Post 7 – foundations and beyond

Alas the end of the term has arrived once again, and as such, this blog will aim to tie up some loose ends and summarize my final reflections on the nonprofit world.

The final topic we covered in this course was the role of foundations in the nonprofit sector.  As our professor described it, nonprofit organizations have their hands out, while nonprofit foundations have their wallets out.  During this unit, I was most struck by our latest guest speaker (I am forgetting the name), who had worked for the Oregon Foundation and was able to pass along direct experience.  What I found most appealing was his overall enthusiasm for his line of work.  He explained that if you really liked to help others and the community, foundations were perfect because they allowed you to award money and help nonprofit organizations without having to deal with the stresses of fund-raising and supporting the business side of a nonprofit organization.  Though I could easily spend the remainder of this blog praising the passion and enthusiasm of this, and other guest speakers, I would like to instead focus on my final opinions in the nonprofit sector as a whole.

Before entering this class, I admit to having no real idea of how nonprofits worked, and why they existed.  In drastic contrast to my opinion leaving this class, I now acknowledge that they play an entirely vital role within our society, more so than any other nation.  The sheer numbers of nonprofit organizations, revenues, and donations all confirm this stance.  In addition to this, I also learned a significant amount about the people working for nonprofits.  During my freshman year I took a philosophy course where the professor showed us a particularly interesting statistic.  Using an accumulation of polls, he demonstrated that from the 1970′s to today there was a shift in why students were attending college.  In the older poll, the leading answer was, “to learn a philosophy in which to happily/meaningfully live out my life” (or wording fairly similar to that).  The more recent dominating answer was, “to get a job out of college”.  I remember leaving that class with a lesser degree of optimism for the direction in which our economically dominated society was heading.  A close investigation of the nonprofit sector mitigated this unease by emerging me into a sector predominantly composed of those who shared the previous generation’s desire to live a meaningful life opposed to merely prospering economically.

Being partly an environmental studies major, I am more than interested in advocating for sustainable living and reduced consumption, however, I did not enter that major knowing how exactly to do it.  Based on this class and individual research, it appears that nonprofits do, and will most likely play a growing role in the current environmental movement.  Be this as it may, I have also come to the personal conclusion that it would be of ill faith to ignore the presence of economics in the nonprofit sector, and the influence of for-profit businesses.  This cooperative and causal relationship between sectors is the emphasis of my research paper, and conveniently enough, another one of my classes this last week provided a guest speaker who further conveyed this hypothesis.  In an environmental studies course, I was able to hear from a corporate executive who was unsatisfied with his previous (and lucrative) job working for microsoft, and wanted to find a way to apply a business sense to help people.  Though his new enterprise isn’t entirely nonprofit, it is able to compete in an economic environment while sharing many of the characteristics of a nonprofit organization such as a mission statement that aims at decreasing foreign poverty while supporting free trade.  I fully support economic integration into the nonprofit sector as my research has led me to the conclusion that it has the potential to drastically increase efficiency, however it will be interesting to see if this business model marks the beginning of a national (or even global) trend.

Post 6 – Chapter 9

International Nonprofits

At first glance the most prominent examples of international nonprofits appear to be entirely benevolent as seen through natural disaster relief programs and CARE.  Further examination however indicates a less altruistic motivation behind international “giving”.

O’Neil explains that the birth of American international nonprofits occurred post World War II and helped with European reconstruction.  CARE was used as a specific example in this book as they provided over 1oo million “CARE packages” within the first two decades of reconstruction.  On the face of it, delivering these packages seem entirely charitable, but further reflection implies other motives.  Historically CARE packages were used to improve American relations with European countries while competing with the Soviet Union.  The book explains that during the cold war international nonprofits increased and continued to attempt improving international relations in a war time setting.  From here I began to inquire further into the motives behind international giving, and soon realized that a reoccurring theme behind some (not all) of the giving was competition over economic relations.  Many modern day economists argue that the only way to lift a third world nation out of poverty is to bolster that nations economy.  This conveniently benefits the donor country who ofter profits from free trade and accessibility of foreign resources as seen in many developing African countries such as Nigeria.  Similarly, I found it interesting how CARE packages have changed over time.

