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.
Even more interesting to me than the shear number of people involved in the non-profit sector, is that many started out working in the governmental sector. I guess it truly goes to show that the non-profit sector provides volunteers and employees with a more fulfilling personal experience than the governmental sector. I agree, that the book was a bit wordy when it came to conveying the vast amount of money generated by the non-profit sector, but in a way I am not completely surprised with how many Americans donate to non-profit organizations. Looking back to work with Relay For Life, it's amazing the number of people living paycheck to paycheck that set aside money to participate in those types of fundraisers.
ReplyDeleteMuch of the reading was new information to me and I was really surprised by how many groups are considered non profits and the variety of work they do.It is interesting and a bit heart warming that so many people choose to work in the non profit sector and do a different kind of good than the government does. I thought the book had a few too many tables and charts that overwhelmed me, but since most of it was stuff I hadn't read before, it was interesting enough.
ReplyDeleteZach, you missed it Tuesday but your post reminded me of something Bob said in class. Non profits are started with more heart and less head. Whenever get disheartened about how crappy people can be, non profits are a good place to look and see how many good things are being done by good people. It is so different to think about a "business" that is started not to line the pockets of an executive but to honestly help others. We also talked about unionizing non profit workers so they can make fair wages and I agree with that (if they can do it without getting everyone fired...)
ReplyDeleteYour right, the scope and scale of non-profits in the US is staggering. I never realized they accounted for such a large piece of our economy. It's great to know that a large part of our overall workforce is making a living doing what is important to them. You're on the right track with your volunteering, the more experience you have, the better the odds of finding employment that will be fulfilling in the future.
ReplyDeleteThe statistics were fun once I read them a few times and put them in to perspective. I was really happy to read the staggering ones regarding the US's volunteerism compared to our peers. Hopefully this course will provide more good news. Though I do tend to question a lot of statistical information simply because it can often be misleading.
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