Walking the Talk

I wrote this essay for Salt Lake City Weekly, printed in their weekly paper as the cover story and published online on December 16, 2021. Download a copy of the issue here, and read the piece online here.

Despite Utahns needing social services more than ever during a pandemic, nonprofit organizations are in crisis.

A survey conducted by the Utah Nonprofits Association (UNA) and released in May 2021 claims the 121 organizations that participated saw a 37% decline in staffing levels from 2019 to 2021—alongside an estimated 40% decrease in revenue—despite a 74% increase in demand for their services. The UNA report on the survey results included testimonials from nonprofit executives, who described feeling burnout from trying and failing to meet community needs.

"This perfect storm of increased demand, reduced funding and staff cuts as a result of COVID-19 and its accompanying economic crisis left nonprofits scrambling to provide critical services to society's most vulnerable populations," the report stated. "Cutting both staff and services in a time of increased demand creates ongoing and far-reaching consequences."

As the myth of a widespread labor shortage has been recontextualized as a "Great Resignation"—with workers refusing to return to their jobs over low wages and toxic working conditions, or being unable to because of health concerns or lack of childcare—it's worth digging further than the UNA survey. Is economic fallout from the pandemic truly the root cause for why organizations positioned to support communities through crisis are struggling?

The roughly 100-year history of philanthropy shows that nonprofits were originally created for the wealthy to supplement social services where the government fell short, but soon became another outlet for the affluent to accumulate wealth through businesses that harm our communities—tax free.

The contradictions between a nonprofit's charitable mission and the individuals who fill its board and direct the budget suggests the crisis is historical, systemic and one of values, leadership and imagination—all exacerbated by the pandemic.

The experiences of five former Utah Pride Center employees filing a lawsuit against the organization provides evidence and anecdotes for this dynamic. Their story—along with my own experiences working with community organizations locally and across the country over the past decade—raises questions that should be asked of those making urgent appeals for donation dollars this giving season. Starting with this one: In a world where economic, racial and gender inequality has grown wider, and climate change catastrophes more frequent, what needs to change for these organizations—and most importantly, the communities they serve—to withstand these all-too-predictable "perfect storms"?

Crisis of Values

In 2020, as pandemic lockdowns were imposed across the world, the nonprofit Utah Pride Center (UPC) laid off half its 25-person staff, including Brim Wachendorf, Liz Pitts, bek Birkett, Michael Bryant, and my friend and fellow community organizer, Hillary McDaniel.

"This downsizing is happening as a result of COVID-19's impact on our funding streams," UPC's then-CEO Rob Moolman told Q Salt Lake at the time, "out of an abundance of caution for the finances and long-term future of the Center."

The group of five former employees has since filed a lawsuit against the Utah Pride Center claiming wrongful termination, discrimination, and retaliation. Each of them had previously raised concerns about nepotism, discrimination and potential mismanagement of funds with Moolman, who resigned in July of 2021. These complaints and others were made by more than a dozen employees, many of them investigated and corroborated by The Salt Lake Tribune in an article published in June of 2020.

"The excuse that our roles were terminated because of COVID is ridiculous," Wachendorf said, who was laid off in April 2020 along with Pitts, "because all of our roles were the ones that specifically, outside of therapy and health insurance, contributed directly to bringing funds into the [Pride] center."

McDaniel said that before the layoffs, everyone who was fired had offered to take pay cuts and were told it wouldn't be necessary to cut staff at the start of the pandemic because the UPC had "put money away." When the center later received a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan from the federal government—shortly after the first wave of staff cuts—employees, including Bryant and McDaniel, questioned why those laid off weren't given back their jobs. They too were then put on the chopping block in June 2020 along with Birkett, who had been advocating for increased financial transparency.

I met McDaniel in 2018, months before they were hired at the Pride Center. That year, McDaniel was serving as the volunteer entertainment director for the Pride Festival, which they said was the first time they realized the UPC wasn't walking the talk on its mission and values.

At the time, a wave of community campaigns was spreading across the country, protesting corporate sponsors and police presence at Pride parades and demanding an end to "rainbow-washing"—or the performative support for the queer community while continuing practices and policies that disproportionately harm LGBTQ+ folks.

When McDaniel found out that Wells Fargo would be joining the parade—a financial institution mired in controversy over its funding of the Dakota Access Pipeline and allegations of discriminatory lending practices—they pulled organizers aside and decided to lead the charge on pressuring Moolman and the UPC board to take divestment seriously.

"I knew there were enough people on the inside who were realizing 'there's more of us than them'," McDaniel said. "Sometimes that creates a spark of hope that we can create change, so we started having conversations."

McDaniel reached out to a handful of queer friends—including myself—with a proposal to launch a petition and disrupt the Pride Parade. We named our campaign "Queers Divest."

"We're just moving this conversation out from behind closed doors because there was no progress being made," McDaniel told City Weekly in 2018. "There were maybe some people nodding their heads, but no one was doing anything."

