Week Ten

Budget Plan Brings Big Changes to Tax Incentives for Donors was a tough read because I know shamefully little about taxes and how they work, though I am interested to see how the proposals for the new fiscal year shake out since there has been a lot of controversy around this issue lately with the GOP majority in the House.


I enjoyed Donors and Nonprofits Face a Defining Moment in Responding to a Crisis because it was all about how critical the next ten years will be in the post-recession redefining of economies in the United States and across the world; the same ten years that I and likely many of my peers in this class will be entering the nonprofit workforce. One of the last paragraphs noted how when a crisis is over, it seems natural to want to relax and enjoy the peace again, but that in fact, that's one of the most critical times for growth. The tone wasn't desperate or overly sensationalizing as it could have been, which I appreciated. I also appreciated reading about the social impact bonds in the UK since I think that if it is true that the United States will shift from being the dominant player in the world economy in the next decade, we're going to have rely on the innovations of other developed countries for support if we're going to make it through.

The article A Newly Powerful Grant-Making Force: Artist-Endowed Foundations, like the one before it, was also focused on the changes that could very well occur in the near future. I have done a fair amount of reading on my own about the Smithsonian controversy earlier this year but wasn't entirely aware of the response from the foundations the article mentioned such as those for Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe - two of my favorite artists. More interestingly, it turns out that Warhol and Robert aren't the only ones with foundations, as the article mentioned there are over 300 others attributed to different artists. Even though we've talked a good amount about foundations in this class, and I even used one for our first assignment, I had never really considered that an artist could start a foundation themselves to continue funding what was important to them in the arts for many years to come. Very cool.

If you're interested to read more about the controversial Hide/Seek show and learn why it elicited such a response, here's a pretty good summary: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/10/AR2011021006633.html

How To Do Good and Prove It: Integrate Social Impact in Your Nonprofit's DNA was an interesting way to wrap-up readings for the term since it kind of gave some tips and tricks about how to move forward with nonprofit work in a clear and definitive way. I'm not sure I entirely agree with the eight word mission statement approach, but I liked the model for how to move from a mission to results.

Week Nine

Aid vs. Trade

This was one of the more compelling TED talks I personally had ever watched. Okonjo-Iweala’s personal expertise on the issues she discussed was illustrated beautifully when she recounted saving her sister’s life by walking over 20 kilometers to a visiting doctor and breaking into the church through a window when everyone else was trying to use the door. I really liked how she balanced this story with her own arguments and opinions because it kept the talk very engaging throughout. In one of my other PPPM classes this term that focuses on fundraising we have talked multiple times about the power of the personal story over statistics or facts, and this is definitely a good example. That said, the facts from Okonjo-Iweala about the lack of opinion research in Africa resonated with the William Easterly article as well, and I agree with them both that a lack of interaction with the public receiving foreign aid definitely seems like the biggest flaw in the design of the system.

Why Does Foreign Aid Fail?

Like the previous article, William Easterly seems to think the biggest problem with foreign aid might be us. We aren't listening to what those we are helping really need, and we aren't concerned with what happens to the money we spend so long as the check gets deposited - as Easterly rhetorically says in the interview, "Well we spent 2.3 trillion to help the world's poor, so our job is done." The lack of accountability is unfortunate.

Millennium Development Goals

I used the MDG's extensively in PPPM 327 my sophomore year and remember a lot of class discussion focusing on whether or not they were as praiseworthy as they seem. I think ultimately they have created a great deal of positive change for many underserved populations, and that these successes should not be discredited completely as some arguments against the MDG's might claim. However, as I recall from that class, there is little recognition of how the MDG's were established and why those specific measurements were chosen. Coincidently enough, after looking a bit more into William Easterly after reading his article, I discovered he feels the same way:

http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/papers/2007/11_poverty_easterly/11_poverty_easterly.pdf

 Mercy Corps

I have heard of Mercy Corps before but never visited their site or read much into them, so it was a pleasant surprise to see that they had headquarters in Portland and do such great international relief work. The timeline of their projects was my favorite piece of their website because it showed how involved they've been in some of the biggest events in my own lifetime. 

