When I talked to my friend Heather* the other night, she had just gotten home from a long day at her nonprofit internship in Virginia and her voice was shaking. “I’m so scared, Danielle” she said. “You won’t believe what this cab driver told me.” Heather was living in an area that those in her wealthy suburban neighborhood in Massachusetts would consider a ghetto.

“Now, I don’t want to scare you or anything,” the cab driver told her, “but I feel it would be an injustice if I didn’t warn you about the area where you’re living.” The driver continued, “I actually cringed when I pulled up and saw you waiting outside for me.” Heather gripped her wallet for the duration of the drive. When they reached her house, he said “I would get your key ready before you get out of the car and run for the door. Don’t stand around outside fiddling for your key. Some of my friends even say that if they were cab drivers, they ‘sure as hell wouldn’t go to that area'” Heather thanked the driver for his warnings and gave him a large tip. Not until she had walked up the “rotted, splintered” steps did Heather realize how fortunate she was. Many of the regular employees at her company lived in this area year round because it was all they could afford. Here she was, a privleged suburban kid living on her parents’ dime. “My mom would have gladly paid for a nicer place,” Heather told me, “but there aren’t any good neighborhoods for miles around.” Lucky for Heather, in six months she will return to the safety of her hometown, but for hundreds of people at her nonprofit this was all they could afford.

Heather’s story is not unique. When I interned at the American Cancer Society, my supervisor explained that he wanted to take me out to dinner to thank me for my hard work, but couldn’t afford it. Other friends I have talked to in the nonprofit world can barely make ends meet. The majority of the employees at Heather’s organization earn under $28,000 a year with the president only making $31,385. Heather is only making $50 a week on her stipend and on an average day she spends $15 of that on cabs because she is afraid to walk alone in her neighborhood or for that matter to the grocery store. Therefore, she also relies on private transportation to eat her dinner every night in a restaurant. The catch- she wouldn’t be able to afford to live even in the ghetto without her mom’s credit card.

Why is it that those of us who are committed to making a difference with our lives are forced to scrape by while the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are earning millions in stock options alone? A DC lobbyist I know once commented that the best nonprofit employees either have extensive credentials and are only willing to devote their services if they get competitively paid OR are so passionate about a particular cause that they would be willing to work for free. I do not believe this is healthy for our global society, for it makes it difficult for anyone except the independently wealthy to afford to live comfortably while donating their time to a good cause. If nonprofits want to attract and retain a talented workforce, they need to start compensating their people better.

As a result of her internship experience, Heather who has dreamed of being an animal rights advocate since her sophomore year of college, become more cognizant of the personal sacrifices that would entail. As she put it, “I realized that, in order for me to turn my passion into a career, I would be forced to live in areas that I never imagined myself even visiting.” Heather feels torn between what she senses is her purpose in life and the hard shell of the real world. “I want to have a career that is meaningful,” she told me tonight online, but maybe a nonprofit isn’t the best way to go.” I feel the same way in the area of cancer advocacy. The bottom line- how can the children of nonprofit employees make their mark on the world if their parents are barely getting by? We need to consider the next generation of workers in America and how their college educations will be paid for.