Episode 108: Is Your Organization Funder-Ready? And Why it Makes a Difference
You may have a mission statement, a budget, program descriptions, and a board of directors. But, are they Funder-Ready? Funders use the documents they request to weed out nonprofits. Learn what Funder-Ready means, and how to get there.
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🔦 NONPROFIT SPOTLIGHT 🙌🏿
Garuda Promotional Products Pt. 4
👉🏿https://www.garudapromo.com/
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🚀 RESOURCES TO HELP YOU RUN A SUCCESSFUL NONPROFIT
How to Demonstrate Impact https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pJPpJqvtSBSnOsds14dw7xw5jQ3JYcyy/view?usp=drive_link
90 Days to a Profitable Nonprofit https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ofgeHJ2CTVS0t8STMiNqfveaVpWfaK7o/view?usp=sharing
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Learn more about my success with helping nonprofits
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Podcast Transcript
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to On Air with Amber Wynn, where nonprofit leaders learn to fuse passion and commitment with proven business strategies to create long-term funding impact and sustainability. And now here's your host and resident, Philanthrepreneur Amber Wynn.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Hey, fam, it's your girl in the house, Amber Wynn, Philanthrepreneur and today I am talking about, I'm keeping consistent what I've been talking about for the last couple of episodes. I've been talking about the funder perspective. Today, our topic is your organization funder ready, because that's really what it comes down to, right? When we talk about your program descriptions, being clear and concise about what it is that you're doing, how you're doing it, your impact. When we talk about measurable goals and objectives, it really is about being funder ready, funder responsive. Listen, if I had a dollar for every time an executive director told me, oh, I have that. So for example, the conversation is, oh, Amber, I can't figure out how to get these grants, or I can't figure out how to diversify my funding stream, and I'll ask them a question. Well, do you have a funder ready annual budget?
(01:20):
Oh, I have that. Okay, well, do you have funder ready program? Oh, I have that yet. They've been in the community 5, 10, 15 years y'all, and they still are self-funding their organization. It says to me, yes, you may have a budget. You may have program descriptions, you may have a mission, but are they funder ready? There is a difference. It's a difference between saying, yeah, I have a car and saying, yeah, I have a Tesla. There is a difference. Yes, that vehicle will get you from point A to point Z, but what is it a luxury car or is it a bucket? No judgment. It's going to get you from point A to point B, but when we're talking about you being competitive in the grant writing landscape, it makes a difference. Funder ready, it makes a difference. So when we come back, we're going to dive into what is funder ready?
(02:17):
Are you struggling to fund your programs? Can't get a grant to save your life. Most consultants will share the what of how to start a nonprofit or how to fundraise. They may even share the why, but they don't share the how because that's where they make their money. Now, I'm not hating. I'm a businesswoman too, but I've been where you are trying to make the world a better place, struggling to keep the doors open up to the wee hours of the night writing grants and doing whatever needed to be done. And because I've walked in your shoes, I'm not here to make you spend your will, waste your time or your hard earned money. We ain't got time for that. The world needs you. I'm here to show you how to transform that pit. You keep dumping your hard earned money into a profitable nonprofit.
(03:06):
I take my 30 years of nonprofit experience as a founder, executive director, program developer, grant writer in funder, giving out over $7 million annually in grants, and I save you literally thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours. I walk you through setting up your nonprofit organization so that you can be generating enough revenue to cover your monthly expenses in just 90 days. How would that feel? Not paying bills from your personal bank account. I share my insider secret tips, tricks of the trade and provide you with a step-by-step roadmap on how to turn your bootstrap organization into a profitable nonprofit. Within six months, you could be generating enough revenue to pay your salary or fully fund your program. The choice is yours, but you have to get the blueprint, and it took me three years to develop it, but it's here and it's going to change your life.
(04:04):
Join my other successful clients who are just like you full of passion and determination, but they had no idea all that it takes to run and fund a successful nonprofit. Now they're winning grants and drawing a salary and they know what it is that they're supposed to be doing to run a successful nonprofit. They're no longer making it up as they go. They have the roadmap and they're clear about next steps, and I want that for you. So what do you get in this course? You'll walk away with knowledge, products, processes, and systems, not just a bunch of promises, but exactly what you need to turn your organization into a profitable nonprofit. I promise you don't need grants. What you need is a solid infrastructure, and this course is going to give you all of that and more. And what's more, it comes with the money back guarantee.
