10 Lessons on 10 Years of Founding a Non-Profit

10 Lessons on 10 Years of Founding a NonProfit

I grew up as a child always being told by my mother, "If you have the ability to help someone else, you should." That simple statement was ingrained in me in a deep way that from a young age - I had a mission to serve.

Although this mission felt very true to who I was, I began to understand the world actually saw this as irony. A young brown girl born with one hand is always trying to help others - shouldn't she be the one being helped? What people saw as my greatest tragedy, I saw as my greatest strength as it fueled my understanding of resilience and what it means to overcome.

The Simple Good is an extension of myself. It was a solution inspired by my own challenges of facing oppression and hopelessness that continues to be put upon me, and people like me, because of how I was born into this world - a woman, a person of color, a person born with one hand, aka imperfect. This program was my solution to stopping people from cutting short our possibilities because of stereotypes and assumptions. By empowering youth to overcome adversity and fuel positive activism through art, resilience and positivity, I have been able to grow a community and movement that celebrates the simple good in our lives thus building empathy and breaking down the barriers we set up for ourselves.

This year will be our 10 year anniversary since I founded The Simple Good. Since our founding, we have been able to serve 5,600 youth across the globe to find their meaning of 'the simple good' in their lives. This feat has forced me to pause and reflect on the lessons learned from this journey to found and sustain a nonprofit from scratch in order to truly make a positive impact on others.

Below are 10 lessons I’ve learned from my 10 years of founding a nonprofit. I am sharing these reflections in hopes this will inspire your impact on the community we are all a part of.

1. Starting a social impact business takes patience, humility and passion.

After I quit my corporate job to dive into TSG full-time, I quickly experienced the nay-sayers and non-believers in starting a non-profit for a greater good. I could have easily been swayed by their lack of hope but I knew that to drive good into the world, you also have to have an openness to the unknown and have an ability to trust things beyond your control. As a leader, it takes a lot of patience to fuel your resilience to keep going. It takes humility to keep an open mind and heart to create space within yourself for continuous learning. Passion is a key driver that fuels this all to come together. This is a difficult but beautiful challenge that evolves the human spirit.

Reflecting on these past 10 years of TSG has been eye-opening and humbling. Naturally, I began to wonder why it took so long for this critical human work to finally be recognized? I quickly answered my own question - authentic, human-centered work is a long-game and because of this - it has just as long as an impact on the people you touch.?

This is what matters.

1. Protecting humanity is a full-time responsibility.

Entering the nonprofit sector, I was surprised to see that not everyone is actually value-aligned with their mission. We saw a great deal of this during the George Floyd protests where organizations that said they were doing the work, actually revealed they had a lot of internal biases that they needed to confront first. As a value-centered organization, putting the values of the communities we serve at the forefront impacts how we run the organization. This means being intentional about our language, who we receive funds from, who we partner with, how we implement programs and how we represent ourselves as people both on and off the job. As my team started to grow beyond just me, it was important for me to see their true belief in 'the simple good' in their life to ensure everyone that spreads our mission is authentic and impactful in our service delivery. This means understanding and protecting humanity despite the flawed negative norm of society.

3. You can’t lift people up by putting them down.

Even after our national reckoning, we still have a long way to go in understanding the function of language in oppression. Too often we are using words like “at-risk”, “underserved”, “low-income” and “violent” to describe individuals rather than describing individuals by their strengths and their aspirations within the environment they are in. This leads to the process of ‘other-ing’ which dehumanizes an individual and provokes injustice towards the individual and their community. At The Simple Good, I stress that the communities we serve invite us to serve them - which is a deep honor and therefore we are also a part of the community. The communities we serve become Our Communities that we take hold as our own and are also accountable for.

4. Not many people understand nonprofits.

Nonprofits are also a business. It’s interesting that many people - including business people, don’t know this. A non-profit is a business entity that is providing a public need that is not already being supported by the Government. This recognition by the government thus allows the entity to receive tax deductible donations to support the public need but that is not everything that goes into how a nonprofit functions.

Many people like the idea of a nonprofit and assume the work is based on volunteers and no profit. Just like for-profits, every nonprofit operates differently - each one has its own business model and it has to generate revenue to pay staff and purchase resources to deliver on its mission and function. It’s not a one-size fits all model because human need isn’t a one-size fits all. If you’re really interested in a cause, ask questions about how the organization works and sustains itself and then ask how you can help. Avoid making assumptions.

