Whitneyville Cultural Commons

WCC image

Revitalization in Hamden

Laine and Jennifer Harris realized something — there was tremendous potential in two historic church buildings in the urban neighborhood of Whitneyville in Hamden. Then the Whitneyville Cultural Commons was born.

 

By renovating and revitalizing this area, they envisioned setting up a community center with education programming, a place to host cultural events, and an innovative coworking space for local businesses or nonprofits. Without taking away the valuable church services, they took action and began renovating the buildings.

 

WCC logo

Whitneyville Cultural Commons Mission

When Laine Harris would look at the historic church buildings at the corner of Whitney and Putnam avenues in the Whitneyville urban neighborhood of Hamden, CT, he saw two possibilities.

 

The first: A For Sale sign followed by a demolition crew followed by a chain store. Not good, he realized.

 

The second: A dream. I can save this place, he imagined.

 

Lucky for all of us, Laine chose the second possibility by putting his retirement money on the line to buy the buildings and commons space they are built on. He and his wife Jen Brosious renovated the beautiful structures with the idea of establishing a co-work space with social and cultural events, allowing the small congregation that built the church in 1834 to continue worshiping there on Sundays.

 

In business (and in life, for that matter), this is what’s called “being an angel.”

 

If not for Laine and Jen’s generosity and vision, it’s hard to say what would have happened to this place by now. But what about the future? Even for angels, an enormous project like this is costly and physically draining.

 

Lucky for Laine and Jen, community members stepped up and formed a non-profit corporation, the Whitneyville Cultural Commons, to help the community center at 1253 Whitney Ave. sustain itself and grow, (as well as ensuring that Laine and Jen can actually retire when they are ready).

 

As a non-profit, the WCC will thrive with community support to be a gathering place to work, share, create, learn, play, and enrich each other’s lives.

 

With everyone channeling their inner angels, there will always be a tree-filled common in Whitneyville and the two church buildings will grace us with their iconic and historic presence into the future. It’s a job for all of us now, and no demolition crews need apply.

Coworking Spaces

Cowork is a style of work that involves shared workplace and independent activity. Employees are typically not a part of the same organization, but merely share in the office space and other equipment shared at a location.

 

Coworking is especially attractive for work-at-home professionals, independent contractors, and workers who travel frequently.

 

A major benefit of coworking is the possibility of knowledge share. Because people from all different organizations and backgrounds congregate at these locations, it is possible to share ideas, discuss concepts, and fine-tune theories without being limited to coworkers of the same business. Sense of community is a large, and essential, part of the coworking process.

 

WCC offers coworking spaces with different purchasing options — from a single day to a monthly pass.

 

WCC Coworking Options

Rental Spaces

In addition to coworking, WCC offers several beautiful areas for hosting events or parties.

 

These rentals range from an auditorium, to a sanctuary, to a study lounge, and of course many conference rooms.

 

WCC Rental Spaces

Progress Being Made

The Harris Family and the WCC’s Executive Director Robert Sheiman are equally excited to have a resourceful and energy-efficient space for his community.

 

From the Hartford Courant:  “It’s been amazing to see the growth in use of the historic properties over the last three years, for all manner of purposes. We’ve had local, Quinnipiac University graduates use space to start their first web development company Checkmate Digital and create new jobs in Hamden,” said Sheiman. “We’ve gotten to host annual dances and fundraising events from local nonprofits like Fellowship Place, Jack and Jill Foundation, BBYO and New Haven Farms. Not to mention the dozens of local arts groups and new churches bringing dances, concerts, worship and theater to Whitneyville by holding them at the WCC. It’s been heart-warming proof that a community resource center is actually needed and desired. There’s nothing more validating to this project than the consistent use of it by all members of the diverse Greater New Haven community.”

 

There are ongoing plans for the grounds to become the “commons” for the Whitneyville neighborhood. In addition to the old church house, Harris has his sights set on the original Greek Revival Church, which is still used by a number of local congregations.

 

As the organization continues to succeed and becoming financially viable it intends to expand its reach and grow its economic development initiatives in Whitneyville.

The Benefits of Downtown Revitalization

While the short-term costs are typically too high for immediate ROI (e.g., shutting down businesses, renovation and construction of buildings, drawing people back in), the long-term returns in human energy far outweigh them.

 

Organizations like WCC are willing to take on the risk of developing these areas, at no profit, in order to make the place community better for all of its residents.

 

The major improvement comes with the business growth to the area. Increased contracts (coworking, rentals, other events) lead to more economic activity in surrounding areas which leads to improved employment and job gains in businesses and nonprofits.

 

In addition, the tax base grows due to increase property values. This further attracts economic activity, residential movement, and overall energy to the area.

 

Whitneyville Cultural Commons is on a mission to do all of these things.

Donate to Whitneyville Cultural Commons

To donate to this fantastic cause and help revitalize downtown Hamden, click here. Every dollar makes a difference in improving the area and adding value for organizations and individuals to take advantage of for many years to come.

Human Energy: 3 Principles for Changing the World

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Introduction to human energy

The great scientist and inventor Nikola Tesla coined the term human energy in an essay he wrote in 1900, in which he related all human progress to simple physics.

This idea has largely gone unnoticed amid his myriad other inventions and original thoughts. But it shouldn’t any longer. We are going to re-examine his ideas on human energy and find ways to relate them to actually making a difference in our world. After all, that was what he was aiming for.

Though we may never be able to comprehend human life, we know certainly that it is a movement, of whatever nature it be. The existence of movement unavoidably implies a body which is being moved and a force which is moving it. Hence, wherever there is life, there is a mass moved by a force. All mass possesses inertia, all force tends to persist.

Owing to this universal property and condition, a body, be it at rest or in motion, tends to remain in the same state, and a force, manifesting itself anywhere and through whatever cause, produces an equivalent opposing force, and as an absolute necessity of this it follows that every movement in nature must be rhythmical.

In other words: The human mass is moved forward by an accelerating force and slowed by an impeding force that is both partly negative and partly frictional.

Tesla believed the fundamental goal of all scientists should be to solve the problem of increasing this human energy—something we will explore now.

Click here to read Nikola Tesla’s original essay The Problem of Increasing Human Energy.

A little science

Tesla’s idea was grounded firmly in the principles of thermodynamics. He advised that we should conceive of man as a mass that is urged on by some force. The energy of this mass can be measured by well-known principles.

Energy equation image

Man, however, is not an ordinary mass, consisting of spinning atoms and molecules, and containing merely heat-energy. He is a mass possessed of certain higher qualities by reason of the creative principle of life with which he is endowed. His mass, as the water in an ocean wave, is being continuously exchanged, new taking the place of the old. Not only this, but he grows, propagates, and dies, thus altering his mass independently, both in bulk and density. What is most wonderful of all, he is capable of increasing or diminishing his velocity of movement by the mysterious power he possesses by appropriating more or less energy from other substance, and turning it into motive energy.

But in any given moment we may ignore these slow changes and assume that human energy is measured by half the product of man’s mass with the square of a certain hypothetical velocity. However we may compute this velocity, and whatever we may take as the standard of its measure, we must, in harmony with this conception, come to the conclusion that the great problem of science is, and always will be, to increase the energy thus defined.

What does this mean?

Man, or mass, is pushed forward by some force. This force is resisted by a second force, partly frictional and partly negative, which acts in a direction exactly opposite.

Mechanically, think of a train moving up a hill. Gravity acts as the resisting force. Socially, think of a student moving through the school system. Poor schools act as the resisting force. Making sense?


Human energy image

In this diagram:
M represents the mass
f represents the force acting positively
R represents the resisting force

Tesla describes these variables in physics terms:

In accordance with the preceding, the human energy will then be given by the product: ½ M * V2 = ½ * M * V * V, in which M is the total mass of man in the ordinary interpretation of the term “mass,” and V is a certain hypothetical velocity, which, in the present state of science, we are unable exactly to define and determine.

To increase the human energy is, therefore, equivalent to increasing this product.

There are three ways to increase this human energy:

1. Increase the mass
2. Reduce the resisting force
3. Increase the velocity or impelling force

Each solution involves different degrees of effort and impact, each of which will now be discussed in detail.

1. Increase the mass in human energy

Back to the concept of mass – remember, we equate this to population, in human energy terms.

Viewed generally, there are obviously two ways of increasing the mass of mankind: first, by aiding and maintaining those forces and conditions which tend to increase it; and, second, by opposing and reducing those which tend to diminish it.

In other words: the greater the population, the greater the human energy. Naturally, we need to do our best to preserve this population and increase it. Assuming the same level of production per capita, a greater population on its own will be good for society. Although we know greater populations require more land, resources, jobs, food, etc., if we can assume positive returns in productivity per person, then growing populations are good for the human energy system.


World population image

More workers, more output, more customers, and so on. This is what we want. How do we achieve this?

The mass will be increased by careful attention to health, by substantial food, by moderation, by regularity of habits, by promotion of marriage, by conscientious attention to children, and, generally stated, by the observance of all the many precepts and laws of religion and hygiene. But in adding new mass to the old, three cases again present themselves.

Either the mass added is of the same velocity as the old, or it is of a smaller or of a higher velocity.

Tesla relates this to a train running with 100 locomotives on a track. To increase the energy of this moving mass, you decide to add 4 locomotives.

If the added locomotives are of the same velocity, the total train energy will increase 4%.

If, however, you add 4 locomotives of half the average velocity of the first 100 to this train, then the total energy will increase by 1%. On the other hand, adding 4 locomotives at twice the velocity as average will increase the total train energy by 16%.

While this is a critical piece of the human energy equation, velocity will be examined in the third part of this guide. For now we will focus simply on the addition of compartments to the train.

