Week 8: The Arts and Advocacy

Alright, so the theme of this week is Advocacy and Arts & Culture so I’ll start out with our old friend Michael O’Neill. The first chapter titled Advocacy focuses on the nonprofit advocacy organization typically involved with issues like women’s suffrage, abolition, and environmentalism. Among one of the more surprising organizations that fell under the category of nonprofit advocacy organizations was AARP. What also surprised me was the actual difference and impact these organizations have had despite their relatively low number of employees for example minority rights organizations (woman’s rights, african american rights, and LGBT rights).  The second O’Neill chapter focused on nonprofit organizations concerned with art and culture and much like advocacy organizations there organizations have had a pretty large effect despite their size. It was interesting to find that museums are the largest part of this breed of nonprofit organizations. Because of the absent role that government plays in art and culture in todays society, it isn’t surprising that the majority of revenue for these organizations is private donations. Despite governments support of the arts as seen in institutions like the Smithsonian Museums, compared to other developed countries America’s support for the arts is much lower.   

In the article The Power of Nonprofits, asserts that the ideal of being involved in the policy making process is one that has existed since the star of our nation and as a foundation of American people. It has been seen throughout our history that if the American people have seen something they wish to change, they have fought for government to change it. I feel like this ideal and the work that nonprofit advocacy organizations do, is one of the best parts of America today. I think that it's awesome that in the Middle East right now, so many people in these nations are doing this exact thing. They are seeing things that exist in their government and they are standing up and advocating for things to change. 

It was interesting and kind of sad to read the information on Senate Bill 40 and to read what the Nonprofit Association of Oregon had to say about the bill. I think it is sad that this bill needs to be passed in the first place, that being said, I think that this is a good thing to have in oregon in order to monitor nonprofits as well as create more trust and comfort for the public when it comes to donating to these organization. 

In the article about arts and the money they have pumped back into the economy was really interesting. I was surprised to hear that these non profits economic impact grew by 24%  between 2000 and 2005. With these numbers the organization Americans for the Arts is boldly asking for a 40% boost in funding. While I do think that the arts are important, I find it hard to believe they will get what they are asking for especially in this economy where  cuts are being made across the board. Here is an article about how recently some art nonprofit funding is being cut:


http://www.reporternews.com/news/2011/feb/08/historic-sites-local-arts-nonprofitsthreatened/

I think that article that for me showed the importance of art nonprofits was the article Poetry Gives Teens a Voice. I like how the article gave a face to all of the numbers and showed how the Youth Speaks nonprofit had a personal, positive and important effect on these youth. For me this kind of article speaks more to the importance of art and culture nonprofits than the fact that arts groups pumped $166.8 billion back into the US. 

Week 7: Education

So, this week's topic: education. O’Neill talks about a few things including charter schools which I was super interested in because I went to a charter elementary school, and it had some of the best teachers in the area.  I did some extra research on charter schools and found that since 1990 the number of charter schools has rise drastically and that now there are over 3,500 charter schools. While I went to a charter school I really had no idea what it was or how it differed, but it sound pretty innovative to me.

Next, I'd like to talk about the Education Trust Subprime Report. This report essentially talked about the role of for-profit colleges and universities and how they deal with poorer students. First of all, the role of for-profit colleges has risen since the enrollment at such schools increased by 236% between 2008 and 2009, which I thought was crazy considering that most people were dealing with the housing crisis and a slow economic period, I would have expected most people to be enrolling in public or non-profit colleges and universities. When I read that most of the increased employment was due to heavy recruitment of low-income students I was even more confused yet everything made sense when it came out that 66% of for-profit colleges and universities revenue comes from federal student aid through Pell Grants and other federal student aid programs. Despite all of this money coming in to for profit schools, I still figured it was a win since more and more low income students were getting the education they deserved and need, yet I was surprised again to learn that many of those same student don't graduate and then they are straddled with student loans and debt to pay back. I found myself extremely disappointed in the actions of these supposed centers of growth and education, to me it just seemed like another for-profit institute looking to make more and more profit on vulnerable students.

One perfect example of these disappointing institutions is the University of Phoenix that was mentioned in the Education Trust Subprime Report as well as the article "Fed Up at the University of Phoenix". According to the article, it is "the largest chain of for-profit colleges in the country" and have a reputation for straddling their students with student loans as well as private loans. 

In the article "Will the For-Profit Education Bubble Burst in 2011" an interesting topic was explored. According to the some new legislation, the government can now pay for veterans and military members who have served to attend college. If they choose however, to go to one of these for-profit universities or colleges then taxpayers are essentially paying to send they men and women to places where the quality of education is sub-par. Is this right? Should our tax money go to institutions that take advantage of young, vulnerable students?If the government were to exclude these institutions, who it be to big-brother-ish? 

