“Does anyone really need IDR’s humour? We are a learning platform after all.”

Stage two: Anger

“If I wanted to do comedy, I would’ve joined consulting!”

“Why can’t we just publish another collection of funny tweets and call it a day?”

Stage three: Bargaining

“I really think I could execute a lot better if I teamed up with someone.”

“So you can’t help me because you’re busy drafting a 2500-word explainer on ‘systems thinking’? I thought I was writing humour this week…”

Stage four: Sadness

“Am I not funny enough to write…humour…for…nonprofits?”

Stage five: Acceptance

“What if I just repackage the few humorous tropes that we all know about the sector as the article? I’m sure it’ll turn out…

When your manager—who hasn’t spoken to you all year—opens the conversation by asking you how you are doing.

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When they kick off the conversation asking about what you’ve accomplished since your last review. (But you’ve forgotten everything that happened before yesterday).

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When they ask you to talk about your weaknesses and indicate that they have (critical) feedback for you.

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When they ask you about your stretch goal and you are hearing those words for the first time in life.

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When they finally get to praising you for being a valuable asset to the organisation.

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When they say they really want to know how the organisation can support your growth.

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But then they tell you that they don’t quite agree with your suggestion that a pay raise is the best form of support.

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And now is the time for your manager’s yearly confession that while they appreciate you, they don’t have the funds to actually pay you better.

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However, however, they see you in a leadership role in the future…and then there will be money.

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If you want to know what our nonprofit does, start with a deep dive on our website. Visit our About, History, Mission, Programs, Milestones, and News pages. They won’t tell you anything specific, but they will prolong your visit, boosting user traffic that justifies the money we spent on our website.

Still think you can find out what we do? Give it your best shot. Read our Mission Statement, Goals Statement, Vision Statement, Issues Statement, and Statement of Values Statement. Download our reports. Subscribe to our newsletters. Study our executive director’s old blogs. After conducting this exhaustive research, you will know exactly what we do: produce indecipherable accounts of what we do.

You would think we could convey our purpose in plain human language, but that isn’t the case. Our initiatives exist in a realm beyond comprehension. Our activities can be understood only by using a particle accelerator, an AI supercomputer, and a fifth-century Benedictine codex. Even the description you’re reading now should only be viewed with special glasses, like an eclipse.

So, how does our staff spend its time? We can describe it in three simple words: we drive change. There, we told you. You want to know more? Fine, here you go. We leverage resources to build capacity. We align partners for impactful solutions. We address needs, embolden stakeholders, empower the powerless, and give voice to the voiceless.

Got it? No? Guess we’ll have to dumb it down for you. How about this: we center things. Because “center” is a verb that people like us use to impress other people who impress us by using it. What do we center? Justice, fairness, compassion, community, love, kindness, gratitude, family, happiness, health, and other irrefutably beneficial concepts that won’t tell you what our programs accomplish.

Bottom line? We tell a story of innovation that raises awareness of critical issues. Then we drown that story in jargon no one understands.

We claim to work with the most vulnerable and underserved populations, but like everyone else, they won’t understand a word of our opaque messaging. It’s not really for them, though, is it? It’s for people who use buzzwords to raise their in-group status. It’s for our peers in conference breakout sessions. It’s for making our old classmates at Wesleyan jealous.

The point is, our organization is uniquely passionate and purpose-driven, with a profound commitment to making the world a better place. What more do you need to know?

It doesn’t matter, because we won’t tell you.

This article was originally published on McSweeney’s.

1. The heart ❤️

The situation: You are a CEO who has asked if someone from your team can make it for a one-on-one coffee meeting at 7 am. 

You get two heart emojis in response, but here’s what they mean:

• Your millennial team member: Yes! Would love to catch up. ❤️
• Your Gen-Z team member: No ❤️

2. The thumbs up 👍

The situation: A team member sends a long text message about staying in the office all night to finish a project when their colleagues know it could have been completed in a few hours.

They get a ton of thumbs-up emoji reacts, but here’s the key difference: 

• Your boomer colleague: Job well done!
• Your Gen-Z colleague: I’m rolling my eyes, please stop.

