Pink Slip

For the second time in two years, I found myself cleaning out my desk this week.

Seriously. Again.

The first time, I was completely stunned. I didn't see it coming at all. I thought I was actually making good progress and was looking forward to discussing next year's goals, and instead, I was turning in my keys.

But this time...

This time, I smelled it coming. I had a really lousy week the previous week, and I knew my boss wasn't happy with me. I expected that we would have a stern conversation sometime this week. But when I walked in, and the head honcho was also sitting there, I knew things were going down.

I've definitely had some issues at work. A couple of deadlines that I was chasing pretty furiously. I was seeing this week as the week when I would prove my worth again, demonstrate again that I was the person they wanted in this position. They were taking a chance hiring me, and I wanted so badly to prove that the gamble was worth it. It WAS worth it - I learned a tremendous amount, I did some fantastic work, and I'm proud of what I did.

But I slipped. I let my anxiety and my fear of failure get the best of me, started getting sloppy on collecting information. Deadlines started creeping closer and closer. I started fibbing to my supervisor about where I was on projects. There's a thing that happens when you start falling behind and the workload never stops. You keep thinking you'll get to a spot where you can catch up, some quiet week. You think you'll work a few evenings, maybe some time on the weekend to catch up. You keep thinking that you'll catch up sometime down the road, and then the end of the road happens.

Could I have stopped this? Maybe. Did I see this coming in time? I don't think so. By the time I sensed trouble, it was already too late. Maybe I should have visited the therapist more often. Maybe I should have worked more on the weekend. Maybe ... maybe ... maybe ...

And then again, maybe it was inevitable. I was being brought in as an entry-level employee, doing way advanced-level work. Every fundraising job right now is being expected to overperform in a terrible economy; there's less money out there, but we're all being to find every available dollar. I was brought in as a rookie who was expected to perform like a ten-year veteran, and when I couldn't keep up with the frantic pace being set, I got the axe. Was it my fault for not being able to keep running, or their fault for pushing me too hard?

It doesn't matter now. What matters now is moving on. I've got to move onto another job, and this job search is going to be a little more complicated than the last one. But I'm feeling oddly relieved by this. Sure, I'm back on unemployment, and sure, I hate having to start the search process all over again. But maybe it's time to find a job that's actually at my level. This might be a genuine case where the last job wasn't a good fit, and I can use this to really find something that really matches where I'm at.

I'm feeling good about this, people. Really. If I got through the last search in the dead of the recession, I can get through this one.

Endgame for ACORN

ACORN has been crumbling in the past few months.  Half of its state chapters have disaffiliated themselves from ACORN and reformed as independent organizations.  Now, according to the New York Times, ACORN is on the verge of filing for bankruptcy.  

The past few years have been catastrophic for ACORN, but not for the reasons most people think.  The trouble depended long before James McKeefe dressed up in his Pimps Я Us outfit and started harassing local offices.  

ACORN has had a long and troubled history.  I first learned about them when I got involved in grassroots organizing at the beginning of the last decade.  Shortly after I became an organizer, the local ACORN office was facing a strike from its own "organizers" (their term for canvassers).  They complained that they were working in unsafe conditions and not being paid fair hourly wages.  

The ugly situation peaked when ACORN strikers picketed outside the Seattle Labor Temple while ACORN management was attending coalition meetings inside.  It all ended after a NLRB ruling, a large settlement for back pay, the firing and replacement of the local office's manager, and the personal involvement of Wade Rathke, ACORN's CEO ... oh, pardon me, Chief Organizer.

Rathke, of course, was the center of a much larger scandal in 2008.  A firestorm erupted when it came to light that his brother, who was also on the salary of ACORN, had embezzled somewhere around a million dollars, or possibly more.  (The true amount has never been publicly revealed, to the best of my knowledge.)  Most companies, faced with a massive embezzlement, would call the FBI or the police.  But not ACORN, and not with the incestuous nature of the crime.  Instead, they buried the story.  A funder (apparently Drummond Pike, leader of the Tides Foundation) paid off the debt to ACORN and made a hush-hush payment arrangement with the criminal Rathke brother.  Only a select few board members ever knew about the secret, until the New York Times blew the whistle in July 2008.  

Afterward, Rathke attempted to explain why he would try to hide something this outrageous.  They - notably Rathke, the founder, CEO, and public face of ACORN - said that revealing the crime would put a "weapon" in the hands of its opponents.  But the cover-up revealed something much worse - no one was watching the books at ACORN.  They had failed the most basic test for nonprofits - they weren't keeping a close eye on their finances.  

Funders notice when things like this happen, and they reacted swiftly to the news.  By the fall of 2009, several major funders including the Ford Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Bank of America and JPMorgan had all ceased their longstanding support of ACORN.  ACORN was sending out panicky fundraising letters with language like  "We need your help to survive."

By the time the videos started surfacing, ACORN was already on the way down.  O'Keefe was beating a dead horse.  It's possible that ACORN's crippled position made it easier for O'Keefe to get into multiple office.  But O'Keefe did not destroy ACORN.  

Republicans have been trying to make the name ACORN toxic since at least 2004.  James O'Keefe did some serious damage with his creatively edited videos and his wild stories.  (Note that no crimes have ever been charged in connection with the videos, except against O'Keefe himself.)   They were the final straw.  But ACORN's back had been broken long before. 

What actually brought it down was its own poor decisions and malfeasance.  If you want to blame someone for the collapse of ACORN, blame its founder.  Blame the man who became convinced that he could do no wrong, the man who created the house of cards and who blew it down. Wade Rathke built ACORN, and Wade Rathke deserves the blame for its collapse.  

