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You are here: Home / 5 - Industries / Non-Profit Management / What Does a Nonprofit Do?

What Does a Nonprofit Do?

July 22, 2009 by Matt Perman

Defining the mission and primary outcome of a non-profit can be difficult. For there is no universal, specifically measurable bottom-line such as profit.

In his Managing the Nonprofit Organization, Peter Drucker actually provides a good measure of clarity to help overcome this challenge:

[The distinguishing feature common to nonprofits] is not that these institutions are “non-profit,” that is, that they are not businesses. It is also not that they are “non-governmental.” It is that they do something very different from either business or government. Business supplies, either goods or services. Government controls.

A business has has discharged its task when the customer buys the product, pays for it, and is satisfied with it. Government has discharged its function when its policies are effective. The “non-profit” institution neither supplies goods or services or controls. Its “product” is neither a pair of shoes nor an effective regulation. Its product is a changed human being. The non-profit institutions are human-change agents. Their “product” is a cured patient, a child that learns, a young man or woman grown into a self-respecting adult; a changed human life altogether.

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Filed Under: Non-Profit Management

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Matt Perman started What’s Best Next in 2008 as a blog on God-centered productivity. It has now become an organization dedicated to helping you do work that matters.

Matt is the author of What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done and a frequent speaker on leadership and productivity from a gospel-driven perspective. He has led the website teams at Desiring God and Made to Flourish, and is now director of career development at The King’s College NYC. He lives in Manhattan.

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