How do we increase the mass?

Things that harm our bodies and shorten our lifespans can be though to reduce the human mass. A combination of voluntary vices like drugs, alcohol, and harmful activities as well as involuntary events like disease and natural disasters all play a part in reducing the mass.

It makes sense then that reducing the frequency of these activities would be in the best interest here.

While voluntary vices have a significant impact on society, reducing the involuntary things like disease provides a much better long-term return on investment.

For every person who perishes from the effects of a stimulant, at least a thousand die from the consequences of drinking impure water.

This precious fluid, which daily infuses new life into us, is likewise the chief vehicle through which disease and death enter our bodies.

Ensuring people have clean drinking water in sufficient quantities should be a top concern in all areas. Along the same lines, we should concern ourselves with feeding everyone healthy food at reasonable prices.

A person’s health is made up of a combination of internal and external factors. Beyond mere genetics, a person’s choices and environment greatly impact the long-term health he can expect to achieve.


Healthcare components image

Source: Stanford Social Innovation Review

So in addition to minimizing tobacco and alcohol use, a person should focus just as hard on supplying her body sufficient water and food.

How to provide good and plentiful food is, therefore, a most important question of the day. On the general principles the raising of cattle as a means of providing food is objectionable, because, in the sense interpreted above, it must undoubtedly tend to the addition of mass of a “smaller velocity.” It is certainly preferable to raise vegetables, and I think, therefore, that vegetarianism is a commendable departure from the established barbarous habit. That we can subsist on plant food and perform our work even to advantage is not a theory, but a well-demonstrated fact. Many races living almost exclusively on vegetables are of superior physique and strength.

There is no doubt that some plant food, such as oatmeal, is more economical than meat, and superior to it in regard to both mechanical and mental performance. Such food, moreover, taxes our digestive organs decidedly less, and, in making us more contented and sociable, produces an amount of good difficult to estimate. In view of these facts every effort should be made to stop the wanton and cruel slaughter of animals, which must be destructive to our morals. To free ourselves from animal instincts and appetites, which keep us down, we should begin at the very root from which we spring: we should effect a radical reform in the character of the food.

Bottom line: Beyond merely increasing the population, we must ensure the population is of sufficient health. This can be achieved through clean water, healthy food, and reduction in unhealthy activities.

How do we quantify mass?

Mass is the most easily quantified component of human energy. It is basically population. Or more specifically it can be broken out as the number of residents, taxpayers, businesses, and so on. Residents make up the basic population count in any area. In addition to this, they add production value through buying things, working, and paying taxes. Similarly, businesses employ individuals, sell things to people, and pay taxes.

To increase the energy in any given city or state, it therefore makes sense to increase the number of residents who pay taxes and stimulate the economy through working and buying things.

You might also want to count the number of residents who are home- or land-owners, because this aids in property and other tax development.

Types of activities that increase population:

To increase the mass, we must attract people to an area. Rising property values, good schools, safe neighborhoods, and job opportunities are all attractive qualities in an area that wants to attract permanent residents.


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Source: Active Rain

Naturally, the degree of each of these characteristics will vary depending on the type of people you want to attract. A bustling city looking to boost its economy will look to improve its infrastructure to attract business investment and property purchases. These will tend to increase job opportunities and the number of people who flock to fill them.

A quiet town, on the other hand, might look to keep its overall mass down, in order to preserve the lower overall costs of running the government and to keep the property values relatively high so as to reduce the number of people moving in.

Any place that wants to increase its mass must focus on improving the qualities that people will most likely move for. On the other hand, a place that’s content with its mass must focus on maintaining the qualities that keep the current people in place.

2. Reduce the resisting force on human energy

The simplest way to increase the human energy in any system is to increase the overall mass. But earlier we explored the priority of adding mass of a higher velocity to increase the energy at a higher rate.

The velocity has to do with both the force moving an object forward and the impeding force applied against it.

As before stated, the force which retards the onward movement of man is partly frictional and partly negative. To illustrate this distinction I may name, for example, ignorance, stupidity, and imbecility as some of the purely frictional forces, or resistances devoid of any directive tendency.

On the other hand, visionariness, insanity, self-destructive tendency, religious fanaticism, and the like, are all forces of a negative character, acting in definite directions. To reduce or entirely overcome these dissimilar retarding forces, radically different methods must be employed.

One knows, for instance, what a fanatic may do, and one can take preventive measures, can enlighten, convince, and, possibly direct him, turn his vice into virtue; but one does not know, and never can know, what a brute or an imbecile may do, and one must deal with him as with a mass, inert, without mind, let loose by the mad elements.

Tesla was clear in distinguishing between frictional and negative forces.

Frictional force acts in an unpredictable manner and cannot be counted on to be reversed or used to increase mass in a positive way. There are certain disabilities that are inherent in man that serve to limit specific individuals’ capacities (whether they be physical, mental, psychological, whatever). These limitations cannot typically be reapplied in a positive way, but their negative impact can certainly be reduced.

Negative force, on the other hand, acts in a directionally opposite way from positive forces. Think of things like hate, violence, and war. These typically surface through ignorance between groups of people. The inability or unwillingness of one group to understand another, often builds tension and conflict that leads to destructive forces in society.

Unlike frictional forces, these can be reversed. The energy is real with hate, it is just misdirected. Opening up a hateful person’s eyes to the other side’s perspective has the power to turn that negative force positive.

A negative force always implies some quality, not infrequently a high one, though badly directed, which it is possible to turn to good advantage; but a directionless, frictional force involves unavoidable loss. Evidently, then, the first and general answer to the above question is: turn all negative force in the right direction and reduce all frictional force.

There can be no doubt that, of all the frictional resistances, the one that most retards human movement is ignorance.

Think of your ordinary, every-day language barrier. You may know some people who speak English as a second language, and you may find it harder to engage with them. Maybe communication is a little choppy. Certain cultural cues are lost in the exchange. This is exaggerated many times over among two people who don’t have any way to speak the same language.


Language barrier image

Without the ability to communicate effectively with another person, the relationship suffers inherent friction.

Now add to the mix differences in religious beliefs, customs, work habits, priorities, and other things. You end up with a situation where it is near impossible for many multiple societies to see each other’s perspectives and deal effectively on a large scale. Even differences in currency have the ability to spark massive economic reforms across countries. Naturally, energy is lost translating meaning between people.

Not without reason said that man of wisdom, Buddha: “Ignorance is the greatest evil in the world.” The friction which results from ignorance, and which is greatly increased owing to the numerous languages and nationalities, can be reduced only by the spread of knowledge and the unification of the heterogeneous elements of humanity. No effort could be better spent.

The ability to see other peoples’ perspectives is the ultimate way to reduce this ignorance, and in turn reduce the friction holding back human energy. Breaking down the ignorance that separates people of different races, nationalities, religions, and anything else, will enable the impelling force behind human energy to face less resistance.

Conflict image

Now, let’s take the example of war. Every prudent country funds a standing army—a line of defense to protect itself in international conflicts. The mere presence of a military implies something bad is going to happen, typically resulting in a loss of population (or mass).

But however ignorance may have retarded the onward movement of man in times past, it is certain that, nowadays, negative forces have become of greater importance. Among these there is one of far greater moment than any other. It is called organized warfare.

When we consider the millions of individuals, often the ablest in mind and body, the flower of humanity, who are compelled to a life of inactivity and unproductiveness, the immense sums of money daily required for the maintenance of armies and war apparatus, representing ever so much of human energy, all the effort uselessly spent in the production of arms and implements of destruction, the loss of life and the fostering of a barbarous spirit, we are appalled at the inestimable loss to mankind which the existence of these deplorable conditions must involve. What can we do to combat best this great evil?

I mean, would we really need armed forces if we actually had complete and total peace worldwide? Of course not. Law and order absolutely require the presence of organized force.

If peace could be attained among societies, or even within our cities and towns, we could re-direct the wasteful energy spent on defense and criminal justice toward something more “velocity-adding” to society.

How do we quantify frictional and negative forces?

This is a much more difficult task than quantifying mass. Examining the activities that work against societal progress requires counting the number of negative events impacting the population.

Things that act in a negative direction against the human mass include crime, fires, natural disasters, and other destructive events. Things that act as friction toward progress include disease (mental, physical, and emotional), poor infrastructure, and anything that stands in the way of clear communication and dealing between different groups of people.

Types of activities that reduce the friction:

According to Adam Smith, governments serve three major purposes:

1. Defense against foreign powers
2. Law, order, and justice among its own people
3. Enabling of commerce through education and infrastructure

Certainly the first two categories address needs related to frictional and negative forces. And a good portion of the third category does as well.

General administration in governments allows for their continuing operation. Thought typically seen as a cost center for taxpayer dollars, it is important that some minimum level of government exist to maintain and enable a certain amount of public services.

Public safety departments help ensure the maintenance of the current population. Fire, police, and emergency medical services all work together to keep people alive, reduce crime rates, and limit destruction from negative events.

Health and welfare departments (including hospitals) also help maintain the mass. By keeping people healthy, governments reduce the friction that ends up surfacing among sick people unable to provide the same level of value to society as before.

Human services are part of a much broader category that typically addresses myriad frictional issues. Think about a homeless shelter. People who use this service are in desperate need of a home, without which, makes it hard for them to engage in value-adding activities in society. When the obstacle of finding a roof to put over their head is removed, they can more proactively find a job and a permanent place to live.

Criminal justice systems also address frictional and negative forces but in a much more balanced way. Whereas hospitals exist to heal people and bring them back to “full value,” oftentimes courts decide that someone is not a value-producing member in society and must be incarcerated. This is a costly decision, as the person cannot earn a wage, pay taxes, and contribute productively to society. However, these decisions have the ultimate value of society in mind, deeming the person more dangerous (a negative force) than productive (a positive force). So the marginal cost of removing this person from society should be a net positive in the long run, if done correctly.


