December 16, 2003

Alliance MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: Vicki Asakura

 

Culture and the Capacity Builder in a Multi-Ethnic Metropolis

Vicki Asakura is Director of the Nonprofit Assistance Center in Seattle, www.nacseattle.org

 

AsakuraStaffFresh out of college, Vicki Asakura was still immersed in community organizing when the bottom fell out for many of Seattle’s Japanese American and other Asian refugee and immigrant families.  Many had relied on work in large manufacturing operations such as Boeing’s to be self-sufficient.  As a wave of layoffs came, they found—for the first time—a major need for services.  Often, people were “reluctant to seek help in the mainstream community because of a loss of face.”  They had little experience asking for assistance.

“That’s when I got into human services,” said Asakura.  She and others took on being part of the solution and created the Employment Opportunity Center, where she quickly rose from volunteer to assistant director for a staff of eight.  The Center offered not only an appreciation of shared culture, but bilingual staff who spoke several languages within—and eventually beyond—the Asian-American community there in Seattle.

After a series of shifts in federal dollars and programs, Asakura served on the staff of the Private Industry Council.  “My role was to do the refugee planning for King County, monitor organizations and provide TA [technical assistance],” she recalls.  “In that job, the philosophy I had was—while I had the expertise and the sense [of what was needed]—not to shove my ideas onto them, but to take the ideas the refugee community wanted to implement.  They created the model and I helped make it a reality.”

For Asakura, that emphasis eventually led her to the Nonprofit Assistance Center (NAC), formed in the 1990s with a similar empowerment approach. The organization, originally a project of Technical Assistance for Community Services (TACS), came into existence because a group of funders saw that “a lot of the grassroots organizations didn’t seem to be accessing the TA or training offered by mainstream organizations.  They did a study, and the findings confirmed what they identified—that there weren’t nonprofit support services really accessible to smaller groups operated by and for low-income constituencies and communities of color.” 

Now, heading the ethnically diverse staff of the Center, she leads efforts to strengthen such groups in part by commissioning peer organizations and consultants (often consultants of color) for customized assistance in startup and growth.  NAC brings together training, intensive organizational assistance—directly and through brokering—as well as leadership development, funder education, documentation and dissemination of what is learned from practice that contributes to organizational and programmatic change. Like many nonprofit resource centers, NAC emphasizes board development, fundraising, systems development, financial management as well as program development.  Unlike most others, it approaches all its work from a commitment to cultural competency that was the motivation for creating NAC.

The original impetus was reaffirmed when NAC was exploring a possible merger with other organizations into a consortium, and “what was really clear was the connection to community building and capacity building for communities of color,” says Vicki.  In the process of considering this restructuring, she noticed that “the community building piece seemed to be missing from the objectives of some of the more mainstream groups.”

“We try to match groups with consultants that reflect their values and also have the technical knowledge,” she explains.  “For instance, we have groups involved in advocacy or social justice, so even if they’re not involved in communities of color, they want someone with that social justice perspective.  If there are consultants who’ve done work in a refugee community, you don’t have to explain what a refugee is; you can just jump into that work.”  In some cases, a mutual aid society or ethnic organization is asked to help in newer efforts by another ethnic group that also focuses on refugees.  For Asakura, there is enormous value in life experience and the seasoning from bringing to nonprofit assistance a strong grounding in the culture—including ethnicity, socioeconomic and political context.  For trainings, she says, consultants of color are “a draw,” and NAC also goes the extra mile by locating sessions right in the heart of the neighborhoods that these nonprofits are in.

As a newer venture, Asakura has brought NAC into leadership development training and coordination, with projects supported by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Seattle Foundation.  “There was interest in targeted communities and looking at new models for leadership as opposed to traditional models,” she notes.  “The key element is the leadership; the strategy is around using trusted leadership,” people who are advocates from and for the immigrant/refugee community to gather information as part of assessing community needs and defining a direction.

She makes sure that NAC keeps an eye on creating or supporting models that really work for the groups they serve.  For instance, with boards, different structures and moving toward rotation with staggered terms have been important.  But so has acknowledging the “informal and formal board structures,” such as a complement of elders who have a voice in board decisions, and processes of consensus building that may seem very slow.  “The satisfaction is seeing groups feeling empowered to make changes and to actually see those changes implemented.”

In this quest, Asakura finds the Alliance to be an important ally.  “I was really, really energized at the [annual] conference, having the opportunity to sit with the People of Color group and meet people who are doing similar types of work. It just reaffirmed the work we’re doing.”

As for future direction, she said, “I would like to see the Alliance as a whole continue giving opportunities to show the different forms of capacity building and how they work differently-- geographically, too. How you do things in another city or state may not always work.”  For example, she said, in a smaller city like Seattle as contrasted to larger urban centers, there tends to be much more cohesiveness across the ethnic communities NAC serves.  “We have the Minority Executive Directors Coalition where people of color come together and develop advocacy strategies.  One of their main goals is advocacy around funding and different issues that affect communities of color; they also are doing work around cultural competency.” 

Currently active in the Alliance’s People of Color Affinity Group, Vicki brings that experience as a resource on multi-ethnic collaboration.  She is a key player in the Alliance’s mission of creating an exchange of ideas, strategizing for change, and building partnerships that make it happen.

Vicki Asakura
Director
Nonprofit Assistance Center
1825 South Jackson Street #101
Seattle, WA    98144
phone: 206-324-5850
fax: 206-324-6423
main e-mail:vasakura@nacseattle.org
www.nacseattle.org

Member Spotlight written by Brigette Rouson

 

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