Non-Profit, or For-Profit?

Dennis Bakke and his Imagine Schools management organization have responded to Stephanie Strom's recent NY Times article with a letter posted on their website. As expected, Imagine denies any wrongdoing and accuses Strom of biased coverage.

And, once again, Imagine denies they're a for-profit company and - once again - claims they're really, really close to getting 501c3 status (seriously, they've been saying this for AGES).

It was back in 2005 that Dennis was interviewed by the Washington Business Journal. In the interview, Bakke claims, "And we're close to converting to nonprofit status." But Dennis followed up that line with an equally perplexing statement: "I spent 20 years telling Wall Street that profit is not God, and now I'll probably spend 20 years in education telling people it's not Satan, either." [Imagine is registered as a nonprofit in VA; they still lack the federal 501c3 status. They're also registered as a corporation in DE with 60,000 shares as of 2008]

How you can claim to be converting to nonprofit status and then follow up that claim by supporting for-profit education is rather perplexing.