Return to Sender: [Non-]Profiteering

The problem is this: they can't afford anything after that. Putting on events costs money, and often, every dollar paid in admission to these events goes into paying the overhead. There's nothing leftover to buy new computers, or, sometimes, to buy a new toner cartridge when the copier is running low. The staff at most nonprofits is overextended and underpaid, and the funding for their salaries doesn't usually allow for an annual cost-of-living adjustment. Some of the hardest workers in the city can hardly afford to feed themselves, and you can forget about buying a new winter coat from anywhere other than a thrift store. They have bare-bones health plans that don't permit them to choose their doctors and could leave them in trouble in the case of an actual medical emergency. They will never be able to afford to buy a condo at Symphony House, a building ironically constructed so as to be near the arts. They'll be lucky if they'll be able to buy a place to live at all.

Your stereotypical artist: poor, but vocationally so, and more or less happy despite (or perhaps because of?) it. Well, the poor part is true. The vocational part is only true inasmuch as these are people who want to work in the arts because they feel that they can make in impact there that they couldn't make in a more corporate environment. But believe me: nobody, save for certain religious figures, is vocationally poor. There's not a single person working in a Philadelphia nonprofit (and believe me, we have a lot of them) who doesn't wish that he made more. Those people who take jobs in the arts, knowing that it's not the most fiscally responsible thing to do, may be happy with their positions, but they are not happy that their college loans are quickly accruing interest while they have ramen for dinner for the fourth time this week.

But Jill, you're no doubt asking, can't these nonprofits rectify the situation by writing more grants? Sure, there's grant money to be had, but that can only go so far, salary-wise. And so it becomes a challenge to actually find someone willing to work in the nonprofit world, and those who do don't usually stay for very long. Most of them sell out, go corporate. I've been working in the nonprofit world for more or less the last five years now (save for a nine-month transgression), and the thought has definitely crossed my mind. I know that I can do a lot less work and make a lot more money by answering phones and doing a little light filing. But if everyone who worked in the nonprofit world and had that thought actually acted on the impulse, we'd be in a very, very dark place. No music, no theatre, no dance. None of those festivals that pop up all the time in Philadelphia. Just one big cultural void.

So why the column?

The arts need your help. Go support them. Don't complain about the admission cost. Get a few raffle tickets. Buy some art off the walls if you like it and think you can afford it. Make private donations (they're tax-deductible). The salary I was offered is livable, albeit barely; I'm not asking you to do this so that I can get paid more. I'm asking you to do it so that some people can get paid at all. And so that these organizations that bring so much art and culture to our city don't collapse without them.

Image via Flickr user yomanimus.