A Day in the Life of Nonprofit America

Richard Ober is president and CEO of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation. In an opinion column in the Concord Monitor, Ober talks about the pride he has in being part of and supporting the nonprofit sector because of all the good that is done by nonprofit organizations. The range of activities is extraordinary, but it seems ordinary because we take these services for granted.
“That list, Ober adds, “represents just a tiny fraction of the ways in which thousands of nonprofit staff and volunteers serve our communities, our neighbors and our families on every ordinary day.”
Ober’s point is that social benefit aside, the nonprofit sector in the United States is not small and plays a critical part in our economy. The National Council for Nonprofits offers a statistic that if the sector was an independent country, it would have the 16th-largest economy in the world. The sector contributed about $878 billion to the economy in 2012 and employs 10.2 percent of the workforce in this country.