I went to college and got a professional degree from a top 10 university. At the end of grad school most of my classmates went to work for think tanks, consulting firms, or get a PhD. I decided the first two of those didn't align with my values as a socialist and I was burnt out on the academy. So I decided to work in Development for medium-sized nonprofit serving refugees. In some ways I did find what I was looking for, my work for and with some of the least among us does give me a sense of purpose. I work hard not to enrich a some owner I don't know but to help the people in the community I see every day. And yet, the greatest lesson I have learned is that work, as it currently exists in America, cannot be saved by purpose alone.
In the year and some change I've been at my current job, we have seen massive turnover. Hardly a week goes by that a staff member doesn't resign and I understand why. Almost definitionally, no one gets into nonprofit work to get rich, but it is still wearing to talk about how important it is that our clients receive living wages to take care of families at the same time most of the staff make less than the goal wage and cannot themselves afford to have families of their own. I am not quite that low and between my wife and I we do alright, but even then we fall a bit below the median for our city. That's mostly alright by me, but the incentives of the nonprofit sector are still brutal.
I am demonstrably good at my job. In my short tenure, our fundraising has increased by 15% in spite of waning pandemic funding. It's never enough. We can't bolster the existing organization, we have to continue growing. Whatever I do, we always need to grow more. No one wants to offer a grant to increase existing employees pay to a living wage, they only want to hear about what we can do to increase services to more people. In spite of lacking sales motives and shareholders, we have the same terrible treatment of for-profit workers. The people offering services are not worth considering anymore than the person making a burger, writing a grant proposal, or any other number of jobs that actually keep the world running.
The problem isn't meaning. It's the the system that requires us to work as hard as we can to put money in the pockets of the wealthy and then keep the money there by getting just enough out to prevent real change and spread their propaganda at the same time they get credit for their tax write-off subsidized “charity.” Even in the part of the economy dedicated to not making money, capitalism ruins everything.