In the late twentieth century, many U.S. theorists observed that distinctions between the state, the market, and the private nonprofit sector seemed to be eroding. State-funded services were increasingly delivered by private nonprofits, “social enterprises” that aimed to carry out market-based solutions to problems previously addressed by charitable organizations. Nonprofits increasingly adopted competitive strategies related to marketing, investment, human resources, and other practices more traditionally associated with the for-profit sector. In higher education, for-profit colleges and the emergence of the “entrepreneurial university” reflected a redefinition of the mission of the university that eroded the boundaries between the nonprofit and for-profit worlds. These three papers explore the convergence of nonprofit and for-profit institutional models in the late twentieth century and the impact of this new regime on customers, workers, and funders.
Peter Drucker, Frances Hesselbein and the “Discovery” of Nonprofit Management
By John Miles Branch, Ph.D. Candidate, History Department, Northwestern University
In 1988, the prominent business theorist Peter Drucker declared in the Wall Street Journal that the nonprofit sector had “discovered management.” Volunteers and paid employees alike, he wrote, were working toward concrete objectives in an increasingly professionalized environment. Soon afterward, he partnered with Frances Hesselbein, the longtime head of Girl Scouts of the USA, to start an organization dedicated to advancing management practices at nonprofit organizations. Drucker and Hesselbein stepped into a decades-long debate over the distinctiveness of the nonprofit workplace in the United States. As the proportion of American workers employed at nonprofits grew, a variety of historical actors—labor unions, prospective volunteers, managers, and policymakers—wrestled with tensions between the supposed service motive at the core of their work and the ways in which it was embedded in a market economy. This paper situates Drucker and Hesselbein in this historical trajectory and examines the ways in which they sought to resolve these tensions through the new field of nonprofit management.
From Lab Rats to Entrepreneurs: Science, Philanthropy, and the Entrepreneurial University, 1980-2024
By Eric John Abrahamson, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Principal Investigator, History of Science Philanthropy, History Department, Johns Hopkins University
In the 1980s, as research universities embraced a new role as engines of economic development, business incubators helped transform graduate students in science and engineering into entrepreneurs. Over time, these new nonprofit entities evolved to play a critical role in connecting students with venture capitalists/philanthropists, many of whom were also major donors to universities. Focusing on business incubators in the San Francisco Bay Area, Cambridge/Boston, and San Diego from the mid-1980s to the present, this paper looks at the evolving model of the business incubator over more than four decades and its influence on the culture of academic science.
Slow Rise of the Phoenix:
Delayed by Higher Education’s Entry Barrier
By Stephen Adams, Professor of Management, Salisbury University
In the 1970s, San Jose State Economic History Professor John Sperling founded the Institute for Professional Development aimed at making higher education more accessible to working adults. Blocked in his efforts to gain accreditation, Sperling moved his enterprise to Arizona, where it was accredited as the University of Phoenix. Two decades earlier, San Jose State University Engineering sought accreditation to provide graduate education for working adults. Its efforts were blocked by the University of California. Comparing these two cases in two different eras, this paper explores concepts of competition in the nonprofit sector by looking at the industry of higher education’s use of accreditation as a barrier to entry and its impact on the needs of local employees.