Nonprofit Growth: Goal Setting vs. Fear [ PART 2 ]
In my last blog post, I was talking about the freedom that comes from goal setting.
Because it naturally sets your boundaries. It allows you to align your time very easily within those boundaries.
Boundaries help us know what to ‘say no’ to and what to ‘say yes’ to.
Boundaries tell us what to start doing and what to stop doing.
Boundaries remove the guilt, shame, and all the ‘we ought to do X.’
I don’t need to tell you what that looks like in the nonprofit sector. You know, things like:
“We don’t make any money during Giving Tuesday, but it would look bad if we didn’t do it.”
“The staff spends way more time on the golf event than they should, but our two chairs love doing it even though it raises very little money.”
“Our board wants us to write more grants, but I spend days writing them and am rarely rewarded the funds.”
“I don’t have time to find individual donors or even do relational fundraising, because there aren’t enough hours in a day. I’m expected to do it all.”
Successful fundraisers align their TIME with DOLLARS.
Great – that makes sense, right?
But before you do that, you’ve got to make sure your overall approach to your funding model and annual financing plan isn’t wrong or broken, too.
And that starts with budgeting. Yep, budgeting.
Organizations who struggle to become fully funded are often rooting the income side of their budget in hope, and not a realistic, month-by-month plan to reach or exceed revenue.
I see this so often.
I talk to high-performing Nonprofit CEOs who are killing it when it comes to programs and organizational management but struggle to even make payroll because of their approach to their financing plan and funding model.
When someone asks you about your budget for the upcoming year and your sentence starts with “We hope to get to $ . . . “ or the answer is rooted in some form of “a bit more than last year”. . . then you have some work to do.
Do one thing for me in 2021, make a goal to stop settling.
Instead, create a true plan to fully fund your big vision, including the overhead it’s going to take to get you there.
For years, I’ve seen organizations over-rely on unpredictable, transactional, and inadequate funding sources and then crash when that funding disappears. What does that look like?
Over dependence on a single government contract, a few generous foundations, an annual event, or the income from a successful program. In this situation, organizations feel secure, but are very vulnerable. Hello, 2020.
While I’ve been observing the limitations of funding an organization this way for years now, it’s never been more obvious than in and after 2020, when the pandemic brought so many fundraising activities to a halt.
The crisis brought the traditional model’s inadequacies to the forefront: Many nonprofits are too dependent on too much of one thing.
So, what do I challenge you to do today?
Make a GOAL to break free from traditional FUNDRAISING Income Models that limit growth and never secure unrestricted cash.
Set your BOUNDARIES so that you can truly create a real FINANCING Model that helps you grow AND secures all the money you need for programs AND OVERHEAD.
Spend the majority of your TIME on the activities that ATTRACT investment-level gifts from individuals.
How about you? Are you in?
Whenever you’re ready, here are THREE things you can do next:
👣 Follow me on LinkedIn here where I share the same lessons I teach my clients about attracting larger gen-ops dollars and adding 7-figures + to their bottom line.
🍎 Read my GUIDE! THE TRUTH ABOUT GIVE/GETS :: Top 5 Reasons Your Board’s Give/Get Is Leaving Thousands (Sometimes Millions) on the Table. See how limiting board members to the Give/Get model restricts gifts and keeps your staff from reaching their full fundraising potential. Here to get it.
📈 Work with me to scale your org's revenue by 2-5X and fund your organization’s Strategic Plan // If you’re a business-minded CEO already raising MILLIONS but need to diversify revenue and secure more general-operating dollars to invest in growth, you can apply to work with me here.
