The Trouble With Mickaboo

Recently Mickaboo Leadership has faced questions regarding long-term issues within the Mickaboo organization. This email addresses Leadership’s reactions and the subsequent expulsion of two senior Mickaboo volunteers. 

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Dear Tammy, Michelle, Sarah and Pam,

Several weeks ago, a journalist sent you a list of questions. You chose to respond with misinformation and evasions. When we followed up with a detailed rebuttal documenting those falsehoods, you declined to answer anymore questions and shifted into self-preservation mode.

Your response was predictable. It’s a repetition of the same tactics you’ve relied on for years. Rather than addressing valid and well-documented concerns—many of which you have privately acknowledged—you chose instead to deflect, suppress dissent and retaliate. First, you accessed Mickaboo volunteer email accounts and combed through internal records in an apparent effort to identify and silence those raising the alarm. You then expelled Melaine Bryant and Vincent Hrovat, two individuals responsible for a significant portion of the organization’s day-to-day operations, the latter being the go-to volunteer for problem solving—someone who has served Mickaboo for almost 25 years. Lacking any legitimate grounds for dismissal, you manufactured a flimsy pretext and attempted to intimidate them into suppressing the information they’ve gathered by invoking the baseless claim that a nonprofit’s internal operations are confidential. These actions raise a simple but serious question: What are you trying to hide?

Your response to the journalist’s questions maintains we should have used the organization’s newly implemented and previously untested whistleblower policy—implying that our decision not to do so reveals a lack of alignment with the organization’s values. Yet leadership has left no doubt that they do not tolerate dissent. In an email to administrative staff, Tammy says that concerns can be brought to leadership—but then immediately makes it clear that disagreement with leadership’s policies is grounds for leaving. That is not whistleblower protection; it’s a threat–one that, as noted above, has been carried out.

For decades, volunteers have tried constructive ways to address their concerns, but these attempts have always been met with threats and personal attacks. Many talented and hard-working people have left Mickaboo after you stonewalled them or questioned their abilities–starting with Mickaboo’s co-founder and all her supporters. Others, like us, have stayed and will continue to stay, but we will no longer keep silent. We are taking a long-overdue stand.

Mickaboo has for years avoided facing its most urgent challenges. That must end. Long-term boarding and hospitalizations undermine Mickaboo’s mission to prioritize quality of life through home-based fostering, and create significant disparities in the allocation of care. Many foster birds are denied preventive care due to cost, while a small number receive extensive and expensive treatments at For the Birds.

It is unacceptable to keep suffering birds alive in miserable conditions under the pretense of care. Unnecessary and prolonged veterinary interventions are detrimental to their welfare. We must be responsible stewards of donated funds. We must address conflicts of interest involving Dr. Fern Van Sant and For the Birds. We must end the warehousing of birds without adequate enrichment or interaction. We must restore transparency and accountability to our nonprofit operations.

You, Tammy, claim every decision you make—as president, medical director and registered veterinary technician (RVT)—is in the best interest of the birds. But therein lies the problem. You should not be making these decisions. While your experience as an RVT is not in question, you are not a veterinarian and certainly not an avian specialist. Your pattern of second-guessing veterinary professionals is why so many birds end up at FTB. No other clinic would keep birds hospitalized for years or subject them to so many ongoing tests, especially when there is no evidence that such intervention is successful.

You say there are many factors in Mickaboo’s vet selection process, but the main one appears to be control—specifically, which vets allow you the most input. The Medical Center for Birds (MCFB) is a world-class, state of the art avian facility within easy reach of most of our volunteers. Many people from beyond the Northern California area bring their birds there for second opinions, and vets across the world consult with them via video. You, however, have failed to refer even the most complex cases there. In fact, you’ve moved birds from that facility to FTB instead, where their health always seems to decline. Tellingly, many of the birds who deteriorated at FTB have begun to thrive once removed from that environment.

As leaders, you continue to position yourselves as the only ones qualified to make decisions, despite the fact that it is we, the volunteers—the coordinators, the fosters, the screeners, the home visitors and many others—who keep this organization functioning day to day. It is exactly this kind of thinking that has led Mickaboo to become increasingly insular—marked by an “us versus them” mentality that shuts out feedback, resists change and fosters mistrust. It’s the organizational version of circling the wagons—defensive, reactionary and ultimately unsustainable. This approach is dangerous and deeply counterproductive. For Mickaboo to move forward, that culture must change.

In the recent communications Mickaboo leaders have sent about what you’ve characterized as a “distraction”—the journalist’s questions about our concerns—there’s been notably little focus on the birds themselves. What we do hear is how difficult this has been for you—how inconvenient, how frustrating. But what about the birds? What about the people who entrusted them to your care?

Boomer the macaw lived in an abusive home for the first twenty years of his life. Then he came to Mickaboo and had seven years of love and stability with his foster, Scott, before Scott’s untimely death. How would you explain to Scott, a loyal Mickaboo volunteer, that his beloved bird has now spent the last five years at FTB, for a condition that had been resolved when he was receiving care at MCFB? Did you even consider reaching out to MCFB for their input?

And what about African grey Evie’s surrenderers? They gave her up because they didn’t feel she was getting enough attention from them and believed it was the best thing for her. How would you explain to them that she spent four years at FTB, deprived of her most basic needs—no shredding material, no chewing toys, access to food only twice a day, nothing to do but barber her own feathers?

And Max? Another African grey, whose family thought they were giving him a better life. Instead, he was labeled aggressive, caged and left with no effort at rehabilitation for nearly six years. What would you say to them? Unlike Scott, you could explain it to them. We have. And they were rightfully horrified.

The Foundation Group identifies five common reasons nonprofits fail. Number three is a leadership deficit—a problem that often emerges as an organization matures. At first, a group may run on the energy of its founder, but over time, it needs shared, strategic leadership: strong boards, transparent systems and accountability. When an organization becomes centered around one person’s–or a small group of people’s–control, it may survive for a while, but it rarely thrives. This is Mickaboo’s reality. The only reason we’ve lasted this long is because capable volunteers have kept us afloat despite these failures—not because of leadership, but in spite of it.

What you don’t realize is that there are more than just two of us. We are current and former insiders, many of whom you’ve treated poorly in an effort to silence dissent. And beyond those of us who have been actively involved in the preparation of our report, there are many, many more who are disturbed by what they’ve seen, but who have been afraid to speak out because they know what happens to those who do.

We have spent months working on an audit of Mickaboo.  We’ve documented the problems and we’ve offered concrete solutions. We are not trying to tear Mickaboo down. We are trying to save it. From mismanagement, from dysfunction, from a culture of control that values authority over results, and loyalty over transparency. If you truly want Mickaboo to thrive, you will rise to the challenge and help us make changes.