What does sustainability really mean to you? What will it really take to ensure the financial self-sustainability of your organization's mission?

Imagine that your organization could live on independently into the future, no longer struggling to maintain itself financially. What if, over time, you could generate steadily increasing funds and community support for the work of your organization? What if you could set your organization on a course that would allow it to become self-sustaining over time?

At Benevon, all of our work is toward this one end: sustainable funding for the mission of every nonprofit organization. We believe this is possible if you have a clearly defined goal and then adopt a systematic approach and stay with it over time. We believe that sustainable funding for nonprofit organizations is attainable, even for the smallest of groups, if they dedicate themselves to making this happen.

The clear focus on such an objective will tease out those less than passionate about the organization's mission and will magnetize new supporters who want to be a part of securing the organization's long-term future. It will force the leadership to clarify its strategic plan, and it will forge the organization's path to broader community support. Ultimately, it will take the suffering out of funding operational needs, and allow the organization to focus on its mission—be it curing disease, cleaning up the environment, or improving the life of one person.

The first step to sustainable funding is having the courage to think the thought—to admitting to fundraising fatigue and frustration associated with years of old-school techniques, largely strong-arming, entertaining, and often downright begging. In other words, someone within the organization has got to be getting fed up with the old way. Be it the business person on the board, the founding executive director who can't see her way clear to ever retire, or the passionate development director, it takes one person to blow the whistle on the old reality and invite people to consider a new funding future for the organization—a future of sustainable funding. It means lifting your head up out of the day-to-day grind long enough to see that you are running on a never-ending treadmill of hand-to-mouth, one-year-at-a-time funding. The future is predictable and guaranteed—more treadmill, more running, more burnout, more turnover. What a depressing legacy to leave!

Imagine being able to walk away from your favorite nonprofit knowing that its future funding is secured. Imagine that such funding stability is no longer just for big universities. Much like the advanced work that went into setting up an endowed chair at a university in a special field of science or humanities, imagine someone having done all of the advance planning and work to ensure that your organization's work would live on through a stable base of funding.

For some groups, sustainable funding may come in the form of earned income, a social purpose business venture that generates revenue to offset the cost of its services, like a thrift shop or other industrial shop. Or perhaps it is from a long-term cause-related marketing relationship with a corporate funder whose business objectives are complementary with your work.

For most groups, though, the key to financial sustainability, ultimately, is an endowment fund. The corpus of that fund, when invested wisely (often with the assistance of the local community foundation where it can be pooled with the assets of other nonprofits and managed prudently), generates enough interest income to meet or exceed the annual operating gap the organization needs to raise each year.

Impossible and out of reach as that may seem, it has to start somewhere. I interviewed twelve organizations of all sizes that each had a significant endowment fund relative to the size of its respective budget. I asked them how their endowment came to be and how the earnings are used today. Mind you, each of these groups was still running an active, donor-centered major gifts program, involving new people, and following our model year after year. They did not seem like the kind of organizations you'd imagine having a solid endowment.

In most cases they were reticent to talk about their endowment, and not for fear of violating any confidentiality. It was almost as if they felt guilty about having their basic needs handled and not having to suffer any longer about money. They were effectively off the "treadmill" and they were as shocked about that fact as anyone. In every case, they acknowledged the foresight and vision of someone who had come before their time and said, "This is enough. We've got a great organization here, doing great work. We need to leave it knowing that it will be self-sustaining, knowing that the people in charge will be able to focus on fulfilling the mission and not have to worry about their next fundraising scheme to bail them out."

For most of these organizations, that didn't happen overnight. It took years of planning and action to build the base of individuals in the community who truly understood the mission and were committed to the long term viability of the organization. Week after week, year after year, they told their story to anyone who would listen, gradually strengthening their board and volunteer support.

Many of the dedicated, smart people who really cared about the missions of these organizations eventually asked the same questions: "How much money would it take to endow the operational funding gap here? How much would it really cost to achieve sustainability for this organization?"

In other words, they began to quantify the problem; they did the math. They didn't back away when they saw the size of the number. Then, systematically, just as they had built their base of annual donors and eventually more major supporters, they began working to fund an endowment. They brought in the outside experts to help them in the process, perhaps to start a planned giving program and to run an endowment campaign. They never lost sight of their goal: financial self-sustainability.

The gifts flowed in. Outright gifts, planned gifts, foundation gifts. And all the while, they kept their annual unrestricted giving program growing, introducing their programs and services to new people in the community, spreading the word, involving new people on the board and as volunteers. These people, in turn, brought their own vast resources to bear.

Now, years later, no one can quite remember how it all got started. No one was looking to take the credit. No one is there to retell the story and most folks don't much care. What they know is that the foresight of those initial visionaries has allowed them to continue doing the important work of their mission while building their individual funding base every year.

Someone way back then (or maybe just a few years ago) thought the thought. Someone said, "this is doable" or, "it's sure worth doing" and they rallied a strong team and did the work to make it happen.

You may be that person or part of that team for your favorite nonprofit. Without you and that team, it won't happen. Stand up and be counted. Get the process going. Sustainability is within the reach of your organization.