In the best case, you get to change the world and make a bunch of money. Sometimes, you just have a viable business selling sugar water. And other times, you're doing something really good that's just not going to get you paid.
There's nothing wrong with the last thing, other than its potential lack of sustainability.
I'm now a teacher; I could easily make 10x my comp elsewhere; possibly 100x. Measured on your scale, the only value is what I'm getting paid. But it turns out that those good feelings are worth something to me.
This. I feel that this has been missed in the thread a little.
Non-profits denote nothing about their financial good-standing or moral good-standing. You can be an amoral non-profit, a moral for-profit or vice-versa. Your profit structure has nothing to do with the morals of the people inside of it.
Additionally, there a lot of non-profit executives that are profiting very healthily off of their work.
The average for-profit company can't be trusted/expected to do what's best for anyone outside the profit structure (e.g. users or the public at large). Of course you can have exceptions in either direction, but on average for-profit orgs will likely be willing to fuck over anyone else to increase profits - intentionally or not - because profit growth is literally their purpose.
'Non-profit' advertises that you don't have to worry about that specific, powerful motivation of the org contending with your best interests.
It's a less powerful motivation, in that there are not shareholders who will benefit from growth.
But in practice, executives and managers end up making more, which provides an incentive for growth.
A sustainable business demands some kind of ongoing income.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/business
Someone's profession (their "business") can certainly be working at a nonprofit, but that's because they are getting paid. The nonprofit organization itself is not a business. You might be looking for the word "corporation", which can include nonprofits.
Nonprofits in the US literally are corporations, just with a different tax status. They need revenue that exceeds their costs. Many of them sell things. They can even turn a profit. Ikea operates as a nonprofit in the US.
Requiring more revenue than costs does not a business make. You starting a nonprofit does not give you special insight into the meaning of words. I am the treasurer on the board of a nonprofit. I have had to go through the books, confirm we’ve got enough cash for a year of runway, etc. The understanding of what nonprofits do is not the issue.
Someone has to pay (paid) for this business a.k.a. is actively loosing money.
What? No.
If a business isn't able to sustain itself with its revenue, it has failed and will need to shut down. That's the definition of failure.
Lots of things can be "successful" by your metric by using unsustainable pricing.