Why I don’t like the term “non profit”
- It starts with a negative
- It refers to tax status as opposed to purpose
- It implies penury
- It doesn’t include businesses that were founded with a social mission, which are increasingly important in our efforts to create meaningful and sustainable change on a global scale
- It doesn’t include government agencies with a focused mission, which are also important to social change
- It’s just plain old school
For a while now I’ve been struggling with finding language to describe people and organizations dedicated to social, environmental or spiritual change. As I wrote my webpage, which is dedicated to helping these people and organizations thrive, I kept bumping my head against this absence of vocabulary and promised myself to start a conversation here on TripTych to generate new language for this exciting development in our society.
I see a powerful, emerging movement that blurs the lines between traditional nonprofits, grassroots organizations, political movements, government agencies and socially-oriented businesses. What shall we call this movement?
Here are some ideas I’ve heard, but none are perfect, of course. If you have others you like, please share them!
- Social sector
- Social benefit organizations
- Third sector
- Social economy
- Civic sector
- Civil society
