[nostromo]

The primary thing most nonprofits need is money. Here, I'll give you an example:

My mom ran a branch of Habitat for Humanity for a while. People universally loovvee Habitat. People were constantly volunteering, which is great! However, most of the time, there just is no work to be done by volunteers.

The primary thing Habitat needs is land and construction materials (which usually means: money).

People were sometimes upset about being turned away... but unless they could donate land, money, or construction supplies, there just wasn't much unmet need for general laborers.

[zanny]

I think you point a more systemic issue in the modern world. It isn't just in non-profits, there is a general lack of land, money, and construction supplies. First world infrastructure crumbles not due to a lack of unskilled labor to set to paving streets with vehicles, it is a lack of those vehicles for people to drive, and a lack of money to push politicians to allow it.

I'm not well versed at all in the problem, but I see it as a major one - there needs to be some major innovations in materials extraction and distribution to enable a next generation deployment of machinery to make the next round of renovation globally possible. And there is just no one picking up supply to meet that demand, mainly because while people want to fix all the broken infrastructure and build nations on new roads and proper housing, there is just no machinery to meet the demand, and no money to pay for it.

[mjn]

I can believe that's true for Habitat For Humanity, but not all charities have the same bottlenecks. My mom co-runs a branch of Meals on Wheels, and the main thing they're constantly short on is volunteers.