Page 24 - midJersey Business - July/August 2015

array of ways businesses are en-

gaging in broader environmental
and social goods that it wasn’t in

the past. So now we’ve got this
brave, new world and this world

is one in which the lines between
those three sectors are blurring,

where some businesses are put-
ting together non-proit arms, and

non-proits are putting together
for-proit arms, and it’s an inter-

esting generational sea change.”
The non-proit sector is not

taking this inancial squeeze sit-

ting down. There are still serious
problems to ix in society and

serious people required to solve
them. So instead of rolling with

the punches that the nation’s
changing economy is throwing at

non-proits, some have changed
the rules, the jargon, and the

game altogether in an efort to
spawn a new era of change.

It’s called social proit, and
it’s the future of the non-proit

sector.

T
A NEW CONVERSATION
According to the Chronicle of Phi-

he non-proit “Government is no longer lanthropy, the term “non-proit”
business isn’t capable of doing the things it should be vaporized, retired, and

what it used to used to do and that’s true at the never used again. It’s simply not
be. And it may local, state, and federal level,” relevant anymore; it’s not repre-

never be again.
says Marty Johnson, the founder, sentative of the type of work being
This is true president, and CEO of Isles Inc., done by forward-thinking, altruis-

because of a double-barreled set
a self-help, urban green develop- tic organizations. It’s really nothing

of recession-borne circumstances ment organization in Trenton. more than a tax designation.
that have seen both government “So you’re seeing a lot of shrink- “So it’s important that we use

funding slip and charitable giving age there. There is divestment in language that is more appropriate
slump since the salad days of 2007 the public sector.”
to that, which is how the social

when non-proits raked in more Former Senator Bill Bradley
proit label came to be coined,”
than $344 billion in donations.
is credited with the idea that Johnson says. “We don’t deine

Take a look around and it’s easy government and the marketplace ourselves by what we are not. We
to see government agencies cutting are like two legs of a three-legged deine ourselves by what we are

back wherever possible. Just look stool. Without the third leg— and that means creating proits
at the number of cops on patrol in non-proit organizations—the that the social side and environ-

Trenton or the funding making its stool is not stable and cannot mental side of life are going to
way to city schools. According to provide support for a healthy directly beneit from. They are not

the Indiana University Lilly Family American economy.
proits that are being taken by an
School of Philanthropy, public
“Businesses are increasingly individual. They are proits taken

and private generosity may not co-branding with broader public by a community or a region.”
reach pre-recession levels for up to or environmental interests,” David Grant is the former presi-

another decade.
Johnson says. “There’s a whole
dent and CEO of the Geraldine R.

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