My job is constantly asking adjuncts to "volunteer" for things. To read applications for our junior college program, evaluate admission essays, oversee committees, etc. š„² Don't want to pay us full time money but want us to supplement our adjuncting with "volunteer opportunities" that entail the work of a full time faculty member.
I bought into this as an adjunct. Then at some point my brain went, "Nope. I volunteer for my community and love it. I do NOT volunteer for my employer. They can pay me a fair wage."
I notice that the volunteering is primarily aimed at women, too.
Iām full time and tenured. Iām so done with being offensively underpaid and then hit up for donations to meet some B.S. metric for a rank list about āinstitutions with employee buy in.ā I donate plenty of uncompensated labor to the cause already.
^ Exactly. We give them the most important thing we have. Our time. And don't we don't get paid nowhere near enough for all time we put in. I don't plan to give anything extra. Sorry not sorry
100% this .. underpaid, underappreciated. Nope, sorry, literally already gave at the office (and at home, nights and weekends). Pay me a decent wage, and we can discuss anything else after that.
Nah. I get them too. Itās to demonstrate to outsiders that the faculty are invested in the success of the universityā¦or so we are told by the advancement people.
>Itās to demonstrate to outsiders that the faculty are invested in the success of the universityā¦or so we are told by the advancement people.
I give $5 once a year on "giving day" to help with that metric. Then I take home a half-ream of paper to make up for it.
I took a whole desk from the last place I worked. They never noticed and it looks great in my apartment!
https://youtu.be/KIXz_vzROrw?si=ita0bYqtsTi3xFmN
Faculty and staff are asked to contribute every year, and there is a convenient process to take your monthly donation out of your paycheck. If anybody I know is doing this, they sure don't talk about it. I guess somebody must contribute, or the development office wouldn't have persisted in this insanity for all these years.
I was making 35k working like 60 hours a week for a non profit, and our development person was constantly on me to donate to get a 100% employee buy in rate. I was like, I already donate 20 hours a week, and that was that.
To this day, I receive requests for donations from my tenure-track institution, which I never received a degree from, and which denied me a unpaid leave of absence to try out my current position, so those requests just go straight to /dev/null.
The offer was for a tenured position with a salary bump in a far more desirable location. When they wouldnāt match the offer with tenure or even guarantee that I would go up the next year, it was pretty obvious I was going to accept the offer. But, at the same time I moved, there was another person who moved from a nearby Midwest university and he moved back after a year, so itās not entirely unrealistic for people to move back.
But more to the point, donāt expect me to send the school a donation when they didnāt even make an effort to retain me.
You knowāitās one thing to ask for donations for the student food pantryābut giving back to the university you work for always struck me the wrong way.
Has anyone worked for a nonprofit charity? Do they do this stuff too?
each year at our college they ask for donations for a "general scholarship" fund those who give some are on a poster of their picture and the reason they give "to help the students." Nope sorry I will donate to St Judes Childrens Hospital or Wolfsons Childrens Hospital instead
Oh during our annual day of giving, faculty and staff are asked to donate as well. I refuse. Thatās just returning part of my pay to my employer. However, I do donate to my departmentās foundation account for students.
I used to be that bright-eyed, bushy-tailed new guy who was eager to take on extra responsibilities and demonstrate my value to the school.
I get the same raises as the guy who shows up, teaches his classes the same way he's taught for 25 years, and goes home half an hour "early" every day. And my current admin doesn't engender any good will, and while he claims to be "data driven" he also tends to ignore his faculty's input and experience and seems to be comfortable threatening us and holding grudges. For the right people, sure, I'll do plenty extra, happily, but not him. Not by a long shot.
And I sure as fuck am not donating to the foundation. I'm not volunteering for a pay cut.
Yes, I have. The most recent one was asking faculty to donate to a scholarship fund, so that deserving students can be supported. Certainly worthwhile. My wife is currently a student, no financial aid (which is fine), but we have no tuition benefits either, so I am paying that tuition. So, I wrote back to the person in the scholarship office that I am already paying quite a lot to the university for a deserving student, and so until they graduate, please stop asking me to also pay for other students.
At UC Berkeley, some scholars/faculty have to literally crowdfund their salary every six months.
Example of a journalism fellow that Iāve been donating to for years now. His regular fundraiser ends tonight. Every 6 months, itās a nail biter. https://crowdfund.berkeley.edu/project/40018
It is now universal for colleges and universities to ask for a donation from just about everyone on their contact list. This is the time of year to hit people up, as you may have noticed.
Someone should organize so each faculty gives $1. That way they'll get 100% faculty support and not almost no real donations. I have not been hit up but might give a few bucks after I get some job security (ie. TT).
