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Add to FavoritesShould all non profit organizations be required to generate an income stream to maintain their operations? No! That would take away the very reasons as to why some of these businesses were created. There is a reason as to why they are nonprofit business! Many are created to provide a public service where none other exists. To give above and beyond what could be expected of any business to give.
It may sound strange to say that a business is fulfilling it's proposed purpose regardless of whether or not it generates an income, but in the case of nonprofit businesses, this is often the case. There are a lot of reasons as to why a nonprofit organization may be in existance and a lot of those reasons have nothing what so ever to do with the generation of money.
A large number of nonprofit organizations operate solely with the intent of creating awareness for their cause. They are out there to advise you, educate you, or alert you to a certain aspect of life that they deem important enough to create awareness for. The information that they are trying to convey could be for an illness or health issue, a potential threat to the environment, a political agenda, or it could merely be concerned with the promotion of some new product or proposed lifestyle adaption. Whatever it is that they are trying to get across to the public, they feel the information is important enough that they are not concerned with the cost of getting the message out, they just want that message out there! Public awareness is actually big business!
An aspect of nonprofits that a lot of people may not be aware of is the fact that a lot of nonprofit organizations exist only to act as a means of offering training or employment to people within their charity. The business's soul function of operation might in fact only be to create employment for that group of individuals. They employ individuals who are disabled or from some other disadvantaged group. Regardless of whether or not that business generates a revenue stream it will have performed the very functions as to why it was created simply by existing. Although a lot of these type of nonprofit businesses like to run at a "break even" level, in a lot of cases the business itself may often be a government sponsored program so not reliant on producing a viable income, only on providing jobs or training for those who fall within the specifications of that group.
In the case of a lot of nonprofit organizations they survive through the generosity of public donations. These nonprofits do not charge for the services that they provide to the public but rely instead on private or business donations to keep them functioning. Donations of money, volunteer workers, food, clothing and often even for their store location keep them up and running. They bring in no profits yet they act as a viable business. Any monies brought into the charity are quickly returned into the operation of the business. This type of nonprofit business survives solely to provide a service to those less fortunate. An example of this type of organization would be your local community food bank. Most cities have one.
Should all non profit organizations be required to generate an income stream to maintain their operations? No! That would take away the very reasons as to why some of these businesses were created. Many are created to provide a public service where none other exists. To give above and beyond what could be expected of any business to give. There is a reason as to why they are a nonprofit business!
Learn more about this author, Ladymermaid.
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Yes
The idea that nonprofits should not generate revenue isn't realistic. Yes, most of them are 'charities' but even charities need to pay the bills and in recent years, donations have been dropping dramatically.
If we lived in the perfect world then every noble and worthy nonprofit organization would have all the funds they need, simply out of the goodness of the society's convictions and generosity. The reality is people can be stingy when it comes to helping their fellow man or supporting services they think the government should be paying for.
In the old days we had great philanthropists who were dedicated not to personal profit, but to the progress and advancement of our society's health care infrastructure, educational institutions, social welfare programs, and cultural facilities. Men like Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford founded great institutions that (through the generating of revenues from endowment funds, fundraising events, etc.) paid for the wonderful range of institutions we have today. The common citizens, if they had more than two pennies to rub together would gladly donate one or both of them to charities, schools, and churches, usually because they, too, had at one point or another depended upon their services.
We as a nation have undergone a dramatic transformation over the past century, and not completely for the better. We have gone through a period of tremendous wealth building and seem to think that this growth in wealth has lifted everyone in our society to a higher quality of life. We think that all the charities must be raking in big bucks because we think that everyone must be contributing to them. We are delusional in this thinking.
A few years ago, the city of Denver instituted a municipal ban on the poor and homeless panhandling for money on the basis that some' of them might' (and I do mean MIGHT) be using the money for drugs and alcohol instead of food. They also banned street-side newspaper sales out of 'concern' for the safety' of the sellers. They installed 'homeless parking meters' for members of the community to 'donate' to the homeless shelters and soup kitchens.
The maintenance and operation of this system has proved more costly than the amount of 'donations' collected and the bans on panhandling and newspaper sales drove the poor and homeless deeper into desperation. Some people protest and claim but I donate to the United Way' without ever knowing that organizations must exist two to five years and be able to prove they are effectively serving their intent before they are eligible to receive United Way funding.
Nonprofits, be they hospitals, schools, housing organizations, or Girl Scouts, have been forced to change. We are living in a new economy, one in which people are much less willing to give 'something for nothing' as some put it, or make donations to central agencies like the United Way and think that the money will surely end up helping those for which the donation was intended. Often it is not until they, themselves, need the services of these very organizations do they come to realize how cash strapped most of them are.
In order to continue their missions of making a better society, they have had to turn to more creative funding methods. These methods have run the gambit from major events like concerts, marathons, and community festivals to simpler forms of revenue generation like cookie sales, thrift stores, and marketing websites. The revenue-generating activities are not criminal, immoral or philosophically wrong. They have become, unfortunately, a fundamental necessity.
Learn more about this author, Tabren Wyldstar.
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