According to our reading assigned this week, “the nonprofit sector is the collective name used to describe institutions and organizations in American society that are neither government nor business.” Another definition of “nonprofit” presented in class on Wednesday was, “A corporation that exists for a purpose aside from the distribution of profit to its shareholders”. Although these definitions of  “nonprofit” give us scope in terms of the nature of their purpose, there is much more dimension to what being a nonprofit really means.

In class, we discussed how nonprofits are a group of corporations that revolve around a public issue that benefits our society, and used various types of 501C3s on a micro level. On a macro level, we discussed the diversity of nonprofits and categorized the different types of organizations/institutions that count as being not-for-profit. The categories discussed were:

1. Quasi-government: Nonprofits that carry out the functions of government (transportation, safety, infrastructure, etc.)
2. Values-incentivizing: Organizations that have a purpose that society has decided to support and incentivize (social clubs, frats/sororities, identity-based organizations, etc.)
3. Counter-balance: Organizations that hold government and society accountable (advocacy groups, think tanks, media, etc.)
4. Quasi-business: Nonprofits that make money through business while carrying out social missions (Warby Parker, Toms, Ben and Jerry’s, etc.)

After leaving class and revising my notes from the reading, I quickly realized how our rudimentary definition of nonprofits gave a very brief and shallow impression of nonprofits. The diversity of nonprofits is astounding, and is still a sector that is commonly misunderstood and undermined for the simple reason that a basic definition will not be able to express the depth and scope of this commonly misunderstood sector.