If the work of nonprofits is so valuable, why are nonprofit workers so undervalued?
I spent almost all of my 20s working in nonprofits and my husband has worked for Habitat for Humanity since 2003, so reading the following in the Nonprofit 2020 blog was pleasingly direct to me:
"To commit to a career in nonprofits is already akin to taking a vow of perpetual poverty. The workers quoted in the first survey who complained about being underpaid are not seeking a 10,000 square foot vacation retreat, or a private jet, or millions in stock options. Instead they seek a living wage: enough to repay student loans, get a decent apartment, and take their families out for dinner and a movie now and again." [link]
Have you ever earmarked a donation, requesting that it be spent on programs and not administration? Have you ever rated a charity based solely on what percentage of its funds go to overhead?
Many people do, thinking they're "savvy" donors, but really they're buying into a gross oversimplification. A construction manager's salary and health insurance, his/her skills and his/her passion for building Habitat homes are worthwhile expenditures. A Habitat home is not just volunteers, 2x4s, paint and nails; it's made possible by a staff member who wrangles the hundreds of volunteers, the fundraiser who gets sponsors for the supplies, the grantwriter who dots every i and crosses every t.
At a museum, you can't spend money on the conservation of a painting or book without also paying a talented conservator. Clever writers and gifted designers communicate the mission of a nonprofit--but the financial rewards are significantly better to use those same skills to shill commercial products. The same is true for many, many, many nonprofit positions.
Some will choose to forgo the more extravagant financial rewards available in their field in order to do good and feel passionate about their work. They accept never earning what commercial carpenters or graphic designers can and do earn. But continually chipping away at nonprofits' overhead and administration costs, assuming those costs are unnecessary or wasteful without any basis, becomes a form of punishment. How much can you strip away from a nonprofit's employees before they burn out?
This isn't limited only to employee salaries, either, but is true of the tools of their trade, too. Quality safe tools on a Habitat job site, adequate computers and software in a charity's offices. These, too, are "overhead," but they are the tools required to achieve the organization's mission. If your favorite charity's newsletter editor has already accepted the pay cut necessary to work in the nonprofit field, is it also fair to expect her to do the job with a ten-year-old machine and sitting in the state's least ergonomic chair 50 hours a week? How many other ways do you want to hinder her success (and, thereby, your favorite charity's success)?
Okay, I'm off my soapbox for the morning, but hopefully I've provided you with some insight into this issue and maybe made you think a little more deeply about your expectations of nonprofits.
Want to do more than think about this? Great. Share this perspective with your friends and families. Send your next donation in earmarked for salaries or administrative costs instead and include a note that say "I love the work you do. Thanks!" Know someone in the nonprofit field? Ask them what one thing would make their job easier or give them more job satisfaction.
Thanks for reading and have a great day :)
Comments
PS -- Send me a message; I'd love to know what org you work for!
I did a lot of volunteering on the fund dispersal side of our local United Way. It was a great way to see inside the non-profit world.
Whenever people I hit up for the campaign complained, "But I don't want to pay administrative costs" I would ask how the people at a nonprofit should be paid. By your tax dollars because now they need to be on welfare? That doesn't solve anything. Or are nonprofit workers so extremely rich they are doing this out of the goodness of their hearts? Not everyone can be independently wealthy enough to be a full-time volunteer.
Once you make the argument that these are jobs, then the wind gets taken out of their sails a little bit. A little. Everyone loves to complain about overhead but they never take the time to understand these organizations aren't run by people with free time out of their homes.
Thanks for a very eloquent post.
Strange how the field becoming more professional (eg, degrees in nonprofit management, museum studies, and the like) has not been able to make stronger inroads against this precedent.
(Note: My background is in the arts community, so I don't know if this history also extends to things like the United Way or other charities. I'd be curious to hear other people's knowledge and takes on this.)
Yes, the "Ladies Who Lunch" crowd is and remains big in the volunteer world as that is what is expected at that level of society. Also, the wives have the time and resources to devote to their causes. I would be right there with them if I didn't have to actually depend on myself to be the wage earner! :-)
Seriously though, we have people with advanced degrees in all levels of non-profit work. Just as an FYI - I'm on the arts side now - and was a UW employee for a little while - and funding, budgets and contributed revenue are different from when I was a corporate girl.
