In this week’s reading, “Striving for transformative change at the Stuart Foundation”, another kind of nonprofit organization, Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP), whose mission is to measure the nonprofit organizations' funders’ performances, is introduced.
So for the three parties, funders, providers, and beneficiaries, who are involved in the nonprofit service, two are being measured. We develop organizations like Charity Navigator to assess the performance of the providers. And we also have CEP to assess the performance of the funders. So is there a need to assess the beneficiaries?
There are so many groups of people crying for help in our world. However, which group is the most urgent? Is it people in the poorest part on the earth planet who are not getting enough food and clothes, not to mention medical care, or the people who just lost their home and family, like the victims in the recent tsunami that recently happened in Japan, or the people who just lost their job and house, and are having nerve breakdown? How should nonprofit organizations pick their beneficiaries? Can there be an objective standard to differentiate the level of urgency, and will it cause social disputes?
By nature, standardization is not a fair. It pains many of us to weigh the interests of one needy individual against another. This creates a moral conflict, almost like choosing a favorite family member. I do not believe that there is an objective standard by which we can make such determinations. Unfortunately, given limited resources, this is what organizations and funders attempt to do all the time. They must make decisions, whether popular or not, to support specific causes.
ReplyDeleteConceivably, this is the best we can do as of 2011, as it demonstrates the confines of our institutions. Our conventions and social systems require significant renovation since we may argue that there are in fact sufficient resources for all, albeit they are unevenly distributed. Hopefully, tomorrow will bring a more balanced world.