Essay 4 Ideas

For this essay, I want to write about the positives and negatives of nonprofit organizations. Several nonprofit groups help a lot of people that aren't able to help themselves. They can provide food or care for special-needs groupds; sometimes they can provide monetary funds or skilled volunteers to raise awareness. But there's also a flipside to this argument. Many nonprofits in the last decade have been exposed for misappropriation of funds, using their organizations as pass-through devices to make money or filter profits from other companies, and paying outrageous salaries to friends or family members.

The state of Texas has different governing bodies and auditors for different types of nonprofits; for example, a foster care program would be overseen by the Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services, whereas the Bay Area SPCA would be handled by a more general office like the Secretary of the State of Texas. These governing bodies are, as you can imagine, inundated with work and unable to keep a good handle on each and every nonprofit. Sometimes, nonprofits get out of hand simply because the person who started their own doesn't have a good handle on rules and reporting expectations. Sometimes the answer is a little more sinister since nonprofits are relatively easy to launch.

My position on this essay is that nonprofits are generally good, but there should be resources and support for the officers and directors of these groups that are easy to access. It woud be wonderful to develop a better system for the state to effectively track these groups, but we are a long way off from that. Once the red tape is minimized, state agencies will be able to regulate more efficiently. As things stand now, offending nonprofits typically don't find out they've done anything wrong until several months (in some cases, years) after the fact.