This subject of reading, combined with the research assignment #2 on grantmakers, opened my eyes onto a step in the nonprofit process that is often overlooked. The work done by nonprofits is something easily observed or connected to communities. We have all seen the food line at the downtown soup kitchen and value the impact of the volunteers that come out, but many do not acknowledge that nonprofits are still simply competing within a capitalist system. That was actually why I was so surprised that the premise of the funder pool was so small, only making up 35% of nonprofit revenue. Although I understand that individual donation would most logically want to have a more hands on connection to their donation dollars, the foundation system seems to be logical middle-ground to connect the sense of capitalism into the nonprofit mindset.
Filling out the research project really gave me insight into the kind of extensive tax-structure that these nonprofit foundations must go through, and such accountability gave me a higher faith in the structure of the system, even when most operating foundations devote 85% of their investment proceeds to their own programs (O’Neill, 183).
The importance of noncash donations from corporations was another important facet that Nonprofit Nation touched upon. O’Neill mentioned that 20-30% of total contributions are valuable noncash contributions, and I have seen the importance of aid first hand within my work with PDX Pop Now. A nonprofit organization in its baby-status stage works with a relatively small pool of donors and this leaves many specific holes left open after the dollars have been spent across the board. The posters that the press team plastered around town were donated by Stumptown Printers. In compensation for the unpaid performances of the artists, the organization created a well-stocked green room with food completely donated by local companies, including such well-known Portland icons as Voodoo doughnuts. Cases and cases of water for back-stage use come directly from sports shops in the area. Without these more direct hands-on donations, the true functionality of this organization would be destroyed.
I know little to nothing on the state of international aid coming out of America, and so this was an interesting section. Obviously everyone has grown up with the statistics of strife that many undeveloped countries are struggling with, and as a privileged nation I find it intrinsically important that we put this ability to good work. However, for any of this philanthropic opportunity to be successful we as Americans must change our interpretation of international relations that has been shaped by years of precedent. It is important that the common citizen understands the necessary disarmament of international American aid and global interaction to create a realistic fiscal shift towards nonprofit philanthropy.
We as a nation have consistently played the role of armed presence in foreign countries to ‘facilitate development and promote human rights’ in nations that are experiencing corrupt government, and this has shaped the way we view our pursuit of aid. This however has placed our nation in a place of extreme contention within international relations, and armed occupation often leads to many extraneous misfortunes such as civilian casualties. Our current federal budget dedicates to military action $881 billion. In comparison to government funds based in foreign nonprofit aid (only 0.25% of the entire budget, O’Neill.) we can see the striking disparity in thinking that our government has adopted.
It was also interesting to see the comparison of the distribution of American nonprofit work and the Millennium Development Goals that were laid out in our online reading. It seemed to me that the first 7 goals laid out in this plan to “save the world” were focused on combating the basic human need that billions of individuals are experiencing throughout the world, and yet our nonprofit basis seemed evenly (and that is a liberal interpretation) split between addressing these first 7 goals and the last goal of “Developing a global partnership for development”. Within our 2,078 nonprofits in America dedicated to international aid, only 80 are dedicated to human rights while 432 are dedicated to promoting international understanding and 187 dedicated to peace and security. I do not mean to argue that any of this work is irrelevant, only that I feel like we may be shirking the responsibility of securing the foundation of these countries before we build on them. A nation with huge wealth disparity and extreme hunger and disease will not be able to work cohesively within the global system despite our attempts to give them these communication tools. I feel that this is simply another illustration of the misconception of international aid that Americans hold that I discussed earlier.With a tendency to focus on self-interested action, a lot of our focused aid is going towards creating made-up peaceful relationships to better our own trade with a greater populace. As William Easterly pointed stated “On the part of the rich country public, they’re mainly concerned with how much aid money is spent and then they’re satisfied.” I feel we need to take more initiative to following up in accountability of these organizations and make a point of facilitating lasting aid.
