What are the unique qualities of Non-Profit Corporations? In the US, not only do they get favorable tax status, but they can also accept donations, which entite the givers to their own potential tax benefits. But, the government has an interest in making sure these non-profits actually do have a charitable intent, and are not just some scam to make something off of other people.

So, perhaps you are asking which other endeavors can benefit from this? Because it is possible that, in some cases the overhead of having to prove you are operating as a charity might get away from the mission of whatever you are trying to do, no matter how paradoxical that sounds.

Case in point: the Raspberry Pi foundation. It started out life as a UK charitable foundation which aimed to make low cost computing accessible to everyone. But after making their boards, they came to the conclusion that making computer hardware was difficult to do as part of a non-profit, so they split into two organizations. I wonder whether various hardware vendors had issues contracting with or signing NDAs with a non-profit company, or whether their tax exempt status was causing problems when contracting with for-profit vendors.

The non-profit still does advocacy and charitable work, but there is now a for-profit company which designs and manufactures the Raspberry Pi boards, and in fact went public in the UK a few years ago. The Raspberry Pi Foundation owns almost half of the for-profit company, but still retains its non-profit status.