Toward a Care-Centered Approach for Nonprofit Management in a Neoliberal Era

Abstract

Traditionally the nonprofit sector has played a dual role in American society, providing venues for both civic engagement and care for those who are unable to participate fully in either democratic governance or the marketplace. As the nonprofit sector becomes increasingly marketized, some scholars have developed “counter-discourses” that seek to reassert the civic role of nonprofits. These counter-discourses are vital to maintaining the sector’s civic role and thus for civil society; however, they neglect the caring role played by nonprofits. Moreover, they neglect the role that caring plays in civic engagement. Drawing on feminist care ethics, this article seeks to remedy this oversight by developing a counter-discourse of care for the nonprofit sector, to reassert a nonprofit management practice that engages in and values care. The article concludes with an exploration of practices and strategies to realize a counter-discourse of care.

NOTES

Notes

1 See Maier, Meyer, and Steinberiethner (2016) for an overview of the use of similar and overlapping, but sometimes distinct, terms related to the nonprofit sector becoming more “business-like” in the relevant scholarship.

2 The nomenclature of a “counter-discourse” is drawn specifically from Eikenberry (2009a).

3 It should be noted that DeLysa Burnier’s work is not unique, as there is a strong tradition in public administration advocating care and compassion as guiding values for governance and management (e.g., Follett, 1965/1918; Hummel & Stivers, 1998; Jun, 1999; Scranton & Ranney, 2012; Stout, 2010).

4 While care ethics theorists have argued generally that care ethics and communitarians have “serious disagreements” (Held, 2006, p. 100), there is some alignment with feminist communitarian viewpoints. Indeed, Christians (2002) has argued that feminist communitarians have ensured that “communitarian political theory is saved from itself” and its more neoconservative leanings by orienting the philosophy toward “critique, multivocal representation of the marginalized, and social transformation” (p. 170).

5 When individuals “become far removed from the person actually experiencing the struggle,” they can demonstrate a kind of misguided empathy, or “empathy gone bad” (Bowdon, Pigg, & Mansfield, 2014, p. 58; see also Zembylas, 2012). Without giving careful attention to the essentialization of others’ experiences, instructors can damage the connections they seek to build (Bowdon & Scott, 2003). Zembylas’ (2012) notion of “strategic empathy,” or use of empathy in strategic ways in the classroom, is an effective tool for countering this effect.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Billie Sandberg

Billie Sandberg is an Associate Professor in the Department of Public Administration at Portland State University where she also serves as the Director of The Nonprofit Institute. Her current research focuses on the application of critical social theory to issues of public governance, with a focus on philanthropy and the nonprofit sector. Her work has been published in Administrative Theory & Praxis, Administration & Society, Voluntas, and the Journal of Public Affairs Education. She is the co-editor of and a contributor to Reframing Nonprofit Organizations: Democracy, Inclusion, and Social Change (Melvin & Leigh, 2019).

Erin Elliott

Erin Elliott is a doctoral candidate in the Public Affairs and Policy program at Portland State University. Her research centers on critical nonprofit theory and civic identity. Her work has appeared in the Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning and in Sustainable Solutions: University-Community Partnerships (Taylor & Francis, 2016).