As the leader of a large nonprofit organization in Boston—the birthplace of the American Revolution—I’ve found myself asking: In the face of escalating attacks on our communities, our sector, and our society, what do modern-day revolutionary acts look like?
Over the past year, as we’ve seen our hard-won rights deliberately eroded through policies that are fueling and exacerbating economic and social inequality, I’m reminded that revolutions aren’t always one-off, dramatic uprisings, but are shaped by the methodical, gradual daily investments that we make to build a better society for all of us.
For me, that means recognizing that lasting social change requires more than the important work nonprofits do every day to serve and strengthen our communities. It requires direct democratic action through policy, advocacy, and lobbying. Too often, nonprofits are told that this work is outside our role or beyond our reach. But if we want to change the conditions that create inequity in the first place, we must see policy advocacy as essential to our mission—and as a powerful tool for advancing the change our communities need.
I am a child of immigrants and a lifelong Bostonian, born and raised. I carry deep pride in being from the city of firsts: the first public school, the first public park, the first public library, and the first subway. To be Bostonian is to carry a fierce loyalty deep within your bones—to initiative, rigor, and the public good over superficiality and self-interest.
If we want to change the conditions that create inequity in the first place, we must see policy advocacy as essential to our mission—and as a powerful tool for advancing the change our communities need.
Yet I am also an Asian American woman who has spent my life navigating a city profoundly shaped by segregation, economic inequality, and elitism. To be a non-White, immigrant, working-class Bostonian is to inhabit a constant paradox: of grappling with the injustices of a city so profoundly shaped by racism and segregation while being rooted in democratic ideals; of having rocks thrown at you while walking to school in a White neighborhood, and then sitting in a classroom to learn about Boston’s identity as the crucible of the American Revolution.
This contradictory experience has created a lifelong ambivalence. I am a Boston girl proud of the city’s long list of historical firsts and its role in creating our nation, even as I remain deeply critical of the systems of oppression that shape the lives of people of color and working-class communities. A short walk from my office brings me to the sites of the Boston Tea Party and Boston Massacre. This is the version of my city’s history that is canonized in our nation’s classrooms and textbooks. And a five-minute walk in another direction takes me to where I grew up in Chinatown, a shrinking community built by low-wage laborers—restaurant workers, seamstresses, and hotel workers. My experience of Boston and its history is one that is not represented in history classes; it is complex, multifaceted, and often bitter. Yet it is always shaped by the resistance of communities of ordinary people. And, more often than not, the heart of that resistance is found in the coalitions and the nonprofits that are the bedrocks of our communities.
With more local nonprofits per capita than anywhere else in the country, Boston’s community-based organizations have always been at the forefront of driving transformative change for marginalized communities. Beginning with the settlement house movement in the 1800s, Bostonians founded organizations that moved away from antiquated notions of charity toward social justice, economic empowerment, and community organizing. Several of these organizations (or their successor entities) are still in operation today.
Since then, Boston has been home to many nonprofit organizations that are national models. Take the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI), which organized resident-led urban revitalization and transformation of more than 50 acres of vacant lots into affordable housing and community-owned spaces, leading to national and global recognition and replication. Or BAGLY, the Boston Alliance for LGBTQ+ Youth, which has been pioneering and advocating for social support, leadership development, and health promotion programs for LGBTQ+ youth since its founding in 1980, resulting in replicated programming across the country.
Organizations and coalitions like these were crucial in reconciling my experience of growing up in a wealthy, educated, and multiracial but highly segregated Boston. From a young age, I was exposed to many forms of resistance—from active, sometimes violent action to quiet community building—and I came to understand the pivotal role nonprofits played in community life.
These elders showed me what community-led power building and resistance can accomplish and illustrated that change can happen gradually and through persistence.
Sign up for our free newsletters
Subscribe to NPQ's newsletters to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.
By signing up, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of use, and to receive messages from NPQ and our partners.
