Against the Cult(ure) of the Entrepreneur for the Nonprofit Sector

Abstract

The increasing marketization of the nonprofit sector is well documented. Scholars have explored its effects on nonprofit management and discussed its potentially harmful implications, especially as regards the sector’s traditional roles as service provider and advocate, facilitator of democratic discourses, and preserver of civil society. However, this scholarship has not fully explored the implications of a central figure in the discourses of the market—the Entrepreneur—and of entrepreneurialism generally, for the increasing marketization of the nonprofit sector. This article seeks to remedy this by drawing on critical scholarship to examine how the Entrepreneur, and entrepreneurialism in general, has come to dominate the discourses of the nonprofit sector in recent years and discusses the potential long-term implications of this trend.