International Nonprofits

Introduction

International nonprofits play a key role in the United States. The missions of those nonprofits are different upon the cause they pursue. Elizabeth Reid and Janelle Kerlin wrote on January 2006 Urban Institute publication“Whether arranging international student exchanges, assisting victims of foreign disasters, or influencing policy between nations, international nonprofits based in the United States are expanding the interaction of Americans with people, places, and ideas from around the world. They contribute to, and are shaped by, the globalization that is redefining the world in which we live.”

Quick Facts About International Charities in the United States from Urban Institute Publication

• According to Urban Institute Publication international charities in the U.S, occupy  2% of the nonprofit sector and  generates 2% of its revenues.
• Effectively operating in these areas:

1. International understanding
2. International development
3. Relief assistance and international affairs

• “They provide important humanitarian aid, secure financial support for institutions and causes abroad, build cross-national understanding through the international exchange of ideas and people, and conduct research for policy development on foreign policy, trade, security, and other issues with global consequences.”
• “International organizations are also part of a global activist agenda that includes human rights, women’s rights, workers’ rights, AIDS, environmental protection, and other transnational issues.”

Examples of International Charities Practices

Quoted from the Urban Institute Publication, the practices that international charities in the U.S are:

• They provide important humanitarian aid
• Secure financial support for institutions and causes abroad
• build cross-national understanding through the international exchange of ideas and people
• conduct research for policy development on foreign policy, trade, security, and other issues with global consequences.
• part of a global activist agenda that includes human rights, women’s rights, workers’ rights, AIDS, environmental protection, and other transnational issues.

Issues with International Nonprofits

According to Urban Institute Publication,  it is relatively hard to examine nonprofit international organizations for the reasons quoted as follows:

“No comprehensive directory of international organizations describing their scope, programs, and financial capacity to fulfill international missions is available. “

“Some data on international nonprofits are collected by government agencies, though this information is generally limited to a select group of nonprofits that have contract or grant relationships with federal agencies.”

“Loose and diverse definitions of international organizations, lack of a comprehensive and mandatory reporting system for international organizations, and the rapid increase in number of organizations operating internationally also contribute to the difficulty of compiling a useful directory”

Conclusion:

“Without comprehensive organizational data, researchers and government officials have been hard pressed to provide even an approximate picture of the capacity and contribution of the U.S. international nonprofit subsector as a whole.”

Reference:

Reid,  Elizabeth & Kerlin, Janelle” The International Charitable Nonprofit Subsector in the United States: International Understanding, International Development and Assistance, and International Affairs” January 20, 2006

http://www.urban.org/publications/411276.html

Advocacy

Introduction

According to Joyce Johnson, advocacy is defined as : “to speak up, to plead the case of another, or to fight for a cause. Derived from the Latin word “advocare”, which means coming to the aid of someone”. In the nonprofit sector advocacy is one of the most important practices. Many nonprofits advocate for different issues. Those issues can range from human related issues to animal rights and environmental issues.

Advocacy VS. Lobbying

A number of people confuse advocacy with lobbying because both practices aim to raise the public awareness about issues. The main difference between advocacy and lobbying is that lobbyists try to use the public’s opinion about an issue in order to try altering legislation. “Lobbying, as defined by the Internal Revenue Service, involves attempts to influence legislation at the local, state or federal level,” Johnson explains. Separating advocacy from lobbying can get tricky sometimes. “Lobbying always involves advocacy, though advocacy does not always involve lobbying,” Johnson suggests.

History of Advocacy

Advocacy started in the United States as one of political components of democracy. It is one of the rights that citizens have the freedom to do – if they chose to – . Many nonprofits believed in advocacy as a powerful tool that can be used to resolve community’s issues.” The First Amendment to the United States Constitution makes provision for the freedoms of speech and association. These are the foundations upon which nonprofit organizations are built. Although people can advocate in other countries, the ability of American citizens to form voluntary associations for the purpose of advocating for the common good is unique in history,” Johnson gives a brief overview about the history of advocacy in the nonprofit sector.

Most advocacy nonprofits start at the local level and then expand to a wider range. Most of advocacy groups call for minority issues.  Johnson gives an example, “An example of this progression in advocacy activities has been the battle for educational opportunities waged by African-Americans. During the days of slavery, access to schools was denied to African-Americans. Following the emancipation, the need for basic education was met by allowing African-Americans to attend schools that were “separate but equal.” When it became apparent that segregation could never produce equality, advocacy activities by groups like the NAACP led to legal battles and to the end of segregation. Today, the battle for equality in education continues as advocacy groups, such as the Black Alliance for Educational Options, fight for school choice as a means of further equalizing the educational opportunities of African-Americans.”

