Financing Not Fundraising: Break Free From the Starvation Cycle

The other day I met with a nonprofit leader (let’s call her June) who has a great idea for an earned income venture that fits directly with her mission, but she doesn’t have the start-up capital to launch. When she explained this to me, she threw up her hands as if to say, “I’m powerless to move forward.”

But from my vantage point she has all the pieces necessary to raise the start-up capital and launch, she just isn’t putting them together. It’s a common refrain — nonprofit leaders complain about being in a catch-22 of not having enough money to raise enough money. But the answer is often right in front of you. To break free from the starvation cycle, assemble the assets you already have in order to raise capacity capital, which is the topic of today’s post in the ongoing Financing Not Fundraising blog series.

The nonprofit starvation cycle is one nonprofit leaders know only to well. Nonprofit organizations rarely have the technology, staff, and systems to function effectively. So they scrape by trying to wring one more drop out of a completely dry rock. But instead of waiting for funders to fix the situation, it is up to nonprofit leaders themselves to break free. And you break free by raising capacity capital.

Capacity capital is a one-time investment of significant money that can help build or strengthen a nonprofit organization so that it can create more social change. Capacity capital funds things like technology, systems, a program evaluation, revenue-generating staff, start-up costs for an earned income business. It is money that strengthens the organization so that it can do more.

But often nonprofit leaders, like June above, don’t recognize that everything they need to raise capacity capital and break free from the starvation cycle is in right in front of them.  Here are the necessary pieces:

A Plan. You know what you need in order to do more, so put together a change plan and figure out what elements you need (technology, systems, staffing) and what they will cost. Do your homework so you can speak intelligently about what it will take to get you from point A to point B. June has a great business plan for her venture and knows exactly how much she needs in start-up costs.

Donors Who Love You. When raising capacity capital you want to go after donors who already love what you are doing and want to see more. You must convince them that a one-time investment of capacity capital will enable you to do even more of what they already love. June has a great network of long-time donors, which she could convince to become capacity capital donors.

A Connection Between Capital and More Impact. Make a convincing argument to those donors that capacity capital will create more of what they already love. For example, having a great Development Director in place can bring hundreds of thousands of new dollars each year which means many more people will be touched by your organization.  Or explain how an evaluation of your program will allow you to focus your resources on highest impact activities. June could describe how a profitable earned income venture could increase financial sustainability while delivering more impact.

June has all of these pieces. She has a great plan for an earned income business that could significantly contribute to a more sustainable financial engine and thus allow her nonprofit to reach more people, a clear articulation of how much capital she needs and for what, and a committed group of donors who love the organization. For her, and for most nonprofits, it is simply a question of connecting the dots.

If you want to learn more about the power of capacity capital, download the Enormous Opportunity of Capacity Capital e-book, the Creating a Capacity Capital step-by-step guide or the Raising Capacity Capital webinar.

Photo Credit: PublicDomainPictures

Tags: capacity capital, convincing donors to give, development director, earned income, financing not fundraising, nonprofit donors, nonprofit fundraising, nonprofit starvation cycle, Philanthropy

Stop Beating Your Head Against the Nonprofit Fundraising Wall

I was in Atlanta last week speaking at NeighborWorks America’s National Fundraising Symposium. I really love speaking to nonprofit staff and board members who are in the trenches trying to raise money for their organizations. The same thing that happened in Atlanta always happens. The group started out tired, uninspired, worn out with fundraising. But then I started to describe Financing and the light bulb went on. And for the rest of the day when I talked with attendees, or heard them talking to each other, they would try out this new word, this new concept, “Financing.”

But it’s not just semantics. Financing is a fundamentally different approach to every aspect of a nonprofit organization. For the group in Atlanta, I laid out the five main elements of it:

• Create A Financing Plan
  Nonprofits must create a comprehensive strategy for bringing enough, and the right kind of, money in the door to achieve their strategic goals. This includes revenue and capital, programs and infrastructure dollars, and all funding sources. Money must be understood and used as a tool, instead of feared and sequestered.




