Justin is Funraise's CEO, a co-founder, and a bad-ass, experienced nonprofit fundraiser. Like a true fundraiser-turned-founder, he breaks down the concepts behind Funraise's mission everywhere he can make nonprofits' voices heard.

When it comes to growth, there are really only a few levers that can be pulled to accelerate it.

The challenge many nonprofits have is that those levers are traditionally labeled as overhead expenses, which discourages many organizations from experimenting.

We need to remove the stigma of overhead spend at rapid speed.

Here's why:
→ Eradicating hunger and poverty...
→ Addressing climate change...
→ Ending racial inequality...

...is going to be EXPENSIVE.

As donors, we can either fund incremental change or rapid change. Rapid change will take more upfront investment.

This means more overhead.

Want an example?

Organization A has a $1M annual budget. Here's how they are expected to survive:

$250K at most to fund people, fundraising etc.
$750K to fund programs (impact).

^This will be VERY hard to grow program impact.
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WHAT IF...

Organization A was allowed to spend 50-60% at first on people, fundraising etc?

It would be more likely that they would grow at a 100%+ rate year over year, generating tens of millions in program impact instead of a few million.
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Choose rapid impact over an arbitrary financial ratio that makes ZERO sense for any business model.