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alexpotato

I don't know about in swimming centers in England but I do know YMCAs in the US often have budgets that look like:

- Revenue: $25.01M

- Expenses: $25M

So "small savings" like this can add up for them.

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This is mostly just due to how nonprofits work. If you have excess revenue, you can’t return it to shareholders so you might as well spend it on mission-oriented activities.

You can, and should, keep it in case you have less revenue next year though.

You can do this up to a point but if it looks like you're actually making a profit it might raise questions eventually. Keeping enough to cover one year's operating costs is pretty common though.

God forbid a non-profit try and compete honestly

Non-profits usually don't "compete" at least in the economic sense. They exist for a charitable purpose that isn't normally well-served by the competitive market.

First of all, charity is a christian concept that has no role in modern secular society. Anything worth doing out of the kindness of our hearts is worth doing collectively without expecting individuals do disproportionately sacrifice.

Second, of course zero-margin processes have an economic role. That is what market efficiency looks like. The entire point of competition is to produce these economic processes. The american brain can't fathom getting their money's worth lol

> Anything worth doing out of the kindness of our hearts is worth doing collectively without expecting individuals do disproportionately sacrifice.

What are you saying here? Like, how are you distinguishing individual charity from the thing "worth doing collectively"? Presumably you don't consider individuals voluntarily giving and thus voluntarily organizing insofar as they coordinate to be the same as collective action, so I can't help but wonder which part is different, and I worry it's the voluntary bit....

Yes. I think people should be forced at gunpoint to contribute to their society. Typically that gunpoint is the state, but we seem to be allergic to having a functional society. Why be proud of your country when you can be a narcissist who steps over the homeless on the way to your job?

Non-profits have treasury functions.. it is prudent that many of them have some sort of cash reserves.

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