As someone who co-ran a non-profit with a mission full time, I ended up deeply in personal debt as a result (of not being paid for years but still having living costs). Those running the non-profit ended up significantly worse off than other people working there. I'm still paying it off years later.
At mine, management were required to be volunteers (even full time), but other full time staff were paid salary and benefits.
Most people working there were also volunteers, but part time or occasional as they felt like it. They had time for day jobs.
The reason for this arrangement was because most members who co-owned it did not believe anyone should be paid, but we had a grant for premises and hired staff. Nobody wanted the hired staff to be in charge overall, as their incentives, skills and competencies were far more aligned with the premises owner and business angle, and not with the non-profit's mission. So it had to be run by motivated volunteers, and that included developing a type of non-profit business and manufacturing service, managing staff, as well as organising a large number of volunteers, events, teaching, safety, purchases, accounting, etc.
Boy did that combination take a lot of work for a long time. Like regular startups, we had a big idea and hoped it would grow to something we wanted to see in the world. It actually did really well for what it was.
The model broke for different reasons than the obvious one with sustainability, involving assholes and a commercial opportunist who offered the premises owner something better (which they then promptly failed to execute, destroying everything for everyone), just as ours was starting to flourish at a sustainable level and we were getting better at distributing the work and knowledge effectively.
On the other hand, if you establish basic norms, you shouldn't have issues like "X won't let me cheat on my expense report" or "Y won't let be a literal agent of foreign power" regardless of the size of the organization.
> Those running the non-profits may do better than the workers.
I know.
I was nearly violently assaulted by the CEO of my NGO when I pointed out they justified our patltry salaries by the fact we’d make approximately the same on the GS scale while the higher ups made multiples of what POTUS did (which iirc is towards the far end of the bell curve for government salaries).
(Hacker protip: Don’t stand in a doorway, raise your voice, then police the response.)
You’ve obviously never worked for a nonprofit :-)