The predominant method that nonprofits have used to fund their missions has been through traditional fundraising, i.e.  begging through such methods as grants, special events, direct  mail, United Way funding, major gift campaigns and the like. In our view of the sector, the predominant story told to attract the funds is the story of need…a nonprofit organization needs funding support to provide needed services for needy people. The predominant  motivations for individual donors to provide these funds are such emotions as sympathy, giving to “deserving” people, a sense of giving back to community through a “worthy” cause and perhaps even guilt.  

The operative word is “giving”.  Our argument is that this business model creates a form of addiction for nonprofits. They become addicted to sourcing, in any way they can, a stream of outside revenue that is becoming increasingly  unpredictable or project based. Most nonprofits are dependent on the success of their fundraising capabilities for sustainability. Services and employment within the nonprofit are dependent on the success or failure of its fundraising capabilities. Therefore, services and employment within the nonprofits also become unpredictable.   

Any negative unintended outcome in the fundraising effort or the  completion of project based funding almost always results in reductions in staff or service and sometimes creates such severe  strain that the organization has to cease operations. Thus, a new  “need” is created, i.e. the need for self-preservation, which becomes  the dominant story within such an organization. 

Is there a new and better way? We think so.  

The model that the Ability Society has transformed itself under the past 8 years is called Social Entrepreneurship…a term that simply means using business methodology to accomplish a public good. We  aim to accomplish our Mission by creating ongoing, sustainable, stable and independent income streams. To achieve income streams we require investment capital to purchase or build the “bricks and mortar” to create the business opportunities. Our income streams come from two main sources. The first is commoditizing our intellectual property into products and services which we create income streams through fees. This   proposal mainly deals with this approach. The second way is to create income streams through methods outside of our core expertise. An example of this was the purchase of our office building that has space  excess to our needs, which we lease out creating an ongoing income stream. In our model, the operative word is “earning”. Both methods support our Mission. We are proposing a secondary option to fund the capital costs to build an elevator which in turn creates leasing revenue for our programs.