My Time With StackUp

This topic is going to be a little different from my past topics. Past topics have been academic in nature, but this is a more personal story about my involvement with a charity called StackUp.

But before I start with the details of StackUp and my involvement with it, I should mention that I have always had a desire to serve something in some way, shape or form. But I needed something that I believed in; it couldn’t be something like volunteering at a soup kitchen or an animal shelter – although those are worthwhile pursuits. I wanted something that I could feel a connection to and feel like I had a certain level of control.

Before StackUp there was Operation Supply Drop (OSD). I heard of OSD in 2013 when I was introduced to their Indiegogo campaign. OSD is a military charity that provides videogame care packages to soldiers deployed overseas and recovering in military hospitals. The idea really spoke to me, so I made a small donation. OSD’s founder and CEO, Steve Machuga, made a point of contacting me to thank me for the support. Over the next two years I would donate my old videogames to them.

Steve, a veteran who served in Iraq, had always found that his Game Boys would help him with the stress, danger and boredom of deployment. It wasn’t very long before he started getting videogames for his fellow troops. He became known for it. So, in 2010, he started OSD to help guys like him get through their deployments.

Then, in 2015, shortly after I made a donation, Steve contacted me. I still don’t know all the details, but there had been some internal conflicts, and Steve was no longer with OSD. He wanted me to contact OSD and tell them that my donation was to go to him to distribute as he sees fit – it was not for OSD. I sent the email that he asked for. Then Steve got in touch again—he said he had things to discuss. The main thing he wanted to discuss was that he was starting a new charity, which he would call StackUp.org, to do the same thing as OSD. He wanted me to head up the New York chapter.

I discussed with some friends and family, and decided that it seemed like it could be a worthwhile pursuit, and sounded like the kind of thing I’d been wanting to do. The first few months were extremely slow – I didn’t know what I was doing. But, gradually, we started attending community events – especially those with a military connection. We were different than other local chapters – “stacks” in the language of the organization. Other stacks were mostly comprised of veterans, and functioned as social groups. We were focusing on outreach, and we were connecting with other veterans groups in the tri-state area – VFW Posts, American Legion Halls, Fort Hamilton (in Brooklyn), and other military charities. We would bring tables to these events and set up shop. We’d talk to people about what StackUp did. To get people interested, we had a “push-up challenge” and a “selfie challenge.” If you could do 30 push-ups in one minute or take a selfie in front our banner, post it on social media and tag StackUp, we would give you a prize. I started the push-up challenge after I went with StackUp to Pax East 2017, at which they had a similar challenge.

Even though things started slowly, they began to snowball. We would go to one event, meet people and make contacts with other organizations, and get invited to their events. Eventually we were familiar faces with The Mission Continues, The Wounded Warrior Project, APK Charities, a few American Legion posts and VFW halls. Eventually I would even get honored at the grand reopening of the American Legion Post in Weehawken, NJ.

But a problem was starting to arise. As time went on, we were being invited to attend more and more events. Most stacks, functioning as social groups, didn’t need a lot of supplies. We were doing outreach – and a lot of it. For that, we needed business cards, information cards, small branded items for giveaways. It became increasingly difficult to get the supplies we needed. In addition, the Stackup T-shirts that we had were falling apart and becoming ragged, but we were having trouble getting new ones. StackUp’s policy was to provide one free shirt for each new member – after that, you were on your own. There was a reduced price for members to buy new shirts. But even though we tried, we couldn’t even buy shirts. At one point we sent money for shirts. They told us it was the wrong amount and refunded it (instead of telling us the correct amount). The inability to get new shirts was becoming a big problem beyond the obvious issue of representing the organization in ragged attire. Sometimes people would donate video game consoles. When we asked what they wanted – maybe a receipt to use for a tax deduction? – they generally asked for Stackup shirts. We were willing to buy the shirts out of our own pockets to give to the donors, but we couldn’t even do that.

During this time, our relationship with Stephanie, the Director of the Stacks Program, was deteriorating. My mother wrote about this.

As time went on, we attended more events all over the New York metropolitan area. During this same time, we had a harder time receiving any physical supplies for these events.  We would fill out StackUp’s pre-event forms as well as emailing the Stacks Director and sometimes even the CEO of StackUp about our upcoming events and our lack of StackUp branded information and other items.  StackUp staff would either not respond or inform us that they never received our paperwork or that they would send us shirts and supplies.  When StackUp did not promote or include our events, we had mixed feelings.  We still were making good connections at the local level, complete with various honors and recognition.  However, we wanted our events to count so that StackUp would enjoy the full benefit of the number of events for their annual reporting.  We rarely received any supplies and none in all of 2018.  We were not sure how to contact StackUp so that they would respond by sending us the supplies we needed for our numerous upcoming events. 

