The Pathway to Organizational Financial Stability
Funding is the key to nonprofit success. It’s impossible to run a successful nonprofit without funding to support your mission and work. Funding procurement is also one of the most confusing, complex, and often frustrating components of a nonprofit organization. Nonprofit professionals often find themselves navigating this confusing, complex, and frustrating world of nonprofit fund procurement with limited resources, experience, training, and strategy. This is where Salang Consulting can help support you and the success of your nonprofit.
As nonprofit professionals, we understand our mission. We understand our programmatic goals. Where we often get lost is connecting our mission driven programmatic goal to our funding. In 2009, Gregory and Howard published an article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, “The Nonprofit Starvation Cycle” . EUREKA! As nonprofit professionals, we FINALLY understood why we struggle to find funding to drive our mission. The article provided a profound look into the reality of the nonprofit sector. 56% of nonprofits do not have adequate funding to support their organizations.
It is 2020. I would love to report the Nonprofit Starvation Cycle has magically been overcome. Unfortunately, NONPROFIT UNICORNS, this is just not the case. 25% of nonprofits report a 67% decrease in revenue consistently from 2013 -2019. 55% of nonprofits do not have cash reserves to operate for more than 3 months and 38% finished 2018 with a deficit. WOW! These are scary statistics. When nonprofits are scrambling to fund their missions, while also operating with inadequate staff, infrastructures, and often lacking basics like functioning computers, how can we possibly successfully drive our missions and support our communities?! THIS is where funding strategies support you. Salang Consulting has over two decades of proven results supporting our clients to achieve over 300% organizational financial growth. We support YOU so YOU can focus on what really matters, serving your communities.
Funding strategies help you procure the funding which leads to organizational financial stability. When nonprofits develop their funding strategies, they are 89% more likely to procure the necessary funding to support their missions.
Funding Strategy #1: Grants!
Grant funding is most often the backbone of nonprofit funding. That being said, the grant procurement process is extremely competitive with only 10% of applications being funded. Hiring a professional grant writer increases grant procurement success by 67%. My best advice- HIRE A CONTRACT GRANT WRITER! CONTRACT Grant writers are worth the investment. You keep organizational dollars focused on programmatic goals and services. Your contract grant writers drives financial procurement. Salang Consulting offers a wide variety of grant writing services with an 84% grant procurement success rate. This just makes sense!
Funding Strategy #2: Host an Event
There are many reasons to host an event. It’s not just to raise money. Events are a great way to introduce your community to your nonprofit, elicit potential donors, and provide community engagement and outreach. The type of event you decide to host should be determined by several factors including your organization’s mission, potential donors and supports, and organizational capacity to host an event.
Funding Strategy #3: Virtual Fundraising
Virtual fundraising is a great fundraising tool which leverages supporters and connects them to your cause. A common virtual fundraising platform is crowdfunding. Virtual fundraising is most successful when you tap into social media and existing supports, leveraging those to increase your impact. This allows you to maximize your audience and funding dollars.
Funding Strategy #4: Individual and Corporate Gifts
Individual and Corporate gifts help us diversify funding and reduce reliance on grants. While pursuing individual and corporate gifts is very time consuming for most nonprofits, the results are worth the efforts. Additionally, Individual and Corporate Gifts are the ONLY traditional nonprofit funding source that has not decreased in recent years. In fact, it has increased by 46%!
Funding Strategy #5: Giving Campaigns
Recurring giving campaigns help your organization stabilize funding. Ideally, we would move your donors from one-time gift givers to recurring monthly donors. Giving campaigns are also beneficial to nonprofits as they are often unrestricted funding. They can provide the infrastructure support and overhead for items such as rent and utilities which often aren’t allowable expenses in many grants.
Funding Strategy #6: Year End Appeal
Year end appeals and Giving Campaigns have the potation to raise 30% of your annual funding procurement dollars. This is a HUGE! Year-end gifts are made by donors for several reasons including tax deductions and charitable Christmas tributes. A solid Year End Appeal can make the difference between a positive and negative balance sheet at the end of the year.
