Week 9 Journal

This week I learned about nonprofits. I learned that often times nonprofits don't have the infrastructure to do well and succeed. They also suffer from their funders having unrealistic expectations. We've always had the idea that charities should spend as little as possible on overhead and fundraising so that most of our donations can go to support the actual cause. I learned that that isn't necessarily true if we want the nonprofits to be able to survive and make a difference in social issues. 

I liked Dan Pallotta's Ted Talk about nonprofits. He brought up the 5 differences between nonprofits and for-profits: 1. You can't use money to lure talent away from the for-profit sector; 2. You can't advertise on anywhere near the scale the for-profit sector does for new customers; 3. You can't take the kinds of risks in pursuit of those customers that the for-profit sector does for new customers; 4. You don't have the same amount of time to find them as the for-profit sector; and 5. You don't have a stock market with which to fund any of this, even if you could do it in the first place. These are huge disadvantages to the nonprofit sector. He mentioned asking the nonprofit about its dreams and using that as a guide for who to donate to. I learned a lot by listening to his talk and thinking about what he said. 

I can use this lesson as a nonprofit volunteer and donor. It makes total sense that these nonprofits need more money in overhead to do fundraising, advertising, and to recruit new people and ideas just like other businesses. It is odd that we expect them to do it all and made huge strides in social problems with no money and no resources. I can see that now. We need to change how we think about nonprofits and not be so concerned about the overhead costs.