I watched an organization I used to be involved with implode on social media this week. I am actually surprised it took as long as it did after my experiences. But it prompted me to revisit some of the writings I did following my experiences with the organization. Here is an excerpt of some of those writings.

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The goal of writing this is not to slander the organization. The purpose is to help me process and reflect on my experiences. No identifying information about the organization will be shared in this writing. And anything shared can be backed up with documentation. That should be enough protection for me to feel safe in sharing.

I started volunteering with this organization during the Pandemic. I jumped in with both feet eager for the experience and to help the organization grow. I developed a support structure for the volunteers in the organization, and I am deeply proud of what I put together. I was also interested in the educational initiative which did not get started until the spring of 2022.

I quickly learned the group was one of very passionate, mostly females, who wanted to do good things in this world. What I also learned is that it was a super toxic group.

My first negative experience happened early in my volunteer time. I am a published author, so I offered to take the responsibility of sharing meaningful stories on the organization’s blog. Being new, I submitted my first two posts to leadership to make sure we were on the same page about what was presented as outward facing for the organization. And we were not. Both posts were edited so much that the true story and meaning behind the posts was lost. The edits were actually longer than the actual posts. I quickly backed out of this role, as I wanted to share the true stories not market the organization.

But I Stayed.

Part of my initial role in supporting volunteers was ensuring they had the supplies they needed. One morning I made a stop by the supplies place, and the person inside was the manager of the supplies. To this day I do not know why she took on that role because she always complained about it and felt like volunteers should buy their own supplies. On this visit she was especially irritated because volunteers had requested a specific brand of something, and she did not want to make that purchase. I took what I could find and quickly left given her irritated mood. As I was loading the supplies into my car, she came out of the building yelling at me to come back in and sign out what I had taken. I was totally taken aback. Yelling is something I do not tolerate after being in a verbally abusive relationship for a decade of my life. I reached out to leadership saying yelling was not ok and to please address it. It was not addressed.

But I Stayed.

In the summer of 2022, I was asked to serve in a role that I was in no way qualified for except for the fact that I was the only one around to do it. I served in this role for 3 weeks after being asked to do the role for 2 weeks. It was the hardest thing I have ever done in my entire life, and I have done a lot of hard things. I was tethered to my laptop and phone from the moment I woke up until I turned my phone alerts off at 8pm each night. I was able to identify areas that could be improved and shared this information with leadership. At the end of those 3 weeks, I was tired and frustrated, but proud that I maintained the integrity of the assignment. When I expressed these frustrations to leadership (with ways to make things easier and more efficient) they threatened to fire me and sent out an email saying I was no longer on that team. Not one thank you for your hard work and being a team player.

But I Stayed.

The educational initiative finally started with a kick off event in the spring of 2022. There was a sharp contrast in that event and the event I coordinated in the fall of 2022. The spring event was for one sibling group from a local community center. The leadership team attended, as did many of the core team members, professional photographs were taken, and posts were made on all social media platforms. My event was for youth in foster care. Only one core team member attended, my husband came to take photographs, and the only assistance I had was from a new volunteer who had reached out to the info@ email address 2 weeks prior. No social media shares and no thank you for coordinating. I felt zero support from the start of the educational initiative. If someone reached out to me for programming, I would ask the director if it was ok for me to move forward. She would always say yes, then I would get something going. But no collaboration at all. We would have sporadic meetings with leadership where they would brainstorm amazing, and super lofty goals with zero follow up. In the short time I held this role, I created partnerships with 3 high schools, 1 elementary school, a Girl Scout Troop, and a handful of teenagers wanting to give back to their community. There was so much potential, and it was sad to have to say no to schools for events and programming because we did not have enough team members interested in helping with this initiative. I posted in our group text thread when I formed new partnerships. Once I posted about partnering with an organization that provides services to minority families. One team member replied “this seems to be way far from our mission. Are we sure we want this type of partnership?” After that I stopped posting in the group text thread about partnerships.

But I Stayed.

I was rightfully feeling frustrated by the lack of support, but things went South in November of 2022 when leadership on an impulse fired a very valuable team member. Hoping with all of hopes that there was an HR policy that would prevent this from happening and a compromise could come once emotions weren’t high, I asked about this policy in a group text. When leadership realized I questioned this (per screenshots sent to them), they confronted me. I explained my rationale, but they were not able to hear me. I was asked to apologize to the group text and screenshot the apology and send to them, which I did, along with an apology to them. My intention by asking the question was to help resolve the impulsive decision to fire. After my public and private apologies, I was called to a meeting and asked to turn in all files for projects I was working on. Listening to leadership explain why I was being fired was literally an out of body experience. It was truly that bizarre.

Being able to process those 15 months and all that transpired was A LOT. I am proud of all the good things I accomplished, but I am reflecting on why I would allow myself to be treated in such an abusive way.  I believed in the mission and the work, and I am not afraid of working hard, but this environment was, well, abusive. And I could not even see that it was abusive until I started processing it all after the fact. At first, I was really hard on myself for allowing such abuse. I am proud of the strong self-assertive woman I have grown to be after some pretty traumatic life experiences. So why would I tolerate being treated in an abusive way and keep asking for more?

I did write a letter to the Board of Directors but since it is a small group of family and close friends, I did not expect much to come from it. I do hope the shady hiring practices (no paperwork, tax forms given to employees) and that the lack of financial transparency are addressed at some point.

There were many positives from this experience. I developed two new close friendships, which I will cherish forever. And I did a lot of good to get the organization up and running. When I am down on myself for allowing mistreatment, I am going to focus on those good things.

Trying to do good things should not come at the expense of your own personal well being. That is an important lesson I have learned from this experience.

• lifeinmiddleage