Did that experience leave you frustrated, or just stymied by how it all works?

Do you ever find yourself wondering, “What IS fiscal sponsorship, anyway?”

Today’s Reader Question is all you!

—————————————————
Dear Mazarine,

There needs to be some education around Fiscal Sponsoring, being a lead agency & the need for Collaboration.

I’ve asked many local agencies to become my partner fiscal sponsor, etc… and 99.9% of those people (in the non profit arena) didn’t know what I was talking about. They’ve never heard of that before. How can I educate them and do you know of this being a problem for anyone else but me?
 
Sincerely,

Dianne Sikel
www.Life-Love-Money.com
Communication & Relationship Consultant

————————————————————————————-

Hi Dianne!

I do think it’s difficult to find nonprofits who have heard of this concept. Especially small nonprofits. So you will find yourself educating them. Which isn’t bad, if they are open minded and willing to collaborate! But you have to build a partnership first!

How do you birth a partnership? How do you INCUBATE your idea inside a larger nonprofit, and get to do the work that you want to do?

1. What is Fiscal Sponsorship?
Well, when a nonprofit loves an individual very much, they get together and 9 months later fiscal sponsorship is born!

You + A Nonprofit = Fiscal-Sponsorship-Marmoset! Picture by floridapfe from Flickr

There you have it! A beautiful baby marmoset!

Just kidding. It doesn’t take that long.

(Prepare yourself for Marmosets everywhere!)

Fiscal Sponsorship means that a nonprofit allows an individual to use their 501 (c) 3 number to get money from foundations, corporations, or individuals, and allows the nonprofit to be a “pass-through” for the money. The nonprofit may or may not take responsibility for what the individual does.

2. How can I get fiscal sponsorship by a nonprofit for my idea?
You need to do the grant research, OR the sponsorship research/acquisition, on your own. Preferably, you also need to have been volunteering your time at the nonprofit so that they know you, they know what you do for their organization, and they are pre-disposed to like you. Come to them with the money in your hands, and say, “I have the money to do what I want to do for your organization’s constituents. Will you give me fiscal sponsorship?”

3. How do I educate nonprofits about what fiscal sponsorship means?
I never met a nonprofit yet that didn’t like money! You can tell them, “I have a foundation or corporation ready and willing to pay for my work that I already do for your nonprofit, but I need to get fiscal sponsorship from you, which means I need to have your blessing to use your tax id number. You would get a percentage of the money.” And then you can negotiate how much that is. Could be 5-10% of the money. They may ask you, “What sort of paperwork will I have to fill out, and when is it due?” So prepare that information in advance.

4. What if the nonprofit says no?
If they say no to money, did you ask the right person? Did you look for your own money, or did you walk in there wanting a piece of their grant money? (That’s never a good idea, by the way). Is someone being a gatekeeper? Did you spend enough time building the relationship by volunteering? Did you introduce yourself to the executive director? Are they in the middle of a crazy-making cycle? (Is their big event next week?) Is the development director stressed to the max? All of these things can impact whether or not they want to be your fiscal sponsor.

5. How can I research which nonprofits might be interested in being my fiscal sponsor?
Ask around to other people who have been successful at getting fiscal sponsorship. How did they do it? And who did they go through? Look at your local community foundation. They might be willing to be a fiscal sponsor. If no one in your town or city wants to have a partnership with you, look at your idea again. Is it really, truly useful? If it is, look at national nonprofits that deal with your same issue. Start to build a relationship with them, and then ask about fiscal sponsorship. You can also research http://idealist.org to discover which nonprofits might be open to the idea of collaboration. You can call them up and say, “How often does your nonprofit collaborate with other nonprofits or individuals?” That will save you a lot of time right there.

Do you have any more ideas about how to get fiscal sponsorship? I’d love to hear them in the comments below!

Are you new here? Welcome! Sign up for my newsletter and get fresh nonprofit fundraising, management and career ideas monthly!

First Name:

Last Name:

Email:

Reader Questions: How do you partner with a nonprofit, get AKA Fiscal Sponsorship? originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on April 27, 2011.

“Why are you pooh-poohing their idea? Maybe it’s a good idea! Maybe we DO need another nonprofit to deal with this issue!”

There are a lot of nonprofits that do similar things, it’s true.

