Nonprofit Launch Plan Podcast for Startup, Small, and Growing Nonprofits

Matt Stockman (00:00)

What do you do when your nonprofit officially exists, the paperwork's all approved, your vision is clear, and everything else is still at zero? Zero names in the database, zero donors, and zero dollars in the bank. If that's where you're at right now in your nonprofit journey, this episode matters more than you might think because the survival...

And the strength of your nonprofit in the future is going to be greatly impacted by some decisions and areas of focus that you concentrate on from day one. And this is part one of a three part series on how to secure your very first nonprofit dollars. In this episode, we are starting where almost every healthy nonprofit begins, not with strangers, with a big fancy grant, but with people.

who already believe in you and trust you. And I'm gonna walk you through why this step is so critical in building your financial foundation and step by step what to do to bring your first gifts into your nonprofit.

Welcome to the Nonprofit Launch Plan podcast for startups, small and growing nonprofits. This podcast is here to help you build your nonprofit from the ground up on a strong, sustainable foundation by providing clear frameworks and practical tools and real world guidance that you can actually put into practice.

I'm your host, Matt Stockman. I'm a nonprofit growth coach. And here at Nonprofit Launch Plan, we believe that every successful nonprofit must operate at peak performance across six key areas, leadership, fundraising, marketing, programs and services, operations, and finances. So on every episode of the podcast, we focus on a topic that is core to at least one of these six areas.

helping you create lasting impact without unnecessary complexity. Now, before we get into it, I want to tell you about a special freebie that I've got for you, which we're going to be referring to a whole lot throughout the course of this episode. If you're struggling with fundraising, it is the number one pain point for everybody launching a nonprofit, but should be at least 80 % of what you're concentrating on to begin with. I've got a great...

free mini course that I've put together. It's a PDF workbook and five short videos that go along with it that will walk you through the five core steps of the fearless fundraising framework that I've built, helping you clarify your messaging and growing your confidence to ask other people to partner with you financially. The mini course is free. All you have to do is go to non-profitlaunchplan.com in order to get the course. These five steps will really create a proven plan and a process.

that will first build your confidence in fundraising. It will take out all the fear and it will create more positive results, more people partnering with you and supporting your work. Again, it's free. Get the mini course just by going to the website, nonprofitlaunchplan.com and click the pink banner at the very top of the homepage. Now, let me set the stage for our conversation today on the podcast. And if what I'm about to describe is not necessarily you, do me a favor.

Don't check out. There are still great takeaways in what I want to share with you, no matter where you are in your nonprofit journey and how large or small your organization is. Every nonprofit starts in essentially the same place, as do most small businesses. It's what I call ground zero. Zero names in your database, zero donors, and zero dollars in the bank.

You've got an idea, you see a problem you want to solve in the world, and you scrape the money together to hire the accounting firm or the attorney to help you get your paperwork in order. Then one day the approvals all come in the mail and voila, you in that moment are the executive director of a nonprofit. So you're sitting at ground zero, zero names in the database, zero donors and zero dollars in the bank. What do you do? If it's all zeros everywhere,

where does the money actually come from? And in almost every healthy startup nonprofit, early funding comes from three primary places. And so for the next three episodes of the podcast, I'm gonna deep dive into each one of these three areas, break it all apart for you, and give you some easy to do action steps that if you follow the plan, will start to get some money in the door for you. So in this first of a three part series,

If you're at ground zero, meaning zero people in the database, zero donors and zero dollars in the bank, your first dollars almost always come from people who already believe in you. This is likely not a surprise to you, but it is a way more critical moment in the survival of most nonprofits than you might think. Here's why. If you've ever seen a baby being born either in real life or maybe just in TV or the movies, you know that

Getting the baby to take the first breath is that first critical moment in the delivery room, right? And this moment of finding your first donor dollars is in some ways very much like that because right off, it's testing you as a nonprofit leader to see if you're going to take a deep breath and allow the people who love you and believe in you to support you financially and to be your early on cheerleaders. Or if you're going to make

what I believe to be a really critical mistake, and allow the other outside voices in your head to talk you into believing that if you just work on a bunch of stuff, you get the website right, and you get your giving platform right, and you get your social media accounts just right, that somehow or other the money will just naturally foul from strangers who just somehow immediately feel compelled to get involved and are going to be extra generous, and all of your financial needs will magically disappear.

