We can organise our economy in very different ways, and even as the free market and the idea of capitalism reign, there can be different extents to which goods and services are produced and supplied to the end consumers. The non-profit organisation can serve as a way to coordinate activity that delivers real economic results in the form of goods and services.
I think we have overlooked the ability of such a form of economic organisation to do more for the world. The advantage of a non-profit that it explicitly pursues resources specifically for a cause. It doesn’t mean it will squander resources inefficiently, but the stated purpose of it, is to generate the impact or advance towards the mission. Ironically, some of the more profitable companies in the world can tend to make claims that are similar to non-profit in terms of the contribution it brings to society.
And since non-profits often have to deliver results in exchange for funding, or to unlock pre-committed funding, they will learn to optimise their budget and utilise resources optimised to deliver some of the results or at least provide inputs to the causes they are trying to champion. The funding portion of non-profits may be different but the way it should be ran operationally is probably not so different from a typical company, with the exception it may not be able to use the usual incentives for its staff (in those circles, they sometimes call it a passion tax).
Yet perhaps more forms of organisations should be acting as non-profits. For example, banks should potentially operate without profits, with the key objective of optimising risks in the system while providing access to credit for organisations and people. In fact, I think that all financial institutions, even those providing payment solutions probably should have limitations placed on their profits because ultimately, it is the real economy that they are trying to drive and allowing them to extract too much from the real economy can hinder the more fundamental process of capital allocation – which is what we are already seeing. Everyone needs to contribute to the real economy and finance in particular, has become the tail wagging the dog, in name of the pursuit of profit. That is a shame.