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The trouble with non-profits

aaronsw.com

81–85 of 85 posts

Re: The trouble with non-profits

#81
post #66

"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,…

A big part of it was that most of them were still uncertain about the whole email thing. It's not an exaggeration to say that some of them didn't know how to use a spreadsheet.

They have an irrational fear of technology, and it may be because they believe nonprofits should be modeled after the 60s and 70s counterculture-based nonprofits where technology was distrusted as being a tool of the Man (a lot of money was poured into computers via AI funding, defense grants, etc).

It is awful and sad that they would not use Urbantastic because it sounds like a great idea.

Re: The trouble with non-profits

#82
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the love of Cthulhu! Repeat after me: Profit is not determined by how much value you create, it is determined by how much of that value you can capture. Some value isn't easily captured and that's a perfectly legitimate reason for nonprofits to exist.

I didn't say you should try to make as much profit as you can, but if you are not able to make anything, what evidence is there that you are benefiting anyone or even doing more harm than good? On the other hand, I've been following OB and LW since they started so I can easily see why you want to believe in the goodness of non-profits.

> On the other hand, I've been following OB and LW since they started

...and you didn't pay for it, and we don't run ads. Do you feel that we benefited you, and did more good than harm?

Re: The trouble with non-profits

#83
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say you should try to make as much profit as you can, but if you are not able to make anything, what evidence is there that you are benefiting anyone or even doing more harm than good? On the other hand, I've been following OB and LW since they started so I can easily see why you want to believe in the goodness of non-profits.

> On the other hand, I've been following OB and LW since they started ...and you didn't pay for it, and we don't run ads. Do you feel that we benefited you, and did more good than harm?

On the economics of charities and their inferiority to markets, see Robin Hanson's post on OB a few days ago, http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/09/lost-charity.html

Re: The trouble with non-profits

#84
post #75

Of course, if one looks at the profit-seeking world, one sees multiple examples of organizations blind to feedback: GM springs to mind these days.

True, but responding to feedback is a lot harder than being aware of it. And especially so in a larger organization. I'm not so sure that GM's problems stemmed from not being aware of the problems as not being able to respond for various structural, legal, and social reasons.

Re: The trouble with non-profits

#85
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Grameen Bank provides small loans to poor people. It seems very possible that this NGO (and its many imitators) will be put out of business by commercial banks." Traditional, for-profit banking simply can't, which is the entire point. Even when microfinance institutions lean further toward for-profit, they end up more and more like traditional banks making traditional big loans. And that's the way it actually moves,…

Which strongly suggest microloans don't really produce that much actual value.

No, it absolutely does not suggest that at all. For example, ROSCAs are inherently non-profit, they don't even hold money at all, and yet provide needed services to their users in ways that for-profits simply can't.
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