Government purpose quote image

The establishment of permanent peaceful relations between nations would most effectively reduce the force retarding the human mass, and would be the best solution of this great human problem. But will the dream of universal peace ever be realized? Let us hope that it will. When all darkness shall be dissipated by the light of science, when all nations shall be merged into one, and patriotism shall be identical with religion, when there shall be one language, one country, one end, then the dream will have become reality.

3. Increase the velocity affecting human energy

Onto the most important solution to consider for increasing human energy: increasing the velocity.

Of the three possible solutions of the main problem of increasing human energy, this is by far the most important to consider, not only because of its intrinsic significance, but also because of its intimate bearing on all the many elements and conditions which determine the movement of humanity.
When discussing velocity, we should revisit the example presented earlier. Remember, we wanted to increase the overall energy of a train by adding compartments to it. When compartments of higher energy are added to the train, the train’s overall energy is increased, and in turn so is the average energy of each compartment.


Acceleration velocity image

When compartments of lower energy are added, however, the train’s overall energy is increased, but at a much lower rate. And the average energy of each compartment is actually decreased.

Apply this example to society. Naturally we want to increase the mass. But additional mass added (again, additional population) will increase the overall energy of the system at varying rates.

Think of a person being born. Either this person will grow up to be of a “higher” or “lower” velocity than her parents. The overall opportunity of this person can be compared to those offered to her parents. Maybe she will be exposed to a better education. Maybe she won’t be forced to work at a young age. Maybe she will have more technology to aid in her learning and development than her parents.

This simple illustration shows that it is of greatest importance to add mass of a higher velocity. Stated more to the point, if, for example, the children be of the same degree of enlightenment as the parents (that is, mass of the “same velocity”), the energy will simply increase proportionately to the number added. If they are less intelligent or advanced, or mass of “smaller velocity,” there will be a very slight gain in the energy; but if they are further advanced, or mass of “higher velocity,” then the new generation will add very considerably to the sum total of human energy.

How do we add mass of higher velocity?

Society is driven forward by the ability of individuals to work. Since the beginning of time, technological innovations have allowed for economizing of day-to-day tasks. Farming allowed for people to source food in centralized locations instead of hunting and gathering. Marketplaces allowed for people to buy their clothes instead of making their own. Even the concept of a corporation has allowed people to pool their resources in order to provide greater value than any one individual can.


Major inventions image

What we have, as a result, is a collection of resources specializing in individual tasks that contribute to the overall system. One person makes shoes. One person slaughters animals. One person repairs furnaces. And so on.

This specialization has created an economy based on a much more efficient supply chain than one in which every family provided everything for themselves. Anything designed to make providing for oneself easier, can be said to increase the velocity at which mass moves forward.

But looking at all this busy world about us, on all this complex mass as it daily throbs and moves, what is it but an immense clock-work driven by a spring? In the morning, when we rise, we cannot fail to note that all the objects about us are manufactured by machinery: the water we use is lifted by steam-power; the trains bring our breakfast from distant localities; the elevators in our dwelling and our office building, the cars that carry us there, are all driven by power; in all our daily errands, and in our very life-pursuit, we depend upon it; all the objects we see tell us of it; and when we return to our machine-made dwelling at night, lest we should forget it, all the material comforts of our home, our cheering stove and lamp, remind us of how much we depend on power.

And when there is an accidental stoppage of the machinery, when the city is snowbound, or the life sustaining movement otherwise temporarily arrested, we are affrighted to realize how impossible it would be for us to live the life we live without motive power. Motive power means work. To increase the force accelerating human movement means, therefore, to perform more work.

For simplicity, we will assume that the amount of work or output a person contributes to society equals his overall productivity and energy pushed through the system. Technological advances, in any form, tend to increase this amount of work, no matter the field. Farming, industrialization, vaccination, and many others help contribute to more efficiency and higher productivity for people.

In the same way that people can contribute ideas and effort to the overall human energy system, outside sources of energy clearly contribute to its increase as well. Coal, oil, wind, and solar are just a few of the many ways that we harness energy from our environment and use it to make our lives easier and more productive.


Energy sources image

From the very beginning three ways of drawing energy from the sun were open to man. The savage, when he warmed his frozen limbs at a fire kindled in some way, availed himself of the energy of the sun stored in the burning material. When he carried a bundle of branches to his cave and burned them there, he made use of the sun’s stored energy transported from one to another locality. When he set sail to his canoe, he utilized the energy of the sun applied to the atmosphere or the ambient medium.

There can be no doubt that the first is the oldest way. A fire, found accidentally, taught the savage to appreciate its beneficial heat. He then very likely conceived of the idea of carrying the glowing members to his abode. Finally he learned to use the force of a swift current of water or air. It is characteristic of modern development that progress has been effected in the same order. The utilization of the energy stored in wood or coal, or, generally speaking, fuel, led to the steam-engine. Next a great stride in advance was made in energy-transportation by the use of electricity, which permitted the transfer of energy from one locality to another without transporting the material. But as to the utilization of the energy of the ambient medium, no radical step forward has as yet been made known.

Finding ways to harness energy from our environment and use it to enable commerce, education, and overall improvement of society is the easiest way to increase the velocity moving human energy forward.

How do we quantify velocity?

Velocity is probably the most difficult aspect to quantify in the human energy equation. At a high level, it is represented by anything that facilitates increased value or production in society.

We can attempt to quantify this measure by looking at social outcomes related to human achievement. Graduation rates, job attainment, wage growth, purchasing power…they’re all possible indicators.

In their own ways, these kinds of measures indicate efficiency and effectiveness in a society—the higher they go, the better off the people are, and the more able they are to produce and add value for the overall system.

Types of activities that increase velocity:

Several government services exist to improve the capabilities of its individuals.

Schooling is the first thing that comes to mind here. Typically making up over two thirds of a municipal budget, education is the primary spending category among local governments. They exist to teach children and prepare them for the real world, providing real life skills and theoretical knowledge to back them up. The better the schools, the more productive the students should become.


Books image

Other government services exist to facilitate commerce and the ability to do more work.

Public works ensure bridges and roads are in working order.

Transportation departments ensure people can get where the need to go.

Conservation and development agencies invest in programs to increase economic activity and sustainability.

Parks, recreation, and library departments help educate and entertain citizens while increasing property values for those living in a certain area. Again, if property values go up, the human energy equation is bolstered by increase tax receipts and resulting public spending on programs or increased spending power for the property owners.

A Note on Human Energy and Collaboration

Hopefully this type of thinking can help relate the many different components acting in society. Instead of seeing everything as competing agents, we can start to see the interplay of different activities and how certain shared outcomes are typically desired by many overlapping organizations.

A more collaborative business and political environment should help cut through some of the competitive tension that hurts many industries—perhaps none more-so than the nonprofit sector. Like the way businesses compete on the ground level for customers, nonprofits often battle over every little bit of funding they can get, creating waste and misalignment of outcomes.

But how can collaboration help remedy this? Imagine the following scenario:

Five similar nonprofit agencies, that each would produce the same general outcomes, compete for the same government grant. To win this much-needed funding, each organization submits bare-bones proposals in attempts to underbid the competition and win the contract.


Competition arm wrestling image

This creates a major problem: agencies have a harder time meeting the original intended outcomes on such stripped-down proposals.

So instead of creating a cohesive strategy to split funding among five complementary agencies, all the money goes to one which is now unable to deliver based on the low costs proposed.

Nonprofits exist to create better outcomes for society in areas where profit-driven enterprises can’t compete—essentially picking up the slack left by public services but, overall, serving the same purpose.

Tying back to the human energy idea, we can see how this works. The most basic element of the energy equation is mass (or population). Mass ties very nicely to financial measures in the form of taxpayers versus tax receivers from a government perspective. So, in a way, to grow the human energy in any given city, it makes sense to calculate the total mass of taxpayers funding the government.

For example, removing people from prison and enabling them to lead productive, taxpaying, value-adding lives obviously benefits the community in which it takes place.

Human energy can quantify these types of outcomes and financial tools like social impacts bonds can be used to fund them.

Human Energy Investment Calculator

Do you need help attracting funding for your nonprofit or social service program?

 

Use this Excel financial model to select from a list of social impact areas and model out investments in your city. Select from the universe of American municipalities, with official social, financial, and economic data from 2017 Census.

 

Choose an investment amount and time horizon and see how your program benefits the city in terms of:

 

1.   Social service spending reductions

2.   Property tax income increases

 

Nothing in this file is locked. Please use it at your convenience and modify, update, change as necessary. I hope this helps you fund ideas, attract investment and improve your community!

 

$7.00
$0.44 (tax)
Total: $7.44

Now, what if the other elements of human energy (which, admittedly, are much more difficult to quantify) could be tied to dollars in the same way that mass is? Outcomes achieved by nonprofits represent either increases in the force accelerating human progress or decreases in forces slowing progress.

Again, nonprofits already know their missions seek to achieve these goals, whether or not financial measures are easily attached to them. But without tangible proof of societal improvement, few governments have incentives to increase current funding without commensurate increases in taxes.

By taking the concept of human energy, we can bring together the many different agents in society to help produce better outcomes and a better life for everyone.

Partnership for Strong Communities

Partnership for Strong Communities

Connecticut is making progress on reducing chronic homelessness. This headway can be credited to a statewide effort by both social advocates and government officials. Local nonprofit Partnership for Strong Communities is one of these players, making a significant difference across the state.

