[efitz]

I believe that many (most?) non-profits are a combination of grift and money laundering.

I would love to see requirements that 75%+ of all non-profit revenue has to pass through to the community, that non-profits may not transfer funds to other non-profits, and that directors and officers cannot be compensated and have very modest limits on expenses.

[WJW]

It seems to me that there's a strong Pareto law inclination to this. 99% of non-profits are going to the local volley ball club type organizations that indeed don't make any money at all, or maybe a few hundred at most. I am in the board of a local chess club and you should see the amount of discussion that sometimes happens around a budget of no more than the equivalent of several hundred USD. I honestly can't imagine anyone is using us to launder money. (How, even? Yearly contribution is less than 100 EUR and even major sponsors for tournaments etc are easily traceable local companies that contribute <1k EUR each)

Then there's a relatively tiny amount of organizations that processes the vast majority of funds. Universities, hospitals, big FOSS organizations, etc. Those are the ones that are actually interesting.

[efitz]

I don’t agree but I take your point. After seeing the recent scandals regarding US AID etc. I have very low confidence that the majority of nonprofits have altruistic motives.

I also don’t buy the “most of our money goes to staff and directors salary and expenses because what we do is organize volunteers”. Why? Why can’t the staff and directors be volunteers too? Why do they need to even have any funding if it’s just volunteer coordination? We do lots of complex things with just volunteers- Linux, for example.

And I’m unable to differentiate the behavior of most nonprofit hospitals from for-profit hospitals, with only a few exceptions.

[cthalupa]

For a huge chunk of non-profits, the non-profit work is the labor of their members. Their goal is not and has never been to pass revenue through to the community - what would that even look like for a hospital? There's a million different examples here.

Directors of non-profits that have enough money for this to matter are doing this as a full time job - are we going to eliminate every competent director from working here if they can't afford to stop getting compensated for their work?

Your suggestion would cripple non-profits doing all sorts of important and beneficial work.

[butILoveLife]

My non profit is genuinely helpful. We spend less than $1000 a year.

At most I advertise my for-profit website and try to gain personal fame, but if I was trying to do those 2 things, I'd spend it directly on those 2 things.

Kids benefit and I second-hand benefit.

[mc32]

This would be great. I would also like to see non profits close shop once their goals are reached or fail rather than transform into a new thing just so the top people who make up the organization can continue to have a paycheck.

[input_sh]

That's kind of the fault of grant givers.

Nobody wants to give you a huge grant to continue doing what you're already doing, you only get grants for doing something completely new and grandiose. If you're lucky, you may get like 20% of the grant to cover your other expenses that don't come with a caveat of having to spend it on something completely new.

[post-it]

This article is mostly about universities and hospitals. Not really clear how either of those could possibly pass 75% of funding through to the community.

[bombcar]

They'd just redefine salaries as "funding through to the community" - which, if we step back, they kind of are.

Find a university located in a small town and work out how much of the town is dependent on the money flowing from the "gown".

[darth_avocado]

> I believe that many (most?) non-profits are a combination of grift and money laundering.

Actually most non profits are a massive jobs program for the middle and lower middle class. The side effect is that some problems that the government or the private sector won’t touch, get a slight more attention while providing tax benefits to people who contribute.