We must also recognize the ways that the nonprofit sector benefits from and supports the public and private sectors. In an effort to provide a standard against which to measure both challenges and reform efforts, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, in collaboration with other funders and nonprofit colleagues, is refining a set of core principles to guide policy and action on the nonprofit sector for the new century. We hope these principles will be a useful beginning to policy makers, opinion leaders, and citizens of all political persuasions for the task of adapting the American tradition of the nonprofit sector to the challenges of our day. In a nation in which commercial interests, the profit motive, and market mechanisms play a central role, the vitality of the nonprofit sector provides an essential balance. Nonprofit organizations should reaffirm their commitment to these core values in order to continue to justify public respect and subsidy.
Nonprofit organizations take a wide variety of forms.
Some are directly involved in alleviating human suffering while others promote the advancement of knowledge or the pursuit of artistic excellence. Though a source of complexity, this diversity is also one of the great strengths of the nonprofit sector, ensuring that it can truly give expression to a range of perspectives on what constitutes the public good. We should take care to assure the diversity that gives it its special character. The nonprofit sector's support for advocacy sustains democratic discussions of policy and should be encouraged. By allowing people to join together to identify public problems and press for solutions to them, nonprofit organizations help to sustain America's constitutional traditions of association, democratic participation, and free speech.