Final Post

As the term has ended I have gathered my thoughts about what I have thought about this class. PPPM 280 has been a wonderful class for me and a very helpful one for my future here at Oregon. I was just admitted into the Planning, Public Policy, and Management school this term. Therefore, I was hoping my first term of PPPM classes would give me a chance to see what the school was like within the classes. Here are my thoughts on the term itself.

I have just finished my first set of classes within the PPPM school this term. I took PPPM 280 intro to nonprofit sectors, PPPM 407 conservation and communities, and another PPPM 407 class (health policy). At the beginning of this term I had no idea what to expect from my classes because of the different variety of classes I was taking. I thought all of the teachers were nice, but they all had different ways of grading. Now since the term is over I can evaluate each class individually and find which one was the best. The best and most interesting class this term was PPPM 280.

I firmly believe the PPPM 280 was the most beneficial class this term by far and maybe even my entire career here at Oregon. Prof Choquette honestly was the best and by far the funniest professor I have had here at Oregon. He was funny when it was necessary, but serious when it was needed. The way he taught created a fun way to learn. He was a great help outside of class, and a beneficial professor in class. I can honestly say that this class will be one of the most influential classes that i take in the PPPM major because of its ,many connections it will have to life after college. I also firmly believe that for a class to be fun. engaging and worthwhile it is imperative to have a good teacher. Prof. Choquette blew past my standards of those three key elements of a good class.

Along with a great teacher it is also even better to have a knowledgeable GTF. I thought you (Sarah) were also by far the best GTF I have had so far in college. From sending me a video link to help me with my final paper, to setting up hours out of your day to help students with their final paper topic, to creating slideshows to teacher the class about other subjects correlating to nonprofit sectors like art, to getting one of the most influential speakers I have ever had in school… the list can go on. Anyways, my point is I have never had a GTF care about the students as much as you did this term for me. You honestly made it fun to do blogs, do the readings, and it was even funnier when you would swearing class and forget the time when you were presenting your presentation. This showed me a serious but fun side to you. This created an environment of desire to learn not have to learn.

This is my final post and I did not really talk about the last two weeks of class, but I felt it was more necessary to talk about my feelings as one of your students. I firmly believe that, once again, you and prof Choquette were the best team of teacher/GTF pair I have experienced i college.  I hope to see one of you, or both of you, if possible in the future. Thanks you very much for an exciting and fun term of classes.

-Sean Daly

International Nonprofit

After listening to Matt Geschke talking about his friend Shawn Tuey and the Nonprofit that they run in the U.S. and Africa was very intriguing to me. I, like Shawn Tuey, have no idea what I want to do once I am done with college here at the University of Oregon. I also had no Idea what I wanted to study once I got into college, but I am now starting to see why I chose Planning, Public Policy and Management. This speech that Matt did for our class really changed what I want to focus the rest of my time here at Oregon.

I have always been interested in sports throughout my life and I have been fortunate to be able to cooperate in local sports because of my parents. My father has always taught me no matter what the sport is and I hope to do the same for My children. I have learned so many things in the world of sports and like Matt I have been brought up to see the power of sports and the impact it can make on an individuals life. I have wanted to help children out with sports and their lives ever since I did my senior project on this type of action. After listening to Matt I have found that what he does with nonprofits is exactly what I would like to do with a career once I am done with college. I have done so many sport related camps that have shaped my life and the way I play sports today. Some of these cams include Goal-line soccer, Sky-hawks basketball, and pee wee basketball. All of these I did with my friends and I had the most fun time doing these sports activities and learning how to play these sports. I would love to transfer these feelings to other children around the world who need that push in life, because I believe that sports can help someone in need.

