The Magnifier Vol. 1

One month on Substack and I have already found so many great writers and commentators on the nonprofit and social impact space.

I started writing The Volunteer Lens because I felt like my research and writing skills had atrophied, and I wanted to rebuild the muscle a bit before inertia became so strong it would be impossible to overcome. It has been quite nice to shake off the cobwebs and test out a new focus subject. I look forward to digging a bit deeper, questioning my own experiences and beliefs, and deepening my own understanding of what it means to serve.

• If you, like me, have had trouble keeping up with the dizzying executive orders flying out of the Oval Office, and if/how/ those EO’s impact the nonprofit sector, The National Council of Nonprofits has created a reference chart to track signed orders and their effects. Conveniently, the chart is organized by category, including LGBTQ+, DEI, and Immigration.

• Giving for Liberation: This piece from Tirrea Billings made me step back and reflect on my own giving practices, both as an individual donor and as a member of a collective giving circle in my community. Honestly, her entire Substack (Philanthropy Unfiltered) is worth following for thoughtful and important discourse on justice, giving, and the nonprofit sector.

• Women’s Giving: The Women’s Philanthropy Institute at Indiana University released a new literature review report on the state of women’s giving and volunteering in 2025.

If you’re familiar with Notion, I recently found a free template to help refine your organization’s mission statement. As a non-non-profit professional, I didn’t have an organization to test the template with. Instead, I used The Volunteer Lens as the subject of my reflection and found it both easy to use and comprehensive.

Looking back at my days working on committees for fundraising events, this would have been very useful to define a specific mission for the event to help stay on target and on mission.

September kicked off the fall cohort of the Texas Abortion Advocacy Network Academy (TAAN Academy) from the ACLU of Texas. I had been eyeing this training for a while, and my calendar finally lined up to make attending possible.

The academy is designed to empower everyday Texans with facts and knowledge to fight misinformation and obfuscation from politicians and anti-choice groups. When I logged off from the first class, I told my partner that I wish I had taken this course before we had our first child. I felt so much fear during my first trimester. I didn’t feel safe as a pregnant person in Texas. Had I been able to go through this course before getting pregnant myself, I would have been armed with a greater understanding of my own rights.

After sending “WTF IS HAPPENING” texts to my girlfriends for the past two years, taking the step to educate myself is empowering. I’m very excited about what is to come in the academy, particularly the class on direct action and the role of artivism in advocacy in November.

And because knowledge is power…

Information provided by the ACLU of Texas TAAN [[September 2025]]

1. Pregnant People Cannot Be Prosecuted for Having an Abortion

• Texas’s bans target providers and supporters, not the person who is pregnant

• No Texas statute makes it a crime for the pregnant person to self-manage or obtain an abortion

• If you are threatened with arrest, contact a reproductive-rights legal hotline immediately.

2. You Have the Constitutional Right to Travel

• The U.S. Constitution protects interstate travel

• No Texas law currently criminalizes a pregnant person for leaving the state to get abortion care

• Some local “travel ban” ordinances have been proposed, but they do not override your federal right to travel and have not been enforced against individuals

3. You Have the Right to Advocate for Abortion and Share Information

• The First Amendment protects speech, organizing, and sharing factual information about abortion care, including how to access services in other states

• You can hold meetings, distribute literature, post online, and raise funds for people seeking care

» What is restricted in Texas?

• Providing or facilitating an actual abortion

• Dr. Kimbology: My long-time coach, Dr. Kim Corson, is new on Substack! She is brilliant, I’m obsessed with her, and you should read this article about the power of sacred rage immediately.

• The Power of Mattering: In preparing a talk for October at a women’s leadership conference in Houston, I found this LinkedIn Live recording about mattering at work, which happens to be the subject of my presentation. The principles are simple (you might even say, common sense), but it’s rare to see them in practice. It made me pause and ask myself, when have I taken steps to make my fellow volunteers and nonprofit staff partners feel like they matter?

• I’m Certifiably Emotional: This month, I completed the final step and became fully certified as a Lead Trainer for my organization’s mindfulness and emotional intelligence training program. This certification represents over 120 hours and 2 years of learning, facilitating, and deepening my personal practice. In the future, I hope to volunteer with a community mindfulness program. Until then, I will proudly display my digital credential and continue to ripple these ideas throughout my organization.

“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” — Arthur Ashe