Starting a Nonprofit or For Profit?

Greetings, friends. So I was recently asked about what it takes to manage an organization, a nonprofit organization. And I mean, what is it? What is it? How hard is it? How hard can it be possibly to, to run your dream, essentially manage something that you feel very passionate about. In my case, as many of you may be aware, I literally wanted to create a nonprofit organization to give back to my community years and years ago. During the time that I was incarcerated, the dream, the vision came alive. I executed on that dream. And then I, I realized at some point that, you know what, passion doesn't necessarily pay the bills. Passion doesn't necessarily take care of your family for the long haul. And when I say long haul, I'm talking about generational wealth. It doesn't necessarily take care of that. So What is my advice to people that are interested in starting their own nonprofit organization? My advice to you is to keep your day job, do your nonprofit as something that you just want to do on the side, or do your nonprofit full-time but have an exit strategy, have a plan for other resources to take care of your family. Resources in the form of revenues, income streams that you're going to need to survive. A lot of this information wasn't taught to us. Unfortunately, it wasn't taught to us. And who is us? I'm talking about individuals Black and brown folks, formerly incarcerated folks, marginalized folks, system-impacted folks. We wasn't taught a lot of these things. Raised in public school systems where the community is not suburban or, you know, what we call upper class or upper middle class, whatever you want to call it, right? We wasn't taught a lot of this, so it's very important to know. I, I don't advise people to look at a nonprofit as a money bag where you're going to make all this money and be rich. If you're going into becoming a nonprofit owner to become rich, it is not the space for you. You should avoid that. Um, because what ends up happening is you'll find yourself in trouble. You'll find yourself in a lot of situations because a nonprofit organization is a public trust. It's a public trust. You receive grants, fundraising money from donors, and, um, some contracts and opportunities that are tied to a public, trust that you're in as a nonprofit organization. Funds are monitored, money is monitored, and you can't do what you want with it. Um, a salary for a CEO or ED, executive director, exceeding a certain amount over an annual gross amount of the organization could set off red flags. So if you're only a $1 million, $2 million nonprofit organization annually, but as an executive director or founder, you're pulling more than $200,000 annually, that might set off red flags. Plus, you have a board of directors. Your board of directors typically are the ones that set your salary, set your salary, even for founders. Yes, even for founders. Um, the board of directors typically set that. So I'm just sharing this with you. I'm impromptu video I'm putting on for you just to— my friends recently, a lot of my friends actually been asking me about this. Uh, you know, they have ideas and they want to, uh, you know, they have dreams, they have goals, they have desires similar that I had to start a nonprofit organization. Um, but again, I learned very quickly that this couldn't be my end-all be-all for earning a living and, and making money. Having the grandchildren— me with 12 grandchildren and 6 children— I said, no, no, no, no, no, no, this can't be it. This, this is not how we're gonna do this. So at some point I learned very quickly that I had to become a consultant. I had to become a public speaker. I had to become an author. I had to become business owner in other spaces. I had to find out what is gonna actually take for me to take care of my family long term, for the long haul. Meaning after I'm long gone and passed away, what is it going to look like for my family? Is there going to be an existence of, uh, you know, generational wealth that I can leave to my children and grandchildren? And they say, oh, Grandpa started this thing, or Grandpa created this, and, and we're continuing on. And one of the best areas to look into for this is, um, real estate, of course. Real estate, of course. I have other business, uh, um, you know, ventures that I'm involved in, like, you know, Enagic. You might be familiar with— give you a little peek over there, the board. See that? Enagic. So that's another way, uh, for passive income, you know. Um, I love it for the water. That's one aspect, but just passive income, uh, opportunity, that's just, uh, one of the ways. I'm sitting here in my office, uh, as Timeless. Today I'm CEO of Timeless, doing my job as a CEO and founder. But again, pay attention, pay attention, and, um, understand that If you're someone that's very interested in starting your own nonprofit, just think about these things that I'm saying to you. Um, number one, um, is it the end-all be-all? Is it something that you're gonna collect a pension from, uh, and retire on and have a, a nice pension, 401k, Social Security, whatever, to live off of? To your standard of living and life, uh, uh, livelihood that's suitable for you as a human being? You know, you have to ask yourself those questions. If you know that, you know, after your role as a founder, as a CEO of a nonprofit, that your lifestyle would not be maintained in retirement because you no longer in that role as executive director of your nonprofit. Then passive income, multiple strong streams of wealth, of income, um, uh, generational wealth. Start thinking about all those things. Think about how are you going to create wealth for yourself, passive as well as, you know, active. You know, you opening a store or starting a business, writing a few books, things like that, becoming a public speaker. All of these things are critically important because if you don't think about them now while you have this desire to become a nonprofit owner, you're going to regret it later. And, and if you try to use the nonprofit to do that with, it's not going to work and you'll fail miserably and you'll probably find yourself in trouble. That's my piece. I appreciate being able to share this with you all. Sign on with me, you know, check out my previous videos that I have here on my life and subscribe, subscribe, share with your family and friends, anybody that you know that's been system impacted by incarceration, you have loved ones that's been to prison or jail, follow me, subscribe to me. I'm here for you to support you as your, your, your business coach, your life coach, your personal coach. Your success coach and speaker at your upcoming event. Talk to you again soon. Peace.