Why Your Nonprofit Must Start Acting Like a Business

Every nonprofit has super-sized goals. ?Whether you want to increase homeownership, promote financial empowerment or strengthen your community, the bottom line is you want to help people do better, live better and be better. But if you don’t know how to run your nonprofit like a business, you won’t succeed.

The key to building a thriving nonprofit is to understand and implement business principles. Here are three reasons why.

You want to appeal to corporate donors.?

Every nonprofit needs money to run. One major source of funding is corporate donors. However, when companies look for nonprofits to support, they want to feel confident that the nonprofit will manage its resources well. By using and exhibiting business principles you can give corporate donors the confidence they need to contribute financially to your success.?

You have to show proven results.

A business that doesn’t satisfy its customers won’t have customers for long. The same goes for nonprofits. Your donors are your customers and if you don’t show them you can do the job, they will take their funds elsewhere. Successful businesses create systems where they can repeat a series of steps that bring about results. Your nonprofit must learn how to do that too.

You must nurture and grow your talent.

Whether you’re running a for-profit enterprise or a nonprofit organization, you’re only as effective as your employees. Successful businesses create policies and learning opportunities that are designed to bring out the best in their employees, which in turn creates organizational success.

Are you ready to run your nonprofit like a Boss? It’s not too late to register for the Reaching Millions Leadership and Business Development Conference and attend the breakout session, Why Nonprofits Must Act Like a Business with fundraising expert M. Gasby Brown