More Sustainable Income Sources for Your Nonprofit

Contrary to popular opinion, foundation funding is NOT shrinking. The crunch most nonprofits feel is the increased competition for the same pool of funding dollars. The number of nonprofits granted status has increased and the number of proposals written for the same grant is increasing too. That\’s why it is so important that your nonprofit have an income plan that doesn\’t rely solely on foundation funding.

At OrgSpring, we like to teach nonprofits to create and maintain sustainable funding streams. These are funding streams that derive income for your organization from its list of supporters, members, advocates, and the general public. It can be an event (or series of events), a fundraiser, or the sale of products or services.

The right niche can create an almost-constant stream of income for your organization while reducing its reliance on foundation funding. The end-result is a more sustainable organization with the ability to grow quicker and continue providing its important services for longer. With the availability of web technologies and e-commerce, your income streams can be maintained entirely online, giving you the ability to sell everything from memberships, articles and education, services, products, events, tickets, classes, or just to take simple donations.

But the point of this post is not to walk you through every possible type of event or income stream, but to show you that this type of funding is indeed possible. In fact, if done the right way it\’s more than possible – it\’s almost hard NOT to succeed.

In the past two years, we\’ve setup more than 200 website with e-commerce capabilities. Here are a few examples from actual clients with whom we\’ve has the pleasure to work:

This organization is in its infancy. Before we started working with them they didn\’t have a website nor did they have the capabilities to take online transactions. Donations were ZERO, and grants had not yet started to roll in. After setting up their site and announcing it publicly the organization was able to generate more than $1,000 in a two-week period of time. What could you do with an extra $1,000?

Let\’s take a look at another organization which created an online donation page and generated more than $15,000 in a month with a very targeted call-to-action to its audience. One page donation, with one html announcement email to its readers and they were able to generate an average of nearly $400 in donations per day over the course of the month.

One organization took donations, memberships, and event sales online and was able to produce $127,000 of income over the first six months of 2014. That\’s a staggering number for a nonprofit that is run by less than 2 people. If monthly income continues on the same trend line, this organization will generate nearly $300,000 of revenue in its first year taking online donations. Simply amazing!

If your organization would like to open up additional doors to a more sustainable future we encourage you to give us a call. Our mission at OrgSpring is to help you accomplish your mission. We are nonprofit organization too, and we only work with nonprofits.

The services we provide are offered pro-bono to organizations with budgets of $50,000 per year or less. These are startup nonprofits or organizations that are resource constricted. We help remove the resource barrier and get you the help you need to succeed online.

Get the Help Your Nonprofit Needs to Succeed Online

Organizations with budgets under $50,000 per year can get a free web audit here. We can also get you setup with a free website to start taking donations online, just like these other organizations featured in this article.

For organizations with budgets of more than $50,000 per year, we charge a modest fee to perform a web audit. These organizations are small, but growing, and usually have different needs than smaller or startup nonprofits. More information can be found here.