Sustainability is vital to the success of any nonprofit organization that wants to remain resilient in times of crisis and beyond. This article provides insight into how you can develop a sustainability framework that fuels your mission so you can keep serving your community.
Recent studies indicate that 30% of nonprofits fail to last longer than 10 years. That’s why nonprofit sustainability is non-negotiable if your organization wants to keep thriving, even in times of uncertainty.
Keep reading as we share more information on sustainability, why it matters, and the factors necessary to achieve it.
Nonprofit sustainability refers to the ability to continue fulfilling your organization’s mission and helping the causes you serve in the long term.
A sufficient amount of funds and resources are vital to building a sustainable nonprofit organization. However, with the federal funding freeze and other factors posing challenges in today’s ever-evolving landscape, it can be difficult to stay afloat.
Diversifying funding streams and investing in your infrastructure is vital to avoid being part of the nonprofit starvation cycle and enabling sustainability that allows you to fulfill your purpose.
Having the right qualities can help your nonprofit survive in times of uncertainty and beyond while having a tangible impact. Your nonprofit should have financial stability (i.e. diversified funding), strategic investments, a clear and focused mission, strong leadership, transparency and accountability, and effective governance.
Your nonprofit is designed to provide value to your community. More often than not, nonprofits rely too heavily on one-time donations or major gifts to fuel their operations instead of minimizing their risk through diversified funding.
Nonprofit sustainability is important to ensure you can continue to serve the people and/or causes that form part of your mission in the long term – even in the face of financial challenges.
Here are five reasons why sustainability should be a priority for your organization:
Nonprofit sustainability will enable you to maintain your operations and continue providing the critical programs and services that form part of your mission. This ultimately allows you to provide much-needed solutions to your beneficiaries.
To do this effectively, you need to have long-term financial stability so you can maintain the required resources needed to create, deliver, and expand on your mission.
Having financial viability allows you to provide immediate short-term assistance to your beneficiaries in the wake of a crisis.
Long-term programs are equally important and often complementary to immediate aid as they often help deal with underlying causes. But having on-demand access to funding and resources is necessary to assist beneficiaries who require immediate relief.
For example, if your nonprofit is focused on providing humanitarian aid, you’ll need the required resources to be able to immediately assist when a natural disaster like an earthquake occurs.
Being able to create new programs in response to the changing needs of your community is critical. But additional programs require access to funds, more boots on the ground, being innovative, and resources that breathe life into that particular program.
Launching new programs showcases your ability to evolve as your community faces emerging issues. Additional programs also allow you to expand your outreach and impact. And, they create new opportunities to attract additional donors, funding sources, and even volunteers.
Having the right resources on hand is necessary to not only mobilize your mission but also attract new revenue streams that ensure sustainability over time.
Nonprofits need to be able to rise to the challenge in times of looming uncertainty. And your ability to remain operational and continue to do the incredible work you do is what reinstills your donors’ trust in your organization.
Financial stability ensures you’ll have the necessary resources to thrive and survive when pressing challenges arise. For example, factors like the foreign aid freeze and other economic changes are why many U.S. organizations may currently lack access to federal funding and grants.
While it may seem taxing to acquire long-term funding and create new revenue streams initially, it is worthwhile. Through strategic planning, fund diversification, and an efficient nonprofit sustainability model, you can weather storms in the long run.
Financial uncertainties can add unnecessary pressure on organizations, which may result in donors losing faith in the causes they give to. And we all know that donor trust is at the heart of building successful funding sources that keep your mission alive.
When you prove you can deliver results consistently and showcase them through impact reporting, you create a renewed sense of trust that helps build long-term donor relationships – and ensures more consistent donations to your organization.
More and more donors want to know that their values align with the nonprofits they choose to support. By demonstrating your impact through methods like storytelling during campaigns, sharing beneficiary interviews, and impact reporting, you actively engage them and demonstrate that their contributions are being used for the intended purpose, building their trust.
Creating a nonprofit sustainability model or framework may seem daunting and even impossible at times. We’ve put together an action plan to get you started and relieve some of the pressure during challenging times.
Having a proper understanding of the costs involved in running operations and programs and maintaining necessary resources is essential to creating a workable nonprofit sustainability framework.
Assess where you may be overinvesting – or underinvesting – and shuffle funds where it makes sense. Focus on creating a realistic budget that corresponds with your key priorities, and adjust your targets regularly in line with actual performance.
Teamwork makes the dream work, as they say! Building a professional and reliable team – including board members, staff, and volunteers – and investing in the right fundraising tools is critical to long-term success.
Focus on establishing an efficient team that encourages and prioritizes cross-training and collaboration to ensure optimal creativity and resilience in response to new challenges. Great talent may seem expensive but can drive innovation and efficiency – and attract other established leaders.
Keeping your staff and volunteers motivated can sometimes be a challenge. Make sure you delegate tasks efficiently to avoid burnout among team members.
A great team goes hand in hand with having a robust fundraising platform. Invest in a fundraising platform that balances versatile fundraising features with cost-effectiveness and high-level security.
Diversifying fund allocation is a vital component of your nonprofit sustainability planning. Consider leveraging multiple fundraising avenues that go beyond the more traditional fundraising methods. This will help you achieve long-term financial stability and ensure you meet the evolving needs of your donors.
Let’s explore some innovative ways to divide and conquer your fundraising.
In an increasingly cashless world, organizations must adapt their fundraising strategies to accommodate modern transactions – and avoid the risk of leaving precious donations on the table.
In-person fundraising solutions like donation kiosks are a great way to diversify giving options for your donors and encourage donations when they feel most motivated to contribute to your cause.
