Is high turnover in the non-profit sector universal?

In My Humble Opinion
1

And is mismanagement in non-profit organizations impossible to change?

Until recently I worked at the 4th largest Holocaust museum in the U.S. I’m a history major, and getting a job there seemed like a godsend at the time. I only lasted a year however. Mismanagement, favoratism, and poor business practices abounded. I’ll try to keep this short, but it will probably turn into a rant.

First off, I was hired as a gift shop associate. I have retail management experience, mostly bookstores, and thought that this would be a good transitional job- once I got my BA I could transfer into the education or exhibits department. They didn’t tell me that they were looking for a gift shop manager… sorta. I didn’t get the manager title, or pay, and there was a volunteer who’d been there for so long that her word was law in the gift shop- basically, my immediate supervisor was a volunteer who spent maybe 15 hours a week, tops, there. I had my own office, and placed the orders, communicated with other departments, did research on new products, etc. But I really didn’t have the authority to make many decisions, and was in fact left out of meetings that had a huge impact on the gift shop. If anything went wrong, however, I was responsible.

That was my major issue- if I had known what the job entailed, I would have never accepted it at that pay. A few months after I started, there was a rearrangement in the hierarchy and my actual immediate supervisor changed. The volunteer who thought she owned the place was still there, but my boss kept pushing to get me promoted, so she stopped volunteering suddenly. So there was my chance to change the ridiculous gift shop practices that were losing us money (the gift shop hadn’t been very profitable, if at all, since the volunteer started there). I visited other museum gift shops in the area for ideas, I started printing and analyzing sales reports- something that hadn’t been done in years. I wanted to show that since I started working profits were up, so I could use it to hopefully get the promotion I deserved. I made a lot of good changes- simple things, like professional signage instead of hand-written Post-It notes taped to shelves listing prices. Several of the new products I ordered immediately became the best-sellers in the store.

My boss held several meetings with his bosses trying to get me the manager title and a raise. He made me talk to HR, because he knew how unhappy I was. I explained pretty much everything I expressed above, and the HR manager told me they were aware of the situation and were having a meeting that afternoon to discuss the gift shop. Still, nothing happened.

There were a lot of other problems that really started to bug me, too. There was blatant favoratism. Some of the employees had parents on the Board of Directors, and they could do no wrong. They came and went as they pleased, antagonized employees they didn’t like, etc (I know of one who left after a few months because one woman harassed her so badly- the woman’s father was a member of the board, though, so she wasn’t reprimanded). Certain “favorites” routinely failed to fill out important paperwork, took more personal days than allowed, and had 3-hour lunch “meetings” with friends. One, whose father founded the museum, was arguably incompetent and would have been fired had she worked somewhere else. Then I had to deal with interrogations from someone on the board about why I had ordered certain expensive books (because we’re having an exhibit on the Armenian Genocide and the Director of Curatorial Affairs told me to). He obviously had no bookselling experience. I had to deal with things like this all the time- people who had no experience in a particular area telling me how to do my job, or forcing policies that weren’t profitable. I could go on and on about the problems there. I understand when you’re dealing with this type of organization, it can be difficult, but this place constantly made bad decisions which cost them a lot of money. I know it’s a non-profit organization, but that doesn’t mean you have to actively try not to make money.

I’m just upset by it, because I really loved that job. I feel privileged to have met some amazing people, like our volunteers who were survivors. I felt like I was doing something worthwhile, and I made some contacts that could be useful in my later career, but just couldn’t deal with such poor management. I would like to possibly work in a museum later, but if this is what I have to look forward to, I’ll pass. I wasn’t the only one who got fed up- my boss told me that in the 8 years he’d been there, he’d seen 60-some people come and go- in an organization that employees around 30 people fully-staffed.

Is this unusual?

2

I have worked for not for profits for years and while your experiences are extreme, the problems you mention are very common. My experience with not for profits is a little different than yours, I’m a foreign aid worker, but your gripes could have come from anyone working at an HQ job.

Part of the problem is that people from the not for profit sector don’t just lack management experience, they are hostile to anything that comes from the for profit world. Another problem is that you have two types of people: professionals who are trying to make a career and rich donors who are trying to get free travel and impressive jobs for their kids’ college application.

In my industry the way to avoid these problems is to go to the field and stay the hell away from all the politics of the home office. In your industry that might be harder.

It’s amazing how hard they make it just to try to do a little good in the world isn’t it?

And yes, turnover is incredibly high in my sector too, especially in the home office.

3

I just quit a job that technically was with a for-profit company, but it was owned by a non-profit organization and the management came from that organization.

I have honestly never worked anyplace that was so badly mismanaged. It was a software company, formed to create an application that the owning organization would use, but the plan was also to sell it nationally.

I could go on and on about how the CEO and his cronies mismanaged the whole thing, but I think the most telling argument is that they apparently believe that they can produce software without actually hiring any programmers. The projects they’ve taken on would require a minimum of 20 engineers and testers to really do right, and it could be argued that it needs many more. The VP of Technology, a guy who has already made his fortune from building a successful software company, pleaded for months for them to hire more people, and they never would. He finally left, as did many other engineers.

