What Churches Can Learn from the WNBA About Multiple Bottom Lines
Part 1 of a three-part series on what churches can learn from the business world.
TL;DR: The WNBA illustrates a challenge every church faces: the more worthwhile goals an organization pursues, the more complicated leadership decisions become. Social enterprises call these "multiple bottom lines." The key isn't avoiding multiple priorities—it's knowing which one ultimately governs all the others.
Making money is HARD.
Nearly half of all businesses fail within five years.1
Now imagine making business even harder.
Imagine trying to turn a profit while also improving your community, caring for your employees, protecting the environment, and advancing some larger social mission.
In other words, imagine trying to succeed according to multiple bottom lines.
Businesses that intentionally pursue these kinds of competing goals are often called social enterprises.
Oddly enough, one of the more intriguing examples I’ve seen recently isn’t a coffee shop, a nonprofit, or a certified B Corporation.
It’s the WNBA.
Now, before basketball fans accuse me of picking on the league, let me be clear: I’m fan of the league and admire what the WNBA is trying to accomplish.
Like many organizations today, the WNBA isn’t pursuing just one objective. It’s trying to build a profitable sports league while also growing women’s athletics, advocating for social causes, paying players well, and providing compelling sports entertainment.
None of those goals are bad.
In fact, they’re all good.
The challenge is that every additional goal creates another bottom line to manage.
Sometimes those bottom lines reinforce one another. Other times they compete.
I think that’s one reason this summer of 2026 has been so turbulent for the league. Players like Caitlin Clark have become a lightning rod because her play and presence touch some—but certainly not all—of those competing priorities.
Social Enterprises and Multiple Bottom Lines
The business world has a name for organizations that intentionally pursue more than one bottom line.
They’re called social enterprises.
The United Way of the National Capital Area defines a social enterprise as a business that prioritizes social or environmental goals alongside financial sustainability.2 Unlike a traditional business that measures success primarily by profit, a social enterprise also asks questions like:
Are we serving our community?
Are we creating social value?
Are we caring well for our employees?
The point isn’t that profit doesn’t matter—profits sustain the business after all. Rather, profit becomes one important measure among several.
That’s a noble aspiration, but it also makes leadership decisions exponentially more complicated in that—Every additional bottom line creates another tension to manage.
Sometimes those priorities reinforce one another; other times they compete.
Churches, I would argue, face exactly the same challenge.
Like social enterprises, churches rarely exist for a single purpose. They proclaim the gospel, form disciples, build community, care for members, serve their neighbors, and steward financial resources, among other things. None of these are bad goals. In fact, they’re all central to the church’s life.3
The challenge is that these priorities don’t always reinforce one another. Sometimes they compete.
Every hour spent on one ministry is an hour not spent on another. Every dollar allocated to one initiative is a dollar unavailable for something else. Every strategic decision inevitably elevates one priority while, at least temporarily, placing another in the background.4
That’s simply the reality of organizations operating with multiple bottom lines.
The Leadership Question
This, I think, is where churches have something to learn from both social enterprises and, perhaps surprisingly, the WNBA.
The challenge isn’t simply having multiple bottom lines—many healthy organizations do.
The challenge is recognizing that, eventually, every organization has to decide which bottom line is ultimate.
This summer, I served as a bridge pastor at a church that had begun asking how it might better use its building to fulfill its mission. Listening to some of those early conversations, it became apparent that many of the church’s priorities, while all good, also competed with one another.
For instance, questions were raised about whether flags—if any—belonged in the worship space. Others wondered whether, if the building were increasingly used for community concerts, recitals, and other neighborhood events, the worship space itself might need to be adapted to better accommodate those uses.
Whatever your thoughts on flags in the sanctuary or the use of sacred space for community events, I think the larger organizational principle is the same. These aren’t conflicts between good and bad. They’re often conflicts between good and good. Yet attempting to pursue both simultaneously almost always means one priority receives greater emphasis than the other. In that sense, one “suffers.”
That’s why every organization eventually has to ask:
Which priority governs all the others?
I’m intentionally not answering that question here.
Different churches—and different Christian traditions—will likely answer it differently.
My point is simply this: the more bottom lines an organization has, the more important it becomes to know which one ultimately drives its decisions.
That’s really the key. If that question remains unanswered, organizations inevitably find themselves pulled in multiple directions at once.
The WNBA is wrestling with that reality. So are many churches.
If I had one piece of advice for both, it would be this:
Figure out your ultimate bottom line—and have the courage to let it govern all the others.
https://founderreports.com/business-failure-statistics/
https://unitedwaynca.org/blog/what-is-a-social-enterprise/
I’m purposefully avoiding a deep-dive on ecclesiology here.
We can talk about abundance all we want, but humans are finite.
I'm with Richard Hong, a Presbyterian Church USA pastor active on Facebook: watching shows like "Restaurant Impossible" or "Kitchen Nightmares" can be a remarkable oblique insight into congregational governance and thriving. The issues are SO comparable -- not in every way, but in enough to really make one think. The key parallel: people have to choose to come to your place and lay down some money on the table for a meal. There are many choices in any given community. The parallel that always grabs me: owners of restaurants who have to admit they have zero idea of what their baselines are, in terms of the actual costs of keeping the doors open, and what drives the income they have. Simple fixes often are transformative, like realizing what your food costs are, or bringing your prices more in line with comparable dining experiences in the area.
In the same way, I am amazed at how many church leaders seem to almost WORK at not knowing what their baseline income and expense lines are, and cultivate a militant ignorance of where their income flows from. Just the exercise of peeling back standard report materials to getting at the hard floor of what it costs to operate a week, a month, and what your average week or month in giving is, can be searing (as it often is on the restaurant shows for owners and managers) but gets everyone to where they can make some hard decisions.