There are also a lot of nonprofits that seem to be unusually resistant to change, that do not like to collaborate, and that are remarkably isolated for the national movements they’re part of.

And for this, we need to not try to change them from within, for too often nonprofits would rather fire change-makers rather than actually listen to them.

So for this we need to create our own nonprofits.

If you still believe that we have too many nonprofits, then do a little survey.

Research idealist.org or do a quick google search and tell me how many nonprofits there are in your town that do the exact same thing, and how many ways they overlap services.

Frankly, I think that there will never stop being a need for nonprofits to do the things that government is increasingly backing away from doing.

As schools are teaching to the test instead of encouraging children to broaden their love of learning, we find after-school programs funded by nonprofits doing just that.

As federal programs for job training are being phased out, we find nonprofits stepping up to the plate, creating career fairs and computer labs to retrain people out of work.

As governments defund programs for the homeless, we find a surge in need, and homeless services nonprofits banding together, sharing resources, and helping people more than ever before.

Starting a nonprofit is like starting a small business, but instead of saying, “Here’s a way I can make money and help my family”, more likely the person starting the nonprofit is saying,

“Here’s a way I can make money AND solve this societal problem.”

If 90% of new businesses fail, then should we be surprised that many new nonprofits fail too? Should we be worried if they do? Maybe not!

I mean, come on! We have tech for-profits starting up every day, and no one says to them, “There are too many tech startups! Cut it out already, there’s not enough need!” because frankly, we are all on the internet, and we read things CONSTANTLY. We’re always looking for information or for ways to make our lives easier.

We are all out in the world, and we see the need for nonprofits constantly, whether we go to the hospital because we have no health insurance, or whether we see a homeless man asking us for change.

We see the need when we go to the grocery store and have the option to donate to charity at the register, or when we see trash in our favorite green places and know that our local nonprofit needs to help clean up.

And that reminds me. This week, for Earth Day, when you’re out walking, why not pick up some trash that you see by the side of the road, and take it to a trash can?

Leave it better than you found it.

Do we really have too many nonprofits? Citation needed! originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on April 19, 2011.

darwin fish!

Hi Mazarine

I am grants manager at the Charles Darwin Foundation in the Galapagos Islands. Raising and managing millions annually through grants, but most of it is restricted to specific projects and we do want to increase our unrestricted/general operating funds (doesn’t everyone?). What would you suggest?

Thanks so much for your interest

Freda
—————————————————–

Dear Freda,

Thank you so much for writing!

Here’s a special metaphor just for the Darwin Foundation. Evolve or die. So, what this means is:

Imagine a nonprofit depending mainly on grants and one annual event to survive.

Does this sound familiar? This is how a LOT of unstable nonprofits operate.

So, how do you get more STABLE with your multiple income streams?

What direction should you go in?

If you are offering social services, I would recommend getting government contracts to offer comprehensive services with a couple of sister agencies in your city.

If you are doing scientific research in the Galapagos, that’s a bit trickier.

You could try trademarking the Darwin name and being able to collect lucrative use-rights from the Darwin fish stickers that seem to be everywhere these days.

I understand it might be difficult to get people worked up about the Galapagos, since there aren’t that many people out that way.

One thing that you could do is start to facilitate phonecalls with donors so they can talk to people doing the work in the field on the Galapagos, so even if they can’t physically go there, they can start to understand the issues, and feel connected with the work that’s going on.

You could also get speaking engagements at local corporations and start to build those relationships, get volunteers, start to build relationships with big universities with serious scientific research, and start to partner with their fundraising offices as well.

What about your board? Do they have the means to give large sums to the Darwin foundation? If not, do they have rich friends they could ask? They should be spearheading a fundraising effort, and just because they seem reluctant, doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be involved. EVERYONE CAN DO SOMETHING.

If you REALLY want to get a lot of unrestricted funding, the BEST way to do that is start to build your major gifts office. Which means, board first, everyone needs to give, get, or get off. That’s how that works. If they aren’t giving, they need to be connecting you with people who CAN give.

How can you find donors who would be willing to give large, unrestricted sums to your nonprofit?

Glad you asked!

The Short Answer is: Research your ASS OFF

The Long Answer Is
You need to learn who your sister agencies are in the field. Who else is doing this work?

