Oh dear

As if donor suspicion regarding nonprofits weren't enough.

The New York Times Report Sketches Crime Costing Billions: Theft from Charities

And on the project front, I had a really excellent meeting without someone who had worked for foundations before and is now in the academic machine. He essentially told me to take my project for-profit if possible, equating the nature of nonprofit organizations to slavery. Strong words, but given his stance on nonprofits as an extension of the service industry, not necessarily a stretch, either. When I was an undergrad way back in the late 90s I was expecting to maybe swing around $23,000 for a starting position at a New York nonprofit--and this was after I had already donated nine months worth of time (about 540 hours) to one museum.

His advice regarding my ongoing problem of figuring out how to network with other nonprofits and gain informal kinds of technical assistance? Be straight up, transparent, and if worse comes to worse, play the student card and pretend I'm researching the organization.

Future topic: Founder's Syndrome. He apparently had tried to write a grant for an organization, and it turned into a tortuous process (I assume, given his facial expression) because of the founder's inability to cede control (and perhaps rhetoric) in order to persuade rich people to give the organization money.

Competition, nonprofit style 2

In this week's previous post, I asked a general question regarding nonprofit organizations' abilities to patent and sue on behalf of innovations they make. In also used "nonprofit organization" interchangeably with "social justice movements" and will be more careful in this post to make the distinction.

I haven't read INCITE's The Revolution Will Not Be Funded (yet), but did read Gerard Alexander's (2007, April 23) "The Nonprofit Industrial Complex" from the Weekly Standard. Alexander's conservative orientations lead him to critique nonprofits (or otherwise termed the independent sector) for their left-wing tendencies, but he makes some salient points, namely:

• Nonprofit endowments or foundations invest around $1 trillion annually
• Nonprofits are largely unregulated, either by government or stakeholders in the organizations, like clients or government (this critique coming from a neoconservative, no less!)
• Nonprofits can become unofficial extensions of government agencies
• Foundational influence can decrease over time given newfound corporate influx in philanthropic giving and changes in the nonprofit sector itself, with specific transitions for hospitals and educational institutions into profitable enterprises (i.e. Blue Shield, University of Phoenix)

I'm going to exclude universities from my discussion of nonprofits and intellectual property as it should be self-evident what that relationship is.

But I will still open discussion regarding intellectual property rights for the nonprofits I am especially interested in, like those involved in youth social programs. Tangentially, here's a good case study.

Other countries, for example, were able to replicate the core business model of this agency. The core business model, however—a marketplace-style mode of matching donors and project proposals—was contingent on software that could produce matches and facilitate the proposal fulfillment process. I have no idea how sophisticated or expensive this software was to develop, but I am sure that the donation by Yahoo! of technical assistance (months of volunteering by engineers) amounts to a significant outlay of time, expertise, and would have been completely inviable without the donation. This agency, modelled as the primo example of social entrepreneurship, seeks to become self-sufficient through a user's fee paid out by donors, but I am not sure to what extent the agency currently is self-sufficient. I will be interested as the woes of this recession play out.

Indeed, anyone in the nonprofit world should be so concerned.

Competition, nonprofit style

The program planning took a backseat role this weekend as I rushed the first draft of my thesis to a self-imposed deadline today. The good news, as far that headache is concerned, is that I have a lot data and ideas with which to work. The bad news is that I'm at 70 pages, I have a few more ideas to develop, and the department sets an approximate page limit of 50 pages. Part of me wants to continue just to see if it's possible to get an honorary doctorate for being prolific--but then again, I guess every lame-ass blogger would be eligible as well.

On the program front, I did have an awesome meeting with a program director today, seeking answers to questions about curriculum development. But here's the issue: given the funder limitations out there, how do nonprofits compete with each other?

The first answer is that those who do not write enough grants or who suck at programs/management just fade out.

The second answer is that some nonprofits (like those modelled on emerging social entrepreneurial frameworks) have innovative programming and therefore have some sort of first-mover advantage in securing funding.

The third answer is that some successful nonprofits are able to outsource their work through subcontracts to sustain other nonprofits that are not yet as "developed" or even incorporate smaller nonprofits to grow.

The answer I'm interested in, however, relates to the innovation and the intellectual property rights that a successful nonprofit might have. Since I do curriculum development, I want to get some ideas from organizations that are already established. Some of these orgs are set to publish their curricula and sell them, either to sustain programming or offset print costs. But at the same time, for a pilot project that simply does not have the start-up capital to gain technical assistance, I am really shy to ask, "Can I look at your work and take a few ideas?"

Culturally speaking, within the nonprofit world my first reaction is that workers are generous with their knowledge and skills given the lack of profit incentive. But philanthropy is increasingly directed by donors and competitive. Additionally, with the professionalization of grassroots movements and the exponentially growing field of "consultancy," is it possible that those involved in social justice movements will become just as assertive in claiming ownership of their methods as those in the corporate world? Could it be possible to patent and sue on behalf of a movement's techniques?