(04:57):
So go ahead, click the link below to register for this course. We're back with on air with Amber Wynn, Philanthrepreneur, and today I'm asking you the question, is your organization funder ready? Because it makes a difference. It's not enough to have a 501(c)(3) tax exempt status that just makes you eligible. You are competing with the other 1.43 million nonprofits out there, so you got to have more than that. Your organization needs to be funder ready, funder responsive. Listen, this is what it comes down to. If I'm just speaking very bluntly, the IRS has established a set of rules for nonprofits and funders align themselves with those rules. If you are out there doing the work, I'm not saying you're not doing the work. If you're out there and you don't look the part, then funders are not going to fund you because you don't look the part.
(06:01):
So being funder ready, being funder responsive means a couple of things. Number one, funders align what they ask of you in their guidelines to the IRS. So if what you are providing to them, your descriptions, your goals, your outcomes, if your infrastructure is not aligned to the IRS, you're not going to get funded. And these are the things that they use to screen ineligible nonprofits out. So you may be doing the work or whatever, but if you submit answers to your grants, to the guidelines, to the questions that aren't aligned with the funder, then you're going to get screened out if when they ask you for those financial statements and your budget is the most important one, and they're always going to ask you for it, if it doesn't look like the type of budget that a funder needs for it to look like, meaning the priorities are clearly a articulated, the budget line items don't have the type of nonprofit budget line items that they're expecting to see, then you're going to get weeded out.
(07:20):
You're going to get screened out. A lot of times, my lovelies, it's not about what you say, but it's how you say it. And when I say how you say it, I'm saying that it is funder responsive that you are writing your answers in such a way that a funder sees the value the funder sees that you are in alignment with those IRS rules and regulations. I am so excited to tell you that I have been working with the client for the last 90 days. She signed up for coaching with me. Now, this individual has been in existence for over seven years, and she's been grinding, she's been submitting grants, and she was discouraged, I have to say, because she's still doing the work. She's just doing it out of her pocket. Worked with her for 90 days to get her infrastructure up to par.
(08:12):
So we reworked her mission, made it clear and concise. We reworked her program descriptions. Why? Because she's promoting events. Funders don't fund events. Corporate sponsors fund events, funders fund programs. So we got her programs tight. We got those measurable goals, trackable, traceable, impact driven. We got her finances intact, meaning we created an optimal budget. We created a budget that if a funder looked at it, they saw that you are a viable organization. A lot of times my beautiful nonprofits think, well, I'm going to make it a small budget and then a funder will more than likely funding that is the opposite. If your budget is under $250,000, especially if you're in LA, a funder's going to look at you sideways because you need to calculate in salaries, program materials, supplies, and I help people say, well, 90% of all of our money goes to programs.
(09:14):
You'd think that a funder would be happy. You'd think that wouldn't you? But let me tell you, if your organization is fully volunteer driven, who's accountable because a funder can, a volunteer can walk away, and a funder knows that if you have paid staff, then there's somebody that they can call at all times who is responsible for the information in the running of the organization. So no, they don't want a fully volunteer driven, they want proof that this is a viable nonprofit. You hear what I'm saying? So being funder ready means that you look the part. It means that your infrastructure looks like a viable nonprofit. It means that those red flags that says to a funder, yeah, I'm not so sure that this person knows what they're doing. Something as simple as your title. The IRS has said that a nonprofit board is responsible for hiring and firing the executive director.
(10:16):
So if your title is president/CEO, then that says to a funder, you don't know what you're doing. You don't know what you're doing. Because the IRS says that that title, that structure should not exist. The president hires and fires the executive director. So if you are both the president and the executive director, you're not going to fire yourself. So that right there is a red flag for any viable funder. And let me tell you this, I always get this. Well, I've been getting grants with that title. You've been getting 5, 10, 15, 20 $5,000 grants. A funder, A funder can write that off. But when we talk about where I want you to be, which is fully sustainable, getting six figure grants, those things start to matter. If they give $5,000, that's fine. They can say that they were in their community and they gave $5,000, but I want you to start generating enough revenue so that you get your salary.
(11:22):
So that means those big dollars. So that means those little flags that says, I'm not sure if this person knows what they're doing. I'm not sure if this organization has been ran like a viable nonprofit business. Those things start to matter. So this individual who had been self-funding her nonprofit for seven years writing grants, she was going out in communities mad about it, mad about it, talking to funders saying, you don't fund organizations doing the work and dah, dah, dah, dah. It wasn't, she didn't look the part. Y'all spent 90 days tighten it up, got her different board members that represent leadership in the nonprofit sector. At the end of those 90 days, three weeks after we did all of this work, guess what? She got two grants. Her first one was 180,000 and the second one was 80,000. Hello. Why? Because she has now a funder ready organization.