Role of Advocacy Nonprofits

The purpose of advocacy is to influence authority or a decision maker with the public’s opinion and views on a given issue. According to Johnson advocacy can be classified as follows:

Community advocacy: “involves changing the ideas and attitudes of the public. This is typically accomplished through education programs that may include direct mail, publications, group presentations, and a Web site. Many nonprofits make effective use of the media to reach the public and promote an issue using newspaper coverage, TV, radio, feature articles, editorials, letters to the editor, news releases, and press conferences.”

Legal advocacy: “using lawsuits in the courts to protect or create rights, improve services, or raise public consciousness about an issue, an effective method of accomplishing needed reforms. The advantage of legal advocacy is that courts are open and complainants (those who make a complaint in a legal action) must be heard if the complaint is presented in the proper terms.”

legislative advocacy: “when the target for change is a federal, state or local law, school board policy, or budget allocation. Nonprofit advocacy to influence legislation may involve legislative monitoring, committee testifying, lobbying, writing position papers, organizing networks and coalitions, and a variety of other activities. “

Conclusion

Advocacy nonprofits can be very successful achieving their goals. The key elements of that success is the ability of those nonprofits to raise as much awareness as possible and the high capability of outreach and communications.

Reference:

Nonprofit Advocacy By Joyce Johnson

http://learningtogive.org/papers/paper40.html

Research

Research question:

Can online social networks  effective  nonprofit sector?

What spurred your line of inquiry?

• The growing number of online social networks subscribes creates an advantage for nonprofits  to reach a large number of audience.
• Comparing and contrasting the use of online social networks by the nonprofit sector and other sectors.
• Understanding the role of online social networks in the nonprofit sector.
• Examine the online social networks strategies that nonprofits follow.

Links to a couple of sources

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/21/AR2009042103786.html

http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/internet/archives/page9215.cfm

http://content.knowledgeplex.org/kp2/img/cache/documents/2242.pdf

http://blue.utb.edu/lfalk/2008BRY.pdf#page=414

http://www.tc.columbia.edu/centers/ccf/pdf/Children%20and%20Electronic%20Media_18_01_PolicyBrief.pdf

http://www.arkansasarts.org/documents/socialnetworking_guide.pdf

Education & Health

HEALTH:

In reference to the class material, we can see how the number of nonprofits in the health field have shrunk since nonprofits started. Under the Obama administration, the health care reform bill has just passed. Of course, that is going to have a direct effect of nonprofits in the health care industry.

In the Nonprofit Times publication an article titled “Healthcare Reform and Nonprofits: It Could be a Good Deal for Some and Not for Others,” by Michele Donohue, she discusses the new health reform impact on nonprofits. Donohue explains the effects of the healthcare reform on nonprofits from several aspects. The first impact is on the health insurance for employees on the nonprofit sector. The up-sloping price of health insurance plans will add more to the cost on the nonprofit employer which means more spending. As a result, many nonprofit jobs will be at risk and the demand for nonprofits jobs is going to decrease.

The article also emphasizes the lack of nonprofit owners involvement during legislation of the new healthcare reform. That gave small business owners a better advantage than nonprofit owners in incentives and tax breaks. In addition, some politicians even confused the concept of nonprofits thinking that all personnel of nonprofits are volunteers that may already have health insurance.

Another important aspect that the article has mentioned is the nonprofit healthcare providers must revise the way they function in order to them to survive in the industry. Therefore, nonprofits should adjust some of their fundamental operations like fund raising methodology. Furthermore, healthcare charities are going to be required to report detailed information about their finances to the IRS which they did not have to do in the past.

However, the bill includes a number of elements that could refresh the healthcare market and open a lot of opportunities for the nonprofit sector such as;

-Nonprofit CO-OP: “a federal program to help establish nonprofit, member-run health insurance issuers, also known as the Consumer Operated and Oriented (CO-OP) program.”

• Tax-exemption for nonprofit medical insurance providers.
• Provides loans and grants.
• Provides training and job creation.

-Nonprofit healthcare providers are required to be community-based so that community representatives demonstrate their needs.

-Adjusting urgent care regulations and provide financial support for those who need it and qualify for it.

Given the previous factors I think the new health reform will create more niches for nonprofits in the healthcare field. The more focused is the nonprofit mission the more support it is going to get from the community and consequently the government. I also think that in order for nonprofits to survive in the healthcare industry they should work collectively and not competitively so they can earn a bigger market share in the industry.

EDUCATION:

Many people think that funding for education is dropping in the recent years. The reason behind their assumption could be due to the poor economy phase that the United States is experiencing. In her article titled “Education Nonprofits, Once the Focus of Foundations, Anxious over Future Funding” in the Medill Reports Chicago publication, Ellen Thompson addresses the concerns of the effects of the current recession on funding for education. Many nonprofits in the education field are preparing new strategies to generate funding in different dynamics to adapt to their current recession. According to the article, some managers of nonprofits in the education field have changed their behavior in terms of promoting their message to potential donors. Some of those organization stated targeting “community” donors and “corporate foundations” and they have succeeded of getting generous funding.