I feel that Matt and Shawn are very brave for spreading their message to Africa where many of the people there probably feel that two white men trying to help a country in need is not necessary. I would never think about going to another country to help out their children as most people in the U.S. would not want outsiders to change our culture. I thought like this until I heard Matt talk in our class. When he said to push for something if you want to do it I really felt motivated that I could do anything if I put my mind to it. It must be very hard to change what indigenous people believe in because one is an outsider. This is where I believe that nonprofit organizations thrive. They thrive because people want to make better internationally. Matt worked with younger Africans (6th to 7th grade) to teach them about life-skills which I believe is the best place to start. It is the best place to start because starting at a young age will lead to more beneficial actions by those people in the future. I also thought that it was very smart to set up the camps on a day to day basis. I am mainly speaking about the children needing to go to the life-skills sessions to play in the basketball game the day after. I also felt that it was important to get the townspeople involves as coaches to provide less corruption and arguments. Lastly, I found it interesting that Matt found fighting between each other was not as big as the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa. Each of these factors interest me to do more research in international nonprofits around the world.

In the end, I have found Matt’s story, and Shawn’s story even more to be some of the most intriguing stories to listen to on a standpoint of  helping the international world. I have always wanted to help children in the U.S., but after listening to Matt I believe that helping children internationally may be more interesting and more beneficial to me. This is because international countries need more help than people in the U.S., and it would also be fun to learn the culture of those who live in third world countries. Once again Matt’s speech was very helpful to me, so thank you very much for bringing him into our class Sarah!

Education and Nonprofits

Education and teachers in the my life have personally been average if not a little above average from elementary through high school. Although I have had a blast and had great teachers as people, the teaching itself was not the same. I have always gotten along with my teachers which has made my classes more interesting. I have had a somewhat beneficial schooling career with education, but I know it could have been more beneficial and  got me better prepared for college than what I was taught. I also know this is a similar problem for children around the country and there needs to be a better teaching/education systems for schooling to strive in the future.

After reading the class text to prepare this blog I recall O’Neil saying, ““In 1993-1994 the average base salary of public school teachers was $34,153, compared with $21,968 for private school teachers” (114). This caught my eye because of the discussion we had in class about The Bill Gates foundation wanting to give two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to each state in the U.S. (if wanted and they follow the guidelines) for the public and private school systems to better children’s experience in elementary through high school. I also then thought back to my experience in high school and remembered a changing moment that I am now able to compare to this  predicament our education is in. Here is what I chose to focus on for this blog. . .

When I was a senior in high school I had two teachers who seemed pretty wealthy (I didn’t think it was from teaching) and seemed very happy to teach. This lead to me asking them about their past in college and other places they had worked. One of these teachers actually went here to the University of Oregon. After talking to the first teacher I found out that he graduated with an accounting degree and was an accountant right out of college. He told me that he could not stand sitting in a cubicle in an office all day so he switched to teaching math in high school where he could incorporate being the track coach and teach children about math and what he loved… this was sports. Another teacher of mine was in a situation almost the exact same to the first teacher i talked to. He was also an accounting major that used to be an accountant, disliked it (even though he was getting a lot of money), and switched to become a teacher. The only difference between these two individuals is their age. One was 27 and the other was about 34. This to me showed that their is a wider gap in people that I know who have changed their initial job they used to work for to becoming a teacher now. To me, this was an “eye opener” to what the “real life” is like and what I want to do when I get older may change in the end.

I thought about this reading and what we, as a nation, need to do to improve the schooling for children to raise the amount of youth who make it to college and succeed without dropping out. I do not believe, for the most part, that teachers want more money. I believe this because they know the financial consequences they may be getting themselves and there family into if they work as a teacher. I was told by one of these individuals that I spoke with and he told me that he was making less than a third of the amount of money he was making as an accountant. He also told me he became a teacher and wanted to make it a career because he loved it and the money did not matter if he was doing something he loved. Therefore I believe all teachers are different in what they want, but they know the consequences financially if they become a teacher. I think the money should be going somewhere else. This could maybe be  incentives for teachers, or something that teachers (as a majority) say they want to make it more fun to teach. Personally I believe more money needs to go to the education side of this problem than to the teachers.

