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Home»Culture»Building a Collective Future: A Conversation with Niloufar Khonsari – Non Profit News
Culture

Building a Collective Future: A Conversation with Niloufar Khonsari – Non Profit News

October 22, 2025No Comments
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Niloufar Khonsari’s book “The Future Is collective: Effective workplace strategies for building a culture of care”
Book cover courtesy of Penguin Random House

Truth to Power is a regular series of conversations with writers about the promises and pitfalls of movements for social justice. From the roots of racial capitalism to the psychic toll of poverty, from resource wars to popular uprisings, the interviews in this column focus on how to write about the myriad causes of oppression and the organized desire for a better world.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Steve Dubb: What led you to write The Future Is Collective: Effective Workplace Strategies for Building a Culture of Care, and what are you hoping readers will take from it?

Niloufar Khonsari: I was getting a lot of inquiries about the structure and the organizing model we had built at Pangea [Legal] Services and how we practiced collective governance in both these areas.

At the time, I was an immigration attorney representing deportation defense clients, immigrants in detention, immigrants at risk of deportation, and also organizing, working with organizers, doing busy work, and doing internal governance. I was coming from not just a theoretical perspective but from living out this kind of collective structure, both internally and externally in immigrant justice work.

I kept noticing that the loudest voices or the most recognized voices about leadership and organizational design were often really removed from the day-to-day practices. They came from really brilliant people—professors, consultants, philosophers—but not necessarily grounded in nonprofits and movement building.

“What an executive leader has to do to let go of the title…is both a very personal, deeply reflective process and a collective process.”

I wrote The Future Is Collective as a reflection and acknowledgment of the wisdom of our Indigenous ancestors, of Black women, of other BIPOC leaders, of gender expansive folks, and my own personal experiences in leadership, organizing, movement building, and the nonprofit space.

I wrote if for my peers and colleagues. I also wrote for it for my younger self and for anyone who is trying to build and be part of something rooted in social justice and collective governance. It was a book I wish had existed when I was first starting out in my journey as an activist and leader in the social justice space.

SD: A few years ago in NPQ you wrote about giving up your role as executive director, “As a leader of color, I had to unlearn a tendency to equate professional titles with respect and a sense of self-worth.” In the book, you expand on this theme. Could you talk about what leaders need to do to transition effectively to collective management?

NK: What an executive leader has to do to let go of the title and some of the authority is both a very personal, deeply reflective process and a collective process.

On a personal level, I had to do a lot of deconstructing of these notions of what success meant, what achievement meant for me as a leader, as a leader of color.

I had to unpack a lot of ego and the external praise that comes with titles and hierarchy. The theory and values were there. But when it came to implementing it, there were multiple “ouch” moments for me. It was a process; it didn’t happen overnight. It took about three years. And the learning and unlearning are ongoing.

On the collective front, we had conversations where folks expressed their desire for moving away from a single director leadership model to more distributed authority. There were comments that I received as criticism or a questioning of my leadership—questions that I had to do the work to personally unpack.

There is a gentle feedback loop and training that might need to be embraced for this kind of transition and evolution of an organization, even when the leaders themselves are pro-distributive leadership.

We are still human, 90 percent of it is relational. It is giving the space and time for both the group and individual leader to move through this transition.

SD: Are there any specific practices that would make that kind of transition easier?

NK: One facilitation tool for a conversation like this is setting boundaries. In our case, we did the go-around and everyone just free flowed. But containing it and limiting it and giving it more structure can help.

For example, you are doing a go-around to discuss the question, “Should our existing leader remove their executive director title or not?”

Contain the conversation to everyone naming one thing that our organization will benefit from if we do this and one thing that might be a disadvantage. And name one appreciation—one thing that is working really well with your current leader’s role.

Then offer space in one-on-one to directly speak with the leader or a second person in the organization to offer feedback or additional concerns about the continuity of the single leader’s leadership.

