Sky Bluesky: The Movement

Ah Ha, Hush That Fuss

Wed, 26 Oct 2005 22:28:45 GMT

" When he saw me still sitting, he asked if I was going to stand up and I said, 'No, I'm not'. And he said, 'Well, if you don't stand up, I'm going to have to call the police and have you arrested.' I said, 'You may do that.' "

Hundreds of radio stations yesterday paid tribute to Rosa Parks in the only way that seemed fitting: by playing that Outkast song.

It's interesting to me the role that Rosa Parks played in the civil rights movement. As NPR put it yesterday, she was an icon. She wasn't a "leader," in the way that Dr. King was: she didn't lead marches or speak at rallies. She wasn't an organizer, though she was active in the NAACP. She wasn't even the first person to be arrested for sitting in the "white person's" section. She was a symbol, a member trained to be a symbol, in the same way that I helped to train dozens of members when I was an organizer.

Members take the hardest jobs, and often the most frightening. I trained members to speak at press conferences, to testify in front of legislative committees, to lead rallies and marches, and sometimes just to be the presenter of hundreds of signed petitions to the targeted official. It's hard, on the organizer's end, to pick the right person: you need a combination of ego (to be the center of attention) and humility, of eloquence and heartfelt honesty. Members are often the most overlooked part of any nonprofit: they're given the most lip service, but in point of fact, organizations get lost in their own machinations, their political stands, their connection to the powermakers, and they forget that they stand on the backs of their members.

We used grassroots members as speakers for very simple reasons: no one cared what I thought as an organizer. I wasn't on Medicare, or Medicaid, or food stamps. I wasn't on Section 8 housing. I had no story to tell. I could offer statistics to prove our political case, but nothing quite tells a story like an actual, living, human being. Organizers and political leaders can only do so much: to really have an impact, you need members.

So Rosa Parks was a grassroots success story. She exemplified every black person who ever had to suffer with unjust laws that proscribed their humanity. She was an ideal candidate - quiet, meek, yet possessed of an inner strength beyond all bounds. Rosa Parks was a rock, and was exactly the right person to become exactly who she became. Every day as an organizer, I was looking for someone to become the next visible member, the next embodiment of our latest political campaign. People are powerful: think about Rosa Parks, James Meredith, Jackie Robinson, Polly Klaas. Think about Cindy Sheehan. The individual story is always, and is justly, more powerful than any intellectual, statistical, or in some cases, rational, argument that can be made.

Rosa Parks became a symbol for the civil rights movement, and suffered for it. She and her husband lost their jobs after her famous case. She feared for her life, and fled for Detroit, where she lived until her passing. We warned our members constantly that there were negative effects of going public with a personal story, and Mrs. Parks truly suffered for her single act of defiance. But in the end, she was strong enough to handle it, just as Dr. King and her companions at the NAACP saw when they decided to use her court case to launch the boycott that became the first chapter of the modern civil righs movement. Rosa Parks was a symbol, an icon, a living reminder of all that our country has gone through (and toward the end, a symbol of all we still have to overcome.)

People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.

Cried Out

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 14:38:33 GMT

Well, it's Friday. As countless rock dj's have said, thank God.

Wednesday wasn't a bad day, baby-wise. He was cute, and sweet, and we went down to visit Mom at her school for the first time. It was a little odd to change suddenly from primary care provider - superdaddy! - to "oh, this is my husband." My wife was great, and introduced me to everybody. And they promptly shook my hand and then ignored me completely. That was fine - they know R, not me - but what bugged me was when I would start talking about little O, and they would literally cut me off to keep talking to R about how cute he was. I apparently had nothing to say about the baby. I was just the driver.

Work-wise, Wednesday was frustrating. I had a perfect at home assignment - preparing hundreds of envelopes for a big mailing. The envelopes were stuffed, stamped, labeled, and all ready to go when my boss remembered that I was supposed to put in a cover letter. So I had to rip open hundreds of manila envelopes, stuff the envelopes in, and reseal them with tape. They were Frankenstein's-monster ugly, and looked ridiculous. I had to spend an hour of my time with Oliver working on envelopes instead, trying desperately to keep him entertained on his playmat while furiously stuffing and taping. Then R came home and helped me out as long as she could, until O woke up.

Wednesday night was rought for Mrs. B. He either was eating or sleeping practically from the minute she came home - no playtime, no smiles, nothing.

I noticed the tears and asked what was wrong. She choked out, "I miss my baby." She wanted to actually see him with his eyes open, not just feeding or sleeping. And it was worse - she was starting to feel like she was losing him, like I was having a better time with him and growing closer to him than she was. After only three days, she felt like she was losing him.

Thursday morning she went to work with tears streaming down her face, and I cried after she left. She was inconsolable. My wife was crushed emotionally, and I could do nothing to help her, it seemed.

So yesterday was a good day - he ate, he slept, he played. We went to University Village to visit my brother, who must have been a little bemused at how I had suddenly turned into someone who can't think of anything to say that didn't involve "Oliver" or "he started smiling" or rattles or toys or other babyness. He was a good little passenger, bouncing around in his Bjorn and looking adorable, until he decided to spit up all over the front of it near the end.

I picked up a book for Mom: "How She Really Does It: Secrets of Successful Stay-at-Work Moms" by Wendy Sachs. (It seems to be helping.)

Thursday night was pretty tough for a while - I did some work and plugged in headphones so I could concentrate. (ADD.) By the time I was done, it was 8:30, baby was nearly asleep, and Mom was in tears again on the bed. After she was done and nearly asleep, I suddenly started sobbing, and suddenly she was trying to console me, and that's when we really started talking.

As it turns out, I had given her the impression that we were having nothing but perfect, blissful days with Oliver. So she was convinced that I had some magic touch, and that she was somehow a bad parent because she didn't have the same kind of perfect, serene times with him.

What was really happening was that I was only telling her about the good stuff, and the things that needed to be reported. I would tell him about smiles, and laughter, and when he ate and when he slept. I wouldn't tell her about the crying jags, or the squirming in my lap, or the times when I would try to get him to smile and he would start screaming instead. So last night, we talked about all of that. I told her all of the bad stuff. And then I explained that I never told her about it because I didn't want to be the "hapless dad." I wanted her to know that I was good with him, and that things were working well. And instead, she thought that I was Superdad, and that he only loved me.

I think we cleared up a lot last night. Mom's still going to have anxiety and insecure moments. I think it helped to tell her that I had my own anxiety and insecurity all day long. Neither one of us is perfect at this, but we're learning, and we're going to get through it.

The Best is Yet to Come

Tue, 23 Aug 2005 14:11:18 GMT

When I was an organizer, there was a common understanding about your first event (press conference, rally, protest, whatever). If it went badly (as it almost always did), it was a relief, beause now you knew that every event that followed would go better.

