It’s not even lunch time and I’ve already said this twice today.
And ‘shocked’ is how I would describe both reactions.
Day in, day out, week after week, I speak with people working on business website or branding projects that aren’t really businesses.
EXAMPLES:
- Career educator wants to leverage decades of course curriculum to reframe socio-economic conversation for specific (resistant) niche (but large) audience
- Blogger wants to leverage platform to create space for social organizing and legislative appeal.
- Bereaved family wants to create infrastructure to support other families in similar crisis
- Author and social activist wants to create website to help support other social activists and authors
Each of the above are REAL examples
And what they all have in common (imo) is that,
They should all be working with a lawyer (first) to see if they could file as nonprofit!
When I say “I don’t want you to pay me”, I mean to convey their project should (could?) be funded through grants and donations, not out of their own pockets.
For those wondering how much a website costs, we dive into that here.
Unless you’re independently wealthy, your pockets are only so deep.
Once you do the initial ‘build” on your project, the project will probably live “as is” for ever and either fade away or become obsolete (either in messaging or technology).
As a non-profit, you can rally support, grow a community, and create an ongoing cash flow through donations and passive income opportunities like smile.amazon.com.
You can also build a real team, a like-minded brain trust willing to keep the project going when, inevitably, it’s your time to step away from the project.
In the last 2 months I’ve worked with 3 nonprofits who received their funding through grants.
AND
I’ve sent 6 prospects away with ‘homework’ to explore the opportunity of nonprofit status.
As of today, 2 of those prospects are working on their nonprofit status and I’ve a proposal out to a third who decided they’d build now, file later 😉
***How do you know if nonprofit status is right for you?
The first place I’d start is with an experienced Business Lawyer who wants to work with nonprofits and go from there.
Most everyone seems to have a lawyer in their rolodex (antiquated term I know but still fun visual to use) but if you need a referral, I have a great one for CT based endeavors), just ask me: begin@northstardesign.studio
“I need some kind of excuse rolodex.”
