idealist.org

Sissy Nga Trinh started SEACA when she was 27. Below, she candidly discusses her early misconceptions about running a nonprofit, as well as the unique experiences and rewards such work can offer.

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Most of the Echoing Green folk are fairly young—late 20s, early 30s. I knew there were other executive directors out there that were relatively young. One of the Echoing Greeners was 18 when he started his organization. It's like I'm old compared to some of these people. There are also a handful of people in their 30s and 40s who are Echoing Green Fellows.

While we were applying for the Echoing Green we did research to figure out how it should be structured and where it should apply geographically. I pushed it to be a multiethnic project—I didn't want it to be only Vietnamese just because of my language capacity. It made sense to organize youth and develop relationships with multiethnic communities and then eventually do adult work. All the youths have different histories of how their families came to this country. One youth's parents walked from Cambodia to Thailand, but she was born here. Another youth came here at eleven years of age, not as a refugee but having already seen the aftermath of landmines and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. So there are some similarities to my background, but all of them have unique stories.

It helps a lot. The people I work with don't have access to certain resources that most people take for granted. Almost all of them get bused 30 miles to school, and they struggle to adapt when their parents don't speak English. A lot of them want to go to college, but their parents don't necessarily know that they have to apply for the SATs [Standardized Aptitude Tests] and do extracurricular activities and all these other things if they want to qualify. For a number of them it's a fight to get to participate in these programs because their parents think they should just be home studying.

That's definitely made me a lot more sensitive to helping them find resources, like health insurance or after school tutoring. My background has made me aware of other things, like the reason they don't want me to come over and meet their parents is because they're embarrassed of their living conditions or the fact that their parents don't speak English. I'm a little bit more sensitive to that.

A lot of decisions are made by people who are traditional power brokers, people who have money and influence and status. For me, organizing is working with people that are directly and negatively impacted by these issues, the people who are not in traditional situations of power—people who don't speak English, who are low-income, refugees, youth, seniors. It means getting people who traditionally don't have access to power to be at the forefront of designing change and demanding civil rights, getting the grassroots to make those decisions on their own and express those frustrations and beliefs themselves.

"If you become an executive director, you'll be lucky to spend 10 percent of your time doing the work you were so excited about."

Somewhat, but it's still an uphill struggle, and I imagine that's going to be the case for as long as I'm in this work. There's always going to be someone out there that believes all Asians are wealthy or that we should focus on this community as opposed to that community. It's always a losing battle when you get into the "We should focus more on Latinos because there are more of them out there" kind of arguments, because everyone deserves justice. When you play those kinds of games, it's just pitting everyone against each other, and I feel that a large part of my work is always going to be educating people and saying, "No, actually"

Last year, the youths decided they wanted to support the boycott against Forever 21, which is a teen clothing company where a lot of their friends shop. A couple of the youths' parents are garment workers, so it was kind of a personal issue. They did all this teen-targeted activity—writing letters to Cosmo Girl and Teen Vogue, creating guerrilla art and fliers to pass out to their friends. One day, we went to a mall to pass out fliers and educate people about why they shouldn't shop at Forever 21. We were speaking to a couple of shoppers, and this one previously timid girl convinced a woman to return the clothes she had just bought. This girl was 13, and when I first met her, she seemed very shy, like, "Nothing. I don't know. Whatever." You know, typical teen.

This was in the context of a site visit from a foundation staff person, who asked her, "How did that make you feel?" And the girl said, "Powerful." You could see the sense of pride in her that she had done this. Thirteen, single-parent family, living in a low-income situation—all these things that tell you she's not someone with power. And yet, because of SEACA's program and because of her work and having the guts to go talk to this stranger about it, she was able to say, "I felt very powerful." That was just amazing to hear.

You have to realize that if you get an Echoing Green and become the executive director of an organization, you'll be lucky to spend 10 percent of your time doing the program work that you're so excited about starting up. I knew I'd have to do a little fundraising and management, but when I applied I was all excited about the vision of the organizing work. Echoing Green has these new fellow conferences that discuss grant writing, program development, and managing staff, and, navely at first, I wondered, "Why are we talking about this?" I've come to realize that every year I do less and less program work because, in order for this organization to exist, that's the role I need to take—the management, the work with individual donors, and all this stuff that is not so fun and sexy. As few organizations as there are out there doing Southeast Asian organizing work, there are even fewer people who are in the position to run them. My vision has changed from "I want to do organizing" to "I want to support organizing work."

Most people don't realize that day to day, most of the work is not fun because you're worrying about budgets and what to do if there's a shortfall, and making sure that you don't lose your 501(c)(3) status by doing something stupid. You don't learn a lot about organizing and social justice work in high school or college, and you learn even less about nonprofit management. You need to talk to people who have been doing this work for a few years, and you really need to believe that this is what you want to do and to understand this is what the work looks like, because you're not going to be program staff doing the stuff you're really passionate about. That was definitely the biggest learning curve for me.

I've learned that a lot of nonprofit leadership models are very much based on the corporate sector. There are a lot of nonprofit leaders who came from the corporate world and now want to do good and tend to be older, male, affluent, and white. But there are alternatives out there. A lot of things are changing, and it's really exciting. There are more young people, people of color, and queer people taking on those positions of power.

My union organizing background tended to make me believe that being a boss is bad, but now I realize leadership isn't always a bad thing. I'm creating an organization that wouldn't exist otherwise. I have the power and the opportunity to create alternative structures that aren't necessarily going to duplicate these corporate models, that will hopefully create opportunities for people who ordinarily wouldn't be taking on leadership roles otherwise. I have the ability to mold and craft a vision for an institution that's even more democratic than the other institutions I've been a part of. Those are the exciting things about being a nonprofit leader, but I definitely think I'm traveling upstream.

My view of the world is a lot more complex now. It's given me a much more critical view of the social justice movement. I can dissect other organizations much better now. Not that I'm perfect by any means, but it's useful to have that vision of why decisions get made the way they do, whether I agree with them or not. Now, I can think more clearly and I have a much more structured view. If I were ever to leave and become program staff, so that I don't have to worry so much about budgets, I would be able to say, "These are things to look at as we're developing this project."

"I remember that vagueness you have when you're 22 or 23 and you know that you want to do good work but you don't know exactly what you want to do. "

I remember that vagueness you have when you're 22 or 23 and you know that you want to do good work but you don't know exactly what you want to do. Having a sense of clarity has definitely made me happier but also much more effective in the work that I do. I have a sense of where it's going based on my previous experience, a sense of the parameters we're operating under, and what additional resources we need.

Knowing that the work I'm doing is filling a need that wouldn't be filled otherwise is a huge source of pride. There are days when I feel like this is not having an effect, and then one of the youth will say something offhanded that shows I mean something to them, that this program means something to them. That gives me a huge amount of pride and it definitely gets me through those days when I get rejection letters from foundations, or when I'm feeling frustrated. I don't think I'd get those kinds of rewards if I did something else.

Everything happened so fast that back in the day wasn't that long ago. I was so nave and idealistic about everything. I can laugh about my attitude when I first got the Echoing Green. I thought it would be easier than it was: "Why wouldn't people want to fund this project? Nobody else is out there, there's lots of money to fund this type of work. I'll spend 10 percent of my time on fundraising and 90 percent on program work." That was seriously, like, stupid.

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