To flourish, nonprofits need to regularly identify and adopt fresh, big innovations. Nonprofits need innovations sometimes to survive but always to flourish. This is important work and it often takes Michelangelo-like skills. To create a masterpiece you must look into the future and see the opportunities trapped inside it. Then, like Michelangelo, you carve away what doesn’t work so you can focus on what does. Finding and creating your next big next is neither easy nor quick. However, fresh innovations are essential and potentially hugely rewarding. Selecting and implementing them shapes every successful nonprofit and establishes CEO’s legacies.

Below are the six laws of nonprofit innovations for major upgrades. These laws assume your innovation has emotional appeal. Note that funding is not listed as a law. While funding is a major consideration, it’s not a law. More on that later.

1. Mission Driven. Not only must your big innovation fit with your mission; mission must drive it. Nonprofits build their next big next on mission based needs. Something is missing in your mission arena; the innovation addresses it. For example, The Salvation Army recognizes that it can’t move people out of homelessness without a place they can move into after their shelter. Thus, its next big next is to create transitional housing. Your next big innovation helps your organization to fulfill its mission in a new or better way.

2. Congruent. Successful innovations are congruent with cultural norms where you serve. Your next big next reflects the world’s current thinking and values. Right now, it is unlikely that a major innovation will involve helping underweight children gain weight in North America. If, however, your mission involves international aid — a big next that links children who need to lose weight in the United States with those who need to gain it in other countries — has vibrant appeal. This second approach is congruent and provides a fresh twist on issues we read about in daily headlines.

3. Seeded in History. Your potential for success increases the more your innovation builds on your historical expertise. Your experience gave you skills. You transfer these to your new innovation to make it work. If you have expertise housing the homeless, this translates into expertise in transitional homes. New lessons still await everyone venturing into big innovations, but your existing skills seed your success.

4. Future Impact. By definition, a major innovation holds the potential to define who you will be in 20 years or more. This is true even though, like Michelangelo, we cannot fathom the full impact of our work now. Twenty years ago, Nonprofit One specialized in grants as a supplemental income source. It struggled through the recession and continues to struggle. In a different city, Nonprofit Two’s founder nurtured a small cadre of donors. It too struggled through the Recession, but Post-Recession, it is stronger and more determined than ever to increase its donor base and stewardship.

5. Maintain Your Essentials. The Fine Arts Museum in St. Petersburg boasts of its fifty-year history of donor support. Future innovation must honor this support. The Museum also receives significant income from ticket sales. Because it is committed to this balance, innovations at The Museum will, also, honor this income source and the community interaction it represents. Your successful innovation strategies recognize key essentials and build your future around them.

6. Challenge Believers. Taxes are the price we pay for civilization; likewise, resistance to major innovations is the price we pay for loyalty. On the positive side, people believe in the way you do things now. In talking to hundreds of successful nonprofits, I found only one “law breaker” of this rule – a CEO who boasted that her staff was enthused by a major innovation. More commonly staff, board members, volunteers, and perhaps even the leadership advocating the innovation, resists change. (While rarely pleasant, resistance is beneficial to you when you use it to hone your message, embrace your history, pace yourself, and identify specific places where you will file down rough edges on your masterpiece.)

Those are six laws of innovation. Specifically absent from the list is funding. Obviously, funding is important. It’s just not a law. When an innovation is important enough in a healthy organization, funding is found. I’ve seen next big next innovations funded by all seven sources of nonprofit income plus internal budget adjustments. Often initial funding indicates that an innovation survived the crucible of the creative process and merits a trial run. Successful leaders know (and sometimes forget) that just because something is fundable doesn’t mean it makes a great innovation.

There you go. Six laws, and one serious consideration, to use as guidelines while you explore your next big innovations. Use them as a frame to organize your possibilities and find your next big next. You can, like Michelangelo, sculpt a masterpiece.

Related Resources

Nonprofit Strategy, Not “Lets Make a Deal”

9 Reasons Why World Class Programs Are a Must
Ideas to Results

Every day you make similar decisions to pursue or not pursue funding opportunities. Nonprofit opportunities are vast and varied. You decide if you will apply for that grant, open a ticket booth at Saturday’s market, join “on-line popularity contests” that require you to entice your customers to vote for you, and, while it’s not often thought of this way, ask individuals for donations.

With most nonprofit income opportunities, including the Challenge, one size does not fit all. Some opportunities provide too little return or no return for the effort. Other funding options confuse current donors. (“I participated in their fundraiser, why are they asking me for a donation?”) Still others don’t fit with the strategy at the heart of the nonprofit’s efforts. At worst, they provide little money plus a lot of distraction from the key essential actions the nonprofit needs to do to succeed. To maximize income, nonprofit leaders must discern which opportunities are worthwhile and which to skip. They must do so with imperfect information, as flaws will continue to exist in all our crystal balls

Is there a way to make funding decisions to maximize your returns? Yes. Think of it as consistently making quality investment decisions. How can you maximize the possibility of making these quality decisions? Establish Pursue or Not Pursue Criteria to apply consistently to each opportunity encountered. Criteria reduce the chance that you will say “yes” in the morning and “no” in the afternoon as your day’s decision-making energy wanes. (Studies show that judges grant less parole as the day advances and before breaks.)

