Sustainability Spectrum
Assess your nonprofit's sustainability and readiness for scale.
Vulnerable
When it comes to sustainability, many nonprofits function in the vulnerable stage. Insufficient annual support requires constant fund raising for operations. Uncertainty in reaching financial targets impacts consistent service delivery.
Resilient
The organization has diverse sources of support for today’s needs. However, program expansion requires dollar-for-dollar additional support.
Investing
Investing occurs when the organization has discovered a potential revenue generating business model and is building it with time, attention, and capital.
Sustainable
If the revenue-generating model is strong enough, the organization or a significant program reaches Sustainable – 100% of expenses are covered by revenues. At this point, the organization only needs philanthropy to help it establish a new program, delivery site, or move to a new geography.
Scalable
When the organization gets beyond 100%, it can use its own excess revenues to help grow and expand.
When we have enough scalable Impact Organizations in our communities, we will truly begin to see our problems solved for the long-term.
We all start somewhere.
The Sustainability Spectrum is a new way to view financial sustainability.
Historically, we’ve been conditioned to think nonprofits …
- can do more with less
- just need an amazing special event to meet that new revenue goal, or
- earned income is not an option, our clients can’t pay for their services.
But is that really true? Are there other business models that could move your organization from vulnerable to sustainable – even scalable?
The answer is YES, but it doesn’t happen overnight. Like the old chinese proverb says, “The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is today.”
Getting started is easy. Contact us today.