Please discourage starting non-profits, etc.

Parents Forum
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I have a meeting next week with a major foundation. This is a routine part of my job. I help them with assessing the sustainability and general health of organizations they are considering a heavy investment in.
Every year, we have the SAME conversation. There are TOO many non-profits. Sure, lots of people have a novel idea and/or are dynamite leaders who really start something great and impactful. But, mostly not. And they often become a drain on the already thin philanthropic resources.

So, I absolute cringe every time I read in a ‘chance me’ thread about some non-profit, or club, or whatever kids start to do something that surely is already being done. This is a BAD habit.

I know their hearts are in the right place, but you know what is more impressive? Joining an already existing organization and really contributing .

Starting any of these things is. It not hard, or impressive. Knitting into an existing org and making a difference is.
I would love to see colleges be explicit about that in their admissions advice to students. And also in their marketing to students about what goes on in their own campuses. One of the gazillion marketing pieces we got from colleges (this week) bragged about 500+ student clubs. For 2,500 students. How ridiculously.
Sure, future leaders are great. But someone has to be the ones who can have an impact even if they didn’t create the structure which meets their wants exactly.

Doubt any one with any power to influence this is reading. But at least I feel better.

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Good point! I never thought of that. I’m on the Board of Directors of NAMI Maine, and we struggle to make ends meet. We run a deficit every year. Our funding has not decreased over the years, but it hasn’t increased, either, and our bills keep going up. One thing I didn’t realize before was that a lot of grants are earmarked for specific programs, such as suicide prevention. It’s not sexy to provide money to pay for electricity, oil, and other overhead costs. It’s a huge problem. :frowning:

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Yes, the old ‘no one will pay for operating expenses’ problem. Philanthropic funders love the new, ‘innovative’ programs, too. They get bored with the old, long-standing programs, even if they work! That’s my job - to shine a light on those things which work. Let the service providers do what they know how to do and stop making them jump through hoops and keep coming up with ‘new’ programs!
PS - I am very familiar with NAMI! Important and difficult work. Thank you for your serving on the board.

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Agree 100%. I also work for a nonprofit. If there is another nonprofit that does the work you’re interested in, or can handle the project you’re interested in, work through them. Do a special project or fundraiser under their umbrella. Don’t reinvent the wheel, which will take away from the established organization’s work. It’s challenging enough raising money; don’t make it harder by slicing and dicing the fundraising dollars into smaller an smaller slivers, so that in the end no one has the funds to make a real impact.

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A plug for volunteering for your state chapter of NAMI! The organization is always looking for young people to help out. Kids struggling with mental illness relate well to young people - they don’t want old fogies lecturing them. Our state chapter is actively pursuing young people to be on our Board of Directors. I would think that position would look fantastic on a college resume and you would really be accomplishing something.

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Totally agree! I worked in the non for profit sector in my early career and then for years as a volunteer. Kids can have a much bigger impact volunteering and contributing to established organizations.

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“Kids can have a much bigger impact volunteering and contributing to established organizations.”
I don’t doubt that this is true. However I suspect that in many cases, the main motivation for a HS kid starting a non profit is that they assume it will look better on their college applications than the usual volunteer work. Whether they are correct in that assumption is another matter. In any event, all part of the EC arms race.

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To add a different point of view
is there something wrong with doing something that makes a profit? Any 18 year old kid can get donations, put it in a bank account, and call it breast cancer awareness. In reality, it’s just a way to pad their credentials
barf! Doing something for a profit and being successful at it shows both creativity and tenacity, and it shows that they can manage money. THAT would get someone’s attention.

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I’d agree with the point about high-schoolers starting resume-padding nonprofits, but for another reason: it’s one of those things rich kids with parental connections can do, but poor kids can’t, because of the paperwork & fees needed to set up a nonprofit in the first place & to keep up with required filings down the line. Not that a poor, unconnected kid can’t raise money – it’s just a lot easier to set up a GoFundMe page.