“the modern “CARE package” includes not only food and clothing but also maternal and child health care, basic education, water sanitation, microenterprise training, and technical assistance in agricultural methods” (173).

This is not to say that all foreign aid is bad, but even when the motives are entirely pure there is still the potential that giving will cause more harm than good.

One of the articles I encountered that helps articulate the errors of foreign giving is, “Third World Development: Foreign Aid or Free Trade” by John Majewski (http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/third-world-development-foreign-aid-or-free-trade/#).  This article dispels many of the altruistic myths about international aid, and instead makes a strong argument for why it is a hindrance to the receiving country.  Majewski’s article focuses primarily on continual aid to third world countries opposed to response aid as demonstrated after natural disasters.  One of the largest problems with international giving is that it depreciates the market value food and goods produced within the receiving country.  Exporting excess American food to help combat foreign hunger seems benign, but in actuality it ends up driving down the prices of local farmers and disrupting the nation’s internal economy.

I do not want this blog post to convey a complete criticism of foreign aid, but I do side with several of Majewksi’s arguments, as well as the environmentalist concern that economic expansion is not sustainable but rather perpetuates the poverty trap of third world countries.  Still, I do recognize the good that comes from international aid such as foreign exchange and culturally enriching programs.  Unfortunately however, we are seeing a decline in this form of international efforts as O’Neil writes, “cultural understanding and student exchange programs on decline 40% from 80s” (176).  The international section of the nonprofit sector struck me as surprising because it appears to be less intrinsically “motivated by the heart” than the other nonprofit branches.

Post 5 – environmental nonprofits

This past week we focused primarily on environmental nonprofits.  As this pertains directly to my major (environmental studies) this was a topic I particularly looked forward to learning more about.  Our course book “Nonprofit Nation” failed to address this sector, so instead we were given several web links and additional supplemental reading.  The first link I investigated was “the story of stuff” by Annie Leonard.  I was fairly familiar with this video, and have mixed feelings about Leonard’s arguments.  On the face, I strongly agree with her overall criticism of American consumerism, and I see significant value in nonprofit attempts to express environmental concerns in a publicly appealing and accessible way.  However, I am skeptical as to the effectiveness of this form of environmental activism.  Videos such as these do have value in spreading shock-and-awe environmental awareness, but they tend to address the problem with an extremist/unrealistic solution.   It would be ideal for the average American consumer to watch this video and see the errors in their ways, however the video lacks direction in what we can do about the problem aside from merely reducing our consumption (which the plausibility of this happening to the necessary extent is a contentious argument in of itself).  I completely agree with the video, and over consumption is destroying our planet, but I think the video could have spent more time discussing realistic solutions that do not require a drastic political and economic revolution, even though it may provide a valid solution.  At the end of the video, Leonard instructs the viewer to explore some of the links to other environmental agencies doing “amazing things”.  This is the direction of environmental activism that I fully support and see nonprofits as playing a vital role in the near future.

Another link we were given was one that lead to a nonprofit’s website dealing with e-waste.  To me, this specific site encapsulates nonprofit participation in environmental activism.  E-waste is a relatively recent environmental concern and has received increased attention as our nation continues to progress into the digital age.  Next Step Recycling mitigates this problem by providing 2 services to the general public.  First, by accepting old electronics they reducing electronic pollution that would otherwise end up in a land fill.  With the majority of LCDs still containing mercury and other toxic metals, this is a considerably vital service.  Second, they sell used and recycled electronics atdiscounted prices.  This allows the consumers to benefit while reiterating the thrifty and recyclable concepts that Leonard preaches in her video.  It is almost entirely predictable that this organization profits from the sales of used electronics, but this just serves as an example of how environmental nonprofits have the potential to integrate into and even compete with for-profit business.

Environmental degradation is as convoluted issue that is not likely to be resolved by the efforts of a single group.  However the recent proliferation of organizations such as Next Step Recycling is a positive step in the right direction.  The only concern that I have is with the efficiency that environmental activism can be accomplish within the nonprofit sector.  On a global scale several members of the European Union serve as poster children for the environmental movement in an economically dominated age, however these countries also do no have the nonprofit presence that we do in the US.  This could prove to be an opportunity for our country to  assert the efficiency of the nonprofit sector in addressing this particular problem,  but still leaves a degree of uncertainty with this approach when juxtaposed with the European methods that are already demonstrating considerable effectiveness.  In the end is it worth the gamble to leave the environment entirely in the hands of the nonprofit sector?