I just remember interpreting some of what colleagues were saying about organizational benefits and downsides and taking those as personal critiques. That is common across leaders. I see it now with many organizations and leaders and BIPOC women, especially, who are looking to do things differently.

Critique feels like an attack. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it is not. The facilitation tool of feedback being affirming or contained in public, versus one-on-one feedback that is constructive or critical can help.

SD: Talk about the hub system, how it worked at Pangea—and how a group determines whether an individual, a team (hub), or the collective decides.

NK: It is an iterative process. That’s the short answer.

When an organization begins to define its structure and decision-making, you start off with what you are already doing. Who is making decisions in what areas?

“A good practice is to have an assessment periodically…to reassess membership in the decision-making arena and make room for possible rotation.”

Then ask: What are major topics that everyone should have input around? Depending on an organization’s size, there may be very few to none. If you’re a large organization, it may be a few. If you’re small—under five people—everyone is usually involved in every decision.

We had groups of two to five people making decisions. We decided that collectively, using several criteria: We needed to have at least one person with institutional knowledge or subject matter expertise. We wanted to have one person who was newer to that topic or the organization and specifically did not have the same institutional knowledge or subject matter expertise. Another factor that I use now is capacity.

A good practice is to have an assessment periodically—every six months or every year—to reassess membership in the decision-making arena and make room for possible rotation.

It took us at least two years to find the sweet spot of how many people are making decisions on what.

We started off with a lot of people making decisions, to err toward being more inclusive. Then we realized we didn’t have the capacity and bandwidth for it. So, we narrowed and delegated even more. It is iterative, and it works well when you’re building that trust.

It is really hard to build something like this right after a rupture in an organization. It is possible, and very effective, for organizations that emphasize relational trust building and do iterations.

“We created all these hubs and then my co-executive director at the time and I asked ourselves, ‘Who is going to hold the bird’s eye view?’”

SD: One thing you note is that hubs can often miss a lot. How can organizations wishing to embrace collective management address the “gap” challenge—the things that fall within the seams?

NK: When there is a gap, someone in the organization can bring it up. If it is not already placed in a hub or bucket, then a new bucket can be created.

Early on at Pangea, we created all these hubs and then my co-executive director at the time and I asked ourselves, “Who is going to hold the bird’s eye view?” We need somebody who connects. We talked about it briefly, and it got dropped. I think I went on parental leave.

It is the invisible glue that is holding an organization together. You don’t feel it when it is being held, and you’ll feel it when it is not. A year or so later, we came back and said we do need somebody who coordinates between the hubs. We asked ourselves: “Should one of us do it or do we hire for it?” We decided to create a position for that gap and bring on somebody to fill that role.

There were other challenges, like activities that could fit under multiple hubs. Figuring it out took time. Our consultant warned us that this sorting would take 30 percent of our time and to account for that. It took that and more in the beginning. We just had to coordinate and communicate—and reach consensus or agreement.

We also need to continually evaluate and respond to our capacity. If there is a gap, can someone circle in? Or can work be paused until capacity comes back? Or, if something that’s not being held right now can be tossed, we can intentionally say, “We’re discontinuing this activity.” Those are three other ways I’ve seen this challenge addressed.

SD: You write about balance—at one point your coworkers asked you to slow down, saying, “We have a hard time believing and following what you say when you’re not doing it.” Your nonprofit also adopted a four-day workweek. How should nonprofits balance the desire to create a culture of care within the organization with urgent mission work?

NK: The generation that is coming after me, this new generation of workers, is so much more aware and attuned to their bodies and needs and what it means to be more balanced. I was not conditioned in that way. The way a lot of immigrants are conditioned is you work, you grind, you do more. More is better. The system tells us that.

We try to shine and shine and work and work. We don’t realize that we are actually dimming our own shine by grinding ourselves down so much.

I’m thankful for my colleagues who were adamant on the days I was working around the clock about the need for us to be balanced. That’s one thing.

The other thing about being balanced is that we go through different stages in our lives. When I was in my 20s and early 30s—before I had a child—my perspective and my needs were different, and my balance looked different.

Creating an organization that can be flexible to people’s needs and respect the differences, time, and amount folks can contribute is one way to balance.

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At this stage, I am a huge proponent of stretching the budget and advocating for a four-day workweek. Or whatever works. Some organizations take off Friday afternoons. The revenue and budget are huge limitations.

The way that nonprofits are structured and work is structured, not everyone has the luxury of being paid well and having great benefits and having a four-day workweek.

Having that available as an internal collective value was key to our retention. I see that with other organizations that I work with now. A huge retention factor is flexibility and balance.

SD: A good portion of your book is dedicated to different aspects of what might fall under “human resources.” What does HR look like at a collectively managed nonprofit, how does it differ from HR in a nonprofit run by an executive director, and what kind of training is required to make this system work?

NK: I have to give a little disclaimer: I was a practicing attorney and a lot of my colleagues were attorneys at the time that we were developing these processes.

Some of the policies we were proposing were actually wonderful policies for us, for workers, that the law should actually protect. But the law wasn’t written for us.

As movement lawyers, we came from the perspective that we will use the law, and we are not bound by its limits. So we had a little bit of empowerment. Some folks who are getting the advice of employment lawyers and HR lawyers might be more reluctant to take certain risks that we took.

With collectively managed organizations, what organizations need to pay attention to is striking a balance between the advice that lawyers and HR advisers will give us—which is often to not create polices that are creative, that serve staff, that bring in that humanity we want—and our values and the direction that we want to go in terms of policies and structures.

I’ll share an example from the book. As an immigrant justice and undocumented activist organization, we came to the point of wanting to create a benefit for undocumented loved ones or family members of our staff.

This need arose because one of our staff had to foot this huge medical bill for their parent. Immigrants, even when documented, when we have undocumented loved ones or family members, we serve as their insurance policy, their retirement plan.

“We have to find the sweet spot between following the rules and the law that wasn’t written for us and creating workarounds that are compliant and humane.”

So, we said, “We want to address this and add a benefit and cover dependents.” We went through all the legal channels. We went to our health insurance provider. They said, “No. Absolutely not. Undocumented parents can’t be a dependent. We can’t cover it.” We went to our employment lawyers. They said, “No, absolutely not. It’s not legal. You could get sued.” We talked to HIPAA [Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act] experts on health. They said, “This is highly litigated space. Do not ask for any medical information. Do not touch that.”

So, we were like, “OK. The system is not made for us or our people and our situation, what do we do?”

We created a workaround to create an equitable salary benefit. It’s not a health benefit. We created a document that took into account the legal advice that we got. It’s taxable salary, not the untaxed health benefits we would otherwise be able to give folks. But we created something that addressed this particular need.

Some risks are not worth taking. I’ve seen organizations that do face costly litigation consequences for not following certain HR guidelines or certain legal rules.

Every organization is unique and different. We have to find the sweet spot between following the rules and the law that wasn’t written for us and creating workarounds that are compliant and humane. Because unfortunately a lot of the law has stripped the humanity out of HR.

SD: Discipline and firing seem pretty challenging to manage in a collective structure. How do you address that?

NK: There are three main ways that collectives and care-centered groups address firing or letting an employee go. Performance improvement is another part, but if you know someone needs to be let go, there are three tools that I think are good practices.

One is coaching out, which can be done either by a leader or a worker in the organization, or you can hire an actual coach to support in that process.

There is a really great chapter on coaching out in the book Managing to Change the World by Alison Green and Jerry Hauser that I think can help clarify a lot of questions around that.

Another is creating a robust onboarding process. A lot of worker cooperatives have a long onboarding process, often six to 12 months. Many call it a “candidacy” period. It is very different from the carceral language of a “probation” period. It is actually designed to set up and resource the new worker to succeed, so they can become a member or, in a nonprofit context, a fully hired new staff member.

