Non-profit? What’s That?!

  

Doing charity work has its rewards and challenges. No better an example than the work many of us do to mentor small businesses and entrepreneurs. Our work would appear to be clear cut. It is anything but! For example, most of our coaches/mentors are capitalists who have successfully retired from careers that achieved great things. They now are paying back to the system what they felt they received from it. It is sort of a ‘paying it forward’ philosophy as well.

Doing this work has uncovered an interesting divide in group thinking. Entrepreneurs make businesses to make money. But where then are the entrepreneurs who build non-profits? Are there any? And why specifically a non-profit?

The simple answer is important needs exist and beg to be served. A lot of those needs are of the human dimension variety. Think housing for the disabled or unemployed veteran. Think also medical care for the helpless. Education for people with promising abilities but an empty bank book. Think beautification of public spaces that taxing agencies don’t wish to pay for. Think of people with life-long illnesses who will always need some form of help to live their lives quasi independently. And then think of the families who want their loved ones to live happy, purposeful lives sustainably even when the parents and siblings have passed away.

Important needs based on people, their values, their promise and what they mean to us as part of the human community. We care, for each other, and that enhances who we are. Work to empower those themes is just and powerful. The work is not always ‘profitable’ by business standards. But needed just the same. And so we build non-profit entities to do this work.

In my volunteer community of mentors and coaches, caring is very evident. But as a pure business proposition it is another thing entirely.

I guess one of the differences is the profit motive. It is not entirely a greed thing, but it does have some dimensions of greed: the bottom line is important; making money for self and family is a strong motive; being fair in compensation to staff of our business is also a consideration for long term, sustainable success of the enterprise. And the enterprise will accrue value I can benefit from in the future along with my family.

Not so with a non-profit. Such organizations are in business to perform a mission that has nothing to do with personal financial return. And that makes such work in my setting more than a bit odd!

Yet when we do the organizational work necessary to maintain a strong coaching and mentoring entity, personal values are quite evident. We work in the non-profit environment to make profit models work for other people. It is not for our financial gain but for others that we do this work. Oh, we are rewarded in feelings and satisfaction in the doing of this work. Plenty of that for each of us. That’s why we do it. This is our way to say – Much is possible for each of us if we try. Our system works.

One of our clients is a quadriplegic as a result of a serious auto accident. His dream is to operate a gym for paraplegics and quadriplegics that will empower them to whatever level of healthy activity they are capable of. Another client has written a book about growing up in an alcohol and drug addicted family. Her book needs to be distributed to help other youth and surviving adults of such environments move on with their lives while shedding the poisoned memories of past family life. Still another client wants to establish group homes for adults living with epilepsy. Another client wants to establish a low income day care center. And then there is the young man who wants to create a manufacturing center employing ex-convicts who have rehabbed from drug addiction and the legal woes stemming from those woes.

Society does not provide all the answers to these areas of needs through government sponsored programs. Charities do. So do communities, churches and neighborhoods.

Non profit organizations fill a lot of these needs. They are still businesses, earning income streams to pay service costs to the targeted beneficiaries of the organization. Net income, however, is rarely the goal. Net income, however, must exist if the entity is to survive. So donations are accepted, grants are curried, and modest revenues are sought from product sales, too. All of these contribute to the sustainability of the enterprise. If successful, the mission and vision of the originators of the organization will be fulfilled. Not just once, but for many years to come.

Oh the needs are everywhere among us. Not all is done by government, or churches, or charities. A lot of this work must be done by each of us if the needs are met. And in our society, our American Society, that’s a big thing!

Right?

June 17, 2015