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of the rich and undeserving of public support.
If social enterprise tackles the role traditionally
filled by the “social service” nonprofits,
with notable success, will it deepen this divide?
Might that, in turn, fragment the nonprofit sector
and erode its willingness or ability to advocate as
a group for policies favorable to the sector?
If social enterprise catches on, mainstream forprofit
companies may start examining how they
can use their core business to achieve social
good. An early signal of this potential: in June
2013, Bre Pettis, founder of the 3D printing
manufacturer MakerBot, sold the company to
Stratasys for $600 million. In November, Pettis,
who stayed on as MakerBot’s CEO, announced
the launch of MakerBot Academy, with a
mission of integrating 3D printing into education.
Instead of a chicken in every pot, Pettis
envisions a MakerBot® Desktop 3D Printer
in every school in the U.S. He is reputed to
have sunk a “Gates-sized contribution” into
making it work, partnering with nonprofits like
DonorsChoose.org, but not making the academy
itself a separate nonprofit.
What This Means for Museums
What if for-profit businesses become effective
competitors in delivery of traditional museum
missions? Not just for-profit museums, but
other entities that achieve the same ends.
Some have noted the irony of the big fuss made
when Jeffrey Deitch, an art dealer hired to run
the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles
(MoCA), reputedly forced out highly respected
(academic, museum-trained) chief curator Paul
Schimmel…who promptly became a partner in
a commercial gallery. Schimmel says he will
organize the exhibitions to be “more thoroughly
researched and elucidated, and…dressed with
many other museum-style fixings, including
educational programming, scholarly publications
and auxiliary programming.” As this
article comments, “combining sustainable
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