Week Eight

Chapters 7 & 8 in our textbook were definitely the most number-heavy readings we had this week, but I enjoyed them. I thought it was interesting that “social advocacy organizations” were defined as “primarily engaged in promoting a particular cause or working for the realization of a specific social or political goal to benefit a broad of specific constituency.” While I can recognize that advocacy nonprofits work solely on creating change on a policy and governmental level, it seems to me that almost all nonprofits do some sort of advocacy work just in their day to day function. Simply by existing and working with a specific demographic or on a certain issue, aren't they making that issue visible and recognizing that it is worthy of change? 

"The Power of Nonprofits" was an interesting, quick little article about how advocacy is really not only in nonprofits’ blood, but our blood too. When something is going on that we don’t like, we tend to get together to do something about it!

“Nonprofit Association of Oregon supports Attorney General’s efforts to publicize questionable charities” was good to read because I was unaware of the issue and of Senate Bill 40 and it presented it in a very compelling fashion. It definitely does not seem right that nonprofits that are using fundraised dollars simply to keep fundraising should qualify for tax-exemptions or should be allowed to receive federal or state funding. I was kind of surprised however that the minimum standard the Bill was proposing was that 30% of annual income be spent on program services. That really doesn’t seem like very much to me. I’ve heard a few different times in my volunteer work and my other PPPM classes that administrative costs for any special event or nonprofit should be around 10%, so I just wonder why it’s ok to let 70% of a nonprofit’s income be spent on things other than program services; arguably the services that the nonprofit’s mission is to supply.


Reading “Senate Bill 40” just moments after reading and writing about the previous article, it was nice to see that this article mentioned “legitimate reasons for underperformance” and creating “appropriate exceptions” for why 30% is a low but fair number for evaluating Oregon nonprofits. Since the 30% rule averages spending on program services over the last three fiscal years, it gives some leeway for worthy nonprofits that may have valid reasons for why their program spending is low for a year or two. The report also notes that Senate Bill 40 doesn’t create any excess paperwork for nonprofits, so it really does seem like a well-thought and balanced approach to weeding out those few nonprofits that aren’t performing up to par as well as highlighting those that are going above and beyond.


“Arts Groups Pumped $166.2 Billion Into US in 2005, Study Says” noted a lot of things I learned in an Arts and Administration class I took last term that I think are valid reasons why arts a commendable and practical aspect of US business. The class was all about the benefits of the arts and discussed not only financial reasons like those discussed in the article, such as creating jobs and business for supplies and space, but that art also has an inherent value to our social senses and is extremely useful in conflict mitigation and brain development for young children.

Week Seven

I sympathize with Elaine as per her note on blackboard about the difficulty of trying to find evidence in favor of for-profit educational institutions. The “For-Profit Schools” article she assigned did make me briefly consider how the resulting increases in efficiency and innovation from operating for-profit could work wonders in a school system, but it was almost instantly defeated in the few short and contradictory paragraphs present in the article. The article claims using business strategies for improving school systems is controversial because, “The fundamental purpose of a school is to educate, not make money.” Agreed. Shortly before that however, it states that using business creates an environment such that “the main concern of management is realizing profits and promoting growth. Proponents of for-profit schools claim business models will benefit students, because financial success depends on providing a quality education. Schools must improve if they are to compete for students.” Realizing profits is quite a different fundamental purpose than educating. I do wish that there were more options for higher education and job training for nontraditional students who can’t or don’t want to access a “typical” four-year institution, but I don’t think for-profit colleges are the answer.

“Fed Up at the University of Phoenix” and “Will the For-Profit Education Bubble Burst in 2011?” were very similar articles and I think helped further my sentiments against for-profit colleges. Both articles highlighted a lot of deception to students about benefits of graduating from Kaplan or one of the other colleges, and how most for-profit colleges have painfully low graduation rates. They didn’t really give any hard facts or figures I thought, but I feel like the picture they painted for me about those kinds of schools wasn’t very pretty.

 

The “Subprime Opportunity” article definitely had a lot of facts and figures. However, I think the thing that stuck out to me the most from that article was actually the part about how representatives of for-profit schools claim that their graduation rates are totally justifiable because of the demographics that they’re serving, namely those who are least prepared and most disadvantaged. That seems like pretty terrible logic to me, and certainly doesn’t instill very much hope into their students I bet.

