3 ms·

This is untrue from my experience of interacting and be part of several non-profits. Most of these non-profits have actual executives from well known companies

This is untrue from my experience of interacting and be part of several non-profits. Most of these non-profits have actual executives from well known companies in similar positions contributing their time to be unpaid volunteer. Great non-profits I know have largely unpaid executive staff. When I see non-profits with significantly paid executive staff, my heart sinks and I would rather stay away from them. More often than not these are pseudo non-profits exploiting holes in the tax laws and essentially getting tax free revenues to pay themselves. Fun fact: several racial supremists, left as well as right extremists personalities don’t actually have full time jobs. They are typically head of some “non-profit” created specifically for them where rich people can donate money and they get this money as salary to “run” the non-profit.

barry-cotter 9y ago
Are these great non-profits that you are familiar with large organisations? I’ve known people whose uncompensated non-profit work supported an e tire school though the other ten or so people involved did about half of the work. That kind of organisation does not scale. You can’t run a summer camp without some full time people, never mind a a soup kitchen, homeless shelter or university. The number of people who are capable of running an organisation of size X who don’t need to be compensated for doing so is way lower than those capable of running an organisation of size X. Being on the board of a prestigious organisation is a great way to network, gain exposure and help the organisation but if no one’s getting paid it’s an upper middle class or higher monopoly. That’s fine if we’re talking about an arts organisation, like the NY Philharmonic or MOMA, where the primary qualification to be on the board is the ability to write a very large cheque but if there’s a more concrete goal it would be better to pay more to get the people who can do it well and do it full time. On the fun fact, single issue organisations political organisations are as legitimate a non-profit as Democratic Party think tanks like Brookings or Niskanen or Libertarian ones like Cato. The ACLU, NRA and NAACP all started off as small non-profits one time. I hope the left and right’s respective racists don’t grow any more organisation but they have no less a right to the tax status than Soros’ or Koch’s pet organisations.

barry-cotter 9y ago

Are these great non-profits that you are familiar with large organisations? I’ve known people whose uncompensated non-profit work supported an e tire school though the other ten or so people involved did about half of the work. That kind of organisation does not scale. You can’t run a summer camp without some full time people, never mind a a soup kitchen, homeless shelter or university. The number of people who are capable of running an organisation of size X who don’t need to be compensated for doing so is way lower than those capable of running an organisation of size X. Being on the board of a prestigious organisation is a great way to network, gain exposure and help the organisation but if no one’s getting paid it’s an upper middle class or higher monopoly. That’s fine if we’re talking about an arts organisation, like the NY Philharmonic or MOMA, where the primary qualification to be on the board is the ability to write a very large cheque but if there’s a more concrete goal it would be better to pay more to get the people who can do it well and do it full time. On the fun fact, single issue organisations political organisations are as legitimate a non-profit as Democratic Party think tanks like Brookings or Niskanen or Libertarian ones like Cato. The ACLU, NRA and NAACP all started off as small non-profits one time. I hope the left and right’s respective racists don’t grow any more organisation but they have no less a right to the tax status than Soros’ or Koch’s pet organisations.