Here’s your magic wand for our nonprofit future

Fun fact- I used to work for a psychic hotline.

My psychic hotline name was… Maxine Future.

🙂 Pretty funny, huh?

In seriousness though, this interview will help you predict the future. Really.

Do you ever wish you had a crystal ball to let you know what is going to happen?

I have been blindsided by nonprofit bosses announcing to me that we didn’t have enough money for payroll-and I thought-how did this go unnoticed?

Ever wondered how to get more stable income streams?

We operate in an environment of extreme uncertainty.

I want to help you not just predict the future, but be in a better financial position no matter what happens.

Here’s a short interview with Sarai Johnson about what our nonprofit future holds in the next 18 months.

In 2008, Sarai Johnson got a job at a nonprofit that had a seemingly airtight business model. They sold homes to low-income first-time homebuyers at below market rates. They mostly got grants to build the homes, provided homeownership education and counseling, and lived on the proceeds of home sales.

Then again, it was 2008. If you were a cognizant human at the time, you might remember a little something we affectionately called “The Great Recession.” The housing market crashed.

And that meant we were up a creek if we didn’t think fast.

Long story short, we did (think fast). And we grew. (This is one of the biggest yada-yadas ever, by the way).

That is to say, we thought like entrepreneurs, figured out how to solve problems, and created business models to support the activities we implemented. Read more of her post here.

I share this to let you know that Sarai Johnson has worked through the downturn and helped nonprofits grow when we had a housing crisis and financial collapse before, in 2008.

Naomi Klein wrote in the Shock Doctrine that we are headed for another bubble and collapse. Chris Hedges agrees. He writes in TruthDig,

“The global financial system is a ticking time bomb. The question is not if it will explode but when it will explode. And once it does, the inability of the global speculators to use fabricated money with zero interest to paper over the debacle will trigger massive unemployment, high prices for imports and basic services, and a devaluation in which the dollar will become nearly worthless as it is abandoned as the world’s reserve currency. This manufactured financial tsunami will transform the United States, already a failed democracy, into an authoritarian police state.

IF this is true…

Question: If the crystal ball says we’re heading for another housing crisis and financial market collapse, what can we do?

Answer: Wave the magic wand of getting entrepreneurial in your nonprofit!

Now that you’ve got your crystal ball, and you see that the global financial markets are heading downward again due to our trade policies, and other factors, we need to face the future courageously and ask what we can do.

So, your magic wand is here!

It’s called getting entrepreneurial, and it looks different for each nonprofit.

Question: What’s a forward-thinking nonprofit leader to do?

Answer: GET PREPARED.

What does preparation mean?

Well, first ask yourself-is growing good?

For example: We raised money at our gala for a new rural bilingual bicultural Latinx outreach coordinator for our domestic violence shelter.

Then once she got the money for this person’s salary, we didn’t have a plan to hire this person, or sustain the income necessary to keep their position funded. We ended up not hiring them.

Often we look at the news cycle and we feel like it is ever more urgent to grow, and do more for our communities, because the need is so great right now.

First, ask yourself, DO we want to grow in the next 2 years?

If so, how do we want to grow, knowing the downturn is coming again?

If you remember the downturn of 2008 and 2009, and how long it took us to come back from that, do you remember what your donors were saying?

They were saying, “Gosh, my investments went downhill, the housing market dropped, and now I don’t have as much to give to your nonprofit.”

If you remember this, then… perhaps building your cash reserves and putting together a more effective fundraising process might be more of a priority than adding new staff and new programs.

If you want help planning for the downturn in the future, come to our webinar on how to be more entrepreneurial in your nonprofit on October 24th, 10am PT, (1pm ET)

Click here to join us