Used regularly, criteria will help you to maximize funding and save time. With them, you can examine opportunities quickly. In 90 percent of the cases, you will pass on misfits in 15 minutes or less. Criteria allow you to say “no” gracefully to presenters who need to be heard because of who they are.  (When you turn them down you refer to the criteria.) When you have multiple opportunities, criteria allow you to compare and contrast them. When used regularly, criteria help staff, board members, and volunteers to fine-tune their income-seeking skills. Criteria allow pre-selecting ideas with the potential to meet the criteria. They also help staff to prepare materials for decision-making, since they can anticipate criteria related questions.

Most importantly, when your criteria encompass your key strategic actions, each Pursue or Not Pursue decision holds the potential to move you directly toward your goals. The right criteria help you to step back and see each opportunity both for income potential and for what else will be achieved. The best funding does more than just provide money. For example, your plan calls for a national grassroots effort via the Internet. By selecting and using criteria, you prefer funding that provides income and gets your cause and web address out front-and-center.

While the goal of funding decisions is first about funding, these decisions also have the potential to impact your nonprofit’s other bottom lines. It is rarely efficient only to gain income when you can also gain more mission and more community support, too. Since every funding opportunity provides multiple results, clear criteria help guide you to favorable options that provide more bottom lines for the buck. For instance, besides seeking income, sustainability requires that you also seek younger donors to guarantee your future. By using criteria that includes income potential and improved sustainability, you will select strategies that provide both.

Establishing criteria to grow a more monetized nonprofit is the result of intentional planning and continued evaluation once criteria are in place. Used, with flexibility, and upgraded based on the results achieved, Pursue or Not Pursue Criteria lead to more income, more community, and more mission.

Related Resources

Seven Lessons to Increase Your Fundraising Success

Want Money: Karen’s Basic Tool Kit

MP3 Download: Nonprofit Income Opportunities (Money-tastic #2)

As you climb and take deep full breaths, do you appreciate your lungs?  It is likely you do. It is even more likely that you’ve developed your appreciation of the organization that works to help everyone have healthy lungs. Your climb is part of an American Lung Association’s Fight for Air Climb. This Tampa event draws 1,000 participants who pay or raise around $125 each to climb one of the city’s highest buildings. Other communities hold similar events to support the American Lung Association in stadiums, arenas, and skyscrapers.

How can you use this idea? You might create an event that requires physical skills like the Climb for Air, or explore ways to use different city venues. Or, you might look deeper, study the strategies behind the Climb for Air, and adapt them to your own income-related experience to help your community to appreciate your work and to have an it’s-a-wonderful-organization kind of experience about your nonprofit.

In the movie of a similar name, George Baker, with the help of the angel Clarence, receives the privilege of seeing what the world would be like if he had not lived. At the end of the movie, George, overjoyed by the fruits of his life, understands, “It’s a wonderful life.” When they grow weary and frustrated trying to change lives, nonprofit leaders need this message. What’s more, your communities need to remember what it would be like without your nonprofit and, in turn, why their support is vital. You can, like the angel Clarence, help your community to experience this.

Part of the wonderful-organization strategy is to create something memorable to help people see why you are needed, since the human brain is challenged to remember what it’s like when something’s missing.  A second part is to link this opportunity to providing your nonprofit with new income.

What might a “without” effort look like? Here are examples to stimulate thinking:

• A nonprofit that serves people who have hearing disabilities develops an event about sound and “the sounds of silence.” The next year, it teams up with a mime group to remember the joy of hearing and to celebrate the skills of those who live in silence.
• A group that serves the sight impaired offers a theater-in-the-dark experience in conjunction with their local playhouse.
• A museum covers donated art with drapes to show what would be missing on donor appreciation day. During a members-only-thank-you-event, the pieces are unveiled. Likewise, to celebrate the founder on their birthday, the pieces given by this individual are hidden until the birthday celebration.
• Another site prominently displays empty exhibit cases with a (photo) negative of the desired gift and sponsor information.
• A nonprofit opens ten minute late on its busiest day. The time passes quickly for waiting patrons. Five people from the community share an original piece of art that expresses what the organization means to them. People vote for their favorite with a purchased ticket. Appropriate pieces are sold in an on-line auction.
• An environmental group digs through its archives to create a special display of what their land looked like before they worked on it. Another organization that lacks “before pictures” compares itself to a distant neglected bay with a collection box. A third group photo-shops pictures of what their bay would look like without their work and displays it so it covers its bay-view windows. Miniatures of this view are included in the appeal letter. Supporters are challenged to Bring-Back-The-Bay with donations.

