Week 10 Post 9

The Budget Plan Brings Big Changes to Tax Incentives for Donors article sounds like a great idea! I think that President Obama is really on the right track with this and it seems completely fair the rich lose their tax cut. It’s not fair that middle and lower class Americans are struggling to pay their bills while the wealthy are skipping out on paying their fair share.  

Donors and Nonprofits face a Defining moment was relevant to me because this is my final paper topic.  I know from readings and lectures in my resource development class that the nonprofit sector really hasn’t been hit too hard in the US. But this is because here nonprofits primarily receive their funding from individuals. In other places across the globe, this isn’t always so.  The guest speaker we had last week (Matt) talked about his work with Peace Players. They receive their funding from corporations and foundations.  Nelson Mandela made it so that these large business making over X amount of dollars have to give money back to nonprofits so that the programs in South Africa are relatively lucky.  In other places nonprofit funding is the first thing to be cut when budgets get cut.  Here is a link to Peace Players.  I thought he was a really fantastic speaker and this organization does great things! 

http://www.peaceplayersintl.org/

The Artist- Endowed Foundations article was a little underwhelming for me.  It isn’t that shocking to me that there are artist foundations that are donating to the arts.  It makes sense that this would be an area of interest for these people and their cash.  I think its good that they have the pull and influence in the community to advocate for lesser-represented populations and can really make a difference that way. 

The Impact article was a good reiteration of what potential funders are looking for.  The need to be so specific and detailed seems a bit daunting but I understand the need for a solid plan with precise goals.  I wonder what the ratio of failed nonprofits to successful ones is.  It made me think of the restaurant business where something like every 1 out of 5 restaurants will fail after their first year. Depressing.

Chapters 10 and 11

Chapter 10 talked about funders and the break down of where the money comes from, who donates to what kinds of causes and so on.  I found it interesting that corporations and foundations don’t really fund religious nonprofits but I suppose it might be too controversial.  It is easier to donate to something that carries less individualized weight. I thought chapter 11 was the more interesting one this week as I have never thought to consider self help groups, drug and alcohol support groups and many other mutually beneficial groups as nonprofits before. But I would say that these are some of the most helpful and needed nonprofits in our communities today.  I don’t see any problem with combining the other-benefit and self-befit ratio. I say the more helped the merrier. 

** Thanks for being such a fantastic group! 

Week 9 Post 8

Mercy Corps mission statements is “helping people turn the crises they confront into opportunities they deserve.  Driven by local needs, our programs provide communities in the world’s toughest places with the tools and support they need to transform their own lives.”  They have teams in 36 countries and have helped over 19 million people.  They have a lot of community-based programs that deal with agriculture, health, hunger and children.  Overall they look like a great organization that is doing a lot for the populations they work with. 

Why does foreign aid fail?

This was a really interesting video clip and I have to admit, something I have not spent much time thinking about.  Easterly spoke about the 2.3 trillion dollars that has been spent on foreign aid over the last 50 years and how ineffective it has been.  Much of the money is lost along the way in administrative costs, high salaries for officials and even stolen by the government of the country receiving the aid.  He said that there was no real accountability and once the money was delivered to the country, we call it good.  I find this information alarming. 

I thought Aid vs. Trade was a great video with an engaging speaker.  I whole-heartedly agree with Okonjo-Iweala’s statements about the US and the UK would not be what they are today without Africa.  Africa was stripped of all its resources, including its people, and these resources were shoveled over to these nations. Taking this into consideration I feel aid is defiantly owed to these people.  Africa was used as an ATM. It was one of the most resources rich continents on earth and now it is poverty and disease stricken. I think America bears a lot of the responsibility for this.    

The Millennium Goals were huge massive goals that I do not believe can be attained by 2015. Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger is not just something we can fix over night.  Neither is HIV and Aids.  I find these goals to be a little insensitive and minimizing the severity of all these different situations.  Even their little symbols are dumb.  These are all huge ills that we have been making small stride to resolve for decades. It’s going to take more than four years to meet these “benchmarks”.

