Two things that happened in the last 24 hours have made me stop and think about how absurd my job of the last 16 plus years as Executive Director of the Tenant Resource Center has become . . . and makes me wonder how much worse it will get.
BACKGROUND
I love my job. I think what we do is valuable. I only get paid $45K a year after 16 years and people think I am crazy and am not doing enough with my law degree. I disagree – tho being paid more would not be turned away! More bothersome is, I have no retirement paid by the Tenant Resource Center (I kinda have my own plan), but I do have decent health insurance. Our budget has fluctuated during the time I have been here from $85K – $360K. We’ve added programs (mediation, 800 number, Milwaukee office, Housing Help Desk, campus office, Housing Crisis Fund, seminars, outreach, brochure series, website, etc.) and we’re have had to cut back on some (Milwaukee office, 800# and campus office which has come and gone more than once.) My hours have fluctuated from working 32 hours a week to 80 hours a week. One week, I even worked 100 hours! I’ve had one staff person at 15 hours a week to 10 or 11 staff people working for me. I’ve hired lots of people who come and go and had to fire and lay off people. We’ve always relied on volunteers and they are what makes our organization run! We get creative and work with several programs, including having W-2 participants work with us. We also rely heavily on our regular donors that attend and sponsor our spring and fall events and we would not have survived all these years without them! They are what help us plug the gaps when the funders fluctuate. We really rely on the community to keep our doors open. Running a non-profit is a constant roller-coaster ride. It’s a constant challenge to stay true to your mission and do what you think needs to be done vs. follow the money and what the funders think needs to be done because you need the money to keep the staff. In the end, I like my job. It challenges me constantly, sometimes I feel burned out, sometimes I’m energized. Mostly I worry a lot but feel confident we will figure things out, no matter what gets thrown at us. But it seems, the hardest challenges of my 16 plus year lay ahead . . . funding cuts or stagnant funding while costs go up, increasing needs and a growing county, more difficult problems people are facing, and a workforce with fluctuating skills for the lower wages we pay. Anyways, one to my two stories about the absurdity of this job . . .
CONVERSATION WITH THE MAYOR
Yesterday a group of non-profits met with the mayor (if you work in a non-profit and want to join the group, let me know!) to talk about our potential role in the Neighborhood Resource Teams that the city has. The conversation was exciting, the mayor demonstrated that he understands the value of our work and had a vision for how we could help on the prevention end of things to stop some of the issues he sees throughout the city. We talked for an hour, but I’m guessing we could have had a great conversation for yet another hour or two. Several people were excited about the opportunities we had in front of us and ideas about what could be done . . . and here it comes . . . BUT . . .
But. We don’t have the resources to participate in the way we would like to. We don’t have the staff hours to spare to help create community solutions. We don’t have the ability to even get the work done we are doing now. We have waiting lists of people to get to, administrative needs that take up our time, emergencies that come up, staffing gaps to fill, etc. etc. etc.
ABSURDITY #1: We finally have a mayor who understands, a role we can play to effectively help our community and because of what has happened to us in the last 10 years, we can’t do it.
Ok, that’s not to say that we won’t find a way, but we won’t do it to the best of our ability if we had the resources to appropriately give to it. It’s a great vision, lots of opportunities, expertise to really make a difference to make this community great . . . but.
CONVERSATION WITH THE COUNTY FUNDERS
Today is the day the non-profits are getting the calls to find out if they are getting cuts from the county. My call came about an hour ago. We currently get $104,490. We will now be getting $85,000. And you’d think I’d be panicking about that, right? Well, I’m not as upset as you might think. Here’s why.
In 1998 we got $98K from the county to run our programs (mediation for people outside the City of Madison, housing counseling for people outside the city of Madison and the Housing Help Desk, including the housing crisis fund). In 2011, we got $99,490 to run those same programs, plus $5,000 to help with eviction prevention. (We have requests for over $1,000,000 in eviction prevention every year. Yes, 1 million dollars.) Obviously wages, health care costs, the cost of paper and everything else went up during that time. We also ended up having to pay rent to the county, get our own copiers (we used to use theirs), pay for our phones (used to be free), etc, etc, so the county took away $8K in support of the program so we really were getting less money than before to do the same thing. My accountant never lets me forget that it actually takes over $140,000 to run the program and funding really runs out 3/4 of the way through the year. Plus the fundraising we do for the Housing Crisis Fund could be going to our overhead and staff costs. Obviously, we can’t keep doing this.
Details will need to be worked out, but I think the Housing Crisis Fund will go away (yes, that is very painful to me) and we will cut back our office hours at the Dane County Job Center (defeating the purpose of a one stop shop, also painful). But, we will cut our services back to the point where we can manage them, do them well and the county will actually be paying for the services instead of so much of our fundraising efforts going into the program. We need those funds to make up elsewhere and support all of our other rising costs that aren’t covered by funders.
ABSURDITY #2 – Sometimes a funding cut, may be more efficient as long as we can do less services to go with that cut.
CONCLUSION
I’m glad its Friday. I still have to go to the Majestic tonight for a TRC sponsored event, possibly table at Orton Park tomorrow or Sunday and have volunteers coming in Sunday night to help with a mailing, but at least I’ll get a little break somewhere in there!
And Monday, I start over again. Good thing I like my job, as absurd as it is!