And it's a damn shame.  ACORN has done some monumental work in its history:  fights against payday loan sharks, predatory lenders, redlining, fights for affordable housing.  They were a mighty force for good, but in the end, like so many great organizations, the hubris of its leader brought it low.  If we are fortunate, other powerful nonprofits will step in to take on the work that ACORN is no longer able to do.  We will not be better off without ACORN in the world.  

Previously:

ACORN Falls (November 6, 2009)

Dragging ACORN Through the Mud (September 23, 2009)

ACORN:  1.3 Million New Voters? (October 27, 2008)

ACORN - Demons and Smokescreens (October 20, 2008)

ACORN Haters Gotta Hate (October 13, 2008)

ACORN in Chaos (September 11, 2008)

More ACORN Fallout (August 18, 2008)

More Thoughts about ACORN (July 14, 2008)

The Fall of ACORN (July 9, 2008)

Wade Rathke - This I Pretend to Believe (February 2007)

ACORN Falls

“This is an investigation of everything — Acorn, the national organization, the local organization and all of its affiliated entities,” said David Caldwell, an assistant attorney general.

ACORN's offices in Louisiana are being raided as I write this. ACORN is going up in flames, and this time, it's for the right reason.

No, I'm not talking about Encyclopedia Brown the pimp and his sorry-ass Saved by the Bell reject wannabe hooker buddy.

The videotapes are bullshit, and you can quote me on that. They're preposterous, hucksterism, pointless, juvenile. This investigation is about the epic mismanagement of a national organization. And I believe it's the right investigation, for the right reasons.

They're targeting the embezzlement of around $1 million - maybe as high as $5 million, according to reports I've read - by the brother of ACORN's founder, Wade Rathke. ACORN has had a problem for a while, apparently, and only the publicizing of the crime made it clear how completely screwed up the organization was.

I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me that having one guy with as much power as Wade Rathke had was a situation bound to lead to disaster. He was clearly getting involved in things without the knowledge of the board. (Why do I say that? Most of the board's members didn't even know about the embezzlement - or the secret "settlement" - until years after the fact. Years.) When all power is consolidated in the hands of one person, and when that person stops believing he has to be accountable to anyone - funders, board members, other officers - then trouble is bound to happen.

Then, just think about the fact that his brother was working high up in the organization as well, and had access to the organization's bank accounts. Recipe for disaster, I'm telling you.

ACORN's trying to set its house in order, but there have been years and years of damage that they have to undo. The embezzlement happened in 1999 and 2000. This was hidden for eight years. Now they're being investigated for tax fraud, and the investigators are also trying to determine how much money was actually embezzled. Remember, ACORN was a tax-exempt organization, run largely on individual contributions and foundation support. They were operating for the public's benefit. When you steal from a nonprofit, you are stealing from the public. In ACORN's case, Dale Rathke was effectively stealing from the very low-income families that they were trying to help.

ACORN's funding is drying up. Foundations don't want to touch them with a ten-foot pole until they can be absolutely certain that their money is going to be handled correctly. This is what should happen. This is the natural repercussion of their poor management.

And now they're being investigated by the state of Louisiana - again, not because of the pimptastic videotapes, but because of their outrageous financial mismanagement. Maybe the organization will be able to answer all of the questions and sever themselves of the taint of Rathke's leadership. Maybe they'll survive this, maybe they won't. But at least this time, the questions that are being asked are the right questions.

I Got a Job!!!!!

It's over.  At long last, it's over.  

I filed for unemployment for 27 weeks.

I submitted applications for 94 different jobs.

I was invited to interviews with no less than sixteen different organizations.  

Seven second interviews.  I made the final cut in seven different job searches.  Seven times, I got close enough that they called my references, asked me questions like whether I would commute or drive, what days I'd prefer to work, whether I could start right away or if I need a week or two.

And six times - six stomach-churning times - I had to get the "sorry, we've decided to go in another direction" phone calls.  I told you about one particularly crappy rejection in an earlier post.

No, wait, change that.  I only got the call five times.  One organization didn't even have the guts to call me to say they hired somebody else.  They just politely forgot about me, didn't return my calls, discreetly took the job posting off their website.  

But it's over.  A few weeks ago, someone said yes.  I am officially employed again. 

We did the dance, just like with other companies.   They asked me if I'd do a phone interview and I said yes.  I did the phone interview on my cell phone, standing in my kitchen, a cup of coffee nearby.  My resume, cover letter, and some hastily scribbled notes were spread out on a counter where I could glance at them easily.  

The phone interview went very well.  They called me back in a couple of days and asked me if I'd come for an in-person interview, and I said yes.  I dusted off my suit, ironed a crease into my pants, asked Mrs. B to iron a shirt.  (She does a better job on shirts than I do, and we both know it.)   I picked out a tie and spent entirely much time thinking about it.  

The interview went well, sure, but I'd had other interviews that went well before.  They asked me for references, and I emailed them to the person in charge.  And waited.  

Two days letter, my references reported that they had been called.  And that the person seemed to really like me.

And a few days later, I got the call.  

I took a day to think about it.  Mrs. B and I sat down to talk it over.  The pay scale wasn't ideal, but the hours are great.  I liked the people I met.  I thought the job would be a good next job for my career ladder.  (Thank goodness for that - I'd applied to several jobs that would have been a step backward, and would have gladly taken them if the price was right.)  

I called them back and told them I'd accept the job.

The person on the other phone went "Yayyyyyyy!"  It was the sound you make when you're ten, and your dad just told you that you're going out for ice cream.

It was the perfect sound to end this soul-crushing, never-ending, gut-wrenching job search.  I was not only the best candidate, but they wanted me.  They wanted ME.   

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going back to work.  

