Okay guys, I’m going to say this once and then I’m going to go back to ignoring the people I’m saying it to, which is a small but insanely irritating minority of readers:
When you try to come up in my comments or asks and say anything about how nonprofits are funded or operated I need you to understand that you are talking with someone who works for a nonprofit and has for longer than many of you have been alive. When you talk about theft of donation, the perfidious villainous “staff” you’re talking about are me. I am Staff.
I have worked in the nonprofit space in some form or other my literal entire adult life, from the age of 18 onward, almost 25 years. Libraries, higher education, arts and medical organizations, I have worked either as service staff or fundraising staff or both for all of the above. Studying wealth and the donation of wealth is literally my job. So when I say something it has the weight of twenty five years of experience behind it.
You couldn’t know that, of course, but you know how I know you’re just repeating ignorant cant you’ve seen in tumblr posts? Because it’s very easy to discover what a nonprofit is doing for the public. We have websites, annual reports, public 990 filings, all of which demonstrate very plainly how much we spend and on what. It’s so easy that if you want to enter into a conversation on philanthropy it’s pretty much step #1. And yet none of you solipsistic chucklefucks have done it. You just look at one of those “big three” everyone can name as “bad charities” and assume all charities are that size or that malevolence because those are the only ones you’ve heard about, because you won’t stir yourself to learn more.
You’re not fact checking and I’m not sure what insults me more, what you say about the work I do or that you didn’t even bother to do the most basic level research first. Not one of you assholes talking about big charities stealing money has ever come up with any kind of alternative to the ones you’re mad about; none of you ever has recommendations, just the same tired old party line. Which means either you want to lecture me to feel superior or you want to justify not giving, and I’m not here for it.
You want to know why the government promised to pay off my student loans tax-free if I worked for a nonprofit for 10 years? Because burnout in the nonprofit space due to low pay, grueling hours, and assholes like you is super common. The only other people who get that promise from the US government are soldiers.
If you don’t want to give to charity just don’t give. You don’t have to, and nobody will think less of you, because most people a) don’t talk about their giving and b) don’t care about yours. I didn’t give regularly for many years because I was working for nonprofits who didn’t pay me very much. But if you’re not going to give you need to shut the fuck up about it. The industry in which I have spent my career is not the newest purity stick for you to use on people you want to bully, especially if you’re just going to repeat bullshit you heard from someone who’s internalized some real evangelical-level guilt over not giving.
And most especially you need to shut the fuck up about it to me.
And most especially
you need to shut the fuck up
about it to me.
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
This is the finest haiku I have ever written. I might need to commission a cross-stitch.