Читать книгу Nonprofit Kit For Dummies - Stan Hutton, Beverly A. Browning - Страница 36

People form nonprofit organizations to create a public benefit for the greater good of all. In fact, nonprofit corporations are sometimes referred to as public benefit corporations. A nonprofit organization can’t be created to help a particular individual or family, for example. If that were possible, we’d all have our separate nonprofit organizations. You can start a nonprofit to aid a specific group or class of individuals — everyone suffering from diabetes, for example, or chronically homeless individuals — but you can’t create a nonprofit for individual benefit or gain.

Just because you’re working for the public’s benefit doesn’t mean you can’t receive a reasonable salary for your work when your revenues are stable and the drawing of your salary won’t result in a budget deficit. And despite the name nonprofit, such an organization can have surplus funds — essentially, a profit — at the end of the year. In a for-profit business, the surplus money can be distributed to employees, shareholders, and the board of directors; however, in a nonprofit organization, the surplus funds are used to strengthen the organization or are held in reserve by the organization to respond to emergency needs or invest in future programming.