VOLUNTEERING NONPROFIT ENTREPRENEURIAL SERVICES

Which member of a heterogeneous population will volunteer to provide t he entrepreneurial services needed to found a nonprofit firm to privat ely provide a public good? We develop a model of this decision, The mo del predicts that nonprofit entrepreneurs will be those who incur rela tively low private costs, or get a relatively high private payoff. Les s obviously, they will tend to have a high discount rate and relativel y long time horizons, either due to their youth, or due to their consi deration of generations to come far into the future. If the public goo d is one which individuals tend to contribute large amounts to, such e ntrepreneurs will tend to be relatively wealthy. If private contributi ons to the firm are relatively small, the entrepreneur is more likely to come from the center of the wealth distribution.