If it went well, on the other hand, you were fucked. If it went especially well - if your turnout was over predictions, or the speakers were perfect - then you were really doomed, because your expectations for events were now set so high that every subsequent event would look like a failure.

I had a good day yesterday, by that accounting.

It was my complete nightmare of the first day. Mrs. B went to work, and she was beside herself with pain and sadness. She went uncontrollably. I was in tears - I have never seen my wife as upset as she was yesterday. The only one who managed to keep his composure was Oliver - at one point, R started crying while holding him, and he started laughing.

So she went to work. Oliver and I hung out and played for a little bit, and then I realized it had been about two hours since he last fed. Time to try the first bottle of the day.

He started shrieking. He didn't want it. We struggled for a while, he screamed some more, and finally he fell asleep out of frustration and exhaustion.

For the next three and a half hours, we tried the same dance - try to feed the baby, baby refuses, with louder and louder screaming and crying, he falls asleep for a few minutes, he wakes up, try to feed the baby... Nothing. He didn't eat for five and a half hours.

The real tears that I noticed before are really coming down now. His eyelashes and his cheeks were soaked with tears. It was all too much for him. Mom wasn't home during the day, I was trying - badly - to push a bottle on him. Mom called around 10:30, and I was nearly in tears as I told her the news.

She came home for lunch to feed our emaciated baby. He ate ravenously, like a starving man at a buffet. I sat on the couch and wept, convinced I was a complete failure. R tried to console me (nice role reversal there) that it wasn't my fault he wasn't eating. He was reverse cycling. He was too shaken up by the new circumstances. It wasn't my fault.

(By the way, I'm not serious about the starving. Babies often don't eat much during the day, and they know when they really need to eat. So I wouldn't really starve unless it went on for a day or two. That doesn't make it feel any better, though.)

We decided I would try to feed him earlier. Again, never wait until a baby's too hungry to feed him. (I think I waited too early in the morning. He moved beyond hunger into total freak-out.) Thank goodness - he fed once at 2:30 and again at 4:00. I felt like I knew what I was doing again. We even played a little. (That's how badly the morning went - I didn't even try to play with him because I was so freaked about him not eating.)

Mom came home and fed him for the rest of the night. I felt like I had been on a roller coaster without a seat belt. It could not go like this every day - I refuse to allow it. I'll watch him more, feed him earlier and more often. But day 1 is in the books. It's over. It's history. This was my big learning day. Hopefully today goes better.

P.S. My boss apparently thinks that even though they gave me a contract for 120 hours over six weeks - 20 hours per week - I only should really have eight hours of work to do this week. I received a fairly obnoxious email that said that I should notify her if I was going to work significantly more than 8 hours this week. I don't know if she's trying to save hours for later projects, or if she's trying to micromanage my workload, or if she's trying to save money. But I don't like it. We'll see how this goes, but I hope it's not going to be a recurring issue.

The Proposal - Part 3 (Hooray!)

Tue, 26 Jul 2005 13:18:43 GMT

Hooray!

I get to work and be a stay at home dad! My boss sat down across from me today and told me that ~~they fell for it~~ they accepted my proposal for working 15 hours a week from home.

Hooray!

So I get some guaranteed income. Plus I don't have to shop myself around to every nonprofit in town to drum up contract work. I was prepared to, but honestly, I much prefer this.

It's only around $900 a month. So we won't be rich. But we've taken some cost-saving provisions already: we've both deferred our college loans for a year until we get settled, and we're dumping the $100/month gym membership. I think we're going to make it.

And I get to work doing the same stuff I've been doing for the past eight months. (Hooray.) I don't have to learn whole new jobs. And when I get back into the workforce, I can list these guys as my employer for longer than just eight months. (After only six months with the last guys, it'll be good to show some long-term employment again.)

But here's the best part. I just wrote my own proposal. I designed it, I pitched it, I negotiated the terms. This is my project. I love it when I take chances and they pay off.

Hooray!

The Proposal - Part Two

Sun, 24 Jul 2005 14:53:45 GMT

The big boss brought me into her office and closed the door. She praised my desire to be with my kid, expressed how much she admired it, and then said no.

Here's the thing, though. She didn't say no, we can't do it. She hemmed and hawed, felt really bad, and then said that golly, the budget just doesn't seem to allow for it. Sorry.

I realized then that this wasn't a refusal. This was a negotiation.

Earlier, I had spent some time drawing up numbers. I am a well-paid admin assistant - I had far more skills than they had hoped for, so they raised the pay by $500 a month to hire me. If I went part time, they would still be able to pay for a 40-hour admin assistant and not spend much more than they would by paying my usual salary.

So I drew up some numbers, for the remaining fiscal year (September-June):

cost of my current salary, if I stayed on full-time.
cost of my salary at 20 hrs/week plus an administrative assistant at 40 hours/week
me at 20 hrs plus admin asst at 35 hours a week

The largest different was about $6700. So they could end up with two staff people for the price of one for not very much more. And then I showed how many new memberships would pay for the difference in pay. This was a strategic move: part of my wish in going part-time is to concentrate on cleaning up their member databases and start doing some aggressive membership recruitment. If it works, then my position pays for itself.

So I handed her my breakdown. She seemed fascinated: my boss lives in budget breakdowns. Twice a week, she asks my supervisor to provide some budget calculation or another. So it really seemed to move her that I had run the numbers for her.

But then she started turning negative again. I just don't see it, it's going to be really tough, our budget's really tight. She mentioned how hard it was to take care of a kid and work - she had apparently helped to watch a friend's baby from a few weeks up to nine months, and was amazed how much constant work it was. (Yes, I did resent her telling me how much work parenthood was, but only a little.)

But she said the same thing twice. I had listed a number of tasks I could do from home: data stuff, news updates, electronic updates. "I can't imagine that would be twenty hours of work." She said this twice.

I leaned forward and said, "If we brought it down to fifteen hours a week, would that make it more enticing?"

She looked up for a minute. "Why, yes. Yes, it would."

So we're still negotating. If I work fifteen hours a week, it saves them nearly $300 a month on my salary. Plus it saves them benefits - I don't qualify for any health benefits if I work less than twenty hours a week. She's going to talk to me sometime next week - again, she's got some numbers to crunch. I think I'll help out by crunching a few numbers myself for her. I think this might work, folks. It might be only a two-month or three-month commitment at the beginning, but I think she's going to say yes.

This was the first time I had done a hard negotiation for a job. For anything. And let me tell you something - I have never felt more confident, or more powerful, in a meeting ever. I had other backup options in case she rejected it outright. I had numbers. I had a proposal. I was holding all the cards. And I was fully prepared for any possibility. I have come so far since being fired from that machine shop six years ago, the final straw that drove me into non-profit work. I have come from begging for jobs to literally writing my own job description.