The arts, although often overlooked, are a sector of the Nonprofit Sector that I hold near and dear to my heart. Although my dedication to the work of nonprofits comes from my true dedication to the desperate right that all citizens have to a decent quality of life, I have also had my life personally changed by the impact of working with a nonprofit organization in my hometown. I have been volunteering with PDX Pop Now! for the past 5 years, and was lucky enough to be one of the volunteers who watched as this little project gained its legitimacy when it gained 501-c3 status in 2007. This organization is best known for its annual 3-day all ages, local music festival, which is the aspect of volunteer work that I most involved myself in, working as a stage manager, festival tech-aid, publicity assistant, set-up crew, and my roles on both a compilation cd panel that helps to fund this nonprofit institution and the booking committee. . Using local artists to create yearly themes and local businesses to support us, ‘PDX Pop Now!’ is clearly aware of all levels of this Portland glory, and uses its accessibility and range to bring all aspects of the community of Portland together. Using the funding they make from sponsors and events, this organization has been able to expand into bringing the arts into Portland Public Schools, bringing in local artists to perform and work with students in the participation and expression in music. Below is a video explaining the details of this aspect of PDX Pop Now!’s work:
The education system, although inherently connected to me as I enter my first year into college, is a section of American structure that I have spent little time analyzing or even acknowledging. As I began to pick and choose between my college options nearly everything came down to cost and the inaccessibility that our monetary means create, and sticking with an in-state public institution was my way to deal with that.
This analysis of inaccessibility and lack of focused resolve to solve this problem reminded me of a novel The American Dream and The Public Schools by Jennifer Hochschild and Nathan Scovronick that analyzed the American interpretation of what education means to us, “The paradox lies in the fact that schools are supposed to equalize opportunities across generations and create democratic citizens out of each generation, but people naturally wish to give their own children an advantage in attaining wealth or power, and some can do it. When they do, everyone does not start equally, politically, or economically. This circle cannot be squared.” A central difference between the welfare ideology that is commonly found in Europe is that it is a basic notion that the duty of the state is simply to provide opportunity and that it is the job of citizens to earn the appropriate standard of living to access this opportunity, all tied back into the individualism that we have harbored as a central core ideology.
I feel that the for-profit sector of education is a resurgence of the naivety of American citizens in the trust we give our economic market, seen in the 236% increase in for-profit enrollment (Education Trust Subprime Report). Much like the credit-based market ploys that skyrocketed in the 1920s, we are experiencing a surge of manipulative marketing based in the for-profit education sector that is setting up our society to fail. And this is not simply speculation, but the true state of some of the most well known for-profit universities such as Kaplan. This video (link below) demonstrates the real-life fraud that has entered our educational system and the manipulation tactics they are using on uninformed American citizens:
Such shady behavior has been brought to light under the extensive lawsuits springing up around this particular institution, such as “recruiters aggressively signing up students who were unqualified and enrolling students in vocational-training courses for industries that they knew to be over staffed.” (For-Profit Education Bubble Burst). The Florida Attorney General has also launched an investigation of Kaplan. In a statement, the office of Attorney General Bill McCollum said the investigation concerned "alleged misrepresentations regarding financial aid; alleged unfair/deceptive practices regarding recruitment, enrollment, accreditation, placement, graduation rates, etc" (FP E BB). Such educational facilities can stay afloat however in the field of education due to this cut-throat business aspect, spending thousands on lobbying (such as Washington Post Company’s $350,000 lobbying investment in 2010) to find the necessary loopholes in our bureaucratic system to stay away from lawsuits. The continued federal support adds to the level of corruption that is connected to for-profit colleges. Despite untrustworthy business motives and tactics, for-profits received $4.3 Pell Grants and $20 billion in federal student loans in 2008-09, totally 66% of revenue from federal student aid. (Education Trust Subprime Report).
This dangerous misrepresentation gives voice to the necessary reform that needs to occur to bring the right values back into focus. As noted in Nonprofit Nation, quality is harbored in private educational institutions not based in the monetary incentive of high salaries but the dedication of staff and parents to the success of students. And this quality is reaffirmed in their national rankings; the 2001 U.S. News and World Report ranking of higher-education noted 35 out of 50 private universities and all 50 top-ranked national liberal arts colleges as private (O’Neill, 122). Since the education system is one of the most influential factors on our developing generation, it is essential to go back to a dedication of making sure this access is both broadened and deepened in its quality, and a dedication towards the development of nonprofit private universities and secondary educational institutions is a good way to do this
Additional Resources
-The link below is just an excerpt of the novel that I referenced earlier, but is a brief introduction to the focus of this piece of literature that helped shape my understanding of the disparities between the control over education institutions across the country, and the contention between local, state, and government regulations. This topic was brought up in class with the disparity of the level of education within the K-12 system based on location and size, and the disadvantage it is setting up students as they enter into higher education.
As I entered this weeks focus I kept an open mind to the information that I would discover as I delved into the world of environmental action and nonprofits. Despite a strong history in volunteer and nonprofit action myself, I have very little knowledge or experience with environmental action, having really only focused my personal action on a humanitarian and arts basis. This attitude I feel mirrors the situation that environmental need has in the greater scheme of society.
