Non-profit organization

A non-profit organization (sometimes abbreviated to "not-for-profit," "non-profit" or "NPO") is an organization whose primary objective is to support some issue or matter of private interest or public concern for non-commercial purposes. Non-profits may be involved in an innummerable range of areas relating to the arts, charities, education, politics, religion, research, or some other endeavour.

Goals

Such "organizations" are often charities or service organizations; they may be organized as a not-for-profit corporation or as a trust, a cooperative or they may be purely informal. Sometimes they are also called foundations, or endowments that have large equity funds. Most foundations give out grants to other not-for-profit organizations, or fellowships to individuals. However, the name foundation may be used by any not-for-profit corporation -- even volunteer organizations or grass roots groups. A non-profit organization may be a very loosely organized group such as a block association, or a trade union, or it may be a complex structure such as a university, hospital, documentary film production company or educational book publisher.

Related Topics:
Charities - Not-for-profit corporation - Trust - Cooperative - Foundations - Endowments - Equity fund - Volunteer - Grass roots - Block association - Trade union - University - Hospital - Documentary - Film production - Publisher

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In many countries applying Germanic or Nordic law (e.g. Germany,Sweden, Finland), it is typical that non-profit organizations are voluntary associations although there are some non-profit organizations with a corporate structure (e.g. housing corporations). A voluntary association is usually founded upon a principle of one man?-one vote. A large, nation-wide organization is usually organized as a league: the local level has a town- or county-level association with natural person membership, these associations being members of the national association. This is perceived to give the local level the maximal autonomy, while it also protects the organization from financial blunders of any single association. The organization of such league (e.g. trade union or a party) may be extremely complex. Often there are separate laws regulating usual, ?idealist? associations (anything from a sports club to trade union), political parties and religious denominations, restricting each type of organization to its chosen field.

Related Topics:
Germany - Sweden - Finland - Voluntary associations - League - Party

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~