Healing and Centering Love as Movement Builders & Nonprofit Workers

When I started working at the San Diego Food System Alliance 8 years ago, ‘love’ was not a word we used regularly to describe the changes we wanted to see in our food system, or in the nonprofit space that has become home to so much critical movement-building work.

But now I see how important it is to call attention to centering love in our work. All around us, inequities are widening and the toxicity of our systems is as clear as day. In our nonprofit community, the pressure to address what’s in front of us and build new, just systems that care for all of our lives is intense. Not only are the demands high, we often find ourselves frustrated and lost as participants in systems of colonial influence that feel so far from the values we strive for. It can be all-consuming.

I’ve come to learn that an antidote has always been available to us: practicing radical love. As Brandon Steppe of David’s Harp Foundation shared in a peer learning group recently, “love obliterates all of it.” Love not in the romantic notion, but in the bell hooks notion: the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth.

Love and spiritual growth. Phrases that, in any meeting, might be deemed unexpected, soft, unprofessional—or, as my 9-year-old might suggest, “cringey.” But, to bring about healing and transformation, to practice radical love in all of our relationships, to manifest the values we aspire to see reflected in the sectors and spaces we occupy—at the core, aren’t these the things we need to start doing, in order to realize lasting change? 

San Diego County Food Vision 2030 is fueled by love. This community-driven plan and movement has welcomed thousands of San Diegans to be leaders in changing the way we grow, move, share, and think about food. Food Vision 2030 is about cultivating a food system where everyone belongs. It encourages us all to think critically about our systems and structures of power, and participate in co-creating a future where we all are nourished and cared for. It is a healing movement intended to cultivate justice, fight climate change, and build resilience: goals we can achieve only when we think with love—not transactionally, but reciprocally. 

As I have witnessed the impact of love at work, I’ve let the word fill my vocabulary—as a Co-Executive Director, a network weaver, a fundraiser, a systems thinker. Only with love has the Alliance been able to nurture our organization this year, and together with our network, grow the movement for transforming San Diego County’s food system. Only with love have we collectively been able to recognize systemic injustice and open up to hard conversations about where we stand within it—how we have experienced harm, and how we may be perpetuating it. Only with love can we practice equity, strive to be in right relationship with the Kumeyaay people and their land, upon which we are guests, and act in the interest of future generations we will never meet. Only with love can we continue to keep our torches lit, and practice the healing and self compassion that are essential as we work toward a more just future.

Our internal practices are the heartbeat. The wise systems thinker adrienne maree brown talks about the importance of Fractals, one of the core principles of Emergent Strategy, which reflects teachings from indigenous ancestral knowledge and black and brown liberation movements. In the Fractals concept, what we practice at the small scale sets the patterns for the whole system. We are all cell-sized units of the human organism. We have to use our lives to leverage a shift in the system by how we exist, as much as with what we do. This means actually being in our lives and bringing our values into daily decisions, with purpose. We first have to be human beings, not human doings. We walk the talk by how we are, how we put things into practice individually and collectively, within organizations and formations.

Love is grounded in action, not simply a feeling. According to some of the programs and mentors I’ve had the honor to engage with, some of the biggest issues facing nonprofit leaders today are: 1) fundraising, 2) board management, and 3) staff management. Turnover rates of nonprofit leadership due to burnout from these issues are staggering. I’ve been told that nonprofit Executive Director years are counted like dog years—seven human years to one ED year. It’s a comparison that makes me chuckle, but the issues are real. Beyond the daily grind of the tasks at hand, all of us working toward more just systems face challenges deeply rooted in relationship patterns, culture, and hierarchies that we are trying to heal from and move beyond. We are caught up in harmful systems that continue to drain us, rather than empower and nourish us. How we get to the other side, toward justice and liberation, is to notice the patterns and practice radical love.

For our nonprofit organization, bringing this “Fractal effect” to life means reimagining our relationships with the funding community to collectively remember the root words behind philanthropy: “the love of humanity.” It means reimagining our internal staff and board relationships to dismantle traditional hierarchies and create pathways for shared leadership. It means taking collective seasonal rests to recoup and nurture creativity. It means slowing down to be more deliberate and strategic with our actions. Our 2022 Year in Review captures some of our initial strides around these areas. It’s not easy work but we believe wholeheartedly that cultural shifts move faster than any other type of societal change. We must become the world that we want to see, individually and collectively, to impact systems beyond. 

This notion of radical love has always been the cornerstone of lasting movements and has recently been uplifted more prominently within the nonprofit space. Thank you, Más Allá, Oregon Food Bank, Justice Funders Network, Movement Generation, Harmonize, and so many others I’ve learned from.

To our incredible community and beyond, I wish you all love and restoration as you reflect on this year and all that’s to come. Together, may we look back and move forward with love.

Elly Brown
Co-Executive Director
San Diego Food System Alliance