Episode 81: Michelle Kinder Part 2

Michelle Kinder is back on Good God to talk more about the nonprofit sector and how to do even more good by giving voice to people whose voices aren't heard enough, if at all. If you work in the nonprofit world or you support a nonprofit of any kind, you won't want to miss this conversation.

Listen here, read the transcript below, or click here for the full video version.

George Mason: 00:00 There are a lot of good organizations doing a lot of good in Dallas. But how do we see a transformation of our community in such a way that people prosper broadly? Michelle Kinder has been working in the nonprofit community for more than 20 years here. She has some thoughts to share. Stay tuned for Good God.

George Mason: 00:27 Welcome to Good God, conversations that matter about faith and public life. I'm George Mason, your host, and I'm delighted to welcome back to the program, Michelle Kinder. Michelle, we're glad to have you again. Michelle is an advocate for social change, and she works with leaders, and she writes, and she talks about this in our community and has a lot of experience in the nonprofit sector. Having spent 20 years with the Momentous Institute working especially with children and families on social emotional health and trying to improve the lives of people in especially at-risk communities in Dallas. So you have so much insight to share with us and you've been doing this, Michelle, even in these last months since you left Momentous. Every time I turn around, there's another op-ed from Michelle and it's being talked about in the circles I travel in and we're delighted about the contribution you're making in this new way.

Michelle Kinder: 01:33 Thank you so much. That's great to hear.

George Mason: 01:35 So one of the big things that you said to Dallas after leaving the Momentous Institute was that you think we've got to change the way we work in the social sector.We have... If I could say it this way, summarizing what I heard you write and claim. There are two very significant things that have to shift. The first is that we have to learn to serve with the people that we're working to help. And not for them, but with them, giving them agency, helping to listen to what they have to say. And secondly, we have to learn to work with other nonprofits and get out of our silos and have a grander vision of who's doing what, how, and those sorts of things. So could you tease that out for us a little bit? How did you come to those two important observations about where we are in Dallas right now?

Michelle Kinder: 02:42 Mm. The first one has just captured me completely recently and I can think back to the Michele of 10 or 15 or 20 years ago that when I thought about, well, who's at the table, um, efficiency won out in my brain over true deep change. And that's really shifted. So I would think, well, we should have other folks but that takes too much time or, but you know, that's more complicated or more dramatic or all the flares people throw up that keep us from doing the deep "with" work. Now I can't even stand being at a table of all white people. Like it just feels like what's happening here? Why, why, who's at this table? Why are we okay with it? Who's not? Why are they not? And, and why do the representatives of the communities that are most impacted by the problems we're solving for not being at this table, why is that not making all of our heads pop off?

Michelle Kinder: 03:51 Like, it feels that shocking and urgent to me now. And so, you know, so now I feel like if we could just begin to sort of stoke that fire in all of us where we start looking around, every single one of us can do that. Every table we're at, look at who's there, think about who's not there. Think about all the things that have come to pass in our history here in Dallas that have made it really easy for some of us to get to those tables and completely impossible for other people. And what I'm worried about is that if we stay on this path, we will self perpetuate the kind of philanthropic and nonprofit community that feels great to the givers and the doers, but is not designed to solve problems. It's designed to just do enough that people kind of get what they need. The people who are holding power and have their needs met get enough to feel good about it. And that sounds really harsh. I don't mean it,

George Mason: 05:05 I understand, but this is where you're driving us toward the question of structural social change and this makes, I think, many people who are traditionally in prosperous and privileged parts of our community, this makes them nervous, because we have, whether we are fully conscious of it or not, we have intentionally developed ways in which we have organized our lives in our neighborhoods, in our schools, in our work life and religious communities so that we will reinforce these sorts of things that end with a Dallas that to some of us seems to be booming and prosperous. And we don't actually see that Dallas is at the very top of the list in cities in America of inequality, in income, in racial and ethnic disparity. In fact, as you know, the Urban Institute study placed us 274 out of 274 cities. This is a shocking notion in terms of inclusion and participation in prosperity and opportunity. So to change that, Michelle, is going to take some very deliberate work on our part. What are some of those things that you think have to happen in Dallas to get our attention that will make us realize that we're making progress and we are changing.

Michelle Kinder: 06:59 I so appreciate everything you just said. Because I do think it makes people nervous. It makes me nervous. Like it forces us to look at... Hey, I'll speak for myself. I thought I was playing by all the rules that I understood. So I gave my life to this nonprofit work, which may in fact be perpetuating the problem.

George Mason: 07:24 It's painful, isn't it?

