So You Want to Work for a Nonprofit?

I was listening to a commentary on PJTV the other day and something Andrew Klavan said, set me back a bit. I do like Klavan and his pithy conservative commentary, don't get me wrong. He was talking about the entitlement mentality of this generation and I was with him, going along smoothly right up until he urged young people considering a career in nonprofits to do something useful, make or do something people want and sell it and all the things we need nonprofits for will take care of themselves.

While I agree with him, that we have too many would-be do-gooders out there clambering for our charity dollars, I have to disagree on two points.

1.Capitalism will not, in and of itself, make poverty and suffering go away.

2.A career in the nonprofit sector isn't necessarily a bad choice for a young person.

I have a couple of caveats here I want to point out.

Jesus told us that “The poor you shall have with you always.” What he meant by that was that misfortune, illness or tragedy can strike anyone, anywhere. Someone is always going to need help and it is our duty to help them. Christ made that abundantly clear. He gave us one rule to guide us by - “Treat others the way you want to be treated.” It leaves us no wiggle room to be uncharitable. Andrew Klavan was also correct in that only people who make a living for themselves can provide help, jobs, goods and services people need. The more money they make, the more help they can give. Even then, you still need people willing to deliver help to those in trouble and most of those guys work for some sort of nonprofit or are paid to perform charitable work by nonprofits. So there IS a place in the world for people who do the work that charities and nonprofits do. Charitable work cannot be entirely done by unpaid volunteers. And you do have to pay your regulars because they do have to eat.

Jesus, undoubtedly the most successful man in history so far as changing the world goes, was in and of himself a nonprofit organization. He chose his career knowing full well what it would cost him. That's where I get crossways with todays trust fund do-gooders. Jesus worked up until the day he headed off into the wilderness to begin his ministry. He did what he had to do and suffered the consequences of his actions. He did not get government grants for his work. He never threw a big gala or charity golf tournament to fund his work. He lived hand to mouth for the 3½ years of his second career (his first career was as a carpenter in the for-profit sector).

Now I'm not saying fund-raisers are a bad thing. I have been a fund-raiser most of my working life and know what good gets done with charitable donations. I'm not saying a career path into the nonprofit sector is a poor choice. What I am saying is that they don't call them “nonprofits” for nothing.

Sadly, what I think Andrew Klavan has picked up on is the apalling numbers of upper class, trust fund babies who lately have decided to spend their parents education dollars on degrees in public policy, sociology, psychology or communications with an eye to working for a big charity and saving the world. Communications was my own degree choice and for five years I taught school before going to work for a charity. But these entitled brats, Klavan is complaining about, leave college after a four year debauch and enter the nonprofit world demanding fat salaries for their supposed expertise. They have a mental picture of themselves jetting off to remote areas of the world where they will wear khaki shorts and one of those canvas explorer vests with all the pockets with the chain zippers and a squashy jungle hat. They see themselves standing over one of those big iron kettles dishing out white mush into wooden bowls held by children with tiny brown hands – at least long enough to get their picture taken for the fund-raising literature.

Charity work is tough. Most folk who work in the real nonprofit world work long hours for pitiful pay if they get any at all. They deserve every bit of support we can give them because they go places and do messy things most of the rest of us don't want to do. The naieve "I'm going to work for a nonprofit" college crowd only see the romance in the thing and very much under-appreciate how tough the actual work is. In their mind's eye, all they see are grateful starving children hugging them in gratitude.

What they don't see is themselves at age 58 with no retirement fund, no savings, no home and no job because the last project ended and nobody else wants an old geezer with a collection of snappy pith helmets to jet off to Africa to spoon gruel into the bowls of tiny black children with big heads.  She'll be a drag on the company health insurance and she's no longer cute enough to have her picture taken for the fund-raising literature.

I helped start five nonprofit organizations over my career and helped reorganize several others. I worked months at a time without pay, taking odd jobs to support myself and family while I wrote interminable startup grants, organized boards and local support and ran fund-raisers. Some of these organizations are even still in operation. Some have long forgotten that I ever had anything to do with their founding. I don't care.

