That’s a good question. I think it’s one of the few ways to convert labor to (meaningful) capital, comparable to being a founder or early employee.

The CEO of a nonprofit may be a well paid associate, but he is still just an associate. The kind of excess revenue that would flow to a partner’s profit sharing check has to be reinvested in the mission instead of disbursed to somebody in cash just because.

Does it? I know hospital system CEO’s get performance pay. Maybe if the numbers were sufficiently egregious and a newspaper (if a local one still exists) decided to do an expose the attorney general would intervene but I think in general some of these non profits are better modeled as perpetual partnerships run for the benefit of partners than they are as mission driven organizations.

Performance with respect to what goals?

Profit or close proxies for profit.