Nonprofits are the backbone of Montana’s communities

There is a disturbing change of rhetoric taking place across our country and across Montana. The idea being perpetuated is that anything other than big business is “parasitic” to our civil society. Nonprofits — the organizations that bring people together to solve a problem without profit-seeking — are cast as “inefficient,” and public funding that supports them as “waste, fraud, and abuse.” This rhetoric is myopic, untrue and quite harmful. 

Montana’s nonprofits are essential — to our economy, to our communities, and to the lives of every Montanan. Nonprofits exist to do things that government and business can’t, won’t and shouldn’t. They exist for a fundamental purpose other than turning a profit and satisfying shareholders. There will never be profit in your local 4-H club — but that doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t exist. And yet, we have seen increasing attacks on nonprofits (also called NGOs) that threaten to remove funding from an entire sector of our economy. Frankly, we need more opportunities, not less, to come together for the sake of people and communities, not profit.

So, on behalf of the Montana Nonprofit Association and the thousands of nonprofits we represent and serve, I want to say clearly and directly what too often goes unsaid: