Week 9

I decided I had to change the topic of my paper due to the subject matter being too broad to adequately address in ten to twelve pages. I chose to focus solely on Kansas and how their non-profits were addressing issues of food sustainability (as a function of food security). I was only able to find five non-profit agencies that worked in this category either through education, research, or the larger community. However there were other for profit organizations, governmental bodies, and universities that were also looking into issues surrounding food sustainability- I didn’t include them because the paper was only covering non-profit agencies.

The thing I found most interesting while researching for this paper was that students are taught about agriculture in the k-12 grades quite frequently, it’s just through the current unsustainable agricultural practices that have been practiced over the last thirty years. It wouldn’t be very difficult to refocus their curriculum around more sustainable methods since the state education standards already take agricultural practices into account. It would be interesting to compare this with other states outside of the grain belt in the Midwestern United States. The standards set up for Oregon don’t require anything about agriculture currently. It would be important for students in all states to address these issues as understanding local food sustainability and environmentally safe practices become more widely utilized in the future.

While I enjoyed the class , there are a few recommendations I have for how to make the class even better in the future. I really enjoyed learning about all the different class projects that people in our class were focusing on. I wish we could’ve had more time to discuss it since it was amazing to see the passion that existed behind the subject matter. I think that hearing about what gets other people motivated helps increase overall motivation and excitement in the class. Next year I would choose a different book to use as a course text since this one was too full of outdated statistics. Personally I enjoy topics that are more specific, so maybe instead of choosing a book the class could focus on a wide variety of non-profit organizations in the different non-profit categories. It would be especially beneficial if some of the non-profits were located in Eugene since then people who were interested in the organization could go and volunteer if they wished. The one example I remember really well was the guest speaker from NEDCO who worked with farmers markets in Oregon. One neat, albeit very difficult to coordinate, recommendation would be to ask the students about which categories of non-profits they would most like to have guest speakers come in and talk about in class. I’m not sure how it would work but it would probably have to involve asking students at the end of the term and then gearing the course structure slightly more towards those preferences the next year. I also really enjoyed the guest speakers, probably due to the fact that they were focused on particular non-profit organizations. It added a different element though getting to meet the people actually involved with the organization since you got to see their passion, the path they took in reaching the organization, ask them specific questions about their experiences, and inquire about recommendations they would have for students wishing to work for non-profits after graduation.

Week 8 Readings

Chapter 9- International Nonprofits

This chapter included several references to agriculture based international programs that sought to increase food production and alleviate hunger in countries such as Africa, Asia, Mexico, and India. I believe these programs are immeasurably important in their contributions toward reducing world hunger and increasing the countries wealth. However, from an environmental standpoint I’m also a little suspect of some of the organizations practices. Massive corporations such as Monsanto create genetically modified seeds (resistant to detrimental effects of pesticides or herbicides) that help increase agricultural outputs- but often times these seeds don’t work unless you buy the companies other products. Other problems include terminator seeds which need to be re-bought every year because they won’t flower after the first season, or the contamination of wild plants from genetically modified ones. Since Monsanto is the world’s largest producer of agricultural products I wonder how much seed products they contribute to international agricultural nonprofit programs.  I tried looking around for organizations that Monsanto donates seeds to but I’ve been unable to come up with a list. I also checked around the International Rice and Research Institute in the Philippines website (mentioned in the chapter) to try and see if Monsanto was a donor or partner but the only thing I could find was a link to Monsanto’s Beachell-Borlaug International Scholars Program.

In my opinion one f the best ways to provide agricultural assistance to other countries is to teach them more sustainable farming methods that reduce soil erosion, integrated pest management techniques that reduce the need for pesticides, and using multiple varieties of plants in the same area that decrease the need for fertilizers and increase the overall crop output per acre. We don’t need to rely on genetically modified crops that could damage the soil and the environment over the long term.