Donation kiosks offer more versatility and flexibility for your on-the-go fundraising initiatives, and can be used at any location – whether that be at your next fundraising event, on-location donation drives, or even street campaigns!
The Donorbox Live™ Kiosk app allows you to turn your iPad, Android tablet, or Android smartphone into a powerful giving kiosk that can accept cashless donations via credit/debit cards, smartphones, and smartwatches.
Bonus resource: Discover six creative ways to use a donation kiosk at your next fundraising event on our blog post.
Transform your cause into an even more powerful movement by leveraging a crowdfunding tool.
A conversion-optimized crowdfunding campaign can help you harness the power of the crowd to extend your outreach and mission to more people. This also helps bring in more recurring donations – essential to nonprofit sustainability!
Crowdfunding campaigns also help maximize donor engagement. Tell your fundraising story through compelling visuals and content, keep supporters updated by posting regular updates and campaign insights, and allow supporters to share your campaign on social media – extending your outreach and potential for donations.
Set Up Your Crowdfunding Campaign
Bonus resource: Learn more about what crowdfunding can do for you in this comprehensive guide.
Nonprofit membership programs are an excellent way to cultivate focused support for your cause and create more predictable revenue.
With a membership program, members feel part of a community and usually have access to exclusive perks you provide, like member-only events, in exchange for recurring gifts. Be sure to include various membership levels, with benefits improving with each tier level to entice potential donors to sign up.
Consider a membership program to connect more closely with your supporters and build lasting donor relationships that lead to recurring giving – and increased nonprofit sustainability.
Empowering your donors to become actively involved in your organization helps build stronger donor relations while maximizing engagement, trust, and ultimately, donations.
Invite your best supporters to fundraise on your behalf with a peer-to-peer campaign. This also allows you to extend your mission to a broader audience through supporter networks you may not otherwise have reached!
By expanding your reach through peer-to-peer fundraising, you get to attract more potential donors and multiply donations to your cause – all by letting your supporters vouch for you, lessening your workload.
Create a Peer-to-Peer Campaign
Fundraising events are a great way to boost networking, engagement and community. You can organize special events that range from walk-a-thons to silent auctions and even galas.
Either way, events are a wonderful way to engage your donors, share your mission and impact, acknowledge major donors or sponsors, and attract more donations.
Consider adopting a powerful event ticketing solution like Donorbox Events that enables you to promote and sell tickets online, assign individual tickets, collect valuable donor information and feedback, track transactions, and even check in guests seamlessly.
While planning an event involves a lot of work, it can be incredibly rewarding with the right strategy and tools in place.
Promote and Sell Tickets to Your Next Event
Establish a foolproof leadership succession plan to enable nonprofit sustainability over the long run.
Remember that a succession plan should not just consider senior members, like an executive director. Instead, ensure you consider all team member levels in your organization, ranging from board members to volunteers.
Bonus resource: Check out our guide on nonprofit succession planning to get started!
It’s important to implement strategic planning that supports your long-term sustainability initiatives beyond times of crisis. Here are three tips to get you started!
A strategy acts as your comprehensive roadmap to outline how you plan to achieve your organizational goals and withstand future challenges.
Your plan should incorporate your mission, vision, values, key objectives, and the actions you’ll take to achieve those goals. Don’t forget to detail how you intend to acquire additional resources that make your mission possible. And, share how you plan to measure performance and innovate when new circumstances arise.
When establishing your goals, follow the SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) goal-setting methodology.
Need help getting started? Download our free goal-setting worksheet to help you craft!
Set clear internal controls by delegating specific tasks to different individuals, minimizing the risk of team burnout and nonprofit fraud – which can have serious financial implications. With defined internal policies in place, your board members will have a clear action plan to identify and mitigate risks.
Additionally, promote a culture of transparency and whistleblowing in your organization. This ensures that teams feel comfortable reporting any suspicious activity and enables more accountability.
With the right policies and a culture of honesty in place, you’re on track toward long-term success!
Your donors are the fuel that keeps your nonprofit vehicle in motion. And more and more donors desire a deeper connection to the causes they care about.
Maintaining a shared sense of respect, accountability, transparency, and commitment to your cause encourages continued giving among your supporters. But it goes beyond just financial transactions.
Prioritize nurturing your relationships with donors over time. You can do this by sharing updates and insights, acknowledging donor-specific milestones (like a first-donation anniversary to your cause), and showcasing the impact of their contributions.
You can better understand your donors’ preferences and habits through effective donor management. Be sure to segment your donors according to their interests, values, and preferences and personalize your messaging accordingly. This will ensure communication that resonates with your donors and maximize the impact of your campaigns.
Finally, don’t hesitate to get them involved! Think fundraising events and surveys, for example. Whichever avenue you choose, remember to continue cultivating those meaningful relationships and show them how much you value them.
Nonprofit sustainability is the key to ensuring your organization can continue to fulfill its mission and do more good – even in the most challenging times. Invest in strategic planning, the right talent, and a powerful fundraising platform that turns your fundraising strategy into a reality.
Donorbox is a robust fundraising platform built with nonprofits in mind. Our fundraising features enable you to raise more donations and have a greater impact on the communities you serve.
Sign up today to start fundraising and see why thousands of organizations choose us to elevate their impact and donations.
For more insightful fundraising ideas and tips, visit our Nonprofit Blog and YouTube channel. Subscribe to our monthly newsletter for exclusive fundraising insights sent to your inbox!
Subscribe to our e-newsletter to receive the latest blogs, news, and more in your inbox.
Jamy-Lee Holt