Good afternoon or morning based on wherever you may be right now! When you are starting a
nonprofit, fundraising might look a little bit different than when you are a more mature or
larger sized organization. So in this video I wanted to share just a couple of tips that are
especially tailored to non-profits that are starting up and their fundraising strategy.
Welcome or welcome back! My name is Amber Melanie Smith. If we haven't met
before I am a non-profit founder and executive director, I make these videos here on Youtube
all about making an impact - whether that is through starting a non-profit organization,
social enterprise, business that is socially responsible, volunteering, service, etc. you name
it. As always, I hope that you find this video helpful and useful and interesting - don't forget
to give it a like and subscribe to my channel for more content like this! And if you're in the
process of starting a non-profit or developing a fundraising strategy and you find that you
could benefit from some more in-depth training check out my website, FounderToFullTime.com
where I have some options for you. When I was first starting my own nonprofit organization I
definitely found developing a fundraising strategy to be one of the most complicated and scary
things about the whole process. I mean many people I know - maybe most people I know - are probably
not too excited about the prospect of fundraising because it's just thought of as asking your
friends for money. But what I learned is that there's so much more to it and it's
not all and in fact not even very much about this actual act of asking people for money,
and that if you can get your strategy developed early on in your non-profit startup development
you are going to save yourself so much time and trouble and be able to scale so much more quickly
as an organization so all that said let's get into six tips for fundraising for non-profits
who are in the startup phase the first tip that I want to share with you and this is important
for non-profits of all sizes but especially for those startup nonprofits and that is this
know your true costs here's what i mean by that as non-profits we sometimes fall into a trap of
not clearly communicating what it actually costs us to run a non-profit organization and this leads
to the consequence of the public thinking that non-profits don't need as many resources as we
actually do or that um you know certain things cost less than people think and this has caused
this sector-wide trend of nonprofits being under funded and the public thinking that non-profits
are getting the resources that they need which we all know is not true so the first step to being
able to clearly communicate your true costs are to know what they are how do you assess what your
organization's true costs may be well the first thing is when you and your board of directors
are developing your annual budget you really want to make sure that you're accounting for
everything your organization genuinely needs in order to operate effectively in the following year
and here's what i mean by that don't forget your infrastructure and operational costs
sometimes people call some of these things overhead and that word has gotten a negative
connotation but it shouldn't an example might be the cost of electricity for the building
that your organization runs in well if your organization is serving people
experiencing homelessness or helping animals or helping youth then electricity is not an
unnecessary overhead cost you literally need the electricity in order to do your mission
so making sure that you are accounting for all of those costs
and communicating why it's important for those operational costs to be a part of your budget to
your donors another example might be insurance or paying for accounting services maybe those are
thought of as simply administrative costs that have nothing to do with your mission but i can
guarantee you if the irs comes knocking at your door saying hey you haven't filed your paperwork
properly so we're shutting your nonprofit down that becomes suddenly very important to your
mission so the lesson here is don't forget about these costs don't think about them later think
about them now in the startup phase and really do your research and analyze what those costs are
once you have assessed what all of these true costs are not just your program costs but also
the administrative stuff we talked about the insurance the infrastructure the staffing you need
to do a good job of serving your community then it's time to be able to practice communicating
what those true costs are to the public and to your donors and existing supporters
given some of the public misconceptions about how non-profit budgets work and what it costs
to run organizations i get that it could take some extra courage to be able to explain transparently
some of these true operational costs that it really requires but what i found
is that when you are clear and transparent with your donors and explain why you need
to cover the cost of that infrastructure that for the most part they get it they understand
you can't run a household metaphorically speaking without paying for the roof
without paying for the electricity you know you you might just say well i only want to pay for
the food that you put in your children's mouths but not that electricity there's no food either so
it's not a separate unnecessary cost you've got to cover these operational costs in order to be
able to achieve your mission the second tip i have for non-profits in that startup phase
is to study and assess all of the different ways that your organization can fundraise
oftentimes what i hear from people just starting out is an assumption that donations and grants
are the either exclusive or primary way to bring in money as a non-profit organization but there
are actually many many ways i actually did a video recently covering five of the different ways that
nonprofits can generate revenue be sure to go check that out to get some more details on those
but you can bring in revenue through donations and grants but also through earned income
sponsorships events and contracts and so much more so definitely do your research for that
now the third tip i want to share goes right along with that second tip and that is that not only are
there many different ways to bring in money but there's not a one-size-fits-all solution for every
non-profit it's really important to understand which fundraising mechanisms are going to be
the best fit for your organization's mission model community location etc i covered this a
lot more in depth in my online course actually over at FounderToFullTime.com. One example
is fundraising events fundraising events might be a really good strategy for small or startup
organizations if they can also double as outreach or awareness raising events and here's why
events take a large audience and a large donor base in order to do effectively you've got to
have people interested in your event available the day of the event willing to pay a ticket price or
whatever it costs to participate that is going to weed out some portion of your supporters so
you've got to have a large enough supporter base so that whatever percent can come to your event
is going to make it a good fundraising return on investment another example is with grants grants
are often better suited to organizations with at least a little bit of experience and time under
