New Resource: Evaluating For-Profit and Non-Profit Affiliates

One of our main resolutions for the new year for MLC was to start fulfilling our promise to publish resources for non-profits and social entrepreneurs. At some point, this activity will roll over to our non-profit affiliate, MLC Collective, as part of its educational mission when that launches later this year.

Appropriately enough our first resource is actually on the topic of for-profit and non-profit affiliates. In my mind, these are always some of our most interesting projects and often brings us in contact with people with big, exciting ideas, who are passionate about their mission, but wary about whether a non-profit structure can be too limiting.

There are definitely pitfalls in the area, but I’m generally an optimist when it comes to making these structures work, which is why we are starting our own non-profit affiliate in the first place. In the course of advising clients, we have developed our own way of thinking about these projects. After having had this conversation countless time, I thought now would be a good time to put into writing and pictures to share it a bit more broadly (though we are always happy to bombard anyone who wants to talk about this with us with even more information and ideas).

Posting it here, but it will also live on our MLC Resources page, along with everything else we produce and share. In fact, this is the first in a 6-part series that will culminate in a “road map” to figuring out whether to start a non-profit in the first place.

We hope you find this helpful!