Worker shortage is a huge concern right now at non-profits - arts, health and human services, animals, education, all of them - because there's no strong contingent of next generation workers/leaders coming in willing to go for little pay and heavy workloads. One of the most recent Chronicle of Philanthropy mags covered this extensively.
Succession planning and talent gap is going to be a problem. Lack of funds for administration and overhead won't help. The pay has to come up, which means an increased awareness of the public of cost of doing business they deem valuable.
I also try to make the point for health and human services is that your tax-deductible donations helps many people get/stay off government rolls. You can either pay more in taxes and let the government take care of things (inefficient) or you can get a tax deduction by directing your funds to an organization that is held accountable for results (efficient).
How this will play out as boomers retire will be interesting. Assuming even more people will transition from the corporate world into nonprofits, I'm curious about how this will affect the field--and here I'm not attempting to use corporate a slur, just acknowledging the differences in skills and environment. Also, thinking on the corporate environment: Over the next 20 years, will the culture of companies like Google still be an anomaly? If not, what's the potential impact of people from Google-type cultures into nonprofits?
Finally, if you haven't already met or been reading Rosetta Thurman's blog, Perspectives From the Pipeline, I recommend it quite highly; she speaks not just to nonprofits, but often specifically to young professionals in the field and to the experiences of blacks in nonprofits, women in nonprofits. Her writing is a burst of energy and motivation in a field which too often is either drab or doom-and-gloom.
Also, while I'm plugging things I like specific to my field, I'm also mad about Jeff Brooks' Donor Power Blog. He keeps me focused on what fundraising is and excited about my work.
At times I think that it's people who come from rich families or who have spouses earning big bucks who can really stay at NGO work for a long time because there's alternative sources of livelihood other than the work they are passionately doing full time. Since I come from a middle income family with both parents doing non-profit jobs too, I just had to get out.
I miss the work I used to do though...
Although I believe that non-profit organizations are absolutely necessary in order to do good works I also feel that it is a waste of a very expensive college degree in some situations. I mean the purpose of going to college and racking up all that student loan debt is to eventually secure a high-paying position right? My daughter's Father has a Bachelor's Degree and was destined to go into pharmaceutical sales yet has chosen to work for a non-profit instead and therefore makes less money than I do. It has a negative effect on the amount of child support I receive which really irks me. And everytime I ask him to pitch in a little extra for this or that, he always falls back on the "I work for a non-profit" crutch.
Totally agree with your point here. I work (well, worked, until I became a mom 2 years ago) in the international development non-profit field in Canada. at the last organization I worked for, it was a well-known fact that anyone who had to support more than themselves did so on a shoestring. But everyone was very dedicated to the work we did, and found satisfaction in knowing the difference that was being made overseas. Then one night I was at a fundraising party for tsunami relief for Sri Lanka, and the woman who had organized it got up and made a speech about how she was giving all the proceeds to the projects, and we didn't have to worry about it being 'wasted on NGO employee salaries'. I felt sick, because we and our colleagues in Indonesia had been working very hard on tsunami relief, but also on human rights in Aceh long before anyone outside Indonesia knew where Aceh was. This attitude was like a slap in the face.
The other thing that has gotten under my skin lately is the 'buy a goat' or 'buy a water pump' marketing around Christmas. I deeply believe in alternative gifts, but again this oversimplifies the issue, and ignores the very good work that needs to be done by people who make next to nothing to begin with.
I am now working from home on a consulting basis, since I can't find a job with a non-profit that would cover childcare and transportation (my husband makes enough for us to live on). It's too bad that I am underemployed, but until my son is in regular school, I don't have the financial option to go back full time.
stay on your soap-box, because few people really understand how tough the non-profit field is, especially with today's economy - getting by isn't getting easier.
I cannot understand how organizations that stand for social justice, respect, opportunity and quality of life neglect all of those principles for the very people they employ. That aside form a salary that makes you one step from needing other non-profit organizations help, or worse the very own you work for. I think there is a trend of creating a corporate world's environment in non-profits, with the same pressure, but without adequate salaries or working conditions. For someone who still had idealism left to try to change a career to non-profit field after 20s, it's like a cold shower, the reality is very disappointing indeed.