#nonprofit life

[whatbigotspost]

Today’s story of upcoming terror in the return of the MAGAt administration…I've just learned about this legislative action being fast tracked in the House for tomorrow, 11/12/24. It horrifyingly would allow the president elect so much power he could revoke any nonprofit's 501(c)(3) status just because he doesn't like it or considers them "the enemy from within." It doesn't matter what person or party fills that office, it is antithetical to our nation and sector to empower dictatorial actions like this.

If you are as disturbed as me, you can tell your rep to oppose this using this form that Jewish Voices for Peace put together and is promoting. My rep (Lloyd

I've just learned about this legislative action being fast tracked in the House for tomorrow. It horrifyingly would allow the president elect so much power he could revoke any nonprofit's 501(c)(3) status just because he doesn't like it or considers them "the enemy from within." It doesn't matter what person or party fills that office, it is antithetical to our nation and sector to empower dictatorial actions like this. Here's a new story about it: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/house-fast-tracks-bill-that-would-give-trump-power-to-target-nonprofits/ar-AA1tPS5b

If you are as disturbed as me, you can tell your rep to oppose this using this form that Jewish Voices for Peace put together and is promoting. My rep, Lloyd Doggett) would never support this garbage anyway, but I still couldn’t resist to send it his way so he knows how I feel and thank him.

[camp-counselor-life]

I think, as much as I hate to just say this so quickly, I am burnt out, in like, a really bad way. I have been toeing the line for a while, months, and did nothing, so now it has caught up with me.

Working at a nonprofit is very personal, and it's very emotionally involved. You have to be excited and caring and fun for every single child and adult you work with, even when you would rather cry. Especially in a youth work environment, because it might be your fifth time running a program, but it's that kid's first time.

So I'm burnt out, from going and going and going. A coworkers asked my average hours, and I said they vary, but usually between 35 and 50. My average, when asked to narrow it down, is 42 to 45. That is 2-5 hours of overtime that I am not fully compensated for.

In all honestly, if I could only work 25-30 hours a week, still get health insurance, and be paid reasonably, I would jump at that. I, and my whole department, are working at a pace we cannot maintain.

I spend so much of my time running around, trying to do 3 jobs at once, that I've exhausted myself to the point of every much exacerbating a tricky mental illness, one that I have worked so hard to control. And the way I control it cannot be fully done in this work environment.

[itsjustjake13]

i had an incredibly vivid dream where i got to quit my job and say everything i thought was wrong with the organization to the founder's face and it was so satisfying. waking up to face the reality of that not being true was... incredibly disheartening for a monday.

[anerdyfeminist]

I take a lot of pride in the fact that all of us in leadership at my org treat our staff like actual humans and with enormous dignity and are basically the opposite of an evil mega corp to the extent we can be

AND

It surrrrrre makes having to lay off 30% of said staff of real humans I fucking love a lot harder than if we were an evil mega corp. Obviously it's not as hard on me to be in the place as it is them to get this news, but I'm truly having the worst week of my work life. IDK how to do this.

[highladyluck]

Direct mail vendor stop fucking up our direct mail program on a regular basis challenge 🙃

[frenchtoastcomix]

Joke's on me, exactly one year after the theater moved, I'm moving out of my house of 12 years so I am STILL not done with moving vans!

[drivemetogeek]

I work on the Comms side of non-profits so both recognize how important planned giving is and can STILL boggle at this actual planned giving email I received from a non-profit:

Some days, it feels like the bad news overshadows the good.

The very foundations of our society are at risk as authoritarian forces push blatantly anti-democratic measures and threaten outright political violence in the naked pursuit of power.

Greed, profiteering, and myopic mismanagement on the part of Big Business have contributed to economic havoc both here in America and around the world.

Extreme weather is endangering people and places all over the world — including catastrophic floods and fires in many states throughout the U.S. — as humankind collectively continues doing nowhere near enough to prevent even worse climate change.

The Supreme Court has revoked the fundamental right to abortion, struck down commonsense gun regulation, gutted voting rights protections, and granted U.S. presidents sweeping criminal immunity.

War is dominating the headlines, with peace at times feeling far beyond our reach.

Unfortunate realities like these have many of us thinking — maybe for the first time, maybe as we reevaluate our legacies — about completing a will. The email goes on to offer a free tool to help you craft said will and asks you to consider including the org in it.

For context, one of the cardinal rules I was taught at the outset of 20+ years of non-profit communications is the importance of including a sense of urgency, agency, and hope when communicating with supporters. Something says these authors missed at least part of that lesson.

So, I got tagged in a post, and I wrote a bit of a novel in a reblog in drafts, and then I realized that probably it wasn't for the best to post up All That Nonsense when the OP was just making a funny post about Wikipedia's fundraising. And it is a funny post! So I'll link here to the post and where I was tagged but I decided to put my thoughts here. Please take this as a hint to be respectful of OP and the person who tagged me both :)

I will say my initial reaction to seeing Wikipedia selling merch AND asking to be in your will was "Well, they're trying something." It's just such a weird topic to bring up, it's hard to be graceful about it, so I think what they were doing was probably the best you can do.

And the response did make a lot of the points I'd make about making a will and such. In fact, FreeWill is what I made my will with and we recommend them to our donors.

