Five years ago, I started an anti-racism organisation from my mum’s kitchen - reflections on leadership by Martha Awojobi
Martha Awojobi is the CEO and founder of JMB. They have 15 years of experience in fundraising and a strong track record as a racial justice consultant and campaigner. You can find out more about them here.
Five years ago, I started an anti-racism organisation from my mum’s kitchen.
I was crying on a video call with my fundraising director, Louise. That day, I had secured a half-million-pound corporate gift for the domestic abuse charity that I worked for; I had also been told that the new job that I was due to start at a London theatre would no longer go ahead due to COVID-19 restrictions.
When Louise called to congratulate me on the fundraising success, I burst into tears: ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do.’
‘You’re good enough to be a consultant,’ she said.
Five years later, here we are. I built a company.
JMB is the anti-racist consultancy with swagger. We built Uncharitable, the home of political education in the UK third sector.
There are so many things that I know now that I wish I had known then. But had I known these things in 2020, I wouldn’t have experienced the beautiful mess of learning as I went along, and often learning the hard way.
So, today, instead of listing five things that I wish I had known about leadership for JMB’s 5th birthday, here are the things I am glad I didn’t know because I got the pleasure (and pain) of learning them along the journey of accidentally-on-purpose starting an organisation from my mum’s kitchen.
1. Vision first, strategy second.
Sometimes it helps to look back to see how far you have come.
When I started JMB in May 2020, I didn’t have a grand vision or even a plan. After a ten-year career in fundraising, I intended to be a corporate fundraising consultant.
And then suddenly everything got very, very weird.
Charities that had never so much as mentioned the word ‘racism’ were all proclaiming their anti-racist credentials in response to the extrajudicial murder of George Floyd.
Words began to lose all meaning as once radical terms like ‘anti-racist’, ‘intersectionality’, ‘safe space’ and ‘lived experience’ were wielded as a weapon by leaders to protect white supremacy culture. We had entered into the era of double-speak in the charity sector. Leaders had no idea what racism is, yet were convinced that they were leading ‘anti-racist’ organisations.
It is not for me to say whether this cognitive dissonance is the product of ignorance or a more deliberate attempt to obscure their lack of accountability. Either way, the sector desperately needed political education.
It took another two years of learning, reflection, and dreaming before I shared my vision for Uncharitable (then called #BAMEOnline) with my team: To build the home of political education in the UK third sector and offer an alternative to third-sector media outlets, grounded in anti-oppression.
Unlearn gatekeeping and power hoarding by removing barriers to access to critical political education about racism, philanthropy, charity sector and social movements, etc - with free ticket options at events, online gatherings, and open-access papers.
Unlearn white supremacist standards of knowledge production by convening and producing art and video content, alongside written resources.
Unlearn individualism by learning collaboratively with other organisations and activists.
And we got to work. Vision first, strategy second.
We have hosted twelve events, four conferences and one festival, published 30 Uncharitable Papers and are about to launch the Uncharitable streaming service with over 50 Uncharitable videos available, as, well as, a merch store.
Alongside that, we have supported organisations in understanding their role in the movement for racial justice and liberation—and yes, we all have a role—through our consultancy work with organisations like Mind, Thirty Percy, Blagrave Trust, ACEVO, Agenda Alliance, Birthrights, and many, many more.
It’s been a good five years.
2. Outsource the things that you can’t do.
I am terrible at admin. I struggle to get things written down on paper (hence, it took me five years to write my first Uncharitable paper). I have an extremely complicated relationship to time. I think there are 54 hours in a day, and if I just do one thing an hour, I can get 54 things done today.
Three months into starting JMB, I hired someone I trusted to manage my diary and support me with admin. It is still the best business decision I have made. Rajane is the real MVP (most valuable player), and JMB would not be what it is today without her taking a leap of faith on me five years ago.
If you are starting your own organisation, please remember that you may be brilliant, but you are still one person. As far as I know, there is no such thing as a Director of Everything.
Know what you are good at, what you enjoy, and what you want to develop in. Then, outsource the rest. I like big ideas but struggle with the minor details. So, I work with people who are great at granularity, and I don’t pretend to be an expert at things I am not.
Your energy is precious. The systems we are trying to dismantle will extract every last ounce of energy from you if you let them. Don’t collude with your own oppression by internalising the false promises of individualism. Don’t wait to hire people to support you. Get an accountant. Please. If you have the money to, do it now.
Despite what capitalism tells us, we can’t actually do it all, but we can do it together—and we can even enjoy it.
3. Lead with clarity: Hold the vision, set out the strategy, model the values.
I have always believed that people could read my mind. And I have been known to get frustrated and impatient when they can’t.
One of the most challenging parts of leadership for me is how much I have to repeat myself. No one prepares you for this. It is excruciating. Things that are quite obvious to me are not obvious to people who do not live inside my brain.
No one will care as much about your organisation as you do. Literally no one. Why would they? And why would you expect them to? People get jobs so that they can pay for food and housing. If they are fortunate, they might like their job. If they are really lucky, it might be a job that aligns with their values.
They aren’t thinking about their work in the shower; they aren’t spending sleepless nights agonising about where the money is going to come from; they don’t have a spreadsheet in their mind that is constantly balancing the numbers, the days, the relationships, the deliverables. Their weekends are actually weekends. You can’t expect the same unwavering commitment from the people you work with that you have as a founder or a leader.
Your job is to hold the vision, the bigger picture, the direction of travel. As my mentor Joyce says, “You have to have your north star.” You are the navigator who stays grounded and focused while traversing ever-changing landscapes and terrains. Your job is to articulate the how and the why.
