Deep inside New York City's recently approved budget is a $17.2 million revenue estimate for Mayor Michael Bloomberg's controversial plan to charge universities, religious institutions and nonprofits a new garbage-collection fee.
The only hitch: The mayor needs the City Council to approve legislation permitting the administration to impose the fee—and a majority of the council's 51 members oppose it.
A majority of the City Council's 51 members oppose a plan to charge some organizations a new garbage-collection fee. Here, a large pile of garbage in New York in January 2011.
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"I don't see how they could have snuck this into the budget—we surely did not agree to this," said Councilman David Greenfield, a Brooklyn Democrat, who has introduced legislation barring the administration from charging such a fee. His legislation already has the support of 31 members.
"The reality is this is a trash tax on nonprofits who can least afford to pay a tax during these trying fiscal times," Mr. Greenfield said. "It's our understanding that they need our permission to get it done. Obviously, they don't have our permission."
If a resolution isn't reached, it will put a hole, albeit tiny, in the city's $68.5 billion budget.
Last year, the city's Department of Sanitation proposed instituting a fee on nonresidential properties in the five boroughs that receive garbage collection and disposal services free of charge. The fee was slated to take effect during the fiscal year that began Sunday.
In May 2011, Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty told the council the department planned to spend the next several months to determine the appropriate charging and billing structure for the nonprofits and religious organizations. The administration hoped to adopt a charging structure that would "incentivize these customers to recycle," he told the council.
Earlier this year, the department sent a survey letter to organizations that would be affected by this proposal, asking them to estimate how much waste they generate.
Among council members, most of the opposition has focused on the small nonprofits and religious groups that might find a new garbage fee difficult to sustain.
But many large institutions with considerable financial backing—such as Columbia University, New York University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art—would also be affected. Taxpayers currently pay the bill for all these institutions' garbage.
Dick Zigun, executive director of Coney Island USA, a nonprofit which runs the annual Coney Island Mermaid Parade, said the proposal amounts to a tax on organizations "that are not supposed to be taxed."
"We are struggling with a deficit," he said. "The impact would probably be a layoff."
Marc LaVorgna, a spokesman for the mayor, said the administration is still examining the results of the survey and is crafting a proposal that will help the city double its recycling rate and decrease the amount of trash entering landfills. No decision has yet been made about carving out small institutions, but Mr. LaVorgna said the administration is committed to imposing a fee and hopes to have a refined proposal soon.
"We're working with the institutions and we're working with the council in coming up with a plan that will encourage recycling and be fair," Mr. LaVorgna said. "We think we're going to be able to come to a plan that makes sense that will help reduce the amount of waste produced out of New York City."
Council Member Letitia James, chairwoman of the council's sanitation committee, said she opposes the proposal, as currently pitched, because of its impact on small institutions. She declined to say whether she would support it if the city focused on large institutions.
Council Speaker Christine Quinn, a Manhattan Democrat who is preparing a campaign for mayor next year, hasn't taken a position on the proposal, said Justin Goodman, a council spokesman.
"This proposal requires legislation," Mr. Goodman said. "When we see the legislation, we will comment on it."
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Tax-Exempt Groups Shield Political Gifts of Businesses
American Electric Power, one of the country’s largest utilities, gave $1 million last November to the Founding Fund, a new tax-exempt group that intends to raise most of its money from corporations and push for limited government.
The giant insurer Aetna directed more than $3 million last year to the American Action Network, a Republican-leaning nonprofit organization that has spent millions of dollars attacking lawmakers who voted for President Obama’s health care bill — even as Aetna’s president publicly voiced support for the legislation.
Other corporations, including Prudential Financial, Dow Chemical and the drugmaker Merck, have poured millions of dollars more into the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a tax-exempt trade group that has pledged to spend at least $50 million on political advertising this election cycle.
Two years after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision opened the door for corporate spending on elections, relatively little money has flowed from company treasuries into “super PACs,” which can accept unlimited contributions but must also disclose donors. Instead, there is growing evidence that large corporations are trying to influence campaigns by donating money to tax-exempt organizations that can spend millions of dollars without being subject to the disclosure requirements that apply to candidates, parties and PACs.
The secrecy shrouding these groups makes a full accounting of corporate influence on the electoral process impossible. But glimpses of their donors emerged in a New York Times review of corporate governance reports, tax returns of nonprofit organizations and regulatory filings by insurers and labor unions.
