Okay Y’all, you are NOT Going to believe this.
Have you ever wanted to make extra money for your nonprofit?
Are you looking at earned income streams?
If your nonprofit is a planned parenthood affiliate, or another sex-positive mission, you might want to try selling, (wait for it) sex toys.
Seriously?
Yep! There’s a charity in England doing this, the Family Planning Association. Their sex toy website is http://desireandpleasure.co.uk.
They not only sell sex toys, but sexy outfits (see below), massage oil, and a board game called “Monogamy.”
This is an example of a nonprofit enterprise that aligns with the original mission of the nonprofit. Don’t try this (obviously) if your nonprofit mission revolves around saving the dolphins.
FPA wants to create healthy relationships and sexual health, so selling sex toys makes sense for them.
If you’re interested in starting your own enterprise, as a revenue stream, the Guardian has some advice for you.
The Guardian reports: “Talk to your current donors. It may that new capital is available to finance your plans if there is a vision of sustainability at the end of them. Donors want to fund this.
• Be prepared to spend – starting a new business stream need not cost a fortune, but it will cost something. Charities need to be commercial about recruiting the best staff for the job (not just re-assigning current staff who are already paid for) and investing in real quality control, branding and marketing. If you aren’t prepared to spend, think again about starting.
• Most important – play to your strengths – build the business around what you uniquely know and the markets you can uniquely reach. Any business launched by a charity should have a head start on any commercial business in the same field, because of its core work. If it doesn’t, it’s not leveraging your assets.”
Insert joke “Leverage THESE assets!” here.
The Guardian says charities are “becoming” entrepreneurial, but as anyone who has been in this field for over 10 years will tell you, entrepreneurship from charities is nothing new. In the 1980s, Bernie Glassman was starting the now famous Greyston bakery in New York, helping people transitioning out of the judicial system into housing and jobs where they could learn a skill that they could use in other places. The Greyston bakery created a partnership with Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, and now, if you’ve ever eaten the Chocolate brownie flavor of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, you’ve eaten some of their nonprofit brownies.
Recently the Greyston bakery became a B corp, which means they are a for-profit with a non-profit mission.
Does your nonprofit have an earned income stream? What is it?
Love this Mazarine! And, you’re right, earning income is not new. Some 25 years ago or so I was wild about a book called “Filthy Rich – Turning Nonprofit Fantasies Into Cold, Hard Cash” by Richard Steckel. It’s still a great book. He subsequently wrote “Cold Cash for Warm Hearts – 101 Best Social Marketing Initiatives” which speaks to collaborations between nonprofits and socially-minded for-profits and “Making Money While Making a Difference – How to Profit with a Nonprofit Partner.” If we really want to solve today’s pressing societal problems, we’re all going to need to work together. Simply working from the “hat in hand” model is just not going to work.