Margaret Mikkelsen recently lost her job as the executive director of Students Active For Ending Rape (SAFER), a non-profit organization that helps students build stronger programs in their schools against sexual assault, but you won't find her wallowing.
In fact, on the surface it's hard to see that anything has changed for Mikkelsen because every weekday she travels to her old office building and puts in a full day's work — only she doesn't get paid.
Mikkelsen is so passionate about her work that she's willing to do it for free. As funding for sexual assault prevention programs, survivors' organizations and women's support networks throughout the country continues to decline, her organization's drastic cutbacks will become even more common.
"We operate on a shoestring," Mikkelsen said of SAFER, which has worked with several nearby schools, including Harvard and Skidmore. "To say that the downturn in the economy hit us hard is an understatement."
Mikkelsen, who now works as a full-time volunteer, explained that many sexual assault prevention programs rely heavily on individual donations. When those individuals tighten their belts, organizations like SAFER tend to suffer.
Several women's support programs in Massachusetts have been similarly impacted. Sport in Society, a Boston-based social justice organization committed to combating domestic and sexual violence, experienced a major governmental budget cut last November.
"It was definitely an unwelcome surprise," Jarrod Chin, director of Violence Prevention and Diversity at Sport in Society, said. "We had been told that we would continue to be funded. … It's a difficult situation when you find that a lot of your funding has been cut in half or completely eliminated."
Sport in Society is reacting to the suddenly depleted funds by utilizing non-traditional methods to generate revenue, according to Chin. The organization provides human resources training to corporations hoping to educate employees about sexual assault policies and coaches secondary-school students to act as mentors against violence.
"We're going to have to request payment for previously free services," he said. "We want to be able to keep our staff and program intact."
Hoping to obtain a greater monetary return, Sport in Society is shifting its focus to private rather than public schools.
"Some of the elite private schools have endowments that dwarf those of many colleges," Chin said.
Unlike Sport in Society, the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center (BARCC) has not yet experienced major funding depletion, but money is tight nonetheless, according to Director of Community Awareness and Prevention Services Peggy Barrett.
Barrett, who previously worked at Tufts as the director of the Women's Center and as a health and sexuality counselor, explained BARCC's setbacks. "Right now we do still have the ability to care for [rape] survivors, but we are being very careful with the money we have," she said. "We're not filling abandoned staff positions, [and] we're not purchasing supplies or new equipment. Basically, we're cutting back like everyone else."
Barrett praised BARCC's volunteer workers as integral to keeping the organization afloat. "They work for a small payroll," she said, "but they have big goals."
Though monetary donations from individuals and foundations have decreased over the past year, BARCC's force of over 100 expertly trained volunteers has remained strong. Many of its volunteers, all of whom must participate in a 40-hour education program before obtaining certification, are college students.
"We need students who say, ‘I can do something about this issue; I can take this on,'" Barrett said.
The news has not been all gloom and doom for BARCC, as some unanticipated donations have come to the organization through surprising sources. Employees at Somerville's Target store recently formed a fundraising team for BARCC's 5K Walk for Change.
"It was great to learn about that," Barrett said. "It's that kind of thing that's going to make the difference for us."
On campus, the Tufts Feminist Alliance (TFA), which aims to demystify feminism and promote awareness about women's rights, is accustomed to battling for better budgets.
"TFA has always struggled with funding from the [Tufts Community Union Senate] " sophomore Tiffany Lam, co-chair of TFA, said.
"Programs like TFA don't get a lot of money in the first place because, in our society, sex is a taboo topic, so sexual violence is even harder to talk about," she said. "People would rather deny its existence than try to fix it."
Approximately 25 percent of women are victims of sexual assault at some point during their college careers, according to a study by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Mikkelsen urges colleges to consider the long-term costs and potential pitfalls of failing to implement a comprehensive sexual assault prevention program.
"Think about the costs of creating a program and compare that to the cost of a lawsuit," she said.
And, according to Chin, the number of women who are assaulted is likely to escalate in the future because domestic and sexual violence tend to rise during tough economic times.
"As people are losing their jobs and their homes, their stress and anger levels spike, and violence increases," Chin explained. "What the government fails to realize is that the services we provide are more important now than ever."