The review found that corporate donations — many of them previously unreported — went to groups large and small, dedicated to shaping public policy on the state and national levels. From a redistricting fight in Minnesota to the sprawling battleground of the 2012 presidential and Congressional elections, corporations are opening their wallets and altering the political world.
Some of the biggest recipients of corporate money are organized under Section 501(c)(4) of the tax code, the federal designation for “social welfare” groups dedicated to advancing broad community interests. Because they are not technically political organizations, they do not have to register with or disclose their donors to the Federal Election Commission, potentially shielding corporate contributors from shareholders or others unhappy with their political positions.
“Companies want to be able to quietly push for their political agendas without being held accountable for it by their customers,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which has filed complaints against issue groups. “I think the 501(c)(4)’s are likely to outweigh super PAC spending, because so many donors want to remain anonymous.”
Because social welfare groups are prohibited from devoting themselves primarily to political activity, many spend the bulk of their money on issue advertisements that purport to be educational, not political, in nature. In May, for example, Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, a group co-founded by the Republican strategist Karl Rove, began a $25 million advertising campaign, carefully shaped with focus groups of undecided voters, that attacks Mr. Obama for increasing the federal deficit and urges him to cut spending.
The Internal Revenue Service has no clear test for determining what constitutes excessive political activity by a social welfare group. And tax-exempt groups are permitted to begin raising and spending money even before the I.R.S. formally recognizes them. Two years after helping Republicans win control of the House with millions of dollars in issue advertising, Crossroads GPS’s application for tax-exempt status is still pending.
During the 2010 midterm elections, tax-exempt groups outspent super PACs by a 3-to-2 margin, according to a recent study by the Center for Responsive Politics and the Center for Public Integrity, with most of that money devoted to attacking Democrats or defending Republicans. And such groups have accounted for two-thirds of the political advertising bought by the biggest outside spenders so far in the 2012 election cycle, according to Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group, with close to $100 million in issue ads.
The growing role of issue groups has prompted a rash of complaints and lawsuits from watchdog organizations accusing groups like the American Action Network, Crossroads and the pro-Obama Priorities USA of operating as sham charities whose primary purpose is not the promotion of social welfare, but winning elections. Efforts in Congress to force more disclosure for politically active nonprofit organizations have been repeatedly stymied by Republicans, who have described the push as an assault on free speech.
“These groups are being used as a conduit to hide from voters the identity of people and corporations who are bankrolling these television ads, which are designed to influence the outcome of elections,” said Representative Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland.
But Jonathan Collegio, a spokesman for Crossroads, said, “Individuals and organizations have a First Amendment right to promote their beliefs through advertising, be that advertising against the Iraq war, against climate change or, in the case of Crossroads, advocating for free markets and limited government.”
Labor unions — themselves among the beneficiaries of Citizens United — have also donated millions of dollars to national super PACs and state-level nonprofit groups involved in battles over government spending, collective bargaining and health care. Donations from corporations and unions alike must be disclosed if they go to expressly political groups like super PACs.
April, for example, the air traffic controllers’ union contributed $1 million to a pro-Obama super PAC. But other contributions are harder to trace. Last year, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees gave $100,000 to Advancing Wisconsin, a tax-exempt group that supported labor’s fight with Republicans in that state; the donation was reported nowhere in Wisconsin, but it emerged in an annual financial report that unions must file with the federal Department of Labor.
Among the largest beneficiaries of corporate donations in recent years have been trade organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which largely backs Republican candidates. As a nonprofit “business league” under the tax code, the chamber does not have to disclose its supporters, who helped finance its $33 million in political ads in the 2010 midterm elections.
But voluntary disclosures by corporations — usually at the prodding of shareholder advocacy groups — shed some light on the use of trade groups for lobbying or as pass-throughs for political spending. A search of voluntary disclosures, some collected by the Center for Political Accountability, which advocates for transparency in corporate political spending, found more than $6 million in chamber donations by 10 companies last year.
Two of the largest came from Prudential Financial and Dow Chemical, which each gave $1.6 million, while Chevron, MetLife and Merck each gave at least $500,000. Some of the donations were directed to the chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform, which lobbies for limits on liability suits.