5. Reactive Funding isn't enough.

Through this work, I realized that people wait until something terrible happens in order for people to give. I always say that it only took a pandemic for people to understand the importance of the work of The Simple Good which has led to program growth by 200% last year. This shouldn’t be the case. Funding should be implemented for preventative measures, such as ours, to stop negative outcomes from happening in the first place. If you’re burnt by a hot pan, you’ll always have that burn mark but if you had a mentor to tell you the impact of that hot pan hitting you to prevent it happening at all, you’ll forever remember the impact of that mentor… and more likely to one day be that mentor yourself.

6. The right partnerships can move mountains.

Collaboration is beautiful and the key to making a larger impact. The right, value-based partnerships have left such a lasting impact on our communities and individuals involved, that we continue to feel the vibration. Saying no to those that don’t understand your goals and values, is just as important. Don’t taint pure water because then no one can drink it - including you.

7. This is one of the hardest jobs.

Imagine running a business where your clients can’t always pay full price for your service, so you have to develop four other revenue generators (grants, donations, merchandise and sponsorship) within one business to subsidize the cost and deliver a basic need to serve the basic wellbeing of human beings - within a world that doesn’t prioritize that. Crazy, right??

When I was in Corporate, I delivered on one service or product that technically isn’t considered a necessity for human survival and made a ton of money for the company - yet the work never had a social impact. We need to challenge how we treat businesses that focus on public good and actually value them as much as we value a luxury good. There is no reason we should feel confident in paying $1000 for dinner or shoes but then think twice if we should invest in a child’s education who is in need. Organizations who serve others shouldn’t hustle so hard that it always has a risk of leading to burn out. It should be a sustainable, valued service that benefits the wellbeing of society, including the individuals doing the work.?

8. Financial literacy is the foundation.

I grew up as an artist but to a surprise to many - I come from a Corporate Accounting & Finance background (yes, I was an auditor lol). I did a lot of poverty alleviation work across the globe including Mother Theresa’s orphanage, where I directly witnessed the gap between the social and for-profit sector. They were two groups of people that needed each other to make sustainable solutions for the community but neither spoke the same language. I realized how much of a privilege it is to go to University (most people in the world are not able to) so I decided to push my art to the side to study business, in the hopes of one day of bringing my two worlds together. It manifested in starting The Simple Good.

Learning and feeling comfortable with financials, revenue and cost structures was invaluable in building and sustaining a nonprofit. This skillset is what allowed me to be fiscally conservative with our spending, which led us to building a reserve which eventually was critical to surviving the pandemic when schools shut down and thus a huge chunk of our revenue stream.?

Knowing business also made me understand the importance of a diverse revenue portfolio. I built a merchandise line (which still exists today) which brought in some revenue when we did not have major support. However when schools shut down and our major revenue streams were on pause during the shut down, it was actually the merchandise sales that saved us. Because of this I believe we are one of the most innovative nonprofits. Btw, be sure to grab our dope gear at shop.thesimplegood.org ??

9. There are way more good people than bad.

The Simple Good has brought me all around the globe, meeting so many different walks of life and being able to connect to humans no matter what culture or language we spoke. Despite what the media and society portrays, there are incredible human beings on this earth that have invested their life towards uplifting others - and that is the majority. It is inspiring to see unwavering, moral courage that stands up for the good of all despite how society may challenge us. It is only individuals like these that ever make true, positive change on this earth and we need to acknowledge this more often.

A few years ago, I was in the Middle East and met an amazing founder and humanitarian who built an oasis to support runaway children. She shared with me a striking statement that I will never forget - she told me that when fighting for good, people will try to fight against it. So I asked, ‘What should you do then?’?

‘Ignore them.’

So I do.

10. The future is actually embedded with hope, if we choose to see it.

History teaches us so much about ourselves and who we are as a collective. We must learn from that wisdom but not hold on to the bad moments as our current reality. The philosopher, Krishnamurthi best explains it when he says:

“To understand ourselves needs no authority either of yesterday or a thousand years because we are a living thing, always moving, flowing, never resting. When we look at ourselves with the dead authority of yesterday, we will fail to understand the living movement and beauty and quality of that movement.”

At The Simple Good, we start each program by challenging our students to express the good within ourselves, because once we find that, we evoke an inherent power. We are so much more than our greatest belief in ourselves - and we must always fight for that in everything we do.?

This is how you fuel change against all the odds.

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The Simple Good is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization whose mission is to connect the meaning of good from around the world to empower youth to become positive activists through art and discussion. Through mindfulness and social emotional learning (SEL) based art programming and public art projects, our mission is to transcend the message that no matter where you go in the world, good means the same to all of us and that is what connects us as human beings.?Support this journey and The Simple Good by donating today: thesimplegood.org/donate

Follow me and The Simple Good on social at @priyashah16 and @thesimplegood :-)