Job Fair

I just got back from a job fair. There were about fifteen employers in the room, and just about everybody who attended looked desperate, depressed, and willing to try anything. That includes me.

I don't know why I bother going to these things.

No, that's not true. Of course I know why I go to job fairs. It's because I don't have a job, and it's been over five months, and going to these things makes me feel like I'm doing as much as I can to find a new job. Leave no stone unturned, etc.

Except that there's nothing there for me. It's all companies that a) I'd never want to work for, b) are offering pure commission jobs, or c) aren't hiring for someone with my background. It's insurance companies and Avon and skilled labor jobs and sales jobs and the National Guard and the Border Patrol and temp agencies and Comcast's sales division.

I don't think I want to do sales, particularly for a big obnoxious company like Comcast. I'm not sure I want to sell insurance, particularly if my income depends on sales. I might consider a job if there was a base salary, but I need something stable.

I sure as hell don't want to be doing home parties for something like Avon or kitchen supplies or desserts. These companies are always at the job fairs, dangling the promise of fun and hoping people don't notice that in order to make a decent living, you have to sell a lot of crap to your own friends and family. And that's fine, but it's not for me.

And then there's the other employers, most of whom are offering entry-level jobs or management jobs that require skills I don't have. I don't think I do, anyway, and they don't seem to know what to do with me when I chat with them.

It's good to see that some employers are hiring, but there ain't a lot of them. There are always so many people waiting to get in the doors, and the reward always seems so small once you get inside. But you do what you can. You chat with people about careers you never thought you'd consider. You shake hands, give out resumes, chat with the other people about what they used to do. You try to be hopeful. You look for an opening, a chance, anything.

I remember going to job fairs for nonprofits, and there were ninety organizations in the room. Nonprofits! Now you can't even get twenty private employers in the same room at the same time. It's pretty stunning. It's literally stunning, every time I walk away from one of these things. I always feel somehow less hopeful instead of more hopeful.

One, Two, Three

This is the pattern. Wake up on Monday and open up the online version of the classifieds - the job websites on Craigslist.org and idealist.org. Scour through the ads to find three that I can apply for. Print out the job listings, open up the folder that contains all of my resumes and various cover letters. Brew some coffee. Start sending out applications. And keep notes on everything in my handy-dandy job search log.

In order to receive my weekly unemployment check, there are a couple of things I need to do. I have to file a weekly claim, and I have to answer a few questions. No, I didn't work last week. Yes, I was available every day for work. No, I didn't work in self-employment. No, I didn't skip any job interviews, didn't serve on a jury, didn't earn any income from any other sources.

Yes, I applied for three jobs last week.

It doesn't sound that hard, does it? Find three jobs and apply for 'em. Big deal. I could do that in my sleep. It's mandated by the state, although of course I'd probably be sending in three applications or more anyway whether or not I had to. I hate being unemployed. I want to get back to work.

When I started looking for work in January, I found a slew of job postings. I could find four each week on Monday morning, and I had my pick of the fundraiser jobs. I could put aside jobs that I was underqualified or overqualified for, or were too far away. I printed out job descriptions and saved them for the following weeks. I was feeling confident, both that the jobs would never run out and that I'd find a position soon.

This lasted until the beginning of April, when I noticed that things were getting tight. Now, it's getting to be a real struggle to find those three jobs every week. Often, I find one job early in the week, apply for it, and then wait for the other two to surface later in the week. It's a waiting game. For example, today is Wednesday. I've applied for one job. I have another one I'm looking into. I don't know what that third job is going to be. It hasn't been posted yet.

I'm checking other websites more frequently, and more desperately, now - UnionJobs.com, the WorkSource website, the University of Washington jobs site. I might even start going to the spam-infested CareerBuilder website again if it keeps this bad.

If I get really desperate, there is another option. I can go down to the job training center and do an approved job search there. Meaning, I check in with one of the counselors, tell them what I'm looking for, and let them search to try and find jobs for me. That can count as one of my three "job activities." I haven't had to resort to that yet, but it might be happening soon.

This is what I think is happening. I'm looking for nonprofit work. Nonprofits (and regular businesses, I suppose) operate on one of two budget cycles - a simple calendar year budget, which rolls over in January, or a fiscal year budget, which runs from July-June. So when I started looking for work in January, it just happened to be the time of year when several organizations were starting new budget cycles and had fresh money freed up for hiring. I was in the right place at the right time.

Now, however, things are slowing down. It's the middle of the budget cycle for some orgs and the end of the budget year for others. And most nonprofits operate on a shoestring budget, so they don't just have reserve money floating around. They live budget to budget. Most orgs are going to wait until their budget rolls over before taking on the expense of a new employee. So I might have to wait until July until the job pools really start expanding again.

That's assuming the job search stretches that long, and I really hope it doesn't. I don't want to be unemployed on my birthday, a month from now. I really don't want to go through the summer without a job. I can't even imagine going for six months without work, even though I know it's happening to a lot of people right now. I have never gone that long without a job, and I hope it doesn't happen.

Waiting for Destiny

The right job is waiting for me.

I really believe this.

However, I'm getting tired of waiting.

I'm getting tired of interview practice. I'm getting tired of trying to explain my philosophy of how to do my job. It's time to have an actual damn job again.

I got another rejection call yesterday - a company with whom I interviewed twice. Good job, a bit of a commute, but nothing I couldn't handle. Job was well within my comfort level. Salary was good, work environment looked great. I didn't get the job.

I asked them why. That's what you're supposed to do - use every rejection as a learning experience. The response was curt - "We just didn't think you were the right match at this time."

Awesome. That's great. Hey, thanks for taking the time for that thorough assessment.

