ELIF How do non-profit organizations sustain themselves?

"Non-profit" is a horribly misleading name. It's just another way to organize a business, it really doesn't have to do with earning profit, has to with what you can do with your profit.

A normal company, can give profits back to their owners. Of course right? They can just give the owner of the business money. They can just say "hey owner, we made a profit, we wrote you a fat check, here it is, take it!" Just like if you run a lemonade stand, you can pocket the profits.

A non-profit can't give their profits to the owner... at least directly. A non-profit can't give its profits to its owner in the same way a regular company can. They can still do basically anything else they want with their profit, that is except hand over their owner a check like in the above example. I mean, they could even have their owner on the payroll and pay him as an employee... thats fine! They just can't directly hand them over the profits like above. Think about running a lemonade stand again, well now you can't pocket the profits, so maybe you invest them to grow the business... or maybe you just increase your own salary...

They're just like any other business with the exception of where their profits go. You can have salaries, expenditures, etc. But instead of taking profits and giving them to shareholders or the person at the top of the food chain (who is most assuredly getting a salary), they're going to whatever the non-profit is supporting.

Non-profit doesn’t mean non-revenue! They take in revenue from donations, sponsorships, sales of goods, etc. and spend it on staff salaries, marketing/fundraising, spending on the root purpose of the organization (ie cancer research, providing educational assistance, promoting a policy view)

Being a non-profit means that surplus funds can’t be distributed as profits to owners/shareholders. Instead there is a board of directors/trustees and an executive director who oversee the organization. And instead of paying out dividends or otherwise returning profits to owners, mon-profits’ surplus funds are reserved for future needs (help them get by in down year for donations) or distributed to the cause the non-profit supports.

Non-profit means that they have no profit after their expenses, not that they make no money. They non-profit organization can make money, through donations or other means, and then uses any excess money after expenses like payroll to reach its objective. an NPO that works to provide local homeless shelters with food, for example, will take the money it generates, pay its staff, then use whatever is left to buy food for local shelters.

They get donations and may get paid money from services provided. This is used to pay for expenses and expansion like in for-profit organisations.

Non profits make money. Goodwill makes plenty of money selling stuff. It's just that whatever money that's left over after all the expenses (rent, salary, etc) is put towards charity rather than paid out to owners/shareholders.

Other non-profits rely on donations and grants from people. If there's a cause you care about there might be a non-profit out there that can take your donation and put to good use. Some of that donation is used on things like salary and rent like before but you're paying people to help out with that issue.