Four Tips for Growing Your Nonprofit
By: Meghan Traynor
We understand that starting and maintaining a nonprofit can have its challenges. We’re here to help! Here are four ways you can grow your nonprofit into a successful organization.
1. Build trust.
Building a strong community with your supporters is vital to your organization’s growth. Here are a few ways you can build trust and foster community with your fans:
- Provide donors with firsthand experiences so they can see your organization in action. Even if they don’t all take you up on your offer, you are still opening the door of trust with them.
- Provide relevant data about the need in your community and what your organization is doing to meet that need.
- Be honest and transparent with donors, volunteers, staff, and followers for a meaningful and sustainable impact.
- Express gratitude. Thank your donors for every gift. Personalize a thank-you letter for each donation and include how it will make an impact in and for your organization. You can even go the extra mile and send a follow-up thank-you note after the donor’s gift has been used that showcases the impact their donation made and, if possible, a testimonial from someone their donation helped.
The more often you communicate and build trust with donors and followers, the more inspired they will be to continue supporting your organizations mission. (more…)
Manners Matter When Growing Your Nonprofit
By: Randi Cairns
When you think of etiquette, you likely think of things like keeping your elbows off the table or not talking with your mouth full. As a society, we have certain rules or conventions we’ve agreed to regarding the proper way to behave in certain settings.
Well, business etiquette is the same thing: It’s about how we behave or interact with others in our work environment. And while most of the personal rules we tend to agree on apply in a work setting as well (nobody needs to see your lunch while you’re talking about your fundraising goals for next quarter), here are three tips specific to business etiquette and growing your nonprofit. (And yes, like your mama told you, manners DO matter.)
1. Be responsive. Whether it’s with the people you serve, your volunteers, your funders, or your critics, show them you’re listening. It’s great to be passionate about your mission. It’s better still to make sure what you’re offering aligns with the needs of your stakeholders. Are you paying attention when your clients tell you what they need? Are you delivering on promised deliverables to grant funders? Are you communicating—both when things are going well and when you hit an inevitable obstacle or challenge?
You want buy-in from others if you’re looking to grow your nonprofit. An easy way to get that? Let them know their feedback matters. (more…)
POWERHOUSE SERVICE & SUCCESS
Client Profile: Green Vet Homes/Living Off Rentals
Powerhouse Services Provided: Company Development and External Communications
“The best part of working with Powerhouse is the comprehensive nature of the team. I can discuss the business as a whole and what the needs are, rather than a narrowly defined role that only handles one aspect of the business. Powerhouse has been key in getting me to start thinking outside of just what I’m capable of as a solopreneur.”
– Kirby Atwell, Green Vet Homes/Living Off Rentals
Learn more about our partnership here: Hiring a Virtual Team for Your Rental Property Business
BUSINESS RESOURCES
Growing your nonprofit can seem like an impossible task at times. How do you balance meeting the needs of those your currently serve with your desire to reach even more worthy individuals? One great way is to improve or rethink your marketing strategies. The Balance Small Business has a great resource for marketing your small business. And, of course, Powerhouse has the expertise to put any plans or dreams you may have marketing-wise into action.
If you need to improve your management style or techniques to more effectively and efficiently administer your nonprofit, check out the Free Management Library resources. This free site has tons of articles focused on improving management in order to grow your nonprofit resources.
Finally, we’re living in a trying time for nonprofits. COVID-19 has had an unprecedented impact on how we all operate and live our lives. Check out this free resource for nonprofits on how to mitigate the effects the global pandemic has had on our society and how to reorient your nonprofit to continue to meet the needs of your target populations.
GIVING BACK & GETTING INVOLVED
Finding Pride and Representation in Literary Outreach
By: Meredith Flory
The stories we tell matter, helping us process the lives we have and dream of the lives we could have. Diverse representation in stories helps us see ourselves more positively and the lives of others with empathy. The Kentucky-based nonprofit organization Read With Pride is working to help stories from the LGBTQIA+ become more visible.
In 2019, graduate students Kadee Whaley and Alyssa Sciortino noticed a need through their work. Whaley has been an educator for a decade and is currently a PhD candidate in English at the University of Kentucky. Sciortino is a pediatric Speech Language Pathologist (SLP). Sciortino explains that she has often been inspired to “push [her]self and [her] colleagues to recognize the need for diversity and representation” to better serve their clients. She observes firsthand how often toys, literature, and educational tools are lacking “not only images of cultural diversity but also diversity in body image, age, religion, disability, sexuality, and gender” and sees children’s literature as a way to help adults talk to children about topics they may feel uncomfortable discussing. Working with college students, Whaley shares how in her courses she encourages “students to consider the experiences of others” and feels a responsibility to encourage civic engagement as a means to “achieving equity for all.” Forming Read With Pride gave her an opportunity to put this into practice.
Starting in Lexington, Kentucky, Whaley and Sciortino hatched an idea to help put LGBTQIA+ stories into the hands of those who need them the most. The mission of Read With Pride is to raise awareness and readership of LGBTQIA+ authors and stories in Appalachia, and the ladies work to make these books available for purchase at various locations. With an inaugural event at the TriPride in East Tennessee, they began to see their mission take shape. Whaley explains that all of their books are available for under $10, and many are used or donated. She continues that part of their goals include making books financially accessible for their region, as many areas of Appalachia are dealing with “generational poverty and underfunded schools.” While the pandemic has caused a halt to many of the events they had planned in 2020, Whaley and Sciortino continue to find ways to serve their community online and in-person.
