Ireland makes a startling claim near the end of his article:
"The political ideology that supports the nonprofit industrial complex is generally referred to as 'progressivism,' which calls to mind the socialist-leaning Progressive movement of the early twentieth century. In spite of sharing a common name, however, today’s “progressivism” has nothing in common with the Progressive movements of the last century, is not socialist in any real sense, and is, if anything, an extremist libertarian movement that destroys the ability of the government to function, rather than using state power for the betterment of the poor.
"Once you start digging into the evidence, you find that the places where 'progressives' wield the most power are some of the least socialist governments in the country. In 2022, San Francisco spent $5.8 billion on private contracts, over 40 percent of all city government spending, while the entire budget of Houston, a city 2.5 times as large, was only $5.7 billion. It is a strange form of socialism that runs more than two-fifths of its government through private contractors, instead of using publicly owned developers and social housing."
The argument that progressives are really libertarians in disguise because they "privatize" city functions would be far more convincing if they were bidding the tasks out to for-profit companies rather that to non-profits. Despite all their stirring rhetoric, looting the tax dollar "commons" is what socialists do in practice. Handing out no-bid contracts to cronies is simply a legal means to that end.
Yes - the purpose of grants is to distance the city pols from accountability while dispensing largesse on their allies and ground troops (who will provide jobs for pols and their friends as terms end).
Similarly, old fashioned socialism (government ownership of means of production- akin to the NHS) has been supplanted by regulatory directives. If the government runs something and is in charge of delivering a service, a pol could be held accountable. If the pols merely micromanage “private” activity- a la Obamacare - they aren’t responsible.
Cronyism is cronyism regardless of the intentions or ideological leanings of the cronies.
I lived in Oakland for nearly 40 years. While the city government has always been corrupt & incompetent, the past 20 years of cronyism (including with criminal gangs) are a whole new level. A vast majority of the voters, however, continue to believe in the feel-good non-profit mindset.
"I wish that our culture would do away with the intention heuristic."
I guess I have to assume you mean the tax regime and legal culture. Because I don't see how psychologically this is even possible in culture at large? In The Mind Club they don't talk specifically about profits vs. non-profits, but based on the book and the Moral Dyad it would seem likely that Corporations will be given less mind and viewed more in the negative than Non-profits because of the intentions themselves. Also, in the political realm Donald Trump isn't actually seen differently by Trump supporters or Clinton supporters except when it comes to what they read as his intentions. This is in the New Science of Narcissism by W. Keith Campbell pages 58 and 59.
"nonprofit organizations hire convicted felons—including murderers, gang leaders, sex offenders, and rapists—who go on to commit more felonies while receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in government contracts"
Well except the vast majority of felons don't and nobody else will hire them but hey, I guess they should remain paupers and be forced to resort to crime just to eat because getting two years probation for littering once or receiving a picture from your two day younger girlfriend should doom one to a lifetime of unemployability or effective indentured servitude.
I mean you would be hard pressed to find any employee in any organization that hasn't committed a felony and won't continue to do so in the future, it just hasn't been politically expedient to prosecute them yet.
But to Arnold's point (I know he was just quoting), amen. I've did a bit of non-profit work in my life and they are utter cesspools whom mostly make matters worse, at least in the social services sector. They exist as make work programs for useless eaters with degrees and to enrich their senior leadership.
I think he is referencing some recent well-known examples where essentially we learn that thugs are paid a sort of danegeld to become "community activists" - please stop hurting people, here's $ for doing nothing - and then they go on to murder people while on this payroll. In other words, he's not talking about people hired to perform actual services or any sort of job for the community but only to continue to be themselves, in effect, and behave. The consequences as well as incentives are predictable but that doesn't make it the less shocking, simply because most people would never dream that their tax dollars would be used in this way.
Amusing I just learned that one myself about a month ago from Dan Carlin's podcast episode about the end of the Aeisr (?sp). Seemed to work most of the time but did fail spectacularly occasionally.
