I worked for 7 years on NGOs, then the last three on startups. I made the transition exactly because of that. And I plan to go back, with a lot of useful things learned.<p>But I was not thinking about these general guidelines. It is more about how to achieve growth. Make something people want/love is a great moto for non profits. Only in this case, the people are not customers or users, but the beneficiaries. Well intentioned people building things not knowing if they are solving a real problem or if their approach is the right way to solve it, it is even more common than with tech startups.<p>The same thing with "get out of the building". Just so many social problems are "solved" at air conditioned rooms. People don't talk (or don't listen) to the people they are trying to help.<p>And the growth mentality, through iterations, is a much better for a lot of problems. Specially social ones, the ones fighting poverty, urban problems, advocacy.<p>Following this principles, a lot of good advice on how to grow, how to impact more people, how to do product development can be used by non profits with not much adaptation.<p>Sure, as much as in the for profit world, not all problems can be solved by the startup=growth model. Medical research is a good example. But medicine distribution could. Some issues (lots of them) demand public sector participation. But advocacy, public awareness, could benefit from startups practice.<p>Also, I must say that most non profit would benefit better from the "bootstrapping startup" model than from "VC startup get huge or die fast" model.