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?