There’s one nonprofit organization for every 300 people in the US. More than 1.4 million of them.
A recent article in The Christian Science Monitor asks the provocative question: Are there too many charities in America?
The article proposes a number of ways the nonprofit sector could operate more efficiently. But than it falls to the unfortunate common belief that fundraising is a drag on the real business of nonprofits:
… nonprofit organizations [should] develop revenue-generating ventures to help support their programs. No longer relying on handouts and wasting valuable service time on fundraising, more charities could launch their own ventures or partner with existing ones to become self sustaining.
Revenue-generating programs are a great idea. But fundraising is not a waste. “Handouts” are not a sign of failure or shame.
The money you get through fundraising makes you stronger than money from other sources, because it comes many different individuals — each one supporting you tangibly. The value of that goes far beyond the value of the revenue.
Beyond that, giving to you makes your donors better people in many, many ways: socially, emotionally, spiritually, even economically. Those gifts make the world a better place before they even start to support your cause.
No question, there’s some terrible inefficiency and redundancy among the 1.4 million US nonprofits. And there’s crummy and unethical fundraising that should not be happening. But let’s set aside the old belief that fundraising is something we should figure out how to abandon. We can’t afford to live in a world without fundraising any more than we can live in a world without nonprofits.
Jeff Brooks has been serving the nonprofit community for more than 35 years and blogging about it since 2005. He considers fundraising the most noble of pursuits and hopes you’ll join him in that opinion. You can reach him at jeff [at] jeff-brooks [dot] com.
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