• Connect Mission & Money
  The financial woes of many nonprofit organizations often stem from a misalignment of mission and money. A nonprofit leader who creates a financial engine for her organization that is fully connected to and supportive of its mission (instead of detracting or isolated from it) will enjoy financial sustainability.




• Diversify Funding
  Relying on only one or two funding sources, particularly foundation grants which make up less than 2% of all the money flowing to the nonprofit sector, is a dangerous strategy in the nonprofit sector. It is far better to create a robust and diverse money mix that fits well with your nonprofit’s mission and competencies.




• Invest Supporters
  As mounting research demonstrates, donors are increasingly looking to become engaged in the nonprofits they support. And they are looking for impact, not just a place to write a check. In order to attract these donors, nonprofits must articulate their value and convince supporters to become a partner in creating social change.




• Find Money to Build
  The time for scraping by and never having enough money for the right technology, staff, and systems is over. Instead nonprofits must become savvy about capacity capital and start raising the money they need to build the organization their mission requires.

It is so inspiring to see people who are on the front lines of creating stronger schools, neighborhoods, communities in this country suddenly realize that it doesn’t have to be so hard. You can stop beating your head against the fundraising wall.

If you’d like to have me come speak to your event, group, board or staff about Financing not Fundraising, or any of the many topics I speak about, email info@socialvelocity.net.

Photo Credit: billaday

Tags: capacity capital, financing not fundraising, foundation grants, fundraising strategy, nonprofit fundraising, nonprofit speakers, nonprofit strategic plan, nonprofit strategy, speaking to nonprofits, worn out with fundraising

From Nonprofit Scarcity to Social Change Abundance

Bill Shore, founder of Share Our Strength, a nonprofit aimed at ending childhood hunger in America, wrote a really interesting post recently. He argues that nonprofits must be more bold, that the risk aversion that defines the sector is itself holding nonprofits back from creating change.

Shore encourages nonprofit leaders to figure out exactly what they are trying to accomplish:

Nonprofit organizations would be well served to step back from the day-to-day operations and ask themselves what success means, how will they know when they have accomplished their mission, and how will they measure it along the way. It sounds like common sense, but almost no one does it, in part because it’s so hard to do. But if you answer those questions with precision and clarity, and articulate the goal you hope to achieve, everything else falls into place.

And Bill is not alone in making this charge to the nonprofit sector. The Case Foundation, founded by Steve and Jean Case who made millions from AOL, has made its focus getting nonprofits to be more bold, to Be Fearless.

But if we are going to ask nonprofits to think bigger we have to address the elephant in the room: money. Nonprofit leaders often put themselves in a vicious cycle of thinking they don’t have enough money to be risky, so they don’t create ambitious goals, and then their lack of ambition impedes greater outside investment.

It is in fact the very act of being bold that inspires action and investment, that marshals resources to do the impossible. The most obvious example is John F. Kennedy’s 1962 charge to “to go to the moon in this decade.” At the time, the goal he set was crazy. NASA had no idea how they were going to make that happen, and they were already behind the Russian space program. But the very fact that the goal was set, and set so publicly, was inspiring.  That simple act of inspiration moved people, money, resources. And Kennedy’s goal came to fruition in July of 1969. The impossible became possible simply because he set a goal.

Often nonprofit leaders are hesitant to set a bold goal because they know they currently don’t have the money, staff, relationships to make it happen. They don’t want to set a goal whose execution is not readily evident. So often nonprofit leaders start from a point of scarcity. They ask the question:

“How much can we accomplish with what we can raise?”

Instead, nonprofit leaders need to start asking the question:

“How much should we raise to accomplish our goals?”

