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As far as a nonprofit, the business model behind nonprofit, you still get to make money though, right to live, right of course, So how does that work? Because people here to work nonprofit and it's like, okay, everything it's like it's just a charity. Everything that comes in goes out, but it's still a business. Yeah, yeah, explain that as like it's easy to explain a for profit organization. Everybody
knows that, But the nonprofit, I think it's interesting. It like it's a nonprofit but it's still a business at the same time.
Yeah, for sure. For sure. So the business part of it just for the viewers.
Right, it's about like the way it's broken up in its taxes, right, like the entities is about. The taxes is different. Right, the way it's broken up. The structure is the same, just a different market.
Right.
So the foot profit, I have to say that you're selling a good to make a profit.
Right. I sell you this candyball. I make money off that candy ball.
The nonprofit is about providing a service that's not being sold. I'm not selling you my financial literacy program. I'm not selling you my mentorship.
Right.
You're in the program for free, but it's funded by that could be a diverse pool. Right, So we have government funding right primary with a lot of nonprofits are funded by government. And interestingly enough, you don't want to be funded by government, right because it's not guaranteed. Political shift happened, you lose that money.
Private.
You have private donors, people who own companies, people are well wealthy that love the cause you're doing. They want to donate, contribute. There's a diverse corporate right, fundraisers, crowdfunding, so all of that money really goes towards your budget.
The same way of foot profits just set up.
Right. Everyone has expenses, right, you got rent, you got utilities.
You got galery salary.
That's where the money comes in. So I'm salaried as a CEO of my company.
Right. I started off unpaid.
Right, And that's the part with the nonprofit like some businesses too, that you have to start unpaid build it.
And the way we grew was uniquely.
Because we started like as contractors, Me and my team, right. Because once I got two or three brothers that join the movement that came home. Right, half my team that over one hundred team is in prison.
FYI.
Like we all came from the same fed state and county. So they all love them noble movement. They jump on board. So what happened was people starting to see us and they're like, Yo, can you run this program?
Our first program was manhuch uh? What was it called the Manhood Training? Right?
It was an eight week program and it was focused on adulthood and life skills and communications. And we went into the Youth Shelter of Mount Vernon. You know, shout out to the youth shelter. They gave us one of our first contracts to run program. That's how we started, right, what they're paying for the program X amount of money or right you come when you do two workshops, I pay for those two workshops. And we just started like building financial systems based on contracts. Then it got a
little deeper when grants come in. So she had a grant from a government and they're like, hey, you get this X amount of money. In this particular first experience, it was a reimbursement grant, so you have to spend the money in order to.
Get it back, right. So all of that taught me how to do.
Budgets spreadsheets right like from the very beginning, and it kind of worked out because it wasn't. I turned down a lot of money, by the way, right in the early parts of my career because I didn't want to do too much and then not be able to have the infrastructure to maintain it, your collapse like that. So I took each opportunity intentionally if it was aligned with my values and my mission, which is very important with the.
Business and nonprofit.
Can't chase the money, you got to chase the mission because sometimes the dollar is tied to somebody who's not aligned with your mission on your values and a lot of nonprofits go wrong with that. They're looking at the dollars they needed for expenses and then they you know, wrap themselves up and they can't produce in all cases. Was like we kind of like started to not put the car before the host started walking.
You know, we crawled. Now we're walking, and then we started slowly running.
And with the nonprofit game was just understanding how to diversify your income right, diversify your portfolio right, how to get corporate funds, how to get foundation money, how to get you know, crowdfunding, fundraisers money, how to get government money, and then looking at that money that the money's coming and tying it to the budget. And that's where salaries, insurance build, I mean, your utilities, anything that you have as an expense for your nonprofit.
Hope. I kind of answered that you said you had to as a CEO. Did you built the border directors? How did you go about choosing that?
And then you said that obviously the team has been incarcerated.
How you go about so that then?
Who's going to be a good sit town mission?
