The explosive growth of the sector also puts new burdens on the donors who must confront an array of choices. At first blush, to have the freedom of so many choices sounds very democratic. But it also means that competing causes must put more and more resources into marketing themselves to hold or grow in market share, which works against those organizations that may have creative programs, but do not have the resources, the name recognition, or the donor base to market themselves effectively. For the largest and best known agencies, there is also a danger. In such a competitive climate, there is a tendency to view the donor as the primary client to the detriment of the organization's traditional service constituencies.
Mission becomes the hostage of financial development.
As the United States moved from an industrial and manufacturing economy to a service-oriented economy, there was also a major move by forprofit companies into service areas historically identified with the public sector or with the nonprofit sector. It would have been unthinkable twenty years ago to imagine prisons managed by forprofit corporations. Yet today, it is a growth industry. Forprofit organizations are now major providers of social services like adoption, counseling, day care, and health care services in the home as well as acute care and long term care in hospitals and nursing homes. These changes in the service delivery system present radically different philosophies and a number of philosophical questions.