Yes, We Can: Latinx Fundraisers Come Together

by Armando Enrique Zumaya, Director, Somos el Poder

We had a remarkable experience at Fundraising Con Ganas in Chicago this last February 29th-March 1st.

Fundraising Con Ganas is unique. It's not really a conference, as you might think. It's a training, yes, but it's really an awakening and a coming together.

Latinx leaders rarely get to meet in this way. Attendees come from their nonprofit, in teams of two or three. Each come real-time, with a board member. We teach a wide range of fundraising methods through 11 classes.

What's amazing is how committed people are, how attentive. Any other type of event like this you'd see people "quasi attending"—on their phones, in the lobby. You really don't see that at Fundraising Con Ganas. You see folks realizing that this is something special, something powerful. People are realizing that they, too, have the power to strengthen and grow their own movements!

It's revolutionary. It's deeply empowering, and it changes all those that attend. That might sound grandiose and silly. But Latinx labor with a whole jacket of internalized racism. They are told "no you can't" from the outside world. And they hear it the most from their fellow Latinos.

Fundraising Con Ganas shines the light on their own power. It shatters internalized racist notions with facts and real-time examples of doing the things we are told we cannot do.

Chicago was special. You can see it in the energy in the photo I included. Its an awakening, that funding great work, that fighting for justice, resisting racism are ALL possible. Our communities our generous and powerful with love, and we can do anything we set our minds and money to do.