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The NY Times Talks Nonprofits

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When I was in graduate school I studied nonprofit management heavily. I’m in the process of designing a course for a local college in nonprofit organizations. As such, I was interested to read today’s New York Times article which discussed the increase in those studying nonprofit management. From the article:

“There are people like myself who will be retiring in the near future,” said Paulette Maehara, the chief executive of the Association of Fund-Raising Professionals, who started her career in 1977 as a fund-raiser for the March of Dimes. “It is a serious concern because we can’t keep up with the demand. Getting more people in the pipeline is one of our top priorities.”

A 2006 survey of nonprofit executives done by the Meyer Foundation and CompassPoint found that 75 percent said they would be leaving their jobs within five years. Many nonprofit educators hope they will be followed by idealistic college graduates armed with an industry-standardized set of skills.

For some reason I feel like our beloved state of New Jersey bucks this trend. I’ve been working for nonprofits for the last four years and there is almost no turnover in the sector. First, salaries for nonprofit workers in New Jersey are not substantial enough to retain skilled talent. Most nonprofits in this state only give cost of living salary adjustments that equate to a 3% or 4% bump. Certainly not enough to retain skilled workers over the long-term. These young, idealistic college graduates will learn about the vicious nonprofit salary abuse sooner or later.

Second, you never see people actually leave the nonprofit sector in New Jersey. The good part about this is that the sector, as a whole, keeps experienced workers involved throughout the state. This offsets the need to bring in new people, which is one of the bad parts about this issue. The other bad part is that some nonprofits run the risk of rendering their thoughts or stances on issues affecting citizens obsolete. Further, some of the nonprofits can render their operations obsolete by not churning talent and bringing in younger workers. For example, I refused to finance a school last spring because their leader didn’t “do” e-mail. He was well into his seventies and came to a meeting with a piece of paper and a pencil so he could draw out the school’s budget. I appreciate the gusto of the old man, but in today’s world you need to know how to use Excel or Calc and you absolutely need to have an e-mail address.

The New York Times article is a good one and I recommend that any college students out there take a read and consider whether or not a nonprofit management degree might be for you.

Post-Election Thoughts and Wrap-Up

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Alright – so Barack Obama won just like everyone thought that he would. No surprise there. Also, the Democrats took the large majorities that everyone thought they would in both the House and the Senate. No surprises there, either. Congratulations to Barack Obama for winning the election – it was a long contest that, thank God, is now over.

Speaking of the long contest, here are some of my thoughts about the election now that it is over.

The Campaign was Too Long!
America is exhausted. I know that Obama ran as a reformer and a healer, but the best thing that could ever happen to this country is the election being over! Campaigns and candidates have become too partisan. Americans need to reject politicians who begin their Presidential campaigns YEARS in advance of the election. We can’t take this amount of bullshit for this amount of time. The election of 2008 will go down in the history books for a variety of reasons, but as long as I continue to teach American government, I will teach students about the negative effects of an 18 to 24 month Presidential campaign.

Fix the F*&$^% Voting System Already
How in God’s name can we have a two year Presidential campaign AND be eight years out from the 2000 debacle and NOT have a better voting system yet? How is it that college campuses can manage to run their entire operations via secure databases, yet we can’t run local elections on similar systems? Some colleges use an online voting system that absolutely cannot be cracked for stupid elections like Homecoming King and Queen. And we can’t figure out a local, regional, and/or national system for harnessing the power of the internet in our voting? Give me a break.

Sarah Palin Destroyed by the Media
Once again – as long as I continue to teach American government to college students, I will be sure to talk about how vile the media coverage was of Senator Hillary Clinton and Governor Sarah Palin. The bias in the media when covering these two women is that worst type of bias – the type where neither the media nor the public even recognize it on its face. For example, how can you ask a female candidate how she’ll be able to raise her children if she’s elected? What type of bullshit is that?! Not one reporter asked that question to Barack Obama, John McCain, or Joe Biden. And the whole flap about Sarah Palin’s $150,000 wardrobe (which wasn’t really hers) was just about as biased and outlandish as you can get.

What is the best part about the media’s bias against women? For me, it’s the fact that Palin will likely run for the Republican Presidential nomination at some point in the near future and (depending on who she runs against) she’s likely to win it. And you know what happens next? Well, let’s just say that I think a Palin Presidential ticket has a better chance to succeed than a McCain Presidential ticket ever had – and you see how many votes McCain got this time around. Same story for Hillary, too. Take THAT biased media!

More on the Media – In the Tank for Obama
The right wing has been beating up the New York Times and MSNBC (among others) for being what they call “in the tank” for the Obama campaign. Guess what? The right wing is correct on this issue. The way that biased commentators like Chris Matthews and Keith Olberman swooned over Obama during a time when they were supposed to be unbiased newscasters (Democratic National Convention coverage) was horrible. Yes, Barack Obama won the election, but did you know that there were newspapers and magazines that called the election in his favor as early as November 1st? America’s print and broadcast media are dead. Thank God for the internet.

The New York Times commented on the vast ideological differences between the FOX News Channel and MSNBC on Sunday. And to that biased paper’s credit, they included the following paragraph:

But within that universe, the study found, the share of positive reports on Mr. McCain at Fox News was above the average of the news media at large, and the share of negative reports about Mr. Obama was higher, too. (The study found that the mix of positive and negative was roughly equal for them on Fox.)

That paragraph deserves more than the quick drive-by that author gives it. In fact this is a study by the Pew Research Center and – to further prove how the New York Times is biased and FOX News reports the facts – I’m going to use a blurb from a FOX News online article to help explain Pew’s results:

The independent Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism looked at coverage in the six weeks following the conventions through the final debate and found on FOX News 40 percent of stories on John McCain were negative, while 40 percent of stories on Obama were also negative.

