For-profit ventures help nonprofits shore up the funding they need to maintain and expand their programs

By Abny Santicola

“A lot of our families who received a car from the Vehicles for Change program come back three years later and buy a car from the used-car lot,” Schwartz says. “I think that that’s important.”

Atlanta-based Open Hand, an organization that provides home-delivered meals and nutrition education to low-income people with chronic diseases, began a for-profit subsidiary called Good Measure Meals in 2005 in response to requests by nurses and referral physicians for nutritious meals for people who could afford to pay for them.