TLDR: executive director of a non-profit caught abusing funds and having an affair with an employee. when 9 of the 14 workers came together to report him to the board of directors, they played Phil Collins, man in the mirror and refused to do anything, resulting in the 9 of us quiting.
I was up until recently the Development Director of a non-profit aquarium in eastern Idaho. The Aquarium itself was small (located in a repurposed movie theater) but the employees there tried their hardest to do the best what funds I could scrape together from the public so that the animals we had could be well taken care of and loved by not just the employees but by our local community as well.
Since our operation was so small, we were all okay with long hours and little pay, untill it came out that the executive director who is married with 4 kids was having an affair with the salt water employee and paying her 80k (for reference as the development director I was making 31k).After we found that out we took a look at the aquarium bank statement and found that while we've been trying to make the aquarium as great as possible for each individual animal, the director was buying cowboys merch, roombas, speakers, patio lights, cookie dough sheets, oakleys and you get the picture. We were all horrified and quickly set about collecting evidence. We recorded all purchases, all the late night evenings alone with the salt water employee via the security cameras and even uncovered that the same salt water employee's animal death rate was being covered up by the executive director.
We then took all this information to the board above the executive director and had a meeting with the nine employees as well as a few ex employees to show our concerns (we transcribed meeting notes and saved that as well). A month after we brought forward our concerns, we were all asked to meet on a saturday at the aquarium with the executive director and another board member.
On that saturday the board member rolls up with a speaker and a book titled “the energy bus” and after a brief introduction he puts on the song “Welcome to our family” from Brother Bear and immediately launches into how we are all supposed to be a family. This is followed by Michael Jackson's “man in the mirror” and how we need to take a look at ourselves and change. Flabbergasted 3 people quit on the spot with the other 6 putting in their two weeks notice. Unfortunately the days following the meeting all the employees who were preparing to transition out were instead fired and not allowed to finish making their animal care guides.
Thankfully we still have all the evidence on a google drive folder, including the audio recording of the saturday musical meeting, but it genuinely feels like nothing is going happen to the aquarium or the director.