Start Your Own Nonprofit Organization

Your Step-By-Step Guide to Success

The Staff of Entrepreneur Media, Inc., Corbin Collins

• Publisher: Entrepreneur Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781413321609
• eBook ISBN: 9781613083727
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Nonprofit Organizations & Charities
• Index: Business

FOLLOW YOUR PASSION

Serving missions rather than profits, the nonprofit sector employs 11 million people, making it the third largest industry in the United States, and often provides our communities' most fundamental services.Whether your mis­sion is to save puppies, feed children, or preserve history, Start Your Own Nonprofit Organization equips you with the tools you need to start, run and grow your organization. This guide provides mission-driven entrepreneurs like you with the latest industry research and pairs it with advice from real-world nonprofit leaders to teach you how to:

• Determine if your business idea is nonprofit or for-profit
• Manage the day-to-day operations and onboard key staff and volunteers that help you achieve goals
• Write a business plan, mission statement, and grant proposals that gain funding and help grow the organization
• Manage your finances to the satisfaction of the IRS
• Integrate the latest technology, apps, and social media strategy to aid in volunteer tracking, donation facilitation, and audience outreach

Plus, gain insight and hard-won lessons from nonprofits like the Susan B. Komen Foundation, Prosperity Indiana, the Melanoma International Foundation, and the New Hampshire Center for NonprofitsNo matter what kind of nonprofit you want to start, this guide will turn your hope for change into help for a deserving community—starting now!

CHAPTER 1

Saving the World by Being True to a Mission

The great majority of nonprofits get their start because someone is on a mission to help serve a need in their community that isn’t being served otherwise. That need could be as seemingly obscure as preserving specimens of old appliances to as obvious as helping people who lack financial means get basic necessities. In fact, federal, state, and local governments seem to rely on the nonprofit sector to extend the assistance available to those in need—from abuse safe houses, to addiction rehabilitation, to feeding hungry children, and definitely to pets in need—a service every community needs but to which the government does not contribute in any meaningful way, and which is fully addressed by nonprofit animal shelters and rescue organizations.

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stat fact

The nonprofit sector has around 11 million employees, making it the third largest industry in the United States, but it accounts for only about 10 percent of wages and salaries in the U.S.

—The Economics Daily, U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics (www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2014/ted_20141021.htm)

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Other organizations keep the cultural aspect of our society intact. Nonprofit theatre groups, literary organizations, art museums, and historic preservation groups ensure that the history and culture of our society are not only preserved, but continue on.

In turn, for helping fulfill the needs of the greater community, these organizations are given nonprofit status in the eyes of the IRS and are not required to pay taxes on the donations they receive. And donors to the nonprofits are further encouraged to donate, not just to help the needy or preserve cultural artifacts for future generations, but also for the pot-sweetener that these donations are (typically) tax deductible. It ultimately is a win-win-win situation: The nonprofit gets to fulfill its mission without dealing with tax dollars, the donor gets the advantage of tax deductions, and the government gets help fulfilling its mission of taking care of its citizens.

How Will You Save the World?

What is the mission that is near and dear to you? Nonprofits exist in almost every category imaginable. This section provides an overview of some of the major categories of nonprofits currently at work in the U.S. and beyond.

Medical

Hospitals represent some of the largest nonprofits in the United States. Not only are they big, but they are very complicated and very expensive, each representing millions of nonprofit dollars. Tufts Medical in Massachusetts, the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, and Loma Linda University Medical Center in California are all extremely well-known nonprofit hospitals that attract patients from all over the world. They all have giving programs and receive donations from grateful patients or their families or alumni of the university with which they are affiliated, along with many other donors. Many nonprofit medical centers have three-tiered nonprofit programs including educational, medical treatment, and research.

But hospitals are far from the only medical-related nonprofit organizations. Most medical associations like the American Heart Association, the American Diabetes Association, the American Cancer Society, and the Multiple Sclerosis Society are well known to the general public. Other nonprofit associations, many of which are far less well known, exist for almost any medical condition. The mission of such organizations is typically three-fold: to educate patients through workshops, programs, written materials, and online information sites; to assist patients with managing their lives with a particular condition or disease; and to donate to, encourage, and otherwise facilitate research to help manage and cure the disease.

