I work over at the non-profit Internet Archive running their Open Library. There are a lot of people in the space, applying their entrepreneurial affinities towards public good. I spent ~5 years doing startups before joining the Internet Archive.
Been here for ~5 years.
There's pretty high leverage for impact. It's very fun and satisfying work. Big community of passionate, smart people who care.
This can be true... and at the same time, I'd say there hasn't been a day which has gone by where I haven't felt impostor syndrome as I'm forced to compare my work against the aggressive forward progress achieved by well funded and staffed for-profit organizations.
One of the reasons talent steers clear of non-profits is circumstantial. VCs (who have a vested interest in smart people starting companies or joining their portfolio companies) encourage smart people to do startups. Makes sense, not bad advice.
But this also results in a strange form of dissonance where I'm perfectly certain millions of people could do better work (better design, engineering, and PM'ing) than I'm doing, and yet in the past 5 years, no one has come along and done it.
I think it's in part this self fulfilling prophecy why more, talented people don't try the non-profit path. You likely won't earn stock and may not save up enough to buy an Bay Area house.
1. The impact at non-profits can be extraordinarily high.
For years, I was the only PM / SWE / ops / dir of openlibrary.org responsible for ~3M+ patrons. We were enabling millions of meaningful book borrows for patrons and students. I've been able to independently drive large programs forward, shape partnerships, and am afforded a massive amount of trust and agency w/o having to escalate through a chain of 20 directors.
2. Many non-profit orgs (Wikimedia, Internet Archive, Mozilla, EFF, et al) offer competitive salaries
(I guess SF is a magical place) I'm still able to earn (sans stock) w/ a competitive 6-figure salary.
3. Non-profits can offer opportunities for self-directed personal growth
As someone who considers themselves an early stage "startup person", I've been able to (at my discretion) participate in community organization (50+ contributors), project planning & management, design, devops, software engineering, program creation, and partnerships (I've helped lead a design partnership with the Tradecrafted Group & Rutger's University). I've mentored 3 interns and have had ample opportunities to participate in public speaking.
4. Flexibility
I work remotely with a diverse group of people from all over the world (Canada, New Zealand, Switzerland, Amsterdam, India, Italy, etc) :)
5. The team & mission
The people I work with care so much.
Caveats: Non-profits are like startups in another way; I've found myself perpetually having to move quickly and balance time constraints (knowing even if I build something people love, the "rocket fuel" or funding is seldom available to scale up the team we need). This also means (at least for Internet Archive) it can be hard to specialize and I don't always get to build the sexiest solutions with the latest tech.