ABOUT GUESTS:
Yodit Mesfin-Johnson

Yodit Mesfin Johnson (she/her) is a mother, organizer, weaver and poet who is active in movements for racial, housing and economic justice. A nationally recognized speaker, trainer and facilitator, she currently serves as president and CEO of Nonprofit Enterprise at Work (NEW), a place-based intermediary serving Southeast Michigan with a vision of just and thriving communities where each person has what they need to live a full life. NEW works alongside other nonprofits and social change leaders inspiring and equipping them as they build community power, disrupt traditional nonprofit management paradigms, strengthen their operations and work more proximately with one another to realize their collective visions. She has co-founded multiple organizations and projects over the years including Black Men Read, Wakanda In Washtenaw, and Future Root, a design and strategy lab working at the intersections of race, place, histories and culture. She hosts Centering Justice, a podcast that amplifies the dreams and demands of Black, Indigenous, and people of color whose works inspire new ways of thinking and being.
Will Jones III

Will (he/him), NEW’s vice president of strategy, serves in an overarching leadership role across our team. He shares stories that amplify NEW’s work; brings people and resources into our community; and shapes and stewards our learning, growth and strategy as we pursue our vision. Will’s leadership style celebrates creativity, and leans on lessons learned as an Eagle Scout, and #girldad. He also loves hosting events that joyfully bring people together. You can catch him, his wife, and their daughters walking their three dogs around Detroit’s west side.
RESOURCES:
Nonprofit Enterprise at Work (NEW)
TRANSCRIPTION:
David Fair: This is 89 one WEMU. And welcome to this week's exploration of equity and opportunity in our community. I'm David Fair, and this is Washtenaw United. There are so many nonprofit and social service organizations in Washtenaw County and southeast Michigan. Some provide similar or even duplicated services. And in providing these much needed services, sometimes they are siloed in their work. Nonprofit Enterprise at Work, or NEW, is an Ann Arbor-based organization with a stated mission to inspire and equip mission-driven people, organizations and communities to realize their visions of a just and thriving society. It has a new vision of creating a collective that works toward that end more collaboratively. Our guests today are leaders at NEW. Yodit Mesfin Johnson is president and CEO, and Will Jones the Third is vice president of strategy. Thanks to both of you for paying a visit to WEMU today!
Yodit Mesfin Johnson: Glad to be here, David! Thank you!
Will Jones III: Thanks, David!
David Fair: Yodit, what do you identify as the biggest challenges in the social sector at the moment?
Yodit Mesfin Johnson: Well, at the present moment, I think, the same as what we saw after the last Trump election and presidency is a lot of fear, a lot of concern over the unknown, a lot of concern about folks' safety, about how we're going to care for folk as authoritarianism and oligarchy increases in America.
David Fair: As a strategist, Will, how do you view the incoming Trump administration and the change in leadership in the state House when it comes to supporting the health of the social sector? What are you planning for?
Will Jones III: Yeah, I think we're expecting some pretty direct and, of course, indirect attacks on work and organizations that center marginalized communities--even name that they center marginalized communities--that promote equity and justice and really, honestly, the vision that we've put forward for what a just and thriving society looks like. And so, when we're talking about strategy, I think one of the things that all of our organizations and us as individuals will have to consider is how do we continue the work and hold fast to the commitments that we've made to our values and to our vision, while also, like Yodit was saying, keep the people and communities that we love and that we work for safe while doing that, right? And I'm grateful to be part of a lineage and ancestry that is kind of rooted in finding ways to do that, right? My people....
Yodit Mesfin Johnson: We know how to take care of each other.
Will Jones III: We know how to take care of each other, and we know how to move forward even while kind of under an oppressive hand or boot.
David Fair: Well, what were the previous four years of a Trump administration like, Yodit, in terms of how it played out in the nonprofit world?