The Partnership’s HousingInCT2017 assessment points out that Connecticut has achieved a 62% reduction in chronic homelessness since January 2014.

Chronically homeless include those with disabling conditions who have been homeless either long-term or repeatedly.

The state’s median monthly housing cost declined by 2 percent to $1,366 in 2016, but still remained the nation’s sixth highest, making it hard for homeless to get out of the perpetual cycle of despair. Despite this slight improvement, an overall increase in rental demand over the past decade combined with the $25/hour wage required to rent in Connecticut, fighting homelessness is harder than ever.

Leading the charge in Connecticut, the Partnership for Strong Communities is a local leader in policy development, advocacy, and research on homelessness and its causes. It is responsible for conducting many important studies, informing state and local officials, and bringing together scholars, practitioners, business executives, and government officials toward creating change.

The Partnership staffs two statewide campaigns – Reaching Home, the campaign to build the civic and political will to prevent and end homelessness in Connecticut, and HOMEConnecticut, a statewide campaign aimed at creating more affordable housing throughout the state.

Here are some of the organization’s critical mission objectives:

Ending Homelessness
Homelessness comes in many different forms. For some, an episode of homelessness is a once-in-a-lifetime event and can be ended by an increase in their income or access to affordable housing. Others experience episodic homelessness – they may experience homelessness sporadically throughout their lives, but tend not to be living on the streets or in shelters for long periods of time. These individuals and families may have a short stay in a homeless shelter, but are also likely to be “doubled up” – living with families and friends willing to offer a temporary home.

Other homeless individuals experience chronic long-term homelessness, which requires a more holistic response. Often, those experiencing chronic homelessness have physical disabilities or mental illnesses that make it difficult for them to stay employed or housed. Many rely on emergency rooms for healthcare and are repeatedly incarcerated for minor offenses. They may also shuttle in and out of the shelter system, which offers temporary relief but cannot adequately address the root causes of their homelessness.

Affordable Housing
Affordable housing provides a solid foundation for a strong community. Residents who live in a home that is affordable have funds to purchase food, provide healthcare, and satisfy other living needs. Residents of affordable homes also have the economic means to purchase goods and services in their communities. Affordable housing helps to create economic stability.

Strong Communities
The ability to afford a residence – to not have to spend more than 30 percent of one’s income on housing so that enough is left for other necessities – is undeniably important. But an affordable house or apartment must also be linked to good schools, adequate community services, convenient transportation, access to affordable high-quality food and other necessities. The Partnership for Strong Communities has worked hard to focus the attention of policymakers on the creation of not just affordable homes but also vibrant neighborhoods and communities.

Visit the Parternship’s website here and learn more about the great work they continue to do and find out how you can help.

What is a Social Impact Bond?

Future city image

Background

Around the world, innovative financing methods are being used to tackle social issues. Programs and organizations typically funded by grants are constantly at the mercy of governments who have trouble thinking past the next election cycle.
 
As a result, when spending cuts need to be made governments typically look for the quickest fix – cutting social services.

What’s wrong?

Think about it. In your city, you may have a $100 million budget allocated primarily to:
 

– Schools: $60 million
– Emergency services: $15 million
– Public works: $15 million
– Human services: $10 million

 
Tax receipts are expected to decline by 10% next year. What do you do?
 
The majority of the first several categories (schools, emergency, and public works) are used on an as-needed basis. They are there to serve public needs in the moment.
 
Human services, on the other hand, typically comprise both rehabilitative (immediate things like food banks or homeless shelters) and preventative (down the road things like job training for unemployed or after-school activities for at-risk youths) benefits.
 


 
Now back to our problem of decreasing tax receipts. Aside from broad reductions, you’re not typically going to close a school, or cut back on your police force – they’re much too important to a town’s immediate value (not to mention the unions involved…).
 
As a result, you would turn to social services as an area to cut. And all things being equal, the preventative services are viewed as a relative “luxury” compared to rehabilitative services…again, because they provide benefits down the road, as opposed to right now.
 
So you’d cut those preventative services. After-school programs, job training, and collaborative work spaces would get the ax before food banks, homeless shelters, and unemployment benefits. They’re simply easier things to cut.
 
Now imagine this scenario playing out in thousands of cities and dozens of states across the U.S. each of the past 8 or 9 years. Naturally, many health and human service organizations struggle due to lack of funding. So despite the fact they do quality work, they are unable to provide the full potential value of their work.
 
Bottom line: Results are determined not by the quality of the organizations doing the work—but by the amount of funding governments are able to grant them.
 
Governments fund short-term services over long-term ones. They favor less complexity to more. And they reward risk aversion at the expense of seeking out truly innovative and high-quality programs.

The root of the problem

Social services are funded by tax dollars (typically through government grants) and donations. They are often provided by nonprofit organizations (if not governments directly). Why is that?
 
They offer value in a down-the-road or not immediately profitable manner.
 
Take a business that sells computers. It makes a product. People need the product. They pay immediately for that product. Value is created instantly upon receipt of the computer. And because that value is created instantly, it is easily quantified and paid for by a customer, making the value realized by both seller and buyer at the same time.
 
Now take a mental health organization. It provides a service. People need that service. They often can’t pay for that service, even though society deems it necessary for the overall good (through increased tax revenues, lower prison costs, etc.). Value is provided instantly to a patient but not realized instantly by society. It happens “down the road.”
 

Naturally, investors flock toward ideas that provide easily quantifiable returns. There are demonstrable data that prove the returns they can reasonably expect, corrected for risk of course, even though some investments are extremely long-term in nature (think of real estate or long-term bonds).
 
The further an investment is from concrete, quantifiable returns, the further it is from attracting funds. Something like mental health service is extremely hard to quantify. We know there are tangible benefits to providing this service. But who exactly benefits financially from it?
 
This creates the great divide in funding. There needs to be a way to bridge the gap from social returns to commercial returns on investment.

How do we solve this?

Traditional methods of funding lead to services delivered in isolation from each other, with inadequate focus on preventative services known to produce better outcomes.
 
Coupled with inadequate resources and rising need, many cities and states are seeing rising poverty, growing need for job training, and a host of other negative social outcomes, many of which could be prevented with adequate investment in prior stages of these problems’ development.
 
Introducing: pay for success.
 
Also known as pay for performance, this describes service payment models that offer financial reward to providers who achieve or exceed specified quality, cost, and other benchmarks. In other words, you only get paid if you do good work.
 

Social impact bond

 
These models offer a blended return, accomplishing both financial and social payback.

Return on taxpayer investment

Governments spend billions of taxpayer dollars each year on crisis-driven services. These programs help a great number of people, but fail to make much headway in solving social problems that have become too complex for one-dimensional, prescriptive solutions. Although they recognize the economic and social benefits of prevention, government agencies generally cannot afford early intervention services as their funds are already committed to high-cost remediation programs.
 
Even if they fund prevention, governments risk having to pay for both prevention and remediation if their chosen prevention programs fail to improve participants’ outcomes. The short-term imperatives of the election cycle exacerbate this tendency to shy away from potentially risky, longer-term preventative investments.
 
social impact bond image
 

Source: U.S. Department of Energy

 
Economic recession and shrinking budgets have forced governments to cut many programs providing prevention services, and as a result, nonprofit providers and their clients are struggling to survive.

The social impact bond

The social impact bond (SIB) is a financial device that integrates the needs of governments, service providers, and charitable investors under one concept: pay for success.
 
The bond is an outcomes-based contract in which government officials commit to paying private service providers for significant improvement in social outcomes (such as a reduction in offending rates, or in the number of people being admitted to hospital) for a defined population.
 
Funds are raised by charitable investors looking to make a difference, and their return on investment is defined by the degree of success in the program invested in. If a program is successful, the government repays the investment plus a variable rate of return based on performance. If the program fails, no payment is earned.
 
The government repays investors only if the interventions improve social outcomes, such as reducing homelessness or the number of repeat offenders in the criminal justice system. If improved outcomes are not achieved, the government is not required to repay the investors, thereby transferring the risk of funding prevention services to the private sector and ensuring accountability for taxpayer money.
 

social impact bond image

 
By leveraging SIBs, governments can transfer the financial risk of prevention programs to private investors based on the expectation of future recoverable savings. They also provide the incentive for multiple government agencies to work together, capturing savings across agencies to fund investor repayment.
 

– Common belief that prevention is less expensive AND more effective than remediation
 
– Prevention also takes longer to realize tangible benefits and is naturally harder to measure
 
– SIBs transfer the risk of funding preventative programs from the government to private investors – government (and taxpayer) payment is contingent on success

 
See the complete list of all active social impact bonds going on today.

The mechanics

 

social impact bond mechanics
Source: Social Finance

 

1. An intermediary issues the SIB and raises capital from private investors.

 
2. The intermediary transfers the SIB proceeds to nonprofit evidence-based prevention programs. Throughout the life of the instrument, the intermediary would coordinate all SIB parties, provide operating oversight, direct cash flows, and monitor the investment.
 
3. By providing effective prevention programs, the nonprofits improve social outcomes and reduce demand for more expensive safety-net services.
 
4. An independent evaluator determines whether the target outcomes have been achieved according to the terms of the government contract. If they have, the government pays the intermediary a percentage of its savings and retains the rest. If outcomes have not been achieved, the government owes nothing.
 
5. If the outcomes have been achieved, investors would be repaid their principal and a rate of return. Returns may be structured on a sliding scale: the better the outcomes, the higher the return (up to an agreed cap).

How it works

Future State wants to invest in programs to reduce prison recidivism – the number of people who re-offend and end up back in prison once released.
 
The obvious benefits include:
 

– Lower prison costs. Obviously fewer prisoners means lower expenses spent on prison facilities, staff, services, etc.
 