How do they get their unrestricted funds? Do you have an annual report from them? Does it list their donors? That’s a place to start!

Another place to go is to Guidestar.org, where you will see their board members listed on their 990 form.

You can start to google their names and see where they work and then if their workplaces are interested in groundbreaking biology research, you can start to connect with them and see if they’d be interested in lending an executive for your board. That can help you build a relationship.

Otherwise, think of natural strategic partners for the Darwin Foundation, people who would lose a lot if your organization went away tomorrow. Is it the society of biology researchers? Is it another corporation? How can you start to work those relationships and help get more and more people to give? You might be able to create natural resonances between what they care about and your cause.

Finally, why not brainstorm with your list of top 200 donors in front of you, and see if you see any connections between these donors?

Are you new here? Welcome! Sign up for my newsletter and get fresh nonprofit fundraising, management and career ideas monthly!

First Name:

Last Name:

Email:

Reader Questions: How can you get unrestricted funding? originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on February 14, 2011.

Over on White Courtesy Telephone, there’s a new post on the Challenge of American Consumerism to Nonprofit Work.

Have you ever stopped and asked yourself, “Would my donors have more attention and money to give to my cause if they weren’t constantly buying new products and being distracted by new advertisements?”

That’s kind of a leading question, but my guess is yes.

When Dan Pallotta says in his book Uncharitable that nonprofits are competing with Nike, Coke and other big name brands for the attention of donors, he is correct. With our small nonprofit advertising budgets, there’s no way we can hope to compete, not even if we spent the entire agency budget on advertising.

So what is the solution?

How can we stop this consumerist avalanche, and redirect attention, when we are riding it ourselves as we blog from new computers and tweet from our smartphones and so on?

Keith Farnish, an environmentalist, writes in his book, “A Matter of Scale”

“The “happiness” that comes from holding a new piece of technical wizardry in your hands is something created by the system that needs you to feel happy in buying that piece of technical wizardry; because if you didn’t feel happy then you wouldn’t want to buy it. The sad fact is that there are few real rewards to be had from following the consumer dream, apart from the initial flush of excitement that raises our endorphin levels – the same hormones that make childbirth more bearable – and thus leave you with a chemically-induced sense of happiness or wellbeing. This then leads you to associate buying things (or taking part in other artificial “experiences” for that matter) with good times, so you do it again, and again, and again. If all this sounds like a circular argument, then you have spotted the exact point I am making – you, the consumer, are stuck in a positive feedback loop which is growing increasingly urgent: “Buy now, while stocks last!” “Hurry, closing down sale!” “Limited edition!” “Special offer!” And all the while the economy keeps growing, and the amount of carbon dioxide being thrown into the atmosphere keeps going up.”

How To Keep People Disconnected

One: Reward Us For Being Good Consumers
Two: Make Us Feel Good For Doing Trivial Things (greenwashing or pinkwashing, anyone?)
Three: Give Us Selected Freedom
Four: Pretend We Have A Choice
Five: Sell Us A Dream
Six: Exploit Our Trust
Seven: Lie To Us
Eight: Scare Us
Nine: Abuse Us
Ten: Give Us Hope

If you want more context and explanation around these ten basic ideas, click here.

Farnish suggests some radical things you can do to fight consumerism and disconnection. I am not saying that I advocate all of them, but it seems that the time has come to consider our options.

We can make change inside our organizations, and we also, I believe, need to reconsider our strategies for engaging donors and stakeholders outside the organization.

If we are actively soliciting, say, Coke to come into our schools so that we will get more money, can we ask ourselves, “What is the ethical trade-off?” If we are trying to get Boeing to sponsor our annual dinner, can we sit back and think, “What are the implications of our aligning ourselves with a weapons manufacturer?”

How can we give people hands-on experiences of connection with our cause? How can we help them get RE-CONNECTED with their purpose as it aligns with ours, which is to make the world a better place?

No matter what size your fundraising office, this is something we need to think about. It goes beyond an appeal letter. Beyond an email or a Facebook poke. It has to do with our basic yearning for our communities to grow strong, and our earth to be healthy. Aligning our values to our deepest desires, and from there, convincing people to take action.

No small task, with the millions of ways to distract ourselves and disconnect. But if we can even meet people where they are distracting themselves, (via videogames like SecondLife, and others) we might be able to make a dent in this mass distraction.

