Consumed by Benjamin Barber

Here’s a book that has been blowing my mind lately, and with EVERYTHING ELSE GOING ON I just haven’t blogged about it yet.

Until today.

I’ve written before about what to buy to make sure slaves didn’t make your clothing, or make your food, here. http://www.wildwomanfundraising.com/fabulous-interactive-graph-decide-buy/

And I’ve also written about if you’re a good nonprofiteer or a good consumer. http://www.wildwomanfundraising.com/nonprofiteer-good-consumer/

Sure, I’m a member of a credit union and a coop. I moved my money. I buy local. I shop for American-made clothes on Etsy and in used clothing stores. I use string bags instead of plastic when I remember to bring them.

But so fucking what?

For this, my foremothers fought for equality, for the right to vote? So I could get a fair trade organic box of green tea?

Privatization means that we have a right to get whatever we can on our own, but at the same time lose any real ability to what we have a right to. Like freedom to organize. Freedom to assemble in a public park. Freedom to have healthcare, no matter how poor we are. Freedom to have a social safety net. Freedom to elect a president by popular vote. Freedom to a fair trial, to have a reason for being arrested.

We really have to ask ourselves, so what if our phone company donates to nonprofits if our votes don’t count for anything?

So what if we shop from the rancher at the farmer’s market if we can be detained indefinitely for no reason?

Let’s face it, voting with your dollars can only take us so far.

The following quotes are from Consumed, by Benjamin Barber.

Consumerism is equally dependent on and perhaps addicted to an identity politics that is wrapped up in merchandising, marketing, and above all, branding.

“Branded lifestyles are not merely superficial veneers but have become substitute identities, forms of acquired character that have the potential to go all the way to the core.”

This reminds me of so many stories, so I’ll try to just pick a couple.

My friend R. went to Brazil recently to visit a college friend. She was looking forward to this trip for over two years. And she was finally well enough to take the trip. When she got there, her friend had turned into someone completely obsessed with brands. R’s friend, M, lived in a gated community and everyone had barbed wire on top of their buildings. Favelas were everywhere and R. got in trouble with M. for showing the maid where her favela was with Google Earth. You know, treating the maid like a human being. One night they got held up at gunpoint while the gunman took their fancy bags, phones, credit cards, jewelry. R. asked M, “Aren’t you going to report this?” and M. said, “What would the police do?”

M. just wanted to go shopping all the time, and wanted R. to buy things for her, because supposedly they were a part of the same socio-economic strata. M.s friends wanted to have endless conversations about the top brands, things they had bought, things they wanted to buy, and their new haircolor. R. said it was so boring that she actually played video games just so she wouldn’t have to talk with them. Her social conscience really made it impossible for her to enjoy the trip. But it kind of galvanized her even more to be completely indifferent to brands and to the people who used them in place of their personalities.

“Because commercial identities tend to be simplistic and hetronomous (determined from the outside) as well as associated with celebrity and whim (I wanna be a rock star!) they enforce the infantilist ethos, undermining agency, community, and democracy.” -Pg 167, Consumed, by Benjamin Barber

“There are no global citizens, only global consumers, no global states, only global capitalist firms; no commonweal, only an aggregate of what individuals and nations and consumer markets want, no global cultural or national identities, only the new hollowed out identity conferred by brands.

Brand loyalty instead of personality

There’s a young man I know, 25 years old, who literally is defined solely by his relationship to his favorite brand of car. This, truly, is all he wants to talk about. It’s what defines his personality. And if you’ve ever looked at a website with regrettable tattoos, you’ve surely seen people getting the apple or windows logo, or another brand logo, like Monster Energy Drink, tattooed on various parts of their anatomy.

So honestly, cause marketing, can you honestly say the best way to find a cure for breast cancer is to buy some Campbell’s soup or get a Breast Cancer Visa? Can you stand there with a straight face and say “This TRULY makes a difference?” Or are we going to get too sophisticated for that game this year?

“Cults are a rich and legitimate source of insight for the creation of brand worship. Alongside alternative religions, brands are now serious contenders for belief and communities.”

Naomi Klein writes about brand vision epiphanies: Polaroid, for example, is not a camera but “A Social Lubricant.” Ugh.

