an intrapreneur is the creative person who starts and manages a nonprofit organization. This is a topic that many people are looking for. bluevelvetrestaurant.com is a channel providing useful information about learning, life, digital marketing and online courses …. it will help you have an overview and solid multi-faceted knowledge . Today, bluevelvetrestaurant.com would like to introduce to you Starting a Nonprofit Organization? 3 Things You MUST do First. Following along are instructions in the video below:
A non profit and helping it grow. So that it can be successful and make make a huge impact in the world can be a lot of hard work. So youre thinking about starting.
A nonprofit. There are a couple things that you should probably do before you get started that will help make sure that you will be successful and make a big impact if youve seen some of my other videos welcome back if this is our first time meeting. My name is amber melanie.
Smith. And i am a non profit. A founder executive director and speaker on all things social impact service and leadership.
Theres really a lot that goes into successfully starting and growing a nonprofit. But in this video. I want to talk about three key things that you really need to do before you do any kind of paperwork or even think of a name for your nonprofit to make sure that you can be the most successful at getting it off the ground possible as someone who started a non profit.
When i was in college and now currently run the organization full time i definitely know about the steps that it can take to get something off the ground successfully and i also know about a lot of mistakes that i made early on that if i hadnt made we would have been able to progress a lot faster and not only becoming financially sustainable. But make a way bigger impact if youre interested in hearing about all those mistakes that i made starting a non profit you can check out my other video on that topic. 7.
Mistakes. I made starting a non profit hope you enjoy but getting back on topic for this video. Im just going to dive right into those three key things that you need to be doing before starting.
A non profit. The first thing you need to do before you start. A nonprofit is to really deeply understand the need that youre trying to address a lot of people start thinking about beginning.
A non profit with some cool idea for a project or program or event that they have but this is the wrong approach you dont want to start with your idea you want to start with the need and heres why if you arent really familiar with the root causes of the problem that youre trying to solve as an organization then you wont know if the idea that youve had is going to adequately address that need and then youre going to spin your wheels doing something thats not actually going to make the impact that you hope it will so in these beginning. Stages. You really want to be doing all of the reading all of the meeting with other people in the community who know about this topic.
All the research that you can possibly be doing to truly gain an understanding of the problem that youre trying to solve in the community.
Whether it is homelessness or hunger or improving education whatever the problem that you see in your community. That is compelling you to want to start a non profit in the first place you need to become very well versed on the topic and youre going to want to do this by looking at a couple of key questions first you want to know who is affected by the problem is it children of a specific age is it animals a certain type of animal is it the environment is it a certain neighborhood in the city so thinking about the target demographic. That is being most affected by the problem in your community or in the world that you are trying to address second you want to be researching and studying the underlying root causes behind that problem that youre looking to solve why is there hunger in the community.
What other factors are influencing how much hunger. There is in the community is it a lack of access to food is it the distance to drive to a grocery store is it the cost of the food. What are the things influencing that being a problem in your community and third when trying to understand the problem that youre looking to solve you really want to know what other issues are interconnected to that problem in the example of hunger or education.
You know that those things are connected a child who is trying to study in school cant do it very well if they are also hungry. So we find in social change in social impact movements that a lot of the issues. Were trying to address are very interconnected like a big spider web.
So what are the factors that are most impacting each other and what are the gaps in the different areas that you might want to solve how do you go about understanding the need like i said before you want to do a lot of research. The internet is an amazing tool. But i highly recommend finding experts in your community or around the world depending on the geographical scope of the nonprofit that youre trying to start and talk to them in person gain.
The knowledge that they have gained firsthand doing the work that youre trying to do and learn everything that you can only when you understand the problem that youre trying to solve will you truly be able to come up with a mission statement. The actions that your organization is going to be taking to address the problem in a way that will be effective in solving that problem the second thing that you want to do before starting. A nonprofit is to study the landscape of other organizations in the same geographical area.
That you are hoping to serve the fact of the matter is there are more and more nonprofits being formed every day in the united states and sometimes they overlap and mission and compete for the same funding dollars. This means that if youre hoping to start a new organization you really need to know who else is out there doing the same work. Because they might be competing for the same donor grant funding or earned income revenue that you are competing for and if you find that youre starting a non profit that replicates the services of another organization in the same community.
