Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed to spin-off socially-oriented non-profit organizations in a special group and to grant them an access to financial budgetary resources, which are allocated for social purposes.TASS
Putin: socially-oriented non-profit organizations should be given access to budget funds
I don't quite get the idea of a government funded non-profit organisation. Sounds just like government but with one degree of freedom.
ReplyDeleteI suppose the advantage is if anything goes wrong, the government doesn't get the blame...."Hey not my fault, they are independent".
The disadvantage same as government funded for-profit organisations.... CORRUPTION.
Sounds like a slippery slope to me. And like Carlos asked, who is responsible if something goes wrong?
ReplyDeleteBut the US funds non-profits on a limited scale. Planned Parenthood, for one, and see what a controversial mess that is? Better to just let government provide the services directly, instead of going through middle men.
Having been involved mostly in the nonprofit sector, I think it is a good way for governments to go. Governments actually provide a whole lot of grants to nonprofits as well as individuals, and so do foundations. It's basically farming out management, administration and operations to the private sector. In my experience there is less likelihood of cronyism and corruption. I never saw anything like that in the nonprofit sector and that's not the way people attracted to nonprofits think.
ReplyDeleteA friend of mine who ran a large nonprofit was once confronted on what they did with the money. He said, "We spend it." And that's the truth. There's a huge amount of work that can be done and much doesn't get done owing to lack of funding because for profit businesses don't see enough profit in it relative to other uses of funds. So a lot of socially useful work doesn't get accomplished even through there are ample real resources to do it.
It's hard to think of any non-profit that is without controversy.
ReplyDeleteIf government performed the service itself, the controversy would still be there, but there would be accountability and it would be clear what was being funded or not funded. Whereas if you give money to a non-profit like Planned Parenthood or the NRA, it's not clear to the public what you are funding. The public perceives it as funding the entire organization and everything they do and stand for.
The same argument applies to delegating the proposed JG to non-profits.