Simplify Your Gym Bill Format for NPOs with airSlate SignNow

Gym bill format for NPOs

let's talk about generating an earned income with bill woosley [Music] hi and welcome to driven's fundraising superheroes podcast i'm your host sabrina shichante and as an innovator in non-profit technology our team had driven is determined to help you unlock your true fundraising potential we want to help you with your donor volunteer and member management so you can give us a visit at trustdriven.com to learn more [Music] fundraising is a big part of your nonprofit's day-to-day i mean it's what makes you a not-for-profit but have you ever considered possibly offering a product or service a generated income to help fund your mission that's what we're here to talk about today we're going to discuss how you can explore and earn income to help fund your organization bill woosley is the president and founder of 5.2 a network that equips face-based entrepreneurs to launch a variety of sustainable nonprofits and startups over the past decade bill and his team have been able to help produce new and renewed homeless shelters mobile medical care clinics and recovery ministries that are better in communities across the country bill joins us today to discuss how your nonprofit can approach and earn income in line with your mission and how to do it sustainably so thank you so much bill for joining the show hey you're very welcome thank you for having me sabrina so can you just explain to our listeners maybe those who aren't familiar what exactly it means to have an earned income and why is it important to organizations earned income uh is is critical especially we work a lot in five to the network i lead we work a lot with non-profits most non-profits typically think of income only from a donative side donative or grants so individuals organizations type things earn income when it's done well it marries up your cause with product or services that actually uh reinforce your cause and so for instance if your goodwill is a great example goodwill they have thrift stores that employ the people they're trying to help get out of poverty out of rece you know recidivism out of out of prison out of going back into prison so they're employing these people in those stores they're actually making money in those stores because then the items in the stores are donated by wealthier people and often bought by wealthier people and so it's this wonderful reusing of commodity but it feeds into their end game so so therefore you've got two income streams a donative and an earned that are both contributing to the outcome you're trying to produce as a nonprofit and and therefore it it does take a special uh or it does take another skill set obviously uh to do that so you're gonna have a development skill set you're gonna have a a business minded skill set that they're gonna have to come together but when you have that then it also mitigates you know up downturns in economy and things like that so it's really a cool way to think of how you're trying to bring about the change you're trying to bring about in a way that is a hand up to that individual who is your core client rather than a handout to that individual so it works on a whole whole number of levels yeah and i'm curious in your experience how has it impacted the sustainability of a non-profit do you find that it has some benefit especially when paired with like the traditional donation models it's it's it's very impactful uh especially if you know your if your listeners are in a u.s base or in a western based where it's a consumer-driven society in a consumer-driven society the individual is making the decision they're they're looking for product uh you know it's able to buy or fee for service whatever your particular earned income stream is based on and therefore their sustainability is not just dependent on the donation but it's it's also supplemented either one or the other uh your your earned income could become very strong uh and so then your donor you know your donor base is is a is a different caliber in our network in 5-2 we've always been historically and in the the the ministries that i've led uh have always been uh roughly 60 40 maybe 70 30 donative to earned uh sometimes you know sometimes it flips and it could be 50 50. so it just helps you show impact and uh extend your reach into a whole different whole different group of people yeah it really allows you to get i guess a little bit creative almost because you're able to control exactly how you're making that money but it could also be really nerve-wracking especially for non-profits who are new to the business phase it definitely can be very nerve-racking uh you know i i wouldn't suggest you just change your whole business model overnight right but and i think the the goal there is to make sure that whatever your earned income stream is it needs to align with your cause it needs to align with what uh life change what community change society change you're trying to bring about and so the the the individual and especially the donor because the donor may initially push back on it they're like well now you're you know you're earning money you're why should i still give to you okay so you need to just pay attention to your your messaging to that donor base but the closer it's aligned then the better so for instance in our network we provide training uh we provide soup to nuts build fund and launch training to go from idea to launch uh uh into a venture that helps people all right that's that's what our training does it's all online it's all there and it's priced very inexpensively because we're trying to get as many christians in the game in starting new non-profits around the world well the reason we can make it so cheap and still be financially sustainable as an org is because our donors are supplementing that so our donors love to hear when people are using the training and the things that they're doing because they know that their donation is directly allowing that person to get it because in most non-profit situations uh or in many they're not going to be