Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Nonprofits

Episode Date: October 4, 2022

Cults tend to thrive during times of broader cultural questioning and turmoil, when institutional support seems to be failing so alternative groups swoop in to offer solutions to the world’s most urgent problems. War, famine, healthcare crisis. Hmmm… sounds not unlike the nonprofit industry, no? This week, Amanda and Isa look into the language, background, and structure of the nonprofit industry to try and figure out how cultishly sus it might be 👀  Get 20% off at honeylove.com with the code CULT.  Right now, get up to 55% off your subscription when you go to babbel.com/CULT. Get Honey for FREE at joinhoney.com/cult Check out jordanharbinger.com/start for some episode recommendations, OR search for The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

The views expressed in this episode, as with all episodes of Sounds Like a Cult, are solely host opinions and quoted allegations. The content here should not be taken as indisputable. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Hi guys, Amanda from Williamsburg, Virginia. I think the cultiest thing about nonprofits is that it's kind of like deconstructing a toxic relationship once you leave. You don't realize how manipulated you've been, how poorly you've been treated until you're on the outside. My name is Beth. I'm calling from the US.

The cultiest thing about nonprofits is the lingo that they get you to use. It comes from their mission and values, but it gets overused to the point that the people who use it are really just being passive-aggressive or they're micromanaging. And at one point it could have held great significance, but unfortunately now it's meaningless. Hi, my name is Racheli. I'm a nonprofit professional. I think it's really culty that we lean into the cult of capitalism and we're all trying to do these amazing things. It would be so much more impactful if we joined forces and partnered together. And I'm really proud that the nonprofit that I work at is recognizing that. And I think the more that we have these conversations, we learn and recognize how to best benefit the people that we're trying to help.

This is Sounds Like a Cults, a show about the modern day cults we all follow. I'm Amanda Montell, author of the book Cultish the Language of Fanaticism. And I'm Issa Medina, a comedian. Every week on our show we discuss a different group or guru that puts the cult in culture. From Disney adults to Christian youth groups to try and answer the big question. This group sounds like a cult, but is it really? To join our cult and see culty memes and BTS pics, follow us on Instagram. That sounds like a cult pod.

I'm on Instagram at Amanda underscore Montell. And I'm on Instagram at Issa Medina, where you can catch all my shows that I perform live. Feel free to check us out on YouTube where you can watch our show with your eyes. Or if you want to support us on Patreon, you can find us there at patreon.com. Today, our topic is the cult of nonprofits. Yeah, the cult that I left before I even really got in. But I mean, I did do three internships and six months full time at a nonprofit. My first internship was at a nonprofit as well.

It was at a poetry nonprofit. Do we all just get in there? I mean, it almost had me. I literally interned at the UN three times and then they still wouldn't hire me after I got a master's in public policy. So they sent me to work full time at a nonprofit and they were like, once you get paid working experience, which I was like, you were the ones who wouldn't pay me. Yeah, they were like, then we can hire you. And so I worked at a nonprofit for six months and then I was like, wait, this is all stupid I'm leaving by.

Yeah, there's so much hypocrisy in the nonprofit space. I remember deciding I never wanted to work at a nonprofit after that internship because they had all these highfalutin promises about like bringing poetry to the modern day and inspiring the youth and I was full of optimism. I was 19, 20 years old. But then once you got there, you realized they barely had any funds. Everybody was miserable and tired and not really doing anything. I was like, why does this organization exist? At one point you have to ask yourself in your early career days, like, what do I want out of my career and is making money a priority for me?

Ultimately, it was for me and I wanted to make money in a way that wasn't corrupt. So I was like, if I work at this nonprofit, I'm going to have to corrupt the shit out of it to make money and I don't want to be that person. Yeah. And another thing I realized is, yeah, I want to do good in the world, which by no coincidence is something that can make you susceptible to cults. I was like, I want to do good in the world, but there are so many ways for me to do that by volunteering outside of my job. Exactly. Something that really hit home with me was that I was in such a bad mood when I worked at the nonprofit that I was like the net negative that I'm giving to the world by being a bitch to strangers because I'm getting underpaid is not really making up for the good that I'm doing by working at this nonprofit.

So I was like, maybe if I pursue a career that will pay me well, I'm in a good mood and then I can be nice to strangers. That is hysterical. I can totally see like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos being like, I need to make all this money so I'm in a good mood so that I can help people. Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. But actually, like that is a trope where people who do such charitable good in their daily lives are like assholes in real life. Yeah. That's not always the case. But it happens.

