Dulari Gandhi
Meet Dulari. She’s an Austin, TX-based humanitarian who started her high school’s first Amnesty International chapter, because she understood firsthand how injustice impacts real people in real life. She's a triple threat (in a nice way) in the philanthropic sector as a program officer at the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, strategic communications professional and social justice pursuer.
She's working to eliminate youth living in poverty and reimagining the funder/grantee relationship. She's wicked smart and has the kindness to help us build a solid bridge between foundations and our missions. When she’s not saving the world, she’s caring for her adorable pittie-mix pups and her beloved fiddleleaf plant.
What You’ll Learn in her Good Guide
Dulari wants you to take (almost) everything you’ve learned about storytelling - and throw it out. In this Good Guide, she’s going to lead you through how to build out a complete picture of your organization - for your funders, donors, volunteers, staff --- and for yourself as a leader. The discussion dives straight into helping you think about your organization as the sum of its most valuable parts. Just like any person, your organization’s story is more than just a summary of what it produces. In this session, Dulari helps audiences work through the key pillars of true organizational impact so that you - and your whole team - will be equipped to tell the full story of your work.The way organizations talk about their work and impact is important.
What Lindsay Teaches Inside PRO!
Get To Know Dulari
Company
Founder of D Gandhi Communications & Program Officer at the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation
Why did you enter the nonprofit field?
From a very young age, I was deeply attuned to inequity and a sense of fairness. Nonprofit work and the work to reduce poverty and its effects has been central to my life since then.
Favorite road trip snack
Jalapeno or plain kettle chips!
Where you grew up and any interesting details about your childhood.
I was born in Queens and grew up on Staten Island in New York City. Staten Island is an interesting place to grow up, particularly in the 1980s-1990s, when it was much less diverse than it is now (and the borough is 75% white as of 2019). I learned a lot from an early age about what racism, wealth inequity, and discrimination looks like and how it impacts real people in real life, and I work hard to never forget where I come from.
Something you think people get wrong in philanthropy.
I think a lot of people conflate wealth and knowledge. And it puts us at a disadvantage when we consider funders the experts in the nonprofit sector. I always say that nonprofit staff are the experts and I'm here to learn from them and to facilitate the funding they need to achieve their goals. I think the value of funder relationships is in feedback, network-building, and partnership opportunities.
Quote I live by:
“Life is very short. What we have to do must be done in the now." - Audre Lorde