There was a study that came out a decade ago or more, so my numbers probably aren't accurate, but the statistic that knocked me back was that most donors who leave surprise large bequests (gifts to charity in their will) give an average of $17 a year during their lives. So there's likely a reason that Wikipedia is targeting users and not huge donors.

It's an ongoing issue that most people also don't document their bequests. By all means, leave money to charity in your will, they will be happy to have it, but they will be even happier to know ahead of time.

Perfect example, THIS WEEK we got a check for six figures from a woman's estate. It was an eyebrow-raising amount of money for us. My boss, who handles both "eyebrow raising money" and "gifts from dead people", immediately went to look her up in our database.

Which she is not in. We had no idea this woman existed. Never gave to us before.

Had we known she was leaving us this money, my boss would have made sure she understood how grateful we were and like, bought her lunch a couple of times a year, and when she did pass we would have known who to reach out to in order to offer our support.

Instead, he came to me and said, "I have a name and an address," and I set to work to find out why she gave and who we could thank. I found her obit, but she didn't die of anything related to our work. Using information from the obit, I confirmed none of her family were in our database either. I looked up her second husband, mentioned in the obit, and his obit said he died of lung disease, which told me that this gift is because she lost her husband.

This helps because I knew from her obit that they had a blended family; they didn't have any kids together but they each had kids when they married, all of whom are now like, my age. So we want to thank her kids but we want to make sure her stepkids, who lost their dad, get a specific kind of outreach as well. I told my boss their names and he said one of the husband's kids was listed as the executor of the will, but there was nothing (surname-wise) to indicate they were related. I found contact information for that person, and my boss was able to reach out to her. She didn't realize we didn't know about the bequest, and now she and her siblings are talking to us about their dad and their own health while her stepsiblings, whose mother left us this very generous gift, are getting condolences and thanks and getting to say how she will be thanked in our documentation.

And I mean, that's why my job exists, to fill in those blanks. We just...would really like to have told her thank-you while she was alive.

SO! The moral of the story is: please consider leaving money to charity in your will if you can, use FreeWill to make your will (they will also help you document your gift) and let the charity know you're leaving them an estate gift. Not only will you maybe get cool swag but especially if it's a concern close to your heart, you'll get to build your relationship with the charity.

[atghealthcarefoundation]

ATG HealthCare Foundation

ATG HealthCare Foundation provides cancer screening, palliative care, women's development, child welfare, and affordable healthcare services across India.

https://atgfoundation.org

[locationlocation]

"why do you feel like I'm out to get you??" - our executive director, in a meeting she set specifically to ambush my boss about perceived slights, but claimed was going to be about something entirely different to get us all to attend

[whatbigotspost]

Source

Some very good news out of Austin today!

APA is an important org here—my own clowder of kittens came from them. They are an inextricable part of how the city maintains “no kill” status, and a lot of their work is “good……”

AND that particular nonprofit organization has a VERY VERY BAD reputation for treatment of employees in the most basic ways. Being in the sector for 15 years here, I have friends and professional acquaintances who work there now who helped champion this victory and many more who have worked there in the past who report that leadership “openly admits to caring more about animals than people.”

So yeah, this victory is big for lots of reasons.

[swordandstars]

@copperbadge: Donors gonna Donor. #nonprofitlife

Meanwhile, in London...

Via @oldenouughtosay over at the Ex Bird Place:

"The National Gallery in London is renovating its Sainsbury Wing and they’ve just found a secret letter from one of the original donors, sunk into a concrete column, saying that he hates the columns and is glad they’re being demolished. 10/10 unhinged rich man behaviour, no notes"

Here are the columns...

And here's the letter.

[camp-counselor-life]

Image ID: The hard pills to swallow meme where the pills are labeled "Organizations can be both progressive and follow harmful social norms." End ID.

[itsjustjake13]

so at my current job, the ceo (on a number of occasions) has hired a consultant to do work. she then proceeds to completely ignore what that consultant has to say or constantly redoes their work.

for example, two consultants were hired to help with this event. they put a ton of great work into the messaging, marketing, and what the event would look like.

the ceo completely trashed all of it, even thought it was fantastic, and the event wound up being so so bad. people complained about the messaging. the program. the only parts they liked were the parts the consultants and myself fought for.

and they're consultants. they are easily paid double what i am. so, as an organization, we are just spitting away money and not hiring actual people to do actual work that could be done.

and getting nothing out of it except angry consultants, an angry ceo, and awful ROI.

this is happened too many times to count. it's so tiring.

[anerdyfeminist]

I recently joined the board of directors for a nonprofit I've been a member/volunteer for since 2010. I love this org, I wouldn't step up to this kind of leadership role if I didn't, but MAN she's an almost entirely volunteer run org so can be a messy bitch.

Current example--we're all supposed to take a DISC assessment so that will be used at a later meeting to talk about our team/group dynamics and strengths. So yesterday Person 1 sent out an email saying Person 2 will be sending the assessment like out today. Then Today Person 2 said that Person 3 will be sending out the assessment today. I SWEAR TO GOD if Person 3 tells me about Person 4................. just gimme the damn assessment link now please😅😅😅

[writerraines]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by G.M. Raines (@writerraines)

[resetmypatientviolence]

Highly tempted to send this as a response to all non-gala related emails until the 6th

Gotta love nonprofit life amiright