美国做Nonprofit创业，是否是个好的idea?

前一段有个网友想做business, 曾经问过我，是否在美国做个non profit组织作为创业不错? 具体的问题如下:

A lot of jobs are created by nonprofit organizations and there is money to be made from doing non profit business. Will that be a good business model?

以下是我给她的建议:

I think you need to evaluate couple of things:

1) Your passion

2) What you are good at doing

3) What are the easy fields to make money with

For example, I have a passion about search engine technology and web application in general. I am good at programming and writing content. Easy fields to make money with, for me is to build a website and grow the audience. Money comes in from ads.

So, you have to analyze your strength and weakness, and find a niche where you can be number one. It took me many years to find a viable business model. The way to do that is through trial and error, but keep your cost low.

Also, don't confuse running a profitable business with non profit. Making money and generating profits is the top priority for a business, while the goal of a non-profit organization is help people and society for the common good.

That said, successful for-profit businesses would typically contribute and pay back to the society as well. Often times, for-profit businesses contribute more back to society than nonprofit organizations simply because they have the money and resources to do so.

So, either for-profit or non-profit, they are just two sides of the same coin. They all do good to improve people's living standards. As to which one to choose as your own business, it is pretty much your call.

总之，最要不得的就是，本来想做business, 因为不好盈利了，所以就想用nonprofit来做。其实，non-profit是business的一种形式，不能作为business的策略。如果想做盈利公司，从开始就不要去歪门邪道的想通过non-profit迂回来做. 我看到很多打着non-profit的旗号，实际上不咋地的公司，被网友指责的，原因就是founders的动机不纯。Let's be honest, 如果你想赚钱，就不要琢磨non-profit。