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I think entering a profit motive is not inherently a bad thing. When companies have a profit motive, there tends to be an extrinsic motivation to do well. When
by indubitable 9y ago
I think entering a profit motive is not inherently a bad thing. When companies have a profit motive, there tends to be an extrinsic motivation to do well. When companies are able to survive on donations alone, you're relying entirely on intrinsic motivations that may not be as strong as we'd like to imagine.
Take for instance the Red Cross and Haiti as one of the most visible recent examples. They received half a billion dollars and achieved next to nothing. 25% [1] of that half billion was spent on "internal expenses." And they have very little clue or accounting of how the remaining money was even spent. Most of it was not even directly spent but instead donated to other nonprofits, who in turn took their cuts, and accountability quickly breaks down. According to that reporting from NPR, the "ambitious plan to build housing resulted in just six permanent homes" from that half a billion dollars.
That sort of waste and lack of any accountability is something that would rarely fly in any for profit business. Would that money in Haiti have been better spent by entrepreneurs looking to create housing/food and other necessities with open intentions of profiting in the long run? Maybe not a fair question since they'd have had to have tried hard to spend it worse, but that's the whole point. Aligning a good service with a good profit is, in my opinion, the true soul of capitalism. It's just such a shame that today it's often easier to make more money in less than ethical ways.
[1] - https://www.npr.org/2016/06/16/482020436/senators-report-finds-fundamental-concerns-about-red-cross-finances https://www.npr.org/2016/06/16/482020436/senators-report-fin...