University of Virginia prof. Gerard Alexander offers a lengthy review of the growth of the nonprofit sector:
The sheer scale and rapid growth of America’s nonprofit sector make it difficult to ignore. In most of history, private not-for-profit organizations weren’t a topic of much attention because they weren’t especially important compared with the markets from which people drew their sustenance and the governments that often extracted whatever they could from them. But with the growth of our national wealth, nonprofits have been expanding relentlessly. The Independent Sector, which is basically the industry group for nonprofits, reports that the combined annual expenditures of all the not-for-profit organizations required to file Form 990 with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service had grown to nearly $1 trillion in 2004. (That’s about half what the federal government spends each year, not counting defense.) In 1977, nonprofits employed around 6 million Americans; by 2001, that was up to 12 million. Roughly 85 percent of this work is in health care (primarily hospitals and nursing homes), social services like child care and job training, and education. If volunteer time is counted, nonprofits represent over 10 percent of all U.S. employment.
Prof. Alexander doesn’t give any normalized trend information. I would like to see a history of constant-dollar nonprofit assets relative to GDP.
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