When I entered the nonprofit sector, I did it because I believed it was the right thing for me to do and not because I though I could make a lot of money at it. The organizations I was privileged to work with did, and are doing, a lot of good. They owe me nothing. I did not go into charitable work in order to get wealthy. I learned very quickly that only the unethical make the really good money in the nonprofit sector. The nonprofit journals complain frequently about the low pay for nonprofit executives and caution that you cannot get “good” managers if you don't pay them. They can make more in the private sector.

Well, duh!

Of course they can make more in the private sector. That's as it should be. It's my contention that if you need to make money, that's where you should go. It's where I am ending my career because I need to make a living now that I'm done with full time nonprofit work. Nonprofits have the same problem as the government. Too many who work for them have lost the citizen public servant ideal where private citizens step up and take their turn to do things that the community needs doing and then step down and return to private life. Charities and Governments should never offer those who work for them too comfortable a living. The laborer deserves his hire, but only that. Here's where I agree with Klavan.

Let those who wish to serve, sacrifice in order to do so. Without the expectation that you will have to sacrifice in order to serve, public service becomes too easily corrupted. I don't care how many millions a nonprofit manages, I don't think he or she should earn 10% of the take. Take a modest salary. Be frugal in how you spend donor money. Do some good and then go make your pile somewhere else - or vice-versa for that matter.

Just one man's opinion,

(c) 2012 by Tom King

Are Christian Pastor's Making Too Much Money

(c) 2011 by Tom King

According to a recent survey by Dallas-based Leadership Network, the average salary for a lead pastor in a megachurch is $147,000. That probably seems like a lot to the folk out there struggling to pay a ten percent tithe or to the widow with the mite and comparatively, it is. But that's not all.


The survey found that salaries for lead pastors in all churches can range from $40,000 on the low end to $400,000. There are probably outliers that make more or less, but the survey only sampled large churches salary and benefits reports. Churches with a weekend crowd of 2,000 or more averaged $99,000 a year. Even assistant and worship pastors made around $75,000.

These kinds of numbers are not unusual in churches with a congregational financial model. In these churches, a church board sets the pastor's salary, not the central church leadership. Many of these church boards consist of well-heeled members of the congregation who, themselves make very high salaries. It's not at all surprising that a church board chairman who reeled in ten million last year with stock options would consider a $200,000 annual paycheck at all unreasonable.

I live in the Bible Belt. You can't throw a cat in Tyler, Texas without scratching the paint off a church. Churches are probably the second largest business in East Texas after prisons and prison accoutrements (we make most of the nation's razor wire here – I bet you didn't know that). Many southern churches encourage tithing and even if only a third of any congregation actually do that, it's still a lot of money flowing through the collection plate. A mid-sized country church with a couple of doctors or lawyers in attendance can rack up a million dollar budget in no time. And managing all that money, often with the help of maybe one paid church secretary and a bookkeeper – the pastor.

It's not surprising that church board members, many of whom are well acquainted with the headaches of managing an operation the size and scope of a church, feel that, as the Bible says, “the laborer is worth his hire” and compensate accordingly. I know pastors of relatively modest churches who make $95K easily. Their boards evidently think that's an acceptable price for a Doctor of Divinity.

When I sat on a nonprofit board, one of the well-heeled businessmen on the board with me explained to me (patiently as though I were a slow-witted nephew) that business executives routinely draw a salary of around 10% of net company revenues. It doesn't take much for a church to have a one to two million dollar budget, especially if the church is tithing. If you have just ten million dollar execs in your congregation, tithe from just those members alone can hit a million in no time.

The situation with nonprofits may be more shocking to some of their contributors. NPOs often have execs that draw more than 100,00 in salary and benefits, especially if the director is a talented fund-raisers. A board member told me once when I was hired as a development officer for a children's charity that he had not problem paying me a couple of hundred thousand a year if I brought in the contributions.

You'd think there'd be a willingness to sacrifice in people who elect to work for churches or nonprofits and there may well be. Line staff in nonprofits and churches are often highly underpaid, if not entirely volunteers. But these aren't the folk who do well at fund-raising and, let's face it, church and nonprofit boards want CEOs and pastors who are good fund-raisers. One thing I've found over the years is that good fund-raisers often have a really powerful sense of self-interest. You almost need that to raise that kind of money. It certainly explains why the very folk that Jesus said should be the “least” if they wanted to be the first, make so much money.