Even the New Yorker IIRC was unable to fail to notice this, as the juicy details were perfect for their regular (and generally entertainingly salacious) agony feature. “What went wrong?” of course ;-).
Most of them have a useful trade, they just can't get hired. Prison doesn't teach anything except how to be a harder criminal.
A teacher who gets felony probation for littering after doing a year in prison has skills and a useful trade, she just can't employ them. See that's the open secret, it's not that convicts don't have skills, the overwhelming number of convicts were functional productive members of society and a positive contributor to their communities ..but then we toss up barriers to post conviction employment such as legal prohibitions or tort liability for hiring them.
That's kind of my point, you know the worst of the worst but most felons aren't that or at least, don't start that way until we force them into it. Martha Stewart is a felon, she's not sporting a face tat. She might have gotten one though had she been forced into destitute afterwards.
You jest on littering but it's not. Felon littering is a thing and it's enforced even where you live, read the daily police blotters, you'll be amazed all the crimes that get enforced which never make the news. Imagine how supportive you'd be if that if you kid gets five years prison for littering and then can't find a job the rest of their life. 'Merica!! lol.
As someone who’s a litter picker upper a la David Sedaris, I have sensed no fear of enforcement in this regard, nor *ever* heard of a policeman citing anyone for littering.
You offer a false choice: either deny convicted felons the means to earn a living or put them in charge of non-profits. Surely, there is a happy medium somewhere between those two extremes.
The quote didn't say "put them in charge of non-profits', the quote said "hire convicted felons". The unemployment rate among felons is high and the underemployment rate is extreme because of attitudes like this hence forcing them into recidivism.
Also the real false dichotomy is "convicted" v. "non-convicted" felons. Americans have a irrational fear of felons, felon just means "some prosecutor or cop was thinking about their performance review", it has nothing to do with guilt or a failing on the part of the labeled party. To paraphrase the often referenced quote by I forget who "Everyone commits numerous felonies a day every day all day their entire life" hence it's completely irrelevant if they are a "felon" or not from an employment performance perspective, it's not indicative of anything including future criminality. All those people running those non-profits that aren't "convicted felons" are still felons in all but record.
Fair enough. But Ireland’s article specifically mentions non-profits run by convicted felons. The CEO of “United Council of Human Services,” for example had previously been convicted of embezzling thousands of dollars. Other individuals who Ireland mentions had been convicted of violent crimes.
I'll match you back with "fair enough" :) .. I didn't read Ireland's article, was just going off Arnold's quote above.
That said, I waffle back and forth on that honesty depending the day of the week. On one hand past performance doesn't guarantee future results but on the flipside it's indicative of them at some level often enough. Like maybe the CEO was a great CEO, learned his lesson (or not), and added value, maybe even enough value that his future crimes were still a net positive for the organization or society.
For every one of that guy, I'd suggest there are (making this number up) hundreds of not-that-guy and why should they be doomed to underemployment and organizations miss out on their potentially excellent services, i.e. it's the problem plaguing convicted felons at all levels, i.e. rather than them "paid their debt to society", the flattening of the world means they can not move and start over while the world moving to hyper-risk aversion means they can't get a job either even if it's proven they have a lower criminality rate (post-conviction) than their unconvicted felon peers (because they don't want to go back).
I'm generally not a fan of anti-discrimination laws in current form nor being expanded but I will say the three areas I'm strongly hypocritical on that is convicts, political opinion / outside_work_activities, and age. Rate people for their current performance, not their sins unrelated to work. To misquote that old quote "Judge the goodness of a society not in how it treats it's royalty but in how it treats it's convicts".
I don't have answers here and like I said, I waffle back and forth on that one, but the answer isn't "just because you got caught for doing a crime every one of your peers does daily because you the wrong prosecutor was bored that day you should be forced to be underemployed for life". I would suggest the answer maybe be quit criminalizing normal or private behavior. Our embezzling friend could have simply been fired and a tort against him for example. If bake some cookies and tell my kid not to eat them as they are for the bake sale, they don't need to go to prison for stealing them from me if I complain about it to my friend at the bar and some bored prosecutor overhears it. Like Karen eating my yogurt from the company fridge with a yellow sticky that says "don't eat".