Many medical/health-related nonprofits are started because of a personal experience with a particular disease or condition. For example, The Michael J. Fox Parkinson’s Research Foundation bears the name of the famous actor who has publicly shared his diagnosis with the world; the foundation seeks to find a cure for Parkinson’s disease. The Susan G. Komen for the Cure, formerly the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, was founded by Komen’s sister, Nancy G. Brinker, who promised her sister she would do everything she could to find a cure for the breast cancer that ultimately took Susan’s life. (The Susan G. Komen for the Cure organization experienced some negative publicity that will be discussed later in this book as an example of how to—or how not to—deal with bad press resulting from decisions or statements made by an organization.)

Smaller medical nonprofits are also common. In Colorado, the 43-year-old Roundup Fellowship helps people with developmental disabilities lead a better life. And the compassionate Balloons for Luv is a 501(c)(3) that provides Mylar balloons with cheerful messages to kids receiving medical treatment for serious illnesses.

Later in the book we will hear from Catherine Poole, founder and executive director of the Melanoma International Foundation, who started the foundation because of her own experience with melanoma and the difficulty she had finding useful information to help her with her own battle with the disease. Now 24 years a survivor, she became determined to help other people find information and assistance and started her organization a decade ago.

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aha!

Before starting up a whole new nonprofit, investigate whether your nonprofit idea might fit as a project within or as a new branch of an existing nonprofit.

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Education

Perhaps the second largest nonprofit sector is education. The biggest players in the education sector are, of course, the major universities and private colleges. They seek significant support from alumni who graduated from their school and went on to do great things. With fond memories of their alma mater, these graduates often write very large checks to the college/university that helped them be so successful.

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tip

It is perfectly acceptable to elect company officers who also serve as members of your board. For example, you can have a director/president, a director/vice president, and a director/treasurer.

—LegalZoom (www.legalzoom.com)

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Universities, like hospitals, have vast infrastructure. When they want to build a new building or complex devoted to a specific educational topic, they start with a behind-the-scenes search for that huge donor who may be given “naming rights.” The Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, The Anderson School of Management at the University of New Mexico, and Rockefeller University in New York are a few examples from the endless list of departments and even entire schools named after the person who put up the funds to found the school or was a key donor to a specific academic department.

Sometimes a department is named after a famous alum or former faculty member to commemorate the person’s contribution to the success of the establishment. For example, the Fiske Kimball Art Museum at the University of Virginia was named for the man who was the head of the first art and architecture department at the school.

If your nonprofit startup will have a facility, offering such visible naming rights to significant donors can be a great source of funding. We discuss how to conduct the various stages of such a campaign and some unique ideas for naming opportunities in Chapter 9 on fundraising. Even if you don’t have a physical building you could name after someone, you could name projects, campaigns, and other efforts after them. Don’t discount this potential source of funding.

The Arts

One of the things that distinguishes us humans from the rest of the animal world is our ability to appreciate something that is considered nonessential to the basics needed for existence—art. (There are many who would argue that the arts are essential to existence, but you get the drift here!) The art...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Saving the World by Being True to a Mission
• Chapter 2: Setting Up Your Nonprofit for Success
• Chapter 3: Choosing Your Board of Directors
• Chapter 4: Finances Count, Even for a Nonprofit
• Chapter 5: The Executive Director’s Role in the Nonprofit
• Chapter 6: Staffing: A Fine Balance
• Chapter 7: Volunteers: Nonprofit Heroes
• Chapter 8: Equipping Your Nonprofit
• Chapter 9: Development: Raising the Funds
• Chapter 10: Website Essentials
• Chapter 11: The Nonprofit World and Social Media
• Chapter 12: Achieving Sustainability and Growth
• Appendix A: Sample Strategic Plan
• Appendix B: Resources for Nonprofits
• Glossary
• Index