But as to the other point: many fundraising efforts are geared to local or niche causes that wouldn’t get the time of day from the larger, well-established organizations. So while there really is no point for a student to create their “own” nonprofit to raise funds in competition with another, established organization – there are many times when the need simply won’t be met but for someone local or with a personal interest stepping up to the plate. But ideally, anyone who sets up a nonprofit should be doing so with the idea of creating an ongoing organization – not something that will cease to exist when its founder graduates from high school. (Part of the idea of a nonprofit is that it is a corporation with a board of directors, precisely to allow that continuity). If you look around you will see all sorts of nonprofits in your community that fit that definition – perhaps the PTO’s at the local elementary schools, local youth sports leagues, local service clubs, a community theater, etc.

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Six of one
 half dozen of the other. There are too many nonprofits chasing a small pool of $$$. But assuming the existing nonprofits are well run and accomplish the goals they’re established to addressed is a bit naive. Will a nonprofit established by a high school student serve the needs better than the existing nonprofits? It’s a toss up, as is assuming the existing nonprofits are well run or should continue.

And really, none of this should be a factor or consideration for college entrance.

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I agree with the OP 100%!!

Work through an existing organization. It can be relatively expensive to start a brand new 501c3. If you must do something new work under the umbrella of an existing organization. See if your school district has an education foundation you can partner with.

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It seems odd to me that students feel it’s important for college apps to found and run an organization (regardless of whether nonprofit or for profit) having never worked for one before. If I were an admission officer, I’d think it sounded naive.

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Agree with OP, but I think we are seeing this because of the overall arms race (as @TheBigChef put it) of ECs. Have you published? Started a company? Any patents? Knighted by the Queen? (OK, the last one was silly). But the concept of having a major spike so that you can get into the top schools drives a lot of this.
One question- not sure if anyone knows the answer- but what percentage of these high school initiated non-profits continue once they graduate and go to college?

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Many here have made better points than I did.

But I will make one more, now that we are on a roll. Sort of related.

I am bothered by colleges encouraging applicants (or maybe applicants are doing things without encouragement) to do things which are just plain unnatural for 17 year olds. Left to their own devices, with no college admissions payoff, I suspect that almost none of the things which elite-college-seekers do would still be done. And I don’t like the lesson that my kid could learn from ‘those kids’ in his high school who he cannot stand to be around because of their being so disingenuous. I want him to admire someone who works at the City mission, not be suspicious of their ulterior motives and repelled by them because they wear a City Mission T-shirt to school.

The hockey team, each year, raises money, buys ice time, and invites the sled hockey players in for a few games of sled hockey. So our able-bodied boys strap themselves into these little sleds and get the snot kicked out of them by the real sled hockey players. You cannot put a price on the smiles on ALL of the boys’ faces on those days. It makes moms cry if they stop to watch.

None of these players ever mention a thing about that on their college apps. They don’t ever talk about It, actually. Why would they? They don’t do it to impress anyone. They do it because the sled hockey players are their hockey brothers, too.

Talking about It as an accomplishment would sully it, and they would never treat the sled hockey players as a prop to help them get into any college.

THAT is what colleges need to encourage. Not this absolutely ridiculous race to be volunteer-of-the-year. It’s gross and it’s wrong and the colleges should do more to discourage it.

I’ll bet on the quiet hockey player who plunks down $200 he earned flipping burgers for an hour of ice, drives all over town to pick the sled hockey players up, gets their wheelchairs set up and brings them into the rink, straps them into their sleds, then himself, and plays his heart out for that hour, loses badly, but fist pumps each competitor swearing to get him next time. And when he gets home, still answers ‘nothing’ when a parent asks him what he did that day.

Are the Tippy-tips finding those kids? Doubt it. In fact, I think a lot of those kids don’t want to be found by the tippy-tops, thank you very much. Because they know that those schools are swarming with the kids from HS who are the kind of people who actually would value their helping their sled hockey buddies as a way to get into that tippy top. And they want no part of that. It’s just gross.

