How I Plan to Fund Startup Sioux Falls Through Community Patronage

Hey guys, Matt Paulson here. One of the most difficult components of running a nonprofit organization is finding funding. You've got a great mission that you believe in. You're incredibly passionate about the work that your nonprofit is doing, and you genuinely think you can make a dent in whatever the issue is that your nonprofit is working on or working to tackle. But how do you fund it? Do you hit up the reliable base of donors that fund many nonprofits in our community? Do you look for corporate sponsors to underwrite your efforts? Do you apply for government grant money or do you try to do a crowdfunding campaign? These are all valid questions and all valid opportunities. There are a lot of different ways to fund kind of a non profit organization. But when it came time to find a financial model for Startups who Follows, I really wanted to do it just a little bit different. It costs right now about somewhere between $1,000 and $2,000 a month to cover the cost of running startups. Two falls. Excuse me. And we just pay. We pay everyone that we work with and we try to pay them well. I don't ask for freebies or trades from service provider. We pay everyone a market rate because I just feel like there are a lot of nonprofits that ask for trades and free stuff and I think it can leave a bad taste in people's mouths. We really do try to pay people pretty well. There are a few contractors that work for Startups who Follows right now that we pay. Andrea Van Essen is a freelance writer that does interviews for our website. Becky Squire does the Startups who Follows newsletter and keeps our events calendar up to date. Josh Sacco does the Startup Sioux Falls podcast. And then Clint Brown also does the Startup Sioux Falls Live interview show, but he funds that through podcast sponsorships. The other other people are people we pay. And Clint kind of, I guess, raises his own money through selling sponsorships. You know, Marina Ohm, she takes the lead on organizing her in person events. So she works for MarketBee, but some of her time is lent to Startups who follows and she certainly gets paid for that through her work at MarketBeat. So nobody's doing kind of a full, you know, doing Startups who Follows. It's a full time job right now, but you know, there are several people that contribute to it and then they are paid for their efforts. For the last six months I've been paying for startups to follows kind of out of my own pocket. I've certainly done pretty well in business and it hasn't been a big deal to pay Andrea. Becky Josh and Maureen just using some of the profit from my business. Ultimately, I kind of decided it's probably time to look for an independent funding source for Startups who Follows because that is what is best for the organization long term. It also gives me an opportunity to teach others how to creatively fund a nonprofit. You know, it's never really healthy to have a community minded organization that's funded by a single individual, because if that person falls over dead or simply changes their mind, you're kind of back at square one for fundraising. Right now, that person is me. So it's not a huge deal. But ultimately, for the long term, health and for Startups who else to be an independent organization, it will need a funding source that isn't just Matt Paulson's checkbook. Right now, Startups who Follows is currently operating as a division of MarketBeat, but eventually it will either be a standalone organization or perhaps maybe a successor organization to the Zero center of Entrepreneurship. If we ever move out of that building. And I don't really know what the future looks like, but at some point startupsufology will need some kind of nonprofit leader running the organization. I figure startupsuit Falls is going to need an independent funding source at some point. It's probably better to start on that now than at the moment when we need to kind of spin it out of market beat. Startups who Follows has really always been an organization that exists for the benefit of the community of small business owners, startup founders and entrepreneurs in our city. I think it would be great if Startups who Follows would be an organization that exists not just for the community, but it's also funded by the community. So if Startups who Follows can get a few hundred small business owners to contribute 10 or $20 a month, that becomes a pretty resilient funding source than just asking for sponsorships or getting a few big donors to cover those costs. So I set up an account with a service called Patreon for Startups who Follows. And really what that Patreon is, it's a platform that allows creators, typically writers, musicians, artists or podcasters, to raise money from their community of supporters. And the idea is that anyone can contribute as little as a dollar a month to a creator to help support their work through a simple or secure online platform. In my case, I'm not a musician, not an artist, but I am a creator of an organization, kind of a curator of community. So I thought maybe we can try to make this work. So the way Patreon kind of works is that somebody who is a Creator like me, they can offer incentives to people that make a contribution for any amount. So you could say for $5 a month you're going to get a t shirt. For $10 a month you're going to get free concert tickets. Or maybe for $20 a month, you're going to get content that's exclusive to people that support us on Patreon. I think it's a really good platform for creators to generate recurring revenue from their audience. I kind of chose Patreon over some other platforms just because of the transparency that it offers to both the creators and their patrons. The patrons are the people that support the creator. You kind of know exactly how much money you're making from Patreon, you know how much they're taking. And your patrons or your supporters also know how much you're making through their patronage as well. And Patreon just makes it really easy for people to make a small recurring donation to creators and it just streamlines a lot of things that normally require invoices and gift agreements and paper checks. So we're going to try to use that as our fundraising platform and I'm kind of excited about the opportunities that it creates. So for startups who follows have kind of created a three tier system so that everyone that benefits from startups who follows can contribute something, even if it's just as little as a dollar a month. For normal people, they're just getting their business off the ground. Maybe they can contribute five or ten dollars a month and just be part of the community and know that they're supporting something good. And for people that have done pretty well in their business and they've got extra money and they feel like startups default is something they want to support and really sew into. We have some tiers for $20 a month and $50 a month where people can kind of get free merchandise and first dibs on event signups. So not huge benefits. Mostly you're doing it because you care about startups who follows. But there are some perks for being a bigger contributor as well. And then for companies that are looking for exposure to the small business community, the startup community, and really looking to advertise, we have a couple of tiers that are either $150 a month or $300 a month that are options that will give them really significant exposure to our audience through our Facebook group, our website, our email newsletter and our podcast. I'm certainly not asking everyone to write a big check every month or every year to cover the cost of Starbucks 2 follows. But I really would appreciate it if everyone who gets benefit from the startup community and Sioux Falls would do something. So even if you could only do a dollar a month or $5 a month, I don't really care how much you give, but I really would like you to become a patron of startups who follows. So My goal for 2019 is to get the Patreon account up to about $1,500 a month and that'll cover the cost of running the organization right now. And certainly I don't keep any of that money. It's not the line in that person's pocket. It goes to pay all the contractors and all the expenses of our events and the people that run the organization. So over the long term I hope to kind of grow that and generate more resources that come in from Patreon so that we can create more content, we can do more in person events, we can do lunch at Therans, we can do trainings. And it would be amazing if eventually startupsuit Falls could be a standalone organization that is funded entirely through community patronage. I really do believe that entrepreneurship is the best way to achieve financial prosperity, to gain more freedom personally and really just the best way to find charitable efforts around the globe. The reason that I can do startups reflects today is because MarketBeat has done well in business. And if I can encourage other people to do well in their businesses, eventually they'll be able to support future nonprofits and zoo followers that are doing good work with all kinds of people. So really the reason that I do startups and followers, the reason I do all the startup stuff is just because I've seen how business ownership has benefited my life personally and just the good that I'm able to do in the world and how it's been able to help my family and how I've been able to help other people as a result of the platform of my business that I've created. I think that if I can persuade a few dozen or a few hundred other people to launch businesses in our communities that'll create jobs, that will generate profit for the business owner and that will also foster charitable giving. So if I think I can do help people start businesses, I think I'll have done some good in the world. Ultimately, it would be amazing if citizens of our community got together and decided that encouraging small business and startup creation is just something that's important to our city. And if we collectively funded an organization that did just that, I think that would be something special and I think we have that opportunity today. With Startups two falls so here's my ask for you. Would you consider becoming a patron or a financial supporter of startups who falls through Patreon? I'm not especially concerned with how much you give or if it's a dollar a month or a hundred dollars a month. I don't care. Just do what's right for your budget. So if you are willing to contribute, head over to patreon.com startupsufauls set up your account. It'll take less than five minutes and it'll make a lasting impact on our community. Thank you.