In conclusion, I believe this is a very conflicting discussion for people to talk about, but I also believe that it is hard to find the right people to become teachers as a career. For example I do not believe CEO’S, people managing companies, or people working for high end paying companies could become successful teachers. I believe that teaching is a “special breed” of people who have the passion to become a teacher at an early age. I hope that our nation comes together to create better teachers and a better education system, but I believe it needs to be focused on the teacher, student, and education in schools connection. If we can change the present dilemma we can change the way schooling is taught for the better.

Research Question for Final Paper

Compare and contrast Carnegie’s Gospel of Wealth to the work of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

RQ:Does Carnegie’s Gospel of Wealth compare to the actions of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation today and what are the benefits that both people/organizations of their time?

Resources: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Pages/home.aspx

-this is the main website to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation where I will find the basic information about foundation, ther statistics, their motive, there goals and accomplishments. . .

http://www.thegatesnotes.com/Conversations/specialfeature.aspx?id=85&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1

-this is a video about Bill Gates and Capitalism which will help me compare to the Gospel of Wealth by Carnegie. . . thank you for this video Sarah!!!

Environmental Nonprofits

Environmental nonprofit organizations are a vast majority of the entire nonprofit sector itself. Not only in the money they support to the environment, but also for the benefit of the environment and its future. Answering your question Sarah, I do think it is very strange that O’Neill did not incorporate an environmental chapter in his book. It seems as if it would be an obvious and necessary part of the nonprofit sector because there are 27,000 environmental nonprofits that brought in six percent of the 42.9 billion dollars given away by nonprofit organizations in 2009. Although this is not as much as other nonprofits bring in it is certainly a substantial amount in the end.

After reading the two reading for this week about environmental nonprofit sectors I realized even more about why these organizations, along with why the environment we live in is so sacred and we must realize its value in the near future if we want it to thrive. Almost everyday I hear about someone helping the environment, or someone hurting it, and after reading Paul Hawken’s commencement speech I actually felt more responsible to slow down things that I do that hurt the earth. This varies from recycling, to conserving energy, not to liter, etc. As I have grown to become a more mature I have noticed that I have become more hesitant about hurting the environment and I have become more mature about my actions. The way Hawken speaks about the environment using connecting quotes from others in the past, the writing develops into an inspirational reading. He uses correlational quotes that show his meaning and what we need to do as a community.

These two readings also reminded me of another one of my classes and my focus within my major. First off, as a child I did not respect the environment and seemed to not care. And now many years later I am a Planning, Public Policy and Management major with a focus in environmental aspects. If someone would have asked me what I wanted to do in college at age eight I would have never said anything near what I am studying at the University of Oregon. I have always wanted to go to the University of Oregon, but now that I have seen the “green” aspects in Eugene I guess I have changed as a person. I am now enrolled in another PPPM class called conservation and communities, which I enjoy very much and I love that I can make a connection from this class to that class. I did not realize the similarities between the two until these readings and week seven of this class. I have been confused about my future here at the University of Oregon, but now I feel like I can create more similarities in what I am studying and which direction I am heading because of my first term of all PPPM classes.

I believe that environmental nonprofits are some of the most important nonprofit organizations, if not THE most Important aspect of nonprofits because of the reasons stated within this blog. Because I believe that environmental aspects are very crucial to our world today I find it incredibly confusing as to why O’Neill did not add anything relating to environments in his novel. Environmental concerns should be at a high point in people’s lives because of the damage we have done to this earth. There is a need for change in the right direction if have the desire to create a more beneficial and more benefitted environment.

Health Care

Health care is a very difficult discussion for people in the United States. We have added a new health policy under Obama that is controversial to some people, but is is essential to others. I believe that his new health policy may cause more problems in the end because of the adding of more people to medicare and medicaid. This also causes problems for families who are making the exact amount of money near the benchmark that year but are still paying the same as higher income citizens.