– Increased income tax revenue. Fewer prisoners means more people available in the workforce. Ultimately this benefit is realized only if the majority of those released from prison do in fact re-enter the workforce, instead of staying unemployed.

 
While not necessarily easy to quantify, you can ballpark it. Say each prisoner has a variable unit cost of $25,000 per year when behind bars. Say also that Future State loses out on $1,000 a year in income tax with each prisoner not working. These figures alone equal a net $26,000 per year cost of a prisoner.
 
The state releases 2,000 of its total 10,000 inmates each year. Those released have a 50% chance of re-offending and ending up back in prison within 3 years. Reducing one year’s released inmates’ recidivism rate to 40% would reduce the number of people returning to prison by 200 by year 3.
 
This carries with it an additional 200 people eligible for work in the state. Assume in this case that everyone who remains out of prison becomes employed.
 
JobTraining Corp has a program that promises to reduce recidivism by the nominal 10% described above. This includes job training and re-integration services for prisoners. The annual cost to run such a program at the scale required to achieve this 10% reduction is $3,000,000.
 
Every 10% reduction ends up benefiting the state $5,200,000 over three years. That equals a 20.1% annual return on a $3,000,000 investment.
 

 social impact bond example

 
social impact bond example

What this means

In this example, the net benefit to society, or in this case the government, is 20.1% per year.
 
These benefits are tangible from a financial perspective. They just take multiple years to materialize. That’s why these programs are typically funded by governments in the first place.
 
Take an outside investor now. Say they want to invest $3,000,000 into this prison recidivism program. For a social investor like this one, they may be enticed by a 5% return on investment for their funds.
 
By year 3, with Future State realizing $5.2 million in total benefits, it can afford to pay out an investor the 5% annual return plus initial investment for their efforts. This equals $3.5 million.
 
This leaves $1.7 million net profit (in the form of higher tax revenues and lower prison costs) to the government.
 

social impact bond example

The beauty of this arrangement

Circling back to the earlier concept, pay-for-success, this kind of deal only gets paid out by the government if the program succeeds. No matter what happens, the investor fronts the money to a service provider (in this case, JobTraining Corp). The service provider has no other obligation in the financial workings of this deal—merely to provide a service.
 
The government then reimburses the investor if, and only if, success is achieved.
 
Because in this case success was defined by hard outcomes with real financial rewards attached to them, it is easy to see that the government will realize the gains in its own bottom line.
 
The government can subtract from these gains and pay out the service provider a cut of the “profit.”
 
If on the other hand, the outcome isn’t achieved (in this case, recidivism doesn’t drop 10%), then the government is off the hook. Nothing is returned to the investor. The funds remain with the service provider.
 
The service is still provided, which means positive outcomes could still be achieved, but probably at a lower rate of return. In this case, the government still earns some financial benefit without being required to reimburse the investor.
 
See the numbers in an alternate scenario. Download a PDF of both scenarios here.
 



 
The investor is on the hook for any risk associated with delivering on these outcomes.
 
In other words…a government can fund a public service with no up-front capital. Additionally, it needs only to actually pay for such a service if the financial reward it sees is tangibly greater than the cost. A classic win/win.

Looking ahead

This example is a very simplified form of a social impact bond. It assumes a straight yes/no basis for successful outcome triggering repayment. In reality, a social impact bond will have a scale of returns an investor can achieve based on a sliding scale of outcomes.
 
As more of these deals pop up across the United States, it is important to determine how effective they are at not only providing a social service, but also providing a return on investment.
 
The more success that is achieved on the ROI side, the more investors will eventually flock to these types investments.
 
Governments, if planning properly, can fund outcomes completely risk free. If they have good data to support the financial impact of social outcomes, they can prove to investors a financial return on their end.
 
Until data exist in the quantity and quality that support these outcomes though, investors will bear a greater risk in funding these types of deals. In these early stages of this industry, it is more likely to be seen as a donation than an investment. But once deals start proving financially viable for all sides, the social impact bond industry has the chance to really take off and make a difference across the world.

Middlesex County Coworking Space

In October 2017, the Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce announced plans to move ahead on an innovative entrepreneurial concept that would bring a coworking space to downtown Middletown.

What is cowork space?

Cowork is a style of work that involves shared workplace and independent activity. Employees are typically not a part of the same organization, but merely share in the office space and other equipment shared at a location.

Coworking is especially attractive for work-at-home professionals, independent contractors, and workers who travel frequently.

A major benefit of coworking is the possibility of knowledge share. Because people from all different organizations and backgrounds congregate at these locations, it is possible to share ideas, discuss concepts, and fine-tune theories without being limited to coworkers of the same business. Sense of community is a large, and essential, part of the coworking process.

Planning stages

Middletown Entrepreneurs Work Space (or MEWS+) is being led by the chamber’s VP Jeff Pugliese.

“Support from the city of Middletown can be a catalyst for additional funds coming into the community,” Pugliese said. “If we are fortunate enough to secure the city’s support, we will then apply for additional support through a statewide network of entrepreneurs, mentors, service providers and others involved in helping Connecticut’s most promising startups succeed and grow.

“We’re essentially looking to take money pledged by Wesleyan, Middlesex Hospital and Liberty Bank to get the city’s support to really make that initiative sustainable — for a couple years at least,” Pugliese said.

Source: Middletown Press

Partners

MEWS+ partners image

Purpose

The MEWS+ is an exciting concept that will serve as a key component to economic development initiatives underway in Middletown. It will also act as a bridge to the manufacturing and engineering industries in Middlesex County.

Working with local property owners, the program aims to find “cool” and accessible locations for business meet-ups. Prioritized locations will have the requisite layout and logistical capacity to be co-working spaces.

Connecting to local manufacturers and engineering firms will be a critical part of this initiative. We hope to work with Pratt & Whitney suppliers and vendors. The Middletown Engine Center is critical to the economic health of Middlesex County, and we hope to strengthen our already strong relationship with Pratt & Whitney through this important initiative.

The MEWS+ will also work to foster local health care innovation by collaborating with Middlesex Hospital, which works in partnership with Mayo Clinic by sharing the latest lifesaving research with Mayo Clinic Specialists, and Community Health Center, which is building a world class primary healthcare system by serving more than 145,000 patients since its inception.

Source: MEWS+ pres release

Will it work?

Coworking is growing in popularity. As of 2016, New York led all cities in the U.S. with 330 coworking centers. Los Angeles had 263, San Francisco 180, and Chicago 123.

Though Connecticut is in the earlier stages of exploring this concept, but hopefully Middletown can provide a replicable and scalable model for other cities in the state.

See the following infographic for more statistics on coworking and the potential it could offer the state.

Cowokring infographic image
Source: OfficeVibe

Immediate next steps

Middletown Entrepreneurs Work Space will open thanks to $70,000 in funding provided by the common council, Wesleyan University, Middlesex Hospital and Liberty Bank. The Middlesex Chamber is currently outfitting a portion of its second floor that can provide a work place for 10 to 15 people.

The Chamber will serve as the headquarters for MEWS, which will also offer networking events and other services to provide resources for small businesses outside of the office setting.

It will be interesting to follow the progress of this program and see if it gains scalable traction in a state that certainly needs to reinvest in industry.

More information

See the Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce for more info here.

Visit MEWS+ directly here.

CT Addiction Services

Amid the increasingly prevalent opioid crisis happening across the country, one of the biggest challenges for users is finding treatment. A new, stand-alone website launched by Connecticut’s Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMHAS) can help change the way addicts can get the services they need.

The site, CTAddictionServices.com, allows people to see what beds are available at DMHAS-funded facilities. That includes detox programs, residential treatment and recovery houses.

Across Connecticut there are approximately 1,000 state-funded beds that exist for these purposes. With this new website, providers are encouraged to update as close to real-time as possible the status of their facilities.

CT Addiction Services image


Users of the system have the ability to choose which type of program they seek and can see which facilities have capacity so they can make arrangements to check in.

By clicking on one of the providers’ names, users can find more details about the facility including what programs are offered, how many total beds there are, and what types of insurance are accepted.

CT Addiction Services details image


The website is funded through a federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) grant which runs from September 1, 2016 to August 31, 2019 and provides the state $1 million annually to “expand medication assisted treatment as well as strengthen outpatient resources and improve statewide infrastructure.”

An article posted in the New London Patch last September forecasted over 1,000 fatal overdoses across Connecticut for the year 2017—an 18% increase over 2016.

This map attempts to illustrate the density of the problem, with darker colors indicating higher concentration of overdose deaths. (For an interactive version of this map see the original article here.)

CT overdose map image


Seeing how this is a growing problem in Connecticut, this website is a great step toward eliminating at least some of the roadblocks for people stuck in the downward spiral of drug abuse.

With any momentum the site could expand to include non-DMHAS-funded programs and create a sort of hub for all types of services people seek but have trouble finding.

Woofgang & Company

Woofgang image

Fairfield-area nonprofit Woofgang & Co. opened its doors this October with the goal of providing jobs to adults with disabilities. The organization will sell dog treats and other novelty items while providing vocational training and employment opportunities for young adults with disabilities in the Fairfield area.

The Mission

Woofgang and Co. is a nonprofit organization driven by a single purpose: to help young people with disabilities succeed. Our friends and family members with special needs have inspired us and made us especially aware of the employment challenges they face upon leaving the school system and entering adulthood.

Who’s involved?

The organization was founded by Fairfield-area parents and others concerned about adults with disabilities.

It is partnering with The Bigelow Center for Senior Activities which will provide production space for early operations.

What’s unique about Woofgang?