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Highly selective colleges are always looking for some hook in applicants’ resume. The fact of the matter, is few teens, or people, in general do. So these kids and their parents are desperately looking for something that makes them look special.
It’s not just starting a non profit. In the last several years, there has been a rise in kids writing papers,articles, internships, doing research , inventions, starting businesses, all in hopes that these activities promote their applications over the crowd. The AOs then have to sift through the spin and figure what is truly a work of passion, of incredible effort or
an EC to gain entry in a selective college.

It’s sad to see that some of these things are for sale. One pays to get mentors for research. It’s actually become a business. One pays to get that 3rd world experience. (I can think of worse ways to spend the time and money on that one).

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Great point! I often wondered that with so many leaders all around , who is following and doing the work? :smile:

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I disagree about starting new organizations. In the last 20 years or so, for various reasons, I’ve been aware of the creation of about a dozen charities. Only a couple of these were started by high school students. To the best of my knowledge, those both still exist. One was started by a freshman in college; it is a very large, successful charity. One was started by two first year medical students. It still exists.

Two were started by my neighbors because of tragedies that befell other neighbors. While teenagers didn’t start these two organizations, they donated thousands of volunteer hours to them. They did it not to pad their resume for college; they did it because they knew the families affected by these tragedies.

In one case, the local, grassroots, neighborhood charity merged with a larger organization. It was started 4 years earlier than the larger one. It involves helping families of people with a certain medical condition. A few years later, a professional athlete developed the condition and his friends and teammates created a charity to help. The two organizations have merged. The founders of my local organization are now on the board of directors of the larger organization and they have continued the small, local events which were fundraisers for it. They also supply a disproportionate percentage of the volunteers for the larger group’s fundraisers.

The other , grassroots organization now co-operates with a large, powerful charity. That charity was ignoring a particular ethnic group. The grassroots organization focused on that group. It wasn’t that everyone involved in the organization is a member of the ethnic group; it’s that the neighborhood kid who had the problem was of a particular ethnicity and had trouble getting help because of her ethnicity. I think it served as a real wake up call to the larger organization that it was ignoring a particular ethnic group. Today, the grassroots organization still exists. It co-operates with the larger organization and has in effect taken over a role essential for it to do its job fairly and equitably. It has expanded its role to helping other ethnic groups that the big organization hasn’t helped historically.

I don’t think ANYONE–including high school kids–could be discouraged from starting a charity. They should be discouraged from doing so simply to pad a college resume. But I personally don’t think someone who sees a problem and can’t find an organization that exists to solve it should be discouraged from creating one.

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I agree, @Jonri. I don’t think most kids who start charities make much money. I think student run groups are generally small and the reason people contribute is because they’re local. That doesn’t mean that if the kid’s organization didn’t exist their money would go to a larger organization. There’s no guarantee it would go anywhere at all.

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Many large, established charities aren’t that well run - too much administrative overhead and bloat, for one thing. How many stories do we hear about mismanagement?

I often choose to give some of my charitable donations locally where I know the impact as well as those running the org and I know things are run largely on volunteer steam and effort.

But, yes, teens starting nonprofits usually isn’t efficient or effective. However, I think college admissions offices see through a lot of this just as we do. I know plenty of kids who’ve gotten into top notch colleges without this kind of stuff.

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The colleges don’t encourage it. Kids get mixed up on what “leadership” really is. Sheesh, getting experience with an adult run org tops reinventing the wheel, in so many ways. And locally, not some of the oddness kids come up with. Plus, so many found something then never lift a finger to directly help the needy.

Same with those fundraisers. More raised isn’t more impressive.

Why not for profit? Cuz it’s not what adcoms are looking for. Those Wharton wannabes drive me nuts, lol, with their number of blog followers or how they founded a business.