Do you work for a park, an elementary school, a high school, or a university?

Parks and schools find it difficult to withstand commercialization as cities and states lose their tax revenues (from giving massive tax cuts to corporations to come to their locales -Mazarine). Corporate research funding for academic science privatizes what is supposed to be public research and allows research results and patents to be sold for private profit.

Apparently these big corporations believe in socialism when it comes to bailouts, but market capitalism when it comes to profits. The beneficiaries of public services (such as Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Chase, Wells Fargo, and various student loan companies) refuse to pay their cost in taxes.

State funding continues to decline and universities increasingly become huge research empires that need continual infusions of cash to sustain bloated administrative costs.

Privatization becomes a condition of academic survival.

Can you believe that? Don’t criticize your corporate overlords from your academic armchair, lest you have that armchair whisked out from under you, and end up on the street. No wonder people I know who teach at universities have gone to teach in Canada. At least there they can voice their opinions.

But what can be done? Well, as you would expect, a nonprofit is already working on it. Several nonprofits, actually. There’s an initiative in the EU called “Beyond GDP” which uses GPI, instead of the GDP. The GPI or Genuine Progress Indicator factors environmental abuse and national debt into the equation. And surprise surprise, Americans spend beyond our ecological means. Click here to check out your ecological footprint. StopCorporateAbuse.org is another nonprofit fighting against corporate greed. And Demos, the institute that Barber works for, believes the answer is global democracy. I’m not sure if that’s it though. What do YOU think?

I’ve said it before but it bears repeating. Freedom to buy is not enough.  Voting with your dollars is not enough.

Grown up citizens exercise legitimate collective power and enjoy real public liberty.

Consumers exercise trivial choice and enjoy pretend freedom.

Consumers even when childish have a place in a free society and express one part of what it means to live freely. But they do not and cannot define civil liberty. When they are defined as doing so, free society is put at risk.

Privatization does not just reinforce infantilization, in the realm of politics, it is its realization.

So how do we fight against infantilization? How do we get our global governments to do their jobs again to protect and serve citizens? How do we make America, and to an extent, the world, great again? Do you have any ideas?

You Deserve A Voice. Voting With Your Dollars is Not Enough originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on February 6, 2012.

“I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge “facts” that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.”

 
Dear Mr. Brisbane,

“I’m looking for reader input on whether you have lost your balls and where they might be found, if so.”

 
WHAT IS BEING A JOURNALIST ALL ABOUT?

ARE YOU INSANE?

ARE YOU ASKING US WHETHER OR NOT YOU SHOULD REPORT THE TRUTH, OR JUST PRETEND TO?

 
WTF New York Times?

DO YOU ALL HAVE JOURNALISM DEGREES OR NOT?

Did you go to fashion school instead of journalism school?

What, is it just UNFASHIONABLE to tell the truth now, so why bother?

Should the Times be a Truth Vigilante?

 
A Vigilante? What do you even mean by that? How about a Truth Teller, or the more old-fashioned term, Journalist? What is more important than telling the truth with the USA’s biggest newspaper, if you have the chance to? What is more important than that? What is more important than telling people they are being lied to, and what to do about it? What is more important than standing up and saying, “This is not right, and we do not agree” with the “newsmakers” you write about?
Do you know what one very brave journalist named Chris Hedges is doing right now?

 
He is suing the pants off of Barack Obama for daring to detain American Citizens for no reason, because that just happens to be unconstitutional. That’s right. He’s not just being a journalist, he’s being an activist. He’s doing on our behalf. The New York Times might want to stand with a fellow journalist at this time. They might want to applaud the guts that he has and do their best to keep this issue in the forefront of the newspaper reporting.

 
Chris Hedges writes on TruthDig.org: “This demented “war on terror” is as undefined and vague as such a conflict is in any totalitarian state.

Dissent is increasingly equated in this country with treason.

 
Enemies supposedly lurk in every organization that does not chant the patriotic mantras provided to it by the state. And this bill feeds a mounting state paranoia. It expands our permanent war to every spot on the globe. It erases fundamental constitutional liberties.

It means we can no longer use the word “democracy” to describe our political system.

 
The supine and gutless Democratic Party, which would have feigned outrage if George W. Bush had put this into law, appears willing, once again, to grant Obama a pass. But I won’t.

