December 20, 2007 | Read Time: 1 minute
Has distrust in politics led to the boom in the number of nonprofit groups?
Kelly Kleiman, a former nonprofit consultant and author of The
Nonprofiteer blog, thinks so.
“People wonder why nonprofits are proliferating these days, and
complain that the field is too crowded. But it finally occurred to the
Nonprofiteer that the main reason for nonprofit multiplication isn’t
baby boomer solipsism or a revival of civil society or easy access to
technology; it’s something bigger, something so huge and obvious it’s
nearly invisible: the exceptional unresponsiveness of our contemporary political system,” she writes on her blog.
Indeed, while rich philanthropists may complain about the redundancy in charity efforts, she writes that the political and economic system that helped them amass their wealth is what has driven citizens to join the nonprofit world.
“No wonder it sticks in some of our craws to be expected to herald the new philanthropists and laud them for their bold engagement in grappling with social problems — problems they created for the rest of us themselves,” she writes.
What do you think? Is lack of faith in the government driving
Americans to start charities? Click on the comments link below to
share your thoughts.