Chapter 9           

            This chapter talked about how most nonprofits in America are based on helping Americans, but some intentional nonprofits look at improving relations between America and other nations and helping people beyond our borders.  While I think we have great need here at home, we cannot deny that there are always others who are worse off. I think that international nonprofits have the right idea and there is nothing wrong with helping our fellow earthlings.  

Week 8 Post 7

  The Power of Nonprofits was an interesting article about the responsibilities of the people to govern themselves.  It made me think about a comment one of my sociology professors made to my class this year.  He said that he’s waiting for our generation to “do something”.  He thinks we are too docile and even though we are being taken to the cleaners while attending college, we remain relatively quiet and just keep footing the bill.  I think that our generation does lack the need to protest in the traditional sense.  I don’t know if it’s lack of time or access to greater technology but we have yet to really push back. 

Maybe we should be more like the students in London?  They are protesting about possibly having to pay $14,000 to attend school. Sounds like small potatoes compared to what we pay. Take a gander. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le-2nCBAZBk&feature=fvst

The Publicizing Questionable Charities article was short and got to the point. I agree that charities that use their money irresponsibly should be held accountable and it is great that there is so much support within the nonprofit community to stop this. 

The Senate Bill 40 article presented a slightly different and more in-depth view of what the bill really means. It still sounds like a good idea to me but I thought it was interesting that most of the charities money is going to the fundraising telefunding company they hire. Why is that? Are these nonprofits just uneducated about how much the company is going to take? Because it seems if they were going to use the money irresponsibly, they would have to collect it first. If it is all being taken in by the telefunding company then isn’t the bill more geared towards that field? Confused. 

The Arts Groups article was kind of a flop for me.  I think that the art based nonprofits are radically different from the social service based ones.  It is hard to really compare the two.  Those who support galleries and orchestras are often times in a different socioeconomic situation then those who focus their attention more on social needs and problems.  I am defiantly not opposed to funding the arts; I just think it’s a different sphere then funding what I tend to think of as more “traditional” nonprofits. 

Poetry Gives Teens a Voice article is a good example of the balance of the arts and nonprofit work. I really liked what the Youth Speaks program is doing and I think that it’s a great way to bring the importance of art down to an organic level I would feel really good about giving to. 

The book chapters (7 & 8) discussed advocacy and arts and culture nonprofits.  I thought that these two chapters compliments the online readings well.  I liked the statement that Americans vote with their feet by attending events they choose to support.  People turn out for things that they are passionate about and advocate for things that affect them directly.  Locating and targeting those people is, I think, the key to a nonprofits success.  

Week 7 Post 6

Subprime Opportunity:

This article made me think about those ads you see on daytime TV for “money now”. Where you sign a couple of documents and boom there is your $400 dollar car payment. Those places scam desperate people into eventually paying double, even triple the money they borrowed in the first place.  This is very similar to what these for-profit colleges are doing to their students. Going after low income and minority students, luring them in with the promise of convince and a quick path to the middle class is heartless.  They are being set up for failure and huge debt loads.  For a country that values education, we do a great job of making it unavailable for a huge portion of our population. 

Fed Up at the University of Phoenix:

This article was pretty similar to the previous reading but more focused on the University of Phoenix in particular.  One phrase in the reading really bothered me. When they were talking about Phoenix’s questionable recruiting techniques they said that recruiters were being told to put “asses in classes, including unqualified students.” To me, here lies the problem, why are there so many “unqualified” students and what makes them unqualified? In my mind these potential students are underserved not unqualified. Maybe they grew up in poverty and were not given the same opportunities as others. Perhaps the lived in a bad part of town and attended schools with few resources or their parents didn’t make enough money.  There are lots of reasons someone might not be able to afford college besides not being qualified.  I think it’s our own fault more people don’t fall on the qualified side of the issue.