I don't think anyone said this specifically and I think Peter was saying the opposite though I can't make sense of his second paragraph. If we generalize it a bit that issue was certainly present in the Atlantic article by Ireland.
Agreed - have no problem with non-profits or most anyone hiring an ex-con, with careful supervision. I have volunteered with some ex-cons on probation (or doing pre-trial diversiob/community service) and they’ve generally done good work.
While I liked your post about NGOs being counterproductive and ineffective, I have worked with some great EDs whose organizations have done good things. Efficiently? Maybe not. But effectively and with good will and good outcomes.
I disagree on the supervision thing, people commit felonies all the time even under supervision. All calling out felons for extra supervisor does is marginalize them and set them up for failure in the same way supervised probation/parole in every study increases, not decreased, recidivism. Do you really work better yourself with your supervisor micromanaging your every move, reading every one of your emails, recording and watching every mouse stroke? And what if every mistake made during that supervision would result in you going to jail without trial or due process? Do you really think Trump's supervision stopped his direct reports from committing felonies? I mean cops commit felonies all the time and I don't think close supervision by their sergeant changes that, I'm pretty sure they are already aware.
My point here is felon is just a harmful prejudicial term completely divorced from historical context to the point it's meaningless except to harm someone given the rampant overcriminalization of America the past fifty years. It's belongs in the language dustbin of history like "rape", "racist", "nazi", "communist", etc.
I'd question the ED thing but we all have our biases. At least on the social services sector, I can't think of a single NGO that took government money, as opposed to a fully private charity, that did anything but harm. I say that because often I find they provide the allusion of "helping" without people considering the negative of (I forget the economic term for it) what if they didn't exist, opportunity cost? i.e. they get a free pass with "well something is better than nothing" or "1% help, 99% graft is better than 0% help" and there truth in that both in absolute and theoretical terms but it always begs the question "well if they didn't exist at all, maybe the government would be forced to address the problem and it could possibly help 2%", i.e. their existence hides the problem and they let politicians sleep guilt free for "doing something".
The obvious solution is a constitutional amendment - no public funds can go to or from an organization that is tax exempt, federally, or be transferred indirectly to them through any other government organization (including state and local). Further, to go several better, we need to reaffirm the FAR - no government organization can give grants of any kind to anyone. Contracts are to be the only mechanism for the expenditure of public funds; employment, loans to be repaid (and which cannot be forgiven without criminal charges, conviction, and then a pardon), and purchasing. No other transaction agreements, no CRADAs, nothing that doesn't involve purchase of an auditable good or service.
A colleague of mine, who was a former hospital CEO (85% of hospitals being non-profits), opened my eye when he said, "Non-profit is just a tax status." To which one might add, "Government is just a non-profit with guns." They are all organizations hungry for revenues.
Nonprofit organizations play a vital role in civic society, as Alexis de Toqueville wrote centuries ago. Diverse non-profit organizations are the sinews that keep our society unified, free and democratic. The list goes on and on - churches, arts institutions, libraries, private schools and colleges (although the latter have become problematic of late), publications of various sorts, historical societies, the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, multiple political parties, etc., etc. Whether they should be tax-exempt or direct recipients of government subsidies is a separate question. But let's not throw out the nonprofit baby with the possibly dysfunctional incentive bathwater. It is notable that autocratic regimes such as Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea lack this sort of vital, diversified civic sector.
Totally agree. My observation of the non-profit environmental activist sector has observed then using known false scientific claims of some horrible environmental harm to attack a innovation sub-sector with no real power while a real environmental harm by industries and groups that have political power get a free ride. The eNGO directive is to get donations and truth and the environment are secondary.
