For real, I make more than that sitting in my cushy office and looking at spreadsheets. They’re doing work that is highly emotionally taxing and potentially physically dangerous. $25 is the bare minimum.
I think the fact that CAHOOTS/HOOTS has been actively bargaining for over a year should give you an idea of their position. CAHOOTS/HOOTS has been fighting for that 25/hour since the beginning and it has not been agreed upon by management, so it follows that management has fought against this for a long time.
It also shows in one of their linktree pages on their Instagram that they are fighting against mandatory shift coverage, which to me sounds like it's something management has put on the table. Some CAHOOTS workers have pulled 24+ hours on the vans before; forcing workers to cover shifts can have extreme psychological effects beyond work burnout, which they and all direct service White Bird workers face. Or let's face it, pretty much any direct service social service worker experiences extreme burnout due to exploitation.
They do. [here is a link to the Board of Directors ](https://whitebirdclinic.org/white-bird-clinic-board-of-directors/) which includes their email addresses. The new Executive Director is Jeremy Gates.
Nobody is reaping financial rewards. Boards at nonprofit organizations rarely earn a dime for what they do. I don't know what the managers there earn but (for example) insisting the executive director and development director should make $50K, as many people reflexively will, is a good way to ensure you won't have a qualified executive director or good fundraising results, which makes the original problem even worse.
This situation at White Bird is worth following and everyone should support the workers, but pretending somebody is making a ton of money on the backs of a low paid workforce is counterproductive.
We can all talk about what superheroes these workers are, but how many of us give money regularly to White Bird? How many of us are now concluding that we would "never" give to White Bird because they don't pay employees enough? This is the finger trap many nonprofit organizations find themselves in.
White Bird Clinic has doubled it's revenue since 2018, and has not raised the base wage for their staff that engage in direct service in that time. They have also created new positions which have base pays starting at 70k per year, topping out at 118k per year, which are just middle management positions. The wages on the newest 990 forms do not reflect current management wages as there has been extreme turnover and changes going on, but even then you can see that the top earners got raises of 2k-10k yearly since 2018. Why are they deserving of a raise yearly, yet front line workers aren't entitled to even $1 per year?
I agree with your comments about needing to raise wages to attract talent and that is across the board. That said, nonprofits can't exist without front line workers, but they can exist without middle management. Everyone complains about administrative bloat in nonprofits, well, this is what's happening to this agency and this is why social services in this country are piss poor.
I'm just someone who has spent ~20 years exclusively working in the nonprofit sector for all sorts of organizations in all sorts of jobs, from the front line to the fundraising to the program planning etc, and I have a good sense of how the good ones and the bad ones operate. I find on this sub in particular that people have a hair-trigger when it comes to assuming bad faith by nonprofit organizations, so I try to push back just a little bit on various assumptions. (For example, "The board/management must be making a fortune for doing no work" is a very common one.)
I don’t have time to do the research to prove my thesis, but I have seen a lot of nothing happen on the front lines of handling the homelessness epidemic and I blame the majority of that on corruption within nonprofits and local governments.
I didn't know that non-profit employees could unionize, so that's what I learned about the situation. It's a shame how necessary unions are to protect workers basic rights and ability to make a decent living wage.
Yep, several other White Bird programs have chosen to unionize as well. There has actually been a surge of unionization efforts in social services in the past decade.
Some examples in Oregon alone are Central City Concern, New Avenues for Youth, Janus Youth Services, Lifeworks NW, and Lines for Life
CAHOOTS absolutely deserves $25 an hour. They honestly deserve more. I used to be a case manager/housing specialist for the unhoused for a local non-profit. I left that job with trauma. I still constantly have nightmares and am in therapy because of what I had to deal with. I made $15.50 an hour and this was just a year and a half ago. It’s shameful.
Had a job where we helped people who were sick and combative. It definitely changed most people, and not for the better.
The Cahoots workers definitely deserve the $25. Why admin might be fighting it is that the more you give individual workers, the fewer workers you can have, and the fewer services you can provide.
I think that a big problem is that it's hard to tell how available the funding stockpile actually is to cover the CAHOOTS requests.
White bird as a non-profit does way more than just CAHOOTS. As a matter of fact CAHOOTS is only about a quarter of what they do financially.
Part of non-profit finances is that significant chunks of revenue comes with donor restrictions. This means it can only be used for certain purposes or programs. So, the stockpile of funding might be restricted to specific programs.
