Earned Income
Is Earned Income Right for Your Nonprofit?
Earned income, or the sale of goods and services, is a somewhat misunderstood and unexplored financial opportunity for nonprofits. Yet there are countless examples of nonprofit organizations that sell goods or services to supplement their revenue, like the Girl Scouts, Goodwill, museum gift shops, hospitals, charter schools.
If you’ve ever wondered if earned income might be an opportunity for your nonprofit to raise unrestricted revenue, download our “Evaluating Earned Income” webinar. This webinar is part of our ongoing Financing Not Fundraising webinar series that shows nonprofits how to create a more sustainable financial engine for their organization.
Earned income is not right for every nonprofit, but every nonprofit should at the very least analyze whether earned income is a potential opportunity.
This webinar will help nonprofit leaders:
- Understand what earned income is and when it is most successful
- Learn about other nonprofits and their earned income businesses
- Evaluate whether earned income is a possibility for their organization
- Determine if their organization is ready to explore earned income
- Understand the steps in launching an earned income stream
Evaluating Earned Income Webinar
Recorded
The registration fee will get you:
- A link to a recording of the webinar, which you can watch as many times as you like
- The PowerPoint slides from the webinar
- The ability to ask additional follow-up questions after the webinar
And if you missed last month’s sold out Raising Capacity Capital webinar, we are did repeat of that webinar. Capacity capital is the money that every nonprofit needs, but most find so hard to raise. Capacity capital can help your nonprofit to:
- Hire a development director
- Launch an earned-income stream
- Expand your programs
- Evaluate your impact
- Train your staff
It is money for infrastructure and organization building. If you want to move your organization out of the starvation cycle, you have to learn how to raise capacity capital.
The Raising Capacity Capital webinar will show you how to:
- Talk about the importance of capacity capital to your donors and board
- Create a budget for the capacity dollars you need
- Break the goal into donor ask amounts
- Identify prospective donors
- Give your board a role in the campaign
- Gain the confidence to start asking for the money you really need
Raising Capacity Capital Webinar
Recorded
Photo Credit: www.girlscouts.org
Tools to Build a Stronger Nonprofit Sector
A little over a year ago I started introducing tools on the Social Velocity web site to help nonprofits, who might not be able to afford consulting services, grow their programs, create a financing strategy, revamp their board. I am blown away by how popular these tools have become.
I started Social Velocity almost four years ago because I saw a real hole in the nonprofit sector. Small and medium nonprofits working on social change lacked access to expertise and resources to strengthen and grow their solutions. The Teach for Americas of the world were building impressive organizations and replicating their solution far and wide. But they were doing so with the help of deep networks of experts and money. They were the lucky ones.
But there are equally impressive solutions housed in much smaller, less resourced nonprofit organizations that aren’t really seeing the light of day. Because these organizations don’t know how to put a growth plan together, figure out how to finance the impact they want to have, or create a compelling ask for money to build, their solutions are not reaching as far as they could.
Social Velocity exists to help those small and medium-size nonprofits who want to be entrepreneurial, grow their programs, get their board engaged and invested, raise money to build their organization, break out of the starvation cycle.
And there are some nonprofits that are so small or so new that they aren’t ready yet for a customized solution. So our tools are there to help them start creating momentum on their own.
Our Step-by-Step Guides help a nonprofit to:
- Create a theory of change, which is the fundamental backbone of any nonprofit effort to get more strategic and garner more external support.
- Develop a case for support, a clear, well-articulated, compelling argument for why a donor should give to your nonprofit.
- Craft a sustainable financing plan, that lays out how enough, sustainable money will flow through your doors to support your mission.
- Create a business plan for an earned income venture to result in new, unrestricted revenue for your nonprofit.
And the E-books we have developed describe:
- How to move from the exhausting hamster wheel of fundraising to a more strategic, sustainable effort to finance your nonprofit, and
- How to create a groundbreaking board of directors that can strengthen and grow your impact
And our Monthly Webinars describe how to find individual donors, evaluate earned income potential, create a message of impact, raise capacity capital and much more.
You can learn more about all of our tools here.
I’m committed to continuing to expand our inventory of tools so that more nonprofits can strengthen and grow their impact. So I’d love your ideas for other tools you would like to see.
Where do you struggle and where do you need guidance? Let me know the kinds of tools you would like to see in this post’s comments, on our Facebook page, or via Twitter or email.
Photo Credit: Andrew Morrell Photography
How to Raise Money to Strengthen Your Nonprofit
There is a revolutionary concept that could dramatically transform the nonprofit sector, if only every nonprofit leader knew about it: capacity capital. Capacity capital is the money nonprofits so desperately need to strengthen and grow their organizations. Happily,the Financing Not Fundraising webinar “Raising Capacity Capital” will show nonprofit leaders how to raise this critical kind of money.
