There are three questions that every business has to answer to stay in business. How they answer these three questions will determine if they will be able to stay in business for the long term and during times of economic hardship and sustain themselves for years to come. A non- profit is no different. Take a look and see how your idea for a non-profit answers these questions.
The Questions:
1. How does it provide something that everyone needs to sustain life in the Global market? I. E. Food, clothes, Shelter?
2. Does it create jobs and boost the economy for the local community?
3. What problem does it solve?
Before we being to write out our proposals we have to answer these questions.Otherwise it just becomes our pet project and a noble idea that everyone will pat you on the back for but you wont get much in the way of financial support.
Most of us can answer questions 2 and 3. Yet, we have a lot of trouble with question 1. In fact if we can answer question 1, then we solve the biggest problem that a non-profit has: FUND RAISING!
Almost everyone I know defaults to begging for money or asking for grants when it comes to funding a non-profit. While that has its place in order to help people get involved and helping to get it started, a truly successful non-profit needs to stand on its own with both support and funding. This mean studying the successful non profits that are still around after 100 years and seeing what they do to thrive. What there seems to be as a new trend in funding non profits has been around for several generations.
As you read on hold on to your hat and be prepared to see the potential.
The trend right now in developing non-profits is to create a for-profit business in which the profits go to supporting a cause or non- profit. As I pointed out before this is not a new concept. Its one of the things that non-profits who have been successful for 3 or 4 generations have used.
Here is an example that I read about last year:
There was a social worker that discovered that there was a great need for shoes in Ethiopia and Sudan. When the poor walked around barefoot little particles of sand would work their way into the pours of their skin through the bottom of their feet and cause a condition of silica poisoning that caused the feet to swell and the person to be unable to walk well or work. Young women who contracted this condition were doomed to a life of poverty and begging because they were deemed un-marriageable if they had this . It was a totally preventable condition that was corrected by wearing shoes.
So the social worker hit on an idea. Make shoes that will be from natural sustainable materials and market them to raise money to buy shoes for Africa. The shoes ranged in price from $40 to $75 dollars a pair and for each pair of shoes sold they could donate a pair of shoes to a community in Africa. They developed a for profit business to do this. All the profits, after taxes, would go to the charity. It goes farther than that because not only did they have a business that sold things people needed and hired people to work they actively promoted the non-profit activity as apart of their over all marketing strategy. Every shoe they sold benefited someone by giving a pair of shoes to someone who need it. So they answered the questions by creating two entities: a for profit business and a non profit charity.
1. How does it provide something that everyone needs? It manufactures and sells shoes through a for profit business.
2. Because it is a manufacturing business that sells a product it puts people in the local economy to work using the for profit business
3. The problem it solves is providing shoes for poor people in Africa that need them.through the non-profit chairty.
This is a sustainable non profit that also has many volunteers and many additional donors, that can weather the storm.
One other note: The success is made more poignant by the fact that their is a theme in product and provision: Shoes.
So how will you answer the three questions to develop a non-profit for wild horses?
