Feeder organizations are also legally allowed to provide a service for a fee or donation that is then invested back into the original NPO. Car washes and festivals are common examples of services that can be arranged or performed by the members or volunteers of a nonprofit. Even the Boy Scouts of America, for example, once supplied the service of newspaper disposal. The newspapers that they collected were sold to recyclers who paid the scouts a small fee for the materials gathered.
Though such services usually target the NPO’s particular constituency and serve as marketing for the nonprofit organization, the services are permitted to seek a different audience in order to attract funding from other locations. Educational enterprises might offer related media materials, but even a café that caters to NPO staff is considered a viable “service.” Research operations may provide consulting services to fund their basic, freely available research.
