Most of my experience is with non-profit orgs, but unlike a lot of people in the NPO space I have a fair amount of for-profit experience. I think people who work for NPOs tend to burn out at even higher rates than people in for-profit orgs because they get emotionally invested in the mission, fail to set reasonable boundaries, and because they typically make less than people who work for for-profit orgs and therefore have more money related stress and fewer resources to deal with stress.

Working for an NPO can be existentially rewarding, but I hear a lot of myths about how NPOs provide better work life balance, etc, and I don't think that's true at all.

I have a theory that a lot of people do things in certain ways in order to keep up appearances. For instance, a lot of startups waste a lot of money on things that are 'business-y' to legitimize themselves as a 'real business'.

To that extent, I find that a lot of NPOs waste a lot of resources appearing 'thrifty' (read: cheap). I've worked with a lot of NPOs that waste tons of employee time and money because they don't want to spend money because of the 'optics'. What this means is that getting anything done takes more time and energy at an NPO.

My specialty is database marketing, and I've literally done thousands of experiments across millions of mailed letters. I've found that for most donors, anything that can make a letter appear 'cheaper' improves response rate and the average donation. Most people interpret similar data as people preferring more 'personalized' letters, but I think that's because there is a lot of overlap between 'low-budget' and 'human touch'.

The irony is that at once place we spent more than three times as much per letter to make them appear cheaper.

This mindset also applies to people who work at non-profit orgs. People would spend 3 days doing stuff by hand rather than paying $100 to have it automated. On a similar note, I was stuck with an ancient Pentium 4 for a long time because the IT department bought them used. They were eventually replaced with Core 2 Duos. They were slow as hell, which was bad enough, but if you did the math the lifetime cost was much higher than buying a new computer due in large part to how much power Pentium 4's used. Not to mention it took them forever to upgrade from CRTs, which use so much more electricity than LCDs.

Thx for sharing these insights. The 'cheap look' of the donation request letters feels to me comparable to those bio-produce where they leave/add some soil on the carrots and potatoes, or the IT startups that love an unfinished industrial look to their office as if they are squatting the place.

Probably for many in the targeted audience the feel of 'authenticity' is important, even when it is manufactured.

Also, just because they are a charity, does not mean that I am, or that I can afford to be. I spend a third of my waking hours working for someone else, which makes the time I spend with my family outside the walls pretty close to non-negotiable, exceptional circumstances notwithstanding.

And when you are someone like me who is precariously employed in an expensive area, you suck it up and get it done :)

>Charities pay for work just like anyone else.

Usually much less than anyone else, though the benefits packages tend to be more generous.