January 19, 2009 | Read Time: 3 minutes
As charitable organizations face unprecedented challenges because of the global economic crisis, it is time for all nonprofit leaders to join forces and become key players in achieving a recovery.
Instead of doing what nonprofit groups traditionally do—seek money for their own causes and programs—we need to focus on solving the problems at hand. What Americans need now are jobs and what charities need are extra hands, so let’s urge Congress and the White House to make charitable employment a key component of the economic-stimulus plan.
Spending government money on jobs at nonprofit causes would accomplish several goals. The government would be financing jobs that paid workers a decent living, money they could use to invest in goods and services in their hometowns. It also would help nonprofit groups deal with the short-term increase in demand for services and a shortfall of private and government money available to hire new workers to meet those demands. And perhaps most important, it would give nonprofit groups an opportunity to train a cadre of workers who can sustain charitable institutions over the long haul as demographic changes make it harder to attract workers.
Workers placed in organizations that focus on arts, conservation, health care, social services, and so many other causes could acquire skills and experience that will be much in demand for decades to come.
The need for workers is especially acute at social-service organizations, which are facing steep rises in demand. Training more people to do this vital work will make it possible for charitable organizations to come closer to caring for all those who seek aid.
In his book, Obama’s Challenge: America’s Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency, Robert Kuttner cites “professionalizing human services” as one of a set of strategies for turning the economy around.
“If we had a national policy that every single job caring for our aged parents and young children was defined as a professional, living-wage job, we could create many millions of jobs in the service sector,” he writes. “At the same time, we could ease the lives of the elderly and give all of America’s children a healthy start, and their mothers and fathers more capacity to be productive workers and nurturing parents.”
President-elect Barack Obama has already said that health care would be a big priority for his administration, and that area too offers many possibilities for a jobs-focused economic-stimulus plan.
If the federal government paid nonprofit health-care organizations to expand their work forces so they could care for more needy people, for example, it would provide new jobs for many low and middle-income Americans, as well as improving care for the nation’s most vulnerable.
Such a program would provide immediate employment to many Americans who have lost their jobs in recent months, aid the growing numbers of people who lack health insurance, and set workers up with the skills they need to work anywhere they want as the job market improves.
America’s recovery will depend on investing in human capital, and if aimed broadly at nonprofit groups, it could build lasting social capital.
Virtually every nonprofit leader can, without disparaging other domestic spending priorities, legitimately make the case that their particular cause has been neglected and requires a several billion-dollar investment to begin to set things right.
But if nonprofit groups want to show why they have a special role in American society, they need to avoid thinking only about their own organizations and their own causes. It would be far more productive for the nonprofit world to seek ways to put people to work than to advocate for government money program by program.
So let’s join together and show government officials how they can provide jobs to millions of people—jobs that will offer a real benefit to our communities.
Irv Katz is president of the National Human Services Assembly, in Washington.
