Abstract
Despite some encouraging trends, America's nonprofit sector stands at a cross-roads because of an interrelated series of challenges. Government budget cuts beginning in the early 1980s have eliminated a significant source of nonprofit revenues and created a serious fiscal squeeze for many organizations. Although the sector as a whole managed to replace this lost revenue, it has done so largely through fees and charges that have attracted for-profit businesses into traditional fields of nonprofit action, creating a serious economic challenge to the sector. Simultaneously, important questions have been raised about the effectiveness and accountability of nonprofit organizations, and about what some see as the over-professionalization and bureaucratization of the sector. All of this has undermined public confidence in the sector and prompted questions about the basic legiti-macy of the special tax and legal benefits it enjoys. To cope with these challenges. American nonprofits could usefully undergo a process of renewal that revives the sector's basic values, reconnects it to its citizen base, and creates a better public understanding of its functions and role.
Original language | English (US) |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 5-23 |
Number of pages | 19 |
Journal | Voluntas |
Volume | 10 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 1999 |
Keywords
- For-profit competition
- Nonprofit accountability
- Nonprofit funding
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Business and International Management
- Sociology and Political Science
- Public Administration
- Strategy and Management