The profit-maximizing non-profit

Consider an organization that solicits private contributions, which will partly be used to provide a public good. The organization's goals is to maximize its profits, namely the difference between aggregate contributions and the amount it spends on providing the public good. An equilibrium exists in which many persons contribute, each contributor enjoys zero consumer surplus from contributing, and the organization takes as a profit the contributions of all but one donor. Such behavior by the organization is consistent with incomplete crowding out of governmental grants. Furthermore, when the organization is constrained to spend at least fraction of all contributions on the public good, it can have an incentive to produce inefficiently.