In this episode of the Leaders for Inclusive Community podcast, host Isaac Haney-Owens interviews Ari Katz, who manages fundraising and operations at The Kelsey. They discuss the importance of donations in creating affordable, accessible, and inclusive housing, the values that drive their fundraising, and the impact of giving. Ari also shares personal anecdotes from their work at The Kelsey, the significance of an abundance mindset in fundraising, and the transformative power of donations in building a supportive community.
Transcript
Isaac Haney-Owens
Welcome to the Leaders for Inclusive Community podcast. Today, I’m interviewing Ari Katz, who manages fundraising at The Kelsey and partners with the donors who make our mission possible. In this season of giving, I’m talking with Ari about how they approach their work and how donations make an impact.
Isaac
Welcome to the podcast. I appreciate you for being here.
Ari Katz
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to talk with you about this.
Isaac
Why did you decide to work at the Kelsey and what excites you most about your work here?
Ari
So I really love being able to know that the work I’m doing is having a positive impact on other people. That’s really fulfilling for me. So I was drawn to nonprofit work after graduating college and I had a couple different internships and eventually found my way to fundraising specifically. And once I started looking for full-time jobs, I was really, really hoping that I could find something that felt values aligned. And as a person with disabilities myself, I have ADHD and I’m an amputee, this position at The Kelsey really stood out to me as I was applying for jobs. And I, in undergrad, studied environmental studies and right now I’m working on a master’s in disability studies. And I think housing is a really interesting intersection between those two fields.
And I won’t get into it too much since it’s not related to fundraising, but affordable, sustainably built and operated housing is a really key tool for combating climate change and cultivating climate and disability justice. And so I bring that angle to the work that I do and I find it really interesting.
And what excites me the most about our work here is the fact that we are both changing people’s lives and changing the housing field to be more inclusive, more affordable, more creative. And there’s a lot of really troubled history when it comes to disability and housing. Institutionalization is one example. And I feel really grateful to be able to work with this team and our partners to kind of unravel some of those threads even just a little bit. I think like 50, a hundred years from now when scholars, historians, whatever, are looking back on the history of disability and housing, I really believe that The Kelsey will be a part of that history and that our work is creating a better housing future for people with disabilities as we like to say.
Isaac
So what stories or moments have you seen that show why people feel passionate about supporting our work?
Ari
One of the coolest things is when we meet with funders and they talk about their work the same way that we talk about what we do at the Kelsey. For an example, we were meeting with a financial partner recently and they were talking about like disability-forward design, disability-forward policies, disability-forward financing. And it was really cool to see them use the term disability-forward since that’s very much a term that we use to describe our work. And it was awesome to see that term kind of take on a life of its own within the partners that we work with. And, you know, for me, that really speaks to the fact that our approach resonates with funders, our approach to disability inclusion and the way we talk about disability-forward design or policy and all that within our work. I think that’s one of the coolest things is to see other people using our language as their own. We love to see that.
Isaac
Because we want this to be the norm.
Ari
Yeah, absolutely. So it’s cool to see it starting to become normalized. I think that’s an instance of it already becoming more normal.
Isaac
How does our approach to fundraising align with our mission and values?
Ari
That’s a good question. I think two things on this one. So first, we really try to approach our work with an abundance mindset. So what that means is we don’t try and keep our ideas to ourselves. We don’t try and gatekeep any of our content. We really, we try as much as possible not to operate under a scarcity mindset. And we always talk to funders through that lens of you know, sharing and collaborating and funders have been really open to that, which is really cool. And I think the second piece is, you know, too often when people fundraise about disability, it really comes from a perspective of pity or ableism or paternalism. And, you know, we recognize that things aren’t always like sunshine and rainbows all the time like a lot of the people that we serve are genuinely going through challenging times. And, you know, when we paint the story of what’s going on, we paint the facts of the challenges, but we don’t paint people with disabilities in a way that is pitiful or infantilizing or tokenizing. And I think all of this really shines through in the way that we present our information and our work to funders. We really work across the team of people with and without disabilities to talk about how we best articulate our work and how we make sure that we are continually respecting the people that we are aiming to serve through the way that we talk about our work. And, you know, there are some funders out there who really want the story of an organization as a savior or like as this hero. And we really try to stay true to our mission. And we are super grateful that we have a lot of donors who support that angle.
Isaac
Because we just want to be one of many organizations that are doing this work. We don’t want to be known as the main one to go to.
Ari
Totally. And it’s also super important because we can’t do this alone. The housing crisis is such a big issue that we need a ton of people working together to solve this. And by sharing what we know and working with other partners, that is the best way to do that.
Isaac
Because there’s a saying that goes, many hands make lighter work.
Ari
I like that. Yeah, absolutely.
Isaac
Could you share a bit about why donations are essential to our work? What are the specific needs that our fundraising supports?
Ari
Yeah, so donations are what allow us to keep making an impact in our communities. Housing is really capital intensive, so donations are what enable us to create new housing communities and deliver inclusive resident services and other programming for our residents. Donations also allow us to create new programs like the Disability and Housing Narrative Change Cohort, which brought together a group of disabled leaders from across the country to equip them with storytelling skills to show the need for disability-forward housing. You know, all of our work is ultimately geared toward creating more accessible, affordable and inclusive housing. And every dollar donated, really every single dollar really does help us closer, get closer and closer to realizing this dream. We also get so many requests for support, like every week different communities ask us to bring our housing model to their hometowns or to help out with research or policy work and we do not have the capacity right now to respond to all of those requests. So funding is also something that could help us do more of that and bring The Kelsey to more communities.