The interesting thing about the organization is that it is set up as a self-sustaining business, creating and selling products to fund its operation. Unlike most social service agencies that depend on government funding, Woofgang & Co. intends to operate independently of government financing.

This is especially important as government funding for such services continues to get slashed amid ongoing budget struggles.

Take action!

Check out Woofgang’s website and purchase products here.

Donate to the cause here.

See a recent article in the Fairfield Patch about Woofgang’s launch in October.

The Ultimate Guide to Nonprofit Fundraising

Nonprofit Fundraising image

Introduction

Nonprofit fundraising is a complicated topic and a critical function. Nonprofits are in a unique position from businesses in that they cannot price their products and services to, well, make a profit. Operating budgets must be conceived from other sources than program revenues.

This is a guide focused on fundraising for nonprofits. It will discuss the following major topics:

1. Crafting a nonprofit fundraising strategy

2. Optimizing your organization

3. Kickstarting your donor development

4. Developing your marketing campaign

5. Leveraging grants and other funding opportunities

Don’t have time to read the whole thing right now? Download the Ultimate Guide CHECKLIST instead!


Before we begin, here is a brief background on funding.

How are nonprofits funded?

The following categories make up the bulk of funding for nonprofits:

Fees for  Goods/Services from Private Sources – this is driven largely by hospitals and higher-education nonprofits who charge fees for services, tuition, etc.

Fees for Goods/Services from Government Sources – includes things like Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements

Government Grants – cash awarded to organizations with varying stipulations attached

Private Contributions – charitable donations and grants from private individuals, corporations, etc.

Investment Income – endowments make up a significant portion of income, especially among foundations

 

Nonprofit fundraising sources graph

 

This information is from the Urban Institute’s Nonprofit Sector in Brief 2015. Although a bit dated, check out the report to find more details and other cool information related to trends in the industry.

Where do donations come from?

Private contributions make up the largest portion of non-program-related revenue streams for nonprofits. These donations totaled $373.25 billion in 2015.

Of this amount, 71% came from individuals, while the rest came from foundation grants, bequests and other corporate philanthropy.

While this represents enormous potential, it brings even more enormous challenges for nonprofits looking to focus marketing and fundraising strategies on specific channels. The need for personal touch with most individual donors makes it hard to scale funding strategies focused on individual donors.

Craft the perfect nonprofit fundraising strategy

Any successful initiative requires a plan. To maximize your organization’s potential, it is important to understand where you are today and define specific paths to where you need to be in the future. A useful strategic plan for your fundraising function will provide a sense of direction for your organization and outline measurable goals to assess progress.

Establish a vision

The first thing you want to do is create an ideal version of your organization. Leslie Allen from Front Range Source published a good guide on the topic where she suggests you ask yourself the following questions:

 

Nonprofit Fundraising Vision Checklist

 

A bit of administrative work should also be done now…specifically setting a budget for how much you wish to spend on this nonprofit fundraising strategy and an implementation timeline that you wish to achieve your goals by.

Understand your current state

Describe your organization as it exists today. This will form the foundation for which your strategy will be executed against.

You should take inventory of all the different funding sources you currently use and have used in the past. Try to rank and prioritize the effectiveness and quantity of funds raised from each one. Take note of what’s worked in the past and what hasn’t.

Take an external perspective if possible. If you can afford to audit your organization, do it. If not, be as unbiased as possible in determining how effective your organization performs in this area, and compare it to other organizations. Use either current employees or colleagues from outside the organization to get a picture of how other nonprofits perform.

Key takeaway – understand your strengths, as well as your weaknesses!

If you are too overly funded by a specific source—let’s say a specific government grant that comes in each year and funds 90% of your budget—you need to address this. Like any business overly concentrated on one customer, you run the risk of being shut down, should the government grant stop (hello state budget troubles…).

Don’t limit yourself to single or few funding sources whenever possible. Make your organization invulnerable to things you can’t control.

Envision your future state

Use the answers produced in your vision creation to help craft your future state. Where the vision phase is about creating conceptual ideals for what your organization should look like, this phase should be about quantifying them.

Decide exactly what you want to concentrate on.

If you decided that a focused nonprofit fundraising strategy was the way to go, make sure to document why it is the best course and what the benefits of this choice will be.

The result of this phase should be a set of goals that you want your organization to achieve.

Perform a gap analysis

By quantifying your future state and documenting where you stand today, your next step is to perform a gap analysis. It is critical to understand where all the major gaps are in your organization.

If you have 90% of your revenue coming from one government grant and your future state involves diversifying your revenue streams, then obviously here is a major gap in your strategy.

Always know your organization’s vulnerabilities. Prioritize what you think are the most critical gaps and areas that could produce the most impactful change if they are closed.

 

Nonprofit Fundraising Gap Analysis image
Image Source: Buzz Analysis

 

Connect the dots

The final step requires determining exactly what actions need to be done to achieve your desired state.

Break up the goals into key initiatives. You should ideally come up with a list of projects that can be executed on, each with different rankings for cost, effort, time, and impact.

Create a matrix that assesses each project against these four dimensions and rank the projects according to your priorities. If your strategy needs to be completed quickly with less regard to cost, then rank projects requiring less time higher. If you want the biggest impact of your initiatives, then rank those ones higher, with the understanding it might take longer and cost more than other projects.

Always understand the project management triangle of cost vs. scope vs. time. Any strategic decision will be based on these three constraints. Any change to one constraint necessitates a change in the others. Or else quality suffers.

 

Nonprofit fundraising project management constraints

 

Be sure to get all the right stakeholders involved in this priority setting process to make sure your strategic alignment matches your organization’s vision and your board’s idea of what needs to be done.

Optimize your organization for change

A common mistake among nonprofits is the lack of a single person who oversees the entire “money function” of the organization. It isn’t enough to have an individual who manages only government contracts, or only individual donors – you absolutely must have someone who oversees all cash flows into the organization.

Development director office

To ensure you hire or promote from within the right candidate for the job, you must be able to offer enough of a salary to entice someone to stay and grow the organization. Check competitive rates of not only nonprofit development directors, but also nonprofit CFOs, for-profit CFOs, etc.

It may be painful trying to come up with the money to pay someone to do this job—which is typically lower than executive director or other high-ranking positions in your organization—but it’s worth it.

You’re paying for people who spend 100% of their time focused on money. And in a few years’ time, they should be paying their own salaries with the work they’ve done to increase your organization’s capacity.

Build a business environment that enables development.

Beyond just funding the salary of your rock-star fundraiser, it is important to give this person authority over creating a team and office within your organization. By choosing the right person, you can ensure that they know exactly how many staff they need and what roles they need to hire to perform specific tasks (marketing plans, technology upgrades, cold calling, etc.).

Additionally, you must budget for costs like software, computer upgrades, marketing collateral, association dues, professional development, and so forth. Leyna Bernstein of Blue Avocado posted a nice piece on How to Hire your First Development Director that goes into a few more nuances of this task, and it’s certainly worth checking out before moving on in this guide.

You want to create an environment that enables development success. In this way, you help retain top talent that can executive on longer-term strategies that have the highest potential for organizational growth.

 

Nonprofit fundraising difficulties image
Source: UnderDeveloped: A National Study of Challenges Facing Nonprofit Fundraising

 

Bottom line – You want to hire the right person who will help grow your organization. They need to have the keys to the kingdom when it comes to seeing how all money flows in and out. They need the ability to propose and set a budget and to executive on their strategies.

Bonus tip – leverage volunteers.

Use unpaid help to support your efforts in reaching out to people. Especially for organizations with slim staff and budgets, this can be an effective tool. Tap into your alumni pool and other partners/alliances you may have formed in the past.

Volunteers can be especially useful when promoting events, selling tickets, or soliciting sponsorships.

Shari Tishman published a nice set of tips for finding and using volunteers for this purpose.

Engage with your board

Your board of trustees ultimately sets the direction and vision for your organization. As a result, we need to spend some significant time making sure everyone is aligned with what we are trying to accomplish with fundraising.

The role of the board typically changes based on the size of the organization–smaller organizations have board members that typically take a more operational and hands-on approach, while larger organizations may have board members more focused on governance issues.

Regardless of the size of your nonprofit, it is critical to make sure everyone understands the importance of philanthropy and can agree on a high-level strategy for accomplishing the mission.

Have an open conversation about what role board members can play in nonprofit fundraising. Beyond agreeing on strategies, this can be an extremely beneficial task in helping to grow and retain donors. For example, a simple thank-you goes a long way. A donor-centered fundraising study performed by Cygnus found that when donors got a thank-you call from board members within days of making a gift:

– 93% said they would definitely or probably give again

– 84% said they would make a larger gift

– 74% said they would continue giving indefinitely

Find ways to engage donors. Use board members for this purpose. Their clout alone brings great respect to the people who donate to the organization. This should be used to your advantage.

Just as important as engaging board members with donors, is keeping donors engaged in the strategy. Present strategy proposals and work in their feedback. This ensures alignment and sense of purpose with board members.

Keep everyone involved in the budget setting process so they know a strategy goes beyond simple concepts and pipe dreams. The board needs to know that fundraising is staff driven and presenting a simple projection of anticipated costs and revenue with a strategy can go a long way in helping drive change.

Most importantly – realize when you have good board members and do everything you can to retain them. Keep them motivated. Listen to what they say. Their contacts and knowledge go a long way toward helping drive your strategy, so realize what you have while you have it and don’t risk losing good board members to greener pastures.

Amy Eisenstein posts some good guidance around retaining board members here.

Measuring and communicating impact

After staff and board considerations, the next big item to prepare for is impact measurement. You need to be able to communicate your story with words and numbers.

