Non Profit Rantings: Part 3--Shitty Volunteers

Besides donations, I'd say one of the most valuable aspects of any agency is its volunteers. Without them, we'd have no program no matter how many grants we got. But it never fails to amaze me how many kooks are drawn to nonprofit work. (I see you laughing--yes, I've considered the possibility that I'm a kook as well. Hmph.) For every decent volunteer I get, I probably interact with 5 weirdos who have varying levels of mental issues, their own agendas, just plain pains-in-the-ass people. And since we practically live or die by word of mouth, I can't exactly jump down their throats.

But this one old fart I'm about to make an exception for. Apparently, this situation has been going on for quite some time without me knowing anything about it. I have no idea what to do about it, so in the end, I struck a compromise.

This volunteer, Old Fart, has been one of our oldest volunteers. He happens to be a fundamentalist preacher for a megachurch here in town. I don't like him. He is arrogant and talks over you when you're trying to talk (because he's the man, and you're the idiot woman). He once ran a community "divorce help" class, where, according to inside sources, his whole schtick was: don't get divorced, it's a sin. So, in you trot for help dealing with divorce, only to be told that now, on top of the emotional and financial trauma, you're going to have a roasty future.

I should've been suspicious. But I've been to busy to have time for basic human emotions like suspicion. Trouble happened, because he also runs an English as a second language tutor training class for us--great for getting a group of tutors ready to go. He's one of the few trainers we have, so when he offered to do another session, we jumped at the chance. Our student waiting list is always out of control, so when I found that he could crank out a group for me, I was excited. The group meets Mondays for 2 hours for the next 6 weeks.

Well, about the 3rd week, I get a phone call from a distressed member of the class. She told me she just had to say something about the class, even though Old Fart had said we already knew about it. That pricked my ears up. Then she drops it on me: Old Fart has been running this class as a prayer meeting to go convert the Oriental. He even still calls them Orientals (which is so 1950s). He starts off with prayer, he quotes scripture all throughout class, he leads off examples with "now, this would be a great way to introduce the Oriental to Jesus Christ." He's running a missionary school. And he's charging people for it. And it's under our name.

I was so pissed I couldn't see straight for a while. But I couldn't seem to make Director/Buddy understand why it was so important that Old Fart stop doing that. Apparently, he's always done that, everytime he had one of those training sessions. She was just grateful that we had the help, she didn't care what bargain was made. "They knew they were going to a church; they should've figured that'd be part of it." Um, no.

Our whole point in life as an organization is to be learner-centered. That means, the person who is learning gets to decide what they want to learn. We're not here to cram our culture--especially our freaky fringe culture--down other people's throats.

"Hey, I think I'd like to get my US driver's license, can you help me with that?"
"Um, no, but we can talk about Jesus Christ."
"Well...I sort of need to drive around. Can we do anything with the driver's license stuff?"
"Your vehicle to the Lord is more important, Oriental."

All kinds of horror scripts flashed before my eyes.

I've tried every scare tactic I know, and Director/Buddy isn't scared enough. I shrieked about church and state, and how we're registered 501-c-3, and if we're going to be "churchy", that's a different registration. But since Bush's creation of "faith based initiatives", the line is too blurry to make that argument stick. I tried the word of mouth argument that all the secularists were going to tag us as a fundamental missionary organization and not support us. Phased her not a whit. Finally, I struck a compromise. "If you're going to charge people and be churchy, you have to put it on the flier. I'm telling people it's free and it's really not. Lots of people like to have a Jesus Warning Sticker with their material, OK?" And that seemed to do the trick. So IF it ever happens again, at least people truly will know what they're getting into.

-- Virgil