Profit isn’t a 4-letter word.  Seriously though, it’s six letters and it’s necessary.  If you’re hung up thinking that non-profit equals noble and profit equals greedy capitalism, let me sit back and get my popcorn and see how long it takes your noble, do-good, non-profit to be floating belly up.

Someone said this once, “My friend’s non-profit donates a ton of money, in fact last year she was in the negative,” and that’s a good thing?

NO!!!

If you’re in the red, you’re on your way down the toilet.  Non-profit or for profit doesn’t matter…being in the red is a bad thing. Stop trying to make profit a 4-letter word. 

Headline: “Profit giant buys bankrupt non-profit”

I know of another company, a for profit, that actually bought out a non-profit when it went bankrupt.  The carry-over employees have a bad taste in their mouth and bad blood for the money hungry corporation.  Oddly enough, that corporation has been paying their paychecks for the last 10 years and making a CRAZY profit doing it; all the while the mission of the previous non-profit and the education they were doing has continued.

Not much changed about the daily operations at this company.  Sure things got leaner, the staff worked harder, and sometimes longer. But millions of people were, and still are, inspired every year by the work those employees are doing.  Yet, they think they’re working for the bad guy.

Save the world!

Contrary to what some of us would like, we don’t live in a utopia, and you don’t get things for free. Bad news, you can’t save the world for free.  It also might behoove you to remember that people who have enough money to make donations to your non-profit, so you can save the world, are probably pretty good at profit.  That means they aren’t likely to keep throwing money at you if you aren’t willing to do some work yourself.

More than likely, you’re in this field because you want to save the world. You have a message you want people to hear so they’ll wise up and stop pillaging the planet.  If you want that message to be heard in the sea of input that most people are living in, you’re going to need money to do it.  If you’re creative, you might even be able to get your message out there while you make money.

So let’s change the shade of those rose colored glasses and stop judging people and companies for bringing home the bacon.  It doesn’t matter how you’re filing your taxes.  It’s what you do with your platform that makes all the difference.

 

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Profit worksheet (935 downloads)