My first official job, at age 21, was with the Wichita Area Community Action Program, Inc. As a young man I was eager to get into the fight against poverty and racism. The director of WACAPI was Russ Hanson. I was impressed with the cadre of seasoned and committed change agents which comprised the staff of our organization. Russ Hanson was very definitive about what our roll as a poverty agency (non-profit):
- WACAPI was funded from a government grant, soft money, his orientation was that you can never build a life from soft money.
- Our purpose was to put ourselves out of a job.
That has remained my attitude about non-profits through the years. When I moved to the west coast I was dismayed at the number of people trying to create careers from soft money funded (annual grants and periodic donations) nonprofits; thus I was most disturbed that there was no impetus toward putting themselves out of a job. A note about Washington State: “In 2012, 54,823 nonprofit corporations were registered with the Corporations Division in the Secretary of State’s office. While this number includes a large number of community benefit organizations commonly identified as charities,” of which “26,242 are exempt organizations”. (Source: Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs). I won’t go into detail about the nuances of non-profits but everyone from Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, 527 Political Action Committees, to sports associations’ setup non-profit or charity organizations.
Recently I watched a TED presentation that has me rethinking my thoughts about non-profits. Dan Pallotta views the funding much different traditional views regarding non-profit funding and overhead. I still think the role of most health and human services foundations should be to put themselves out of business; but take a look at this 18 minute video and see if he changes your mind about nonprofit funding.