And I feel like it happens a lot more in America because we don't have like institutional support from the government. If you work at a nonprofit in America and they don't give you healthcare, you still don't have universal healthcare. But low key people who work at nonprofits in like France, they are chilling because they have amazing healthcare. They have amazing work benefits. That's probably why they smoke so much in France because they're like, oh, I'll just get new lungs. I interned at the UN in Paris and we would come into the office at 10 a.m. leave for a two hour lunch at noon and then come back into the office for an hour and a half and then leave by 5 p.m. I did not work that summer. You were made in the shade.

We will talk more about how the cult of nonprofits are a specifically American concern. But your schedule that you're describing makes me think of that song from the Wizard of Oz where the Munchians are like, we get up at 12 and start to work at 1. I don't know that song, but I kind of want to make it the theme song of my life. Take an hour lunch and then at 2 we're done. Dolly good fun. That's how everything should be. Yeah. It is a very European number.

We all need to slow down. We do. Put your feet in grass like we always say. I say as I've joined the cult of coffee again. I was just talking this morning about how I started drinking coffee again this week and I feel so productive. I mean, we met up. We did work together. Now I'm like looking back on my week and I'm like, oh no, I just made a series of to-do lists.

I was just like high on coffee making to-do lists all week. Coffee is not at the end of the day going to put the words on the paper for you. No, but it made me feel like I did. Yeah. The cult of nonprofits is a topic I've wanted to cover for a while because I do volunteer at a couple of places and the tactics that they use to recruit people into the fold and inspire them to align with this mission remind me of MLMs. They remind me of New Agers.

Yeah. They remind me of so many different cults. There's cognitive dissonance there because they are ultimately trying to do good, but it inspired me to want to look under the hood a little bit more and I never realized how truly cult like the American nonprofit space is. Yeah. And I think it's so geared to America because they kind of catch people at their highest guilt, right?

Yeah. They'll catch someone who's been working corporate for forever or only focused on themselves and then after years of not caring for others, they have this urge to help. They're like, what's my life purpose? I need to help someone. They start volunteering. That's how they start to get involved. They're not getting paid.

They're slowly in the fold and then the nonprofit is like, oh, you can do more. You can do this. And then some people will like quit their job to then work for the nonprofit only to realize even though it's not for profit, it's still a business, but it's not well run. Yeah. I totally agree that is one way of getting inducted like the folks who have been corporate and later feel bad, but there's also the youth and the college kids. This was like me, people who get inducted via unpaid internships or college grants and

that youthful optimism that they can be the ones to finally change how things work. Almost always, cults will start out by promising a larger than life solution to some enormous problem that the establishment has failed to solve to your point like poverty or illness or war. And that is exactly what nonprofits promise. When we say the cult of nonprofits, what's the first thing that comes to mind for you? Immediately, the Peace Corps comes to mind. I think we should do an entire episode on the Peace Corps.

What I think of is these nonprofits who go to other countries, these American nonprofits who insert themselves in these other communities and say, I know what your problems are. I know how to fix your problems. Follow my solution oriented strategy and I will fix you. A lot of the times they're not actually caring about the community, listening to the community. They just want to solve problems in a way that can get them more funding. It's all back to the business. How do we get more funding?

That's something that turned me off so much about the United Nations. It was like, how do we send this photographer into this war-struck zone so that we can post it on Instagram to boost our freaking funding? Yeah, it is the ultimate institutionalized virtue signaling. A lot of the times they really are just there to make themselves look good. And to your point, that missionary aspect, going to places that never asked for your help to do charity work is extremely culty. We talked about this in the Cult of Dating apps episode, but nonprofits are absolutely

not made to be deleted. They are not incentivized to solve the problems that they set out to because then they won't exist anymore. I've always said nonprofits should be hinge made to be deleted, but now not even hinge is made to be deleted because the algorithm is fucking us all. They lure people in by exploiting their desire for a better world and promising a solution, and then you get in there and realize they're not actually incentivized to want to solve the problem or else nonprofits would collaborate with each other, but instead, not all nonprofits,

but many of them compete with each other. And they're able to get away with it because this nonprofit label is so deified, is so respected. Obviously, there are good nonprofits out there. I think the more local an organization gets, the better it is because it's targeting these problems that are close to home. That you can see with your eyes. You can see with your eyes, community oriented, and you can all be part of the conversation

together because it's not a stranger's community, it's your community. So you can have a real say in what you want the solution to be. But I think the larger the problems that the nonprofits want to solve get, that's when it gets cold here because you can't solve that and you're getting way far away from the mission. Now you're caught up in the marketing and the glory and the glamour. I can think of some super culty organizations that are able to get away with their antics because they're small and have no microscope on them and we'll mention an example of that

in a bit, but you're right. The loftier the promise, the higher the risk of cultishness in general. And you were touching on this before, but that makes me think of how oftentimes rich people will get really into fundraising and throwing gallows and they're so into the clout that comes with raising money without actually ever donating a significant portion of their own income. I mean, yeah, on Real Housewives, they do that all the time. They throw these gallows.