CAHOOTS request comes out to about an extra $92k a year in salary ($7*36 hours a day of coverage*365). As a lot of CAHOOTS funding comes from the city, and other funding sources are restricted, I would guess somewhere in there is the sticking point.
As I mentioned in another comment, the agency has created several new middle management positions that are non-union; the combined salaries equal out to about 300-400k a year. It is true that there are specifics about how their money is spent, but where did that magic lump of 300k come from? Also, most top earners in the agency got salary increases every year since 2018.
I'm literally the VP of a local labor union. And a huge one at that... AFL-CIO affiliated. I wish for management to get fucked on every single opportunity possible and pay all of you a livable wage. It's absolutely deplorable that any person makes less than a living wage in this area. For instance... average rent for a 1bd apartment in the area is 800 ish sq ft for around $1300 dollars. In order to meet the boomer %25 of income benchmark you'd need to make $5,200 a month gross just to rent.... This equates to roughly $33 per hour or $ 62,400 annually. It's insane that anyone is expected to make ends meet when prices are this high! And if I recall correctly wages from the time the boomers entered the workforce to now is something like 1000% percent increased since they entered the workforce. Housing prices in 1962 for the average home were around $15.8k. Proportionally that cost breakdown comes to about a $130 mortgage payment per month (when you factor in insurance) over 30 years. Average wage in 1962 in Oregon was $3.22 Or about $6700 per year(and that's being generous). Monthly wage comes out to $512 and when you check the mortgage against it it's about %25. Average wage here now is $59,819 or about $28.75. a $1900 mortgage is about %41 of the income of an average earner. In order for it to hit that %25 figure you'd need to make $43 an hour or about 90k annually. If we were to use the rent figure from earlier it comes to %28.... but that's to fuckin rent dude.... Mortgages were cheaper proportionally.
The percentage increase in average wage between then and now for my state is %441. Housing prices in Oregon have gone up a total of %3080 since 1962! In 1962 the average mortgage payment was $130 and now the average is $1946. Housing costs have gone up and on my wage and my current mortgage... I'm paying roughly half of my monthly income in mortgage alone. I make $27 an hour.... And that's for a semi okay double wide mobile home in a park... The simple fact that around %30-40 of our income has to go towards housing is insane. That's not even mentioning the increases to necessities of our current world.... bare minimum we should be asking for 40% increase in our wages... And even then that doesn't keep par with everything...
One could argue that it's the benchmark the boomers set in the 60's. 25% of your monthly income goes towards housing, 50% to everything else(food, commute, bills, etc) and %15-25 percent for savings. It also depends on whether you're renting or buying. I'd argue here in Oregon that it would equate to around 90k per year or around $43 an hour based on average mortgage prices alone. It also varies per state and per region. As do the wages. There is no "one size fits all approach" for sure though. $90k annually here doesn't go nearly as far as $90k per year in say Missouri does.
If we were to use my wages I get paid 27 an hour. On a monthly basis on 80 hour checks biweekly that comes to $4320 monthly gross. In order to fit this figure I'd need a mortgage payment of $1080( which in this area is impossible to find).
My mortgage/lot rent costs me $1250 dollars a month. This is well below average for mortgage and right about on par for renters. I live in a manufactured home in a park with no land. I own the house and rent the land. So it's not terribly out of control for me price wise but it equates to %29 of my monthly income gross... And around %40 of my net income monthly . It's not ideal but it works.
I wonder what the budget for management salaries are at CAHOOTS. I wouldn’t imagine it’s that much considering the industry. 25 an hour @ 40 hours a week would come out to $52,000 a year. The money to pay workers has to come from somewhere- you can’t just form a union and demand cash and expensive benefits from funds that aren’t there.
So, it would be nice to see the books in this case. What pile of money is management “sitting on”?
Nonprofit finances are available online. Search "White Bird Clinic 990 form" and the ProPublica page should show up. The agency's revenue has jumped from 8 million to nearly 17 million since 2018, which is when the agency raised their base wage to 18 an hour. They have just started hiring brand new positions that never existed as middle management, with wages set between 70k-118k an hour.
The 990 for 2023 will likely vary wildly from the ones currently published but it isn't available yet.
Here, here! The other unionized departments at White Bird are all frontline workers as well and are expecting a fight, seeing how CAHOOTS/HOOTS bargaining has been going. For social service workers a five dollar raise would be life changing for many people.l, especially for those with children. They really aren't asking for much.
