Op-Ed: We Committed to Paying Our Staff More Than a Living Wage. Your Nonprofit Should Do the Same.
This op-ed was originally published by the Chronicle of Philanthropy. It is reprinted here with permission.
The rally outside New York City Hall was a familiar scene of speakers and placards decrying the injustice of near-poverty-level wages. The hundreds of workers gathered that day in March demanded a minimum wage of $21 per hour and a 6 percent cost-of-living adjustment — not unreasonable given the cost of living there.
What made this rally different was that the workers were not protesting Amazon or other large corporations. They were nonprofit workers seeking better pay from the food pantries, domestic-violence shelters, and foster-care groups they serve.
In New York State, human-service workers earn only 70 percent of what their counterparts at government agencies are paid — not enough to survive in normal times, let alone during a period of escalating inflation. Given the demographics of the state’s human-service workers — 66 percent women and 68 percent people of color — low nonprofit wages are fueling New York’s poverty and inequality.
The story of low wages for nonprofit employees is not unique to New York. Nationally, nonprofits employ about 10 percent of the entire private workforce. That’s 12 million paid workers — nearly as many …
It’s heartening to see that not all of the noise generated by the 2020 presidential campaign has dissipated in these post-election times.
President Biden pledged last week to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2030 — making good on a big campaign promise and possibly nudging some of us out of the still-skeptical category.
When I think about climate, I think about equity. Low-income people spend more of their paychecks on energy and transportation costs. Those sweet rebates on electric vehicles? They don’t go to people who can’t afford a new car, much less an electric one. As CPR Member Scholar Maxine Burkett notes, environmental degradation creates “sacrifice zones” — and communities of color pay the price. We simply cannot address climate change without addressing racism, and environmental racism in particular.
When I think about climate, I also think about jobs. Jobs that don …
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