Kerry O’Halloran, The Profits of Charity [Book Review]

Extract: There is an increasing plethora of texts about not-for-profit organizations and Professor Kerry O’Halloran’s The Profits of Charity is a worthy contributor to this growing collection. Professor O’Halloran’s latest book was written during his tenure at the Australian Centre for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Studies at Queensland University of Technology (footnote 9, p. xxxiii). This book identifies public policy and law reform as the coercive forces upon charities to actively pursue economic activities. Central to O’Halloran’s book is how the traditional ‘‘gift relationship’’ between donor and charity has changed, and how charities have successfully emancipated the state from its social welfare responsibility. Although the negative consequences and the complex realities of this new construct between government,business, and charities are already known, however, this book examines these issues
through the public benefit principle.