But I think the main reason I felt so strong in there is that I knew I was doing the right thing. If this didn't work, I would find another way to take care of Ollie at home. I am supremely confident that I can find other work to keep our bills paid if this doesn't happen. And I know that I'm supposed to do this, so now all that remains is working out the terms. But the confidence came from - how do I say this? I was doing what was right. I felt righteous. That's it. For once, I didn't feel desperate at all. I felt righteous.

The Proposal - Part One

Mon, 18 Jul 2005 00:36:39 GMT

I've decided to try to talk my current employers into letting me stay on as a part-time employee in one capacity or another. Truth is I'm a little worried about contracting myself out to non-profits. It's unstable work, and it might not get money rolling in right away.

So I hit my supervisor with my proposal (Free tip #1: always have a proposal!) on Friday. The proposal was a multi-part proposal:

I'll work from home twenty hours a week as a employee. (Advantage: I can still get half-time benefits and other benefits. Plus, I'll be able to list these guys as an employer for a longer period of time.)
I'll work from home twenty hours a week as a contract employee. (Advantage: I'd get paid more. I have a time contract with dates, so I have a guaranteed job for a period of time. Disadvantages: I'm in charge of my own taxes. No health care benefits. I enter the wilderness known as self-employment. Apparently, I'd even have to apply for a business license.)
I'll help out part-time until you hire my replacement. (This would only be for a month or two, but it'll help with income unti I can get more work contracting.)

Surprise - she didn't freak out and run out of the room screaming. She actually seemed to react positively to the idea. I started listing the tasks that I could do from home, and she even started adding to the list. She really warmed to it quickly.

The biggest problem is that we're due to hire a couple of new employees soon, and they'd love to have the admin support for them when they come on board. But so far, my administrative support for our first new employee has been pretty basic. Order new computer and desk for him. Make sure they arrive. Make phone calls to get his DSL line set up. I can do that from home.

If I'm working part-time, they'll probably need another admin person to be in the office 30 or 40 hours a week. But their budget has just changed drastically, so I think they can afford to hire someone. Besides, when they hired me to be the "admin assistant," they had just reposted the position with a pay hike of $6,000 a year. We both knew that I was overqualified for an admin job. If they cut my salary (and residual benefits) in half, change my job description, and hire someone at their original pay range, they won't be far off from my full-time salary. Plus they'll gain money, because I'll be working specifically on fundraising and expanding their membership.

My biggest advantage is that I've proven my worth to them. I've helped the office run more smoothly. I've helped clean up their databases, and thrown a bunch of good ideas. I think that they'll be willing to work with me to keep me around. After all, half-time me is better than nothing. Right?

I feel like my supervisor was my biggest hurdle. If I have her on my side, we can collectively get the executive director to agree. But if she wasn't on my side, I was sunk. So we'll see how it goes on Monday. Wish me luck, folks. I may be wrong, but I've got a feeling that this just might work.

Free Mojtaba and Arash

Wed, 23 Feb 2005 01:12:27 GMT

I have a blog. (The BBC. by the way, has defined "blog" nicely. Quoth the Beeb, "Blogs are free sites through which people publish thoughts and opinions." They're so smart.)

Anyway, I have this blog where I post my opinions and thoughts. I rant and rave about our President, complain about my workplace, and voice controversial and unpopular opinions. I have also worked as a professional organizer, helped to organize protests and various types of civil disobedience, and voiced unpopular opinions about elected officials. Sometimes, I've voiced these opinions directly to their faces, and sometimes, I've done this on television or in print.

As much as I bitch about the current resident of the White House, he will not arrest me for saying anything about him. (Well, I could say certain things and get arrested, but I'm not going to say them, cause I'm not stupid.) He will not incarcerate me without trial. He will not have me killed for using this blog.

I just finished reading "The Plot Against America" by Philip Roth, and was surprised how comforting it was. As bad and horrible and evil as Bush is - and he certainly is all of those things - we will survive him. We have a healthy and vibrant democracy, with millions of people who will fight for our freedom. I know he's bad, but we have the ACLU, EPIC, Media Matters, and hundreds of other noble groups that fight for our rights. We will not go willingly into fascism. And as bad as Bush is, we will survive him and take our country back.

I'm not supporting the idea that Iran is an evil state, or that they deserved to be bombed or invaded or attacked or their leaders beheaded. But free speech is free speech. Bloggers or reporters should not be arrested for speaking out.

Free Mojtaba and Arash.

House Cleaning

Tue, 22 Feb 2005 14:06:39 GMT

Three-day weekends are the best. (I'm trying not to be jealous of my wife, who gets the whole week off. It's her mid-spring break. Or mid-winter. Or sub-mid-post-mid-solstice break. I get them all confused.)

I spent a good amount of time cleaning out my categories yesterday. I moved all of my posts about my work into "the Movement," so hopefully, you all can actually find them as a separate category. (As always, Radio is being a little finicky about updating my list of categories. So you can just use this link to see the new work.

As I was doing this, I realize I haven't posted about the new job in a while. There's a good reason: there's nothing to report! Honest, folks, I'm just working a straight forty a week as an admin assistant, and it's boring and ordinary and just what I wanted. I order supplies. I've straightened out file cabinets and book shelves. I ordered some highlighters last week.

Boring is good. I like boring. Boring is so so so much better than working crazy hours, or working in an organization on the way to ruin.

We had a board meeting last week, and aside from the board members not showing up (we had eight attendees out of 21) they're fine. They're actually interested in our organization and its work, and care about its funding. They seem fairly attentive. My last board, if you recall, was tragically inept and distant, which is why they're still on the verge of collapse.

Oh, and as for my last organization, the news is not good. I mentioned before that they were on the verge of getting a huge deus ex machina gift. Well, deus is not playing anymore - the prospective gifter changed their mind about giving this organization a six-figure gift, and now they're back on life support. I feel bad about it, but more than that, I feel lucky that I escaped into a good job.

Endings, Beginnings, and Truffles

Tue, 14 Dec 2004 03:06:44 GMT

On Friday, I went to work for the last time at the organization I'm calling FISH. I came into work at 8, and plowed away at loose ends and unfinished work until about 6:30.

At noon, a board member came to take me out to lunch. I had the same discussion I've had with everyone else - the board needs people with real experience in fundraising, they need to expand their membership, people need to stop talking and start doing something... You know, the usual.

No matter how many times I say it, I really don't think they get it. It's like trying to help a child get out of a rushing river, only you can't save them because they keep crying "I'm scared!" You just want to yell, "I know you're scared. Now get over it so I can help you!!"

