u/Balancedbeem

I don’t know if this is allowed, so if it gets taken down, ok. I had a really upsetting experience tonight. I work for a small, nonprofit art center in my community, and we are hosting concerts this summer. We bring in bands from all over, but tonight’s band was from a city just a few hours away. Our community is pretty rural, and we are a small, progressive island in a sea of red.

We have two trans employees, an intern who uses he/him and a receptionist who uses she/her. Before the concert even started, two of the band members made denigrating remarks in reference to our trans employees. One was in reference to our intern (not to the intern themselves, thank goodness, but to another employee). The other was to our receptionist when she answered a question and a band member responded “Thanks, dude.” I suppose the case could be made that “dude” wasn’t meant to be disrespectful, but seriously…

The lead singer (and namesake) of the band was absolutely lovely. She was so complimentary to our intern and the crowd loved her. So many people asked to have them back, and she said she would love to come back and felt so welcomed by our community. I’ll be honest, I couldn’t even enjoy the concert after I found out what had happened with the two other band members.

My question, do I mention this to her? She was the only person I communicated with in organizing, and I could send her an email. I don’t know if it makes a difference, but she is a POC and the rest of the band is not. I am not either, but I really try to be an ally for all. I also don’t want to make unfounded accusations against her band mates, but I trust my employees. I do plan to debrief with my intern tomorrow to see if anything else was said to them. I did check in with the intern throughout the night to make sure they were ok (they said they were), and apologized to our receptionist and expressed my disappointment in the band. I don’t even want to have them back unless it’s just the lead singer.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Edited to add: I chose this sub because it’s one of the kindest and wisest I know!!

My husband got free tickets, and I want to do something fun with our two kids next week. They are 11 and 13 and love places like COSI, but I e heard that GLSC hasn’t been updated since the 90s and a ton of the exhibits are broken? The last post on here was from a year ago and said all of that. Does anyone know if it’s gotten better? And I remember it being cool for little kids, but how about middle schoolers? My husband says that since the tickets are free, I should just go, but I’d rather pay to go to something like the zoo or natural history museum if GLSC is as lame as I’ve heard.

I’m sharing this mostly as a somewhat interesting story but feel free to comment your thoughts! I’m a development officer at a small nonprofit. I received a weird email today that read like a phishing scam. It looked like this:

From: RealPersonName@ReputableFinanceFirm.com

Cc: AlsoRealPerson@ReputableFinanceFirm.com

Subject: Grant Award RealName Charitable Trust - My Organization

Hi MyName!

On behalf of the RealName Charitable Trust, I’m pleased to share that your organization has been awarded a $100,000 grant for strategic plan—congratulations!
 
As Grants Manager for the Trust at ReputableFinanceFirm, I will be assisting with the payment process. Could you please provide your organization’s wire instructions so we may remit payment?
 
Thank you in advance for your help!
 
Best,
Real Person

I did Google the people on the email and the domain matched up and it all seemed “legit” as did the email signature. So I called the phone number in the signature and here is the summary of the conversation:

Real Person: Hello? (No formal answer)

Me: Umm, is this Real Person?

RP: yes…

Me: Umm, I just received a strange email from you that we had received a grant from a fund I didn’t apply to and have never heard of?

RP: oh, yeah, I know it looks strange, but that’s the way we do it. We actually have to process that by the 30th so if you could get me the info, that would be great.

Me: um, I’d like a little more info. I’ve never heard of this fund and we didn’t apply…

RP: well, it’s a pretty well-known fund. We serve all of Philadelphia and around Pennsylvania.

**aha moment for me. We are in Ohio and our org is named for our county. For example, it’s like the Brown County Center for Science. Well, there is a Center for Science in Brown County in PA too. We occasionally get communications for them and vice versa. I explain this and RP’s response was crazy**

RP: oh DAMN! Damnit! I’m so sorry. That sucks. I’m sorry. You must be really disappointed.

Me: No, no I’m fine.

I’m not really crying about not getting a grant I didn’t apply for from a fund I’ve never heard of via a suspicious email and phone call. Could this be phishing? Or just bad communications? I’m chuckling thinking about it now.

Not sure if my flair is right. I wanted to ask a Reddit community for advice, and this seemed like the best one to come too!!!

My daughter (13) and I are heading on a road trip to a camp she’s attending about 4-5 hours away. When we’re driving, I’d love if she weren’t just glued to her phone, but she and I don’t talk very much (not in a bad way… just that she’s 13 and not very talkative). I was thinking that an audiobook that we both listen to would be a great way to bond on the long drive.

Does anyone have suggestions for some good YA books we could listen to? We both love fantasy and mystery. She likes some sci-fi and horror, but me, not so much! I appreciate all of your suggestions!

I’m a one-person development team, and our organization of just over $1m has a fairly diversified funding portfolio. We’ve had a very successful corporate sponsorship program for businesses who can give $2,500+ per year, but we recognize that it is less dependable. For example, one of our leadership givers recently sold their business out of state and that annual gift vanished immediately.

We introduced some smaller sponsorship levels for specific events we run, and I made what I thought was a fairly conservative estimate of what it could generate. However, the state of the economy has meant that we may not meet my conservative estimate. I feel like all the businesses in our community, large and small, have just decided to tighten their belt, cinch up the purse strings and ghost us.

I’m meeting tonight with some friends/colleagues also in fundraising and we regularly compare notes. I really don’t feel it’s anything our org has done or my approach (which has been successful in the past). I think it’s just the volatile economy right now, and I suppose that means I’ve done things right and done all I could, but that doesn’t help our budget. Sigh.