Nonprofits Quotes

Associations must evolve if they are to survive into the future. ~ Omer Soker

I basically believe the medical insurance industry should be nonprofit, not profit-making. There is no way a health reform plan will work when it is implemented by an industry that seeks to return money to shareholders instead of using that money to provide health care. ~ Dianne Feinstein

Today the Internet is run by private sector interests within the United States under the supervision of a nonprofit entity formed by the U.S. Department of Commerce. ~ Robin Hayes

Only liberal organizations are clearly designated [in the press] as "nonpatisan, nonprofit." Non-liberal research organizations are always identified as "right-wing" or "conservative." ~ Irving Kristol

Look inward for solutions to your greatest challenges. ~ Omer Soker

I cannot belong to a nonprofit organization because when you receive grants, you have to make such great compromises with your artistic plans. ~ Mikhail Baryshnikov

Centralized sounds good ... but the reality is that the National Guard and Army don't have the kind of ties with local organizations that ultimately deliver lots of service, your nonprofits, churches, humanitarian organizations. Those types of linkages get built up over time, in local communities. ~ Peter May

Lack of resources (payroll), time and competing priorities are why so many nonprofits haven't done well. It's that simple. ~ Seth Godin

Evidence is mounting that faith-based service programs are often more successful than other programs in correcting social problems. [It is wrong] for government to demand that religious nonprofits gut precisely that part of their program [funded through tax dollars] that makes them so effective. ~ Ronald J. Sider

Mac [Barnett ] and I have been friends for more than ten years. We met working at an educational nonprofit. And we have been pranking each other the whole time. It's our own version of a prank war. We thought we would channel some of that energy into writing a book. ~ Jory John

There are so many local nonprofits making a positive impact every day, and yet, oftentimes we don't hear enough about them or their needs. ~ Sylvia Mathews Burwell

The [nonprofit] sector enhances our creativity, enlivens our communities, nurtures individual responsibility, stirs life at the grassroots, and reminds us that we were born free. ~ John W. Gardner

After graduating, I'd moved to the Washington D.C. area to see what I could do with the skills I'd picked up from a creative writing degree. The chief export of the nation's capital is, of course, paper work, so I reckoned I could land some kind of writing or editing position at one of the many nonprofits and associations in the area. ~ Jeff Deck

The real development I've seen of people in organizations, especially in big ones, comes from their being volunteers in a nonprofit organization - where you have responsibility, you see results, and you quickly learn what your values are. There is no better way to understand your strengths and discover where you belong than to volunteer in a nonprofit. That is probably the great opportunity for the social sector - and especially in its relationship to business. ~ Peter Drucker

Philanthropy Advantage provides the best nonprofit business consulting in Kansas city, USA. As a leading Microsoft Dynamic CRM consultant in the Kansas city, we are specialized in providing high end MS CRM solutions for Nonprofit and foundations. ~ Matthew Walker

While other industries have suffered, the nonprofit arts world continues to build in strength while it encourages the growth of innumerable small businesses on its periphery, thereby creating more jobs. ~ Louise Slaughter

Music is a language and different people who come along are each using that language to do something different, but all coming at it in a similar vein inasmuch as it's always community based and for the most part nonprofit. Most bands don't ever come within a mile of profit - clearly these people are not playing music to make money. ~ Ian MacKaye

The spread of online information isn't just good for charities. It's also good for donors. You can go to a site like Charity Navigator, which evaluates nonprofits on their financial health as well as the amount of information they share about their work. ~ Bill Gates

I am involved in a lot of nonprofits. And when I reached the ripe old age of 60, I wanted to provide leadership to some I had been involved in. ~ David Rubenstein

The received wisdom in advanced capitalist societies is that there still exists an organic "civil society sector" in which institutions form autonomously and come together to manifest the interests and will of citizens. The fable has it that the boundaries of this sector are respected by actors from government and the "private sector," leaving a safe space for NGOs and nonprofits to advocate for things like human rights, free speech, and accountable government.