I think that's one reason God instituted the tithe. It makes sense. If God sets the rate of contributions, then that leaves churches free to choose leaders for churches that might not necessarily be good fund-raisers, but who are, instead, Godly men and women who care more about their people than they do about their pocketbooks.

It's worked pretty well for my own church where pastors are paid, not on the size of their churches, but on the length of their service and experience. It also protects us from leaders who would build a cult of personality around themselves. There's no reward for doing that other than an ego boost and, in practice, it would take a pretty needy ego to be willing to do the kind of work it takes to build a cult of personality without any monetary reward.

In the end, local church and nonprofit boards have to decide how much to pay someone that you are going to trust with a multi-million dollar budget. An underpaid executive is an invitation to embezzling, not because pastors are inherently greedy. A low salary for someone handling large amounts of money won't attract many honest, competent folk who can make a more livable wage elsewhere. At the same time, it is too easy for such a job to attract grifters who would accept low pay in exchange for access to unsupervised loose cash (like offering plates).

What to pay your pastor or nonprofit director is a tough problem that's best left to local boards and congregations to decide. The system is surprisingly free of such shenanigans considering how many churches and how much money is involved. I don't think the government or large corporations have nearly as good a record.

Hmm. Maybe I ought to list that Theological Doctorship I got on-line for ten dollars from the Florida Institute of New Age Theology on my resume'. 

Just one man's opinion....

Tom King

Charity Sex: The IRS Says It’s Not Deductible

Okay, it’s not exactly charity sex, though Spokane, Washington engineer William C. Naylor did try to have the IRS declare the delivery of his sperm to deserving women, a nonprofit, charitable activity.

Apparently Mr. Naylor has set up an organization called the “Free Fertility Foundation" as a "nonprofit" organization.  Well, you can set up a charitable organization to do almost any worthy activity, but apparently the IRS felt that impregnating women probably didn’t fall under the spirit of the 501(c)(3) designation.

Naylor, a wealthy inventor and his father operate the “charity” as a way to provide deserving women with high quality Naylor sperm.  The screening process is rigorous. Out of 800 some odd applicants so far, father and son have only selected 24 women as deserving of the Naylor chromosome set.

When the IRS said, “No!”,  the Naylor’s took his case to tax court. 

On July 7, the court ruled in favor of the IRS.  The court did not rule out providing free sperm as a charitable activity (leaving hope springing eternal in the breasts of male narcissists everywhere).  It only sided with the IRS in saying that the pool of beneficiaries wasn’t large enough to be considered of benefit to the community as a whole.

Naylor claimed in his petition that providing sperm to deserving women would ‘make more of a positive difference to the world than all of the inventions and scientific discoveries that I could ever create.’

The court disagreed, claiming that the activities of Naylor’s foundation “benefit” so few women that it was clear that the foundation “…is not operated exclusively for exempt purposes and therefore does not qualify for tax exemption pursuant to section 501(c)(3).”

Well, duh!

What was your first clue?  Naylor’s defeat is a serious blow to narcissists everywhere. The only question the case leaves unanswered is the obvious one.

How exactly does Naylor deliver his charitable offering to those women he and his old man have chosen as worthy to receive the sacred Naylor semen?  Do they present themselves in his backyard ceremonial temple wearing white robes with little gold tiaras?

Somehow, I’d be disappointed to find out that he uses dry ice, an Igloo cooler and Fed-Ex overnight delivery.

Just One Man’s Opinion.

Tom  

Who Gave You Permission to Help That Man?

Someone asked me something like that once. We were trying to find rides for seniors and people with disabilities who can't drive so they can get to the doctor, to the grocery store and to church. He was a development director for one of the largest charities in town. What he really wanted to know was whether we had the okay of the local good old boy network BEFORE we started looking into the problem.

"Who gave you permission to start a transportation initiative?" he asked.

The answer: Nobody did!

So, without permission, in 7 years we tripled the funding for rural transportation for seniors. We forced the rural transit provider to drop discriminative practices. We engaged private sector transportation providers to help get folks with disabilities get to and from jobs. We stopped predatory "coyote" drivers from exploiting the families of farm workers in small rural colonia's and helped the women get an affordable ride to town to buy groceries. We did so without raising taxes by so much as a nickel.

