While out to dinner for a friends birthday this weekend I encountered the following conversation. Another guest was talking about how she was going to encourage her wedding guests to donate to a certain non profit (whose name I can’t remember) that has absolutely no administrative costs. She goes on to say how great this is because all the proceeds go to the clients for cancer related services. Now this may seem great to the average donor. But let me give you a little insight into the non profit world.
1. We have big jobs to do. We aren’t just dealing with profit margins and sales quotas. We are dealing with human lives. People in jobs more serious than mine are doing hard stuff: serving people struggling with addiction, housing homeless people, attempting to provide structure the lives of at risk teenagers, serving the mentally ill. That’s just a few of the really intense jobs out there.
2. Most of us don’t get paid a lot. In fact the people in the jobs listed above are among the lowest paid non profit employees.
3. When you say things like “there are no administrative costs” that means people are doing hard work to run a program and not getting paid. Or even if there are very low administrative costs, I guarantee you its because the staff get paid so little or have terribly useless health benefits. Some people may choose to run a non profit as part of a volunteer endeavor, and refuse payment but this is actually not good for a non profit because there is often no long term plan. So you may provide excellent cancer services for patients for 3 years at no admin costs, but wouldn’t it be better if you could provide the same services for a longer period of time because you are willing to PAY someone to run the company?! Stuff like this would never fly in corporate world.
4. In no way am I advocating that non profit staff should have such inflated salaries as many in the corporate world and bloat admin costs. What I am saying is that the administrative costs is not the only way to judge a non profit. It is number that the giving community has deemed as one of the best ways to know if a non profit is “good.” But as someone in the non profit community, take it from me, that is not the only thing you should consider when donating to non profits. Often times no or extremely low admin costs means no plan for the future. You’ve been warned, that’s my rant for the day.
