April 8, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute
Cynthia Gibson, a philanthropy consultant, wants to get nonprofit researchers to find new topics to study.
“There’s rarely a day that goes by that we don’t see yet another report about something that’s already been studied to death and that many see as ‘stating the obvious,’” she writes on her blog. “So why do these studies keep getting funded, disseminated, and reported on?”
She has compiled a list “of all the things that most of us in the nonprofit sector think are pretty much established” to get researchers to either explore new issues or find new ways to examine the established ones.
On her list of well-known facts are:
- Charities need operating support, but most foundations don’t provide such grants.
- Mergers are easy to talk about, but hard to do.
- There is almost no agreement on what social entrepreneurship means.
Ms. Gibson is asking others to contribute to the list — or identify issues on the list that may not be as well understood as she thinks.
What do you think? What are the well-worn areas of study in the nonprofit world?