This chapter also focused on the history of government spending on American international nonprofit organizations. The revenue given to nonprofits since WW2 has declined by over 40 percent and only 0.25 percent of the federal budget goes towards foreign aid today. America has the third largest economy in the world, and while I think it’s important that we spend money on trying to improve the well being of our own citizens, giving only 0.25 percent of the federal budget to foreign aid is appalling. And this number was generated in 2000, before the terrorist attacks, increased military spending, and the recession. We’re living in an increasingly globalized world- one with a lot of very large problems. I think the government could and should take the lead on combating these issues and reallocate its funds towards long term solutions. People in more and more places around the world are looking at the American suburban and consumptive lifestyle and replicating it in their own countries. It would be much better if these countries had a better model to replicate- one based more on helping others rather than inordinately increasing their own comfort through purchasing more goods. And it’s not just individuals. If the US government would step up and take the lead it would make it more likely that other governments around the world would follow suit instead of the current situation where everyone is more concerned about their economies dipping below those of other industrialized nations. With world problems becoming larger all the time I think it will be very interesting to see which countries governments and citizens will step up first in the next ten years- and what finally gets them to do it.

Preliminary Final Paper Topic

Question: How is the nonprofit sector addressing (or not addressing) local food security in Oregon and Kansas?

I chose this topic because I want to become involved in making US food systems more sustainable after graduation. Since it’s dealing with LOCAL food systems, the US is so large, and each state varies considerably, I think focusing on two very different states would more adequately address the core issue. Primarily, how nonprofits in different social and circumstantial locations are preparing to help with the issue of food security. It would also be helpful to see if the nonprofits in these two states had commonalities or differences in their approaches towards reaching a constituency.

Links:

http://www.irs.gov/app/pub-78/      I plan on using this website to locate “agriculture”, “food”, and “sustainable” related nonprofits in both Oregon and Kansas. It will allow me to compare the numbers of nonprofits in these two states. I also plan on using the Guidestar website to find nonprofits in both states.

After I find lists of sustainable food nonprofits, the next step would be to to go through and look for commonalities and differences in the mission statements, goals, success stories, membership, and outreach to try and identify overarching commonalities and differences in nonprofits between the two states.

Week 7 Readings- Environmental Nonprofits

This week were given several websites and readings about environmental organizations and nonprofits. I was particularly interested in NextStep Recycling because I actually met someone on the Eugene bus system that told me that I could donate my computer to their organization. Unfortunately I forgot the name and store location so my computer has just been sitting idly in my room. So the first thing that comes to my mind is how much it would benefit the nonprofit to have a better advertising system. If I hadn’t met the person on the bus it would’ve been very easy for me to go through my four years here without every knowing such a place existed.

I also really like this program from a social justice perspective. In a previous class I learned about the exports of electronic waste from “developed” countries to places like India, parts of China, and Africa. The e-waste that is sent to these countries are typically broken down by hand into reusable parts where the conditions (just from the nature of the electronics) is hazardous. As so often is the case children are often part of the process, as are very long work days for very little pay. Programs such as NextStep Recycling can help start to break this cycle through reuse in our own countries. Here are some links that include more information:

1) Toxic E-Waste Gets Cached in Poor Nations: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/11/1108_051108_electronic_waste.html

2) Image of where ewaste is typically shipped: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/multimedia/photos/ewastemap/

One issue I have with the organization (or perhaps the recycling system as a whole) is that individuals would be less likely to recycle their electronic equipment if they have to pay for it. After all- why would you spend $12 dollars to throw away a microwave oven when it doesn’t (immediately) cost you any money just to throw it in a dumpster? Especially in a recession. I’m not sure if this could be avoided however and I understand that the employees want to make some money for their services. I guess the best thing to focus on is how wonderful it is that an organization like this exists while considering that every organization has room for improvement.

