Your McMurray Six On/Six Off

Life is never that simple. Quite often people fall on hard times and need to be helped. Most of us rely on families or friends until we get back on our feet, but what if you have no one? Nonprofits work to identify those who need the help and to get them the assistance they need.

2. If people are going to get unemployment benefits they should be subject to the same restrictions that employers insist of their employees. I have to go to work sober and unencumbered by recreational drugs. So should people on pogey.

There is a particular despair only felt by those who have been marginalized by society. Many get there because of horrendous addictions while some pick them up on their journey down. Nonprofits tend not to judge. In a perfect world nobody would have an addiction. In a perfect world we’d all be dating supermodels.

3. Nonprofits should channel all their money into their causes. Why do some of them own huge office blocks and pay fat salaries to their staff?

It’s hard to justify the economies of scale when some non-profit leaders get paid executive salaries, but the successful nonprofits have had to take a hard realistic look at their operations and become more businesslike. Rationalizing real estate needs and hiring professionals are just two of the ways they have become more efficient.

4. Calling them social-profit organizations is misleading. That doesn’t describe them. Neither does nonprofits, (see point three above). They should be called charities because that at least is where they impinge, in the normal person on the street’s charitable feelings.

While it is true that they do rely on the innate good nature of most people to enable them in their work, their name is to do more with their legal status than any perceived deception. Non-profit is a tax status as well.

5. Because non-profits don’t pay tax, they are in effect an economic burden on taxpayers. Non-profits are an obscure fiscal ruse that skews the financial reporting of the country.

We’re back in perfect world theory again. It would be brilliant if the government could balance the books every year and charge us exactly the amount of tax needed to pay for everything. In the real world, people slip through the cracks of society every day. Government agencies do react, eventually. Nonprofits fill the gap.

6. Many non-profits waste their money on elaborate fund-raisers and posh events. What does a $500 dinner ticket actually have to do with a Kidney dialysis machine? They should be ashamed of themselves.

Granted there is a bit of subterfuge here, but it is not a game invented by the non-profits, they’ve just learned the rules. Here’s how it works. Corporations want to look good because their shareholders demand it, so they all have a charitable component to their operations.