Right around this time Stephanie asked us whether we could use gaming consoles at our events. We said yes, and StackUp sent us two PS4 Slims. The idea was that they would attract traffic to our tables. For some reason that never made sense to me, StackUp could send us PS4s but not monitors or portable protective travel cases with built-in monitors that made the consoles usable at events. We spent several hundred dollars of our money on GAEMS cases. Shortly after we received the PS4s, Stephanie emailed us inventory sheets that she wanted us to sign. That would have been fine, except that the sheets stated “I agree to return them…in the same condition they were in on the day I borrowed them. I will also return the items immediately upon request.” The clear language made us responsible for normal wear and tear, or for any breakage (regardless of our care) or theft. We were also bothered about the word “immediately.” If they requested return while we were on vacation, would we have to cut our trip short to rush home and return equipment? We explained our concerns to Steve and Stephanie. Initially Stephanie insisted that we wouldn’t be responsible for normal wear and tear, and Steve agreed. But my father pointed out (again) that the wording said we would be. At this point, Steve agreed and told Stephanie to “remove that phrase from the inventory sheet.” Stephanie sent us a revised sheet, in which she added the phrase “normal wear and tear excepted.” But it still said “in the same condition,” making the change ambiguous. It also still left us responsible if it broke or was stolen. The change also didn’t address the question of immediate return.

Shortly afterwards, at one of the weekly online meetings, StackUp staff mentioned that a few stacks were adamant about not signing the sheets because they didn’t want to be held liable if something happens. The staff insisted that they understand that things happen, and these forms are just about getting assurance that the stacks will act responsibly. But this didn’t address the fact that the sheets we were being asked to sign stated otherwise.

Eventually Stephanie said that we would get no more supplies until we signed the form. To resolve it, my dad and I played lawyer and reworded the form. He signed it and sent it to Stephanie. He said that if it doesn’t satisfy her we will send the PS4s back. She said that it was fine, and that was that. Interestingly, we still didn’t get more supplies.

During the back and forth about the inventory form, we mentioned to Steve that we had spent several hundred dollars on GAEMS cases. He responded that we go above and beyond for StackUp and we shouldn’t be spending our own money on GAEMS cases. In fact, he said on a few occasions that we shouldn’t have had to spend our own money on this. But he never offered to reimburse us.

In December, 2017, Steve contacted us wanting to talk about a few plans for 2018. He scheduled a phone call. I had just had surgery on my eye and was incapacitated, so I couldn’t talk with him, but my father briefed me on what was said. Apparently, Steve had felt that we were doing an outstanding job as a stack; we had had the most events by a wide margin, and he wanted to know what he could do to help us continue this work in 2018. My dad had brought up the fact that we were very undersupplied --  we needed shirts because the ones we had were ragged and we liked to give shirts to our contacts at other organizations. Also, somehow, some of the paperwork we filled out around our events kept getting lost in the ether. Steve responded to all of this with a promise of a six-month supply of materials and shirts – at no charge. He also wanted to have a follow up call with us. None of this materialized.

Going into 2018, StackUp promulgated new protocols for the stacks to follow. The big new thing was that each stack would get up to $1000 per year to cover event-related expenses. We were told that, going forward, Stacks that did a good job would get an increased budget in the future. Something interesting to note is that, before this budget, we received scant supplies – but we did receive some. Once the new budget was implemented, we didn’t get any.

In 2018, we found a greater and greater breakdown in communication. According to one of the new protocols, Stacks were supposed to have a monthly check-in with the head of the stacks program.  This was essentially an email summary of what we had done, what we were planning and whatever issues we were facing. In our check-ins, we always indicated that we were low on supplies for our abundant upcoming events (which we duly listed). But we never received a response.

Things came to a head in June.  We were scheduled to attend an Independence Day celebration at Fort Hamilton. We were going to be given free table space, but the event’s organizer wanted us to have some kind of swag to give away. He had seen at past events that we had almost no supplies, so he said to me that they were happy to give us free space since we were a charity helping military, but they were expecting us to come fully supplied. I had found out that there would be thousands of people attending the event and, given what I was told, I could not, in good conscience, go to the event empty-handed. I emailed Steve (CCing Stephanie), telling him that we have this event at Fort Hamilton, but have no supplies – our business cards, our info cards and our StackUp branded wristbands were all gone.

Steve responded by asking “Have you requested all of these goods from Stephanie? Was she aware you are out of supplies? Did you tell her about this event? Has she been sitting on a supply request from you for weeks without any mention of getting support?”

We answered him by forwarding the email requests that we had been sending Stephanie over the prior six months, including the monthly check-ins.

