Be Charitable
We believe charities should be run like businesses. The main difference should be that the metrics (key data), which are being managed, should relate to the number of people well served rather than the amount of profit accumulated.
In business, one only has to count cash to know how well they are doing, which is fairly easy. To help people other than yourself is much harder to address and quantify, but it should be approached with the same vigor.
Charities do not distribute profits or have stock shares. All of what ordinarily would be profit from their business-like activities is redirected back into their nonprofit projects. In a properly run 501c3 charity, there are generally staff members who absorb modest salaries and other ordinary business expenses, but high salaries and expenses are frowned upon and illegal in some cases.
Other sorts of charities, for instance, churches, associations and political organizations fall into different tax classes; whereas, here we are focused on fully tax-exempt 501c3 organizations, which are essentially charitable businesses whose monies flow internally after being raised or earned. There are no shareholders, dividends, or stock sales in a 501c3.
No one should directly profit from charitable activities. Yet there are abhorrent cases where there has been executive excess at the expense of charity stakeholders and society (an executive at United Way is one high profile example). This is an anomaly and not in the spirit of charity. Cases like this should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Furthermore, to use charitable donations on anything other than direct charitable actions and modest expenses (to run and grow an organization) is a moral violation.
Some corporate vendors who serve charities naturally profit since they aren’t nonprofit organizations, but their profits should be limited by managers on both sides of the transaction.