In addition to demands for the UPC to divest from Wells Fargo and Chase Bank—and revoke their entries in the Pride Parade—the petition called on the center to re-examine the diversity of its board of directors and the process for appointing board members. A letter announcing the petition suggested that "a history of trading board positions for donations coupled with closed-door practices serves to maintain a disturbing culture of white supremacy, colonialism, classism and ableism within the center."

The letter—or perhaps the media attention around the letter—brought Moolman to the table with Queers Divest, and an agreement was made to give petitioners a free parade entry ahead of Wells Fargo and Chase Bank, with UPC leadership committing to make changes to the center's funding structure.

Moolman marched with Queers Divest in the parade, though he did not participate in the intermittent "die-in" demonstrations (in which participants lie on the ground, as if dead) that were performed every 20 minutes or so, forcing the companies and organizations behind to stop.

"One of my roles as executive director is to make sure I am listening constantly and trying to learn more about the important issues that affect both our communities and other marginalized groups, and to try to understand practical ways we should, or could, step in," Moolman told City Weekly at the time. He also said that making the UPC board more diverse was a "tricky" question.

"What does diversity look like that is not tokenism?" Moolman asked.

Months later, during a town hall event at East High School, Moolman said the Pride Center couldn't immediately walk away from its funding sources due to the services they paid for, but he committed to a three-year plan to divest from conflicts of interest.

Those conflicts included donations from Jane Marquardt, a co-founder of Equality Utah and the vice president of Management and Training Corporation (MTC)—a private prison company that also builds and maintains migrant detention centers—and L3Harris, which contracts with the Department of War to create surveillance technologies and other defense products.

UPC's most recent annual report lists both Marquardt and L3Harris as donors, along with Wells Fargo and other questionable funding sources. But conflicts of interest are not limited to the UPC, Salt Lake City, the COVID pandemic or even the current century.

"[Since the Revenue Act of 1913] wealthy individuals and families can receive tax deductions by diverting their financial assets into private foundations ...[which are] only required to disburse 5% of their assets annually," a report by Justice Funders states. "The remaining 95% can be invested in companies—including those that cause social, economic and environmental degradation—to maximize profit and further accumulate wealth."

"Are our souls worth the money we make from the human cost of war? How can we sleep at night?" asked my friend Luis Miranda in a recent op-ed in The Salt Lake Tribune that highlighted donations made by war profiteer Northrop Grumman to the University of Utah, Utah State University and United Way of Salt Lake—Northrop also contributes to the UPC.

Instead of expecting a "thank you" and applause at the next gala, Justice Funders asks, how might philanthropists courageously tell the truth about the harm done to communities through their businesses? How can they build and repair relationships in ways that shift power imbalances, giving unrestricted money and land back directly to the communities they've exploited to gain their wealth?

Crisis of Leadership

"Being a part of the [queer] community, many of us worked here because we knew how important these services were," said McDaniel, whose first interaction with the Pride Center was as a community member seeking mental health support. Though Moolman and most executive staff identified as LGBTQ+, McDaniel said "community members had to be sneaky about helping other queer people."

One such incident was described in the aftermath of a Latter-Day Saints church leader making transphobic remarks during the faith's General Conference. Wachendorf, who was responsible for posting to social media for the UPC, drafted a response and discussed it with Bryant, then-UPC community development manager, who added a fundraising request to the outgoing statement.

"We knew it was a time-sensitive thing, so we went ahead and posted it because [Moolman] couldn't be found, even though he liked to have the final say on everything," Wachendorf said. Instead, they turned to Pitts for approval, then-community engagement director.

"I knew it was going to ruffle some feathers," Pitts said, "but I knew it was the exact right message to send from this organization."

According to the group, when Moolman saw the post, he thought it was too directly critical of the LDS Church. Rather than turning to Wachendorf, who was attempting to make their case, he "aggressively cornered" Bryant. Wachendorf and Bryant both identify as gender non-binary, but Wachendorf believes this was one of many moments where their identities were invisibilized and power imbalances were created based on gender presentation—Wachendorf being seen as a woman, Bryant as a man.

"I want to say 'abuse.' I faltered, thinking, 'abuse is a strong word,' and then I realized it was abusive behavior," Wachendorf said. "It was something that we had to endure from the people with the final say of things—on and on and on. And the fact that it was coming from the absolute top of our organization meant that we had no one to turn to, no one to protect us."

The former employees described another moment shortly after the pandemic when Bryant suggested the center start a food bank. "Despite lots of pushback, Michael persisted," says Pitts.

The media was invited to report on the shift in strategy, and the group described Moolman conducting interviews—despite being one of the people pushing back against the idea—and asking the staff to undo the work of storing heavy boxes of food, without offering to help, in order to stage photos for the press.

"It speaks so much to the dichotomy between working-class and wealthy employees," Birkett said. "We didn't have empowerment in leadership."

