When people don’t trust your nonprofit, what is holding you back?
What do you think?
I think it is INEQUALITY. Inequality not just of wages, but of status, which leads to health issues, stress, and earlier death for nonprofit staff.
Bill Moyers talked about inequality and how it affects our health, economic well being, and what it has done to our country. He interviewed two epidemiologists, Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson, who have made this their life’s work, and who have just come out with a book entitled “The Spirit Level: Why Equality Makes Societies Stronger”.
“RICHARD WILKINSON: (With a large wage gap) almost everything gets worse: homicide rates, how kids get on at school, math and literacy scores, teenage birth rates, obesity. Mental illness is worse, how much people feel they can trust others, the size of prison populations, what proportion of the population are locked up, measures of social cohesion, how much people are involved in community life. Everything seems to get worse.
BILL MOYERS: Levels of trust among people are affected by the distribution of income?
RICHARD WILKINSON: I think it’s something that people have had an intuition about for centuries. They have often regarded inequality as divisive and socially corrosive. And our data shows that this intuition is much truer than any of us ever realized. We choose our friends from amongst our equals. People don’t feel so at ease with people who are much better off.
BILL MOYERS: Inequality makes strangers of us?
KATE PICKETT: That’s right. At one point, we wanted to call our book, “Inequality: The Enemy Between Us” because in a more unequal society, the social distances get stretched out between us. As the hierarchy gets steeper, social distances are greater, and it’s harder to trust.
RICHARD WILKINSON:Also, as these differences in status get bigger, status competition seems to increase, and people judge each other more by status. You know, “You’re somebody I should pay attention to, or are you someone I can ignore completely?”
Ask yourself, if premature death, obesity, imprisonment, low math and literacy scores, high teenage birth rates, and indeed, DISTRUST among people are what your nonprofit is set up to prevent, what are you doing within your organization to do the greatest good for your staff and coworkers?
Since 1970, wages for nonprofit workers have stagnated while Executive Director or “CEO” pay has risen over 300 percent.
Chart from: Business Insider.com, click on map to see more evidence of wage inequality.
I have seen nonprofits that have fundraised to hire a new staff person, and then when they raise the money, the Executive Director gives themselves a raise instead.
I have seen nonprofit boards that allowed a leader to be absent from the office 4 days out of 5 for 9 months at a time, without any drop in salary or benefits.
I have seen nonprofits that have the majority of staff being paid $12 per hour, and the leader makes $120,000 per year, despite hurting the nonprofit’s reputation, morale, not knowing how to run programs or manage people, and not fundraising at all.
I have seen nonprofits be so understaffed and demoralized that when a shelter for homeless women becomes a prostitution house, the leader who caused the whole mess blames staff and hushes it up so that nothing happens.
I have seen nonprofits working on the same issue fighting amongst each other for government funding.
And the funny thing is, some nonprofit leaders don’t think there is anything wrong with this system.
The hypocrisy is just staggering.
They think that the rules apply to everyone but them. And they think that they don’t have to listen to anyone who makes less than they do. They think that wage inequality doesn’t affect them. They think that they can continue to make twenty times more than what someone else in the organization makes, with impunity, and it won’t affect their ability to achieve their mission, or the happiness of their workers, or their perception in the community.
Peter Frumkin recently wrote about what makes a nonprofit fundable, in philanthropy. He said that the passion of the people and the researched nature of the program are equally important when it comes to deciding who should get funding. And that those who do not exhibit passion should not get funded.
However, I think neither should be the deciding factor. Inequality is what separates us, make us inefficient, and undermine our programs. Inequality in the nonprofit world makes it harder for everyone. If you want to look at which nonprofits are really working, look at the ones not with the researched program models, not with the “passionate” people, but those nonprofits who are modeling equality.
Case in Point:
The National Urban League, the nationwide organization whose symbol is an Equals sign, because supposedly they are fighting for Equality, is one example of a movement that is failing because of inequality, and a blatant example of hypocrisy and propaganda.
The National Urban League’s CEO makes half a million dollars per year. Most Urban League employees make under $36,000 per year. The 115 affiliates are not succeeding, not because of racism, but because of inequality, which leads to inefficiency and ineffectiveness. Affiliate employees see that no matter how hard they work, their hard work will not be rewarded with increased status and wages, and so voluntary and involuntary turnover is very high. Consequently the nonprofit does not accomplish its mission.
To conclude: All of the “passion” in the world won’t make a program work when the idea behind it is bad, or when the program directors are undermined by the CEO/Executive Director. Your nonprofit needs to model equality in order to be effective.
Does YOUR nonprofit work toward equality? Do you have a nonprofit union? Comment, I’d love to hear your thoughts!