When I was laid off three months ago, I went after my job search with a vengeance. I was going to be back on my feet as quickly as possible. I even said that. Remember?

Nonprofits always need good fundraisers and good organizers, and I've done both. I have half a dozen jobs I'm looking at already. I don't think I'll be out of work long. I might end up taking a pay cut, but I'll be back on my feet soon.

That was me, three months ago. I even had a plan for making some money out of my sudden unemployment. I actually thought at one point that if I could get back into a new job within two months, we'd be able to bank some of my severance pay and my unemployment checks. It was a nice idea, back in January, but those days are gone. We're not exactly hemorrhaging money, but we're losing about a thousand dollars every month I'm not employed.

The state's unemployment rate ballooned to 9.2% recently. They're expecting it to top out at 10% sometime next year. That probably means the actual unemployment rate is somewhere between 13% and 15%, if you count everyone who's given up on find work, everyone who's run out of benefits, and everyone who's working part-time but wants a full-time job.

I'm trying to stay optimistic, but it's hard to recover from each slapdown. I have more and more doubts about my abilities. I start seeing more and more jobs for which I know I don't have enough experience, and I start wondering if maybe the experience I have is worthless. I worry about my references. I worry about the answers I give in interviews. Fuck, I hate this.

I know that I deserve a great job. Not a good job, but a great job. If I had my pick, I'd take a job that was within ten miles of my house, a job with a straight forty-hour work week, one where I could learn some new skills and build on my own strengths, and one with lots of opportunity for advancement. But at this point, I'm going to have to take the first job I'm offered. I won't have my pick of the lot.

I know that the right job is out there waiting for me. There are thousands, hundreds of thousands of people in this state looking for a job. Every job I apply for has two hundred other applicants.

And yet, I've been offered interviews with eight different organizations. So something I'm doing is working right. All I need is to win over one of those organizations. Just one. I only need one job. Just one.

Layoff

I went into work on Monday and it was a typical day. I turned on my computer and got a cup of coffee.

Then I cleaned off my desk.

I tossed away what didn't matter anymore - copies of letters I'd sent, receipts for purchases, drafts of documents. I filed what needed to be saved and tossed the rest. Then I began arranging my files so that someone else could make sense out of them besides me. Someone else would need to.

Once that was done, I sat down at my computer and began methodically cleaning out my Outlook program: deleting emails that no longer mattered, forwarding emails that would need action taken by someone, and deleting my task list one by one. Click, click, click, until every single task had disappeared.

I took my pictures off the wall, and put my coffee cups and my other personal effects into a small box. I turned in my keys and the company credit card. And then I said goodbye.

I've been laid off.

Seattle's economy has taken a series of devastating blows. The collapse of WaMu is still rippling through our economy. Boeing is laying off 4500 workers. One of the newspapers is on the verge of closing its doors. Microsoft, according to rumors, is going to be laying off thousands of its own workers in the next few days.

And my wife and I looked at each story and said to ourselves, thank goodness we both have solid jobs in this crashing economy. Thank goodness we don't have to worry.

But I worked at a three-person nonprofit that depends on individual donors for its money, and those donors live in Seattle and in the surrounding area. Some of them had WaMu stock. Some of them work at Microsoft. Some of them have investments that have collapsed. My board was worried about the future and decided to trim staff so they wouldn't have to face shutting its own doors in a year or two. I understand why they did it. I don't have to like it, but I understand it.

I suppose I'm lucky. Mrs. B has been wonderful during this, and I'm eternally grateful to her for it. Oliver has been - well, I suppose "sympathetic" isn't the right word, because he doesn't understand what really happened. But he's been charmingly optimistic. When I came home last week and told him I was going to be looking for a new job, his first question was "where is that new job, daddy?" He's already been giving me things - pictures, toys - that he wants me to take into my new office.

I'm in a good position. I didn't learn overnight that my organization had collapsed. (This, unfortunately, was the case with at least one local nonprofit recently. For the sake of their privacy, I won't provide a link to the story.) I wasn't thrown out, I wasn't fired, I wasn't led away from the office in shackles. I'm not in trouble like the guy who jumped out of a moving airplane to avoid his debts. Thankfully, I'm also not working in the financial sector or another job sector that's in a tailspin right now. I'm in the nonprofit world, and rain or shine, they're always hiring.

I'm also leaving in a relatively good position. I don't get a golden parachute like some folks in the business world, but I'm getting the equivalent of six weeks in severance pay. My boss will give me a sterling reference - he felt genuinely sick about letting me go. Many of the board members have also called or emailed me to express their sadness at losing me, and that really helps cushion the blow.

And thank goodness, I have a wide network of friends in the nonprofit world who are all searching on my behalf (if they're not already searching on their own behalf.) Nonprofits always need good fundraisers and good organizers, and I've done both. I have half a dozen jobs I'm looking at already. I don't think I'll be out of work long. I might end up taking a pay cut, but I'll be back on my feet soon.

ACORN in Chaos

“Why are they still negotiating with Wade Rathke? Why are the people on staff who knew about this embezzlement still on the staff?”- Coya Mobley, ACORN Board Member

Two members of ACORN's board just filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the organization, seeking to remove Wade Rathke completely from the organization and to have financial documents related to the organization released.

Apparently, after Rathke left his position as "chief organizer" of the organization, he went to work with ACORN International, which is a separate organization that just happens to share office space with ACORN. Mr. Rathke has allegedly been making a bit of a nuisance of himself, walking into the offices of the organization he left in pieces and attempting to talk to the employees. They've asked him to stop.

“Mr. Rathke stubbornly refuses to do that, so he sort of haunts that office, tries to talk to folks doing their work,” according to Bertha Lewis, the interim chief organizer.

