Big v. Small in the non-profit world

I'm doing a project for my non-profit class where I research an "ethical" issue in the non-profit field. It's turning out to be pretty interesting. I was curious about whether "economies of scale" exist in the non-profit world. That is, if one or several large organizations can achieve greater sector-wide efficiency than lots of small organizations. Would there be less overall administrative cost with a larger organization, for instance, or would there be better coordination in a disaster situation? If so, maybe small non-profits have an ethical obligation to make a sound evaluation of their potential effectiveness before they birth themselves.

This question brought up a lot of issues around non-profit organizations that I had not thought much about but that are pretty interesting. Particularly, this issue points out important ways that non-profits differ from for-profit organizations. Take the issue of poor performance. If a business sucks at what it does, it will go out of business fairly quickly. In the non-profit world, there is no necessary connection between the quality of its services and the amount of money it can raise. In other words, there isn't a very strong "destructive" power to ensure that only effective organizations survive.

The converse of the argument that small non-profits are inefficient is the argument that small non-profits are more flexible and have better knowledge of the needs of local communities. In essence, this argument is identicle to conservative arguments for decentralization of government. Perhaps a wide ranging, diverse set of non-profits can better fill the gaps of government and industry that an oligopoly of bulky, bureaucratic organzations. Indeed, this rationale is partially responsible for the proliferation of non-profit services, as conservative forces have pushed for the "outsourcing" of social services to private charities.

On the other hand, this proliferation creates intense competition for funding. Advocates of competition would point to the positive incentive for innovation that competition provides. Critics would point out that non-profits are duplicating services and undermining their stated missions by failing to cooperate with other organizations.

Anyway, some interesting thoughts about non-profits.

Bigfoot exists.

mothman? bigfoot? chupacabra? you bet!

This is definitely my new favorite website. www.cryptozoology.com. I will now commence geeking out.

miscellaneous debris

I miss everybody. All my old Earlham homies, all doing stuff everywhere. I miss you people.

I wonder if people will read this.

I should find out tomorrow about my internship with one of various non-profits. If I don't get it, it'll probably be the campaign trail for me.

The girl I'm dating is wonderful. If you're her, and you read this, know that I agree that baboons have funny butts.

My dad is getting his poems published. Way to go, Dad!

I got new shoes today, and a new fan. Awesome. This month is going to suck. I have a 20 page paper on the effect of school funding level on student outcomes, 2 big research papers/projects for my non-profit class, a debate and 15 page paper for my international development class, and finals for each class. I'm guessing I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 75 pages worth of writing to do in the next month. Awesome.

Commericals and Iraq

It's funny to watch Sunday morning news shows. The commercials are always for investment firms or business software...stuff that most people will never be in a position to buy. I like to compare this to commercials for daytime t.v., which are usually about get-rich quick schemes, makeup, and lose-weight-quick pills. Late night t.v. is cool too, because all kinds of friendly women give me their phone numbers.

I re-learned how to play Canasta last night. It's fun! I find that doing stuff is usually more enjoyable than watching stuff. I think I'm going to take some artsy classes this summer. Doing stuff rules. Apparently, it used to be more boring, since people seem to have been quite infatuated with watching stuff.

On good news in Iraq....this complaint is malarkey. If there were car bombs every other day in the United States, would people say, "the politically biased liberal media refuses to report the good news in the United States." The news NEVER reports good news...that's not what they do! In fact, in most cases, good news isn't news at all!

On the one hand, yes, this creates a distorted picture of the world everywhere (a problem that I'm fighting in my own therapy). But, it's B.S. to claim that this is more true for Iraq than anywhere else.

Shellfish or No Shellfish? St. Paul and Muhammed Cartoons

Ok, so I've been thinking of an interesting issue in community dynamics. In some interactions, some people seem to be the limiting agents, and their preferences seem to take priority over others. Here's a couple of examples.

St. Paul (A.K.A., Paul of Tarsus, a.k.a., Saul of Tarsus, a.k.a. Jimmy the Rat), wrote to one of his start-up cults about some problems they were having. It appears that the gentile-oriented Christians wanted to eat meat and have sex all the time like the rest of the hellenistic culture. They took a more liberal attitude toward the old Law, interpreting Christ's death and resurrection as an abolition of the dietary and cultural proscriptions. Many of the Jewish Christians, on the other hand, wanted to still keep Kosher and all that good stuff. So, Paul basically told the Gentile Christians, "You know, between you and me, that dietary stuff is all bologne (bad pun intended). But, it's not going to kill you to refrain from pork and shellfish, so if it bugs the other folks so much, just give it a rest." (this is the literal interpretation of the Greek). Here the people with the qualms, with the compunctions, with the misgivings (read the sissies) won the day. There was no compromise.

Here's a modern day version. I'm hanging out with my buddies. One of them is a vegetarian, and four of them are not. We all love steak, and want to go to Little Zagrebs. But, we like our veggie buddy, and don't want him to starve or to be forced to eat a potato with relish or something lame. So, instead, we go to Moonbeam's Golden Tofu and Tobouli Shack, where I eat a pretty good Falafel and bean sprout sandwich. It's ok, but I really want a big, perfectly seasoned steak. Again, here the person with the most limits sets the rules for the community.

You can think of some other examples. Roomates who are extremely sensitive to noise or messiness, group outings where people refuse to go to McDonald's, people with allergies to peanuts...I don't know, you get the picture.

I find this phenomenon interesting because minority opinions seem to be able to win out over majority opinions, usually without much compromising. It is this lack of compromise that intrigues me. It seems like communities are overly willing to grant some inalienable right to groups or individuals who arbitrarily draw some line in the sand over which they declare they will not cross. Why do communities let these strong opinions dictate where the line is drawn, rather than insisting on a democratic process of negotiation? Of course, as in the case of the person with the allergy, they really do have a strict line.

I think this recent cartoon hubub is an example of this issue. The sacredness of Sharia Law to Muslims does not give them an absolute right to draw the line of decency for the rest of the world.

Ok, I should stop now, before I get too political. The short version is, I think this is an interesting community dynamic.

Itinerary

Today, I'm going to the DMV to get my car registered. Then I'm going to the library to spend the day entering data into a spreadsheet. Then I'm going to a bluegrass concert with a beautiful woman. The last activity promises to be the most enjoyable.

First Blog

Hey, I'm starting this blog so that I don't have to send out emails to everyone I know every time I post something. This way, only people who have interest in my daily tedium or occasional rants will read about it. Also, I've decided to tone it down a little as far as revealing the intimate details of my personal life and expressing unfiltered opinions regarding my normative prescriptions for the world. There will also be fewer curse words. I realize that the difference between a blog and a diary is that everyone on earth has access to my blog, whereas only sneaky snakes have access to my personal journal. This difference is significant, and shouldn't be taken lightly.