Abandoning the Rhetoric of Independence: Reflections on the Nonprofit Sector in the Post-Liberal Era

Abstract

This paper argues that nonprofits scholarship before 1980 was premised on unex amined assumptions about the independence of the sector from government, business, and private wealth. These assumptions shaped the direction of empirical and theoretical research into nonprofits. They also underlay public policy towards nonprofits, particularly the 1969 Tax Reform Act. Only when the Reagan admin istration proposed massive cuts in federal spending did scholars begin to appreciate the dependence of the sector on government revenue. At the same time, they became aware of the importance of other kinds of dependency. The 1969 Tax Act had, in encouraging the professionalization of nonprofits management, created conflicts between professional managers and traditional financial, governance, and consumer constituencies, which in turn raised serious questions regarding organizational dependency. From within history and the social sciences came other theoretical and empirical insights that belied the sector's assertions of independence. The paper concludes by suggesting that the rhetoric of independence be replaced by an appre ciation of the reality of dependency, by a concerted scholarly examination of organi zational interdependence, and by an understanding of the range of dependency choices organizations confront according to the services they offer and the constitu encies they serve.