Please join us for our next meeting of the Money, Markets and Governance workshop, Tomorrow (Tue, April 17th), at 5 – 6:30 PM, in classroom 401 in the Social Science Research Building.
Maoz Brown
PhD Student, Sociology, University of Chicago
The Moralization of Commercialization: Uncovering the History of Fee-Charging in the U.S. Nonprofit Human Services Sector
Discussant: Simon Shachter
PhD Student, Sociology, University of Chicago
Abstract: Recent literature on commercialization in the American nonprofit sector attributes increased reliance on fee income to neoliberal policies, often depicting this trend as an invasion of market forces that debase civil society by reducing social values and interpersonal relations to commodities and transactions. My paper challenges these beliefs by presenting historical data that have been largely ignored in recent writing. Examining a series of multi-city financial reports, I demonstrate that the U.S. nonprofit human services sector increased its fee-reliance significantly before neoliberal policy changes. Drawing on social work literature, I show that the practice of fee-charging reflected an ethos of communal inclusiveness rather than mere profit-seeking. In light of this evidence, I argue that fee-charging must be understood as a longstanding and multivalent feature of the nonprofit human services sector rather than as a recent incursion of profit-driven rationalities.
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