Question

is openstudy a nonprofit organization? is openstudy a nonprofit organization? @OpenStudy Feedbac…

Answer 1

i am making untold millions. you?

Answer 2

im serious is it?

Answer 3

I'm only at the half million mark.

Answer 4

Lol as far as I know it certainly is given there are no adverts, no fees and is completely free.

Answer 5

Somebody has to be getting paid. People don't work for free and it costs money to keep a site going

Answer 6

And what about that Bill Gates Foundation contribution stuff....

Answer 7

Oh yes, they are paid, though funding (from MIT I think among other things) but they don't get a profit.

Answer 8

I have a hard time distinguishing pay from profit

Answer 9

Profit is when you get paid right? So what's the difference?

Answer 10

"Nonprofit organization (abbreviated as NPO) is neither a legal or technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends" basically..

Answer 11

They didn't spend much money to get started and they get paid more than they have so....I would say that's profit

Answer 12

Definitions don't mean much to me at the moment

Answer 13

But the business itself actually makes no money so it makes no profit (but bah, I'm no economist).

Answer 14

I make up my own definitions. I don't trust books

Answer 15

The individuals are still getting paid while the "business" isn't. A business last time I checked is a group of individuals. But each member of the group is still getting paid. The pay is not distributed from a large pool, yet each individual gets paid directly. Sounds like a different way to gain profit in such a way that everybody is happy, not just a few individuals at the top. But understand that my idea of business is "legal pyramid scheme" so...

Answer 16

To tell you the truth I don't know, but an NPO is a specific term relating to... well that definition :P And OS fits the NPO definition.

Answer 17

The way I see it, they get paid not to advertise, not to charge people for money, and not to put their money into a large business pool

Answer 18

I don't know. My brain is wired a little differently

Answer 19

As long as they don't do those things, they will continue to get paid

Answer 20

lol, that is an interesting way of thinking of it and is probably true :) though I don't know about the 'business pool bit'

Answer 21

Yeah businesses do it all the time. It's called revenue sharing.

Answer 22

that's how people at the top such as CEO's get their astronomically large paydays

Answer 23

and bonus paychecks

Answer 24

Oh I see..

Answer 25

In NPO, they take a different approach so that things don't look so obvious but it's just the same thing by different means. Nobody says anything about it because usually NPO is for a good cause

Answer 26

Like for instance, this site

Answer 27

KC, I hope I answered your question

Answer 28

then i guess i have to buy the next round

Answer 29

We are not a non-profit, no. Non-profits have a very clear legal definition, and the law doesn't particularly care whether you trust books or not. Non-profits are companies who are in essence not permitted to retain surplus income.

Our income right now comes from funding, as has been pointed out, in part funding from the NSF, the NIH, and the Georgia Research Alliance, as well as the Gates & Hewlett Foundation's Next Generation Learning Challenge. There are plans for bringing in income on-site, ideally without ads, while keeping the core experience (what you see now) free, but we're focusing on making this core experience very very good first.

Answer 30

Why did you switch everything back to the old OS? I kind of liked seeing pictures of everybody all at once.

Answer 31

does tht mean u all have two jobs?

Answer 32

http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/08/openstudy-wants-to-turn-the-world-into-one-big-study-group/

1.27 Million $ Funding :D :O