The For- Profit Bubble Burst article was great because it discusses the push back coming from unsatisfied and jobless students.  Personally, I believe that these institutions should be closed down because they are clearly not doing their students or their few graduates any good. I remember seeing some commercials for Kaplan University a couple years ago before I really understood what they did and thinking they were really good. I found an example on Youtube. I’d say they still have a pretty good advertizing team.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giZ3HBFbeAg&feature=related

For Profit Schools:

I think the most valuable part of this article was the pro and con list that was presented.  The biggest con that stood out to me was misguided focus.  The primary goal of an educational institution should be to educate.  There is just no way around it. Public colleges and universities are already outrageously expensive and they are allegedly not profit driven. How can you run a business, where the bottom line is money, and still be looking out for your student’s best interests? I don’t think you can. And yes while the business may have incentives to cut costs, they are defiantly not going to cut costs for their patrons.  They cut costs by hiring part time instructors, cutting down class time and jacking up tuition.

Education Research Chapter:

I found this chapter to be chalked full of numbers and difficult to read. I found myself skimming over all the statistics until I got to the trends and issues section. The trend is, college is pricey and often prohibitive. The nonprofit education and research sectors have maintained not only market share but also positions of leadership and are focusing on teaching, not money. Maybe Americans need  institutions like these and less for profit universities to rip them off.  

wk 6 Post 5

Since the reading for this week was on the lighter side I decide to share my general feeling towards environmental nonprofits.  In my opinion, organizations that work to better the environment are some of the most crucial nonprofits out there.  The work they do affect every human being on the planet in a direct manner.  I find environmental issues to be more pressing and urgent when I am exposed to them because frankly, I feel as if out generation is the one that’s going to get screwed.  All of the irresponsible choices made by humans before us, environmental and fiscal, are going to be dumped on our laps in the very near future and we need a plan. 

I found the McKenzie Watershed Council Annual Report to be surprisingly pleasant to read.  It was easy to understand, brief but still had enough detail to be informative.  I enjoyed the short paragraph project updates and the clear goal listing.  I also thought it was smart of them to put the financial break down chart at the end of the report. It seems like a good idea to leave people with an idea of your revenue as an organization.  Now the donor, or who ever is reading the report, sees your needs as an organization and the goals you are trying to meet with that money.

The Paul Hawken Commencement Address was my favorite reading for this week.

I feel inspired. I really liked this speech and though he made some great points.  I wish my graduation speaker had this much umph. He spoke indirectly to non-profits when referencing all those good people with an optimistic view of the world and are working to better the situation. The many issues the world is now grappling with do seem huge and overwhelming and it is easy to have a pessimistic view of things. It is harder to search for solutions. To try and fail and try again. Hawkens speech really resonated with me so I looked him up and found that he is a pretty well known environmentalist and has done lots of lectures and interviews (that are fairly long).  I did find a little six-minute speech he gave that is equally inspiring and has some humorous moments.  Take a look.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1fiubmOqH4

I found the Al Gore reading to be a bit dull. I didn’t really get much out of it except that more money should be allocated to these causes, as they are important issues.  I think that this article as good information but it was present rather poorly.  Perhaps the reason that the $6 billion donated to environmental causes represents only 2% of giving is due to the fact that it is harder to make earth as appealing as children, or homeless or sick people.  People like to give to people. Finding a way to present these issues in a different more people oriented way may result in more money.

I found a video for a campaign called 1% for the planet. I dig it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEtbpEFAttE

A Guide to Environmental Non-Profits was cool just because it had never occurred to me that a nonprofit might try to almost trick you into thinking the organization was something it wasn’t. In my mind a nonprofit always works towards something “good”. But “good” is arbitrary and to me might mean something completely different than to you.  But there does seem to be something dishonest about an organization called Institute for Cetacean Research being a group for Japanese whaling interests. But I guess spin is something that exists in all spheres where money is a factor. 