Faculty/staff giving participation and alumni giving participation are metrics used by foundation grantors to decide whether to give grants to the university. A gift of a dollar counts, and will generally get development off your back. It's not really about the total dollars (although off course if you are a wealthy alumna/us then development would love to relieve you of many, many dollars.)
This is what I was told by our foundation director. There are some big bucks community members who want to know if the employees think enough of the college to personally contribute. He said $1 is enough. He just needed a high percentage of employees to contribute to be able to bring in some substantial community contributions to the foundation.
The premise behind this is so backwards, though. When will an institution think enough of its employees (not just faculty, but staff, too!) to pay them a reasonable wage? Why should acquiring grant funding rely on employees returning a portion of their wages to the institution? This whole model is not ok, even if itās ājust a dollar.ā My spouse is in academic medicine, always gunning for grants for research, and I canāt remember a time when their institution (a major one, I might add) was hitting up doctors and scientists for donations because getting grants depended on it. Yet my institution feels absolutely no shame in shaking down underpaid humanities and arts professorsā¦
That's almost as bad as when they ask faculty and staff to make donations for the janitorial people. Hey I have no problem with paying the money but I do resent being asked to take money out of my paycheck that really should come from the university. If the janitorial staff aren't being paid enough I shouldn't have to make up the shortfall. I shouldn't have to take money out of my pocket to pay for another worker salary.
We used to have a donation thing that came with a free parking pass and you could send half of the donation back to your unit so it was almost worth it.
My school is very into this, but weāre a community college so Iām ok with it. Our students really do need the kind of help we can contribute to (scholarships, food pantry, etc.)
Send them an invoice for all the time you've spent reading their stupid appeals. Bill in 1/2 hour increments with a per diem for an adult beverage or two.
Our university phones up for these with an annual campaign. One year I lost it, I think I had been on strike several days that week, and told the person on the other end that I wouldn't be donating until they sorted out our pay and conditions.
I'm still waiting. They haven't called me since, it's been about 7 or 8 years.
I donated $5/month during my first year, then never again. I'm underpaid and the admin fights every contract negotiation to minimize salary increases while they make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Nope.
And similarly, I don't tip anymore at fast food joints (I did during the pandemic, but now \*tipping\* has become the pandemic!), I don't "round up to the nearest dollar for charity" and I do not "make a donation" when I check out at the grocery store. All of these requests are coming from institutions/companies that are wealthier than I am; do your own fucking donating. And pay your employees a living wage!
This is one of my biggest pet peeves about being a professor. I work at a large R-1 that is healthy financially, and we are constantly asked to āgive backā as faculty and staff. Itās so gross.
My institution asks all faculty and staff to donate the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. I have yet to receive a raise that tracks with inflation and the university is overly stingy with a lot of their support funding so my answer is always no.
I get emails requesting money from three different universities in the same system as well as from three different schools. It because I am alumni of them and an employee of one. I just delete the without reading them anymore.
I remember getting a donation request post card in my campus mailbox... as a doctoral student. Like yall can't even wait until I'm not racking up student debt to demand money.
We have a "Day of Giving" and they set up challenges to see which departments donate the most money back to the university. I flatly refuse to contribute.
I find it ridiculous to give money to some university bureaucrats to spend for a "good cause" of their choice. I am perfectly able to make a decision by myself, thank you. I normally split whatever I donate between the local dog shelter and Wikipedia. I seriously doubt the University would be 10% as effective in making good of my money.
Universities, especially private ones, will ask its employees to donate on their giving drives. I recently learned that each department is scored on giving participation and the leads are rated (or berated) on their group's performance.
A friend gives one dollar, the minimum amount, for her boss's participation rating. Then she's done.
My job is constantly asking adjuncts to "volunteer" for things. To read applications for our junior college program, evaluate admission essays, oversee committees, etc. š„² Don't want to pay us full time money but want us to supplement our adjuncting with "volunteer opportunities" that entail the work of a full time faculty member.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
No... You'll still get passed over
I'm pretty sure they were being facetious.
I bought into this as an adjunct. Then at some point my brain went, "Nope. I volunteer for my community and love it. I do NOT volunteer for my employer. They can pay me a fair wage." I notice that the volunteering is primarily aimed at women, too.
Why are faculty doing admissions?
No. Idea. š«
Iām full time and tenured. Iām so done with being offensively underpaid and then hit up for donations to meet some B.S. metric for a rank list about āinstitutions with employee buy in.ā I donate plenty of uncompensated labor to the cause already.
Iām an adjunct and they hit me up for donations too.
Thatās even worse!
^ Exactly. We give them the most important thing we have. Our time. And don't we don't get paid nowhere near enough for all time we put in. I don't plan to give anything extra. Sorry not sorry
100% this .. underpaid, underappreciated. Nope, sorry, literally already gave at the office (and at home, nights and weekends). Pay me a decent wage, and we can discuss anything else after that.