Yodit Mesfin Johnson: Yeah. As I think back, there was a lot of, as there is now, reactivity and reaction to and anticipation of sort of the worst. However, what emerged from that, I think, is a deepening of relationships across mission and scope. And I think fortifying of shared vision, shared strategies, shared programming, I know that, for us, with our work around diversity, equity, inclusion and justice, we had to get creative about how we frame that work and how we offered it in response to Trump's executive order banning DEI. We also made, and I would encourage other nonprofits to be thinking about specific ways in which we can support, for example, Arab and Muslim folk, who I very much anticipate another version of a Muslim ban, so we want to be sure that we're protecting and working closely with those communities. Obviously, if you've read or even scanned Project 2025, similar to 2017, we expect that public education will be under attack. We expect and know, of course, that reproductive justice and reproductive rights will be under attack, along with a really emergent and urgent issue is a bill that was fortunately not passed this past week--the Kill Nonprofits bill, which will come back up following the election. And what it does is gives the the Trump administration sort of carte blanche to call any organization--any nonprofit organization--a terrorist organization based on a really subjective view of that organization's work. So, much like 2017, when the movement for Black lives was characterized as a terrorist organization, I worry about what the new version of that as it's imbued into policy could look like for really any organization, not just those that are working with marginalized communities, but any organization that is pushing against their agenda. So, what I suggest in terms of strategy there is that organizations and leaders are talking about scenario planning, are having conversations about risk and risk mitigation and, to the point about our work, we have to be building collective power. The days of sort of siloing or trying to go this alone, I think, put us at greater risk than where we want to be in the future.
David Fair: And I do want to talk more about that collective power. Washtenaw United and our conversation with Yodit Mesfin Johnson and Will Jones the Third from Nonprofit Enterprise at Work continues on 89 one WEMU. Will, in October, NEW hosted the inaugural Social Sector Strategy Symposium to drive transformative change in the local nonprofit sector. You all put a lot of work envisioning what that would look like and include. So, when you had a moment to reflect on the event and what you take away from it, what exactly do you think it brings to future planning?
Will Jones III: I think it brings some excitement for me about the future, the work, the vision. People are really committed and energized by the thought of taking collective action towards this work. We had great turnout from the event, and we've only heard support for having another one next year. So, if you're interested, stay tuned. Fall 2025. We'll be back. But folks, I think, there's a deeper and better understanding that we can't just do this isolationist work anymore, right? And even though we each have our lanes, the need for coordination and collective effort towards that vision is pretty, I think, well-understood, at least by the folks that are in our networking community. So, that does give me some hope in times when I think things can be pretty bleak and dark. And leaning into community, leaning into the relationships that we've made and are willing to make, I think, is what's going to get us through this. So, we can't do it alone. And I'm glad that folks are realizing that.
David Fair: And, Yodit, as you know, there are always barriers to change. And among nonprofits, there is sometimes a proprietary sense about grant driving, securing grant funding and the community work being provided. In your transformative vision at NEW, will there be a need to not only collaborate but consolidate?
Yodit Mesfin Johnson: Well, let me say a couple of things. One is we have a really powerful, amazing social sector in Washtenaw County, and most of the folks that I know are doing this work because they care deeply about community. So, I do not want to blame nonprofits for what you just described. I want to name that the external factors, including the pressure from philanthropy, it exacerbates competition. It exacerbates scarcity. And so, what I saw at the S4 event was people really understanding that the root cause of our sector, why it even exists, David, is because of unequal power dynamics. It's because we do not broadly--the big "we"--we do not broadly believe that every citizen of our country deserves dignity and deserves a set of basic human rights, like housing and clothing and shelter and access to quality education and food. And I think our participants understood that that basis, that our sector exists, because of unequal power dynamics and systemic racism and oppression, that if we really want a just and thriving community, that's NEW's vision. It's no new vision. It's what we've believed for many years, that we are who we need to create a just and thriving community. Nonprofits have a role in that, but many other people do. So, this social sector strategy symposium brought people from across industry to ignite more collaboration, to ignite more understanding of those root cause issues, and to begin to think about together how our work is already interconnected and how we could amplify that.
David Fair: And, Will, I want to zoom out for a moment. There is often misguided notions in public narratives about people that utilize social sector services. How vital is it to address these head-on and begin to change the dialog and narrative, particularly when it comes to perceptions and prejudices against members of the BIPOC community?
Will Jones III: Yeah, I mean, it's vitally important. You know, the stories that we tell ourselves about our neighbors and the why that they're in the conditions that they are or the privilege that they may or may not have, all of that shapes the policies and the systems that we then enact and the behaviors that we display between one another. So, getting people, I think it's almost an overplayed thing to say at this point, but getting people to listen to each other, to understand, to be in community, to see each other's humanity is vitally important. And when we do that, we can shape and reshape the stories that we tell ourselves that then become the ways that we show up in relationship to one another. All of the things that we are going to be experiencing in the next four years and beyond are because of stories people have told themselves about.
Yodit Mesfin Johnson: Who has value and who doesn't.
Will Jones III: Right, you know?
David Fair: And I want to explore that idea of story a little bit further. We're talking with Yodit Mesfin Johnson and Will Jones the Third on WEMU's Washtenaw United. They are on the leadership team at NEW, or Nonprofit Enterprise at Work. Yodit, I've heard you say that when you moved to Washtenaw County, as a woman of color, you felt invisible. What about the vision for transforming the social sector will create greater visibility for those who feel today, as you did then?
Yodit Mesfin Johnson: Yeah, I think that what I have seen over the last five years that feels refreshing for me but builds on legacies of community organizing and power building in Washtenaw is a really grappling with the truth of this county. We like to fashion ourselves as this progressive and liberal space. And perhaps that's true in comparison to our immediate neighbors. But the reality is that there is a deep history of racial and economic injustice in Washtenaw County. It is compounded when folks like Donald Trump are in office because they perpetuate those very systems and policies that disconnect us, divide us and other us.
David Fair: You know, there's a good portion of this community in Washtenaw County and obviously throughout the country that disagrees with that wholeheartedly. How do you create the conversation there?
Yodit Mesfin Johnson: I think what Will touched on in terms of seeing one another in our humanity, for us, that's look like leadership development fellowships, like Champions for Change and Road to Resilience and Leadership Delaware, we're bridging some of those divides across the county. Our partnerships with folks like the Dispute Resolution Center or the Interfaith Council on Peace and Justice, United Way, of course, are important ways for us to disrupt narrative about who has value here and who doesn't. But I do not think that we can continue to push all of this responsibility onto the local nonprofit community. We have to call in the business community, the higher ed community, government to also play a part in creating, I think, what is still an aspirational view for Washtenaw County. And that does, back to the point of story, mean sitting in the truth of our histories and not only reckoning with that, but remembering the truth about places like the south side of Ypsi, which, until U of M came to Washtenaw County, was the county seat and was the equivalent of a Black Wall Street for Washtenaw County. And yet, a lot of the narrative is that that's a high-crime, poor, disenfranchised community. And nothing could be further from the truth. So, we want to remember those expansive histories about this county and then to reimagine together what it looks like to have everybody have an opportunity to thrive here, not just some.
David Fair: I'd like to thank you both for coming in and sharing your vision for today and for the future! I'm most grateful!
Yodit Mesfin Johnson: Thank you, David!
Will Jones III: Thanks for your time, David!
David Fair: That is Nonprofit Enterprise at Work President and CEO Yodit Mesfin Johnson and its vice president of strategy, Will Jones the Third. For more information on NEW and its vision for transforming the future through collaborative strategies in the social sector, stop by our website at wemu.org. We'll have all the information and links you need. Washtenaw United is produced in partnership with the United Way for Southeastern Michigan, and you hear it every Monday. I'm David Fair, and this is your community NPR station, 89 one WEMU FM, Ypsilanti.
WEMU has partnered with the United Way for Southeastern Michigan to explore the people, organizations, and institutions creating opportunity and equity in our area. And, as part of this ongoing series, you’ll also hear from the people benefiting and growing from the investments being made in the areas of our community where there are gaps in available services. It is a community voice. It is 'Washtenaw United.'


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