NGO v. Non-Profit

I was presenting in Berlin last week about what we are doing in Internet politics here. I realized that one of the concepts I was translating was that what we referred to as non-profit organizations they called NGOs -- non-governmental organizations. In many cases -- Greenpeace, etc, it is actually the same organization. As I pondered it, it is interesting that the assumed actor in our society is a profit making corporation, while over there it is government.