their belts because grant funders are going to be looking for information about the impacts your
organization has already had in order to decide whether or not to give your organization money
so if you're brand new right out the gate you haven't done much work yet you haven't accumulated
many impacts yet then your odds of getting a grant might be significantly decreased the fourth tip
that i want to share is what you do before you can start fundraising and that is to grow your
audience first and developing the strategy to grow your audience kind of what i was mentioning before
about events it's really the same with all fundraising you might as an organization have
5 000 people on your mailing list but of those 5 000 people maybe only a quarter
of them are opening your emails so that's what 1250 and then out of those people maybe only uh
10 are even considering a donation so that's just over 100 people at that point so you might
have the 5 000 but you're really only counting on maybe 100 people who might be prospective donors
all that is to say the larger your audience and reach the more likely you're gonna have a larger
pool of donors and for those of you coming from the business world you know that this is very
similar to how you would market your business or do a sales funnel or something like that
so in order to start growing your audience when you're a startup non-profit you really want to
consider who your target audience is who are the people most likely to be interested in your cause
is it people with children is it people who have a dog is it people who like to hike and spend time
in nature and thus might care about environmental issues so you want to think about who this target
audience is what group of people or groups of people might be the most likely to care about the
particular particular issue that you are tackling as a non-profit and then you want to think about
where are these people going where are they located how can i get in front of them what
are some of the other interests they have what publications are they reading what types of
social media platforms are they hanging out on etc another thing you can do to grow your audience is
use the power of social capital which is also considered the power of the social connections
of you and your team so you can do this thing called relationship mapping you can get together
with your board of directors your your leadership team your core volunteers and just think about who
do you know out there in the community do you have ties to corporations to the small business
community to restaurants to other nonprofits to local government basically mapping out
who do you know as a collective team for your nonprofit and then what you can do is encourage
each of your leadership members to invite a handful of people to the very next thing your
organization does where interaction is possible an open house event a volunteer activity some kind of
um i don't know festival or meeting or discussion basically you just want to get exposure to as many
people as possible through these social connections that you already have then
there's this whole process of cultivating these relationships because of course you're probably
not going to and you most likely shouldn't ask someone that you have just met for money right off
the bat you've got to cultivate the relationships and you can do this by staying in touch with them
regularly i would say at least once a month through some mechanism email newsletters
on social media ideally posting way more than once a month but basically staying in front of them
and once you've cultivated that relationship over multiple months it is time to make your first ask
for financial support the fifth tip that i'm going to share today is a really great one and
that is to master storytelling there is just some great research that keeps coming out on
fundraising and psychology that talks about how people are far more likely to make a financial
contribution or decide to support a cause after they hear an inspiring or compelling story
versus after they hear statistics or data so while i always think it's a good idea to be an expert
in the data and research and statistics related to your nonprofit and the issue that it tackles
you should also become an expert storyteller and train your team members to do so as well to start
thinking through how you can be a storyteller for your organization you want to think about
who does your organization serve what are their lives like every day what are some of the barriers
or challenges they face in their lives and very importantly how does your organization help them
overcome those barriers if you can train your team to ask these questions and answer these
questions well they'll be able to form stories and look for stories as they are doing their work out
in the community and be able to come up with maybe something like a story database that you
can call upon when you're making your messaging on your website social media or fundraising pitches
i also want to say that it's critical to include a call to action in your stories you can tell a
great story and inspire someone to the point where they're just ready to go help whatever
with whatever you need but if you forget to ask them for that help at the end of the story you're
gonna lose that potential and that momentum so at the end of all of your stories include
just a little bit of information briefly about how they can turn that inspiration into action
come to this event come volunteer with us go call your senator or whatever donate here you
know including that actual call to action so that they can put that energy into good use
for you the sixth tip that i want to share is to start small and just be patient with the process
it can be hard as a startup nonprofit and it is very rare that as a new organization
you're going to magically come upon some large donation or very large grant
with with little effort it's going to take time you're going to need to start small and build
up and scale from there maybe your first fundraising goal is five thousand dollars
and then next time it's ten thousand dollars and you go from there and suddenly with the right
moves on your budget side you're investing in the infrastructure you need so that you can do more
and reach more people and then increase your fundraising goal to 50 or a hundred thousand or
maybe a million dollars but you've got to start somewhere and be patient through that process all
right i would love to hear from you now are you just starting out with fundraising as a non-profit
what have you tried so far what's working what challenges are you facing be sure to share in
the comments below and as i mentioned before if you're looking for some additional resources
or trainings i've got those on my website FounderToFullTime.com. You can check those out.
I also do a newsletter for change makers and non-profit leaders that i will share the link
to subscribe to that below as well you can join and opt out anytime as well and finally i have
a Facebook group called change the world or bust we now have over 3,000 people in there from all
around the world who are just out there trying to make an impact in their own way and we'd love for
you to join us so come on by for that that's all i got for you today once again my name is
Amber Melanie Smith and I hope that you liked this video and I hope to see you next time thanks bye!