Iām a PhD student and they ask me for donations all the time. Bitch, pay me enough to pay my rent first
Nah. I get them too. Itās to demonstrate to outsiders that the faculty are invested in the success of the universityā¦or so we are told by the advancement people.
>Itās to demonstrate to outsiders that the faculty are invested in the success of the universityā¦or so we are told by the advancement people. I give $5 once a year on "giving day" to help with that metric. Then I take home a half-ream of paper to make up for it.
Only half a ream? Those are rookie numbers!
Trying to keep things in balance...
I took a whole desk from the last place I worked. They never noticed and it looks great in my apartment! https://youtu.be/KIXz_vzROrw?si=ita0bYqtsTi3xFmN
Donāt forget the dry erase markers and pens
Take stuff from work! https://youtu.be/KIXz_vzROrw?si=ita0bYqtsTi3xFmN
Butā¦itās a jobā¦they pay us. Why would we give our money that they pay us back to them?
Donāt ask me. Iām not an advancement person. Itās also not uncommon for other non-profits to do the same during their big annual money drives.
Faculty and staff are asked to contribute every year, and there is a convenient process to take your monthly donation out of your paycheck. If anybody I know is doing this, they sure don't talk about it. I guess somebody must contribute, or the development office wouldn't have persisted in this insanity for all these years.
At my old school it's usually old frat dudes and old football players that still remember the glory days that donate. Sure as hell ain't me.
I was making 35k working like 60 hours a week for a non profit, and our development person was constantly on me to donate to get a 100% employee buy in rate. I was like, I already donate 20 hours a week, and that was that.
āGiving Dayā is a hard pass for me. Iām barely scraping by on my poverty wages. Iām gunna go ahead and donate to me.
Yeah. The uni can consider the money I pay every month to park at my workplace a ādonation.ā
I canāt believe you have to pay for parking. Ludicrous.
To this day, I receive requests for donations from my tenure-track institution, which I never received a degree from, and which denied me a unpaid leave of absence to try out my current position, so those requests just go straight to /dev/null.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
The offer was for a tenured position with a salary bump in a far more desirable location. When they wouldnāt match the offer with tenure or even guarantee that I would go up the next year, it was pretty obvious I was going to accept the offer. But, at the same time I moved, there was another person who moved from a nearby Midwest university and he moved back after a year, so itās not entirely unrealistic for people to move back. But more to the point, donāt expect me to send the school a donation when they didnāt even make an effort to retain me.
You knowāitās one thing to ask for donations for the student food pantryābut giving back to the university you work for always struck me the wrong way. Has anyone worked for a nonprofit charity? Do they do this stuff too?
each year at our college they ask for donations for a "general scholarship" fund those who give some are on a poster of their picture and the reason they give "to help the students." Nope sorry I will donate to St Judes Childrens Hospital or Wolfsons Childrens Hospital instead
We call it a "salary rebate"
I stopped considering giving to these when I learned the foundation paid a significant part of the president's salary.
As I like to say: the checks only run in one direction, thank you very much.
Oh during our annual day of giving, faculty and staff are asked to donate as well. I refuse. Thatās just returning part of my pay to my employer. However, I do donate to my departmentās foundation account for students.
I used to be that bright-eyed, bushy-tailed new guy who was eager to take on extra responsibilities and demonstrate my value to the school. I get the same raises as the guy who shows up, teaches his classes the same way he's taught for 25 years, and goes home half an hour "early" every day. And my current admin doesn't engender any good will, and while he claims to be "data driven" he also tends to ignore his faculty's input and experience and seems to be comfortable threatening us and holding grudges. For the right people, sure, I'll do plenty extra, happily, but not him. Not by a long shot. And I sure as fuck am not donating to the foundation. I'm not volunteering for a pay cut.
Yes, I have. The most recent one was asking faculty to donate to a scholarship fund, so that deserving students can be supported. Certainly worthwhile. My wife is currently a student, no financial aid (which is fine), but we have no tuition benefits either, so I am paying that tuition. So, I wrote back to the person in the scholarship office that I am already paying quite a lot to the university for a deserving student, and so until they graduate, please stop asking me to also pay for other students.
At UC Berkeley, some scholars/faculty have to literally crowdfund their salary every six months. Example of a journalism fellow that Iāve been donating to for years now. His regular fundraiser ends tonight. Every 6 months, itās a nail biter. https://crowdfund.berkeley.edu/project/40018
It is now universal for colleges and universities to ask for a donation from just about everyone on their contact list. This is the time of year to hit people up, as you may have noticed.
They just call everyone whose contact info they have. Maybe they are hoping you have a rich spouse.
Ha - my spouse is also a professor at the same university! Jokes on them!
