Quotes about Nonprofit

Today, National Geographic has a membership side with a magazine and some television side, and they generate about a billion dollars in revenue, and they're profitable. And so at the end of the year they have some bottom line profit which they can then reinvest, because they're running it as a not-for-profit in charitable endeavors. But... The real magic in National Geographic isn't how much money they have left at the end of the year. It's the fact that through their overall focus they are reaching hundreds of millions of people and educating people about the world. It just happens to be done in a business-oriented kind of way that is more sustainable.

One of the things I'm most focused now on, with the Case Foundation, is the notion of social entrepreneurship. I'm an entrepreneur. I like building companies, but I also like building projects, and one of the things I learned in the last five years is it's easy to start new things, particularly in the not-for-profit world. It's harder to scale them, and so we're trying to figure out a way to work with some of the not-for-profit organizations -- around maybe ten years, or already well led, already well respected -- on how to kind of get them over that tipping point where they really become more mainstream phenomena. One statistic that was startling to me is if you look at the top 20 companies, and you look at the list 20 years ago and you look at the list today, about half of the companies change every 20 years, because 20 years ago CISCO and Microsoft and some of the other companies didn't really exist. Wal-Mart. And so in the business world there's this process of constant change and evolution and a list changes. In the not-for-profit world, if you look at the top 20 not-for-profits 20 years ago and today, 19 of them are the same. One has broken through, which is Habitat for Humanity, which is a great group that we work closely with.

The real development I've seen of people in organizations, especially in big ones, comes from their being volunteers in a nonprofit organization -- where you have responsibility, you see results, and you quickly learn what your values are. There is no better way to understand your strengths and discover where you belong than to volunteer in a nonprofit. That is probably the great opportunity for the social sector -- and especially in its relationship to business.