Editor's Note: Little Disasters

Unfortunately, huge disasters — misrepresentation, misuse of funds, personal greed and stupidity on the part of higher-ups — happen. And when they do, they hurt the nonprofit sector in big, heartbreaking, 60-point-headline ways.

Fortunately, they’re also few and far between, and they often hinge on the bad behavior of just a few people within an organization. But things like what I’m talking about here are all too common, and they often speak to a dangerously casual disregard for donors. To an underlying indifference or inefficiency that permeates the organization and quietly, insidiously eats away at its credibility. They seem smaller and less disastrous than the headline-scale messes, but are they?