This sounds like a great idea. But if it was ever true, it has not been for decades. Since at least the 1970s, authentic actors like unions and churches have folded under a sustained assault by free-market statism, transforming "civil society" into a buyer's market for political factions and corporate interests looking to exert influence at arm's length. The last forty years have seen a huge proliferation of think tanks and political NGOs whose purpose, beneath all the verbiage, is to execute political agendas by proxy. ~ Julian Assange

I wondered if I was just doing this as some kind of ego trip. Then I decided I didn't care. Not enough is made of the fact that being of service makes you feel good. I think nonprofits should guarantee that giving your time and money makes your skin better and your ass smaller. Why not? There are so many people in the world with so little. Who cares why you decide to help? ~ Amy Poehler

People assume Wall Street is a certain culture and tech is a certain culture. But if you look at the (gender) numbers at the top of (those) industries, they don't vary very much. I think in finance, women hold 19 percent of the top jobs, and women are 21 percent of the leaders in nonprofits. ~ Sheryl Sandberg

Create and communicate absolute clarity of purpose. ~ Omer Soker

One sad consequence of this is that people don't feel permitted to try understand Internet infrastructure, so I'm really grateful to groups like Free Press and other nonprofits who are trying to make the issue urgent and comprehensible. And Andre Blum's book Tubes is great on this topic. ~ Astra Taylor

The number of great museums and nonprofits versus the number of corporate headquarters is incredibly out of whack. ~ Richard Stengel

In geometry, as in nature, the circle is the archetypal shape of wholeness and inclusion. It is an effective shape for nonprofits or community-focused efforts. ~ Maggie Macnab

Nonprofit status is what created the Bible Belt. The tax code brought religion back to this country. ~ Gore Vidal

Perhaps your quest to be part of building something great will not fall in your business life. But find it somewhere. If not in corporate life, then perhaps in making your church great. If not there, then perhaps a nonprofit, or a community organization, or a class you teach. Get involved in something that you care so much about that you want to make it the greatest it can possibly be, not because of what you will get, but just because it can be done. ~ James C. Collins

I'm going to do some consulting for nonprofits and arts agencies. These are areas I'm interested in that didn't come directly out of Harvard, but certainly I started looking at things in a different manner. ~ Damian Woetzel

I've just always loved animals. So I've often thought that if I weren't a writer I'd work for some nonprofit organization that does something positive for animals. ~ Cate Marvin

The most abundant resources that we possess amongst the 1.5 million nonprofits in the United States are passion and knowledge, yet our most scarce resource is collaboration. ~ Adam Braun

But the improvements will happen faster and last longer if we can channel market forces, including innovation that's tailored to the needs of the poorest, to complement what governments and nonprofits do. We need a system that draws in innovators and businesses in a far better way than we do today. ~ Bill Gates

Do you know how many houses all of the nonprofits have built? No more than 5,000 in five years. Do you know how many we lost? Two hundred thousand. ~ Mary Landrieu

I created my foundation as a result of that and my website, and I try to shed some light on some very topical issues right now. The idea is to try to get people to become obviously more knowledgeable about the issue and try to get corporations and individuals to contribute to these nonprofit organizations. ~ Leonardo DiCaprio

I honor businesses for what they do, I honor nonprofits for what they do, I honor government for what it does, and then I invite everyone to the table so that together we can come up with innovative and broad-based solutions that can serve as many people as possible. The fewer or less diverse voices you invite to the table, the smaller and narrower your solution will be and the fewer people it will serve. ~ Bernie Glassman

One of my frustrations is that we in society generally have this bifurcation in how we see the world. That's probably a little less true with business audiences, but in general, there tends to be this view that for-profit companies are greedy, and nonprofits are noble. It's absolutely more complicated than that. ~ Nicholas Kristof

So for a long time, I did a lot of freelance writing in addition to writing fiction and such - I was a food critic for a magazine for a bit, I did writing for nonprofits and political things, I was the editorial consultant for another magazine for a couple years, all sorts of jobs. ~ Tod Goldberg

If college admissions officers are going to encourage kids to take the same AP math class, why not statistics? Almost every career (whether in business, nonprofits, academics, law, or medicine benefits from proficiency in statistics. Being an informed, responsible citizen requires a sound knowledge of statistics, as politicians, reporters, and bloggers all rely on "data" to justify positions. [p.98] ~ Tony Wagner

Remember, no one can make you feel inferior without being related to you and repeatedly questioning why you're in nonprofit. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt