Empower Your NPO with Personal Selling Business for NPOs

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hey y'all so i'm answering the question today can nonprofits sell products this is a good one let's get into it hey y'all tiffany here with boston the budget i help new and small nonprofits get up and running and i also provide simple clear information for people who are trying to navigate their non-profit startup journey if you are not subscribed to my channel make sure you subscribe because i am dropping videos every single week so i wanted to answer the question can your nonprofit sell products and let's get right to it the answer is yes and there are a lot of buts to that yes but generally your nonprofit absolutely can sell products now when i'm saying products i mean things like t-shirts or mugs or maybe you have a book or maybe you put together like a kit of some sort and you're selling it to people to be able to make money to finance the operations of your nonprofit the answer is yes now i want you to wait to the end of this video make sure you keep watching because at the end i'm sharing my favorite type of product that i think every non-profit should be selling if it's appropriate for you to sell products some of your nonprofits are different your mission is different but if you see a lane where you could sell products this is the type of product i think every non-profit should have the other piece to this is you could also have a service that you sell as well so maybe you're providing counseling or maybe you're providing mentoring um in some sort of fashion right and so you want to sell that to the public so that they can pay for part of the cost of providing that service you absolutely can do that a lot of people that i talk to who are thinking of starting non-profits are really scared to do that or think that that's something they shouldn't be doing or is taboo for a non-profit to charge for services you can charge for services and you can choose not to but what i want you to do is think in your community of all the non-profit hospitals the non-profits schools and universities that also charge for services when you have to get a service from a hospital you have to pay for it now insurance can subsidize some of that but it's still at cost somebody's still being charged for that and it's the same kind of thing now your non-profit is obviously going to be different than a hospital but i use that example because everyone can relate to that and once you understand that you're like oh yeah there are all kinds of nonprofits out here every non-profit is not just run by volunteers only gathering products and dispersing them to the community you really have to open your mind when you think about the potential of having a non-profit organization now there's a term for this kind of income that you're making for your nonprofit when you're selling a product or a service it's called earned income versus what's called contributed income where contributing is those this is money that's granted to you but earned income is money that you earn by selling a product or selling a service so i do have another video where i broke this down so make sure you check out that video as well and i also have a video that talks about different earned income ideas if you're trying to find ways to earn income and i also have a freebie and it includes 50 ideas yes five zero ideas of ways you can make money earning it instead of being granted or donating the money so if you need that worksheet make sure you click the link below so you can grab it for free so if you're still listening to this video and you're learning something new you're probably wondering well how does this work tiffany because i thought nonprofits aren't supposed to be making money they're not supposed to be making profit how does this even work what should i be thinking about if i want to go down this road i got you i'm going to break down three things you need to take into consideration if you're going to decide to sell a product to finance the operations of your nonprofit the first thing i want you to think about is its relation to your charitable purpose so when you apply for tax exempt status in your form 1023 or 1023 ez you need to state your charitable purpose also when you fill out your articles of incorporation you indicate your charitable purpose that's outlined in many of the documents many of the legal documents that you put together stating the charitable purpose of your organization you need to make sure if you have 501c3 status that if you're participating in an activity that takes up a substantial amount of time and is making you a substantial amount of money it needs to be related to your mission so where i'm going with this is there's a term called unrelated business income tax so if you're a tax exempt organization and you're making money through an activity that's not related to your taxes and purpose then the irs expects you to report that to them and if you're making over a certain amount then you need to pay tax on it so i'm dropping the irs documentation so you can look at it for yourself so you can understand unrelated business income tax and i also did another video that i'm linking above that kind of went into this a little bit so you can understand so if you're going to devote a lot of time to selling a product if it's going to be a main way one of the main ways you make money you need to make sure that it's related to your charitable purpose and if it's not and you're spending a lot of time and making a lot of money through this avenue then you may risk your tax exempt status so you need to know all the rules before you go down this road so you don't inadvertently make a mistake and risk losing your 501c3 status and remember i'm not an accountant and i am not your accountant so i give this information because a lot of people don't know this and you wouldn't naturally stumble upon this if you were just googling and you probably don't even know to google something like this so this is why i provide this kind of information on my channel to make you aware and to empower you to learn more for yourself and to do more research for yourself so you can know so don't just rely on me just because you're watching my youtube videos but also just use this as a way to empower yourself and learn yourself the rules so you don't find yourself in a lot of trouble the second thing you need to be mindful of if you're going to sell a product as a non-profit is sales and use tax okay so if you're selling a product you may need to charge sales tax to the customer and you may need to remit that tax that you collect from the customer to your state now there's a lot of rules around selling products because every state is so different so you need to first of all in the state that you're housed in right in the state that you are operating you need to check and see what you need to do to be able to sell items usually you have to apply for a sales and use tax certificate or something like that and then once you have that you have to probably do monthly or quarterly reporting to the state to let them know the the money that you're