They throw these huge dinner parties and then at the end of the episode, you find out they raised $16,000 and you're like, bro, you're wearing a $50,000 watch truly like you bought a $100,000 dress to go to the gala and, you know, you want to put yourself in their shoes and be like, how do you incentivize rich people to care? And for them, because it is about clout, that's how they incentivize each other to care. But I'm also like, I'm not going to lower my standards for you. Just care. Exactly.

And they're also not really ponying up. Yeah. This makes me think of a story where a couple of years ago while I was still working in the cult of the beauty industry, I interviewed Kristen Bell. She was collaborating with some drugstore beauty brand and she's involved with a few nonprofits. One of them is called baby to baby. Babies like hanging out and becoming Instagram friends, baby to baby. From baby to baby, here are my tips for getting famous.

From baby to baby, if you start young, the younger you start, the better it is. Do your skincare routine in your crib. It's like rich people's babies getting together and like swapping tips for how to get famous. How to avoid trauma as a baby from you to you. It was like a group interview and a bunch of us were talking to Kristen Bell and she's fantastic if anyone's curious. But she was truly one of the most charming and sincere celebrities I ever interviewed back in the day.

But we were talking a little bit about the toxicity in Hollywood and the toxicity in the beauty industry. Apropos of nothing, she was like, I've been working in Hollywood for this long. I've been involved in the beauty industry for this long and nothing is as toxic as the philanthropy space. She was like, people in the fucking charity space are as cut throat as they come. I can imagine that because it's probably a lot of times, not always super, super rich wives who have turned that into their niche, their thing.

And so it's like become their business, but it's more so for clout. It's like multi-level marketing for the wealthy. And I think what raises the stakes is that they're not just competing for money or for beauty or for fame. It's so loaded because they're kind of competing to see who's the best person because their nonprofit work reflects their moral compass. And I also think it's the most toxic because even though they're competing with each other, what are the repercussions of that competition, like real people's lives, real nonprofits

that are just trying to get funding to help real people? Hi, my name is Jo from New Orleans, Louisiana. The cultiest thing about nonprofits is the idea that you should be suffering for some kind of higher cause and that that suffering makes you somehow superior to other people. Calling in from London, the most culty thing about charity is how religious organizations hold the space. Making someone's faith conditional to receiving aid is wholly unethical and genuinely unlawful. Hi, I'm Jo.

I'm from North Carolina. And I think the direct or indirect expectation that nonprofit employees should put the organization's needs before their own is the cultiest thing I've experienced working in nonprofits for over a decade. Let's get a little bit into the background of the nonprofit industry. What does the nonprofit landscape in the United States look like? If you don't know this already, a nonprofit is a 501C3, baby. And all religious organizations are 501C3s.

That means that they're like tax exempt with the understanding being that all generated profits go to the communities that they are serving or they are reinvested into the nonprofit. There is no like profit, nonprofit. Yes. Yes. But when those profits are reinvested into the organization, they can be put just about anywhere. And I think when you're a member of the public and you donate to a nonprofit, your expectation

is that that money is going to go straight to the person or the animal, but that is not always the case. For me, the biggest example that nonprofits are not always real nonprofits is the NFL. It was a nonprofit up until recently, just a couple of years ago. The NFL is the most profitable organization. How did they get away with that for so long? There are so many organizations from the most mainstream to some really, really fringe organizations that hide culty antics behind that nonprofit status.

The nonprofit industry is booming. According to a 2019 report from the National Center for Charitable Statistics, 1.54 million nonprofits were registered with the IRS in 2016. Just in 2016? Yes. Why aren't there like more barriers to entry with nonprofits? I don't fucking know. I feel like it also probably is one of those things where conservatives have made it easy

so that conservative can benefit from it, but still hard enough so that actual nonprofits still have to jump through a ton of hoops. Actually, there are so many nonprofits that have these conservative, religious, right-wing Christian agendas like the Salvation Army, which we'll describe more in depth, but also there are a lot of really culty, seemingly progressive organizations that hide behind the status as well. Requirements for nonprofit status do exist, but they're not that hard to get, first of all, or else 1.5 million nonprofits would not be registered.

