The next phase for the Great Nepali Diaspora

"Your comfort zone will kill you!"

While the comfort of home, family, close friends and some food items (read: my mom’s cooking, momo, mac & cheese) is something I wouldn’t ever trade, there is value in the above quote.

?I’ve been reflecting about this in the context of The Great Nepali Diaspora and have some updates to share:-

?? New Platform

Our online home for #TGND has been Slack, with Whatsapp for communications/logistics. While I am grateful that Slack was the hub for us to get started, it (the free version) doesn’t serve its purpose anymore. At $7/user/month, I can’t afford the paid/professional version, esp since I am bootstrapping. I have tested SO MANY platforms over the last year and even debated about building our own app. Reasons we’re not building our own platform at this point: Cost (tangible/intangible), time, lack of security/privacy measures, etc. I have found something that allows us to grow & scale and incorporate essential features like a mentorship portal, job board, etc. This month, we’ll onboard our members, starting with our Chapter and Hub Leads, so you’ll see information on this soon. We’re making the first month free so people can test it out and adopt our new ‘home’ ??

?? Paid Memberships

In order for TGND to be financially self-sufficient and sustain itself instead of dying like a one-hit wonder, paid memberships are a non-negotiable. I didn’t want to charge members when we started the organization in 2022 because there was so much behavior shift needed already for Nepalis to network with each other. Adding a cost on top of it might have hurt the adoption. Now that we have a STRONG proof of concept and added value for our members (through internships/jobs, deals, investments, partnerships, mentorship, etc), we are ready to take this next step. I have done multiple iterations of the membership pricing and talked to SO MANY people to get feedback. The basic membership tier we will release first will be $10/month for working professionals and subsidized at $5/month for students. This will allow TGND to pay for tools, cover our super lean admin costs and hopefully, give us the much needed (financial) wings to fly higher. There is a lot of demand for higher level, curated memberships like CEO club, mastermind groups, business memberships etc. We will build out the membership tiers accordingly. But we need to get started on this NOW!

We have been looking at grants (esp with our Grants Manager Bhoomika) and donations too, so there will be various sources of revenue. My hope is to share our financial reports at the end of Q2 and make financial visibility + governance a priority. I am so grateful for everyone that has kindly donated as individuals or through their workplace. I ?? you for it! It has helped our bills take a sigh of relief. But as I have been sharing publicly, philanthropy in the Nepali #diaspora is not an easy game and I don’t want to depend fully on it. The critical mass of TGND and the fact that it is a politically-neutral & non-salesy platform means there are tons of real business opportunities; whether in terms of partnerships, sponsorships and other commercial facets.?Having a regular, consistent revenue flow will enable us to explore these options further.

?? As always, I look forward to your vocal support and action-oriented, intentional response to these updates. I am very excited about this next phase of #TGND’s journey and hope you WILL join me on it!