Are donation requests or current events stirring your curiosity on what nonprofit funding is all about? Today’s article provides an overview.
Fact 1: Funding Comes from Many Places
Most sources agree that in the United States, about a third of nonprofit funding comes from government grants. Nonprofits also are funded by:
- Foundation grants. (At BridgingApps, a substantial part of our funding comes from the CTA Foundation and the Comcast NBCUniversal Foundation.)
- Corporate sponsorships.
- Philanthropic donations.
- Fee-for-service income (paid services, often priced by client income, where payments are channeled back into the nonprofit’s mission).
- Individual donations. (In the U.S., “charitable giving” accounts for over 500 billion dollars—and over 4 billion volunteer hours, estimated value $122.9 billion—a year.)
- Fundraising events. (The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) has an active “walkathon” program—and Easter Seals Greater Houston has our annual Walk With Me at the Houston Zoo, coming up this Saturday. Walk With Me raised over $700,000 in 2024.)
Fact 2: Fundraising Is Now an “App Thing”
Some organizations now have their own fundraising apps: NAMI recently introduced Fundraise4NAMI, available on Android and iOS. Another option is to create a shortcut to the fundraising website. Shortcuts look like apps and function like links: they’re created via the “Add to Home Screen” option under More (Android) or Share (iOS). (See our video “How to Add a Shortcut.”)
Even without fundraising-specific apps, event organizers and participants use:
- Text or email apps to customize, organize, and send funding requests;
- Budget apps to track donations; and/or
- Calendar apps to schedule and share their activities.
Fact 3: Funds Serve Multiple Purposes
Nonprofits get the best “worthy cause” ratings when most funding goes toward their primary mission. Most Easterseals affiliates in the U.S. put around 90 percent into disability-assistance programs; Easterseals MORC, in Michigan, managed a whopping 96 percent for Fiscal Year 2023.
Of course, the best nonprofits still have to budget for:
- Operating costs
- Staff salaries
- Volunteer training
- Facility construction and maintenance
- Travel and lodging costs for representatives attending out-of-town events
- Public relations
- Research
- Items specific to a nonprofit’s mission, such as advocacy. (Side note: See “Online petitions work best when you do more than just sign,” from CNN, for an interesting discussion of the different levels of advocacy.)
Fact 4: The Best Fundraising Gets Personal
Every PR professional knows that donors give not so much to causes, as to people. Most statistic-based requests are either boring or overwhelming. It’s much easier for potential donors to identify with stories from and about individuals (as on the Walk With Me “honorary ambassadors” page). It’s also much easier for individual donors to feel that their gift makes a difference, if they’re focused on one person’s needs rather than a whole society’s.
In recognition of April as Autism Acceptance Month, we close by sharing these posts about individuals with autism, who make up a significant number of BridgingApps clients.
Raising awareness is right up there with raising funds!