The Nonprofit

Poppy Malone swayed to and fro in the beat-up leather chair behind her desk. The rest of the office was as empty as her calendar, and the overhead lights were off—her usual modus operandi. Illuminated by her laptop screen, she stared into the abyss, wondering what came next. After twenty-four years, Poppy was retiring.

And if any of that surprises you, then clearly we haven’t met.

Hi, I’m the Iron Harbor Misfits Collective, Inc., but you can just call me Missy. I’m Poppy’s 501(c)(3) nonprofit, brought to life when she’d had enough of corporate chaos. I’ve weathered her highest highs and lowest lows, biweekly meltdowns, and one near-total implosion. Yet, I’m still standing. Poppy might be leaving, but you won’t be getting rid of me anytime soon.

You probably have a lot of questions, so please hold your horses—I’ll get to them. For now, let me introduce Poppy.

I won’t sugarcoat it: Poppy is peculiar. A misfit, as she’d proudly say. Her hometown was so small that it didn’t get a traffic light until 2021. She couldn’t tie her shoes until junior high, but in second grade, she could fearlessly spell hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.

An instructor told Poppy driving was a lost cause, so she escaped to Iron Harbor for college. The city bragged it had the best public transit outside New York. Spoiler alert: it never came close.

After college, Poppy’s first job as a paralegal gave her the only taste of stability she’d ever known. Her boss, Mr. Greco, was a portly corporate lawyer with a flair for colorful suspenders and ties printed with little farm animals. He appreciated her zest and eagle-eyed accuracy. He even tolerated her microwaved salmon and chronic tardiness.

When Greco croaked in 1992, Poppy lost her only ally. For the next decade, she ricocheted through temp gigs, catching pink slips like they were Pokémon.

The trouble was, Poppy never learned to keep her opinions to herself. Nothing irked her more than inefficiency, perhaps even more than small talk or overhead lights. She soon discovered the corporate world was chock-full of all three. At five feet tall, dressed in neon frocks and oversized wire-rimmed glasses, she challenged the status quo whether she was asked to or not.

Managers brushed her off, which only peeved her more. She believed that if she became the squeaky wheel, she could shake up a few bylaws or org charts. Instead, she mostly bruised egos. Managers told her to back down. She never did. After enough run-ins, HR escorted her out, citing whatever lame reason was most convenient.

With each firing, Poppy’s confidence dwindled. Every Sunday night, she stared at the ceiling, wondering if she’d ever find another boss like Mr. Greco. Still, she kept hoping the next job would last, scraping by on unemployment checks and canned beans until something else came along.

After her latest pink slip, she trudged back to the temp agency to confess her newest offense: sending a blunt memo to the CEO critiquing her boss’s proofreading skills. The agent, unfazed, suggested she try volunteering. It was Poppy’s fifth job in two months, and even the agent had run out of ideas.

“Work for free?” Poppy scoffed. “Unlikely.”

She stormed out of the temp agency, only to be accosted by a billboard blaring Iron Harbor’s latest slogan: Work. Play. Belong.

Cigarette butts and creased receipts cluttered the cracked sidewalk beneath Poppy’s neon sneakers. She arched an eyebrow, mulling over the billboard’s message.

I certainly have the ‘play’ thing down, she thought. But will I ever belong here if I can’t hold a job?

Behind her, cranes raised modern high-rises, while the buildings in front of her looked ready to collapse. Poppy spotted a homeless man sleeping on a bench and was reminded that social programs were an afterthought. The new mayor wanted a shinier, wealthier city, never mind the commoners.

Vexed by the billboard’s plastic grins, Poppy retreated to her safe haven: the public library. She plopped behind a teal iMac and searched Yahoo! for volunteer opportunities. Nothing looked worth her time, but she kept scrolling—thoroughness was nonnegotiable for her.

By page six, she stumbled upon an article about starting a nonprofit. She skimmed it and noted it looked oddly similar to the business filings she used to prepare for Mr. Greco.

With no plan whatsoever, she mailed a check and an application to the IRS. Three weeks and roughly sixteen clerical errors later, I existed—born out of Poppy’s spite toward the temp agency and a relentless little spark that insisted she could change the world.

Poppy lost sleep for weeks, puzzling over what she could possibly do with me. Out of ideas, she invited her best friend, Saffron, over for tea.

Saffron, a special ed teacher, mentioned the word neurodiversity. Always on the hunt for new words, Poppy asked what it meant. Saffron explained that it referred to including people who thought differently. Curious, Poppy pondered for a moment before asking Saffron whether she thought Poppy was ‘neurodiverse.’

“The word’s neurodivergent,” Saffron corrected. “And yes, I think you are.”

For a second, Poppy felt affirmed. Then, because silence was never her strength, she blurted out that she was starting a nonprofit out of spite. She asked Saffron whether it was preposterous. When Saffron said yes, Poppy became even more determined. She marched back to the library, borrowed a red pen and a stack of blue sticky notes from the circulation desk, and feverishly drafted my future.

My mission was simple: help misfits like Poppy find jobs where their idiosyncrasies and talents were considered in equal measure. For her, this was a last chance to prove herself. There was just one problem: Poppy was broke and had spent her last pennies on my EIN.

But fortunately for Poppy, she still had the First Bank of Ben Dover.