They're not getting over it. They're too scared to move, and they're the wrong people, and the whole thing may very well crash and burn.

Or they could get their very own deus ex machina. It might happen. There are significant rumors that a prospective deus is making moves. But I've said it before - these people are so naive that if they get their asses saved by one more unexpected big donation, they'll think that everything they did was just dandy, and so why change anything? "We must be doing something right - we're not dead yet." Not Dead Yet is not a good indicator of success.

And today, I started work at the Organization Which Has Not Yet Earned an Acronym. (OWHNYEA is not an acronym. It looks like Welsh, though. Is it Welsh?) It was a deeply uneventful day - with one exception. All day, I had this amazing feeling of relief. I'm not writing budgets. I'm not setting policy decisions. I'm not doing anything of earthshattering significance. Of course, I'm doing important work. But the big decisions will be made by other people, and for once, I'm relieved to just be ... working.

By the way, I'm not quite done with the FISH yet. I forgot a couple of things that I promised I'd do, and I might drop by one evening to finish them up. They're very simple things, but I don't want to feel like I gave anything less than a full effort to wrap up my work there.

I'm also going to drop off an Xmas card and a box of Trader Joe's truffles. They could all use a little holiday cheer right now.

On the Other Hand

Tue, 30 Nov 2004 13:34:06 GMT

Maybe there's another reason I'm not reacting to leaving my current organization. I've got other things to be thinking about. Things like this.

Yeah: new job. Financial malfeasance. Whatever. I'm gonna be a daddy.

Leaving Another Family

Tue, 30 Nov 2004 02:50:43 GMT

I feel a little conflicted leaving my current organization. I feel like I should be ... feeling something. Some attachment. Some sadness about leaving.

I don't.

Before I write this next part, I'm going to play a little game. It goes like this. Let's say that I worked for five years at an organization called the Coalition for All that is Righteous. We'll call it CAR for short.

Let's pretend that I'm leaving my current job with an organization called Friendly Individuals for Salmon and Happiness. We'll call it FISH for short. I know it's a little goony, but play along with me.

So anyway... when I left my last gig, I told people I would always be part of the CAR family. I spent five years there, and really felt like CAR's issues were my issues. And I still am in contact with several staff members. They keep me updated about people I worked with, or issues.

But not so with this current organization. I had much less time to get used to FISH issues, first of all. But also, CAR worked on issues that genuinely affect people. FISH works on environmental stuff - of course, environmental problems affect people, but it's more of an abstract connection. And I don't get to work with grassroots members very much, so I don't interact with people who are affected by the problems that FISH is trying to solve.

I felt really sad when I left CAR. Now that I'm leaving FISH, it feels more like cleaning up an apartment before you move out. I'm doing the basic functions to be done with this gig, but I'm not going to cry. I'm just going to leave Friday at 5:00 pm, and start another job next Monday morning. It's just moving offices.

Oddly enough, this lack of sadness makes me a little sad. I was so excited to be moving into a challenging new position at FISH, and I thought I would spend years and years here. I really thought I would nest here. I didn't even have time to use my business cards. I was so hopeful that I would learn about FISH' issues and learn to be as passionate about them as I was about CAR's issues. I wanted to be passionate about FISH. They never gave me the chance. So I'm angry, and I feel a little cheated. Maybe that's why there's no tears.

The Job Search is Over

Sat, 20 Nov 2004 03:26:17 GMT

I got it.

I got the call at 4:00 today. I got the job. They promised a decision by Monday, but they didn't wait that long.

I knew I was in good shape. Two of my references called to give me breathless descriptions ot their conversations, and both of them said it sounded very very good.

I got it. We're going to be okay. I can get off the sinking ship. My lifeboat has arrived.

(My beloved Mrs. Bluesky asked me if this was just a lifeboat for me, or if this was really a job I wanted. It's a job I want. It's as much work, slightly less responsibility, and another small office. The co-workers seem intelligent and sincere, and sorta quirky in a good way. I think it's going to be good. I really do.)

Update - Looking for a Lifeboat

Fri, 19 Nov 2004 16:05:25 GMT

The second interview went very well, thank you. Thanks for the good wishes and kind thoughts.

They called three of my four references yesterday - the fourth didn't tell me, but the first three did. My references will all say wonderful things about me, because they love me. One actually called to ask me about the job description and to plan what she would say. I'm feeling very optimistic.

There was another interview with another prospect that I wasn't too impressed with. Sometimes it just comes down to communication: they don't know what you're trying to say, you don't know what they want to hear. It was like that. So we'll see what happens with that, but hopefully it won't be an issue.

I will be taking a pay cut of $5,000 a year if I take this job. I think we can survive it. I'd rather lose money and still have a job than ... well, you know the rest.

My current organization finally approved the 2005 fundraising plan yesterday. They made me inflate numbers by another $10,000, and then tried to make me do it again during the board meeting. I refused. I told them pretty bluntly that I'd done as much number-shuffling as I was going to do. Surprisingly, they didn't fight me on it. So whoever has my job next year will have their workplan ready for them. I don't expect that this place will survive past February without some major cash influx, but at least my conscience is clear.

The Most Useless Board in the World

Mon, 25 Oct 2004 16:06:11 GMT

Thursday: board meeting. This was the one where they were supposed to implement their lame-ass fundraising proposal, come up with a schedule, answer all of our questions, etc.

Our questions were basic. Is this a plan to end the year with a zero balance, or a real plan for our survival through 2005? Why do your budget and our budget have a gap of about $20,000? Will you pay us for our vacation days when ... sorry, if ... the organization folds?

Well, they didn't answer many of these, and the answers they gave were infuriatingly dodgy. Fucking weasels.

They want to write a fundraising letter and raise over $20,000 in the last two months of the year, during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. None of these people has ever written a fundraising letter before, except the board member I like to call Cocky Asshole, who has worked for organizations before that did fundraising. That probably means other people wrote letters and had him approve them.

Fundraising is an art and a science. They've ignored the science - the budgets I drafted that suggested if we do exactly this, we might raise $15,000 if we're lucky and everyone works really hard. They want to raise $23,000, and I think they're crazy.

Now they're making mincemeat out of the art of writing a fundraising letter. In a nutshell, they want a letter that begs for money and says pretty dramatically, "if you don't do it now, we won't be around next year." But they don't want to panic people. But they want it to sound urgent. but not desperate.

So I would think they ask the one guy who's employed as their fundraising specialist to write the letter, hmm? Nope. They want to work with me - meaning, they don't trust me and want to write it over my shoulder to make sure I don't fuck it up.

So I told them, fine, you write the first draft. You seem to have a good idea what the letter will look like. So go ahead.