What he has done is unforgivable, unconstitutional and exceedingly dangerous. The threat and reach of al-Qaida—which I spent a year covering for The New York Times in Europe and the Middle East—are marginal, despite the attacks of 9/11. The terrorist group poses no existential threat to the nation. It has been so disrupted and broken that it can barely function. Osama bin Laden was gunned down by commandos and his body dumped into the sea. Even the Pentagon says the organization is crippled.

So why, a decade after the start of the so-called war on terror, do these draconian measures need to be implemented? Why do U.S. citizens now need to be specifically singled out for military detention and denial of due process when under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force the president can apparently find the legal cover to serve as judge, jury and executioner to assassinate U.S. citizens, as he did in the killing of the cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen? Why is this bill necessary when the government routinely ignores our Fifth Amendment rights—“No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law”—as well as our First Amendment right of free speech? How much more power do they need to fight “terrorism”?

Fear is the psychological weapon of choice for totalitarian systems of power.

 
Make the people afraid. Get them to surrender their rights in the name of national security. And then finish off the few who aren’t afraid enough.

If this law is not revoked we will be no different from any sordid military dictatorship.

 
Its implementation will be a huge leap forward for the corporate oligarchs who plan to continue to plunder the nation and use state and military security to cow the population into submission.”

WHAT is the point of having a newspaper if you are asking your readers whether or not you should tell the truth?

What kind of spineless, gutless newspaper are you running?

Are you just trolling for comments?

WHAT GIVES?!

 
Are you basically saying that you are going to become a mouthpiece for the government in a country known for freedom, liberty, equality and justice? Oh, the irony!

Might as well rename The New York Times “Government Pamphlet #1444″ and be done with it Mr. Brisbane!

And if you want some balls, I have extras.

Should The Times Be a Truth Vigilante? Should the Pope Be Catholic? originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on January 18, 2012.

But since we don’t have that, why else are we in trouble?

Well, aside from the Great Depression 2.0,

Aside from Corporations taking over art’s right to dissent from The Free Free School:

“Corporations who refuse to pay £billions in taxes are fêted for their relatively paltry largess and are awarded privileged access to events and policymaking. Donations no longer fit within notions of ‘patronage’ or ‘philanthropy’ but are strategically targeted blue chip branding exercises. This is part of a much bigger drive towards the marketisation of the arts and the privatisation of cultural provision and public space.”

Your nonprofit could start have to pay taxes and pay for a number of things. Such as sewage, water costs, property taxes, and finally, on any money that you bring in.

Think I’m kidding?

So first, in 2010, we had   “Attack of the Tax Exemption Killers from Blue Avocado”

Then in May 2011, from the Wall Street Journal Online: Strapped City Chicago asks nonprofits to pay sewage, water costs

From MetroTrends.org: Oh, also nonprofits asked to pay Property Taxes

From the Nonprofit Quarterly: Occupy the Charitable Tax Deduction?

Then in January 2012, from the NonprofitQuarterly: New Benefit Corps are a message to nonprofits?

Drew McManus talks about why most discussions about new nonprofit models are dead ends.

And Pamela Grow points me to a new tax on retirement income in Michigan! And they PASSED IT! So that tiny $200 social security check that you’ll get at age 65 to live on? Now THAT will be taxed too, so you’ll probably get $150 or something. Who can live on $200 a month, let alone $150 a month in America anymore?

I’ve been talking with Gene Takagi of Nonprofit Law Blog and he says:

“Well, cities are strapped for cash, so you must expect them to start looking to nonprofits for more revenue.”

ORLY?

See, here’s the thing. Pardon the caps.

WHY NOT ACTUALLY CHARGE BIG CORPORATIONS WHO HAVE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS THE TAXES THEY HAVE AVOIDED INSTEAD OF ASKING ALREADY CASH STRAPPED NONPROFITS TO PAY?

The idea that nonprofits should pay taxes is a red herring.

There’s money all around us. It’s just being held by the biggest corporations. Why should nonprofits have to pay the price of bad corporate tax laws on the part of cities/counties and states?

Maybe we have to ask ourselves, is it because we are not speaking up in defense of the sector?

Is it because we are not so hot at advocacy?