Do you have any ideas? Please leave a comment.

Are you a nonprofiteer AND a good consumer? originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on January 14, 2011.

This survey is ONE PAGE. Fast. Easy. Just click and you’ll be taken right there.

Take the survey here!

So, could you tell me, would you like to learn about

• Social Media Strategies
• Fundraising Strategies
• Entrepreneurship/Business strategies
• Or something else entirely?

Take the survey here!

Would you like to learn more about Social Media/Digital marketing strategies?
Specifically?

• Finding Customers
• Increasing Referrals
• How to get people to visit your twitter page more
• How to make a background for twitter that builds your list
• Content Creation
• How to get great testimonials on twitter
• How to sell your stuff and have people enjoy the process.
• How to get big names to talk about you
• How to get people to retweet
• Traffic Generation
• Commenting
• Branding
• Consulting
• Getting “Known”
• Implementation
• Website Creation
• Basic Graphic Design
• Copywriting

Take the survey right now yo!

Or if you’d like to learn more about Fundraising Strategies,
Which are the top 3 that you’d like to read about?

• Recurring Donors
• Motivating Board Members
• Sponsorships
• Burnout
• Fundraising in a small shop

Seriously, inquiring minds want to know!

Or, if you’d like to learn about Entrepreneurship and Business Strategies, would you like to learn about

• Making money on the side
• Becoming an entrepreneur
• Multiple streams of income
• Transitioning into a new line of work?

I dig your opinions. So give ‘em to me!

Can you help me out? I want to ask you questions originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on January 3, 2011.

Today’s post is a bit of a departure. Often, I’m on this blog, telling you how it is, or finding other people to tell you how it is.

Today, like Socrates, I’ve got questions for you. Lots of questions. Consider even one of these questions, and leave a comment. I would LOVE to know if these questions sparked something in you, if you are inspired, disgusted, bored, curious, or something else entirely.

Voltaire said, “Judge a man by his questions.” Feel free to judge me by these questions, and add some of your own in the comments, or on twitter!

Santayana

A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness; happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment, when the picture of one’s life, or of human life, as it truly has been or is, satisfies the will, and is gladly accepted. -George Santayana

Is the purpose of a job to satisfy you?

Is it worth considering in this day when people are struggling just to get by?

Is this a first world problem?

Absolutely. But shouldn’t we consider it all the same? Even if we’re in the first world, don’t we deserve satisfaction too?

Who are you, really?

Why are you in the nonprofit world?

It’s more than a paycheck, but it’s more than the cause too.

What’s at the root of you being here, right now?

What made you decide, underneath all of the logic and rationalizations, that this was the right job for you?

Is it still?

If not, what is?

I’m not suggesting that your life become a string of meaningless pleasures, that you should chase a dream of being completely comfortable in a mansion or living a beach bum life.

Rather, I’m asking you, why are you really in the nonprofit world?

What drives you about what you do every day?

Do you love your job?

Do you hate your job?

If you don’t have a job, what’s the motivation for looking for a nonprofit job?

What’s the point, for you?

Are you just doing this until something better comes along?

Is this a place you’d like to stay for the next ten or even five years?

If this job doesn’t satisfy you, why not?

Is it the people you work with?

Is it the salary?

Is it the location? Would you rather work in a city, or in the country, or internationally?

What kind of job would satisfy you?

Do you want to work at a bigger nonprofit?

Do you feel like you have job security?

If not, why not?

What would job security look like, if you had it?

What would a satisfying job look like, to you?

Can you draw it? Write it? Say it? Create a song about it? Chart it? Diagram it? I challenge you to think of your most satisfying job, right now, if you don’t already have it.

After you’ve done this, ask yourself, and maybe you’re already asking yourself,

What’s the bigger picture for your life?

What kind of legacy are you going to leave behind?

What’s important to you?

Is your current job satisfying the bigger picture for your life?

If not, what WOULD satisfy the bigger picture?

Are you paid in commensurate with your experience?

What do you think of the sector?

Do you think it’s propping up the erosion of government services?

What do you think is going to happen with the sector in the next five to ten years?

Will nonprofits become more like businesses, and will that satisfy you?

Or will nonprofits become more like social entrepreneurships or hybrid nonprofits?