Your nonprofit will want to develop its own unique approach to “What would it be like if we didn’t exist?” Or, its counterpart experience, “What is it like to need our mission?” In both cases, help people to imagine life without you and earn income while doing it. Use these two questions to explore this strategy still further:

1. What does your mission allow people to experience that they would miss if you were not here?

2. What does your mission prevent that most people in the community do not personally experience?

Take your answers and let your angel or muse help you to develop experiences for your nonprofit. Knowing a strategy to use is only one step in obtaining more resources for your nonprofit, but it is an extremely important one.

Every day, good non-profit organizations find ways to improve their funding streams. One way to improve your income is to help your community remember why you are so important. Even if this type of experience fails to fit your needs, regularly strengthen your funding stream so that you too can become and remain a profitable nonprofit.

Our next column is about reaching new people. Can’t wait? Read about the 14 Ways to Create Donor Relationships in 10 Minutes or Less to stimulate your in-between thinking.

Karen Eber Davis is on a mission to help non-profit leaders generate sustainable income. Her work is known for its innovation. To help clients fulfill their goals in creative, effective, and, whenever possible, brilliant ways, she helps them to explore and exploit all of their funding opportunities, and pursue those with the greatest potential – including and beyond the usual strategies and solutions. To learn more, visit www.kedconsult.com.

In nonprofit organizations, developing a supportive board creates a base for mission possibilities and growing both a culture of philanthropy and your income. Many nonprofit leaders find obtaining all the board support they need to be a challenge. You might even believe that more supportive board is your “mission: impossible.” However, unless you choose to be, you are not powerless here. Obtaining board support is possible – even to help with raising funds.

If You Choose to Accept Seeking More Board Support: Reframe

Inspired nonprofit leaders dedicated to obtaining more support create supportive boards. They do this because this board support leads to more income and mission. If you seek greater board support, decide that you will obtain it. Then, reframe the challenge. Instead of approaching this as something the board should be doing, decide what you will do to support your board. One “secret” to more board support is your own actions.

Creating support, among other things, is a matter of education, skill building, and discipline. This article focuses on these actions. To help you, I’ve created a menu of standard education needs. Use it as a well from which to draw ideas as you plan your “Get More Board Support” campaign. Most people at least include a brief “enlighten and educate” experience in their regular meetings. One key to success is the consistency of your efforts.

The Right Stuff to Learn

1. Your Nonprofit 101. This topic helps board members, like Anna with the King of Siam, get to know all about you. At a retreat, a CEO was surprised to learn that a member didn’t know the nonprofit had a website. Another member was unaware of a program they’d been offering for two years. The CEO remedied this by creating brief meet-the-team sessions. During them, staff members share their work for five minutes, and answer board questions for ten.

2. Funding Quick and Dirty. To make sound decisions and to help you obtain funding, every board member needs to understand all the ways you earn funds, the effort necessary to gain these funds, and their relative size. Once this is clear, they also need to know or decide on how you plan to be funded in the future. As a starting point, use this exercise from a recent issue of Added Value.)

3. How We Earn This Funding. You can also improve board support by taking the mystery out of nonprofit funding with facts and overviews of the processes used to obtain different income sources. Does your board think that you magically obtain county funding, or do they understand the 60 hours of work required yearly to even apply? Show them the paperwork and discuss the process. Do they want to solve income shortfalls by doubling donations without identifying additional resources to dedicate to the effort? Share with them the resources, steps, and timeline needed to obtain 200 new donors. When they understand the actions needed and why, board members can deepen relationships and provide effective support. Eventually, explore the board action fundamentals for all seven nonprofit funding sources. (Hint: Share our series, What Your Board Needs to Know About the Seven Sources of Nonprofit Income)

4. The Exact Help You Want. What is a supportive board? Do your members know the answer? This education helps them to know exactly what you hope they will do and how to do it. Create a list of the specific, measurable actions needed to support the organization. If income needs drive your efforts, ensure your board understands the expectation established in this area by the governance committee. Also, for instance if corporate funding is an area of focus, provide step-by-step training on how to tell your story and explore corporate interest. To actively measure growing support, see Guilty as Charged, Prove Your Board Supports Your Organization and this tool.

5. Mission Success, Energy Boosters. Success stories are the antidote for the hard work, discouragement, and roadblocks everyone experiences to make mission happen. The right success stories refresh, sustain, and inspire us. What are the human stories behind your organization? Invite clients or staff to share. Ask board members to share why are they dedicated to this organization. For some members, helping your nonprofit is a penultimate event. It’s a lost opportunity for your nonprofit if the people sitting next to each other at meetings fail to learn the why behind their fellow board member’s passion.