Some contributions are disclosed by accident. Aetna’s check to the American Action Network, along with a $4.5 million contribution last year to the chamber, was mistakenly included in a filing with insurance regulators. The disclosure was first reported by SNL Financial, a trade publication. Even where companies pledge voluntary disclosure of political contributions, they often make an exception for donations to tax-exempt groups.
In 2007, Aetna signed an agreement with the Mercy Investment Program, a shareholders group, to disclose trade associations to which it made large contributions. On regulatory filings, the company initially described its $3 million contribution to the Chamber of Commerce as a lobbying expense, but the company now says it was intended to finance “educational activities.”
An Aetna spokesman would not say whether the chamber donation would appear on the company’s 2011 voluntary disclosure. Sister Valerie Heinonen, the director of shareholder advocacy for Mercy Investment Services, said that a failure to do so would violate the company’s pledge.
Beyond the contributions to large, established nonprofits like the chamber and American Action Network, corporate money is also quietly shaping the political discourse through more obscure groups, none of which are required to disclose their donors.
In Minnesota last year, Express Scripts, a major drug benefit manager, gave $10,000 to a Republican-linked group, Minnesotans for a Fair Redistricting, involved in a partisan fight over redrawing legislative boundaries. Express Scripts made the donation, previously unreported, because the “electoral maps in Minnesota were in doubt and we supported efforts to bring certainty to Minnesota voters,” said Brian Henry, a spokesman for the company, which is based in St. Louis. He added that the firm has a facility in Bloomington, Minn.
The reasons behind American Electric Power’s $1 million contribution to the little-known Founding Fund are less clear. The company characterized it as “lobbying” in a corporate governance disclosure last year, but the fund says it does no lobbying. The fund, whose address is a mail drop in Alexandria, Va., would not make any of its directors available for an interview.
The fund’s treasurer, Frank Sadler, is a lobbyist who previously worked for Koch Industries advising nonprofit groups that support free market causes, although he said the Kochs, major Republican donors, were not involved in the group. In its public filings, the fund said it expected to raise about $10 million this election cycle, primarily from corporations, and use it to promote free markets and “the narrowing of the scope and reach of the federal government.”
A spokesman for American Electric Power, Pat D. Hemlepp, said the company supports organizations “with positions on issues that align with AEP’s positions” and strives to be transparent on political giving. “We also respect the positions of others, including some of the organizations that receive funding from AEP, to not publicly disclose funding or activities. That’s their right under the law.”
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Andy Rooney’s Thoughts on Charity from 1983
Even for those of us who don’t watch much network TV, Andy Rooney was a gift to television journalism. Do realize, however, that he started in print journalism, including being an “embedded” reporter (without that term) during World War II, and writing for Stars and Stripes. So he could write just as expertly as he could offer curmudgeonly television commentary. Sometimes his commentary provoked anger, including from those who assumed they would like what he says. He was notoriously cranky about charity, for example, and claimed to be no fan of giving things away. A culture writer at Mother Nature Network found a 1983 article Rooney wrote on charity that reflects both Rooney’s charmingly cantankerous persona and some hard-to-acknowledge truisms.
In “Charity Is Never Easy”, published in 1983, Rooney acknowledged pangs of guilt for “drop(ping) some letter asking for a contribution into the little wicker wastebasket.” The reason, he said, is because “there are so many people and organizations that need and deserve help that it’s more than I can stand to think about sometimes”—and this from a guy who professionally found things to think about and write about that many of us would have let pass without commentary (remember Joe Piscopo’s famous “Did you ever wonder why” impersonations of Rooney, using a line that Rooney never actually used himself).
“One of the difficult things about charity is deciding whom to give to,” he wrote. “You can't give to everyone who asks and sometimes those who don't ask need help worse than those who do. I don't give to the person with the dog on the sidewalk outside of Saks Fifth Avenue because I'm not sure what's wrong with him.” For Rooney, giving to and through the United Way was a “partial answer,” though he acknowledged being “embarrassed to see how little I’ve given compared to how much I have.”
Although he offered a few of the typical excuses people use not to give—“We say to ourselves that we're suspicious of how this charity spends its money, or we don't like the new policy of this school or that organization”—he ended his essay with a very uncomfortable line: “Charity is never easy. So many of the people who need it don't seem to deserve it and that provides a wonderful excuse for all of us not to give much.”