It may seem like semantics, but I believe the distinction is profound. Instead of money holding you back, money becomes a tool to employ in accomplishing something much bigger. If you start by setting bold goals about what change you want to create, that very act, the act of putting a stake in the sand, can inspire. And that inspiration can attract the things you need to make your goal a reality.

In order to set bold goals, nonprofit leaders need to remember why they started their organization in the first place and why they continue to come to work each day. What is that passionate resolve that keeps you going every day? Why are you pouring your heart and soul into the work? What ultimately are you trying to change about the world we live in?

Start there. Create your bold goal from that place. Remove the obstacle of not having enough and watch how you suddenly have more than you could have ever imagined. That’s where real change begins.

Photo Credit: Mission Controls celebrates the moon landing, NASA.

Tags: Bill Shore, John F. Kennedy, nonprofit challenges, nonprofit hurdles, nonprofit outcomes, nonprofit roadblocks, nonprofit scarcity, nonprofit strategy, Share Our Strength

10 Great Social Innovation Reads: January 2013

January was about looking ahead to 2013 and being prepared for the many changes to come. It was also about understanding and embracing new generations, thinking about risk differently, re-evaluating growth, and analyzing the unique and critical role of foundations.

Below are my top 10 picks for what was worth reading in January in social innovation. But please add to the list in the comments. And if you want to see more, follow me on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest or ScoopIt.

You can see the 10 Great Reads lists from past months here.

1. The predictions about what 2013 will mean for social innovation continue this month. As part of their whole Outlook 2013 series, the Chronicle of Philanthropy provides 5 Ways Nonprofit Work Will Change in 2013  and 5 Nonprofit Innovators to Watch. And the Philanthrocapitalism blog makes 20 predictions for 2013 chief among them is the rise of the woman philanthrocapitalist.  Writing in Forbes, Antoinne Machal-Cajigas tells us What’s Next in the World of Social Innovation?




2. January saw the second inauguration of President Obama, and Mathew Forti and Colin Murphy argue that his re-election campaign offers nonprofits some ideas about how to measure performance.




3. Phil Buchanan, head of the Center for Effective Philanthropy, likes to stir things up, and I love him for it. He argues that nonprofit dependency on philanthropic dollars is NOT a bad thing.  And because there is no rest for the weary, later in the month he argues against “the stampede to embrace the idea that for-profits — or for-profit models — can more easily combat our toughest social problems.”




4. Writing on the HBR blog, Kimberly Dasher Tripp reminds us that scaling social impact is not about growing organizations, it’s about growing solutions.




5. And speaking of impact, if you haven’t started figuring out what results your nonprofit is achieving, you may want to start since it looks like your youngest donors are demanding it.




6. Bradford K. Smith, president of the Foundation Center, wrote a moving post about the critical role foundations play in our society, “Free from the bottom-line pressure of markets, the partisanship of electoral politics, and the demands of fundraising — [foundations] can use their independence to do remarkable things, whether it’s taking on issues that no one wants to touch, sticking with an issue for decades if required, or keeping the rest of us from forgetting the millions of people who, through no fault of their own, continue to be harmed and/or excluded by war, economic injustice, disease, and discrimination.”




7. Beth Kanter writes a great post about overcoming the risk-aversion of the nonprofit sector by taking “little bets.”




8. As you plan your conference schedule for the year ahead, check out the William James Foundation’s comprehensive list of social entrepreneurship conferences.




9. Social change can be exhausting, demoralizing work. Here’s how a New York City teacher, with arguably one of the hardest jobs in education, stays committed to social change.




10. The millennial generation is no longer willing to separate work and life, so says Ryan Steinbach on the UnSectored blog. In fact, “millennials see their careers as not a part of their lives, but rather what they do with their lives – and life is so much more than making ends meet. It’s social, emotional, physical, and spiritual. It’s about pursuing your passions, building relationships, and giving back.”