In contrast, on MSNBC the study found that 73 percent of stories on McCain were negative while Obama received just 14 percent negative coverage on that channel.

Why didn’t the New York Times article cite those numbers specifically? I give them credit for briefly mentioning the results, but when FOX News gives an equal percentage of time to negative stories for each candidate, can you really trust the New York Times when they call this, “the share of positive reports on Mr. McCain at Fox News was above the average?” Above the average? So in the New York Times’ mind if you’re not consistently bashing McCain and the Republicans, you’re “above the average?”

Once again – America’s print and broadcast media are dead.

Those are some preliminary post-election thoughts. Let me know if you have any ideas!

Beginning my Staycation Today!

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Today begins a much-needed 9-day break from my job. I’ll be off this weekend, the entire coming week, and the next weekend before I head back to work on October 27th. As I normally do, I overbooked myself in September and October between my day job, my two-hour daily commute, teaching at the local college, serving on a national Board, volunteering, and running my website company (among other things…like LIFE)! I’m feeling good, though – just ready for a few days of relaxation and being away from the office.

It’s worth mentioning, though, that I put together a large “to do” list for myself during this vacation. That’s right – I have tasks to complete during my time away from the office. I’m not going away on a vacation, I’m doing one of these newly popular “staycation” things where I stay around my house for a week. I’m doing this partly out of necessity (while I’m on vacation from my day job, I still have to teach twice this week) and partly due to the tremendous cost savings associated with not going away. Initially, I wanted to take a few days and go down to Nashville. Then I realized that I would go down to Nashville and spend a bunch of money on a flight only to get down there and wind up doing more work for the national Board that I sit on. I figured that I can do that from home so why spend the money on the flight?

To keep busy over the next few days, I’ve given myself four small pages of notes on things that need to be addressed. Everything from figuring out the problem with my truck to reading a stack of the books that are sitting in my room to making certain foods that I like to getting ready for next week’s classes that I have to teach.

It’ll be a busy, yet somehow relaxing week!

The Epitome of a Scumbag

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Former Ocean Township Mayor Terry Weldon is getting what’s coming to him. Ocean Township is doing the only good thing that I’ve ever seen them do in filing suit against Weldon for extortion. I’ve actually had interactions with this son of a bitch through his former employees/henchmen (all of which have left Ocean Township by now). This man is a bad person and he did bad things to Ocean Township and the surrounding areas.

This guy tried to bribe my former boss (who was also a dolt). He wrote down a number on a napkin, passed it to my boss, and after my boss told him to shove his napkin up his ass Weldon ordered his henchmen to make life a living hell for my former company. I used to work in the rental business and we couldn’t get Certificates of Occupancy without threatening a lawsuit. Our college houses were put at the top of some indefensible “list” created by Weldon and his former Chief of Police. Our tenants received citation after citation. We would have tenants receive parking violation citations while the house NEXT DOOR would not receive them.

Terry Weldon is the epitome of a scumbag and I’m glad that the FBI stung his ass. I only hope that they keep digging deeper and go after the rotten bastards that worked underneath him and acted as his henchmen. Slimy, scuzzy, no good idiots.

And now many of you see where my disgust for Ocean Township stems from… 🙂

College Move-In Is Coming; Get Ready for the BS!

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As the summer season and record-high temperatures begin to wind down, it’s that time of the year again for those folks living near colleges and universities. You know…THAT time of the year. The time of the year when college students move on to campus or into houses around the campus. The time of the year when two or three neighbors get MAD at this process and start bitching and complaining. In other words, it’s the time of the year when logic stands still.

What do I mean? As one of my old college professors used to say, “You don’t live next to the community pool and complain about the swimming!” I’ve been in and around the Monmouth University area for some 9 years now and each Fall semester the same mind-boggling phenomenon takes place: the people who live in the area around the school year-round are amazed that college students are moving into the same rental house that has been used for college housing for the last 25 years. And “it” begins. What is “it?” This is when the otherwise normal local people start calling the police for everything under the sun.

Last September I had friends moving into a house with their parents present helping to move furniture and the cops were called because the family car was idling on the street as the family moved boxes out of the car. Think about that. Some complete low-life is sitting in his or her house (in this case “her”) and watching every move you make – even the simple act of taking a box out of a car!!! Talk about creepy. And since some of you might be wondering, that house never had the police come back to it because there was never a need (no wild and crazy parties, kids pissing on the front lawn, loud noise, or any other stereotypical BS nonsense). So I hope that neighbor was happy with themselves – they called the police to tell their “neighbors” to move their car because, frankly, they would have looked like complete assholes if they asked this kid’s parents to move the car.

If you’re going to Monmouth University next week…get ready for it. The locals around here love stirring the pot. At the same time, don’t be a moron and be a bad neighbor. No one wants you moving into their neighborhood for 9 months if you’re going to be out of control mental patients. Act like normal human beings and then when these crazy locals treat you like LESS than a human being, you can call them out for it (which I’ve done on a few occasions). And don’t expect logic to play a role in their arguments, either. I went back and forth with a local guy via the local newspaper’s Op-Ed page once. My argument was based around the fact that the university has been in existence since 1933 and this guy knew what he was getting into when he moved directly down the street from it. Do you know what his cockamamie response was?

He bought his house is the 1980’s and the school only “officially” became a university in 1994 – so he has been in the area longer. Think about this – the buildings, professors, students, curriculum, etc. was all the same on one day…then the “college” became a “university” and apparently that reset the clock in this bozo’s head. Moron.

Well, now that I’m completely off track it’s probably a good time to end! Here’s hoping that the incoming college students don’t have to deal with insanity at the local level and that the local people act in good faith, so long as their new neighbors act in good faith.