Many people naturally assume that public welfare organizations are completely free, but it's actually much more complicated. Take a well-known public welfare foundation as an example. While it does provide free services to families in need, out of 11,000 surgeries, 4,000 are paid out of pocket, and only 7,000 are truly free. This is not cold-blooded; quite the opposite—it's rational.

How do free programs sustain themselves? Mainly through two pillars: donations and the hospital’s own profits. It sounds straightforward, but where's the problem? Once traffic declines, donations dry up; if the economic situation worsens, profits diminish. Both pillars are compromised—can this business continue? Clearly not.

This actually reveals an overlooked truth: truly sustainable public welfare organizations must have the ability to subsidize free projects with profitable ones, what is often called "self-sustaining." In other words, they need not more and more donations, but healthy commercial operational capabilities.

If a public welfare project can only rely on donations and operating at a loss, even the noblest original intention cannot withstand the test of time. So don’t get it backwards—public welfare organizations actually have higher requirements for commercial operations than ordinary enterprises, not lower.