Three Key Considerations for Starting a Nonprofit When You Have a Great Idea

Nov 13

How are you? It continues to be a challenging time for nonprofit organizations, so that our work supporting leaders to work and think strategically is more important than ever.

We are continuing our series on the Nonprofit Lifecycle with our first phase - the Idea phase!

ID: Dark green background, a bell curve mountain labeled Nonprofit lifestyle. The stages are Idea, Start-up, Growth, Maturity, Decline, Turnaround, and Terminal. The first stage, idea, is lit up orange.

“Idea” sounds fairly self explanatory:

Someone sees a community need and decides to “do something” to address it.

This may include spending your own money to take care of it initially, bringing together a group of volunteers to explore solutions, or to start working at your local government level to speak up and advocate for them. Obviously, this list is not exhaustive, ideas come in many forms.

If you are reading this, you may be the one with the idea! And if you have had the chance to speak with people about what to do next, they may have told you: Don’t do it!

Why NOT to start a Nonprofit

As I write this, I’m thinking about Selena (not her real name), who joined the Nonprofit Management Certificate program a few years ago. Selena noticed a need in her community, knew she and her colleagues could help, and started a nonprofit to provide support. But there was a lot she did not know. After a few years, she realized that the process of running a nonprofit was very challenging. They had received initial funding, but when that ran out, there was a lot more to do.

In writing this post, I searched for Selena’s organization. I could not find the website. It looks like the organization did not survive.

Selena’s experience is typical. Similar to starting a business, starting a nonprofit is incredibly difficult. Most people who want to start a nonprofit are thinking about the community's needs, which is terrific. However, they are not thinking about the financial model and all of the administrative pieces that need to be managed.

Why you SHOULD move from Idea to Nonprofit

Getting that bad news out of the way, there is some reason to be hopeful. All of the organizations we work with, thriving nonprofits, started as an idea - so some do succeed! We are in the process of finishing the strategic plan for Construction Trades Workforce Initiative. At the strategic planning retreat with the staff of almost fifteen, founder Beli Acharya reflected how some of their first strategic planning meetings had been held with a “group” of two in her living room.

So some nonprofits do succeed and go on to make a significant impact.

What to do at the Idea stage

The Idea stage is about information gathering and building a business model and financial plan.

First, you want to find out whether someone already doing this kind of work? If so, see if you can collaborate with them rather than starting your own nonprofit.

You do not need a full strategic plan at this point. Instead, you need to answer the following questions:

How will we receive funding?
Do we have enough community support?
Are there board members interested in serving?
Are we interested in doing the administrative pieces?

To start a nonprofit, you will need to focus on different kinds of work

Many people who start nonprofits come from the “program side.” They are focused on the services they plan to deliver and why these are needed.

Successful nonprofit organizations have a strong program model along with a strong financial model and strong community providing oversight and feedback about the work.

That doesn’t mean that one founder needs to do all of this. The founder can be passionate about the idea and bring other people on the team to work on other parts of the work.

Most founders are good fundraisers

Building and running a nonprofit organization costs money. Full stop.

Because of that, most founders are good fundraisers. This might not have been an initial competency, but they learned along the way.

As a founder, you’re trying to get your idea to go viral in your community and beyond. That involves “selling” the idea to donors, community leaders, and potential partners. So you need to feel comfortable doing this.

What do you want to do with your idea?

Having read all of this, are you feeling more committed than ever to starting a nonprofit?

Sometimes what happens is that a new generation has new ideas about how to solve pressing issues. Or is able to recycle and/or reuse older ideas that are ready to resurface in effective ways. That group doesn’t agree with the approach that a previous generation has tried or the ways they’ve done things. So a new nonprofit emerges, working on a challenge with a fresh set of values and approach.

In the end, no matter how discouraging things can be, both in the ‘real’ work and current state of affairs because of the direction of our Federal government or how daunting it might be to take action on your idea, sometimes action is the way to put your concerns at ease. Ideas are only as good as you take them. Until you act, they’re merely dreams. The Idea phase of this process is a place to explore those ideas cautiously to determine if they are able to stand on their own. If they can, then they’ll transition to the next phase, Start-Up, which we’ll talk about next.

As always, I love to hear from you – but the question I have is this: What was an Idea that you loved, but that you let go because it simply wasn’t actionable? Follow up: Maybe the timing wasn’t right when you first tried, was there an idea that you tried a second time and it worked?

I’m happy to explore these Ideas, strategic plans, or any other of your nonprofit needs with you. The rest of my – and I’m sure your – 2025 is nearly full, but let’s see what’s left or take a look into a fresh start in 2026. Let’s set up a time to talk and see what you need to do to make 2026 impactful.