Question: Bullying of new members
Hi there, I started on my daughter’s middle school choir booster club last fall and I am the Vice President if the show choir as well as other non-board positions to help. There are s group of women who have worked on the board for several years. Two of them do not currently have any kids in the school. We had a fundraiser recently that was voted to be distributed to the group last fall because our advising CPA said it could not legally go to the individual sales. I had originally disagreed with the concept of group division and the president and I clashed on this until we were told about the laws not allowing non-profits to benefit individually. The fundraiser is over and the president who pushed for group sales is now furious because only 12% of families participated in the fundraiser and she wanted it to be considered an individual fundraiser and have a re-vote. I had to work when they held a brief impromptu, last-minute meeting regarding finances and none of the agenda for this meeting was known to me. I knew we were to have our scheduled monthly meeting yesterday, but that was it. During the meeting they pushed through very controversial financial decisions and forced votes on some but not all of the issues. The choir director and secretary let me know they did not vote on how the recent fundraiser would be divided (group or individual). The secretary sent out the agenda for the meeting for yesterday and included a review/vote on items not finished at the last minute meeting. Several of the woman in the group (I’ll call them the gang) wrote back that it was discussed/voted on already and nothing more would happen. I asked about the fundraiser and I was told that if I had been at the meeting I would know and that all things were resolved. When I asked about the legality after we had been told it was illegal, the ignored me or responded with hostility, defensiveness. The email chain went on too long, I’m afraid, and in the end, the gang had fully unloaded on me as a mean person for asking and they said I attacked them because I kept asking for them to answer. Ultimately the president (in the gang) told me I am unkind and I just want to rub her face in the fact that the fundraiser didn’t do well. I was shocked and still am reeling with pain and confusion. I know it’s hard to communicate exactly what happened but it was so ugly and I don’t know if I should step down. I feel like, because I made this commitment to a wonderful cause, I should stay. But these women in this “gang” are brutal and I’m getting crushed.
Asked by Anonymous