Will nonprofits merge and collaborate more, and will that satisfy you?

Or will nonprofits continue to float in the limbo between business and charity/volunteerism?

Your turn to bless me with your wisdom!

Please leave a comment, I’d love to hear from you!

Are you new here? Welcome! Sign up for my newsletter and get fresh nonprofit fundraising, management and career ideas monthly!

First Name:

Last Name:

Email:

Does your job satisfy you? originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on October 14, 2010.

Let’s take a look.

Fundraising: You learn how to market your nonprofit with direct mail.
Entrepreneurship: You learn how to market your business with direct mail.

Fundraising:You realize you can’t do it all alone. You learn how to ask for help.
Entrepreneurship: You realize you can’t do it all alone. You learn to ask for help.

Fundraising:You learn how to ask for money. You learn how to write grants, some of which are more complicated than the most complicated loan application you’d ever want to see for a start-up business.

You learn how to write a strategic plan and a development plan, which, combined with grantwriting, can prepare you for writing a business plan.

Fundraising: You learn how to nurture relationships with donors by giving them many little touches throughout the year.
Entrepreneurship: You learn how to nurture relationships with customers in the same way.

Fundraising:You take the long view. You don’t want a gift, you want a giver.
Entrepreneurship:You take the long view. You don’t want just one sale. You want a repeat customer.

Fundraising: You learn how to market your nonprofit with social media, and build relationships.
Entrepreneurship: You learn how to market your business with social media, and build relationships.

Fundraising: You learn how to get in the news, and about effective fundraising copy that will make people interested in what you do.
Entrepreneurship: You learn how to get in the news, and about effective ad copy that will make people interested in what you do.

Fundraising: You try to get everything for free, or at a discount, because as a nonprofit, you have no budget.
Entrepreneurship: You try to get everything for free, or at a discount, because as a startup, you have no budget.

Fundraising: You look for and take every opportunity you can to build multiple streams of income for your nonprofit.
Entrepreneurship: You look for and take every opportunity and partnership you can to build multiple streams of income for your business.

So, has anyone ever thought of this before? Am I the only one?

What does this mean for you?

If you’re a one person shop, this could be your year to start your own business on the side!

If you’re in a bigger shop, this could be the year where you shadow different people in your office to find out what they do, if you’d like to prepare yourself to become an entrepreneur.

How would you do this?

What would you sell?

What services would you offer?

What is the first step?

Don’t worry. Just start brainstorming. Ask yourself what you would really feel fulfilled doing.

And then if you start to worry about being a business owner, think about the last year, two years, three years, four years, when you’ve been working at a nonprofit, and had to do everything alone. You had to teach yourself how to write direct mail. You had to teach yourself how to run an event. You had to teach yourself how to write a grant. You had to teach yourself how to make a budget. You had to learn from your mistakes. You had to learn about social media, websites, and other ways to market your nonprofit online. By now, you should know a LOT!

You took responsibility for the future of the organization on your shoulders. If you can shoulder THIS much responsibility already, why not start your own business?

Are you new here? Welcome! Sign up for my newsletter and get fresh nonprofit fundraising, management and career ideas monthly!

First Name:

Last Name:

Email:

Does fundraising prepare you to be an entrepreneur? originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on October 1, 2010.

As someone who fundraises for a living, this may sound weird, but people actually want to fundraise for you, for free! They want to do a walk-a-thon, a bike-a-thon, or a bake-off. They want to touch the people they’re helping. They want to do more. The problem is, you don’t have time to supervise and help all of these people with every little idea that they have. You have grants to write! You have appeals to plan! You have major gifts to ask for!

How are you giving them ways to do more, and reasons to do more?
You need to invest in technology on your website, so that you can empower donors to fundraise. It’s an initial expense that will pay off. How?

What’s in this for you?
1.You will create a structure that will compel people to act, and make it easy for them to do so

2.You will start to have a pool of donors that will make their own fundraising events, with the need for minimal support from you

3.You make your programs more engaging and more REAL by highlighting real people, real situations, instead of just a holistic set of services.

4.You will have a place to send people when they ask, “What can I do?” It can link to volunteer opportunities, to a place where they can create their own event, and send their friends and family to donate, and a link to other ways to give or get involved.

