After 5+ months of looking for a 2nd part time job for Mrs. WeHaveCookies, she is just finishing her first week as an administrative assistant/event coordinator for our local Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. Unfortunately both of us need to be working full-time in order to live here (rural Norcal, Humboldt), while previously she’s been able to only work part time so that she could work on her music composing.
While she was looking for work, she was also working on a business model for her own custom composition music company. The wedding market was a significant target to try and reach to purchase her services.
Her new place of employment is one of a small number of local wedding venues, but her staff position with the Fellowship (a non-profit) basically parks her in a conflict of interest if someone were to know she was a composer and want to have their wedding and/or reception at the Fellowship’s facilities. It also precludes her from discussing anything about her music composition services at all with potential Fellowship venue clients.
I understand why, but this seems unfortunate and I’m wondering if there is any legal, ethical way that her music could ever coexist with a wedding at the facility without her having to do the composing for free or quit her job.
This kind of conflict of interest must be the church’s policy since there aren’t any laws that I know of preventing this kind of thing.
I once lived on a property owned by a nonprofit society. We were paid in free rent, and our job was to book and manage the events done on the property - which were 95% weddings. They had no problem with the fact that my wife did catering, cake decorating and flower arranging, and had no problem with it when she and I bought tablecloths and offered those for rent. To avoid accusations of conflict of interest, we opted to solicit business passively - we listed ourselves on an informational sheet along with other vendors in the area and did not sell our services unless a client called us (on our own separate business phone number) to ask about them. It never came up, but we made sure our services were competitively priced with the other vendors.
So, she’ll have to negotiate this with the church elders (or equivalent leadership people). I don’t see anything unethical about what my wife and I did and would recommend that she suggest a similar strategy. However, it is ultimately up to the organization and their conflict of interest policy.
Has she just asked someone at the church how they feel about it?
I would hope she’s be able to work out a [buzzword]“synergystic”[/buzzword] deal with them. Why WOULDN’T they want a ready source of original music? As long as no one was pressured into hiring her, I would see it as a unique service.
I agree with dracoi – it’s good that you’re noticing the issue, and should make sure that the Fellowship is OK with whatever you do, but it’s certainly possible to do both ethically.
It’s always the ethical people who ask if what they think they should not do is ethical. You didn’t even whine about the unfairness of it all!
Open, honest, and up front to the folks she works for, and (although evidence thus far would indicate this is an unnecessary caveat) aside from making folks aware of her skills, and talents, not using her position to get free advertising.
Thanks for the responses. At this point I’m just kicking around ideas and the concerns about conflict of interest are actually just coming from my partner herself. Apparently there has been some confusion on the part of previous people in her position as to how the venue can be promoted for special events without running afoul of their non-profit status. So she wants to learn the ropes and better understand that before further complicating anything.
This is just a tax issue. Rentals such as you’re describing are part of the non-profits unrelated business income and is considered taxable income (less expenses directly related, or reasonably allocated, to the source of revenue). There are some rules about how much UBI a nonprofit can have, but I’d be very surprised if this kind of thing was a real challenge for them. Many churches make boatloads of UBI from rentals, advertising and childcare without problems.
Often, the problem is that someone in the leadership of the organization sees the income tax on UBI as some kind of “penalty” when it really isn’t. It’s just a tax on doing business, at the same rates that any corporation would pay.