The indomitable capitalistic 
spirit
can find a buck to be made almost anywhere.
A new cottage industry has sprouted from the parched
soil of other people's misfortune. There are myriad individuals
and companies among us whose business it is to profit from charitable
organizations. Livelihoods are being earned by a new breed
of charity workers making a career of doing good.....for themselves.
Most of us have been dunned by dinner-hour
telemarketers who call "on behalf of a worthy cause" and keep
for themselves as much as ninety cents of every dollar. Lately,
I have been introduced to a number of well-coiffed designer-suits types
who run essentially the same scam: cashing in on a charity's needs
for professional services for which there are no longer available
donors.
I give some of my free time to a non-profit in
Hartford. We administer Hartford's AmeriCorps program, hire
high school kids and handymen to help the elderly stay in their own
homes, train city youths in entrepreneurship, provide job training and
placement for welfare recipients, and operate an affordable day-care
center.
Our funding comes from the federal, state and local
government, the United Way and public corporations and private
foundations. Many of these sources require program evaluations
before renewing their contributions. The fees for these
professional evaluators run into thousands of dollars.
In spite of an aggressive effort on our part to get our outside services
donated, the only professionals to volunteer their time -- go figure --
are lawyers.
Our accounting firm charges a fee equivalent to what
a business with similar revenues would pay. The accountants
strongly recommended hiring a financial consulting group with expertise
in non-profit operating procedures. The drain on our agency's
resources for these two services alone is comparable to the sticker on a
decent mid-sized sedan.
Computer professionals and software companies
aggressively market their designs to shepherd our non-profit into the
technology age. An accounting software package, necessary to keep
track of multiple grants and different reporting requirements,
runs about $3000. Experts to set up the hardware bid in at about
$75 an hour. Once in a while a company will donate an old 386
computer -- the electronic equivalent of an abacus -- which requires our
paid consultant to set it up in a usable fashion. Training
seminars to teach our employees how to use all these high-tech marvels
are available from a plethora of providers for three or four hundred
dollars a day.
America Online has a special area to connect
charities with fee-for-service providers. Enter this
cyber-shopping mall for non-profits and you can order a thirty-eight
minute videotape on volunteer relationships for $149. A paperback
instructional on improving your donated time can be had for the bargain
price of $15.95. VCR tapes on various fund-raising techniques are
tagged at $79.95 or two for $150. There is a separate area
for vendors entitled: "How to sell more of your stuff to
nonprofits."
Education and training for the social service
provider is available from a slew of specialists in the field.
The mailbox is filled with brochures detailing three and four-day
seminars. Spend a couple of thousand dollars and four days in
Orlando or Hawaii and they promise to teach you how to budget more
wisely.
Trencherman appetites for charity dollars often
extend to the non-profit's own employees. It is not uncommon to
read of a charity executive who flies first-class and has a lavish
expense account. Our own executive director, to whose credit realizes he
did not enter a lucrative career field, often slips me a document
purloined from the social service underground which lists those of his
peers earning six-figure salaries.
Urban life being what it is, we face obstacles
recruiting new volunteers with needed skills to serve the agency.
Last month, a consultant met with our committee to detail the ways she
could help improve the operations and membership of our Board.
Her fee for this expertise was to be $10,000. I suppose any board
coughing up that much certainly needs her services.
Like any other operation, our agency still has to buy
pens and paper, pay the phone bill and the rent, provide health
insurance and put out payroll. Every dollar that is spent
reduces the services than can be provided to the needy. While we
have been able to maintain a fairly decent administration-to-service
cost ratio, each check going to a professional for time that might
be volunteered is Robin Hood in reverse.
Some years we scrounge enough money to give staff a
Christmas bonus. Last year we modestly handed out supermarket gift
certificates. I had irrational visions of Tiny Tim opening up a
carton of eggs and a stick of butter on Yule morning while our
consultants sipped cognac dressed in silk smoking jackets.
These are tough times for charities. In
addition to their particular missions, they must vie against one another
and an apathetic public for a foothold in the Lebensraum of
government and private funding. People who will not
find the time to volunteer should realize they create an expensive void
in not doing so. Nature may abhor a vacuum, but capitalism
loves one.
Charity work isn't dead -- it just costs more.
-end
April 12, 1998