The Coming Crash of the Nonprofit Sector

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January 2005 IMPACT

The Coming Crash of the Nonprofit Sector
by Mordecai Lee, professor with the Helen Bader Institute for Nonprofit Management at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; reprinted with permission from the September 2004 issue of the PA TIMES, monthly news publication of the American Society for Public Administration

Editor’s Note: The following editorial does not necessarily represent the views of GEO nor its staff, but is intended to help further discussion in the field.

It happened in 1929 and again in the late 1990s. The stock market crashed. Exponential rates of growth simply cannot be sustained, regardless of what is being counted. Simple math and statistics guarantee either a crash, or some other shattering change to modify the direction of the line on the curve of the growth chart.