6 Essentials for Starting a Nonprofit
Coming up with the idea to start a nonprofit was easy. The ideas flowed freely in the early days of building The Ready Room Project, but starting any new venture - nonprofit or otherwise - requires discipline and focus.
We’ve done a lot of “Googling” in these early days trying to figure out how exactly to do this.
Here are 6 things we found to be absolutely essential to getting The Ready Room Project out of our heads and into the world.
This is the list we wish someone handed us when we got started.
1 / Find your people.
Starting and running a nonprofit isn’t a one-person job. You need people to help carry the load of charitable work, legally, practically, and emotionally.
Find a Partner
Having a partner has been essential to getting The Ready Room Project launched. Jeff and I split up work, encourage each other, set goals, edit each other’s writing, and bounce ideas back-and-forth daily.
An operational partner has made the “grunt work” fun.
It’s essential to work with someone to execute operations and provide moral support when you think your ideas are terrible and this will never work. It happens more often than you think.
Recruit a Board
We didn’t know much about the role of a non-profit Board of Directors until we got started. A little research helped inform how we might leverage a Board to maintain our integrity and execute our mission as a non-profit.
Our Board is lean and made up of friends, which makes communication a cinch. Our members have very different strengths and interests, which helps broaden their contributions as a group and as individuals.
Bottom line: recruit partners whose strengths complement yours, and make sure they’re people whose company you enjoy. You’ll be spending a lot of time with them!
2 / Identify who you serve.
Before we defined how we would serve, we first have to identify the group we wanted to serve.
Limiting who you serve gives you clarity.
When I put on the website that 1.2% of American kids have a parent who’s active duty military, Jeff thought people might wonder why we weren’t serving a bigger population.
But that number amounts to hundreds of thousands of kids - plenty of people for us to serve over many years.
Clearly defining who we serve helps us identify and meet specific needs, rather than dilute our impact by spreading ourselves too thin.
Bottom line: Narrowing down your target beneficiaries will help clarify how you serve them over time, and it’s something you can identify before you start.
3 / Make a simple plan for how to serve them.
We couldn’t have every detail figured out before we got started, but we absolutely needed a mission laying out how we would serve our beneficiaries.
What’s your mission?
Ours is “The Ready Room Project provides out-of-reach opportunities to military kids and spouses.”
It’s intentionally broad, giving us wiggle room to experiment with a range of philanthropic efforts.
We envision gaining clarity and specificity as we begin executing projects. It’s impossible for us to know what will work, what will have the most impact, what people will get behind, and what we can actually get done before we start.
This feels like the messiest part of the process for me, but one I believe we’ll specify and streamline as we execute projects and keep working.
Bottom line: you’ve gotta start somewhere, but that doesn’t have to be where you stay forever.
4 / Set up legally.
We did a lot of digging and sought legal guidance to determine what we needed to do to build a firm foundation for The Ready Room Project.
First steps
Jeff jumped through the hoops to set us up in the state of Texas as a nonprofit corporation, which meant securing our name and establishing a physical address in the state (known as a “Registered Agent”).
We applied for an employer identification number (EIN) through the IRS.
And we spent quite a bit of time writing bylaws that would govern The Ready Room Project and divide responsibilities between oversight (the Board) and managing day-to-day operations.
This part of the process took awhile, but it was time well spent.
The final hoop
Before we told anyone about our website, Jeff, Mackenzie (our CPA) and I reviewed and completed every line of the IRS’s application for federal tax exemption.
IRS tax exemption isn’t essential to start collecting donations and operating as a non-profit charity, but we’ll need it for various tax benefits and seeking corporate partnerships and large dollar donations down the road.
So although it’s not necessary to start, we felt that applying for federal tax exemption was essential to getting started.
Bottom line: Get your legal ducks in a row before you hit “go.”
5 / Set up financially.
In order to start raising and distributing money, we needed some financial infrastructure in place. For us that meant banking, bookkeeping, and setting up an online donation platform.
Banking and bookkeeping
We needed a place to deposit the dollars we’d (hopefully) be raising, so banking was essential.
We set up a business bank account, got debit cards, and made initial capital contributions ourselves to get started.
We also recruited help with the finances.
We have an accountant who’s helping ensure our expenses, donations, and fundraising remain above-board.
We’re working with her to develop a monthly bookkeeping cycle so we can track every dollar and be organized and prepared come tax season.
Donor platform
We didn’t necessarily need a website to get started, but we did need a donation platform and ways to collect money.
We set up accounts with Stripe and Paypal (so we could process money online) and used Donorbox as our donation platform, which has been easy to integrate on our website with lower fees than many platforms (a priority for us).
Ultimately, we decided to build a website. Even though it might not be “essential,” we’re finding the website to be an indispensable hub to house information for our donors.
Bottom line: you need a sound financial set up get start collecting donations.
6 / Embrace your conviction.
Beyond a website, pretty pictures, and an email service provider (all “nice to haves”), conviction is essential.
Ups and downs are inevitable.
We poured countless hours of effort into this project, and we realized quickly that people had a range of reactions. That’s normal. It’s not their baby, it’s ours. And it’s not personal, it’s usually constructive.
We realize now that all of that feedback drives us toward deeper conviction. Not everyone will be on board (right away) with our idea. And that’s okay!
Reminder: Screenshot the texts and emails from the folks who send you encouragement. Consider the constructive criticism, correct typos your friends find, and try to brush off the skeptics.
Bottom line:
It was HARD to put ourselves out there, create something out of nothing, and ask for support; but it wasn’t impossible.
We brought on partners who shared our vision and complemented our strengths.
We set ourselves up for success and longevity, legally and financially.
We defined who we serve and how we serve them.
And we believe in our collective capacity to make change.
We love brainstorming ideas for projects and dreaming big about what’s to come for The Ready Room Project, but we’re learning to love every step of the process - even the essential ones that don’t come quite as easily to us.
