Gavin writes that we have to look carefully at what is happening in our sector and exhorts that the time is now to rethink what we do and how we do it.  In a nutshell he claims:

·      Few of our organizations are truly essential. (we just think they are)

·      The economic crisis for our sector is not short term

·      If we hold the course we will surely die or become even more irrelevant

He advocates that we let go of our relationship with government, that we strike a new path even if it means being lost for some time.

A pretty bleak assessment, (I agree with Gavin, thinks are pretty bleak.) except I take heart that when things are so bleak because it liberates us to get outside our box.  We are, as I explained in my article in the previous issue of the Philanthropist, part of The Invisible Public Benefit Economy, which operates parallel to the commerce economy. The public benefit economy, measures success not by how much wealth is amassed but rather by how much our common wealth is shared, preserved for future generations, or given away.  This public benefit economy is much larger than the organized nonprofit sector. Many people as we have seen time and time again are wired to help others, to work for the common good, to think beyond their own self-interest. We can't be stomped out, we have this annoying habit of resurfacing again and again.

Twenty years from now, as Gavin points out, the world will be a different place, and the nonprofit sector will have done its job if in our communities people have come together to collectively tackle the challenges we face and the commerce economy is reoriented to work for the well-being of all instead of the few.