| by Terry Axelrod, Founder and CEO, Benevon
Plant the Seeds of Sustainability
Part Five
The real work of fundraising is providing a future of ongoing
stability for your organization. In a world of abundance,
sustainable funding is possible – and necessary –
for every nonprofit.
A fundraising plan focused on financial sustainability will
ultimately take the suffering out of funding basic operational
needs and allow your organization to focus on its mission
– be it curing a disease, cleaning up the environment,
or improving the lives of migrant workers.
The first step to sustainable funding is having the courage
to think it is possible.
As impossible and out of reach as sustainable funding may
seem, it has to start somewhere. A few years ago, I interviewed
twelve organizations of all sizes that had significant endowment
funds. These are organizations that still run active, donor-centered
fundraising programs, involving new people. They are not the
kind of organizations you would expect to have solid endowments.
In every case, they acknowledged the foresight and vision
of someone who had come before them and said, “Enough
is enough! We’ve got a great organization here, doing
great work. We need to leave it knowing that the people in
charge can focus on fulfilling the mission and not worry each
year about the next fundraising scheme to bail them out.”
Eventually, they also asked: “How much money would
it take to endow the operational funding gap here? How much
would it really cost to achieve sustainability for this organization?”
They didn’t back away when they saw the size of the
number. They began working systematically to fund an endowment.
They never lost sight of their goal: financial self-sustainability.
The next step toward sustainable funding is to clarify what
that means to your organization. For some, it may come in
the form of a large cash reserve or rainy day account; for
others, it may be earned income or a social-purpose business
venture. For most groups, though, the key to long-term financial
sustainability is an endowment fund that generates enough
return on investment to meet or exceed the basic operating
cash you need to raise each year.
The Benevon Model is about creating a system that reliably
generates more and more happy donors who give money to your
organization. As you take care of these donors, they will
bring in others who want to be involved. Over time, the circle
of people supporting your organization will grow, and you
will have an increasing number of loyal donors who have chosen
to make a multiple-year financial commitment.
Sustainable funding for the mission of each nonprofit organization
is possible, even for the smallest of groups, if they have
a clearly defined goal and a systematic approach maintained
over time. You could be the person with the courage and vision
to spearhead the sustainable funding effort for your organization.
Sustainable funding is within your reach!
Next week, we’ll examine some of the ways to generate
long-term sustainability.
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