And also, people claim nonprofit status without actually having it kind of all the time. I guess that just highlights that you should always look into it and make sure that it's like a properly registered 501c3. And even if there is a website, like save the website or take a screenshot of the website, because if anyone can fake a website, but if they fake a website saying it's a 501c3, that's fraud, and then you can have a case for getting your money back. Yeah, absolutely. I looked up a checklist of basic things that you need in order to set up a nonprofit in

the state of California, and the California Association of Nonprofits website, it said all these things like, you need a name for your business. Classic name. Yeah. It always starts with a name, huh? Exactly. You're like, you don't need a good idea. Just pick a name.

They're like, you need a name. Here's how to apply for tax exemption, et cetera. But nowhere on that very official checklist did it advise you to think about whether or not the nonprofit you want to start is helpful or necessary. It doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to be. A lot of people have this false understanding that a nonprofit has to be altruistic and is inherently doing good because it exists.

Yeah. And that's just not the case. I think something that highlights that is the fact that in 2016, the nonprofit sector contributed and estimated $1.047 trillion to the United States economy. That is so much money. How do you contribute money that was never made in profit? You know what I mean? My brain like short circuits when we start talking about numbers this big.

I think a lot of people's do. Yeah. And is he a fun fact the other day about ants that was like per every person? There's like a million of ants with every person has a million ants assigned to them. The movie ants is not as good as Bugs Life, but you know my thing. How I think Kim Kardashian looks exactly like the lead girl ant in the movie ants. No, I didn't know that. But that makes sense.

It's like round. You know, her face is literally identical, her skin tone and everything. Check us out on YouTube. We'll throw up an image. We'll throw up an image. Speaking of big numbers in 2016, 12.3 million jobs were in nonprofit organizations. And interestingly, the biggest nonprofit hubs in the United States are the San Francisco Bay Area and DC.

So my old stomping grounds. Yes. And that is fascinating because nonprofits are basically next to neighbors nice and cozy with what are arguably the country's most depraved profit driven cult like industries, big tech and politics. Oh, wow. I didn't even think of that, but that totally makes sense. Huh.

Huh. Wonder what's going on there. Wonder what's going on there. I don't. I think it's funny how a lot of people who work in nonprofits think that the big nonprofits, they're like the end goal. You know what I mean? People work at these like smaller nonprofits and build their way up to like the name brands

like the United Nations or the IRC, the International Rescue Committee, because they have these beautiful buildings and DC like a glass offices. And so people think that just because you get there, you're going to be treated well or paid well. And a lot of times that's not the case. Also how funny is it that the same competition and dreaminess that informs the profit driven American dream is informing how we engage with quote unquote charity. Yeah.

Like at the end of the day, we still want to be in a big fancy glass office, even if we're doing good. When you're motivated at a traditional company, it's like you're either like selling a product or getting more clients. How do you become intrinsically motivated to what like find more people to help or like what's the move? Right. It's like, do you then have to create the problems or exaggerate the problems in order

to solve them? And that is such a cold red flag. Speaking of those giant big dogs in the nonprofit space, we should list off the top five big charities who received the most donations, at least as of end of year reports from 2021 and how much money they are generating exactly. I mean, right off the top, the ones that I recognize are like Salvation Army, St. Jude's Feeding America, Salvation Army made $2.37 billion in private donations and a $4.1 billion total revenue in 2021, Feeding America, $3.4 billion in private, $3.5 in total revenue,

St. Jude's was like $2 billion in private donations, then the most popular one, I don't even recognize United Way worldwide, they made $3.85 billion in private donations and $5.2 billion in total revenue. Why are there still hungry people in America? Seriously. And it's madness because when you look up to try to find what exactly they do, it is a little bit inscrutable. United Way is an international network of over 1800 local nonprofits.

Okay. So it's a... It's a conglomerate. Yeah. Conglomerate. Yeah. It was the largest nonprofit organization in the United States. Why are these nonprofits wearing that with pride?

If you're in the nonprofit space, you should take pride in being like in a small and local. Yeah. And especially because the larger a nonprofit gets, the larger the overhead and bureaucratic costs get. The red tape. And so the less money is going to the people. And there was this book that like I was told to read, but I didn't read. If anyone wants to read it to me, I'd read it too.

One of my like came over to your house and every night before bed, read you 30 pages of this. I would not... I love that. It was, it's called Just Give Money to the Poor. My fucking thesis advisor is going to have a field day with me mentioning it because I, she told me to read it a thousand times. Classic ESA like recommending books, other people recommended to you that you haven't

read. Yeah. And it's this book that says that a really overlooked approach is to just give money to people. They'll know what to do with it. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of times it's these people who aren't in these circumstances and they're like, I

have all this money, but I'm going to tell you how to use it or like make you join my colter be like, okay, if you want to be part of this like nonprofit and get help on learning how to apply to jobs or on how to like not be homeless, you have to do it my way. Yeah. Yeah. It is a really narcissistic approach and it's over complicating things in a way that make the money hard to follow. It's like, what's this being used for?

