The Philanthropic-Consultant Industrial Complex
Submitted by Steve on November 15, 2011
From Jan Masaoka at Blue Avocado:
In the blink of 15 years, we've gone from a time when there was hardly any nonprofit infrastructure support to one where it feels as if the infrastructure—we coined the term Philanthropic-Consultant Industrial Complex—outweighs the nonprofits doing the actual work.
Even more than the money, the philanthropic-consultant infrastructure is changing who's running the show: rather than supporting nonprofits, foundations and consultants are increasing telling nonprofits what nonprofits should be doing.
(Of course we recognize the value of infrastructure . . . Blue Avocado is even part of that infrastructure. It's the relative size and the shifting center of gravity we're concerned about here.)