Guest post by Walter Howell, associate at IS business associate member, Community Wealth Ventures (CWV). This is the seventh in a series of posts originally featured on CWV's blog.

With the Major League Baseball (MLB) All-Star game being played tonight, it pays to remember the immortal words from one of baseball’s most iconic films, “Field of Dreams”: if you build it, they will come.

Putting his own twist on this famous line, Jim Horan, Executive Director for the Connecticut Association for Human Services (CAHS), believes that if you build it, the results will come.

Read more...

Guest post by Phil Buchanan, president of The Center for Effective Philanthropy

This is the final installment in a series of six blog posts, which were originally featured on the CEP Blog.

Why are we, in the nonprofit sector, putting corporations on a pedestal? The recent damage caused by the unethical, if not illegal, practices of many of this country’s largest financial institutions needs no recounting. Nor does the environmental destruction wrought by a wide range of companies over the decades.

Yet, as I have discussed on this blog over the past six weeks, many continue to hype boundary-blurring, beat up on the label “nonprofit,” advocate the adoption of “business thinking,” and promote corporations as the solvers of our toughest social problems. All this without sufficient acknowledgment of the vital role of nonprofits – organizations that do not have to answer to investors pushing for a financial return.

Read more...

Guest post by Phil Buchanan, president of The Center for Effective Philanthropy

This is the fifth in a series of six blog posts, which were originally featured on the CEP Blog.

In my last several posts, I have described what I regard as worrisome trends: the way many (inside and outside the nonprofit sector) push for a “blurring of boundaries” between sectors, disparage the term “nonprofit,” and equate “business thinking” with “effectiveness.”

But, many go further still, arguing – or at least strongly implying – not just that nonprofits could benefit from an infusion of “business thinking” but that, in fact, nonprofits are increasingly irrelevant because it is companies that will solve our most vexing social problems. To this growing chorus, the private sector is now where the action is.

Read more...

Guest post by Phil Buchanan, president of The Center for Effective Philanthropy

This is the fourth in a series of six blog posts, which were originally featured on the CEP Blog.

Related to the emphasis on boundary-blurring and the frequent dissing of the term “nonprofit” that I have discussed in my last several posts is an equation of “business thinking” with effectiveness. You would think, after what we have witnessed in the past several years, that the word “business” would not be used as a synonym for “effective.”

But it is. And an increasing number of people, including those who should know better, seem to be falling into this trap.

Read more...

Guest post by Phil Buchanan, president of The Center for Effective Philanthropy

This is the third in a series of six blog posts, which were originally featured on the CEP Blog.

Beating up on the label “nonprofit” has become an almost reflexive habit of those speaking and writing about the sector.

“Anyone who has thought about it for more than a nanosecond agrees that ‘nonprofit’ is about the worst possible summary we could give of ourselves and our work,” writes Harvard Business Review blogger Dan Pallotta, crediting Harvard Business School (HBS) Professor Allen Grossman for noting that the sector “suffers from the distinction of being the only sector whose name begins with a negative.” (I had Professor Grossman as a second-year MBA student at HBS and he is an outstanding professor, who I respect greatly and stay in touch with to this day. But I disagree with him when it comes to the way he views the sector and the comparisons he draws to business.)

In a much more constructive spirit than Pallotta’s, Peter Hero, former president of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, has also argued that the term “nonprofit” is problematic because of what it conveys.

Read more...