And are they doing it on purpose so that they don't follow the money? Yes. And I think in a lot of cases they are. It's like, okay, I see that you're wearing an Armani suit, but how does that translate to getting the people you're supposed to help food and shelter and other necessities? Something that people don't realize about the Salvation Army. It is an evangelical organization that has an alleged history of ableism and anti LGBTQ plus behavior.

Oh, of course it is. I mean, it has the word army in it. Yeah. There you go. And it's not army chic. Okay. It's not like an army jumpsuit. Oh my God, that's amazing.

That makes me think of that SNL sketch conservative or not or whatever. It's the horseshoe theory SNL sketch where they name a bunch of different scenarios that could either be interpreted as right wing or left wing and the game show contestants have to guess which it is. So it'll be like, this woman wears nothing but camo print. And the person's like, hmm, in an army way or in a Rihanna way? Yeah. It's like army or Rihanna.

Who knows? Like this person gets all their food from a farm. It's like in an Iowa way or in an LA co-op way. Yeah, or like Brooklyn co-op. Yeah. For sure. A couple examples of this anti LGBTQ plus behavior from Salvation Army in 2001, they tried to strike a deal with the Bush administration, which would have allowed religious charities

that received federal funding like theirs to circumvent local ordinances against anti-LGBTQ discrimination. It didn't work because there's gay people everywhere, they're everywhere these days. They're hiding everywhere. They're just jumping out of the bushes. In their camouflage. They're just hiding in the bushes. Hiding in plain sight.

Salvation Army has done a lot of sus things. In 2012, a Vermont branch was accused of firing a case worker after learning she was bisexual. Okay, erasing her from the branch. But honestly validating because she was threatening. Yeah. Threatening enough. Okay. Yeah.

That actually is like for the movement. I love this story. Yeah. But actually ultimately fucked up. That's the kind of nuance that we give around this podcast, you know, or just like joke, joke, serious, serious. That's right. Joke, joke, serious, serious.

Can you handle it? Are you? Because sometimes we can't. Because sometimes we can't. Is your asshole clenched? Because ours is. It cannot be denied that the whole entire ideology and culture of nonprofit work as we know it is deeply American in the way that a lot of cults are.

Yeah. I mean, the United States is the only country that disenfranchises its own people so egregiously that independent organizations would need to band together to problem solve and provide what the government cannot. I also think it's no coincidence that Republicans a lot of times run on a platform that says we don't need to fix problems through tax payers dollars. We need to fix problems through the nonprofits and the private sector because that's how they hoard their money.

Totally. They just pretend they're going to fix the problems, but then they use that sector to keep all their money. When there's a lot of private money being donated to nonprofits, that increases the likelihood of private agendas so nonprofits can easily be manipulated as a political tool. There was a quote from a Guardian piece that said, when nonprofits are doing the jobs that a government is supposed to provide, it's usually the sign of a breakdown and of a failed state.

So not voting well for America. Classic failing. Me and Calc too. Hi, sounds like a cult podcast, this is Joanne from Orange County, California. And I think the cultiest thing about nonprofits is how altruistic they make themselves out to be while their leaders can sometimes be taken a lot of the money for their own pockets. Hi, I'm Rose and I work at a nonprofit in Massachusetts. I think the most culty thing about nonprofits is the fact that they exist to convince staff,

donors, people they serve, that their mission aims to fight against or end some specific issue related to social justice. But because of the nonprofit industrial complex, nonprofits literally depend on government and corporate funding. But those systems directly contribute to the inequity that nonprofits are fighting against in the first place. Let's get into some of the cultiest aspects of nonprofits. I think first and foremost, the financial exploitation.

These nonprofit leaders are preoccupied with making super high salaries. In 2018, Gail McGovern, the CEO of the American Red Cross, was paid $694,000. That's a fancy salary. Where is this major ends justify the means philosophy that you find in nonprofits? There's this expectation when you work for one to do anything for the quote unquote mission and that the mission is important above all else, even when it comes at the cost of workers' standard of living. And that mentality comes with a serious discouragement of dissent.

Nonprofit employees who make an average of $50,000 something per year are famously overworked. Honestly, $50,000 a year is pretty high for average nonprofit salaries. But you make such a good point because the thing about the mission of nonprofits is that all companies have that. All companies have that culture of do it for the community. It's so much easier to say no when the mission is sell more sweatpants, but when the mission is help starving people, it's so much easier to believe it and to fall for it and to stay in it for way longer.