We as people have the tendency to hold single-minded interest in the problems that affect our day-to-day lives, and the slow growing impact of our environmental destruction does not fit this mold for many people. Going green fell more into a trend in many people’s eyes than a true way of life, and this is demonstrated in the menial support the nonprofit sector has based in environmentalism, holding only 2% of all philanthropic giving and 5% of grants (Saving the Environment for Profit). With this underdeveloped tendency that this focus holds, the need for indulgence in profit aid is reasonable. With little immediate motivators in modern, prosperous countries such as the United States an incentive needed to be created for true action, and the use of capitalism, our countries main culture backbone, was a prime resource. Again, my knowledge of basic economics and current industrial marketplaces fails me, but the statistics in the readings point to a clear and necessary success of this transition over to for-profit efforts. The nature of business, the leading force behind our environmental crisis, leads those in charge to focus only on the numbers of personal gain. By putting expendable caps on pollution rights, this influences these businesses to find true monetary value in investing in environmental technology. This benefits our country in two forms, by increasing action on a dire problem and opening up a modern market for the growing age in a time of economic crisis, valued at $600 billion and over 1.4 million jobs (SEP).
This transition away from singular nonprofit action into an incentive-based economic action is being facilitated by the current Obama administration. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed on February 17th, 2009 has focused $80 billion to spur the production and development of renewable energy sources, expanding manufacturing capacity for clean energy technology and advancing vehicle and fuel technologies (http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/energy-and-environment).
The video that can be found on the White House website, written directly below, presents more information on the economic impact that such an environmentally focused Act has had on the job pool in a focus on the positive incentives that environmental action can produce :
With such a global and extreme issue such as the devastation of our planet, I feel immediate and modified reaction is in order, seen in the success of such aspects as Cap and Trade. But this does not leave the work of environmental nonprofits unnecessary. I see the current role of the Third Sector in the realm of environmentalism as an important collection of strength to plug the holes in our specific communities, such as demonstrated in the work of the Mackenzie Watershed Council. This, and other nonprofits, works to address the necessary protection of the smaller details of our country to leave as much preserved as possible as we shift the general culture and attitude of environmental action with the easier means of economic incentive.
We have established our nation on the doctrine that all citizens of our great nation have the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and happiness, and yet these rights are sorely mistranslated into the social construct. For is it possible to fully gain your right to life when it is inherently shortened by an inaccessibility to basic care for 50 million individuals? Within the homeless community alone, an estimated 3 million population, the repercussions of a lack of proper preventative care and treatment for chronic conditions has resulted in an age-adjusted mortality rate of 4 times that of the general population (“Homelessness.”, R.H. Means).
My personal experience with the incompetence of our current health care system lies in the experience I had with my sister a year ago. My older sister falls into the basic category of a basic working class citizen. After losing her job last November, she worked multiple minimum-wage jobs with no benefits to simply cover the cost of housing. Without a viable option to get a check-up from a doctor or any preventative care, her health began to falter drastically, but without the capacity to pay out of pocket or have any accessibility to health coverage, this issue was simply ignored. After having no other options, she walked into a hospital ER room and collapsed. My sister had been living with untreated Type 1 diabetes for nearly 7 months, until her body fell into diabetic shock. She spent the next 5 weeks in a hospital bed, undergoing 4 surgeries treating infectious damage to various organs as a side effect of her untreated condition and ringing up thousands of medical bills. Still in the predicament of minimum-wage citizen, she has had to cover the costs of her newly diagnosed condition out of pocket, far down on the waiting list of the Oregon Health Plan for over a year now. What this story illustrates is the deficiency of our current health system to address the needs of “notch group”. This sector of society is the collection of citizens that are working at or below the poverty line but who do not qualify for government funded Medicaid.