You might discover that its a really big uphill battle to gain any traction to raise money or to make the kind of deep impact that youre hoping to so you really want to make sure that youre focusing on addressing needs that are not already being addressed by an organization thats doing a good job in the community now im not saying that competition in every case is bad in some cases. An organization might be out there thats not really being very effective and in that case maybe. Its healthy to have a little competition.
Im all about innovation and making sure that the most important thing is getting done. And that is solving the social issues that were here to solve ultimately. We should be thinking how can we put our non profit out of business.
Which means if youre gonna start an organization have a vision of that end goal.
What would it take to create a world in which your nonprofit doesnt need to exist whether thats ending homelessness or ending human trafficking whatever it may be your goal is to solve the problem and then either disband or move on to solve another problem the goal is not to perpetuate your organization for all time. If that were the case then thered be no point starting at all so if youve studied the landscape. And you have found other organizations out there doing what you are essentially hoping to do and solving the problems that youre hoping to solve youve got a couple decisions to make the first is is there any way that you can partner or collaborate with this organization in reinventing.
The wheel. Perhaps you could be an asset to them the second thing is taking a look at are there any major gaps that that organization is not able to fill and if you really want to start your own nonprofit. Perhaps that gap is what you could focus on to make sure that youre meeting a need without competing for the same funding sources as the other organizations.
The third thing that you want to do before starting. A nonprofit is to think through your business plan especially including your plan to be a financially sustainable organization. A financially sustainable organization would be one that has regular revenue coming in that you know you can count on and ideally youre in a situation.
Where you can not only count on that to survive at a base level. But you have a plan for how youre going to grow and make an even bigger impact over time too as i mentioned before ultimately try to solve the problem that you have excel to solve. When youre thinking about the financial component of your business plan.
Theres no one size fits all for every solution. A lot of nonprofits. Think that grants are just kind of a silver bullet and that getting some grants will solve all of your problems.
But when in reality. Only about one in ten grants can be obtained even by professional grant writers. So grants are very competitive.
Theyre very difficult to get and theyre definitely not a source of funding that you should probably rely on when you start a non profit. If youre interested in more information about the different ways that a non profit can fundraise and explore developing that financial sustainability. Ive got another video for you fundraising strategies.
When youre trying to start or grow. A non profit and you can check that out the link to there are two main components of the business plan that you want to really focus on at this early stage. And that is once youve figured out the what meaning.
What actions or activities.
Your organization is going to undertake to inevitably address that big problem that you are setting out to address you want to know how are you going to measure your progress towards that goal. If its something like ending homelessness an obvious way to measure that would be that there are no people experiencing homelessness in the city for x number of years in a row measuring these things is called measuring outcomes. So an outcome is basically the difference between where you started before you begin your organization and the difference world that has been achieved now that youve been working at it for some time essentially how you change the world.
So you want to know how are you going to measure your impacts towards your progress towards the outcomes that youre hoping to achieve is it a changes in attitude or perception about something. In that case. A survey might be a good way to track the changes in attitudes over time when you survey someone in the beginning.
You survey someone at the end of the year. How has it changed if its something like the example of homelessness that i just brought up it could be how many people have who were chronically homeless are now no longer on the streets and in affordable housing. The second major piece of the business plan that you want to think through before starting.
A non profit is of course that fundraising piece and how you are going to plan to become financially sustainable as an organization whether that is through some kind of earned income mechanism charging some very small reasonable amount for items or services that you offer or sponsorships thinking through what is going to be the best fit for your specific organization and again recognizing that theres no one size fits all solution for all nonprofits. Every organization is different and is going to need a different approach to be successful. There is of course a ton more that should go into a business plan for a non profit from your operations to recruiting volunteers to your marketing strategy.
But if i depict the top two things it would definitely be how are you going to measure your outcomes and impacts and how youre going to be financially sustainable as an organization and i know that when i was first starting a non profit. Those are the two things that i wish i had put a little bit more thought into in the very beginning. So are you thinking of starting a non profit.
And what stage in the process are you at id love to know please share that in the comments below and dont forget to subscribe because. Im making weekly videos on nonprofits social impact service leadership. And more i really hope that you found this helpful.
Please. If you are on facebook check out my facebook group change the world or bust. We having conversations there about how to make a difference in the world effectively.
And its just really good conversation. So come join us over there i hope this helped you out dont forget to check out my other videos. If you are starting a non profit.
Ive got some great resources on my channel check those out and thank you again so much for watching. .
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