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Becoming Business-Like: Governing the Nonprofit Professional

Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly

Published online on

Abstract

How do nonprofit practitioners learn to understand themselves as nonprofit professionals? Although the literature has explored the extent and repercussions of nonprofits becoming more business-like and professionalized, little attention has been placed on the process through which this professionalization occurs. Using an autoethnography based on my practice as cofounder and eventual manager of a small nonprofit organization, this article narrates the range of practices and mechanisms through which I came to understand myself as a nonprofit professional. Following Mitchell Dean, who draws heavily on Michel Foucault’s later work, this article argues that professionalization is taught to nonprofit practitioners through two intertwined mechanisms: the "technologies of performance," which include funding, and evaluation and monitoring procedures; and "technologies of agency," which involve the often subtle socialization mechanisms into the sector. It thus deepens our understanding of how the transition toward being more business-like is occurring.