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Thanks! So to summarise, you'll end up with lower earnings because your skills and network won't improve as fast as they would at a for-profit?

• wordcode 11y ago
  Well, not exactly. You can maintain individual skills and can build any kind of network you want while working in a non-profit. It's that you're in a domain with other people who are not focused on making money. That's not really about your network, which mostly means people you don't work with on a daily basis. It's about the people you do work with and the opportunities and choices that emerge from those daily interactions. You will not find people in a non-profit focused primarily or even secondarily on making money. In fact, many people deliberately sacrifice earnings to align with the mission of a non-profit. Non-profits are also structurally unable to participate in many of the vehicles that enhance earnings for employees in for-profits, like profit-sharing, equity, tax-related benefits (non-profits don't pay any taxes), and so forth. When you're young, you might be "really good" at football and baseball, enough to have the opportunity to pursue one or the other professionally. Nearly everyone in that situation has to choose one or the other, and being a professional football player will necessarily mean you are not a professional baseball player (Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders aside). Non-profit vs for-profit is a similar choice when it comes to earnings. At the end of the day, an accumulation of decisions, some of which you would make but many of which would be made around you, that all entail sacrificing opportunities for making money, will mean you will likely wind up with lower earnings.