First off, I would like to give my condolences to Susanna Gabay’s family and friends. It’s always hard to understand these situations, especially when they involve a young person who is your age. Despite how people may feel about her death, the most important thing to remember is to celebrate her life and not get caught up in the logistics of what you could have done or what you could have said.
So, after class today I went to the library to try and get all these readings done for this week’s posting. It has been a struggle. Besides the news about Susanna, the readings are a little hard to get through. I felt my eyes glaze over and my mind wandering as to what I will put in my burrito while I was reading the “Broader Movement” article. However, I did find a few good statistics.
From 1995 to 2007, conservation and environmental organizations have grown about 4.6% per year.
- This is due to the steady growth of environmental awareness within the last fifty years and the recent wave of attention that has been brought to environmental issues such as global warming. However, one thing that I thought was interesting was that 2% of environmental nonprofits become inactive a year.
I also found it fascinating how inactive nonprofits are due to the amount of federal funding that is distributed within the nonprofit sector. In “A Good Cause Gone Bad”, Christine McDonald discusses how many of the large environmental nonprofits are more like corporations. Even though this concept of large organizations acting like large corporations can be understood when one takes into account the bureaucracy that becomes involved when organizations become larger, I think the main reason why these nonprofits tend to follow this pattern lies in their federal funding. Just like large corporations who both have the monopoly on a product and receive tax cuts from the government, large nonprofits also tend to follow this “Executive Director, bonus salary” persona because the government gives them the means. From a government standpoint this makes sense because large nonprofits hold more weight when politicians have an agenda where they want to have a well-known advocacy group as a partner. Large nonprofits also come in handy when they want to address an international cause such as Red Cross and their efforts in Haiti. Even though large nonprofits are able to lend more goods and services, the fact still remains: When an organization becomes too big they also pose a threat and can do much more damage than bonus salaries.
I think that more of the government funding should go to grassroots programs that can form local coalitions with other nonprofits in their area. I feel like programs that are formed within a community can help a community more because they have the subjective view needed to address the problems.
So, after class today I went to the library to try and get all these readings done for this week’s posting. It has been a struggle. Besides the news about Susanna, the readings are a little hard to get through. I felt my eyes glaze over and my mind wandering as to what I will put in my burrito while I was reading the “Broader Movement” article. However, I did find a few good statistics.
From 1995 to 2007, conservation and environmental organizations have grown about 4.6% per year.
- This is due to the steady growth of environmental awareness within the last fifty years and the recent wave of attention that has been brought to environmental issues such as global warming. However, one thing that I thought was interesting was that 2% of environmental nonprofits become inactive a year.
I also found it fascinating how inactive nonprofits are due to the amount of federal funding that is distributed within the nonprofit sector. In “A Good Cause Gone Bad”, Christine McDonald discusses how many of the large environmental nonprofits are more like corporations. Even though this concept of large organizations acting like large corporations can be understood when one takes into account the bureaucracy that becomes involved when organizations become larger, I think the main reason why these nonprofits tend to follow this pattern lies in their federal funding. Just like large corporations who both have the monopoly on a product and receive tax cuts from the government, large nonprofits also tend to follow this “Executive Director, bonus salary” persona because the government gives them the means. From a government standpoint this makes sense because large nonprofits hold more weight when politicians have an agenda where they want to have a well-known advocacy group as a partner. Large nonprofits also come in handy when they want to address an international cause such as Red Cross and their efforts in Haiti. Even though large nonprofits are able to lend more goods and services, the fact still remains: When an organization becomes too big they also pose a threat and can do much more damage than bonus salaries.
I think that more of the government funding should go to grassroots programs that can form local coalitions with other nonprofits in their area. I feel like programs that are formed within a community can help a community more because they have the subjective view needed to address the problems.
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