6. Nonprofit Funding Landscape. No organization operates on Mars. This education helps the board grasp essential changes impacting you from the outside. Many nonprofits invite their community foundation staff to talk about planned giving. You need not stop there. Invite experts to talk for ten minutes and answer questions for five more. Send out one of our podcasts for a mid-month boost.  Ask your board members and vendors to be mini-guest speakers on topics like, “What do nonprofit organizations need to know about technology?” Don’t neglect what you personally have to offer. After you attend a national conference, share your insights by providing relevant highlights in twitter-length lists in board-only emails. Enrich your board with the wisdom of others.

Accept This Assignment

This article provides you with a mindset and a set of actions to obtain more board support. In part, the support you seek will result from a combination of growing knowledge and skills — for you and your board members. Is Board support, even for funding needs, Mission: Possible? Yes, Secret Agent.

Resources Mentioned:

Resource Exercise: Invite Your Leadership to Dessert (Page 3.)

What Your Board Needs to Know About the Seven Source of Nonprofit Income, Added Value Series, Feb. 2011- Sept. 2011.

Guilty as Charged, Prove Your Board Supports Your Organization

Board Support Chart

Mission Brilliant Podcasts

You’re reading Your Profitable Non-Profit, a column for non-profit leaders like you, which explores remarkable ideas that leading non-profit organizations use to increase their income. Each column shares a successful funding idea, plus ways to adapt it for your use. In this column, you will learn more about an extra-special special-event that attracts new audiences.

The Opportunity

The Tallahassee Museum specializes in North Florida’s history, nature, and wildlife. From amazing native animals and rare historic buildings to beautiful natural scenery to exciting public educational programs, there’s something for everyone. One evening per year, that something is Zoobilee, an event that results in five figures of income. Zoobilee is held from 7 to 10, after hours on a fall non-football weekend after the summer heat breaks. In 2011, Zoobilee tripled its income from the previous year; most of the increase came from reduced expenses.

Four keys to Zoobilee’s 20-year success include:

1. More Than Money. Special events are time consuming. Besides money, Zoobilee reaches new audiences and creates relationships; over time it has become a must-attend event for Tallahassee’s adult community—even though the Museum itself is still mostly considered a children’s venue. Besides funding, the Tallahassee Museum enhances its brand and reaches new audiences.

2. Location. Instead of onsite, the predecessor event to Zoobilee was held at the local armory. Zoobilee invites visitors to come to the Museum and see its is not just for kids.

3. Fresh. Although Zoobilee is an annual event, the theme changes yearly and the Museum tweaks event production for effectiveness and efficiency.

4. Pricing. Zoobilee tickets are all inclusive price ($40 in advance, $45 at the door). The price is reasonable for adults seeking a night out, but also costly enough to discourage college crowds in this college filled community.

Your Profitable Non-Profit Opportunity: How You Can Use Zoobilee’s Four Keys

1. Triple Bottom Line or More. It’s a truth universally acknowledged, that it’s easier to call 5 or even 50 potential donors to ask for funding, than create an annual special event. Special events take hours and hours of staff work, even with great volunteers. Therefore, your special events, like Zoobilee, should be about more than for money. Copy the Tallahassee Museum’s concept of making special events do more. They use Zoobilee to build their brand and find supporters. With intentional planning, your nonprofit can insure that its events lead to more by using them as a step in the process to greater community involvement, rather than just a stand-alone activity.

2. Bloom Where You Are Planted. Not only does it save hall rental, holding events onsite introduces guests to your facility, helps them to know you better and saves you time, since you avoid multiple commutes to offsite locations.  Re-look at your site and consider if you can hold your special event there.

3. Be Fresh. Keeping special events fresh remains a universal challenge. Over the years, the Tallahassee Museum developed several formulas to refresh Zoobilee. Which of these can you use?

• Sponsors. Music is a key component of Zoobilee. Many attendees attend for the right band, but over the years the Museum struggled to find a band to please all tastes. They solved the challenge and increased their income, by asking a bar familiar with local bands to sponsor (and pick) the band. This provided new income, less band advice, great sponsor publicity, and the audience with hotter bands. What sponsorship opportunities can you develop to help you take a monkey off your back?
• Themes: Changing themes each year has kept Zoobilee fresh and fun. The Tallahassee Museum uses themes that track current culture and that offer a potential for dress-up like, Biker’s Ball, Pirates in Paradise, Zombie Zoobilee and this year, Prehistoric Zoobilee (coordinated with the new Jim Gary’s Twentieth Century Dinosaurs exhibit).

