I made visible progress on the trailer today. The sides and front bulkhead are now attached to the trailer base. I was pleased during the dry-fit stage to see that everything fits together tightly and is square. I tried to be pretty careful when cutting and sanding and it seems to have paid off. From here on out it begins to look like a teardrop trailer instead of a stack of wood.
It's gonna be cozy!
Here's a site with some rare color photos of destruction in London from the WWII bombs dropped by Germany.
Photos
I know the following is fairly obvious stuff, but I'm going somewhere with this. So work with me.
Two things distinguish a for-profit organization from a similar non-profit:
The for-profit organization expects to see a black number at the bottom of their spreadsheet at the end of the year. If it's a zero or, worse, a red number they failed.
The non-profit is fine with a zero. They'd like a black number because that means they can expand their operations next year, but a zero is OK.
The other distinguishing feature is how the govt. views them. If it gets a 501c3 designation from the IRS the non-profit can solicit donations, and the donors get to claim their gift as a tax deduction. There are other benefits for being a 501c3 organization, like exemption from paying corporate taxes and, in some cases, property taxes.
That's pretty much it for the differences.
Because of the 501c3 designation the non-profit has that additional source of income - donations. Some non-profits have income from both their operations and from donations while others have just donation income. An inner city rescue mission doesn't charge anything for its services (homeless guys don't have a lot of disposable income) and depends entirely on donations. A non-profit hospital charges its patients and their insurance companies, but also receives donations from patrons and grants from philanthropic organizations.
Some people tend to attribute other distinctions to the two types of organizations, like salary levels.
Hospital A is a for-profit facility, part of a large medical corporation. Six blocks away is Hospital B, a non-profit one-off that in other key respects is very similar. The administrator of Hospital B may have a salary significantly larger than the administrator at Hospital A. The salary of Administrator A was determined by corporate suits at HQ in New York, and B's by a local board of governors. Both bodies paid what they thought was necessary to get the candidate they wanted. There's no connection between for-profit or non-profit and salaries, whether hospitals or.... There's also no direct connection with regards to efficiency, or size, or any other characteristic.
I think the bottom line dynamic is overlooked, or perhaps misunderstood by a lot of people. Just because an organization is non-profit doesn't mean they aren't paying attention to that figure and its color. If it's red by a significant margin or for a significant length of time the organization can't continue. They aren't able to pay the light bill or salaries, or do whatever constitutes their mission. They then have to do the same thing the for-profit organization must do in that situation: increase income and/or lower costs. For both of them that bottom line is determinative and it's power absolute.
(to be continued)
2 comments:
....that power of red ink is absolute unless your company or non-profit has friends in the right places to take tax money from others and direct it to said companies/non-profit's bottom line.
Mike H.
"From here on out it begins to look like a teardrop trailer instead of a stack of wood."
...or a desk.
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