For our troubles, I got a nasty letter from the executive director of the local Council of Governments. The director of the state Transit Association called me "anti-transit".

I figure we must have done something right if we upset so many good old boys!

There has been a lot of rhetoric in recent years about an old African proverb. "It takes a village to raise a child."

Somehow, folks of a certain political persuasion have come to believe that Washington, DC is just the village to do that.

I'm not sure on what planet the federal government is considered a village, but it is surely not in this solar system. The proverb is dead on, though. I know from experience. I grew up in such a village.

Back when I was 12, If I had been seen throwing rocks at a street light in Keene, Texas by any one of the town's mothers or grandmothers, word would have reached my Mom before I could have made it home at a dead run. Mom would have met me on the porch, her arms crossed and tapping her foot in a way that boded no good for me.

There is no power on Earth for getting things done effectively and humanely like that of a small community. That's the village those old Africans were talking about. Local communities, united together to fix their own problems - that's what the proverb means. They aren't talking about vast unwieldy social programs.

Virtual Village began as a dream to help people working in small to mid-sized nonprofits in rural and small towns, local neighborhoods and communities. The idea was to help inexperienced, but passionate local leaders successfully network, write grants, create new programs and solve problems in their own communities.

They don't need a mandate from Washington. They don't need the okay of whatever good old boy political network runs things in their state. What they need is help figuring out how to do what needs doing.

We call it "doing good without permission".

You'd be surprised how many government bureaucrats we've aggravated so far.

As we built the website, however, the economy suddenly came crashing down around everyone's ears. Foundations cut their giving for new projects. Some closed entirely. The feds cut the deduction for philanthropic giving, seizing control of dollars that once flowed freely to charities and channeling them through government programs. Our small, local charities need help more than ever.

I was driving through the country yesterday and saw a crude sign in front of a tiny country church advertising a "Soup Kitchen". It wasn't sophisticated. It wasn't politically correct. Yet struggling rural seniors were getting a hot meal. The church started the soup kitchen because Meals on Wheels and food bank programs have been having getting food out into the rural areas and there were a lot of older people out here in the sticks that need a hot meal every day. So neighbors pitched in and are helping their grandmas and grandpas and struggling families that have been laid off, have lost jobs or businesses or who have had the family wage-earner die suddenly. By the time a government program could have been put together, isolated seniors could have been starving. They didn't because their neighbors acted quickly and solved a problem with the resources they have.

They'd like to keep it going permanently, but they don't know how.

The Food Stamp folks have long complained that church food pantries were cutting into their business. A couple of years ago they actually started a marketing campaign to bring people back to the Food Stamp program that were being fed by little church food pantries. Now, the Food Banks that supply those church based pantry programs are suddenly finding it harder and harder to get the food supplies they once did as the federal government tries to centralize all anti-hunger programs under government control.

Small to mid-sized charities also face stiff competition for increasingly limited Foundation grants. Big charities with fat development budgets and marketing resources dominate the competition for what grants and other funding remains out there. Local charities are having to do more, with less money and they're doing it with organizations that don't have the aggressive development resources they need to find funding to keep their doors open.

Virtual-Village is a vitally needed on-line tool that can help the hundreds of thousands of small church and community-based organizations that have sprung up to meet needs in our towns and neighborhoods that were not anticipated up in Washington's central planning.

We're here to help the people who create and run local charities. We're here to show them how to reduce travel costs, to access information they need to do their jobs and to help build collaborative networks using 21st century telecommunications and Internet based tools. These wonderful people solve a myriad of problems that exist in our home towns that nobody in Washington has ever thought of, much less designed a "program" for.

These are tough times.

Please go to this link ( http://virtual-village.org ) and visit the site. Small charities can't afford expensive development officers, much less afford an extensive development and fund-raising program. Yet, Foundations and government funding sources increasingly require more and more networking, interagency cooperation and program coordination before they'll give money to local charities. This is an expensive and time consuming task, something most nonprofits can't afford. Virtual Village can help by bringing the collaborative networking process down onto our own desktops.

You can help the little nonprofits and faith-based ministries survive in this era of crumbling economies. Contribute now. We need your time, your talent and your money. Any one or all three!

We need just $25,000 to finish adding all the new tools the site needs to be fully functioning. A commercial for a used car dealer can cost more than that to make.

