Shame On You! (General)

Over the weekend, someone stole a laptop and a video monitor from the Disney Entrepreneur Center. While I am quite sure that anyone who would steal anything from a non-profit organization won’t understand this concept, but here goes...shame on you! This one selfish act has already produced negative repercussions that are too many to mention. The time that has been spent with the Orlando Police, the building security people, conducting an equipment audit, and the countless emails to locate serial numbers, security camera footage, and insurance procedures will never be recovered. Now, the multitude of organizations that use our center and our training rooms will be punished by having new regulations for usage, new lock- down procedures for the equipment, and a variety of new security proceedures. Lastly, as a non-profit entity, we struggle to raise sponsorship dollars from the community to pay for the operation of our center, and any unexpected loss will negatively impact our budget, so somewhere, or someone, will do with less so that we can cover the loss of our stolen equipment. We share our facility with 10 organizations who, in turn, provide coaching, support and assistance to the small business community, and in six years, nobody has disrespected our facility, our equipment, or our mission, until this weekend. Now, we must consider purchasing our own video security, new locks for all the common areas, and re-keying all the existing locks… expenses that were not in our budget, and were not even deemed necessary until this weekend, when someone decided that a laptop computer and a video monitor would serve them better at home. Shame on you!