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I got involved with a local youth centre years ago -- I was running a community radio station at the time and was encouraging other local groups to start doing shows, including this youth centre, and they offered me a seat on the board of directors -- and quickly realized that it wasn't exactly being run in an open and aboveboard way.
Nothing HORRIBLY serious, but a lot of petty and slightly criminal things going unremarked and unnoticed. The board was mostly friends and relatives of the Centre's director, so they'd kind of fallen into a do-whatever rubber-stamp-it mentality that shocked the heck out of me at first. Questionable hires, misreporting things to get more revenue out of the government, a lot of low-level dickering that definitely wasn't honest but wasn't high seas piracy, either... dirty enough that I felt compromised, but not dirty enough that I felt that bringing the youth center down over it (which certainly would have happened) felt warranted either.
Then the director became gravely ill and had to leave the post abruptly and everything changed anyway, so I never had to take my convictions to the wall. I have no idea what I would have wound up doing.
But having worked in some community orgs and had board seats on others, I can say that when you're working in a non-profit, it's easy to feel that you're "off the grid" as far as society goes. You have to scrounge for funding by applying and re-applying for grants, holding fundraisers, running everything on a shoestring. There's a real feeling of camaraderie and purpose at first, but I think if you get the same people in that situation for too long, they begin to feel that (a) their 'sacrifices' give them moral permission to break rules and cut corners as they see fit, and (b) since they're scrapping for survival anyway, they can ignore those pesky laws and surround themselves with people loyal to "the cause."
And to be fair, sometimes you get boards full of creaky old yes-people because nobody else is around. Sometimes the manager has to ask their best friend to take a board seat, because it's the only way to get to quorum, and then a year later, well, your cousin is free on Tuesdays and you're having a hard time getting that other position filled, and over time things just slide. The "Board of Convenience" mentioned in the thread summary.
I've never been in a situation where I felt people were doing wrong with deliberate intent, but plenty where people started taking the easy way through things and cutting corners and felt very threatened and insulted when people dared to question them. Because they had sacrificed so much for the cause. An outsider telling them to clean up their act just didn't get how things really worked. And so on.
It's tough, dude. I feel for you. But hopefully you're not up against nasty people, just people that have put a lot of time and effort into something and have slackened into bad habits... and that feel proprietorship over something they really shouldn't be trying to "own." |
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