4. Serve New. Zoobilee serves the 20 to 30-something plus crowd. If you, like the Tallahassee Museum, are mostly a kids-kind-of-place, consider a special event to reach a new age group. While it may stretch your staff and resources, it will enhance your brand and may guarantee your future. If you serve adults, what would a children’s event look like? If you serve teens, what event might you offer for toddlers?

Every day, good non-profit organizations find ways to improve their funding streams. One way to improve your income is to make your special events produce great outcomes, like the Tallahassee Museum. Even if this type of special event fails to fit your needs, consider new ways to strengthen your funding stream so you too can become a profitable non-profit.

Our next column is about helping the community to experience what it would be like without your organization. Can’t wait? Read about the seven sources of non-profit income to stimulate your thinking.

The voices will respond in unison, “Relationships.”

Doubtless, over the years you too have been advised to form relationships with donors. While there is truth in this platitude, forming relationships is not enough. You have a relationship with the clerk at your local convenience store. You have a relationship with the neighbor who greets you with a grunt as he walks his dog when you leave for work in the morning.

You must not just form relationships. You must form relationships that inspire others to live the life they seek in ways that help your organization—a tall order. You must learn enough about others to discover if they have the means and passion to help your organization. If they do, you want a relationship that inspires them. While one can’t usually create inspiring relationships in ten minute or less, you can, by breaking relationship components, consistently take actions that create inspired relationships in ten minutes. Read on to learn how.

About You With Them

1.  Be available. Arrive ten minutes early; stay ten minutes late. Your physical presence enhances relationships.
2.  Be the one greeting and starting the conversation.
3.  Prepare thoughtful questions. If Jerry is likely to be at the annual meeting, review your Jerry notes. What query, after some small talk, can you make to move your conversation with him beyond the weather?
4.  Be present. Listen to the words. Observe faces and gestures. Hear their tone. Be fully present with individuals for five minutes with the sole agenda of being present.
5.  Learn about them. Care about their issues and interests. If they are from China or Poughkeepsie, pull out a map and locate their hometown. Read a Wiki article about a hobby. I met a fern enthusiast. I learned via Google that in the Victorian era there was a fern craze that probably explains why both our grandmothers displayed ferns prominently in their foyers.
6.  Seek one-to-one conversations, the building blocks of relationships. When our children were small we worked hard to help them recognize that they had two parents with two experiences and two different viewpoints. If you have never had a ten-minute conversation with an individual donor, you have an opportunity to form a deeper relationship. Learn their unique story; why are they involved with the organization. What do they believe you do best? For those you know, find out who or what inspires them. Then, be inspirational.

Just You

7. Cultivate your love for your organization. Just as the earth from space is lovely, the picture fades when you zoom into a slum. Close up it’s easy to become jaded. Even as you work to fix your organization’s flaws, step back for ten minutes to review your heart-warming successes.

8. Grow your people skills, especially dialog. Suggested resources include Fierce Conversations and Crucial Conversations. Read or listen to a chapter or another source for 10 minutes over several days. In between, digest and use the materials.

9. Deal with the residue of past rejections to be ready to risk again. Move on or move individuals to the backburner who pass on opportunities to support you. Feel the fear of future rejections. Ten minutes of writing down fears and exploring them will help you to pop many of these fears like soap bubbles. End your session by reminding yourself of this truth: you have countless prospects. You seek those who believe, like you, that what you offer is worthy of investment.

10. Be trustworthy. If you make a promise, you have an obligation to fulfill it whether the donor will ever know it or not. If you promised a tour to someone you find out is unlikely to be a donor, offer to fulfill your promise. This extends to your commitment to “small things.” Who have you promised to get back to? Does your voice mail recording promise a return call? Do you consistently fulfill it? Take ten to return the calls or change your message.

11. Don’t be a doormat; push back as needed. Grow your assertiveness skills. Your observation skills tell you that Joanne doesn’t want to be challenged. Growing assertiveness skills will help you to challenge her, for her sake, so she can find out how to achieve her dreams. How, in ten minutes? Plan a way to share your reluctance to push and why you must with her.

12. Know the value your organization offers. If someone invests a dollar, what is the return? If you are unsure, ask this at a meeting. Explore in ten-minute increments until you have a firm answer.

13. Provide more love after the check than before. Jerry Pannas writes that the cost of existing donors is one-fifth of the cost of recruiting new ones. Invest ten to send a quick email or handwritten note saying, “thank you,” or, “I was thinking of you.”

14. Don’t want money. No matter how you hide it, “want money” comes through. Take ten minutes to grow a relationship now by interacting with a donor without it being about your money needs.

Other Resources

Waiting for Super Donor. What Your Board Needs to Know About Individual Donations.

