For me, starting a non-profit was both very rewarding and also the hardest thing I've ever
done in my life. Every year I meet Founders who thrive, Founders who get started and then close
up shop after just a year or two, and then Founders who never quite get started at all.
So in this video I want to talk about some reflection questions to think about and ask
yourself to identify if you're really ready to start a non-profit and go on that Journey.
Welcome or welcome back! My name is Amber Melanie Smith, and I'm a non-profit founder
and executive director and I make these videos here on YouTube to help people on their social
impact journey - whether that's social impact created by starting a non-profit or social
Enterprise organization, volunteering, leadership and service, and all that good stuff, or something
else. As always don't forget to give this video a like and subscribe to my channel to let YouTube
know that it needs to share this content with more folks who want to make a difference in the world.
I also have some online trainings and resources at my website FounderToFulltime.com for people
who are interested in starting a non-profit or even developing a sustainable fundraising plan
for their non-profits, so check those out. Maybe they're for you! This is a topic that I wanted to
talk about because I feel like it's the part of the non-profit process that you just don't talk
about or don't have opportunities to talk about usually when someone is thinking of starting a
non-profit the things they think about relate to the financial aspects of it the legal aspects of
it the logistics of the paperwork involved the board of directors stuff like that the business
side but what a lot of people might not realize until they get a year or two into the process is
that starting a non-profit is a pretty personal undertaking it's just like starting any kind of
business or special project or piece of art if you're an artist it's something you pour a lot
of yourself into but the structure of non-profits and how they are designed to work might surprise
people who are not already familiar with this world so that means we've got to ask ourselves
some questions before we get started to um just make sure that this is the right path
for us I was thinking about my own journey starting a non-profit and and the stories of
so many other Founders that I hear from and I've come up with six things that you might
want to reflect on as you're getting started so let's jump into those all right here are
the six things that you need to be emotionally prepared for if you start a non-profit and thing
number one is you've got to be ready prepared for the Long Haul you've got to have patience
here's why starting a non-profit takes a long time getting a non-profit up and running to the
point where it can make a true Deep Impact in the community can take time and we know this because
it takes a lot of resources and building up those resources unless you're miraculously starting with
a large sum of money in the very beginning which is pretty rare it's going to take time to build up
an audience and build up those donors and build up those resources I know for someone like me
I'm very impatient and I'm very frustrated when I see problems in the community and I see that
they're not being solved with a greater amount of urgency so this was a hard lesson for me to
learn but I have seen that over the many years of my own work with my non-profit that the impact
grows once you lay that foundation so if you can have the patience to get past those first couple
of years of of paper work and legal stuff and building up an audience and building up a donor
base and finding what your ideal revenue streams are depending on your non-profit model then once
you get past those things and have laid the strong foundation and created solid infrastructure for
your organization things will start to go and scale a little bit more quickly but you have
to go into it preparing yourself mentally and emotionally for that long haul so that's thing
number one that uh you you've got to emotionally prepare yourself for thing number two is you have
to be emotionally prepared for rejection and I would say this is true of any Venture any business
or I mentioned art before you know anything that you're putting yourself out there for
you are likely to face some kind of rejection at some level and it's the same when you're starting
a non-profit organization you will be rejected many if not most times for funding opportunities
um for people to help you and donate their services and you know what that's okay because
you don't need necessarily everyone to say yes all the time you just need a couple of those
True Believers to say yes and get you started and once you get one or two donors or volunteers or
supporters on board then they can bring in their social networks and then other people start to see
who is involved in your organization builds up something called social proof which is the idea
that when people see that lots of other people are involved in a cause it makes them more likely to
want to participate too because there must be something to it if so many awesome people are
involved but I can tell you if you struggle with this um just practice remember that being told
no isn't necessarily personal and oftentimes a no at that moment is not always a no later sometimes
the timing isn't just right for someone to make a donation to your cause but maybe it would be
the right timing a year after that for me it has taken in some cases four or five years of building
a relationship and building trust with certain sponsors before I heard any kind of yes from them
to support my cause so if you can develop a thick skin and do number one which I mentioned was have
patience then you'll be able to get through the rejection and get excited when you have people who
do say yes all right number three the third thing you need to be emotionally prepared for is that
you need to be prepared to let go of some power this is a hard one for lots of people I hear from
um people watching this channel from people I meet in my day-to-day life who um maybe they haven't
quite you know learned all about the non-profit structure and how it's designed but legally the
way non-profits are set up especially in the in the United States is that it's supposed to be
led by people in your community not necessarily just one person or a specific family or a group
of friends it is supposed to be designed by the public or led by the public and serve the public
so the IRS has set up the non-profit structure in order to meet this vision you have to have a board
of directors made up of people from your community you are not supposed to have people who are
related to each other serve in more than a handful of board of directors positions so everything
about the way non-profits are legally structured is designed to ensure that no one person has all
of the power even if you are the founder of the organization this can be really hard to hear as
a Founder I totally get it I have a vision for what I want to happen for what I want to see for
the impact that I want to see made through the organization that I started but you know what I
have to compromise sometimes I have to work to educate uh you know the others on my team and
the board of directors to get us all to a point where we're making an impact that is very well
researched and effective and I think that that just makes the organization stronger but it can
be really hard for someone starting out to um to understand this about the non-profit structure and
to be comfortable with it and there are certainly horror stories out there where Founders and their
Visions have not been met or they've even in some rare cases been ousted from the organization so
I'm not going to say that doesn't happen but the structure and the design of the non-profit world