able to afford you know a typical for-profit fee oh definitely and i'm really curious to get your thoughts as this is a subject that has been brought up on the podcast really organically a couple of times should do you think that nonprofits should begin approaching their organizations like a business like almost adopting that business mindset do you feel like there's any benefit to that well there's there's huge benefit again you're not jettising jettisoning your cause your values it's very very important uh one of the reasons we work so much with individuals and what their values are because their values are going to allow them to have joy uh feel good about what they're doing and if all of a sudden in this non-profit that you've started which is going to look like you by nature because you're the one who built the thing if all of a sudden it starts crossing value boundaries then it's going to cause you internal conflict it's potentially will cause conflict externally with other employees or things because you haven't been clear on what those values are etc etc so i i do think that at the same time though whether you're a non-profit or a church i mean i've led churches uh in the past the larger they become or any as soon as they start having assets you have to pay attention to those assets and it's a wise steward who will will adopt business principles uh within reason to your again to your values okay so uh you know as soon as you have employees you're gonna have to do hr by you know legal stuff there's all sorts of business things you need to be paying attention to and from a financial standpoint there are there's a lot of wisdom god's put a lot of wisdom in the business world uh i mean it's all his anyway so how can we take those those nuggets and those principles and apply them uh to our organizations and not just how but how should we we should okay and now what what does that look like so by by all means uh and it's i know people of faith you know and i i'm one of those at times you you know it's this whole thing of you're praying you're you're asking god to provide uh god does provide it all comes from him uh at the same time he's not asking you to just sit in a closed room and sit there all day he's asking you to do and to work and he's given you gifts to work with so how you manage and use those that's that's as important as your prayer life and your devotional life and your depending on god so what are those things that organizations should be considering before they even think about approaching an earned income model um you know you really talked about using those resources is there anything that nonprofits should discuss um think about is there things that they need to check before they even approach this this kind of work oh by all means that's a great great question so you know because sometimes we work with a lot of entrepreneurs and they're like oh good idea let's go do that well hold on a second you know uh by all means what i would suggest uh there there's we have a free little mini course and you can go to start new training dot com slash mini dash course mini course and that begins you to kind of jump start this process now when you get there you're gonna see it's it's how to uh create movement on your calling but that calling is what you as the leader and you as the org need to discuss okay so it's it's why are we doing the things we're doing and maybe you've never really had that clarification of that because what we're trying to do we're trying to to clarify your calling to equip your calling and then ultimately to activate it and what i'm talking about an earned income is an activate phase issue okay so before you ever get to the activate side of things let's talk about this calling so again as an organization why are we existing what are we trying to accomplish and there's a in our training we used a business model canvas approach and a business model canvas is nine quadrants it asks from very critical questions uh that's a that's a wonderful exercise for you to go through uh with your maybe your executive team or whoever you know maybe your board or whomever and just say okay let's let's go through these questions and let's see if we're clear there if we're not clear there before we just say let's go you know sell something uh let's let's make sure we we do that one of those questions is what are the resources needed to accomplish what we're trying to accomplish and when we work with existing orgs that question is also what resources do we already have sometimes we'll work with groups that will come to us and they're resource rich they've got an empty building they've got a gym or they've got staff and you know now they're their business change and they're trying to figure out how to employ you know how to leverage what they have whether they have connections or they have good will in the community whatever it may be that's a very critical question because oftentimes your earned income is going to have a pretty strong connection to that resource area of what you have already yeah you have to kind of do a resource check before you jump in like even in just day to day like any sort of startup business there's always that potential to fail there's always you know that struggle beginning to really get your your income back so yeah that's really important you have to like put your ducks in a row and then also consider like does this even make sense with our missionary values that's exactly right that's exactly right so i would just say before you jump in uh we we know it works we've seen it work we've seen multiple examples but before you go there as as the leader in the org because you you you don't want to fail at this in a big way now you want to fail fast you want to learn there's a good chance that your initial idea of how you're going to create earned income isn't going to isn't going to work but uh it's the exercise and it's having this flexible mindset and persevering uh you know one of the biggest reasons for startups fail is the founder just gives up right it's just it's too hard well this flexible mindset