One of the hardest parts about creating and then maintaining a nonprofit organization is sourcing money to sustain growth. It's a difficult balancing act to provide quality service and reach as many in need as possible while garnering enough funding to keep the operation supported. All too often, nonprofits may not make it more than a few years due to fund sources drying up or an inability to find new avenues as the organization grows.

Fortunately, there are a few steps nonprofits can take to create a self-funding nonprofit model that can keep business in good stead for years to come. To help, nine members of Forbes Nonprofit Council open up about their personal methods for creating self-funding models with nonprofit support capabilities below.

  1. Monetize Your Services
  2. Apply An Open-Source Model
  3. Have Dominant And Secondary Source Funding
  4. Become A Social Enterprise
  5. Leverage Social Media And Automation
  6. Create a Proprietary Knowledge
  7. Sell Your Value
  8. Create Mission-Aligned Earned Income
  9. Treat Your Beneficiaries Like Customers

Financial stability requires diverse funding streams, especially if government contracts are the largest source. Targets are the first step because diversification is not easy. Each new source requires learning and painful stumbles. Our targets are 40% contract, 40% fee for service, 10% gifts and 10% grants.

Read the full article about self-funding nonprofits by Forbes Nonprofit Council.