My point is the early days never play out like that. Now all of that does need to be right. mean, your website needs to be right, and your giving platform needs to be right, all of that. But a lot of times, I get phone calls from nonprofit and ministry leaders who have great websites and have a great giving platform, and they have no money. Because from day one, they felt awkward about inviting the people who believe in them the most.

to fund the work that they're trying to get off the ground. And they've never dove in and just tried it. It's the place where nonprofit leaders can allow themselves to derail because it's in this moment that the voices in your head of doubt, the voices that maybe you've heard your whole life of you'll never accomplish anything or you'll never be able to do this on your own. It's that moment where those voices can get super loud.

Some nonprofit leaders listen to the wrong voices and immediately feel uncomfortable with the idea of inviting friends and family and people who know them and trust them and say things like, I don't want to ask the people I Or I don't want to mix relationships and money, or I don't want to mix family and money.

Or my friends and family have a lot of trust in me and I don't want to endanger that by asking them for support. So I want you to listen to my voice. Better yet, if you're a person of faith like I am and you feel like God has led you to starting this work, listen to his voice and turn towards your inner circle for the beginning help you need. By inner circle, I mean your friends, your family, your former colleagues, professional connections.

people who know your character, who know your heart, who know your competence, and who know your commitment. these people are giving support solely because they trust you as a person. They might not even trust you necessarily as a leader, but they believe in you as a person.

you're inviting people who already believe in you to be a part of something that you're building. Now, the voices in your head may be saying, these are the people that mean the most to me, and I don't want to jeopardize that. But if you look at this from the opposite perspective, these are the people who are the most likely to take a chance to get into the boat with you if you just ask them. So hopefully at this point, I've talked you into the big idea that your first

donor dollars are going to come from your inner circle

and that is exactly where those dollars should come from. But what do I do? Well, I've got some very specific steps that I want you to take. And the first thing I want you to do is to go to my website and get the Fearless Fundraising Mini Course. I talked about it a moment ago. I know this feels like a little bit of a pitch all of a sudden, and I guess it kind of is, but there is a purpose behind it.

The mini course first and foremost is free on my website, NonprofitLaunchPlan.com. Click the pink banner at the very top of the home page and download the workbook and the videos that go along with it. The whole workbook, exercises, et cetera, probably take you a couple of hours to complete. But when you're done with it, you're going to have a very simple, easy to follow roadmap that if you follow it, even if you've never asked anyone for a dime before,

will give you the words you need to lead someone through a conversation that can end in them giving you financial support. So don't skip this. Get the mini course. It's free. And work through it. And then once you do that, the next thing I want you to do is to open up a document on your laptop. Or if you're a spreadsheet nerd, you can make a spreadsheet instead. And what I want you to do is I want you to write down the names of all of the people that you can think of that already trust you.

pull out your phone, open up your contacts, and just start typing. Just people who know you and like you and who you think trust you. Now, I want you to do one important thing. Resist the temptation in this moment to start connecting dollar signs to any of this, which is harder than you think, especially if you've got like a rich uncle who loves you and it's only human to think of him first. And we'll talk more about that in a moment.

but just free flow this list. Shoot for at least 25 people, but you could have as many as a couple hundred on it. Just names, don't overthink it. I just want you to put down these people. These are people who know you and trust you. Once you put the list together and you feel pretty good about it, and again, don't overthink it. You can add names to it later if you think of other people, then I just want you to sit on it for a day or so.

Then come back to it and rearrange the names on the list in order of importance to your life and level of trust as well. You'll likely end up with a lot of family and your closest friends at the top of the list. And then some others who are former bosses who really believed in you, teachers, mentors, et cetera. You know, the inner circle of the inner circle at the top of the list. Then here's what I want you to do next. And it's very specific.