Michelle Kinder: 07:25 Right.

George Mason: 07:26 To a church as well, right?

Michelle Kinder: 07:28 To a church, to wealthy people who give generously. Right? That's a hard thing to grapple with. That may be, the rule book is just a chapter, you know, and it's a chapter that privileges a very small group of people in our city. And so, the first thing to me that would show that we're all on a right path is like, are we willing to grapple with that question? Like, are we anti-fragile enough yet to just grapple with this idea that maybe what we considered the whole picture and the recipe for being someone good in this world is not the whole picture.

Michelle Kinder: 08:18 And so can we grapple with that honestly? That's the first. The second is we are not going to get to a different future privileging the same voices. It's just not gonna happen. And I include myself in that. Like I'm one of those voices that has been privileged and now I think more about like, how do I make way for some other voices and use my privilege to make way. I was talking to Erin Crosby who works at the Budd Center, SMUs Budd Center, amazing leader, woman, person. And she really pushed me even beyond that, she said, it's not just voice. She didn't say it exactly like this, but this is my takeaway. My takeaway was there's the sort of totally dark room of like, Hey, we're giving money and we're doing backpacks with food, you know, we're doing our part, totally dark room.

Michelle Kinder: 09:17 Then there's the light on of like, you know, maybe it's a nightlight of, but we should ask people what they think and give them voice. Right. So that's important and it's more than we were doing, but it is not the end. Where she pushed me was we will have arrived when all communities in Dallas not only have voice, but they also vote like what they want has power. It's not just airing their opinions, but they have the capacity to vote and then veto. That was really profound for me.

George Mason: 09:57 Veto? Tell me more about that.

Michelle Kinder: 09:57 So like when, when things are getting, like if there's a big project that's going to be impacting a certain neighborhood before no one in the neighborhood was even talked to. Now we're breaking our arms, patting ourselves on the back, going on, listening tours. That's great. It's better because we're giving voice, but we will have begun to arrive when those people are at the table and their vote counts as much as mine or yours. And then when we want to do something that they know is not right for their community, they have veto power.

George Mason: 10:32 Which we see in prosperous communities in Dallas all the time. I mean, if we want to put permanent supportive housing for homeless persons in prosperous communities, there is a hue and cry from those communities about not in my backyard. Right? And so the NIMBY philosophy comes out, but it doesn't happen in underserved communities in the same way. Those voices are not used to believing that they are heard, they're not organized, they don't have a sense that if they do gather to speak, they'll be taken seriously. And so this is the culture change politically that we need to see take place.

Michelle Kinder: 11:18 Right. And, and it's tricky because there's where we are developmentally, there's a dark side of giving voice because right now where we are developmentally and it's still a pass through and it's better than where we were. But right now we're at that space of you have voice until you say something I don't want to hear. Or you say something that's gonna affect how much power I hold in this world or make me look at myself. And the fact that my long straws directly connected to your short straw, it's not random, then you get marginalized as you know, an angry person or, this was too hard. We should have done it ourselves to begin with, you know, so, so we, we have to go through some really painful things if we're going to get to the vote and veto.

George Mason: 12:16 You know, it's interesting you say that. Years ago, I was with a broad based organizing group in Dallas. And we were working on some public education reform. And we invited the school superintendent to come to a rally and they had a large number of people at I think it was Lincoln High School. And we were standing in the wings. I was standing next to the superintendent at the time, and the people were chanting and they were ready to confront the administration. And he sort of looked at me nervously and said, George, what am I getting into here? And you know, it was that sort of knowing two prosperous white guys who have a sense of power and an auditorium full of people who were trying to gain their voice and to learn how to exercise their democratic opportunity.

George Mason: 13:18 And it was a nervous moment. And I remember saying to him, I get it. I get it, but let them speak. Just go out there and be there, and we're going to get through this, you know, but this is part of the process. And it's this moment of realizing that everyone who needs to learn how to participate is not going to be as sophisticated as we would prefer them to be. In fact, we need to drop some of our sophistication so that we can actually be in relationship. And it's an awkward stage, isn't it?

Michelle Kinder: 13:56 It can be an awkward stage. And for me, it's helpful to think about like if it were flipped, if I had generations of interactions and policies that made my world smaller and harder, right? As opposed to, in my case, the opposite as a white woman, then I would also be in that rawer state, you know, that that rawer state is not a reflection of a problem that they hold or even a lack of sophistication. It's a reflection of the truth and the hardness of the truth that they have to bear or to put forth. And the fact that there's a sort of a deep, guttural knowing that that truth is going to disrupt the power structures so completely right, that there's little to no hope that it will actually be heard. And I that makes sense to me.

