“We have this big red shiny button sitting in front of us”: An Interview with Mijo Lee

Part 1

A professional headshot of Mijo Lee, a woman with curly brown hair,  brown eyes, and rosy tan skin, smiling at the camera.

Mijo Lee is a dear friend and colleague. I met her in 2011, when she was hired on to staff at Social Justice Fund Northwest¹ (SJFNW or SJF). At the time, I was renting office space from SJF in downtown Seattle while working as the Family Philanthropy Organizer for Resource Generation². I was lucky to spend several years sharing office space with Mijo, getting to swap stories over lunch and run around the office doing scavenger hunts with her child during their days off from school. In the following years, she became Program Director, Associate Director and then Executive Director at SJFNW. Alongside many others, she helped guide SJF through an almost decade long period of immense growth and success. Primarily using a giving project fundraising and organizing model, now employed by social justice public foundations throughout the country, she helped reinvigorate SJF and its community of donors. She is a bad ass fundraiser and rich people organizer— funny, big hearted, direct, principled, and deeply committed to collective liberation. 

These days she works as a social justice donor advisor and philanthropic consultant to individual wealthy people and family foundations. She also co-leads DIGG (Donor Intro to Grounded Giving), a program for wealthy people to learn how to “fund anything, grounded in social justice values and social change strategies.” She runs DIGG with Rye Young.

She is one of my favorite humans and the interview below is part one of a two part series, transcribing a hour and half long conversation we had in February. It has been edited for length and content clarity, and mostly uses these questions. She is full of honest, insightful reflections on how to organize the rich with love and rigor, and the inevitable challenges and contradictions along the way. I’m thrilled and honored to be able to share some of our conversation with you.

MG: Okay. Well, why don't we jump in…How did you come to participate in engaging, fundraising, and organizing wealthy people for social justice?

ML: You were there. You know, I got hired at Social Justice Fund Northwest in 2011. I had never done any kind of professional fundraising, much less organizing of wealthy people before. I was hired because of my willingness to do a really unique and challenging job. 

One of the reasons that I was hired, Zeke [Speir, former Executive Director of Social Justice Fund Northwest] later told me, was that I had a good answer to this question, “what is your experience with wealthy people?” 

I gave some answer about having attended NYU [New York University] and realizing how rich most of my classmates were and that I wished I had known more about how to organize them. 

Even though I didn't have direct professional experience with wealthy people, there was something that I didn't know was there, which is that I come from this middle class background. I have class privilege as a professional middle class person and have been adjacent to rich people. 

I think that is a very common experience with people that I see in this line of work, either being wealthy themselves or being wealthy adjacent, and having learned to navigate those worlds before they got into this work professionally.

When I was hired at SJF, we had just started doing giving projects. As you well know, the very first Giving project was a partnership with the local Resource Generation (RG) chapter in Seattle. From the beginning, I was doing cross-class organizing and community building in the giving projects, as well as fundraising for SJF. I was learning how to do both at the same time, and as part of both, learning from you and RG about how to organize and fundraise our wealthy participants and donors. 

MG: Anything else you want to say about your class background or how it's shaped your relationship to this work?

ML: I was thinking about that, this morning, in this workshop I was leading with staff at Grassroots International [where Mijo is a former board member]. 

I asked a question, “What messages did you learn growing up about money, about rich people, and about giving?”...which is a slight variation on a prompt that we used in every giving project curriculum during my years at SJF. 

What I have seen in asking this question, in dozens and dozens of giving project cohorts with a diverse range of people, is that the answers are consistent depending on someone’s class background. 

You can pretty much script it.

What it boils down to is this…poor and working class people are better at giving. They know how to do it. They do it all the time. They're super practiced in it. It's not even a question. 

And the more privileged you are, the weirder you are about it. It's more individualistic, it's more isolated. 

I could go on but my point is that because I hadn't done that discussion in years, it was kind of a splash of cold water in my face. I had a revelation right in the moment, which, in some ways, is really obvious. I work with these people who are so much wealthier than me and anybody in my family will ever be. So I increasingly see myself as less privileged because of the differential. 

But a dividing line that matters is whether giving is optional. Is giving something that you can choose to do? Or is it how you and your family and your community and your people survive? 

And by that metric, my class privilege [as professional middle class] is so clear. That for us, giving was optional. We did it. My parents definitely set that example for me, but not because that's what we needed to do to survive and how we kept our family alive. It's something they did out of the goodness of their hearts. 