COULD we partner more to get better results?

Gene suggested on Twitter that nonprofits could train boards to advocate. But I don’t think that’s good enough. And apparently, neither did John Hardie, @PocoJuan on Twitter. See our convo below.

Commentary from @pocojuan on Twitter

Is there some way nonprofit associations in each state could spearhead this effort to protect the charitable tax deduction, like TANO is doing here in Texas?

Well?

What do you think?

If your nonprofit is part of a nonprofit association, why not ask them what they’re doing about this issue? Ask them what they’re doing to protect YOUR nonprofit?

And @PocoJuan had more to say:

PocoJuan on Twitter

What do YOU think? What do YOU have to say?

Is the answer getting your board to advocate?

Is it getting your association to advocate on your behalf?

Is the answer hiring a lobbying firm?

Is the answer starting a petition?

What can YOU DO right NOW?

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Your Nonprofit is in Trouble. How? Read on. originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on January 17, 2012.

Because of my posts about being a nonprofit wage slave, and being unable to make rent on a nonprofit “salary”, someone took issue with this. Actually, more than one person did, and I’m glad about it. I got a reader email saying,

“I HATE YOUR PITY PARTY! IF YOU DON’T LIKE HOW YOU’RE PAID IN NONPROFITS THEN GET OUT!”

And some other, less choice words.

And well, shoot man.

What are people who want to change the world supposed to do? Some of us are best suited to being social workers. Some of us are best suited to being therapists. Some of us are best suited to being bus drivers or nonprofit office managers. We still deserve a higher wage. I will show you why.

Here’s my question for you.

Why should people in the nonprofit sector make less than every other sector?

Rick Cohen on Blue Avocado says, “It’s official, we’re paid less than any other sector.”

Proof:

And it's not like we're going to get paid significantly more in other sectors.

The fact is man, wages haven’t risen since the 1970s in most sectors.

Proof:

More Proof:

That means MOST people, not just nonprofits, are getting the short end of the stick. Especially women. Especially women of color. So even if we “get out of the sector” it is not much better out there than in here.

And people from every economic strata, such as doctors, nurses, air traffic controllers, hotel maids, pepsi truck drivers, are getting shafted. Here’s a post I did about how no sector is safe. Using data and detailed economic research and in-depth investigative journalism from Mother Jones. One of the top progressive nonprofit news sources in the US.

Starting your own business is not the answer.

You ended with a “start your own business” rant and frankly, that’s not a reality for most people. We shouldn’t have to start our own businesses to make a living wage. Not everyone is suited to being an entrepreneur.

America is also not one of the best places to start a business, contrary to popular myth. The best places? New Zealand. Canada. Australia. According to DoingBusiness.com, the US is ranked 13th in ease of starting a business.

Maybe next time you criticize someone wanting to help people get paid more, you should do your own research into this issue. It’s easy for you, as an english-speaking white man with a cushy job at a foundation in America with many resources to get started as an entrepreneur.

Have you ever stopped to consider what the barriers are for a black woman with two kids? A single mom of any color? What about a black man coming out of the judicial system? What about a hispanic man who may not speak English?

Income equality will help EVERYONE’s standard of living rise. And that IS worth fighting for.

We need to speak for those who need our support to get pay parity. Income equality. Equal treatment no matter what the color of their skin, their sexual orientation, how long they’ve been unemployed, or how many children they have or are planning to have. Maybe you’ve never experienced this discrimination personally, but let me tell you, it’s out there.

The Spirit Level Book (a must read!)

In a truly equal society, as argued in “The Spirit Level, Why Equality is Better for Everyone,” by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, say:

Since we finished writing The Spirit Level in the spring of 2008, there have been many more studies reporting relationships between inequality and health. Nine of the new studies look specifically at rich, developed countries. Seven find, as we do, that health is worse in more unequal societies.

AND

“There is now evidence that inequality played a central causal role in the financial crashes of 1929 and of 2008. We suggested that inequality leads to increases in debt. It turns out that they are intimately related.” For more details, check out this article.

So if you think that it doesn’t matter that people at nonprofits don’t make enough money, then you’re basically saying that you don’t care that people who want to make the world better are less healthy, and that we have more giant financial crashes.