Post 4

I thought that Those Non-profit Packers was a wonderful article about how the Packers made it to the Super Bowl this year being the only tem in the league to be owned by their fans.  It’s cool that volunteers run the stadium and the community really cares and feels apart of the team. They donate 60 cents on the dollar of concessions to local charities. Though I am not a huge football fan, knowing this information has defiantly changed my view of the Greenbay Packers.  I wanted to find out a little more about the team and their history so I looked them up on Wikipedia.  It turns out that the Packers are the second oldest franchise in the NFL and the last vestige of “small town teams”. If you are interested take a look.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Bay_Packers

The Value of Nonprofit Health Care article had a line in it that stood out to me. “The nonprofit sector is where we go to protect our values and cultures. The nonprofit sector is societies safety net.” I have never considered that a nonprofit might be more culturally sensitive or even more accommodating to specific values than government programs.  I can see the religious organizations being more appeasing to those who hold strong beliefs regarding their religion but under what other circumstances is a nonprofit more appealing morally to a particular individual? I was also surprised to see that according to the article, nonprofit health care and insurance providers typically provided their services at a lower price and offer a wider variety of health plans for quality member satisfaction. I am doubled covered through my parents at Kaiser so all of my prescriptions are free. I have a lot of friends that cannot afford health insurance so they never go to the doctor and have to get their medication alternative ways ( like through Planned Parrenthood).  With so many Americans being uninsured, how can these “nonprofit” hospitals be such saviors to the middle and lower class? The priceis are still outrageous and so for many, health care takes a back seat.  This goes back to the argument we had in class about the pros and cons to universal health care but I do not believe that the current system is working and I certainty don’t think that health care, even through a nonprofit hospital, is affordable for all.

The main concern of the Mergers of For, Profit, Nonprofit Hospitals was; will the same, low-income generating services be provided to the same lower class population? Burn centers, drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers and trauma centers are all areas in medicine that don’t typically turn over a lot of profit but these are the services many nonprofit hospitals are willing to provide. This article left me wondering about all the rehab centers in the US and how many of them are nonprofit. Places like Serenity Lane charge their patients a lot to get treatment, how do the insurance companies play into this and what to rehab centers have to do to get that nonprofit status?  

ADD grows up was my favorite article for this week. I completely agree with the last speaker and think that America relies to heavily on drugs. Any imperfection results in a little blue pill to make it better.  ADD pills can really affect people’s personality and the change between medicated and not medicated days can be drastic.  My mom is a first grade teacher and while all of those out of tern speaking fidgety students are challenging, when they are their medication they often seems sad and not themselves. It seems like a pretty fine line between doing what is best for your child and giving them what would appear to be the “upper hand” and letting them be who they are.  I Youtubed pros and cons of ADD and found that MTD did a “True Life” series about being addicted to Adderall. I think it does a pretty good job of showing some extreme cases of ADD meds gone wrong. Interesting stuff, though, obviously, I don’t think it is representative of all people who take Adderall. Take a look

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXZOOnZXAaQ

The chapter in the book we read for this week had a lot of information and statistics in it about the health care and nonprofit versus for profit hospitals, but I felt all the numbers were really outdated. How much has the world of health care changed since 1997? Probably quite a bit. It is challenging to take in all this information about the health care sector when we don’t know if these same trends are continuing today, 13 years later.  

Post 3

This weeks readings were focused around housing and other social services based nonprofits in the US.  Because there were so many readings I am going to break them up again like I did last week.

Redeeming Value was the reading I choose to do first; I enjoyed this reading because it was about a local organization I can connect to. I had no idea that St. Vincent de Paul’s is quite so cutting edge and does so many things to gain the support they need. Offering green jobs that help to support the community in a healthy way and the furniture resale from the UK were two topics that stuck out to me. On the other hand I can see the storeowners side of being in constant competition with St. Vincent’s and simply not being able to drop their prices that low.  But overall I think that the pros of this nonprofit out weight the cons by a landslide.  They are doing so many good things for the community in an economically and environmentally sound way. I can dig it.  The reading referenced the Lamb building so I googled it to see what it looks like. 

