Post your name and organization in the comments! Welcome to the Non-Profit Skool, please keep all posts and interactions focused on "non-profit" topics...and please keep every interaction positive.😃 To learn more about Stroman & Associates, visit https://stromanconsulting.com

I’m curious, what is the biggest project your organization is working on? Maybe it’s a capital campaign, maybe it’s a gala, it could be building a strategy around one mega donor. Post it below and let us know what you’re working on! I’m going to be finishing the Asking Academy Express for Skool this week. My goal is to have it live before the end of the week!

Hi everyone! I’m Esther Park 👋 I specialize in nonprofits and love helping people bring their visions to life. Whether you need advice, guidance, or hands-on support to get your nonprofit off the ground, I’m here to help. I work with organizations both as a consultant and on a paid basis if you want me to handle things for you. I’m excited to connect, share insights, and learn from this amazing community. Feel free to reach out with questions. I love talking about all things nonprofit! 💡✨

Many great community projects never get the support they deserve because they are not presented the right way. That is where grant writing comes in. It helps turn good intentions into structured proposals that funders can support. If you are running or planning a nonprofit project, this is the right time to learn how to position your work for funding. The right proposal can open doors you never imagined.

What Does It Mean to Work in the Nonprofit Sector? For many people new to the whole concept of the nonprofit sector, there is a great deal of misunderstanding of what it means to be a nonprofit. Some think it means the organization can’t operate in the black, because it then becomes a “for profit.” Many people think that nonprofit staff should be paid less than standard wages because they are working for a “charity.” For clarification purposes, let’s start with what it means to be a nonprofit organization. A charitable nonprofit is usually a 501(c)(3) agency, a designation received from the Internal Revenue Service after meeting certain requirements, most importantly that the organization serves a charitable, education, scientific, or community service purpose. Individuals can deduct donations to approved nonprofit organizations when filing their federal tax returns. Most government agencies and foundations will only make grants to nonprofit organizations. Contrary to popular opinion, being a nonprofit does not mean that the organization must operate in the red or that it cannot have a fund surplus. Actually, the main characteristic that separates a nonprofit from a profit-making entity is that no individual or group of individuals can benefit financially from the profits of the agency. By receiving nonprofit status, these organizations are exempt from paying most federal and state taxes. Sometimes the nonprofit community is called the third sector (as opposed to government or the business sector) the independent sector, or the voluntary sector. All these terms are appropriate and accurate. Some nonprofits are thought of as charities, while some are huge operations such as major universities and health care systems, but they still share the commonality of being a nonprofit entity since no individual or group of individuals benefit from the surplus revenues of the organization. Volunteering and Charitable Giving One of the things that makes the nonprofit sector different from other sectors is the fact that so many people volunteer not only their money, but their time, to help these organizations succeed. While it is difficult to unearth statistics showing how many fundraising professionals there actually are, if just twenty percent of the public charities in the United States employ just one fundraising professional, that makes almost 200,000 professional fundraisers in the United States alone. And, of course, many of these charities are large ones that may have a development staff of dozens of people (universities for example) and even mid-sized organizations often employ two to ten development staff persons. I would safely estimate, therefore, that there are close to half million individuals in the United States that list their profession as fundraising, development, advancement, philanthropy or some term that involves the obtaining of funds for a charitable organization. Who are these people and how do they find their paths leading to a career in fundraising? The professional fundraiser usually enters the field from one of these possible avenues: