For instance, many social-service providers have nonprofit status yet contract with government to carry out programs with taxpayer dollars. Defending their right to be publicly supported, they protest when Members of Congress try to prevent them from lobbying for revenue. Management reform is not an adequate answer for what ails them. Some organizations like hospitals and insurers have concluded that they can't achieve management reforms as nonprofits. Their answer is to convert to for-profit status where the incentive for investment and profit produces more services at less cost.
News reports suggest the same trend is beginning at many university centers and departments.
These institutions of higher learning are selling or licensing scientific research to private businesses, despite faculty protests, because they find the discipline of the market benefits their organizations as well as the greater good. Perhaps their tax status also needs to be reconsidered. Churches and charities with a spiritual and social mission may rightly regard broad-based management tools as an unwelcome intrusion. So should colleges dedicated to the liberal arts. Perhaps these nonprofits can't or shouldn't be made to work in the ways Light describes.