Let me take the pressure off of you before we go any further. I am going to ask you to set up face-to-face or virtual meetings with all of these people, but I'm not going to ask you to ask them for money. It's at this point that you need to have completed the Fearless Fundraising Mini Course because what I want you to do is to reach out to the top 25 people on your spreadsheet. The inner circle of your inner circle. These are the people that believe and trust in you the most and ask for a chance to meet with them.

and this is super important, the purpose of the meeting is to share with them your mission and your vision of your nonprofit

and to ask permission to practice your fundraising appeal on them. In other words, you're scheduling 25 conversations, not asks. Your goal is to practice what you've put together in the mini course, not to pitch them.

Here's the reason we do this. These are the people who are your biggest cheerleaders. They're your fans. They're going to support you no matter how good or bad your fundraising appeal is. And there's no better way to get it honed in other than practicing it a lot with real people who ask real questions, have real facial expressions that you don't expect, and so much more. At the end...

Success is measured by you getting acclimated to what is undoubtedly a more challenging skill than as a nonprofit leader you're going to have to master and that's asking people to join your giving team. More so than it is having a bunch of checks. Now, spoiler alert, it is very likely that some of these 25 people are in fact going to be your very first supporters. But the point of this is reps on your fundraising messaging.

not dollars. Clarity builds confidence both for you and for the person listening. I want you getting adjusted to this and practicing on the people who are going to give you the most grace. And it's going to take you at least 25 face-to-face meetings to get you comfortable. Then after that, start making face-to-face meetings with the rest of the people

farther down on your list of your inner circle. But this time, it's not for reps, but it's for commitments. It's for yeses, monthly pledges and checks. But now you've got the confidence that you need to be able to ask boldly.

And I want you to do something that might seem a little silly, but it's really important and meaningful and is a small step to take today that will be very significant for you in the future. When you receive your first gift, either take a picture of the check, print out the transaction receipt from when the money hits your account, whatever it is that's the signification of

We have some money in the bank. I want you to print that out, frame it, and hang it in your office. You see this in businesses and restaurants and stuff, kind of behind the cash register. It's a picture frame with the business's first dollar in it,

The reason I want you to do this is because you're about to embark on an amazing roller coaster ride that will be fulfilling, exhilarating, devastating, and really difficult all at the same time. And I want you 10 years from now, when you've grown your nonprofit to a $10 million plus annual budget, to never be too far away from remembering all of the blood, sweat, and tears that you put into getting that first check.

So let's stop here. in the next episode, we're gonna talk about the next place to find the financial support you need when you're starting out.

from ground zero, that triple zero baseline, meaning

zero names in the database, zero donors, and zero dollars in the bank. And that's your board and your board's network. That's coming up on part two of this three-part series on the Nonprofit Launch Plan podcast. Now, before we wrap up this episode, don't forget about the special freebie that I've got for you. We've been talking about it in this episode. You're going to want to have this in order to complete the exercise of this episode.

Get the PDF mini course and the five short videos that go along with it that will help you build the five core steps of the fearless fundraising framework. Those five steps are problem, solution, ask, urgency, and action. And if you're wondering what all that means, get the mini course because I explained it all. It will help you clarify your messaging and grow your confidence to ask other people to partner with you financially. It's free.

Get the mini course at nonprofitlaunchplan.com. Nonprofitlaunchplan.com. Click the pink banner at the very top of the home page it for today's episode of the Nonprofit Launch Plan podcast for startups, small and growing nonprofits. Thank you so much for tuning in. And don't forget to do all the podcasty things. Hit subscribe and like so you don't miss out on future episodes. And if in some way or another,

you found this to be helpful. you, one, let me know, drop me an email, matt at nonprofitlaunchplan.com, and two, share it with another nonprofit leader who you think might benefit. Until next time, thank you so much for watching and listening, and keep making a difference.