Assignment 2 Research Question

Question:  How is environmental advocacy changing in specific regards to the nonprofit sector, and will there be a continued tendency to increase cooperation with for-profit businesses whn dealing with environmental policy?

As an environmental studies major I am interested to researching and monitoring the trends and avenues in which environmental activism is taking place.  I have some degree of insight as to the role of some nonprofits in environmental conservation and restoration, however I am also aware that this field has been fairly dynamic in the past 40 years and will most likely continue to change as environmental concerns receive more public and political attention.  In last Monday’s lecture we discussed how nonprofit cooperation with for-profit businesses is a relatively recent phenomenon.  I would like to apply this evaluation to the environmental sector and investigate it further.  As I continue my research I will most likely narrow the topic further and focus on specific environmental nonprofit, using them as case studies in evaluating the efficiency of nonprofit/for-profit cooperation.  The specifics of this research topic are still subject to change.

Preliminary topic links:

http://www.allbusiness.com/business-planning/business-structures-corporations/453051-1.html

http://www.metapress.com/content/176r7432v8603531/

http://breeze.uoregon.edu:9003/findtext/cgi/core/sfxresolver.cgi

http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/684328.pdf

Post 4 – Arts and Culture

The topic that I will be blogging about today is the role of nonprofits in arts and culture as addressed in chapter 8 of Nonprofit Nation.

“Like advocacy, arts and culture have a place in American society far out of proportion to their size” (152).

The timing of this chapter in the term came particularly good as similar topics are being addressed in several of my other classes.  In another PPPM class, we have been discussing the need for cultural diversity and preservation based on the economic, social, and even ecological impacts that can result.  Based on this weeks reading, nonprofits are a good way to achieve this preservation.

“The great majority of arts groups have fewer than ten employees and budgets less than $500,000″ (154).

It was interesting to see how relatively small the economic impact was based on the book’s statistics on revenue and employment.  it is likely that this size is due to the large division of nonprofit and for-profit arts organizations.  A question that arose from this dichotomy was at what point do the two intersect?  One specific example is with music.  It appears (and I may very well be mistaken at this point) that classical music fits into the nonprofit realm and modern music–such as rock–fit into the for-profit realm.  If this is the case, I am curious as to whether this occurs because there simply is more of a profit to be made in the latter.  If you look at the major record labels of today’s music industry, though it is true that they do enjoy a significant degree of profit, they are still providing an arts based service to be enjoyed by the general public.

Another section of the reading that resonated with me was the further interaction between nonprofits and for-profits in the arts.  The book spoke specifically with theater as an example, and I was intrigued by how for-profit theater would use the nonprofit theater as a recruiting tool for new talent.  Examples such as this help confirm nonprofits’ roles as experimental devices, as was mentioned previously in the book.  Through this usage, it is evident that for-profits thus benefit from the existence of nonprofits (at least in theater), and therefor the impact of nonprofits can overflow into the for-profit realm.

It was interesting that the book continuously compared the structure of arts in our country to others around the world.  Though I was initially predisposed to side with the argument that increased government funding would lead to an improvement of arts and culture, I was forced to reconsider my position after the book explained some counter-arguments.  The first argument based on increased efficiency through nonprofits was not surprising to me (as it has been reiterated throughout the book’s entirety), but the second argument stated that government interference could negatively affect the arts and culture which it funds.  The example of this that first came to my mind was government censorship.  If this were to result, it would immediately change my stance on government funding.  In my opinion, it is not worth the additional funding if it gives the funders any sort of creative control.  I related this specifically to music and the cliché example of bands “selling out”.  In cases like this, I would rather have non-diluted art as provided by the nonprofit sector.

EDUCATION. . .

