Facepalm

Davies Symphony Hall

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

Found all over the place, on social media, in email, and elsewhere:

Crude as a gut punch, tender as a kiss, Verdi’s Requiem translates the medieval Latin mass for the dead into the vivid and visceral idiom of Italian opera.

Very seriously, who writes this stuff? That first clause is ridiculous, inaccurate, a likely turn-off to potential audience members, and frankly embarrassing. SF Symphony can certainly hire better people than this....well, wait, maybe they just can't afford to these days.

 

Ticketing Fees, Once Again

Found on the Cal Performances website:

There is a $15 per order service charge on single ticket purchases that partially underwrites the cost of our ticketing platform, credit card processing, Ticket Office staffing, and ticket delivery. To avoid this fee, tickets can be purchased in person at our Ticket Office during our regular office hours. Note: there is a $20 service charge for all subscription orders.

It's nice to see an explanation, but for heaven's sake: credit charge processing and Ticket Office staffing apply even if you buy tickets in person, assuming that you use a credit card. For that matter, the ticketing platform has to be updated even if you buy in person. The seat or seats you just bought are no longer available. So I still don't get it.

Don't Be This Small Non-Profit 3

In 2018 and 202, I posted about issues I had with trying to renew my membership in a small nonprofit organization (SNP) and then about what I saw as some issues in that organization.

Today I received this from SNP, and JFC. This organization hasn't followed basic principles of record keeping, considering that they are missing legally required documentation. I really have to wonder what will happen when they've been audited. I'll note, in passing, that Pro Publica's Nonprofit Explorer's last 990 for this organization is from 2011. It's possible that the IRS is behind in processing whatever they've submitted, but I wonder whether anyone on the board knows what a 990 is.

When we, your 2023 Board, took the reins this year, 3 of the 6 of us noticed an alarming amount of past mismanagement and financial discrepancies. The other 3 Board members have since resigned. The three of us remaining have been working hard to investigate and clean up our compliance and financial issues and had hoped it was all a case of innocent naivete on the part of past boards and not the intentional Theft by Transfer that our organization has been threatened with in recent months.

Unfortunately, this is not or at least not entirely the case. SNP has been the target of an intentional, attempted takeover event from inside the organization. We are not at liberty to say who at this point in the criminal investigation, but we can tell you that the core breach happened in the last half of April this year and the only people with access to our accounts were 2023 and 2022 board members. We are frustrated, angered, disappointed that someone(s) in our community who we elected to protect this organization has broken the trust we all put in them.

We know that member names were taken, along with email addresses, and any other contact information you supplied to SNP; phone, physical address, etc. Due to how our web host works, we do not have reason to believe that individual credit card numbers have been stolen, but our thief(s) have, since the breach, had the ability to charge/refund charges if you had payment on file with us. So if anything suspicious shows up, please let us know.

Separate from this breach, SNP is also missing a great deal of legally required documentation from the past 5-7 years. If anyone, past board member or otherwise, has any copies of old board meeting minutes and especially financial records, please send them to either [email address1] or [email address2].

While this breach of trust from some of our own is very serious, we and our legal counsel know SNP has the law on our side and we are working hard to bring about accountability and ensure the security of this organization and your information going forward. 

Tsk, Tsk, NY Times.

I'm a pretty regular reporter of typos and factual errors to the NY Times, that is, at least once a month and sometimes more often than that. I count 18 this year. Usually, I send email to the paper's tell-us-the-error address; sometimes I contact the writer. Usually, I get action.

There's an error that has been up at the Times since April about which I sent email and I tried to contact the author (on Twitter, probably a mistake). It's in this Michael Kimmelman article about skyscrapers on Park Avenue.

Scroll down to the photo that's labeled as follows:

The MetLife Building, formerly known as the Pan Am Building, from 1963, squatting over Grand Central Terminal in the middle of Park Avenue.

Credit...

That's the MetLife Building in the background, all right. But the photo was taken from E. 49th and Park Avenue looking south, and the building over which the MetLife Building squats is the Helmsley Building, not Grand Central Terminal. Here's a similar photo of the Helmsley Building, from Wikipedia; and here's a photo showing the MetLife Building and Grand Central Terminal. 

You'd think that a photo editor at the NY Times would be able to tell Grand Central from the Helmsley Building. Either the caption or the photo should be corrected. 

Don't Be This Small Non-Profit 2

 Probably you won't remember the unbelievable hassles I had trying to renew my membership in a small nonprofit organization a couple of years back. I'm here to say, you still don't want to be this organization.

