How can nonprofits gain the advantages of the for-profit model?

In my last post I described the advantages of for-profit models over nonprofit models, including scalable revenue, incentives and metrics to drive effectiveness and efficiency, and incentives to fund high-risk, high-reward experiments.

But not everything can be for-profit. How can nonprofit organizations get some of these advantages? Here are five ideas:

https://rootsofprogress.org/how-nonprofits-can-gain-for-profit-advantages

My current obsession: funding for research

At the beginning of April I got obsessed with a new topic: how research is funded. The last several weeks, I’ve been exploring a lot of ideas and projects. In the spirit of working with the garage door up, here’s what I’m doing now.

My current focus is the history and present state of funding for research, especially but not exclusively “basic research”. My goal is to understand how research is funded, why it’s done that way, how the present landscape came to be, and where might be gaps or opportunities to do it better.

https://rootsofprogress.org/my-current-obsession-research-funding

Podcast interview on Plugged In with Jordan McGillis

I was interviewed on the Institute for Energy Research’s podcast “Plugged In”, hosted by Jordan McGillis. We covered progress studies, “natural resources”, the relationship of energy to the Industrial Revolution, culture and progress, pollution, property rights, and more. (This was published a few weeks ago but I’m just getting around to putting it up now, sorry!)

https://rootsofprogress.org/podcast-interview-on-plugged-in-with-jordan-mcgillis