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? 

Rate My Nonprofit

Would it be fantastic or a disaster if there were a rating system for nonprofits informed by the people who actually work for them?

Admittedly, I’m too old to have ever used ratemyprofessor.com or ratemyteacher.com. There’s some controversy (mostly by teachers, duh) about how well ratings like those work – whether they delve into the substance or stay on the surface, whether they’re the online equivilant of people power or popularity pagent. For starters, here’s a good discussion by a professor about those sites and their accuracy.

Popularity contests aside, ever since Al Gore invented the internet and George Bush made the internets I’ve amused myself in bored moments by thinking about what I’d write on a similar, so-far-non-existent nonprofit rating site. 

Sure Charity Navigator’s helpful figuring out where, imprecisely, the money goes, and Guidestar offers up completed tax forms. But that’s just flat, one-dimensional quantative data. I want a site that gives us the qualitative and gory goods on nonprofits: what the people who work there actually say about them. The site could have ratings for specific aspects – like management, benefits, and job satisfaction.  

I can just imagine the freak-out by nonprofits when not-so-positive or not-so-fair reviews come in, and fear that potentially enough bad reviews could hurt a nonprofit. That’s not my aim. But here’s the upside: nonprofits that do well by their employees would have nothing to fear. And – gasp – could maybe learn something.