What is a business? Is Christian Aid a business? Is McDonalds? What about a university? This is a difficult and complicated question to answer but let us start from the claim that a business is an organization that buys and sells goods or services for profit.

If I buy some books from a shop, they are goods and the business makes a profit. If I pay the taxi driver to take me to the airport then that is a service and I increase the taxi company’s profit.

Maybe then Christian Aid is not a business? Arguably there is no “customer” purchasing a good or a service, whereas McDonalds clearly is a business. But what about a university? Well that is a much harder and more controversial question, and one that we have posed below for you to consider. For any business, whatever its size, the key feature will be that it sells goods or services for profit.