[gaucheries]

While I was in undergrad, I volunteered at SPD’s warehouse in Berkeley for a summer. Although I enjoyed my time there, and I learned a lot about non-profits, publishing and more, I found it be a very strange, tense, and awkward place to work. And cliquey. I did not feel welcome, seen or accepted. Kind of like the Bay Area at large over the past decade or more (and I speak as a regional native).

An anonymous former employee supports the claim that SPD was a poor place to work, run by toxic people: https://damagedbookworker.medium.com/terrorized-by-spd-61201...

[gedy]

While I feel for this person, this gets very messy when people passionate about the industry agree to "unpaid internships". Yes it's not right and they should stop, but it's literally a little like letting someone screw you with no commitment, then you being upset they don't feel the same way as you do.

I know the arts are rife with this stuff, but stay away from it.

[chipdart]

> (...) it's literally a little like letting someone screw you with no commitment, then you being upset they don't feel the same way as you do.

I strongly disagree with this take. Contributing your time to a non-profit is not "letting someone screw you with no commitment". Moreso if you're an intern in a non-profit that explicitly set forth to offer unpaid internships to anyone who applied. Volunteers are there to contribute without expecting a salary, but that is not consent for abuse. Quite the opposite.

Also, you're talking about completely distinct things. Volunteering for an organization is not a green card to be treated poorly or abused by current staff. In fact, organizations who open internships understand well how it is in their best interests to create a good environment and a good experience. They know they are opening their inner workings to the outside world and creating experiences for those whose main deliverable for the organization is not work but PR in the form of testimonies and first-hand accounts.