That's something I'm noodling on today.

MG: That's powerful. Thanks. 

Who have been your mentors in this work? 

ML: There have been so many. You know, I think of Braeden (Lentz, more on him here) because he was at my first Making Money Make Change Conference³. He's just such a chill, grounding person, oh my god, to an almost unnerving degree.

One of our biggest donors was there, and this was when they were still doing money stories⁴ in the huge group. It was this weird thing for the non-wealthy people. 

We were faced with the question, “Are you going to share your money story in the big group or not?”

I was freaking out. I was like, “Should I tell my story!?” I felt really weird about being vulnerable in the space when SJF has these major donors there, including one that I'm really trying to build a relationship with. 

I actually don't remember what Braeden said to me. What I remember is he grounded me so much. He spent a minute with me, talked me down from whatever ledge I was on, and I was able to go into that room feeling like I could say whatever I needed to say. I could be authentic, I could be my real self. And it was going to be okay. It was all going to be manageable. That's something I've seen Braeden model over and over. 

Who else? More recently, Rye Young. I’ve learned so much from Rye these last couple of years co-leading DIGG. He's really challenged me in ways that nobody else has been able to do. He's helped me understand how to engage with the emotional side of this work. Why and how. I'm grateful to him for that. 

I also think of donors that I have had who have shown me what’s possible. I've had donors who have made big mistakes. And then I went and I talked to them about it, and they were like, “Okay, I'll do better.” 

I can think of a number of people that I've had those types of conversations with and afterwards, thought, “Oh, it really can be that easy!” 

And I'm so proud of the donors that we worked with at SJF. I hear about them raising all this money for other organizations. They are really doing the work out there! I feel proud to have been part of their development as donors and fundraisers and leaders. I feel very much like we were in it together. We were figuring it all out together as we went. I feel like I learned from them as much as they learned from me or us. We were really making it up as we went. 

MG: What do you see as the lineage of your work engaging wealthy people as part of left movements? 

ML: Lineage as far as the history that I'm building on?

MG: Yeah

ML: I mean, working at Social Justice Fund, the ATR [A Territory Resource, the original name of SJF] origin story is something that I've spent countless hours hearing, processing, reframing, repackaging, retelling. Simultaneously, the Funding Exchange story⁵, which SJF was never formally a part of, though we’re both part of the same larger meta-story. I think a lot about the lessons from both.

Similar in some ways to the growing movement of social justice minded rich people now, there was a moment in the late seventies and early eighties, an upsurge of social justice public foundations, where rich people were trying to fund movements in some kind of collective fashion. 

At that time, there was a fork in the road. Several forks, actually. But the one that I'm talking about is between FEX saying, “Donors get out of the way, Activists make the decisions.” And groups like ATR saying “Donors stay up in the mix forever.” 

This was an ideological divergence which has mostly come together at this point. There's a couple of outliers, but for the most part, the gap between those two camps has shrunk. There’s a lot more people and groups working in the mushy overlap between those two poles.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about how my work is built on the legacy of the lessons learned at ATR and the FEX network. And in some cases, built on the rubble of organizations that have died, relationships that have died, a lot of really rough stuff. I've heard a lot of horror stories from working and middle class people, who were on social justice foundation staff, boards, or committees back in the day, about the ways they were treated by rich people. I've heard stories from wealthy people who were treated badly while participating in different social justice philanthropy projects.

I’ve heard so many painful stories from all sides. 

At the same time when I hear all these stories, I always think “everybody was really doing their best. Everybody.” I really do believe that the rich people who were doing all these shitty things, were doing their best. And sometimes their best was awful. But they were making up something that nobody had done before. They were figuring it out. And the extent that we're able to do better is because of the mistakes that they made. So I'm grateful for them for taking the risk and making a mistake even as badly as they fucked up. And I'm especially grateful for all the working class people of color who really led this shit, actually made it work, actually made it happen at immense, immense cost. You know, when they usually don't get the credit.

MG: Is there anybody that you think of in particular when you think of working class folks of color that have led and might not be known? 

ML: I mean, a lot of the people who were involved with ATR in the nineties are people that I would name. So people who were on the staff and board like Soya Jung, Scott Nakagawa, Alice Ito, Glenn Harris, Gary Delgado, Eric Ward. Garry Owens, who just passed away last year. I’ve been thinking about Garry a lot. 

