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Like nonprofit, the lifeline is fundraising. Right, you have to be able to get money, and you said government is not the best sauce to get money, so it's private donors. It's also very challenging right to kind of like always, it's not not guaranteed either that you're gonna get extream. So how has it been for you as far as fundraising? What are some challenges and what are some best practices that you.
Learn for sure? For sure? So right now we have a strategy.
So I started implementing strategic planning right The strategic plan, like I said earlier, is based on your needs assessment, right, so we look at what do we need in the organization and then okay, we need this and how we're going to get it right. So what we did was this year we have three approaches. So we have a
grant writer that we contract. So this grant writer spends time in the library because they have a source called Foundational Directory and it's a free database that tells you all the grants are that companies pay for that, but at the library is for free, right, So he'll spend hours there and research and finding grants that align with our mission. He'll present it to me and say, yo,
this is a good grant to go after. We'll have several meetings on it talking about budgets, how'sing aligned with my current mission and budget, and then he's going after them.
Right. So that's one approach.
The other approach is more like a traditional model corporate outreach.
Right.
So I was fortunately through one of my donors, so we have some secure donuts from last year that gave us a lot of money.
He gave me a list.
Of like over five hundred companies throughout the US worth up to seven billion dollars.
Right. His company is based on cold calling. That's what we're doing. Right. We have a team.
My team is dedicated some of their hours a week to co calling those companies to introduce us, share our mission and hopefully build relationships. So when it comes to money and outreach, it's about relationship building, as y'all know. Right, So that's what that's one approach that we want to measure too to see if it's even effective.
Is the waste of time? Is it working?
So we're doing that to raise money. And then crowdfunding, right is another thing through online campaigns, social media right, go fundme and things like that for specific things.
And then on what.
We did last year, which was really really interesting. It was our first one, which was our first fundraiser gala, right the goal with fifty thousand, We walked away with sixty eight thousand dollars. First night, you know, shout out to styles ped came as a guest speaker. We had four hundred and thirty two people in the building. First fundraiser, right.
And that's how you raise money. You sell tickets, you get you get a venue space, right, you market the tickets, you use the money for non profit, but to invest back into the company the money that we raised for that fundraiser.
The goal was our first office.
And we just you know, signed the commercial lease in February and we finally moved in and up and running. So those are the ways in which now you have to think about getting money for the nonprofit.
Because if you the.
Goal for every nonprofit is to try to secure consistent donors. Even if one person give me five hundred a week, I mean a year, one puss giving fifty thousand a years, you got to count all of that money, right, while still going after grants, you still need government funding, right, and then what kind of put me in position? Was a unique opportunity. So Executive Order two eleven by Governor Hoku. You know it was announced in twenty twenty two as a result of gun violence, so a lot of money.
GVP is a buzzword.
Right now, gun violence prevention, right, you know a lot of people going after it. That money was a lot of money. About twenty million dollars was pulled into an initiative called Project RIDS. So Project RIDSE was a new approach to funding nonprofits from the state. It was never done this way, right where they was giving you the money up front, right, So we applied, we got accepted. We were like one of like five nonprofits in Yonkers that got it, and we got a nice chunk, which
played a major role in Meague going full time. Right, so now we got part time staff members. I got I'm a full time staff member. I got volunteers, and I got paid per DM. So that's as I need them. Right, you go into a per contract. So we've diversified our money by using the state money, the contract money, the crowdfunding, the fundraiser to now paid all the stuff that we need.
For the company.
Let me ask your question. So it's like, is there like a test or like a limit, Like is it a rule, because let's say everythink they have a nonprofit. I raised five million dollars, right, I have to use because like somebody could just depositive in their bank account.
Right.
So it's like, is there a rule to be like, Okay, if eighty percent of the money that you raise, you have to deploy in the course of eighteen months, Like how did they track that?
Yeah? No, So when you do your own fundraiser, you determine that, right unless a donor that's given you x amount of money says this money's for this, So the donor could determine like this is for your rent only you can't spend this on program expenses, for example, you can't spend it on.
Food for the office. Right.
So that's how one stipulation comes in with the project. Like when it comes to state funding, is reavery controlling, Right, you have a budget, a proposed budget that you have to actually adhere to, right, so that money is controlled in the timeline that you said you're going to spend this money. They monitoring, like whatever the case is. When you do your own fundraiser, like, you know, you got to be authentic to your you know, your supporters.
Right.
Our goal was an office space, right, so when we got the money, right, we didn't have no stipulations like you got to spend this money on the but we like now y'all helped us raise money for the location, and we're gonna get the location because we actually needed the location.
Right.
So the stipulation varied depending on the grant that you're going after. Right, Some grants are unrestricted. So shout out to Jay Jeff Bezel's wife.
Hopefully she sees this man.
She's been running around dumping millions of dollars into nonprofits unrestrictedly though, Like unrestricted is like, yo, do what you need to do with it. There's no police reporting on it, right, Like that's a nonprofits dream, you know.