From the same article above:

“In his first major speech as leader of the Labour Party (in the UK), Ed Miliband said: “I do believe this country is too unequal and the gap between rich and poor doesn’t just harm the poor, it harms us all . . .”"

Let me just clarify this once and for all.

THIS IS NOT A PITY PARTY.

I’m here to call attention to disparities. I’m here to be a cultural critic. I’m here to help people think about how they want to change their worlds, their nonprofits, their lives.

My prescription for positive change? Unionize. Organize. Get clear about what you want to change and then change it. I’m not going to change it for you. But I’m not going to pretend that business as usual is just fine with me.

Wake up man! This is NOT a meritocracy.

And this is not a pity party. This is a call to action.

Do you understand me now?

You can tell the pioneers, because they’re the ones with arrows all over their chests.

I’m happy to stand beside Dan Pallotta, a white man who writes for the Harvard Business Review, and author of “Uncharitable” and agitate for a stronger nonprofit sector, to agitate for everyone who is getting underpaid at nonprofits right now. To agitate for better pay and better treatment for everyone. If that means unions, then so be it. If there’s another way, I’d be open to hearing what it is.

I’m happy to speak up. And I hope if you feel the same way, you’ll leave a comment, email me, or say hi on Twitter.

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This is not a pity party. You understand? originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on January 16, 2012.

If you need a little more WHY:

Why would you want to sit on a nonprofit board?

Because you believe in the mission. But also, it’s a good way to move on up in your nonprofit career. Have you ever known an executive director who previously sat on your nonprofit board? This seems to happen quite a lot. Two nonprofits I’ve worked for had this happen. You can probably name a few, yourself.

What does sitting on a board entail?

It entails making sure your executive director is not stealing money with the nonprofit credit card. And then, if they are caught, it entails firing them.

Oh, no, they didn’t do it by accident. Because if they tell you that, and you let them stay, THEY WILL DO IT AGAIN, and STEAL EVEN MORE.
But seriously though.

I am being serious. That just happened to a nonprofit I used to work for.

As a board member, you are fiscally responsible for the nonprofit organization. So, if it goes belly up and can’t pay its bills, YOU are left holding the bag. So, don’t take this lightly. Also, you should learn how to fundraise and teach your fellow board members how to do it, so that you don’t have to worry about this happening.

What if I don’t want to fundraise?
Everyone can do something. Maybe you can stuff envelopes. Call people to say thank you for giving a gift. Research grants. Advocate for more funds at the government level. I have a comprehensive checklist and quiz that goes into detail about how you can help your board members fundraise here.

What else?

You need to give to this nonprofit, so that you can convince other people you know to give. That will be more convincing. Also, it should be in the bylaws that you need to give.

Ugh, really?

Yeah. But if you don’t believe in the mission, then why are you on the board anyway?

What about the board meetings?

Those are going to be once a month, probably. 2 hours of your time. Take this time to get to know staff better. Let them know you’re there to help. Ask what you can do. Be realistic about what you can accomplish with a certain timeframe. If a board report is not making sense to you, ask to have it explained. Your other board members will secretly thank you.

Committees?

Yes, you’ll probably be asked to sit on a committee too. There’s the marketing/communications committee, the fundraising/gala committee, the executive committee, the website committee, the strategic planning committee, the finance committee, etc. One thing I’ve learned from sitting on nonprofit boards is that if I do fundraising for my job all day, I’m kind of burnt out on doing it for other people for free after I get off work. So even if you’re an accountant, maybe you don’t want to do it for free for this nonprofit. Say so up front, if so. However, this does lead to people who aren’t terribly skilled in the committee focus being on this committee. Nobody said being on a board was easy. But it can help you be seen in more leadership roles, create the right relationships to get you that development director or executive director position. Click the link at the top of this post to see what board positions are available at nonprofits near you.

If you like this post, check out
“Are You Pressuring Your Board?” by Alexandra Peters

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Do you want to sit on a nonprofit board? originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on January 11, 2012.

Are You a Wage Slave?

Aristotle made the statement “[a]ll paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind”.

As the Blue Scholars say, it’s a 501 Community Plantation!

Ready to ride shotgun with Cicero?

According to Wikipedia,

Wage slavery refers to a situation where a person’s livelihood depends on wages, especially when the dependence is total and immediate.

