>But I still don't know why - if this is the case - why people who are still employed/working full time, getting their regular paycheck, just working from home, would feel the need to stop whatever domestic services they had in place.
Because there's a pandemic going on and they don't want outside people in their house? Also, some of these services are now illegal in many cities including SF (Child/adult/senior care is still allowed. I'm assuming cleaners aren't.)
I've had 9 in 4.5 years. 3 were from me choosing to switch teams. All others were moves within 500ft to adjust for growing teams.
Why do you think it's a big deal to switch desks every 6 months or so? My company does the move for me, so all I have to do is put my few things in a box and label it (and my computer stuff). Takes 30 minutes tops.
> I see big problems with this type of arrangement - you raise ten dollars while spending five thousand on the event itself. Yet you will call this a charity event?
This reminds me of when people complain about charities paying their CEO well.
Would you rather pay a CEO $100k to bring in $1million in charity funds, or pay a CEO $1million to bring in $5million in charity funds?
Same here. Would you rather run a successful event that brings in $5k in charity funds, or an event run by amateurs who end up bringing in $1k in charity funds?
There's an argument to be made about transparency, and organizations that take all this too far (90+% is clearly too much), but end results matter.
>Would you rather pay a CEO $100k to bring in $1million in charity funds, or pay a CEO $1million to bring in $5million in charity funds?
Personally I'd rather pay five CEOs $100k each to bring in $5million, than one CEO double that for the same net effect.
There is only so much money people will give to charity in a given year. It's entirely possible that the larger charities with higher expense ratios starve out smaller charities that are more efficient at spending the money the receive, so the net effect is worse.
That's assuming the five CEOs aren't going to go after the same $1million each. A more talented CEO might be able to bring in new streams of money.
Y'all are bringing up a ton of hypotheticals that don't matter to my main point: Talent costs money. The optimal end result may end up spending a lot of money on that talent to bring in the most amount of money.
This includes hiring an agency to run a fun run (the original scenario) when having it be run by amateurs might end up with it failing for a million reasons (low turnout, insufficient staffing, etc).
And yet that argument is never made to justify paying line-workers more. Non-profits often pay regular workers less than public sector or private sector jobs because "the mission is the reward". Shouldn't the same apply to non-profit leadership?
>And yet that argument is never made to justify paying line-workers more.
This isn't an argument to "justify paying the leadership more". That's backwards. This is an argument to say that when you're a board member trying to fill a leadership role, it might be worth it to spend a good amount of money to bring in people who would otherwise never take the role.
If you want a line-worker argument, it's similar to when people start trying to outsource software work to cheap firms and are then surprised when the results aren't satisfactory. Bring in line workers (software workers in this case) who cost more but are better and you might have better end results.
You shouldn't just pay the outsourcing firm more money and expect better results. In the same way you shouldn't "justify paying the leadership more", you should find leadership who are worth more money.
In both cases, it's possible you find the holy grail of someone wiling to work for the cause for little money and are also talented, but it's much more difficult.
I never said "little money". Leadership roles signify high status, so you have to pay an upper-middle-class or upper class salary for the area.
But is it not fair to assume that nearly everyone who cares more about the money and is talented enough to take a leadership role, has already gone to the private sector? A desirable CEO candidate determined to stay in the non-profit world is far more likely to look at whether the org excites them, than how much it's paying (again, as long as it's an upper-middle to upper class salary).
For line workers it really may just be a paycheck.
Talent may cost money, and there are a few highly sought after precious examples of those people, but the world is swarming with parasites with absolutely no talent but lots of social standing they want to maintain by being seen as acting charitably (like Trump's failsons), desperately competing with each other to con you out of your money, and that's what you usually end up with.
In principle a competent CEO who truly brings in "novel" money to a charity more than a cheap one is worth it. Note my use of the word Novel above because it is to differentiate between money a charity makes by just poaching money that would have gone to some charity anyways from money that would not be spent philanthropically otherwise.
If Robin Mahfood can justify his 400k CEO paycheck for "Food for Poor" (real name and number) and also promise that all the new money he brought in was actually money that would have been squandered otherwise, then Robin Mahfood is indeed a worthwhile expenditure. I doubt that's the case most of the time, though.
