Opportunity for Impact: Children’s Environmental Health

10 Nonprofit Funding Models

Giving Compass' Take: • The authors compile a list of 10 nonprofit funding models that will help organizations maintain sustainability.  • Which of these models offers the most clarity for helping philanthropists understand funding restraints of nonprofits?  • Read about how philanthropists can support new nonprofit models. Money is a constant topic of conversation among nonprofit leaders: How much do we need? Where can we find it? Why isn’t there more of it? In tough economic times, these types of questions become more frequent and pressing. Unfortunately, the answers are not readily available. That’s because nonprofit leaders are much more sophisticated about creating programs than they are about funding their organizations, and philanthropists often struggle to understand the impact (and limitations) of their donations. There are consequences to this financial fuzziness. When nonprofits and funding sources are not well matched, money doesn’t flow to the areas where it will do the greatest good. Too often, the result is that promising programs are cut, curtailed, or never launched. And when dollars become tight, a chaotic fundraising scramble is all the more likely to ensue. We hope to help nonprofit leaders articulate more clearly the models that they believe could support the growth of their organizations, and use that insight to examine the potential and constraints associated with those models: Beneficiaries Are Not Customers Ten Funding Models Member Motivator Big Bettor Public Provider Policy Innovator Beneficiary Broker Resource Recycler Market Maker Local Nationalizer Implications for Nonprofits: In the current economic climate it is tempting for nonprofit leaders to seek money wherever they can find it, causing some nonprofits to veer off course. That would be a mistake. During tough times it is more important than ever for nonprofit leaders to examine their funding strategy closely and to be disciplined about the way that they raise money. We hope that this article provides a framework for nonprofit leaders to do just that. Read the full article about nonprofit funding models by William Landes Foster, Peter Kim, and Barbara Christiansen at Stanford Social Innovation Review