Week Nine Reflection

In week nine, I have learned about Nonprofits and Non-Governmental Organizations–or NGO's. It felt like there weren't as many resources to go through this week, but I still think it was jam-packed with great facts. I've read The Nonprofit Starvation Cycle written by Ann Goggins Gregory and Don Howard, Fundamentals, Not Fads by Kim Jonker and William F. Meehan III, Building Movements, Not Organizations by Hildy Gottlieb, and a TED Talk given by Dan Pallotta titled, "The Way We Think About Charity Is Dead Wrong." One key point I would like to mention from this week's studies is the vicious starvation cycle. The funders get unrealistic expectations about how much it costs to run a nonprofit, nonprofits then feel pressure to conform to funders' unrealistic expectations, nonprofits respond to this pressure in two ways: spend too little on overhead or they underreport their expenditures on tax forms and in fundraising materials, and as time goes on, the funders expect granters to do more and more with less and less. This vicious cycle eventually starves nonprofits.

One thing I found rather fascinating in this week's reading is what Dan Pallotta has mentioned in his TED Talk. He mentioned five areas of discrimination businesses hold over nonprofit organizations. First, is the compensation, the large businesses get more money for doing things than a nonprofit organization does. Second, advertising and marketing, for-profit companies spend their money on advertisements while nonprofits do their best to put most of their money towards those who actually need it instead of advertisements. Third, the taking of risk in pursuit of new ideas for generating revenue, when a big company such as Disney creates a movie but it fails, nobody is going to call them out on it. However, if a nonprofit does the same thing, leaders of the nonprofit may get questioned in being good individuals. Fourth, is the time, people seem to just have more patience with for-profit companies than they do for nonprofit organizations. Fifth, the profit itself. it is easy for for-profit companies to attract people to their business with money. However, nonprofits cannot do that with their profits.

As a nonprofit donor, I could use this lesson to remember not to just focus on overhead costs. I should focus more on the scale of their dreams and how they measure their progress towards those dreams and what resources they need to make those dreams come true. The harder a nonprofit works towards making their group more of a movement than just a nonprofit organization, the better chances it gets in succeeding to create a healthier and more humane world.