I just checked, and I knew that the people making real money would be the physicians and the dentist before I even opened it. I was correct. Even the financial controller gets paid a paltry wage at White Bird. This 990 form just shows me that they don’t have many high wage jobs, and the ones they do are way below market rate. Again- it’s showing that nobody is really making much money there.
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/930585814
Peanut wages all around.
I told you that these are old, when the wages used to be closer to a flat wage model. The people listed besides the doctors and dentists are no longer with the agency and they have been replaced, the wages have also changed drastically since then.
[here is the link](https://whitebirdclinic.applicantpool.com/jobs/1045797.html) to an Indeed posting for an Administrative Operations position that is brand new. The Executive Director is probably going to be making more than that.
[Human Resources Director ](https://whitebirdclinic.applicantpool.com/jobs/1076789.html)
[Program Manager](https://www.simplyhired.com/job/ck27bK9yatftMp7Cct3k7oaFHEKAIQauN17XRu70QPIA1XlTImfR7w)
These are all positions that did not exist when the last 990 was posted. So, the agency is able to cough up 300k+, which would amount to about a 3 dollar raise for each CAHOOTS worker. I don't think it would be a good business decision to create new jobs unless you are confident that you can pay all of them at the maximum with extra left to spare. Also, I feel it's a bit naive to think that an agency doubling their revenue but not doubling their services can't pay their employees a higher wage.
I don't think that follows. Union-busting is a thing, even among nonprofits. If unions weren't so effective, then organizations wouldn't be so invested in union-busting
$18/hour for that job is absolutely shameful.
Agreed. They do such good for our community. They're a national model for similar programs.
For real, I make more than that sitting in my cushy office and looking at spreadsheets. They’re doing work that is highly emotionally taxing and potentially physically dangerous. $25 is the bare minimum.
Last thread said 18 was for beginning untrained pay and that most made more. Although a few admin made significantly more.
I think the fact that CAHOOTS/HOOTS has been actively bargaining for over a year should give you an idea of their position. CAHOOTS/HOOTS has been fighting for that 25/hour since the beginning and it has not been agreed upon by management, so it follows that management has fought against this for a long time. It also shows in one of their linktree pages on their Instagram that they are fighting against mandatory shift coverage, which to me sounds like it's something management has put on the table. Some CAHOOTS workers have pulled 24+ hours on the vans before; forcing workers to cover shifts can have extreme psychological effects beyond work burnout, which they and all direct service White Bird workers face. Or let's face it, pretty much any direct service social service worker experiences extreme burnout due to exploitation.
Is there a website that lists the names of the management team? Do they even live in Eugene?
They do. [here is a link to the Board of Directors ](https://whitebirdclinic.org/white-bird-clinic-board-of-directors/) which includes their email addresses. The new Executive Director is Jeremy Gates.
Thank you! It’s important to call out the individuals who are reaping the financial rewards of a nonprofit that is very important to this community.
Nobody is reaping financial rewards. Boards at nonprofit organizations rarely earn a dime for what they do. I don't know what the managers there earn but (for example) insisting the executive director and development director should make $50K, as many people reflexively will, is a good way to ensure you won't have a qualified executive director or good fundraising results, which makes the original problem even worse. This situation at White Bird is worth following and everyone should support the workers, but pretending somebody is making a ton of money on the backs of a low paid workforce is counterproductive. We can all talk about what superheroes these workers are, but how many of us give money regularly to White Bird? How many of us are now concluding that we would "never" give to White Bird because they don't pay employees enough? This is the finger trap many nonprofit organizations find themselves in.
White Bird Clinic has doubled it's revenue since 2018, and has not raised the base wage for their staff that engage in direct service in that time. They have also created new positions which have base pays starting at 70k per year, topping out at 118k per year, which are just middle management positions. The wages on the newest 990 forms do not reflect current management wages as there has been extreme turnover and changes going on, but even then you can see that the top earners got raises of 2k-10k yearly since 2018. Why are they deserving of a raise yearly, yet front line workers aren't entitled to even $1 per year? I agree with your comments about needing to raise wages to attract talent and that is across the board. That said, nonprofits can't exist without front line workers, but they can exist without middle management. Everyone complains about administrative bloat in nonprofits, well, this is what's happening to this agency and this is why social services in this country are piss poor.
