Why is creating a non-profit so popular?

[skieurope]

Reposting a comment I made some time ago:

Non-Profit

Ladies and Gentleman, may I present the most overused EC of 2020. Starting a YouTube channel has now slipped to #2. Without getting into semantics on the definition of non-profit and 501(c)(3), starting a non-profit for the purpose of assisting people long after you’ve left HS is great. The challenge is that many students want to do so to pad their resumes thinking that college admissions simply requires completing a checklist. Start a non-profit. Check. Publish a book. Check. Get 100K views on my YouTube channel. Check. Unfortunately, admissions does not work that way, and AOs will see right through the obvious ploys. MIT actually says it really well: http://mitadmissions.org/apply/prepare/highschool The person who starts a non-profit will intrigue the AO not simply because s/he checked a box, but because of other factors related to it, some of which are intangible. The same, though, can be said for other ECs.