nonprofit leadership podcast kathleen janus notes

Op-eds and speaking opportunities add up.Very few social entrepreneurs have books out.Or they practice telling their story to groups of ordinary people. Some organizations have storytelling roulettes and staff had to tell stories.Some TED speakers prepare for six months.“You will never create a movement without a great story.”.“Great storytelling comes with practice.”.One Board member sets up 12 coffee meetings per year for their Executive Director.They all bring different things to the table Others have great connections with wealthy individuals. Some Board members have great connections with foundations.Some organizations create Board engagement plans for each Board member.Nonprofits should examine the written expectations of Board members and modify them if needed.Many nonprofits complain about their Boards not doing enough.Only 15% of Boards are involved in fundraising for their nonprofits!.“Senior leadership was really critical for them.”.“It’s actually not about the leader at the top.”.

They now operate on 65% earned income and 35% philanthropy capital

Hot Bread Kitchen started to provide childcare to their participants by raising funds.

They created a cafe and also sold their produce to local markets

Hot Bread Kitchen provides job training for low-income women looking to enter the food industry.

Many nonprofits test earned income programs.

You can give incentives to survey participants (including control participants), like gift cards.

Very few nonprofits carry out randomized control trials early on.

Some randomized control trials can cost six figures.

Such data gave confidence to donors and can lead to seed capital.

An organization needs to figure out what indicators to measure, such as attendance rates of a scholarship recipient feedback from students’ mentors, etc.

But only 6% of them felt they made “good use” of their data.

75% of the nonprofits surveyed collected data.

“It’s not just about proving your program is working.

Measuring impact allows an organization to collect data and figure out if a program is working.

“Impact measurement is absolutely critical.”.

Wishbone now allows students to raise money on their online platform.

She updated the donors and decided to scale. She forwarded those essays to family and friends to raise a few thousand dollars to give these kids summer experiences.

Wishbone was started by a school teacher who asked her low-income students to write essays about their passions.

“Innovation becomes a part of your organization’s DNA.”.

“It’s about improving the model as you grow.”.

Organizations that scaled quickly first went into a quiet phase where they tested different strategies to get proof of concept.

A nonprofit that raises $2 million per year has likely hit financial sustainability.

There is a desert of failed pilot nonprofits because they were unable to sustain themselves.

Of the 300,000 nonprofits in the US, ? of them raise less than $500,000 per year.

When Kiva went on Oprah, they raised $11 million overnight.

They were able to hire an executive director when they hit a certain size.

Kathleen was a practicing lawyer at the time.

SPARK doubled its revenue every few months.

$5,000 seemed like a lot of money at the time.

They organized a fundraising event in San Francisco and raised $5,000 to help women in Rwanda.

Kathleen in her twenties got together with her college friends and started SPARK to support gender equality.

She noticed early on how nonprofits struggled to survive financially.

Her parents sat on many nonprofit Boards.

Kathleen Janus grew up in Napa, California and began volunteering at a very early age.

The Happy, Healthy Nonprofit: Strategies for Impact without Burnout by Beth Kanter and Aliza Sherman Kathleen Janus Show Notes She is a lawyer, lecturer at Stanford, and founder of Spark.

In this episode, Kathleen talks about her new book, Social Startup Success: How the Best Nonprofits Launch, Scale Up and Make a Difference. She documented their secrets to success and wrote down the five patterns that got them there. She conducted studies and interviewed 200 social entrepreneurs. Does that sound familiar to you?įor five years Kathleen Janus traveled the country to find out how successful organizations like Teach for America, City Year, and Charity: Water broke through their barriers. Most of their energy is spent trying to make payroll at the end of each month-which means less time is spent maximizing their impact. Countless nonprofit organizations are stuck on the treadmill of financial survival.

Nonprofit leadership podcast kathleen janus notes