Nonprofit fundraising is much more than asking for donations. It includes everything before and after this step…from searching for supporters to expressing gratitude and measuring impact. Measuring impact helps you do two things:

1. Evaluate fundraising campaign effectiveness

2. Demonstrate your program’s effectiveness and help tell a story that will attract future funding

Your programs already exist to further your organization’s mission. And for programs that do it well, there should be data that prove it. Make sure to have the systems in place to capture the results of your programs’ efforts. (Note: systems don’t need to be complicated…they can simply be processes used to document results of activities.)

Use your mission to determine a set of outcomes you wish to achieve. Then work backwards to determine the activities you can perform to get there. Media Development Investment Fund illustrates the different levels of impact you should be able to capture.

 

Nonprofit fundraising impact image
Image Source: Center for International Media Assistance

 

For more information check out this guide on measuring nonprofit impact.

Human Energy Investment Calculator

Do you need help attracting funding for your nonprofit or social service program?

 

Use this Excel financial model to select from a list of social impact areas and model out investments in your city. Select from the universe of American municipalities, with official social, financial, and economic data from 2017 Census.

 

Choose an investment amount and time horizon and see how your program benefits the city in terms of:

 

1.   Social service spending reductions

2.   Property tax income increases

 

Nothing in this file is locked. Please use it at your convenience and modify, update, change as necessary. I hope this helps you fund ideas, attract investment and improve your community!

 

$7.00
$0.44 (tax)
Total: $7.44

Optimize your website to communicate your story.

Once you’ve set up your impact measurement processes, find ways to communicate your results on your website. This may come in the form of dashboards, case studies, personal stories, etc. Be sure to consistently update your content to not only keep things fresh, but communicate your continued success.

If a donor visits your site and sees overwhelming evidence of the good things you’re doing, he will be more likely to buy into your cause and believe that his donations are being well spent.

How much do you spend on fundraising?

CharityWatch analyzes the effectiveness of nonprofits across a wide range of statistics. One particular interesting number is the Cost to Raise $100. Exactly how it sounds, this reflects how much it costs a charity to bring in $100 of public donations.

On this basis, a nonprofit is considered highly efficient if its cost to raise $100 is $25 or less.

Practically speaking, determine how much you want to raise with your nonprofit fundraising strategy or even a specific campaign. Start with a 4:1 ratio to get to the $25 mark and go from there. If you wanted to raise $5,000,000, you would start your budget at $1,250,000. Adjust from there.

Grassroots Fundraising Journal published a handy fundraising worksheet that you can use to begin crafting a more detailed fundraising budget.

 

Nonprofit fundraising worksheet

 

 

Kickstart your donor development

Now the section that probably brought most of you here…actual donor development.

You have your organization set up for success. You have a clear vision of what you want to accomplish. Your board is behind you and you have the right staff to tackle the job. Now how do you actually find funding?

Prospecting and donor research

Many experts like to talk about a fundraising pyramid. A strong general fund of small donors supports a smaller core of mid-level gifts on top of which is a few major donors for your organization.

 

Nonprofit fundraising pyramid image

 

You want to maximize each level of this pyramid and continuously work on moving people upward.

The first step is to create a list of prospects. The most common prospecting strategies combine the following approaches:

– Direct mail or email

– Brainstorming of prospects (using board members and staff alike)

– Prospect research (databases full of free or purchasable contact lists)

As Iris Sutcliffe from Network for Good points out, donors give for their own reasons, not yours. When assessing your current prospect pool and searching for more, evaluate the following characteristics of each prospect:

– Longevity – How long has this person been giving? Should they possibly move up the pyramid if they’ve been here a while?

– Cumulative giving – Are prospects donating in lump sums or giving multiple times per year? Look for the latter as good opportunities to move up the pyramid.

– Engagement – Look for people who are reading your newsletters, responding to your calls, reaching out about your organization…these are the types you want to move up the pyramid.

Additionally, DonorSearch provides a list of indicators worth tracking and searching on to help pinpoint your ideal pool of candidates.

 

Nonprofit Fundraising Philanthropic Indicators

 

Leverage Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems

When you begin a prospect gathering mission, it couldn’t hurt to start by scrubbing your current database (whether its paper files or an Excel workbook or an entire donor management system). It is good to get a clear idea of everyone you have previously had relationships to understand your likelihood of using these people as a base for your new strategy or as referrals to new candidates.

Once you have a baseline of prospects, decide if you should leverage more advanced technology for your nonprofit fundraising efforts.

The benefits of a formal CRM system are enormous for all types of organizations. With the proper system in place, your organization has the ability to record all communications with donors and prospects, track their personal characteristics, create easy email campaigns, find volunteers, and so on.

 

Nonprofit fundraising CRM system logos

 

Especially useful are these systems’ abilities to report on progress during campaigns and analyze the demographics of donors and prospects. You can run reports that help determine which people in which locations to target for each specific kind of outreach. This helps when trying to nail down a specific donor outreach campaign.

For a quick guide on how to choose a donor management or CRM software package, check out this guide published by The Balance.

TechSoup has a breakdown of 8 top CRM systems for nonprofits as well. Perform a similar analysis when evaluating software for your organization.

Ensure donors keep giving

You have two major goals with donor development:

1. Make sure current donors keep giving.

2. Try to move donors up to mid-level and major gift level status.

Some useful tips for maintaining and improving donor relationships range from simple thank-you notes to community recognition to providing access to special information or services.

Personal touch goes a long way in cultivating relationships with donors. Invite people individually to events or conference calls you may have. Point out donors who have given in a monthly newsletter. Everyone enjoys a little recognition, especially if they are intent on furthering their own missions of giving.

More tactically, you can use donor surveys and other donor-directed communications to try to get a feel for how they perceive your organization to be doing. Gear your marketing collateral to them based on specific programs and results that you’re achieving.

While you’re publishing data and other marketing collateral for wider consumption, try to focus specific pieces to donors only to let them see inside the progress you’re really making as an organization. You can use a more friendly and informal tone when communicating with current donors, to help aid in the relationship building process.

Hold special events just for donors. Have a social where donors can meet one another and discuss their own missions and visions for what they want to achieve. Everybody appreciates being connected with more people who can help their cause…so use this avenue intelligently to help boost relationships among your community.

Work the pyramid

Asking for more money is never easy, especially if you fear losing a relationship with a person who has given faithfully to your organization for many years.

But you must overcome this fear and ask for more money.

Why would someone consider giving you more money?

First, they must believe in your mission. It must support something they find dear to them. So, communicate your mission accurately and descriptively.

Second, they must believe in your team and that you will use their money wisely. No, they don’t expect a return on their investment, but with the thousands of nonprofits out there competing for their dollars, they have plenty of options to choose from when giving to a charity.

Most importantly, donors increase their gifts when asked to. Unless you ask, they’ll likely continue giving the standard amount—which is fine—but we’re trying to build a fundraising strategy for growth.

Key takeaway – You should aim as high as possible when placing prospects in your donor pyramid. The bigger you make the mid-level and high-level sections, the better off your organization will be. You can count on these larger donations on a more regular basis, which can be used a springboard for future growth.

Develop an impeccable marketing campaign

There are many different tools you can leverage and approaches you can take to boost your nonprofit fundraising strategy.

Major types of communication

The basic types of marketing channels are generally known. You can communicate direct via email, phone call or personal visit. You can communicate to a broader scale with public speaking, newsletters, website content, advertising etc. The main thing to know is what you’re trying to accomplish with each type of communication.

You’re not going to get a major donation from sending out a newsletter—you might, but this type of communication is generally geared to higher-volume, lower-dollar amounts.

You’re typically going to want to use more mass communication methods for filling your pipeline and those earlier-stage types of activities. More direct personal touch is required to close most deals, especially when more money is on the line. C.J. Hayden’s book Get Clients Now! takes a look at the effectiveness of each of the major marketing strategies.

 

Marketing Strategies

 

When to use each approach

A good approach uses a mix of all the techniques discussed above. There will be times you want to target individuals and times you’ll want to target groups.

Direct Mail/Email
This method can be used whether you’re reaching out to an individual or your entire prospect list. Be sure to use mail over email if you plan to have a later-in-the-process “sales” discussion with a prospect as physical mail has a more personal touch.

Use this technique when you want to connect directly with individuals. Be sure to use personal touch to make the recipient feel that this note has more value than the other things that end up in the trash. Also include a call to action—conversion rates skyrocket by simply including an option to act on your message.

Advertising
Use this technique when you want to reach out to more than just your immediate community. This can be through printed newspapers and periodicals, on the radio or through television or other forms of media.

Make sure you know the expected return on investment before planning any fundraising dollars to this method, but realize it can pay off especially if you want to educate the masses or get your brand and mission out there.

Internet Marketing
A much cheaper form of marketing your brand, the use of social media platforms and other online communities allows you to connect with the largest number of potential donors for the lowest overall cost.

Besides simply promoting your content or brand, you can include calls to action like “donate now” on a nonprofit Facebook page. The internet was made to reach people quickly and cheaply. Use it to your advantage.

Special Promotions
Host an event that brings together different people in your community and use the platform to raise funds. Everyone likes to be connected to like-minded individuals. By creating somewhat regular events that accomplish this, you can provide spikes in your donation intake at certain times of the year.

An annual appeal may work here. Market the opportunity as an annual or monthly gathering, and give people a reason to attend. The key here is to make sure you don’t overdo it. Don’t host too many events or the idea of a special promotion loses its luster. Why would a donor attend your annual appeal if you actually had weekly appeals? No luster.

Public Relations
When you host an event or produce a new piece of useful content, create a press release to announce it to your community. Like advertising, this has the opportunity of reaching a large number of people.

