Agree that specifics are important here. Some specifically interesting examples to me where non-profit and for-profit models overlap:
A university is set up as a non-profit org, receiving charitable donations from alums and other institutions or individuals. The university’s main non-profit activities are education and research.
The university also wholly owns a for-profit org (basically, a hedge fund) which is used to manage the university’s endowment.edit: actually, an endowment fund also counts as regulatory non-profit if its sole purpose is to fund a non-profit’s activityMozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation. Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit org that also wholly owns the for-profit org Mozilla Corp. Mozilla Foundation’s main non-profit activities seem to be internet advocacy and funding other related projects. My impression is that Mozilla Corp. derives most of its income from search engine placement in Firefox, and then Mozilla Foundation is subsequently funded by Mozilla Corp.’s profits. I haven’t looked in detail though, so I may be off.
Note that in the above two examples, I’ve been using the terms “for-profit” and “non-profit” in a primarily regulatory sense, i.e. for-profit = corporation, LP, etc. vs. non-profit = 501(c)(3). In those examples, the terms also seem to map onto their “intentional” sense, but it’s unclear what form a general rule might take to disentangle “for-profit” vs “non-profit” in their regulatory vs “intentional” senses.
One other important feedback “loop,” or rather a feedback terminal, is an M&A event. The for-profit organization’s owners receive a single injection of $ from a new parent organization, and then the for-profit organization (a) continues operating as a separate subsidiary of the parent, or (b) ceases its separate existence, getting liquidated into the parent. (Various outcomes in between can also occur.)
I’m curious whether there is an analog of this sort of M&A “loop” with non-profit organizations. If there is no such analog, then we have two broken feedback loops in non-profits: an indifferent product/sales loop and a nonexistent M&A “loop.” How relatively important are the two broken loops in explaining the strengths and weaknesses of for-profit vs non-profit models?