Greenpeace is an example where a 100+ Nobel prize winners signed a letter accusing them of "crimes against Humanity" for their actions against golden rice. Going against GMO crops was a major fund raiser and science was getting in the way. https://supportprecisionagriculture.org/nobel-laureate-gmo-letter_rjr.html
We purchase most of our seafood from aquaculture facilities outside the US borders as a result of junk science claims by activist blocking aquaculture in the US. We created a lot of the technology but had to go outside the US to create a real aquaculture industry, while the activist spent millions on political propaganda with their leaders getting rich.
It's always called "operating margin" as opposed to "profit margin." Then, instead of the "excess" being distributed to shareholders, it's distributed to NGO insiders through wages/salaries, and benefits.
Man, I feel "seen" right now! I've always felt that moral halo that nonprofits have (and have felt a corresponding shame that I run a for-profit in a sector led by nonprofits) *even though I've known these arguments for years*. I appreciate Ireland putting these evidences together, and drawing conclusions.
I have one possible nit-pick on his argument that I'd like to put to the hive mind. He writes:
>> "Nonprofits that self-righteously declare themselves providers of homeless services actively lobby to make homelessness worse in order to increase their own funding"
I don't have a hard time believing that some homeless-services nonprofits actively lobby for some policies that make homelessness worse; unintended outcomes are common when ideology enters in. And I grant that this likely leads to increases in their funding.
I DO have a hard time believing that they do it (consciously) "in order to" increase their funding. Anyone able to provide evidence that'd shake my priors?
Re: "a nonprofit only has to keep its donors happy."
Most private schools/colleges rely much more on revenues from customers (private tuition) than on philanthropy. (The matter is complicated by subsidies for student loans.) And in some sense, there is competition for enrollments among private schools/colleges.
Private not-for-private hospitals depend mostly on fees for services (paid by private insurers or by Medicare/Medicaid). Competition among hospitals is restricted by territorial licensing by State governments.
These complications don't gainsay the overall validity of your case against the intention heuristic and against tax exemption of so-called not-for-profit orgs.
For grins I thought I’d see how charity rating sites grade some of the non-profits in Ireland’s article. These rating sites are ostensibly a way for the generous soul who wants to support a charity or non-profit to learn if they are fiscally responsible, cost-effective and “overall health of a charity’s programs”. I’d like to believe this includes you can discover whether or not they are crooked! Community Passageways in Seattle had a “needs improvement” rating from Charity Navigator, even though they went on to say “Proceed with caution – Confirmed Embezzlement”. Another rating site, Great Nonprofits, did not have a rating for Community Passageways, though they had their EIN and Seattle address. Based on my very slim experiment, buyer (or giver) beware.
If anyone ever tells me that non-profit companies are better than for-profit, I'll have this article by Ireland to point them to. That said, when I read the quote I couldn't help but compare it to complaints that immigrants increase crime and steal jobs. Reading the full Atlantic piece did nothing to dispel that comparison. TODCO did what any number of for-profit landlords do. Most of the problems mentioned were implied to be failures of non-profits when they were instead government failure. Indeed, I found the latter part of the article on government failure far more interesting and compelling. Back to the immigrants comparison, only an idiot would argue just because not all non-profits are perfect, or even just effective, that they are all bad or a net negative, which is much like what we frequently here about immigrants.
This is a touchy issue. It does seem like many educated people run non-profits and get many of the tax advantages. From my own interactions, immigrants have very little understanding of non-profit structure and are skeptical of the idea. They don't understand what non-profit means, and, understandably, do not see how motivation to work is any different. I agree outcome should be a metric of evaluating non-profits, but that some outcomes are not fully solveable- (e.g mitigating homelessness) without stronger market/subsidies.
Ireland makes a startling claim near the end of his article:
"The political ideology that supports the nonprofit industrial complex is generally referred to as 'progressivism,' which calls to mind the socialist-leaning Progressive movement of the early twentieth century. In spite of sharing a common name, however, today’s “progressivism” has nothing in common with the Progressive movements of the last century, is not socialist in any real sense, and is, if anything, an extremist libertarian movement that destroys the ability of the government to function, rather than using state power for the betterment of the poor.