Just keep in mind that you will get more press coverage in an area if you can show that your news directly impacts the community.

 

Nonprofit Fundraising Marketing Trends
Source: Amanda DiSilvestro’s post on 5 tips for launching a successful localized email marketing strategy

 

Additional methods for nonprofit fundraising success

Weidert Group published a list of the 10 most effective marketing strategies.

Of note are cobranding and affinity marketing. Up to 6% of all product launches rely on some form of cobranding. Get your name attached to others who support similar causes. You shouldn’t see other organizations as merely competitors…but rather as potential complements to your strategy.

Work with partners to build a whole that’s greater than the sum of the parts. Unlock hidden potential by partnering with the right affiliates to help extend your reach beyond your immediate community.

Margot da Cunha similarly compiled a list of 7 marketing strategies for nonprofits. Take a look at some of these good ideas when crafting your fundraising strategy.

What about crowdfunding?

In a society that’s continuing to be more interested in social impact, this is a potentially huge area to raise funds.

Think of Kickstarter. Anyone can promote any cause and collect money from anyone around the world. All they need to do is connect to an investor’s sense of purpose.

Be aware there are fees attached! If using a public platform, understand the costs associated. Take the time to compare different platforms and factor in the cost to raise money with any effort placed on a platform.

Also be aware of nonprofit fundraising laws! With the internet it is much easier to raise money from people in multiple states, even if you operate in just one. Many states require nonprofits to register in order to conduct fundraising within their jurisdiction—this may apply to more states than intended if you plan to raise funds online. The National Association of State Charity Officials published a guide for social media and internet solicitation.

That being said, there are definitely opportunities to use crowdfunding to your advantage.

 

Nonprofit Fundraising Crowdfunding Stats
Source: Crowdfunding: A Strategic Fundraising Plan for Nonprofits by Nonprofit Ally

 

Craft the right story

There are many ways to get a person to be interested in your organization. Most include connecting with their individual sense of purpose. You need them to feel the pain you’re trying to solve.

You might think you don’t have all the right details for a truly compelling story, but you’re wrong!

Beth Kanter outlines four classic storylines that work well when soliciting donors:

1. Overcoming the monster

Talk about some form of adversity your organization is tackling. Are 99% of kids in your region on subsidized school lunch programs? Okay…tell that story.

2. Rags to riches
Use your actual clients or service recipients as a catalyst. Explain the poor circumstances that led to them using your organization, and the 180 degree turnaround you helped them achieve. Don’t be afraid to get detailed in describing the low point.

3. Quest
Everyone loves a good quest story. We’re on a quest to a completely carbon neutral society. Where do we stand on that long journey? What are you doing about it?

4. Tragedy
Some events have the ability to appeal to the masses. Think of the recent devastating earthquakes across southern U.S. and Puerto Rico. Tell that story. Make people feel compelled to do something for all those suffering.

Leverage grants and other funding opportunities

While donors may make up a good core of your fundraising strategy, there are often overlooked free dollars out there that you may qualify for without realizing. It is important to understand where these areas of opportunity are and to always incorporate grants and other free money into your fundraising plans.

Master grant research

There are growing numbers of online sources that can be used for free (or at reasonable costs) to help in your prospect search. Download the free premium edition of this guide to see a list of the top sources and some of their details and how best to use each one.



 

Write a killer proposal

Finding the right grant for your organization is only half the battle.

How do you now secure the funding?

If you’ve never written a grant proposal before, check out GrantSpace’s free introductory grant-writing class. It can be done online or in person and should help provide a baseline for writing a good proposal.

GrantSpace also includes a repository of sample documents. This ranges from proposals to letters of inquiry to cover letters to budgets. Check this out for good proposal templates.

Key things to consider…

Do your homework! If you find a grant and it has a request for proposals (RFP), then it should have all the guidelines for you to consider. Read the document carefully. Understand any deadlines, if there is a letter of intent due before the application, the ceiling amount for funding, etc.

Then go to the funder’s website and see what other types of organizations are typically funded. Visit their websites and see the kinds of programs they offer. Does your organization seem to fit this mold? Write your proposal keeping in mind what types of programs worked in the past for this funder.

Start planning. If you agree your organization is a good fit for the grant, meet with your team and start outlining what needs to be done. If a letter of intent (LOI) is required, use it to your advantage. This is your one- or two-page pitch to the funder to show why you’re a great fit for them. If the funder likes you, they will ask you to submit a full proposal. This is potentially a huge time saver, if in fact you are not a realistic recipient for this grant.

 

Nonprofit Fundraising Grant Management Pipeline
Source: Grant Management Technology Helps Nonprofit Organizations to Better Manage Grant Lifecycle and Win More Funding by Brooke Grimes

 

Reach out to the funder’s program officer. They’re generally very friendly people and a simple conversation can go a long way. Either you briefly discuss your idea and it’s not a fit, and you’ve saved yourself the time and effort putting together a full proposal.

Or you’re a great fit, you hit it off with the funder, and you’ve started a great relationship together, essentially completing the first stage of the application process.

This could lead to many years of future funding. Don’t overlook this useful step! Try to build a relationship with the funder before you’ve formally applied for funding.

When you finally start your proposal, you should have all the information you need to be confident that you will win the award. It should be 5-15 pages long and cover things such as a summary of your program, background and needs, goals, evaluation process, budget, timeline, and any partnerships you are planning to leverage.

Remember to answer every part of every question!

RFPs can be very long and tedious, but any excuse to dismiss an applicant is usually enough to throw the proposal in the trash. Don’t risk this. Don’t worry about fluffy language…get straight to the point. Feel free to leverage content from previous proposals, as often the same questions are asked in RFPs.

Submit your proposal and be confident you will win. If not, you move on. There are plenty of other grant opportunities out there…see the previous section…

The grant-writing process

The following diagram illustrates the standard grant process that you’ll likely go through. Image is courtesy of The Writing Center of the University of North Carolina.

 

Nonprofit Fundraising Grant Writing Process

 

If you’ve been following all the steps outlined in this guide, the actual grant-writing process will be the least stressful part. You’ve already got the foundation for sustained excellence engrained in your organization. Now just wrap the bow around your mission and earn the grant dollars that you know you deserve!

Conclusion

In an ever-changing technological and financial landscape, it is sometimes hard to dedicate the time and effort to staying on top of what works and what doesn’t in this space.

Use the tools outlined in this guide to help your organization maximize its fundraising potential. Share your successes and lessons learned with us as we would love to incorporate them into updated material for others to use.

Nonprofit fundraising doesn’t have to be difficult, and hopefully this guide provides a good basis for crafting your strategy and executing on it for years to come!

2017 Annual Nonprofit Conference

CT Nonprofit Alliance image

The Connecticut Nonprofit Alliance (The Alliance) is hosting its annual nonprofit conference on November 30, 2017.

Where and when
The event will take place at the Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford from 8:00 a.m. to 3:45 p.m., and interested parties can sign up here.

Theme
The theme for this year’s event is From Collaboration to Collective Impact, although the Alliance has speakers lined up to discuss a myriad of different topics from inclusive leadership to the power of influence.

Details
Two keynote speakers are scheduled:

     – Tim Delaney – President & CEO, National Council of Nonprofits

     – Jacob Harold – President & CEO, GuideStar USA

The conference will include a series of concurrent sessions that attendees can pick and choose from, with sessions for networking mixed in between.

See the full agenda here.

More information
Sign up for this excellent event as it offers the chance to meet some like-minded individuals in your community and learn a thing or two that might help your organization move forward.

For more information, contact Katie Breslin (kbreslin@ctnonprofitalliance.org) of the Alliance.

Fed 40: A Mobile App Feeding the Hungry

FCE logo image

Feeding Children Everywhere (FCE), a nonprofit organization based in Florida was started after the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti, with the goal of providing meals to hungry people. Since its inception, hundreds of thousands of volunteers have helped provide healthy meals to people in 49 countries around the world.

The organization’s latest project, Fed 40, was launched in November 2016 in the form of a mobile app. At its core, the app allows users living in designated low-income areas to request 40 healthy meals delivered to their doorstep in one day at no charge.

After starting in Florida, Fed 40 has since expanded to Texas, Oklahoma, and Connecticut, and plans to scale nationwide by 2018. Started with a $2,600 donation from the community of Ellington Congregational Church, the program was opened to CT residents.

How it works
Previous projects saw FCE working its extensive volunteer base by hosting events that gather individuals who collectively mix, measure and package four basic ingredients of a red lentil jambalaya meal. Meant to be cost-effective, healthy, and easy-to-travel, these meals are an efficient way to deliver a large quantity of meals with a limited amount of resources. The Fed 40 app will allow residents who are hungry in the United States simply click a button and have 40 meals delivered to their residence within a day.

Organization milestones reached

    — 20 million people fed
    — 100 thousand people empowered and mobilized

FCE’s mission
“We are committed to providing healthy meals to those in need. Our delicious Red Lentil Jambalaya is all-natural, non-GMO, gluten-free and vegan. We source our plant-based ingredients from farms right here in the United States.

We are committed to sustainability. Creating a hunger-free world will be possible if we have an awareness of our impact on the world around us. We have implemented sustainability goals to reduce our carbon footprint and to eliminate the utilization of harmful plastics. This commitment also includes helping to create self-sufficient and sustainable communities through our program areas.

We are committed to making your contribution truly matter! Financial efficiency and meaningful impact are the pillars of our commitment. We believe that financial transparency combined with a high-energy, tangible impact volunteer experience is the key to a contribution that makes a meaningful difference.”

Additional info
Click here to donate to Feeding Children Everywhere.

See this article from the New Haven Register (Kathleen Schassler, May 9th) for more information about this program.