Back in late June, I received email from this org about Black Lives Matter that was similar to what I'd received from other organizations. SNP, as I called them then and will call them now, pledged to increase diversity, etc., etc. 

I sent a 1200 word letter analyzing the current membership on certain axes and asking a bunch of questions about just how they planned to go about doing this. Ten days later, I got a thank-you-for-writing email that promised a longer response "soon."

It's now been nine weeks and no longer response has been forthcoming. I don't particularly need my membership in this organization, so....perhaps I won't renew.

But there's yet another reason for you, dear reader, to figure out how not to be this small nonprofit organization. They have a web page of Black Lives Matter resources on which there are lists of books, organizations, films, podcasts, and other web resources....and mostly the lists don't include LINKS to those resources.

Folks, it is 2020 and no organization should have to get feedback about providing links on the web. No competent organization, anyway. I'm sending them one very concrete suggestion about diversifying membership, but it includes stuff like dedicated URLs. I hope their webmaster knows what they're doing, although that page with no links, which is as useful as a printed page on the web, isn't encouraging.

Don't Be This Small Non-Profit

[July 14: Pushing this to the top of the blog because of follow-ups.}

Stuff that happened to me when I tried to renew my membership in a small non-profit organization (SNP, hereafter); an object lesson in how not to treat your members.

1. I received a renewal notice by email on February 2, 2018. I sent a check to SNP on or around February 8, because I had canceled my credit card owing to a fraudulent charge and I hadn’t received the new card yet. The check went to the post office box listed on SNP's web site and in the email I received.

2. February 16 - I received another emailed renewal notice. I replied to the email, which came from info@SNP. I did not receive an answer.

3. March 4 - I received another emailed renewal notice. This time, I forward that email and a reply to membership@SNP. I did not receive an answer.

4. March 7 - I received another emailed renewal noticed. This time, I forwarded that email and a reply to treasurer@SNP. I did not receive an answer.

5. March 23 - I sent a printed letter to the president of SNP at an address where I thought the president would receive it. I was confused about something and sent it to the wrong address, but it got to the president anyway. (Small world effect, here.)

6. April 3 - I hadn't heard anything, so I sent email to membership@SNP, president@SNP, vicepresident@SNP, and treasurer@SNP just saying I had a question and could anyone answer it.

7. April 9 - I heard from the president by email, who had gotten my printed letter. The president was very apologetic and promised to contact the treasurer on my behalf.

8. April 25. - The president checked back with me to see whether I had heard from the treasurer. I had not yet heard from the treasurer, who could not find 2 minutes before heading out of town a couple of weeks ago to send an email saying "I'm on this."

Apparently my case will be discussed at the Board meeting on April 29, nearly three months after I got the first renewal notice. My check hasn't cleared my bank yet, nor has the envelope containing the check come back to me.

Update: May 3 - The Board meeting was on April 29, and several days later, nobody has gotten back to me about the status of my membership renewal.

Things that went wrong:

• Organization says it's okay to send a check to a physical mail box that nobody monitors.
• Organization has multiple email addresses listed on its web site that nobody checks.
• Officer of the organization is asked to get in touch with a member, doesn't do it in a timely fashion.
• Renewal process, which should be simple, stretches out over three months even though member attempted to pay on a timely basis.
• Update: Board meets, is supposed to talk about this, nobody gets back to member with status report even after she sends an email the day after the meeting.

As I said, don't be this organization. No, I'm not going to tell you which organization this is.

Update: July 14, 2018

• On April 30, I followed up.
• On May 3, having heard nothing, I sent another follow-up.
• On May 8, the president of SNP asked me to tell her again where I had sent my check. Note: she had this in writing and I had sent it to the address on the org's web site.
• I told her I'd just pay my dues on line.
• On May 10, SNP finally told me they couldn't find my check and also that they were changing the PO Box address because the person who checks it does check regularly but doesn't communicate regularly with SNP. What. The. Fuck.
• Today, I got an email transmitting links to the quarterly newsletter of SNP, and it starts "Normally, the newsletter is only delivered to members whose dues are current, but we want to make sure that everyone is included in the excitement leading up to [event]. Enjoy this issue and plan for [event, which conflicts with an event that it's more important for me to go to]." I honestly can't tell what the problem here is: their database still thinks I haven't paid, or their cover email is totally guilt-trippy and ham-handed. I'm still trying to decide whether to send outraged email, curious email, ignore, or what.
• SNP did indeed switch the contact address, which is now in a different city and state.

While I'm not going to disclose the name of SNP, it has 137 members in it because it does nothing to increase membership....and there are a few obvious things it could do.