To the editor:
Should a thousand flowers bloom in the charter school world? Gadfly thinks not (“No oaks needed,” December 3, 2009), and I agree. But would you extend the reasoning, as I think you should, to the nonprofit world generally?
I'm doing research on the kaleidoscopic nonprofit sector we have in the US, a sector stimulated and shaped in part by the generous tax breaks given to nonprofit organizations and their donors. The NY Times had a piece earlier this week that credited a recent report my students and I wrote: “Anything Goes: Approval of Nonprofit Status by the IRS.”
The usual line from conservative quarters is that the charitable sector is the place for a thousand flowers to bloom and that the government shouldn't be in the business of determining what counts as a worthy charity.
But then you write:
“Clearly the let-a-thousand-flowers-bloom approach is not working in American schools--and the social-justice bloom has turned into a real stinker in New York. It's not clear how many ACORN-inspired schools there are in other cities, but since the organization has offices in most every major metropolis, we'd bet there are quite a few. We're all for choice and charters, which most of these schools are. But we're also for rigorous, honest curricula and schools that impart solid American values, not revolutionary zeal.”
Substitute the word "charity" for the word "schools"--and then substitute any of the twenty organizations identified in “Anything Goes” and I think the statement still stands. Do you?
Rob Reich
Associate Professor of Political Science and Faculty Co-Director, Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society
Stanford University