Another article called “A Good Cause Gone Bad” by Christine MacDonald focused on the problem of environmental organizations and nonprofits accepting donations from large corporations. I’ve heard a lot about this problem before. The environmental group starts out well meaning and discovers one of the best ways to earn money for their cause is to get donations from large businesses. These businesses have increasingly become oil and automobile industries because it’s to their benefit to get some good publicity when their products are the chief cause behind the problems. They don’t look AS bad if they donate to the environmental movement. And in order to keep getting money for the cause the nonprofit environmental groups turn away when their sponsors cause a major oil spill. After all, it’s better they have SOME money than no money at all. And on the one hand I definitely see their point. That same company would’ve had that oil spill whether they gave money to the non-profit or not… very rarely do the large companies choose to fundamentally change their business when it continues to earn them billions of dollars in profits. And if the nonprofit has to look aside from that ONE company when they mess up… so be it. But at the same time those major corporations are giving money to hundreds of environmental donations, all of which have to look away if they want to keep getting money. The system doesn’t make any sense because the institutions that could be lobbying against the polluting corporations are stuck in a system where they aren’t able to. They hold a false sense of power- that money will certainly help their cause but how much does the corporate donation compare to the cost of cleaning up that one oil spill? I would bet that it wouldn’t even be a fraction of the restoration cost.

Week 6 Readings

Chapter 8: Arts and Culture

While I have always known that the importance of art and culture in the US is small compared to other countries in Europe, I was still surprised by just how small of a role it plays in our society. To some extent I can see why it may not have developed here as strongly as it did in other places. For one thing the United States was founded by a great diversity of people, and continued accept enormous numbers of immigrants from all over the world into the country throughout its history. There is no one central culture, which is a positive thing because more diversity allows for greater understanding and knowledge over time. However it can also be negative because so much diversity can lead to a lack of identity as a country- which I think has happened within the US. We definitely have a historical legacy but there isn’t a cultural identity that every individual shares. I believe that there are more regional identities that several states share- especially in the south- rather than a national one.

It could also be because the US was settled relatively recently when compared to counties in Europe. While the US was first settled by Euro-Americans starting in the 1400’s, France became a country in 843 AD, Germany has roots in the Holy Roman Empire, and Sweden dates back to the 9^th century.

The reason cited in the chapter was concern over too much government intervention. On this note, I think our nation is largely too concerned with how much of a role the government plays in our daily lives. Not to say that it isn’t an important issue but I feel we’ve taken it to an extent where it’s sometimes detrimental to our progress. Government intervention is not always a bad thing and I think our country would be better served by being wary of it rather than whole heartedly against it.

Since the US government plays such a small role in arts and culture when compared to other countries, I decided to try and do some more research on what other governments have done. While I wasn’t able to nail down specifics (even with the help of the NEA) as I have previously through the world fact book and UNICEF, I did find that both France and Sweden actually have a government branch dedicated to national culture and art, entitled the Ministry of Culture (France: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minister_of_Culture_%28France%29 Sweden: http://www.sweden.gov.se/sb/d/8371), while the German Federal Government spends about 12% of it’s total expenditures on arts and culture (http://www.bundesregierung.de/nn_919412/Content/EN/Artikel/2008/08/2008-08-03-warum-foerdert-der-bund-kultur__en.html).

Something that really surprised me about this chapter was the statistic from the 2000 National Endowment for the Arts that stated: “In 1995, per capital US federal, state, and local government spending on the arts and museums was $6, as compared with $46 in Canada, $57 in France, and $85 in Germany.” I had no idea Canada spent more money on arts and culture sector than the US. I first thought that this might have something to do with the French influence in the culture, but I doubt it can be fully attributed to this. As far as the US is concerned, I think the government should take a greater role in making sure that the arts programs are fully financed in schools across the country. It did attempt to do so through the No Child Left Behind Act, but I don’t believe it’s efforts have been very successful (http://www.artsusa.org/networks/arts_education/arts_education_015.asp ). While funding the arts it might not help contribute to our countries cultural identity, it would definitely contribute towards a well rounded education for children as well as promote their efforts to create their own identities.

Week 4 Readings

Chapter 5: Health Care (Nonprofit Nation)

Before reading this chapter I was under the impression that upwards of 70% of the health care services in this country came from governmental organizations. I assumed that (among others) hospitals, blood and organ banks, and professional associations such as the American Medical Association were for profit or at least government owned entities. I was unaware that the nonprofit health sector was actually much larger than the for-profit sector (60% of hospitals vs. 16% of hospitals).