They wrote a first draft, and I swear it looked like a suicide note. I would have jumped out a window if I had gotten this letter in the mail - especially if I was a former board member, or former executive director. It was desperate, shrill, and it was so panicky that it intimated that the recipient should feel responsible if the organization collapsed.

So they dicked around with it a little bit in the board meeting and decided that they would meet "my expert opinion." (After they said I wasn't a "fundraising professional" in the last board meeting.) Mr. Asshole flashed his best Cheshire cat grin and told me, "What we were offering to do was help you with this letter. We didn't want to suggest that you wouldn't be involved." I could have stabbed him.

So I expect this morning that I'll have another shitty draft in my mailbox, and they'll tell me that they've done their best, now it's up to me to make it beautiful. Put some lipstick on this pig, make it purty. I hate being a part of their ridiculous plan, and now they've made me the center of it.

Friday: board event! A wine tasting, perfect for all their pompous rich elitist friends. We gave away a few items and did a small sloppy silent auction. I did a ten-minute pitch for the organization and everybody told me what a wonderful job I did. It sounded like "we're completely fucking up the place. You're doing such a great job smiling while we do it!"

Someone handed me a bottle of wine at the end of the night. No, not someone: another one of our board members. I got so many compliments that night that I was completely nauseated. We need leadership, not pats on the back. Flattery and a bottle of booze will get you nowhere, you pompous ostrich head-in-the-sand assholes.

Dead, Dead, Dead

Sat, 16 Oct 2004 17:07:43 GMT

The board has considered all of the best options, and chosen another really stupid one that they made up on the back of a McDonalds napkin. They're going to pledge us around $20K, but here's the catch: it's not really money that we can spend. It's money that gets put into a special bank account that only the board can access, and it's only to be used to close the organization. Nothing else. Message: we don't trust the staff, and it's their fault we're in trouble.

They've decided that all of us are going to be cut to 30 hours a week. For two of our staff people, that's practically a 30-40 hour cut, because they never work 40 hour weeks. I can't afford this cut, and neither can the other staff people. If it was a temporary cut, and we would go back to full-time at some point, that might be all right. But there's no suggestion that this will ever change.

But the best part of this cockamamie plan is their idea for an end-of-the-year fundraising pitch. Let me explain. A couple weeks ago, I put together an aggressive fundraising plan aimed at everyone who had been members in the last four years, but stopped giving us money for some reason. Using percentages I thought were realistic, I calculated that we could raise between $10K and $20K. $20K was the absolutely highest we could raise, because a lot of these people hadn't given us money since 2001. These are practically cold calls.

Anyway, the board knows more than I do about fundraising, so they've decided to write a special fundraising letter, telling people that's it's urgent, but not telling them exactly how urgent it is. The board will help me write this letter, because it has to be worded exactly right to present the proper message. Message: we don't trust the fundraising guy to do his job.

Oh, and this special fundraising letter is going to raise $23,000, more than even my best guess scenario. Message: the fundraising guy's numbers were wrong.

Oh, and this letter will also talk about the heroic sacrifice that the board's making toward the organization. Because the board really thinks that's going to inspire people. (Meanwhile, we're sacrificing 25% of our salary. But the board is sacrificing. Even though every non-profit board knows that part of the deal is that they contribute to their non-profit financially, whether it's through fundraising efforts or direct contributions. They help bring in money. That's the deal. Our board actually signs contracts saying that they'll contribute a certain amount of cash.)

So in a word, it's dead. It's dead because the board doesn't know what they're doing. It's dead because the board doesn't trust the staff, and has decided they're going to micro-manage us. And it's dead because rather than trust the fundraising proposals of their hired fundraising person, they're making up plans that don't make sense.

There's other reasons why we're at this point. There aren't experienced fundraisers on our board, and nobody has made any effort to recruit veteran fundraisers. Our board president is emotionally immature. There is a desparate lack of leadership there. And I'll admit, our executive director wasn't keeping enough of an eye on the books. But when we hit the crisis stage, we needed to pull together to get through it. And instead of pulling together, the board has decided to stab us in the back. So it's over.

Dead, Dead, Dead

Mon, 11 Oct 2004 05:00:37 GMT

I want it to die. My nonprofit is run by invalids and incompetents. My executive director is, at best, out of her league. At worst, she refused to see the writing on the wall and now has done a fine job of convincing me this is not her fault, that the other people are to blame, that she is an innocent caught up in a maelstrom.

I want it to live.

My organization was founded on the dream of one man and sustained by the dreams of idealists and nature-lovers. It is truly an organization founded by love - love for one's natural surroundings, and love for balance between demand and protection, between business needs and ecosystem livelihood. I want this magnificent organization to rise again, to grow ever stronger, to blossom where it once wilted.

We deserve to close our doors. Board members have begun speaking to their peers - that is, our competitors. The do-gooder world is a cannibalistic one, where cries for help inspire behavior more akin to sharks in the water than comrades in arms. Major donors in the community know how much trouble we're in. Members of our board have made foolish decisions, which will make it even harder for us to rise onto solid footing again.

If we continue, my job will be wild in the next three months. I'll have to pull together fundraising call sessions, emergency calls for membership, and it might not work. But I'll be hustling, one way or the other.

I want it to die. I want to start over with a new organization, one that isn't trying to run with one broken leg and a bum ankle. I want security, for me and my family. I don't want to be a hero to these people - I want to abandon them and go find a truck-driving job and just be a breadwinner.

I want to save them.

But if I do, I'll be saving them from themselves. They deserve to lose. They deserve it. They deserve to have their own incompetence and continual apathy met with its most natural result - failure. Any other result would convince them that they know what they're doing. They may know many things, but in this case, they have no goddamn idea what they're doing. They couldn't organize a bake sale, much less the resurrection of an insolvent organization.

I've told my fellow staff that if we find a way to solve this budget crisis, it just enables a hapless board to continue functioning. In previous years, it was always a deep-pocketed donor who wrote five-digit checks to save our bacon. Now, it'll just be the staff running to rescue the board. But it's always someone else: the board has always had their savior. It's time they fall on their faces.

They deserve it, but I don't want to see it happen. I don't want to see the reaction when the children of the founder find out that their father's dream is dead - died because the appointed stewards of that dream couldn't see they were going down until the ground jumped up to meet them. I don't want to see that kind of heartbreak.

Ultimately, it's out of my hands. Tomorrow morning, I start my service as one of twelve jurors deciding a person's fate. Tomorrow evening, the board - fittingly, it is also comprised of twelve members - decides this organization's fate. We all stand in judgment of each other, each casting the dice for others, each having our future decided by strangers. The case is out of our hands now. There is nothing more to do.