That doesn’t mean your way is the only way, or even the right way. It doesn’t mean that building a strategy and a culture isn’t a collaborative effort. And it definitely doesn’t mean that you have to take on the responsibility for it all. But it must start with you. Establish values, set expectations, and facilitate a collaborative culture where people know the why and how, not just the what.
Learning to lead with clarity is such an underrated skill that I am still grappling with. Yes, that means repeating myself more times than I think I have to. It means accepting that not everyone will live and breathe my organisation, nor should I expect or want them to.
It has taken me five years to understand that to lead with clarity, you must take yourself as seriously as you take your mission. And you have to actually believe that you can do it.
4. Work on your shit (I am so serious).
What I wasn’t expecting was for leadership to expose the parts of me that cause me the most shame: conflict avoidance, people-pleasing, fear, and inaction, to name a few.
I had never led a team of people, and suddenly I had a team of seven. I carried so much anxiety about replicating awful leadership practices that I had been subjected to in the past. We have been conditioned to believe that all power corrupts and that leadership is inherently oppressive. So what does that mean when you are a queer Black person whose work is dismantling racism? For me, it meant relinquishing my power out of fear. Fear of not being liked, of being labelled as ‘privileged’. And fear of engaging in conflict.
Authority is not domination; I saw them as one and the same, so I absented myself from both.
My simplistic understanding of how power works rendered me powerless as I avoided giving direct feedback on performance for fear of upsetting people. I became resentful whenever I said ‘yes’ when I wanted to say ‘no’. I became unwell when I took on team members' interpersonal conflicts as though they were mine. I felt crushed by the enormous weight of the self-imposed pressure to rescue my colleagues from the consequences of their own actions. And in doing this, I denied them their humanity and opportunity to grow, as well as my own.
Over the last year, I have worked with two coaches, a therapist and a mentor - all incredible Black people - who have held me while I rebuilt my relationship to power and established boundaries. They helped me to recognise and name my own part in toxic dynamics that often felt like they were happening to me, when in fact I was an extremely willing (albeit sometimes unconscious) participant.
These are just a few of many things in the pile of shit that I have had to work on, and will continue to work on. Unlearning scarcity mindset, perfectionism, individualism, competitiveness and comparison, eating more vegetables; the list goes on.
Some of these patterns are ingrained from childhood. Facing them takes patience and compassion, more compassion than I know how to give myself. But I am trying—slowly, messily.
I am unravelling a lifetime of conditioning by systems of oppression that had no intention of people like me ever claiming a leadership position.
5. Surround yourself with people who want you to win.
Joyce says, ‘No one is self-made.’ And I believe her.
Even though I am recounting some hard lessons in this paper, I do consider myself a successful leader, and the quality of my relationships has been the determining factor in my leadership success.
I have tripped over my words on countless occasions when excitedly sharing my half-baked ideas with Cam over a bottle of wine. She listens, encourages, prods, challenges, and helps me embed a loving approach.
I have sent hundreds of hours of voice notes to Seyi as we reimagine Black feminist leadership structures and support each other through the times we’ve messed up or had to take the L— often punctuated with belly laughs, sometimes with trembling voices and eyes filled with tears.
And when shit really hits the fan, I call my mum.
I will never know all the people who have backed me in rooms that I wasn’t in. But I know that many people have, including people I don’t even know. And I am grateful.
I am grateful to the elders who tell me to keep going when my confidence is at an all-time low. I am grateful to the youngers who show me the future that they are building and guide my practice, keeping it from becoming crusty and stale.
I know what solidarity looks like, because it has been extended to me so many times in the past five years: guidance, mentorship, opportunities to experiment with my ideas, shoulders to cry on, harsh truths and healing conversations.
Sadly, not everyone around you will have your best interests at heart or want you to succeed. In fact, some people close to you might try to sabotage your work or destroy your reputation, believing that it is undeserved. They might try to undermine you, steal from you, lie to you, and betray your trust.
These are experiences that will shape you, for better or for worse.
Learn what is yours to work on, learn what is the responsibility of others and hold firm in your truth. You will experience heartbreak, likely multiple times. You need people around you who not only understand that grief, but can hold you with care while you feel it (and sometimes that means telling you about your own toxic behaviour). And yes, you have to feel it. To heal and become realigned with your vision and values requires deep mourning, and a compassionate relationship with grief, hurt and endings.
It might be tempting to retreat in these moments of pain, but healing is an expansive and relational process. When I leaned on the guidance of my friends and mentors and shared my fears, hurt, and vulnerability, when I allowed myself to feel it and believed that I deserved care, I found transformation.
Building a team is harder than it looks. Building a team with a shared values framework is even harder. Surround yourself with people who want you to succeed. And want the same for them. I am blessed to have the most incredible team at JMB, a team that encourages and challenges me, makes me laugh until I cry, and sometimes cry until I laugh. We are decolonising our relationships through a collective effort to regenerate energy and choose life through authenticity, gratitude, honesty, accountability, and mutual respect.
Building accountable relationships based on a shared commitment to unlearning white supremacy culture requires us to unearth feelings that we might have tried to keep buried for years: envy, competition, insecurity, fear, unworthiness, shame.
Unearth and confront these feelings; heal and reconnect. Do not make other people responsible for your feelings or your healing; these are our responsibility alone. No one else can heal you, but we can heal together.
Transformative relationships are where we begin to reveal the ways that white supremacy has harmed us and disconnected us from each other and ourselves. They are where we can be our most vulnerable selves, share the unhealed wounds of our inner child, and be met with compassion. Transformative relationships are where we can practice new ways of being together and remember old ones. They are where we can relearn connection and practice accountability.
Relationships are what is going to save us from a system designed to disconnect us and then kill us one by one. They are not just how we will survive, but how we will resist. And how we will win.
Five years ago, I started an anti-racism organisation from my mum’s kitchen. I never intended for it to transform my life, but I’m grateful that it did.