Catching Up with Powerhouse Planning’s CEO Jessica Bertsch
Powerhouse Planning, m
ore affectionately known as PH in our online blog series, is eight years old this month. On September 11th, PH turns the big 0-8. In celebration of another turn around the sun, we decided it was time to catch up with our illustrious founder and CEO Jessica Bertsch to see just what she thinks about PH eight years after she signed the paperwork making Powerhouse Planning a dream turned reality.
PH: As you are very well aware, we are eight years old. However, not many people may realize that our actual “birthday” falls on 9/11. Was that deliberate?
JB: The true story is that I filled out all the paperwork to make PH official, and when I got to the date line and filled in “September 11,” I realized exactly what day it was. I deliberated for at least five minutes on whether I should go ahead and click “Submit” or wait another day so we wouldn’t be associated with such a dark day in American history. But then, I really started thinking about it and consciously decided that I wanted PH to be a light in the darkness and something about beginning what I hoped would be a force for good on such a day seemed like the right thing to do. The rest is history.
PH: Reflecting on the entirety of PH history, what do you think you got right?
JB: A man I worked with before I started PH, and someone who has been a bit like a mentor to me, told me that I should always surround myself with people who are smarter than me. So when I started PH, I looked for those who are true experts in their field. Look, you don’t want me heading up your IT services or working your graphic design projects, but hiring the right people has meant that we can provide super high-quality products to our clients. By surrounding myself with experts and smart thinkers, I’ve been able to definitely grow outside of my own comfort zone knowing I’ve got the right people to make it successful. Another related thing to that is that I think we’ve done a fantastic job of helping our freelancers grow their comfort zones as well. We hire them for one thing, but when we discover their “hidden talents,” we encourage them to pursue and expand. It’s something that’s worked out very well for us.
PH: What, if anything, have you gotten wrong? And why is it important to reflect on those things?
JB: Oh my, I’ve gotten so much wrong! Most of the mistakes I’ve made have been on the behind-the-scenes business end of things. Things like giving accurate quotes to potential clients on what kind of hours, money, and time will be necessary. I also have struggled with finding and creating healthy boundaries between work and home. When you’re an entrepreneur who works from home that can be one of the biggest challenges. I’ve needed to learn how to grow a “healthy me” so that I can be the best CEO, wife, mother, and human being I can. And I’ve been completely transparent about the mistakes I’ve made. It’s important to help others learn and grow, so if my experiences can help someone just starting out from making the same mistakes, then I have an obligation to own and share those mistakes.
PH: How did you create such a strong community in a virtual work space?
JB: That’s something else we’ve gotten extremely right. I don’t know of another virtual work force that truly feels like a team, especially in the last four or five years since our Executive Assistant, Jennifer Kirkpatrick, has come on board. She was telling me the other day that PH now employs 22 freelancers, which just blew my mind. We offer new hires a New Hire Toolkit that explains the culture here and sets them up for a strong beginning. We’ve worked hard to offer virtual book clubs, awards, recognition, and just some fun virtual events that help us grow and enjoy each other and the culture we’re creating. Not long ago, some of the freelancers took an hour out of their Friday to just hang out together virtually. That’s something truly unique. And we’re low pressure about it. If you want to be a raving PH fan, we’ll embrace you wholeheartedly, but if you just want to be a fantastic behind-the-scenes worker, we love that too. We’re inclusive and truly celebrate each other’s wins. We like to joke that it’s a good thing we’re virtual because if we worked in a traditional office space, we’d just have too much fun during normal work hours and then have to go home and get all our work done!
PH: Where do you envision PH going from here?
JB: Honestly, I don’t know! I went into this knowing to expect years where we wouldn’t grow or where we’d plateau, and every year that’s what I’ve expected. Yet every year we end up growing. Don’t get me wrong, that’s a great thing and I’m glad we’re continuing to grow and meet a need in the business community. I think as we continue we’ll be making better, stronger, smarter decisions. I’d like to see us go deeper into government contracting and grant writing, areas where we’ve only begun to dip our toes in the water. I also think we’ll maintain our company where we are right now. I’m very conscious of our growth because I want to ensure that I can still be a strong wife and mother, 100% present in my family’s life, and I want the same for our freelancers. I can see growing more once all my children are in school full time, but for now I think we’ve reached a good work/life balance.
PH: What are you most excited about right now in the PH world?
JB: I’ve loved seeing what we’ve been able to do for nonprofits over the last two and a half years. The fact that we can provide the services of around five full-time personnel for the price of one gives us the ability to really help. We can provide grant writers, graphic designers, technical writers, marketing specialists, quality assurance experts, and more for about what it would cost them to pay one employee. That’s just a dream for nonprofits, especially smaller ones who just don’t have the budget for these things yet. We’re big on wanting to be a force for good, and our freelancers really appreciate their nonprofit clients because it lets them feel like they are doing more than just work—they’re helping provide services that benefit our greater communities.
PH: One final question. Is there any little-known secret about PH that you’d like to share?
JB: We’re an open book. Honestly, I can’t think of anything. I guess this would be a great time to share about our favorite PH volunteers. My husband, Fritz, has done so much behind-the-scenes stuff since we started. Anything from helping me unpack my office every time we move to creating Excel spreadsheets. And my son, Quint, is my favorite payroll helper. The whole family gets involved in marketing videos for nonprofits as well. PH has truly been a family endeavor, and I would never have gotten this far without them. The only other thing that comes to mind is just how proud I am of our little company that we haven’t had to use any of the COVID-19 relief funds set up for small businesses. Our very nature means that we already had processes and procedures in place for being 100% virtual, and we didn’t really even lose any clients or work. We’ve actually thrived during the pandemic, and that’s something I attribute not only to our business practices but also to the amazing freelancers who make PH what it is.
