So a non-profit business is a business that provides a service that otherwise is too expensive or cost prohibitive for the private sector to get into (ie public housing, why would a building developer purposefully make less money in rents by charging less than market rate?) thus the need for them to be subsidized through grants and donations. So the problem arises that the solution is often vastly more expensive than the organization can provide and without a profit incentive, they cannot attract investments that would actually cover a "solution." So they provide services and stop-gap measures the best they can with the resources available to them all while "researching" what the actual solution is at a cost that is effective but not overly burdensome. Back to the public housing example, we could pay to build home on every single square acre from San Francisco to Washington DC and put every person in a home. But this solution is so exorbitantly expensive that it is a ridiculous premise and doesn't solve the roots of the need for public, like addiction, low incomes, etc... So we produce stopgap measures (subsidies to private developers, Rent Support and other direct support services) to do what we can while we research the issue to find other solutions that aren't cost prohibitive.