Identifying New Supporters:  A Helpful Tool

Davis Leadership Activities for Growth

MP3 Money-tastic #3: Creative Revenue Streams for Your Non-profit

7. Bridge The Gap. The bridging the gap step is key to your efforts to earn more funds next year. How will you move from here to the place you seek? What strategies will you use; that is, what frameworks for decision-making will set the nature and direction of your work? What specific actions must be done to move toward your vision? To complete this step, determine a sequence of events that moves you from where you are now to the income you seek. You cannot successfully assign this to a committee, although a committee’s advice can help.  Personally write a sequence of achievable and realistic steps that are needed.

After her preparations, Jackie outlines a triple approach to reach the three percent funding increases established earlier. She decides to close the funding gap with one-percent funding increase in:

1. Individual fundraising

2. Fees for services, and

3. Grants that help them streamline operations.

8. Reality Test. Check The Plan. Will the bridge to your vision really bring you to your desired destination? Or, are you building a bridge to nowhere? Will the bridge, as designed, carry adequate traffic? A bridge made out of marshmallows may be pretty and interesting, but it will fail with the first rain. What is a marshmallow bridge? One made of sweet ideas that vaguely resemble reality, like a plan to build a $10 million dollar structure when you’ve not raised your first $100,000.

Jackie knows it is not only necessary to do the right thing; it is necessary to first know what the right thing is. Jackie needs information on their fees for service in order to implement changes soon. Aware of her limits and the benefits of an outside perspective, she approaches a board member with a passion for “making good business decisions” to underwrite a consultant to advise her on the reality of her plan, coach her, study their fees, and help them to identify their best new funding opportunities. The feedback from the consultant’s analysis confirms the plan. Her bridge is solid. It will lead the organization to more money next year.

9. The North Star. You will be busy. Your busyness is the reason it’s critical to know your essentials; your North Star. When you pause and gaze up, knowing the essentials will help you to know immediately if you are on track. What are your essentials? Be specific. One organization that sought to increase individual funding identified these “musts.” The number of contacts added to the mailing list, people “touched,” and individuals asked face-to-face for specific donations.

Jackie develops three touchstones. These are movement on the fee for services project, dollars of requested grants that will help her to reduce operating costs long-term, and the number of donors she thanks, touches, or requests funding from.

Underway

10. Schedule and Do. Schedule time on your calendar. Invest resources. Once scheduled, follow Nike, and Just Do It. One expert, for example, advises that planned giving can be accomplished in two hours a week. I find this brief period a challenge. Nonetheless, in one personal project, to date, two hours consistently applied over three months has yielded consistent weekly marketing to 200 people and a committee with growing planned giving skills.

As the year begins, Jackie’s plan to earn more money next year becomes earning more this year. Jackie schedules four one-hour blocks of time in her calendar each week. While over time these hours gets nibbled at like a cheese block surrounded by hungry mice, her consistent effort is enough to create improvement.

11. Evaluate Often. Are you on track? How will you know?  Evaluate often—but simply. Do not wait until the end of the quarter, like school grades. Instead assess your progress at least monthly. What do you check? Focus on your North Star essentials. Schedule 30 minutes once per month. Then, for fun, challenge yourself to complete it in 20. Record this time in your calendar now, for the next twelve months.

Jackie sets up a monthly chart that she sends to her board and shares with her staff. It takes her an hour to develop, and fifteen minutes a month to complete it.  She measures and reports on her North Star essentials. As the year continues, she add details: the amount of time invested with donors individually, the number of telephone calls made, whether successful or not. She also includes an “ask for money” — indicating conversations that proceeded deep enough to request funding. Staff copies her model and creates similar charts. Not only does this keep them on track, but also it changes the conversations in the organization. They focus on mission and funding, instead of budget fears.

By mid-year, Jackie’s non-profit organization doubles its requests for grants. One funded grant provides resources to reach fifty new paying customers. The consultant’s recommendations regarding earned revenue are underway. Jackie and she continue to explore ideas and small important changes. While Jackie never dedicates as much time as she would like to individual donors, her hours are greater and more consistent now. The mailing list and volunteers continue to grow.

12. Gain Knowledge. To fulfill your plan or any great endeavor, you must learn more. For example, if you seek corporate sponsorship, identify the industries most likely to sponsor your efforts. Talk to people in that industry. Read their trade journal. Subscribe to e-newsletters that focus on sponsorship activities. More generically, gain knowledge for now and in the future. How do others obtain a source of funding? What has succeeded? Obtain new knowledge, think, and decide how you apply it.

As the swift moving stream of information flows by her, Jackie reads, highlights, and takes notes on everything about individual giving that crosses her desk. At yearend, she has a notebook full of tips that she is using and an idea list about growing a culture of philanthropy.

13. Celebrate Success. Do you need help with this? Most groups don’t. Many do need to slow down, appreciate their accomplishments, and thank (again) everyone who helped. The destination is lovely, but the journey is important, too.