Rathke's huffy response isn't going to win him any friends. “I was with the organization for 38 years, and there are many people I hired and supervised, and I have great relationships with them. I haven’t been involved in supervising them. Are they saying that simply because I breathe, I exist, they have a problem?”

No, stupid. It's because you can't let go. You utterly failed the organization you created, and they have asked you to leave. It's one of the fundamental rules of community organizing. When the community asks you to leave, you find the door. You don't whine, you don't complain, you don't pout. You don't keep dropping in to see how things are doing. You get the hell out. It's time for Wade Rathke to find the door.

ACORN's lack of transparency, and Rathke's inability to honor boundaries, are only going to prolong this disastrous scandal in the public eye. The lawsuit is a reaction to bad behavior. The best way to make this thing go away is to act honorably, openly, and swiftly, and they aren't doing any of that so far.

More ACORN Fallout

“Does Drummond know the word is out? If not, shouldn’t someone tell him?”

I'm going to do something I have never done. I'm reposting an entire blog entry from someone who is not me. The author is one Drummond Pike. He maintained a blog on the Tides Foundation website - a blog that has since been scrubbed from the internet. (I copied the cached page from a Google search in order to recreate this blog post.) Keep reading to find out why Mr. Pike might have wanted to hide this particular entry.

---

Time to Step Aside
Author: Drummond Pike
Source: Notes from the Left Coast
http://drummondpike.tides.org/index.php/2008/06/25/saultime-to-step-aside/

Wade Rathke has done something some would never have predicted. Resigned as ACORN’s Chief Organizer. Who ever would have imagined?

I met Wade in 1972, as best I can recall. Marge Tabankin and I were running the Youth Project (she was my boss) and had developed a bit of a competition to find the most impressive new organizers “out there.” The YP, begun in the Center for Community Change’s basement, was an operation to leverage foundation $$ into community organizing that involved young people – an attempt to bring the national movements of the day down into the everyday lives of disenfranchised communities. I came up with Mike Miller from Organize, Inc. in SF – a skilled, talented follower of Saul Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation approach: parish based, working class organizing. Alinsky had defined the field in many ways and his Rules for Radicals was found on the shelves of an entire college generation at the time. Margie’s choice was this kid named Wade Rathke.

Rathke was this ornery, young red head in Little Rock, Arkansas that was a couple of years into what would become ACORN as we know it today. He’d dropped out of Williams College to work with the anti-draft movement, but ended up working with George Wiley on the National Welfare Rights Organization. He built an edgy, confrontational group in Springfield, MA and learned on the job how to push for a better break for welfare mothers. His yearning to return to the south led him to convince Wiley to back his hair-brained scheme to build a new kind of organization that expanded the range – low AND moderate income folks, but stretched organizationally beyond one city into a statewide, and ultimately national, approach where there were more levers of power.

So, when I showed up in Little Rock on that hot, humid day in 1972, I found something I hadn’t expected. New thinking, new ambition, new methods. Later, on a whim, I invited Wade up to train some organizers in Montana at the Northern Plains Resource Council. What I saw then truly convinced me that this was a special person – able to find common ground between welfare moms in Springfield, aggrieved neighbors displaced by a freeway being built through their Little Rock neighborhood, and land-rich ranchers in eastern Montana fighting coal strip-mining. What they all faced was an imbalance of power, and they were swimming upstream. He imparted wisdom, practical advice on strategy and tactics, and an invitation to think of themselves in a larger context.

I was deeply impressed, and when I started up Tides several years later, he was my first call to recruit for the Board. Over the 32 ensuing years, he’s been a font of wisdom and advice on how to build an organization. I’ve felt often as though I were sitting at the foot of a master, and I think I was. He built ACORN on the premise that old models were meant to be challenged, and that’s something we at Tides have absorbed as well.

Later, when he started what became Local 100 of the SEIU, he pulled off a similar “defying gravity” move: he started a new union in a “right-to-work” state whose laws were extremely hostile to any effort to organize workers. Once again turning convention on its head, he figured out that workers consigned to minimum wage jobs had issues, an instinct to make their efforts collective, and a willingness to give the intense Rathke a chance to show them a new way. Now getting contracts signed with employers in right-to-work states is challenging in the extreme, but judging by the hostile monitoring they got during the Bush 1 years, they must have been doing something right.

I am convinced that the light of history will shine on Rathke quite brilliantly. In his 38 years at the helm of ACORN, he achieved what few have ever done working with poor people. He showed them that, through their own devices, and when collected in significant numbers and willing, on occasion, to be “impolite,” they can win real, tangible victories. If you have ever attended a national convention of ACORN, you will know what I mean. And if you ever need testimony, just talk to one of the leaders of ACORN like Maude Hurd and before her, Steve McDonald, or any of the others. 400,000 families are members, and it is hardly surprising to see progressive national candidates for public office come and address the throng. America will never be the same for the ACORN he helped build from scratch.

There is a paragraph in his blog about moving on that talks about the things that didn’t go well. I know about this from my own experience with Tides. You make decisions. You care. You do what you think is right. And, inevitably, some things you get wrong. How we are able to move forward directly depends on how we see the things that don’t go well and whether we learn from them. As Amory Lovins once famously invoked, “Systems without feedback loops are inherently stupid.” You can say the same about organizers and managers. The thing that many who meet Wade in other circumstances may miss is that he has always maintained the most important of feedback loops – those with the members and leaders. The respect he always shows, the deeply human connection between organizer and members he always honors, are incredible to behold.

