Week 4..........Social Service Industry

The St. Vincent de Paul article was really interesting for a few reasons. I found myself wondering how the Executive Director sleeps at night because I feel like he has so many projects going on he couldn't possibly have time to sleep. It's cool that they import from abroad, but I found myself thinking wouldn't be a better idea and a money saver if they just expanded their non-profit to the United Kingdom? I was also interesting that they briefly mentioned that they do return "some" of the proceeds to the agencies that ship the items in the first place. What are these agencies and exactly how much do they "return"? I enjoyed the anecdote that McDonald said in the article about the private sector not wanting to think about what gets thrown away, I would argue that they are making their own industry out of what other sectors don't want to deal with. I mean aren't we all in some aspect doing the same thing? I was once told that people hate asking for money or favors as much as they hate to speak in public, but that's to some extent what all non-profits do, right? We ask for your support financially or volunteering in some way or another. I do like that the author of the article harped multiple times on the fact that St. Vincent de Paul's takes advantage of federal programs or federal grants available to non-profits like this. It's so important to take advantage of these things as a non-profit organization because for every ten you get denied from, there's one out there you might be granted. 

The article about Louisiana low income residents receiving funding from the federal government for their heating and cooling costs, leads me to believe that one of the main concerns and problems in theses areas are not being addressed: community programs that encourage residents to leave their homes and save money by going to the local park and providing residents with alternatives to running up their utility costs. This sounds complicated, but it's simple. Where I'm from in California the average temperature between the months of May and September is 107°F but when residents where asking for the federal government to continuously supplement their air conditioning costs, the federal government responded by funding community facilities and programs like a local free water park. It was a great idea and this along with community programs that encouraged residents to get off the couch, also encouraged people to spend time with each other. (Note: I know this can't work everywhere, but it may help.) 

The article about smart growth was fascinating to me, I had been wondering for awhile how to define affordable housing and how it really did get started. I had discussed with my urban redevelopment professor how these things occur, but I liked the historical aspect this article took on. 

The chapter in the text book about social service was really interesting to me. The description of social services seemed very to the point, it's a human service industry. The wide variety of social service organizations in the non-profit sector was astonishing to me; helping families, helping patients and even helping convicted felons, there seems to be no area untouched by social services. The extent and impact that the social service industry has reaches far more people than any other industry, in my opinion. It's also very interesting that the federal government is the main funder of these non-profit social service organizations.