George Stevens recently posted on R.E. Foundations, the Council on Foundation’s blog, about entrepreneurial donors. He wrote,

“…community foundations are a platform for the nonprofit ecosystem. Do we encourage donor innovation using our platform? Do we engage the entrepreneurial donors in our communities? To fail to do so is to be left behind in the recovery of the nonprofit sector.”

How can you get started making your donors into entrepreneurs?

Do what Kiva.org does.

Kiva.org

If you haven’t heard of Kiva, they do microloans, connecting one donor and one entrepreneur in a developing country, whether it’s in Azerbaijan or Vanatu.

What they do
You go to their website and you immediately see a picture of a person who needs help starting their business. Maybe they want to start a stall to sell shoes. Maybe they want to sell vegetables by the road to market in their town. Whatever it is, there’s always a monetary goal. The goal is something small, usually $25 to $1,000. That’s how little it takes to help people in developing countries.

A quick solution
So since your money goes a lot further in these countries than in your own country, you feel good. Here’s a problem, all it takes is $40 dollars to solve it, you put the money in, and problem solved. Now the person can pay back the loan slowly, over time, as they get more successful. Then you get your money back, and you can choose to keep it, or reinvest it in another entrepreneur.

Ways to make it even more meaningful
And you can even go see the person that you funded, and make a report back to Kiva, with pictures, a blog post, or a video! Talk about a meaningful “voluntourism” opportunity!

Focus on people, not programs
Kiva has taken donor engagement to a whole new level. Their transparency makes them successful. When I first saw what they were doing, I just thought, “HOW CAN I DO THIS FOR MY ORGANIZATION?” But I couldn’t get any buy-in from senior leadership about doing this. It’s a dilemna peculiar to nonprofits. We have individual programs, all of which need money, but often, we don’t focus on the people in the programs. And we should.

How to start
So to start to make your organization like Kiva’s, start with the stories of real people, or real animals, or real places. Put a number on how much you need to raise to keep offering services or ramp up services for a particular program. Talk with your program managers, directors, and other staff. Find compelling things to say about these stories. Then go to your website, and get a programmer to put a donation thermometer up next to pictures and stories. Keep adding more pictures and more stories. Wash, rinse, repeat. If you need a programmer to help you make your changing stories and donation thermometers, I recommend Steve Havelka. He is affordable, and gets the job done fast!

If you have a few more resources
Do what Mercycorps does.

MercyCorps and MPower

They have a button on their website called “MPOWER” where they educate people about four or five programs that need help, make a donation thermometer, and help people choose how they want to be involved. This page is where donors can fundraise for a cause, create their own donation page, and start to use their own ingenuity, as a volunteer, to fundraise.

If you only have five minutes
You can partner with The Extraordinaires, and provide microvolunteer opportunities through their website, or yours. Does some lawyer have 15 minutes to look over your legal document? Take advantage of that! Does a researcher have 1 hour to research grants for you? Jump on that opportunity!

Extraordinaires and MicroVolunteering!

If you want to set up donation and fundraising pages for your donors to become entrepreneurs, you can use Crowdrise.

Thanks for reading! Is there anything else that you can think of, that would be useful for people who want to engage donors to be entrepreneurs for their causes?

Please leave a comment!

Invest in Technology, and Empower Your Donors to Fundraise for You! originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on September 24, 2010.

1. Your first post – Gosh… my first post ever, I think was back in 1999 on Diaryland. I’m not going to embarrass myself now by posting it! I’ll give you the first post here (What is Fundraising?) instead.

2. A post you enjoyed writing the most – Are You Attacked For Your Fashion? was really fun to write. Partially because I got to put a woman with a whip and Vivienne Westwood at the top, and partially because I got to write about systemic oppression. I really love helping people figure out how to take their power back.

3. A post which had a great discussion – Fundraiser of the Year of Mismanaged Nonprofit of the Year had some great discussion, primarily from the people I’d written about.

4. A post on someone else’s blog that you wish you’d written – Dan Pallotta wrote a wonderful post on “The Psychic Benefits of Nonprofit Work are Overrated” and Equal Rights for Fundraising and Let’s Call It the Humanity Sector and Executive Compensation and the Curse of Proximity and and and okay basically just go to his blog and read him, okay? He’s INCREDIBLE.

