2nd Post

Before even reading chapter 3 I presumed that religion was a major factor in the nonprofit sector and the information in this chapter did nothing but reinforce this presumption. Religion is a fundamental part of everyday life. This is why I wasn’t surprised to find that the United States is among the most religious of the developed nations. It seems that no matter where you go, the presence of religious is always felt. Whether be a small town church, or religious influences being played out in politics you can see how much of a factor religion is in our society. Having said this, I was still fairly surprised at just how widespread truly is after looking at the statistics. I knew there were a lot of different churches, but 365,000 (the number of churches in America) is quite a staggering number. This obviously would coincide with a high rate of religious affiliation, which I once again expected but did not anticipate the statistics given in the book. 70 percent of people in America were reported to have claimed to attend yearly and 40 percent claim they go to church every week. When I think about all of the people I know, I would definitely say that these numbers would be a lot lower. Obviously this has a lot to do with the culture surrounding the area I grew up in, but it really puts things into perspective as to just how big religion is in America. Religion seems to be somewhat of a separate entity from the rest of the nonprofit sector. It seems to play a very vital role in charitable activities yet its purpose is not solely to provide for these types of services. Most other nonprofit organizations focus on a specific or several specific areas while religious organizations will make contributions in all areas to some extent. This makes religion very influential, and, in my opinion, maybe too influential. The intertwining of church and state, in my opinion, hinders our political system and should avoid interrelations.

Social services are usually the first thing to come to my when thinking about nonprofit’s. They are extremely necessary components that help to keep our society afloat. The charitable contributions of social service npo’s simply could not be matched by the government which is probably why they provide, “by far the dominant source of nonprofit social service revenue”. As I alluded to earlier, it seems as if religious organizations and social service npo’s are quite interrelated as they often work together to achieve similar goals. All in all it comes down to creating a better society by helping those in need. The continuance of the government’s large role in funding these organizations will be vital in keeping the status quo. It will be interesting to see what kind of shifts in government funding will take place in the future. Will these organizations become more self dependent if the government is forced to cut back funding? Will we see an increase in for profit activities within npo’s? This could cause problems in the business climate as they are known to have some unfair advantages over private businesses doing similar activities. No matter what the future holds, social service nonprofit organizations will continue to be a major factor in our society, as they have been for decades.