collecting because they want to make sure that if that product is eligible for sales tax that you're asking for that tax and you're paying them for the tax that you collect from the customer also keep in mind that if you are selling items to people across state lines then those states may have certain rules for how you approach how to sell to other people and because every state is so different you're going to need to investigate what happens now usually only if you have a physical presence in a state do you need to collect sales tax from the customer and give it to the state usually it's only in the state that you reside in or you have a presence in but the rules are changing on this and they've been rapidly changing over the last i would say 10 years so you need to keep an eye on this another thing to think about is if you're using like an online platform so say that you're using like etsy or ebay those platforms often collect sales tax for you so you don't even have to think about it and so they have agreements with the states to collect the sales tax and then remit it to those people and it's often because they have larger a larger presence across the country and they may be responsible for doing that anyway so they step up and collect sales tax on your behalf but the point is you need to know who's doing what so you're not held liable for not collecting sales tax and not reporting it back to the state now this sounds really complicated i know and i think i may even do a video explaining the difference between sales tax and income tax because what i just talked about really has nothing to do with your taxes and status and even though i'm using the same word tax it's a different kind of tax and it's at a different level right so i want you to understand that sales tax is a completely different ballgame than your c 3 status so just because you have 501 c 3 status does not get you out of charging people sales tax in your state if you're required to do that so you need to understand the rules and make sure you're following the rules when you are selling a product and the third thing i just want you to keep in mind is that selling a product or selling a service is very different than writing a grant proposal or soliciting donations from donors okay it requires a certain set of skills which are similar actually the kind of marketing and the kind of things that you do to build leads and to get people to buy a product is similar to asking donors for money but it is different so if you're also collecting money from donors and at the same time selling a product it's often going to require two different processes for you to do that right so for example if you're selling t-shirts or if you're selling books then you have to have some kind of marketing in place to be able to push that out so you're doing certain kind of marketing marketing to a particular customer to convince them to buy your product and then there may be some things that you have to keep to keep up like having a website that can sell products for you that can help you do keep track of shopping carts and collect money and all this kind of stuff when you're selling things the figuring out the sales tax what i just mentioned before all that kind of stuff is different from collecting donations collecting donations is its own set of processes right so on the flip side you have to build up your donor base you have to identify people who are your prospects to give money which may be different from the people who would want to buy a product from you they may be the same or they may be different and so parallel processes but they may come out to be different and so when you're asking for donations right you have to identify the prospects you have to build those people up to trust you to donate to your organization then you have to do follow up with them you have to share the impact of your work that is different than a customer where you may want to be following up with the customer to upsell them or following up with a customer asking them to buy something else so see how i'm saying they're similar because you're doing you're warming them up to do something and then you're doing some follow-up but the purpose behind it is a little different between the two so if you're going to sell a product it requires a whole other pathway for building your customer base and selling to people and you need to have the capacity to do that if you want to make substantial sales and it's going to take some of your time away from other work that you're doing because running a business that's a whole full-time job and then you want to do that on top of running the nonprofit and doing your programming so yes it's important to sell products if you want to have diversified income coming from different sources it is important to do that but also you need to make sure you have the capacity to be able to do all those things and you need to figure out where to put most of your effort and if it makes sense to kind of scale down and sell products at a smaller level than it is to get donations that's a decision that you and your board need to make so don't automatically say oh because tiffany said i can sell products i should just sell a product think about the amount of effort and time it's going to take to do that and if it's worth it and figure out where's the best place to put your efforts so i promise at the end to share with you my favorite kind of product that i think every non-profit that sells a product should have and it is a digital product what do i mean by that it's a product that you sell that people can only get electronically from you so instead of you actually publishing an actual book like a hard cover book you can create an ebook or you can create a pdf that people purchase to get access to it and the reason why i love digital products is because the overhead is low so you don't have to worry about storage you don't have to worry about all the things that come with having like physical product with you you can just do something one time right just write the book one time and then people just automatically buy from you and the overhead is low now you still have to do marketing you still have to build your customer base in order to buy it but it can be pretty easy to sell if you get a platform that specializes in sending out digital products like the one that i use called podia.com if you want to see it you can see a link down below in the description box it does it for you it automatically gives people access to it and it has a system all in place for you to be able to communicate with those people so it doesn't require a lot of effort a lot of money to be able to do that well and to be organized with it so that's why i love digital products as a way to make money if you're going to sell a particular product was this video helpful if it was make sure you let me know in the comments below and let me know what other kind of videos you'd like for me to do talking about nonprofits thank you so much for watching my video today if you need help from me you can always visit me at .bostonabudget.com otherwise i will see you in the next video [Music] you