I have been a businessman all of my life, yet learning how to set up a non profit organization has still been one of the greatest challenges I have ever faced. I have wanted to know how to set up a not for profit for many years now. You see, life has been good to me. I have been very successful, and my hard work has been rewarded more than most work is. Now that I have made a lot of money, I want to give something back. Setting up a nonprofit was my way to do that. I wanted to reach out to underprivileged kids and help them have the advantages that I never had. I thought that it would be easy. I naïvely assumed that the government would make it easy to help the poor and less fortunate. Unfortunately, it was anything but easy.
Figuring out how to set up non profits starts with lots and lots of government forms. It is amazing, but there is more involved with how to set up a non profit than how to start your own business. I was able to teach myself the latter, but with the former I had to hire experts to help me do it. Once you get all of the appropriate licenses and have your nonprofit strategy organized, you aren't even halfway done. One of the biggest challenges in how to set up a nonprofit is how to apply for grants. Grant writing is an art in and of itself, and by no means easy. Although I am a qualified and competent writer, I still had to hire my own private grant writer to apply for government assistance in getting my nonprofit going. There is more to how to set up a non profit than I could have even imagined.
Of course, when you are learning how to set up a non profit, you can't and neglect things like networking. Like making business profit, Starting a nonprofit successfully is as much about networking as anything else. You have to make connections within the community, see what their needs are, and see who is already working on those needs. Only once people see that you are there to serve the needs of the community will they be responsive to what you are doing. As business is all about competition, nonprofit organizations are all about cooperation. It sure is a pleasant change of pace for me!
