In my last post I outlined some of the exciting developments facing the sector.

The confluence of these issues presents an exciting if unknown future: how the generational shift, new technologies, the desire to build community across difference, the increasing permeability of the very concept of “nonprofit,” and the redefinition of the workplace will combine to transform the nonprofit sector.

I believe the next decade will bring new leaders, new technologies, new structures and new partnerships.

It will bring new, well-capitalized competitors, and some may be for-profit companies that crossover into the sector of traditional nonprofit work. It will also bring new donor demands for accountability and impact if nonprofits are to maintain their already-tenuous hold on identity as a sector and not just become under-capitalized competitors in an increasingly crowded and sector-blind blended economy.

One key to success in this environment will be a collective rethinking of what it means to be an organization, what we mean by “workplace,” and what it means to both compete and partner across many permeable boundaries.

This transformation will not be optional.

Just as the days have largely passed when nonprofits were viewed as “charities” or volunteer auxiliaries led by do-gooders, so too will the current conceptualization of nonprofits as “institutions” and perhaps even as “organizations” give way.

Many nonprofits will instead become known as their brands and will operate through networks.

Even those that maintain institutional cohesion will be organized to a far greater degree around shifting coalitions, online activism, a mobile workforce or perhaps even volunteers whose day jobs are in completely unrelated fields.

In this changing world the current modes which foundations use to advance their missions, and the traditional approaches used by capacity builders, will fall far short.

In recent musings about generational and cultural awareness, I discussed sociocultural trends that are influencing the nonprofit sector.

Thoughts about our future would be incomplete without a thorough consideration of technology, sector crossover, and shifts in traditional organizational models and tax exemptions.

Traditional boundaries between the business and nonprofit sectors are evaporating. Examples of this trend are plentiful. Corporate leaders now occupy CEO roles at major foundations; businesses develop nonprofit subsidiaries. Wall Street investment houses aggressively compete with community foundations for donor-directed funds.

Nonprofits develop fee-for-service programs and develop products to sell, often online.

Government regulations that once made many services an exclusive nonprofit domain are falling; local government taxing authorities question the value nonprofits provide the community; and Washington asks if nonprofits devoted to the high arts deserve tax exempt status or deductibility of gifts, since their work does not benefit the poor but rather fulfills their wealthy donors’ personal passions.

Meanwhile, technology allows us to reconsider the traditional organizational structure. Concerns over rising gasoline prices, high downtown rents, elevated greenhouse gases, and the quality-of-life impact of long commutes from the suburbs, combine with the possibilities offered by fast Internet connections, high-quality video conferencing, affordable all-in-one printer-scanner-fax-copiers, and virtual intranets, to make “virtual workplaces” an appealing alternative for many organizations, nonprofit or otherwise.

Moreover, the widespread adoption of Web 2.0 social networking technology presents a new, non-hierarchical, non-controlled, not yet fully understood, format for connectivity among nonprofit sector workers and activists and between the sector and its constituents.