Isaac
What are some of the most exciting ways gifts have helped advance our mission in the last year?
Ari
The first thing that comes to mind for me for this one is our project in Alabama. So, you know, as we enter new markets, local philanthropy is so helpful to get a project off the ground and to engage in our initial community engagement work. So for Alabama, we had a lot of, a core group of local philanthropic individuals who made a huge difference. They stepped in early and they generated some of that grassroots funding that helped kick the project off. You know, recently we had a large donor propose a challenge grant, which we just completed this week, which is allowing us to keep moving the project forward and be in a stronger position to apply for multiple millions of dollars of public funding. We have a site secured now because of philanthropic support. And we have a co-development partner who we are working to secure. So this project is starting to really come to life because of donations.
Isaac
What would you say to someone considering their first gift to The Kelsey and how can they trust their donation will have a real impact?
Ari
First thing I’d say is welcome. Welcome to The Kelsey community. We’re so happy to have you. Everyone involved in our work from staff to donors to board members to partners, everyone is so passionate about the work that we’re doing and so we’re always really excited for new people to join the community. And every donation we get is put towards our work to advance a disability-forward housing future, to create more homes for people. And if a donor has a particular passion for a certain area of our work, like housing in Alabama or policy advocacy, we can make sure that your donation gets put towards that work. We also update our donors regularly to let them know about the impact that their donation is having in real-time. We always love to share photos of our events, stories from residents, reflections and learnings from what we’re doing, previews of work to come, and we’re really grateful for our donor community and really honored when people choose to give to us because we know there are a lot of organizations out there doing amazing work. And so we don’t take it lightly. And we really make sure that donors feel involved and feel like they are a partner in this work because they are.
Isaac
For those who want to support our work without giving money, what are some other ways they can get involved?
Ari
The biggest way that people can get involved non-monetarily is by engaging with our resources and just spreading the word about what we do. So we have a really awesome Learn Center on our website with tons of incredible resources and they are entirely free to access. Additionally, even if you don’t yourself don’t have capacity to give other people, you know, might. So for example, every year we organize a team of runners for the New York Marathon who fundraise for The Kelsey alongside their Marathon training. And so peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns like that are really, really helpful for our work. And we’re also always open to supporting other people to take on projects like that. So there are a handful of ways that you can get involved if you’re not donating. And we welcome that for sure.
Isaac
Lastly, do you have any stories or moments in your work that especially highlight the impact of donations on our communities and programs?
Ari
Yeah, so last month we had our biannual work retreat in the Bay Area and this retreat all revolved around The Kelsey Ayer Station housewarming. And for me, that was the first time that I’d been back on site since groundbreaking, when there was no building. It was just a dirt lot. And so stepping back into that space and seeing this community come to life and not just in pictures was really cool and it really did feel so alive. And during the housewarming party, I got to help out with a picture frame decorating table. And it was so special to see the residents interact with each other, to see them helping each other out with their art, to see them laughing and complimenting each other and just having a good time in each other’s company. People were talking about how much safer they felt, how much more involved in the community they felt than ever before. How amazing it was to just finally have their own space, their own place to call home. And they also made me feel very welcome. They were asking me questions, bringing me into the conversation. And I remember when I shared that this was my first time seeing the building in person, one of the residents offered to give me a private tour of the building and to get to see his unit so that I could see more than just the lobby where the event was taking place.
And that was a major highlight for me because he was so proud to show off his home. He was proud to be living at The Kelsey. And that was kind of a full circle moment for me of like, wow, all of all of this work that we’re doing, like this is what it is boiling down to. It was really special. And I think in this kind of behind the scenes role that I do, it can be really easy to think about our work in terms of numbers. You know, how many donations we’ve received, why we still need to fundraise, all of the impact metrics that we track that funders ask for, how many units each building will have, and being in person in the community really broke down each of those numbers. And that these are real people’s lives and there are so many worlds within those numbers. So that was really special.
Isaac
And it shows you what all those donations have been able to turn into.
Ari
Absolutely. They are turning into joy and community and safety. It’s really cool.
Isaac
Is there anything else you would like to share?
Ari
On the topic of fundraising, I just would love to highlight the role that you play in our work. And just a shout out for your amazing thank you notes that donors get. I know people really love to receive them. So thank you for that, Isaac, because you play a big role in this too.
Isaac
And I’m glad to help out and let the donors know how important this, their donations are to the organization and the work that we’re doing. Because it’s important to thank those that are making this possible.
Ari
Totally.
Isaac
Because we need to thank everyone who donates, regardless of how much they donate. Each bit helps, every little bit helps. So we want to thank all of them for what they’re doing, because they’re part of this journey too.
Ari
Yeah, we really do see donors as partners in this work. We totally could not do this without donors.
Isaac
Thank you for listening. If you have a topic you’d like me to explore or a person to interview, email me at Isaac at the Kelsey dot org. Goodbye.