I’m still in a WhatsApp group with all the people I used to work with at my hot trash job. Today has truly been a day to be grateful.
I was a digital strategist in the third sector before I gave up my job to write full time. My Big Boomer boss hired someone to replace me who *can’t use Microsoft Word*.
It’s a rollout day for one of their new programmes. Big deal. Generally brings in a lot of money from important donors. I think I spent more time teaching my replacement how to do this than anything else because I had digital programme launches down to an art.
The Boomersaurus Rex hired to replace me has fucked up the delivery strategy so the programme launch has come from her personal account, is going to everyone’s junk inbox, and has thus far been sent out nine consecutive times. The WhatsApp group is a-flurry with messages about how everything has gone wrong.
I got a text this morning from the Boomersaurus that simply said “I cannot send?”. Send what.
This is obviously amusing for me, but it highlights something about the third sector that pisses me off. It never, ever uses the skills, knowledge and diverse experiences of younger people that could genuinely make a difference.
The international third sector is generally no longer about sending neatly-turned-out white kids “overseas” to find themselves and occasionally build schools. Thank God. Despite popular conceptions, it’s not full of altruistic angels looking to change the world, either; it’s instead full of people who—for the most part—do want to do good but are also flawed and desperately human.
There is, however, a major stumbling block to genuine progress all the same, and it’s exactly the people you’d expect it to be: white boomer men.
I’m the youngest year of the millennial generation. Most of my friends are involved in either public sector or third sector work. Most of us are paid like shit, and work for boomers who don’t know TikTok from Twitter. My best friend works for an organisation that defends journalistic freedom around the world, and her (male) boss is incredibly proud of being a second-wave feminist who once read Simone de Beauvoir, and likes to chime in with suitably outdated opinions on gender with typical White Man enthusiasm. Great. Only, it’s 2020 and we’re now on fourth-wave feminism. How can his organisation defend the journalistic freedom of trans, enby, gender fluid people when his mindset is firmly rooted in the 1970s?
My former boss used ethnic slurs about various peoples from the part of the Middle East we worked in. We provided healthcare. Imagine the impact it has on a population when the person who heads up your healthcare provider is a racist. (I obviously reported this to the chairman before I left, and it was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me in terms of having to resign. In good conscience, I couldn’t stay). That doesn’t even touch on his deep and rich misogyny.
These are obviously much more extreme examples than simply not knowing how to use Word. But the fucking up Word is important. It highlights the fact that the third sector is steeped in capitalism—the kind of capitalism that values longevity more than anything else. The boomer who was hired after me? She was hired because she’d been in the sector for a long time and my Big Boomer boss respected that. It’s capitalism in action: how much production can we squeeze out of you until you expire? It is quantity over quality every time because that’s what late stage capitalism does.
There’s a really simple remedy to this: bring in young people. More than that, bring in a diverse range of young people. Young people of colour, young people with a range of gender identities and sexualities, religions and heritages. Organisations don’t need these young people to have degrees in digital marketing or seven hundred years experience of sending Tweets. We’re the fucking internet generation. Choose the quality of a more meaningful, more nuanced CV than a boomer with 20 years in the same role who, sure, has lasted long, but doesn’t really have much to show for it.
When charities or third sector organisations contact you asking for support (and let’s face it, that’s predominantly financial), ask them the age breakdown of their staff. Ask them their hierarchical structure within their offices. Ask them the demographics of their staff, and ask them how they’re pursuing a more diverse and representative workforce.
Part of believing in radical economic restructuring for me is knowing that the need for charity constitutes a moral failing on our part, collectively. Our economic structures should (and can!!) be reformed so that charity is a thing of the past. Part of the work of moving to a regenerative economy that removes the need for charity is by using charities as a proving ground. What this means is holding “the best of us” to account. It means ensuring that the most vulnerable of society are served by people who look like them, and who are committed to a society that includes them. The best charities ultimately want to be redundant.
So, just as you do for politicians, hold the third sector to account. It’s uncomfortable. No one wants to be the dick that questions the lovely people at a charity. But no third sector organisation is immune to its context, and the damaging attitudes and prevailing cultural norms that we see in the rest of life exists there too. Radical economics demands this of us.