Capacity capital is the money that every nonprofit needs, but most find so hard to raise. Capacity capital can help your nonprofit to:
- Hire a development director
- Launch an earned-income stream
- Expand your programs
- Evaluate your impact
- Train your staff
It is money for infrastructure and organization building. If you want to move your organization out of the starvation cycle, you have to learn how to raise capacity capital.
I have worked with a number of small to medium sized nonprofits to create a pitch for capital to strengthen revenue functions, grow programs and otherwise build organizations.
Let me give you an example.
Elaine Spallone, executive director of Charlotte Chamber Music, felt that they were stuck. As a small, but beloved arts organization they had a great product, but they couldn’t get beyond the vicious cycle of never having enough money, never being able to expand their presence and impact. They had a solid board, and a great vision for the future, but lacked philanthropic equity to build the organization to achieve that vision.
I worked with Elaine and her board to create a long-term strategic vision, a plan to get there, and a funding pitch for capital to build the organization. You can read the on-going case study about this work to raise philanthropic equity at a small nonprofit here. Charlotte Chamber Music is now actively raising capacity capital, and it’s very exciting.
It’s incredibly powerful to think about the implications of this concept for the entire nonprofit sector. If a nonprofit that provides a solution to a social problem was no longer impeded by a lack of capital, it could be revolutionary.
We’d no longer see great programs wither on the vine. The best and the brightest ideas could travel all over the country, indeed, all over the world. All it takes is the right kind of money, invested in the right place at the right time, and the solution can take off.
If you are interested in raising capital for your nonprofit, the “Raising Capacity Capital” webinar will show you how to:
- Talk about the importance of capacity capital to your donors and board
- Create a budget for the capacity dollars you need
- Develop a campaign goal
- Break the goal into donor ask amounts
- Identify prospective donors
- Give your board a role in the campaign
- Gain the confidence to start asking for the money you really need
Raising Capacity Capital Webinar Details:
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
12:00-1:00pm EST
Price: $49
The registration fee will get you:
- Access to the live, interactive webinar
- A link to a recording of the webinar, which you can watch as many times as you like
- The PowerPoint slides from the webinar
- The ability to ask additional follow-up questions after the webinar
Register Now
Photo Credit: gfpeck
Send Me Your Questions
I’m launching a new series on the blog today. I receive so many great comments and questions from readers on the blog. So I want to start a new regular series that answers readers’ burning questions.
Once a month (or maybe more often depending on the response) I will pick a reader’s question to answer. It can be about anything related to nonprofits, social innovation, boards, financing, fundraising, social innovation, philanthropy, you name it. Each month I’ll pick the most interesting question and write a blog post response to it.
If you have a burning question that you would like me to write about, send me an email at nell@socialvelocity.net, send me a Tweet at @nedgington, or post it on the Social Velocity Facebook page.
And as an incentive, the person whose question is selected for the first month’s post in the series will receive a free copy of my e-book, “10 Traits of a Groundbreaking Nonprofit Board”
So start sending me your questions. I can’t wait to read them!
Photo Credit: e-magic
How Nonprofits Can Thrive While Awaiting Economic Recovery
After 3+ years of a difficult recession it looks like the economy might be starting to turn around. That’s great news. But for the nonprofit sector, which is always the first hit by and last to rebound from a recession, it might still be awhile until they enjoy the looming economic recovery. But it does no good for nonprofit leaders to throw up their hands and curse the economy. Instead, nonprofits should seize this opportunity to rethink how their organization brings money in the door.
There are some key things nonprofit leaders can do to create a sustainable financial model in the midst of lingering economic uncertainty:
- Take a Step Back. Stop putting your organization in the “fundraising” box and take a big step back. Figure out an overall financial model for your organization that connects with your mission and your organization’s core competencies. Don’t just go through the regular fundraising motions (direct mail, events, grants). Rather, analyze how to create a long-term financial model for your organization.
- Harness Your Board. Your board of directors ideally is a group of people who bring connections and expertise that could help your organization. Tap into that. Educate them on what your organization needs and brainstorm how they can help. Now is not the time to be shy. Be strategic about what your board can do and get them to do it.
- Create a Plan. If your organization doesn’t have a strategic plan and a revenue plan, create them. You raise money by being strategic, first about what your organization is and does, and second about how you are going to create sustainable revenue streams. People give to causes that they care about, and they give even more money to organizations that are strategic about what they do and how. A good strategic plan is an invaluable tool around which you can build investment. And a good revenue plan gives you a step-by-step way to generate money.
