Passion Turned Profession · Book I · Starting up
How to Start a Nonprofit With Almost No Money
Most guides start at incorporation. This one starts a chapter earlier, at the question everybody skips: whether you should start one at all.
15 chapters · 156 pages
What it is
There are four legitimate ways to pursue what you are trying to do, and only one of them is a 501(c)(3). Some readers reach Chapter Three, recognise that a simpler structure serves them better, and stop there. That is a successful outcome.
If the answer is yes, the remainder is procedure. The name and the state filing. Bylaws, which are ignored until the day they govern everything. The federal application, both forms and both fees, and which one applies to you. A founding board that is more than three friends in agreement. And a first-year budget that balances.
Then the first ninety days, where most avoidable damage is done.
If you cannot name three things your mission rules out, you have not written a mission. You have written a mood. Book I · How to Start a Nonprofit With Almost No Money
What this book assumes
Nothing. It assumes you have not started, and it is the book to read first.
Every chapter
15 chapters, and what each one does.
Every chapter, with the sentence it opens on.
- 01
Introduction
- 02
What a Nonprofit Actually Is
Nobody owns it. That is the entire point.
- 03
The Four Paths
Only one of them is a 501(c)(3).
- 04
The Mission
A mission is a filter, not a poster.
- 05
The Name and the State
This is the part where it becomes real, and it costs about as much as a decent pair of boots.
- 06
Bylaws and the Founding Documents
Nobody reads them until the day everybody reads them.
- 07
The Federal Application
Two forms, two prices, and a decision worth getting right.
- 08
The Board
Three friends nodding along is not a board. It is a liability with a quorum.
- 09
The First-Year Budget
A budget is a moral document that has to add up.
- 10
Individual Donors and the Ask
Asking is not begging. It is offering someone a way to be useful.
- 11
Grants
A grant is not free money. It is a contract with a report attached.
- 12
Earned Income and the Rest of the Money
The steadiest dollar is the one nobody had to be persuaded to give.
- 13
Launch
The day you open is not a day. It is a Tuesday you will barely remember.
- 14
The Ordinary Tuesdays
Nothing kills a nonprofit on a dramatic day.
- 15
What Outlasts You
You are building something that should be able to fire you.
Two more lines from inside
From the manuscript.
An organization that only works if one person never gets paid is not an organization. It is that person, with paperwork.
Book I · How to Start a Nonprofit With Almost No Money
A board’s value to you is precisely equal to its willingness to tell you that you are wrong.
Book I · How to Start a Nonprofit With Almost No Money
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What this book assumes
Nothing. It assumes you have not started, and it is the book to read first.
Each subject is treated once, in the book that owns it. Where an answer belongs elsewhere, you are given the chapter reference.
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