Nonprofit Terminology

The terms Nonprofit, Not-for-Profit, Voluntary and Independent are used in differing contexts and countries as modifiers to describe what appear to be very similar phenomena. These modifiers are used together with words like organizations, sectors, boards, corporations, committees, associations and numerous other objects to describe third sector various forms of uncoerced or independent collective action or cooperation outside markets, states, or households.

The term Nonprofit is most widely used in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, while Voluntary (as in voluntary organizations) serves the same purpose in Great Britain, and nongovernmental (as in nongovernmental organizations is preferred in much of the rest of English-language usage throughout the world.