A fair day’s pay

You don’t need to study the history of organized labor to understand why it came to be such a force in society. It’s really about a very simple concept – a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.

To offer an extremely brief synopsis, the rise of the industrial revolution created large factories.  Workers were often exploited and conditions were not safe (or even humane).  It seemed like the owners of the factory viewed the workers the same way as the machinery – just another cog in the machine. In reality, the existence was not far removed from slavery.  Once labor began to organize and fight back, things changed.  Conditions improved, pay became more equitable.   Living standards rose and work related injuries declined. All in all, life got better.

Hold that picture in your mind while I tell you a story of a recent meeting I had with a young and rapidly growing nonprofit.  This organization has a lot going for it. First off, it has a hugely important mission to stamp out a horrible disease.  Second, a very strong fundraising effort, with all the modern elements – social media, sports based individual donor events, high profile lead donors who actively lend their names.  The executive director proudly took me over to introduce a new member of his team.  We’ll call him Billy.

Billy is very bright and extremely energetic, just a few years out of a very good college. He’s the manager of one of the newer campaigns in the shop, and doing an awesome job. Once we step into his office and close the door, I ask the E.D. to tell me more about Billy’s job.  Billy works about 60 hours a week, with a lot of weekends, late nights and early mornings.  His job does not include any benefits like health care, flexible savings or 401k. He gets two weeks paid vacation a year, 6 holidays and 6 sick days. Billy’s pay ? - $35,000 a year (just to save you the trouble, that’s less than $12 an hour –about equal to a floor worker at Home Depot). 

You may recall my last post, where I identified a major challenge facing the future of social entrepreneurship – The Nonprofit Martyrdom Syndrome (NMS).  First and foremost on the list of symptoms is the abysmal pay rates that are accepted as normal in social services. You may also recall that I used some information about fundraising professionals as the framework for my initial diagnosis. As you can see from Billy’s case, the problem goes far beyond fundraisers. And although I’m sure that your organization does much better than this, you probably know some colleagues who have this situation in their shop. Maybe you know Billy. Maybe you are (or were) Billy.

Leaving the moral arguments of Billy’s situation aside (as hard as that is to do in an industry that is focused on care for others), this practice of low pay and horrible hours is just bad business. And the sin is even more egregious when you apply it to the individuals charged with bringing revenue into the organization.

Remember from our last discussion that the average tenure of a fundraiser in an organization is 16 months – an incredibly short amount of time.  And that low pay and long hours was cited as one of the primary reasons for this high turnover rate.  Contrast that with the typical for profit venture, where the sales organization is usually the highest paid team in the shop. 

Now I’m not advocating for commission based fundraising, and I know that there are ethical challenges in pay for development officers; but it seems pretty clear that higher pay and better hours would reduce turnover. And I know that there are difficulties in just how to execute and structure higher pay in a way that it doesn't violate ethical standards. But it can be done. More importantly, the notion that one must sacrifice oneself on behalf of the cause is truly noble, but may cause unintended consequences that threaten the longevity of the organization. 


And I'm also not suggesting that Nonprofit Labor should start to organize, although there is some interesting movement around the idea of better organizing Nonprofits. If you want more on that,check out my friend Robert Egger's newest project - CForward. Nor am I insinuating that Nonprofit leaders are purposely exploiting their workers. What's happening is not being done intentionally. We all mean well,  yet we have a blind spot when it comes to our own team.

What I am suggesting is that this acceptance of low pay,long hours and a lack of benefits is a problem. We run organizations that deliver amazing support to those most in need, but  somehow find it acceptable to do that at the significant expense of those we depend on to deliver the service. This is the real issue, and it's the first sign of a larger illness - the dreaded NMS. 

Like any major disease, there are many factors that play into the development of NMS. However, the root cause for Billy’s situation is not as complex as you might think. More importantly, the cure is fairly simple. We’ll get right to that in our next installment.