"Once you start digging into the evidence, you find that the places where 'progressives' wield the most power are some of the least socialist governments in the country. In 2022, San Francisco spent $5.8 billion on private contracts, over 40 percent of all city government spending, while the entire budget of Houston, a city 2.5 times as large, was only $5.7 billion. It is a strange form of socialism that runs more than two-fifths of its government through private contractors, instead of using publicly owned developers and social housing."
The argument that progressives are really libertarians in disguise because they "privatize" city functions would be far more convincing if they were bidding the tasks out to for-profit companies rather that to non-profits. Despite all their stirring rhetoric, looting the tax dollar "commons" is what socialists do in practice. Handing out no-bid contracts to cronies is simply a legal means to that end.
Yes - the purpose of grants is to distance the city pols from accountability while dispensing largesse on their allies and ground troops (who will provide jobs for pols and their friends as terms end).
Similarly, old fashioned socialism (government ownership of means of production- akin to the NHS) has been supplanted by regulatory directives. If the government runs something and is in charge of delivering a service, a pol could be held accountable. If the pols merely micromanage “private” activity- a la Obamacare - they aren’t responsible.
In other words, the fascist model of socialism. The government still controls things; it just operates through a "private" cut-out.
I was born in Chicago.
Cronyism is cronyism regardless of the intentions or ideological leanings of the cronies.
I lived in Oakland for nearly 40 years. While the city government has always been corrupt & incompetent, the past 20 years of cronyism (including with criminal gangs) are a whole new level. A vast majority of the voters, however, continue to believe in the feel-good non-profit mindset.
"in 19 and 41"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ5tbyW6NKM
"I wish that our culture would do away with the intention heuristic."
I guess I have to assume you mean the tax regime and legal culture. Because I don't see how psychologically this is even possible in culture at large? In The Mind Club they don't talk specifically about profits vs. non-profits, but based on the book and the Moral Dyad it would seem likely that Corporations will be given less mind and viewed more in the negative than Non-profits because of the intentions themselves. Also, in the political realm Donald Trump isn't actually seen differently by Trump supporters or Clinton supporters except when it comes to what they read as his intentions. This is in the New Science of Narcissism by W. Keith Campbell pages 58 and 59.
Non-profits have become the no-show/no-work jobs for families and friends of those with connections to the government.
https://arnoldkling.substack.com/p/the-intention-heuristic
I completely either missed that post or don't remember it, thank you. Been reading Arnold for, God forever lol, too many gems to remember them all :(
I remember that post and the comments on it very well.
Edit: Typo/clarity
"nonprofit organizations hire convicted felons—including murderers, gang leaders, sex offenders, and rapists—who go on to commit more felonies while receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in government contracts"
Well except the vast majority of felons don't and nobody else will hire them but hey, I guess they should remain paupers and be forced to resort to crime just to eat because getting two years probation for littering once or receiving a picture from your two day younger girlfriend should doom one to a lifetime of unemployability or effective indentured servitude.
I mean you would be hard pressed to find any employee in any organization that hasn't committed a felony and won't continue to do so in the future, it just hasn't been politically expedient to prosecute them yet.
But to Arnold's point (I know he was just quoting), amen. I've did a bit of non-profit work in my life and they are utter cesspools whom mostly make matters worse, at least in the social services sector. They exist as make work programs for useless eaters with degrees and to enrich their senior leadership.
I think he is referencing some recent well-known examples where essentially we learn that thugs are paid a sort of danegeld to become "community activists" - please stop hurting people, here's $ for doing nothing - and then they go on to murder people while on this payroll. In other words, he's not talking about people hired to perform actual services or any sort of job for the community but only to continue to be themselves, in effect, and behave. The consequences as well as incentives are predictable but that doesn't make it the less shocking, simply because most people would never dream that their tax dollars would be used in this way.
A new word for me - "danegeld". Indeed, a tax to protect against Danish invaders! Love it's application here. Thanks.