Tyree Scott, who's passed on. Garry and Tyree were both such important movement leaders in Seattle. Gail Small, Andrea Alexander, and Susan Balbas and others who led the way for Native philanthropy in the Northwest. PCUN [Piñeros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste, a farmworkers’ union in Oregon] as an organization and an ecosystem that grew up alongside ATR/SJF and indelibly shaped its politics. 

MG: Thanks. It’s good for all of us to know those names. So many important leaders and important stories to be told. 

What are you most proud of from this work? 

ML: Well, I have a client right now. It’s a couple who were SJF donors. One of them participated in giving projects, so I’ve seen her whole trajectory. And this couple does not have inherited wealth. One of them had a high paying job and they became wealthy through that work. 

They don't expect to inherit money, unlike most of my clients. Most of my clients have inherited wealth. So I'm often thinking “we're going to distribute this inheritance. And we're also creating a template that you'll come back to when the next one [inheritance] hits.” But with this couple, it is very likely that this major money moving effort is actually a one time thing. 

I’m just really proud to see their commitment to funding systemic change, their trust of local organizers and social justice movement leaders, and their boldness and generosity. They were really committed to listening to what these leaders and organizers and groups needed. And I know that they are able to do this because of the training and the organizing that one of them experienced at SJF. 

That's on my mind right now. It's been really beautiful. 

Another one, is a family foundation client, the Radical Imagination Family Foundation (RIFF), that I’ve worked for with my colleague Luke Newton. I am genuinely so proud of the money that we've helped move. I give Luke a ton of the credit for that. How can I not be proud of tens of millions of dollars in grants up to ten years long, moving out to movements? It's pretty dope. 

I'm proud of a lot of things. There's so many I mean! You know, some of our DIGG alumni went from giving like $1,000 to $2,000,000…and it's all going to movements! What the fuck?!

MG: That's awesome.

Are there any mistakes that you made that you want others to learn from?

ML: I've never made a mistake, Michael.

MG: We can move on then. [Laughing] 

ML: Oh, my God. Well, this is an interesting one that Rye and I've been talking about, which is the question of…so let me backup a little bit. 

The kind of progressive rich people that gravitate to us, social justice movement fundraisers, are often motivated by feelings of guilt and shame. Ergo, as fundraisers, we have this big red shiny button sitting in front of us when we meet with people who have that tendency. And sometimes you can just see it glowing. And, you know, if you push that button, in the short term, you might get the bigger gift. And I think that's even more true in the last bunch of years, with Donald Trump and George Floyd and everything else. 

And the decision about whether or not to push that button is not actually a simple one. Obviously if we're thinking long term, big picture…don't push the button. Right? We're in it for the long haul. I want to invest in this person's personal growth…But sometimes you do have real urgency. You fucking need the money and you don't know if the long haul is really going to be a thing for this person. Maybe this is your one shot. You know, it's just not simple. So there have been times when I push that button and it's not the principled choice.

It's not the choice that's most in line with my values. I can't really defend it from a long-term organizing standpoint, but I can defend it from a short-term resource mobilization standpoint. 

There's also times when I've made a mistake the other way where I'm like…”Actually, I'm not going to push because I think that I can work with this person for the long haul” and then they ghost and you're like, “Fucking hell!” You can gamble wrong in either direction. 

So there's a debate that Rye and I have had. You know, at SJF we would always ask everybody to make a personally meaningful gift. We had this whole long list of ways to define a meaningful gift, one of which was it makes you feel a little scared. Rye is always saying how our goal should never be to destabilize somebody's nervous system. People do not make good decisions in that state. And I think that makes so much sense.

At the same time, I also know that, physiologically, fear and excitement are the same thing. Not mentally, not emotionally, but physiologically. And I do want people to feel excited. And I know that for myself, I know that I'm growing when I feel a little bit destabilized and uncomfortable. So I think it's a very individual determination. I think you have to get to know the person well enough to know “is this person going to meet their potential when they're feeling kind of nervous and uncomfortable or when they're feeling very, very held and secure” and different people need different things. And that's fine. 

One thing that I have learned from talking and reflecting with Rye is that I definitely have encouraged people to make big decisions in a destabilized place. And that is something that I think a lot of organizers, not just fundraisers, but organizers in general, do. I think it's probably the way that I was trained as an organizer, and I don't think it's a grounded way. I think that should not be the default. There are some people who need that, but that should not be the default. And that was my default and that is something I regret.

MG: I love those examples. Thank you. I could relate to all of it. I think every fundraiser can. These are important tensions you’re naming in this work.  

What perspectives or tools do you use that you have found most useful?

