In the past year Lester Salamon has published new editions of two works that analyze the nonprofit sector in America. The first, titled America's Nonprofit Sector: A Primer (3rd ed.) and published by the Foundation Center, conveys knowledge about the nonprofit sector in the U.S. and the role it plays in American life. It discusses what a typical nonprofit is and the different types that exist, where they get funding, government activity in the sector, and what roles charities play in key subsectors such as health, education, and the arts. Salamon also examines trends, challenges, and future developments.
The new second edition of The State of Nonprofit America (Brookings Institution Press, 2012) offers a more comprehensive view of the field, with an 80+ page essay on the future of nonprofit America (written by Salamon), as well as a collection of in-depth essays addressing key subsectors (including one on foundations and corporate philanthropy) and major challenges such as commercialization, the influence of technology, changing demographics, and culture shifts. In this post I'll look at each book's take on the road ahead for nonprofits.
The final chapters in America's Nonprofit Sector look to the future by examining changes affecting the sector, and identify the opportunities and threats they hold for it. Supporting trends include social and demographic changes that have expanded the demands for services that nonprofits have traditionally provided, increased visibility and policy salience, professionalization of staff, and the "new philanthropy" such as a greater corporate willingness to engage in partnerships and collaborations with charities. Major challenges include but are not limited to new fiscal realities in the wake of the economic crisis of 2008, as well as competition from for-profit firms, especially in health care.
From these trends and challenges Salamon foresees three possible futures: the "status quo option," in which nonprofits continue a posture of self-celebration and drift; the "social enterprise option," where younger activists and socially conscious entrepreneurs create a new fourth sector that merges social purpose with business methods and taps into the huge amount of resources found in private investment capital; and the "renewal option" where the nonprofit sector's role in light of contemporary realities is rethought in terms of function, relationships with business and government, and operation.
Salamon's opening essay "The Resilient Sector: The Future of Nonprofit America" in The State of Nonprofit America expands upon the ideas presented above, but the volume also includes six articles by other nonprofit experts that also address major challenges. Selected essays include "Commercialization, Social Ventures, and For-Profit Competition" which explores the trend toward commercialization in the nonprofit sector in detail and assesses its implications for the sector's operation and role, and "Demographic and Technological Imperatives" which looks at key technological, demographic, and cultural trends affecting the sector including distributed learning, "clean tech," social-networking activism, the changing definition of aging, fusion families, and virtual global communities.
--Rob Bruno
Catalog/Reference Librarian
Foundation Center--NY
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