My experience has been somehow similar.<p>What I think these organizations mostly lack is a clear incentive structure. Money flows in on one end and is spent on... stuff.<p>There&#x27;s not a strong incentive for tracking performance or impact. If you spent the money, got something out of it and didn&#x27;t kill anybody in the process, you&#x27;re gold. Actually, most non-profits I&#x27;ve worked with are very averse to the idea of measuring the impact of their activities.<p>There&#x27;s also the problem of failure; most just don&#x27;t recognize failure as a necessary step to success. I regularly see complete failures being spun into successes. The very admission of failure is enough to get you fired or shunned.<p>I&#x27;m actually looking at what comes out of YC (e.g. Watsi, Bayes Impact) to see if a new model of non-profits emerges, one that moves fast and embraces result-driven approaches.