Holding Patterns

Thu, 30 Sep 2004 15:46:23 GMT

I'm falling into the same pattern I started at the old job. I have a series of fairly simple tasks to do, and rather than accomplish those simple tasks so I can feel like I've done somthing, I find myself surfing news sites for hours, looking for something significant. The news just isn't that exciting. But it's a distraction: things change, even if they change from one meaningless thing to another meaningless thing.

It's really avoiding finishing the work I have to do, because when I have several things on my workplan, it makes me feel productive. No, that's not right. It makes me feel important. It makes me feel like my job is significant, because I have stuff to do. If I finish those five things I have to do, what if there's nothing left to do? What if that's it?

It really doesn't help that once I get myself into the frame of mind to work, I get pulled into a conversation with one of my co-workers about the budget, and the situation, and what are we going to do, and what the hell is the board doing anyway. I'm just not getting a whole lot done, and some days it's hard to feel like making an effort.

I think the whole staff is doing this, to some extent. We're all in a stall until next Tuesday. Next Tuesday is like the big board meeting, part 2. (The big board meeting was a couple of weeks ago. The board took a good look at worst-case and best-case budget forecasts, made a few unproductive comments and halfhearted suggestions, and took a listless vote to keep the organization going. Very inspiring.)

This time, though, it's not just them becoming aware of the budget deficit. Now the board members have to actually show that they're going to do some aggressive fundraising to make sure we survive. If they show some desire to fight, then we'll be okay. If not, then I guess I know what my next move is.

Stunned Into Silence

Tue, 14 Sep 2004 02:47:44 GMT

I got nothing for you, people.

I'm flummoxed by what's happening at the workplace. I'm horrified at the idea of plunging back into the shitty Seattle job market, twice in eight months.

What do I say? There's the presidential candidates and their debate, who got wounded and who never showed up, who has the most meaningful health care plan that won't help nearly enough people. Should I analyze the arguments, scrutinize the documents like everybody else is doing? What does that matter? One of them won't have a job come November, and I may not either.

Should I tell you about the sudden rain squalls we've had in the last few weeks? About the times when I wake up, 3 in the morning, and have to pull the windows shut because there are small rivulets forming on the window sill? And that by the morning, the clouds have blown away, as if we had all dreamed the rain, brought it into reality by our collective need for change and drama?

Should I tell you about the woman who parked her car in the street the other day? She was wearing a burqa or similar covering. I don't know the names of the various veils for different cultures. But she stopped her car in the middle of the street, kissed the ground, walked to the other side of her car, kissed the ground there, and then, before getting back into her car, threw a piece of plastic near a garbage can on the sidewalk? It was an odd ritual. Worship of the twin gods of terra firma and recycling.

Should I talk about the Mariners? I considered briefly posting an Ichiro watch on this blog, a running tally of his chase of George Sisler for the most hits in a season. But then he went hitless for two consecutive games, going 0-for-8, an eternity without a base hit for our batting machine. I thought for a minute I had cursed him. Should I tell you about my favorite hit, or the way I stop whatever I'm doing to watch his cockeyed springloaded-gate swing, or try to wield metaphors about oases in deserts of failure?

It's hard to pay attention to the world right now. I know it's still out there, but I'm just feeling shaky right now. Even my cat has noticed.

I was listening to Steve Earle's "Christmas in Washington" on Sunday. Steve Earle was calling for Woody Guthrie and Emma Goldman to come back and help all of us lost souls, and I just sat there and felt sorry for myself, just another lost soul who can't tell the difference between a vision and a career ladder. Tears poured down my face as I sat at the computer, wearing headphones, and the cat just looked at me.

Diagnosis: Depressing

Fri, 10 Sep 2004 14:18:23 GMT

Worst case scenario for my little non-profit is that we have to close down by January 1st. We're running out of money rapidly, and there's an outside chance that we won't get a couple of grant checks.

Slightly better case scenario is we have to close down in March. In the middle of the legislative session. Foundations typically have a lull around March and April, and we don't have any other revenue sources set up to replace that money.

My executive director is devoted to saving the organization, but she's trying to pull along a board that just doesn't seem to give a rip. This drives me crazy. When you take a seat on the board of any organization, you take fiduciary responsibility. That means your ass is responsible for our budget. If the ship goes down, you are responsible. Period. So the fact that our board has refused to look candidly at our financial situation for months just makes me want to scream.

We've tried. We hand out budget forecasts at board meetings, and they're passed around like a plate of unpopular appetizers. We tell the board to organize events. They will raise half of their stated goal for board events this year - a gap of $8,000. If we're lucky.

We had an event yesterday with a lot of the people who genuinely care about my organization: the founding executive director, a wealth of dedicated community members. The widow of the founder was in attendance. There were many tears, because many of those people know that we're very close to sinking. Those people are angry, and upset, and have promised to do everything they can to help. I wish I could say the same of our board.

Even if we - the staff - somehow manage to pull it out, I almost feel like that's enabling the board. They haven't taken their fiduciary responsibility seriously for years, and every time they've been saved by a huge check from a dedicated donor. So they're used to last minute reprieves. Deus ex machina. Argentum ex machina. Anyway, if we save them one more time, we're just enabling them to continue to be shiftless and disinterested. I want to save my job, but I'm not sure I want to save this board from their own laziness.

I can't believe Labor Day was four days ago, and this week, I've done nothing but think about having to go on another job search. I hate this.

Starting to look ugly...

Thu, 09 Sep 2004 03:48:21 GMT

Next year's budget looks to be short about $50,000 - around 20% of our total budget.

I'm writing the fundraising part of the budget. I'm writing very conservative estimates for our fundraising efforts, since we've done a pretty crappy job of raising money this year. The board was supposed to raise about $20,000, and if we're lucky, they'll raise around $8,000.

The board chair sees things a little differently. She thinks we can raise nearly $25,000 next year through events that the board puts together. So, roughly triple what we made this year. It's not polite to call the chair of your board crazy. So I haven't. Yet.

But we've all been scratching our heads, trying to figure out what to do to make up the $50,000 difference. (We - meaning our 3-person staff. The board hasn't seemed to realize that we've got a problem yet. So it's up to our us.)

The ideas, so far, all seem to revolve around two - maybe three - options:

Cut staff. We could all take a month off without pay. One of us (the executive director) could quit. All stupid ideas.

Close our doors. If we can't find the money, we're going to start running out of cash, and the only option then is shutting down.

Wait for the board to suggest something brilliant. Nobody thinks this will happen.

So our board meeting is next week, when we'll look at the whole budget picture. I guess then I'll find out if I should start sending out my resume. If the board wants to fight to keep this organization floating, by really fundraising and pushing themselves, or if they just want to wash their hands of it.

