About

Vu Le is the Executive Director of a nonprofit in Seattle, the Vietnamese Friendship Association (VFA). He also chairs the Southeast Seattle Education Coalition (SESEC). Vu’s passion to make the world better, combined with a low score on the Law School Admission Test, drove him into the field of nonprofit work, where he learned that we should take the work seriously, but not ourselves. There are tons of humor in the nonprofit world, and someone needs to document it. He is going to do that, with the hope that one day, a TV producer will see how cool and interesting our field is and make a show about nonprofit work, featuring attractive actors attending strategic planning meetings and filing 990 tax forms.

Known for his no-BS approach, irreverent sense of humor, and love of unicorns, Vu has been featured in dozens, if not hundreds, of his own blog posts. He is also the humor columnist for the awesome nonprofit online magazine, Blue Avocado.

You may be thinking, “Why ‘Nonprofit with Balls’? Isn’t that sexist?! Why not ‘Nonprofit with Balls and Ovaries,’ you sexy sexist pig?!” The title comes from an experience he had, described here. Basically, it refers to all the balls that we nonprofit professionals have to juggle: clients, board, staff, volunteers, funders, auditors, payrolls, budgets, cashflows, trainings, annual events, etc. We are all knee-deep in balls. We have balls coming at us from every direction. Sometimes we “drop the ball,” but no worries, since there is never a shortage of balls in this line of work.

Since there is so much material, he aims to publish a new post about once a week, on Mondays, usually at 2 or 3am. If you like what you’re reading, please follow this blog by email (click the button on the right of this page) and tell your friends about it. Also, go “like” him on Facebook.com/nonprofitwithballs. Please comment once a while. He, like all other nonprofit humor bloggers, has very low self-esteem, so your comments and likes help a lot.

In his free time, Vu watches way too much TV (Game of Thrones, Walking Dead, Downton Abbey, Breaking Bad, 30Rock), spends time with his wife and baby boy during the commercial breaks, and makes fun of hipsters and their ridiculous asymmetrical hair, weather-inappropriate scarves, and skinny-jeans. He also enjoys talking about himself in the third person. If you need to contact him, make sure you read this post he wrote called “How to Schedule a Meeting without Being Punched in the Pancreas.”