Few weeks ago I was having this amazing training with more than 40 fellows from many, many!, different countries for the Global Leadership Lab that Atlas Corps organized 3 times a year. It is always a very rich environment to be around, people doing amazing things all over the place. But that is not my focus.

During one of the sessions one fellow introduced his (or hers – cannot remember who was) nonprofit saying it was apolitical, which made me think how misused this word is everywhere.

I have never believed there is such a thing as an apolitical organization. Organizations are political, they might be nonpartisan, but they select agendas, they select partners, they select what in the end of the day is a world view which is packed with political ideas. Just thought about sharing the basic difference here.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, apolitical means “Detached from, not interested in or concerned with, political issues or activities” while Nonpartisan means “A person who or group of people which is not partisan.”

I totally agree that organizations can be nonpartisan, even though is harder and harder, because political groups that share the same set of beliefs also can help increasing the visibility and work of nonprofits – while they already do in many cases.

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