"A store where profit comes not in dollars"

This New York Times article on an Upper West Side children's store illustrates the transformation of profit-making commerce into nonprofit identity.

The store, A Time for Children, on Amsterdam Avenue near 84th Street, is owned by a family foundation that Ms. Stern and her husband, Michael Stern, established two decades ago to help disadvantaged children.

She opened the store, she said, as an enhanced way for their foundation to support theChildren’s Aid Society in New York City. With the store, she said, the couple’s foundation, Big Wood, provides not only money for Children’s Aid, but also a job-training site for its youth employment program.

All of the store’s after-tax revenue goes to Children’s Aid, and all of its employees, except for two managers and a training assistant, are 16- to 20-year-olds referred for part-time work by the agency. They generally work four-month stints of 12 to 15 hours a week, earning $8 an hour, while attending high school in most cases, or college in a few.