This is an interesting article I found while trying to find out more about for-profit colleges. Greg Cappelli is the Co-CEO of the Apollo Group, the company behind the University of Phoenix. I thought it was really admirable that he pointed out that people, myself included, usually tend to associate “convenience” with “easy” but that truly the University of Phoenix is not easy. I also appreciated reading about some of the proposed changes in regulations of federal dollars for for-profit colleges the article talks about.

http://www.azcentral.com/business/articles/2011/02/11/20110211arizona-profit-schools-tighter-federal-regulations-apollo-cappelli.html

Week Six

“There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING.”

Love it. The speech by Paul Hawken that we read this week was a very passionate and inspiring three pages. Even though I’m writing about it first, it ended up, by some trick of fate, being the last of the readings I read this week, and it was a great way to reach the finish line. Hawken’s views on our generation’s fascination with getting rich versus being rich, and with the television versus the stars, stuck out to me as being reminiscent of things we all talked about earlier this term with a lack of participation from our younger peers in all things civic and social – and that’s really a bummer. At the very end of the speech Hawken pointed out that the generations before us have failed, and truly it’s sink or swim for us now. I think herein lies the most important point, which is that not only do we need to learn how to reorient ourselves to environment, but we need to teach the same things to our kids. I am a practicing vegan for largely environmental reasons, and I take a deep satisfaction out of sharing my diet with others. I hope we all can find something similar that we love about the environment and pass it on to our kids someday, because I really think that’s going to be the key to our success.

Speaking of success, the nonprofits listed as “Anti-Environmental Groups with Deceptive Names/Mission Statements” in A Guide to Environmental Non-Profits definitely can claim success in fooling me about their real causes via their names. Knowing when this article was written would have helped, but I was really surprised that the U.S. House Committee on Resources was on that list, and that its website apparently was proudly displaying what I would deem anti-environmental news stories. Accordingly, I decided to do some investigating; below are two screen shots of the second and third stories to come up on the Committee's home page.

The articles are about ways to cut down Federal spending on environmental regulations and keeping Obama's political actions transparent, respectively; pretty ridiculous, right? Enjoy: http://naturalresources.house.gov/default.aspx

Another article we read was about Al Gore's choice to utilize other avenues besides the nonprofit sector for his environmental work was interesting. I thought this quote summed things up nicely: "The point is not to become enmeshed in the details of the examples. The point is to appreciate the degree to which the common social good of environment, accompanied by emerging financial innovation, has become a vibrant marketplace where assets have monetary value and private investment and individual gain maintain the common good." The fact that for-profit environmental technologies is 100 times the size of philanthropic environmental work is astounding, and I think Al Gore made a very innovative decision to utilize the public market as a way of defending a very public good.

Post 4

Like many of us have said in past postings, the textbook can feel a bit dated in its facts, so I really appreciated having the direct comparison to some of the articles we read off Blackboard that were much more current. The differences between public and private ownership seemed to really be the central element to most of the material this week, and that’s definitely the topic that I would want to explore the most in this blog entry. While the article on the Green Bay Packers gave me some neat insight into how the ownership dilemma really transcends multiple institutions in our society, the issue that I found most interesting was hospital ownership. When for-profit hospitals were first mentioned in the textbook, my visceral reaction wasn’t very positive. I think what was so troubling was that in my head and heart, “for-profit” and “hospital” didn’t seem very compatible. Indeed, when compared to what we know and love about nonprofits, the term “for-profit” isn’t very comforting. That said, as I read on through the rest of the chapter and the additional articles, I learned that my response was not only perhaps unwarranted, but unfair. The textbook, written in 1997, and the Mergers of for-profit, non-profit hospitals: Who does it help? article, written in 2010, both evidenced that about 60% of hospitals are nonprofit, and that an additional 20% are owned by the government. Only a small chunk of hospitals are for-profit, and as the Mergers article also cited, it seems that the big conversions we’re reading about tend to come and go in phases, and equally from nonprofit-to-profit and vice-versa. Plus, the textbook noted on page 104 that the General Accounting Office didn’t find a huge difference in the amount of uncompensated care offered by nonprofit and for-profit institutions, which definitely surprised me. All that said, I think the point that really hit it home for me were these two quick sentences in Merger:

“Jill Horwitz, a business and law professor at the University of Michigan who studies the hospital market, says the biggest difference between the two types of hospitals is in the services they offer. For-profit hospitals, she says, are more likely to offer lucrative services, such as cardiac and diagnostic services, while their non-profit counterparts often provide more less-profitable services such as trauma centers, burn centers and alcohol- and drug-treatment programs.”