- Reallocate Resources. As a nonprofit organization you have limited resources (money, staff, technology, time) with which to raise money. You want to make sure that the effort you put in has the highest return on investment. Calculate the direct and indirect costs of every revenue-generating activity and determine the real net income you generated. Are there better, more effective ways to raise more money for less cost and effort?
- Use Technology. Move your communications with donors and prospects online. You’ll save money and have a better chance of getting more and bigger gifts. Send email newsletters, campaigns, event invites. Survey your donors. Create an online community through social media where people can get to know your organization and become involved. People will become more interested in your work and more invested in the organization.
- Learn from the Best. Now is the time to learn from others, get a fresh perspective, find a mentor or coach for your Development Director. Use social media to find interesting and innovative people and ideas. Talk with your fellow social change leaders locally, nationally and internationally. Attend online conferences and webinars. By getting out and hearing what others have done and how they have innovated you will find new ways to grow revenue.
- Strengthen Your Case. Money is raised around a case for support. It can be tempting when times are tough to fall back on a message of need. “We need to raise $50,000.” But the better way is to clearly connect donors with the change you are creating in the community. If you don’t have a case for support write one. If you have one, revisit it and make sure that it is compelling, clear, concise, inspiring. Invest donors in the change you are creating.
- Clone Your Best Donors. When you are struggling to find new donors, go back to the source. Dig into your database to determine the characteristics (demographics and psychographics) of your best (most years of giving, biggest dollar, greatest upgrade) donors. Then survey them (formally or informally) to find out why they give, what messages resonate with them, what they read, where they get their information. You want to understand how they tick so that you can find others like them.
- Diversify Your Funds. When one revenue stream (or several) are down, you want to be able to draw on other streams. Are there other revenue streams you could launch or strengthen? Have you explored earned income? Could you grow your individual donor base? There are many ways to raise money and always potential for new avenues. Explore whether some of these make sense for your organization.
Things may be looking up, but it’s going to be awhile for the nonprofit sector. Instead of waiting around for a better economy, make some significant changes now to how you raise money. In so doing you’ll be turning this challenge into a tremendous opportunity for your organization.
Financing Not Fundraising Webinar Series
Because of the popularity of the past two Financing Not Fundraising overview webinars in October and November, I’ve decided to launch a webinar series that breaks the Financing Not Fundraising concept into its various parts and expands on how to approach each element.
I will kick off this new webinar series in January with a new webinar each month. Some of the webinar topics will be:
- Creating a Financing Plan
- Finding Individual Donors
- Developing a Message of Social Impact
- Raising Capacity Capital
- Evaluating Earned Income
- Calculating the Cost of Fundraising
- Moving from Push to Pull
- Getting Your Board to Raise Money
If you want to find out when those webinars get scheduled in the new year, sign up for our the Social Velocity e-newsletter.
But in the meantime, if you want to get up to speed on the overall concept of Financing Not Fundraising, check out the Financing Not Fundraising Overview webinar.
This webinar, based on our popular Financing Not Fundraising blog series will show nonprofits what a broader approach to securing the overall financing necessary to create social change looks like, including:
- How to align your nonprofit’s mission with the money needed to deliver on it
- Why a message of impact results in more money
- Understanding the critical difference between revenue and capital
- Why overhead isn’t a dirty word anymore
- How and why to calculate the net revenue of money raising activities
- When to explore new revenue streams
If you’ve been following the Social Velocity Financing Not Fundraising series and you want to learn more, or if the series has brought up some burning questions that you’d like to have answered, join us for this interactive webinar.
If your staff, your board, and your donors are worn out, rest assured, there is a better way. Join this webinar to find out how.
Financing Not Fundraising: Rethinking How Nonprofits Bring Money in the Door
Recorded
$39
Financing Not Fundraising E-Book
I’m delighted to announce that, by popular demand, we are releasing today the Financing Not Fundraising, 2011 e-book. This 27-page e-book is a compilation and expansion on the 11 blog posts from 2011 in the Social Velocity Financing Not Fundraising blog series.
In the midst of an incredibly challenging economic situation that is not getting better any time soon, the Financing Not Fundraising, 2011 e-book outlines a new vision for how the nonprofit sector gets funded. Fundraising in its current form just doesn’t work anymore. Indeed, traditional fundraising is holding the sector back by keeping nonprofits in the starvation cycle of trying to do more and more with less and less.
What the sector needs is a financing strategy not a fundraising strategy. Nonprofits have to break out of the narrow view that traditional FUNDRAISING (individual donor appeals, events, foundation grants) will completely fund all of their activities. Instead, nonprofits must work to create a broader approach to securing the overall FINANCING necessary to create social change.