George Mason: 15:08 Sure, sure. Which is all the more reason why those of us who do have access to power and to people in positions of authority have to play a mediating role in some way, to help, not because we're, you know, special or whatever. But to use our privilege by getting out of the way and by helping those voices speak.

George Mason: 15:32 Well, let's continue this conversation after the break because there's lots more to say. So thank you Michelle.

George Mason: 15:42 The Good God program is a project of faith commons, a nonprofit organization I founded in 2018 to help promote the common good doing public theology across faith traditions and across racial and ethnic lines is an important thing today in our communities. We hope you'll continue to enjoy Good God. But look at some of the other things we're doing also through Faith Commons at www.faithcommons.org.

George Mason: 16:17 We're back with Michelle Kinder and Michelle, we were just talking about changing the political culture and ways that require us to think differently about our place in it and who our neighbors are and listening to all the voices of the community. But we also have a challenge in the nonprofit world where nonprofits are doing many wonderful things in our community. And there is, as you said earlier, there's a two inch thick book that lists the number of them. There's loads of them, loads of us at work out there, but often working independent of one another. One of the challenges you've given us is to say, how do we think about working together differently? How do we think more strategically about the transformation of our community, not just in this slice of it or this slice of it or this slice of it. So that's a challenge you issued. And I'm wondering where do we go from here with that? How do we begin to change the culture of the nonprofits?

Michelle Kinder: 17:26 This is going to seem so weird, George. But I think there's some major truth in that and it's clearly a need, but I also think it's a favorite rabbit trail. I often am in the room with people who are like, you know, what would make it work is if we had nonprofits and we consolidated and they worked better together, which I think might be true, but I also think that that is a way and a place we jump on something that feels doable and the way people jump on it actually is disempowering to communities and nonprofits and pulls energy away from problem solving for the real stuff. So where my brain goes is like, I think that that would happen naturally if nonprofits started to think about--nonprofits and funders--because that dance either makes or breaks this, right?

George Mason: 18:35 The mission instead of the organization.

Michelle Kinder: 18:38 Yes. So if the funders and the service providers began to think about how do we want to exist in this world in a way that brings, like we were talking about earlier, different voices to the problem solving table and creates missions and work that is not designed to plug a hole for life but is designed to get at the root of the problem. Darren Babcock, who I think you know from Bonton Farms talks about the rungs of the ladder, like someone getting from homelessness to a sustainable, that there are rungs on the ladder that are missing. And until we go at the rungs, we are going to have nonprofits that look and feel good and continue to celebrate 100, 150, 200, 3000 year anniversaries and funders who continue to give tremendous amounts of money. This is such a generous city, right? But we are not going to get at a true shift from let's continue to do good to let's solve the problems. Like let's actually solve the problems.

George Mason: 20:03 So, yeah, look, for example, what would it be like if in Dallas, African American workers actually made the same as white workers? What would it be like in Dallas if women made the same as men? What would it be like in Dallas if the graduation rate from high school in a DISD were the same as it is in Plano, for example, or in Highland Park? I mean, when you start talking like that, now you're starting to get to some real differences of outcomes that we should be really excited about pursuing instead of just "do the kids have backpacks".

Michelle Kinder: 20:50 Right, right. And that when you start thinking like that, then funders and nonprofits are going to organize around each other in a way that is not siloed. But if we come at it trying to just fix the silos, it's a rabbit trail. In my experience. It's just more meetings, more people meddling who are further away from the problem. But if we can, if we could get everyone to start thinking in a visionary way and start thinking about... There's a quote that I'm going to misquote. I think it's from the op-ed project, but it's this idea that within every big intractable type problem, there are many solvable problems and many of them are solvable right now. And we don't think like that. We just think this is a big intractable problem and people are hurting and we better show up for them, which is good. Like we wouldn't not want to be those people. We definitely want to do that. But it's just an endless cycle.

George Mason: 21:57 Well, we've seen some of this take place, I think in the Dallas schools in very positive ways, right? So you don't just have a big massive problem that you say it's impossible and where do you even begin? They actually decided to just begin. And so they began to do innovative things like actually putting the best teachers in the most vulnerable schools with kids and paying them more. And changing the way they went about that. We've begun to recognize that if kids are ready to read when they start school, they can much more likely succeed throughout their entire life, and so we have pre-k and we've advocated for and gotten state funding and there's a kind of flywheel effect when that sort of thing begins to happen and people get excited and they say we can change all of these things. It can be different.