And that's how nonprofits are able to get away with forcing employees to work long unpaid hours. They're supposed to be highly motivated by passion, right? That's how the reasoning goes. They shouldn't be motivated by decent salaries or sustainable work hours. So you can really guilt people into volunteering in addition to working at the nonprofit. I know people who volunteer for hours and hours and hours in their free time for the nonprofit that they also work full time for.

And if that's your life, that nonprofit is taking up every single last hour of your day. They're the only people that you are friends with. That's the language that you speak. It's also just really unfortunate that these are the people that are being overworked and underpaid because these are the people that are directly interacting with people in need. And then they might be treating those people in need with little patience or not enough understanding because they're overworked and they're exhausted, and this makes me think specifically in a lot of counseling positions, like a lot of public family counselors or

people who work for nonprofits who help people in the counseling or mentoring space. It's exhausting for them. A mentor or counselor needs to be inherently understanding and patient. How can you be those things when you are worked to the brim? That makes me think of social workers. It also makes me think of public school teachers who are told when the working conditions are terrible that they're doing it for someone who needs it, aka the kids or the less fortunate. And that is used to justify so much really abuse.

Not everyone who works in the nonprofit space is even interacting directly with folks in need. And that's because there was an Urban Institute report that found that most nonprofits choose to cut salaries, benefits, and other costs long before scaling back their operations. They will always add positions of middlemen and red tape and bureaucracy so that the nonprofit can keep running. And look legitimate. That reminds me of the tech industry, tech companies that get their big first initial

investment round, then they hire a bunch of people to not really do anything, but just so that they look like a company. Yes. I remember you telling that story when we covered the cult of Theranos. You've touched on this a bit, but I think another thing that makes nonprofits culty is their language. They use special language to bond members over a collective mission, but they also manipulate them to imbue them with the sense of like transcendent purpose, even if they're being

duped or exploited. You know it on my cultish the language of fanaticism bullshit by language. It's the language. It's the language. It's all the language. Yeah, nonprofits are masters at using this emotionally loaded jargon that really resonates with dream big Americans. They call everything a movement.

There's this constant repetition of phrases like work that matters. They have so many buzzwords like accountability. Oh, warriors, like you're our warriors. Dude. Okay. I volunteer for a cancer nonprofit that I love so much. I fundraise for them, but the language is so culty and highfalutin and MLME they'll use this almost lovebombie rhetoric that has a quasi religious undertone repeating phrases

like some days today, this is our week of winning. Let's fly above and beyond. You are the greatest generation of warriors and heroes in this quest for a cancer cure. I mean, don't even get me started with cancer. Boy, do I have theories on that one that nonprofits are keeping us sick. Yeah. Well, like they haven't found the cure to cancer because like there's so much business around cancer.

Yeah. I mean, I think that's more like big pharma, but I don't know. Allegedly. Allegedly. Allegedly. It's a very complicated nuanced issue. I mean, the conspiracy theorists. Not complicated to me.

Yeah, I know. They're pumping cancer in our veins to keep us donating to St. Jude's at CVS when we're buying our birth control and they're like, do you want to donate? And then you're like, okay, I guess like it's good karma so that I don't get pregnant. Actually, this brings up a good point because like sometimes when we talk about how there's cultishness and everything, we can start to sound conspiratorial, but the reason why we try to get into the nuances and the nitty gritty and make everybody feel like their asshole is clenched is because actual conspiracy theorists oversimplify everything.

They're like, these people are actively on purpose trying to keep us sick, keep us poor, blah, blah, blah, blah. Me right now. Yeah, but I think while like there are little teeny tiny grains of truth there, the intentions of these nonprofits and even a big pharma aren't as nefarious as we think. It's just like a lot more complex of an issue than like someone is trying to ruin your life on purpose. And that doesn't make the outcome less dangerous.

It just means cultishness can exist in spaces that don't resemble like Charlie Manson trying to move a bunch of people to a remote commune on purpose. I don't think they're trying to ruin people's lives. I just think that big pharma is profit over anything. And because their profit over anything, there are going to be negative consequences of their actions at times, which they don't care. Totally. Speaking of how multi-level marketing, the language of nonprofits is that leads to a

next point, which is that some nonprofits have a really intense, uncomfortable focus on recruitment. This cancer nonprofit that I volunteer for, they want more volunteers, but the methods that they use to try to coerce you into like getting your friends and family to volunteer with them too, it really like creeps me out sometimes. Really? Yeah. I have so much to volunteer.

So I guess I'll freaking mention how I've been doing big brothers, big sisters for like three years. And I have a mentee here in LA and I actually think it's like the least culty organization. They're super healthy. They call me once a month to check in just to see like how my mentee is doing, if like there's any thing going on at home. And then they email you random events and they're like, Hey, you want to go to a Lakers game for free or you want to go to like a Dodgers game for free with your mentee.