It is characteristic commentary for a professional iconoclast who quit CBS for a time because it vetoed his critical essay on the Vietnam War (he read it on PBS instead, garnering a Writer’s Guild award) and came out early and consistently against the invasion of Iraq. It’s no surprise to us that he would raise questions about charitable giving.
We encounter opinionated people all the time who think that the world is hungering for the next installment of their musings but who lack the slightest familiarity with a pertinent fact or two—much less a thought or insight of real value. Somehow, by virtue of the accident of their position or power, they think, as Barry Switzer has said, that they were “born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple.” Andy Rooney was idiosyncratic, argumentative, and sometimes ornery, but his grouchy commentaries were worth listening to. That we will never hear another from Rooney reminds us of the dwindling quality of public discourse in American journalism.—Rick Cohen
In “Charity Is Never Easy”, published in 1983, Rooney acknowledged pangs of guilt for “drop(ping) some letter asking for a contribution into the little wicker wastebasket.” The reason, he said, is because “there are so many people and organizations that need and deserve help that it’s more than I can stand to think about sometimes”—and this from a guy who professionally found things to think about and write about that many of us would have let pass without commentary (remember Joe Piscopo’s famous “Did you ever wonder why” impersonations of Rooney, using a line that Rooney never actually used himself).
“One of the difficult things about charity is deciding whom to give to,” he wrote. “You can't give to everyone who asks and sometimes those who don't ask need help worse than those who do. I don't give to the person with the dog on the sidewalk outside of Saks Fifth Avenue because I'm not sure what's wrong with him.” For Rooney, giving to and through the United Way was a “partial answer,” though he acknowledged being “embarrassed to see how little I’ve given compared to how much I have.”
Although he offered a few of the typical excuses people use not to give—“We say to ourselves that we're suspicious of how this charity spends its money, or we don't like the new policy of this school or that organization”—he ended his essay with a very uncomfortable line: “Charity is never easy. So many of the people who need it don't seem to deserve it and that provides a wonderful excuse for all of us not to give much.”
It is characteristic commentary for a professional iconoclast who quit CBS for a time because it vetoed his critical essay on the Vietnam War (he read it on PBS instead, garnering a Writer’s Guild award) and came out early and consistently against the invasion of Iraq. It’s no surprise to us that he would raise questions about charitable giving.
We encounter opinionated people all the time who think that the world is hungering for the next installment of their musings but who lack the slightest familiarity with a pertinent fact or two—much less a thought or insight of real value. Somehow, by virtue of the accident of their position or power, they think, as Barry Switzer has said, that they were “born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple.” Andy Rooney was idiosyncratic, argumentative, and sometimes ornery, but his grouchy commentaries were worth listening to. That we will never hear another from Rooney reminds us of the dwindling quality of public discourse in American journalism.—Rick Cohen
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Tax-Exempt For-Profits Avoid Paying their Share
This post was made by Rick Cohen from Nonprofit Quarterly. Be sure to click the link to read the full post. Rick's comments are right on and clearly illustrate the double standard confronting nonprofits everywhere. As Rick relates:
Let’s see if we get this right. Nonprofits are leeches on society, they don’t pay taxes, they take our money (your money) and fail to pay their own way, they pay their executives exorbitantly, they spend too much on administrative costs, and, oh yes . . . they don’t pay taxes. This is worth saying twice, since taxes have become the prime mover of politics in recent years.
The argument is so tiresome, so monotonous, and so ill founded. It’s time to correct the record, not in tabulating how much taxes nonprofits actually pay (and they do: as employers paying matching employees’ FICA, as service providers frequently paying registration and licensing fees, as property owners paying user fees for water and sewerage, etc.), but in terms of how many tax-paying entities don’t pay the taxes they are supposed to pay or receive tax rebates.
Nonprofits are hardly the only tax-exempt nongovernmental entities in the U.S. By happenstance, hook, and crook, for-profit corporations frequently don’t pay taxes, get legislative bodies to exempt them from taxes, and they often pay their executives at levels that leave entire nonprofit budgets in the dust.
Compared to the relatively small number of nonprofits with revenues and real estate, the for-profit sector’s multiple navigation strategies to avoid federal, state, and local taxes leads to a basic question – which sector is the real tax-exempt sector?
If you know the way, you don’t have to pay—at the federal level
The crushing burden of federal taxes seems to leave many corporations much less crushed than nonprofits being hit with Unrelated Business Income Taxes (UBITs):
. This past March, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) provided a list of corporate tax evaders, several of which are among the nonprofit sector’s most trustworthy corporate philanthropic benefactors:
1) Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009. Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings.
2) Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, although it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion.
3) Over the past five years, while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS.
4) Chevron received a $19 million refund from the IRS last year after it made $10 billion in profits in 2009.
5) Boeing, which received a $30 billion contract from the Pentagon to build 179 airborne tankers, got a $124 million refund from the IRS last year.
6) Valero Energy, the 25th largest company in America with $68 billion in sales last year received a $157 million tax refund check from the IRS and, over the past three years, it received a $134 million tax break from the oil and gas manufacturing tax deduction.
7) Goldman Sachs in 2008 only paid 1.1 percent of its income in taxes even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion and received an almost $800 billion from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department.
8) Citigroup last year made more than $4 billion in profits but paid no federal income taxes. It received a $2.5 trillion bailout from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury.
9) ConocoPhillips, the fifth largest oil company in the United States, made $16 billion in profits from 2007 through 2009, but received $451 million in tax breaks through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction.
10) Over the past five years, Carnival Cruise Lines made more than $11 billion in profits, but its federal income tax rate during those years was just 1.1 percent.
Business Insidermagazine added additional big corporations, not necessarily those with the name recognition of those on the Sanders list, that are paying next to no federal taxes:
· NextEra Energy: Pretax profits of $8.572 billion, effective tax rate of 1.74 percent
· Xcel Energy: Pretax profits of $4.334 billion, tax rate of 1.78 percent
· Amazon: Pretax profits of $3.512 billion, tax rate of 4.33 percent
· Host Hotels and Resorts: Profits of $1.116 billion, tax rate 3.05 percent
· TECO Energy: Profits of $1.62 billion, tax rate of 2.31 percent
Note that several of these corporations actually received tax rebates, putting their effective tax rates into the realm of negative percentages. In several cases, such as Exxon Mobil and Bank of America, their zero tax rates in 2009 were simply an extension of the lack of taxes they paid the previous year. In fact, many corporations over the years have managed to make their profits immune to taxation. A 2008 Government Accountability Office study found that more than half of U.S. companies doing business in the U.S. had paid no income taxes for at least one year between 1998 and 2005 and 42 percent had not paid taxes for at least two years.
Be sure to read more here.
Let’s see if we get this right. Nonprofits are leeches on society, they don’t pay taxes, they take our money (your money) and fail to pay their own way, they pay their executives exorbitantly, they spend too much on administrative costs, and, oh yes . . . they don’t pay taxes. This is worth saying twice, since taxes have become the prime mover of politics in recent years.
The argument is so tiresome, so monotonous, and so ill founded. It’s time to correct the record, not in tabulating how much taxes nonprofits actually pay (and they do: as employers paying matching employees’ FICA, as service providers frequently paying registration and licensing fees, as property owners paying user fees for water and sewerage, etc.), but in terms of how many tax-paying entities don’t pay the taxes they are supposed to pay or receive tax rebates.
Nonprofits are hardly the only tax-exempt nongovernmental entities in the U.S. By happenstance, hook, and crook, for-profit corporations frequently don’t pay taxes, get legislative bodies to exempt them from taxes, and they often pay their executives at levels that leave entire nonprofit budgets in the dust.
Compared to the relatively small number of nonprofits with revenues and real estate, the for-profit sector’s multiple navigation strategies to avoid federal, state, and local taxes leads to a basic question – which sector is the real tax-exempt sector?
If you know the way, you don’t have to pay—at the federal level
The crushing burden of federal taxes seems to leave many corporations much less crushed than nonprofits being hit with Unrelated Business Income Taxes (UBITs):
. This past March, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) provided a list of corporate tax evaders, several of which are among the nonprofit sector’s most trustworthy corporate philanthropic benefactors:
1) Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009. Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings.
2) Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, although it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion.
3) Over the past five years, while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS.
4) Chevron received a $19 million refund from the IRS last year after it made $10 billion in profits in 2009.
5) Boeing, which received a $30 billion contract from the Pentagon to build 179 airborne tankers, got a $124 million refund from the IRS last year.
