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One way that foundations can help sustain social and economic
justice organizations is to help them diversify their funding
base. This can range from developing strategies to raise more
money from their membership, or by initiating or expanding earned-income
projects. Even if earned income represents only 5 – 10 percent
of their overall budget, it increases their financial stability
and support within their own community, gives them more flexibility
in allocating money to programs, and reduces dependence on any
single source of funding.
Many progressive organizations have services or goods to sell,
but most don’t know how to do so. In early 2003, FACT commissioned
a report by veteran fundraising trainer Andy Robinson and successful
social entrepreneur John Anner to examine these organizations’
ability to initiate or expand mission-related, revenue-generating
commercial activities, and determine what programs or activities
FACT could offer its grantees to help them increase their earned
income capacity.
Though we have not implemented the recommendations in the report,
we offer our grantees discretionary funds to create such ventures
— three have requested them so far — and we offer
the report’s executive summary to encourage those that want
to embark on such ventures to do so, and to give them a better
understanding of the trade-offs involved. |
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