What New and Small Nonprofit Founders Need to Succeed: The Answer Might Surprise You

**References to small nonprofits in this article are for organizations with typical expenses of $250,000 or less.

If you were to ask most nonprofit organizations what they need right now, it’d be a safe bet that more funding would be on the list. If you were to ask most new nonprofit organizations, I would venture to say that more funding is not only on the list, but it’s priority #1. When we envision what support looks like for nonprofits, our minds immediately go to money. However, my experience with new nonprofit founders is that money doesn’t always address their needs. There are certain skills and capacities they need in addition to financial resources to help them succeed.?

However, funding opportunities for capacity-building and professional development is limited, and often not provided in addition to program grants. Nonprofit founders often have to choose between direct money for programs, or skills development. If given the choice - what would you pick? Most new organizations would take the money and try to figure out the rest. If we understand the importance of capacity-building AND direct funding, then there is value in understanding how donors and funders can holistically support nonprofits alongside direct monetary gifts.?

Supporting new and small nonprofits requires a shift in how we traditionally think about funding organizations. Community-led, grassroots organizations are often led by those with the programmatic background but not the nonprofit management background. If funders want to continue to support these organizations, it’s important to understand all of their needs, not just those that are monetary. If major donors and funders are thinking about how to support new and small nonprofits, here are 3 important things they need that funders should consider investing in.

Assistance developing a compelling message and strategies to become more visible

When starting a new project, many nonprofit founders mistakenly believe they need a perfect business plan or a perfect pitch before they can begin speaking about their nonprofits. Many times they will sit on their ideas and not share what they’re building for fear of looking unprofessional or inadequate. In some instances, they may fear that their ideas will be stolen or dismissed, so they stay quiet. What they don’t realize is that while major donors and funders need assurance that the idea is solid, there is value in authenticity over perfectionism. They fear that funders won’t support them unless they have a fully formed vision, when the reality is that a startup will encounter many changes in efforts to evolve and create a project that best fits the needs of their participants. That push and pull process is necessary to truly make an impact.

There are no perfect programs, and in fact, effective programs are always assessing and evaluating their processes and outcomes and adjusting when it makes sense. However, nonprofit founders are keenly aware that major donors and funders tend to be wary of new ideas and startups, so as a result, they believe that they can’t fully talk about the impact of their programs until they’ve reached some (often unattainable) level of perfection.

Here’s the catch: if an organization doesn’t share their work, the likelihood of funding is small because they won’t be discovered. Yet, if they get stuck in the trap of perfectionism, they’ll never feel comfortable enough to share their work.?

What new nonprofits often miss is that the power of a new organization is to show how real and raw the work is. The on-the-ground work can be messy and unpredictable - but that’s often where the most effective work happens. Organizations need to be willing to share their story from the very beginning but be skilled enough to message it in a way that resonates. When they are willing to share their story, they inspire people to support their work in a way that makes them feel like they’re actually making a difference with their donations. Founders need help crafting clear and compelling stories to persuade people to support them, even if they’re new.

Founders tend to want to highlight everything they're not (“We don’t have a building yet.”, “We don’t have a full program yet.”), instead of highlighting the things they are great at (e.g. helping young people graduate, getting needed basic resources to prevent child maltreatment, helping to secure housing and economic supports). Messaging matters but new organizations struggle with how to communicate their work and how to share it in a way that is impactful and inspiring enough for people to give.?

A supportive community

One word that consistently emerges in my conversations with nonprofit founders is: isolation. There is not a national network dedicated to new nonprofit founders. While there are state nonprofit associations, some do not intentionally create space for new nonprofits. Part of this may be because some perceive a low success rate for new nonprofits - why put resources into a group of people who may never successfully launch? While it is a valid concern, it still overlooks the numbr of founders who DO have viable ideas, who are making an impact already, but need connections to mentors, education, and consultants to help secure their organization’s infrastructure. Since there are not many networks for new nonprofit founders, they often find themselves in a confusing world of information, making it difficult to parse out the difference between for profit and nonprofit practices.?

Often when new and small nonprofits attempt to collaborate with other nonprofits, they are ignored - largely for fears that a new nonprofit will take what other nonprofits perceive as already constricted and limited funding sources. Other nonprofits are simply too stretched, and do not have the time to assist.

It is important for nonprofit associations, community foundations, and other networks to understand the power in supporting new ideas and innovation, by creating resources to help new nonprofits navigate their startup journeys. Nonprofit founders need access to mentors, potential board members, funding partners, business partners and more. Hosting community incubators, helping to leverage grant writers or grant writing training, providing masterminds, etc., can help to foster an environment of collaboration, not competition. This is not only among new nonprofits, but all nonprofits in your local community.

Finally, it’s important to cultivate a community among new and small nonprofit founders so that they can learn from each other and leverage each other’s strengths. In many ways, the startup experience for nonprofits is different from established nonprofits. Fundraising when you're starting with little to no money, is different when you already have a list of donors and successful past fundraising campaigns. Hearing from people in similar situations helps them realize that they’re not alone and that success is possible.

Education to become sustainable

We make assumptions that new nonprofit founders should step into the work knowing everything all at once. Navigating a nonprofit’s launch requires a broad understanding of nonprofit management and the use of multiple skills. Established nonprofits have designated staff (at least those with sizable staff) that can handle different aspects of the work.?

A new or small nonprofit founder has to know all of it: accounting, board management, IRS rules, state regulation, fundraising rules, HR, insurance, conflict of interest - the list goes on. New and small nonprofit founders are often held to a higher standard and chastised when they don’t know the full scale of rules and responsibilities. The reality is that an established Executive Director wouldn't know where to start with that list. Established nonprofits don’t know all the rules required with starting a nonprofit and would be just as lost, but somehow new nonprofit founders are often blamed for their lack of knowledge.

To address this, there needs to be an acknowledgement that one person cannot possibly know everything there is to running a nonprofit. To be clear: this is not an excuse for new nonprofit founders NOT to educate themselves and to equip themselves with the skills they need to launch. In fact, in a recent survey of 142 founders that I conducted, many of them had a strong desire to know and understand the rules so they can be compliant. Most founders don’t want to fail and don’t want to be in trouble with the IRS. They want to do things the right way - they just don’t have access to the training and mentorship to make this happen.

Nonprofit founders need tailored education because industry terms are foreign to many of them. Instead of blaming founders for what they don’t know, it is more helpful to provide educational opportunities for them to level up and learn the skill sets they need to be successful. Board management and fundraising are the top 2 priorities, but also marketing, program development, and organizational strategic planning are key skills that I often see missing for nonprofit founders. The nonprofit education sector has many resources geared towards small shop fundraising, but it would be helpful to also focus on framing their work toward those who are new to the sector (like this Network for Good webinar ?I did on how to fundraise with 0 donors and $0).

When working with new and small nonprofit founders, it’s important to understand that nonprofit founders want to have good, effective programs, but they often don’t have the access and knowledge. For those of us in the sector who have the knowledge, that is a challenge for us to step up and provide support, so that we can support innovation and bolder solutions in our local communities.