I think the best way of to generate funding for education is by looking at what expertise does the employment market need in the future and then teach and train youth to purse those careers. Nonprofits can create new alternatives for funding from the government sector and the private sector as well. For example both latter sectors can cooperate with the nonprofit sector and provide funding for nonprofits that offer job training and educational programs for individuals with disabilities, provide free tutoring for curricular and non-curricular subjects for students who need it and cannot afford it, provide workshops for individuals with less education to help them learn new technologies which will help them advance in their career.

Sources:

http://www.nptimes.com/10Jan/npt-100115-1.html

http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=117429

Religious and Social Services Nonprofits

Religious organizations are played an important role in the birth of nonprofits.  There is many religious groups in the united States of America. In the third chapter O’Neill describes the role of religious organizations in the nonprofit sector of the United States and the ways that religious nonprofits operate.  One of the most important things that O’Neill brings in the chapter is that most religious nonprofits keep their financial information private since they do not have to report everything to the Internal Revenue Service and states governments (O’Neill 2002, p.54).

Most of the time the main source of religious nonprofits revenue is from individual donors, however, there are a number of other ways for religious non profit to generate revenues from government  sectors and business related revenues. O’Neill  gave a number of examples of churches that have earned very large amounts of revenues (O’Neill 2002, p.59).

Religious nonprofits spend most of their money on “congregational” activities and on communities development projects especially schools,  hospitals and housing which is not surprising because this is why donors provide funding. There other areas where religious nonprofits spend their money, for example they pay employees wages and volunteers’ allowance, they can increase their assets by buying land or buildings and they can spend it on business investments like bonds and securities (O’Neill 2002, p.p. 59-66 ).

Social services nonprofits are a larger scale of religious nonprofits. According to O’Neill, nonprofit social services organizations include all aspects that religious nonprofits serve.  Thus, many people who do not have religious affiliations favor nonprofit social services organizations over the religious ones (O’Neill 2002, p.73).

The size of  nonprofit social services  is relatively small, that explains the smaller number of employees and revenues as well (O’Neill 2002, p.75). Like religious nonprofits, nonprofit social services agencies obtain their revenue from different sectors. The major contributor to nonprofit social services however, is the government sector (O’Neill 2002, p.77). The government supports social services organizations because the government realized the important role that nonprofit social services play to help resolving social problems at the micro level. O’Neill lists a number of issues that social organizations deal with like domestic violence, spouse and children physical or mental abuse, drug abuse, disability and day-care  (O’Neill 2002, p.81).

Nonprofit social agencies started doing a better job than governmental agencies that were created to provide social services (O’Neill 2002, p.85). Therefore, the government opened the door for a lot of opportunities for nonprofit social services agencies. In the end, the economic gain of being a nonprofit social organization was inviting to many businesses and social nonprofits were created inefficiently which had a negative impact on local smaller business that provide social services as well (O’Neill 2002, p.p. 86-89).

introductory post

The purpose of this blog is to study concurrent nonprofit sector trends and to discuss the key strategies that successful nonprofit organizations  follow in three major areas as follows:

- Nonprofit administration and management;

- Nonprofit operation and fund allocation;

- And nonprofit organizational structures.

Giving that the course is an introductory course to nonprofit sector, the analysis of the listed areas are going to help creating a better understanding of the nonprofit sector’s functions. In addition, the analysis will allow us to learn how the nonprofit sector differs from other sectors.

My background is mostly in business administration, economics and energy.   I am new to the nonprofit sector, in fact, this course is my first course in nonprofit.  My field of interest is management and organization’s behavior. Therefore, I am hoping that the class will help me to learn the essentials of leadership and management in the nonprofit sector.

Previously, I thought that concept of a “nonprofit” was created in the modern world. However, last week’s reading shows that philanthropy started in the 17th century. Also,  the reading explains the differences between nonprofit and other entities in terms of ownership, management and taxation (O’Neill 2002, pp.2-5) .

The rapid development of the early “nonprofit” concept to nonprofits nowadays explain that nonprofits were one of the best business models that help to support local communities. As we have observed, the  idea started from public libraries to schools, then charities, to foundations…etc.

The modern government has amended legislation and came up with several acts -to separate nonprofits from other sectors -in a way that benefits nonprofit and integrated that with the with Internal Revenue Service procedures. That helped modern nonprofits to function in a better way to serve their goals. Furthermore, it allowed the nonprofit sector to operate efficiently and effectively.

Today, nonprofits can serve in several forms. Each form depend on the purpose, location and clients of the nonprofit. Therefore, nonprofits have several classifications based upon their legal structure, organizational structure and tax exemption. At local level nonprofits have to follow the laws and regulations of the state where they operate.

The number of nonprofits has grown exponentially in the United State. This is due the large acceptance of communities and contributors to the services that the the nonprofit sector provide.