Books / The First 90 Days of a Nonprofit Founder
The First 90 Days of a Nonprofit Founder
by Steve Kennedy
Form. File. Recruit.
Ninety days, one week at a time, from an idea to an incorporated, organized nonprofit with its exemption application filed, its state registration done and its first donors thanked. Each week has a short story from an invented nonprofit facing the same problem you are, the work in plain steps with the reason behind each one, the mistakes people make, and five things to have done by Friday.
When the book is out it sells here, with checkout by Stripe and delivery by email from BookFunnel, the same way Tips for the Day does.
Thirteen weeks
Form · Days 1 to 35
- Week 1Why This Organization?
- Week 2One Sentence and a Name
- Week 3Who Sits at the Table
- Week 4Making It Legal
- Week 5Bylaws and the First Meeting
File · Days 36 to 63
- Week 6A Number, a Bank Account, Two Signatures
- Week 7The Four Policies
- Week 8Asking the IRS
- Week 9Your State Wants to Know You
Recruit · Days 64 to 90
- Week 10The First Budget
- Week 11The First Forty Donors
- Week 12Volunteers, Insurance and Real Risk
- Week 13Day 90
A sample: how Week 1 begins
Week 1: Why This Organization? The story.
The chain snapped at 10:40 on a Tuesday night, on the shoulder of Route 9, four miles from the Brenner Logistics warehouse and nine minutes before Luis Ortega's shift started.
He walked it. He was forty minutes late, and it was his second late night that month, which at Brenner meant a written warning. The next morning he wheeled the bike into the shop where Tess Navarro had fixed bicycles for twelve years and asked her, very politely, how much a chain cost, because he needed to know whether he could afford it before payday.
Tess fixed it for nothing. She had been fixing bikes for nothing out of her garage on Saturdays for a year by then, mostly for people who rode the night shift because the last bus left downtown at 9:50. That morning she did the arithmetic she had been avoiding. Thirty-one bikes since spring. A waiting list taped to her garage door. A brother who kept asking whether she was running a charity, and if so, why she was paying for all of it.
She was not running a charity. Not yet. This book is about the ninety days in which she decided whether to start one, and then did.
What comes with the book
- The 90-day checklist and a printable 13-week calendar.
- A founding board recruitment kit: the ask letter and the director agreement.
- A bylaws worksheet, a conflict of interest policy sample and an organizational meeting minutes template.
- A Form 1023 readiness checklist and a first-year budget in Excel.
- A state links sheet: where to find each state's corporations office, charity regulator and tax department.
- Works on paper, in a spreadsheet or in any system you use now. Each week ends with a short note on where All In One Nonprofit does that week's work.
- General guidance, not legal, tax or accounting advice.
Free on an annual plan
Organizations on a paid annual plan of All In One Nonprofit get every book in the series free, inside the platform. In your first year? The Launch Plan is six months of AIONP Essentials for a one-time $199: https://www.allinonenonprofit.com/launch/
Tell me when each book is out
One short email when a new book in The First 90 Days series is published, and the first chapter of each free. Unsubscribe from any email with one click.
About the author
Steve Kennedy is the founder of All In One Nonprofit. He has served volunteer-run organizations for decades, as a director, as president and as the person everyone called when the tools were too technical. More about Steve
The whole series
Six books, for the founder, the board, the executive director, the treasurer, the development director and the consultant: https://www.allinonenonprofit.com/books/