To Advance Their Cause, Foundations Buy Stocks

The New York Times reports:

Earlier this year, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation invested $10 million to acquire a stake in Liquidia Technologies, a biotechnology company working on new ways to deliver vaccines.

The foundation bought its shares using a program-related investment, or an investment that can be counted toward federal requirements that it pay out 5 percent of its assets each year.

A growing number of foundations are using such investments, known as P.R.I.’s, to connect with profit-making ventures that advance their missions. But as they become more popular, some officials in the nonprofit field worry that this and other newer mechanisms are blurring the lines between profit-making businesses and charitable work.

“Equity investments, and sometimes debt instruments, are ways to tap into the private sector when we think it will add to the work we are doing and leverage private flows of capital to advance our work in global health, global development and U.S. education,” said Jeff Raikes, chief executive of the Gates Foundation.

You might ask where do the "non-profit" world begin and end??