6) Valero Energy, the 25th largest company in America with $68 billion in sales last year received a $157 million tax refund check from the IRS and, over the past three years, it received a $134 million tax break from the oil and gas manufacturing tax deduction.
7) Goldman Sachs in 2008 only paid 1.1 percent of its income in taxes even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion and received an almost $800 billion from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department.
8) Citigroup last year made more than $4 billion in profits but paid no federal income taxes. It received a $2.5 trillion bailout from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury.
9) ConocoPhillips, the fifth largest oil company in the United States, made $16 billion in profits from 2007 through 2009, but received $451 million in tax breaks through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction.
10) Over the past five years, Carnival Cruise Lines made more than $11 billion in profits, but its federal income tax rate during those years was just 1.1 percent.
Business Insidermagazine added additional big corporations, not necessarily those with the name recognition of those on the Sanders list, that are paying next to no federal taxes:
· NextEra Energy: Pretax profits of $8.572 billion, effective tax rate of 1.74 percent
· Xcel Energy: Pretax profits of $4.334 billion, tax rate of 1.78 percent
· Amazon: Pretax profits of $3.512 billion, tax rate of 4.33 percent
· Host Hotels and Resorts: Profits of $1.116 billion, tax rate 3.05 percent
· TECO Energy: Profits of $1.62 billion, tax rate of 2.31 percent
Note that several of these corporations actually received tax rebates, putting their effective tax rates into the realm of negative percentages. In several cases, such as Exxon Mobil and Bank of America, their zero tax rates in 2009 were simply an extension of the lack of taxes they paid the previous year. In fact, many corporations over the years have managed to make their profits immune to taxation. A 2008 Government Accountability Office study found that more than half of U.S. companies doing business in the U.S. had paid no income taxes for at least one year between 1998 and 2005 and 42 percent had not paid taxes for at least two years.
Be sure to read more here.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Real Business Decisions by Nonprofits? Who Would of Thought It Possible?
The Daily Star, a small newspaper located in upstate NY, recently reported that the local Girl Scout offices in Oneonta and Norwich will close June 30. As the article states: The decision comes after a 21-member task group of volunteers and staff spent nine months gathering data, holding membership forums and reviewing the properties and office spaces held by the council after its merger of five smaller councils in 2009. GSNYPENN now serves girls in 24 counties in New York and two in Pennsylvania.
Feedback: Although for some this may seem a negative, especially in the local rural region, nonprofits need to increase efficiencies and strengthen their business operations to maintain services and be viable in the today's environment. These kinds of difficult decisions are needed and should be expected. Of course, there are implications here around rural versus more urban areas, but ultimately what needs to be remembered is that the bottom line is just as important in the nonprofit sector as in the for profit. People will disagree and take issue with decisions like this, especially anytime local ownership and presence is impacted, but with the economic downturn and significant competition for contributed revenue, this is now a regular part of doing business. "Businesses" lay off people everyday, and nonprofits have been forced to make the same, painful decisions. The difference is that unlike for profits that are truly focused on maximizing revenue for profit, nonprofits are making decisions, in most cases, that will allow them to maintain services, strengthen their organizations, enable them to fulfill their mission and most importantly, best serve their constituents with the programs and services they want and need. So, politicians, communities and consumers of nonprofit services, please remember these are business decisions, and they are taken with careful thought and due diligence by board members and staff that are your peers, neighbors and voters.
Feedback: Although for some this may seem a negative, especially in the local rural region, nonprofits need to increase efficiencies and strengthen their business operations to maintain services and be viable in the today's environment. These kinds of difficult decisions are needed and should be expected. Of course, there are implications here around rural versus more urban areas, but ultimately what needs to be remembered is that the bottom line is just as important in the nonprofit sector as in the for profit. People will disagree and take issue with decisions like this, especially anytime local ownership and presence is impacted, but with the economic downturn and significant competition for contributed revenue, this is now a regular part of doing business. "Businesses" lay off people everyday, and nonprofits have been forced to make the same, painful decisions. The difference is that unlike for profits that are truly focused on maximizing revenue for profit, nonprofits are making decisions, in most cases, that will allow them to maintain services, strengthen their organizations, enable them to fulfill their mission and most importantly, best serve their constituents with the programs and services they want and need. So, politicians, communities and consumers of nonprofit services, please remember these are business decisions, and they are taken with careful thought and due diligence by board members and staff that are your peers, neighbors and voters.
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