During that period, staff are given benefits and salaries and are treated like salaried employees. It is just clear to everyone that we’re still in an onboarding process and we are giving you a lot of time and attention to ensure that you succeed, and we’re going to have checkpoints. The easiest and best period to let go of an employee is in this candidacy period, not after they have already been at the organization for years.

The third path occurs when, even after a person has been given opportunities and space and resourcing and the humane support and there is still an accountability question—the person is not doing the thing they were hired to do, or there is a values misalignment or values drift.

Here, what is really important is creating a collective process with the team before this ever happens. Collectively developing the policy and the guide in writing so that everyone has a shared understanding of how we hold our colleagues accountable, including letting people go, when that needs to happen.

My viewpoint on this is something I heard from [organizational development consultant] Tamila Gresham, which is that in most nonprofits our mission is not to keep people employed.

Because that is not the purpose of the organization, as my colleague Esperanza [Cuautle] at Pangea would remind us, we need to ask ourselves: “What is our goal? What is our mission? Let’s focus on what the work is that we want to do and the values. Bring those together.” Our colleagues and our work need to support our actual goal and mission. When they are not doing that, we need to draw a boundary.

That’s one of the hardest things with nonprofits and social justice organizations, especially the ones that are collectively minded and want to do shared leadership—a lot of us don’t want the responsibility and weight of holding our colleagues accountable and making these difficult decisions. We want to have decision-making authority, but not in letting somebody go. It is a real tension.

SD: How should groups think about setting decision-making rules?

NK: We need different forms of decision-making for different types of decisions. For medium-sized decisions, when it is not time-sensitive, my preference is modified consensus decision-making—or an individual can lead an advice-based decision-making process.

For decisions that are time-sensitive and high-impact, we need a different kind of voting or decision-making process.

“We need different forms of decision-making for different types of decisions.”

For example, an emergency grant is available. Deadline is in a week. Everyone is going to have to do this extra work, but we will get enough money to hire two more people that we have been wanting to hire.

For that kind of decision, a good process is consent-based decision-making—the person responsible makes the decision. Everyone has 24 hours to respond, to give input. The door is closed after that. If no one has a reasoned objection, and that is very specifically defined, then the decision moves forward.

SD: You write that the future is collective and that worker-led organizations are “not a mere trend” but represent “a transformation in how we understand power and community.” What gives you this confidence?

NK: So many organizations have already shifted into this direction of at least centering the value of equity, meaning collective governance.

Some people aren’t calling it collective governance. Some organizations I work with right now are still saying, “We’re hierarchical. We are committed to our single executive director structure. We love this structure that we have. But we want to look at our salaries and make them more equitable.”

Well, let’s infuse some of these values and principles in. The nonprofit space is really clearly moving in this direction whether they name it or not.

There is a lot of struggle in the process. But many have already paved the way—dozens of organizations that I spoke with have built up really effective functioning, wonderful policies on structures and cultures of care. There are hundreds, thousands across the world.

I do want to caution folks. Some have asked me, “Well, I know this one organization that tried to do collective governance. It didn’t work, so they went back to hierarchy.”

My response to that is, “Well, how many organizations do you know that try hierarchy and it hasn’t worked. Did they throw that in the trash?” We just keep reproducing and recreating these harms.

At the bottom of it is this shared value of caring. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be in social justice work. There is a deep connection to our communities and environments that is driving this. Folks are getting more intentional about how we are driving it—not just externally, but also internally.

SD: Is there anything else you would like to add?

NK: One thing about deconstructing the models that don’t work, and the ways of being in ourselves, internally and personally. In the book, I talk about the roots of this. Corporations were modeled after military systems where the top ranks ruled over and controlled the lower ranks. We even use the language in nonprofits: “frontline” workers, which is a military war term.

This language and these ways of operating are so deeply ingrained. I would like to encourage readers, activists, and practitioners to consider that.

I have struggled the most in my work and practices when I was replaying, repeating the patterns that I thought I was letting go. Persisting and gaining some awareness and acknowledging that is what has helped me and my colleagues, and many others, to actually thrive and build this new way that we want the world to be.

 

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