First of all, I think, you are greatly underestimating the role of productivity growth in fighting poverty.
Apart from the forces that directly increase productivity (science, markets, entrepreneurship, etc), I think, the most important factor for creating broad based wealth is transparent, evidence based, predictable governance and a functioning legal system. It's not about low taxes or high taxes or small or big government. There are very low tax countries that work and very high tax countries that work and everything in between.
So if I was going to do non profit work, I would look into ways of creating transparency, shedding light on areas that affect many people but suffer from lack of good data. Try to connect new sources of data related to poverty and make it available to the public, to economists, social scientists and governments. Or try to make money flows visible to fight corruption or misinformation. Things like that.
Apart from the forces that directly increase productivity (science, markets, entrepreneurship, etc), I think, the most important factor for creating broad based wealth is transparent, evidence based, predictable governance and a functioning legal system. It's not about low taxes or high taxes or small or big government. There are very low tax countries that work and very high tax countries that work and everything in between.
So if I was going to do non profit work, I would look into ways of creating transparency, shedding light on areas that affect many people but suffer from lack of good data. Try to connect new sources of data related to poverty and make it available to the public, to economists, social scientists and governments. Or try to make money flows visible to fight corruption or misinformation. Things like that.