Just go to the Virtual Village homepage and click on the 'donate' button. Help us finish building the website and adding the tools our friends will need to survive the coming lean years.

The community you help may be your own!

I've given 6 weeks pay so far. Can you give lunch money? It's easy. Follow the easy to use Paypal "Donate" link on the home page. Just a couple of minutes and you can strike a blow in support of all those little guys out there helping your communities.

• They aren't making government salaries.
• They don't have government health benefits.
• They spend on average less than 8% of their entire budgets on admin costs.
• Many go without pay altogether.
• Millions of volunteers work with them.
• Tens of millions are given a hand up.
• Tens of millions of lives are changed.
• We can help them do even better.

Join us, won't you.

We don't have to ask the government for permission to help the homeless, to shelter a battered wife and her kids, to feed an elderly person or to help someone who's fallen on hard times to get back on his feet.

Why should we have to ask someone in Washington whether the widow next door deserves to have a couple of neighbors mow her grass or paint her porch for her?

Why should our neighbor have to file stacks of humiliating paperwork when all he needs is a couple of bags of groceries and a ride to work for a few weeks till he gets on his feet?

Help Virtual Village help our community do-gooders to, well, to do good!

Thanks for your support,

Tom King

Hip Shot Charity and Tom's Diet

Nonprofit organizations are in trouble lately. With the shrinking economy, people have gotten to where they toss those fundraising letters without even looking. Let's face it, we all hate to say "No!"

Well, not all of us hate to. There are some real curmudgeons out there who get a kick out of it, but most of us like to help where we can. We feel guilty if we don't and sometimes it makes us mad when friends get involved in a fundraising campaign because it makes us feel obligated to give something substantial. After all they are our friends and we don't want them to think we're cheap. If we toss the letters without reading them, we can reduce some of the guilt we feel at not sending something and say truthfully, "No I didn't see the letter," if asked about it later.

So what do we do when the economy takes a nose dive and we can no longer pony up for the thousand dollar table at the annual Cattle Baron's ball?

Do what I do. Skip lunch!

It's my new diet/charitable giving plan. I'm on a carb restricted diet to try and lose about a hundred pounds worth of such lunches. So now, if someone asks me for a donation and I like the cause, I just give 'em my lunch money. Even if they say they don't, they'll take cash. Stick it in the envelope and send it right back. It may not be a lot, but cumulatively, it does add up. I already give more of my income percentage wise than President Obama in an election year, so why not pad my stats a little more and de-pad my derriere (not that there's too much hope of that since my behind seems unnaturally resistant to dieting)?

This has the double benefit of not only insuring I don't have to feel guilty about turning down charities, but it also help reduce my consumption of carb-restricted salads. I know you can eat all you want of them, but why? As a pretty much vegetarian by preference, I hate eating a lot of meat anyway (which is supposed to be one of the attractions of this kind of diet). So, for me, veggies unadorned and salads without croutons or crackers is pretty much it in the way of guilt-free snack foods. After a while, you just can't bear it any more and you just quit eating and decide to give your lunch to charity, which is, I think, the secret to this diet anyway. You just get too discouraged to eat!

Look, the economy could stand to lose some fat and so could I, but that's no reason I can't do some good while slowly starving myself into an unnatural thinness.

I say unnatural because last night I watched a movie in which a chubby little dentist claimed to weigh 185 pounds. Heck, my left leg weighs more than that! I didn't look as fat as he did when I weighed a good 50 pounds more than he claims to. Either I've got lead desposits in my bones or somebody's scales really are off.

At 185 pounds, I look like I just got out of Auschwitz or something. And no matter what I do, my behind is enormous!

How is that fair?

Oh, well, enough of my whining. Send your low carb treats to me at "Dieting Makes Me Cranky", 20755 Bay Shore Drive, Flint, TX 75762. Cash is accepted, but I am liable to eat it - if only for the salt content!

I'm just sayin'

Tom King

Virtual-Village.org Goes Live!

Hi folks,

I'm pleased to announce that Virtual-Village.org is live and online as of today.

