Dear Soulful Revolutionary,
We’re delighted to share with you the latest episode of A Soulful Revolution Podcast with you! Our guest, Tirrea Billings, artivist, educator, and storyteller at Philanthropy Unfiltered, encourages us to reimagine what the work of social justice and resistance looks like within the context of organizations & art.
She shares her journey through the nonprofit & entrepreneurial spheres, identifying what exactly has been missing from her work in the systems and organizations she has been a part of. Tirrea’s latest essay “Bad Onboarding Breaks People” provides a critical container for our conversation and invites us to look critically at the nonprofit industrial complex and to reimagine what could happen if we built our organizations — and our movements — around care, belonging, and joy.
We talk about how art and storytelling become tools for liberation, why onboarding can be a gesture of care, and how mutual aid and community-centered power challenge traditional philanthropy. Tirrea’s reflections serve as a reminder that critique and creativity can coexist, and that joy itself is a form of resistance.
Our hope is that this conversation sparks your imagination for how you show up in your work, your communities, and your own artivism… reminding you that transformation begins often in the small, human ways we care for one another.
About Tirrea
Tirrea Billings is an artivist, educator, and storyteller who writes about the nonprofit industrial complex. She has a BA in Film Studies and an MA in Communication from Western Michigan University. Her work focuses on amplifying voices that have been systematically excluded from mainstream conversations about power, policy, and change.
Through her platform, Philanthropy Unfiltered, she writes openly about contradictions, dysfunction, and new opportunities within social change work — creating space for practitioners, funders, and organizers to imagine more liberatory approaches. Tirrea believes in the potential of radically honest dialogue and the power of imagination to transform systems to better serve communities.
Resources & Links
Read Tirrea’s Substack essay: “Bad Onboarding Breaks People”
Read Tirrea’s Substack essay: The Master’s Tools: How Traditional Grantmaking Blocks Liberation
Listen to Ruby Sales on On Being: “Where Does It Hurt?”
Watch “The First Step” — a documentary exploring dialogue, reform, and radical empathy