I wanted to compare how much of their GDP other countries spent on health care so I did a search for OECD data and found this table through Wikipedia: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/International_Comparison_-_Healthcare_spending_as_%25_GDP.png

The US spends 4% more of their GDP on health expenditures than any other country. I assumed that military expenses made up another very large portion of the US GDP but I wasn’t sure how education and other costs played into that. I went to the State of the Worlds Children Report from UNICEF and found that between 1998-2007 the US central government spent 25% of their expenditures on health, 2% on education, and 20% on defense. As a comparison, central government spending allocated to:

• the average industrialized country was  18% health, 4% education, and 12% defense
• the average developing country was 3% health, 9% education, and 12% defense
• the average least developed country was 5% health, 14% education, and 15% defense

http://www.unicef.org/rightsite/sowc/pdfs/statistics/SOWC_Spec_Ed_CRC_TABLE%207.%20ECONOMIC%20INDICATORS_EN_111309.pdf

While these statistics are looking at central government spending and not expenses from non-profits, it paints an interesting picture of how much governments around the world spend on these three main areas. Table 5.1 in Nonprofit Nation showed that US government spending on and revenue generated from health care was much less than that of nonprofits and also centralized in a few main areas like ‘psychiatric and substance abuse hospitals’. Contrastingly, nonprofits were more focused in general and specialty medical categories. It makes me wonder how nonprofits play a financial role in other nations GDP but aren’t reported in things like UNICEF statistical data. On that same note, I’d like to know which areas of health care governmental and nonprofit expenses are allocated across countries, but I’m not sure where to find that data. While looking up these figure I also began to wonder what would happen if the US were to reallocate funds from the military into education and how that would impact society and our efforts abroad. Or more generally, what would happen if a government were to make the expenses in these three sections relatively equal.

Another thing I found interesting about this chapter was that private charitable gifts and grants played such a small role in funding health care in the US. In terms of financing I know individual expenses in this country are quite high but I expected government funding to be lower and private charitable gifts to be much larger (or at least at a comparable level) as those for social service donations.

One thing that confused me was the section dealing with the tax-exempt status of health care non profits. If it’s true that there are only small differences in uncompensated care and nonprofits have become very businesslike in demeanor, what are the major differences between nonprofit and for-profit medical facilities? Do nonprofits offer reduced cost care? Are there clear cut rules about what a health care non-profit must offer?

Week 2 Readings

Chapter 3 and 4: Nonprofit Nation

Chapter 3:

I was surprised to learn that the United States is one of the worlds most religious developed nations. Since the book didn’t provide comparisons to either developed or developing nations, I decided to do some research to see if I could figure out where the US was ranked in terms of its beliefs about religious importance. The main study I came across came from Gallup entitled “What Alabamians and Iranians Have in Common” conducted in 2009:  http://www.gallup.com/poll/114211/alabamians-iranians-common.aspx . In terms of what I was searching for the color coded map provided me with the most information about  which developed nations were ranked at comparable levels with the US. I also found a UNICEF resource about which countries were considered industrialized, developing, and least developed for the purpose of comparison: (pages 44-45) http://www.unicef.org/publications/files/SOWC_Spec_Ed_CRC_Statistical_Tables_EN_111809.pdf . According to these two data sources France, Germany, Ireland, Canada, and Italy were the industrialized countries with a religious importance similar to that of the US, with Portugal, Poland, ranking at higher levels. I knew the US has a strong religious influence in certain regions, particularly the south, but I hadn’t realized that on a percentage basis that the US was ranked so highly.

I was also surprised that Catholicism was the largest religious denomination in the United States. I admit that I don’t know much about religion but I thought that it would rank somewhere around the third or forth highest for the country. It would be interesting to examine how devout the people saw themselves within their religion with regard to beliefs of previous generations. The book did mention that 90% of adults in the US believe in God and that religion is important in their lives, but I’d like to learn more detailed information about this in the future.