5. A post with a title that you are proud of – Aw Girl, Are You Jaded was fun to write.

6. A post that you wish more people had read – It seems like every time I turn around these days, people are asking me, “How can I get known online. How can I build my brand online?” So why don’t people all read my FREE 17 page e-book? I have no idea. Here it is again.

7. Your most visited post ever – It seems to be “The Myth of the Naked African Child” because people look for the words “women” and “naked and “african” a lot on google, apparently. Sigh. The post is really about toxic giving, which is something we really need to think about as the world braces for another Haiti, another Katrina, and another earthquake in Chile.

Thanks for reading! What else would you like to see on this blog? Please leave a comment!

Are you new here? Welcome! Sign up for my newsletter and get fresh nonprofit fundraising, management and career ideas monthly!

First Name:

Last Name:

Email:

Fun and Forgotten Gems from ProBlogger’s Challenge! originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on July 25, 2010.

World of Good got acquired by eBay and Greater Good!
Now you can find World of Good at eBay.

What is World of Good?
World of Good was founded in 2004 by Priya Haji, MBA with the mission to help small artisan producers improve their livelihoods by providing them with access to mainstream retail markets. The company has helped more than 40,000 individual artisans across 70 countries by connecting them with millions of U.S. consumers. Haji also founded World of Good Development Organization, a sister non-profit focused on improving the lives of low-income women in the developing world.

Have you ever bought or sold something on eBay?

Have you ever bought anything from World of Good?

Has a hybrid nonprofit ever before been bought out by a for-profit?

It looks like they’re trying to compete with places like 10,000 Villages AND Etsy, because they highlight American-made goods as well as international, fair trade goods.

Wow. Imagine a new vision for your nonprofit. Imagine that you get so profitable and your nonprofit brand gets so popular that eBay is looking to buy you! Imagine what partner you’re currently collaborating with that you could convince to buy your nonprofit and help you scale your solutions!

World of Good’s take on the situation: “eBay’s acquisition of the brand results from a two-year long collaboration between the two companies that led to the development of WorldofGood.com by eBay, the world’s largest multi-seller marketplace for socially and environmentally responsible shopping. The transaction reflects eBay’s growing commitment to engaging consumers to affect social change through sustainable commerce. It also represents World of Good’s commitment to creating the greatest market opportunity for small, Fair Trade and environmentally responsible producers around the world. The online marketplace hosts hundreds of sellers, with tens of thousands of sustainable products from 85 countries.

“We are excited about the opportunity to scale the World of Good mission to an unprecedented degree through eBay,” said World of Good co-founder and CEO Priya Haji. “Also, we are confident that GreaterGood will be an excellent steward of the retail partnerships we’ve built and will continue to grow Fair Trade through mainstream retail channels.”

“GreaterGood’s acquisition of World of Good’s wholesale division reflects its growing Fair Trade business, including its Global Girlfriend apparel line. Since 2004, World of Good has developed extensive retail product lines for partners like Whole Foods Market, Hallmark and Disney, among others. GreaterGood will continue to work with the same retail partners and artisan groups in order to grow market access for small artisan suppliers around the globe.”

I hope that GreaterGood will not try to create more sweatshops for artisans that currently get fair trade. I hope they will do the right thing, since both Hallmark and Disney are not exactly known for discouraging sweatshop labor.

“Robert Chatwani, Director of eBay Global Citizenship said of the acquisition, “We look forward to this next step in our commitment to building an integrated, sustainable shopping experience within the eBay marketplace and are dedicated to applying our reach, resources and business model to create a positive impact for people, the planet and communities throughout the world.” -All quotes taken from The World of Good website

Wow. This is a big step for eBay and GreaterGood. It seems like they want to challenge Etsy, 10,000 Villages, and other companies that are helping more socially conscious consumers buy American-made or fair-trade goods. I wonder how these other companies will respond.

Imagine if you could get big companies like Paypal, Google, Dell, or others interested in buying your nonprofit and continuing your charitable work because of what you sold and how well you marketed yourself! Imagine how many more people you could reach, how much more you could work towards global solutions for poverty, clean water, hunger, vaccines, etc!

What do you think of the acquisition? Good? Bad? Indifferent?

Want to sell your hybrid nonprofit to a larger corporation? Start collaborating originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on July 16, 2010.