I know for sure for sure for the board of directors. It started with Lamont Withdrew right, he was off because he was our first fiscal sponsor, So that check that we got for five thousand, we couldn't take it because we wasn't a five O one C three yet. So fiscal sponsors are like other more established nonprofits that'll take that money pass it through their bank account to you. Because then that check the person who wrote the check to that it went to a nonprofit, right, it had to
be a five on C three. So him being our physical sponsor and being somebody that was, you know, helping us build the business. He was our first board member, right, and then we you know, at the time, we were selecting people who was helping us on the ground. But it was like I try to get people who are are an expert in different spaces, whether in education, whether in fundraising right, whether it's marketing right, operations to contribute and put back down into the organization. But it never
works like that. You find people that's dedicated it, then they're too busy, they got too many kids over the family level, so they can't contribute. So we re ramped the board in twenty twenty two going into twenty twenty three, and one person who's still we have actually five, there's five board members right now, me I'm the president, the
co founder is the board treasurer. Then we have an advisor and two secretaries and the other two besides Lamont, we met them through just networking and they had the skill set that we needed, which is understanding nonprofit business, understanding operations right. Other ones worked in correction facilities to understand program and leadership development. So we started to select people based on how are they tied to the mission
and what do they bring to the table. And right now with that small team, we're starting over because we're literally formalizing the board process on what recruitment strategy looks like.
Right, we have to enhance.
Our by laws, right the by laws is the governance structure of the nonprofit. We're literally working with three different law firms to tighten up some of the back end documentation such as the by laws, and that by laws is going to dictate how we recruit new board members. So while that's being developed by a legal consultant firm, where we're with the board to make sure our strategy is in line with the by laws, and it's really you want to target people who's going to bring to
the organization. They're volunteering their time, but you want people who's going to bring in money, bringing resources, bringing connections and also information. Right, So we're still in that development phase. When it came to the team, it happened through me knowing individuals from serving time with them and them returning home and reaching out asking for the opportunity, and then it just kind of working out at the right time.
Right.
That was like an unstructured way that we recruited of course with intention, right, like you know. Now, so now the whole team is forming costs for only half the team. We have women on our team that's been impacted by the system indirectly that got you know, different careers that contribute to the movement. But now we have a actually HR department is in Now we're developing an HR system where we're doing onboarding more for more and more corporate.
But there's a caveat that we are keeping with the organization, and that's the voting process. I like member led organizations, right where my team has to say so on how certain things process.
Right.
So one of the last two excuse me, the last two members we had we did a panel discussion, right, So, and it's somebody I was up North Fork, master grad bilingual, solid brother, well intellectual. He brought so much to the table, but I knew he just came home. We got to kind of groom him. And that's how we start to do it. We like, he's take an opportunity at Woodfield. They'll build their like kind of experiences working with the population.
We kind of observe them, We put them in spaces to kind of get them a job of the team, and then we like, Yo, this person's dedicated. This person actually brings a lot to the table, and they bring diversity. That's the other key, diversity.
Right. So then from there, if we feel like, yea, we.
Want to vote them in, we'll do a panel meeting with the person and I'll have the whole team. Could be a little intimid dating, but it's more like just really interviewing you about your interests in this movement, right because we don't call it a nonprofit or a.
Company or job. We a movement.
So there's you know, company values and cultures that we have to talk about and how do you like assimilate into That is what we try to figure out. And fortunately, you know, we have a team of thirteen right now. You know again I said half my team did a lot of time. Five of them have former gang experience from Cribs, Bloodslain and Kingston and th Adios to you know No Blood, So like they all were gang leaders
in their own way. So now they use that to go back into the institutions working with the young kids who are gang banging. So the diversity kind of worked out, but the cherry picking comes in with who were bringing in and why And now we're just going to implement the more like formal.
Process of it because you need a HR.
I have to remove myself from also the interviewing process just to some degree to offset any liabilities, you know what I'm saying. So it's more member led, but now we're bringing in more corporate structure.
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