Author: Zoey Zhu
Plus One Foundation is a non-profit organization with a mission to mobilize resources to help enrich the lives of people affected by neurological diseases. As a marketing intern, I am responsible for making the grants for our clients happen. Through interactions with various stakeholders including sponsors, service providers, and clients, I learned how this kind of non-profit organization works and how stakeholders can bring influence on the organizations. However, I started to wonder why and how this kind of organization even exists in the market, and why our clients seek their treatments relying on organizations like Plus One Foundation instead of hospitals? In this essay, I will answer these questions by explaining the economics of non-profit organization in today’s market and why clients choose organization service providers instead of local hospitals.
First, I want to talk about the general understanding of non-profit organizations in economic perspectives. The mission of Plus One Foundation is “Mobilizing and maximizing resources to help enrich the lives of people who are affected by neurological diseases”. This is an essential part in the Trustworthiness Theory (Valentinov, 2008, p757). From consumer behaviors’ perspective, consumers usually cannot fully utilize their abilities to evaluate product quality, especially services like medical treatments and nursing care for people with diseases or elderly people. At this time, consumers will have tendencies to choose a non-profit organization because they would like to believe for-profit companies would have incentives to gain some opportunistic advantages which are actually from consumers’ pockets. They can get similar treatment with less money when they choose non-profit organizations. On the market side, this character of non-profit organization, showing opportunistic advantages are much lower than for-profit organizations, actually address market failures (Valentinov, 2008, p757).
I am grateful for working with the Plus One Foundation. Not only can I utilize my skill in real recruit settings, I can also give back to the community, especially people with neurological diseases. According to John Hopkins Centers for Civil Society Studies, in the Nonprofit Economic Data section, nonprofit jobs grew almost four times faster than the for-profit companies in 2019. Nonprofit employment is larger than expected and wages actually exceed for-profit wages in many fields. Non-profit organizations give people more chances to get employed and help with the employment rate (CSS from John Hopkins Center). In addition, the Economic Growth Model points out that there are indirect effects toward the growth of economics. There are positive relations between nonprofit organizations and human capitals. Nonprofit organizations also have positive effects on entrepreneurship (Bahmani, 2012, p279).
People who have neurological disorders are not only facing bad health conditions, they also need to overcome the challenges of long-term recover treatments after they get out of a hospital receiving normal medical treatment. However, the reality is 30 million people in the U.S. do not have insurance in 2019, according to CBO. The Plus One Foundation provide grants for those patients in order to reduce their economic burdens. I touched base with some of our clients who are benefiting from Plus One’s different grants. One of those clients was diagnosed with complex regional pain syndrome about four years ago. This disorder involves extreme pain and is not easy to get relief from. The only place she was able to get some relief from is the pool. She lost her job because of this illness which changed her financial situation greatly. It is a struggle for her even to get in the pool a couple times a week. In fact, many clients are like her. They do not have enough money to pay for the expensive insurance for their long-term treatments since these neurological diseases can make them lose their jobs. Some of them do not have insurance at all. Those people deserve to be treated and give their lives another chance by looking for non-profit organizations like the Plus One Foundation.
Non-profit organizations like the Plus One Foundation are reasonable to stay in the market since they help people with diseases and financial difficulties, provide jobs in the market, stimulate profits for local businesses, facilitate growth of economics, and help build reputations for sponsors.
Sources:
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Valentinov, V. (2008). The Economics of Nonprofit Organization: In Search of an Integrative Theory. Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. 42(3), pp. 745-761. Retrieved from https://www-jstor-org.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/stable/pdf/25511356.pdf
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John Hopkins Center. (2019). Nonprofit Economic Data Project. Civil Society Studies. Retrieved from: http://ccss.jhu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/NED-Factsheet_1.2019.pdf
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