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Nonprofit Post-Mortem
April 7th, 2007The money from the Blue Moon Fund is gone now. The way it was structured was that, I’d work for another nonprofit, as an employee, that nonprofit would pay me for what I’m doing. It didn’t make sense, but I was told that it was the fastest way to get funds.
Thus, I began to pour my efforts, behind the brand name that I created, into a nonprofit that could only pay me by virtue of my efforts. It was a horrible overhead.
It was billed as a favor to me, to provide a fiscal agent for Think New Orleans. It was a lot of language that I didn’t understand. I assumed that it was not the strange language of a new form of business, the nonprofit business. In the end, it turned out to be the strange language of someone who is making things up as they go along.
Eventually, I found myself before an employment contract made it clear that any “intellectual property” would belong to this fiscal agent. At that point, I was ready to break, but others were involved.
There was much that did not make sense, but the part that made the least sense of all, was that I was supposed to stop pursuing income outside of this fledgling nonprofit. It created a personal financial disaster.
Eventually, I realized that, as an employee, I could simply quit the nonprofit. I did. I was told that many horrible things would happen if I were to do this, but none of these horrible things befell me.
This experience was isolating.
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Dear Alan,
I too have had terrible experiences being part of non-profit orgs. I once managed the Legal Aid Bureau of New Orleans. It was a joke. Money was being pilfered and when it came time for me to get a promotion I was turned down and it was given to someone with no college degree and no experience.
Other than that the clients of the legal aid bureau did not get good qualified lawyers. They got guys who were fringe alcoholics, drug addicts, or whatever, but with no experience and generally did the client a dis-service by “representing” them.
After reporting a $5,600 downright embezzelment (sp?) to local and Feds, I was told by the Feds that it was OK to take under $6,000 and they would do nothing.
At that point I resigned and moved on
Looks like you did also.
Susan
Hi Alan. Funny–I was just about to write you an email about how I’m hard at work trying to get a job min the Twin Cities non-profit world! As you may remember, I’ve had a lot of experience, both good and bad, with arts non-profits in DC, NOLA and Mpls. I’ve been a volunteer, an intern, an employee (and a temp), curated and shown photos in their galleries.
The non-profit community organization whose board I’m now on is probably the one that has impressed me the most with its clear mission and both its employees’ and board members’ devotion to its work. I guess I’m saying to you and to Susan don’t give up on non-profits just yet (but it is wise to be wary of being an employee!). There are good, stable organizations that do a great service to their communities and there are ones that are poorly run or staffed by people who are really only out to benefit themselves.
At any rate, I wanted to also give you a link to the site of a small area plan for an area near my neighborhood that has just been released. I saw a presentation on it last night and was very impressed with the way in which its drafters have involved so many stakeholders (I hate that word but can’t think of a better one yet) as well as public and private funding sources.
http://www.38thandchicago.org
Jenny