To get things started here, I thought it would be a good idea to review the importance, in economic terms, of nonprofits in VA. So I’m pasting in a good part of the op ed that appeared in the RTD a while ago.
The joint report of the Johns Hopkins Nonprofit Economic Data Project, the Connect Network, and the Community Foundation serving Richmond and Central Virginia presents a clear case that nonprofits generate significant economic benefits in this state. With 31 billion dollars in revenues and 211,000 paid employees in 2005, the data show significant levels of nonprofit impact. The nonprofit sector is the second largest employer in the state, behind only retail trade in terms of numbers employed. The equivalent of another 139,000 full time workers volunteered for nonprofits.
For many of us, these are astounding facts. All-too-often we think of nonprofits as the social and economic equivalent to an organized self-help group that survives mostly on donations. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries British friendly societies did provide a mixture of recreation, ritual, fraternity and insurance for working-class men and their families.
Today, the landscape of the nonprofit world has substantially changed. It now extends to paid employment. No longer are nonprofit services provided exclusively to those who have joined a club. Instead, 31 billion dollars in revenues generated indicate that a great number of people now purchase the services of nonprofits.
So, institutions of higher education like the Jepson School of Leadership Studies and hospitals represent a significant segment of the nonprofit world today, alongside vast numbers of smaller organizations. In 2005, Virginia hospitals employed fully 35 percent of the nonprofit workforce, nursing and residential care, 11 percent, and elementary through post secondary education employed 13 percent.
What are we to conclude from the joint report? The state, the economic impact of nonprofits is strong. A major implication of this study is that nonprofits constitute a significant piece of the economic landscape. More than this: those who work in nonprofits supply services that local people need and want. In doing so, nonprofit workers acquire and use local knowledge. This suggests that there are mutual gains to be realized as that local knowledge might be shared with corporate and political leaders. Nonprofit, for-profit and government spheres within Virginia have much to learn from each other.
No doubt, nonprofits also generate "spillover" effects. They raise awareness and provide early indicators of a need (to be filled by for-profit, nonprofit or government), and developing leaders. Those who work in nonprofits identify common needs. More than this, they develop solutions.