Michelle Kinder: 22:58 Yes, yes, yes. That's where I think the shift is coming. And there are lots of people thinking like this. So to me, 10 years from now, the way that the funding community and the nonprofit community are going to be talking about the way we work together and also work with communities. I hope we're really, really embarrassed by how we talk about it today. 10 years from now.

George Mason: 23:31 Wow. Good.

Michelle Kinder: 23:32 Yeah. And, and, and I, I expect three years from now to be embarrassed about what I think today. Like, cause I'm embarrassed about what I thought three years ago. So it's not like it's just can we get there and grapple with it together and, and move forward.

George Mason: 23:50 What's next for Michelle?

Michelle Kinder: 23:52 So one of the things I'm doing that I'm really excited about is with Stagen Leadership Academy.

Michelle Kinder: 23:58 We're launching a social change leadership program for women. And it's a 52 week practice based course it'll pull from women across from across the country. It's funded by investors so that that isn't a reason you get in or out. Applications opened yesterday and we'll launch our first class in January and we'll err in the direction of underrepresented leaders. We're going to be seeking to learn as much as we have to teach. The reason that that project is important to me is because it feels like an operational way of lifting voices that need to be heard. So instead of myself jumping into another nonprofit or another cause I feel interested in elevating and amplifying voices that are doing incredible work, but maybe because of structural and personal things they're at like a hundred watt when they have the capacity to be a thousand watt. And Stagen is a tremendous organization. They've been around 20 years. I studied with them as a student for three, just transformational and they're a great partner in launching this class.

George Mason: 25:29 So good. Where do people go if they want to investigate this and maybe even sign up?

Michelle Kinder: 25:33 Yeah. So you can go to my website and sign up for updates if they want to, which is michellekinder.com. They can also, there'll be a new Stagen website mid-September that'll have more information about it. But if they reach out to me directly, I can give them all the information and the link to the application and everything.

George Mason: 25:52 Terrific. In the few minutes we have remaining, Michelle, being, we've talked a lot about the nonprofit community, but the religious community, the church, the synagogue, mosques, the people of goodwill who are faith-based in their orientation, have a significant role to play in all of this. Because this is also touched on your life and your background. What would you like to say to those of us who are trying to do our work in this multi-faith environment in Dallas, touching on a lot of the same things that other nonprofits are doing? Is there a challenge you'd like to issue to us?

Michelle Kinder: 26:40 You know, one of the things I learned watching my missionary dad, and mom too, both of them embody this, this idea that there are no neutral interactions, that everything either moves the ball forward, moves it back, or it's a missed opportunity. And so I would think that if the faith communities started to like deeply embed themselves in that mindset of abundance that we were talking about and just resonate with the kind of divine love that they have access to, that maybe other people are feeling starved for. If they could think of how that is going to show up in the world in every single interaction, to me, that might be our best hope at navigating this time that can feel so unsettling for so many people.

George Mason: 27:36 One of the things I hope for is a growing renewal of the faith community's sense that while they need to have vital communities of faith congregations, you might say, they don't exist for themselves. Our congregations exist yes, in part to nurture from generation to generation and to pass our faith along. But our faith is fundamentally about neighborliness, about the creation of a world that looks like what God dreams of that this is what supposed to animate our lives. You know, we actually even get tax exempt status locally. We don't have to pay property taxes and these sorts of things. And the reason for that social contract is that there's a kind of assumption that we're going to be doing some things for the community that would cost taxpayers to do it and would make it a government oriented program. But if we're engaged in it, we're part of a dynamic partnership. And if we're not, because we're so busy building our little kingdoms on corners, this is a sort of violation, not only of the social contract, but I think also of our spiritual one.

Michelle Kinder: 29:07 Hmm. I love that. I think that could not be more important, especially right now. Silence around the kind of suffering people are experiencing right now is experienced as deafening.

George Mason: 29:24 And complicity.

Michelle Kinder: 29:26 And complicity. Yeah. So, so yes, if, if all of our communities, religious and spiritual communities would show up in the way that you just talked about and sort of be that guiding light going forward, it might be our best shot.

George Mason: 29:46 Well, you are a guiding light for us and we're so grateful for all that you do in Dallas and beyond. Thank you for sharing with our Good God community as well. Glad to have you.

Michelle Kinder: 29:58 Good to be here. Thank you.

Jim White: 30:03 Good God is created by Dr. George Mason, produced and directed by Jim White. Guest coordination and social media by Upward Strategy Group. Good God, conversations with George Mason, is the podcast devoted to bringing you ideas about God and faith and the common good. All material copyright 2019 by Faith Commons.