I once traveled to Peru with Wade during the time leading up to the launching of ACORN Peru, I saw this same deep respect, combined with an understanding of the circumstances in which folks were organizing. I also saw him meet an equal, recognize and respect it, and establish a real understanding about the power of organizing in changing lives. This fellow, pictured on the right, ran an amazing organization that could produce thousands of people on the street on very short notice. I actually believe Wade was a bit jealous!

As Wade so eloquently says, he is moving on to work with “the weak” links in the ACORN network – the international ACORN’s and Local 100 which is recovering still from Katrina. He’s unlikely to call them “weak” in a year. Why? Because he’s our generation’s great organizer.

---

This post was written June 25, 2008, around the time that Wade Rathke resigned from ACORN. It was intended as a heroic tribute to someone who Pike clearly holds in great esteem. This post looks even more suspicious, given the news that broke today.

Weeks after Mr. Pike wrote this post, the New York Times broke the story that Wade Rathke's brother had imbezzled close to a million dollars from ACORN, and that Wade and a few ACORN insiders had hidden the crime from everyone - investors, supporters, and even several members of the board - for years. (A refresher here.)

In that article, the New York Times reported that the stolen money had been repaid by some anonymous donor - a remarkable gesture by someone who clearly was trying to protect ACORN from further damage.

Today, the Times reported that this donor was one Drummond Pike - the founder and chief executive of the Tides Foundation.

Problems:

1. Wade Rathke sat on the board of the Tides Foundation. Oh, until very recently. Questions, questions, questions.
2. Pike has not confirmed that he paid the debt - although it has been confirmed by other sources - and it is still unclear whether he paid it with his own money or Tides money. His succinct response was, “As a rule, I do not comment on my personal finances.” If it turns out he did this with Tides money and not his own money, this is going to erupt into a full-blown disaster.
3. The Tides Foundation gave grants to ACORN on numerous occasions. Pike was one of a handful of insiders - including Rathke - who knew about this scandal and did nothing until the Times broke the story. There is now reason to question not only Mr. Rathke's behavior and judgment, but also Mr. Pike's leadership re: his foundation.
4. The Tides Foundation is one of the most important funder of social justice work. Tides funds innumerable nonprofit organizations. If it turns out Tides money was used to repay this debt, every organization that ever received Tides money will now be tied to the ACORN scandal, thanks to Mr. Pike's actions.
5. I can guaran-damn-tee you that few, if any, donors to the Tides Foundation knew about this behind-the-scenes deal. If it were me, I sure would want a say in whether my money was being used to cover up a crime. (Again, assuming that Tides money went to pay the debt.)
   

In retrospect, it looks like Pike's farewell letter to Rathke is just part of the coverup. He knew something was dirty in Rathke's sudden resignation, and yet he still wrote this piece that made Rathke look like some magnificent combination of Horatio Alger and Martin Luther King.

Far from being over, the ripples of this scandal are just beginning.

This is the part that sticks with me. I wonder if Pike was commenting on his own behavior when he wrote these words, or if it was meant sincerely at the time. Regardless, these words are going to come back to haunt him.

You make decisions. You care. You do what you think is right. And, inevitably, some things you get wrong. How we are able to move forward directly depends on how we see the things that don’t go well and whether we learn from them.

More Thoughts About ACORN

Peter Dreier and John Atlas have an excellent article on HuffPo this morning that covers all of ACORN's good work over the last thirty-eight years. They also have a nice shout-out to yours truly in the article (I'll forgive them for not citing my blog):

One former organizer wrote on his blog, "conservatives and others are going to use this as an opportunity to bash ACORN -- and by extension, every social justice-minded nonprofit in the country." He correctly observed that, "the conservatives are going after [ACORN] for the wrong reasons. Working for social justice for low-income families is a noble pursuit and should be celebrated. Fraud has nothing to do with ACORN's mission. This didn't happen because of ACORN's mission -- it happened because of the greed of Dale Rathke and the unconscionable acts of a few organization insiders. This is a people problem, not a mission problem. Do not be confused."

Dreier and Atlas are exactly right that ACORN is now being attacked by groups who have wanted them dead for a long time. The people who are attacking ACORN now are its targets - the politicians who refuse to sign living wage laws, the business interests who don't want to treat their workers like human beings, crooked lenders who make money off the misery of low-income people.

And perhaps I was a bit harsh in my last post, because I was falling into the same trap of condeming the whole organization for the errors of a few people. ACORN doesn't deserve to die for this (and the country will be worse off if they do collapse because of this). However, they're going to have a very tough road ahead of them. It will take them years to shake the spectre of this moment, and it's possible it will never go away completely. They'll need to make sure it never happens. If they haven't done so already, they'll need to clamp down on their accounting. They'll have to be very public and very direct about exactly what money they have and exactly what they plan to do with it. Any secrecy at this point will be seen - rightly or wrongly - as hiding something.

I have to mention that the ACORN situation is not just being discussed by ACORN's opponents. Many of us in the social justice world are going to keep our concerns quiet, just as we've kept quiet before when other national organizations have folded due to financial mismanagement and ill-advised partnerships. It's not nice to wash your dirty laundry in public.

But I can guarantee you that we're talking about it today. There are whispered conversations happening all across the non-profit world about ACORN. Organizers are talking about it in their break rooms. Canvassers are discussing it on street corners before they begin their shift. Executive directors are discussing it with their boards. This is one of those moments where thousands of organizations are taking stock, making sure they don't have any skeletons in the closet like this.

Every organization I've worked for has done a stellar job of making their funding and their internal workings transparent. As I've said again and again, nonprofits have an obligation to the public and that obligation includes transparency. We make our 990s public. We post our annual reports on the website. When a problem arises, the best organizations talk about it with their board and their funders - they don't sweep it under the rug.