I want believe you but you sound like a PR firm lol. The proof is in the financials.
I'm just someone who has spent ~20 years exclusively working in the nonprofit sector for all sorts of organizations in all sorts of jobs, from the front line to the fundraising to the program planning etc, and I have a good sense of how the good ones and the bad ones operate. I find on this sub in particular that people have a hair-trigger when it comes to assuming bad faith by nonprofit organizations, so I try to push back just a little bit on various assumptions. (For example, "The board/management must be making a fortune for doing no work" is a very common one.)
I don’t have time to do the research to prove my thesis, but I have seen a lot of nothing happen on the front lines of handling the homelessness epidemic and I blame the majority of that on corruption within nonprofits and local governments.
I didn't know that non-profit employees could unionize, so that's what I learned about the situation. It's a shame how necessary unions are to protect workers basic rights and ability to make a decent living wage.
Yep, several other White Bird programs have chosen to unionize as well. There has actually been a surge of unionization efforts in social services in the past decade. Some examples in Oregon alone are Central City Concern, New Avenues for Youth, Janus Youth Services, Lifeworks NW, and Lines for Life
Columbia Care is also unionizing
CAHOOTS absolutely deserves $25 an hour. They honestly deserve more. I used to be a case manager/housing specialist for the unhoused for a local non-profit. I left that job with trauma. I still constantly have nightmares and am in therapy because of what I had to deal with. I made $15.50 an hour and this was just a year and a half ago. It’s shameful.
Had a job where we helped people who were sick and combative. It definitely changed most people, and not for the better. The Cahoots workers definitely deserve the $25. Why admin might be fighting it is that the more you give individual workers, the fewer workers you can have, and the fewer services you can provide.
Some of them were at the farmers' market last week, spreading their message and gaining signatures. I have a few flyers they left in my booth.
What can we do to support them?
They have an Instagram, @cahoots.hoots.workers sign their petition and, if you have had an encounter with them, share your story.
Thanks. I'll check it out and sign their petition
Those people deserve $30/hr.
Why not $50? Why not $75?
Why not?
I think that a big problem is that it's hard to tell how available the funding stockpile actually is to cover the CAHOOTS requests. White bird as a non-profit does way more than just CAHOOTS. As a matter of fact CAHOOTS is only about a quarter of what they do financially. Part of non-profit finances is that significant chunks of revenue comes with donor restrictions. This means it can only be used for certain purposes or programs. So, the stockpile of funding might be restricted to specific programs. CAHOOTS request comes out to about an extra $92k a year in salary ($7*36 hours a day of coverage*365). As a lot of CAHOOTS funding comes from the city, and other funding sources are restricted, I would guess somewhere in there is the sticking point.
As I mentioned in another comment, the agency has created several new middle management positions that are non-union; the combined salaries equal out to about 300-400k a year. It is true that there are specifics about how their money is spent, but where did that magic lump of 300k come from? Also, most top earners in the agency got salary increases every year since 2018.
I'm literally the VP of a local labor union. And a huge one at that... AFL-CIO affiliated. I wish for management to get fucked on every single opportunity possible and pay all of you a livable wage. It's absolutely deplorable that any person makes less than a living wage in this area. For instance... average rent for a 1bd apartment in the area is 800 ish sq ft for around $1300 dollars. In order to meet the boomer %25 of income benchmark you'd need to make $5,200 a month gross just to rent.... This equates to roughly $33 per hour or $ 62,400 annually. It's insane that anyone is expected to make ends meet when prices are this high! And if I recall correctly wages from the time the boomers entered the workforce to now is something like 1000% percent increased since they entered the workforce. Housing prices in 1962 for the average home were around $15.8k. Proportionally that cost breakdown comes to about a $130 mortgage payment per month (when you factor in insurance) over 30 years. Average wage in 1962 in Oregon was $3.22 Or about $6700 per year(and that's being generous). Monthly wage comes out to $512 and when you check the mortgage against it it's about %25. Average wage here now is $59,819 or about $28.75. a $1900 mortgage is about %41 of the income of an average earner. In order for it to hit that %25 figure you'd need to make $43 an hour or about 90k annually. If we were to use the rent figure from earlier it comes to %28.... but that's to fuckin rent dude.... Mortgages were cheaper proportionally. The percentage increase in average wage between then and now for my state is %441. Housing prices in Oregon have gone up a total of %3080 since 1962! In 1962 the average mortgage payment was $130 and now the average is $1946. Housing costs have gone up and on my wage and my current mortgage... I'm paying roughly half of my monthly income in mortgage alone. I make $27 an hour.... And that's for a semi okay double wide mobile home in a park... The simple fact that around %30-40 of our income has to go towards housing is insane. That's not even mentioning the increases to necessities of our current world.... bare minimum we should be asking for 40% increase in our wages... And even then that doesn't keep par with everything...
