2. When you start a series of for-profit ventures to "fund" your not-for-profit ...and you are much more involved in those.
- 3. When getting financial donations has become the vast majority of your effort and time.
- 4. When you become really really good at using race, class and gender discussions to prevent any criticism of what you are doing.
- 5. When your offices are furnished much better then anything your clients will ever own in their entire lifetime.
- 6. When you feed people far worse things then you yourself would ever eat or even give to your dog.
- 7. When that photograph of Billie Holiday is the only heroin addict ever willingly allowed into your presence.
- 8. When you are happy hearing about squatters getting evicted because you can
- get more funding for your housing program.
- 9. When you find yourself thinking or saying that if one more homeless person would freeze to death this winter, your budget for next year would be assured.
- 10. When you leave your office in fear of the people your supposed to be helping.
- 11. When you don't dare to answer the phone that rings at 2 am as it might be one of your clients.
- 12. When you get that rush of fear from coming face to face with your hungry clients out in front of the hotel as you enter your $500 dollar a plate fundraiser.
- 13. When there is debate at your Conference of Homeless Service Agencies as to whether you will feed the homeless you brought in to speak at your banquet.
- 14. When you call the police to have that long-haired bearded guy arrested for trying to teach your clients how fend for themselves for free.
- 15. When you're told to hide the city's free guide to homeless services so that the clients have to come back over and over since your program gets money each time they sign up... and you do it.
- 16. When your donation money is used politically to expand your nonprofit operations, which allows you to pay more pimps’ salaries--that would seem astronomical to the poor they are "serving." To organize the expansion of your nonprofit organization which results in more political clout enabling you to get more public and private donation money.
- 17. When you've served as a shelter director for 20+ [or 10+ or 5+] years and have no real idea where else the homeless could go or what happens to the homeless that you've had to turn away.
- 18. You have to go to extraordinary lengths to keep those who are not poor from seeing what your soup kitchen looks like on a "normal" day.
- 19. When you always, invariably cut services when decisions have to be made between retaining services for the poor or laying off one or two college-educated social workers who own their own home and whose life-partners work.
- 20. When you spend much more of your time making the poor people you "serve" jump through hoops and "hurdles" then actually filling their needs.
- 21. When you spend 20 minutes lecturing a homeless person about not selling goods you provide before giving them the single bus token they need to leave your facility.
- 22. When you admit to having dreams about ways to make being poor as difficult as possible for your clients... and you think some of them are pretty good.
- 23. When your government funded housing program is designed with as many hurdles as possible so that the vast majority of the poor can't qualify, letting you sell the units at market rate.
- 24. When most of the money for your "advocacy " group goes for four star hotels and your staff platinum credit card.
- 25. When you put barbed wire on your shelter fence and use the fear of freezing to lock your clients in at night.
- 26. When you are asked to schedule your soup kitchen's meal times so the homeless are less visible on the street to businessmen...and you do it.
- 27. When you don't care that you tell your homeless clients to call several programs for help, then to call you back despite the fact you know that they don't have 50 cents for the pay phone and you are likely to be out of the office anyway.
- 28. When your advocacy group uses the threat of protests by the people you represent as a way of extorting donation money out of oppressive corporations.... and without getting them to change their policies.
- 29. When you seek [usually white] middle-class prestige college-graduated applicants who have rarely seen and never experienced poverty to manage programs for the homeless rather then promote qualified [usually people of color] ex-homeless already within your organization.
- 30. When you lie, claiming you don't have access to the keys, rather then let the homeless go to the bathroom outside of your shelter's normal hours.
- 31. When you fire any of your employees who criticize the social services industry and your place in it.
- 32. When someone comments on how the numbers are declining at your shelter and the first comment is: "Well, we wouldn't want to be out of a job or anything."
- 33. When your job performance appraisal is tied to your willingness to remove children from the homes of poverty stricken parents.
- 34. When most of your events feature open or cash bars though most of your clients have drug or alcohol problems.
- 35. When you make over one hundred thousand dollars per year as your clients eat out of garbage cans yet you are always grateful when others point out your selflessness.
- 36. When the only decent food donations end up in your freezer and you justify this by saying that there wasn't enough to serve everyone so it might as well serve your holiday guests and not go to waste.
- 37. When you physically attack or permit your employees to attack your clients when they insist on their right to a drink of water.
- 38. When you could care less that a group of large violent men actually run the details of your shelter as you get paid well anyway and it saves you from having to interact with your clients.
- 39. When your collect donation money in order to collect more donation money.
- 40. When your primary concern when entering into anti- poverty coalition activities is who will get the credit.
A Montreal Expos fan paid $2,605 for the last hot dog sold during the team's final home game before being relocated to Washington, DC. Usually if you want to spend that much money on a weenie, you have to make a donation to a political campaign.~Jake Novak
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