Nonprofit and Philanthropic Studies:  Education for What?

In closing remarks to conference participants, Raul Yzaguirre offers observations about nonprofit management education and its future.  He notes that the nonprofit sector if growing in importance and impact, so it is not surprising that higher education has taken notice by developing degrees and programs.  He acknowledges the role universities play in education and professionalizing nonprofit management and leadership.  However, he offers caution about such programs by posing a danger.  The danger is the possibility of migrating from a sector characterized by passion, citizen involvement, creativity, cause-oriented activism, and compassion with all its faults and all its messiness to one that is know for good management but sterile in ideas, lukewarm in professional detached from human suffering, and sheepishly obedient to whomever is ruling the state.  The ideal is to be both professionally competent and personally passionate, to have the management skills needed to administer programs of scale and yet the creativity to see beyond the current challenge, to care for the needy but to work for a society that does not produce victims. 

 

Yzaguirre closed by extending a challenge to the sector to ensure inclusion and a welcoming environment by embracing others and reflecting American society.

 

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Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Supplement vol. 36, no. 4, December 2007   184S-187S