I'm researching how to start a Non-profit. How does one make a living (i.e. receive a pay check) in non-profit

Answer 1

As a nonprofit, you need to raise funds to cover all your program expenses, and overhead. The program expenses are the funds directly used to advance the mission, and the the overhead are your costs of operating the organization, including staff salaries.

Program money is easier to get than 'overhead' money - very few funders offer grants for overhead, but you can allocate a portion of each donation you receive to cover to overhead expenses. Just try to keep the ration like 75% to the charity, and 25% to overhead, and be sure you disclose this information to potential donors.

An excellent resource for any nonprofit or person seeking to start one is the Foundation Center. It is the absolute best compendium of information on how to start and efficiently run and fund a nonprofit organization

You can start with the Foundation Center's "Establishing a Nonprofit Organization" online tutorial. This tutorial describes 12 tasks that need to be accomplished during the process of establishing a nonprofit organization, including board development, creating bylaws, filing for federal tax exemption, recruiting staff, and developing an overall fundraising plan.

http://foundationcenter.org/getstarted/t...

I also recommend browsing their FAQs (frequently asked questions) for even more information

http://foundationcenter.org/getstarted/f...

Answer 2

honestly starting out...most of what you make is put back n to the business...as any new entrepreneur. But after a while you will hopefully grow...and set a sallary. And an hourly wage for your employees. One thing that non-profits have over other new organizations is tax breaks and some funding in certain situations.

Answer 3

You create a budget to do the work you want. You learn to ask for money. When the money comes in, you pay yourself to do the work you promised to do. It's like any business: you pay income taxes but not taxes on what you raise. So let's say you want to create a nonprofit to tutor children. Tutoring 100 children will cost $10,000. You raise $10,000, you tutor 100 children (probably using volunteers), you draw a salary from the money you raised. Frankly, though, if you really want to do the work, rather than raise money and write budgets, you should find a nonprofit doing that work, and work with them. Otherwise, you spend all your time fund raising, bookkeeping, and writing reports. You have to do the administrative work, not the fun program work.