The readings and lectures this past week opened up a rather heated discussion that started–but was far from limited–to the role of nonprofits and education.  The role that nonprofits play within education is a highly contentions subject as it has implications that extend to social inequality and elitism.  Throughout this discussion, I was specifically intrigued with several concepts.  As a current college student, this blog will focus primarily on the subject of higher education.

Question: Would a profit-based educational system be more effective in supplying low-cost quality public education?

Economically, I do believe that increased privatization has the potential to decrease costs through further competition, but the underlying quality clause in the question is subject to debate.  First off, it is my experience that there are a slew off options (for those who have the luxury of affording choices) for colleges ranging over various price ranges.  Though public institutions are nonprofits, the existence of competition is still fairly prevalent between state institutions as well as their for profit counterparts.   Our PPPM 280 class is composed of a relatively non-diverse group of students that is a small representative of the national population.  That is, our discussion was heavily biased on the fact that we all could afford college, and all chose a state institution.  For me, it was important to keep this in perspective as my peers represented arguments in favor of the status quo, which for us is pretty good as is.  As such, it is difficult for any of us to acknowledge the handicap presented to individuals who come from less fortunate socioeconomic backgrounds when trying to seek higher education.

My opinion on education is that drastic reform is necessary.  As college tuition increases dramatically each year (nearly $1,000 for next year for my university), higher education is becoming a luxury for the privileged few.  In lecture the professor used New York University as an example of unprecidented tuition (the 2nd highest in the nation if I recall correctly), and cited a study which revealed that many of the current students were forced to work 2 to 3 jobs in addition to full-time enrollment.
“Don’t let your classes get in the way of your education”

I am a firm believer that a significant amount of what I learn in college is not limited to the classroom.  For me, the university supplies an adaquet environment for me to transition into an adult.  I personally “work my way through college”, which at 25 hours per week pays for my monthly rent and leaves me with scarcely enough money to buy top ramen.   Though the need to budget and live between paychecks has undoubtedly left me with the satisfaction of living like an adult, working has deprived me of several college activities.  This deprivation is not limited to the social realm (though it would be nice to take weekend long excursions with friends), but also extends to school related activities.  On more than one occasion my single job has prevented me from joining a desired student body group that meets during one of my shifts.  This being said, I am grateful to only have to work 1 job, let alone 2 or 3.

YOU BETTER HAVE A CAREER PLAN!

In addition to limiting the college experience, I was also intrigued by the professor’s discussion of how students are no longer able to experiment with different majors due to the cost of tuition.  With this being the case, it seems like our country is breeding the next generation to pursue occupations with personal appeal that is limited to the annual salary.  Aside from merely creating a working class that is miserable, it is questionable whether or not this will effect the nations productivity and GDP.  It is somewhat inarguable that it is easier to devote oneself to quality work when it pertains to passion.

The topic of education has been in my opinion the most convoluted subject presented thus far in class.  It is difficult to predict how this will play out in our country, but based on what we have read and discussed so far, it is likely that we won’t see the full ramifications of increasing tuition until we have reached the breaking point.

Post 2

Hi again!  The reading this past week focused primarily on religion and social services within the nonprofit sector, and as before, I there were several elements that I found to be specifically surprising.  Through previous courses I have had, I was well aware that grants are a fundamental aspect of nonprofit funding.  In an environmental policy course I was enrolled in we had guest  representatives for local watershed councils (nonprofit organizations) that visited and explained the importance of seeking external funding, and that the majority of money they received were through state grants.  I was relatively quick to assume that this was the norm for all nonprofits, however the section on religion nonprofits dispelled that notion.  According to Nonprofit Nation, 85-90% of church revenue is generated from donations (59).  It did not strike me as all that profound to learn that some portion of revenue is generated in this way–having personally contributed to the church offerings during service–but it was completely surprising to learn that the small bowls passed around weekly contribute to this extent.  The class lecture during the previous week definitely hammered in the importance of private contributions in the country’s history of nonprofits, and churches kept this legacy alive.