Check it out:  http://www.svdp.us/what-we-do/affordable-housing/rental-housing/completed-projects/lamb-building/

Next I read the Louisianan Reading.  I found this reading to be a little dry and boring.  It stresses the importance of organizations that help people pay their utilities bill, specifically in Louisianan.  I think that this article was a good lead into and tied in well with the Greater Greater Washington reading.

           

I really liked the video that the Greater Greater Washington reading had within it. I have seen section 8 referenced before in the Eugene area when looking for housing for myself but I have only ever seen “section 8 not accepted”. Obviously it is difficult to live a stable and healthy life without permanent housing.  According to the reading most of the people who apply for section have children or are mentally or physically disabled in some way. These are the people who need stability in their lives the most! I think that section 8 is a great idea but the waiting lists are outrageous. These are the kind of problems that are so large they almost seem impossible. We have a great solution but the need is so great it becomes difficult for the process to run smoothly.

I found the reading about the Auburn Family Residence building to be the most interesting of the bunch this week. My immediate response to this article was to shut the place down it sounds like a death trap. But what would happen to the families and women who live there? Even if the building is in appalling condition and grossly understaffed, where would the people who call it home be if it were no more.  After all of Auburns inspections and write up it would seem like they would have been given an ultimatum by now but nothing of the sort seems to have happened.  With their population growing and more and more people depending on this building how can it go on when it is falling down around its patrons.   This article also left me with a lot of questions. Where do they get there funding? Why is the boiler across the street in another building? And why have changes not been forced on them?

This interview was with the CEO of MAAC and included a little bit of his personal story.  It again stressed the importance of building a better, safe and healthy community.  This nonprofit really seems to have a lot of heart behind it. Pizano’s push for self-sufficiency for low and moderate-income families is a prime example of what I think of when I think nonprofit, someone who is all about giving back. It reminded me of the movie Pay it Forward, if you haven’t seen it it’s a great one!

Here is the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pCtXRP1edo

The chapter we read in the book this week was about social services and the people who work /volunteer in that field.  The part of the chapter that stood out to me was the section about the relationship between the government and nonprofits. The book said that” governments can often achieve better results through nonprofits than through its own agencies”.  The advantage of being in the private sector and a nonprofit are enormous. The lack of red tape allows for decisions to be made and implemented faster. The chapter also discussed ways in which nonprofits are becoming more like business such as taking up some for profit enterprises in order to raise funds. It seems to me that it might be beneficial for nonprofits to take more of a business approach to running their organization.  Marketing and PR are important to any organization, if your nonprofit is not known how are you going to gain support? 

Post 2

The first reading I looked at was the Charitable Deductions Under Scrutiny article.  I think that the motives behind giving being so hotly debated is interesting and the uncertainty of how things will turn out if the benefits of donating are lessened is something that needs to be seriously considered. Out of the three proposed plans I think that the last one (limiting the percentage of itemized deductions that tax payers could take) makes the most sense.  I do not see a problem with being able to write off your taxes for charitable donations as long as it does not become excessive or untruthful.  The money that people are donating is going to programs that do the community good and are picking up slack where the government needs help.  The availability of the services provided by non-profits is critical and so is the money to support them.  

I found the Tim Harford article about why people give to be pleasantly simplistic.  I liked the break down of three basic motives, pure altruism, warm glow and social pressure.  I wish that the article had provided a statistical break down as well so we could see how much of the population makes up each group.  I know that it is true for me that I am more likely to volunteer than I am to donate money because I am a student and hardly have any to spare. The last sentence of the article about there being more volunteers at a soup kitchen but less food makes sense to me but also makes me wonder about the role of large companies. I am curious about big food producers like Sysco and General Mills.  Do companies like that manage their own philanthropies, donate to outside ones or even donate at all? And do these places ever donate their own product to places like soup kitchens?

