A National Imperative: Joining Forces to Strengthen Human Services in America (Jan 2018)

ROADBLOCK: MISTAKEN BELIEFS ABOUT HUMAN SERVICES CBOS

CHALLENGE #5 How to build trust among the players in the human services ecosystem? How to build trust in the transformative potential of the human services ecosystem, and CBOs in particular? For-profit corporations work toward clear outcomes: create profit and deliver shareholder value. Corporations that don’t do this don’t survive for long– investors cut themoff, they go bankrupt or competitors take them over. The human services ecosystem exists in the form that it does in part because themarket for its services is not economically viable, and the value that its services provide are not readily reflected in a single, simple financial metric like profit or shareholder value. For many observers, particularly those not directly involved in the human services ecosystem, the belief that “profit is good and lack of profit is bad” leads to a negative bias regarding “nonprofit” CBOs: profits reflect value-creation therefore “nonprofits” are not valuable. (Many in the sector, sensitive to these misperceptions, have questioned the continued use of the terms “charity” and “nonprofit.” This was a consideration in our decision to use the termhuman services “CBO” in this report.) • • Funding for human services CBOs are handouts for the poor (rather than valuable investments with real social and economic impacts for the broader community). • • CBO staff do not typically work as hard as private sector employees because they aren’t working for “real” businesses. • • CBOs are simply pass-through vehicles designed to funnel donations to end recipients at minimum cost. • • CBOs are generally not well-managed. Among members of the public who do not hold specific negative views of CBOs, there is commonly a lack of understanding and appreciation for CBOs’ role and value. Unfortunately, restrictions that require CBO funding to be used for direct programmatic expenses, and limit resources for corporate marketing and communications functions, hobble CBOs’ ability to address these misperceptions head-on. Variations on this belief are that:

“Society fails to consider the true societal value of the services provided by human services CBOs, rather than just the monetary costs”

– Human services CBO CEO, Minnesota

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