It is a negatively connoted term used to draw an analogy between slavery and wage labor, and to highlight similarities between owning and employing a person.

Cicero wrote in 44 BC that “…vulgar are the means of livelihood of all hired workmen whom we pay for mere manual labor, not for artistic skill; for in their case the very wage they receive is a pledge of their slavery.

The term ‘wage slavery’ has been used to criticize economic exploitation and social stratification, with the former seen primarily as unequal bargaining power between labor and capital (particularly when workers are paid comparatively low wages, e.g. in sweatshops), and the latter as a lack of workers’ self-management (which criticizes the job choices that an economy allows). The criticism of social stratification covers a wider range of employment choices bound by the pressures of a hierarchical social environment (i.e. working for a wage not only under threat of starvation or poverty, but also of social stigma or status diminution).

The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly. The individual slave, property of one master, is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the master’s interest. The individual proletarian, property as it were of the entire bourgeois class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence. -Karl Marx

Do YOU feel like you have a secure existence? Yeah. Me neither.

The term ‘wage slavery’ was widely used by labor organizations during the mid-19th century, but the structural changes associated with the later stages of industrial capitalism, including “increased centralization of production… declining wages… [an] expanding… labor pool… intensifying competition, and… [t]he loss of competence and independence experienced by skilled labor” meant that “a critique that referred to all [wage] work as slavery and avoided demands for wage concessions in favor of supporting the creation of the producerist republic (by diverting strike funds towards funding… co-operatives, for example) was far less compelling than one that identified the specific conditions of slavery as low wages…”

Do you see declining wages? Do you see intensified competition? Do you see an expanding labor pool? WTF are we supposed to do about this mate?

Wage laborers and their families incur debt from financial institutions to compensate for insufficient earnings.

Are you paying down massive debt of one kind or another? Hmmmmm. Are the cards stacked against you? Are you SEEING this now?

According to economist Steve Keen, the “deleveraging” moments when they (or the governments they live under) pay down debt instead of spending on consumption or investment in real-economy infrastructure, result in economic crises or even depressions (such as The Great Depression).

Wow, what are we in right now?

“To Marx and anarchist thinkers like Bakunin and Kropotkin their concept of wage slavery was as a class condition in place due to the existence of private property and the state. This class situation rested primarily on:

• The existence of property not intended for active use,
• The concentration of ownership in few hands,
• The lack of direct access by workers to the means of production and consumption goods
• The perpetuation of a reserve army of unemployed workers.

As you’ll see from the quotes above, this has all come around before. What worked then was regulating the system so workers had a voice, wages were raised, debts were forgiven, and social mobility was possible again.

My Story

When I was working full time at nonprofits I fulfilled all of these criteria and then some. I had no money to buy groceries at the end of the week and lived on credit. Meanwhile my bank took out my money in different orders all the time so they could get the maximum overdraft fees. I was overdrawn CONSTANTLY. I lived frugally, barely had any furniture, put off repairing my car until it died, biked 10 miles to work whenever I could, bought the cheapest food, barely went out to eat, and worked long hours and still had no money.

Sound familiar? What’s YOUR story? Write it in the comments!

If you look at jobs on craigslist right now, you’ll see the same problem, wages at $13-$15 an hour with no hope of advancement, people asking you to work “part time” for $28,000 a year as a Development Director. No matter if you’re in a “rich state” or a “poor state.” Wages have not risen in any significant way in our sector in some time. Only if you’re at the top of the administrative heap at a college, university or elementary school have wages risen significantly for you. And that leaves out most of us.

First of all, if you ARE a wage slave, it’s not your fault. It’s what you have to do to survive. For now.

But there IS something you can do.

How about you start out, right now, in 2012, and resolve that you are going to do better for yourself. Get more for yourself, get a better paying job, or work for yourself. How about resolving to tell more people about what wage slavery is to start with?

Get enough people on your side, maybe start a union, maybe just sign a petition demanding better working conditions.

You can ALSO take my webinar “Moving On Up In Your Nonprofit Career” and that will be a good way to figure out a way out of all of this. Seriously. It’s gonna rock.

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Are you a wage slave at your nonprofit? Take this quiz! originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on January 3, 2012.

