Money Is Just a Tool: Building Sustainable Nonprofits with Sharmon Lebby

So you're an expert in, you know, supporting or consulting nonprofits.

So maybe like to maybe get it out there first, like why

in

the first place people should even begin to think about this path.

Is that a fair start to our conversation? Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

I personally find nonprofits to be this amazing catalyst for change, mostly because of the people who start them and the people who run them and the people who are working in them.

I'm a very people-centered oriented person, as you can tell.

But I think these people are just all about change.

They're all about creating impact in their communities.

They're all about pushing the world into different and better places.

And because of that, I think nonprofits are just these really super incredible entities.

Um, and again, just catalysts for change within our world.

That's great.

So, you know, maybe just like a specific, uh, angle or insight, like, okay, I have, uh, already a nonprofit in Malaysia and now I like to, uh, sort of venture into the United States, right? To make sure, because people say if you have a pilot that works in the United States, it can be replicated anywhere in the world, right? So what kind of like hard questions would you just hit on me? Like, you know, okay, Faiz, this is, you know, or to anybody new, just say, they were like, okay, I want to start a nonprofit.

I have this course that I'm passionate about.

What are the questions that, you know, the first one that you probably ask them to think about, I guess.

always ask like, is your nonprofit really needed? And so I think that means taking a good hard look at your community, the people that you want to serve and really thinking about whether the idea that you have or the passion that you have for this organization is filling an actual gap or if it's just like this really cool idea that you have in your head, right? So I think a lot of it takes, doing some research and figuring out other organizations that already exist that might be doing similar work.

And again, if you are, you know, different enough from them that you should start your own organization, because a lot of times we build like these separate organizations when they could really come up under another organization, right? They could be a program, you under an organization that already exists, or sometimes you can just collaborate with some other people, whether it's businesses.

And I think it's really important to think like, do I need my own thing or is it better to strengthen what's already there?

Oh, that's a good way, right? But you know, sometimes you sort of derail someone's dream, right? By telling them the truth.

I know.

Yeah, yeah.

So what has been your experience so far? I'm so sorry.

I'm like.