Amusing I just learned that one myself about a month ago from Dan Carlin's podcast episode about the end of the Aeisr (?sp). Seemed to work most of the time but did fail spectacularly occasionally.
Even the New Yorker IIRC was unable to fail to notice this, as the juicy details were perfect for their regular (and generally entertainingly salacious) agony feature. “What went wrong?” of course ;-).
I should add that I want people with records to get jobs and hope they could learn to do some useful trade in prison.
Most of them have a useful trade, they just can't get hired. Prison doesn't teach anything except how to be a harder criminal.
A teacher who gets felony probation for littering after doing a year in prison has skills and a useful trade, she just can't employ them. See that's the open secret, it's not that convicts don't have skills, the overwhelming number of convicts were functional productive members of society and a positive contributor to their communities ..but then we toss up barriers to post conviction employment such as legal prohibitions or tort liability for hiring them.
I don't know, I think down here you know them by their tats, not their "convictions for littering".
But I envy you - if they are enforcing littering where you live, it sounds like a paradise to me.
That's kind of my point, you know the worst of the worst but most felons aren't that or at least, don't start that way until we force them into it. Martha Stewart is a felon, she's not sporting a face tat. She might have gotten one though had she been forced into destitute afterwards.
You jest on littering but it's not. Felon littering is a thing and it's enforced even where you live, read the daily police blotters, you'll be amazed all the crimes that get enforced which never make the news. Imagine how supportive you'd be if that if you kid gets five years prison for littering and then can't find a job the rest of their life. 'Merica!! lol.
As someone who’s a litter picker upper a la David Sedaris, I have sensed no fear of enforcement in this regard, nor *ever* heard of a policeman citing anyone for littering.
You offer a false choice: either deny convicted felons the means to earn a living or put them in charge of non-profits. Surely, there is a happy medium somewhere between those two extremes.
The quote didn't say "put them in charge of non-profits', the quote said "hire convicted felons". The unemployment rate among felons is high and the underemployment rate is extreme because of attitudes like this hence forcing them into recidivism.
Also the real false dichotomy is "convicted" v. "non-convicted" felons. Americans have a irrational fear of felons, felon just means "some prosecutor or cop was thinking about their performance review", it has nothing to do with guilt or a failing on the part of the labeled party. To paraphrase the often referenced quote by I forget who "Everyone commits numerous felonies a day every day all day their entire life" hence it's completely irrelevant if they are a "felon" or not from an employment performance perspective, it's not indicative of anything including future criminality. All those people running those non-profits that aren't "convicted felons" are still felons in all but record.
Fair enough. But Ireland’s article specifically mentions non-profits run by convicted felons. The CEO of “United Council of Human Services,” for example had previously been convicted of embezzling thousands of dollars. Other individuals who Ireland mentions had been convicted of violent crimes.
I'll match you back with "fair enough" :) .. I didn't read Ireland's article, was just going off Arnold's quote above.
That said, I waffle back and forth on that honesty depending the day of the week. On one hand past performance doesn't guarantee future results but on the flipside it's indicative of them at some level often enough. Like maybe the CEO was a great CEO, learned his lesson (or not), and added value, maybe even enough value that his future crimes were still a net positive for the organization or society.
For every one of that guy, I'd suggest there are (making this number up) hundreds of not-that-guy and why should they be doomed to underemployment and organizations miss out on their potentially excellent services, i.e. it's the problem plaguing convicted felons at all levels, i.e. rather than them "paid their debt to society", the flattening of the world means they can not move and start over while the world moving to hyper-risk aversion means they can't get a job either even if it's proven they have a lower criminality rate (post-conviction) than their unconvicted felon peers (because they don't want to go back).
I'm generally not a fan of anti-discrimination laws in current form nor being expanded but I will say the three areas I'm strongly hypocritical on that is convicts, political opinion / outside_work_activities, and age. Rate people for their current performance, not their sins unrelated to work. To misquote that old quote "Judge the goodness of a society not in how it treats it's royalty but in how it treats it's convicts".
