NONPROFIT MANAGEMENT & LEADERSHIP, vol. 17, no. 3, Spring 2007 © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 375Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/nml.157

The Four Functions ofNonprofits

Michael O’Neill

On Being Nonprofit: A Conceptual and Policy Primer, by PeterFrumkin. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005.232 pp., $19.95 paper.

PETER FRUMKIN’S thoughtful and useful book fulfills the promiseof its subtitle, “A Conceptual and Policy Primer.” While targetedat the relative newcomer to nonprofit literature, it provides an

interesting and somewhat original framework within which to viewthe world of nonprofit and voluntary organizations. The writing isclear, concise, and informative.

Frumkin crosses two common social science distinctions—demandside versus supply side and instrumental versus expressive—toconstruct a box with four basic functions of nonprofit work: servicedelivery (demand/instrumental), civic and political engagement(demand/expressive), social entrepreneurship (supply/instrumental),and values and faith (supply/expressive). These four functions, nicelysummarized as “expression, engagement, entrepreneurship and service”(p. 1), are discussed in separate chapters, along with an introductorychapter on “the idea of a nonprofit and voluntary sector” and a con-cluding chapter on “balancing the functions of nonprofit and voluntaryaction.”

The book provides, through extensive footnotes, a good intro-duction to some of the best literature on the nonprofit sector, includ-ing common theories like Hansmann’s “contract failure,” Weisbrod’s“government failure,” Salamon’s “voluntary failure” and “third-partygovernment,” and Young’s “social entrepreneurship.” Frumkin alsodiscusses current controversies related to commercialization, exces-sive compensation, political influence, and government oversight.The four-cell box is revisited in the final chapter, with the additionof “core problems” of each of the four basic functions (vendorism forservice delivery, polarization for civic and political engagement, com-mercialism for social entrepreneurship, and particularism for valuesand faith). The key argument of the final chapter is that the nonprofitsector needs to balance the four basic functions “so that no one func-tion is allowed to dominate the other three” (p. vi).

The bookprovides, through

extensivefootnotes, a goodintroduction tosome of the bestliterature on thenonprofit sector.

While much of the book is a summary of literature on nonprof-its, the four-function construct is an original attempt to organize andclarify the large, complex, and messy reality of the American non-profit sector. Like Hansmann’s four-cell box, generated from cross-ing the two dimensions of commercial versus donative and mutualversus entrepreneurial, Frumkin’s framework is illuminating up to apoint. For instance, one could argue that the primary example of“supply side/expressive religion” is at the same time highly expres-sive and highly instrumental. For religious people, their faith-drivenactions and organizations are not only expressions of belief but alsomeans to ends, the latter including bringing the Kingdom of God onearth, fostering justice and peace, helping the poor, engaging inmoral reform, and achieving personal salvation. Such instrumentalmotivations are not captured by descriptions like “the need peoplefeel to enact their values, faith and commitments” (p. 96). However,Frumkin recognizes the interrelatedness of these polarities; for exam-ple, he says, “The expressive dimension of nonprofit activity neednot be conceived as opposed or hostile to the sector’s more instru-mental dimension” (p. 96). Any effort to frame the complexity ofnonprofit work necessarily encounters such difficulties. Frumkin’sfour basic functions of nonprofit activity may best be seen as direc-tions or emphases rather than separate categories. Taken in this way,they provide a thoughtful and thought-provoking means of viewingnonprofit activity. That opinion, however, falls somewhat short of theappraisal by the author, who states that “the breadth and depth ofour understanding of [nonprofit and voluntary activity] has beenseverely constrained by the lack of a clear statement of the sector’score activities, rationales, and dimensions. This book strives torespond to this need by presenting four critical functions that thesector performs. While it does not pretend that these functionsentirely exhaust the range of purposes and rationales that guidenonprofit action, the book argues that many of the most essentialconceptual and policy problems within the sector can be usefullycaptured within this framework” (pp. 27–28).

Finally, Frumkin’s book contains many interesting short discus-sions of topics such as nonprofits’ relative lack of simple lines of own-ership and accountability, why nongovernmental is a more popular termthan nonprofit internationally, evaluation differences related to theinstrumental-expressive distinction, and the increasing importance ofvalue-driven donors.

MICHAEL O’NEILL is professor of nonprofit management at the Universityof San Francisco’s College of Professional Studies.

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Nonprofit Management & Leadership DOI: 10.1002/nml