ML: Hmm. The book, Classified: How to Stop Hiding Your Privilege and Use it for Social Change was very important to my education and curriculum development, training of staff, and approach to organizing. The piece of Classified that I use the most is “Lucy's Redacted Story”. We’ve used it in DIGG. It's a really effective way of getting the point across about how people with class privilege edit our stories to avoid reckoning with the reality of our privilege.

I used to use “the class privilege side effects” animals and then I stopped. It didn't translate well to SJF’s curriculum so I stopped using them in workshops…and they're still in my head. They really were helpful for me to understand the oppressive behaviors that I was seeing and experiencing from some of our wealthy community members. To see them as these cuddly little animals really took the edge off my anger and resentment, and sometimes fear of the power that they had over me. To be able to see “oh, this is a scared little penguin.” 

From the book, “Classified: How to stop hiding your privilege and use it for social change.” Cartoon of penguins exemplifying one of the “class privilege side effects” talked about in Chapter 8.

I still have to deal with the reality of all of it…and not all the staff had the same reaction. This is also why I stopped using them. I had staff members who I tried to share them with, and they were like, “Fuck that! I do not want to see a scared little penguin here. I'm mad.” And I was like “Okay, you know what? That's totally valid.” So again, the penguins just live in my head and they help me there. 

Another book I’ve been using a lot with my clients is Chuck Collins’ book, Wealth Hoarders. That's a recent one for me. It's great because it helps make clear to my clients the idea that…”it's not that you're stupid, it's not that you're incompetent, it's not that you're not trying hard enough to redistribute your wealth. You're not making it up. It's not in your head. There's actually an entire industry that is devoted to preserving and growing your wealth, whether you want to or not.” Talking with clients about that has been really helpful. 

Of course, there is also Rye’s Donor Growth Patterns tool that I’m always using now. It's been huge. 

Another one that was very formative for me is the book Class Matters: Cross-Class Alliance Building for Middle Class Activists by Betsy Leondar Wright. She had this chart of working class, middle class, and owning class patterns. It was too reductive to use on its own in workshops. But it has been a helpful sort of cheat sheet for understanding some things that are going on. And her piece about non-essential weirdness…very important!

MG: Oooh! You’re mentioning so many great resources.

Have you had personal practices that have kept you in the work, that you use when dealing with the real hard parts of your job?

ML: Having a community of folks who are doing similar work has been the most important thing for me. So I can process with them and get advice. 

A grounding practice that I started doing at SJF is reminding myself that I am dealing with all of this weirdness so that the grantees don't have to. And that's a choice that I am making. Nobody's forcing me to be here. I am choosing to do this and I have good reasons for choosing it. Somebody has to do this and it doesn't have to be me, but I damn well want to make sure that it's not the grantees. 

—-

Ok, everyone. We’re going to stop there.

There is so much more from Mijo. I can’t wait to post part two (now here). In it Mijo talks about her assessments of this current moment in wealthy people organizing, what’s going well, what’s not, and where we could focus in the coming years and beyond.

Thank you Mijo! And thanks to you for taking the time to read and reflect on these ideas and this work.

If you liked this interview and want to support this project, please like the post, add your thoughts and reflections in the comments below, subscribe and share it with others.

1.  SJFNW is a powerhouse social justice public foundation that moves money to groups in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming. It was founded in 1978, as A Territory Resource (ATR) and is 45 years old this month. It was part of a wave of social justice public foundations started around the country in the late 70’s and early 80’s.

2.  Resource Generation organizes young people with wealth and class privilege in the U.S. to become transformative leaders working towards the equitable distribution of wealth, land and power. It has a membership structure, with local chapters and national staff, all working to apply community organizing tools and practices like base building, leadership development, and campaigns to this unique constituency. It was founded in 1998 and has over 1,100 dues paying members.

3. Making Money Make Change (MMMC) is a 25 year old conference for young people with wealth and class privilege. It started out as a collaboration between Third Wave Fund, Tides, Funding Exchange and Resource Generation. For the last 15 years or more, it’s been RG’s flagship 101 conference for young people with wealth who care about justice. Mijo has gone to many, many MMMC’s over the years as an organizational rep for SJF and as a presenter.

4. Check out this post for more about money stories and how they’ve been used at MMMC.

5. Short version is that the Funding Exchange was a network of social justice public foundations founded in the 70’s and 80’s around the country. While the Funding Exchange closed down around 2013, many of the member funds still exist and continue to do important work today.