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.