Has Low Pay Affected Your View Of The Nonprofit Sector?

Helping to save the world is without a doubt rewarding work, but is it worth the mental toll and stress from not being able to care for yourself that comes with it?

 A recent article I read in The Billfold discusses how emotional reward doesn't pay the bills. This issue of nonprofit employees not being paid enough has always been a tough discussion. It's difficult for nonprofit workers to justify wanting pay that is somewhat similar to their for-profit counterparts when their organizations might not have enough money to solve the issues they're working on. Then there are the opinions of people from outside of the sector who believe that nonprofits and their employees must make do with bare minimum in order to truly be doing everything they can for their causes.

When you think about it though, is this really the most efficient way to go about saving the world? Or are we just creating another issue by forcing nonprofit workers to lead unnecessarily stressful lives?

Some argue that the added stress from not being able to live comfortably affects the ability for nonprofit employees to do their jobs, thus, causing the whole organization to perform less efficiently than it could be and, in return, actually harming their work towards their cause. Another argument, which is a little more straight-forward, is that nonprofit workers are living, working human beings, the same as for-profit workers, who deserve to be able to live their lives with the dignity of not having to worry about being able to pay their bills each month. Popp directly touches on this in The Billfold article when she explains, "What actually unraveled me was that even after all my resources had been spent providing comfort for others, I still couldn’t provide it for myself."

By Jake Chatt