Despite reading all of the negative evidence for for-profit colleges and universities, I tried to keep my mind open for the last article about the positives of for-profit schools. Despite the possible advantages for for profits schools, like the fact that a good business model with a good business model eventually benefits the student because they depend on providing a quality education. This however, I found easily countered in the previous articles since most for profits make money for every person they get coming in, what does it matter if they get a good education or not? So I see why it was hard for Bob to find the other side to this argument, though I do appreciate his try. Apparently, this is a pretty partisan subject in Washington, here’s a good article on it: 

http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/articles/2011/02/07/the-partisan-battle-over-for-profit-education

Week 6: The Environment

And so we move to the environmental nonprofit world. Side-note: no offense to Mr. O’neill but I did enjoy the absence of Nonprofit Nation reading this week. I’ll dive right in with the McKenzie Watershed Council and their work to manage water in the McKenzie River Basin. I thought their work along with their accomplishments were quite impressive. I really liked how one of their main focuses was promoting education within schools and throughout the community. I was impressed that through their their numerous and varied partnerships they were able to put on events like Annual McKenzie River Cleanup. I think because of environmental organizations like this that have community and school education programs more people become more concerned and aware of the problems that exist in the environment and therefore it leads to more action on the parts of citizens. I know that Oregon is known for it’s views on environmental conservation and I definitely think that it is in some part due to the success of organizations such as the McKenzie Watershed Council who involve their communities and educate youth. One non profit that exhibited a similar attitude toward education, I found in the “Guide to Non-Profits” document. The non profit is called Conserve Our Ocean Legacy and they work to educate people about the dangers of overfishing and habitat destruction. If you haven’t got it by now, I think education is really important; it involves communities, raises awareness, recruits potential supporters and or donators, and gets word out about the issue. Here’s a really cool group of women who also think that education is really important and so they have set up their own program to educate kids in schools across the country about environmental issues:

http://manhattanbeach.patch.com/articles/nonprofit-spotlight-grades-of-green

It thought the article “Saving the Environment for Profit” by Susan Raymond brought up an interesting idea about the benefits of a issue being the focus of for profit companies or non profit organizations. Looking at raw numbers where about 6 billion dollars comes in from various sources like private donations and grants. On the other side the global environmental market was estimated around 600 billion, about 100 times that of the non profit sector. So by a purely numerical analysis, the emerging environmental market strongly benefits environmental conservation and sustainability efforts. So overall this seems pretty good, and I think it was totally awesome that Al donated his salary to an environmental nonprofit.

And finally, I have to say, I found Mr. Paul Hawken’s speech quite inspiring. What really struck me was how he said that at this point in time “the greatest movement the world has ever seen” is occurring with so many people working towards righting the wrongs they see in the world. I think this class is great evidence of such a movement, here we all are attending a class twice a week to understand a whole community dedicated to serving, aid, kindness, and selflessness, it’s great!

Week 5: Health Care

               So this week in Nonprofit Nation, we learned about the role of healthcare in the nonprofit sector which actually has a large stake in not only the nonprofit sector but also the US economy. While nonprofit hospitals are the largest in the healthcare sector (57%) , I was intrigued to find that the for-profit hospitals as well as government controlled hospitals were on the rise, specifically, I was interested in the “for-profit conversions”. It saddened me that many nonprofit hospitals had to convert or be bought out by for-profit hospitals to be able to operate, pay off debts, or acquire new/ proper technology. The article “Mergers of for-profit, non-profit hospitals”  by Jenny Gold spoke to the same issue. In the article, however Ms. Gold paints two different views: first that the for-profit hospitals are helping nonprofit hospitals by giving them the funds they need to operate efficiently and serve the needs of their community and secondly that the for-profit hospitals see an opportunity for more capital gains in the nonprofit sector. Obviously, I would like to think it is the first one but I think most of the time it is a mix of both. Below is an article showing the upside of for-profit conversions as well as an alternative view about the purchase of the Detroit Medical Center. 

http://www.bizjournals.com/southflorida/news/2011/02/01/hca-seals-deal-for-mercy-hospital.html

http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-transactions-and-valuation-issues/8-issues-surrounding-a-for-profit-companys-acquisitions-of-non-profit-hospitals.html

Alright, for the other readings, I found the article about the publicly owned Green Bay Packers quite interesting. I thought it was, well, cool that the team was a nonprofit sports team where 60% of their proceeds go to charity and most of the employees were volunteers. I found myself wondering and hoping that if the same level of dedication and commitment from members, owners, and fans was exemplified in other nonprofit, how much bigger and influential would the nonprofit sector be?...all I know is, I’m pretty much a Packers fan now. 

The article that I was really interested in though was the article about ADD, “ADD Grows Up” by Rebecca Leung. I was really interested in the fact that now more and more adults are being diagnosed with ADD and I was especially interested that with this rise in diagnoses, the drug industry has benefited immensely.  As I was reading the article, I was amazed that this disorder has mainly become a way for private companies to make money.  One quote from the article said that today there are “also push medications, self-help books, videos, organizational software, personal coaching and even therapeutic swings” furthering the unavoidable and pretty blatant fact that this a ploy from private companies to make money selling people things for problems that they came up with and promoted in the first place. All of this really makes me question the motives of private companies and their place within the health care system. Finally, this brings me back to what I was first speaking about to me the question is, is it really good for the healthcare system and the people it serves to be privately owned by for-profit companies whose motives are, at a basic level, solely to increase their profits?