In this episode, Steve Schneeberger with the Youth Ministry Institute shares about Nonprofit Life Stages: the first 10 Years. Here are a few highlights:

FOUNDING. The first strategy for us was to talk to other people who had run organizations. Then we looked for a few people who could come alongside us help things get started. We approached potential board members with the idea that they would give us their time and give $3,000 a piece annually to our start-up. Amazingly a number of people came forward.

SETTING FEES FOR SERVICE. The first year we set the price point fairly low because we were establishing a price point in a market that didn’t exist. We then realized all these churches said yes too easily. So maybe the price point wasn’t high enough. When we looked at our bottom line budget, we knew it wasn’t a sustainable model. That’s why we upped it the second year. Ironically, we had twice as many churches sign on the second year and there wasn’t any pushback.

ADOLESCENCE. At about the five year mark or four year mark people were beginning to fall away. Our beginning board members, the venture capitalists, were ready to move on to something new. Then we began to reorganize how we invited people to be part of the board. We set term limits so we didn’t burn anybody out. We took out the $3,000 fee so we could ask people that didn’t have that kind of capacity. We asked ministers to be on our board...

YOUNG ADULTHOOD. We’re at the 10 year mark now. We feel like know who we are and our mission’s pretty clear. Now we just need to figure out who we want to be for the next ten years. So in the fall we’re entering into a strategic planning process. We’re involving our past and present board members, our donors, past students, current students and all of our employees and beginning to think about what we do next.

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