and iterating and saying okay here's who we're trying to get now let's let's come together and talk about what what are some good ideas that would get us there in align with who we are it's it's a wonderful exercise oh for sure and do you think that any non-profit has the potential to generate an earned income or do you feel like it like they could take this model and kind of adapt it to their mission in their organization or do you feel like there is some cases where no this might not work for you well there might be some cases uh but even in the urban core in impoverished settings uh i i would i would suggest to you your tendency probably when i'm talking to your audience your tendency as a non-profit person who's never done this especially if you're working with an impoverished community base your tendencies probably say that's not going to work for me i can't charge money there's no money here well i would i know that's not even accurate okay and and again in in the the western society people pay for things they value okay they're always going to pay for something they value the question is do they value it or not is it worth to them what you're charging them so so i would suggest that you may not you may not have a 60 40 or a 70 30 it may be in 90 10 where only 10 of your earned income is going to be coming out of an earned stream or your of your total income is going to be coming out of earnest but the point being is that i would explore there maybe it's fee for service maybe it's you know some kind of child care i don't know what it might be okay i'd have to know your situation the goal would be to really not say they won't do it not say they can't do it but rather let's look at some things thinking about that end user in mind that we you know we believe and we could test to see that they would pay so i would i would strongly strongly encourage you uh your listeners to to not assume prematurely that there's no money there that your clients aren't going to pay at all can't pay and usually what i hear is oh they can't pay well unless they're just totally being cared for by somebody else they're paying for things okay the question becomes and and also just understanding that uh that that's almost uh a denigrating mindset because it's almost treating them that they're another class of people and they're not you know able to like others so i would be cautious with that kind of a mindset but i also would understand uh you know they're you know one of the groups we're working with was working on a ministry uh to help unemployed men uh find employment in in a projects setting in new york city uh and understanding they're they're living on almost nothing i got it so maybe you're gonna have them pay with their time you're going to for instance decrease some of your expenses as an organization because now you have individuals who are providing those services almost on a barter basis so there are some different ways you can look at it interesting yeah so it doesn't just have to be like money in exchange for good service it could be like time in exchange for good insurance that's it could be time uh again it'll take you some management any you know you're gonna have to manage those you're gonna have issues but you're always gonna have issues so you're kind of picking your battle of which ones that you feel are again most closely aligned with with your your calling and going back to that whole um idea of risk and potential anxiety when it comes to nonprofits exploring this for the first time how much should organizations be investing into an earned income venture in terms of time in terms of resources like we said it can be nerve-wracking so how can they help minimize those risks when they're getting started out well i would say first of all if this is the direction you're going to go uh make sure your board's on board with it okay explain to them and this is why it it might actually be very healthy for your board to go through this process just so they understand what's happening usually when we see there's two reasons an org would do this either they're failing or they're struggling financially and they're trying to find new you know avenues or uh they light on the idea and it so resonates with them and they understand it's like a whole nother level okay but regardless i would get your board on involved with it and in using your board as a decider of your risk level okay so maybe maybe you have you know maybe you can look out because because technically when we work with orgs and individuals in in these situations we we don't want you to spend money prematurely because you only spend a dollar once so before you spend the dollar we want to make sure you can spend it well so there are testing ways you can do okay so this is why again we have a whole process you don't just go out and you know we're gonna sell that building and start doing it you've done some studying on it you've looked at your client base you looked at your donor base and then i would just say based upon that in your resources our first recommendation would be how to leverage existing resources okay so maybe you're you're sitting on dollars that you you know you typically are going to use some other way and you could say you know what this year we're going to redirect them and we're going to redirect them into establishing an income stream so it's not really going to hurt our bottom line in year one because we were going to do something else with those dollars so it is it's probably unless you're just getting out of the gate it's probably a little bit of a longer look uh unless again you're just you're just sitting in a situation uh we worked with a co-vocational couple that are launching a spanish-speaking church outside of austin this couple owns a bath and kitchen remodeling company they're from columbia lovely couple they want to keep the business but by nature who they are they've attracted a lot of entrepreneurs so all of a sudden they kind of realize you know what we could do like training of entrepreneurs and as an income stream for the church okay but at the same