This is what I get for trying to do some good in the world.

K

King Fu

New member
As some of you may or may not know, I'm the president for the Southern Illinois chapter of a humanitarian organization known as Goth Help Us. This is something that, a few weeks ago, I was thrilled to death about doing. I started up a Myspace to get the word out, and I had a lot of plans in the works, including making merch for my chapter. I had already talked to someone about having the merch made and already had a quote for a price.

So, I wrote a blog about it on Myspace (which is how we, for right now, are keeping in touch with everyone). One of the other chapter leaders read it and loved the idea, so they asked if they could use my blog. I was cool with it. Apparently, the GHU founder read it... and the aftermath of it hasn't been pretty. She sent a long string of messages via Myspace to the other chapter leader who copied my blog, accusing her of trying to steal money and so on and so forth. She then proceeded to make a rather hateful blog about it on the page that only chapter presidents can read. She didn't outright mention myself or the other chapter leader, but it was hateful. It claimed that taking donations and making merch was illegal and could get her in a lot of legal trouble, and could also result in her being sued, and that if she got sued, the parties responsible for taking donations and making merch would get sued as well.

When I started working on this, I was told to take my chapter and run it like it was my own organization, so that's what I did. Shortly after she made the blog post, she sent me a message concerning some other GHU business. When I responded back, I tagged this on to the end of my message:

I have a few other things I'd like to say as well. My intention in taking donations and making the t-shirts was not for personal gain. My intentions were solely for getting the word about the GHU out and getting people interested. I had intended to give a majority of the donations to the main GHU PayPal account anyways. When I started up this Myspace, it said in one of the blogs with information for new members to run your chapter like it was your own organization. There was no information on what was and wasn't legal. So, I'm sorry if it came off any other way.

~ Jesse.

To which she responded with:

I'm not mad...it was actually someone else who took your idea and went wild with it is why I had to clamp down. In the future we can figure out something to do to get you set up better, but until the other person cools their jets, we have to be strict across the board.

Hope you understand.

*hugs*
Rebecca

Which makes absolutely no sense. Raven (the chapter leader who copied my blog) copied everything WORD FOR WORD and only changed the area relevant information.

It's just frustrating because I've been stressed out about this anyway. Now I'm just pissed off.
 
Having worked with and written grant proposals for non profits, I will tell you that first---hateful blogs are stupid. That show absolutely no leadership skill at all. Second, she is right. Unless you are registered with the IRS as a non profit--which is really easy to do---she can be sued. There are a lot of legal actions that have to be taken before you can sell or distribute merchandise under a non profit name. Especially if you are going "world wide" like you did in the myspace blog. I would recommend that you first, create a plan for this, and second, get approval from presidents before you do anything that uses money.
 
See, I was unaware of this. I understand all of that now, but if there was such a legal concern, she would have made it clear from the start.

If I didn't want to be a part of this so badly, I'd tell her where she could stick her organization.
 
You are correct. She has shitty leadership strategy.

On the other hand, you should always ask before doing something in the business name, unless you are the business manager/owner
 
In retrospect, I understand that. But, like I said, in the beginning we were told to take our chapters and run it like it was our own organization. I got a bit over zealous. There's a difference, though, between correcting an ignorant mistake and being hateful.
 
Maybe you were one of the first presidents to take that leadership role seriously and truly run with it. In most cases, folks just do basically what has always been done. "Hey, so and so held an open house. Why don't we do that?" No innovation or creativity, so the founder hadn't, up to this point, considered the need to make things a bit more clear in what is allowed, what needs to be researched, and what requires pre-approval.

Try not to be too mad or stressed over the fact that you at least attempted to try a novel approach. Save those good ideas until the founder gets her act together.
 
Back
Top