Though not covered in the book explicitly until chapter five, it is understandable that I had neglected to anticipate the extent of public donations up until this point, largely due to my past nonprofit experience working for Cascade Futbol Club.  For this nonprofit, the majority of revenue was generated through registration fees (as mentioned in blog post 1).  In fact, during my 3 years of employment, I can not recall the club ever having applied for other sources of funding.  It is possible that applications were handled at the board level however.  Nonprofit Nation later gives examples of how some nonprofits have slowly had the tendency to resemble for-profit organizations.  The book uses health care as the primary example of this trend, and even makes some accusations of nonprofiteering.  This argument is considered to be a significant contributing factor to the convoluted issue that is health care reform.  Though the book speculates that there is a balance between hospitals converting back and forth from for-profit and nonprofits, it will be interesting to see which direction the institution of health care pursues.

Continuing to the topic of social services through nonprofits, there were several areas which I found equally interesting.  First was the concept that nonprofits have proliferated and remained because they are a more efficient median for supplying social services at a smaller scale.  One of factors was that the nonprofit sector provided the government with the luxury of failing.  I particularly agree with this concept, and it makes sense that in a stricter political context, taking risks in new and unproven programs often present a liability that is too much to overcome, and eventually slows progress in policy reform.  The nonprofit sector thus mitigates this problem by serving as a testing ground for trial and error.  This advantage comes at a cost however.  Since nonprofits can be more experimental, there is a lack of stability in the nonprofit sector.  With many nonprofits entirely dependent on a small amount of grants or other sources of funding, the loss of a single source may prove significant enough to cause the organization to go under.  It will be interesting to see over the course of future reading and lectures how the lack of job security effects the nonprofit sector and overall national economy.

Introduction to Nonprofits (post 1)

Hello blog readers!  My name is Robert Tan, and I am a student at the University of Oregon.  Over the course of this term, my blog will serve the distinct purpose of expressing my reactions, opinions, and experiences as I begin my course long exploration of the nonprofit sector.  To begin with, I do not start this term with a strong understanding of the delineation between nonprofit and profit based organizations other than the obvious information one could evince from the names of each (one seeking profit, etc).  What I do posses however is experience working for a small nonprofit organization back in my home city of Salem.  The nonprofit I worked for was called Cascade Futbol Club (CFC), and was an organization aiming to provided the service of recreational youth soccer for the city.  The club itself was fairly small with only five paid office employees (including myself).  In addition, we employed someone to perform field maintenance and depended significantly on volunteer help from the community and board members.  My particular role within the office was to  schedule the games, register new players and families, and train, evaluate, and pay the twenty or so youth referees we employed.  While working for CFC I had known that it was a nonprofit organization, but really had no idea what that classification entailed.  It has been interesting so far in class to apply the lecture information to CFC as it provides further insight and understanding to how the organization operates.  Based on Monday’s lecture, I believe that this organization would be considered a public charity, passing the 509(a)2 as an activities charity.  Though further research is necessary to confirm this, CFC was a fairly self-sustaining organization that received most of its revenue from membership registration fees.

On a separate note, one thing that has struck me as a reiterated point in lecture has been the reasoning behind starting profit or nonprofit organizations.  Particularly, the distinction that profit based organizations are created from the brain, whereas nonprofits are created from the heart.  Tying this sentiment back to my CFC experience, this idea was strongly confirmed through my interaction with the board members.  Though I the entire board only met a handful of times each year, I could tell that each was passionate about the organization.  I had known many of them since I was young and had played soccer with their kids.  Though it was normal to encounter over-the-top soccer families who were active in organization and team decisions that directly influenced their child,  it surprised me to see that these board members had remained active at CFC even after their own kids had graduated from the program years ago.  This devotion to the club’s mission (to provide youth with the opportunity to develop soccer skills and to play soccer, with quality coaching, ina positive environment that promotes good sportsmanship, leadership, character development, personal integrity, and self-discipline) confirmed their nonprofit motives.  This kind of selflessness has been a reoccurring theme through both the reading and lecture material so far, and I was surprised to learn the extent to which many nonprofits were entirely dependent on private donations.  Over the course of this term, I hope to further my knowledge of nonprofits, as well as my awareness of their prevalence in everyday life.  Though I am still unsure of my exact career intentions, as an environmental studies/PPPM major this knowledge will prove valuable as a significant amount of environmental activism operates within the nonprofit sector.

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