I'm like, yeah, pop off. And then it's like lit. I would recommend. I did research in grad school about it. And I learned that some of the biggest influence you can have is one on one mentoring. And so when I decided that I didn't want to work in the nonprofit space anymore, I was like, okay, I want to do something that helps people. But on a micro micro level and I was like, what's the best way to do that?

Find a mentee in your community that you can have a one on one relationship with and it'll help, you know, and you're not going to change the world, but you're going to change like one person's life. Yeah. And I think a lot of the time nonprofit higher ups are thinking too big and they're missing the details and the community aspect and they're getting away from themselves. I think the reason why the recruitment strategies feel so creepy sometimes at this nonprofit where I volunteer is because it's a fundraising commitment and fundraising again, like you're

trying to generate money and that can feel really gross. So they're trying to pump you with all of this like missional inspiration. I mean, big brothers, big sisters is a big nonprofit, but they have their local branch. They have like the Los Angeles branch and that is a great local community. It's also a great use of your skills. I want to be as helpful as I can. And maybe the best that I have to offer is not some big grand, like larger than life thing. It's just like, you know, maybe I could help with kids who want to creatively write or

something. Yeah. This is Catherine from DC. I think that the cultiest thing about nonprofits is founder syndrome, which basically means that the person who created the nonprofit is kind of like at the center and they build like a full cult of personality around this one person, regardless of that person's behaviors, actions, values, they're kept on and no one like disturbs them because they built the nonprofit around themselves.

Hi, my name is Casey and I'm from North Carolina. And to me, the most culty thing about nonprofits is the gaslighting when it comes to salaries, especially the larger nonprofits, they have to make their salaries for their highest earners public. So there's a lot of cognitive disnits between when you're being told there's no money for promotion and looking at what the CEO is making. So there's this nonprofit called preemptive love and it's this anti-war organization. And it was started by Jeremy and Jessica Courtney, they were partners.

Their career began in the early 2000s as Christian missionaries in Turkey. And for that reason, many donors to the organization to this day think that preemptive love is a religious charity doing religious work. But what they say they do is they stop the spread of war. They provide food, shelter, jobs, medicine to mend the wounds of war in different countries like Syria, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Mexico, Colombia, oh Lord, Iraq and Lebanon. They promise to change the ideas that lead to war, like creating the largest diverse network of peacemakers on the planet off the bat.

I'm already saying this is just not going to work in Colombia. Yeah, like with so many culty organizations websites, it's really hard to tell what the highfalutin promises that they make actually translate to the language on their website is really confusing and vague, presumably to avoid explicitly overstating what they do while also making it seem like they are creating the most magical change in the entire world. You know what the vibe they're giving me is, you know when like two really like macho dudes are fighting at a bar because they're drunk and they're just idiots and they're going

to war with each other, it reminds me of like a girl that thinks she can just stop the fight. And she's like, no, you guys like stop fighting, like why are you fighting? You're going to get punched. Like you don't belong in this fight. That is so true. It just really makes me think of the Book of Mormon, the musical. Oh right, I started to watch this. These missionaries going into these places being like, I'm here now, I'm going to solve

everything. Yeah. There was a medium article that was published making all of these claims about preemptive love. It said that they build a false image by exaggerating and manipulating the truth about their charity work. There was an allegation during the war with ISIS, preemptive love worked with another very legit organization to deliver food to families.

But allegedly the other organization, the Iraq health access organization took most of the risk with distributing aid and during this one battle, Jeremy, one of the co-founders received footage from the other people's team filmed himself on a backdrop that looked similar enough and wove the footage into the footage he was sent to pretend to narrate it in real time. That's disgusting. I mean, I really have no other word for it. It's like the ultimate face tune fail.

Yeah. I mean, it's like that movie, not okay. Yeah. Where the girl like pretends to be survivor of the bombing. Yeah. That's why I think that movie like wasn't great because it was too realistic. I was like this and influencer would do this. Preemptive love has been accused of so many examples of like editing videos to make it

seem like the founders were near the scene of an airstrike or something like that on the front lines. Actually, on the front lines, not the sidelines is one of their core values. But of course, they're naming the thing that they are precisely not doing to get in front of the narrative. Even if they were going on the front lines and actually being there, you're just another issue when you're there. You know, it's like when everything started going down between Ukraine and Russia most

recently, you know, they have a whole history. I'm in a lot of documentary groups on Facebook and a lot of documentary filmmakers were like, Oh, like is anyone sending like producers out there to like film what's happening? Stop. I know. Stop. Get out of there. Like this is real.