Nonprofit health organizations are adding a large portion of the money that goes into health care. According to our class text, “In 1997… nonprofit health organizations had $385 billion in revenue, $461 billion in assets, and 5 million employees” (O’Neil 91). This is a massive amount of money and will help stabilize our health care financial status, but there are still holes in the amount of money needed for proper health care in the U.S. Health care is so huge that it amounts to one seventh of the nations economy which is a lot of money which our nation does not have available. Our nation is greatly in debt and there is no promise in the near future that our economy/debt will be getting any better. This causes a problem to our economists and the government of the U.S. because we are pushing our debt to higher amounts which hurts the outlook of our nation to our peers and our well-being. Therefore without the help of nonprofit health organizations our health care system will become even worse. I firmly believe that if we put our health care system in the control of our government and for profit organizations this will drive health care into the ground for all individuals. Our nonprofit organizations in health need to be relied on for a beneficial outcome for our nation’s health care system.

I was frustrated when the new health care reform was passed because I do not think our health care system is in great shape right now, and to add 30 million more people to something that cannot support it will not be beneficial in the end. I believe that this “reform” is not a reform because of the amount of people it helps, but also hurts and the “money that will be saved” is not being saved because the same amount will be coming back federally. There are some people saying that this bill will hurt the deficit we are in now, and others like obama say it will be beneficial and help the deficit we have placed our nation in. I believe after seeing the facts that this bill will hurt our nation’s deficit even more. Although it is too early to make a conclusion to what the outcome will be, from what our nation’s history has seen I believe it will hurt us i the end.

Here is a detailed analysis of what I believe in.

http://healthpolicyandmarket.blogspot.com/2008/03/detailed-analysis-of-barack-obamas.html

This provides support to why the reform will not work in the end, and gives facts about the reform itself.

This deficit we have placed ourself in may get worse, but may get better in the future depending on our actions as a nation. I obviously do not support the reform, but I have not seen it in affect long enough to make a conclusion about how the bill has affected the people in the U.S. In the end, I believe that we must rely on nonprofit organizations (not only the government and for profit companies) because of its immense addition financially to health care in the U.S. If we do not correlate all of these necessary attributes for our economy it may become worse in the near future.

Religion and Social Services

I have been pleased with the class material and how it has correlated to the reading each week. So far I have learned a lot about nonprofit sectors because i did not have a lot of knowledge in nonprofit programs before this class. I have had the basic knowledge a person could have in the subject and I hope to learn more about what it means to be a nonprofit organization and the types of goals of the many different organizations. I also would like to learn more about the history of nonprofit sectors because so far its history has been the most changing and most intriguing to me.

In class we have learned a lot about the history of nonprofit organizations. The most interesting part of its history is the amount of money that has grown from the beginning until now. for example: in 1970 nonprofit sectors received 21 billion dollars, in 1980 they received 48.6 billion dollars, in 1990 they received 101.4 billion dollars, and in 2000 they received 203.5 billion dollars. With the data shown every ten years, nonprofit programs have doubled the amount of money donated to them and in most cases it more than doubled. This shows the amount of money donated to people or other things that are known to need money. Along with the amount of money, another correlation is the amount of nonprofit organizations that have started from year to year. In 1956, 5,373 programs were created for nonprofit sectors. In 2000 there were 67,267 nonprofit sectors in the U.S. Although some years there were less programs than the year before, but the stats are astonishing and are on the rise for the future. These stats alone for the history are amazing for the people in need and provide opportunities for people to work or volunteer in these programs.

