by Gary C. Gibson

Created on: November 01, 2009   Last Updated: November 07, 2009

If we ask 'how do non-profit organizations change as they adopt social web strategies' we may assume certain points about social organizations and change that are not actual or necessary elements of social organizations. Besides the obvious fact that a non-profit organizations does not include those that lose net earnings unintentionally but have profit as a general goal, we encounter the issue of a value theory regarding the nature of what profit is as well as a pre-determined value for the relationship between a non-profit organization and social networks. It is useful to clarity these unclear meanings in order to determine a more firm criterion of non-profit organizations and their relationships to social networking organizations.

First the issue of profit. Generally it is taken to mean net revenues beyond the cost of production. In thermodynamic terms the points is akin to making a perpetual motion machine, or starting a universal flow of energy from absolutely nothing that continues to increase (without being God). Few organizations actually create environmental profit. The exceptions are clever arrangement of renewable resources such as clover into interesting shapes for specialized purposes such as deer hunting calls, and occasional non-renewable transformation of a limited amount of resources in to information processing technologies. Profit from the human point of view ought to be considered to be providing necessary elements for human life sustenance with the least amount of disorganization added to nature (thermodynamically). I would guess that perhaps no more than ten percent of business actually operates at anything resembling a profit.

The second point is that of 'social networking' entry; organizations of human beings are of specialized functions. An acceptable way to determine what is and isn't a non-profit organization would be to determine who receives the profits. If the Salvation Army earned two billion dollars annually selling edible books yet allocated the 'profit' over production costs to buying bicycles for the homeless then it would rightly remain a non-profit organization. Organizations should be free to produce profit without being taxed so long as they distribute the excess earnings not required for financial life support of organization members impartially to reviewed eligible non-organizational members. This non-technical distribution of allocation eligibility requirements for non-profit status would not change the function of

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