Venture Forth!: The Essential Guide to Starting a Moneymaking Business in Your Nonprofit Organization

by Rolfe Larson

How to find, test, and launch a successful nonprofit venture Venture Forth! The Essential Guide to Starting a Moneymaking Business in Your Nonprofit Organization is the most complete step-by-step guide on the topic. Building on the experience of many organizations, this handbook gives you a time-tested approach for finding, testing, and launching a successful nonprofit business venture. Whether your organization is large or small, the book's seven steps guide you through the entire process-from idea to complete business plan. Examples, tips, timelines, and reproducible worksheets help you assess the strengths and weaknesses of venture ideas to find the most promising ones; determine which ideas fit your mission, resources, and skills; make solid decisions based on data rather than impressions; prepare a complete-and reassuring-financial analysis showing your breakeven point and future profitability; write a compelling, detailed business plan and get it approved; and get ready to start the new business! Nonprofits with established ventures will find these steps useful for evaluating, expanding, or improving their business. Even if you don't intend to earn a dime in venture income, you can use the book's process to improve the financial health of your current programs. Lower your risk and increase your chance of success with Venture Forth! and start generating earned-income while reducing your dependence on grants.

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Kathy (McDowell) Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book wasn't exactly what I had in mind. I'm interested in starting a nonprofit corporation; I wasn't really looking to add other moneymaking ventures to it already. However, the book gave me questions to think about and reasons why I could do better and perhaps save myself some stress by pursuing a venture organization. Maybe later down the road.
If you're looking for a book with copies of actual forms you will need, this isn't the book for you. This book has worksheets and questions, zero copies of forms.