A recent email to the NPR show "Market Place"

Re: your new, year long series on charity giving. What does a lowly social service worker have to do to get business-oriented shows like yours to talk about something other than the giving end of my business? Why is it that we aren't considered when "business trends" are discussed, except to mention how much people give (or how little!) or horror stories about (so-called) "entitlements"? Why don't you focus on how our business process has changed during this depression?-How staff morale is at an all time low because now we aren't serving more with less but we are stuck not serving people at all. Why not some stories about how we have to shift from government-based grant writing toward foundation grant support and what that means? Wanna know how this depression is hurting people? Try talking to a proud,newly laid-off autoworker who now has to walk through the morass of State bureaucracy and answer highly personal questions on some 15 page form to get $112/month in food stamps for his family of 4. Then talk to the social worker who has to help him through the process, all the while trying to convince him that the information he puts on the form won't be used against him by the government or lost threw identity theft! Why don't you talk more extensively about the policy issues regarding mental health and substance abuse treatment as it relates to this healthcare reform mess? Are your listeners aware that 10% cut in Michigan's Medicaid budget means fewer doctors can afford to accept the poor and that prior to that, anyone wasn't seriously and persistently mentally ill could get no help whatsoever? Are your staff writers aware that all the workers at the community mental health agencies can do for client's they serve is to stuff them with globs of pills and cross their fingers? Nonprofit work is more than about the folks who do the giving but about the persons who administer the money after it is given. It seems the only time you pay attention to us and our business practices is when the Acorn's (the bad guys for this year) or the United Ways (they were the bad guys back in the 80s during a misappropriation scandal) do something stupid. And when you broadcast that, all of us nonprofits suffer because then everyone lumps us all together and then stop giving. And when we do get positive press, it is always around the holidays. Excuse me but people have been starving, loosing their homes/jobs, having mental health/substance abuse problems, loosing custody of their children, escaping domestic violence, and returning home from prison all year long. Where were you folks in June? Frankly, I wish you all would forget about us for it seems that when you do pay attention, it does us less good than it does harm.