Books / Tips for the Day
All In One Nonprofit: Tips for the Day
by Steve Kennedy
Three tips a day. One year. A nonprofit that lasts.
Every day of the year brings three short tips: one for starting a nonprofit, one for running it, and one for growing it. The book follows the nonprofit calendar, so the filings, deadlines and seasons arrive when they do in real life: the W-2s and 1099s in January, the annual return in May, Giving Tuesday and the extended return in November, the year-end rules in December.
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Forming the organization, the board, the exemption application and the first filings.
Records, compliance dates, donors and volunteers, kept the way funders and regulators expect.
Appeals, grants, events, planned giving and the habits that bring donors back.
A sample day: January 1
Day 1 of 365. Week 1: Why this organization.
Write the one sentence first
Before a name, a board or a bank account, write one sentence: who you serve, what changes for them, and how. If a stranger cannot repeat it back after hearing it once, it is not done. Every later decision, from the bylaws to the first grant, is measured against this sentence, so spend a morning on it now and you will save a year of drift later.
The year opens, the books close
January 1 is the first day of the new year and the last chance to close the old one cleanly. Before any new spending, confirm every December transaction is recorded and categorized, every receipt is attached, and the December bank statement is in hand. The annual return, the state report and every donor acknowledgment this year will be built from those December numbers.
Do this today: confirm December's transactions are entered and the bank balance matches the statement.
Thank before you ask
The first calls of the year are thank-you calls, not asks. Pick the ten people who gave most in December, or gave for the first time, and call them this week with no request attached. Donors who are thanked by a person within a week of a gift give again at a much higher rate than donors who get only a receipt, and January is when they are deciding whether you noticed.
What is in the book
- 365 days, 1,095 tips, each day on its own page, January 1 to December 31.
- A weekly theme, and a "Do this today" line on most days.
- A page on moving the dates if your fiscal year does not end December 31.
- Works on paper, in a spreadsheet or in any system you use now. Where a task lives in All In One Nonprofit, the day says where.
- General guidance, not legal, tax or accounting advice.
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
Rather have one day at a time?
The three tips for today are free at https://www.allinonenonprofit.com/tips/, and you can get them by email every morning.