is that it's meant to be shared so that the impact can be representative of the community now if you
are hearing this and you're thinking to yourself well maybe starting a non-profit is not the right
path for me there are still other ways you can create a social impact out there you can start
a business that you own or a special project that you are the sole leader of and make an
impact through those mechanisms but if you choose to go the non-profit route just understand that
legally it's structured to allow for sharing of power all right the fourth thing you've got to
be emotionally prepared for is to be accountable to the public and transparent this kind of goes
along with what I was just talking about this idea of sharing power but uh when you're a non-profit a
lot of your records are public so your annual taxes that you have to file are public record
anyone can look those up and um if you have a paid CEO for example their salary is usually listed
right on those records as well so um you know this is all designed to ensure that non-profits
because they're given the privilege of tax-exempt status are also accountable to the general public
so there are certainly laws around how you have to as a non-profit be accountable and transparent but
it's also just a really good ethical practice that you need to get ready for you need to be
open with and communicating your impacts as an organization the list of people who are on your
board of directors is also usually a bit of public information many organizations have board members
listed on their website so people know who is involved in the organization the staff same thing
um if an organization makes a mistake or does something wrong it's just good practice to be
upfront about it and say what you're going to be doing differently just like you would hope that
a business or a large corporation would this requirement to be accountable and transparent
means that you need to put some strong policies in place when you start an organization to make
sure that you're going to be able to uphold these standards of accountability and transparency for
example you've got to do really solid bookkeeping you have to be able to do your taxes correctly
each year or you could get penalized by the IRS you have to be accountable to your
um and transparent you know to your donors if a donor says I want to make a donation
to you but I would like you to spend it on this one program this is called restricted
funding then you are legally obligated to spend it that way or you can decline the
donation if you don't want to spend it that way but there are all these layers of accountability
that you just need to make sure you have policies in place to support another one for example is a
conflict of interest policy it's a good practice for non-profits to have a written document that
is their conflict of interest policy that describes what a conflict of interest looks
like in your organization and what steps your organization takes to avoid those conflicts
of interest and other common policies that are just a really good idea for non-profits to have
in the spirit of transparency are things like a whistleblower policy or you know Fair inclusive
Employment Practices policy stuff like that all right so the fifth thing you've got to be
mentally prepared for is to be mentally flexible and what I mean by this is you're going to want
to Prime yourself to be ready to change your mind and be flexible and evolve as an organization and
evolve your mission and involve the programs or projects that you do and here's why I say that
I have long believed and have talked about in other videos that creating positive social change
is like science problems that we're facing today are so big and so complicated that it is probably
quite unlikely or impossible for someone to come up with the magical solution that solves these
problems on the first try we've been trying to end homelessness for decades and decades and
decades same with food insecurity they're big problems they're really hard to solve and every
community that has these problems is also a little bit different so a solution that might work well
in one community may or may not work the same in another community for all these reasons you have
to think like a scientist you have to be willing to try some things that you think could work to
get feedback from your community and to have an open enough mind to learn that you could be
wrong that your proposed solution might not be effective at all and when you hear it that it's
not you have to be willing to change that's why we start nonprofits in the first place is because we
want to make a genuine social impact and we can't make a genuine social impact if we're sticking
to a solution that we've been proven won't work alright so we are on to the very last thing you
need to be mentally prepared for that I'm going to talk about in this video are you ready for it
okay here it is it is that you need to be ready to accept help and ask for help this one was
really hard for me and I've talked about this in some other videos as well but when you're first
starting out and you don't necessarily have all of the volunteers and the money and the
board of directors members that you think you need it can be very very tempting to just say
well I'll figure out how to do everything myself and then I'll do it all I'll build a website I'll
do my own accounting I'll do this I'll do that and that might get you a little ways for some
time but what I learned and one of my biggest regrets is not delegating earlier in the process
I wish thinking back on my experiences with my own organization I wish I had recognized my top
skills and my my worst uh like problems my worst um lack of skill areas much sooner and delegated
those things out within the first year or two of the organization if I had done that I would have
probably grown the organization way faster than we ended up growing because I would be specializing
in the things that I'm best at and leaving those other things to the people who are the best at
those things I am not an accountant for example I am not a website developer in another example so
um you know see if you can find help it's worth the investment to try to find the people with the
right skills who can take those items on so that you can focus on the items that you are best at
earlier on in the organization and in some way this goes along with the whole get ready to let
go of some power thing because doing everything yourself means you're in control of everything
but it also means you're going to move slower and you're not going to be able
to use the best skills that you have to offer your mission alright I would love
to hear from you at this point if you have already started an organization
are there other questions that you think aspiring Founders should ask themselves before they get
started or if you are an aspiring founder share how are you feeling about your journey so far
in the comments as I mentioned before I have a website FounderToFulltime.com where I have some
online trainings for people interested in learning all the steps to start a non-profit as well as how
to develop a sustainable fundraising plan for your organization, so go check those out there. I have
a newsletter for change makers and non-profit leaders where I will send out information about
the latest non-profit Trends and even some funding opportunities so be sure to subscribe to that
newsletter using the link that I've left in the description of this video here one final thing
I have a Facebook group Change the World or Bust. We've got lots of people from all over the world
joining in having conversations talking about their own Journey so I hope you can join us there.
I hope you found this useful and and thought provoking and I hope that you'll give it a like
And subscribe to this channel for more content like this I hope to see you next time bye!