In my community of Chinatown, residents organized to resist racism, xenophobia, and limited access to services—from advocating for the inclusion of Chinese parents’ voices in the school desegregation process, to organizing for community control over state and institutional land appropriation and development in Chinatown. These efforts led to the creation of many organizations dear to me. The Quincy School Community Council, which pioneered community-based school governance and multilingual classroom programming in the 1960s and 1970s, became a national model for the community schools movement and non-native English-speaking parent involvement. This organization became the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center (BCNC), where I would work for 20 years, first as a youth organizer and eventually as the executive director. It was at BCNC where I learned to connect my experience to my community’s history, and to connect my community’s history to the history of our country and its treatment of all those who come seeking a better life. It was also at BCNC where my mother learned English, where I made friends as a pre-teen, where my children would go to pre-school, and where I, as a young college graduate entering nonprofit work, found mentors in the elders who passed on wisdom gained from their formative experiences in civil rights campaigns in the 60s and 70s.
These elders showed me what community-led power building and resistance can accomplish and illustrated that change can happen gradually and through persistence. Organizers like my father fought overwhelming odds and taught me that standing up to injustice is our right and our responsibility.
I am inspired to carry the organizational persistence and resilience that have shaped my life with my own work in the sector—first in my own community and now at Third Sector New England (TSNE). Nonprofits aren’t just participants in social change; they are the infrastructure that supports and cultivates leaders who make sustained change possible and the institutions that teach our young people agency and voice.
The organization I now lead, TSNE, was also a maverick. Founded in 1959 to support public and community health research projects, TSNE was the first fiscal sponsor in the country. Later, recognizing that organizational needs went beyond fiscal sponsorship, we broadened our support to include consulting and leadership development, shared services, and the operation of one of the largest shared nonprofit centers in the country. We focus on building the capacity of the social sector and providing the tools, information, and infrastructure for organizations to make change and to make good trouble. We take care of the “busy work” so that nonprofits stay focused on their missions and the work of advancing their missions.
For so many nonprofits across the country, budgets are razor thin, and compliance is increasingly a high-stakes game. Nonprofit leaders are overburdened and organizations are understaffed. Through models like TSNE’s shared services or fiscal sponsorship, nonprofits are able to share the cost of back-of-house services such as accounting, payroll, and human resources. The supportive work of an organization like TSNE allows for more visible work to thrive in organizations like Future Chefs, a Boston-based organization empowering young people with life and culinary skills to succeed beyond high school, or the Massachusetts Voter Table, which works to engage voters and advance access, engagement, and representation for people of color and working-class people across the state. From the organizations feeding families to those providing healthcare for our veterans, nonprofits strengthen and support the communities that function as the bedrock of a democratic society.
As a sector, we are structured to be competitive. We compete for funding, recognition, and sometimes even constituents. But this is an outdated model based on individualistic principles and centered on philanthropy.
TSNE’s work is not the loud work of resistance but instead the quiet, methodical, and strategic work to support and build the infrastructure of our sector, which in turn supports our communities. But now, supporting the sector and our communities demands more active engagement and direct action. As a result, TSNE has engaged more deeply in advocacy and using our voice to support policies critical for a strong nonprofit sector. Through educating policymakers, organizing national tables in response to legislation threatening our values and our work, and rallying our partners to also engage—we have flexed our muscles beyond our direct service work to protect the systems that make our work possible.
Like our elders in the social justice movement and this nation’s forefathers, we must build coalitions, agree to disagree, organize, and fight to retain our rights. We must embrace advocacy as a critical tool to ensure we can continue providing services for our communities. We must see our current social and political context for what it is—and understand that this is our revolutionary work. We must continue the struggle “to form a more perfect Union.”
As a sector, we are structured to be competitive. We compete for funding, recognition, and sometimes even constituents. But this is an outdated model based on individualistic principles and centered on philanthropy. Is there another model that can focus on cooperation, collaboration, community, shared resources, and common advocacy—so that we find strength together as a sector? How might we find power as a unified voice? If we find or create such a model, it could be revolutionary.
We can be victorious in building a more equitable and just society for all of us. But nonprofits must be intentional, strategic, coordinated, and unafraid to use our collective and organizational voices. Now is not the time to center egos or individual agendas; it is the time to build cross-sector alliances. We must align on narrative structure and share compelling stories, share resources and improve operational efficiencies, be open to mergers to maximize resources and impact, and strategize on shared policy and advocacy agendas to create the society we want to live in. Gil Scott-Heron said it best: “the revolution will not be televised.” As I see it, it will be sustained, principled, and rooted in community—and nonprofits will be at its heart.
