null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 hours ago
Before everyone piles on, it’s probably worth understanding the context.
Yes, this was a daft idea, doomed to generate outrage, and outrage is an appropriate response.
However, as the article says, this non-profit was insolvent. This type of non-profit is not flying a CEO around in a private jet. Their entire budget for the year was $400k. Enough for rent, several staff, snacks and art supplies for kids.
The budget was very likely prepared by a volunteer, with limited skills and experience.
It’s often also unclear what an organisation’s total debts are. It’s not at all uncommon to realise an error has been made in understanding an award or something and suddenly the centre owes 5 years back pay for underpaid over time or some such.
Suddenly the centre is insolvent and is required by law to cease it’s activities.
At this point someone has had the misguided notion that the problem can be fixed by coercing parents to contribute towards the debts.
Explaining the problem to parents and asking for donations would’ve been fine, but obviously they wouldn’t have received $40k in donations so it would’ve been unsuccessful.
Tying the request to the kids “art” is just poor taste all the way up and down.
So yeah, it’s offensive, but it’s not nefarious, and while it’s really daft I can at least understand how it happened.
I did particularly like this:
“We did not make this organisation insolvent, it was already insolvent,” the management committee said on Sunday.
Saying that in an indignant Australian accent makes it feel like it came straight out of some antipodean cringe-humor sitcom (FYI “Fisk” is pretty good!).
Maybe but it sounds like the current management committee inherited the problem. I’m dealing with that right now.
I certainly didn’t mean to imply imply they’re actually incorrect, just that presumably working to fix it was part of their mandate, and the frank admission that they didn’t magically fix everything is kinda darkly funny.
Oh me neither. My wife liked Fisk I should give it a watch
To add to that, it’s in Australia and AU$2200 is about U$1500 / £1100 / €1250.
Average full time weekly wage is about $1,700 AUD before tax.
And due to higher living expenses we end up with less disposable income than Americans.
Considering how little disposable income most Americans I know have, you must be truly fucked.
So it was a fundraiser? Hm, I actually don’t have a problem with that and I think it’s a nicer (more creative if you will) option than - idk, simply asking for money.
I work in this area and underfunding is a constant companion. Add to that the abysmally low pay and the disregard for all the extra work educators do, usually for no overtime pay at all, I get positively pissed off that they get in trouble for trying to fix a bad situation. Probably, as you said, brought up as unpaid labor by someone who had no nefarious thought at all about the whole thing, just wanted to help. Apparently they were unaware of rules and regulations, is the worst I can say here.
Did parents step up and donate the money anyhow? That is the real question.
Yeah. I feel like a little bit of finesse could’ve averted this disaster.
$40k debts is pretty manageable. If that’s owed to the ATO for example, as soon as you get a payment arrangement (easy to obtain) then you’re no longer “insolvent”. Pay it off over 2 years, so you get 3x of this type of fundraiser.
Given the staff “walk out”, it’s possible that the money is owed to employees, which muddies the waters.
Instead of saying “everyone has to pay $2,200”, they should have said…
It’s still a long shot, but it’s a better chance than trying to guilt every parent into paying $2,200.
jordanlund@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
And the $2,200 wasn’t for each kids individual artwork, it was to produce a collective scrapbook from all the kids in the school, plus photos, etc.
$2,200 is still insane on a per-piece basis. It shouldn’t cost more than $50 a piece depending on the size of the book. I could see $2,200 being printing costs for the whole run.
Quokka@quokk.au 7 hours ago
I work in ECE in Australia, and from this
They 100% mean printing out on the shitty work printer and pasting photos they took on their iPad alongside some pages of their artwork in one of those $3 black 48 paged A3 scrapbooks from OfficeWorks.