Advice for Nonprofits

Hello everyone,

We haven’t gone on an agency visit lately, so I thought I’d take some time and talk about some of the problems I’ve seen nonprofit agencies have to work through. One thing that can help a lot of nonprofit organizations is the Nonprofit Training and Resource Center at the United Way office in Blount County. They have all kinds of books and materials on how to set up and run a nonprofit agency.

Most nonprofits start as a dream by someone who’s found a need in the community and figured out a way to meet that need, and the training center can help a person turn that dream into reality. It can help a person figure out how to put a board together, what things to be careful about, and everything else in between.

I’ve worked with a lot of nonprofits, and the major problem I’ve seen nonprofits struggle with right out of the gate is setting everything up. If they set things up on a firm foundation, the organization is more likely to make it. What’s a firm foundation? There are two things I’ve seen that can make or break a nonprofit: money (support) and people (volunteers).

A lot of times people first get excited about forming a nonprofit, and they’ve got all of this energy and enthusiasm. The hard part is keeping that going. It’s like anything when you first get into it: your adrenaline’s flowing, and you’re all psyched up. But then what happens a year later when all that energy’s gone? Sustaining a nonprofit is one of the hardest parts, and that’s when a nonprofit needs to have the right people with the right vision in place to help it along.

Of course, money is a big part of it, too. The nonprofit’s gotta’ have the capital to continue that dream or the ability to raise funds. And as nonprofits, especially new ones, how can they get the money upfront to do the communications, the marketing, and all of those things that have to be done to raise funds for their purpose? It’s about having the right people and the upfront capital to be able to do those things.

I can’t tell you how important it is for people to do their homework on the front-end, and the training and resource can really help a nonprofit do that. With the center as a resource, a person can go into setting up a nonprofit fully aware of the possibilities and hurdles they’ll face. And there will be some. It’s wonderful to dream, but there are going to be bumps in the road. How people deal with those bumps is ultimately what decides whether or not they’re going to be successful.

Have a good one, everybody.

Blog you later,
Dave Bennett