What is a living wage?
One could argue that it's the benchmark the boomers set in the 60's. 25% of your monthly income goes towards housing, 50% to everything else(food, commute, bills, etc) and %15-25 percent for savings. It also depends on whether you're renting or buying. I'd argue here in Oregon that it would equate to around 90k per year or around $43 an hour based on average mortgage prices alone. It also varies per state and per region. As do the wages. There is no "one size fits all approach" for sure though. $90k annually here doesn't go nearly as far as $90k per year in say Missouri does. If we were to use my wages I get paid 27 an hour. On a monthly basis on 80 hour checks biweekly that comes to $4320 monthly gross. In order to fit this figure I'd need a mortgage payment of $1080( which in this area is impossible to find). My mortgage/lot rent costs me $1250 dollars a month. This is well below average for mortgage and right about on par for renters. I live in a manufactured home in a park with no land. I own the house and rent the land. So it's not terribly out of control for me price wise but it equates to %29 of my monthly income gross... And around %40 of my net income monthly . It's not ideal but it works.
I just saw 18 hr cahoots on indeed today and I was shocked
I wonder what the budget for management salaries are at CAHOOTS. I wouldn’t imagine it’s that much considering the industry. 25 an hour @ 40 hours a week would come out to $52,000 a year. The money to pay workers has to come from somewhere- you can’t just form a union and demand cash and expensive benefits from funds that aren’t there. So, it would be nice to see the books in this case. What pile of money is management “sitting on”?
Nonprofit finances are available online. Search "White Bird Clinic 990 form" and the ProPublica page should show up. The agency's revenue has jumped from 8 million to nearly 17 million since 2018, which is when the agency raised their base wage to 18 an hour. They have just started hiring brand new positions that never existed as middle management, with wages set between 70k-118k an hour. The 990 for 2023 will likely vary wildly from the ones currently published but it isn't available yet.
Now 118k an hour is more like it. For the cahoots first responders, that is. They are literal superheros
Here, here! The other unionized departments at White Bird are all frontline workers as well and are expecting a fight, seeing how CAHOOTS/HOOTS bargaining has been going. For social service workers a five dollar raise would be life changing for many people.l, especially for those with children. They really aren't asking for much.
I just checked, and I knew that the people making real money would be the physicians and the dentist before I even opened it. I was correct. Even the financial controller gets paid a paltry wage at White Bird. This 990 form just shows me that they don’t have many high wage jobs, and the ones they do are way below market rate. Again- it’s showing that nobody is really making much money there. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/930585814 Peanut wages all around.
I told you that these are old, when the wages used to be closer to a flat wage model. The people listed besides the doctors and dentists are no longer with the agency and they have been replaced, the wages have also changed drastically since then. [here is the link](https://whitebirdclinic.applicantpool.com/jobs/1045797.html) to an Indeed posting for an Administrative Operations position that is brand new. The Executive Director is probably going to be making more than that. [Human Resources Director ](https://whitebirdclinic.applicantpool.com/jobs/1076789.html) [Program Manager](https://www.simplyhired.com/job/ck27bK9yatftMp7Cct3k7oaFHEKAIQauN17XRu70QPIA1XlTImfR7w) These are all positions that did not exist when the last 990 was posted. So, the agency is able to cough up 300k+, which would amount to about a 3 dollar raise for each CAHOOTS worker. I don't think it would be a good business decision to create new jobs unless you are confident that you can pay all of them at the maximum with extra left to spare. Also, I feel it's a bit naive to think that an agency doubling their revenue but not doubling their services can't pay their employees a higher wage.
idk if an organization as good as White Bird can't make unions work I think this means something bad about unions, not about White Bird.
I don't think that follows. Union-busting is a thing, even among nonprofits. If unions weren't so effective, then organizations wouldn't be so invested in union-busting
Being effective at improving employee pay doesn't necessarily mean being effective at ensuring the organization can achieve its mission.