(12:26):
Her infrastructure is funder ready. Her responses, her program descriptions, her mission, her measurable goals and objectives, her systems, and even her mindset. When we would talk, she would be like, well, I thought, I'm like, you're not getting paid to think, beloved. You're getting paid to run a nonprofit that looks like a viable nonprofit business. I am telling you, and I'm telling you because if I have one more person look at me and say, I got that, I got that. If you are still self-funding your nonprofit, if you are struggling to cover programs, if you haven't grown in the last two years, you ain't got that. Stop saying that you have it because you think that perpetrating a fraud is going to powerfully position you. I'm going to implore you to pause right now and be honest with yourself. Nobody know this but you, your brain, your mind, and your truth.
(13:29):
If you have been in this space for two years and you're not generating consistent outside revenue, if you are self-funding your nonprofit organization, then you ain't got that. You are not functioning with funder ready infrastructure, and I want you to consider that because I want you to move beyond this facade that you're putting out there, and I want you to start getting consistent outside revenue. I want you to stop funding your nonprofit because the revenues out there are to support your organization, but you'll never access it if your organization is not funder ready. I'm just keeping it real this episode because all of the things that I keep saying that your nonprofit is a business that a funder is looking for legal ways to eliminate you. That there are red flags and there are telltale signs like the titles, like your annual budget, like your program budgets, like the responses to those questions that you're answering. There are formulas. There are specific things that a funder is looking for, and if you don't know what those things are, you will continue to self-fund your organization.
(14:48):
That's facts, that's truth. That's real. So because I am your girl, I'm your biggest cheerleader, I am your fan and I'm here to support you. I'm here to tell you that if you are self-funding your organization, if you're struggling with getting grants, you don't need to hire a grant writer. Not right now. You don't need to hire somebody who's going to come in and create a strategy. Not right now. You don't need to hire a fund developer. You don't need to hire, what do they call them? A development director. You don't need that right now. It's not going to help you. You're going to waste thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours. What you need to do is to get your organization funder ready, and if you don't know what that is, then go check out my website and learn about 90 days to a profitable nonprofit.
(15:39):
It's going to give you the roadmap. It's going to give you the blueprint. I used to tiptoe around it because I'm like, oh, well, I don't want to keep promoting my, I have the solution. I have the answer. And when I ask these questions, well, what's your annual budget? And someone tells me it's $60,000. You're not going to get funded. You're not going to get funded because that's not a funder ready budget. When I ask a person, well, who's on your board? How many board members do you have? Are they fundraising? No, they're, I'm not going to continue to tiptoe around how I can help you. I'm going to give you the solution. You've just got to reach out and grab it. The solution is there for you. Your answer is not a grant writer. Not yet. Get your organization funder ready and then hire your grant writer and then you will see success.
(16:28):
Okay? Get your house in order and then get your strategy, because that's going to help you, your board create a fundraising strategy. But get your house in order first. You will see exponential results, exponential growth. You don't believe me, I've got proof. I've got clients who've gone through this. Oh, I have that. I have that. When I explain it to them, they're like, oh, I guess I didn't have it. You didn't. That's okay. That's what I'm here for. I'm here to support you. Go to my website and check out the resources that I have for you to help you so that you can stop self-funding your nonprofit. We're going to stop that this year. We are now at the part of the episode where you get to ask me your questions, whatever it is you're not certain about. There are no dumb questions. There are only questions that have not been asked, and I'm here to answer.
(17:25):
So in this episode, we have a question from Andrea who is in Bakersfield. I have my articles of incorporation. Does that mean I can start taking donations? Great question, Andrea. So if you have articles of incorporation from your state, that means that they are proving your organization as a nonprofit. And so technically, yes, you can take donations because your organization is a nonprofit. The issue though is whether or not your donor is okay with your organization not being able to give them tax benefits. So it's a two step process. First, you get approved by your state as a nonprofit, right? Because they need to know how they're going to tax you. If you're a nonprofit, they're not going to tax you. Once you get your articles of incorporation, you then get, you send those to the IRS who then awards you tax exempt status. So technically, if you have your articles of incorporation, you are a nonprofit, and technically you can take donations.
