Trends in Corporate Giving: Building Nonprofit Capacity
The nonprofit sector is a powerful force in the U.S. economy. According to the Center for Civil Society Studies at Johns Hopkins University, more than 70 million people work and volunteer in the nonprofit sector. Nonprofits employ more people than every other sector except retail and manufacturing, and their revenue accounts for nearly 10 percent of the U.S. GDP.[1] As a result, recipients and funders alike have a serious stake in a nonprofit’s ability to reach the best possible decisions, work effectively, and sustain itself over time. Nonprofits are vitally important to the health and wellbeing of the United States as we know it. And with organizations such as Guidestar tracking not only nonprofit financial data but also assessing the impact of their activities, nonprofits are under increasing pressure to deliver more, faster, and with less overhead. It’s not just the United States either: more than 1.2 million Canadians are employed in the nonprofit sector, and China has more than half a million registered nonprofits (China’s first ever charity fair took place in 2012).
