To Profit or Not to Profit : The Commercial Transformation of the Nonprofit Sector

Nonprofit organizations are increasingly resembling private firms in a transformation bringing with it a shift in financial dependence from charitable donation to commercial sales activity. This book examines the reasons and consequences of the mimicry of private firms by fundraising nonprofits. User fees and revenue from 'ancillary' activities are mushrooming, with each having important side effects: pricing out of the market certain target groups; or distracting the nonprofit from its central mission. The authors focus first on issues that apply to nonprofits generally: the role of competition, analysis of nonprofit organization behavior, the effects of distribution goals and differential taxation of nonprofit and for-profit activity revenue, the effects of changes in donations on commercial activity, and conversions of nonprofits to for-profits. They then turn to specific industries: hospitals, universities, social service providers, zoos, museums, and public broadcasting. The book concludes with recommendations for research and for public policy toward nonprofits.


About the author:


A prolific and distinguished scholar, Weisbrod has written or edited 15 books and more than 160 articles and papers on the economics and public policy analysis of poverty, nonprofit organizations, education, health, the causes and consequences of research and technological change in health care, manpower, public interest law, the military draft, and benefit-cost evaluation. His most recent research examines the comparative economic behavior of for-profit, government, and private nonprofit organizations; and the causes and consequences of the growing commercialism of nonprofits. He also is the author of The Nonprofit Economy (Harvard University Press, 1988).