Nevertheless, these might not be comparable scenarios anyways - an expensive CEO might atleast make financial sense if not a moral one. It's just a stretch to say a very low margin charity event is even a financially viable event, and hopefully your million dollar CeO can see that and avoid it for his charity.
> charity makes by just poaching money that would have gone to some charity anyways
No, “money going to charities” is not all one bucket. A huge chunk of charities are incompetent or are just stupid ideas to begin with. It’s better for 70% of my donation to go to a competent charity than 90% to a pointless one, even if that 20% difference is going to the CEO.
Checkout givewell.org to learn about the importance of picking good charities. It is critical to poach charity money from bad charities.
How are they going to raise the money, does the one raising $5M blindly do so by enlisting a third party to pay poverty wages to young people to con pensioners out of their money (usual way is to trick them in to signing a monthly payment when they think they're paying a one-off [to get rid of the annoying person invading their home]) on the doorstep?
Do CEOs only act competently for immoral sums of money?
How about the CEO does an honest days work, raises what they can without defrauding people and gets paid at most, say, 3 times the median salary of everyone employed by the organisation?
There's a good chance that even if the CEO is honest and completely above board all they're doing is stopping other charities getting money. That is, splitting the pot differently. So, perhaps the $100k is far better - was overall the charity sector gets more to spend on charitable aims.
100k may be better for the overall charitable sector, but its worse for this particular charity. It's the tragedy of the commons. It's a well-studied problem, and there's no non-centralized solution to that problem.
My wife worked for a non-profit theater (12 million/year budget, 4 million from donations, 8 million from ticket sales. Most of the donations are from major donors - 5K and more.) Its 'CEO' was the best-paid person in the theater, paid ~230k/year. The stagehands, who were making ~$25/hour would grouse non-stop about how much he was paid. From what I know of him, and his job, (mostly fundraising), I am almost positive that he was a profit center for the theater. If he left three months from now, their financials would not improve.
Now, it's entirely possible that someone else in his position, who would take the job for $130,000/year, and would raise as much, or more money. Or maybe someone else would raise even more money, and expect $500,000/year.
I think that for that particular theater, they'd probably be wrong to fire their CEO, if their goal was to cut costs.
I can't say anything about your fraud or conning comments. Obviously that's bad, and I worry that you're arguing in bad faith by bringing that up.
My main point is that being the leader of a large organization that brings in lots of money is a skill that is highly sought after. If you want to attract that kind of person then you'll have to pay for it, or find the 1 in [some large number of people] that has both the skills needed and the willingness to work for much lower than the rest of the market would pay them.
Frankly non-profits and for-profits are usually not competing for the same CEO pool. And for non-profit leadership, compensation should not be a motivating factor - assuming they're already paid enough to live an upper-class lifestyle in their area. The mission of charity should be what matters.
Are they over priced? They're cheaper than Sennheiser or Bose at $159. They have a value-prop of having their own, better, wireless protocol that works flawlessly with iOS. And people seem to like the form factor.
One screw up isn't going to keep me away, as I've had mostly good experiences with Airbnb.
Is it worth a one time screw up of $200 for my years of positive experiences? For me, yes.
If the ratio of positive to negative experiences starts going down, I'll be finding other ways to vacation.
Likewise, if a grocer messes up once, but I've been going to them for years without issue, I'm going to let it go. If it starts happening more often? I'll look for other ways to get my groceries.
(Side note: I've been booking more hotels recently. But that has to do with cost and convenience mostly, not false listings or false cleaning fees or anything else like that).
But your example is only if you only boulder indoors. Costs add up quickly if you want to move outdoors and want the flexibility to do a variety of climbs.
You can easily have a couple thousand dollars in gear.
Harness $70
Belay device $20-150
Rope $150+ (possibly multiple)
Quickdraws $10-14 each, you probably want a dozen or so.
Some slings
Some carabiners
That'll get you outside and working on bolted routes.
Then you get into climbs that don't have man made bolts that you can clip into (trad climbing).
Each piece of protection at this level costs $60-80 new, and you'll probably want like 10 of them at least.
