Professionalism and Commercialism

The changes in the structures of society and with regard to the provision of services by the public sector have forced 2 major phenomena to manifest themselves in the sector. First, the sector has become more professional. Instead of vocations (priests, nuns etc) and volunteers running and delivering community-based services, the norm now is to have professional managers and funded staff. Much of this funding is, in many cases, still provided by the state, philanthropic sources and donations. However, the need to meet the extra costs incurred by professionalism and the increased need of service users has resulted in the second phenomenon, commercialisation.

Commercialism covers a wide range of activities from traditional institutions, like museums, having gift shops and coffee shops down to the establishment of stand alone commercial business established to meet identified social objectives (social enterprises). A range of ‘earned-income strategies’ have evolved over the years and it is worth looking at these strategies in more depth.

Advertisement