Comment by prroyston | Hacker News Reader

Comment by prroyston | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I am a nonprofit CEO who’s worked in community, sport, educational and health charities.

Organizations and causes require people who work full time to help organize the charitable work. It is very difficult to find people to volunteer at this level and typically if you do, they are independently wealthy. Retired people can do more but typically they do not want to give that much time and have other things they want to do.

4 hrs a week which is a typical volunteer shift at our hospital does not lend itself to pulling all the details together.

Good people deserve to get paid to do good work. Just like in tech, you get what you pay for. And typically a nonprofit worker puts extra hours and time in as does their family members in support of the cause.

I understand the need for professionals, but what grates me is seeing the leaders of these organizations renting expensive venues to conduct some of their activities, sometimes display expensive art and so on. As if they need to impress their donors. No, donors already believe in the cause, they don't have to be plied, taken to expensive restaurants, served luxurious food, etc. in order to get their commitments. They should believe in the mission, run frugally and most of all divert the majority of the money to the cause.

I often hear, well, if you don't pay them top salary you are not going to attract people from private enterprise. I don't think you want people whose main motivation to contribute is money.

Yeah, it's too late to shift it, but from everything I've seen when researching on Charity Navigator, leadership at non profits is viewed similarly as C-suite with regard to salary. I suspect it's probably because to be effective, it's much easier to just network at the level that C-suite professionals would, rather than the grassroots approach that requires raw labor, outreach, etc.

It's probably easier to get that guy you know who is high-up at Kroger to get involved in your charity in a mutually-beneficial way.

Or maybe I'm just really really over the edge jaded and cynical. It's probably that.

This.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com