Nonprofit

How to spell nonprofit

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce nonprofit

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does nonprofit mean?

1. adjectiveNot operating in order to make money for owners or shareholders; using any surplus to further its goals.
2. nounAn organisation that does not operate to earn money for owners, but to serve a cause or community.

Nonprofit in a sentence

• adjective

  She left a corporate job to run a nonprofit housing charity.

• noun

  He volunteers his accounting skills to a small nonprofit in his town.

• adjective

  The museum is a nonprofit institution funded by grants and donations.

• noun

  The foundation registered as a nonprofit to qualify for tax exemption.

Where does nonprofit come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word joins the prefix non-, which comes straight from the Latin non meaning simply 'not', to the noun profit, which English took from Old French profit in the medieval period. That French word descended from the Latin profectus, the past participle of proficere, literally 'to advance' or 'to make progress', formed from pro 'forward' and facere 'to make or do'. The financial sense of profit as monetary gain grew naturally out of that idea of advancement or benefit. The compound nonprofit is a much younger, largely twentieth-century American coinage describing organisations that do not exist to generate gain for owners. The spelling trap is purely the seam: writers hesitate over whether to glue non and profit together, hyphenate them, or keep them apart, and the solid one-word form is the standard here.

How the word is built

• non- (not)
• profit (gain, from Latin proficere 'to advance, make progress')