ED Life
Hi everyone, My apologies for being absent the past couple of weeks. My little son arrived on Tuesday, after 13 hours of hard labor that were almost as difficult as some grant application processes. We’re naming him Viet William Prinzing Le. We got lots of good suggestions for names,
Community Engagement
This week, I was asked to speak on a panel to a bunch of social work students on working with refugee and immigrant clients. Panels are like the lunch buffet of information sharing. It is a group of people with knowledge of a certain topic, asked to speak together with
ED Life
In less than three weeks, my son will be born, and I’ll be a father for the first time. I am very nervous about being a father. Terrified, really. But not nearly as terrified as I am of our annual dinner, which is coming up shortly after the baby
ED Life
Last month we had to work on a grant. I don’t really mind writing grants, but this one was painful. It was awful. It was the worst grant I had ever written. It was like getting a thousand paper cuts, bathing in lime juice, and then drying off with
ED Life
This week I had two nonprofit blind dates (NBD). It’s like a regular blind date, but it’s work-related, and people are generally not as attractive (they tend to look more tired). Usually it starts because a colleague thinks you should meet someone or vice-versa because the stuff you
Community Engagement
As a field, we have a lot of meetings. And we totally suck at scheduling them. Each week, I get at least a dozen emails like this: “Dear Vu, my name is John, and I am from Unicycles for Peace, a nonprofit dedicated to replacing violence with the joys of
ED Life
Executive Directors are problem solvers. That's why we get paid the big bucks. But why keep it to just nonprofit problems? We would make great advice columnists! Dear Nonprofit Director: After a year of dating the girl of my dreams, I introduced her to my family and announced
ED Life
Once a month, we Executive Directors get together for ED Happy Hour, a time for all of us to share best practices, discuss the challenges of our field, and strategically plan for collective impact. At least, that’s what we tell people while we argue over topics like who would
ED Life
Like most executive directors, I come home exhausted from hours of telling staff what to do and taking credit for their work. To de-stress, I’ve started watching ridiculous amounts of television. And I started noticing something. There are plenty of shows about lawyers, doctors, detectives, cooks, servants, zombies, etc.
ED Life
This week, VFA had a site visit. Whenever we apply for a grant, the second-best outcome is a site visit (the best outcome would be a funder saying, “We’re funding you, and in fact, doubling your request and sending the kids in your after-school program a laptop and a
Community Engagement
Last week I received a severe drubbing from a program officer for unintentionally breaching protocols with her foundation while seeking funding for the Southeast Seattle Education Coalition (SESEC), which I chair. I’ll explain the whole thing later in my book “Unicorns, Equity, and General Operating Funds: Quest of the
Community Engagement
Chapter I: Scary Stories to Tell at Halloween Parties This past weekend, VFA’s Saturday English School (SES) program had our Halloween-themed session. These are students who just arrived to the US, and they can’t believe some of the crazy stuff we do around this holiday. Such as wasting