One topic that’s been top of mind this week has been efficiency in the nonprofit world. The mother in my host family works at the BMW Foundation, which essentially provides funding for and facilitates connections between smaller nonprofits. Coincidentally, she has actually worked with my non profit, GSBTB, in her role at the BMW Foundation in the past. As someone who is working with nonprofits but is employed by a foundation that is much less financially constrained, she has a lot of interesting thoughts about how the nonprofit world functions in comparison to the for-profit world. She pointed out that employees of nonprofits are often not given the same support in terms of mental health, vacation time, and work expectations as compared to employees of for-profits, because it is often assumed that nonprofit employees passionately want to do their jobs, and do not therefore need the same breaks or compensation. We also discussed efficiency – naturally, at a for-profit company, you maximize production. At a non-profit, this mindset of maximizing performance is rare, both due to the financial structure and the general ethos. Yet I don’t think it would hurt to adopt this mindset, and effectively “maximize production” – with the “product” being the amount of good that one can do. 

At GSBTB, the things that they provide seem mostly “fun” (art, meals, music, etc.). But these things took enormous logistical planning and grunt work, and I was exhausted at the end of the day! Just because the service provided seems whimsical doesn’t mean that the employees of these nonprofits shouldn’t be given the same compensation and support. And additionally, I think that GSBTB’s services are incredibly valuable, and they should absolutely work to maximize the number of people they serve.