Today I am going to focus primarily on our class discussion we had on Thursday, regarding churches as nonprofits. This was a very interesting lecture and discussion that we had, it dug deep into the roots of what make our country. The US is such an interesting country because it holds high regard for the constitution, yet wants to progress in many ways. The dilemma now is where to draw the line. We see this in many issues of today; gun rights, immigration, and separation of church and state. The latter is what we discussed in class.
I was surprised that even though churches as tax exempt, there is no financial accountability with the government. What I mean by financially accountability is, churches do not legally have account for any of their money. This may be a problem because a person can say that they gave $100,000 to their church and get a write off. Asking for a church to have financial accountability with the government would also go against the founding principal of the US. I believe that the church does need to have accountability, but from that point where is the line drawn? If there is going to be true separation of church and state, i.e. pastors not lobbying for a political figure, then churches should not have account for their finances, as cliché as it sounds. It is such a tough issue because of the broad views and beliefs in the country.
As we discussed in class, when a church becomes a nonprofit it must follow all the regulations of a 501(c)3 organizations, but they are automatically tax exempt. This happens in order that no government regulation interferes with a churches business. This is such an interesting issue in our society. It is important to remember that many churches do provide for the needy; from soup kitchens to well drilling. No matter what religion or not, it is great to see people caring for people.
On another note…I thought the article titled “The Gospel of Wealth” was interesting. It was a very poetic article. It is somewhat difficult to summarize, it is an article about social and individual wealth and how ones decisions or actions affect everyone around them, or lack their of an action. One quote that was good can be found on page 12, it states, “Under its sway we shall have an ideal state, in which the surplus wealth of the few will become, in the best sense, the property of the many.” The article goes on to state that all the wealth in the hands of few has a much more ‘potent force for the evaluation of our race, than if distributed to all the people.’ By this the author is saying the there will more good done with all the money being used for a public service. I was confused with this section, it seems as the author is saying that wealth needs to be distributed evenly, but will do more good used as a whole. Let me know if I have this wrong with your comments.
Lastly, in the comparisons of non-profits and for profits article, I found the eight characteristics of non-profits interesting. The atmosphere of ‘scarcity’ is a characteristic I believe is very true. In non-profits, it seems as though there can also be something more; more money, more resources or more time. It is sad that organizations with a social cause are thought to be lesser organizations that cannot get funding. This is not true; non-profits are making a huge difference in the world,
All in all, this was an interesting week. I learned many things about non-profits and how they function in our society. I did do the readings in the book, I just found the church and nonprofit statuses very interesting. Hope this all makes sense.
Cheers.
Aaron, I think your analysis of Carnegie's article is correct. Large amounts of money in the hands of a few well-intentioned individuals that know how to spend the money wisely on behalf of the common public can do much more good than simply handing out that money to the individuals themselves. At first I thought that line to be counter-intuitive. Big companies have lots of money, but they use it to hand out bonus checks to their individual employees....not to great for the public good. Then I remembered that (duh!) this is a non-profit course so we're assuming that the money is in the hands of well intentioned individuals. Now, I guess, we just need to make sure well intentioned individuals like ourselves and others with aspirations of starting non-profits have the knowledge and power to earn that money and the morals to put it towards the right purpose.
ReplyDeleteThough I too believe non-profits do much good for society I think people are too quick to assume that all nonprofits are good. I'm not saying that the nonprofit organization in itself bad but the people who run it could be. My sister worked for a nonprofit in Guatemala and her boss was actually hoarding money for himself rather than giving it to people apart for the organization who really needed it. There will always be bad eggs out there..I think it's up to the board of directors to keep an organization honest in hiring the right types of people, etc...
ReplyDeleteI also found the part relating to how to distribute the money, in "The Gospels of Wealth" interesting. I think Trafton in his response explains it well also, bottom line it depends on whose hands the money is in. The wealth should be trusted with well-intentioned individuals, which the public often assumes is all non-profits, but sadly this is not always the case (as in Emma's above comment). I think this is pertains to our next assignment of researching non profits and their finances.
ReplyDeleteAaron, I think you may be a week off. The Carnegie article was for last week...
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