Blog # 3

This week’s reading reviewed the social service aspect of nonprofit organizations.  Social service in nonprofits is arguably the most broadly appealing and therein most sponsored facet of nonprofit organization.  I feel that social service non-profits are the conventional image most people think of when envisioning non-profits --before taking this class I thought it represented the vast majority of non-profits.  Our class this week was spent in the library where we learned about the resources that we could use to look up statistics on non-profits.  It was interesting to see all of the tools at our disposal.  Guidestar and Foundation Center in particular were helpful for me.
On Tuesday much of the class was spent debating health care. At one point the professor mentioned the cost of extending medicare to those on the verge of death.  I find this debate very interesting yet, of course, highly contentious.  As the video above explains "last year medicare paid 55 billion dollars just for doctor and hospital bills for the last 2 months of patients lives. That's more than the budget of Homeland Security or the Department of Education."  I found this statistic, quite frankly alarming, particularly because much of these charges are unnecessary for the most part.  By law medicare cannot reject any treatment based upon cost.  Therefore, many expensive unnecessary procedures are given to patients that may or may not extend their lives.  The debate is obviously touchy but I felt it was interesting and relevant to our class.  I couldn't upload the full video but it is available here: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6xPBmkrn0g).

Chapter 4 of Nonprofit Nation goes into the relationship government has with social service non-profits that I had never considered.  According to the book, the United States government accounts for “three-fifths of nonprofit social service revenue” (p. 89).  Conversely, the government does not provide significant aid to other non-profit services.  In my opinion social service non-profits can often be much more efficient than government social services, and therefore permit government assistance.  Non-profits are not entangled by constant bureaucratic red-tape and hoops and hurdles that the government must go through.  Moreover, the government is generally reluctant to try new ideas; often government agencies are conservative in that respect.  Non-profit agencies on the other hand have the ability to act as laboratories for new creative ways of social service.  However, the government-non-profit relationship can often be dicey.  For instance, in the Supreme Court case Boy Scouts of America v. Dale (http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/99-699.ZO.html) the Boy Scouts of America were affirmed the right to discriminate scout masters on the basis of sexual orientation, atheism, and agnosticism as protected by the First Amendment.  The 5-4 decision was interesting because there is federal money channeled through the Boy Scouts, therefore, one would expect that the First Amendment would not necessarily be extended.

I usually think of non-profits as unable to compete economically with for-profit organizations.  Non-profits do not have a profit maximizing mechanism that for-profits have because non-profits internalize so many of their externalities.  However, the article titled Redeeming value: St. Vincent’s builds a business empire on what’s thrown away changed my perspective (http://registerguard.com/csp/cms/sites/web/business/25677985-41/mcdonald-agency-business-vincent-paul.csp).  The St. Vincent de Paul “increased its revenues and grew its work force each year by more than 10 percent.”  The St Vincent’s was economically competitive because of its outstanding financial manager Terry McDonald and because it relies on some of its returns instead of purely on donations.  I think Terry McDonald’s socially minded entrepreneurism in an effective model for other non-profits.  His operation provides for a creative and business minded frame of organization businesses have but also the altruistic function of non-profits.  I feel that it will be important for like-minded people like Terry McDonald to represent non-profit organizations.  Should non-profits have more business savvy approaches (in a limited sense) they would probably have larger successes.  

The article Understanding the tools in the affordable housing toolkit by Malcolm Kenton (http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/8786/understanding-the-tools-in-the-affordable-housing-toolkit/) gives some insight into providing affordable housing.  One policy tool the article highlighted that I am particularly a fan of is inclusionary zoning.  Many people think that zoning practices generally prohibit low and moderate income housing by making unnecessary zoning requirements which increase property value.  Practices like these are exclusionary zoning and have been a barrier to affordable housing and social integration.  Inclusionary zoning conversely requires developers to reserve a certain amount of new residential development as affordable, low-income households.  Inclusionary zoning prompts a market driven solution to affordable housing problems by actually requiring developers to bear the burden through zoning requirements.  Jonathan Levine's book Zoned Out: Regulation, Markets, and Choices in Transportation and Metropolitan Land-use is a really interesting book about the power inclusionary zoning can have on affordable housing.
  (http://books.google.com/books?id=zURqiV_lGqkC&pg=PA116&lpg=PA116& dq=zoned+out:+regulation,+markets+inclusionary&source=bl&ots=iWOPcZ6wyD&sig=OgkQSOLyDks1NIvqrmlsXVAVwqI&hl=en&ei=m18_Tai3Moa2sAPw77nTBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false). 

Social service non-profits can be an effective alternative to cradle-to-the-grave government sponsored welfare programs.  However, there certainly needs to be some middle ground.  The government obviously must have some form of oversight for the money it is funding, yet, it cannot do so to the point where it impedes the non-profit’s independence.