Photo Credit: thatdisneylover

Tags: Foundations, Millennials, nonprofit, nonprofit outcomes, nonprofit risk aversion, performance measurement, philanthrocapitalism, Philanthropy, scaling social impact, social change, social innovation

Who Should I Interview Next?

I’ve been doing the monthly Social Velocity Blog Interview for 2 1/2 years now and have talked with more than thirty inspiring leaders in the world of social innovation. But now I need your help.

Over the last few years, I’ve interviewed

• Social investment gurus like Kevin Jones, Antony Bugg-Levine and George Overholser
• Philanthropic thought leaders like Phil Buchanan, Lucy Bernholz, Clara Miller and Sean Stannard-Stockton
• Nonprofit leaders pushing innovation forward like Dennis Morrow, Susan Comfort and Karina Mangu-Ward
• Social entrepreneur startups like Erine Gray and Ted Howard
• Sector activists like Robert Egger and Jeff Raderstrong

And many, many more.

It’s been amazing to hear from these leaders about where we’re going in the world of social change and where they hope to take us. You can see all of the past interviews here.

But now I’d like your ideas for who I should interview next. What all of these interviewees have in common is that they are people who are pushing boundaries, asking hard questions, creating new realities, making real social change. Who’s next?

So help me add to the list. If you have a suggestion for who I should interview next, leave a comment below or email me at info@socialvelocity.net. Thanks for your help!

Tags: Convergence, interviews, nonprofit, nonprofit leaders, Philanthropy, Social Entrepreneurship, social innovation

New Consulting Video

One of my resolutions this new year is to add more video to the Social Velocity site. I love watching video, and I’d love to see more nonprofits using the medium, so I thought I should probably follow suit. A few months ago I created a Social Velocity YouTube channel and will continue to add video to it over the course of the year. I also plan to do some video blogging this year, which I’m pretty excited about.

But today I want to introduce my new consulting video. Here I discuss how I consult with nonprofit clients. If you are reading this in an email, you can see the video by clicking here. Take a look!

Tags: board development, Board of Directors, Fundraising, fundraising plan, fundraising strategy, nonprofit consulting, nonprofit management, nonprofit strategy, strategic planning

Losing the Nonprofit Charity Mindset

Note: While I’m off during the holidays I wanted to provide some archive blog posts that you might enjoy. A version of this post originally appeared on the Social Velocity blog in November 2010.

Along with the burgeoning social entrepreneurship movement comes a bit of hubris that social entrepreneurs know better how to create social change than do the nonprofits that have been working on it for decades.  We can’t dismiss an entire sector that has been working on social problems for years.  However, I do think that there are some things that nonprofits can learn from social entrepreneurs.  The most important is how to lose the Charity Mindset.

Nonprofits are sometimes referred to as “charities,” and it is a real misnomer and does a real disservice to nonprofits.  A charity mindset is when a nonprofit, its board, funders or others promoting its work have a narrow view that the organization is benevolent, but not critical, to the world at large.  The charity mindset assumes that a nonprofit starts from the position of need, inadequacy, and burden, rather than a position of opportunity, strength, and effectiveness.  The charity mindset differs from a social entrepreneur mindset in a number of ways:

• Symptoms vs. Solutions: A charity, by its very definition, exists to provide aid to the needy, not to solve the underlying cause of the need.  This is not to say that every nonprofit can work toward solving an underlying problem; there will always be organizations that exist simply to provide basic needs (food, shelter, safety, etc.).  But I wonder if too many nonprofit organizations view their work as residing in the “charity” camp, instead of working, as social entrepreneurs do, to understand the cause of the need and how how they may be able to attack and solve it.

• Fundraising: A fundraiser in the charity mindset apologizes for the burden of asking someone for money, but a social entrepreneur offers investment opportunities to prospects.  Wendy Kopp from Teach for America went around evangelizing the Teach for America story and sought investors who wanted to get in on the ground level of an incredible opportunity to change the American public education system.

