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> If you have to beg every 2 years for money or you go bankrupt, that is some terrible planning Its not. Its the legal setting that prevents non-profits from g

> If you have to beg every 2 years for money or you go bankrupt, that is some terrible planning Its not. Its the legal setting that prevents non-profits from gathering more operating money than a given period. > their revenue streams are not limited to donations They aren't. Except it works the same way - they cant gather any kind of financial capital that could make them a viable competitor for for-profit companies. Otherwise non profits would have steamrolled the for-profit companies a long time ago. > Wikipedia Picking one example as poster boy does not make the argument. Wikipedia is the product of a well-connected, famous persona, who already had enough connections to start and float any kind of organization at the point he started Wikipedia. Its also the first and practically the only one of its kind with no practical competititon. Even so, it is dependent on fleeting funding from donations and similar revenue sources. The sole example of Mozilla can prove how fickle this format is. Its also one-of-a-kind, it was also practically the first in its field, and for a time it had no competition for its major product. Now its on shaky grounds, with funding for Thunderbird being cut, Firefox not doing so fine and so on. Thats the problem with non-profits in the current legal landscape. The landscape is crafted to prevent any threat to for-profit companies and it gimps many things ranging from non-profits to cooperatives for that end. And that makes it totally risky for anyone to build their livelihood on such a non-profit. You can still be able to pay your rent next month as a creator if Wikipedia goes down. But if your Patreon goes down, you are in knee-deep sh*t. Because its infrastructure by now. ... Im totally for non-profits. Actually, an entire economy that comprises of cooperatives, functioning on the infrastructure provided by the democratically elected government is the ideal economy for me. However the proposition of turning such services like Patreon to non-profit is not viable with the current legal landscape unless its changed drastically.

solardev 4y ago
This just isn't true. There is nothing preventing nonprofits from accruing and banking money for many years at a time. Where do you keep getting this idea? There's no magical 2 year limit or anything like that. There are thousands if not millions of perfectly functional nonprofits. Mozilla is more the exception, a monster that gets fed by Google and produces little of value. The EFF, ACLU, Sierra Club, whatever are also nonprofits. There are lots and lots and lots. Nonprofits are a different beast from cooperatives. They don't have a profit motive. If you want a democratic nonprofit there are such things as worker self directed nonprofits. Or if you want shared investments without shared governance there are ESOPs and such. Yes, I would love to see a more democratic economy too. But that's not held back by the limits of organizational structures. Please, if you're going to make these extraordinary and (I believe) incorrect claims about nonprofits, provide some sources?
- unity1001 4y ago
  > This just isn't true. There is nothing preventing nonprofits from accruing and banking money for many years at a time. That was what I was told. Even if its 'many years', its still a limit. Even if there wasn't any limit and what I was told was wrong, it still doesn't change the reality: https://www.councilofnonprofits.org/tools-resources/operating-reserves-nonprofits https://www.councilofnonprofits.org/tools-resources/operatin... All the examples that people give on behalf of nonprofits are organizations that provide a free, non-critical service which would not harm anyone's livelihood if they went away. From free browsers to Wikipedia. There isnt one single service provider among them. ... Ask yourself: Would you build your startup by relying on a nonprofit-provided infra like payments, hosting and so on. That is, if you can even find such a non-profit service in the first place.
  - t-writescode 4y ago
    > Ask yourself: Would you build your startup by relying on a nonprofit-provided infra like payments, hosting and so on. That is, if you can even find such a non-profit service in the first place. Recall that the majority of people that use Patreon tend to be YouTubers that want real income but are regularly banned from getting it; artists; non-profit / open-source software development teams; single-person dream-projects; influencers / online personalities; etc. So, "would I build my [community-facilitated, primary source of income] by relying on a [company that is not beholden to the whims of the stock market, so it can choose what's in everyone's best interest and not just the highest stock value]?" Absolutely.
  - solardev 4y ago
    There is no limit. They can bank millions if they want. And yes, there are poorly run nonprofits just like there are poorly run businesses. How many businesses can survive 3 months with no income? What are you doubting, exactly? That nonprofits can't charge for services? Here's a few examples... some big museums (the NY Moma, the Field Museum in Chicago), the Green Bay packers (and the NFL as a whole until 2015), the Mayo Clinic, the Kaiser Permanente parent organization (which owns the for profit hospitals), etc. Donations are a part of many of their income streams, but not all. In tech, some other examples include VLC/VideoLan, the Linux foundation, TechSoup, Change.org, the Internet Archive... None of those have FAANG level money, but that was never their goal. They still manage to survive and produce very valuable output. Of course I would want a nonprofit payment processor, along with a nonprofit Lyft/Uber equivalent, etc. If I had the money or talent, I'd build those myself. Don't get me wrong, the nonprofit space has a lot less money overall because it can't attract investment. That doesn't mean they can only survive two years at a time. It entirely depends on their business model (yes, even nonprofits have one). If they don't diversify and depend solely on donations and don't get any, yes they will die. Businesses without income will die too. I'm not really sure what we're arguing about anymore. That nonprofits are poorer? It's true, they are. That they can't make or bank money? That part is not true. It's harder for them to attract money because you can't invest in them, but once they get it, they can manage it like any business, even buying up for profit businesses as investments.

