Nonprofit leaders have a natural entrepreneurial mindset. They have to, because like startup founders, nonprofit leaders aim to solve a problem by providing goods or services.

In the process, they use creative problem-solving and marketing to raise public awareness and financial support for their vision, just the way entrepreneurs strive to secure financing and build public excitement for their product launches. Many nonprofit leaders also supervise a passionate, paid staff while recruiting and training a robust volunteer force. Moreover, these leaders must be creative, open-minded, flexible and nimble —  just like, you guessed it, entrepreneurs.

So, there’s nothing wrong with looking up to entrepreneur giants like Jobs, Musk, and Branson. But you may be surprised just how much you can learn from these three nonprofit leaders:

  • Larsen Jay: CEO, Random Acts of Flowers
  • Aaron Negherbon: Founder, COPS Direct
  • Doniece Sandoval: Founder and CEO, Lava Mae

They’ve all demonstrated passionate, open-minded, flexible and nimble thinking about the best way to solve problems outside traditional for-profit business models. And that is the true definition of “entrepreneurship.”

Read the full article at Real Wise