I've had a similar experience; I've worked and volunteered with several nonprofit organizations, and I've worked for several for-profit companies (not startups)

I've had a similar experience; I've worked and volunteered with several nonprofit organizations, and I've worked for several for-profit companies (not startups), and the nonprofits were dazzlingly inefficient by comparison. The executives in the nonprofits were pretty driven and at least somewhat visionary, but average nonprofit employee seemed less competent than the average for-profit employee to me. Dug around to see if I could find studies about this--most seemed to be about the beneficial effects (if any) of profit-sharing. The closest I came was this survey of hospital workers (http://www.gallup.com/poll/7042/ForProfit-vs-NotforProfit-Two-Paths-Same-Outcome.aspx http://www.gallup.com/poll/7042/ForProfit-vs-NotforProfit-Tw...). Very roughly, it suggests that for-profit employees may be slightly more committed to doing quality work if the difference found in the survey is actually significant. Besides that, work at not-for-profits seems to be significantly more humane based on the responses. Unfortunately it's only about hospital employees and doesn't specify the sample size or the methodology.