The short blog post Estate Tax and Charitable Giving is similar to the Charitable Donations Under Scrutiny reading. Both are concerned with the outcome if the current system is changed.  The drop in estate tax coupled with the jump in individual exemption for estates might lower the total value of charitable bequests.  I feel like I don’t have enough information to draw a conclusion about this article. It seems like I would need to see the break down of how many multimillion-dollar homes are left to charities versus smaller middle or lower class homes to calculate an impact.  I do think that the concentration of wealth being held by a shrinking group of people is potentially dangerous not only for nonprofits, but for our country as a whole.  We already have clear class division and the super rich getting super richer, quite frankly, is not something I look forward to.  

Our Ineffectiveness at Measuring Effectiveness was an article about a topic I hadn’t ever put much thought into.  When we talked about the amount of money that goes directly to the cause versus the overhead, it sounded like 60-70% was a good number.  I think that it is unreasonable to ask a nonprofit, particularly a small one, to give 100% of their donations to the cause. Paying their bills, maintaining buildings and funding staff training's are necessary expenses for running a successful nonprofit. I have never heard of a letter grading system for nonprofits and I am sure it is not possible for every nonprofit to be evaluated. This seems a bit unfair. I agree that we need to make sure that money that is donated to nonprofits is not going to waste.  But holding them up to some arbitrary grading system seems a bit extreme.  Each nonprofit differs in size and goals.  Creating a catch all system would be impossible to apply seeing as each program is unique.    

The chapter on religion that we read in Nonprofit Nation this week touched on what we discussed in class about religious organizations being the benefactors of the majority of donations people make to any nonprofit.  I found the chapter to be informative and I enjoyed the sections that discussed the history of religious affiliation in the US. I am curious to know what the cause of the decline in religiosity in the US might be.  Increase in technology and more opportunities to gain knowledge?  More people pursuing higher education? Who knows! The statement that “more people do volunteer work for religious organizations than for any other kind of nonprofit” initially surprised me. But taking into consideration that singing in the choir, teaching Sunday school and cleaning the church all count towards volunteer work, it loses some of its shock value.  The amount of organizations that are affiliated with religion is a much greater number than I thought and looking back I have unknowingly volunteered with a religious organization myself. 

Post 1

Introduction:

Hello! My name is Saba and I am taking this course because I have settled on a non-profit administration minor and this course is required. While I don’t have any experience or background with working in a non-profit, I am really interested in learning about how they operate and the different populations they work with.  I am hoping to gain a better understanding of the different positions non-profit workers hold and the impact they have on the communities they work in.

Reading Response:

This weeks reading was mostly new information to me. I had no idea about the variety of work non-profits are involved with. When I think about a non-profit I think of causes like global warming, animal care, and impoverished youth.  It never occurred to me that there are so many less heavy, but equally important causes to attend to.  The first page of chapter one listed the promotion of cowboy poetry as an example of a non-profit.  The options are varied and this opens up a whole new world of opportunities I have never before considered. 

I found the section about giving to be particularly interesting. I was surprised at the number of Americans who give annually.  It seems to me that so many people are tight on cash and it was a pleasant surprise to see that people set aside time and money to give back to a cause they care about.  As we discussed in class, we can’t know everyone’s motivation to give, be it out of the goodness of their heart or for the tax break, I still see it as a win-win situation.  The anthropology section of the theory chapter explained that the existence and behavior of voluntary associations as a response to needs that can be more effectively met outside family, kinship and governance structures.  This was interesting to me.  It seems it is almost in our nature to be compelled to give back whether that be via your time or your money. A community feeling is important to all people in a variety of ways for a variety of reasons. Though volunteering or donating money may be done for selfish reasons, it can help that individual grow or find support and that is hardly a negative side effect.

Since I’m a sociology major another part of the reading that stood out to me was the part about how associations are beneficial and important to individuals.  While most associations are class based, the individuals in that class all have the chance to be leaders in their own social sphere. Be that in their place of worship or their labor union. People do better when they value and trust one another. Giving time or money to a non- profit can provide people with the associations they need to create those interpersonal bonds of trust and cooperation. They can feel like they are part of a positive community and are helping themselves as much as they are helping the population the non-profit supports.