Good Guys

HAIL MARY

CLAIRE


At Children of the World’s headquarters in Toronto, Claire Talbot sat at the weekly all-hands meeting, see-sawing a pen between two fingers. It was a Tuesday in mid-September, humidity still thickening the air, summer refusing to relinquish its clammy grip. They were an hour into the meeting, and everyone was wilting as Anya Mueller presented the quarterly financials.

Anya was director of operations and stood with the posture of a dancer, straight-backed and proud. A non-profit lifer in her early sixties, she had a sharp wit and a voice like a handful of gravel. They’d weathered bad years before, but this one was a catastrophe, Anya said. It’s an unprecedented disaster.

Claire was distracted, self-conscious in the presence of the charity’s founder, Crispin St. Onge, whose face had papered the walls of her childhood bedroom. She still owned a complete collection of his albums, his music the soundtrack of her youth. At her job interview, it had taken Claire a moment to reconcile this Crispin—early fifties, ever-so-slightly bow-legged, mismatched rocks—with the leather-jacket-clad rocker of her youth who had gritty vocals and whipped his shampoo-commercial hair in circles on the stage. Now, Crispin sat across from her, head in hands, as Anya took them through the balance sheet and income statements. The figures were in red. Donations. Corporate sponsorships. Volunteer income. All of it way down. It was a bloodbath.

Anya pressed her palms on the table and leaned forward. So. Does anyone have any ideas? She looked around the silent group, her steely gaze pausing at each of them in turn. We need a Hail Mary, Anya said, lingering on Claire. Anything at all.

Anya’s eyes were grey and ponderous, deep-set into her face. Claire experienced them like a set of oncoming headlights.

Claire was the most recent hire, having joined in the spring. After her two decades in the corporate world, the non-profit’s con­stricted budget had come as a shock.

Fine. Anya shut her laptop and took a seat. She waved a vague pen in Claire’s direction and said: Let’s have the comms update. Claire’s got an internet thing to show us.

Around the table, eight eager gazes turned on Claire, willing her to save, or at least distract, them.

It’s a new website, actually, Claire said, syncing her laptop with the projector.

The old one was a relic, and Claire was proud of her facelift, but she was nervous, too, because it was the first big project she was presenting to Crispin. The redesign had been her idea, one she’d executed solo, teaching herself web design, and trouble­shooting on her own. The result was a polished new interface with easy-to-find information and eye-catching images. Good riddance to busy backgrounds and broken links.

Everyone ready? she asked.

Crispin drumrolled the table, and Claire grinned as the mem­ory of huddling beside a dumpster in minus-twenty weather to get his autograph flashed through her mind. Bolstered, she typed in the URL and said, Voila!

Wow, the events manager said, when the homepage appeared, all clean lines and white space. What NGO is that?

Claire laughed. Sure, there was a mousetrap in the corner, baited with a dusty smear of Cheez Whiz, but their online avatar was now dynamic and inviting. She demonstrated the site’s fea­tures, the ease of navigation, emphasizing how everything subtly led visitors back to the donate button.

It’s certainly aspirational, Anya said, turning a Lucite bracelet on her wrist.

Claire knew better than to take Anya’s wariness personally. Anyway, it was Crispin’s opinion that mattered.

This is where we’re headed, she said, donning the armour of total confidence she’d always worn in pitch meetings at her old job. Then—what the hell?—she threw in a cliché for good measure: The website is the first step in the right direction.

It’s our vision board, the office joker guffawed, before becoming contrite as he saw Claire’s face. It’s fantastic, really, he said. It just seems . . .

It’s very slick, Crispin said slowly. Claire, you’ve done a brilliant job. But is it authentically us?

Claire was stung. She’d expected enthusiasm, for Crispin to have one of his excited outbursts where he paced as he spoke and got everyone riled up.

It’s giving boutique with five white sweaters and no price tags, the office joker said. But we’re more like . . . bargain basement deals-deals-deals.

This is us, she said. Sure, we have a bootstrap ethos, but that just means the operation is lean. Our brand promise is a robust ROI. But overseas, we’re on the vanguard. It’s who we’ve always been, and now everyone will know it.

As she spoke, she watched Crispin’s expression—at first open and thoughtful—fall. Too late, she realized the foolhardiness of her words. What the hell was she doing telling the founder his business?

She was grateful when Anya said: It’s an improvement. That’s the important thing. Show us more.

Here’s the drop-down menu for our overseas projects, Claire said, demonstrating. Each country gets its own page.

What happened to the DRC and Sierra Leone? Crispin asked. Where’s Ghana?

Officially, Children of the World had operations in fifteen countries. They had moved into regions with bullish expectations, but things hadn’t always gone according to plan. The failures in Africa had been an unwelcome revelation, and Crispin’s explana­tion—we had to make some tough decisions for the overall health of the organization—had inexplicably left her feeling shamed.

But what did Claire know about running a non-profit? Her job was to protect the brand. So, she’d quietly deleted the evidence, not just on their site but across the rest of the web, suppressing search results that led to the old projects. When she stumbled on a blog post by a disgruntled former employee in Senegal, she’d bur­ied that too.

Noticing the missing regions, Crispin got uncharacteristically touchy. Every project, every country, they’re all important, he said.

Of course, Claire agreed. It’s just that some of them haven’t been operational for years, and I’m not sure—

You’re not sure? he thundered. They’ve been temporarily depri­oritized. We haven’t abandoned our responsibilities.

Claire shrank back. Her colleagues fell silent, staring fixedly at their hands, at the walls, at a spot on the table.

Leave it, he snapped. Don’t change anything.