At yearend, Jackie’s organization reaches its funding goals. Jackie sends a handwritten thank-you note to everyone and a general letter with a request for a yearend gift to celebrate the success. The letter raises $5,000 over their budget. Jackie dedicates every penny of it to raise more money next year.

More Resources

For more help with creating dynamic strategies, see Month By Month, the Strategic Organization. To learn which tools you need in your funding tool kit, read Want Money: Karen’s Basic Tool Kit for the New Year.  To dig deeper into the nonprofit funding opportunities, buy the Money-tastic series here. To read the rest of the series, start here with More Money Next Year, Part I.

Every year trillions of funding dollars pass through the books of non-profit organizations. Chances are you and your board would like more of this non-profit income to pass through your coffers. The goal of the Leaders Series Lunch: Seven Key Funding Strategies on January 12th is to help you explore what will work for your non-profit. We’ll talk about the seven key ways that non-profits earn income for their mission and you. Which are you tapping? Which have you dismissed because years ago someone decided the source was impossible?  Where might you tap or expand a source?

Does looking at a limited list like this help? Yes. Over the past decade, I’ve helped many non-profit organizations to develop new and enhanced funding streams starting from these basic facts. Once a non-profit organization understands where their opportunities lie, they’re in an ideal position to make the most of them.

Here is a quick glance at one source:

Mission Income

Non-profits receive this income for services they provide related to their mission. Non-profit housing organizations charge rent. Theaters charge patrons for tickets. Ride services charge based on mileage. Mission income is the largest non-profit revenue source, with 28 percent of the total. For heath care organizations, mission revenue is almost 40 percent. Almost every organization has opportunities to earn mission income, even if you now only provide free services. For example, we developed a viable mission income concept to offer critical data to new customers in one session, with a never-charged-a-fee organization. Exploring their opportunities within this one funding stream helped them to “clear the fog” and begin to identify and pick their best growth opportunities.

Other organizations have been earning this funding for years, but have been too busy to explore if they are maximizing it. One non-profit automatically renewed a contract to provide mission income services for seven years at the same price. The folks receiving the service were never going to mention to the non-profit that every other one of their expenses had increased during that period.

On January 12, we will help you to take a fresh look at your opportunities in mission income as well as the remaining seven sources. You leave the event with funding opportunities to explore at your non-profit organization.

In the meantime, download one or more of these Mission Brilliant Podcasts to listen to as you drive to Rollins or elsewhere in Central Florida. If you have or are considering memberships, you will love the one with Robbie Kellman Baxter. If you aren’t interested in membership, scroll down. You’re sure to find something of interest to help with your non-profit funding. On January 12, be the first person to tell me your favorite podcast and why—and you will win a small prize.

Looking forward to learning with you in January.

Karen Eber Davis

Karen@kedconsult.com

941-924-4860

4. Status. Jackie meets with her finance staff. Sharing her commitment to earn more, they review current funding streams by category to identify the patterns. (See Can Your Organization Obtain More Income? The Seven Sources.) What is happening with major funding sources? Are they decreasing? Increasing? Are any sources or sub-sources declining over several years? Where have they made more effort this year? What payoff do they see? To illustrate and share the data, they create three funding pies for their current budget, their status, and one of their ideal funding sources. The third was drafted at their last strategy retreat and is still “under construction.” More money next year will not be done in isolation. They plan how to educate staff, board members, and key stakeholders about their funding needs.

To earn more, first you know where you want to go, as established in Part One. Second, you need to know your starting place. Your current income is part of this. Where are you now? What does your funding look like? Draw income pies or other easy-to-decipher visuals. How did you get here? What trends exist in your individual fundraising, grants, earned revenue, and other sources? What funding efforts prove useful?

5. Stabilize Current. Doing a good job this year, including filing reports, thanking donors, and related stewardship tasks, supports continued income from existing funding sources. Big picture, how are you laying the groundwork for next year’s income, this year? For instance, Feeding Children Everywhere has nineteen sponsored food-packaging events. To stabilize funds next year, they want to sign up all of these sponsors again because of their great experience this year. How are you stabilizing current funds? Review your current contracts and relationships. Are you fulfilling them energetically? Evaluate the odds of obtaining the same or a similar funding next year. What steps support this? Believe every funding source can be impacted. Decide on actions to take. Schedule them.

Jackie gathers her development and finance staff for a focused meeting on stewardship. During it, they review their current funding sources. For each, they review how to engage them and the benefits each funding source receives from their relationship. They develop immediate follow-up steps for several neglected entities. They plan to ask several tasks forces, including finance, earned income, and development to create complimentary efforts. Jackie asks the development staff to create “engagement checklists” to systematize interactions with investors, donors, and customers. (Click here for an example of a checklist for grant opportunities.)