Our collective mission, expressed a thousand different ways, is to fight for the public good. We have an obligation to keep ourselves running in order to fight for the betterment of our country and our community. We have an obligation to keep our collective noses clean, so scandals like this don't bring our work to a grinding halt. It's not just a good idea - it is our duty and part of our bond with the people for whom we fight.

We owe it to the public not to fail - particularly not to fail because of our own stupidity. It's bad enough when an nonprofit fails because their funding dries up. It is absolutely shameful when an NPO fails because they weren't minding the books, or minding their own staff.

All across America, organizations are asking themselves, "could we be the next ACORN?" Nonprofits live with small budgets and a whisper-thin margin of error. And unlike most businesses, we make our living by fighting against very powerful interests. It only takes one mistake - large or small - to drown an organization. It only takes one slip to negate years of good, honorable work. So ACORN's current scandal is not something we celebrate. It's a vivid reminder of how vulnerable we all are.

The Fall of ACORN

I don't even know what to say.

I've criticized ACORN in the past. Lord knows I don't think much of ACORN. They're a decent organization with some significant flaws.

But I never thought they would be capable of criminal behavior. The New York Times today ran a story that suggests otherwise.

Acorn chose to treat the embezzlement of nearly $1 million eight years ago as an internal matter and did not even notify its board. [...]

A whistle-blower forced Acorn to disclose the embezzlement, which involved the brother of the organization’s founder, Wade Rathke.

The brother, Dale Rathke, embezzled nearly $1 million from Acorn and affiliated charitable organizations in 1999 and 2000, Acorn officials said, but a small group of executives decided to keep the information from almost all of the group’s board members and not to alert law enforcement.

(Emphasis mine.)

"Embezzle" is a nice word that means "steal." They covered up a theft of a million dollars for nearly a decade. That's criminal behavior, folks. That's fraud. Every time they requested a grant, they were lying about their finances. Every time they knocked on someone's door and asked for money, they were lying about where the money was actually going. It was going into the pocket of the founder's brother.

“It was a judgment call at the time, and looking back, people can agree or disagree with it, but we did what we thought was right.”

With all due respect to Maude Herd, ACORN's president - this was not a judgment call. This is not money that belongs to ACORN. They're a non-profit - they are accountable to their members and to the public. They had no right to conceal this. They have a public trust that they violated, and that they have been violating on an ongoing basis for nearly a decade.

Embezzlement is one thing. It's impossible to stop someone who has access to funds and misuses them. It's possible to limit the possibility of fraud with careful supervision and rigorous checks and balances. (This clearly didn't happen in this case.)

But once a crime happens, they had an obligation to report it to the authorities. And I believe they had an obligation to report it to their funders, including their members. This would have been the most transparent, responsible response to the crime. They didn't do that. They did exactly the opposite. Like they say, it ain't about the crime, it's about the cover-up. The cover-up is what's going to kill ACORN.

There are millions of nonprofits in the world and many of them are doing heroic work with little to no money. ACORN has brought shame upon them all with their selfish, cowardly behavior. If they don't survive this scandal, I won't shed any tears at their funeral.

One more thing that must be said: conservatives and others are going to use this as an opportunity to bash ACORN - and by extension, every social justice-minded nonprofit in the country. This was exactly the reason that Rathke (Wade - the one who didn't directly embezzle $1 million) cited in concealing the theft. (So Mr. Chief Organizer - now that it's become public, and now that it's also come to light that ACORN concealed it for eight years, you think this makes you look better?)

ACORN has opened itself up to massive criticism, but the conservatives are going after it for the wrong reasons. Working for social justice for low-income families is a noble pursuit and should be celebrated. Fraud has nothing to do with ACORN's mission. This didn't happen because of ACORN's mission - it happened because of the greed of Dale Rathke and the unconscionable acts of a few organization insiders. This is a people problem, not a mission problem. Do not be confused.

Blessed Unrest

Listen. I want to share something with you.

This quote can be found at the end of Paul Hawken's amazing book, Blessed Unrest. I'm going to talk more about the book, but first I want to share this quote with you.

There are two kinds of games - games that end, and games that don't. In the first game the rules are fixed and rigid. In the second, the rules change whenever necessary to keep the game going. James Carse called these, respectively, finite and infinite games. We play finite games to compete and win. They always have losers and are called business, banking, war, NBA, Wall Street, and politics. We play infinite games to play; they have no losers because the object of the game is to keep playing. Infinite games pay it forward and fill future coffers. They are called potlatch, family, samba, prayer, culture, tree planting, storytelling, and gospel singing. Sustainability, ensuring the future of life on earth, is an infinite game, the endless expression of generosity on behalf of all. Any action that threatens sustainability can end the game, which is why groups dedicated to keeping the game going assiduously address any harmful policy, law, or endeavor. With no invitation, they invade and take care of the finite games of the world, not to win but to transform finite games into infinite ones. They want to keep the fish game going, so they go after polluters of rivers. They want to keep the culture game going, so they confront oil exploration in Ecuador. They want to keep the hope game alive in the world, so they go after the roots of poverty. They want to keep the species game happening, so they buy swaths of habitat and undeveloped land. They want to keep the child game going; consequently, when the United States violated the Geneva Convention and bombed the 1,400 Iraqi water and sewage treatment plants in the first gulf War, creating sewage-, cholera-, and typhus-laden water, they condemned it as morally repugnant.

Read it again, if you'd like.

That quote captures the essence of this book perfectly. Hawken aims to do nothing less than chronicle the history of the nonprofit movement that exists today - a million or more nonprofit organizations (or NGOs - nongovernmental organizations), all working separately and working together to improve the world.