Yes and no. You can go a long time with very little gear.
I have a pretty nice trad rack, but most of the time I could get by with shoes, harness, belay device, etc. just because I'm typically climbing with other folks.
If you're learning to climb, then you really don't need the equipment beyond personal stuff at all because your partners will have it.
Like, I haven't had to use my rack for about the last 3 months just because the guy I was climbing with liked his better.
Not to mention that I have cams in my rack from the 90s... a lot of this stuff lasts a very long time and has a reasonable used market.
IME, it is way cheaper than, say, lift-serviced skiing or golfing.
It's like anything else, you could spend a lot. You could also live in your car and still afford to do this stuff.
Tools don't exist in a vacuum. When a tool is a closed platform driven by a business, that business is going to heavy-handidly steer how the tool is used.
It isn’t always socially appropriate to friend request people, which is why I rarely do it (because I have no idea what the other person’s expectations are). If I’ve been introduced to a total stranger via Messenger, I don’t necessarily want to (nor should I have to) be their “friend” just to have them see my messages.
Yes and no. Ultimately, any space issue can be solved with enough money, so yes. But space usually isn't easily expanded. My company has the 7th floor of a 10-floor building. When we hire people as we've been doing, we can either fit them into the existing space somehow, or... move the entire office? Rent space on the floor above or below? It isn't as easy as just "spend a bit more money, get a bit more space," so no.
Ultimately, when they moved into this building, they spent quite a bit more than they needed to for the entire floor, knowing they expected to grow. Now they're cramming people in too closely and will probably have to move to a larger building in the future. In the meantime, however...
So yeah, it's a space issue first and foremost, and a money issue only secondarily.
>When we hire people as we've been doing, we can either fit them into the existing space somehow, or... move the entire office?
Yes. Exactly.
My office did it with 0 days down time combining 3 separate locations spread out around a city downtown. We labeled our stuff on Friday, a company was contracted to make sure on Monday our stuff would be in a new office, and it was.
It's a money issue through and through, until the lost productivity is greater than the cost to move, more people get crammed in. Simple as that.
So for every new hire at your company, you pack up on a Friday and unpack on a Monday? Do you only hire on one day a year, or sign week-long leases, rather than year-long leases?
No, that's silly. You lease a building bigger than you need today, and then when you fill it up you either pause hiring or start cramming people in until your lease is up and you can move.
Or, I guess you can set money on fire and break lease after lease after lease, but I think there's no way around the fact that this is a space issue first and foremost, with money providing a way to mitigate/solve space issues.
In what way is this a valid response to what I said?
We moved into a building bigger than our current size yes... so?
You don't fill up overnight.
Do you hire people on a coin flip? Or make up open positions when it tickles someone's fancy?
We were hiring at an incredible rate, but never got to the point of being actively detrimental to our space because once that was barely in sight, we started to move.
It's a valid response because you seem to be denying any factors other than money, which is ridiculous.
I've mentioned lease terms as one major counter-example. It is not enough to lease "larger than you need right now," but given 12-month standard lease terms, you must lease "larger than you will need one year from now," which isn't a factor of money alone.
We had that problem at a different company (lease start actually, being a little far out) and opened a temporary office for 2 months.
There is literally no situation where any moderately competent company is forced to cram people closer than normal except to save money. Even "normal" is defined by money.
Heck, even an incompetent company can pay a competent company figure it out for them.
Office/Commercial space is usually leased on much longer intervals than 1 year. It has to be or it would make no sense to complete the necessary renovations.
yes it's easy to move when everything is sorted, but it's not quick to get to that point - it's potentially months going from "we need more space" to moving day.
finding the space, contracts, fit outs - it's not a one-day task
Not nearly enough tea in their tea bags. Here they were the first to reduce the weight of packs, and it hurt their blends. Hotels seem to like Twinings for some reason. Find a way to sneak an extra tea bag into the mug or pot. ;)
Their loose leaf are decent enough blends, but increasingly uncommon here.
Because there's a pandemic going on and they don't want outside people in their house? Also, some of these services are now illegal in many cities including SF (Child/adult/senior care is still allowed. I'm assuming cleaners aren't.)