• Investment in Infrastructure: Charities spend every last penny on the program and leave little money for building the organization.  Social entrepreneurs understand that it takes organizations, infrastructure, systems, and talent to effectively execute on a solution to a social problem.

• Respect: Charities may be beloved by their supporters, but they may not garner a lot of respect from them.  Social entrepreneurs behave as equal partners with funders in creating solutions, and, as such, they command and receive real respect from investors, volunteers, partners and others.

• True Costs:  Charities like to claim that as much money as possible goes to direct services, but social entrepreneurs recognize the true costs of their endeavors and are open and honest with funders about those costs.  In fact they demand that funders understand and support those true costs.

I think the old adage is true, people will treat you the way you ask to be treated.  If a nonprofit acts like a charity, people will treat it like one.  Nonprofits need to stand up and demand to be treated as critical, equal partners in creating solutions.

Photo Credit: wolfgangfoto

Tags: charity, charity mindset, Fundraising, nonprofit, nonprofit fundraising, nonprofit strategy, Philanthropy, Social Entrepreneurship

Breaking Freeing of the Nonprofit Overhead Trap

Note: While I’m off during the holidays I wanted to provide some archive blog posts that you might enjoy. A version of this post originally appeared on the Social Velocity blog in November 2011.

It’s that time of year when donors make key decisions about their end of year giving. But a post on the Social Earth blog advising donors about questions they should ask nonprofits perpetuates thinking that actually hurts, rather than helps the nonprofit sector. The author asks “How do you know where your charitable dollars are going? Are they going to the cause you want to support or are they going to administrative and fundraising expenses?” In reinforcing old, and destructive binary thinking about program vs. overhead expenses, the author is doing nonprofits and their donors a real disservice.

The author lists 4 key questions she thinks every donor should ask of the nonprofits they consider donating to:

As various charities vie for your charitable donations, there are many questions you can ask them directly, including:

1. How much goes to the cause? How high are their expenses?
2. How efficient is their fundraising? What is their cost-per-fundraised-dollar ratio?
3. Is the charity run properly? How efficient and effective is their human capital? Management team?
4. Do they even need your money? Will your money just be lying around in their reserve?

I think questions #2 and #3 are excellent, but questions #1 and #4 perpetuate thinking that holds the nonprofit sector back.

Let’s start with Question #1: “How much goes to the cause? How high are their expenses?”

As I’ve written before, the distinction between program (or “cause”) and administrative expenses is meaningless at best, and destructive at worst. If a nonprofit organization is creating change, then everything they do is in support of that change. How can a program run if there is no financial engine (fundraising) to fund it? If there is no building or space to house it? If there is no financial management or regular audits? If there is no regular evaluation of whether the program is making a difference? How can you possibly separate “program” from “overhead?” We must move beyond this distinction and encourage nonprofits to raise (and donors to give) more capacity capital, or the money that nonprofits so desperately need to create effective and efficient organizations.

Question #4 “Do they even need your money? Will your money just be lying around in their reserve?” is equally troublesome.

This question reinforces the backward notion that nonprofits should not have a reserve fund. As I (and others) have written before, we have to get away from the nonprofit taboo that operating reserves are wrong. Nonprofits cannot plan for the future, have a sustainable financial model, experiment with program changes, take risks, or any of the other things that are absolutely necessary to creating social change, without some operating reserves. If nonprofits are continually forced to go month to month without any cushion they will never emerge as strong, sustainable organizations capable of creating lasting change.

We must move away from thinking that encourages nonprofits to scrape by without the tools and infrastructure they desperately need. We must stop measuring nonprofit performance with meaningless financial metrics and instead evaluate nonprofits on their ability to deliver change. If a nonprofit is creating real change, does the minutia of how they spend money really matter?

Tags: asking nonprofits questions, capacity capital, evaluating nonprofits, nonprofit donors, nonprofit fundraising, nonprofit outcomes, nonprofit overhead, Philanthropy, program expenses