"[It was] really apparent to me that some people genuinely cared about the whole community, some people treated it like a piggy bank and some people treated it like a social club," said Bryant.

Other Salt Lake organizations have similarly struggled to make space for employees with lived experience inside the communities they serve. Prior to the pandemic, Abram Sherrod worked as a program director for an organization whose mission he described as aiming "to change the world, by starting in our local communities that need it most." But leadership was so far removed from those marginalized communities, he said, that program objectives never matched the needs on the ground.

"[A staff that] was predominantly upper middle class, heterosexual and mainly Christian did not reflect the communities we served," Sherrod said. "I believe that the lack of diversity among its staff, especially in leadership positions, crippled the organization's ability to execute their core functions."

Sherrod also thinks a hierarchical leadership structure was detrimental to their work: "If [the organization] was more egalitarian in its decision making," he said, "it would have a larger collective impact."

Forbes reported in February 2020—one month before COVID-19 reached pandemic levels—that the voluntary, annual turnover rate for employees at nonprofit organizations was 19%, outpacing the annual all-industry average of 12%. The reasons cited included workers being underpaid, overworked and under poor management.

Crisis of Imagination

There are no fresh quotes from Moolman in this piece, and no comments from Pride Center board members or Stacey Jackson-Roberts, the center's new CEO.

The UPC board chair directed questions regarding litigation to the center's lawyers, and cc'd Jackson-Roberts to discuss the future and goals of the pride center. But Jackson-Roberts, in turn, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

"I'm not out to 'get' anyone," I said in one of my attempts to arrange an interview. "My hope is to draw attention to systemic issues ...[and] tease out the paradox many of us are finding ourselves in of wanting to do good in the world within a broken system."

And it is indeed a paradox: Earlier this year, I worked on a project gathering paid and volunteer community organizers across the country to talk through these challenges and outline how our work could include "wellness strategies" to sustain us and our communities. Roughly 50 people responded with concrete operational shifts—like four-day work weeks, health care for chosen family, child-care support and unlimited time off—along with cultural ideals, using words like "connectedness," "thoughtfulness," and being "human" together.

What shifts in values will it take for community organizations to create an internal culture of care? How might integrating those values into their operations and strategies for service increase their capacity to meet the needs of the community? And what kind of leadership and structure does an organization need for those values to become ever-evolving agreements with the communities they serve?

Pitts said she has tried to model her own leadership style after Carol Gnade, who originally hired her at UPC and left the Pride Center in 2018. According to Pitts, Gnade lifted the organization by expecting every employee to succeed and helping them to grow into their roles.

"There are leaders everywhere, it has nothing to do with our title or position," Pitts said.

So how are organizations redefining leadership and supporting leaders from the communities they serve? How are they engaging community members in decision-making processes that increase their capacity to think critically, collaborate and build trust with one another? How might these shifts lead to more self-organized communities that can rely on each other during crises?

When I ask what a future for the UPC should look like, Pitts points to "simple" logistics. "A Pride center should be open seven days a week," she said. "The people who work at a Pride center need to be outside the walls of the building, need to be in the community doing the work that needs to happen. There needs to be street outreach, really cognizant recognition that there are people right here who do not have their basic needs met."

Operating at the whim of wealthy philanthropists with questionable values is clearly not effective in allowing community organizations to carry out their mission. What if leaders had the courage to create mutual accountability in their philanthropic partnerships? Would their strategies get more creative and values-driven, out of an abundance of imagination? How might those strategies contribute to creating more sustainable economies that can care for us all and weather any storm?

"All the money wasted by the nonprofit industrial complex, things they throw away—time, money, resources, people—what could we do with that bucket?" asks McDaniel. "That's the bucket I want. We're going to take the things this system has discarded or forgotten about and build a better system."

Opportunity to Change

I asked the group of former UPC employees why they're pursuing a lawsuit if they believe the whole system's broken.

"I don't believe accountability, in this case, is going to happen," says McDaniel. "Maybe by me speaking up and banding together with other people who are wounded, there can be some collective healing between us."

Pitts also doesn't believe the UPC has the capacity to change at this time. "I started thinking, 'how will I have accountability?'" Pitts said. "I'm going to continue to be a queer activist and a leader in this community, so how am I going to do a better job?"

I don't have answers to all of the questions posed here, and the issues aren't limited to nonprofits—I've experienced them in for-profit and volunteer community groups led by people across the spectrum of identities. But my hope is that we can gather together in our respective communities to talk about them, experiment, fail, try again and share stories about what we're learning along the way.

Because there's one thing I do know, that organizer and educator Mariame Kaba said best: "Nothing we do that is worthwhile is done alone." For me, that includes surviving, and with some love and hope, maybe even thriving through this unrelenting perfect storm.

"I feel like we're all part of something really world changing and critical and so important, so I'm not going to give up. I'll take breaks," said Pitts.

If you have stories to share for a future piece about Utah-based organizations that are reimagining community care and social change, please reach out to movementbuildingmedicine@gmail.com.