Enjoying the Ride

There's just no other way to describe starting and running a non-profit other than saying it's like a roller coaster ride. There are ups and downs, and all-arounds. Right now my non profit is on an up. We were just accepted into a contest for a rather large grant. If we win, we could get our building. If we lose, at least we got the word out and gave it our all. In the meantime, we move forward and continue the funding search, and working towards supporting our mission.

If you feel led to do so, please take a moment to vote for us once a day through the month of October.

Funding Your Non-Profit

So, part of what we do in non-profit world these days is try to find funding. After all, you can't run a non-profit on volunteer service alone, there are costs involved. For example, our specific non-profit needs a building, and to maintain a building we need money. So, we are trying to find ways to raise money for our building.

Right now, we are trying to specifically find grant money. It's not an easy task really. First of all, after figuring out specifically what you need the money for, you have to find available grants and foundations giving away money for that specific area you need it for. That isn't too bad because there really are a lot of grants out there. But the hard part is doing the research to find out how much these foundations have given away in the past, and what organizations they gave it to. What types of programs do they support and does your non-profit fit with their vision or agenda? Do you qualify to apply? Are there specific things they want to know? Specific projects they will not fund? Do they have a dead line for their application?

The work is time consuming to say the least but doable. (Probably why most people hire a qualified and experienced grant writer to do it for them when they can afford it.) Next, after finding out if you qualify to even apply, you have to put together your request letter, and eventually an actual proposal. And they have to be just perfect and on time or you miss the opportunity. Finally, after all of your hard work, it's the waiting game. And in the end, you still may not get your funding. It's a crazy world this fundraising is. But these are the hoops non-profits are made to jump through in order to find money, and support.

There are other ways out there to obtain funding as well. As of late, there have been a bunch of places doing contest for funding, including our government. My non-profit does not go after government funding, but we did find a great contest to enter through Kohl's. (see that button up on the right hand side?) They are giving away grants to the top 20 educational institutions that get the most votes. So we entered and now we have to try to get as many votes as we can to qualify for the grant money we need. With the thousands who have no doubt entered this contest, this is probably a shot in the dark, but a shot we are willing to go after. After all, it has been a great way for us to get the word out on our non-profit. And it has been a great learning experience for all of us involved. There are other plans in the works still, but for a while, we will concentrate on trying to get in on the top 20 list for this grant. And if we won the money? Well, like I said above, we need a building. So, our money would go to getting us into a building and building it out to fit our needs.

By the way, if you have a moment and care to help us out, click on the link up there and share your votes. It would be so appreciated. :)

Another important note to share here on funding is you should never put all of your eggs into one basket. You cannot find a money source, then rely on that same source of money to keep you afloat. You must branch out and diversify your fundraising. You never know what may happen to funding. Especially in an economy such as our today. Here today, gone tomorrow you know. So, make sure you spread your focus over many areas of funding, not just one. Do fundraisers, find many supporters, go after many grants, put together some type of merchandise like t-shirts and stickers to help raise money, go to the local ice cream shop. Ice cream shop? Yep, sometimes they will do a one day event where they donate a percentage of each sale to your organization. Other food businesses will do it too. Pizza places, the mom and pop shops. These are all great ways to raise funding. Yes, the big money is in the grants and other supporters of large corporations and foundations, but remember to keep going after the smaller funds too. Every penny counts! And in the end there is nothing to lose by trying. After all, isn't your non-profit, our mission and vision, worth it?

On Other News...

I am going off course tonight. Instead of talking about non-profit world, I am going to share for just a moment about school. I'm a homeschooling parent you see, and we started the new school year today. It went really well actually. Better than I thought it would for sure. First of all, my kids were up and out of bed by 9 am. This is a huge victory since their normal up time has been many hours later than this all summer. I was very proud of them. Next, my kids were finished with their work by 11:30 am. This says to me, "great planning!" as the amount of work they had seemed not to overwhelm them, and it also did not seem too easy for them to get done. Instead it was a perfect amount of info for them to take in. If only they were all days like this. I know I am in honeymoon mode, but I feel the need to linger there for a bit. Tomorrow is another day you understand, and who knows what will happen. But for now, I bask in the glory!

The Next Step

It's been a busy time for our non-profit. Since getting our 501(c)(3) status we have been busy with researching grants and preparing updates on the business plan. Finding funding proves to be very hard right now in this economy, but we are staying positive. What we have found though, is that there is a ton of free information on the web on fundraising, writing grants, etc. This has been a tremendous help and within a few months I foresee funding coming in.

On the other side, we are also looking at buildings at the same time. I know, you are thinking what is the point of looking for a building when you have no money. I realize this seems a bit crazy, but finding the perfect property for your cause can be very tedious work, and we expect it to take quite a while as our cause is very specific needing a specific type of building.

As we forge ahead with this next step in our journey, there is a lot of uncertainty as to how things will turn out, but our passion keeps us motivated to keep moving ahead. Don't ever let the passion go. If it does you are done for.

FInally!!! We have arrived!

So this has been a long week of celebrating and embracing change. I was fortunate enough to have been celebrated at a dinner for a job I finished and stepped down from, I was provided the opportunity to go to a great picnic to celebrate the end of the school year, then I was blessed with attending my own graduation as I finished school recently, and tonight we celebrated our children finishing yet another wonderful year of school at a promotion ceremony. So much celebrating I could use a vacation. But wait, there's more!!!

I get home tonight, grab the Mac and go to check the email as I do every night before I go to bed, and there it is... the official word. We got our 501c3!!! We can now proceed to the next step. What an amazing feeling it was to see that email. It just makes for the perfect wrap up to a wonderfully blessed week and weekend.

So guess what I will be doing tomorrow? Celebrating once again a tremendous achievement.

Celebrate with me!

Hurry up And Wait!! Still

Yep, we are still waiting on our 501c3 status. Not sure what the hold up is, but should be any time now. We just had to go through some changes to our bylaws in order to continue the process and make the IRS happy, and now we are still on hold. There is just so much we would like to do but can't until we get this piece of paper that has now cost us, well, a lot of money.

Patience is hard. But you have to have them to get through this process. And you have to have a lot of faith that all things will work out. So, the waiting continues.

So what do you do in the meantime? Well, you work on policies and procedures, you work on volunteer contracts and a nice long fund raiser list, among many other items. And you continue to talk it up with the locals so they stay informed on your progress and stay interested and excited.

Plenty there to keep us busy. :)

Hic-ups in Non-profit World

There is bound to be a hic-up or two when starting a non-profit. We had one just this last week.

We have been waiting and waiting for our final non-profit status to be approved but have heard nothing until just a few days ago when we received a nice little letter in the mail. The IRS has asked us to make a few amendments to our bylaws and to get them officially done and sent back to them by May 11th. Yikes!!! To say the lease, we panicked a bit. Since when does anything get done in this state in two weeks? Especially when you have little to no money? But knew we had to do what was asked in order to get our status. So, we did what we had to do. Dug deep in our pockets and paid to expedite our paperwork so we could get it in on time.

The result? Well, we again get to hurry up and wait. And everything goes on, business as usual. Our hope is that we get our official status by May 11th or soon after.

As hic-ups go, it's kind of small so we lucked out there. Can't wait to see what happens next though. It would be great to have the ability to fund raise soon.

On another note, we found a rather large building that has been empty for years with an owner that just may be ready to donate. I'll update more on that later as the process unfolds.

Isn't non-profit world just full of excitement??