This 27-page e-book is a compilation and expansion of the Social Velocity blog series Financing Not Fundraising from 2011. The blog series is ongoing, with new posts added throughout each year. We’ll begin adding new posts to the series in the new year, but in the meantime, this e-book captures and expands on the posts from 2011 in one place.
The 12 chapters of the Financing Not Fundraising, 2011 e-book are:
- What is Financing Not Fundraising?
- Create A Financial Strategy
- Align Money and Mission
- Find Individual Donors
- Develop a Message of Impact
- Raise Money for Building Capacity
- Explore New Types of Money
- Evaluate Earned Income
- Calculate Net Revenue
- Move From Push to Pull
- Stop Lying to Donors
- Getting Started
You can download the Financing Not Fundraising, 2011 e-book here.
If you want to learn more about how to apply the concepts of Financing Not Fundraising to your nonprofit, check out our Financing Not Fundraising Webinar Series
What Nonprofits Can Learn From Netflix
Even if you aren’t a subscriber to Netflix (the DVD and online streaming video service) you have probably heard about how their bad decisions have cost them thousands of customers in recent months. Although a nonprofit might seem worlds apart from Netflix, there is still much to be learned from their debacle.
Unlike for-profit companies that have only one customer group, nonprofits actually have two. First are those customers to whom nonprofits provide services — their clients. For a homeless shelter these “customers” are their homeless clients. Their second customer group is those who pay for the services — their funders. So for nonprofits, customer management is much more complex. I would argue that nonprofits generally do a good job of understanding and taking care of their client customers. But their second customer group, funders, can sometimes get lost in the shuffle.
Which makes the lessons from Netflix even more important. Here’s what Netflix teaches us about taking care of your supporters:
Listen to Your Supporters
Netflix assumed that their customers were so in love with their services that a 60% price hike wouldn’t phase them. When customers flooded the Netflix blog and took to Twitter to complain, Netflix largely ignored their customer’s anger. Then Netflix was shocked when customers started leaving in droves. Organizations make mistakes and will at times irritate their customers, the trick is to listen to your customers and quickly correct any missteps. This is particularly important now that social media is so prevalent and is often the first place people go to vent about an organization. Listen to your funders, volunteers, supporters and other community advocates wherever they are and respond to their feedback, concerns, ideas. Don’t build walls around your nonprofit and ignore the outside world. Meet people where they are talking about you and listen and engage in a conversation with them.
Understand How Your Supporters Tick
It’s not enough, however, to simply listen to your customers, you have to understand what they want and need. Netflix assumed that separating DVD rentals from online video streaming was no big deal to customers. Boy were they wrong. The introduction of Qwikster, a separate DVD-only service from Netflix, threw an already angered customer base into a tailspin. Netflix failed to understand how their customers operate. Having two separate websites, two separate passwords and two separate queues for movies was completely untenable to their customers. As a nonprofit you have to understand how your supporters operate and what makes them tick. What about your mission and programs appeals to your supporters? How do they want to be involved? Invest some time in getting to know your donors, volunteers, board members, friends, advocates and what makes them passionate about your nonprofit, how best to engage them, what they’d like to do to support the cause, and how to make it easy for them to do so.
Acknowledge That Your Supporters Ultimately Run Your Business
Netflix forgot that their customers run their business. Without customers, there is no Netflix. Similarly for nonprofits, you may like to think that you exist solely to achieve your mission, but you have no mission without a way to fund it. You cannot separate your mission from how you financially support it. You need to take a step back and understand what types of funding and funders your mission would appeal to (Is your organization a good sell to individuals? Is there an opportunity for school or other government contracts? Is earned income an option?) and then develop a plan for going after and sustaining those funders.
Figure Out a Viable Business Model
Netflix used to have a very viable, profitable business model. But movie studios have realized that there is more money to be made in content, so their financial demands on Netflix have increased dramatically. Which pushed Netflix to increase customer prices. Now Netflix’s business model is out of whack. I’m not a media content expert, so I have no idea what a viable business model is for Netflix, but I don’t think they do either. The trick is to figure out how to get revenue and expenses to create a net positive. For nonprofits, the same is true. Funders will be more likely to support a viable entity with a bright future. Get your financial house in order by aligning your mission with a way to bring sustainable money in the door and funders will be more likely to support you.
Netflix’s missteps have almost been painful to watch. But watch we must if we are going to learn how to avoid their pitfalls. Whether you run a for-profit or nonprofit organization, you must be ever-cognizant of your customers and constantly work to fully integrate them into a successful, viable financial model.
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