Not everyone in Beijing right now is there to marvel at Michael Phelps. As MSNBC reported the other day, a healthy nonprofit enterprise has sprung up at the Games, with a plethora of Olympic pin collectors set up outside the Beijing Exhibition Center to obtain as many pins as they can through “barter, exchange and trade.” One Canadian collector, who claims to have 40,000 to 50,000 pins in his portfolio, noted that he wasn’t in it for the money: “I could sell [pins] for a couple hundred bucks,” he said. “But I spent thousands to come here. That’s not what it’s about.” Sounds like a pretty mission-oriented activity to me. | 501(c) [Read more]

A very visible, if somewhat basic, call to arms. | The Huffington Post The sad state of nonprofit jargon. | The Chronicle of Philanthropy New Jersey’s Blue opts to turn green. | NJBIZ It’s wicked easy to subscribe to 501(c) Files feeds: Just click here and follow the simple instructions. As always, thanks for reading! | 501(c) [Read more]

The notion among the general public that nonprofits should be able to operate successfully while maintaining absolutely bare-bones operations is not only annoying, says a California SPCA official, it is also dangerous. Writing in the Palm Springs Desert Sun, Fred Saunders offers a very cogent reason why: These are misconceptions that hinder the growth of the organization and become obstacles to achievement of the organization’s mission. The nonprofit organization must be run as if it were a serious business if it is to be successful and continue to exist in a competitive market. To do this, the notion that a nonprofit group should not make a profit needs to be dispelled. Saunders goes on to conduct that dispelling with five points that... [Read more]

Here in the Philadelphia region, where I live, six of the area’s top 10 employers are nonprofits, and a staggering 27 percent of city employees work for nonprofits. Great news for the sector, right? Well, that depends on how well the sector’s doing here. As the Philadelphia Inquirer reported yesterday, the Philadelphia Foundation “is commissioning a study to benchmark the state of nonprofits in Philadelphia and its four neighboring Pennsylvania counties.” It has tapped the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia to catalog and group the members of our nonprofit world, examine their finances and funding sources, and compare them with their peers. The foundation will spend $100,000 on the first phase of the study. An Economy... [Read more]

The world’s most unlikely nonprofit, the National Football League, is blitzing against new IRS regulations that would require it and other NPs to reveal on their Form 990 filings the salaries of way more key personnel than it currently does. The NFL is asking Congress to allow it to keep secret the names of its executives, with the exception of the league commissioner, who earn more than $150,000 annually. Joe Browne, the N.F.L.’s executive vice president for communications and public affairs, said league lobbyists had not yet found a Congressional sponsor for their proposal. “I’ve been here 40 years,” Browne said. “I finally get to the point where I’m making 150 grand, and they want to put my name and address on the form so... [Read more]