nonprofit / not-for-profit / no profit

Some people tout the fact that they are a nonprofit organization. Some even bandy around the term casually. This was something that we had looked at seriously when setting up Wincon.

Nonprofit is an actual legally defined term. As an actual nonprofit organization, you have to file a special tax return and hold annual meetings. You are still allowed to absorb a shockingly large amount of the monies collected for charity and use them for operational costs. The key point of the nonprofit is that the regular members aren’t expected or even allowed to share profits.

Some people call themselves or their organizations not-for-profit in thinking that they are avoiding all this hassle. They really aren’t. Besides, as a business, no matter how touchy-feely it sounds to not strive to make a profit, I’d rather a business makes a profit to ensure it still being around. See notes for nonprofit above for the operating costs.

Wincon was always set up a regular business. We ended up giving a large amount of our proceeds to charity (I’ll explain the hassles of that soon) and we ultimately operated at a slight profit for the original investors. The organizers and committee never drew a salary. We were able to give out some prizes and gift certificates to our volunteers but not nearly what we considered enough considering how helpful many of them were.
In our dreams, we hoped the convention would make a ton of proceeds so that we could afford to bring in phenomenal guests and give away massive prizes of value and super-coolness. This would further increase the memberships to staggering numbers. With the convention growing to the size of a GenCon North, we could make it our sole work and rake in the dividends. That didn’t quite happen.