6. Growth Points. Successful non-profit organizations need at least one new growth area to increase funding. The Florida Center For Child and Family Development, for example, starts a learning institute to reach other providers who can benefit from their knowledge – a mission earned income approach. Might you add earned revenue, planned giving to extend individual giving, or corporate sponsorship (not just tables at your event)? Perhaps your point will be to make extra effort next year in recruiting new individuals to donate.

Successful growth points replace dwindling resources and help you to meet inflation. They can be new sources, i.e., earned revenue, or a sub-source, like planned giving. Commitment to growth fuels hope. Even if you face funding challenges now, growth helps people believe, “Things will get better.” Growth points lead to new skills.

Once you indentify a point, decide the steps needed to move toward it. What next steps are needed — tomorrow? What will you invest? What resources do you need? Explore and answer questions like these to activate your growth point.

Jackie’s non-profit organization’s growth point is increasing individual donations. This fall, they added an annual appeal after doubling their contact list. After talking with her board and staff, Jackie decides to continue this effort. She talks to her direct mail specialist to ask for next step guidance to ensure further growth. While Jackie does not anticipate this growth point will create all the increased funding they need, it will help. The lessons the organization learns about increasing community connections support all their efforts.

End of Part Two/What’s Ahead

With this second set of practical steps that focus on shoring up current funding and identifying a growth point, Jackie already feels more confident about earning more funding next year. Even though she is crazy busy with this year’s emergency appeal, the time she dedicates to More Money Next Year already encourages everyone. She, her staff, and the board are more focused on funding and expressing new energy.

To arrive at More Money Next Year requires changes in thinking, time investment, and actions. Next month, we will continue to follow Jackie as she creates solid plans and take actions to close the gap between what she wants to earn and her current funding.

The Opportunity

Besides wonderful meandering gardens and a singing tower to enjoy, Bok Tower Gardens, located in Lake Wales, Florida, owns Pinewood Estate. The Estate is a 12,000 foot 1929 mansion. Historically, the Gardens offered daily tours at specific hours. Interested guests paid an extra fee inside the Visitor Center before a docent guided them through the Estate.

As you can imagine, the Gardens found that keeping a large, historic estate in tip-top shape was pricy. For several years, staff and board members explored how to increase income and visitors to this interesting attraction before they instituted two minor changes:

1. At the front gate where the Gardens admission is collected, they offered a combo ticket option that included the Gardens and the Estate. They continued offering tickets at the Visitor Center and they also sold tickets at the Estate’s front door.
2. After adding signage and creating a brochure, they positioned the docents inside Pinewood Estate and opened the site for four hours daily.

The Results

In three years, Pinewood Estate tripled its revenue and attendance. What else? Jennifer Beam, Director of Visitor Services and Programs, shares, “Pinewood Estate is now a regular part of the Bok Tower Gardens experience, rather than a step-child.”

With two reversible changes that cost less than $2,000, Bok Tower Gardens substantially improved their funding. This means of increasing income is a category our consulting firm identifies as, “Improve Your Process.” To tap into similar opportunities, examine what you currently do. Then, make adjustments. Measure how they impact the amount of income you earn.

Your Profitable Non-Profit Opportunity

How else can you learn from and adapt Bok Tower Gardens’ success? First, believe that you have options, and that it is possible that small, medium, or large changes hold the potential to earn new funding. Then, consider these options:

1. Study, With An Attitude. Ponder and study your setting and current processes. Ask questions like:

• What simple changes might you make to invite customers to invest more of your mission?
• On an experimental basis, what if you changed something that has always been done a certain way?

2. Space Design. Bok Tower Gardens reminds us that space impacts dollars earned. By adding a combo option for the Estate at the Front Gate, guests had the opportunity to pay once. For out-of-town visitors who had just finished a considerable drive, the value of electing to add the Estate to their visit was readily apparent. What space change might trigger funding increases for you?

3. Combine and Profit. If you charge more than one admission fee, explore a combo ticket. Even though the Gardens did not, contemplate offering a discount on this ticket.

4. Divide and Profit. Take the opposite approach. Contrary to the Bok Tower Gardens example of offering a combo option, if you now charge only one fee, consider offering separate options. Visitors from afar may prefer not to do it all, especially those arriving late in the day. Would an “un-combo” work at your non-profit organization?

5. Shop and Learn. Don’t just shop at other successful museums and retail establishments. Instead, observe as you shop. What kind of customer experience do they offer? How might you adapt or tweak their process for your non-profit organization? To further study your retail experiences, listen to Podcast #8 with Retail Sales Consultant, Doug Fleener.

Every day, good non-profit organizations find ways to improve their funding streams. One way to improve your income is to tweak a process, like Bok Tower Gardens did. Even if their model fails to fit your needs, consider new options so you too can become a profitable non-profit.

Our next column is about Zoobilee. Can’t wait? Visit Karen’s website today to read about the seven sources of non-profit income.