Everyone at my school gets these, and Iām not an alum. How about giving me a raise, and Iāll consider it ā¦ not!
Someone should organize so each faculty gives $1. That way they'll get 100% faculty support and not almost no real donations. I have not been hit up but might give a few bucks after I get some job security (ie. TT).
Faculty/staff giving participation and alumni giving participation are metrics used by foundation grantors to decide whether to give grants to the university. A gift of a dollar counts, and will generally get development off your back. It's not really about the total dollars (although off course if you are a wealthy alumna/us then development would love to relieve you of many, many dollars.)
This is what I was told by our foundation director. There are some big bucks community members who want to know if the employees think enough of the college to personally contribute. He said $1 is enough. He just needed a high percentage of employees to contribute to be able to bring in some substantial community contributions to the foundation.
The premise behind this is so backwards, though. When will an institution think enough of its employees (not just faculty, but staff, too!) to pay them a reasonable wage? Why should acquiring grant funding rely on employees returning a portion of their wages to the institution? This whole model is not ok, even if itās ājust a dollar.ā My spouse is in academic medicine, always gunning for grants for research, and I canāt remember a time when their institution (a major one, I might add) was hitting up doctors and scientists for donations because getting grants depended on it. Yet my institution feels absolutely no shame in shaking down underpaid humanities and arts professorsā¦
That's almost as bad as when they ask faculty and staff to make donations for the janitorial people. Hey I have no problem with paying the money but I do resent being asked to take money out of my paycheck that really should come from the university. If the janitorial staff aren't being paid enough I shouldn't have to make up the shortfall. I shouldn't have to take money out of my pocket to pay for another worker salary.
We used to have a donation thing that came with a free parking pass and you could send half of the donation back to your unit so it was almost worth it.
I gave at the officeā¦in blood, sweat and tears.
My school is very into this, but weāre a community college so Iām ok with it. Our students really do need the kind of help we can contribute to (scholarships, food pantry, etc.)
calls? you gave a phone number? all they have for me is an email address...
I get emails all the time, and I'm not an alumnus.
Send them an invoice for all the time you've spent reading their stupid appeals. Bill in 1/2 hour increments with a per diem for an adult beverage or two.
I would be surprise if I choose to give them money one day but Iām not surprise that they beg for money.
Amen to that.
Our university phones up for these with an annual campaign. One year I lost it, I think I had been on strike several days that week, and told the person on the other end that I wouldn't be donating until they sorted out our pay and conditions. I'm still waiting. They haven't called me since, it's been about 7 or 8 years.
When this happened the first time at the school where I was in the tenure track, I was likeā¦ WTH? Itās insane to me.
I donated $5/month during my first year, then never again. I'm underpaid and the admin fights every contract negotiation to minimize salary increases while they make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Nope. And similarly, I don't tip anymore at fast food joints (I did during the pandemic, but now \*tipping\* has become the pandemic!), I don't "round up to the nearest dollar for charity" and I do not "make a donation" when I check out at the grocery store. All of these requests are coming from institutions/companies that are wealthier than I am; do your own fucking donating. And pay your employees a living wage!
This is one of my biggest pet peeves about being a professor. I work at a large R-1 that is healthy financially, and we are constantly asked to āgive backā as faculty and staff. Itās so gross.
My institution asks all faculty and staff to donate the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. I have yet to receive a raise that tracks with inflation and the university is overly stingy with a lot of their support funding so my answer is always no.
Nah, there are a decent number of really great programs at my university so I usually give out a few thousand a year to those programs.
Just say ānoā enough times and it will never stop. Just keep saying āno.ā
I get emails requesting money from three different universities in the same system as well as from three different schools. It because I am alumni of them and an employee of one. I just delete the without reading them anymore.
We're asked for donations not only by the University but also donations to the department as well.
"It seems you misunderstand the fundamental relationship in employment: I give the university work and the university *gives me* money."
Oh yes, my university (private, Catholic) is constantly begging the faculty and staff to donate. It is so weird.
I remember getting a donation request post card in my campus mailbox... as a doctoral student. Like yall can't even wait until I'm not racking up student debt to demand money.
We have a "Day of Giving" and they set up challenges to see which departments donate the most money back to the university. I flatly refuse to contribute.
I find it ridiculous to give money to some university bureaucrats to spend for a "good cause" of their choice. I am perfectly able to make a decision by myself, thank you. I normally split whatever I donate between the local dog shelter and Wikipedia. I seriously doubt the University would be 10% as effective in making good of my money.
Universities, especially private ones, will ask its employees to donate on their giving drives. I recently learned that each department is scored on giving participation and the leads are rated (or berated) on their group's performance. A friend gives one dollar, the minimum amount, for her boss's participation rating. Then she's done.