What Every Nonprofit Wishes They Could Say When People Complain about ‘Overhead Expenses’

Who decreed that people who work to help other people should be paid less than people who sell stuff? Where is that written? I can’t find it in any government law or any religious text. In fact, they say the opposite. The Bible says “the worker is worthy of his wages.” An Islamic hadith says to “give the worker his wage before his sweat dries.”

When a person buys a car, surely they know their money doesn’t just pay for the value of the car itself or the person selling it to them. It also pays for the advertising that brought them there, the air conditioning they’re enjoying in the nice cool sales room they’ve been in for three hours and twenty-seven minutes, the donuts, the power that keeps the vending machine cold, the landscaping, and not to mention the fact their brand new car is sparkly clean in spite of having sat outside for months being pelted by dust, debris, leaves, rain, snow, hail, sleet, and ash from the annual fourth of July celebration and the resulting wildfires.

Surely they know that the very high price they just paid for their car would be a lot lower if the car dealership didn’t waste so much money on all those frivolous amenities.

But does anyone complain about the overhead expenses of car dealerships?

For that matter, who complains about the overhead expenses of most businesses? Businesses spend money on everything from free lunches to cushy office chairs to hotel and travel packages. All at their customers’ expense. And the gobs of money they spend on marketing! Why, if they stopped spending so much on marketing, they could slash their prices by 20% instantly.

Of course, that might have problematic aftereffects. Like, they’ll get steamrolled by their competition, because their aisles will be empty of everyone except their most loyal customers who’ve been shopping there since fourth grade.

Business can’t survive without marketing. Everyone gets this. Why would nonprofits be any different? If we don’t market, how will anyone know we exist? If they don’t know we exist, how will they give to support the work we’re doing? Is the work going to happen by itself?

Do people expect us to magically gestate the awareness of our existence inside people’s minds? They’ll just somehow “know” about our great work and want to support us, without any compulsion or messaging at all. Does anything else in the world work like that? Do politicians run for office but spend no money getting their message out? I think there have been a couple court cases about that…because they spend so MUCH.

And what about salaries?

Everyone who works for a business wants higher pay, better benefits, more vacation time – in addition to free lunches at business meetings.

And yet, many of the same people grumble about ‘corruption’ and ‘dishonesty’ when a nonprofit’s volunteer coordinator dares to earn a wage worthy of her considerable talents. “You shouldn’t make so much money. You’re taking it away from the poor people.”

What do you think a typical nonprofit staff person does?

Do we sit in asbestos-infested cardboard boxes holding out tin cans right next to the homeless people we’re working so hard to help?

Do they expect us to work for peanuts, because we just care so much and have tons of time on our hands? Our job is to care. How is that less worthy of good pay than someone whose job is to transcribe court documents or process insurance claims?

Everyone wants teachers to make more money. But aren’t teachers just like nonprofits? Their work doesn’t produce income for the state any more than ours does. Why should a nonprofit staff be expected to barely scrape by? Why should we have to deal with constant turnover and staff upheaval? Why should we be under constant threat of losing our best people because they need to go somewhere else to make more money?

If we have to spend 30% of donations to pay our people what they’re worth – what does it matter? How is that “wasting” donations? By keeping these people – our best and most committed and skilled people – we’re able to do a better job fulfilling a mission most people agree is vital.

If not us, who else is going to do it?

When people generously donate to nonprofits, they’re giving to the mission of that nonprofit. And they should trust us to do the best we can to carry out that mission. Are there some bad actors in the nonprofit world who keep like 90% of donations and barely spend anything on the cause they claim to care about?

Sure. Just like any other industry.

Do any teachers sleep on the job and not care about students? Do any businesses have lousy customer service and make crappy products? Have banks ever driven the economy into the toilet and gotten off scott free? Have lawyers or real estate agents ever lied? (okay dumb question).

And what do we do in those situations? We stop doing business with the bad actors.

What nonprofits want, and what we need, is to not feel so much pressure to keep salaries lower than they should be. The more we make, the more people we’ll help, rivers we’ll clean up, animals we’ll rescue, diseases we’ll cure, victims we’ll encourage, teens we’ll empower, injustices we’ll fight, and difference we’ll make.

We need to be free to use resources as we see fit to accomplish our missions. That means marketing. That means advertising. That means office rents. With furniture. It might even mean the occasional catered lunch meeting.

And maybe, just maybe, it might sometimes mean bonuses.

You got a problem with that?

(Oh, and if you’re on a nonprofit board and you feel pressure to keep salaries and overhead expenses lower than they should be – this one’s for you too).