He spends several chapters laying out the history - the icons (King, Gandhi, Thoreau and Emerson), the early movements (including the abolitionist movement, which he describes as "the first group to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know") and then the eruption of NGOs around the world. He talks about the successes and the failures, the triumphs and the struggles (racism, sexism, classism, xenophobia) that still haunt the nonprofit world. He covers it all in less than 200 pages.

This is a dense book. Summing up over a million NGOs in two hundred pages is not a simple task. I found myself taking a break after every chapter to soak in all of the information. Yet the book is not textbook-heavy. He works in the grandest and broadest terms, and yet still uses anecdotes and concrete examples of the movement at work. It is a joy to read. But it's an immense topic, and in his effort to describe the giant network that is "the movement," he found it necessary to include an appendix of over 100 pages that attempts to broadly categorize the various groups that make up "the movement." The appendix alone is an astonishing exercise and a thing to behold.

Midway through the book, Hawken begins describing the human immune system. It seems tangential at first, but then he makes the great leap. He proposes that 'the movement' - the immense network of NGOs, all working to clean up and reform and revitalize their own little corner of the world - is working as the world's own immune system.

Our movement works independently - there is no grand agenda, no great magna carta that we have all signed, no talking points to which we all agree. We work without coordination - and yet we cover each other, we find the gaps left by others, we complement and compliment each other's missions and visions. Like an immune system, we operate as if steered by an unseen hand, rooting out evil and imperfections and attacking mercilessly so that the organism will continue. The organism is us. The organism is the world.

I have worked in a social justice organization, an environmental organization, a legal defense organization. I now work with seniors. I have made the argument since my first job that all of our work was all tied together, and I always talked it as "the movement". Social justice included the rights of prisoners. Protecting water was as important and was connected to fighting for universal health care. For years, I have carried in my head the idea that there was only one movement - an enormous movement, a connected network of groups working to better the world, all in their little way.

Paul Hawken brings "the movement" to life. He makes me hopeful that, in spite of all of our losses small and great, we are transforming the world and indeed, we may have already transformed it. Hawken's book reminds me that, despite the faults and missteps of our movement, the very fact that our movement exists is reason to hope. Our existence and the work we do everyday is a triumph for humanity. He makes me proud to be part of the movement. Everyone who makes their living in a nonprofit should read this book

The Retreat

So we had a strategic planning retreat on Sunday to plan for my nonprofit's next twelve months. Two interesting things happened. First, I proposed that we'd raise more money than we ever have in the past, and we'd do it by getting our (lethargic, complacent, skittish to get involved) board active - attending house parties, asking for money, recruiting their friends, etc. The interesting part of this is that no one argued, complained, protested, or even challenged the numbers. They all smiled and nodded and patted me on the back.

This, of course, fills me with dread. I hope they realize what they were agreeing to when they agreed to it. I guess I'll find out once I start making the follow-up phone calls.

The second thing that happened is that one of our staff asked to have her position converted to full-time. She currently works less than 30 hours a week. Her argument: I have too many responsibilities and I can't get everything done with my current hours, I've put in years of loyal service, my qualifications and skills are blah blah blah...

Oh, and when she goes full-time, she wants to take on new duties. She wants to work on fundraising (which is ... ahem ... my job.) She wants to do public speaking, which would be a disaster on ice.

The back story here is that this person has some mistaken ideas about her talents. For example, she thinks she would be a brilliant fundraiser. She actually wanted to be considered for the job for which I was hired. (Which creates a certain amount of resentment toward me.) She thinks outside the box, which is good, but not in a way that's practical or realistic or reasonable. She's often outside the box and out somewhere in the back corners of the warehouse.

Now, none of this is necessarily a bad thing. The real issue is that she's disorganized, does sloppy work, and can never get anything done on time. Never. Ne-ver. She's an artist by nature - and a good one - but she just works in a scattered, haphazard, right-brain way. Good if you're an artist - not so good if you're the heart of a small non-profit. And my simple feeling, which I told to my boss, is that if someone's failing as a part-time employee, you don't reward that by making them a full-time employee.

So we talked about this request with the board yesterday, and my boss was remarkably candid. Long story short: we love the employee, but she's not going to stay here. She's already looking for another job, and - brace yourself - she has requested a six-month leave of absence. She only wants the leave if she doesn't get the promotion. Why does she need the leave? To "get some projects done." I think she really wants the time off so she can polish her resume and get another job so she doesn't have to come back here.

So the following awkward resolution was reached: we would convert the position to full-time. My boss would inform the employee that she wouldn't have her job converted to full-time. Boss will furthermore tell the employee that he doesn't think she will be happy here, whatever hours she's working, and that it's probably time she look for another position where she'll feel more satisfied. Once she leaves - which she will do - we'll start looking for someone to work full-time in her position.

(Interestingly, my boss doesn't think that this will constitute "firing" the employee. I disagree, but whatever.)

So you can imagine that the conversation between boss and employee, when it happens, will probably be pretty awkward and uncomfortable. There may be anger, or resentment, or slammed doors, or curse words shouted across the office.

Why am I telling you all this? Because my boss took the day off today. Which means that our disgruntled employee and I are going to be the only ones in the office, all day. All the livelong damned day. And she will inevitably ask me the following question:

"So ... did you guys talk about my job yesterday?"

And I will either have to give some oblique hint about the discussion - which I don't want to do - or I will have to refuse to say anything at all. Which will make the whole day a series of awkward silences and guessing games as to what happened, during which I will undoubtedly - by a nod or a momentary facial expression or the tone of a response - indicate to the employee what decision was reached.

I'm not happy.

On the other hand, I'm sipping a caramel latte that's damn near perfect. So it's not all bad.