How To: Fund All The Big Ideas In Your Strategic Plan Without Adding More Events, Grant Applications, Or Appeals

There are a few phrases I hear all the time:

“We finished our Strategic Plan, but now we need the money to actually do what’s in the plan.”

“We finished our Annual Budget, but we always end the year in the red so I don’t know how we’d ever reach our goal.”

The notion that nonprofits will never have enough resources to change the world, are unable to ever be fully funded, or will always struggle because they don’t have enough money?

That’s simply not true.

How do I know? I see my clients do this every day. I see boards, leaders, and development staff successfully make fundamental shifts in their approach to fully financing their missions.

And in my book, success looks like having the money for your programs AND overhead AND reserve fund.

But, here’s the big secret. It’s what everyone gets wrong.

You can’t start with just doing more fundraising things. Your lack of revenue is a symptom of a root problem that needs to be fixed. If you don’t fix it, you’ll always be on the spin cycle.

99% of nonprofit CEOs who come to me are not fully funded because they haven’t addressed the real root problems. These are the things that are keeping donors from giving larger donations to your mission.