WHO ARE WE?
We are a community of people with a mission. Our missions are as diverse as the people who live in the neighborhoods, towns, cities and communities that make up our world. Virtual Village brings together information, organizational tools and most importantly, some of the smartest most experienced folks from the nonprofit, faith-based and advocacy fields. If you have a passion to do something good for your community, we invite you to join us here. We'd all love to help you get it going!

What's up so far
It's a Beta Site - the bare bones of the website with basic tools in place. Over the coming months we'll be adding a whole raft of new features like friends tools, chat room, collaborative grant writing tool and an online shop.

In the meantime we need your help.

What Virtual Village will become depends a great deal on you the membership. Don't be afraid to let us know what you think we need, what we're doing right and what we're doing wrong. Your active participation will help guide us toward making this the most effective nonprofit networking site ever.

PLEASE GO TO: http://Virtual-Village.org
AND SIGN UP FOR A FREE MEMBERSHIP.

It only take a couple of minutes. You can add more to your on-line resume whenever you want.

Please give us just a few minutes of your time each day to check in, trade ideas, stories and experiences with your fellow laborers in the vineyards. I promise it will be worth your time.

Welcome aboard and thanks for your help.

Tom King

WEBMASTER!!!!!

Well, I'll be a webmaster if we get the project funded. Sounds a little sinister. "I AM THE WEBMASTER!" Actually, if we do it right, it'll be more like the web herder or the web coaxer. A bunch of us nonprofit types have come up with an idea for an on-line social/professional network for people like us in faith and community based organizations so we can get together on our computers to plot and plan how to take over the world.

Ultimately, that's what we'd like to do - in a good way of course. Sadly, though we all want pretty much the same thing, the disagreements over how we get those things can get pretty violent. I heard a talk show host disagree with the idea that we want the same things. He says people on the left want power!!

He's half right. The leaders on the left do want power any way they can get it, anyhow they can hang on to it. The problem is, there are just as many people on the right who only want power too! They all seem to fall to corruption one by one....

I've long believed that the rank and file folks could get along fine if we could just ditch our leaders. We could hold a lottery or something to pick new ones. It should be somebody who doesn't want to be in charge. Somebody smart and talented and stable who isn't crazy or vain enough to want to run for public office.

It's that separate elite group - people who have made themselves our leaders that's the problem. They lust for power and will do anything to get it.

"What are we going to do tonight, Brain?"

"The same thing we do every night, Pinky. We're going to try and take over the world!"

Like Brain, our leaders set their followers out to do the dirty work. These guys know full well they are using their followers to tear our country apart. They don't care. It's a big old game to these guys. They play the game every day in the halls of power and then they gather for steak and lobster dinners in the Senate restaurants at night to drink and congratulate themselves on having made fools of us all.

My friend the talk show host is wrong. I used to watch the Pinky and the Brain cartoons a lot when my kids were little. Pinky never had a clue, he just went along with Brain wherever he went. Most of us are far too much like Pinky. We mean well, but the Brains of this world feed us with platitudes and rhetoric, convince us to follow them and then reap the rewards of our labor - either by taxing it out of us or through fees or surcharges or any one of a thousand ways our leaders have of living off the sweat of all of our backs - rich, poor, liberal or conservative.

The best way I've ever found to get anything worthwhile done is to get folks together without the politicians and their lackeys and just do it. That's what the new Virtual Village Website is about. I hope once we get it up, that many of you will join us in this nifty experiment in Internet-based collaboration.

The politicians are going to hate it. People banding together to make their communities better without the permission of the powers that be! What a wonderful and terrifying thing that could be.

I'm just sayin'

Tom

On Becoming an Author

Got an e-mail last week from a publisher looking for an author for a book on charity golf tournaments. I just happen to have such a book and I sent him the manuscript. He called back after he read it and bing bang - with that I've got a deal to publish my book and possibly do a second one on nonprofit boards. I've read books that this editor shepherded to publication and he's good at what he does.

It's funny how stuff like this happens in my life. I've been fiddling with this book for 5 years and running it by publishers right and left. Then, suddenly it finds a home at last, just at the time I need it.

Romans 8:28 says "All things work together for good to them that love God and are called according to his purpose."

I'm finding that proved every day that I live now. Moving into a new phase of my life, I find myself called to do new and unexpected things.

A multi-book contract could mean that I may be able to retire after all. That's something of a relief and I am grateful to God for his care.

Tom