, that it’s prescriptive, and I don’t believe in that. We can be creative. We can create the things that we need, if they don’t already exist. It takes people or a team who are paying attention to the mortar between all of the bricks to uplift that in an organization.
Being a single parent for a long time like I was also makes you creative. You generally need to be pretty creative about how to handle your life and meet your children’s needs. All parents create systems that work for their children and for themselves. It’s a necessity. Kids are who they are and we still need to feed them and get them to school. You have to come up with a lot of different ways to doula your family to thrive. I think that we can use the same approach to organizational operations. How do we make this organization work for every single team member? Everyone should be treated as an integral part of the system and their feelings and needs should be valued.
We at Apiary have the space to be an incubator of organizational practices. A lot of community members in Hivemind are dealing with life and death daily. Because we at Apiary are not, we’re in a different position to be able to vet tools, resources, and experiments. We are creating the shortcuts for building Hivemind members’ operations because that helps everyone be sustainable in this work. I’m thrilled to be able to provide Operations and Finance TA because it affords connection with our community in a deep way where I also get to learn, be challenged, and be humbled by the tremendous work of PSO’s day in and day out.
Who do you love?
The Essie Justice Group—they work mostly with Black women who have incarcerated loved ones to critique and stand up to our carceral system. They have an Employee Handbook that is so beautiful and they did a whole webinar on it. This is what a justice-driven non-profit handbook should look like (IMO). I’ve been inspired by the way Essie Justice has approached operations. That webinar was one of my biggest a-ha moments as a professional.
The I Hate It Here newsletter by Hebba Yousef. While not specific to non-profit organizations, I’ve learned so much from Hebba about how to navigate people operations quandaries. She also highlights others in every single issue, and is hilarious to boot.
Leading with Joy: Practices for Uncertain Times, by Akaya Winwood and Rajasvini Bhansali. This is for those of you who are questioning your life choices and wondering how in the world the “heart” work ended up feeling so awful. This book is a friend and beacon of light.
What words do you live by?
I believe in this idea that we’re all living in our own dream of reality and it’s the place I endeavor to move from, always. This is an interpretation of one of the concepts in The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz and it’s another way of saying that we don’t know each other’s trauma (but let's be curious, or understanding, or patient…).
What’s Happening at Apiary
February is Black History month, and this month, we’re uplifting Reproductive Justice (RJ), a framework created by Black women. RJ talks not only about access to abortion, but to all the ways that reproductive freedom is limited in our modern, white supremacist society and the ways a child is or is not brought into this world, from birth control to housing. Learn more on our website.
What’s Happening in the Community
Fight for the Future released a very helpful audit of current financial privacy technologies available to mutual aid organizations. Learn more about the project and download the report here.
We know the first few weeks of this administration have been a lot. As a helpful reference, the National Council of Nonprofits has created an ongoing list of executive orders and how they affect nonprofit organizations. Access it here.
AORTA, in collaboration with the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, Jewish Voice for Peace, Dissenters, and Amplify Georgia Collaborative, is hosting a two-hour Crash course on Facilitating Decision-Making. This timely event will focus on how to build and sustain power for our movements in this age of political repression. Register here.
Coming up this week on February 13, our friends at the Digital Defense Fund are hosting an introductory webinar on how to harden your digital security. Register here.
Kymberlie’s Cute Stuff:
Everybody watch the new season of Mo on Netflix, created by Mo Amer!
I can’t choose one pleasure-read but I would suggest that you leave GoodReads immediately and get on the Storygraph (a Black-owned, unaffiliated-with-Amazon alternative) instead. You can follow me at kquixotic and see all the dark, moody fiction and the memoirs that draw me in.
If your heart has been needing a massage (like mine has) listen to The Joy, a South African band that Spotify describes as soul-stirring and genre-blending! It’s a bold move to call yourself The Joy and they do not disappoint.
My sun is Scorpio, my moon is Gemini, my Rising sign is Taurus. For most of my astrologically-conscious life, I thought my Rising Sign was Aries so I’m still adjusting to this Taurus placement. Maybe I see joy and jubilation in operations (especially a color code or a naming convention…yippee!) because my Jupiter is in Virgo. 🌙✨