The trouble with non-profits

Post by yummyfajitas » Tue, Sep 08, 2009, 1:00 PM UTC

dagw wrote: post #65

anamax wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Companies go bankrupt because the customer has the power to discontinue their patronage if they deliver a product or service poorly >This definitely happens to many kinds of non-profit! Unless I missed the sarcasm, it doesn't happen with charitable non-profits. They die when funding dries up, and since their customers don't provide funding, their customers have little/no effect on their survival. Yes, a charity ca…

since their customers don't provide funding That depends on your point of view. I'd argue that the people supplying the funding are the customers and that the work they do and people they help is the service they provide. So if their customers aren't happy with the quality of the service they'll take their money somewhere else, exactly like in the for profit case.

Post by beyondkaoru » Tue, Sep 08, 2009, 2:15 PM UTC

neeson wrote: post #66

daydream wrote: post #55

"But it does mean that if you’re involved in nonprofits (or predictions), you need to be much more careful about making sure you’re doing a good job. Unfortunately, few nonprofits do that." Oh really? So he can cite research that says, for example, that only x% (where x His assertion may be true. But just throwing this out there with absolutely nothing to back it up, in a blog post titled "The Trouble With Nonprofits…

I've worked at two social ventures that had non-profits as clients (Web Networks, and most recently Urbantastic.com). There emphatically is something wrong with non-profits. Just because there are some excellent ones (Sturgeon's law applies) doesn't mean that the field at large isn't ill. An anecdote: we had a meeting with a guy who worked at a large company with a philanthropic streak. They provided, free of charge,…

Post by MaysonL » Tue, Sep 08, 2009, 3:02 PM UTC

Post by brandnewlow » Tue, Sep 08, 2009, 3:31 PM UTC

neeson wrote: post #66

daydream wrote: post #55

"But it does mean that if you’re involved in nonprofits (or predictions), you need to be much more careful about making sure you’re doing a good job. Unfortunately, few nonprofits do that." Oh really? So he can cite research that says, for example, that only x% (where x His assertion may be true. But just throwing this out there with absolutely nothing to back it up, in a blog post titled "The Trouble With Nonprofits…

I've worked at two social ventures that had non-profits as clients (Web Networks, and most recently Urbantastic.com). There emphatically is something wrong with non-profits. Just because there are some excellent ones (Sturgeon's law applies) doesn't mean that the field at large isn't ill. An anecdote: we had a meeting with a guy who worked at a large company with a philanthropic streak. They provided, free of charge,…

Post by req2 » Tue, Sep 08, 2009, 4:56 PM UTC

netsp wrote: post #39

blasdel wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fuck that noise -- if you'd have even bothered to google their name, you'd have found that Givewell are total scumbags: http://metatalk.metafilter.com/15547/GiveWell-or-Give-em-Hel... Summaries: http://mssv.net/wiki/index.php/Givewell They got caught out because they were blatantly astroturfing for themselves and slagging 'competing' charities all over the web. Then it turns out that even by their own generous accoun…

You would expect that any organisation doing this kind of work would attract criticism. There is a taboo against harming a charities ability to raise funds. Do you know of any organisation doing similar but better?