solardev 4y ago

This just isn't true. There is nothing preventing nonprofits from accruing and banking money for many years at a time. Where do you keep getting this idea? There's no magical 2 year limit or anything like that. There are thousands if not millions of perfectly functional nonprofits. Mozilla is more the exception, a monster that gets fed by Google and produces little of value. The EFF, ACLU, Sierra Club, whatever are also nonprofits. There are lots and lots and lots. Nonprofits are a different beast from cooperatives. They don't have a profit motive. If you want a democratic nonprofit there are such things as worker self directed nonprofits. Or if you want shared investments without shared governance there are ESOPs and such. Yes, I would love to see a more democratic economy too. But that's not held back by the limits of organizational structures. Please, if you're going to make these extraordinary and (I believe) incorrect claims about nonprofits, provide some sources?

unity1001 4y ago
> This just isn't true. There is nothing preventing nonprofits from accruing and banking money for many years at a time. That was what I was told. Even if its 'many years', its still a limit. Even if there wasn't any limit and what I was told was wrong, it still doesn't change the reality: https://www.councilofnonprofits.org/tools-resources/operating-reserves-nonprofits https://www.councilofnonprofits.org/tools-resources/operatin... All the examples that people give on behalf of nonprofits are organizations that provide a free, non-critical service which would not harm anyone's livelihood if they went away. From free browsers to Wikipedia. There isnt one single service provider among them. ... Ask yourself: Would you build your startup by relying on a nonprofit-provided infra like payments, hosting and so on. That is, if you can even find such a non-profit service in the first place.
- t-writescode 4y ago
  > Ask yourself: Would you build your startup by relying on a nonprofit-provided infra like payments, hosting and so on. That is, if you can even find such a non-profit service in the first place. Recall that the majority of people that use Patreon tend to be YouTubers that want real income but are regularly banned from getting it; artists; non-profit / open-source software development teams; single-person dream-projects; influencers / online personalities; etc. So, "would I build my [community-facilitated, primary source of income] by relying on a [company that is not beholden to the whims of the stock market, so it can choose what's in everyone's best interest and not just the highest stock value]?" Absolutely.
- solardev 4y ago
  There is no limit. They can bank millions if they want. And yes, there are poorly run nonprofits just like there are poorly run businesses. How many businesses can survive 3 months with no income? What are you doubting, exactly? That nonprofits can't charge for services? Here's a few examples... some big museums (the NY Moma, the Field Museum in Chicago), the Green Bay packers (and the NFL as a whole until 2015), the Mayo Clinic, the Kaiser Permanente parent organization (which owns the for profit hospitals), etc. Donations are a part of many of their income streams, but not all. In tech, some other examples include VLC/VideoLan, the Linux foundation, TechSoup, Change.org, the Internet Archive... None of those have FAANG level money, but that was never their goal. They still manage to survive and produce very valuable output. Of course I would want a nonprofit payment processor, along with a nonprofit Lyft/Uber equivalent, etc. If I had the money or talent, I'd build those myself. Don't get me wrong, the nonprofit space has a lot less money overall because it can't attract investment. That doesn't mean they can only survive two years at a time. It entirely depends on their business model (yes, even nonprofits have one). If they don't diversify and depend solely on donations and don't get any, yes they will die. Businesses without income will die too. I'm not really sure what we're arguing about anymore. That nonprofits are poorer? It's true, they are. That they can't make or bank money? That part is not true. It's harder for them to attract money because you can't invest in them, but once they get it, they can manage it like any business, even buying up for profit businesses as investments.