Volunteering & Volunteer Students

today we announced publicly that our pride organization has been devastated by the financial misdealings of its treasurer.

we have been struggling with the realities of this since early march, and were finally in the position of making it public.

for legal reasons we can not place blame, nor can we give details. we also live with the reality that what was all of our finances does not amount to a hill of beans to the justice system. We have been advised that this will not be addressed by either the police or the district attorneys because its just too small an amount.

lesson to learn for all of us: do not “trust friends” when it comes to organizational bookkeeping. make sure all of your financial safeguards are tight, and that you adhere to them, even when its a friend having a busy time. demand accountability.

the worst thing of all, is that the first response I have read from my loving and concerned community, was to tell us how disappointed they were and how embarrassed they were. This from someone who never offered help, never got involved.
this is the risk of putting yourself out there....of getting involved. And most of those people who will complain, attack, belittle and harass us, are the people who would never lift a hand to do the work, but love to enjoy the benefits. There are less than ten of us who for the last three years working all year long have put on an event that covered a weekend and was phenomenally successful and growing. Now we have a mess to clean up, a year that wont have much to celebrate, and working towards building something over again.

im feeling a bit sorry for myself right now...and have to thicken up my skin.....we will get flack. we opted to be open and honest about something that devastated us from the inside, and now the same situation will do so from the outside.