What I know now that I wish I knew then

I was sitting at my desk with a stack of papers in front of me. I had no idea where to begin. We had legal compliance issues, accounting issues, an international program that I barely understood, and hanging over all of it, huge funding challenges. 

The funding issues needed to be sorted out first, but it is hard to raise money without having the other problems addressed. To make matters worse, I had no idea how to actually raise money - I was still of the mind that it would be enough to be working towards a good cause.

Our budget was $230,000 back then, and it wasn’t until another six years that we finally broke $300,000.  Ultimately, it took 12 very long years before we surpassed $1M for the first time. 

If you can resonate with any part of this, then this website is for you. My goal is to save you some of the years I wasted figuring this out on my own. Growing a small nonprofit organization is surprisingly difficult, but don’t lose hope. What you are doing is incredibly important. 

A quick note: I come at this from a faith-based perspective, and that is evident in much of my writing. However, most of the lessons here apply more generally, regardless of your faith or lack of faith. 

If you find any of it useful, I hope you will subscribe and tell others about it.