Frumkin Nonprofit Summary

There are three basic questions that can be used to evaluate nonprofits; whom should nonprofits benefit? What kind of acts should they undertake? And how should they operate? These questions never have easy answers and certainly don’t have any one answer. Nonprofits are an area that instead of being a structured entity, they fill the gaps that the structured for profit, and government organizations fail to, or are not equipped to address. Frumkin’s For Being Nonprofit addresses the conceptual and policy problems facing nonprofits. While he manages to show the problems with funding and bureaucratic hoops nonprofits must jump through, Frumkin has a particularly jaded view of the organization and management of said organizations. His analysis …show more content…
Especially those he labels as service delivery. Frumkin makes the argument in his book that the nature of nonprofits makes them unable to conform to bureaucratic regulations. For example the classic homeless shelter, bases its success not just on how many people they put up for the night, but also the classes they offer; educational, job searching etc… they base their success on how many people no longer are required to use their facilities. Successes like that are virtually impossible to regulate and yet the bureaucratic process requires that for the organization to receive grant money from the government they must conform to the requirements. Usually that means performance measurements; exact numbers of meals served, people given beds to sleep in for the nights, number of jobs obtained through the …show more content…
Often the problems that nonprofits face, lack of funds, or lack of ability to help as many as need it, can be solved with the change in perception of nonprofits. Frumkins text is a classic case of assumptions about nonprofits. It gives the most obvious types and styles of nonprofits. Frumkin in the conclusion of his book states that nonprofits are heading towards self-destruct. The sheer number and variety of nonprofits have made it where they all vie with each other and society can’t keep up, but the number of concerned citizens, not only in the United States, but also in a growing number of countries around the world contradicts that theory. The human race is just as evolving and changing as nonprofits and they adapt to their surroundings and situations