Your volunteers allow your nonprofit to accomplish a variety of important projects, from working on your program initiatives to helping out with fundraising campaigns. Of course, before your volunteers can get to work, they’ll need to complete your volunteer registration process, which might include a waiver. While waivers might not be the most exciting part …
You have a wonderful cause that is helping your community and you want to become an official nonprofit charity. So your question is likely, “What are the typical startup costs for a nonprofit?” The answer is, “It depends!” It depends on where you are, how big you think your budget will be, and where you …
In fundraising, we spend a good amount of time talking about fundraising goals. But we often spend little to no time planning a calendar for how we are going to meet those goals. And, as French author Antoine de Saint- Exupéry coined: “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” Here’s a step-by-step guide …
Are you a volunteer tasked to sell candy bars or gift wrap for a sports team or class? You’re not alone! According to PTO Today, school groups raise more than $1.5 billion annually from informal fundraisers. But while it might be super simple for you to convince others to buy snacks, candy, or gifts, it’s …
It is relatively easy to file the paperwork to start a nonprofit organization. The question is if you should start a new nonprofit. Being a charity is much more than filing a form. Successful nonprofit founders invest years of their lives, almost always as volunteers, to put together their organizations. It takes time, money, resources, …
If you work in the nonprofit sector, you have probably heard of Charity Navigator and CharityWatch. You also probably know that they are two of the top “watchdog” websites to keep track of your nonprofit. But do you know who is using each site? How it affects your donors or potential donors? Or how each …
Every nonprofit needs to take time to create a rated GuideStar profile. Why? Because not only is GuideStar visited by 8 million people annually. It also directly links your information to Facebook Fundraisers and dozens of other top fundraising and social media sites. Here is everything you need to know about GuideStar – what it …
Small but powerful isn’t a statement often associated with nonprofits. Bigger, better known organizations have obvious advantages over their smaller counterparts. Does this mean that small nonprofits can never be powerful agents for change? Not at all. So, what advantages do small non-profits have over large non-profits? Who You Callin’ Small? What do we …
It’s that time of year again, when your board chair is asking, “how did fundraising go this year?” Whether you met your goals or fell short, it can be difficult to explain all of the work you did to cultivate your donors, throw events, find new grants, and befriend corporate sponsors. Here are some tips …
What nonprofit wouldn’t like to save money? Benjamin Franklin wisely counseled, “A penny saved is a penny earned.” Like all great entrepreneurs, Franklin knew the value of a buck. For most nonprofits, a shoestring budget is part of the day-to-day reality. By cutting excessive costs, a penny-pinching strategy can free-up capital for mission initiatives and …
In just 6 steps, you can create meaningful benchmarks to help your nonprofit in strategic planning, proposal writing, and evaluation of your staff and programs. You can apply benchmarks to nearly anything that is goal oriented, so you can use them liberally to improve your measurement and ultimately your nonprofit’s efficacy! Step 1: Figure out …
Every nonprofit should know about these free and simple tools to create professional graphics for presentations, websites, social media, proposals, posters, and programs. You can instantaneously save on your bottom line. You can create your own invitations and marketing materials. And you can make your proposals, presentations, and annual reports stand out from your competition and …
We love statistics for a reason. They break down our complex ideas to simple numbers and make our work measurable. You don’t need a statistic to know how much statistics help your nonprofit – to backing up the need for your work with real community indicators, to measuring and tracking your impact and comparing yourself …
Every nonprofit needs a credit card, to simplify vendor payments or just to pay for office supplies. Another great benefit of using a credit card for your nonprofit can be establishing business credit – provided you seek out a credit card company that reports to business credit reporting agencies. In order to find out if …
There’s a misconception among some smaller nonprofits that “best practices” is a notion that only applies to the big guys. Wrong! Even in the beginning, a two staff, three volunteer (and the office cat) organization can benefit from adopting a higher standard of conduct. Loosely collected under titles such as “guiding practices,” “principles and practices,” …
Page [tcb_pagination_current_page link='0'] of [tcb_pagination_total_pages link='0']