August 1, 2007 | Read Time: 1 minute
News that Carnegie Mellon University agreed to allow its campus to appear in the film Smart People is drawing debate about whether colleges and other nonprofit organizations are getting too commercial.
The movie deal has drawn some criticism — most notably from Jeffrey J. Williams, a Carnegie Mellon professor, in a recent opinion article in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Mr. Williams described the film —which stars Dennis Quaid and Sarah Jessica Parker — as “a new step in universities’ adopting the ways and means of acquisitive corporations.”
But Dan Prives — a nonprofit finance expert and author of the blog Where Most Needed — writes that such arrangements are no cause for alarm.
“I don’t believe the claim that charity and nonprofit organizations are now or ever were a third sector, set apart from the public and private realm,” Mr. Prives writes. “They have always been fully engaged as instruments of both and have always been places to make a living. And part of this has always been fund raising and image building, using whatever tools of marketing communication are popular at the time.”
What do you think? Should universities or other nonprofit groups be working closely with Hollywood to promote their images? Is such placement valuable exposure for their missions, or a step too far away from their charitable purpose? Click on the comments link below this post to share your thoughts.