Religious nonprofit sectors have the highest amount of money donated through the program. It has dominated in the past and still dominates. According to the AAFRC in 2000 religious nonprofit organizations donated 74 billion dollars alone. Also it was interesting to know that 85-90 percent of the money earned was from donations. Another intriguing fact is that non Catholics gave an average of 549 dollars per person and Catholics gave 275 dollars (half that of non Catholics). These numbers may not seem a lot for people throughout the year, but if it adds to 74 billion dollars it is obviously beneficial and shows the amount of people attending churches. Religious organizations are not required to submit financial reports to their members. Although some do they do not have to. These stats are vast for nonprofit sectors and will hopefully show more money made in the future, or reveal other developing programs to gain more money for the needy to compete with churches.

Social services are services for people in need. Social services are small but serve a lot of people in their own way. For example, Goodwill has employed and trained 375,000 disabled people, welfare recipients, and ex-prisoners and their alumni made  earned 900 million dollars. This is an amazing amount of people who need help and got help while making money in the end. I believe that Goodwill is changing the way people look at disabled individuals which is more appealing and helpful to everyone involved. I love that social services give to millions of individuals and families in need. I believe in the helpful actions to the most troubled citizens in the world and I hope that the government and other foundations keep donating to people in need for a happier world full of happier people because of social services.

So far I have seen the “good ” part of nonprofit sectors. I know there are repercussions in one way or another with nonprofit sectors, but after the readings I have not seen any parts where I need to be critical in these situations yet. Once I see that opportunity to be more critical I will be. With this class I hope to gain more knowledge in nonprofit sectors while also being critical to nonprofit organizations and the social services along with donations that come with both. If I can gain this knowledge about these nonprofit programs, become more critical, and become more intelligent about the subject I believe I will become a better person in the end which is my goal.

Hello world! PPPM 280 – Nonprofit Sectors.

     My name is Sean Daly And I am a soon to be Planning, Public Policy, and Management major. I used t be a pre-business major but that was not working out for me so i recently transferred to the PPPM school. I love the outdoors and getting involved in the communities that I live in. I also love sports, video games, and hanging out with my friends. My friends and family have been supportive of me throughout my life especially when it comes to work and sports. I was on the football team here at Oregon last year and learned a lot about coaching and teamwork. Sports have thrived in my life and it is the place where I have worked for nonprofit organizations. My only experience with nonprofit organizations is through my high school basketball team in Vancouver, Washington. We helped a place called the Share house where multiple times I helped give food to the homeless during the holiday season. I hope to learn more about nonprofit organizations in this class for future reference. 

     This is my first PPPM class and so far I feel that it is the best class I could have done first. I think the class presentations and slides correlate perfectly to what I want to learn in the PPPM industry. So far we have touched on the history of nonprofit organizations which I had no idea about the immense profitability of these nonprofit organizations around the world. I have learned more about nonprofit sectors in this class than I have ever learned in my life. This is somewhat obvious because that is what this class is supposed to be about, but I feel learning this material will benefit me greatly once I am out of college and still in college. I hope to learn more about the history because of its intriguing message and the profit that can be made if done properly. In my blogs I hope to read about more interesting topics within nonprofit sectors. All of my blogs will pertain to the material learned in class and how it can be applied for better learning in the readings each week. each week I hope to be engaged in the class material, but to do so I will need to read and re-read for more knowledge pertaining to nonprofit sectors around the world. 

     The first weeks readings ( chapters one and two) in the book Nonprofit Nation by Michael O’Neill, O’Neill talks about the worldly statistics of nonprofit organizations. The statistics he speaks about are stats on prices of nonprofit sectors, economic status over the years, and the history of the amount of nonprofit organizations in the U.S. the amount of nonprofit organizations doubled and tripled over the last one hundred years. I had no idea of the prevalence of these organizations in the world. I knew there were a lot but not as many as there are today. I have also found out that the state of oregon has one of the highest amounts of nonprofit sectors compared to other states in the U.S. We may not receive the most money, but we have close to the most organizations. The amount of money made by religious, social services, health, education, and many more show me the direction of nonprofit sectors and the trend over the past one hundred years shows that the money made in this industry is immense! I hope to learn a lot more in this industry through the class and the readings.