While this was going on, on June 26, we attended a veterans’ stakeholders meeting in New Jersey. We were presenting about what StackUp does for the veteran community. Everything went well. A lot of attendees were very interested and wanted to collaborate with StackUp – despite our not having business cards or information cards to exchange with these other stakeholders. That night, we found that our StackUp email accounts were disabled. Soon after, we received an email from Stephanie (to my dad’s personal account) telling us that our stack was being dissolved. She said a lot in this email. Instead of trying to describe it, I will just share one typical paragraph:

I have emphasized that you exercise quality over quantity for your events. You are only required to have 6 events within a calendar year and currently you are running around one to two a week. You have got to slow it down and focus on events where you are helping veterans in your community and not nights out with the family at the park.

It was ironic to receive this message as part of a conversation that began with our request for supplies for an event at a military base – on the day we had attended (and I had spoken at) a military stakeholders meeting, and shortly after we were honored by an American Legion post for our help in fixing it up after it had fallen into disrepair.

But it gets better.

StackUp has a weekly online meeting that’s open to the public. In these meetings Steve and his staff discuss StackUp business. During the June 27 meeting Steve addressed our firing. He characterized it as “putting us down,” explained that we had gotten “too big for our britches” and asserted that we were the reason that Stephanie couldn’t adequately run the Stacks program. We were, in his telling, taking up 90% of her time. He reiterated all of the crazy claims and complaints that Stephanie had put into her email. And, even though we had been the unpaid volunteers giving our time and energy (and spending our own money) for the good of his organization, he talked about how this was coming after everything 

StackUp had done for us. My father captured a lot of my own thoughts in an email he drafted to Steve the day after the meeting. He decided there was nothing to be gained from sending it to Steve. But, for the record, here is what it said in its entirety:

In letting our contacts know that we no longer work for StackUp, Ethan and I purposely resisted the urge to badmouth you, Stephanie or the organization. When they asked what happened, we said that you had decided to dissolve our Stack. If they pressed for more detail, we said that you were unhappy with what we were doing.

Having heard some of the recording of yesterday's meeting, I am saddened that you couldn't extend us a similar courtesy -- that you felt the need the to go on an extended rant in a public forum, badmouthing people (including a kid) who had spent years volunteering their time and effort, making donations and spending their own money for the good of your organization. 

For this email I am putting aside the questions of who said what, did what and sent what. There's a lot that I could say about that if I thought that it was worth the effort. But why bother?

But the point is that you couldn't muster enough class to simply say something like "It didn't work out. They're gone." You had to trash us -- former volunteers -- in a public forum. It speaks poorly of your character.

I wouldn't be surprised if any of your current volunteers came away with the lesson that, though things may be going well for them now, if things ever turn, you will not hesitate to trash them. If that's the message you want to convey to unpaid volunteers, then I am uncharacteristically at a loss for words.

The day after we got Stephanie’s email, I began calling and emailing all of my contacts (and the members of our stack) to let them know I was no longer with StackUp, and to cancel all of our scheduled events. What made it even harder was that, over the next several months, other people were trying to contact me through a defunct StackUp email address. As late as April, 2019, we were still getting contacted out of the blue, by people who thought we were still with StackUp, and wanted us to attend their events.

It had been extremely difficult at first because StackUp had been such a huge part of my life. I am an extremely shy person, and being in StackUp was helping me overcome my shyness through public speaking and networking with strangers.

But I got over StackUp and moved on. Then, in early January, we heard from StackUp again. There were organizational changes and they wanted to know if we were interested in coming back. We gave it some thought – we had some mixed feelings. We asked several friends and former members of our stack for their opinions, and they all said not to go back. 

And yet, it was tempting. I had enjoyed working for StackUp, and still believed in their mission. And before our sudden departure, we had felt that we were making progress in establishing ourselves as part of the military-supporting community. I also know that organizations sometimes go through growing pains, and maybe our bad experience could be chalked up as an aberration.

Having been betrayed, I approached it cautiously. I had very mixed feelings and emotions. On the one hand, I had enjoyed it, and felt I was making a positive difference. On the other hand, when a dispute arose, Steve was willing to disregard everything I had done for his organization over several years and bash me – an unpaid teenage volunteer – on a public forum.   

Keeping this apprehension in mind, we exchanged a series of emails with StackUp leadership. We expressed willingness to come back, but shared our reservations. In the end, I don’t think Steve fully understood our concerns. He never acknowledged his role in events – he blamed Stephanie for all the miscommunication, and wouldn’t accept any more blame than to say he “dropped the ball.”  At this point, we wanted everything to be discussed by email so we’d have a record, and they kept talking about a phone call. The communication ended; we couldn’t arrive at a meeting of the minds.

It has now been a month and a half since our last communication with them. I feel bad, but it’s important to move on. I know that all organizations suffer growing pains. I just hope that StackUp can one day be the organization that it has the potential to be.