I don't have answers here and like I said, I waffle back and forth on that one, but the answer isn't "just because you got caught for doing a crime every one of your peers does daily because you the wrong prosecutor was bored that day you should be forced to be underemployed for life". I would suggest the answer maybe be quit criminalizing normal or private behavior. Our embezzling friend could have simply been fired and a tort against him for example. If bake some cookies and tell my kid not to eat them as they are for the bake sale, they don't need to go to prison for stealing them from me if I complain about it to my friend at the bar and some bored prosecutor overhears it. Like Karen eating my yogurt from the company fridge with a yellow sticky that says "don't eat".
I don't think anyone said this specifically and I think Peter was saying the opposite though I can't make sense of his second paragraph. If we generalize it a bit that issue was certainly present in the Atlantic article by Ireland.
Agreed - have no problem with non-profits or most anyone hiring an ex-con, with careful supervision. I have volunteered with some ex-cons on probation (or doing pre-trial diversiob/community service) and they’ve generally done good work.
While I liked your post about NGOs being counterproductive and ineffective, I have worked with some great EDs whose organizations have done good things. Efficiently? Maybe not. But effectively and with good will and good outcomes.
I disagree on the supervision thing, people commit felonies all the time even under supervision. All calling out felons for extra supervisor does is marginalize them and set them up for failure in the same way supervised probation/parole in every study increases, not decreased, recidivism. Do you really work better yourself with your supervisor micromanaging your every move, reading every one of your emails, recording and watching every mouse stroke? And what if every mistake made during that supervision would result in you going to jail without trial or due process? Do you really think Trump's supervision stopped his direct reports from committing felonies? I mean cops commit felonies all the time and I don't think close supervision by their sergeant changes that, I'm pretty sure they are already aware.
My point here is felon is just a harmful prejudicial term completely divorced from historical context to the point it's meaningless except to harm someone given the rampant overcriminalization of America the past fifty years. It's belongs in the language dustbin of history like "rape", "racist", "nazi", "communist", etc.
I'd question the ED thing but we all have our biases. At least on the social services sector, I can't think of a single NGO that took government money, as opposed to a fully private charity, that did anything but harm. I say that because often I find they provide the allusion of "helping" without people considering the negative of (I forget the economic term for it) what if they didn't exist, opportunity cost? i.e. they get a free pass with "well something is better than nothing" or "1% help, 99% graft is better than 0% help" and there truth in that both in absolute and theoretical terms but it always begs the question "well if they didn't exist at all, maybe the government would be forced to address the problem and it could possibly help 2%", i.e. their existence hides the problem and they let politicians sleep guilt free for "doing something".
The obvious solution is a constitutional amendment - no public funds can go to or from an organization that is tax exempt, federally, or be transferred indirectly to them through any other government organization (including state and local). Further, to go several better, we need to reaffirm the FAR - no government organization can give grants of any kind to anyone. Contracts are to be the only mechanism for the expenditure of public funds; employment, loans to be repaid (and which cannot be forgiven without criminal charges, conviction, and then a pardon), and purchasing. No other transaction agreements, no CRADAs, nothing that doesn't involve purchase of an auditable good or service.
A colleague of mine, who was a former hospital CEO (85% of hospitals being non-profits), opened my eye when he said, "Non-profit is just a tax status." To which one might add, "Government is just a non-profit with guns." They are all organizations hungry for revenues.
Nonprofit organizations play a vital role in civic society, as Alexis de Toqueville wrote centuries ago. Diverse non-profit organizations are the sinews that keep our society unified, free and democratic. The list goes on and on - churches, arts institutions, libraries, private schools and colleges (although the latter have become problematic of late), publications of various sorts, historical societies, the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, multiple political parties, etc., etc. Whether they should be tax-exempt or direct recipients of government subsidies is a separate question. But let's not throw out the nonprofit baby with the possibly dysfunctional incentive bathwater. It is notable that autocratic regimes such as Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea lack this sort of vital, diversified civic sector.
