Nonprofit Sector Monopoly on Improving Humanity Soooo Over

I'll be the first to admit that my morning journeys into the blogosphere are calculated attempts to find the rays of light that point toward new, bigger, and better philanthropy. Maybe if I looked in the same tired places I'd feel differently, but from where I sit massive change is afoot.

Perhaps the most important component of this shift comes from those who are demonstrating the power of approaches that transcend sectoral boundaries. Two crossed my desk this morning. The first was from Jacquelyn Novagratz whose Acumen Fund blog provides a real-time sense of their pioneering efforts in the Third World:

From Acumen Fund's perspective, watching ideas that were seen as crazy five years ago be instituted as more mainstream also is a reminder that change can happen. Varun Sahni , our India Country Manager, and I had a breakthrough with a reporter in India when she asked us if we were the new "Missionaries of Charity." After thinking about it, we said, that no, we were not missionaries; that the world needed to get away from a bifurcated vision that organized itself in business, government and charity. Instead, what is needed is to think about how we, as a more interconnected world, need to organize ourselves to use our resources more effectively to enable all people in society to flourish. In the 21st century, it will take new kinds of organizations that incorporate ways of reaching the poor as well as covering their costs.

The second was from Social Edge, creatively driven by Victor d'Allant, who is challenging readers to come up with an alternative to the phrase "nonprofit."

Why? Because it's humiliating to describe one's favorite universe in negative terms"It's your chance to redefine our space.

Some of this country's best and brightest are "redefining our space" in myriad ways and, while the Nonprofit Sector I have spent my life in is likely to complain newcomers don't have the "right", the horse has already left the barn on this one."

Susan Herr