So just announced that like six billion she's yeah, she's putting on right now.
She's I think New York State was the first place she looked first, and it was I think she's looking for like some crazy number of nonprofits.
Yeah, no, and her process is hard to even find she did.
They have to find you, so hopefully they find out one for United but no for sure for sure. But the unrestricted comes from you know, noble individuals with a lot of money. That's like, y'all love what you're doing, We trust your work. But this is something good for all business owners. Right, Your finances have to be in order, right, like part of what got us the location or thiss what got us into these A lot of these deals.
Grant writers, I mean grant providers, they want to see your finances sometimes.
Right, there's something called god Star.
They have the IRS website that they go look at and check how much went to program and how much went to salaries. Right, Some of them care about those like little details, but your books, your financial story is your engine for the organization, specifically for a nonprofit because people are giving you money. Right, So, like what we've been working on, which is a financial project, is getting
audit ready. That's what we call it, right, getting audited ready, making sure that when any funder, hopefully real wealthy fund that wants to see our financial story, it aligns right, there's no disconnect.
So that's what I'm getting at. So, all right, you audit ready, So if somebody wants to pull your records, they can see, okay, this amount of money when here this amount of money exactly, So if you're doing due diligence, even for the public to know, like if they want to give money to a nonprofit but they're not sure about if the money's actually going to go to help people, like they can actually look to see financial records.
Yeah the irs, if not the irs.
There's something called god Star. So Godstar has like certain seals like Platinum, gold, Bronze.
The more transparent you are on god Star, the higher the seal you get.
So if you show them like your breakdown of your board, the ethnical breakdown, who you serve your team.
Your finances.
You gotta publish your tenety, I mean your nine nineties every year. You have to publish that, right, so they can see your finances, so that you know, and if they don't, Like I had a funder who in the shout out to Bronz with Rotary Club, you know, they was on it like like it was your finance.
Let me see with this why you don't.
Have this on god Star It was some like steps that we overlooked and he was like intentional and he's like, yo, you guys are doing the right thing. So once you build that trust with your finances, everything else is like just you know.
What are some of the biggest challenges obviously the money raising the money figuring out how to get it, But what are some of those challenges that people who are not familiar with the space. What are the things that that you face, right, Like that is something that somebody puts you on. What are some other challenges if we're getting into the space.
Put the politics right? The politics is tough, right, And I just want to touch on something. You're action and answers to the challenging part. Right, So me being a full time CEO, right, just to talk about the executive to eleven. They're talking about taking that off the table. Right, So imagine a fund is like here for three years, you good and your first shit, They're like, oh hold on, some political things are going on.
Gotta take it off the table. Now.
I gotta think about HOWMA cover my salary. Now I gotta like pivot and I gotta work over time because you know, June come, I might not have a salary.
Right.
So those challenges are about having a strategy in place to pivot the things that you don't see, and that's always hard, right, But there's many challenges with this work. When they come to fundraising, it's about how you build
relationships and with who. So that's the political part of it, right, Like you know this campaign season, so even like some partners of mine that I really job with, you know, politically, I can't take open answers with you because the five oh one C three guidelines is that if I endorse a politician, we get dissolved.
Right, And what does endorsement look like?
It could be them taking your swag and posting on their page that they was actually an event. It could be you taking a picture with them and it's you know, framed a certain.
Way, so you have to be real careful, right.
So and then it's like a lot of the challenge you see is that you cannot separate community service from the political fere they go.
Hand in hand.
So now you gotta deal with politicians who really don't believe in what you believe in, right, And that's some of the things I'm working on, like emotional intelligence, right, like how to navigate these spaces, you know, because I got that rebel in me, but I'm also going through refinement.
I ain't got a little figured out.
And it's times that I'm in a space and it's like I really want to talk how I feel, but I can't. And leadership is about your brand ambassadorship, right, like what are you representing online and offline because people.
Are watching, you know, And so those challenges about.
Policing yourself, you know, being careful where you're hanging out at, how you moving offline and online, but who you really deal with because your brand can be separate from who you are, you know what I'm saying. So if again have to navigate those Even now I'm doing my grand opening for the novel for Space and I'm.
Like, who do I invite? Right?
Like, it gets tricky because you don't want to feel like your favorite time. You know you're showing favoritism to one politician or another, you know, because that might just be you got a closer relationship with this person, but they don't understand that because they run against each other.
So now if he gets here, she gets a position, they like, yeah, we ection you out of this money that we you know you could have had had you voted for us, or you show to support, So like being intentional with who you support and how you support, which leads to another problem and challenge is how do you focus on internally and externally the internal part of the organization learning finance, management, learning how to manage a team as you grow, learning how to manage new systems
that you need, HR consultants, learning all of that, and then the external pressures of yo, we have this event, can you come support, Oh hey, can you do this? Or we want to do a collaboration or can you come to this, Like it's a lot of like just being pulled tuggle wall from two different directions until you know, and those challenges are ready exhausting. But I think if you stay true to your needs, right and your mission. Everything else is going to follow.
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