Totally agree. My observation of the non-profit environmental activist sector has observed then using known false scientific claims of some horrible environmental harm to attack a innovation sub-sector with no real power while a real environmental harm by industries and groups that have political power get a free ride. The eNGO directive is to get donations and truth and the environment are secondary.
Greenpeace is an example where a 100+ Nobel prize winners signed a letter accusing them of "crimes against Humanity" for their actions against golden rice. Going against GMO crops was a major fund raiser and science was getting in the way. https://supportprecisionagriculture.org/nobel-laureate-gmo-letter_rjr.html
We purchase most of our seafood from aquaculture facilities outside the US borders as a result of junk science claims by activist blocking aquaculture in the US. We created a lot of the technology but had to go outside the US to create a real aquaculture industry, while the activist spent millions on political propaganda with their leaders getting rich.
It's always called "operating margin" as opposed to "profit margin." Then, instead of the "excess" being distributed to shareholders, it's distributed to NGO insiders through wages/salaries, and benefits.
Man, I feel "seen" right now! I've always felt that moral halo that nonprofits have (and have felt a corresponding shame that I run a for-profit in a sector led by nonprofits) *even though I've known these arguments for years*. I appreciate Ireland putting these evidences together, and drawing conclusions.
I have one possible nit-pick on his argument that I'd like to put to the hive mind. He writes:
>> "Nonprofits that self-righteously declare themselves providers of homeless services actively lobby to make homelessness worse in order to increase their own funding"
I don't have a hard time believing that some homeless-services nonprofits actively lobby for some policies that make homelessness worse; unintended outcomes are common when ideology enters in. And I grant that this likely leads to increases in their funding.
I DO have a hard time believing that they do it (consciously) "in order to" increase their funding. Anyone able to provide evidence that'd shake my priors?
Re: "a nonprofit only has to keep its donors happy."
Most private schools/colleges rely much more on revenues from customers (private tuition) than on philanthropy. (The matter is complicated by subsidies for student loans.) And in some sense, there is competition for enrollments among private schools/colleges.
Private not-for-private hospitals depend mostly on fees for services (paid by private insurers or by Medicare/Medicaid). Competition among hospitals is restricted by territorial licensing by State governments.
These complications don't gainsay the overall validity of your case against the intention heuristic and against tax exemption of so-called not-for-profit orgs.
"nonprofit" often seems to mean mainly that there are no pesky shareholders with whom the loot must be shared.
For grins I thought I’d see how charity rating sites grade some of the non-profits in Ireland’s article. These rating sites are ostensibly a way for the generous soul who wants to support a charity or non-profit to learn if they are fiscally responsible, cost-effective and “overall health of a charity’s programs”. I’d like to believe this includes you can discover whether or not they are crooked! Community Passageways in Seattle had a “needs improvement” rating from Charity Navigator, even though they went on to say “Proceed with caution – Confirmed Embezzlement”. Another rating site, Great Nonprofits, did not have a rating for Community Passageways, though they had their EIN and Seattle address. Based on my very slim experiment, buyer (or giver) beware.
If anyone ever tells me that non-profit companies are better than for-profit, I'll have this article by Ireland to point them to. That said, when I read the quote I couldn't help but compare it to complaints that immigrants increase crime and steal jobs. Reading the full Atlantic piece did nothing to dispel that comparison. TODCO did what any number of for-profit landlords do. Most of the problems mentioned were implied to be failures of non-profits when they were instead government failure. Indeed, I found the latter part of the article on government failure far more interesting and compelling. Back to the immigrants comparison, only an idiot would argue just because not all non-profits are perfect, or even just effective, that they are all bad or a net negative, which is much like what we frequently here about immigrants.
This is a touchy issue. It does seem like many educated people run non-profits and get many of the tax advantages. From my own interactions, immigrants have very little understanding of non-profit structure and are skeptical of the idea. They don't understand what non-profit means, and, understandably, do not see how motivation to work is any different. I agree outcome should be a metric of evaluating non-profits, but that some outcomes are not fully solveable- (e.g mitigating homelessness) without stronger market/subsidies.