SWPS Responses DB. Week 8

Student 1. Donna Saunders

Originally, nonprofit organizations were established to fulfill a void that government and private business were not willing to cover: providing services for the underserved population.  I agree that the partnering of nonprofits organizations and businesses may have started out as a positive concept to assist the nonprofit in sustaining their finances.

However, there are certain financial rules that nonprofits must follow. In particular, nonprofits are allowed to make a profit, but are legally bound not to allocate profited funds to the owners; instead, the profits have to be used to support of the operation of the agency. Had the partnerships between nonprofits and businesses maintained their legal boundaries, it would have been a great. Unfortunately, this has not been the case.

 

It appears that there has become an overlap of interests, and these legal lines have been blurred. Therefore, the mission of the non-profit to help people in need has been diminished.  It has been my experience that a non-profit agency, of which I had been employed, had helped numerous clients but at some point, less and less progress was apparent. It appeared to me that the clients were just being held on long-term bases. They were not being allowed to achieve their goals. As a result, the client failed to meet the requested criteria, so an audit took place. Following the investigation, people were released from executive positions, several were arrested, and there was a reorganization of the agency.

 

Whether or not that there is a difference in strengthening society and social work, depends on the way it is viewed. Social work has several levels: Micro, Mezzo and Macro. Micro the most common and is based on direct care of individual and family’s problems. Mezzo serves to assist with problems in small groups, such as families and communities. Finally, Macro is on a large scale, which not only deals with communities, but also states and countries, and aims to change of rules, regulations, and policies of that region. A major responsibility of social work is to service the people of society with enhancements, strength building tools for improved life.  According to Eikenberry It’s important that the managers and nonprofits team up to establish a method that will allow the organization to profit financially but lose its priorities to provide services to those individuals, families and communities in need, rather than promote competition (pg. 137)

 

Student 2. Tameeka Murphy 

Growing partnerships between nonprofits and businesses may serve to keep non profits executives from addressing the underlying social issues. Nonprofit organizations were established to provide services for individuals, families and communities while the mission of businesses is meeting specific quotas and making a profit. When the two entities merge the quality of services that are supposed to be provided are now downgraded.  In the article "Privatization in the Human Services" article it states that when non profit agencies begin working with businesses it reduces the comprehensiveness or inclusiveness of services provided.(Abramovitz & Zelnick, 2015). For example, within my agency they are big on smoking cessations and how many conversations we are having with the clients about the effects of smoking. Many of the clients do not want to talk about the bad behavior such as smoking but yet as direct service staff we need to engage our clients with this because if not we can lose funding for not engaging clients in smoking cessations conversations hen clearly they are not interested.

I believe that there is a difference between strengthening society and providing social services. Strengthening society is where all members (politicians, businesses, corporations, non profits organizations, for profit organizations etc) come together and help all in society especially the people in society who are under served with education, housing, etc. Strengthening society would be on all levels(macro, micro and mezzo). Providing social services is on a mezzo level. The services provided by social services is very minimal. Social services should consider doing more strengthening the society than providing social services because it goes beyond providing social services which are incorporated in strengthening society.