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0 pointsNickM7y ago0 comments

I mostly agree with you, but I wouldn't entirely blame nonprofits. There's a lot of public pressure on nonprofits to reduce costs as much as possible because everyone is obsessed with "overhead". This TED talk explains the problems with this situation really well:

https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_abou...

Choice quote: "so in the for-profit sector, the more value you produce the more money you can make, but we don't like non-profits to use money to incentive people to produce more in social service. We have a visceral reaction to the idea that anyone would make much money helping other people; interesting that we don't have a visceral reaction to the notion that people would make a lot of money not helping other people."

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tvanantwerp7y ago

Strongly agree. The external pressure from well-meaning but uninformed donors to "cut costs" isn't helping the situation.

taphangum7y ago

"Interesting that we don't have a visceral reaction to the notion that people would make a lot of money not helping other people."

If for-profits didn't help people, they literally would not exist.

NickMOP7y ago

I think you're misinterpreting what he's saying (which might be my fault for expecting the quote to make sense outside the context of the talk). The quote is referring to the fact that we frown on people making money from running charitable organizations that help people, but making money from running a for-profit business that helps nobody is considered fine and admirable.

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