Profit Shmofit – Why Nonprofit?
For the past week, Being And Doing has been working with Cradles to Crayons Philadelphia. We’ve been sorting clothing, cleaning shoes, inspecting toys, and packing bags of necessities so that said bags can be distributed to other nonprofit organizations that work directly with children-in-need. In a sense, Cradles to Crayons is similar to Being And Doing in that we are both nonprofit organizations set-up to help other nonprofit organizations advance their respective missions (C2C by providing quality products and necessities and BAD by providing volunteer work and promotions).
What is it about nonprofits that inspires our respective organizations to lend a hand? Why, in our free market, capitalist society, is the idea of “non-profit” even something considered to be worthwhile? Shouldn’t it be everyone’s goal to earn as much profit as possible so as to utilize that profit to help others?
In my opinion, the concept of nonprofit work is actually more basic and primordial than for-profit work. If you think about it, work, in the most basic sense, is the expenditure of energy. Historically and physically speaking, any living being works in order to sustain itself or its family (by seeking out food and warding off attack). Humans, however, have developed the concept of working for money, which is a resource that can be used for food and safety, but is not, in and of itself, food or safety. It is a middleman between person and resource. Profit, then, should not be an end, but a means to an end. It should be used to provide services and necessities for our species.
Non-profit organizations are more in-line with the natural tendencies of a living being. They do not measure success by the profit they are able to acquire; rather, they measure success by the amount of services and products that they are able to disburse (using money as a resource rather than a goal). Cradles to Crayons, for example, uses donations to sustain itself so that it may provide products free-of-charge to the people that need them. In other words, the people who are unable to work for individual profit (for varying reasons – and we all know that there are many) are able to get the basic necessities that we all take for granted. The for-profit world can be a unnavigable maelstrom for people who are not able to sail the sea of buy-and-sell, but thankfully there are organizations that can act as the go-between for such individuals. The better adept such organizations are at stretching the value of a dollar (since a dollar’s value is more than its “dollar value”), the more successful that organization is considered to be.
For-profits are successful if what they bring in is more than what they put out, whereas nonprofits are successful if what they put out is more than what they bring in. Which do you think is more pro-active in developing and sustaining the concept of interpersonal community?
Wise words from Ralph Waldo on the wall of C2C Philly
Posting your comment
Beth Dawson | June 18, 2009 @ 1:18 am
You inspire me!
leo | June 24, 2009 @ 10:46 pm
Non-profits are often a way for rich conservatives to keep tax money away from public education and health. It is unquestionably capitalistic. That said how is it that we wind benevolent community-survival strategies around them?
My answer to YOUR question is for profit more and nonprofit more and for profit less and non profit less (an implementation of the “it is and it isn’t construct”). It would for instance be hard to run a greenwashing farm as a non-profit because the character of the non-profit fiscal entity is necessarily depotentializing for said entity. They are organic certified, clean, and productive because they aren’t based on outreach and education but rather product. So it works better as a pure capitalist entity with a fixed idea and a clear territorial hierarchy. It survives longer. The euphemism is “sustainability.” The question is answered in advance of our arrival on earth: “is capitalism sustainable?” a good question that follows is “since we know it isn’t, why do we continue to imbibe and perpetuate the Orwellian assemblages knowing full well their destructive propensities towards thought and earth?” A good answer is subversive propaganda. Greenwashing. That means capitalism is OK if it doesn’t hurt the earth. A logical fallacy we’ve already covered.
Say hypothetically you are on the directorate of the company and want to have educational aspects too so you commission an informed colleague or neighbor to run a subsidiary non-profit that does outreach and education and tours. Neighbor can get grants for non profits through city commissioners and national education endowments and through the process of networking and community involvement attracts other neighbors (or canvass or whatever). In the process they develop a manual for conducting classes and addressing power dynamics to facilitate the passage of greenwashing knowledge and local poverty through mobilizing community resources. The manual is so elaborate and unique that Neighbor’s non-profit start selling it to a broad audience. To do that they commission Neighbor 2 who’s a specialist in marketing to start a subsidiary for-profit that exclusively works to sell the manual. By now you can see the continuum. A For profit with a non profit subsidiary. A non profit subsidiary with its own for profit subsidiary. The story is hypothetical, the mechanism is very real. Non-profits are capitalism. We weave survival strategies around them because they attract community and that’s what everyone wants. Community and earth. Then, earth. We have simply the most onerous task of stepping away from the isolation. WE ARE ONE.
Was this perhaps another false dichotomy of non and for? . . .yes.
That said, I support your efforts. Your values and philosophy are like rain. Like summer shade. Cheers.
BadChristopher | June 27, 2009 @ 7:32 pm
Leo, your mind is lightning-quick. Every time I read a response from you I have to completely isolate myself from my external surroundings in order to walk down the trail of your thought process. Woo!
When I think about nonprofits, I think of them as they ought to be and not always as they are. There are most certainly nonprofit organizations that are operated as large for-profit entities (gigantic hospital networks, for example), but the concept behind the independent nonprofit construct is something I think ought to be understood as the way to begin fixing the problems of undeterred profit-grubbing.
In response to your specific example, I don’t think a greenwashing farm is something we ought to be interested in promoting in our society. Greenwashing is necessarily part of a for-profit venture because it is a marketing scheme as opposed to an earnest interest in doing things right. A nonprofit organic farm would be a wonderful model because it would not need to worry about the constant stresses of supply and demand, rather it would be able to focus on the product because the mission it is advancing is all about properly grown product.
There is definitely a problem with the sustainability of nonprofits in this country today, but only because they need to rely on for-profit sponsors to provide them with capital. Money is the real issue here, and the reason I am focusing on for-profit and non-profit is because they are the vehicles which are run on money (including the government, of course, which, supposedly, is the largest nonprofit in the country, but we won’t get into that insanity right now!)
The ideal nonprofit is akin to work that produces real results. If money is removed from the equation, every system is nonprofit! Since we live in a capitalist society, however, in order to promote the concept of work for purpose to those who cannot understand a world that does not run on profit, or a life that does not involve the constant scramble for one’s next dollar, we need to further our ideas in a language that the majority can understand.
Yours in peace dear friend! I’ll be in touch next time we swing through Cleveland!
leo | July 14, 2009 @ 1:58 am
yo!