Reflections on the "Idea of the NonProfit Sector"

Please reflect on the “idea of the nonprofit sector” as discussed in course readings and in my lecture. Frumkin provides a useful discussion of the essential dimensions of the nonprofit sector in terms of supply and demand. Other scholars in the Powell and Steinberg text frame the essential dimensions in a variety of ways, including contrasting service and expressive roles of the sector; others frame the essential dimensions in terms of “public serving” vs. “member serving”, especially useful as you consider the IRS designations detailed in Publication 557. The lecture discusses individual, intermediary, and institutional dimensions.

Question: First identify and discuss points from course materials related to “the idea of the nonprofit sector” that were of greatest interest to you. Second, propose and discuss (in terms of course readings or other justifications) a metaphor or analogy or some other depiction that best captures for you “the idea of the nonprofit sector”.
While I am still engaged in the readings for this week, I do have some initial impressions and questions from what I am learning.


Frumkin asserts that nonprofits ”1) do not coerce participation 2) they operate without distributing profits to stakeholders and 3) they exist without simple and clear lines of ownership and accountability”. At the same time in this writing, I also detect the tone that although these are general features, there is a “dark side” to nonprofits that kind of makes such features more pliable than concrete.

To my own thoughts on coercion specifically, I turn most to work I did in a public radio station during fund drive time in the early 1990’s. Professionally I had colleagues at the time in broadcast radio who would say things like …”Well, you have it easy, when you need more money, you can just ask people for it”. The fact, …not so easy to just ask people for it (there is that “choice” concept again).

There have been many times then and now when I wish we had a culture of giving wherein the “public” would think, “Oh, I need to pay my Public Radio bill before they turn it off”, or “Hey, I really need a gross of civil rights advocacy - my sister was just laid off, mainly because she is Lesbian.”

Then I turn to Kevin Robbins piece which shows that indeed Western historical roots of giving have a coercive base in terms of Jewish tradition and law, Greek understandings of wealth as community endowment to individuals to serve as stewards of it for the greater good, and Roman protocols on how to give. I begin to understand how the early Christian church could on the one hand use funds generated to gain power and prestige in Roman society through giving, while also depending upon the tenets of Christ to “give all”, “recompense for sins” and beneficence to those that gift to entice members to generate such funds.

I then wonder at the disjuncture today. Put simply, if you have money you are expected to give while if one lives “paycheck to paycheck” the idea of giving or community involvement through volunteerism cannot be realistically entertained. Are judgments I have made about Corporate giants such as Walmart or Bill Gates about their “goodness” or “harm” to society based on a weighing of philanthropical acts verses treatment of their workers, culturally and historically based?

I wonder about the coercive power that Bill Gates faces. He and his wife can pay a lot in taxes, or reduce that load by philanthropic endeavors – so to some degree their giving is self-serving. At the same time, the greater public expects some amount of philanthropy to private charities, etc. from Bill Gates specifically. So, although Gates may be compassionate and care a whole lot about those efforts he and his wife patronize, the fact is that there is an “arm twisting” element as well.

Meanwhile, others of us live “paycheck to paycheck” and have a practical focus that may take less into account the stray puppy dog in the local shelter and more “How will I pay for the kids doctor appointment today?” So, some elements of society have high immediate expectations upon their funds, time, and energy while others have immediate needs more cared for, but perhaps exist in a different culture of expectation of themselves and those both above and below. At the end, I think about the intersections of class, race, and gender with giving. Further, how do these understandings come to bear from historical understandings and market understandings of supply and demand.

Are there lessons herein when approaching philanthropy of monetary and “sweat” funds that are to be learned dependent upon the identity characteristics of the group we are looking at.

I reflect further on supply and demand as pointed out by Frumkin and consider the professionalization of the nonprofit sector and the real need to move away from an attitude that staff who work in the nonprofit world don’t have to be paid wages competitive with the corporate sector because they have engaged in this work voluntarily.

Work in the nonprofit sector work may be because such persons are motivated by family upbringing, history, culture, and identity that value a set of intangibles as much important to the soul as much as money is to the pocketbook. For me this attitude has been most prevalent in civil rights advocacy in which the attitude has been for the longest that because such persons (especially field and grassroots operatives) are most passionate about the work they do that they “don’t need to be paid as much”. This just bewilders me, as high quality workers still have families to provide for and still need to live in a manner which best enables them to pursue passions for the benefit of the greater good. So, I see and agree with the supply side of the equation that we should focus on the people doing nonprofit work. But, can we trust that the motivations of each of them are akin to what the demand side of the equation would dictate? Does demand dictate the mission, purpose, and ethics of our organization while supply looks to provide the best people to do the best job?

As I said, I am still going through the readings, but these are some things that have “bubbled up” from them……