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I returned to the airwaves this morning with my coworker Jules to talk about nonprofits and society on WUML. My good friend Charlotte, who I know from my Lowell cable access days, hosts Thinking Out Loud every Friday morning. I previously was a guest on her show two years ago plugging my job, the CTC VISTA Project.

This time, Jules and I had a free-ranging discussion on the nonprofit sector and its role in constructing society. As we’re arguing, nonprofits are hamstrung as social innovators because of their structure: barred from advocacy, they concentrate on services which—while individually valuable—provide only symptomatic relief rather than comprehensive reform. We don’t want to discount the valuable and necessary services of nonprofits (not at all!), but believe that a parallel movement of advocacy and reform is key to building a better society. While nonprofits are perhaps a natural place to begin dialogue, vision and action for improving society as a whole, those components must ultimately move beyond the narrow confines of traditional nonprofit organizations in order to be effective.

Listen to the program below

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Click here to download the mp3.

If you find this type of talk interesting, you would probably enjoy the book The Revolution Will Not be Funded.

I was lucky enough to be invited on Talking Out Loud this morning with wonderful hosts Felicia Sullivan and Charlotte Crockford. The live show was aired on UMass Lowell’s radio station, WUML. I mostly discussed AmeriCorps*VISTA and the CTC VISTA Project and had a blast.

Fellow VISTA Leader Danielle was awesome to make this recording for me. We made one from the soundboard, but our recording device accidently had its internal mic on as well, so there was lots of extraneous noise; though Danielle’s was made by putting a microphone up to the computer speakers.

Danielle also made me the picture below.