Opinion: Mergers of Nonprofit Groups Are Not Always the Answer

While the recession may be causing many nonprofit groups to consider merging, it is not the best option for most organizations, writes a foundation president in an opinion piece in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Emmett D. Carson, head of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, notes that mergers are expensive, complicated, and disruptive and do not always result in stronger organization in the end, says Mr. Carson, whose own organization was born of the merging of the Peninsula Community Foundation and the Community Foundation Silicon Valley.

Instead of merging, says Mr. Carson, failing nonprofit groups should be allowed to close of their own accord, leaving stronger groups to expand where it is possible. Private donors and government grants, meanwhile, could provide financial incentives at a lesser cost than it would take to support widespread mergers.

Another foundation president — Jeffrey Solomon, president of the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies — also expressed concern about the rush to consider mergers in an opinion piece that appeared in the latest issue of The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

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