Blurred Lines between Sectors Businesses and government entities often provide services similar to those of nonprofits. As a result, there may be few obvious differences among nonprofit, for-profit, and government services such as substance abuse prevention programs, child care centers, and hospitals. Although there is growing concern over the potential impact on communities of the conversion of hospitals from nonprofit to for-profit status, there is little documentation of the consequences. The overlap among sectors sometimes occurs naturally and with positive effect. For instance, nonprofits may create for-profit subsidiaries that allow them to make a profit in one program that can be used to subsidize services in another.
Nonprofits also use services provided by businesses when it is cost-effective to do so.
Many colleges now provide commercial food services for students, for example. Boundaries between the nonprofit, government, and business sectors always have been shifting and permit motivated entities to move in new directions. These changing boundaries can lead to innovation and new opportunities for problem-solving. The creation of nonprofits engaged in AIDS prevention and treatment in the 1980s is one illustration of how nonprofit advocacy can spark government and industry involvement in an important public cause. The political and economic forces of the last decade differentially affected the growth rates, strength, and viability of nonprofit organizations, depending on their areas of activities, sources of revenues, and size.