Opinion
Do We Need Activists or Entrepreneurs?
from an Opinion piece in The Chronicle of Philanthropy:
Calling All Boomers: Don’t Start More Nonprofits
by Mark Rosenman
Many people probably rejoiced when they heard about a study released last week showing that 12 million baby boomers want to start their own nonprofit or socially oriented business over the next decade.
But it’s hard to imagine those findings cheered many people who understand the nonprofit world. More than a million nonprofit groups already exist, and plenty of for-profit ventures are dedicated in part to providing some social benefit. Adding millions more of such entities is not good for this nation.
Such a multiplicity of organizations would move America further away from developing coherent analyses of public problems. And it would lead the country to define and treat social concerns as fragmented individual or local matters. That would make it profoundly more difficult to mount any significant effort to advance the broad-based change needed in our social, political, and economic institutions.
Mark’s complete opinion piece can be found here.