time you know so they're not really risking much there they actually have a resource that they just haven't leveraged i.e their their knowledge and their their abilities and their wisdom so yeah that's a really interesting way to look at it that's really cool um going now back into okay so they they took the risk um they're really excited they found something that works with their mission they're confident they go into it and then a couple weeks go by and they're like oh this isn't delivering what i thought it would we're in the negatives and then there starts to be some panic so what should organizing organizations do when this happens and they find themselves at a loss what steps should they be taking well first of all you said there are a few weeks in and i would just say if that's your mindset don't do this okay i would give yourself at least six months to a year all right so uh and what you're going to be one of your what you're going to want to be looking for is engagement and uh obviously you're going to have to have some kind of operations knowledge in whatever it is you're setting up okay uh but this is again if you're truly gonna do this uh it it's not gonna happen overnight and i would really be looking to what kind of engagement we're having so let's for say for instance you're going to be doing something online that's going to be some kind of a service capacity uh you know unless you're a well-known entity already and you can just roll this baby out you know boom you've got instant following you're gonna have to build a following before you build a consumer base so start looking at some of those metrics to say okay do we are we having engagement are we talking what content are we creating to show that this is going to work for people whatever it may be uh you know if some of your more traditional models that we see are like partnering with coffee growers you know in a sustainable way right so when i buy this coffee i'm actually contributing to the well-being of some individual way down the pipe we also see you know products that are made by impoverished people uh people that are in in you know poverty situations and therefore you've got to find those people right so there are different things you'll have to do that to build that out well uh that that again if you risked a lot of money in this i would want to know what's your return you're looking at how quickly if you're saying well we got you know we're putting up a hundred thousand we gotta have it back in six months i'm like uh i don't know about that okay so but if you're saying hey we're gonna we're gonna put up 25 000 this year and we're going to see how it goes in 2022 and here are some things we want to see to see if we can get traction with it or maybe a hundred thousand in 2022 if you have it okay now you've taken a longer view and now let's really dig in and see what you're looking at because what you don't want to have happen is that that alarm bells start going off prematurely because you didn't really think through what what it is you know the time frame of what's going to happen i feel like taking a pause is really important in those situations too um and trying to figure out where you can learn yeah because it is really nerve-wracking it can't it can't be hard especially it is and i think as the leader you know whether you're ceo or executive director or whatever your title is at the end of the day you've got to be convinced this is the direction you need to go and you're unless you know there are no such things of these overnight successes every overnight success you when you really dig in it was five or ten years in the making and then all of a sudden they came on the horizon so so you're not going to have that so let's talk instead about what time frame you and your board are comfortable with uh and and what dollars you have to get there now you may be in a situation that you're like i've got to push this thing and i need to have some return and i'm going to be putting money that technically i could put elsewhere then i think it's a discussion of so if you put it elsewhere how's that going to contribute to your cause how's that going to generate so i would just say it is a longer play slightly longer play uh but it's also broadening your base which is very healthy so it's a strategic move more than a tactical move that's probably a good way of putting it exactly well thank you bill um before we go today can you let our audience know how they can get in touch with you where they can learn more about your work sure sabrina yeah first of all you can go to our our main site which is 52.com fivetwo.com uh there you'll find uh where if you've got questions like this you can click on the strategy session and somebody will get in touch with you and we'll you know give you 15 20 minutes and just kind of talk through what you're thinking about and we can help you think through what level of coaching or resources you know you might need but you can also as i mentioned earlier you can go to our training site which is startnewtraining.com and that's where our our training platform sits uh you can go to startingtrain.com mini course m i n i dash c o u r s e and you can get a free three it's like it's four video course to kind of help you start seeing some of this stuff and start thinking it through end of the day you can also you can grab me on facebook bill woolsey you can get me on twitter grab me on linkedin send me an email and would love to dialogue with you well thank you again bill for your time and for joining us on the show for those listening i have provided those links that they'll mention in the description box in case you'd like to get in contact with them you can find everything he mentioned there and if you'd like to stay up to date with all the content we have going on at driven you can give us a visit at trustdriven.com there you can also join our newsletter so you never miss a blog post or a podcast we love to have you be a part of the german family thank you so much for listening and we'll see you next time on the fundraising superheroes podcast