From the article:
> “I've lost faith in the nonprofit business model”.
There’s your problem right there. Investors want profit. If you want investors then you have to convince them you’ll deliver ROI.
Altruism is not a business model. There is nothing wrong with altruism but it is not compatible (except in short term or insignificant ways) with most of the business world, which is profit driven.
Non profit doesn't mean you survive on donations. Non profit can still charge money to keep the lights on. If you have 2M users, charging $0.50/year for use can still get you $1M to run your business.
Edit: I think the comment was taken quite literally. The point I was trying to make was that the user base exists, monetization for profit is definitely hard, but monetization for keeping the lights on can work. You could try a flat fee for all users, you could do seasonal exclusive contents to support the platform, you could try selling merch, you could literally put a banner annually like Wikipedia does etc. The point being, if you have 2M users and you provide enough value, there are ways to make it work. Donations unfortunately don’t work, because it’s not top of mind for people and people need a little pushing.
As a side point I was curious how low you can charge given processing fees, and you'll have to charge $1 to get $0.50 cents roughly (checked Stripe/Paypal for my currency CAD).
“I think it's fair to say that at this stage I've lost faith in the nonprofit business model working in a way that allows Exercism to reach any of its potential.”
Removing the context that makes it clear that a quote is only applying to a very limited situation is a bit dishonest.
There’s your problem right there. Investors want profit. If you want investors then you have to convince them you’ll deliver ROI.
Altruism is not a business model. There is nothing wrong with altruism but it is not compatible (except in short term or insignificant ways) with most of the business world, which is profit driven.