(18:35):
What you cannot do if you haven't submitted them and been approved by the IRS is to offer them the tax benefit, so they can't write off that donation. Generally speaking, that's why folks do donate, is because they want that tax write off. To answer your question, technically yes, you can get donations, but you have to let your donor know that you do not yet have tax exempt status, and they cannot write that off. If they don't care, it's not a big deal. However, if they're like, oh, well, I was writing to you so I can get that tax write off, then you can tell them, I am in the process of getting that tax exempt status from the IRS. You can still accept the information, the donation, and once you get that tax exempt status, you can then offer them that tax write off. So very, very, very good question.
(19:33):
Thank you so much. I appreciate it. If you have a question that you'd like to ask me, you can hit me up on any of my social media platforms. You can email me at amber@amberwynn.net, and I would be happy to answer your questions. Now, we're going to move into the final part of the episode, nonprofit shine on. We're going to shine the light on not only our amazing nonprofits, but those consultants and individuals in the community supporting our nonprofits. Hello, that would be me. And in our shine on nonprofit segment, we are wrapping up our conversation with Swire Ho of Garuda Promotional Products. He specializes in providing nonprofits with the resources they need to function as a fully viable nonprofit, meaning products that you can then promote your brand with, products that you can use for diversifying your funding streams, for cultivating your donors. Just being out there. For example, let's just say if your nonprofit is manning a table at a community fair, you need to have that table cover that has your logo and lets people know what type of nonprofit or what type of organization it is. So things like that, things that you need to function as a viable nonprofit organization. So I'm excited to wrap up our conversation with Swire today, and let's check out Shine on nonprofit. And Swire Ho,
Speaker 3 (21:26):
A lot of company, a lot of brands will have the mission until they talk to me. So when they talk to me, they'll throw everything out the door. I just want the lowest cost price item that is listed on your website. I'm going on the record now saying that you don't need to get promotional product if you think that's not the right time. But when you're trying to order branded product or promotional product to give away or to sell on your website, it has to align with your message. Like you're saying, Amber, if you're a sustainable nonprofit, you can buy something from me, that rep in seven layers of plastic that's just not aligned with everything that you say. So maybe you're trying to encourage child development. Maybe you're trying to save the forest. There are different things to align your brand with your mission statement. If you don't think you find the right product, you don't have to force yourself to buy it, but to find something that when people receive it, they will think about, wow, so you, I'm really supporting that organization and this is a product that I will proud using every single day.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
We are back, and I get passionate about this stuff though, so I want all of my nonprofits who have made the sacrifice to be in the community and make the change that they want to see. There's a simpler way to bring your dream into fruition. So when I have people fighting me, and I mean, y'all be fighting me. I got that. I got that. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. Pause. Just pause and say, maybe I don't have what I really need. Maybe you think you have it, but listen to people who've been in the community. Hello, people who have experienced hi people who've done it, done it right, and gotten positive results. Hello, listen. So that you can move your organization forward. Today's episode has been about, is your organization funder ready? If you've been in the community and you're still self-funding your organization, and it's been 2, 3, 4, 20 years, I'm going to step out on a limb and say, no, your organization is not funder ready.
(24:09):
And that is what you need to do this year. You need to focus on not just checking off boxes saying, I have a mission statement, I have program description, I have measurable goals, I have a budget. If you have these things, but you're still self-funding your organization, I am going to challenge you and say yes, but they are not funder ready, and it is the funder ready organization that gets the money. So if you have been challenged in that area, go visit my website, check out the resources I have. I promise you, once you get into the groove, if you get my course, you'll be emailing me like all of the rest of my clients saying, oh my God, Amber, I had no idea. I know, I know, I know, I know, I know. It's okay. I'm going to help you get there. I have got your back.
(25:02):
I got your front. I got your side right, but you got to trust your girl. You got to trust me. Stop saying, you got it. Lean in. Check it out. I got a 30 day money back guarantee. Check it out for 30 days. Do the work. And if you get into that course and you say, I have this, I'll give you your money back. It's not a big deal, but I guarantee you 90% of the people who get into my course don't know what they don't know, and they learn so much. That other 10%, they just fly. They just fly. They have what they need in order to take it to the next level. So thank you for joining me today. Like I said, sorry about that tangent, but I love my people. I love my community, and I'm here for you. So I do get a little bit passionate. Please check out all of my resources that I have available for you on my socials. And if you liked what you heard, be sure to like me on my socials. Be sure to subscribe, share this episode with people in your network, and then take care of yourself, like you take care of your community. I'll see y'all next week, guys.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe and leave a review on iTunes. Head over to www.amberwynn.net/podcast for the links and resources mentioned in today's podcast. See you next time.
