I found myself with some extra time and a cool breeze and paged through the NY Times to see what I could see.
The business section includes an article, “On the Road – Boss in the Corporate Jet is Likely to Be a Woman.”
When I finished the article, I didn’t know quite what to focus on first. Here’s what came to mind, in no particular order:
- Shoddy statistics made for a misleading title and overall weak article.
- It’s sad to me that women with money and power are anomalies to be reported on, though of course I’m glad to see successful women featured.
- I’d like to know what the author’s basis was for generalizing male motivation for private jets (ego, status) and women’s (buying time, avoiding problems). He doesn’t say
- Reading this while commercial flights are getting worse for the rest of us who don’t have $130,000 (or $375,000+) for a plane was a little hard to swallow, though of course I’m very happy that women are better represented in the “haves” category.
- Oh yeah, what about all those people who can’t afford a coach-class commercial flight to whine about?
And that leads me to my nonprofit-related thoughts and questions:
- What would I do with $130,000? What would my organization? Who could we serve, and how?
- Does it make sense for a charitable organization or foundation to have a private jet? At what point does the cost of elaborate organization cause a poor return on investment and defeat its own purpose?
- Where does nonprofit reporting live in our major newspapers? Where should it? Business? Education? Health? Our strength, that we address all of those categories, can be a weakness because we’re hard to feature as one entity.
What do you think?