This personal experience, combined with my general observation of the strife of most American citizens to attempt to fill the cracks of our broken system, leads me to see the importance in of the nonprofit to step up their influence within the health care field while the politicians bicker over its future in Washington. Before this weeks reading I was not aware of the impact that the nonprofit sector held over the hospital system, making up 51% of all hospitals nationwide in 1997. The American Hospital Association stated, “nonprofits accounted for 59% of the hospitals, 69% of the beds, 73% of the employees, and 74% of the expenses (O’Neill, 93-4). These statistics, combined with the impact demonstrated in “The Value of Nonprofit Health Care” demonstrates an effective productivity of this format. These statistics would not stay viable unless the nonprofit is able to provide more specific and effective means of treating the health care needs of America. What the dangers of a profit based health care system stands at is putting the value of human life into a material value context. For-profit health care providers must rely on their stockholders to support their companies, and the trend of denied claims to an insurance company in maintaining profitability puts the value on keeping costs low rather than helping our basic humanity. In any sense, capitalist run economies, although efficient, are based in the human characteristic of selfishness, and have no place in humanitarian work. Nonprofits, in the basic nature of their work mentality, are focused on their clientele, as seen in that “the top-rated health plans for quality and member satisfaction have been predominantly nonprofit. In addition, nonprofit health plans typically have higher medical loss ratios, meaning that more of the premium dollar is spent on actual health care services rather than on administrative costs and profits” (The Value of Nonprofit Health Care). Putting the costs and arguments of who’s-paying-for-who aside, we will require our greater conscience as a nation to take hold in order to effectively redefine our health care system so that we are not simply shifting dissatisfaction but truly aiding the general public.
This link connects to a state legislative solution within Arizona to address the “notch group” situation that I referenced earlier. Arizona state health care has actually been a leading factor in trying to redefine coverage, experimenting with major cuts on Medicaid funded organ transplantation to increase accessibility of basic preventative care for other uninsured citizens.
While looking over the statistics of the breakdown of social service organizations (O’Neill 76) I was reminded of a categorization system that I was introduced to in a public policy legislation class I took last term. Helen Ingram and Ann Schneider (authors of Policy Design for Democracy) developed a social construction of the target populations of public policy based on their public image and political power. This broke down individuals into four characteristics: Advantaged, Dependents, Contenders, and Deviants. This same system can be broken down more simply into those that the majority of society deems “deserving” and “undeserving”. With such a range of focuses within the social services, you can see within Table 4.1 in Nonprofit Nation how this type of social image impacts the number of organizations addressing certain aspects of need. Child and youth services (combined with child day-care services) make up the highest number of firms, which fall under the category of “dependents”. This category illustrates a sector of society that holds high public image and a felt responsibility from the general public to protect due to their lack of political standing or capacity for self-assistance. Services for the elderly and disabled fill a high base for nonprofit aid, falling under the “advantaged” category of society because their strife has not come about by faults of their own and, as functioning adults in society, they can create political attention to their needs, which in turn can influence the nonprofit sector to shift attentions towards their causes. Similarly, in the online reading online reading we read about the Low-Income House Energy Assistance Program, and its affects on the individuals in Louisiana. The $10.5 million helps low-income individuals pay their utility bills, demonstrating a focus on certain sector of society. Home-owning low-income families fill a special section of the societal psyche, demonstrating a simultaneous immediate need while still upholding a respectable image in societal norms. This demonstrates again the increased aid observed for programs that focus on individuals who hold personal respectability within the social eye despite their need.
The counterpart to this distinction is those need bases that fall under the “undeserving” spectrum. This trend often involves the connotation and misconception that most public individuals hold of the causes of the required need. This often occurs in public assistance directed towards the homeless community and drug rehabilitation. The greatest misconception of the homeless class is a stereotype of ‘laziness’ or ‘mendacity’ that has suppressed public service to this sector, despite the fact that a survey done by the U.S. Conference of Mayors found that 13% of homeless single adults or unaccompanied teenage youth and 17.4% of homeless adults in families were employed. The disparity that these working people are enduring is the conflict between the imbalance of the shortage of affordable rental housing and simultaneous increase in poverty, but this reality is overlooked due to the “untouchable” status that this sector of society has unfortunately adopted. Drug rehabilitation has also fallen between the cracks. In relation to public policy legislation and government action, treatment is seven times more cost-effective than domestic law enforcement, ten times more effective than interdiction, and twenty-three times more effective than attacking drugs at their source. And yet within political action and the spectrum of social service action, drug rehabilitation is limited. Speculation can deduce that again this is due to the connation of a drug abuser’s discord, and their self-created demise. It becomes a moral conflict for many, feeling that aid should not be given to those who had an essential part in the creation of their problem while still needing to address the presence of need.
I do not mean to condemn the social services, as the nonprofit sector is truly the little work addressed at rectifying the bias that we see in governmental public policy legislation and saving these citizens. I only attempt to bring attention to the kind of bias that we hold within us in all aspects of life, even in times of selfless aid, and possibly help create a more balanced palate of assistance.