I'm so angry. I left another job with five years' seniority - a lifetime in non-profits - to come here. I thought I was moving into security, a predictable schedule, and less stress. Instead, I climbed onto a sinking ship that nobody told me was sinking. I'm angry at the board, at my executive director, at everybody. I'm angry that all the good work of this organization may go down the tubes, like so many other good nonprofits that have already sunk in this state.

And I'm mad at the board, because while we're all fretting about the future of the organization, and our jobs, they're twiddling their damn thumbs. They don't have to worry. If the organization sinks, they don't lose anything but a monthly appointment on the calendar. We lose our jobs. I have to do another job search, the second in twelve months. Mrs. Bluesky and I have to wonder about the child we're trying to have, about whether we'll have the money to raise a kid if I'm pulling unemployment checks. Goddamn shiftless board. Damn pack of rich bourgeois environmentalists, with their Patagonia backpacks and their REI vests and their Swiss waterproof watches. I miss working with real people, who worry about where the next paycheck is coming from.

Labor Pains

Mon, 06 Sep 2004 23:51:08 GMT

(Thanks to the Hammering Man Fan Club for the slick graphic. Go to their website to see a delightfully biased history of Hammering man. You know. The one that represents working men - "the sorta stupid Working Man who stands around in public places uselessly bonking something in his hand with an ambiguous hammer.")

In honor of Labor Day, the only holiday created by a desire to prevent worker riots in the street, I'm going to share some of my absolute worst work experiences.

The worst jobs I have ever had:

Cleaning up a landfill. This was a temp job I held for four whole days. Landfills are dirty, slimy, messy places, but apparently all of the rubbish has to be in those pits. Otherwise it doesn't break down right. So my job was to walk around the landfill and pick up all the stay papers, boxes, and various weird pieces of crap that were floating around, so it could decompose in its proper place. It was raining. It smelled like sewage and mud. I came home every day stinking and miserable.
Cashier at video game arcade. When I was 20, I thought this would be a great job - an insider's view, all the free tokens you can pocket. by the time I left, eighteen months later, I could hardly stand to be inside the arcade. All the noise. The constant racket. Kid's parties, especially, with a dozen screaming children running up to you like coke fiends demanding tokens, their hands shivering, their legs running in motion like Wile E. Coyote. Aahhh!!
Machine shop lathe operator and gopher. Actually, for the most part I enjoyed this job. I learned a tremendous amount, having only barely worked in a machine shop before. I only bought my first toolbox a year before I got this job, and had to learn computer-controlled lathes, reading blueprints, and producing nuts, bolts, and bearings to precisions within 1/1000th of an inch. But I had two awful moments there.

The first awful moment was a buffing job. Metal parts have to be produced with a specified finish. Rougher parts would have a finish of 400 or 500, for example. The shiniest, smoothest parts we produced (usually) would have a finish of 20 or 30. I'm not sure what scale they used. Anyway, I had to buff these huge metal rings to a finish of 3. By comparison, a mirror typically has a finish of 5 - I had to get metal smoother than the surface of a mirror! To do this, you hold the piece onto a buffing wheel until the surface is spotless, or until your hands fall off, whichever comes first. The wheels were made of paper or cloth, and it would wear off and blow into the air. So my hands were literally going numb, and I was breathing paper fibers the consistency of spider webs. By the time I was done, my hands were so numb that I couldn't hold a pencil. I ended up going on workman's comp leave for three days.

When I came back, I was fired within a month. (This was the firing that drove me into non-profit work.)

By contrast, here's a few of my favorite jobs:

Loading trucks for a U-Haul facility in Wyoming. I remember vividly throwing boxes into the trucks, snow falling in the space between the edge of the building and the truck's roof, sweating like a weightlifter. The speed was ferocious, and I probably lost fifteen pounds in the two months I worked there. This was a second job - my first was temping in a local hospital's emergency room at the registration desk. Some of the toughest and most satisfying work I've ever done.
Librarian. Yep. I worked in both my college's library and the local town's library through college. This may be the best job I've ever had: the staff were all smart, the workplace was quiet and pleasant, and I got to talk to people all day about books and information. One semester, I worked as a reference librarian, so I got to come into work every day and answer questions for people. There may be no better work in the world than satisfying people's need for knowledge.

Organizer. After all of the complaining I do about my former job, organizing itself is a wonderful job. The work conditions are terrible. You work 60-hour weeks (often, in organizations that claim to work for social justice and worker dignity.) You are constantly pulling off events, protests, press conferences, and organizing drives with little thanks. You're considered expendable since organizers aren't directly doing fundraising work.

But my job was to mobilize low-income people, often with chronic health conditions, and engage them in the political process. Often this was political work in the most basic sense, explaining the different branches of government, the difference between the state Senate and the Senate in Congress, when to vote, how initiatives work. But you get to see people taking their first steps in their political life, learning their own power to make change. I have never had a job before that brought tears to my eyes so often.

Happy Labor Day. Go learn some history. Labor Day is too important to be only about barbecues and music festivals.

Watching the Cash Register

Wed, 01 Sep 2004 03:47:23 GMT

I just looked over our fundraising budget at work. I'm trying to put together the plan for next year, and I'm trying to get a picture of our past work. It looks like we planned to raise about $90,000 in 2004. And we're actually going to raise about $60,000, if we're lucky.

Our organization has a budget of about $250,000 and only three full-time staff. Like a lot of non-profits, we don't have big bucks in reserve, we don't have guaranteed funding year after year, and we really push to meet every year's budget. So a gap of $30,000 is real cause for concern. That's practically my salary for the year.

Did I mention that at least $9,000 of that gap comes from board events that never happened?

Other organizations expect their board to do a certain amount of fundraising every year. We expect it, but we don't do a damn thing to make sure they actually do it.

Now I've got to put together the plan for next year, and whether they say it or not, I know my board is expecting me to find a way to plug that $30,000 gap. Problem is, you can't double your membership in one year, and you can't promise to raise money that you know you can't raise. I mean, you can - look at Enron. But any smart budget writer doesn't do it.

What's starting to worry me for real is that there are about five versions of "the budget," and every one of them is different. None of them are flush, but all of them have different versions of how much we'll miss our goals.

So I've tried to go back into our member database to help track down the real numbers. I'm just trying to find out answers to basic questions: how many members did we have last year, for instance? Did Fred in Walla Walla give us money in 2003? Did the Fred Foundation give us money?

And what I'm seeing in our database is:

We can't figure out how many people gave us money;

Fred in Walla Walla gave us money, according to one database, but he's not in our member database;

and we wrote a thank-you letter to the Fred Foundation last year, but didn't record when the check came in.

These are all bad things for a nonprofit to forget. If you're not minding the books, you end up having cashflow problems, and that can lead to shutting-the-doors problems. I don't want that to happen.