3. Crying 😭

The situation: You are on an internal Zoom call, and everyone has their cameras on. Suddenly, you see Jay’s dog jump up onto the screen, drop a glass of water on their laptop, and then their screen goes black.

Crying-reactions are lighting up everyone’s screens (because they’re obviously on mute), but they’re saying wildly different things:

• Your boomer colleague: I’m bawling, I can’t believe this happened.
• Your millennial colleague: That dog is so cute I’m crying.
• Your Gen-Z colleague: I laughed so hard I cried.

4. Folded hands 🙏

The situation: You get a text from your boss late Friday evening, and it says, “Hi everyone, I slipped and fell and so won’t be able to lead the team mental health walk in the park at 8 am tomorrow. Apologies to everyone who was going to join!”

Prayer hands emojis start coming in instantly, and here’s what they mean:

• Your boomer colleague: Oh no, I’m so sorry!
• Your millennial colleague: Thanks for the update!
• Your Gen-Z colleague: Who was going to sign up for this in the first place?

5. The hands clapping 👏

The situation: You have a LinkedIn-obsessed funder. The unofficial mandate is that everyone who is on LinkedIn has to “react” to his posts, which, quite honestly, are just long ramblings. 

More often than not, everyone just reacts with clapping hands, but what they’re saying is:

• Your boomer colleagues: That’s insightful! / Glad to see it! 
• Your Gen-Z colleague: This is a waste of everyone’s time. 

6. The skull 💀

The situation: You, a boomer colleague, and a millennial colleague have formed a panel to conduct interviews together. You are going to hire a corporate crossover. The fifth time you hear the words, “synergy”, “strategy”, and “scale”, the three of you begin texting each other via emoji.

You’re all sending skull emojis, but what they mean are:

• Your boomer colleague: I’m exhausted. 
• Your millennial colleague: I’m laughing so hard I’m dying.

Taking responsibility

We’re fully aware that AI and cost-cutting have been some of the biggest reasons for job loss in recent years. But the numbers are not depicting the complete story: Companies are afraid of admitting they’re replacing their staff with AI. We don’t want to replicate this. We take full responsibility for the decisions that led us to this stage.

Why we’re doing this

IDR started in 2017 with four people and one goal in mind—to make knowledge more accessible. To this end, over the last seven years we have published more than 2,000 articles, written by approximately 1,500 professionals, reaching more than 14 million people every month. In fact, we had our biggest growth spurt during the pandemic. We doubled the size of our team, launched new features and podcasts, and started publishing in four regional languages, but all of this came at a cost. Being the only social sector publication meant that we had a lot of content but very limited budget to support the team required to make this content available.

Before the financial year 2023–24 came to an end, we took stock of what we needed to do. To keep ourselves afloat with the current budgets, we’re laying off 12 members of our editorial staff by June 2024.

The role AI will play

This decision will not affect the content IDR puts out. We’ll be using AI as a writing and language tool to keep publishing at least five pieces every week. These will be overseen by our remaining editorial staff, who will fact-check and bring clarity and structure to the piece where needed. Our team will also make sure that we continue to represent diverse voices and bring new insights to the sector.

What you can do

We want to take this time to thank our team. They are the reason we’ve reached where we are today. To say that this decision affects us heavily would be an understatement. Our team is full of dedicated, intelligent, kind, funny, and courageous people, and we want to make sure they’re taken care of after they leave IDR. So if you have an opportunity for them, or if you know someone else who might, write to us.

If you want to read a more in-depth note about this decision, what led to it, and what our funders and partners have to say, click here.

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You’ve been pranked! Happy April Fools’ Day.

But the funding challenges that the sector faces are not unknown. So please consider supporting us and our work. By donating to IDR, you are joining a community of people who believe that the right information, in the right hands, can change the world.

Thank you for laughing with us on April Fools’ Day every year. Here’s a link to how you were fooled last year, and the year before that, and the year before that.

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To read previous parts, visit the following links: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX, Part X, and Part XI. You can also find more tweets from @nonprofitssay here.

A researcher goes to ‘the grassroots’:

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Illustrations by Ishwar Singh.