One section in this chapter confused me, it stated that in 2000, 70% of all professional workers were women whereas 49% of religious workers were women. I would’ve thought that there would’ve been more comparable levels of men and women professional workers in the US, if not necessarily within a religious context. I know there are more women enrolled colleges but the numbers are still fairly similar, but a 70/30 split is a pretty significant gap.

Chapter 4:

It’s not surprising to me that 39% of nonprofits in the US have less than 5 employees. However when you consider that even these employees could be part time and likely not paid it’s amazing to think there are so many nonprofits in the US. And while I know that even small nonprofits make a difference, I have to wonder if a lot of these businesses aren’t just barely breaking even in terms of finances.

Class: I’d like to find out more information about the process of how small non-functioning nonprofits are now being removed from the IRS database. I assume that it’s a fairly simple process, but it would be interesting to see how the revised numbers of functioning nonprofits compare with our current numbers, where a lot of the organizations have gone out of business. It would also be interesting to see the areas where most of these nonprofits have gone out of business, within education, health care, religion, etc.

Week 1 Readings

Chapter 1 and 2: Nonprofit Nation

Chapter 1:

Three main things surprised me about this chapter. First, I wasn’t aware that it was so difficult to determine how many nonprofit organizations existed within the US or that there were so many caveats regarding their status and regulation requirements. I would have thought that the third sector would’ve contained less caveats than either businesses or government but when you examine the wide range of organization sizes, this begins to make more sense. Second I was shocked to discover that while nonprofits only earn about 5-10 percent of the nations GDP, this revenue is larger than the GDP of all but three countries in the world. This really made me think about how wealthy the United States really is. We’re constantly reminded about the financial crisis yet even just 10 percent of the United States GDP is earns more money than most countries on the planet. It helps put things back into perspective and helped me visualize  just how wealthy the US is (it’s very difficult to visualize statistics and compare GDP and really absorb the information) . I was also surprised to find that nonprofits employ more civilians than the federal and state governments combined. I don’t know how the percentages engaged in nonprofits line up with those of other countries, but in an era where the US is viewed negatively by nearly the entire world at least we can be proud of our dedication to causes we believe in.

Chapter 2:

While I found this chapter mildly interesting I think to some extent it is over analyzing why nonprofits exist. I think that many people want to make the world a better place for both themselves, their community, country, or just the world in general and that just knowing this information can be helpful to a persons overall outlook on humanity. Having an understanding why nonprofits exist in general is very important but having separate anthropological, historic, sociological, political science, and economic theories doesn’t really seem necessary. That being said, the main thing I found interesting about this chapter was within the political science section regarding that nonprofits fulfill four major functions: diversity, experimentation, freedom from bureaucratic constraint, and attention to needs that other organizations neglect. It’s helpful for understanding why our country is where it is today and predicting the situations in which nonprofits arise in the US. I would like to know more information about whether these are consistent across other countries, particularly ones in Asia where the politics are drastically different.

In class last week we learned that the US was one of the first countries to start up nonprofit organizations for the benefit of everyone on such a large scale. I’d never heard of this before and initially I didn’t believe it was true. I would like to look further into this in the future and learn more about the history of both Europe, the UK, and other wealthy nations at around the time nonprofits began to pick up in the US. It made me proud of my country and sheds some positive light on our history.

I really like how this class focuses on positive elements within society. As an environmental studies major I’m often in classes that mainly focus on the worlds problems without giving equal time to current and future solutions. It can get quite depressing at times so it’s a nice change of pace to be taking a class about all the positive things people are doing in society.

Hello world!

Hello! The purpose of this blog is to post reactions to PPPM 280′s readings (Nonprofit Nation: A New Look at the Third America by Michael O’Neill), class discussions, and guest speakers throughout the term. This process will allow me to record my thoughts as well as review each weeks course material.

I’m currently a senior at the University of Oregon with a major in Environmental Studies. I have previously volunteered with the Willamette Resource and Education Network (WREN) in Eugene Oregon where I helped teach environmental education about the wetlands to grade school students.  I hope to one day work in the Nonprofit sector, hopefully supporting sustainable agricultural practices or local farm organizations. My goal for this term is to learn more about the different categories of the Nonprofit sector as I have only had experience in one area.