At this time, they have 4 engineers - three senior, one just out of college. This is to build and support enterprise level software applications. BIG software. They don’t plan on hiring any more.

The company has about 10-12 people at the moment. Everyone except the 4 engineers are managers of one type or another. There’s four levels of management between the CEO and the lowest peon. None of the managers are technical at all, but they make all the decisions about technical issues. The times I tried to stick my neck out and tell them why a decision wouldn’t work, they ignored me. As one person has remarked “Too many chiefs, not enough indians.”

They refuse to pay living wages for the engineers, citing “cost of living”, nor do they offer decent benefits. When I confronted them about the salaries, they cited cost of living figures that did not match up with the salaries (ie, cost of living here is supposedly 90% of the national average, my salary was more like 50% of the national average).

It’s too bad, as this town could really use a successful high tech company, and we were poised to become that until the upper management pissed off all the people who knew what they were doing and they left. Now, it’s just going to be another small town company, limping along under the thumbs of the local good ol’ boys club. Very sad, and not necessary, but in the end incompetence and cronyism win.

4

I worked a couple of different local history museums for a few years before leaving the field. I *loved *certain aspects of what I did: researching, designing and installing exhibits, developing and running programs for school groups, and working with the collections. I was damn good at it, too. I did not like, nor did I ever receive training in, fundraising, volunteer management or dealing with board members, but I was expected to do all of those things as well. Both museums had great executive directors, but they were stymied by officious, incompetent board members.

I ultimately left the field because I realized I was working way too hard and stressing way too much for such little compensation. Unfortunately, many non-profits, including most museums, seem to view their employees as people who do the job purely for love of the cause, not as people who need to make a living. This attitude is a shame, because it drives away lots of good employees. All of the folks I know who have worked in the non-profit sector long-term have spouses who make much higher incomes.

5

Working for non-profits is largely an exercise in futility unless you are upper management and can have some say in the way they are run. I run a fairly large non-profit right now, it is an environmental company meaning we are educational museum and are heavily funded by our membership and programs. I took over from someone who was very haphazard and was sort of whimsy when it came to keeping records. So I’m building it from the ground up again. We are well funded so I’ve got a decent budget to work with.

Case in point of a very bad non-profit is the Catholic Charities losing their ability to manage foster homes. They lost their insurance because of some horrific discrepencies on their part. Children were hurt, some mamed. The problems came down from on high…not god but their upper management.

I’ve set up this non-profit so we have teams of people working in collaboration, not just people left alone to their own devices. Power trips can run rampant when people are left to something they onlt think they know how to do…

6

Actually, I have nothing but praise for the way my not-for-profit was run, but it’s more like praise for the way the way the board and executive director managed to get through the minefield.

Most of our money came from grants, and the grants were mostly for programs, with very tight limits on “administration.” That meant no money for basic things like software or even a decent copier. After I was there two years, we finally got a technology grant that allowed us to upgrade all our computers so we could get them all running on the same OS.

Because we had to do things on the cheap, we relied on cheap fixes, patchwork and favors for the most basic things. We could only afford a part-time bookkeeper. She did a hell of a job, but there was no time to look for better, more cost-effective ways of doing things.

And salaries, of course, were low, so most of our staff was young and inexperienced. Smart, hard-working and talented, but they hadn’t yet acquired the experience and professionalism that helps you reduce the routine stress and save your energy for the really hard stuff. That leads to burnout.

I’m working for a trade association now - still technically a not-for-profit. Our members are constantly nagging us to add more programs, but balk at paying for the organizational upgrades necessary to execute the programs. Fortunately (at least for the time being) the board is telling them no new programs unless they’re willing to pay for the infrastructure.

7

I’m sorry, I do not concur. I do not think that non-profit turnover is any higher than for-profit turnover. Furthermore, and within my limited experience, I have found that many people who choose a career in the non-profit sector stay there for life, even if they do flit from one non-prof to another.

I do think that within the (really, really broad catch-all term of) non-profit sector there does exist a wide divide between the MUST SAVE THE WORLD and BAD BUSINESS PRACTICES mindsets. I also think that you chanced upon a particularly bad organization. IME, smaller, local non-profs are often goverened by board members unfamiliar with the organization’s mission and who simply want another obituary credit. This is in stark contrast to a for-profit board where the mission is, quite simply, the bottom line.

I’m going to be a bit critical here, but that been-around-since-Methuselah volunteer could have been a great ally had she been played right. Volunteer management is always a huge issue and there are seldom enough elder-psych majors around to assist. Your OP indicates that you are somewhat unclear as to whether you wish to pursue a career in history, business, retail, or volunteer management. From what I have read you are quite clear that you are into history and that bottom line, but in the non-prof area you are going to HAVE to deal with people, and you are HAVE to going to develop people-skills.