I think this quote is what it all comes down to for me in terms of conversions of hospitals one way or the other.

Also, just to give my quick two-cents on the ADD Grows Up article, I agreed and disagreed with some of the ideas presented. I don’t want to discredit ADD as being a legitimate condition because I really don’t know enough about the issue and think it could have a really crippling effect on a lot of people. However, I do agree that ADD is infinitely more complex than anything a six-question survey could capture and that it sure is strange how ADD rates in America are vastly higher than anywhere else in the world after all the marketing that was done on TV and in magazines. Case in point: I wanted to learn more about ADHD so I typed it into Google and saw that “ADHD” had a YouTube channel. I thought that this was a neat way to disperse info about the condition out to the public, so I went to view what they had on their site. Turns out it’s really just a marketing ploy for Concerta, an ADHD drug for kids and adults. Awesome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3ySskAz7Ho

Post 3

Our readings this week on affordable housing, community development, and social service tied together nicely and got me excited for what we might be learning about and discussing in class this week. I have had some great experiences in my time here at UO volunteering for issues related to homelessness and it is an issue I feel very strongly about. Through the Service Learning Program on campus I have participated in multiple Alternative Break trips to different cities in California and Oregon, and I am always consistently frustrated by the differences I find between the reality of the homeless communities I’ve worked with and the stigmatized views of them that can be found in the media and amongst our peers and politicians. I don’t contend that stereotypes of homeless individuals are entirely unfounded, and indeed recognize that, like any community, there is a full spectrum of behaviors and actions within the homeless population. I think what is frustrating for me is that I can’t seem to shake the idea that we have essentially created these stereotypes for transient individuals because it is simply easier and less costly to do so than to address the root causes of homelessness and accept some shared social responsibility for our situation. As the news article Understanding the tools in the affordable housing toolkit put it, “An often-overlooked remedy to the underlying problem is to increase the minimum wage across the board so that working people can live off of their income without needing other assistance. But this has not been the chosen approach, for the most part, in the United States.” Instead it seems, we have opted to fix the most basic element of the equation – the lack of housing part – via free and reduced-price housing options, leaving the disadvantaged communities utilizing them to fend for themselves beyond that. A couple of previous PPPM classes I’ve taken dealt with the history of the federal government’s Housing and Urban Development department, and I think it’s a really interesting example of looking at the evolution of social programs and policies in America; I’d recommend looking more into the subject to anyone who enjoyed the Understanding the tools article like I did.

While I also enjoyed reading that Louisiana was receiving federal funds for families struggling to keep their utilities paid, the other reading I liked a great deal was the chapter in our textbook on social service, particularly the latter half and the discussion of trends in nonprofit and governmental relations. It was almost ironic to me that this reading came now since I felt like it addressed a number of points of interest we had all brought up in weeks previous about how our current system of government and welfare came to be in America. The “public-private partnership” between all levels of government and the nonprofits they work with was cited in the book on page 85 as being “more pragmatic than philosophical” for a number of reasons. I think this was my favorite part of the reading because it summed up much more eloquently than I had ever done regarding why nonprofits are such an important part of our society. Without being tied down to governmental bureaucracy nonprofits are much more fluid and adaptive, and provide a great deal more jobs and better service to their constituents. Plus, it de-politicizes subjects that might otherwise have been too controversial to take action on. For many of these reasons and more I am thankful for nonprofits in our society. 


The Alternative Break trips I mentioned earlier have been some of the most challenging and most fulfilling experiences I've had here at UO, and I would definitely encourage anyone interested in them to read more about the program online at the Service Learning Program's website - serve.uoregon.edu. Or, feel free to ask me about them! I've had the experience of being a participant and co-facilitator and know the program pretty well and would be glad to testify - in fact, I already did: http://serve.uoregon.edu/programs/alternative_breaks/testimonials

Post 2

I greatly enjoyed this week’s readings on the role of religion in the nonprofit sector. I am extremely interested in religion from a sociological perspective. As evidenced by this chapter, I find it fascinating that it is one of few subjects that seem to pertain to all four sectors of American society: the household sector, the government sector, the for-profit sector, and the not-for-profit sector. From the very first page of the chapter where it is said that “the United States has long been recognized as one of the most religious of the world’s developed nations,” I found multiple points during the text that were particularly noteworthy and intriguing. Perhaps my favorite quote came from page 62 where it says that:

“Ninety percent of American adults say they believe in God and pray and that religion is important in their lives. Seventy percent claim membership in a religious congregation. Forty percent report belonging to a religiously related support group. When asked what degree of confidence they have in major societal institutions, Americans rank religion at or near the top, far above corporations, unions, the media, or federal, state or local government. Religion, the military, and the U.S. Supreme Court are consistently the three top-rated institutions.”