I've already told my Exec. Director several times that our database is bad, and our budgets need to be straightened out. But there's just no easy fix for any of this. I'm basically rewriting the budget to reflect reality. What I need next is for a trustworthy volunteer to check every single check we've received in the last two years, and make sure every one is recorded in our database. Fun, fun, fun.

The other problem is my board. At least one time in the past, when they've been faced with a major budget gap, their solution is "shut it down." Which is an easy solution for them, because they're just board members. Their salaries and families don't depend on this place. I end up in deep shit if this place goes down the tubes.

So it's very possible that when our board meeting comes up in a couple of weeks, I may have to jump up on a table and demand that they demonstrate they care about the future of this organization. If they aren't willing to do that, I may have to make some decisions. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Fundraising by the Numbers

Thu, 05 Aug 2004 04:05:33 GMT

I've got the remains of a fundraising campaign to salvage. Out of about 200 prospects, there are about 60 that were never reached. About 40 of them are still in the hands of their contacts - board members and beloved members who volunteered to fundraise, in essence, for us.

So I got about 20 people left to contact.

It's canvassing all over again. Instead of the person-to-person contacts that we wanted, they've got me smiling and dialing like an old-school phone canvasser, which I am. So I wrote a phone script and I called through the list yesterday.

The results stand:

3 people reached.
1 person (in Tennessee!) swore her check was in the mail.
1 person said they put together all of their fundraising letters in November, and divvy up their money. So we'll wait until November.
1 person was the contact's husband. His wife was out of the country. Call her next week.

Today, one person got a voice mail from me and called me back. He promised he'd send something.
And I got the check that the good woman from Tennessee promised me.

Seventeen calls to go. My total so far: $50 in the door.

How Not to Run a Major Donor Campaign

Thu, 05 Aug 2004 03:24:57 GMT

If you ever run a nonprofit, and you find yourself running a major donor campaign, here's what not to do. First, you should assume that the point of your fundraising campaign is to raise money - some would say, to persuade donors to give major contributions. (Whence the name.)

When you put together your list of people to ask for money, don't include people who have only given money one time.
Don't include people who have given $25 consistently for years. $25 is not considered major by anyone, unless you're running a lemonade stand.
Don't include the girlfriends of board members who have moved out of state. (Hint: if they moved out of state, the relationship is not what it used to be.)
Don't assume that half of your money will come from eight donors.
Don't assume that 40% of your money will come from two donors.
Don't assume that 25% of your money will come from one donor who you've managed to piss off. Especially if you pissed off that donor by always assuming they'd come through with a big check.
Don't include organizations, groups, or clubs as major donors. Major donors are people.
Don't track the results on two different spreadsheets. Especially if the numbers don't match.
Finally, don't ask someone to run the campaign if it's the last thing that person will do while on staff with your organization. You'd think this would work - they'd want to leave a good impression, right? No. People who leave non-profits want to get the hell out of town. They don't care about their legacy. They want to be done with it.

I'm not saying that any of this happened with my current nonprofit. I'm just offering suggestions for those of you who have that non-profit, save the world spark. Purely hypothetical.

Where are we going? And how did I end up in this handbasket?

Tue, 03 Aug 2004 02:41:07 GMT

Organizers and people who work in nonprofits are workaholics, drunks, drug users, and to a fairly large extent, sluts. Most. Not all. Addiction to damage seems to be a constant. And after a while, those choices seem not only sensible, but necessary.

I switched jobs last May because my old job was driving me crazy. it was disorganized, I was given the responsibility of three or four people, and to top it off, the office drama was getting silly. There were Macbeth-type plots going on between our board and our staff, and finally I just lost faith in everyone: the board, the staff, my fellow organizers, everyone. I had to get out.

So I left. And I moved to this new gig, which promised a quieter office, a more manageable workload, and a whole new perspective. Just what I needed.

Except ... some things just didn't seem right.

The second-to-last person in my job, for instance, left because he didn't think the organization was financially stable enough. That should have tripped a red flag right there, but it didn't.

(The last person in this job left because she was over her head. She wasn't ready for the expectations of the job. Not too much workload, like my last job. I have massive respect for people who know when they're outta their league, and she did.)

So ... a lingering black cloud labeled "financial instability" hung over the office. But nothing to worry about - that's all in the past.

Then we do a fundraising campaign. Hmm. The person running it is an ex-staffer who's "transitioning out" (translation: get me outta here). She runs it. I ... um ... watch. Until it becomes obvious the campaign isn't going according to plan. Proverbial shit hits proverbial fan.

Hey, suddenly it's my show! Hey, here's all my notes! Hey, do the follow-up! Hey, call the board members and ask them why they didn't call the 15 people they were supposed to! Hey, figure out why we only raised half the money we expected! Hey, figure out how to do this better next year! Hey, where are my car keys?

Holy rats-off-sinking-ships, Batman!

And then today, it all comes out. I knew a few things. Little things. Like my organization cut back on a lot of unnecessary expenses last year because the money wasn't there. Like they had seriously considered shutting down in the past. Like they had only been fundraising - from members, as opposed to foundation grants - for three years.

What I found out today makes me question seriously whether anyone's watching the cash register. Basically, there's two things. There was a gift. A big gift. Five-digits big. (Our budget is under half a million, so this was a serious chunk of our budget.) The gift was given on the provision that it would be reserve funds only - only to be used to get through temporary hard times. And if it was used, it had to be repaid within a few months.

If it wasn't repaid, then the money was intended to be for paying the final bills. Last electric bill, last rent check, final separation checks when we laid off everyone.

The money was first stashed, then accidentally added into the budget, then, inevitably, spent.

So this windfall got pissed away, and we ended up with nothing but memories. And so, when our books get tight again, which is happening this year, of course, and will always happen, we have nothing to fall back on.

Oh, and the second thing? Our board is only just beginning to figure out how to write a budget. The last person who really set the trend on writing budgets, and cash flows, and all that? That would be the person who accidentally spent the reserve cash by accidentally writing it into the budget. Oops.

That would be the person who's now gone and outta here.

So I don't exactly have the same office chaos as my last gig. What I have instead is a demanding job raising bucks for a company that isn't good at raising bucks...

an executive director and board who can't, or won't watch the books...

a history of financial mismanagement...

and did I mention that the aforementioned executive director is starting to freak out about money? Starting to drop little hints about running out of money?

Did I mention I'm working on writing the fundraising plan for next year?

I tell myself all the time that nonprofits always have a certain amount of chaos. Money slumps come and go. It's the price you pay for doing something you love, as opposed to life in the private sector.

I've been here for three months. I am not worried. I am not overly concerned. I am not worried.

I'm not ready for this sort of thing. Again.