Kool Aid Talk

I’ve been slowly sipping the off-brand all-natural Kool Aid offered by the book “The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Nonprofit Industrial Complex.” It’s made up of leftist scholarly essays that remind me of two things: that I hate the pretention of academia and that to some people I look like a friggin’ neo-con. Point in case? I don’t think the Ford Foundation is evil.  

But I found myself compelled by professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s description of the funding straight-jackets that confine nonprofits:

And generally the issues they [nonprofits] are paid to address have been narrowed to program-specific categories and remedies which make staff – who often have a great understanding of the scale and scope of both individual clients’ and the needs of society at large – become in their everyday practice technocrats through imposed specialization.

I’ve never thought of technocrat as a dirty word until now. Time for a good scrub...

Post Mortem

First off: I am not a quitter.

Second:  it's time to quit. 

No worries -- this is not angsty wrist-slashing I'm contemplating. Instead, it's time to break up with the soup kitchen volunteer work I've done faithfully and joyously each week for the last three years. But how?

Uh... it's not you, it's me? 

It was a great relationship at first. I felt appreciated; I made friends; I came home feeling fulfilled and grateful for all the stuff I usually take for granted, like meals that don't involve toddler-sized vats of peanut butter and mystery-meat soups. 

The 501c3 did so much right that it was easy to forgive its quirks. Like the fact its "leadership team" is all white, despite a diverse volunteer staff and a professed anti-racism agenda. Like the fact that team fired a volunteer who's crime was curmudgeonliness ... without giving the volunteer feedback about his behavior. 

I'm not a quitter. I could have stuck with it. But over the last few months the leadership team has instituted changes to build community that have ended up taking it away. Intimate group reflections have evolved into 30 people in a circle, straining to hear a bible study. Stimulating lunch conversations among 3-4 people have shifted to 30 people eating in a circle the size of  a sumo mat. Now the good talks are gone, and there aren't even large men running into each other wearing skimpy belt-thongs. How disappointing. 

It's time to quit, and that's something I've never been very good at. I want to run my mouth and give feedback, even though the leadership team's made it very clear over the years that they're not interested. What, pray tell, could a once-a-week volunteer know about a 501c3 that full-time staff wouldn't? 

So, consider this wishful thinking #103: I wish nonprofits could see volunteers as a resource for different perspectives in organizational decision-making. And wishful thinking #104: perhaps the occasional exit-interview to figure out why volunteers quit? 

The Existential Life

Apparently, it doesn’t matter who we are. For weeks now, I’ve been scouring the internet – and even making calls! – looking for demographic information about all us 9 million or so folks who call nonprofits hell home. My sense is that the majority of us are college-educated white women, but my sense also landed me dating three clinically depressed musicians in a row -- so clearly there’s some work to do. And, besides, word is that I’m supposed to really know my audience if I’m trying to make a website work.

Well, my search for stats about us has failed. But I did find demographics about who volunteers most with nonprofits. And the We Really Don’t Get Paid award goes to…. white married college-educated mothers between 35 and 44. 

I don’t know how many of these volunteers are stay-at-home moms, but maybe I should start planning a website for them instead of us. MILV: Mothers I'd Like to Volunteer. 

This whole DemographyGate shocks and insults me a little. If I’ve learned anything from nonprofits and the media, it’s that everything can be manipulated into numbers. So why not us?

Here me out, census bureau and statistically-undefined crowd: I want to be counted, if only because the picture of the nonprofit sector is often white women helping minorities. White women are lovely – I happen to be one of them – but it’s worth figuring out the barriers that stop men and minorities from nonprofit work. It’s not tokenism I’m talking about – it’s bringing our work toward equality and justice back inside the office. At least there we can count.