Is charity dead? ("We are all beggars now")

Phil Cubeta echoes Julia Moulden's call to open your heart and let him come inside... just for a little while, long enough to get warm again

Thus spake Phil Cubeta, waxing eloquently here:
http://www.gifthub.org/2009/05/is-charity-dead.html

Now that all our games are up and the war against poverty is proclaimed unending, where shall we go? hands out, shoes un-soled, heads bare? from whose table shall we scrape a scrap? will we dine on dreams again, or shall our cup be filled once more? our lips are chapped, our limbs weak. what vision does this final fortune cookie hold for me, beggar to the stars?

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Non-Nonprofit Blog

I will be the first to say that the last thing that we need in this world is another blog.

But here's an idea for one that I hope someone starts:

Non-Nonprofit Blog
Where margins feed missions

I did not come up with this idea, of course. I credit Robert Egger with V3 Campaign with being the most vocal advocate for the idea that "nonprofit is a tax status. We are businesses."

Why do we define ourselves by what we are not (i.e. "not-for-profit")? Is simply not making money our goal, or are we here to achieve something?

Incidentally, www.nonnonprofit.com and .org is currently available.

We need more conversation about the financing model that we use as "non-profits." We need to consider ways to change our vocabulary so that we think of ourselves as social enterprises . . . or, as I am tending to say, mission-based organizations.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

What should we call ourselves?

• Nonprofits?
• Social Enterprises?
• Mission-based organizations?
• Care-based organizations (thanks to George Ellis and the Dallas Social Venture Partners for this one)?
• Community-based organizations?
• Non-governmental organizations (NGOs)?
• Charities?
• Philanthropies?
• Pinko commies?
• Loony bins?