Don't Sell Your Soul, Market It

2:00 PM Wednesday May 18, 2011

In an open letter to college graduates in Forbes last week, Carl Schramm, the head of the Kauffman Foundation and a man I admire, encouraged young people to follow a path of entrepreneurship, reasoning that, "Although they are necessary parts of our society, governments and nonprofits are not self-sustaining. In order to do their good works, they must rely on the underlying wealth created by business." If reliance on the wealth of others makes a business not self-sustaining, then no business is self-sustaining. The music industry, for example, is not self-sustaining, because it relies on the wealth of consumers, who use their money to buy albums.

Humanitarian organizations provide a service — they heal the sick, care for the poor. Donors pay the organizations to provide this service to others. How is this different — or less self-sustaining — from the spa that sells a gift certificate to one person to purchase a treatment for another? Or from paying someone to clean your house or prepare your taxes? It's the same basic contract, but the humanitarian work is more powerful. When you raise a person up, you create the possibility that they will create wealth. Not so with a massage.

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