We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Diamond Moseley. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Diamond below.

Diamond, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today When you’ve been a professional in an industry for long enough, you’ll experience an industry-wide U-Turn, an instance where the consensus completely flips upside down or where the “best practices” completely change. If you’ve experienced such a U-Turn over the course of your professional career, we’d love to hear about it.

Since leading, developing and growing organizations in the nonprofit sector, I realized a few inequities:

-The lack of minority representation in leadership amongst agencies that primary serve communities of color.

-The lack of support services for people of color working and leading community serving organizations.

-The funding gap amongst agencies that serve and represent communities of color.

Diamond, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’ve always had the desire and passion to serve people, but I did not understand how and in what capacity could I help. I love to write so I developed a skillset for grant writing and utilized the nonprofit space to build on my unwavering commitment to help people in need. After 10 years of successfully working with nonprofits as a grant writer, funding development officer, and consultant I raised well over $2.6 Million dollars for agencies across diverse areas such as healthcare, homelessness, educations, environmental, criminal justice, and LGBTQ initiatives.

I am most proud of my ability to take an organization from an idea to inception and sustainability; as well as my vision to successfully organize people and communities to solve systemic problems.

My most exciting accomplishment has been supporting an under-served school in Kingston, Jamaica with access to high-speed internet in an enhanced learning environment.

I plan to continue expanding my services and outreach by teaching people how to rally resources and impact their communities.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

The nonprofit sector is emotionally and mentally demanding therefore, you must prioritize self-care, professional boundaries and expectations for yourself and your team. Grant writing can especially be stressful because the financial health of an organization is a burden grant writers carry. Most agencies are underfunded and rely on grant writers to increase their capital. That is an unrealistic expectations that is often unmet due to resource scarcity and nonprofit misconceptions.

Once I realized the stress grant writing brought to my life, I decided to take a step back and redefine my business model so that I can teach organizations how to best position their agency to receive grants and coach them on writing practices. This was a more impactful and effect way to meet my desires of helping people while maintaining my professional wellness goals.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I’ve restarted my nonprofit consulting business three times within the past 7 years to meet changing demands, market trends, and personal preferences. Each time I had to start my client prospecting, marketing, and vision from scratch. Each time I restarted I hit and exceeded new milestones that I intended.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.blackgirlsrunnonprofits.com/
• Instagram: @blackgirls_runnonprofits
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100084304446266
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/diamond-moseley-5423b183/