This is happening. Even if they were actually going on the front lines, you're causing more problems than you are helping. You're in the way. This is not like an Instagram museum. Yeah. Also working for preemptive love is an experience. There are apparently these ridiculous demands of undying loyalty and control over employees.

It's been claimed that Jeremy implemented a policy where no one working at the nonprofit was even allowed to utter the word partner because they didn't want to address who they were actually working with or not. The official reasoning was not to put the partners in danger by naming them. But by controlling the language and information there, they could control the narrative and avoid persecution or any consequential whistleblowing from the inside. Yeah. This reminds me of when people are discouraged to talk about how much money they make.

Like the less you know, the less you can do to change the culture. The more you can get away with. Yeah. The more the people at the top can get away with. Yeah. Jeremy announced that he would give up his nearly $200,000 salary to save the organization from cuts during COVID. But then he allegedly reinstated his pay.

Three months later, we all know the pandemic lasted way longer than that. And then in 2020, they raised $15 million and only spent $1.6 million on tangible programming. Oh my God. $1.6 out of $15. You know what that really reminds me of is the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Organization, the pink ribbon organization that puts on that breast cancer walk. You can and should actually look up how any given nonprofits funds are spent because that is public information.

If you know the name of this nonprofit so well, like you recognize the brand of McDonald's or Starbucks, they're putting in too much fucking money into marketing. That's why I don't understand why like celebrities or influencers, I mean, I know Selena Gomez does this. I love that girl. I don't understand why influencers don't do this more with nonprofits. Influencers are now all starting, you know, their own makeup brand because since they have a large following, they don't have to spend so much on marketing because they are

their own marketing tool. So like do that, but with a nonprofit or just affiliate with a nonprofit with people that already know what they're doing. Yeah. That too. I mean, we do them all the time because I'm so lazy. I'm like, can we just collab all of our posts on Instagram? Exactly.

Also, at preemptive love, there have been claims of verbally abusing and mistreating their employees, that classic thing, working at a nonprofit. You consider yourself a martyr and because you're doing it for this mission, you're more likely to tolerate exploitation or you'll blame yourself later for not getting out of there. Essentially, the Courtney's and preemptive love are an extreme example about nonprofit founders being most passionate about building their own empire, establishing themselves as heroes and silencing anyone who tries to get in their way and the nonprofit industry

at large paves the way for them to do that. Yeah. We just wanted to talk about one specific nonprofit so that we could give you an example of how nonprofits can get really culty really quickly in a really bad way. Hi, sounds like a cold pod. My name is Caitlin. I have worked for five nonprofits and found four of them to be incredibly toxic. I think the cultiest thing about nonprofits is that organizations will weaponize their

mission to try to silence any complaints. There is also rarely any upward mobility in the orgs, so you are stuck in low pay but continue to get avalanches of work. Hi, I'm Hannah from Canada and I think the cultiest thing about nonprofits is that there is typically no HR, especially in smaller nonprofits, where I work. So if there's something going on that you're not comfortable with, there's no one to talk to except the CEO, I think that's really problematic. Lisa, out of the three cult categories, live your life, watch your back, and get the fuck

out. What do you think about the cult of nonprofits? I mean, I got the fuck out, but we do need them, unfortunately in America. So I think they're a watch your back just because I do hope that there are good people that work in them that will continue to try to make them better and more influential in a good way. Yeah, I agree, they're a watch your back because there are so many institutional problems in the United States and nonprofits are there to kind of quote unquote fix them.

There is the opportunity for so many false promises and hierarchies and lies and exploitation, etc. I think it's just then the responsibility of the participant or the volunteer or the donor to find the live your lives out there. Yeah, exactly. And we do need those people and we do need these nonprofits. There's different forms to change our culture at large, like voting or advocacy or lobbying or deep wonky policy work.

But I think nonprofits, they should serve local communities. I also just thought of a pun. Just remember your nonprofits are not profits like with a P-R-O-P-H-E-T. That's a good one. They're non-profits. They're not profits. Yeah. Okay, we sound insane, but we got a subtitle this on Instagram.

Okay, that is our show. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back with a new cult next week. But in the meantime, stay culty, but not too culty. Cults Like a Cult is created, hosted and produced by Amanda Montell and Issa Medina. Kate Elizabeth is our editor. Our podcast studio is all things comedy and our theme music is by Casey Kolb. Thank you to our intern slash production assistant, Noemi Griffin.

Subscribe to Sounds Like a Cult wherever you get your podcasts. So you never miss an episode. And if you like our show, feel free to give us a rating and review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts and check us out on Patreon at patreon.com slash sounds like a cult.