Join Us

Today’s post is for every person reading this blog who is working to help the dead be heard.

Whether you’re working at a domestic violence shelter and you work for each woman who is murdered before she can leave for good, or perhaps you’re working at an environmental nonprofit that helps people cut down on environmental toxins before they become ill, or even if you’re working to help people with a particular disease, this post is for you.

Greg Palast writes

Greig, 13-years old, and her mom, Jacqueline, were burnt to death when a gas pipeline exploded under their home in San Bruno, California. Our investigation reveals that “PIGs,” pipeline inspection robots, were deliberately mis-programmed to under-report dangerous pipeline cracks …all so gas and oil companies can save a couple bucks on repairs. The Greigs died because pipeline companies lied. And now the PIG-jackers want to build a new pipeline from Canada to Houston.

. . .

For a decade, Goldman Sachs worked a scheme with Greek politicians to manipulate currency reserves to hide big deficits. The fraud netted Goldman a secret fee of over a quarter billion dollars; and netted the Greek people, when the scam blew up, a destroyed economy and a debt––to Goldman and cronies––of $14,000 per year per family. When the debts bankrupted fruit-seller Petrakis, he committed suicide.

Paraphrasing Terry Pratchett:

“Who will listen to the dead?

We who died demand justice now. These are the crimes of Goldman Sachs, Chase, Bank of America, British Petroleum, Shell: Theft, embezzlement, breach of trust, corporate murder

There was no safety. There was no pride. All there was was money. Everything became money, and money became everything. Money treated us as if we were things,and we died.

Blood oils the machinery of the financial system as willing, loyal people pay with their lives for congress’s culpable stupidity, unaware of the toll that is being taken. What can we say of the men that caused this, who sat in comfort around their table and killed us by numbers?

We want Justice. We who died demand this of you.”

To those who know this system is broken, to those who Occupy, don’t give up. We are winning.

How do you know we are winning?

Los Angeles became the first major city to vote out Corporate Personhood on December 7th, 2011. Boulder Colorado also voted to end corporate personhood in November, 2011.

Representative Ted Deutch and Senator Bernie Sanders introduce House and Senate constitutional amendments for Campaign Finance Reform

Dumping Foreclosure Barons

Nevada sues Bank of America

Martha Coakley, Massachusetts Attorney General sues for fraudulent foreclosures and robosigning, against Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial.

Money moved in October 2011: More than 5 Billion And who knows about November? Probably at least that amount.

“Since the Move Your Money project began, we have been blown away with the response. A year and a half into our campaign and over 4 million accounts have moved away from the nation’s largest Wall Street banks, with an additional 7 to 9 million accounts predicted to move by the end of 2011, according to Michael Moebs, CEO of Moebs Services (UPDATE: new numbers suggest nearly 10 million have moved since 2010). In 2010, Bank of America lost 400,000 accounts alone, as customers grew weary of ever-increasing fees, a lack of personalized service and an overall distaste with the largest bank’s abusive practices.” -From MoveYourMoney.info

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Who will listen to the dead? originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on December 15, 2011.

HOLD ONTO YOUR HATS!

I’m about to let you know that for all of the stories of corrupt nonprofits, and how it brings the sector down when we focus on them, sometimes we HAVE to focus on them, because justice is NOT BEING SERVED.

There are so many corrupt Urban Leagues that there is an actual blog devoted to the stories about these corrupt Urban League affiliates. I’m not saying that ALL urban league affiliates are corrupt, just many of them. You can see a few of these stories here. I don’t know who runs this blog, there’s no name attached to the blog, and you can’t even seem to make comments on the blog anymore, but it shows me that this problem is not just with one affiliate, but that this whole national nonprofit may indeed be rotten to the core.

In the last several months, even MORE stories have been coming out, in February 2011 and then again in May 2011, about the Urban League of Seattle, the Urban League of Columbus, and yes, even at the Urban League of Portland, Oregon. I used to work at this Urban League.

According to Nigel Jaquiss of the Willamette Week, the Oregon Department of Justice is investigating the CEO of the Urban League of Portland for theft. This CEO’s name is Marcus Mundy.