Ben, Poppy’s then-boyfriend, was a wealthy investment banker from Delaware, twenty years her senior. He was a practical man, devoted to spreadsheets and strict morning routines. Poppy was anything but practical. For three years, he endured her midnight rants and cringeworthy puns, but he was growing tired of bailing her out after every job loss.

So, in a bold move, Ben named me the sole beneficiary of his mother’s inheritance: nearly two million dollars.

Maybe Poppy will finally get on the right track at the ripe old age of forty, Ben thought. And maybe I’ll finally have some peace of mind.

Even so, Ben doubted Poppy’s financial acumen, so he budgeted my funds and helped build a board and a fundraising plan to keep me operating. He had one stipulation, though: he would not co-sign the lease to house me.

Still determined to start me, Poppy spent an entire week hunting for a landlord willing to overlook her subprime credit score. On the brink of giving up, her realtor, Brooks, said he had an option—if she stayed open-minded.

That afternoon, Poppy met Brooks in front of a shabby little building on downtown’s edge. Its windows were boarded, and the brickwork sported a spray-painted anatomy lesson that made Poppy blush. Brooks explained it had been a shoe store that shuttered five years earlier when the owner retired.

But I knew there was more to the story. The shoe store’s pulse was Tommy, a rough-around-the-edges sage who guided the place for nearly a hundred years. When the owner handed the family business to his son, the boy ignored Tommy’s advice and changed the business plan. The place tanked within months, and Tommy disappeared.

Sad, right? But I promised I’d answer your burning questions, and I’m a woman of my word—unless it’s freezing and I’d rather stay in.

So let me start with the basics. Organizational pulses, like yours truly, come alive the second the IRS approves an application and doles out an EIN to our owners. We know them to the core: their hopes and dreams, workplace rivals and crushes, Starbucks orders, and everything in between.

For better or worse, we take on our owners’ traits. Some are hot-tempered or well-organized. Me? I inherited Poppy’s stubbornness and her avoidance of movies where the dog dies.

Personality quirks aside, pulses are helpful advisors who keep our owners’ best interests at heart. We can’t converse with them, but trust me, we’re in every document, policy, and business decision. When people talk about intuition, that’s really just us giving ourselves a push.

It’s noble work, but it isn’t always easy being a pulse. Even our strongest nudges are often ignored, and good things go belly-up within a year or two. Make it twenty years, though, and you’re promoted to organizational sage — like me, and Tommy before he passed.

As fate would have it, I inherited Tommy’s old shop. Poppy, a sucker for vintage flooring, fell for the place the instant she spotted its hideous maroon-trimmed tiles. To this day, they still adorn her office, and I let it slide—they remind me of Tommy. Once Poppy leaves, I know the tiles will too. Chad, her assistant director and successor, has kept a binder titled Mission: Tile Removal since 2010.

Of course, there were times when the tile removal was the least of my concerns. When the Wall Street bubble burst in 2008, I thought I was a goner. Poppy’s personal life unraveled: Ben lost everything and disappeared overnight, leaving her to manage my finances alone. At the time, he had a staff of five running me, and she feared having to let everyone go.

Desperate times called for desperate nudging. On the brink of death, I mustered enough strength to push Poppy into hiring an operations manager. After months of dragging her feet, she finally chose Chad Perkins, a philanthropist’s son fresh out of college. She nearly rescinded the offer when she learned his middle name was Keith—her least favorite, purely because of how it sounded. Thankfully, Saffron talked her out of it.

Much like Poppy, Chad was his own brand of peculiar. He sported a walrus mustache and never seemed to understand how hairbrushes worked. He owned no formal wear and lived in tattered cargo pants. My favorite detail, though, was that he read only historically accurate romance novels and debated Poppy endlessly in their defense. Still, he was a total sweetheart—diplomatic, soft-spoken, and equipped to handle Poppy’s stubbornness.

Bizarre mustache aside, Chad’s the one who resuscitated me. Once he joined my crew, he uncovered Ben’s secret. Ben had stacked the board with old pals who fudged data and siphoned money. The scandal and media storm shocked Poppy, and she sat down for a month. It was grim to watch.

But Chad stepped in. He helped appoint a new board and slowly stabilized me. For a few years after, things were touch-and-go. I have a few scars, but we survived, and I grew beyond Poppy’s wildest imagination.

Thanks to Chad’s administrative brains and Poppy’s relentless heart, I helped more than three hundred people land jobs. But data isn’t our greatest success. Over the years, eighty-seven misfits joined our payroll.

Many of them, like Poppy, had never been given a fair chance. Inspired by her story, thirty-six went on to leave their mark elsewhere—some even started their own nonprofits. Whenever someone announced their departure, Poppy beamed, knowing her mentorship had helped them believe in themselves.

After helping so many people find their footing, Poppy started to understand herself. In 2023, a neurologist told her she had ADHD and Autism. She never embraced the labels, content to call herself a misfit who never quite synced with the world. Thanks to me—and Chad, who still treats his middle name like classified information—she somehow built a life helping others while figuring out her own.

Naturally, the moment Poppy achieved any semblance of emotional stability, Chad pushed the retirement paperwork across her desk. It’s taken her two years to fill it out.

But let’s not kid ourselves. If Chad doesn’t turn this place into a dumpster fire (spoiler alert: he won’t), I’ll be seeing her neon sneakers darting down the hallway by next month.

For tonight, let me nudge her.

Earth to Poppy. It’s past 10 p.m. Close your laptop. I need a break.