I have a deep and sincere respect for religion for a number of personal reasons, and regardless of your own personal opinion, I think it is quite interesting to explore the idea that religion, which relies so heavily on the idea of faith in the intangible, is given top marks from the American public’s confidence. I find that to be a prime example of how goodwill and a sense of commitment to the wellbeing of others is a prominent aspect of the nonprofit sector in the United States, that we will pick ourselves up from our busy lives and strapped budgets and provide for those in need in our communities when our governments and our societal “safety nets” of social services fail. Volunteering is, as I’ve mentioned in past blogging, is an extremely big player in my own life, and I think it is my experiences as a volunteer that have made me who I am today. Interestingly, our reading also quotes Robert D. Putnam, a sociologist and public policy analyst who has studied and written extensively on the idea that Americans are, for a number of reasons, on a downward spiral because of the growing loss of social capital in our lives. For a number of reasons, including reduced involvement in church activities and organized religion, Putnam thinks that we are losing out on gaining valuable social skills and civic norms by not connecting with each other and having experiences like volunteering and exploring issues facing our society. I would likely agree that our own loss of social capital is truly unfortunate and may be detrimental to future generations if these trends continue. I actually work as a swim instruct for the City of Eugene, and in the two years that I have been at the pool I am at, kids’ involvement in swim lessons has lessened almost every quarter down to our current all-time lows. Examples like this where kids are not getting the opportunities to interact with others and experience new things are really a bummer, and I hope we won’t be paying the price for it down the road. 

Post 1

Hi! My name is Zach Nicolaides and I am a senior here at UO majoring in Planning, Public Policy and Management (PPPM). I grew up just outside of Portland in Hillsboro, Oregon and I miss having such easy access to an urban setting. That said, I do appreciate how “user friendly” Eugene is in terms of transit by bike, bus or foot. The majority of my teenage years in Hillsboro were focused on my competitive swimming career with a local club team. Now almost four years out from quitting in 2007 I still swim laps at the SRC whenever I can, though that usually isn’t very often as my schedule is pretty jam-packed. Volunteering and feeling connected to the community around me are both very important parts of my life, and I am involved with a number of different organizations and events on campus including UO’s Relay For Life, Alternative Breaks and Alpha Phi Omega. Relay For Life is an American Cancer Society (ACS) event that I have participated with in a number of different ways for almost ten years now. Through volunteering and interning with the Society I have gained some great firsthand knowledge and experience in what it is like to work for a nationwide nonprofit, especially in terms of development and donor relations, and I

The purpose of my blog is to provide an outlet for exploring the discipline of nonprofit management as it is presented to my peers and I in PPPM 280: Introduction to the Nonprofit Sector. I’m excited to learn about the nonprofit sector through a variety of mediums this term, such as guest lecturers and small group discussions, and hope that the class will be a very dynamic and invigorating experience. By the end of the quarter, I would love to have a better understanding of how the nonprofit sector in the United States plays a role in our macro economy, as well as how it compares to other developed countries in the world. Each Tuesday I will be blogging about what has been going on in class and in our readings.

For our first few weeks of class we were assigned the first two chapters of Nonprofit Nation by Michael O’Neill as reading. I thought the reading gave a good, if somewhat wordy, introduction to the nonprofit sector, particularly in terms of the difficulty and complexity of giving the sector itself a succinct definition. While the IRS definition of what constitutes a nonprofit for the purposes of taxes and accounting, the book evidenced multiple times that there a numerous nonprofit organizations exempt from these regulations, and therefore unaccountable for. With that said, I think it is absolutely fascinating some of the statistics you can find about nonprofits in the United States. The fact that the nonprofit sector has more civilian employees than the federal government and all 50 states combined, and is accountable for 5-10 percent of our nation’s GDP, is truly humbling for me. As we’ve touched on a bit already in lecture, nonprofits in the United States really have a lot of goodwill and heart behind them, and I’m extremely pleased to read that they are such a prominent part of our culture.