He used the Urban League credit card fraudulently in 2010, and you can see it directly on their 990 forms on guidestar. I’ve linked them here, for your convenience (It’s a PDF download of the entire 990 form). He was caught by the board, and he promised not to do it again.

But THIS YEAR he stole over $44,000 on the Urban League credit card that was supposed to be used just for gas for the Urban League Senior bus. Instead he used it for his children’s cellphone bills, for fundraisers at their private school, for his children’s clothing, for taking himself out to dinner at restaurants, for paying his parking tickets on his brand new Honda Odessey van, and for lots of other things. This is the guy who gets paid $91,000 a year. He claims “I did not spend enough time on administrative and operational issues,” he says. “But I absolutely did not use the Urban League [credit] card for personal expenses.”

Fool me twice, Mr. Mundy?

Rotten To The Core

I can tell you now, that when I worked there, I saw evidence of corruption.

According to an associate that I know, the Senior services staff was supposed to get a 4% cost of living raise every year. It was built into their grant from the county. For 6 years, their wages had not increased. Where did that money go?

According to another associate, there was the matter of a donation from The Federation of Women of $50,000 for the Senior Services program that no one ever saw again.

As far as I could tell, the CEO was never in the office, but when he was, he used office materials flagrantly to print out things for his children’s school, often reams and reams of paper would be used. He would ask me to babysit his kids when I had other work to do.

He would never return phonecalls, and reports he requested left on his desk would end up in the trash. He never approved people’s budgets, even if they came and stood in his office, after months of him ignoring their requests and pleas to just even LOOK at the budget, he wouldn’t even do that. He just didn’t seem to care about the position that he held. He wouldn’t raise money. He only called me into his office to yell at me, and then for several months, he refused to meet with me at all, even on our scheduled meeting times.

After I left that organization, two more development staff people came and went, in quick succession. The third person who came has been there less than 6 months. I’m sure she, like me, had NO IDEA what she was getting into.

According to the Willamette Week article by Nigel Jaquiss:

One county report, dated Nov. 7, 2011, said the records Mundy recently provided were so incomplete as to be “not auditable.”

Records show the Urban League’s board approved most of Mundy’s spending after the fact—but only after county reviews raised serious questions. And it did so despite the organization’s independent auditor warning that the president’s credit-card use could invite an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service.

Urban League Board Treasurer Charles Wilhoite, who says he’s speaking for the board, acknowledges that the organization’s record-keeping has been sloppy. He says the board is pushing hard for an improved administrative performance from Mundy.

Wilhoite also says the Urban League’s financial health is sound, and the board still supports Mundy.

You’ll see that Charles Wilhoite, the board chair, is not saying that Marcus Mundy will be fired. In fact,

“Everybody has total confidence in his ability to continue to lead the League,” Wilhoite says.

That is SO… WRONG!

Where do you draw the line? They are going to lose their county funding, which is most of their budget. Marcus Mundy doesn’t care about the job. Even the Oregonian says Marcus Mundy is stealing money from the Urban League.

There is incontrovertible proof that he’s stealing from the nonprofit.

Marcus Mundy has been stealing for over two and a half years. He was caught in 2009. Proof below.

Proof of theft

More proof from the 990 form

He will CONTINUE to steal, as he’s been found to be stealing again in 2011.

If it were anyone else, they would have already been shown the door. He is abusing his power, he is bullying staff, he is making an abusive workplace. He needs to go.

Am I a troublemaker? Have you read the evidence, and judged for yourself? What do you think?

Is there enough evidence from what I’ve shown you above to prove that Marcus Mundy has been stealing?

From the Urban League credit card records, from a financial black and white perspective, that he has been stealing. The board has known about it. The Willamette Week newspaper knows about it. Now the Oregon Justice department knows about it.

I think YOU have a right to know about it, whether you’re a donor or a foundation, and to give your money somewhere else.

We have a responsibility, as nonprofit bloggers, to tell the truth, to make the sector better, for all of us.

Let’s toss out the bad apples, and make this sector better together.

BREAKING NEWS: Urban League President IS OUT

Finally.

Justice is served.

What do you want to bet that he won’t be forced to give back that money? That there will be no trial? That the nonprofit will just “let it go”?

Or will the wheels of justice continue to turn?

Rotten To The Core: Now the truth can be told originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on December 9, 2011.