If you think this approach to building sustainable funding from mission-focused individual donors might be a good fit for you, here are some ideas for how you can start educating yourself and your team about how the model could work for you:

1. Make a list of the reasons why you volunteer or work at your organization. What's so special about the mission that keeps you coming back? Why does the work of your organization need to be sustained for the future? Passion for the mission is the starting place for everything in our model, and it's the perfect first question to be asking yourself: Why am I so passionate about this group?
   
   
2. Visit our Web site to take our Suffering Survey. Find out if you're suffering about fundraising, and if so, how to end the suffering!
   
   
3. Define sustainable funding for your group. Keep talking to others at your organization about the possibility of attaining sustainable funding. Have a discussion about how you would quantify that for your group: endowment, a major gifts program, more individual donors, a reserve fund, etc.
   
   
4. Make a list of all the things your group already does to raise money (e.g., candy sales, golf tournaments, parties, auctions, or mailings). Rate them in terms of their dollar return to your organization. Then rate them according to the amount of work each one takes to produce. Lastly, rate them according to how mission-focused each event is. Discuss your findings with your group. How satisfied or frustrated are others in your group about the way you are doing your fundraising now?
   
   
5. Make a list of all the program-related events your group puts on in the course of a year (e.g., the children's music concert, grandparents' visiting day, open house at your summer camp, graduation day for your adult literacy class, or beach clean-up day for your environmental group). Notice that you could be opening up some of these events to the community as a way to educate people and connect them to your work.
   
   
6. Watch our free online video, Seventeen Minutes to Sustainable Funding. Learn how the model works. See what questions it triggers for you.
   
   
7. Have five people on your board watch the seventeen-minute video.
   
   
8. Get on one of our free, regularly scheduled one-hour topical conference calls for faith groups, youth groups, health and human services, or education groups, and listen to what other people in your field have to say about how the model has worked for them. Ask questions about how this could be customized to the unique needs of your organization. For more information, visit our conference call calendar page.
   
   
9. Come to one of our live introductory sessions. For more information, visit our in-person introductory session page.
   
   
10. If your group seems interested, call or e-mail Benevon to request a private thirty-minute call with one of Benevon's trained staff or coaches to get your questions answered about how the model could be customized to your organization's work.
    
    

For more information on getting started with the Benevon Model, listen to a podcast from Terry Axelrod. (Note that this audio file is large and may take some time to download.)